Beatlebone (8 page)

Did you know that Mars is about, John?

Well that's all I fucking need, isn't it?

It is a dull fire in the eastern sky and now the past in a dark sliver returns: it was here they saw the women dressed in black walk into the sea.

Scared but even so he goes for a turn in the half-a-night's air. Now it is Sue that comes to follow and watch. She is tiny as a faerie that could walk the leaves and not bend a stem but weirdly big up top with those giddy tits and she wears a Victorian brocade number for a blouse and she has her sexy smile on—hasn't she?—and she sits in the garden and tunes into the far-out stations.

Alright, Sue, love?

A smile, an elf's—she picks at the flowers. The half-a-night smells of salt and flowers. He watches the sheep for a bit. They drift this way and that across the crooked track that comes up the hills to the Amethyst, and loose sand moves in strange drifts and sings—a grainsong—and he's emotional—just a bit—and he walks the haunted hotel garden—he wants to get away from the freaky elf-eyes, from the North-of-England girl Sue—and now he is entirely unseen—or so he believes—and he looks down and trips out for a while on the slow-moving waves—birdsong, breath-of-sea—and he watches the salty Dummkopf sheep as they come and go, the way they move like slow daft thoughts, and his go to his old dad again. A flitter in the head and he is back in that place again. The way that he sneaks up sometimes unawares, the way he just appears—

Alright, Freddie? Alright, kid?

And always it's as a kid, he sees him as a kid in the faraway twenties—Little Freddie, of the Bluecoat orphanage, a gimp, he comes hop-a-long—and he sits on a rusted iron bench by the briars and the beads of the berries of the haunted island garden—treesong, breeze in the leaves, his blues, a midnight yearn—but what he feels beneath the pads of his feet are the stones of the city of Liverpool—as was, Mariners Parade, Fazakerley Street, Hackins Hey—and he watches the city and the world take all its strange forms and shapes through his father's eyes, and how it must have been for him, and how great the miracle, the zillion-to-one shot that his eyes should fall and catch on a slender girl, his blue-veined love, his Julia.

Dead love stories are what make us.

Well.

He's all stirred up.
Just fucking leave it, John, he says.

By night the old garden is sweet as incense and hollow as a church. There is a great heaviness here. Tang on the air of the summer-come-soon, and with it the years are coming back—windy beaches, freckled youth, the thin reddish-brown limbs of a north-western summer; the summer of his lost anonymous England; Tropic of Lancashire. He speaks now in his old true voice. Feeling lurches; feeling shrieks. He cannot think about his father easily. It causes too much commotion. He'll have a fag and a brandy instead—tamp all that stuff down. That way you can keep the past locked in. He goes inside again. Sue comes along to follow and watch.

Okay, Sue?

In the lobby he falls into an old armchair. Damp green the velvet, like mosses, as if the world is creeping up through its stones and into the Amethyst again. He feels like a very senior citizen. Sue eyes him darkly as she comes past—like a strange breeze she moves past—and he knows now that maybe he is scared a little of button-pretty Sue.

So where'd you hook up with this lot then?

One minute I'm at Saint Hilary's, she says.

Saint fucking Hilary's?

And the next? I've met this bloke on the train.

Blokes on trains? Never a good idea, sweetheart.

Turns out he's Joe Director.

Love and fate, he says.

Why's it you're here really? she says.

I've been indignantly asking myself that same fucking question, Sue.

From above there is a mighty hog's bark—the Amethyst is not good on the nerves—as Joe Director goes hard, hard at the boy Frank, and he can hear Frank's sputtering, and he can hear his cries.

You think this stuff gets you places, Sue?

You leave it inside it poisons and twists.

That's what I used to think.

Used to?

He turns an eye in to meet its other—a goon-show for the daft kid—and she halfways smiles.

Where'd he really find you, this Joe?

There is an arrogance to her; it's a kind of shine—the star-of-youth—and it lights the haunts of her elfin or woodland face.

I've told you. I was always going to come here.

She goes up the stair. She looks back at him for a slow, held moment as she turns the stair. She disappears into the strange room up there. And the screeches in the room come down to sobs and groaning as her voice goes among the others, and he can hear new, fast, urgent whispers, as of love.

He sits auntishly in the comfy damp chair.

Next, a great manic slam and entry—

Return of Cornelius.

Never a dull moment, the Amethyst.

Not good, John. The pressmen are crawling like demented fucken maggots all over the province of Connaught.

Cornelius, hoarsely whispering—

I mean it's a full circus wagon of the cunts. They're camped in Mulranny. They're camped in Newport town. They're all over Westport like flies on old meat. The place is riddled with them. There's not a boat moving on the Clew that don't have a camera fixed to it. There is no earthly approach to the island at this moment in time. They could even be on the island itself…

Throws up the paws in a hopeless flap—

We just don't know, John.

Who sits in his armchair, cross-legged, harshly executive, with a brandy on the go, a heavy tumbler full of amber sea—

What the fuck happens now, Cornelius?

We'll need to keep you here a small while yet. And what harm?

From upstairs—

A screech.

A cry.

A Scream.

He swirls his brandy; he inclines his head towards the door.

To the garden, Cornelius. Please.

You've fucking landed me in it here, pal.

How so, John?

You've set me down in a freakhouse!

Ah go easy.

I want away from here and I mean now!

That could be a problem, John.

They are in conference by an old gate down the hotel's sideway. The five-bar gate sounds its hollows in the breeze. Hedges converse, it seems, the stars whisper, and the dark sea groans.

Get me the fuck out of here, Cornelius.

Through the hollow bars of the gate the breeze moves slowly to play an off-kilter tune—an arabesque.

Would you not go easy on yourself, John? For once in your fucken life?

A strange music in reverb as the breeze comes through the bars of the gate.

I've a bad feeling, Cornelius.

But that could be on account of anything at all just floating around the place. Remember you're a long way off the road when you get to the far end of Achill Island.

Meaning fucking what?

These are pure open-minded people, John.

Cornelius?

Stop. Calm yourself. And listen…Okay?

The breeze plays through the bars of the gate a night-song and Cornelius stands frozen there, his palm held high—

Listen?

Cornelius…

Do you hear, John?

The strange notes that play and turn on the air.

Maybe, he says.

That's awful sadness, isn't it, John?

But from where?

Here. Just now. Listen. And you know the funny thing about it?

What?

That feeling mightn't be your own at all.

It is a sadness that's ripe and livid on the air. He tries to hum it but he cannot—the notes will not hold or take shape.

Do you see now the way you can fall into a dream with this place easy enough if you'd like to, John?

I am working on a way to the island, John. We are not beaten yet. In fact an O'Grady is never beat. An O'Grady could be down on the flat of his back stuck like a pig and the guts spewing out of him like a red fucken river and he's still not beat. All I need is your patience, sweet John. Just stay hid till the place clears. Give it a day or give it two and the Clew will be clear as light. Patience is the virtue required. This is the best place for you. It's not like I can leave you with normal kinds of people. These are your own kinds of people. Just relax yourself and I'll be back again shortly. I will get you to the island, John.

A vat of goat curry simmers on the hob. It's got horn and pheromone and dark magic in. Frank stirs, Frank tastes; Frank looks a bit puzzled. Frank also is the lieutenant in charge of chickpeas.

This lot will feed the regiment, John says.

Frank has a First War face. He smiles weakly and takes up the pot of chickpeas and sets it on the drainer. He twists the end of an ashy rope of hair between a thumb and forefinger. John can see that the boy is in the room and not—his mind is all fucked with and swayed.

You've been taken apart tonight, have you, Frank?

It did get a bit thorny.

And how you doing now?

Frank sniffs at the air for a clue; he takes out a lighter and he burns the same tip of hair.

It could go either way, John.

Battle's never won, is it, Frank?

You've got one thing reckoned, he says, another comes up.

It's like laying lino, John says. Does it get violent in the room up there?

It goes 'round the edges of.

Frank tests a chickpea in his gob—he looks dumbfounded.

What exactly are you doing out here, Frank?

The boy smiles. He has milk-bottle shoulders and a North-of-England mug, that First War face.

Where's it you're from, kid?

I'm from Leeds.

A Tommy in a trench—take aim on the alleyman.

I'm sorry for your troubles, John says.

And he can see the sweet dull suburb—dad's an headmaster, isn't he?—and the sweet beaming mam; she wears a floral print; it's the better end of Leeds, this.

I want to change, Frank says.

I'm all for it, change. Every day of your fucking life you've got to change. You can't stand still, not ever. You change or you fucking die. But it's you that's got to make the change, Frank. Nobody can tell you how and nobody can show you how.

The boy narrows his eyes.

Now if I was you, Frank? I'd grab young Sue and your satchels and I'd take to the road and bloody smartish.

What gives you the right to say?

Nothing. But I look at you, Frank, and you're twenty years old or whatever you are and I think it's a shame you've got your head all mangled up by this old hog who's set himself up as some kind of fucking guru out here, some kind…

No leaders here.

Oh look around you, Frank. Open your dim fucking eyes.

But the boy just shakes his head in sadness and covers the chickpeas with a tea towel.

Grub soon, he says, and leaves the room.

High in a corner of the room a spider rides a breezeblown web and there isn't even a window open.

A hurdy-gurdy plays somewhere from a hi-fi and from elsewhere there is a dull sobbing.

Not good not good not good.

By night he'll creep in on tiptoes to watch the child sleeping. There is something in the way that he breathes that stops all the time inside. A trace of slime above his lips—a snail's slime, a silver—and John wipes it clean with an edge of his T-shirt softly as he can so's not to wake him. The city outside quiet as it ever can be. The black breathing of the park. And the way the past is dropping away. He stays as quiet as he can, he hardly takes a breath—at last the past is dropping away—and the kid unglues an eye—so silently—and has a peep and he takes him up to love and they stand together in the blue of the night above the streets and park, and the city for half a moment is quiet as it ever can be, and they are blue in love and doomed in all the usual ways.

Joe Director pads softly across the lobby in his flowing garb. He positively fucking wafts across the lobby. He has a little Moroccan teapot held daintily in the one paw and a small cine camera in the other. He'll want to watch himself with that fucking camera. He sighs even as he walks, and there is something that changes on the air as he comes across. He has an odd weight on the air, as a ghost has weight.

John-kid, he says. A toppener?

We will sit over our nettle tea together. There is no want out the Amethyst Hotel for nettle fucking tea. We will sit and primly sip our tea in this spell of midnight pleasantness. Joe Director stretches and yawns; he lifts his fat little feet and he kicks them out into the air for a bit and he lets them drop again, wearily.

You're tired, Joe?

Wall-fallin', he says.

John can feel his stomach contract. There is something in the tone or note. There is something in the waddling Northern vowels. There is something off. We will sit parked in the lobby like a pair of very deranged guests. Joe places the camera significantly on the floor between them and slowly now he tells a version of himself. He tells of all the mad sisters and all the feral brothers, all packed together like ferrets in a sack, and this was in a nothing house, and this was on a nothing street, and this was under the coalsmoke and Lancashire sky and

—nettle tea, a careful sip; on he drones—

the rancid squats in London town—someplace horrid, wasn't it Ealing?—and the camp in Spain, and the dogs and the junk and the lizard women, and the babies with stars for eyes

—I beg your pardon, Joe?—

and a black-sand beach for a winter—all the junk—and a lost-time in Morocco—medina whispers—and if any of it is true or not, John does not care, all he wants is to hear the telling, having an interest, as he does, in such arrogant freaks.

We are what we pretend to be, aren't we, Joe? For a finish?

He does not like this—his smile is thin, grey, cattish.