Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

You’re not doing so bad now.

Well. Wait till I tell you. It was the way the ear went on me that turned my entire life around like a miraculous transformation. You might think there was drink involved but there was no drink involved. What was involved was buck fucken madness. On the night of the badger.

They move in shadows, don’t they?

Well this is it, Ken. But if I hadn’t come through that dark night in that field I wouldn’t be stood here talking to you now.

——

Bodies move; the night shifts.

Someone sings a bit from the Beach Boys for half a minute—

Well it’s been building up inside of me

for oh, I don’t know how long.

Which is all he fucking needs, and for a moment the pressure of his sadness is vast on the note that holds.

Are you not so great in yourself, Kenny?

No, I’m not so great.

I thought as much.

He sits tightly in a corner and keeps his eyes down. The measure of the note that holds is brokenheartedness. Bodies sway; teeth sing. Smiles twist on gappy mouths. Heavy scowl lines show by the grimace and the grin. He watches a mandolin player collapse into himself and get carried out sideways.

Argument goes through the musicians like fire.

The burly landlord says—

Right. Be done with ye. A pack o’ cunts.

And he turns on the radio instead.

Kate Bush is away on her wiley fucking moors still.

He calls to the landlord—

What’s the station?

Luxy.

They like their K-K-Kate Bush.

Cornelius passes by and bites a woman’s neck as he passes and she squeals and slaps.

Now, Cornelius says. Aren’t you delighted?

The night fractures; it folds in.

There is wild talk that the singer Ray Lynam might show — he is known to be in the vicinity.

——

An older lady sits and clings to him for a while, auntishly. She carries a waft of marmalade and brandy. She tells him that she is out with the sister — her bird-like fingers claw at his forearm — that she hasn’t talked to the sister in nine years, a nine years that is now lost to them — her nails dig into his skin — and there is no sign of a thaw — none whatsoever — and what it all goes back to is that she came down pregnant, the sister, and I said a stupid thing. Sometimes, Ken, a stupid thing can be a true thing but even so you shouldn’t say it. I said is the child his? Referring to Ronnie. Well. Six months later didn’t the yellow-faced child step out from her. And there was no prizes for guessing where that came from. Out of him from the fish farm. Out of him out of Belfast. Out of him in the denim the yellow child was spawned. Out of him with the big ignorant mouth on him and the same buck not knee-high to a fucken midget. And of course Missy hasn’t spoke to me since. But what harm? Is there call, when you think about it, Kenny, for us all to be mouthing away at each other like fucken goats, morning, noon and night? Would it not be better for us all to shut up for a while and ease off on ourselves? Hah?

——

He stands by the doorway and smokes and looks out to the tall pines that shimmy and flex in the wind and to the dark lake’s water as it laps. A pale youth stands beside him, a brightly eager type with his head inclined gently for questions.

This place around here is called the Highwood then?

No, Ken.

Oh?

The pub is called the Highwood.

So the place is named after the pub?

You could look at it that way.

——

Cornelius swings a great dog-faced laugh as he passes by. He seems to bark as he moves. The radio goes off again and everybody roars for a while and Cornelius is on the verge of tears he is so happy to see everybody.

Silence is requested and a shimmer goes through the room — is it Ray Lynam that’s in? But no, there is no country singer, it is just a young girl that sings out to the tips of her black hair, and the night folds in around him.

Too much.

He goes outside for a while. It is starless now and black and the sky is breathing. The tips of her song vibrate and strain to fill the room back there — he closes his eyes to hear it.

Well it’s been building up inside of me

for oh, I don’t know how long.

The past opens to him as starlessly and dark. He walks from it and towards the water. He goes for a while into the feeling of being lovelorn and younger. That green envy, that deathly swoon inside, and say it’s the year that you’re seventeen.

If he can hold the feeling, maybe he can work from it again and write again.

——

He talks to a very old man. He says that age can come and go in your life, can’t it?

Well, the old man says. I’m eighty-seven years of age now but I looked worse when I was seventy-three.

That’s exactly what I mean.

There are some people, the old man says, who are not only old at forty but they’re bitter aul’ cunts, too. Do you know what I mean?

I surely do.

But there’s no worry in that because they’ll all get the fucken cancer.

——

He drinks some more. He smokes what is passed to him. The young dark girl sings again and he sits tightly in the corner and he listens to her sing and he settles to the belief of himself as an unknown and safe here, in the Highwood, as this soft-voiced Ken, with his old-fashioned hair and his milk-bottle eyes, and a suit that sweats and itches and smells of dogs, rain and coalsmoke.

He drinks a white spirit that is passed to him — by the fiery bead it goes down — and Cornelius swings by, madly grinning and able—

Cornelius in a burly fast Cornelius-type rush

— and he says hush! He says hush now, everybody, hush, for the love and honour of Jesus. Ah for Godsake hush! I think Kenneth might have a song for us?

And the remarkable thing is, Cornelius says, he don’t stammer even the one time when he sings.

——

He is accused of stealing fags by a farmer.

The Gitanes!

They’re me own fucking Gitanes!

You’re only a stoaty cunt, the farmer says.

He is pinned to the wall — the farmer’s great knuckly paw presses hard against a reedy art college chest.

You’re only a long yella fucken stoaty cunt!

He shucks from the paw and screams—

Who’s ever heard of a sheep farmer smoking fucking Gitanes?

The farmer falls to one knee like an old crooner and shows his palms in a gesture of injured righteousness just like Levi Stubbs out of the Four Tops and goes oddly falsetto—

I do smoke the fucken Gitanes! he cries on the high note.

And Levi Stubbs’ tears run down his face.

——

Beyond the high window the sky moves its clouds and now clearly the night by the silver of its starlight shows—

The sceptred tops of the moving pine.

The shadow of a mountain as it reaches darkly for the sky.

——

He is called a stoaty cunt and a lying cross-eyed cunt and a Jew-nosed cunt and an English cunt, an English cunt, an English cunt.

The night folds in.

He drinks the white spirit and he smokes and he sings.

——

And now he is among the trees. He believes that he can talk to her across the night and trees. He tells her that he loves her. He says that he sees her sometimes in faces that pass by. He says that when he is near the sea he thinks of her most of all. He tells her what has become of him and I wonder can you see, he says, what might have become of us together. He says that he misses her still and badly and that he will miss her always. He says you were younger then than I am now. He says that he thinks of her as a girl still

my blue-veined love, my Julia.

——

Nausea sends him to his knees like a green-faced lout. He throws up in hot, angry retches. He lies on the bonnet of a car for a while and he looks to the sky above the hills. He feels the cool night around him as a second skin. He hears two men speak — the North-of-England is in their voices. He cannot see but can feel the way the men lean against the wall and smoke and talk and the way their voices gather thickly in the dark—