I was on the verge of saying: ‘You know something, babe? You’re absolutely right!’
But I was suddenly distracted by the sound of approaching voices and looked up to see the bank chick standing close by, my heart missing a beat. I was surprised by her patchouli perfume, which suddenly smelt sweet as it went floating by, and the cheesecloth Indian-style blouse she was wearing. I guess I hadn’t expected her to be wearing that kind of gear. But then, that was what you did, I thought — pigeon-holed people. Just because she worked in the bank didn’t mean she had to be a straight. No way! I thought.
I didn’t know what to say when I heard her saying: ‘No, she said she was coming, but she had to go to Dublin!’
All that night I found it difficult to sleep. I could feel her presence hovering close by. I saw her standing on O’Connell Street, the thoroughfare on either side entirely deserted, as though there’d been a bomb scare. She was unwinding her hair and staring straight at me. ‘Joey,’ she was saying, ‘how you been?’
The swirling colours of Abraxas — the Santana album — were fluid and fantastic in the sky behind her. She had just got back from her travels and was wearing a sort of padded oriental jacket with embroidered motifs of shimmering gold. It looked stunning. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What, Jacy?’ I sounded hoarse as I spoke her name.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ she said.
‘Got something for me?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A special gift for you.’
She rummaged in her bag then and smiled as she handed it to me.
‘It’s hand-sewn, embossed in gold,’ she told me. ‘I found it in a little shop in Bombay. It was just sitting there, waiting for me. And I knew I had to buy it. As a special gift for you.’
‘Siddhartha,’ I whispered and ran my hand across its cover.
Then I kissed it again, that sweet and lovely book she’d given me, carried all the way from India to present to me in that empty street. I felt as if I was in a truly wondrous place.
As though I’d been reborn.
Rosa and Big Bertha
The day of Rosa and Big Bertha the place was packed. There had been talk of Fr Connolly arriving with a picket but he didn’t show. I think he had enough on his plate with the Provos and their objections. Which, if you’d any sense at least, you tended to take very seriously indeed. They’d been going around drumming up dissent and tearing down his posters any chance they got, so I don’t think the girls were too high on his list. The first thing was the football club mascot that they now called Horny Harry, having dressed him up in a sailor’s uniform. The roars of them above the music! They perched him on the bar counter and every time his mickey went up — there was somebody in behind the counter squeezing a bulb or something — the place went half mad, egged on by the jukebox as it blasted out ‘You Sexy Thing’.
‘Horny fucking Harry!’ howled a man at the front. ‘If the wife got a look at that —!’
‘Maybe it’d put a smile on her face!’
‘And maybe hoors like you that can’t shut up go flying out fucking windows!’
‘Maybe they do!’
Then I heard someone calling: ‘You’re looking happy there, Joey! Old Harry must be doing the trick!’
‘Something is but it ain’t him!’ I laughed, and Sandy McGloin said: ‘You’re a good one, Joey! No mistake! He’s a good one, isn’t he, Hoss?’
‘Mr Barbapapa!’ laughed Hoss, adding: ‘I’m only kidding you, Joey! I’m just frigging around with him, and Big Joe knows it! Right, old sweat?’
‘You got it!’ I replied cheerily.
We were all in great form. During the interval, Big Bertha and Rosa sat drinking at the bar, enjoying all the attention that was coming their way, with enough drinks to quench the thirst of an army lined up in front of them. An old-timer had managed to squeeze in between them, beaming away like all his Christmases had come together. ‘And what’s your name, little fella?’ asked Bertha as she vigorously rubbed his thigh. Boyle Henry was standing by the pool table in his yellow three-button polo shirt, stroking the cue suggestively as he winked over at the boys. ‘No handling the merchandise!’ was what his wink was saying. All of a sudden he delivered a mighty kick up the hole of the old-timer and said: ‘You touchee, you fuckee — out on the streetee!’
There was a great laugh when he did that, and then it was time for the show proper to begin. They set up the ring in The Courtyard — a bit of a ramshackle affair, just tatty old canvas and breeze blocks. But it did the trick all right. They had decorated the place with pennants and flags — ‘The games people play! At Barbarella’s!’
The first thing Rosa and Bertha did was go down on their knees and get well stuck into Horny Harry. ‘That’s the stuff for the randy hoor!’ shouted someone from the back as the disco beat thumped. When they’d given Harry as much as he could take, they pushed his cap down over his eyes and sent him flying out into the middle of the crowd. The old-timer caught him and pretended to copulate with him right there and then. ‘Christ but he’s the dirty bastard!’ they guffawed. ‘Get up on the crack of dawn, he would!’
Without warning, Rosa got a hold of Bertha and sent her stumbling backwards against the ropes. ‘You made a big mistake there, lady!’ says Bertha and comes charging at her like a bull and gives her the father and mother of a slap there and then right into the mush. ‘Jesus!’ gasped the audience in astonishment. Such a wallop! You could hear it all over the —
Then what does she do, when she has her on the floor? Starts bawling: ‘You want it, huh? So that’s how you wannit — you wannit, lady? Then that’s what you fucking get!’
Where she produced it from, no one could say for sure. It must have been hidden underneath the canvas. I wouldn’t say too many people in Scotsfield had ever seen a dildo before. At any rate, not one that size. Next thing you know she’s pretending to give it to Rosa between the legs. Which did the trick more than anything they’d come up with yet, and all of a sudden there’s not a sound to be heard in The Courtyard. Then the fighting proper started and, before you knew what was happening, the old-timer had got stuck in between them and was climbing on top of Bertha. ‘That’s it! Ride her, cowboy!’ called Hoss as the old-timer turned to say something back but fell slap bang down on his face into the mud. Then Rosa came up behind him, hit him a smack and sent him flying back down again. This was the best yet. Some of the audience were weak from cheering. Rosa dragged Bertha past him by the hair, gave her a pretend punch in the stomach and said: ‘Come on then, baby!’
The music was sweeping about the place like a big long twirling scarf, going: ‘Una paloma blanca! I’m just a bird in the sky!’ when all of a sudden what happens? Bertha has turned the tables on her opponent and is slapping her hard, one, two, three, four, five times in the face. There were people turning their heads away.
‘You think you can beat me, huh?’, she snapped as she hit her, ‘You think you can take on a champion like me? I’ll show you what fighting means!’
Then she scissored Rosa around the neck and started bumping and grinding, with the sweat rolling off her. After that she banged her head a good few times against the floorboards until Rosa pretended to be passing out. But with one leap Rosa was back on her feet and Bertha was there beside her, taking a bow and blowing kisses right, left and centre. The old-timer was close to fainting at this point, covered in muck from head to toe, and I could hear him saying behind me: ‘Do you think they’ll be coming here regular? Do you think it was good? I think it was good! I hope they’ll be coming here regular!’
Boyle Henry came climbing in through the ropes and, after holding up both women’s arms and announcing: ‘Ladies and gentlemen! The fabulous Rosa and Big Bertha!’, went on to say that there would be two more shows before the wrestlers went back to England. Then he called for a big round of applause for the sexiest women in Ireland — all the way from England, of course! The roof was nearly blown off the place with yelps and piercing wolf whistles.
But once it was all over and the women had gone back to their hotel, the mood sort of changed and conversation all but died out in the bar. You could hear nothing apart from Austie saying: ‘Well, so much for Connolly and his picket! All talk! That’s all he is — just talk!’
Then, after a bit, one of the regulars stared broodily into his pint and said: ‘Aye. Well, maybe — maybe, I was thinking, it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if he had come with his picket.’
‘Ah now,’ said Austie, and smiled. But not much — he was reading the situation from experience and could tell that they were all privately in agreement with the speaker. Like what they were secretly thinking was: Those English prostitutes have made fools of us! Come over and make their money and then what do they do? Fuck off!
For the next couple of hours, it was like you were afraid to say anything — no matter how innocuous — in case a fight might break out.
But I reckoned by now I’d learnt to deal with situations like this. Once upon a time I would have found myself picking up every detail, the sudden jerking of a head or the flick of a cigarette. Investing such gestures with a significance that was often misplaced. But not now. Now I was oblivious to such trivial ephemera. My reading — my acquisition, I guess you could say, of knowledge — seemed to be directing me towards a different, more important place. Along with the vibes I felt coming — emanating — from her. A calm was descending. A peace. I could see the glittering water, and there, just beyond, the twinkling, beckoning lights of a comforting, precious harbour.
Hoss said: ‘Are you listening to me, Joey?’ Some horseshit or other about a football match. I nodded and made eye contact with him, just to keep him happy. But I could just as easily have said: ‘I’m not. No, I haven’t been listening to a word you’ve been saying.’ Because that was the truth — I hadn’t. For the very simple reason that I was giving my attention to certain other words that he wasn’t privy to and which I found a hell of a lot more interesting.
‘It’s up there, straight ahead!’ I could hear Jacy saying. We were on a winding dirt road just off the interstate and heading for our new home in the mountains. I’d read all about it in a book on reincarnation I’d found quite by chance — if such a thing really, truly can be said to exist — in the library. It was as though it had been hollowed out of the rock in expectation of our arrival, deep in the safety of its darkness, each tiny little detail meticulously and lovingly prepared.
Our special name for it was the Karma Cave, and the moment you laid eyes on it, you knew exactly what it was. Realized that you’d been there before, even if you couldn’t say exactly when.
The first thing you heard as you approached it was the fragile tinkling of the wind chimes rotating slowly in the heavy afternoon air. There was a little silver tiger. And an elephant. I could hear those chimes so crystal clear.
‘Are you fucking listening to me?’ I heard Hoss saying. ‘I said, Corrigan played a blinder! He won the match for them! He won the fucking match on his own!’
I cast him a blissful and unworldly smile.
The Councillor
I knew Boyle Henry had been in the back lounge that day, but hadn’t realized who’d been in there with him until I came back in from the yard with the crate of Guinness and saw him running out after her. He was stubbing his Hamlet as he pursued her, the door swinging behind him as I heard him calling: ‘Wait! Come back here, Jacy, for Christ’s sake! I didn’t mean that!’
I could hear them arguing outside in the street. ‘Of course I’ll do it!’ he growled. ‘I’ll do it now — tonight! If that’s what you want me to do! Sure I’ll fucking leave her! You think I wouldn’t?’
I know it should have been the beginning, that I should have realized then. But if you had told me I don’t think I’d have believed you — ‘What? Jacy? With Boyle Henry?’ I’d have said, and laughed, dismissing it casually, before going in behind the counter once more to continue with my work as if it meant nothing to me in the world.
Except that it did, and when I looked again Boyle Henry had come back into the bar and was sitting over in the corner, colluding in whispers with the Provo who ran The Ritzy. Danny, I think, was his name. I saw him accepting money as it was passed to him under the table, a fat roll of notes bound with an elastic band. The blue-movie money, most likely. For Henry to launder through one of his many businesses. The new hotel he was involved with, maybe, or the proposed shopping centre the council’d been talking about. I didn’t know.
Or care. Right at that moment, there was only one thing I cared about, and that was the book I had open in front of me called The Lyrics of Joni Mitchell, running my eyes across the words of ‘California’ with only one thing on my mind: how we were going to reach it, the Karma Cave, despite this unexpected setback.
Arrive somehow at that precious harbour. The longed-for place you’d call … home.
Aviator Shades …
… cheap or not, can look real good. Especially when you’re stoned out of your box. Boo Boo had given me some terrific ‘Paki black’ draw and I’d been blasting it all evening by myself. I was completely whacked as I ran though my routine in front of the mirror, folding my De Niro arms, grinning for a while just thinking about things. The black was so strong it could make you laugh at nothing. ‘Phee-oo!’ I wheezed (there were tears in my eyes) and cocked my revolver. Revolver! Revolver my bollocks! There was no fucking revolver — the papers got that whole thing arseways. We didn’t need no shit like that, me and Jacy, I grinned, and went pow! with my index finger.
Then I got down to the nitty-gritty. Pasting back my hair and going: ‘So then, Jace!’
And: ‘So, how you been?’ and ‘I really like your hair, you know?’ Although I could never seem to manage the last part all that well. Eventually I decided to stick with the original: ‘So how you been then, Jace? You doin’ good?’
I smiled and tugged down my jacket.
‘You lookin’ at me?’ I said then, and continued: ‘Yeah, Jacy, I’m lookin’ at you. And you know what? I like what I see. No — love what I see. Because it’s a mystery.’
I’d sit down then to contemplate. Before going through it all over again.
‘I really like your hair,’ I’d say. ‘Your hair — I really like it,’ as I blew a neat chain of smoke rings. Then I stubbed out the joint and said: ‘That’s the last one — this time for definite.’
I turned and pointed the gunfinger at my reflection.
‘You got that?’ I said. And then said it again. ‘I said, you got that, Joey?’
Laughing a little bit. But nervously. I mean, I knew what I was taking was a really big step. And that it wasn’t going to be easy. But I knew in the end it would all be worth it. More than anyone could ever believe.
‘Because then you’ll be mine,’ I announced impassively to my reflection. ‘You got that, Jacy? Then you’ll belong to Joey!’ watching her face slowly melt into mine.
The Big Fellow in Banbridge
You’d hear the old-timers going on about it, looking around them with hunted eyes and muttering behind their hands. Like the day Willie Markham died when me and Bennett were kids. The neighbours had been coming in and out of the house all morning. ‘It’s not looking good,’ I heard one of them saying, staring brokenly at the ground. Me and Bennett were sitting on the window sill, staring in. I had never heard anything like the sounds coming from inside that room. It was like someone was being burnt alive. You could see them all crying. It was then Bennett started on about the ‘Big Fellow’. He could get very excitable, often coming out with things you didn’t expect to hear. ‘He’s always there, Joey!’ he kept insisting, gripping my arm tightly and pleading with me, looking into my eyes as if to say: ‘Somehow! Help me! Help me to stop him being there, Joseph!’
Another day he told me he’d had a dream about him and that he’d been like one of the gangsters out of The Untouchables. Standing there smiling like your uncle, with a great big fedora and a brown suit covered in stripe
s. But when you looked again you could see he wasn’t smiling at all. And that what he was holding in his fist was your still-beating heart with its blood seeping out through the cracks in his fingers. He was beside himself as he told me this. ‘Why is he always there?’ he kept repeating until in the end I had to beg him to stop.
‘Don’t talk about him any more!’ I pleaded. ‘Do you hear me? Do you want me to start seeing him too?’
Which I did. Years later, the night I first heard about The Seeker dying in Clapham. The Big Fellow was standing over him, examining the red tip of his cigar as though the decaying corpse meant nothing at all. Just another job of work. But then he looked towards me — and smiled. It was the most awful smile I had ever seen and even now it makes me shiver to recollect it.
I often wondered whether that was what Bennett had seen in those last few minutes in his smoke-filled cab. The Big Fellow standing out there on the grass by the edge of the water, examining his cigar. And then slowly turning to give him … that smile.
But Banbridge — I hadn’t expected to encounter him there. We had been across the border numerous times by then and nothing untoward had ever happened. It wouldn’t even cross your mind that something might, for the band had never been as busy; the stints we were doing with the showband Tweed were going down an absolute storm. They’d do Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon — their version of it was legendary — and we’d play ‘Vampire’, ‘Hardcore’ and ‘Psycho’ and, with the word getting out, the crowds turning up at the gigs starting to get larger and larger.
They really were good times.
Some nights the two bands even got onstage together, once — I think in Bundoran — doing a fifteen-minute rockabilly version of the national anthem that ended with the drum kit being kicked into the audience and Boo Boo roaring ‘The Whores of Donegal’ at this bunch of headbanging pink-haired punkettes.