Beatlebone (9 page)

You've been out here for a while have you, Joe?

Been here for years now.

The smile warms; there's a flip of the wrist.

Feels like nothing, he says. So long as you're keeping busy.

You know about my island, Joe?

I knew some of the people you had on it for a bit.

The Diggers?

Same as.

I heard there was a fire out there.

I heard as much, John.

He takes out a lighter and wraps a wiry strand of his hair around a fat thumb; he sets fire to the end of the strand.

The high note of its bitter scent flashes on the air.

Joe?

He takes up the camera, and trains it, and sets it with a flick of the thumb to its whirring.

No thanks, John says—he raises a palm against it.

Not even a quick hello, John?

Put the fucking thing down.

And might it be out there still—or up there—somewhere, in an old freak's effects, or on the spidering web, just a few seconds at the end of a reel as the tall man, gaunt with tiredness, holds a palm against the lens and pushes it away firmly, angrily, and the hog-like man chuckles, and it is past midnight at the Amethyst Hotel—are there witches moving on the beach?—and all the stars are out, and Mars is a dull fire in the eastern sky.

They settle again to their sipping; they settle again to their talk.

I've had some luck in my life, John. I've had an angel's share. But for you to show up at our little place here? Well that's something very special indeed.

There's an arrogance to him, and the hoggish smile, and the query comes now just as expected—

Do you want to come up the room, John?

He says—

Joe?

Yeah?

Have you any idea how long it'll be before Cornelius gets back?

Sometimes he'll walk the streets on the biblical afternoons when a great downpour hits the avenues and it rains frogs and cats and dogs and the people all become strange twisted birds in the hot wind from the tunnels and get sucked down the black maws of the subways and the taxi cabs move through the yellow blur and vapours of the streets and the rain washes the colours of the streets and smears them and he comes down from his eyrie and walks the streets for a while and he is that happy in his old raincoat with the fisherman's hat pulled down over his eyes—the hat a yellow oilskin makes him look like a cartoon duck—and he roams for a while around the seabed of the city and he has a natter with the crustaceans—hello?—and he goes among the pools of the streets and the mad things—the hat he's had for three bucks off a Chinese dude that keeps a stall in the park—among the crabs and the mad—he talked to a Turkish boy once who had only the one yellow snaggle tooth and a mouth that'd been opened with a hatchet apparently and a T-shirt that read
Galatasary
—and for a while it feels like his very own town and place and maybe he can work again and breathe again and write again, and not be locked to the fucking past—that he might play again—not locked to the past—that he can write again—not locked to the past and its same old song—

Lah-de-dah

Lah-de-dum-dum-dah.

At table—

There's Frank.

There's Sue.

There's Joe Director.

It is two in the morning. It is early in the Maytime. It is a whispery old dining room. There is a vat of goat curry and a giant wooden bowl of spiced chickpeas with mint and parsley and there are bottles of cold Madeiran wine. Into the grain of the wooden table the words

B L A C K

A T L A N T I S

are carved and from a hi-fi the boozy sitars waft—a dozen years he's been trying to outrun the fucking sitars. Spoon up the curry from the antique delft. It's tasty as hell.

Kid, says Joe. Tender as such.

Drink the cold sweet wine—it's a very nice old wine. Let the night drift out a little. Get looser. The delft shows a little Dutch kid. The finger-in-the-dyke kid. What's-his-face? Outside the pale night is stretched across the sky.

Black Atlantis, Joe?

Joe Director nods sombrely.

It's outside the window, John.

Joe Director is a forest hog.

Frank is a wolf.

Sue, an elf.

And John?

I have made my own shell—

I am the clam,

the barnacle,

the brittlestar.

Do you want to come up the room, John?

No, I don't.

Do you want to get the rants on, John?

No, I fucking don't actually because what I realise right now I'm sat here is I don't need to scream no more and I don't need to rant neither because I know who I am and what I am and what I am is I'm a full-grown fucking man. I don't need to do that stuff anymore.

Come on, John…

Look, he says. After a while you've gone and opened yourself up plenty. And you can just let it fucking lie. But you lot do whatever you need to do to get yourselves through the night. Don't let me stop you.

You want to make a circle, John?

I'm good but thanks.

You want to get the rants on, John?

I've said no! I don't want to get the fucking rants on!

Do nothing you don't want to do, John-kid.

Well that's just fucking fine then.

He drinks a bit and smokes a bit and drifts. The light of the moon comes through in witchy rays. He thinks—

What if we were to run away for real? Say to Buenos Aires to a secret compound behind high gates with Hector on security detail with his machine gun and his 'tache. Or make it a tiny fiefdom in a jungle someplace—a Kurtz. Or make for the desert. Or what about Berlin in an old factory packed with hypodermic flunkies. Or what about Budapest. Or what about fucking Barnsley. Or say he goes upriver, or say he goes underground, or say he's a shepherd in Patagonia—of course you've got your Welsh down there, bloody Taffs, they get everywhere—or say he just clings to a rock out in the middle of the black fucking ocean

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief

on his own tiny Atlantis

as kids we sang, on the street we sang

on his nineteen rabbity acres—or what about a fucking trout farm in Wales—do a Roger Daltrey on it—and let there be no…

You're on the move, John?

This is Joe Director.

You what?

You've left the room, John. You might pretend to be here but you're not. It can't contain John, the Amethyst.

Frank and Sue are quiet, smiling, watchful.

Come on up the circle, John.

Fuck off.

What about we do the rants, John?

You're a bunch of fucking throwbacks.

Come on, John.

It's 1978!

We could go up the room, John.

I'm done with all that stuff. I'm done with all that open up and bleed.

We could go to the room right now.

Come on, John, says Sue, and she's up, an elf, and she has his hand in hers, and her touch is so light.

Come on, John, says Frank, a young wolf, and he's up, and moving.

The time is now, John, says Joe Director. Let's go inside.

Pale night.

An upstairs room at the Amethyst Hotel.

Once a room for dancing, its ghosts, unseen, move in silence across the old boards still.

Sea-rasp outside hoarse as love by night whispered.

The room is bare but there are symbols of the occult daubed on the walls.

On the floor in a corner of the room a tapered candle burns on a saucer of Dutch patterned delft—the flame sputters and twists in the breeze that comes through the room and the red wax melts in beads that fall to pool and harden on the faded blue of the delft.

The symbols on the walls are in a red daubing as of blood.

The light of the candle is feeble and yellowish—the pale blue of night dominates against it.

High windows are left open to the night.

Moths in flight are shown though feebly in the throw of candlelight.

Joe, Frank, Sue and John squat upon the boards to make a Ranters' circle there.

They are an hour in, and they are already past the worst of it—

Hard veins of assault rise in Sue's neck; their blue pulsing is an alien form in the room; she loudens.

Sue begins to weep.

Frank Screams.

Sue rises onto her knees and makes the cocksucking gestures—cupped palm, piston wrist—and Screams and lets her eyes roll until all that shows is the whites of her eyes and she roars from her hollows at John—

Joe Director's hands move to his belly to bed down the chuckles there. He is a proud old hog.

Sue exhales sharply from her nose and falls to the seated position again; Sue deflates and wipes her tears away.

John raises his hands behind his head and knits his fingers there; his smile is dew-bright, amused, morning-fresh.

Sue smiles and shakes her head—John winks at her—and now she sticks her tongue out and she loads indecency into her eyes. She lets her voice drop an octave—there is throat and smoke in it now.

She lays her hand on her breastbone—brittle as a bird's beneath the brocade of her blouse—and drums the tiny pads of her fingertips there.

Frank Screams.

Joe Director shakes his head and glowers. He is an angry old hog but he speaks quietly.

Joe Director rises and crosses the circle and he thumps Frank hard about the side of the head; the boy whimpers and recoils.

Joe mocks the whimper; Sue mocks the whimper.

Frank rises onto his knees and shakes his head viciously at Joe and lets loose a dog snarl and weeps.

Joe Director shimmies his hips in merriment as he pushes Frank back down with the palm of his hand to the crown of the boy's head and now he roars—

Joe slaps her face.

Frank Screams.

John is thinking: Nice crowd we've in tonight.

Sue makes a sex noise—a chocolate moan.

John is thinking: They're here all week, folks.

Joe Director sits again; his eyes blaze but he lights a smile and speaks softly—

A silence holds for a slow beat.

The air feels restricted now—the room feels tight as a drum.

The night aches a slow moment beyond the high windows: it is Achill Island in the Maytime of 1978.

Streaks of nightgreen, iridescent, work the ribs of the water beneath.

Mountains lie in silhouette against the pale sky.

Somewhere a blackbird sings.

And now, unseen by the Ranters, a thumbprint appears in the pool of hardening wax on the Dutch patterned saucer.

John speaks coldly—

A breeze moves through the bare room again; there are sighs of sea.

Sue bites on her lip as she searches out the word.

She closes her eyes—John feels a chill, a touch—and now her words come rabidly, super-quick, in a machine-drone:

The veins of her neck rise to pulse in blue again.

Sue lets loose a Scream that shudders her rib cage under the slim fit of brocade; Joe Director nods in grim approval.

Joe Director starts to play a motor growl on his lips, and he builds it to a great thrumming of sound, and a new rhythm is made, and John turns his eyes in, one to meet the other, in derision of a throwback scene; it's nineteen seventy fucking eight.

Sue rises, and she weeps again as she crosses the circle—the sound of her unwellness—and she roars hard into John's face:

but John's face is unmoved, thin-lipped, a sark.

Sue makes as though to spit at him but she does not spit; she retreats and sits again.

Joe Director rocks back and forth on his heels; he looks gently at John. Sympathy coats his words like honey:

Tiny synapse burn of a moth's wing singed by candle flame—a protein hiss.

Joe Director shows a palm and shushes.

Joe gestures to Sue.

John's heart beats quick and hard like a trapped bird's.

Sue rises and crosses the circle and stands glowering at John.

Joe Director slaps the floor.

She lays a palm softly to John's face—he shucks free of it.

Sue strokes John's neck with the petals of her fingers. They are that soft. A chill cuts through him again—he can feel the odd vibrations the girl is charged on; they are of the woodland places; she is elfin; in her fingers fused and pulsing the greens of England.