Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

The night sea gleams; it moves its lights in a black glister.

The water drags the shingle and the sound is slow and luxurious—

an old king in silverbeard fans a palmful of gold coins to a tabletop covered with white cloth

— and the rocks ache and he sighs in agreement with them. It has never been easy nor was it meant to be.

The fine sand of the cave’s floor comes up to a brilliant white in the moon’s glow. His skin is so white in the glow. He has been ever such a whiteman always — ever the honky, ever the goy.

There is a hard splash as the water splits, and the great sleek head shows, and the dapper spindles of the moustache, and the long fat body works its muscles onto the rocks.

It sidles up to the cave’s entry — hello? — and pokes a sober look inside.

The sad doleful eyes; the night caller; the seal.

There is a moment of sweet calm as their eyes lock on each other’s.

Alright? he says.

Alright, John, the seal says.

——

And I’ll tell you another thing.

Go on?

All this…

He swings his head to indicate the world beyond — he’s got a fat stern head on like a bouncer.

Fucked, he says.

You don’t mean…

I do, John. It won’t last.

You mean everything?

The works, he says.

But it sounds as wehrks .

The wind, the waves, the water, he says.

But it sounded as wawteh .

It’s all in extra time, he says. It’s all of it fucked, son.

Mostly what John cannot get his head around is the Scouse accent.

So where’s it you’re from originally?

You’d know Formby way, John?

Would I? Half my bloody life out there as a kid.

Bunkin’ off, was it?

Now you have me.

——

In a cold sun — wintertime — with their coats laid down in a hollow of the dunes, a salt-lipped girlie, and the way that he kissed her and got a throb on, and he kissed her and put his hand between her legs— clamp . The sudden military clenching of her thighs.

John?

It’s fine.

Don’t.

I won’t then.

The magic words — she opened her legs — and it happened for a while but not for long, and there was the train home — through grim Bootle — and the searching for words — the Albert Dock — and the shifting in seats — Central station — can I see you the Wednesday then? — maybe, I don’t know — and the blue suburbs — maybe, I don’t think so, John — and aunt and home, the home that was his only home.

——

You can’t go back, John.

But I just been.

He eyes the seal hard. He wants some fucking answers here. He has come all this way.

Let me see if I can explain things, John. What you do is you open your eyes in the morning, okay? First thing? And it’s a particular world that appears…Am I right?

Yeah?

And what it’s got is…

is the fall of black hair on the white of her skin

…the look of a world that’s always been. As if it will never change, as if it will never break up, as if it will never disappear…

John cuts in—

I’ve a feeling I’m not about to hear anything good here.

The seal laughs but ruefully.

Reality, John, tends not to hang around. A lonely bloody suburb in 1955—it’s gone — and the rattle of the train for Central under your bony arse — it’s gone — and the smell of the sweat and the red raw of the acne and a tumble in the Formby dunes — it’s gone — and her with a kisser on that tastes of salt and Bovril…

He hadn’t remembered the Bovril tang — a strange seal this.

…and all of it, John? It’s all got the same weight as a bloody dream.

So what’s left that’s real?

This, the seal says. Where you’re sat just now.

The clouds drift to hide the moon; the cave darkens. A pool of silence is allowed to open. The silence is a tease. The seal holds it for a long while, then—

What’s it you want to know?

John sits up a little straighter. He feels his mouth dry out. His words come small and shyly—

Do the, ah…

Go on?

Do the dead ones get together out there?

You’re an odd fish, John.

I know that.

Do you mean on the water?

I think I do, yeah.

It’s complicated, the seal says.

Silence — a heavy beat.

Then—

Deathhauntedness, the seal says.

Okay.

That’s our little problem, isn’t it, John?

John’s head swings low — his remorse.

Deathhauntedness, the seal says. The fear that it’s all going to end and the measuring out of the time that’s left or might be and the morbid fear of numbers and dates and the fear of photographs because they hold the moment in such a sad way and the sense of summer and life as a painful place, as if it’s a painful place to be, out here, in life, and the fear of brightness and the fear of light and the fear of losing her, of dying first — who dies first? — and every time you hold her it’s what you think — who dies first? — and the cold cold feeling that comes in the small hours

— am I getting close in yet, John? Am I getting close in yet, old pal? —

and the stewing in the past and the sense of every time being maybe the last time and everything is charged and everything glows and the night terrors that come in a soak of sweat

— you could call all of this more plainly love—

and the sentiment and the fear and the poison and the pain…

Don’t forget the fucking isolation, pal!

I could hardly forget that, John. The sense that life is for everyone else but not for you? And you know the scariest of the lot? The very worst of it all?

Stop.

You think it might be the sweetest feeling, don’t you, John?

You want to take the pain away.

You want to take the numbness away.

You want to let it fade away.

Let it fade, he says.

And he is alone then in the cave.

——

The next fucking development—

He tries to step from the cave but the white sand rises and circles its grains, slowly at first, but then faster and faster again until it’s a great spinning wheel of blurred light and he’s trapped inside.

He tries to Scream but nothing comes.

He cannot hear himself breathe — is he even breathing?

He cannot hear his heart beat — is it even beating?

He tries to Scream but nothing comes.

He is flung back by a great force.

The grains of sand settle again to the cave floor and for a moment a dead silence holds.

Then he hears his name called—

Joh-hhhnn?

——

The voice is taken by the wind again.

He sits in the cave and asks his heart to settle.

As if it has ever yet settled.

He watches over the water. He works to slow his breath. He sits as still as he can. The vaulted eaves of the cave contain all that’s left of him.

These haunted, vaulted eaves.

He begins to gain the control of his thoughts again. He sees that the morning will come up clear. He begins to trace out the lines of something new. He says the words aloud until they come in forms and pattern. He can see the tiny detail and he can see the broader sweep.

He stands and paces between the cave’s walls. He slaps a palm off each of the walls in turn, and he counts aloud as he slaps and paces, he counts from one to nine and back again.

It will contain nine songs — the nine.

He can hear the tiny fragments — he can hear the broader sweep.

There is an autumn and a winter and a cold, cold spring pouring through him now — he needs to keep pace with the rush.

It will contain nine fucking songs, and it will fucking cohere, and it will be the greatest fucking thing he will ever fucking do.