Gavin Corbett - Green Glowing Skull

‘I don’t know what Cluedo is. I’m … This is …’

‘Or take the man I helped the week before last. Poor lad, went out years ago, in his thirties, to the Niger Delta in Africa to follow the fossil-fuel craze. He had degrees coming out his ears, in oil engineering this and oil engineering that. Thought he might meet a wife out there. But he didn’t. The Nigerian women wouldn’t have him. And he didn’t thrive in the job either. Turns out the oil business down there is run by a cabal of Brits. Treated him like muck. I found him in a bar in Port Harcourt supping bad Nigerian Guinness. Have you ever had Nigerian Guinness?’

Clive remained silent.

‘It’s not the same. Nothing like the same. It’s brewed up there in Lagos.’

‘Mister Quicklime …’

‘Just Quicklime, please.’

‘Have you come to rescue me?’

He took a moment.

‘Well. That’s up to you. I know little about you, if I’m being honest. All I’m here to do is tell you about Bring Our Boys Back Home. And to tell you that Ireland values her sons even if no one else does. I want you to know that there’s help here if needed.’

‘But … you must have identified me as someone in need of help.’

‘I identified you as a fellow tribesman of a certain vintage, alone in a vast and impersonal city.’

‘But really — you know nothing.’

‘Which is true. I haven’t even got your name yet.’

‘I don’t have a name.’

‘Now come on.’

‘I call myself Clive. I’ve learnt to live with this name, Clive Sullis. It means “sword of light” in Irish. Men with theatrically priapic names such as this you have to wonder about, don’t you think? More recently I’m inclined to respond to the name I was born with, Jean Dotsy, though no one ever calls me that.’

‘Look. Clive. As I say — a vast, impersonal city. And full of fairies, you’re right about that.’

Quicklime began brushing the bar, the patch where he had spilt his coffee, with the sleeve of his mould-blue sweater.

‘Ah yes, that’ll bring up the grain all right,’ he said.

Clive stared quietly at the wood for some moments. Then he said, ‘No, I’m staying here. I’ve been here too long, and this is my home.’

‘“Too long” I think is the revealing phrase.’

‘Things are moving along now. I have a purpose here. I have a friend, Denny, and … we’ve started a tenor trio. We’ve formed a little singing group. We’ll sing Irish ballads, play engagements.’

Quicklime examined his sleeve for damp.

‘What sort of ballads?’

‘Oh … the old ones. Like McCormack used to sing.’

‘This is one of the signs, you see. I’ve seen this many times before, in men like you. The pain of yearning is too much and so they lose themselves in sentimental old songs. It’s a dangerous game. These are sad old songs and in their singing the yearning and sadness is perpetuated. And the Ireland depicted in these songs is a fantasy. All harps and rainbows and Glocca Morra.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that, no? What’s wrong with a little make-believe?’

‘Fantasy is the path to madness. And wouldn’t you rather come home and see how things are for real? How long is it since you’ve been in the old country?’

Clive thought about it.

‘Fifty years.’

‘Ah now, Clive.’

Quicklime flicked the gleaming gold pipe of a tap, making it ping.

‘I can show you an Ireland more glittering and more wonderful than any Ireland you’ll ever sing about. Ireland today truly is the land of fantasy. You would be amazed. A new age of statuary … Huge triumphal arches in green Connemara marble … Gold mines.’

‘Gold?’

‘In south County Wicklow. They’ve reopened the mines after two hundred years … We have ways of thinking about politics that are a cause of wonder to the world. Restitutionalism. Bifurcal assemblies … They’re draining the bogs and clearing the fields on the Roscommon — Mayo border to create a new capital city. New Tara.’

‘New Tara?’

‘Tara Nua.’

‘It sounds all very wonderful. It does. But. I could never go back to Ireland.’

‘Of course you could.’

‘No, I could never go back to Ireland. It would be dangerous for me.’

‘How so?’

‘Because … Mister Quicklime, how much time have we got?’

‘Clive, we have as much time as it takes.’

There comes a time, Clive thought, had been thinking all the while. There comes a time. This was the way of healing. This was encouraged, and it was a good thing.

‘Just let it all out, Clive, open up.’

‘You’re a decent-seeming man, it’s turned out. You’ve proved your bona fides.’

‘I will listen to whatever you have to say, whatever it is you want to get off your chest.’

‘A decent-seeming or any other kind of man, but at least you’re a man. At least I’m assured now that you’re a man.’

‘One to another.’

‘Oh no, I’m not a man. At least … I don’t know. As I’ve told you, I was born a woman. I never intended to become a man.’

‘Is this your big disclosure, Clive?’

‘No. No. That’s not what I need to tell you. That’s not my disclosure. I need to tell you — tell someone — about … what led me, or pushed me, to become a man. And what I became before I became a man. Yes — what I became before I became a man. Yes, this exactly. This fact of who or what I am that I need the world to accept.’

‘Take your time, my friend.’

‘But how can I be sure you’re a man and not a fairy?’

‘Clive …’

Quicklime became distracted, his attention switching to some activity beyond Clive’s left shoulder.

‘Clive, I can’t talk to you right now. I’ve got to go, I’m sorry.’

‘But, sir —’

‘But please — come back to me. Tell me everything. I’m in town for a while. My number’s on the card I gave you.’

Two men had entered the pub somewhere through the back. They were taking stools at the far end of the bar, were broad-faced, platform-browed, and neither was doing a good job of hiding an interest in Quicklime. Clive turned back to his companion, but he had already gone, leaving his trilby, or his homburg, on the hook behind the bar.

Denny’s telephone was black and heavy, made of an obsolete compound, and its electrics were partly exposed. The mouthpiece smelt of birdseed and bird markets. He had acquired the phone some thirty years earlier and it was fifty years older again. Its dial wheel resisted his finger like a ship’s wheel resisted the maelstrom.

‘Clive — a letter arrived this morning.’

‘Oh?’

‘From a radio station in the Bronx. Called Bettina’s Bathtime. Care of. But with my name on it. Denny Kennedy-Logan.’

‘Go on.’

‘Ultimately from a lady. Named Delma Rosenberg. Do you know this lady?’

‘Delma. Fidelma. A good Catholic name … No, I don’t know this lady. What does she have to say?’

‘Are you sure you don’t know this lady? Do you have any explanation for this?’

‘For what?’

‘For what’s in the letter.’

‘What’s in the letter?’

‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

‘I am now.’

‘She begins’:

Dear wonderful Free ’n’ Easy Tones. I won’t waste too much time introducing myself. My name is at the end of this letter. Let it suffice for now to tell you that I am a music lover. That means that I am cold on modern music because in modern music the percussion is advanced to the detriment of the melody. I think the art of melody has been lost in recent times, don’t you think so too? Perhaps that’s because so much of the old music has not been heard by younger ears.