Beatlebone Read online

  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 b
lood.

  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.

  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 anymore. 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 Under 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 in to 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 warpath—

  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 Mary of Jesus is sat up the dining room wall, blue and weeping, her long glance so loving—a tear of blood rolls.

  Cornelius O’Grady is sat just beneath—his hair is greased and fixed like a ducktail joint.

  Would you mind sitting down, John, he says. You’re making me dizzy.

  Daylight shows Cornelius in high fettle. There is vim and spark and big vitality. He considers John at length and silently; he shakes his head in amused suffering.

  The problem, he says, is they’d probably know you alright.

  He returns woefully to his breakfasts. He has two fried breakfasts laid out on the white linen. He moves the great boulder of a head in slow swoops over the plates as though by the arm of a crane. He slices daintily into the meats and chews and smiles grimly.