Beatlebone. Kevin Barry

slowly teases out the knuckles of one hand and then the other.

      But you see what my father had was great intelligence.

      That would help.

      Oh he was a wiley man, John.

      He was fucking what?

      He was wiley.

      What the fuck is wiley?

      He was full of wiles, John.

      He was full of fucking what?

      He had a wiliness.

      Oh . . . Like in he was canny?

      Exactly so.

      Okay. So now I have it. But tell me this, won’t you – how can you have a windy fucking moor that’s wiley?

      Hah?

      How can you have a wiley fucking moor?

      A wiley . . .

      He sings it for him in a witchy screech –

      Out on the . . . wiiiley . . . windy moors . . .

      What’s it you’re saying to me, John?

      The Kate bloody Bush song!

      Kate Bush?

      Cornelius shakes his head.

      I knew a Martin Bush, he says.

      Oh?

      Belmullet direction but long dead and God rest him, poor Martin.

      Any relation?

      To who?

      To Kate bloody Bush!

      I didn’t know a Kate. Could she have been a sister?

      She might well have been.

      No . . . I knew a Martin.

      And was he wiley?

      If there was one thing he wasn’t was wiley, John.

      Oh?

      Poor Martin was an inordinately stupid man. He could barely tie his shoelaces.

      A ha’penny short?

      Ah listen. Martin kept animals had more wile in them.

      What kind of animals?

      He’d sheep. A few cattle, I suppose. Though they’d have been wind-bothered up that way.

      They’d have been . . .

      Bothered, John. By wind coming in. The way it would unseat cattle.

      Unseat them?

      Cornelius lowers his sad eyes –

      In the mind.

      You mean you’d have a cow’d take a turn?

      Cornelius squares his jaw.

      Do you realise you’re looking at a man who’s seen a cow step in front of a moving vehicle? Purposefully.

      On account of?

      Wind coming easterly. That’s the kind of thing that can leave a beast beyond despair. Because of the pure evil sound of it, John. The way it would play across the country in an ominous way. An easterly? If it was to come across you for a fortnight and it might? Sleep gone out the window and a horrible black feeling racing through your fucken blood. Day and night. All sorts of thoughts of death and hopelessness. This is what you’d get on the tail end of an easterly wind. Man nor animal wouldn’t be right after it.

      John pushes back his plate and sups the last of his tea and idly twirls the rind of the black pudding about the dull silver of the tines of his fork.

      Cornelius?

      Yes, John?

      Am I alive and not dreaming?

      He taps once and sharply the fork on the edge of the table for tune – it rings cleanly.

      *

      He walks a circuit of the O’Grady yard. He is high anxious again. His fucking jailyard. He circles and twists like an aggravated goose. Energy is the difficulty always. Too much of. An excess of. Flick out these fingers and they might shoot beads of fire. One neurotic foot in front of the other, and circling – what you do is you keep moving. He limps and he stumbles – no stack-heeled Harlem glide is this – and his bones ache; the sky above is grey and the wind moves the clouds over the bleak hills and the fall-away fields. The stone walls drunkenly wander the hills on unmentionable escapades. All is pierced with anxiety and dread. It’s the place of the old blood and it has too a sexy air.

      The sexy airs of summer.

      From who and where was that? At difficult angles across the hills the grey sheep move. They drift unpredictably like the turns of his own dark, glamorous mind. The past is about, too, but now it’s the more recent past, and he imagines the salve again of (oh-let’s-say) heroin, and how might that feel, John? To fall into that dream again – to be in the arms of the soft machine again – and to have that deeper quiet and space again. Morpheus, the dream. Noise is the fucking difficulty always. The excess of. The wind licks out the corners of the yard – its tongues move in green darts and lizard-quick. Sexy airs. Wasn’t it from Auden? The wind speaks, too, and in urgent whispers. News from far-out? Or from close-in? He shakes his head as he walks and circles the yard, and he notes from the corner of his eye the presence of Cornelius by the farmhouse door, leaning against the jamb, and his eyes are vast with pleasantness. The arms folded. The bull’s head inclined. The expression of great interest.

      John?

      Yes, Cornelius?

      You know what I’d wonder sometimes?

      What’s that?

      If I amn’t half a blackman.

      *

      Cornelius carries with prim importance two shaving bowls and two razors. They climb to a tin-sided outhouse built into the rocks of the hill. The outhouse lacks a door and John can see down the country as the sky moves its clouds along and the sun appears and it’s trippy now in the sunburst. The fields are lit and lifting. It’s the hour for a shave and a philosophic interlude.

      A black, Cornelius?

      Is fucken right.

      I think I see where you’re coming from.

      Cornelius turns his throat and jerks the head curtly.

      I’m talking if we were to go way back, he says. I’m talking from the south.

      Cornelius rinses off the razor and shakes it dry. He slaps his face to get the blood back in. The blood comes hotly in a rush to enliven the stately face. He leans against the rock and looks out on the freshening day as if it might just about contain him.

      I’m talking about cunts off boats, he says. I’m talking about my father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s time.

      I’m losing track.

      I don’t know if we aren’t looking at the likes of 1400?

      As if it was the other Wednesday.

      You’re saying there might have been a dusky sailor back then?

      Now you have me.

      Do you hear whispers from back there, Cornelius?

      Ah I would do. Yes.

      You mean from an old life?

      Back arse of time, he says, and gestures grandly with a sweep of imperious paw.

      What do you hear?

      I think it could be a class of Portuguese.

      There’s an old tar with a monkey on his shoulder. And what do you see?

      This is where it gets good. I see a tiny window set deep in a thick stone wall.

      Yes?