Beatlebone (18 page)

The island was fucking exhausting. He didn't last for long out there. Now he waits it out at the farmhouse in the hills. Soon the car will come to bring him to the airport—Cornelius—and soon he will be in the sky again. He sits in a hard chair by the webby kitchen window—in the webs he sees a languid man. He has the place to himself and the day is not without its graces: a duck walks across a puddle in the yard. Appears to be on very serious business. A dog is yowling somewhere far off. They might never think to find me in these demented reaches. He drinks strong tea and smokes a fag—stay fucking busy, John. Bridge off all the silences and the gaps.

Soon he will be able to make something new. He will make something delicate and fine and odd. It's all going to work out beautifully. Because he is our fucking hero still. He can see down the hills and to the water. Time slows just enough for its workings to show—just oddly, here and there, as it will do in the Maytime. The moments bead into each other, one by one and neatly, but sometimes they reverse and spin back, too, and this explains plenty. It turns out you can play with it a bit. You can make time spin back towards you. He breathes deep and feels out the serpent length of himself. A vitamin sadness fills his lungs. Where might I get to if I persist with all this? Getting fucking Saviour notions again. He can see the tiny details and he can see the broader sweep. There is rain now on the roof slates and a concertina wind. The Irish coast sits down there in its drizzle and murk. You wouldn't know where the fuck you are nor when.

He walks for a while in the hills above Mulranny. It is very quiet. He walks by the old railway line. Now it has cleared and the day is lit. There are no people anywhere to be seen. Shades of the railway line move at an unseen thrum. He sits and rests for a while in a scooped-out hollow of the hillside. The breeze snaps and dies and there is perfect quiet across the sky and blue of bay. Something moves. He sits as still as he can and dares hardly to breathe. In the far left field of his vision if he does not move at all maybe the hare will not disappear. He read once that the hare augurs darkly in the Irish mythology. From what he can remember there is fuck all that augurs brightly in the Irish mythology. The hare is no more than a couple of yards away. It is so close he can see reflected in its startled eye the grey stone of hill and blue of bay. It looks out across the flank of the hill but it cannot see him in the hollow. Its nose is a soft purse leather and it twitches to find the strangeness on the air but it cannot place him. Do you not hear my heart racing? A crack of the breeze snaps the tall grasses—everything is immense. He sits perfectly still and grins madly—he is nothing but the grin. The hare rises on its hind legs—it stands mannishly. Actually quite a handsome devil. It is poised in every twitch and sinew to run but still there is this strangeness on the air it cannot twig. Oh Jesus fuck let this moment hold across the sky and blue of bay. The hare turns its nose a tiny mechanical clockwork nidge. It surveys the fields of the Maytime in the hills above Mulranny. From the hotel far below comes a sudden clanging—the kitchens—and the hare takes off as quick as light moves and its pumping run sounds out the hollows of the hill. Fuck me. He gets up and walks for a while again. He goes on down the beach and has a fag. There are further Victorians on the beach. He calls a salute to them as he passes by—

Alright?

—but they just shyly, stiffly wave.

Back in the farmhouse.

Cornelius enters, red-faced, and in a fluster—

This is not a happy day for the Mercedes, John.

Oh?

Exhaust is crooked on it again. There's a man in Mulranny might fix it and drop it up to us tonight but he is not a reliable man and he suffers from fainting fits.

I see.

The worse news is I think the van's on the way out as well.

Tea is made. They wait on the man from Mulranny. There is dangerous talk of black pudding sandwiches.

He paces the yard. He thinks about what to say to his love, exactly, and he thinks about holding the kid. He has a fag to batten down the emotional bits. He leans back against the wall of the farmhouse high in County Mayo and the Atlantic rolls down there—a Mesmeric—and if you close your eyes you can fall into its black drift and turn and you can be wherever you want to be.

On Bold Street he walks the street in the crowd. He wears a drape jacket in midnight green with a velvet collar of dark cherry, or call it cerise, and high-waisted drainpipes in a navy-black mottle cut an inch above the ankle to show leopard-print socks and crêpe-sole brothel creepers in a desert-brown and most delicate suede and his hair is greased and fixed to hold on a ducktail finish and the curl of his lip spells seventeen and he's that fucking sharp except he's got his mum beside. A tadpole kid passes by on a rusty bike. The kid jerks a foot to the kerb and turns the bike sideways to block the path. He looks hard at John. He says—

I heard there was a nigger boat done over.

She goes right up close to the kid. She fronts him. The way she stands there, stone hard, and says—

Fuck off.

And the kid fucks off.

The man from Mulranny does not appear.

Do you see now the way I'm half my life down the far end of lanes waiting on thundering bastards who don't show up, John?

Well this is it.

The van also has given its last.

We'll take it by foot, John. We'll find out what's happening with the Mercedes at least.

They walk down the mountain. They are headed for Mulranny. They walk the country by night. They come to the water and follow the long, dark, turning sea road. The world tonight is a monochrome dream. A pockfaced moon browses the road and bay. Cornelius raises his glance to curse it—

Fucken thing, he says.

There is an odd drag from it.

As long as we're not steered by it, John.

The birds of the night chorus in a hedgerow like fat young lawyers—a prosperous choir. Onwards—this sentimental journey. One honky step in front of the other. Now the road comes up as though on a riser and the sea opens out above the rocks and a swarm of moving lights passes through the water—a shoal?

Precisely so, Cornelius says.

It electrifies, but the road turns again as quickly inland to the dark stone empire and the hills of the night. There is a figure up ahead, a shade.

Fuck me, he says.

Now, says Cornelius. This particular lady, John?

Yes?

A hundred and twelve years of age and hoppin' off the road.

Okay.

Good evening, Margaret?

Cornelius, she says, and does not turn her eyes at all.

This is Kenneth, Margaret, a cousin of mine home from England.

How are you, Ken, she says, and does not turn her eyes at all.

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.