Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

The island was fucking exhausting. He didn’t last for long out there. Now he waits it out at the farmhouse in the hills. Soon the car will come to bring him to the airport — Cornelius — and soon he will be in the sky again. He sits in a hard chair by the webby kitchen window — in the webs he sees a languid man. He has the place to himself and the day is not without its graces: a duck walks across a puddle in the yard. Appears to be on very serious business. A dog is yowling somewhere far off. They might never think to find me in these demented reaches. He drinks strong tea and smokes a fag — stay fucking busy, John. Bridge off all the silences and the gaps.

Soon he will be able to make something new. He will make something delicate and fine and odd. It’s all going to work out beautifully. Because he is our fucking hero still. He can see down the hills and to the water. Time slows just enough for its workings to show — just oddly, here and there, as it will do in the Maytime. The moments bead into each other, one by one and neatly, but sometimes they reverse and spin back, too, and this explains plenty. It turns out you can play with it a bit. You can make time spin back towards you. He breathes deep and feels out the serpent length of himself. A vitamin sadness fills his lungs. Where might I get to if I persist with all this? Getting fucking Saviour notions again. He can see the tiny details and he can see the broader sweep. There is rain now on the roof slates and a concertina wind. The Irish coast sits down there in its drizzle and murk. You wouldn’t know where the fuck you are nor when.

——

He walks for a while in the hills above Mulranny. It is very quiet. He walks by the old railway line. Now it has cleared and the day is lit. There are no people anywhere to be seen. Shades of the railway line move at an unseen thrum. He sits and rests for a while in a scooped-out hollow of the hillside. The breeze snaps and dies and there is perfect quiet across the sky and blue of bay. Something moves. He sits as still as he can and dares hardly to breathe. In the far left field of his vision if he does not move at all maybe the hare will not disappear. He read once that the hare augurs darkly in the Irish mythology. From what he can remember there is fuck all that augurs brightly in the Irish mythology. The hare is no more than a couple of yards away. It is so close he can see reflected in its startled eye the grey stone of hill and blue of bay. It looks out across the flank of the hill but it cannot see him in the hollow. Its nose is a soft purse leather and it twitches to find the strangeness on the air but it cannot place him. Do you not hear my heart racing? A crack of the breeze snaps the tall grasses — everything is immense. He sits perfectly still and grins madly — he is nothing but the grin. The hare rises on its hind legs — it stands mannishly. Actually quite a handsome devil. It is poised in every twitch and sinew to run but still there is this strangeness on the air it cannot twig. Oh Jesus fuck let this moment hold across the sky and blue of bay. The hare turns its nose a tiny mechanical clockwork nidge. It surveys the fields of the Maytime in the hills above Mulranny. From the hotel far below comes a sudden clanging — the kitchens — and the hare takes off as quick as light moves and its pumping run sounds out the hollows of the hill. Fuck me. He gets up and walks for a while again. He goes on down the beach and has a fag. There are further Victorians on the beach. He calls a salute to them as he passes by—

Alright?

— but they just shyly, stiffly wave.

——

Back in the farmhouse.

Cornelius enters, red-faced, and in a fluster—

This is not a happy day for the Mercedes, John.

Oh?

Exhaust is crooked on it again. There’s a man in Mulranny might fix it and drop it up to us tonight but he is not a reliable man and he suffers from fainting fits.

I see.

The worse news is I think the van’s on the way out as well.

Tea is made. They wait on the man from Mulranny. There is dangerous talk of black pudding sandwiches.

——

He paces the yard. He thinks about what to say to his love, exactly, and he thinks about holding the kid. He has a fag to batten down the emotional bits. He leans back against the wall of the farmhouse high in County Mayo and the Atlantic rolls down there — a Mesmeric — and if you close your eyes you can fall into its black drift and turn and you can be wherever you want to be.

——

On Bold Street he walks the street in the crowd. He wears a drape jacket in midnight green with a velvet collar of dark cherry, or call it cerise, and high-waisted drainpipes in a navy-black mottle cut an inch above the ankle to show leopard-print socks and crêpe-sole brothel creepers in a desert-brown and most delicate suede and his hair is greased and fixed to hold on a ducktail finish and the curl of his lip spells seventeen and he’s that fucking sharp except he’s got his mum beside. A tadpole kid passes by on a rusty bike. The kid jerks a foot to the kerb and turns the bike sideways to block the path. He looks hard at John. He says—

I heard there was a nigger boat done over.

She goes right up close to the kid. She fronts him. The way she stands there, stone hard, and says—

Fuck off.

And the kid fucks off.

——

The man from Mulranny does not appear.

Do you see now the way I’m half my life down the far end of lanes waiting on thundering bastards who don’t show up, John?

Well this is it.

The van also has given its last.

We’ll take it by foot, John. We’ll find out what’s happening with the Mercedes at least.

They walk down the mountain. They are headed for Mulranny. They walk the country by night. They come to the water and follow the long, dark, turning sea road. The world tonight is a monochrome dream. A pockfaced moon browses the road and bay. Cornelius raises his glance to curse it—

Fucken thing, he says.

There is an odd drag from it.

As long as we’re not steered by it, John.

The birds of the night chorus in a hedgerow like fat young lawyers — a prosperous choir. Onwards — this sentimental journey. One honky step in front of the other. Now the road comes up as though on a riser and the sea opens out above the rocks and a swarm of moving lights passes through the water — a shoal?

Precisely so, Cornelius says.

It electrifies, but the road turns again as quickly inland to the dark stone empire and the hills of the night. There is a figure up ahead, a shade.

Fuck me, he says.

Now, says Cornelius. This particular lady, John?

Yes?

A hundred and twelve years of age and hoppin’ off the road.

Okay.

——

Good evening, Margaret?

Cornelius, she says, and does not turn her eyes at all.

This is Kenneth, Margaret, a cousin of mine home from England.

How are you, Ken, she says, and does not turn her eyes at all.

I’m not bad — she turns at his voice.

Right, she says.

Margaret, tell us this, because he won’t believe me. What age have you now?

I’ve a hundred and twelve years of age, she says.

And how does that feel? John says.

Rough, she says.

Do the maths for us, Margaret.

I was born, she says, in 1866.

They were jawin’ grass at the side of the road, Ken.

Fuck me.

But Margaret will not be caught on memory — ask her anything you like.

What kind of thing?

Anything at all, watch — Margaret, on what account was the 1943 Munster Final cancelled?

On account of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.

Do you see that, Ken?

She wears a pink raincoat to her ankles and a pair of high yellow Adidas runners. What’s left of hair in scrags is dyed a glossy black — like scraps of feathers dipped in oil and twisted.