by Kevin Barry
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.
She looks at John with interest now.
Have you been on the television?
Maybe I have.
When you were younger, she says.
Well this is it.
I’d recognise the nose, she says. You’ve a bit of weight gone off you since?
I’ve gone macrobiotic now.
There were four of ye, she says.
There were.
The leader was a beautiful-looking boy, she says. The big eyes like saucers and the song about the blackbird.
Okay, John says.
Now, Margaret, Cornelius says. If a young man like this was looking for answers about his feelings, what kind of thing would you tell him?
What class of feelings is he having?
Very fucking complicated ones, John says.
I’ll tell you one thing you could do, she says. You could put a clean tongue inside your mouth.
I’m sorry.
Anyway, she says, and she looks out to the sea again and shakes her head sadly. The best thing is not to feel at all. It’s all hell after fifty, boys.
She turns to him a last time—
But no harm sometimes to have that bit of arrogance in yourself.
———
The examined life turns out to be a pain in the stones. The only escape from yourself is to scream and fuck and make and do. He will not go back any more to the old places. He will not go back to Sefton Park.
———
He stepped out from the shade of a tree. He was blinded in the sun. He wore a stupid bowler hat. He came across looking kind of sulphurous. He sat beside her on the bench. What do you think of my hat, he said. It’s stupid, she said, and he took it off and threw it in the duck pond. The way that her heart vaulted its beat.
These are dangerous words on our lips, Freddie.
It was in the Trocadero she saw him first. There was something in his voice that made a scratch come into hers when she spoke. She told him not to touch so much and he got a face on like a washed dog.
He wanted to fish his hat from the pond again but could not reach. The way that he stood there with his hands on his skinny girlish hips.
You could have a paddle, she said.
It was cold in the park in the springtime in the sunshine. He rubbered his lips and clowned his love for her—she might kiss him if he tried it—and he wiped his hands off the seat of his shiny pants as though to say this is all settled and now there are two of us in it, Julia.
———
The black swarm of the sea moves its lights like a cocaine palace.
I beg your pardon, John?
It’s a lyric, Cornelius. Or at least a note towards one. I’m thinking it all through.
I have you.
I just let the words come out, really, in just a sort of…blaaaah. You know, without thinking? In just a kind of…bleuurrgh. Without thinking. To get the subconscious stuff? And then I see if I can get a shape on them.
Is that how it works?
Sometimes. But the imagination is a very weak little bird. It flounders, Cornelius, and it flaps about a bit.
I’d believe it, John. Cocaine I never took.
I’m inclined to think that’s a very good idea.
Though I was addicted to cough bottles at one time.
Tell me more.
I was drinking five or six of them a night after my supper.
Jesus Christ. What does six cough bottles down the hatch feel like?
Like an eiderdown wrapped around yourself. It feels like goose feathers. It feels like mother’s love. No matter how hard or cruel the world or the night might be you’re…like a baby…kind of…What’s the word I’m after, John?
Swaddled?
Is right. Against all the harshness of the world.
Were there hallucinations, Cornelius?
Were there fucken what. I had a very firm belief—this went on for months unending—that a particular gap in the hill on the road towards the Highwood was a kind of wink at me, in the night, as I drove through. As if the mountain was marking the passage of time for me in a sort of cheeky way.
The gap in the hill was a wink?
Just so. In the headlights as I drove through.
Cornelius?
John?
Oh nothing.
———
They come to Mulranny. A small bar with a low peat fire is chosen for discretion’s need. He orders a pot of tea only but large ham-faced gentlemen with farmer hands and farm demeanour appear at frequent intervals and freshen the pot with small measures of whiskey. In what seems like no time at all there is interested talk of the Highwood. Certainly we wouldn’t be kept late, Ken, there is no music tonight or at least there is no music that is scheduled. Complicated phone calls are made about motor vehicles. A consensus arrives that to be relaxed about things is the best policy as all told we are unlikely to be found wanting for a vehicle. Of course it’s the same attitude has this country on its fucken knees but even so. The only question really is where we are headed for and that is a question that opens out to life generally and is as well ignored. There are planes across the sky and ocean every day of the week is the truth of it. The dog Brian Wilson puts in an appearance, shuffling through the doors a little sheepishly, like a regular lately barred from the place. He takes his ease by the fire. He is accompanied by his charge, a fluttering person with an oblong head who is known as Dutch Mike. I’ve met this dog in Newport town, you know? When was this? Quite early one recent morning. Newport…is that where he goes? Yes, and he has quite a nice singing voice. The night opens out to itself not unreasonably. People come, people go, and a ride is arranged for the Highwood. The stars are out to travel the road above us gaily. Kenneth is an accepted oddity of the western hills now or at least this is how we will allow it to appear. And there is magic, isn’t there, in the way the Maytime opens out to us?
———
It comes along to the morning again. He walks the broad deserted beach at Mulranny. It is bright and cold and his blood tingles with news. He is in a state of relief that cannot be put into words because it is internal and of the blood. The breeze has sharp cold points and he huddles against it in the old man’s suit as he walks. Ambles—the word appears on his lips unasked for and he laughs at it. I’ll have an amble for a bit. The sand circles in small drifts and patters brightly and sighs when it falls to settle in the breezeless gaps. Tiny comic birds run on spindle legs from the foaming waves and put up their outraged chatter. A disbelieving crow watches in jackboots and makes a depressed cawing. There is the fall of his own step and the easy labour of his breathing and now across the sand a black bead hovers in the distance moving and it comes closer and rises to a low contented humming above the sound of the birds and his breath and his step falling and as it approaches—the old Mercedes—it slows with nice decorum and the back door falls open for him.
———
The tadpole kid’s bike creaks on its rusted chain as he takes off again and we walk togethe
r down Bold Street in the afternoon and though I can see your lips move and I can hear your voice still I cannot make out the words anymore but for the single word—John—and it’s a routine traipse or escapade, Wednesdayish, to a bun shop or a caff or the music shop to pay off an instalment, maybe, and I can see you as you turn to me and laugh and we’re by the turn for the tunnel for Central station and I cannot make out the words anymore and this is very hard to do because love is so very hard to do. But I can see you on Bold Street as we move with the crowd again and there is a catch or snag in your voice—a scratch, a sadness—that tells me the way that time moves and summer soon across the trees will spin its green strands.
About the Author
KEVIN BARRY is the author of the highly acclaimed novel City of Bohane and two short-story collections, Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. He was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2007 and won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award in 2012. For City of Bohane, he was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Award, and won the Author’s Club Best First Novel Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere. He lives in County Sligo in Ireland.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
* * *
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
