Kevin Barry - Dark Lies the Island

Camden High Street, Sunday morning, 11 a.m .

HE STOOD WITH Manus by the elevator in the tube station as the crowds rose up in a great surge of bodies and voices.

‘It’s a scrum of people alright,’ Manus said.

‘Wait till you see it coming on for one o’clock,’ he said. ‘Once the hungover fuckers have woken up.’

Sunday morning meant Camden Market and all the tribes were headed for it: the goths and the punks, the rockabillies, the acid-house kids.

‘You’re one twisted fucker, Steven. Did I ever tell you that?’

‘The way it works,’ he said, ‘is there’s a kind of honour thing with the buskers.’

An old hippy slapped his guitar and wailed a Neil Young song by the base of the elevator.

‘They take it in turns,’ he said. ‘When you leave your guitar case down beside the fella singing, it means you’re next in line. You go off and have a cup of tea and a smoke.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘That’s it. Sundays, you get a half-hour each by the moving stair. Is the arrangement.’

‘The fucking crowd,’ Manus said.

‘It’s nothing yet,’ Steven said proudly. ‘One o’clock? You can’t breathe for people coming up that stair.’

They were a dozen to the cell. They came from north Tipperary, south Limerick, north Kerry. Steven was the one they had chosen. The young fella was lethal. They could tell that by the set of mouth on him. Also he had the blood.

‘This day week?’ Steven said.

‘I can try,’ Manus said. ‘A fucking guitar case.’

They went into the hot morning sun. Even the pure unmoving heat of July was a relief after the crush of the tube station. They headed down the High Street among the crowds.

‘Some collection of fucking poofters,’ Manus said.

The goths sold bootleg tapes from briefcases stacked on bakers’ pallets: Sisters of Mercy live in Amsterdam. The punks sat on the ground on the corner of Inverness Street and drank cider with their dogs. The rockabillies headed for the early dance show at Camden Lock. The acid-house kids bounced about like rubber toys and beamed madly as they headed into the warren of the market stalls. There were two blokes in old-fashioned gowns outside the Electric Ballroom.

‘Some collection of homos,’ Manus said.

They went along past the veg stalls of Inverness Street. A graffito on the wall read:

’88 Summer Of Love — Enjoy This Trip

They went into the Good Mixer which had no more than a scatter of old men at its tables yet. Manus bought the two pints and they played a game of pool.

‘How you fixed anyway?’

‘I’m not so bad,’ Steven said.

‘You at the French restaurant yet?’

‘Kensington Church Street.’

‘You’re turning out the gourmet cuisine for ’em, you are?’

‘I’m KP,’ Steven said. ‘Kitchen porter.’

‘Nice way of putting it for a pot scrubber.’

‘Well.’

‘Charles and Di down that way, no?’

‘Not far.’

‘You’d have an aul’ lick off her and all, wouldn’t you?’

Manus was a dog man from north Kerry. There wasn’t much wrong with the back end of a greyhound he couldn’t fix. He worked often at the Walthamstow track. He was the only one that Steven met with on a regular basis. That was the best practice, no question. Everybody studied the practice. Late at night, in the farmhouses and semi-ds — the practice.

Steven named bottom left for the black and made the shot easily.

‘Handy,’ Manus said.

Steven was seventeen the month of June gone. He had a black mass of backcombed hair and a graveyard pallor. His uniform daily was motorcycle boots and black army trousers, no matter the weather. He lived in a squat near Goodge Street station. The building was owned by Arabs and the apartments were for short-term lets. There were always at least half of them empty. Change the locks and they had to give you six months’ notice to get out.

‘What’ll you do after?’

‘I’ll go to a pub and watch the news,’ Steven said.

‘Wear your eyeliner,’ Manus said. ‘Keep the hair up. Wear all the gear, yeah?’

‘No fear,’ Steven said.

Kensington Church Street, Thursday afternoon, 3 p.m .

Polly, the restaurant manager, was most attractive when she was angry with him.

‘The telephone,’ she said, ‘is for bookings only. It’s not for your personal use, Steven. It’s not for casual calls.’

She talked to him as if he wasn’t exactly in the same place as her. He’d been called up from the basement kitchen to the phone in the restaurant. It was not good for business — the sight of Steven with the sauce stains and the hair and the boots.

‘It wasn’t casual. It was important.’

‘Never again.’

It had been Manus on the phone. The guitar was fixed and ready for Sunday. Polly clipped away on her heels, and he was left to the KP corner — it was a mess of steam from the washer and towers of stacked plates and ancient sinks stained with green and brownish moulds. The way it was in the kitchen, if nobody was looking, he’d fork a couple of baby new potatoes somebody had left on their side dish and run them through the creamy sauce in the bain-marie. Nigel, the chef, caught him at the caper with the potatoes one day.

‘Pat likes his spuds,’ he said.

The shift was ten until three, six days a week, and the money was dirt but it filled the hours as he waited. Walking to the tube after, he enjoyed the warm air of the street, and he bought a tin of lager in the Paki shop — his new routine — and he sipped it as he went. He played tapes on the Walkman, his own compilations. They had been made in the bedroom at home before he had travelled. He hopped the barrier at the station — he had not so far bought a ticket.

Back in the squat, he lay on the mattress and he halfways slept and he had an erection. The excitement of the night lay ahead, and it was a great distraction from the Sunday.

It was ‘Feet First’ at the Camden Palace on Thursdays. He showered for it even. He had not yet managed to hook up the electric for the squat and the shower was ice-cold and reviving. He burned a candle in the windowless bathroom for the mirror and he got himself made up to the hilt. He drank from a bottle of red wine as he worked on his face. He set water to boil on the Argos campstove he had bought with his first wages. When the water was ready, he stirred five spoons of sugar into it, and with careful fingers he worked the mixture into his hair, teasing out the strands until they were high and as if wind-blown.

All summer long he had been in rut heat and lonesome. He was in love with the girl in the Italian chipper. He was in love with Polly the restaurant manager. He was in love with the middle-aged lady who pulled pints at Presley’s and called him ‘Ducky’.

‘You’ll have your Guinness, Ducky?’

He was in love with every girl on the Northern line as it aimed for Camden. The anticipation built, and as he entered the Palace he trembled. At ‘Feet First’ they played everything he wanted to hear — unbelievable, it might have been his own collection he was listening to. Sisters of Mercy, The Mission, Einstürzende Neubauten, one after the other, all night long.

He saw her dance nearby. She was a blonde girl, not English he could tell, and the blonde looked good against the black of her clothes.

‘Sab …’

‘Ina.’

‘S.A.B.I.N.A?’

‘Yes.’

She worked for a doctor in the Black Forest. She was a housekeeper there. She was in the city for two weeks only. She was staying with her aunt. He kissed her and she took to it and they kissed and felt each other for a long time then on the dark seats by the sideways. He could see a village in the German woods with great trees all about. He could feel the cool and fresh air. Her English was not advanced but they could talk well enough and it felt easy to be with Sabina. After the music had ended, they sat on the railings on Camden High Street for a while and talked and kissed more.