Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

Sue stretches the word, a mockery of him—

SUE Cali-fo-nee-yah!

JOHN And you can fuck off and all with your daft fucking tits and your daft elfy fucking eyes!

JOE Have a go, Frank.

Now Frank rises — Frank’s up — and he comes close to John; they are face-to-face, chest-to-chest.

JOHN Oh back off, child!

JOE Go, Frank.

The boy shimmers with the threat of violence.

FRANK You’re just a whinging fucking bitch!

SUE Tell him, Frank!

JOE Be a fucking man, John! Stand up!

John pushes Frank hard at the chest and he screeches at the boy and Frank stumbles back, and now he retreats, and sits again; he smiles.

John breathes hard — with his hands on his hips — and he looks at them.

The way they stare back at him, smugly, expectant, amused: a family of three.

Outside, the waves’ slow boom and collapse.

Something gives.

JOHN Do you really want to know what I am? Do you? Well I’ll tell you exactly what I fucking am. I’m fucking anxiety. And I’m fucking lust. And I’m a fucking booze hound and I’m a fucking dope fiend or I was and I’m a fucking sad Scouse sentimental bastard and I’m the most competitive prick on the face of the planet actually and I’m a jealous greedy black-hearted English cunt full of bitterness and fucking poison and fucking rage and I’m the sweetest fucking angel, too, while we’re fucking here and while we’re fucking at it or at least sometimes I am and that is who I fucking am and that is what I fucking am and yeah I miss me dead fucking mam and yeah I want to piss on me dead fucking dad’s fucking bones coz he didn’t fuck her enough and he didn’t make her fucking happy and you know what that makes me?

A delighted silence — three breaths are held.

JOHN It makes me fucking special fucking no-how!

JOE Exceptional, John.

JOHN Me dead fucking dad? I tell you now I want to go down to fucking Brighton or wherever that twat’s laid to rot…

JOE Oh this is very nice.

JOHN …and I want to scrape his peasant fucking eyes or what’s left of ’em from the sockets of his skeleton head and tear his fucking bones apart with me fucking teeth or what’s left of his fucking bones…

JOE I’d suggest more of this, John. Plenty more.

JOHN …and yeah, you’re right, Joe, I can’t get over what I’ve fucking come from and I…

JOE Would you like to burn off some base, John?

JOHN No, I fucking wouldn’t coz I don’t do that no more and I don’t do fucking junk neither and I don’t hardly drink neither! Coz I’m a good little boy who bakes the bread and has a fag and minds the kid and minds his business and minds his own fucking yard.

JOE Do you get sour thoughts often, John?

John goes to the window—

He leans out and tries to suck all the air from the night.

He feels a breath on his neck but it cannot be.

He opens his mouth to Scream but he cannot.

He turns back to the circle: a family of three.

Sue turns her hands to display on the insides of her wrists the raw scars and the welts there.

Frank Screams.

John is thinking: What the fuck is this exactly some suicide fucking death cult fucking caper?

And Sue Screams so hard she brings a green bile up.

JOE That’s a useful effort is that, Sue.

The Barnsley or the Blackburn of him; the Lancaster busman of him; and Sue rises — Sue’s up — and she goes to the window and spits all the bile and spew away.

The birds outside fall silent as the night thickens.

Sue returns to the circle. She is placid again. John watches her carefully as she sits down on the boards.

Now John returns to the circle and sits, too.

He is worn, pale, drawn, opened.

JOE Let’s talk some more about your mam, John.

JOHN Oh come on. I mean, please. I’m thirty-seven years old. I’m fully fucking grown. Do I really need to yodel on about me dead fucking mam and me dead fucking dad all the time? Is it not enough that I live back there half the time? Back in nineteen thirty what-fucking-ever? Can I not just get on with my life now?

A sally of breeze comes through the room; the flame of the candle wavers and rights again.

Joe Director speaks but softly—

JOE Why don’t you tell something about them, John?

JOHN Oh, I see. We’ve moved on to the tender bit, have we?

JOE Well why not?

Joe Director works the quietness that settles on the room.

He holds John’s gaze and loads trust on the line that runs between them — the weight takes and holds.

JOE What’s to be afraid of, John?

Frank’s head falls onto Sue’s shoulder and with her fingertips she touches his face and he shudders.

SUE Oh come on, John.

FRANK Tell us something, John.

The silence holds for a slow beat; then—

JOHN Are you lot for fucking real?

JOE You know that we are. Come on, John.

JOHN Oh fuck off.

JOE Come on.

JOHN You’re really serious?

JOE Come on.

Something gives; the room lightens; John deflates.

JOHN What kind of fucking thing?

JOE First thing comes to mind.

JOHN About them?

JOE Yes.

JOHN I don’t fucking know.

JOE Anything? First thing?

JOHN They were tiny.

JOE Oh?

And John is in the drag of the past.

JOHN He must have been what? Five foot bloody three or something. Coz he’d worn leg braces as a kid. He was a regular fucking gimp arse. Fucking Freddie. And she was smaller again.

JOE A neat little pair. Where’s it they meet?

JOHN This I know…It was Sefton Park.

JOE A roll in the bushes?

JOHN I don’t fucking know, do I? I mean whatever you weren’t supposed to do, that’s what she’d go and do…They were excitable little people, my mam and dad.

JOE Excitable how?

JOHN They’d get carried away on a notion. They’d make lots of fucking plans. They were daft bloody schemers.

JOE Kind of plans?

JOHN They were going to open a pub together. Or was it a café? There’d be music and dancing and all sorts. It would go on all night. Some kind of bloody cabaret was the notion.

JOE Tell about him.

JOHN He’s from Irish. He’s got left in the Bluecoats like a fucking orphan. I could do you the violin.

JOE Why’s it his mark’s on you still?

JOHN How should I know?

JOE Why’s it both their marks on?

JOHN How should I fucking know? Coz they played the fucking banjo?

JOE The fucking…

JOHN Banjo. I know! The pair of ’em played fucking banjos.

Joe Bloody hell. And did they sing?

JOHN She’d do her Vera Lynn. He’d do his Al Jolson.

The vaudeville halls; the North-of-England. The Lancashire-Irish. The pug faces. The waft of sick and ale. The fagsmoke. The sawdust. The smell of piss and chips.

JOE What happened to them?

JOHN I don’t know. Whatever it is that happens to people.

JOE She fucked around on him?

JOHN You’ve been reading the nasty papers, Joe. Tinpot guru sat on Achill Island with his Daily Mirror and his bag of shite cocaine cut with fucking rat poison.

JOE She’s fucked around on him, John?

JOHN Oh I don’t fucking know, do I? And I mean who cares? I mean everybody’s fucked everybody else by now, haven’t they? I mean it’s 1978!

JOE Was he jealous of her?

JOHN I don’t fucking know. He’d went away, hadn’t he?

JOE He’d went where?

JOHN He’d went to sea. Where else do they bloody go? Merchant fucking seaman.