Beatlebone - Kevin Barry

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the building and the room is almost dark again. A day that feels slow as a century – he might be out there still. The evening gets chilly and he climbs onto the bed. He wraps himself in a blanket and phones downstairs. He has a long Socratic debate that after a certain period of time results in a bowl of brown vegetable soup arriving. The kid that brings it has a perfectly ovaline face on as flat as a penny.

      You’d be quicker on roller skates, John says.

      He slurps down the soup. He sits wrapped in his blanket. The soup is that hot it makes him cross-eyed. The bed is moving about like a sea. A call comes in from the fixer. Something deep and familiar to the voice – like a newscaster, and he sees the high purple face again, the dead nose, the fattish driver.

      You again?

      Well.

      He is asked gently of his needs. It’s as if he’s had a loss. He is on a bloody raft the way the bed is moving about.

      The important thing, again, he says, is no newspapers, no reporters, no TV.

      Not easy.

      Another thing, he says. I can’t remember exactly where the island is.

      Okey-doke.

      But I do know its name.

      Well that’s a start.

      The arrangement is made – they will set off first thing.

      What was your name anyhow?

      My name is Cornelius O’Grady.

      Cornelius?

      *

      The way that age comes and goes in a life – he’ll never be as old again as he was when he was twenty-seven. In the attic room at the small hotel he paces and laughs and the words come in pattern for a bit but they will not hold. No, they will not fucking hold. He looks out to the town square by night. It is deserted but not static – it comes and goes in time and the breeze. Half the time, in this life, you wouldn’t know where you are nor when. There are moments of unpleasant liveliness. Tamp that the fuck down is best. He aims for the telephone. He builds himself up to it. He breathes deep and dials and there is a transaction of Arabic intrigue with the fucking desk down there. It works out, eventually – the roller-skate kid fetches a glass of whiskey up.

      That’ll put hairs on me chest, he says.

      Okay, the kid says.

      Peat and smoke – it tastes of the past and uncles, sip by the beaded sip. He doesn’t really drink any more. No booze, no junk, no blow. These are the fucking rules. He is macrobiotic. He is brown-rice-and-vegetables. The stations of the fucking cross. A read – that would be an idea. The room has grown sombre as the night finds its depth. What’s the fucking word? Crepuscular. He flicks a lamp switch against it. The amber light of the lamp as it warms weakly on the old flock wallpaper brings the waft or flavour – you can’t miss it – of Edwardian time. Oh and here’s a word – Edwardiana. Very nice. The word gives dapperness, and tapered strides, and teddy boys. He looks around his tiny room beneath the eaves and laughs – the West of Ireland by night. Oh just taking the fucking air, really. I’ll have a stroll in a bit. Try not to fuck myself in the briney. Fathomless depths, et cetera. Oh Christ, a read – fill up this sour brain with words. He slides a drawer on the tiny dresser – the dresser is so tiny it might be for the fittings of elves – and there is no Gideon’s, not as such, but there is an old book there:

      The Anatomy of Melancholy by Richard Burton

      Richard fucking Burton? What kind of establishment is this? Now the melodious syllables come to shape his lips – hammy, taffy, lispy, vaguely faggy? How did it go? In Milk Wood? He looks in the dull silver of the dresser’s mirror and mouths the words –

      I know there are

      Towns lovelier than ours,

      And fairer hills and loftier far,

      And groves more full of flowers

      And boskier woods more blithe with spring . . .

      Boskier? Fuck me. He flicks through the pages. Okay. It’s a different Richard. And there are all sorts herein. He falls onto the bed. He unknits his long, cold limbs. He falls into the drugged pages. He reads for hours and every now and then

      Thou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself.

      he speaks aloud but

      Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.

      just the two words, repeated

      He that increaseth wisdom, increaseth sorrow.

      over and over again

      If you like not my writing, go read something else.

      fuck me,

      fuck me,

      fuck me.

      *

      At last he gives into the night or at least makes an arrangement with it. He sleeps a long, unquiet sleep disturbed by quick dreams of woodland places. These come as no great surprise. He meets elves and sprites and clowning devils. Anxiety? He wakes at last to a new world and to a morning lost in a heavy mist. Sorely his bones ache – he traces the length of the soreness with a long, dull, luxurious sighing. Which is very pleasant, as it happens. Though also he feels about ninety fucking six. The grey buildings outside have softened in the mist and in places have all but disappeared. The hills across the river are entirely wiped out. He feels oddly at home, as though he’s woken to this place every day of his life: a sentimentalist. Maybe as the grocer or as the farmer or as the priest. Now his calm is broken by a set of angry steps come along the passage and a mad rapping on the door and the door is nearly off its bloody hinges –

      You’d better come in!

      It’s Hatchet-Face, his favourite crone, and she’s on the war path –

      Great spouts of steam gush from her hairy ears.

      Her pinned eyes are livid and searching.

      Her mouth contorts to a twisted O.

      Who’s dead? he says.

      She runs a filthy look around the room.

      She sniffs the air as if he’s pissed the bed.

      Do you realise, she says, that it’s hapist ten in the morning?

      Hapist? he says. Already?

      There are people, she says, with half a day put down.

      Best thing you can do with days.

      She eyes him – an owl for a mouse – and sucks her teeth. There is dark auntly suspicion in the glance, as if he’s been having a sneaky one off the handle. A clamminess, as of families. He has been drawn back into something here. The clock runs backwards. He holds the covers boyishly against his chest.

      Had I better make a move, love?

      You’d better, she says. There’s a woman down there has a home to go to.

      A woman?

      That does the breakfasts.

      Oh, he says. Her with the brass band.

      She has the mother bad. The mother is left with half a lung to her name. The other half is not viable. Or so they’re saying. All I know is she’d want to be gone home to the mother an hour since or the mother’ll be gone out the blasted window. Again.

      To be honest, love, I’m not big on brekkie. A Pepsi and a fag’ll do me. Mothers out windows?

      That wouldn’t be the worst of it, she says. But you’d want to come down anyway – I have a Mr O’Grady waiting on you.

      As she says his name, she fixes her hair and works her lips to an unseemly fullness.

      He says you’ve a man here called McCarthy? I says, well! I says I think I have anyhow.

      *

      Mother

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