Gavin Corbett - Green Glowing Skull

‘I want you to know that I’m a humane man,’ said Quicklime. ‘You asked me for a record player. There is nowhere that sells record players any more, but I found you a CD stereo, although I think that was what you meant anyway. I’ve bought you a few CDs full of patriotic songs. I hope you won’t find that in poor taste but I know that that is the kind of music you like.’

At some point in the ensuing several hours music came to him. What struck him so much was how small the barely accompanied voices sounded within the noise around them. He gathered fleeting amusement from the thought of McCormack and Caruso in the early days of recording standing stoutly with their hands on their hips in front of funnels that almost swallowed them. But soon they sounded like chains in gravel, and he was flipping across the floor like a desperate fish and by and by, drawing blood from his head, he had the stereo stopped.

***

Oh dear. She had sent Veronica running off in yet another muddle. She told her she was worried that she was not in control of her feelings any more and to get any sort of handle on them she would have to change as a person. What sort of feelings, what sort of change? asked Veronica. She would not answer the first question, and to the second she could only say, ‘I am not sure, and I am not sure either if I have the power within me to bring whatever it is about.’ Divine intervention is what you’re looking for so, said Veronica with some frustration in her voice. She had a cold, and it sounded as if she had said ‘divined intervention’. This immediately had Jean thinking of hazel rods and the opposite to divine intervention. She thought too of how she had sat on Mazzard Hill and called for help, and how apt Veronica’s words as they sounded were.

Passing along Burgh Quay one evening she heard a drunkard singing. This was not unusual on the streets of this city but what caught Jean’s attention was how the singer made the terrible noise he was making into a virtue, as if in singing ‘The Lock Hospital’ he actually acted the part of a man whose brain was riddled with syphilis. Also, he was not just wailing in the street at random passers-by like a normal drunkard but seemed to direct his singing at a window of an upper floor of a building on the quay. Also, she saw some slum boys carefully remove the man’s belt without the man seeming to mind or even to notice, and he now continued with his performance oblivious to the fact that his trousers were bundled around his ankles.

What most caught her attention though was that he was young, perhaps only a few years older than she was, herself, and that he was on his own. Usually when she saw a young man drunk and loud in the street he was showing off to other young drunks in his company; only older men got drunk on their own and shouted in the street. She had never seen such unselfconsciousness in a person; that someone of that age could become paralytic to the point of appearing syphilitic hugely impressed her. As she studied him, she supposed she could recognise that the man was handsome enough, though the feeling he really brought out in her was envy that she could not lose herself as he could.

The belt was a good one because it was stiff and kept the shape of a circle; Jean picked it up from the flagstones and approached the man. He did not seem in a particularly angry mood like one of those out-of-control drunks, so she felt it was safe to tap him on the arm. All the same, if the man had eaten her head off like a lion she wouldn’t have minded. She stood there with the man and the evening pedestrian traffic flowing around them. Her, she stood in a pair of white nylon size thirty-four sailor’s trousers she had just walked out of Guiney’s wearing. Her coat was unbuttoned to the river breeze.

The man took the belt from Jean, showing no surprise at all. Without too much fluster he bent down to reinstate his trousers, muttering something about ‘a copy taker above’ as he buckled himself up. Then he resumed his straight but slightly unsteady posture and returned his attention to the window.

‘I have beautiful girls taking my breeches off in the street now, Aisling! And if you don’t come down to me in ten seconds I’m going off with her. Right — I’m gone!’

He pressed his finger to Jean’s chest and told her to speed along. She turned to walk beside him. He walked with his head stooped, giving just the one glance back at the upper-storey window. Only when they had reached the corner with D’Olier Street did he look up at Jean. And he did have to look up at Jean: she was a good three inches taller than him.

‘You’re a big girl all the same,’ he said.

‘Where are we going?’

‘That depends on whether you’re happy to come along.’

‘I am.’

‘You know who I am, then, yes?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Just as well. Will you come and have a drink with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m up at Jury’s. This is my last night in Dublin.’

She went in with him to the grand old hotel on Dame Street, where a cheerier and more civilised hubbub prevailed than out on the street. He ordered her a gin and tonic at the bar and, for himself, a glass of milk.

‘The ruination of the singer’s voice, milk,’ he said. ‘But I’ve done enough for the day.’ Then, shooting out a hand, he introduced himself as: ‘Denny Kennedy-Logan.’

‘Jean Dotsy,’ Jean replied.

‘Do you know who I am now?’

Jean hesitated.

‘Denny Logan?’ said the man.

‘Denny Logan …’

‘I suppose you’re all very taken with the rock and roll?’ said Denny.

‘No,’ said Jean. ‘No, I don’t really care for that kind of music.’

‘What do you like?’

‘Emmm,’ said Jean, thinking. ‘I like … I just like a good song, sung well. I like more of the old-time stuff. John McCormack would have been a favourite in our house.’

‘Ah well then you will have heard of me. Think about it now.’

Jean rolled her eyes to the floor to make like she was searching her memory. In truth, a tiny bell did tinkle.

‘Yes, I have heard of you, I think,’ she said.

He wiped away a milk moustache. ‘There you are.’

‘And you say this is your last night in Dublin. Are you emigrating tomorrow?’

‘No, I’m heading off home tomorrow. I’m only on a visit to Dublin. But I don’t intend to ever come back. No sirree, this is the last time,’ he said, banging his glass down on the counter. ‘Shall we go somewhere more comfortable?’

They took two soft low seats at a table. This left them some feet apart. It was more effort to talk over the clamour so they contented themselves with resting in their chairs. Not that Jean could ever rest very much. ‘At rest’ she was a ball of wire — people had pointed this out to her; at her Christmas drinks she remained with her shoulders hunched up around her neck as if she was still at her desk. She was aware that her shoulders were like this now, and she slowly let them down, and stiffly reclined into her chair. In contrast the man seemed at ease in his own body, and with his chair. From the crazed blackguard who had made a show of himself on the street he had now transformed into a ‘cool’-looking sophisticate. Each pose, in its way, showed equal indifference to what people thought. Slumped almost sideways with his legs crossed, he was smoking a cigarette with steely relish. The brown suit he wore was woollen of a very fine grade. She knew from looking at him that the country he had come from and the country he would return to tomorrow was America.

As meanly as he had been enjoying his cigarette he was eyeing her now, she noticed.

‘Will you have another drink?’ he said.

‘I will.’

He went to the bar, and came back with a gin and tonic, and another glass of milk for himself.