The Misremembered Man (10 page)

D
rinks on the house for me two friends here and your good self, Slope, please!” Jamie slapped a ten-pound note down on the bar counter.

He was celebrating the decision to straighten himself out, cut down on the booze and the fry-ups, and make a new man of himself. Tomorrow he’d be in purgatory, he reminded himself, so tonight he might as well visit heaven.

It was Saturday night, though early; O’Shea’s bar was not yet thronged. Beside Jamie sat Paddy McFadden and Matty Dougan. In the back room, out of sight, a few young men were playing darts, among them Minnie Sproule’s wayward son Chuck.

“Have you won the football pools or something?” Slope pressed two glasses under the Black Bush optics and busied himself with the order.

“No, I haven’t won nothing but the right to enjoy meself,” said Jamie, a little mournfully, “on this, my last night before I go on a diet and cut down on this stuff.”

He took the glass, looked longingly into the amber liquid, turning it this way and that with reflective reverence.

“Christ, you’re mental! Lent’s seven bloody months away.” Slope palmed the note and placed the change at Jamie’s elbow. “But then you wouldn’t know that, since you’ve been missin’ Sunday Mass.” He imitated Maisie Ryan’s accent and glared past Jamie’s ear with mock reproach.

“Aye, she’s a right oul’ bitch that one.”

“Who’s that?” Paddy and Matty asked almost in unison.

“That nosy oul’ whore, Maisie Ryan.” Jamie took a swig of his whiskey.

“I’d pay no attention to that one,” Paddy said. “Not content unless she’s givin’ out about something. No man or children to look after, that’s the trouble with her.”

“Well, the next time she tackles me about not goin’ tae Mass,” said Jamie, suddenly emboldened by the booze, “I’ll kick her big arse for her, so a will.”

Slope was called to the back for an order, and Jamie’s intention to defame Maisie’s character hung in the air like a noxious gas. Matty came to the rescue and changed the subject.

“And why would you want to be goin’ on a diet, Jamie? Sure there’s nothing much wrong with you the way you are.”

“Och now, there’s a lot that could be fixed. Dr. Brewster says if I cut back on the fry-ups it’ll help me heart and me back and all.”

They all three stared at the blue-veined Formica and considered the wisdom of this. Matty was the first to speak.

“I wouldn’t bother with all that. Sure, none of us is gettin’ no younger and we’re all gonna end up wearin’ the wooden overcoat soon enough.” Matty carried the attitude of the eternal pessimist; a man who felt badly when he felt good for fear he’d feel worse when he felt better.

He had the appearance and mannerisms of someone who’d never been young at any time. His sharp, pitted face looked as though it had come to life at the hands of a chisel-happy sculptor who’d mislaid his spectacles that day. The cheeks and eye sockets were hollowed to the bone, the nose too long and dangerously pointed; the mouth a single, daring, lopsided hammer-blow that could never be righted through smiles or talk. He was a farmer, like Jamie, unmarried, and spectacularly uninterested in most matters that did not concern the land, the weather and the rising price of things. Unlike Jamie, he had no fat to lose. His clothes hung loose from his mop-shaft frame.

“Well, there’s another wee reason I want-a sort meself out,” Jamie said. “Paddy here knows what it is, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it at this present moment in time.” He tapped the side of his nose. “If you get my drift, Matty. No offense intended atall, atall.”

“Oh, none took.”

“Now, your secret’s safe with me, Jamie, right enough.” Paddy shifted in his seat and stifled a whiskey yawn.

“Aye, every man has a right to his privacy,” said Matty, wondering deeply what Jamie might be up to, all sorts of ideas and notions flying through his head. For he looked on Jamie as a creature cut from the same cloth as himself. Of similar age, both wifeless and childless, living on inherited land, with dreams shored up in their heads like the sun-cracked peat in the bog.

“Well said, Matty,” Paddy agreed. “I was just—”

He didn’t get time to finish because at that moment a loud scuffling was heard outside the door—as if a bull and a sow were having a quarrel up against it. A few seconds later, the door burst open. All three turned on their stools to witness the arrival of Declan Colt & The Silver Bullets. Two of the band members, red-faced and breathless, were wrestling large amplifiers and cased instruments before them. They nodded sidelong at the trio as they passed.

Taking up the rear was the lead singer himself, his hands swinging leisurely by his sides, a cigarette dipping at the left of his mouth, a stetson on his head. He wore a purple satin shirt, its collar spread flat, like the wingspan of a peregrine falcon, a silver vest edged with gold brocade and a pair of tight white bell-bottoms with corresponding trim. About his hips, a belt of carved silver Indian squaw heads, whose plaits and feathers tinkled as he walked. On his feet a pair of rawhide Mexican boots with pointed toes, red tassels and steel-capped heels. In this garb, Declan saw himself as elegant; imagined himself as an Irish Willie Nelson, minus the braids.

“How you, boys?” He nodded at the group and strutted toward the back room. He liked the ring of his steel heels on the tiled floor announcing his arrival, and the sound of his fake Texas drawl.

The boys at the bar responded, but Declan didn’t stop for small talk. His imagined fame was like a peacock’s plumage rising, a waving fan he rarely saw beyond.

“Oh, Declan!” Jamie shouted after his glittering back, “I brung the wee accordjin with me just in case you want a wee filler later on, like.”

Declan turned, tinkling, his thumbs stuck in his belt. His own interests were being served.

“Good man yourself, Jamie. If it gets busy we’ll sure need you for sure.”

He disappeared.

A great sense of wellbeing broke out in Jamie. The booze and the thought of his future performance were unleashing a rare happiness, watering his weak courage to produce a plant of some size. He returned, smiling and contented, to his conversation.

Time passed, with the three friends smoking and drinking, picking over bones of gossip and farm talk. They hardly noticed as the premises began to fill up. The door behind them rarely rested, admitting mostly couples: dedicated fans of Declan Colt and his band. The husbands: shiny-faced, freed from the fields and construction sites, eager for the drink and carousing. The wives: smiling thinly, fearful of what mayhem might lie ahead.

Jamie and his comrades knew most of the Saturday night revelers, and if a stranger appeared they would look at him slyly and speculate as to who he might be, where he might be from, and what he might be doing in those parts—and with whom, if applicable.

More time passed. More men began to thicken at the bar, some in their Sunday suits, the wifeless ones in their workaday clothes. Smoke smogged the air, voices roared out of blazing faces under the heat of the drink, the rumpus and gathering crowd. Sometimes an imagined slight brought a raised fist or a killer look; ideas and opinions formed in youth and set in stone had made inflexible men of them all.

Slope’s wife Peggy joined him behind the bar. Known “affectionately” as the Bacon-Slicer, she was a no-nonsense woman, lean as a fence post, with a sharp face and a nose like a bill-hook. Her eyes darted among the crowd to target and evict trouble if she saw it. She hated the pub and the men and the drink, and kept Slope on a short leash with her vicious tongue. She had concluded long ago that he and the business were her combined penance for having slept with him before wedlock, producing a daughter, who hated them both. So she “offered it up” a silver cross from the shrine at Knock dangled at her throat as her work-worn hands sudded and stacked the glasses.

“How do, Peggy,” Jamie attempted the greeting. He was at that slack-jawed phase of the inebriation process, risking only a few words at a time, lest he might appear completely looped. The accordion sat on the floor by his feet. Jamie was oiling himself toward picking it up, to being the center of attention soon.

Peggy glanced up from the steaming sink, her pained expression breaking into a reluctant smile. “Keepin’ well, are ye, Jamie?”

“Oh…the best, Peggy, the best.”

“You’ll give us a wee tune later on I hope.”

She swept a lock of hair behind her ear and dropped her head back to the labor, building the wet glasses on the drainer dangerously high.

Jamie studied the bowed head, a straight pale line bisecting the crown in her straw-blond hair, like a harvester track in a corn field. “Give you a wee tune surely, so a will,” he said.

“Give us a vodka and coke there, will ye?” a voice loud and uncouth broke in. Chuck Sproule forced his way between Jamie and Paddy. Peggy continued her chore, pretending not to have heard.

Chuck was an erratically behaved nineteen-year-old, restless and rude, a drop-out with a dead father, a hopeless mother, and four wild siblings whom he bullied to a point beyond madness. He had greasy hair and puckered skin, wore scruffy jeans which barely stayed up on his skinny arse, and a gray tee shirt that had shrunk in the wash and rode part of the way up his back.

“Did ye hear me, did ye?”

Peggy stopped what she was doing, slowly dried her hands and glared at him.

“Jamie, did you hear some unmannerly hellion ask me for something just now?”

Jamie did not want to tangle with young Chuck. He had a talent for catching on a person’s flaw and pulling ’til he’d unraveled them to rage. He didn’t want anything to do with the nasty wee bugger.

“I think he wants a vodkey and coat—I mean vodka and coke—Peggy,” Jamie quickly corrected himself.

“Jezsis, if it isn’t oul’ McCloone!” Chuck elbowed Jamie in the back, flung an arm round his shoulder and stuck his face close to his. “Are you a fuckin’ translator now, are ye?”

“Less of that craic in here, Sproule,” Peggy warned, “or I’ll bounce you out on the street. Don’t think I won’t.”

Chuck released Jamie immediately and straightened. Paddy and Matty studied the bar counter, by turns looking into their drinks and up at the ceiling, anywhere but at Peggy. It was not through kindness that Mrs. O’Shea had earned her nickname; anyone who crossed her usually cut themselves. Her threat had the desired effect: Chuck’s bravado wilted immediately.

“Och, Peggy.”

“Don’t ‘och Peggy’ me! It’s ‘Mrs. O’Shea’ to you.” She kept her eyes on him. “Now, what did you want?”

“A vodka and coke, Mrs. O’Shea,
pleeeease
?” he said in a falsetto baby voice, steepling his fingers under his chin like a pleading altar boy.

Peggy gave in, if reluctantly. She began setting up the drink. All at once there came a squeal from an amplifier, like that of a hog being hauled within sight of the butcher’s cleaver. It deafened every patron for a few jaw-rattling seconds and was followed by a muffled echoing.

“One, two…one, two.” Declan and the Bullets were doing a sound check. The show was about to begin.

“That’s Declan gettin’ her goin’,” Matty made the superfluous comment. “Maybe we should head in.”

Paddy took it as his cue and stumbled to the toilet. Jamie ordered another round.

The lounge, behind the public bar, was a long rectangular room with a raised platform at the far end, and below it a woodblocked dancing area, not much bigger than a generous tablecloth. In its former life the space had been a store, a toilet, and a coal shed, but Slope had seen its potential as a locus of entertainment. With a substantial loan from the Tailorstown Credit Union (which he was still paying off), he had realized his fantasy by knocking the three areas into one and naming it The Step Inside Lounge.

Secured along each wall was a row of bench seats upholstered in amber carriage cloth, salvaged from a derailed slow train from Derry to Donegal. Slope had procured the reconditioned seating at tremendous discount from a member of the traveling community. In front of each seat: a knee-high Formica table. On the floor: a carpet of clashing scarlet stripes and furious lime spots encouraged the drunker patron to believe he’d thrown up even before he had a mind to. The smoke-yellowed walls were of combed plaster. At equidistant intervals a succession of twin-pronged lamps under dusty, green shades jutted out, giving the assembled faces the look of early-stage cirrhosis—an illness that was most likely lying in wait for several of the livers present.

The lounge was crammed when Jamie and his friends took the seats reserved for them by Declan, at a top table near the band. Talk and laughter fairly bubbled, cigarette smoke and oaths poured from mouths; forests of bottles and glasses crowded every table, ashtrays spilled matches and cigarette ends onto the floor.

Mary, the O’Shea’s teenage daughter—with her mother’s eyes (for which she was grateful) and her father’s grin—strode up and down, delivering drinks and collecting glasses. She was a tall, attractive redhead who hated Saturday nights, the unedifying mix of smoke, groping hands, sweaty men and foul language. Often she refused to help her parents out unless she got paid in advance and, being as headstrong and combative as her mother, usually got her way.

Declan Colt strutted about the small stage with hips swiveling, singing “Dixieland” in a sub-Elvis baritone, his satin collar standing up, his head down, chewing the microphone, mopping his brow frequently with a great snowy hankie. The Silver Bullets looked inert by comparison. The percussionist sat stirring a snare drum and shaking his head at some imaginary argument. The third member stood, as if in shock, thumbing a bass guitar, his eyes rooted on the far wall.

After every slow number came a fast filler to liven things up. Now Declan launched into “Blue Suede Shoes” and several couples shuffled shyly onto the dance floor. They jived and spun awkwardly, colliding with each other, the men sweating in shirt sleeves, the women dizzy and unsure. As their confidence grew, they swung and swayed more, their flowery rumps twitching, their jewelry bouncing; twisting and twirling, looking down at their shoes, as if checking for dog dirt, as if squashing insects under their feet.