Beatlebone. Kevin Barry

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 sick room’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