Night Boat to Tangier

by Kevin Barry

Because ye’d have the weather for it.

  Maurice whispers –

  Ye’d be sleeping out on the beaches.

  Like the lords of nature, Charlie says.

  Under the starry skies, Maurice says.

  Charlie stands, gently awed, and proclaims –

  ‘The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.’ Whose line was that, Maurice?

  I believe it was the Bard, Charlie. Or it might have been Little Stevie Wonder.

  A genius. Little Stevie.

  Charlie, with a priest’s intelligent smile, limps behind the bench. He wraps a friendly arm around Benny’s neck. He leans to whisper in his ear –

  The girls and the dogs all in sweet mounds on the beaches and the sky is laid out like heaven above ye.

  You’re lying there, Ben, Maurice says, and you’re looking up at it. You don’t know whether you’re floating or falling, boy. Do you think he can hear the sea, Charlie?

  I have no doubt, Maurice. It’s lapping. Softly. At the edges of his dreams.

  You know what he don’t want in his dreams, Charlie?

  What’s that, Moss?

  Us cunts.

  She’s a small girl, Benny. She’s a pretty girl. And you see what it is? Is we’ve been told she’s headed for Tangier.

  Or possibly she’s coming back from Tangier.

  On the 23rd of the month. Whichever fucken direction? It’s all going off on the 23rd.

  Is what we’ve been informed by a young man in Málaga.

  On account of the young man found himself in an informational kind of mood.

  Maurice moves close in to Benny again and considers him. There is something of the riverbank in his demeanour. Something beaver-like or weasel-ish. He reads the feint blue flecks of the boy’s irises. He might not live for long, he thinks. There is a hauntedness there. He is scared, and with reason. Now Maurice softly confides –

  You see, it’s my daughter that’s missing, fella. Can you imagine what that feels like?

  Charlie speaks as softly –

  Do you have nippers yerself, Ben?

  Any sproglets, Ben? No? Any hairy little yokes left after you?

  In Bristol or someplace? Charlie says. Any Benjamin juniors left behind you? Hanging out of some poor gormless crusty bird what fell to your loving gaze.

  What you shot your beans up, Maurice says.

  Benny shakes his head. He looks around to seek help, but his predicament remains his own.

  You have empathy, Benny, Maurice says. You’re a lovely fella. I can see that in you. So feel it out with me here now, okay? Imagine, after three years, how you’d do anything to be free of this feeling. Because my heart? It’s outside of its fucken box and running loose in the world. And we’ve been told that she’s heading for Tangier, Dilly, and she’s travelling with her own kind.

  I don’t know, Charlie says, sitting again, flapping out a lazy hand. Maybe a convoy is going to come together in Algeciras? Spend the winter in Africa, the hot sun on yere bony little pagan arses. Lovely. And all about ye the colourful little birds is a ho-ho-hoverin’. I’m seeing pinkies and greenies and yellowy little fellas. All very good-natured. So is that the plan, Benjamin? Ben? You’ve gone a bit pale on us, kid.

  What I’m going to do is I’m going to ask you again, Benny? Dilly Hearne? Dill or Dilly?

  I don’t know no fucking Dilly!

  Now Charlie folds an embrace around the boy’s neck.

  You know what I think, Maurice?

  What’s that, Charlie?

  I think this lad is a ferocious wanker.

  That’s a harsh view, Charles.

  Benny makes to get up, but Charlie, with a smile and force, pushes him back down to the bench.

  You see what happens, Benny, he says, with all the self-abuse, and this is just my opinion, son, I mean this is just my theory, you know? My kind of . . . morbid speculation. But what happens, with the self-love, it’s not just the seed itself that gets spent, it’s not just the essence that’s lost. What happens, in my theory, and it’s something I’ve thought about quite a lot, actually –

  Philosopher, Maurice says. This fella. Charles Redmond of Farranree.

  You see what happens, in my opinion, on account of all the wanking, is that the brain starts to get affected and the memory is shot.

  The memory? Maurice says.

  And clicks his fingers sharply.

  Kaput, he says.

  And there’s no point crying out now, son. Because in the Algeciras ferry terminal?

  They’ve heard much worse.

  And I don’t mean to be in any way personal with this speculation, Benny. But I’d have to say you have the look of an animalistic fucken self-abuser altogether, you know?

  Maurice shouts –

  He have one arm longer than the other from it!

  And he stands and drags Lorca on his rope, as if to make off with the dog.

  Come here, he says. Wouldn’t it be a horrible fucken thing for poor Lorca to wake up without a head on him in the port of Algeciras? Like in a nightmare, Ben.

  It’s an awful place, Charlie says.

  It’s a shocking place, Maurice says.

  Sort of place things could take a wrong steer on you lightning quick, Ben. You heed?

  Dilly. Have you seen Dill, have you?

  She’s a small girl.

  She’s a pretty girl.

  Dill?

  Or Dilly?

  When the young man answers finally his voice is hollow, weak –

  I might have seen her one time in Granada, he says.

  *

  It is a tremendously Hibernian dilemma – a broken family, lost love, all the melancholy rest of it – and a Hibernian easement for it is suggested: fuck it, we’ll go for an old drink.

  They move to the café bar. As though on a gentle night’s saunter. The young man, Benny, is arranged between them as they rise on the escalator in a careful caravan – he could bolt, but somehow he is reluctant to.

  The bar awaits grimly beneath the glare of its strip lights. It runs the thread of its voices. The men sit on three swivelling stools that creak rustily as they turn. This is a place in which time passes almost audibly. Charlie and Maurice sit either side of Ben. They are all three drinking from small glasses of beer. Lorca sits happily beneath on Charlie’s grip and tether.

  How’re you finding Spain, Ben?

  It’s all right.

  Myself and this man been coming here a long while now. What are we talking about, Maurice?

  ’92, Charlie, I’d say. ’93?

  Time? It’s like fluff on the breeze, Benny.

  Benny? Maurice says. You have a grave look on your face. Relax your bones. All we’re doing is having a little cerveza, wetting our whistles.

  Charlie leans down and talks lovingly to the dog.

  Who’s my number one boy? he says.

  The dog lets its eyes roll. Charlie Redmond knows at once the tune of a dog, and hums it. Now he starts to whisper a football commentary –

  Zidane’s on the ball . . . He turn on a sixpence . . . He look up . . . He knock it in the box . . . Raúl! . . . Raúl misses it, the keeper has it . . . No! Keeper’s spilt it! . . . And it’s Lorca on the rebound! . . . And the Bernabéu is singin’ his name.

  Maurice leans in to Benny to address him confidentially –

  Charlie Redmond? In my opinion? Is a man that communicates with dogs on a visceral level. You know what I’m saying by that?

  I have no fucking idea, mate.

  They nearly stand up and talk to him.

  That right?

  Now Charlie consults the dog and listens carefully for a moment.

  Hear this? He says Raúl was the most selfish little runt that ever pulled on boot leather. Never passed the ball a day in his life.

  You nearly want that in a centre-forward, Maurice says. I was the exact same way and I playing inside-left.

  You didn’t have Raúl’s first touch, Maurice, in fairness.


  I never said I was at the Bernabéu level, Mr Redmond.

  Charlie leans down again, as though listening to the dog some more.

  What’s he saying to you, Charlie?

  He’s saying this lad ain’t telling us the whole story at all, Moss.

  Look, Benny says. Thanks for the beer, but I got to move. Really.

  Maurice creaks a fast swivel on his stool and jabs a thumb in Benny’s eye. The young man cries out but Maurice moves in to muffle it with a palm across the mouth.

  In honesty, Ben? Charlie says. They’ve seen much worse in the Algeciras terminal.

  My personal belief is that it’s one of the most evil-minded places of the earth, Ben.

  Charlie sniffs at the air, looks worried –

  I mean take a waft of the fucken place? You getting an old haunt off it? Smell of bones and ashes.

  Are they on their way, Benny, are they?

  I don’t know who you mean.

  Dill? Or Dilly?

  When’s it she was in Granada, Ben?

  Please, Benny says. Please stop.

  Okay. We know. All you want is to be at your usual caper. We understand.

  Benjamin? Charlie says. He want a black-sand beach. He want to be talking bollocks. He want a circle of swaying dreadlocks all ’round him. He want the girls and the dogs hanging on his every word. He want to be staring all soulful into the moonlight. Ranting his nonsense about the stars and the leylines and Jah Rastafari and the magical significance of the number twenty-three.

  The cunt wouldn’t go away and get a job for himself, no?

  No fear.

  Right! Benny says. I’m away.

  Maurice leans in, slams him to the stool, bites his shoulder. Charlie muffles the cry with the tips of his fingers placed firmly to Benny’s mouth.

  Ben? There’s no harm done.

  Are they on their way, Benny, are they?

  I don’t know anything. I can’t help you. I might have seen a Dilly one time in Granada. But it was way back.

  Charlie descends in sadness from his stool. He takes the dog by the rope. He moves away from the other two and turns his back on them. He breathes hard as though to control himself.

  Maurice lays a fatherly hand on Benny’s shoulder.

  First off, Ben? I’m sorry I bit your shoulder. There was no call for it. It’s shocking behaviour. But I was badly brought up, you know? I didn’t have your advantages. I’d say your old man was an accountant or something, was he? Or did he run a leisure centre? Usually the way. With your crowd. With the crustaceans. But me? I came off a terrace street the sun never shone on. I was put out working at four years of age. In Cork city. I was a bus conductor, actually, on the number eight, St Luke’s Cross direction. But that’s all a long time ago now, and those were the sweet days of my youth and they’re not coming back. Oh, no, they are not. And never did I think I’d wind up the way I am now. A man that’s heartbroken. A man that hasn’t seen his Dilly in three fucken years. Imagine what that does to a fella? But I apologise again, Benny. I do. Are we on speaking terms?

  Benny half nods; he’s very scared.

  Well, listen to me carefully and take good heed, okay? Because you see that man there? Charlie Redmond? Of Farranree? See what he’s trying to do there? He’s trying to control his breaths, Ben. He’s trying to articulate his spine.

  He calls over to Charlie –

  Are you articulatin’ your spine, Charles?

  If there’s nothing else I’m doing, I’m articulatin’ my cunten spine, Moss.

  That’s good news, Ben, because if he don’t relax himself? All bets are off. I mean seriously. Charlie Redmond? A gentleman. A philosopher. A man so attuned to emotions he can communicate on a bodily level with the most delicate creatures of us all, which is dogs. Charlie Redmond? Loyal as an old dog himself, and fierce! If needs be. And I tell you now, since she were no bigger than a little trout? Dilly Hearne has been that man’s darling. Oh, he doted on her. He was around our place four nights of the week, five, bringing her comic books, DVDs, sneaking her in sweets, and if he didn’t show up, of an evening, she’d be at the window, upstairs, looking out, where’s my Unkie Charlie? And it’s three years now since we seen Dilly, and you can imagine what it’s like for me, the girl’s father, I’ve been in hell. But Charlie Redmond? He’s as bad again. No peace, no solace, not till his Dilly’s got back to him.

  Charlie returns to the pair, with the happy dog, and he squats in front of Benny. He opens his suit jacket, takes out a knife, looks around carefully. He shows the knife to Benny, both sides of it. He puts it inside his jacket again.

  I’d hate to have to take the head off the fucken dog, Ben, you know what I’m saying? So tell me now. Is Dilly due in, is she? Dilly Hearne?

  She’s a small girl.

  She’s a pretty girl.

  *

  On the bench just west of the hatch marked INFORMACIÓN, Maurice and Charlie again sit at either side of Benny. Charlie has the dog on the rope and sings to it quietly.

  From when she was about thirteen or fourteen? Maurice says. It was all going a bit amateur dramatics with Dilly. Scarification. Voices in the night. Running away to the Ummera Wood and burying herself alive. Not calling her mother nor me. Not so much as a text message. We’re going up the walls. Her ladyship is buried to the shoulders in the fucken dirt. And that was hard, Ben, it was, to be dealing with the Oscar-winnin’ performances, because when she was younger? She was just . . .

  A dote, Charlie says, to break his song.

  A gorgeous little one. Watch a bit of telly with you. Laughing her head off. The little chuckles? I can hear them in my chest still.

  Is she on her way, Ben?

  But the next thing, Maurice says, she’s fourteen years of age and she’s after getting into the music and books on white magic and the bedroom door is locked and she’s sat in there like a fucken compost heap. Face on her.

  The way it’s happening, Charlie says, is there’s a convoy of ye getting together in Algeciras. Some are heading out for Tangier and others are coming back. It’s got to do with who minds the dogs. At least this is what our friend in Málaga has us believe.

  You hitting over to Morocco for the winter, Ben?

  Someone come back and mind the dog for you? That how it works? And ye move on the 23rd of the month always.

  On account of the magical significance of the number, Maurice says.

  You think we’re going to let Morocco happen, Ben?

  You think we don’t know what Morocco’s like? A girl gets lost in that place and she could stay lost forever.

  We been in and out of Morocco since 1994, son.

  Charlie Redmond? This man here? The only man I ever heard of that smuggled dope into Morocco.

  Oh, lots of old stories, Ben, lots of adventures. This fella? Maurice Hearne? Do you know you’re looking at a fella there who’s worked in the High Atlas trading goats for dope?

  The stories we could tell, Benny. Did you ever try and buy 350 goats off a fella from Marrakesh, did you?

  On credit.

  In a Cork accent.

  Morocco? We know the ins and outs of that place years since.

  Now Maurice rises and stands directly in front of Benny.

  Where are all the girls and the dogs, Benny?

  For why have they forsaken you, Benjamin?

  Look! Once or twice. Ever! That’s all I ever talked to Dilly. And it was a while back.

  Pale green eyes she got, Maurice says. Off Cynthia she took the eyes, who was a left-footer, from Kinsale, because I married up, Ben. You’d think she’d have passed on a few decent Protestant manners to the girl?

  She don’t say much, Benny says. From what I saw of her. She kept to herself mostly.

  A breakthrough – Maurice and Charlie smile at the boy; they are fond now, avuncular.

  She made the disks of the sun, Benny says.

  She made the fucken what?

  They call them sun disks. What the girls make
. They’re like wooden . . . pendants? For around the neck. The girls burn the designs on with a magnifier, on hot days. Then it’s one for ten euros, three for twenty. At the markets and that.

  Jesus Christ, Maurice says.

  Easy, Moss.

  You know that girl got nine honours in her Junior Cert, Charlie?

  Leave it go, Maurice.

  It’s hard to, Charles! A girl of infinite fucken possibility! And you turn around and she’s out the gap and gone to fucken Spain and hanging off hairy bastards and selling tat at the side of the road like a fucken leper! And I mean at twenty-three years of age? She’s a pure fucken gom still! She’s a gommie lackeen! A fucken sweeping brush handle with a mickey attached to it could talk her into Morocco!

  Why’d she take off? Benny says. You ask yourself that ever?

  Maurice and Charlie exchange a brace of silken grins.

  Ho ho, Maurice says.

  Charlie limps soulfully around back of the bench and rests a palm on Benny’s shoulder. He speaks calmly and kindly.

  I don’t know if you’re getting the sense of this yet, Ben. But you’re dealing with truly dreadful fucken men here.

  Maurice leans in, smiling broadly.

  We’re an awful pair, he says.

  Deranged, Charlie says. Devil-sent.

  What time were ye thinking of crossing over, Ben? What boat are ye on? Is that decided?

  Is the girl Dilly due in Algeciras, Ben?

  Now the echo of a dog’s bark opens a hollow nearby. Benny looks hopefully towards it. Maurice and Charlie look at each other; Charlie holds Lorca back on the rope.

  Two girls appear.

  Their hair is worn in dreadlocks and they carry heavy rucksacks.

  Their clothes are ragged, their skins nut-brown.

  One of the girls has a dog on a rope.

  Chapter Two

  THE TATTOOED TIT

  In the city of Málaga, and beyond, in January 1994

  At the Café Central, in the Plaza de la Constitución, he drank café solo and waited. Around him there was the ceaseless hum of the old Andalusians’ talk. They balled up their napkins and threw them to the tiled floor. The old men spat, narrowing their faces. Their skins of almond shade. The air was blue with cigarette smoke that rose in slow drifts. The old ladies wore ankle-length fur coats for the winter sun. They had high comical arched eyebrows painted on and looked perpetually startled. The coffee machines laughed and spat also. The patrons drank café solo and con leche and cortado and hot chocolate, and ate sugary lengths of long, twisted churros. A woeful fat man from Birmingham arrived just a few minutes late. He had a look of high moral injury as he took a seat opposite Maurice Hearne. His great, fleshy frame came to rest in a soft stack of complaint.