Beatlebone (2 page)

Do you think you can hear him still?

The fat old dog moseys out from the sideway. There is evidence here of great male bewilderment. It's in the poor bugger's walk; it's in his carry. He looks down the length of the town and shakes his head against it. He looks on up the town—the same. He does not appear to notice yet the presence of a stranger. He sniffs at the gutter—it's not good. He has a long, slow rub off the grocer's wall—it's still there, and the pebbledash gets at the awkward bits nicely. He edges onto the square on morning patrol but he's hassled-looking, weary, and the fleshy haunches roll slowly as he goes. He stops up in the middle of the square, now in a devout or philosophical hold, as the breeze brings news to twitch the bristles of his snout, and he growls halfheartedly, and turns to find the line of scent and a tatty man in denims on the bench.

Good morning, John says.

The dog raises an eye in wariness—he is careful, an old-stager. He comes across but cautiously and he looks soul-deep into John's eyes and groans.

I know exactly how you feel, John says.

And now the fat old dog rests its chin on his knee, and he places a palm on the breathing warmth of the dog's flank, and they share a moment's sighing grace.

Never name the moment for happiness or it will pass by.

The dog lies down to settle by his feet and sets a drooly chin on the toe of a fresh purple sneaker.

Those are not long from the bloody box, John says.

He reaches down and lifts the dog's chin with a finger and he finds such a sweet sadness there and a very particular handsomeness, a kind of gooey handsomeness, and at once he names the dog—

Brian Wilson, he says.

At which the dog wags a weary tail, and apparently grins, and John laughs now and he begins to sing a bit in high pitch—

Well it's been building up inside of me

For oh, I don't know how long…

The dog comes in to moan softly and tunefully, in perfect counterpoint to him—this morning's duet—and John is thinking:

This escapade is getting out of hand right off the fucking bat.

A brown car rolls slowly from the top of the town. John and the dog Brian Wilson turn their snouts and beady eyes to inspect. The car has a tiny pea-headed chap inside for a driver. He's barely got his eyes over the top of the wheel. He stalls by the grocer's but he keeps the engine running. He steps out of the juddering car. There is something jockey-like or Aintree-week about this tiny, wiry chap. He fetches a bundle of newspapers from the backseat of the car and carries them to the stoop of the grocer's.

Well? he says.

Well enough, John says.

He places the bundle on the stoop and takes a penknife from his arse pocket and cuts the string on the bundle and pulls the top paper free and he has a quick read, the engine all the while breathing, and Brian Wilson scowling, and John sits huddled against the morning chill that moves across the town in sharp points from the river.

I'll tell you one thing for nothin', the jockey-type says.

Go on?

This place is run by a pack of fucken apes.

Who're you telling?

He sighs and returns the paper neatly to its bundle. He edges back to the verge of the pavement and looks to a window above the grocery.

No sign of Martin? he says.

And he shakes his head in soft despair—

The misfortune's after putting down a night of it, I'd say.

And with that he is on his way again.

John and the dog Brian Wilson watch him go.

You can never trust a jockey-type, John says, on account of they've got oddly set eyes.

A broad-shouldered kid comes walking through the square with an orange football under his arm. As he walks he scans one way and then the other, east and west. The kid has a dead hard face on. As if he's about to invade Russia.

Morning, John says.

Well, the kid says.

The kid stops up and drops the ball and traps it under his foot—he rolls it back and forth in slow pensive consideration.

You one of the Connellans? he says.

I could be, John says.

Ye over for the summer or only a small while?

We'll see how it goes.

Ah yeah.

The kid kicks the ball against the grocer's wall and traps it again and kicks it once more for the rebound.

How's the grandmother keeping?

Not so hot, John says.

She's gone old, of course, the kid says, and winces.

And what age are you now?

I'm ten, he says.

Bloody hell, John says, time's moving.

Could be the brother you're thinking of, the kid says. The brother's Keith. He's only seven yet.

I have you now.

The kid moves on, curtly, with a wave, and kicks the ball as he goes in diagonals to his path, now quickening, now slowing to meet its return and tapping rhyme as it follows the fall-away of the street, an awkward-looking, a bandy-footed kid whose name never will be sung from the heaving terraces—and so the silver river flows.

And the kid crosses the river and walks on and the heron takes off on slow heavy beat-steady wings and the kid's away into the playing fields and the rising morning. It's the sort of thing that could break your heart if you were of a certain type or turn of mind.

If you were a gentleman quick to tears, John says.

And Brian Wilson moans softly again and stretches and yowls in the morning sun.

Here's an old lady a-squint behind the wheel of a fab pink Mini as it grumbles and stalls again by the grocer's—centre of the universe, apparently. She wears a knit hat of tangerine shade and a pair of great chunky specs. She rolls the window and sends a pessimistic glance from the milk-bottle lenses.

There is no sign of Martin, I suppose?

He's after a night of it, John says.

She has a German-type accent—the careful inspection of the words as they tip out.

Well that is me fucked and hitting for Westport so, she says.

She takes off again.

A lovely old tractor spins from its wheels a dust of dried mud and shite and there's an ancient farmer with a stoved-in face and electrified eyes of bird's-egg blue and he stalls also for a moment and calls down and not a little sternly—

Cornelius O'Grady is lookin' for you.

And he moves on again and the old dog rises from his feet and coughs up a forlorn bark and heads back to the sideway.

More fun in it asleep than awake, John says.

He has a look about. There's that small hotel at the top of the square. It sits there with an air of grim inevitability. He shrugs and rises—

I mean what's the very worst that could happen?

Reception is deserted but they're banging pots and pans together out the back. A demented brass band. Morning engagements only. He smells the green of bacon being fried up. Wallow in the waft of grease and smoke. Eat the pig and act the goat. He presses the bell. Nobody shows. He presses again and waits. There's no rush on. He presses again and a hatchet-faced crone appears on the tip of her witch's snout. Looks him up and down. Sour as the other Monday's milk. Double-checks his ankles to see if he's got a suitcase hid down there.

Well? she says.

It's about a room, love.

She throws an eye up the clock.

This is a foxy hour to be landing into a hotel, she says.

And in denim, he says.

The reception's air is old and heavy, as in a sickroom's, and the clock swings through its gloomy moments.

Do you have a reservation? she says.

I have severe ones, he says, but I do need a room.

She sucks her teeth. She opens a ledger. She raises her eyeglasses. She has a good long read of her ledger.

Does it say anything in there about a room, love?

She searches out her mouth with the tip of a green tongue.

It's about a room? he says.

With great and noble sorrow she turns and from a hook on a wooden rack takes down a key—he feels like he's been hanging from that rack for years.

The best room you can do me?

They don't differ much, she says, and switches the key for another—he'll get the worse for asking.

Payment in advance, she says.

No surprise there.

Name? she says, and he rustles one from the air.

She leads him up a stair that smells of mouse and yesteryear and they climb again to an attic floor and the eaves lean in as if they could tell a few secrets—hello?—and at the end of a dark passage they come to a scary old wooden door.

Is this where you keep the hunchback? he says.

She scowls and slides the key and turns its oily clicks.

He thanks her as he squeezes by—hello?—and for half a moment she brightens. She lays a papery hand on his—quality of mothskin; the veins ripped like junkie veins—and she whispers—

Your man? she says. You're very like him.

Not as much as I used to be, he says.

He started to Scream with Dr. Janov in California. He was worked up one-on-one. He was worked up fucking hard. He sat there for hours, and for months, and he went deep. He wasn't for holding back. He hollered and he ranted and he Screamed. He cursed everybody, he cursed them all, he cursed the blood. Dr. Janov said he needed to get at the blood—he went at the blood.

Mother, father.

Cunt and prick.

What had stirred and made and deformed him. What had down all the years deranged him. He was angry as hell. They worked together four months out on the coast. Dr. Janov wore a crown of beautiful white curls—it shimmered in the sun. Dr. Janov spoke of amorphous doom and nameless dread and the hurt brain. It was no fucking picnic out on the coast. He squatted on the terrace and he looked out to the sea and he was heartsore and he drank fucking orange juice and he wept until he was weak. He had a shadow beneath the skin and he was so very fucking weak.

Dr. Janov said that fame was a scouring and a hollow thing—he said there's fucking news. Dr. Janov said he should ignore it—he said you fucking try. Dr. Janov said he should channel his anger and not smoke pot—he said I'll see what I can do.

Dr. Janov said he should Scream, and often, and he saw at once an island in his mind.

Windfucked, seabeaten.

The west of Ireland—the place of the old blood.

A place to Scream.

He sits in his tomb up top of the Newport hotel. It contains a crunchy armchair, a floppy bed, several arrogant spiders, a mattress with stains the shapes of planets and an existential crisis. But he wouldn't want to sound too French about it.

He looks out the window. It really is a very pretty day. The street runs down to the river, and there is the bridge across, and the hills rising and

lah-de-dah,

lah-de-dum-dum dah

the green, the brown, the treetops, and it means nothing to him at all. Across the square a flash of hard light, turning—a swallow's belly, and now dark again, and his mind flips and turns in just that same way. He wants to get to his island but unseen and unheard of—he wants to be no more than a rustle, no more than a shade.

He makes the calls that he needs to make. It's arranged that a fixer will be sent the next day. He lies on the bed for a while but cannot sleep. He takes his clothes off and climbs from the bed. He has a bit of a turn. He scrunches up in the armchair by the window. He's all angles and edges. He speaks aloud and for a long while. He speaks to his love—his eyes close—and he speaks to his mother. Fucking hell. The hours he spends in the chair are like years—

He is a boy.

He is a man.

He is a very very old man.

—and he sits all day until the sun has gone around 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.