by Kevin Barry
This particular noon, however, as Ol’ Boy Mannion loped stylishly along the wasted avenues of the Norrie terrain, an October lull still governed. On either side of the avenues, the flatblocks were arranged in desolate crescent circles, and the odd child leapt from a dead pylon, and dogs roamed in skittish packs, but mostly it was quiet, for the Rises is by its nature a night-time kind of place.
Tipping seventy, Ol’ Boy dressed much younger. He wore low-rider strides, high-top boots with the heels clicker’d, a velveteen waistcoat and an old-style yard hat set at a frisky, pimpish angle. Ol’ Boy had connections all over the city – he was the Bohane go-between. He was as comfortable sitting for a powwow in the drawing room of a Beauvista manse as he was making a rendezvous at a Rises flatblock. Divil a bit stirred in the Trace that he didn’t know about, nor across the Smoketown footbridge. He was on jivey, fist-bumping terms with the suits of the business district – those blithe and lardy boys who worked Endeavour Avenue down in the Bohane New Town – and he could chew the fat equably with the most ignorant of Big Nothin’ spud-aters. The Mannion voicebox was an instrument of wonder. It mimicked precisely the tones and cadence of whoever he was speaking to, while retaining always a warm and reassuring note. Hear him on Endeavour and you’d swear he had shares in the Bohane First Commercial; hear him out on Nothin’ and you’d swear he was carved from the very bog turf.
Ol’ Boy, bluntly, was political.
He approached now a flatblock circle of the Cusack mob. A gent name of Eyes Cusack waited for him on the diseased green space out front of the blocks. He leaned back, brooding, against a burned-out generator shed. He smoked. He acknowledged Ol’ Boy by dropping his tab and stomping it, and the men embraced, mannishly and briefly.
‘Things with you?’ enquired Ol’ Boy.
Eyes was named so for good reason. He saw the city through tiny smoking holes set deep in a broad, porridgy face.
‘Lad o’ mine wearin’ an eight-incher of a reef ’cross his chest,’ he said. ‘Smoketown.’
‘Heard there was an incident alright,’ said Ol’ Boy. ‘Will he pull through for you, Eyes?’
‘Well, he ain’t gonna be botherin’ no dancehalls for a time. An’ this is a nephew o’ mine, Mr Mannion. This a lad o’ me brud’s, like? I said blood? Me brud’s gone loolah on accoun’ and his missus gobbin’ hoss trankillisers like they’s penny fuckin’ sweets, y’check me?’
He was bald and stout, Eyes Cusack. He was in a vest top, trackies and boxer boots – the standard uniform of a Rises hardchaw this particular season – and he wore an unfortunate calypso-style moustache.
‘I’d say hold off on things for a breath or two, Eyes, if you can at all.’
The Mannion tone was pitched low as a calming strategy but it was no use – Eyes had a want on for vengeance.
‘Long Fella ain’t had none o’ his lads reefed, Mr Mannion. Long Fella wanna know this ain’t gonna play out pretty, like.’
Ol’ Boy nodded his understanding. He leaned back with Eyes Cusack against the generator shed and together they looked out over the sighing city.
‘There’s a Calm has held for a good stretch in Bohane,’ said Ol’ Boy. ‘Be a hoor if it went the road, like.’
‘I ain’t the one been wieldin’ a shkelp.’
‘Arra, you know it’s Hartnett has the Smoketown trade.’
‘Sweet Baba Jay pass down the rights, he did?’
Ol’ Boy raised his eyes.
‘Let’s not bring the Sweet Baba into things just yet,’ he said.
Eyes pushed off from the shed with a bitter little jolt of the shoulder blades and he turned to face Ol’ Boy square.
‘I wan’ word got to him and got to him flashy, y’hear?’
‘Go on.’
‘Wan’ word to him that I got the flatblocks stacked behind me. Got people in every circle. Got the MacNiece, the Kavanagh, the Heaney. Wan’ word got to him that reparations need makin’. An innocent lad reefed, like?’
‘Ah, Eyes, there ain’t gonna be no–’
‘Reparations, Mannion! S’my word, like. Tell him a fair shake o’ the Smoketown trade’d work for me.’
‘And what’s he gonna say to me, Eyes?’
‘Tell.’
‘He’s gonna say Eyes Cusack is sending aggravators into Smoketown by design. He’s makin’ a martyr for the uptown so as to get a hold o’ leverage, plain as. He’s gonna say you’re spoilin’ to smash the Calm.’
‘Gonna say all that, he is?’
He turned to go, Cusack. Made as though he had a royal hump on. Ol’ Boy tried again.
‘Eyes? Y’ain’t been asked to turn over no face, check? You just got to say your lad was rogue. That he was messin’ where he shouldn’t have been messin’.’
‘That’s a lad o’ me brud’s, Mannion. Me brud in bits an’ his missus all drooly an’ spooked off the hoss–’
‘Ah let it go, Eyes, would you? Let the Calm hold an’ we can all get on with our business.’
‘Get word to him that I’m willin’ to sit and talk a Smoketown divvy.’
‘A divvy I would very much doubt, Eyes.’
A hard jab of a forefinger from Cusack, then:
‘If he wanna keep the Trace under Hartnett colours? Wanna keep slurpin’ his oysters below in Tommie’s and keep playin’ footsie with his mad fuckin’ cross-eyed missus–’
‘Leave a man’s wife out of it.’
‘He wanna keep suckin’ the wind? Then he’ll sit an’ he’ll talk a fuckin’ divvy on fuckin’ Smoketown!’
Ol’ Boy shut his eyes – the worst of it was when they got brave.
‘So you want me to go down to the ’bino with an out-and-out threat, like?’
A smile from Eyes Cusack the likes of which you wouldn’t get off a stoat in a ditch.
‘Tell him I got the flatblocks stacked.’
‘Don’t do this, Eyes.’
‘Fella gets back what he gives out, Ol’ Boy.’
‘That’s said, yes.’
‘An’ maybe he got old stuff comin’ back ’n’ all, y’sketchin’? Hear tell of a certain man pass this way in the bleaky hour…’
‘This mornin’ gone?’
‘Same one. A man what hop an El for the downtown.’
‘Who are we talkin’ about, Eyes?’
‘That’s a man the Long Fella wanna watch ’n’ all.’
‘I said who’re we talkin’ about, Eyes?’
‘Long Fella know him well enough. His missus know him ’n’ all.’
Ol’ Boy raised softly a palm in warning.
‘Plenty o’ folk have thought before Hartnett was weakening. Same folk feedin’ maggots down the boneyard now.’
‘Just get the word out for me, Mannion.’
He nodded, and he let Cusack move along. He watched the old scut hoick a gobber and tug the trackies from the crack of his arse. Shook his head, Ol’ Boy – they had no fucking class up on the Northside Rises.
A winter’s bother was brewing then. Blood would flow and soon. But there was the possibility, Ol’ Boy realised, that too long and persistent a Calm might be no good for the city.
A place should never for too long go against its nature.
5
The Mendicants at the Aliados
Above De Valera Street the sun climbed and caught on each of the street’s high windows and each whited out and was blinded by the glare; each became a brilliant, unseeing eye. The light seemed to atomise the very air of the place. The air was rich, maritime, nutritious. It was as if you could reach up and grab a handful of the stuff. The evil-eyed gulls were antic on the air as they cawed and quarrelled and the street beneath them was thick with afternoon life.
Yes and here they came, all the big-armed women and all the low-sized butty fellas. Here came the sullen Polacks and the Back Trace crones. Here came the natty Africans and the big lunks of bog-spawn polis. Here came the pikey blow-ins and the washed-up Madagascars. Here came the women of the Rises down the 98 Steps to
buy tabs and tights and mackerel – of such combinations was life in the flatblock circles sustained. Here came the Endeavour Avenue suits for a sconce at ruder life. The Smoketown tushies were between trick-cycles and had crossed the footbridge to take joe and cake in their gossiping covens. The Fancy-boy wannabes swanned about in their finery and tip-tapped a rhythm with their clicker’d heels. De Valera Street was where all converged, was where all trails tangled and knotted, and yes, here came Logan Hartnett in the afternoon swell. He was…
Gubernatorial.
Like a searchlight he turned his cold smile as he walked. He picked out all the De Valera Street familiars. He spotted a haggard old dear from the Trace. With one arm she pushed a dog in a pram, with the other she cradled a cauliflower, and he leaned into her as he passed.
‘Howya, Maggie, you’re breaking hearts, you are?’
Logan in the afternoon was almost sentimental – it was the taint that set him so. When he whispered to his old familiars, it was as if he hadn’t seen them for years.
By Henderson the Apotechary:
‘How-we-now, Denis? Any news on the quare fella?’
By Meehan’s Fish ’n’ Game:
‘Is that lung giving you any relief, Mrs Kelly?’
By the Auld Triangle:
‘When do the bandages come off, Terence?’
His smoke-grey suit, finely cut, set off nicely his deadhouse pallor. The walk of him, y’sketch? Regal, yes, quite so, and he made grand progress towards the Café Aliados.
De Valera Street runs its snakebend roll from the base of the Northside Rises all the way down to the river. It separates the Back Trace from the New Town. Its leases are kept cheap and easy – buckshee enterprises appear overnight and fold as quick. There are soothsayers. There are purveyors of goat’s blood cures for marital difficulties. There are dark caverns of record stores specialising in ancient calypso 78s – oh we have an old wiggle to the hip in Bohane, if you get us going at all. There are palmists. There are knackers selling combination socket wrench sets. Discount threads are flogged from suitcases mounted on bakers’ pallets, there are cages of live poultry, and trinket stores devoted gaudily to the worship of the Sweet Baba Jay. There are herbalists, and veg stalls, and poolhalls. Such is the life of De Valera Street, and Logan Hartnett at this time had the power over it.
He approached the Aliados. The crowd walked a perceptible curve around its front entrance in due respect. The Aliados opened onto Dev Street from the front and to the Back Trace from a laneway door. It was still, after all these years, the afternoon haunt of the Hartnett Fancy. He ducked down the laneway so as to come in, as always, by the side door – a creature of ritual and set habits. A scatter of his boys lounged inside at the low zinc tables. They smoked, and they drank tiny white cups of joe, and they ate sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds from saucers of thin china delft, and they sighed, languidly, as they leafed through the fashion magazines. The Aliados was no longer in the hands of Macu’s people, her father had long since passed, but somehow it had an air of wistfulness for the old country yet: a lingering saudade.
Logan took his usual table down back of the long, low-lit cafe. He had a clear view to both doorways from here – he was careful. He hung his jacket on a peg set for the purpose in the wall behind. The wall held photographs, faded, of ancient football teams. These were from the long-gone days when Bohane would have won All-Irelands. The girl – who was as homely as he could reasonably hire, not wanting his boys overly distracted – brought him his joe and a saucer of seeds and he smiled for her sweetly in thanks. The murmuring of talk among the Fancy boys was lower since Logan had entered the place. He smiled now for all of them. He turned the smile around the room; it was a masterpiece of priestly benevolence. Nobody was fooled by it for a minute – Logan’s smile was packed with nuance. Before its arc had fully swung the cafe, its message – its news – had changed many times, just a half-degree of a turn here, a half-degree there, adjusting minutely as it settled on the various parties of the room.
You would be in no doubt whatsoever as to your current standing within the ranks of the Hartnett Fancy.
Logan flicked his coffee cup with a fingernail. It tinked, pleasingly. He sighed then in long suffering. Examined his nails – a manicure was overdue. He allowed a particular glaze to settle over his fine-boned features. It was as though to emphasise the extent of a martyr’s devotion to the city; his devotion.
Now the custom at the Aliados, afternoons, was that mendicants would take a high stool at the bar and there they would wait precisely in turn for their brief audience with Logan. That an audience could begin was signalled by the slightest raising of the pale Hartnett eyebrows. This afternoon was a quiet one – just a couple of men waited. Logan signalled that the first of them might now approach, and it was the whippet-thin butcher Ger Reid who came dolefully across the tiled floor.
Wary always, Logan would be, of a thin butcher.
Reid was allowed a seat at the table beside him. He sat on the seat’s edge, and he had the look, close up, of a man lately a stranger to peace. Logan took his hand, gently, and held it.
‘You’re not well, butcher?’
‘I ain’t so hot at all, Mr Hartnett.’
‘Ah my poor man.’
The butcher raised his eyes as though the mystery of his misfortune might be read up there on the Aliados’s smoke-cured ceiling.
‘I’ve a… situation, sir.’
‘I know that, Ger.’
‘What’s goin’ on, Mr H, is…’
‘I know, Ger.’
He held the butcher’s hand yet and he stroked it most tenderly. Eye-locked the poor fucker.
‘It’s your wife, Ger. It’s Eileen. She’s been getting familiar with Deccie Cantillon, hasn’t she?’
Reid scrunched his face against the threat of tears. That his situation was known made the humiliation complete.
‘With your own cuz, Ger?’
Reid burped hard on deep, ragged sobs. Logan placed a forearm along the butcher’s spindly shoulders. Noted the way the shoulders jerked and fell with the sobs, and he enjoyed the feeling of that.
‘S’what I’m dealin’ with now, sir!’
‘Oh my poor child of the Sweet Baba… Oh Deccie Deccie Deccie… Deccie’s… below in the fish market, isn’t he?… Ah… You can never trust a fishmonger, Gerard. That is what I’d always say. That would be my advice to you. It’s the way they’d be looking down all day at those dead glistening little eyes. How’re they going to come out of that right?’
‘I only know of it the last week, Mr Hartnett… I haven’t slept.’
‘Only know of it myself the past fortnight, Gerard.’
A dart of animal pain went through the man. Logan smiled as his forearm felt the shock of the words jolting the butcher’s slight frame.
‘Oh I have dark fuckin’ thoughts, Mr Hartnett!’
‘I’d well imagine, Ger. Sure he’s lappin’ her out an’ all, I’d say.’
The butcher now openly wept.
‘Would you say, Mr Hartnett?’
‘He’s like a little cat at a saucer of milk, I’d say.’
The butcher stood and bunched his wee, gnarled fists but Logan pulled him gently into the seat again.
‘Oh I have dark fuckin’ thoughts, sir! Dark!’
Logan placed a finger to his lips and softly blew. Brought his lips then to the butcher’s ear.
‘Gerard? You’re going to stow those thoughts for me. Hear? I’m going to look after this for you, Ger.’
‘Are you, Mr H?’
‘Yes, Gerard. I’ll look after the fishmonger. And you can look after the adulterous cunt you married.’
His pale skin caught the low light of the Aliados – the skeleton of him was palpable, there greyly beneath the skin, the bone machine that was Logan Hartnett – and he smiled his reassurance; it had weight to it in Bohane.
‘But we need be very careful, Ger. You hear what I’m saying to you?’
‘I
do.’
‘Think on. If anything unpleasant were to befall a particular cuz, who’d those fat polis fucks come lookin’ for?’
‘You mean everyone knows, Mr Hartnett?’
‘The dogs on the streets, Gerard.’
‘Ah Mr Hartnett…’
The butcher’s head dipped, and tears raced down his cheeks, and they fell towards the zinc top of the table, but Logan one by one caught them as they fell.
‘So where’d the polis be sticking the old beak, eh?’
‘I hear what you’re sayin’ to me, Mr Hartnett.’
‘It’ll be taken care of, Gerard. You can trust me on that. Now go back to your work and put this out of your mind like a good man, d’you hear?’
‘It’s hard, Mr Hartnett.’
‘I know it’s hard, Gerard. Or I can imagine so.’
‘Thanks, Mr H.’
The butcher rose to go.
‘Of course, Ger, you know that I’ll be back to you in due course?’
‘I know that.’
‘Favour done’s a favour answered, Gerard.’
‘Yes, Mr Hartnett, sir.’
In such a way in the city was a man’s fate decided. Logan Hartnett yawned, stretched, and stirred a half-spoonful of demerara into his joe. The Aliados eased through its slow, afternoon moments. The Fancy boys talked lazily of bloodshed, and tush, and new lines in kecks. They combed each other’s hair and tried out new partings. Logan brooded a while, and went into his own smoky depths, and then he signalled again with a raising of his eyebrows. No surprise at all the next man to shuffle from a high stool. It was Dominick Gleeson, aka Big Dom, editor of the city’s only newspaper, the Bohane Vindicator. Of course, it was in no small part thanks to Logan Hartnett that the Vindicator remained the city’s only paper. Its masthead slogan: ‘Truth or Vengeance’, as inked above a motif of two quarrelling ravens.
