Gavin Corbett - Green Glowing Skull

He gazed at his watch until the blood drained from his arm by the power of gravity. His arm collapsed anaesthetised. It was five o’clock. Was five o’clock. He looked at his watch again. Ten past. Dark already. The only light — and he was outside, because he was cold to the bone, and a dog, a slimy black docker or a butcher’s dog, was sniffing around his feet — came from a bulb on a bracket, attached to a wall, opposite. The underarm of the bracket was wrought into a delicate shamrock sprig.

He thought: My home, my prison, my emerald in the hospital waste, here by my Anna Livia Pleurisy.

Wasn’t it wonderful even in the murk of Hell to find such a detail? Butler Yeats’s stated wish to exist eternally as a golden bird upon a bough came to mind and he thought that it would not be a bad thing to be a wrought-iron shamrock on a lamp bracket, being shone on all the time, and expressing so succinctly what one was about.

He was at least supported: his back was against the wall. Someone in his anger could find it in him despite it all to be merciful. Wasn’t that wonderful too? He stood up, turned around, and studied the soot-black terroristic brickwork. For a whole minute. And took one step to the side. There was a door and he tried it. To his surprise it opened and he found himself, by and by, in a brightly lit showroom for gas-powered household appliances.

A little old man dressed as a gendarme came skating towards him. Ladies in headscarves eyed him askance and aghast.

‘Ah, it’s all right, I know where I am now,’ he said.

The gendarme came up close. ‘Mister, if you’ve any respect for yourself you’ll remove yourself from these premises, go home if you have one, and clean yourself up.’

‘I know where I am now,’ he repeated, ‘and if you’ll just allow me back the way I came in, I’ll be out of your way.’

‘You’ll go out the front door.’

‘Can I use your bathroom?’

‘You’ll go out the front door now.’

‘Can I dry my knees in one of your gas-powered monstrances?’

‘You skedaddle out of here fast and stop scaring the customers.’

He stood for a moment on D’Olier Street, turned right, and right again back into the dripping wormhole of Leinster Market, and came through on to Hawkins Street where he paused and looked up at the Theatre Royal, itself resembling a fancy gas-fire surround. Two young girls in raincoats ran by.

‘My great-grandfather saw Pauline Viardot in Don Giovanni in that place,’ he shouted after them, then blunderbussed into the grubbiest rugby-club ditty he could think of, holding up, as he spun in the middle of the street, a Press lorry on its way to or from Burgh Quay:

‘John Clancy’s sister bends and picks

The coal up from the road.

The fuel van’s not the only thing

That easy sheds its load!’

… and continued to the opening of Poolbeg Street, and carried on to Mulligan’s Bar, feeling aglow in himself again.

‘No hard feelings,’ said big Vincent Fennelly, who had turned around on his stool. His two bigger pals either side of him looked at Denny with amused contempt. ‘You’ve swollen up worse than I’d thought,’ said Vincent. ‘You wouldn’t want to get a second concussion.’

His seat, on the bench at the corner table, was still free. Billy Sperrin — who hadn’t a tooth in his head after taking a kick in the mouth from his own out half, and proudly on nights like this left his gnashers in his pocket — and Beast Features McHale — that very out half, who had never pretended that he had missed the ball by accident — greeted him, with a large amount of irony, like a returning hero.

But Denny’s mood was apt to darken suddenly at this time and, after the way Fennelly and his fellow scrummagers had looked at him, bringing back the memory of the afternoon’s events, he was in no mood now for jollity.

‘They’ve no respect for their elders, Fennelly and that Saint Mary’s crew,’ he said, swatting at the hands of his companions, who were prodding his bruised temple in mock awe.

‘They were only two years behind us,’ said Beast Features.

‘And are twice our size,’ said Billy.

‘If they weren’t in our Senior Cup year then they’re our juniors, and we’re their elders,’ said Denny.

‘You were beyond the bounds there in every way, Denny,’ said Beast Features. ‘And asking for it.’

‘Frankly, it was about time — both Beastie and I agreed,’ said Billy.

‘Now,’ said Denny — he semaphored the barman for another glass of malt; Billy and Beast Features glanced at each other with bowed heads, and Beastie looked at Denny disapprovingly. Both B&B were on the lemonade.

‘Well, he’s given me the wake-up call at least,’ he said. He pressed his contusion, rather enjoying the fizzle of the pain between fingers and bone.

‘Good for him, and for you. I hope you realise now that you’re a stupid bollocks. You’re lucky he didn’t garryowen you all the way to Belfast.’

‘Ha! You said it, Beastie!’ said Billy.

‘What I realise …’ he said, having to break off to allow the guffawing and table-slapping to die down, ‘What I realise, chaps — what Mister Fennelly has woken me up to — is that the time has come for drastic action.’ He paused for effect. ‘Fellows, I’ve made up my mind.’

‘Go on,’ said Billy. ‘You’re about to deliver something dramatic, I can see.’

‘I’ve finally given up on this country. I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to America.’

‘Settle yourself down there, Denny,’ said Beast Features.

‘Listen to him!’ said Billy. ‘America! You’re a mammy’s boy, Denny! You didn’t even last six weeks in Italy! You came running home for mammy’s milk!’

The barman pushed his way through to them and, with a deliberate bang on the table, put a glass full of ice, and only ice, in front of Denny. To Beast Features he said, with a wagging finger, ‘Not a drop more for him.’

‘Good on you, Mick!’ said Beast Features. ‘That’s the way. You see, Denny, even Mick is taking Vincent Fennelly’s side on this one. You’ve become an awful arse, it’s obvious to everybody.’

‘America!’ said Billy again, shaking his head.

‘Pay no heed to him,’ said Beast Features. ‘He’s always been a home bird.’

‘I was a home bird, Beastie, that’s true, and I still am, to a degree.’ He twirled the ice in his glass, and hiccupped. ‘That degree being the point at which the Ireland that could have been changes to the Ireland that is now. That first is the Ireland I’m tied to for ever — the Ireland I carried in my kit bag to Italy and sang to Maestro Tosi about.’

‘Who dismissed it as claptrap!’ said Beast Features. ‘As anybody with any taste would and does. Sentimental crud, manufactured in the main by Englishmen and Americans and West Britons!’

‘Ah, Beastie now,’ Denny protested. ‘Those Thomas Moores and Chauncey Challoners — they had great antennae for the Irish soul.’

‘If it’s from such as your own that that rubbish was divined then your soul is as shaky and artificial as the corner turrets on the Irish House Bar.’

‘And I’ll tell you what,’ said Denny, ‘at least those ballads have more of a connection with this land than the rock and the roll and the doo wop that’s rife about the place now.’

‘Oh, not this again! Jealous of youth! Jealous of youth!’

‘Why would I be jealous of youth? Get out of that!’

‘Jealous of youth!’ said Beast Features. ‘Because the good discerning people of this country didn’t care much for your music anymore —’

‘Ah, easy now, Beastie,’ said Billy.