Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

He is all business now—

About a boat and supplies?

Do I look like the fucken boy scouts, John?

The tape chews and a country song sticks hard on a high note and yodels; Cornelius pops the tape free and slaps in another; he throws a dark look seaward.

I’d doubt we’ll be putting out in that.

Bit choppy?

He whistles through his nose; he sucks his teeth.

We’ll keep you hid till the pressmen clear, John. We’ll wait out the assault.

I haven’t got all bloody year!

They’ll want for patience. If they don’t get the smell of you in a day or two, they’ll be gone.

Just hole me up at a different hotel then.

Hotels no good. Too easy follow you out from a hotel. How’d you think they got wind of you in the first place?

You don’t mean our woman in Newport?

Well.

Fucking Hatchet-Face!

The same woman has two husbands buried in the one plot, John. A small bit of respect would be no harm.

He massages the bridge of his nose — the painful place.

So where do I go, Cornelius?

I’m thinking the best thing for now would be my own house.

Super.

The van climbs and on a sudden turn, at a height above them, a silver horse in full mantle — its eyes shaded — is formed from the motes of air and mist and rises on its hind legs and makes a great silent scream — something Hispanic here — and its teeth are yellowish, foam-flecked, pointed, and it evaporates again, just so and as quickly, this image or vision, into time and the sodden air.

Cornelius?

Yes, John?

——

They climb into the sky. There are woeful songs about lost sweethearts, lonesome moonlight, dead fucking dogs.

It’s coming between us, Cornelius.

The which?

The fucking music.

Cornelius slaps eject and the cassette pops — he flings it to the dash.

Thank you very fucking much.

You’re very fucken welcome.

They climb some more — the country falls away.

As a matter of fact the van knows the road, Cornelius says.

A street gang of sheep appear — like teddy boys bedraggled in rain, dequiffed in mist — and Cornelius bamps the hooter — like teddy boys on a forlorn Saturday in the north of England, 1957—and the sheep explode in all directions and John can see the fat pinks of their tongues.

Mutton army, he says.

They climb the hills inside a cloud. Crags poke through; knuckles show. They come on a patch of clear blue for a stretch and he can see for the first time Clew Bay entirely and the way its tiny islands are flung out by the dozens and the hundreds.

It’s been nine fucking years…How the hell are we going to find my island, Cornelius?

With enormous difficulty, John.

His stomach loops against the bumps of the road. His stones ache and tighten. He rolls the window for some air.

The bloody damp, he says.

And his bones remember Sefton Park as a kid—

Wet jumper.

Chest infection.

Irish Sea.

The van climbs. They are inside a cloud again. They are up and about the knuckles of the hills — it’s the bleakest place on earth.

All this is O’Grady land, Cornelius says. Not that you’d feed the fucken duck off it.

An old farmhouse rises up from the hill — ramshackle, ill-kept, a growth on the hill. The van eases to a stop and a slow, deep-breathing silence. The house sits in complete agreement with its sad hill.

Fucken place, Cornelius says.

The wind drops and there is dead quiet—

Nothing moves.

Not a bird does sing.

The house was my father’s before me. And you know he never so much as shaved in the house?

Oh?

Nor shat, John. He would have thought it dirty.

Emotion is about Cornelius like a black cloak now—

Oh my poor departed father…

His voice almost gives.

Death be good to him, he says.

He sighs and consults his belly and whispers a fast prayer.

They threw away the fucken manual, he says, after they designed my father.

Silence; a slow beat.

He turns to look at John carefully for a moment—

Could you handle a shave yourself, maybe?

I think maybe I could.

I see you go reddish in the beard?

When it comes through, yeah. I’m a gingerbeard.

I’m sorry for your troubles, John.

——

They sit together by the fireplace. The wind is high and plays oddly in the chimney. His heart stirs and searches for home again. On a sour, lonesome note the air moves through the hollows of the chimney and the house; the old house sighs and breathes. He sits inside this heaving thing, this working lung — how the fuck has he got here, and why? Cornelius slowly turns one thumb about the other and looks at him.

Would you be a saddish kind of man, John?

He answers in all the truth he can muster—

As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

Then what’s wrong with you?

I suppose I’m afraid.

Afraid of what?

That all this happiness is going to rot my fucking brain.

Cornelius grins, stretches, rises.

Would you eat, maybe?

You know I think maybe I would.

Right so.

Cornelius goes to his cupboards and roots out a wheel of black pudding the size of a fat toddler’s arm.

Cornelius?

But he moves with such dainty grace about the kitchen it’s hard to speak against him. Like a small bear on casters he moves. He puts a pan on the stove. He cuts a chunk of lard in. The hot Zs of the sizzle come up to fill the room. He slices up the black pudding and sets the slices on the teeming fat. Watching this routine makes John feel calmer somehow. There is blood and smoke on the air. Cornelius fills the kettle and sets it to boil. He is strangely mothering in his movements. As in men who live alone. He arranges everything neatly and flips the slices of pudding over and John’s mouth cannot but water.

You know I don’t eat this stuff?

Never?

Not for fucking years.

He smiles and sets a place with care and plates the food and serves it with slices of bread cut thickly from the pan and a soft butter spread over.

Now for you, he says.

Jesus Christ, John says.

He eats the food. The spiciness, the mealiness, the animal waft — it’s all there in the history of his mouth, and he is near to fucking tears again. The tea is strong and sweet and tastes of Liverpool.

Would you believe, John, that my father lived in this house till he was eighty-seven years of age?

How’d you get to be eighty-seven up a wet hill in Mayo?

He neither drank nor smoked.

I’m packing away all that myself.

I drink, John. I smoke. And I tup women.

Oh?

When I get the chance.

Cornelius slowly teases out the knuckles of one hand and then the other.

But you see what my father had was great intelligence.

That would help.

Oh he was a wiley man, John.

He was fucking what?

He was wiley.

What the fuck is wiley?

He was full of wiles, John.

He was full of fucking what?

He had a wiliness.

Oh…Like in he was canny?

Exactly so.

Okay. So now I have it. But tell me this, won’t you — how can you have a windy fucking moor that’s wiley?

Hah?

How can you have a wiley fucking moor?

A wiley…

He sings it for him in a witchy screech—

Out on the…wiiiley…windy moors…

What’s it you’re saying to me, John?

The Kate bloody Bush song!

Kate Bush?

Cornelius shakes his head.

I knew a Martin Bush, he says.

Oh?

Belmullet direction but long dead and God rest him, poor Martin.

Any relation?

To who?

To Kate bloody Bush!

I didn’t know a Kate. Could she have been a sister?

She might well have been.