Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

——

I established myself in the room marked nine without significant incident. I smoked a little weed for calm, exhaling out the window so as not to activate the smoke detector. Now what we have here, I said to myself, is such an old, old question: how do you bring up the fact of ghosts in reasonable company? Especially in the reasonable company of one’s readers? I was looking out to the hills and the backs of the village buildings as I pondered this — I realised I was actually looking out at the back of the local police station and quickly put my pipe away — and I was feeling much more settled and together in myself, and thinking a little about the story but in a necessarily vague way, just letting it sit at the back of my mind, just there on the ledge of the subconscious where all stories must for a long while sit and season — or so at least I convince myself; no pressure, don’t rush it, and so forth — and it occured to me that the 1970s is by now essentially an historical fiction. True memory of the era — as in sense memory, as in the precise tang on the air of a new morning back then, or the throb and rumble of a great city rising from its fumes in the early morning back then, or the way a lover’s dark hair might splay just so on the sheets, and she stretches — has by now succumbed to time and distance, and what’s left to us is mediated, and it can only be built up again in gimcrack reconstructions, with scenic facade, but if we can get the voices right, the fiction might hold for a while at least.

——

The Liverpool accent, or at least the city accent as it can be heard within, say, a two- or three-mile radius of Lime Street station, is closely related to an Irish accent. There is a type of Liverpool accent that bleeds in particular into the accent of the northside of Dublin. But of course this is an old and storied migration, and one that is stitched into the lore of countless thousands of families: the cities are cousinly.

James and Jane Lennon left County Down in 1848 and emigrated to Liverpool. Among their children was John or Jack Lennon, variously described as a freight clerk or a book-keeper, and also known to be something of a bar-room crooner. Jack married first a Liverpudlian, Margaret Crowley, who died during the birth of their second child. He then married Mary “Polly” Maguire, from Dublin, and they had fifteen children, seven of whom survived. Among these was Alfred, or Freddie, who was John Lennon’s father.

Following the death of her husband — the liver — Polly could no longer afford to look after all the children, and Freddie was deposited in the Bluecoat orphanage in 1921. Later, he is variously described as a ship’s steward or a merchant seaman, and he was also known to be something of a bar-room crooner.

John became obsessed for a while with these Irish roots. He wrote anti-English songs. He named his second child Sean. He consulted the usual books of heraldry and sources of lineage — slow winter nights at the Dakota — including MacLysaght’s Irish Families: Their Names, Arms and Origins , in which he learned that the O’Lennons were most typically from the Counties Down, Sligo or Galway, and were not known to have distinguished themselves in military affairs. Late in his life, he spoke of renewing the planning permission for Dorinish Island and building a magical house out there.

Cornelius?

Yes, John?

There’s a lot of fucking water.

It’s Clew Bay, John.

I mean in the fucking boat.

Oh?

It’s up to me ankles.

Okay.

What does this mean, Cornelius?

It means there’s a hole in the boat, John.

Alright then.

I wouldn’t worry about it. Do you see behind you? There’s a basin.

You mean I’m fucking bailing now?

It could be a notion.

Cornelius?

John?

I want you to look at my fucking ankles.

Yeah…They’re soaking alright.

Is fucking right they are!

Do you want me to stop the fucken sea?

Just fucking answer me…Are we going to make it to the island?

Touch and go, I’d say. Different question for you.

Yes?

Does it matter, at the end of the day, which island I let you down on?

How’d you mean?

There are hundreds of the fucken things. They are all small, wet, miserable holes of places. They’re only fit for hares and rats and filthy birds. Why should one of them be any better or worse than the next?

Listen to me, Cornelius, please. If I was to say to you the words ritual excursion …

Ho ho.

Ho ho fucking what?

You mean like an aboriginal buck?

In fact that’s pretty much exactly what I mean.

The aboriginal is an odd buck.

Are there…Are there rats on the islands?

Crawling with them. Night and day. Chorus of them. A squealing fucken choir. But your aboriginal, if I’m not wrong, is the buck who’d be listening?

Exactly so.

What’s it he’d be listening for again?

A kind of a song but it’s beneath the skin of the earth.

I’ve heard it.

You’ve heard which?

The what-you-call-it. The song.

When was this?

I was coming home from a disco in Castlebar.

Okay.

I took a wrong turn.

This was late on?

Thirty-five o’clock in the morning. I found myself moving across a small difficult field. Oh-oh, I says. Where this field was exactly you could nail me to the cross and crucify me and I’d still not be able to tell you. But I found that an awful shiver had come into me. It was as if the blood had turned to ice in my veins. The feeling was not of this world but of another.

Cornelius?

Stay with me. I turned around. I was sure there was someone behind me. There was nothing and there was nobody. I thought there’d be eyes in the dark. There were no eyes, John. But the dark seemed to close in around me. As if it was trying to take hold of me. I was moved slowly around on my innocent feet. It was like I was being turned on my feet by a dancing partner.

Was it the devil?

Ah go easy, John, would you? I felt like I was being lifted above the ground.

Was it a floating sensation?

Well. I was…aloft. Is the only way I could say it for you.

Okay.

Aloft!

And what happened next?

All the air got sucked out of the world. There was utter quiet. And I could see everything. Do you know that kind of way? I could see the smallest things and the biggest. I could see across the sea and I could see over the shoulders of the mountains and I could see down a maggot’s ears.

There were maggots?

Next thing there was…Jesus Christ…I don’t know…I could only call it a rip in the sky.

Okay.

I’m not joking you. A rip! And I looked into it. And what did I see?

This I want to hear.

I saw the bottom of the fucken sea. And it was deserted except for all the little floaty plants and the rocks and the one…small…wise-lookin’…crab.

A crab?

Is right.

And wise?

And tuneful, John. Because it fucken sang to me.

Cornelius?

Don’t ask me the words. Stretch me out on the Spanish rack and I could not repeat for you the words. But I could tell you the feeling it gave me handy enough.

Go on then.

Utter peace, John. Cornelius O’Grady wasn’t made of bones and flesh and woes no more. All I was made of was a pure fucken smile and glee.

You were floating still?

Across the night and sky and not a bother on me. Well, I says to myself, this is a good one.

How’d it wind up, Cornelius? For a finish?

I came to, John.

I’d imagine so.

On the flat of my back in the middle of the same field and it pissing out of the heavens on me.

Morning?