Beatlebone (16 page)

And now it's Cornelius weeping.

Fathers and sons, isn't it?

Oh fuck off, John! You have me fucken ragged.

They wait out the weather against the walls of the memorious ruin. He looks through the fallen window and onto the bay. A white Spanish horse races across the low waves. This is news he should keep to himself. He squints his eyes halfways shut to make it a trick of the light—the horse stops and turns and raises onto its hind legs and snorts pale fire. It takes off again into the mist and distance. John falls into a huddle and grips himself hard and shuts his eyes to break the spell.

What's the latest, John?

As a matter of fact, Cornelius, I think I've come loose of my fucking bean completely.

No wonder. The wind is after shifting east. There's none of us right when the wind shifts east.

But I'm having vision-type fucking things, Cornelius!

It would surprise me if you weren't.

The weather continues as roughly.

He has a fag and listens hard.

He travels.

I'm away again, he says.

Where've you landed, John?

On fucking Mount Street. I'm thinking of the late fifties. It's a night in the winter and there's a vicious wind come up the town. At this time I'm at the art college. My head's all over the road. It's early in the nighttime and I'm stood outside the art college. I'm stood at the corner of Mount Street and Pilgrim Street. I'm talking to some goon about his new band he's got up and he's asking about band names and what do you think of this, John, and what do you think of that, John, and I've no idea what it is he's gone and called his fucking band, The Flying Testicles, what-fucking-ever, and I'm going yeah, alright, that's good is that, and it's then his face starts to give.

Give?

I don't know how to describe this, Cornelius. But the years are peeling off and time is shifting.

I know the way.

He becomes a different person. He comes from some other time. He is away out of this cold winter, he says, and this miserable air and he tells me about Spanish places and the port of Càdiz and the orange trees in fucking Màlaga, all this, and he'll miss his girl so much—her long brown hair—and he'll miss his dotey Irish mam—and I cannot get away quick enough I'm that spooked. I walk off and wave and he goes, so long then, John, and I'm away up Rice Street, I'm away for Ye Cracke—it's early in the night and empty—and I sit in the war room on my own, a pint of bitter, in the snug, and I have a fag, try to settle, and the city is moving outside me, all around me, like it's come loose, and I don't know where the fuck I am nor when and you know what I'm saying to myself?

What?

I'm saying—

Cling the fuck on, John.

Cornelius?

Yes, John?

Do you think about your old man still?

It wouldn't be a happy dream for me, John. Did I not say? He topped himself for a finish.

Oh. I'm sorry.

He was nearly as well off out of it. And what good would it do to think of him in that place he went to?

No good. You must not ever think of that place. You must not ever think of that dark and glamorous place.

How did it happen, Cornelius?

Well. In the same way that an old dog gets to a certain age and a level of disregard for itself and it just takes off some night into the bushes. My father heard what was coming for him. And we didn't find him after, in the way you wouldn't find an old dog—you just wouldn't—because my father, I have no doubt, put himself in the sea. It was all his life nearby and it would have been an idea always of a way out. He would not have been the type to string himself from the rafter of a barn. He was considerate. There was no show in the man.

Evening moves across the bay. With it there comes a calmness that could be taken almost for reason. The wind drops to near enough nothing. They leave the sour ruin gladly and make for the boat again. It puts out to the dark water.

We're getting closer, John. Despite ourselves.

The boat moves across the bay. The tiny islands rest and idle in the evening light. His heart comes down to a slow, dull, even thumping. In no time at all the cliffs of Dorinish Island can be made out in a clear aspect, rising.

Oh there, he says.

They come at last to his island.

There's a tube of toothpaste in the suitcase, John. There's a brush to go with it. There is a small bottle of whiskey for emergency situations. There are tins of beans and matches and there are kindling sticks dried well. There will be rain in spats but this place will dry you as quick as it'll wet you. There's bread. There is a package of cooked ham cut thick in slices. Ate the fucken ham whatever you do. If you come across on the rocks a large greenish egg not much smaller than the size of your own head and speckled, I want you to walk a long, slow curve around it—it'll be a tern's egg and the fucken mother will have your eyes out if you go near it and it would be an awful thing for a man to lose an eye to a maddened bird on his own small island in Clew Bay. Do you hear me, John?

Yes, Cornelius, I'm listening.

He stands on the island and waves as the boat moves slowly back to its own world. He has the belted leather suitcase by his feet. He wears the old man's suit. The gulls hover above the water to reel down the night. The first lights are beading across the mainland now. He listens intently—oh let there be a sign that this is not the end place. The hollow sound the sea makes speaks of nothing so much as the hushed quiet of the big sleep that's to come, maybe soon, maybe late. The island is cold and loud with birds—he is too scared to turn and face into it. The boat becomes smaller in the distance; it disappears. He tries to put himself together again. His lips move to make words and he looks out for a long time over the dark water. He is falling again. He wants to be home now and away from this cold place. He wants never to feel this old again. The mainland lights are many and hopeful across the distance of the water.

He turns in to face the island at last. It is so very fucking cold out here on the rocks. The stones talk beneath his feet as he moves along the shifting, clicking causeway and the night birds huddle and thrum in the crevices and gaps and make their slow contented hums—it's in the dim haze of the night that he can see clearly at last. The lights on the mainland are arranged as a song and in quite an eerie notation, actually—he hums it for a bit and all the birds quieten. He is terrified and ecstatic and he goes from the east to the west of himself. Small voices come off the water. The water moves and there is a boat in the dark—again they have come for him. There are men huddled on the boat as her engine cuts and the boat lights up with torches and shows the men, with their fags and flasks, and he does not fucking fear them and he stands tall on a high rock to look out and face them and the boat comes ever the closer and one of the men rises in the torchlight and calls—

Mr. Lennon? Would you like to make a statement?

Abso-fucking-lutely, he says.

Have you got your paper and pens handy? Are you ready to press “record”? Then, gentlemen, I shall begin. I am made of rags and bones and tattered skin. I am of the third sex. My spirit animal is the billy goat or perhaps some days it's the hare. I'm never quite sure, in fact. I come and go in time and fucking space. Hobbies? I quite like to speak on the telephone. I do like a good yap. I talk to Liverpool, I talk to Hy-Brasil, I talk to fucking Mars. I like to put my voice along the high wires. I could quote you some poetry if you'd like? How're you fixed for some Gerard Manley Hopkins? I caught this morning morning's fucking minion—the one where he sees a bird and goes all swoony coz he loves fucking nature. Nature? I've had my fill of it, gents. Turns out it's all an illusion. Pull the fucking drapes back and it'll disappear. It's painted fucking scenery. It's a diorama. I am full of venom and bile and honky fucking blood. I'm afraid you've got me at quite a busy moment. I'm about to crawl under a rock and have a yap with the maggots. Also I'm having quite a difficult time with these terns. They do go on a bit, don't they? If you really must take my photograph, young man, make me beautiful and get my good side. It's this one, actually. This side I look like a young Rita Hayworth. The other side I look like Quasi-fucking-modo. I've always envied a gentleman with a hump. No one's going to ask you why the long face, are they? Now what else can I tell you? The number nine's for Dingle—you won't catch me out on the Liverpool buses. I had a small growth on my back the other month, I thought it was me hump getting started. Turned out to be a boil, which was a disappointment. What else can I tell you? I think we should all love and ravish each other but I'm holding out no great hopes. I might grow into this suit yet, I fully accept it's not a perfect fit. Do go easy on yourselves, gentlemen, you'll not be going around for long. Do have a go at the fat lying hypocrite bastards that run the fucking place, won't you? Smell the flowers and so forth and fuck each other gladly. Any follow-ups, gents? Any further enquiries? A little more Manley Hopkins? Certainly. Blue-bleak embers shall fall, gall themselves and gash gold-vermillion. He was a fucking laugh, wasn't he? Good night, gentlemen. Safe home the sea road.

The sound engineer, Charlie Haimes, pushes open the steel door and steps outside to the first of the morning. He sits on the same step of the fire escape that he's sat on almost every morning of these last humid weeks. It is a little after six and already very warm. The bars of the escape are warm to the touch even. He lights another fag, Charlie Haimes. It's late July, and the smoke is a hard burn on his lungs.

Inside a fuzzbox oodles and wafts. An effects unit hisses and barfs. A theremin runs slow eerie loops. A shriek sustains on the long pedal. It all sounds to Charlie Haimes like a cat having an incident. But who is Charlie Haimes to say?

The music dies and there are bootsteps and the steel door opens again—John steps out. He has a face on. He rests on the rail and looks out across the city or what can be seen of the city from the fire escape—the workings of a laundry, the back of a Turkish restaurant, a sliver of the early-morning street. He takes his glasses off and rubs his weary eyes.

The morning lifts across the city. The first scratches of life are on the air; the first of a summer Thursday's railyard aches and rousing groans.

The throb of the first trains from deep as the sun comes slowly higher. It's going to be a blinder. John beads his eyes and sucks on his fag and turns a significant look on the sound engineer Charlie Haimes.

If it had a bloody chorus, thinks Charlie Haimes.

They are running on fags and cold tea. John exhales slowly to the morning. Now he turns and considers with fresh interest the sound engineer Haimes.

The air is warmer by the moment. The city's ripe odour is rising. It's like Delhi on a bad day, thinks Charlie Haimes, whose gut has not been right. He's done time in Delhi has Charlie. The charas hashish. Never again with the squidgy black—never again with the charas hashish. One night he'd thought there was a bird talking to him. Another time a chair.

John looks up to the sky and considers the plain white and blue of it—as if there might be answers written up there.

John flicks his half-smoked fag. He leans his arms on the bars and his chin on his skinny arms.

Morning climbs the white-blue sky. The sound engineer Charlie Haimes wishes that he was at home, in the farmhouse, with Dora, and the nippers, having a spliff and thinking about getting his tomatoes in. There isn't much Charlie Haimes needs telling about tomatoes.

They have a laugh about the fiddler again. This cuts the tension. The fiddler was five foot nothing and smelt of whiskey and had the eyes of a haggard masturbator. John reckoned he'd been sneaking in the loo to have one off the handle.

John, hawk-faced, spluttering, one traumatised 4 a.m., had said: Right then! We're done with the fucking fiddles! And I mean in-fucking-toto, Charlie!

There isn't a great deal Charlie Haimes can say to that. The sun comes through the backs of the buildings across the way. John's skin is night-work pale in the morning light.

John reaches over the rail now and he looks down below. He sighs in long suffering. He slides to a sitting position.

This is heading into odd country is the view of Charlie Haimes. Though there was the time in Llandudno he'd had a weep about his nan.

John joins his hands to make a seashell—a conch?—and blows inside and opens his hands again—puff—as though to free a dove.

He doesn't answer. The silence that holds is easier now and London is pinkly waking. They've been through a lot together. The rattling of the bones; the squalls and the screeching; the occult shimmers; the lonely airs; the sudden madcap waltzes; the hollowed voices; the sibilant hiss; the asylum screams; the wretched moans; the violence, love, and tenderness—beatlebone. The first of the buses goes past at a sprightly chug.

Charlie Haimes could be enjoying the slow life. He could be tending his veggies and having his puff. But the call came in. Have you anything in the book, Charlie? Not till Kate Bush in October. Well, John's in town. John? John. Do you mean John-John? The same.

John pockets his fags; Charlie watches closely.

A summer day gets up and about itself. It's going to be a meat-spoiler. It's going to be pig heat in this old, old habitation. He's got the faraway look on. He—John—has gone off to the vaults of darkness again. As if all of it can make no difference, as if each time he opens his mouth it's just a scream to pierce the moment against the darkness that's coming, the void.

The sound engineer has been around a share of these type blokes in his day. What it is, if you ask Charlie Haimes, is a case of arrested development.

Charlie Haimes tries to remember when he was seventeen. 1961? Not bloody yesterday. He was possibly already in Brum by then. Which wasn't without its excitements for a Charlie Haimes, seventeen, fresh fish out of Dudley.

The morning is tight as a drum now. The first of the traffic sends out its snarls. The air becomes heavier and tastes of oil and poppers.

This goes down very well.