Kevin Barry - Dark Lies the Island

‘You around tomorrow at all?’

‘I have to go with my friend.’

‘You around Saturday?’

‘I go to Brighton with my aunt.’

‘Ah yeah.’

‘But maybe on Sunday?’

‘Sunday?’

‘I will be at the market?’

She told him of the motorcycle boots she planned to buy at Camden Market on the Sunday. He said he knew the exact stall. He asked what time did she expect to be around and she said maybe lunchtime. If he liked, she would meet him there. Half-past twelve was the time they agreed. Outside the station.

He walked her back to her aunt’s flat on Kentish Town Road. He talked about the difference between being in Ireland and being in England, as he saw it.

‘Ireland is magical,’ he said. ‘England is ironical.’

He liked the sound of that and she seemed to like it too. He kissed her once more in the doorway of the flatblock and it was a great hot and passionate kiss. He walked the long road home and was lit with desire for her. She was three years the older and this was very exciting. It was the first time he had kissed a woman in her twenties and everything in her kiss told him there could be more.

He could see himself living in a village in the Black Forest — it would take only a quick swerve and he was there. For some reason, he kept seeing an old-fashioned motorbike with a sidecar and Sabina sat in it, and the two of them in their boots. Twisting around the forest roads and slowing for the bends. Heading off somewhere for a feed of sausages and beer. To an inn.

He could not sleep that night for the heat in the squat. The excitements of the summer were almost too much to think about. So he did not think but listened only. He listened as the night slowly passed and there was half-light in the window by five and the rumble of the trains began again beneath the skin of the city. He listened as the traffic built. The early clankings and burr of the morning. It was daylight at last that poured a light sleep over him.

A housing estate in Tipperary, two winters previously .

He could hear the slow creaking and the catches of breath. He knew his mother had been fucking the nordy for the last week at least. He plugged his headphones into the stereo and turned the volume loud. The more they tried to muffle the noise, the more the images of their fucking projected. He sat on the bed, cross-legged, stretching the cord of the headphones to its full extent. The nordy had been kept in the house since just after New Year.

Steven had the lights off. He twitched the curtains to look outside. A hard clear night with stars hung low on the estate. The estate was close in all around.

Now and then, a man would come and stay a while. The men were nordys often. His mother was from the north herself — she had moved down when it went bad. She had Steven a year after the move. She had him for an English fitter she met at a disco in Limerick. The fitter had stayed around for a few years only and he was just quick strokes of memory for Steven — the bristles of a beard, the softness of a wool shirt, the smell of his fags; the smell of the fags in the wool of the shirt. The men who came now were preceded always by a visit from Manus.

Steven was not allowed to speak with Manus — that was his mother’s ruling.

The nordy slept in the boxroom. He watched the portable television in the small sitting room with the curtains drawn. He had his meals in the kitchen. He took some air in the yard out back if the days were dry and warm enough. Steven was not to speak with the nordy either but his mother was at work in the daytime and he did so. The nordy was quiet and made no fuss of anything. They would watch Countdown together. Steven went to the library for him. The nordy had requests — anything Elmore Leonard, anything John D. MacDonald.

One day Manus had called in daytime to see the nordy. Steven led him quietly through the house.

‘That’s some pair of boots,’ Manus said. ‘Size you take?’

‘Twelves.’

‘Fuck me. And what age are you now?’

Steven took off the headphones and looked outside to the estate; the slow nights of a winter. Their noise had ended and he pictured them resting. If he stayed awake long enough he knew he would hear the fucking start up again.

Tottenham Court Road, Sunday morning, 11 a.m .

The greatest insult was to call it the mainland campaign. If they were the mainland, we were what? He carried the guitar case as he walked. It was light as air.

‘Slap it off a wall,’ Manus had said, ‘and it’ll make no differ. She’ll go when she’s to go, hey?’

One o’clock was the time that was set. The morning was hot and dusty. He had slept soundly. There was the feeling of Sunday as he walked north for Camden. As he moved he felt the strength of his intention harden. Trash from the Saturday night went by in drifts of strange breeze about his feet.

He saw the dead bodies rise from their beds all over London. He saw them pull on red satin socks and brothel creepers with a leopardskin finish and scoop a palmful of Brylcreem through their hair. He saw nose rings clipped, and then the tartan trousers, and then the torn leather jacket. He saw faces he knew from ‘Feet First’, pale faces as gaunt even as Wayne from The Mission, and they too would be among the dead.

‘The one thing you can’t be is fucking emotional,’ Manus had said. ‘They say the “mainland” meaning the rest of the UK as opposed to the province of Ulster. They’re not referring to the Republic at all. They’re not saying the Republic isn’t a mainland.’

‘As if we don’t exist even.’

‘That’s more of it you buck-fucking eejit! That’s more of the emotional! If you’re emotional how are you going to think straight? You’ve to stay clear in the head, Steven. Don’t mind the fucking emotional.’

They saved what money they could from shit jobs and giros and kept it for the market on Sunday. They left squats and bedsits and made for the stations. From Tufnell Park, Brixton, Leytonstone. They were his own kind and if that was not proof of cold valour, what was?

He was on Camden High Street before he was aware of it. He went to the greasy spoon near the Good Mixer and he ordered a fried egg sandwich and a cup of tea. Two bites of the sandwich and he was on Inverness Street puking. He was annoyed at himself for that but there was no problem. He just had the look of another hungover scut on a Sunday morning.

There were slow hard minutes to be killed. He walked the backway to Camden Lock. He sat a while by the noodle stalls. He kept the case at his feet. He looked down at his boots. It came past noon.

He moved.

He felt steered as he walked along the High Street for the station. He passed by the Electric Ballroom. He saw the dead bodies climb out from the trains. The noise of Sunday on the High Street: the cockney boys selling lookalike threads — ‘Armani Armani! Versace Versace!’ — and the Sisters of Mercy blaring from ghetto blasters on the bakers’ pallets and the gangsters in cars playing acid house and hip hop.

From the tube station the roar of the ascending crowd.

He’d leave the case that was set for one o’clock. He’d meet her outside at half twelve on the dot — surely a German would be on time. They could be in Regent’s Park by the time it went, with her new boots bought. He waited outside a moment by the railings, Kentish Town Road side. He looked hard into the station. A response unit of the Met appeared in a sudden mob by the top of the elevator. There were a half-dozen of them, in riotwear, and a young goth was like a trapped animal between them, his arms all twisted.

The crowd splintered madly as the word went around:

‘Bomb.’

‘Bomb!’

‘ Bomb! ’