Kevin Barry: Beatlebone

No…I knew a Martin.

And was he wiley?

If there was one thing he wasn’t was wiley, John.

Oh?

Poor Martin was an inordinately stupid man. He could barely tie his shoelaces.

A ha’penny short?

Ah listen. Martin kept animals had more wile in them.

What kind of animals?

He’d sheep. A few cattle, I suppose. Though they’d have been wind-bothered up that way.

They’d have been…

Bothered, John. By wind coming in. The way it would unseat cattle.

Unseat them?

Cornelius lowers his sad eyes—

In the mind.

You mean you’d have a cow’d take a turn?

Cornelius squares his jaw.

Do you realise you’re looking at a man who’s seen a cow step in front of a moving vehicle? Purposefully.

On account of?

Wind coming easterly. That’s the kind of thing that can leave a beast beyond despair. Because of the pure evil sound of it, John. The way it would play across the country in an ominous way. An easterly? If it was to come across you for a fortnight and it might? Sleep gone out the window and a horrible black feeling racing through your fucken blood. Day and night. All sorts of thoughts of death and hopelessness. This is what you’d get on the tail end of an easterly wind. Man nor animal wouldn’t be right after it.

John pushes back his plate and sups the last of his tea and idly twirls the rind of the black pudding about the dull silver of the tines of his fork.

Cornelius?

Yes, John?

Am I alive and not dreaming?

He taps once and sharply the fork on the edge of the table for tune — it rings cleanly.

——

He walks a circuit of the O’Grady yard. He is high anxious again. His fucking jailyard. He circles and twists like an aggravated goose. Energy is the difficulty always. Too much of. An excess of. Flick out these fingers and they might shoot beads of fire. One neurotic foot in front of the other, and circling — what you do is you keep moving. He limps and he stumbles — no stack-heeled Harlem glide is this — and his bones ache; the sky above is grey and the wind moves the clouds over the bleak hills and the fall-away fields. The stone walls drunkenly wander the hills on unmentionable escapades. All is pierced with anxiety and dread. It’s the place of the old blood and it has too a sexy air.

The sexy airs of summer.

From who and where was that? At difficult angles across the hills the grey sheep move. They drift unpredictably like the turns of his own dark, glamorous mind. The past is about, too, but now it’s the more recent past, and he imagines the salve again of (oh-let’s-say) heroin, and how might that feel, John? To fall into that dream again — to be in the arms of the soft machine again — and to have that deeper quiet and space again. Morpheus, the dream. Noise is the fucking difficulty always. The excess of. The wind licks out the corners of the yard — its tongues move in green darts and lizard-quick. Sexy airs. Wasn’t it from Auden? The wind speaks, too, and in urgent whispers. News from far-out? Or from close-in? He shakes his head as he walks and circles the yard, and he notes from the corner of his eye the presence of Cornelius by the farmhouse door, leaning against the jamb, and his eyes are vast with pleasantness. The arms folded. The bull’s head inclined. The expression of great interest.

John?

Yes, Cornelius?

You know what I’d wonder sometimes?

What’s that?

If I amn’t half a blackman.

——

Cornelius carries with prim importance two shaving bowls and two razors. They climb to a tin-sided outhouse built into the rocks of the hill. The outhouse lacks a door and John can see down the country as the sky moves its clouds along and the sun appears and it’s trippy now in the sunburst. The fields are lit and lifting. It’s the hour for a shave and a philosophic interlude.

A black, Cornelius?

Is fucken right.

I think I see where you’re coming from.

Cornelius turns his throat and jerks the head curtly.

I’m talking if we were to go way back, he says. I’m talking from the south.

Cornelius rinses off the razor and shakes it dry. He slaps his face to get the blood back in. The blood comes hotly in a rush to enliven the stately face. He leans against the rock and looks out on the freshening day as if it might just about contain him.

I’m talking about cunts off boats, he says. I’m talking about my father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s time.

I’m losing track.

I don’t know if we aren’t looking at the likes of 1400?

As if it was the other Wednesday.

You’re saying there might have been a dusky sailor back then?

Now you have me.

Do you hear whispers from back there, Cornelius?

Ah I would do. Yes.

You mean from an old life?

Back arse of time, he says, and gestures grandly with a sweep of imperious paw.

What do you hear?

I think it could be a class of Portuguese.

There’s an old tar with a monkey on his shoulder. And what do you see?

This is where it gets good. I see a tiny window set deep in a thick stone wall.

Yes?

With four iron bars set hard in the sill.

You were in a spot of bother then?

I would think so, John, yes.

Involving?

Nothing fucken good. Horses, definitely. And somehow I think a plain girl but gamey and with greenish eyes.

He calmly shaves. The burn of his jaw is a cool ordinary feeling and the afternoon is calm and bright or at least it is for a while. Cornelius considers him carefully and for a slow, held moment—

You have the longish nose, he says. Like a particular type of dog I can’t place.

——

Sometimes in the black oily panic of the night when the city sent unsettling dreams across its towers and violent bowers—

the shapes of night in the park

the dark trees crouching

the trees so fiercely bunched

these creatures about to spring

— it was then he would travel to the island in his mind, and he would quieten when he lay his sore bones down among the rocks for a while and let the water move all around and the sky hang down its cold stars — its cold, cold jewels — its stars.

Cornelius?

Yes, John?

I want to get to my fucking island.

I know that, John.

I want a boat and a tent and fucking supplies and I want to be brought to my fucking island and then I want you to fuck off again for three fucking days. I mean that’s all I fucking ask! Is three fucking days a-fucking-lone!

If we were to move now we’d have a pantomime on our hands. The pressmen?

Paranoia oozes in black beads from the tips of his fingers — the day has carved his nerves up bad.

He is fearful and dizzy and cutting off from the real again. The Maytime comes at him like razor blades.

You’re eating the fags, John.

Evening sidles up to the window to taunt the parlour room. He smokes and he drinks a mug of strong tea.

Would you look crooked at an egg, John?

You know I nearly would.

He eats a boiled egg with soldiers of toast and at once he’s brave as a trooper. It’s a duck egg of maiden blue. He sings a bit and it’s got a yodelled twist on the line, a duck’s waddle in the quaver.

Lovely, Cornelius says.

He spoons up his egg — maiden? — and sups his tea. He feels like he’s moved into a nursing home. And not before time.

Cornelius paces the stones of the floor, gravely, but now he stops up short.

Time have we, John?

I don’t know the time.

We’ll chance it.

They sit in front of the television — a tiny black-and-white with a clothes hanger stuck in — and they are just in time — Cornelius twists the set precisely to align it with the stars — because the music strikes up, and Cornelius nods in satisfaction.