There Are Little Kingdoms

  ‘So what exactly is the deal here? I get three wishes, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And it doesn’t matter what they are?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. I can be as disappointed in people as the next man. And if I’m disappointed, who’s to say that I’ll perform my duties in as careful a manner as I should? Try not to disappoint me, Ralph. I hate to be disappointed in people. Would you believe I’d a guy wishing for a long-term parking space convenient to the South Mall? I had another fella looking for a 48-inch plasma screen. I looked at him, Ralph, and I said what do you think you’re dealing with here, an Argos catalogue?’

  The genie becomes irate. The pitch of his voice rises.

  ‘You give people a chance!’ he says, balling a fist and slapping it into his palm. ‘You give them a chance to transform their lives! You give people possibilities! You give them every fucking opportunity. And what do they do? They look at you like you’re crazy. Don’t disappoint me, Ralph.’

  ‘I wish,’ says Ralph Coughlan, ‘that I had a singing voice.’

  The genie stops short.

  ‘I see,’ he says. ‘And how long have you been having problems at home?’

  Ralph pales:

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All the old spark gone out of it, killer?’

  This Coughlan case, thinks the genie, is a no-brainer. When a man starts wishing for the power of song, it is a general fact that he is trying to impress women.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says Ralph. ‘Look, can you do it for me or not? What I’d love is a good, solid tenor, one that’ll hold through on a note, but if that’s too much to ask, maybe you could just do me something that’s kinda… husky?’

  The genie holds up a warning palm.

  ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Let me think this over.’

  The genie settles on a seventies sofa chair of brown corduroy, crosses his short legs, and considers the ramifications of Ralph Coughlan’s wish. You can’t just suddenly give someone a singing voice and forget all about it. You have to consider what they’ll do with this gift because our talents, coldly used, can be deadly as knives. The genie notes that Ralph is a dapper sort: he is well-turned out, carefully groomed. Also there is the fact of the hair. The genie has to be careful. This could be like turning a young Engelbert Humperdinck loose on the northside of the city. There wouldn’t be a marriage safe for miles.

  It is in this way that the genie’s job sometimes has a high stress level. You will already have met genies, at flotation centres, at reiki workshops, haunting the backs of chapels, trying everything and anything as they attempt to ease their anxieties. You will see them slumped over tables in sad dockside bars, or waiting on prescriptions in late-night pharmacies. Many avail of early-retirement packages but even if they leave the service at fifty they are already, in many cases, broken men. The manipulation and shaping of dreams can really take it out of you.

  ‘Well?’ says Ralph.

  ‘Un momento, por favor,’ says the genie.

  Rush hour thickens on the quay outside. There is general belligerence. Men parp their horns at each other. Seabirds jacked up on weird emissions from the chemical plants downriver stand with deranged eyes on the quayside walls and seem to waver in the light breeze and they watch it all go by.

  Now what if a singing Ralph proves to be a force for good in his community? The genie pictures Ralph appearing at fundraisers for Nigerian refugees, or launching into feel-good John Denver numbers on Sunday morning visits to the terminally ill.

  Ralph waits. He looks at the genie with a coolness now. This genie, it is Ralph’s opinion, could use a good wet shave. Ralph will never present himself to the world with an unclean jaw. He will appear to a room with a suave smile and a small bow, in a well-pressed suit, with lightly dressed hair, and he will begin to softly croon. The room will be packed with doe-eyed lovelies. They will all but have to be shovelled out of the seats.

  ‘No rush, genie,’ he says.

  The genie retains some sympathy for his client. He’s just one of these big handsome fools, the type of man who believes that if he keeps brushing his teeth and thinking pretty thoughts, it’ll all turn out gravy.

  ‘Okay. We’re going to do it, Ralph. You can sing.’

  Ralph emits a small, delighted gasp and gets to his feet. The rolodex in his brain flips over and over and searches through all the easy-listening finger clickers he’s ever been partial to and stops at the Ws: he selects ‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’ by Andy Williams.

  ‘Guess there’s no use in hangin’ rouuuuund,’ he begins. ‘Guess I’ll get dressed and do the towwwwn.’

  He still sounds like something off a turkey farm. The genie is sombre.

  ‘I can hear where you’re coming from, Ralphie.’

  ‘What’s the story, like?’

  ‘Not always instantaneous,’ says the genie. ‘Relax. The docket is gone in. A lot of these things we can do on the spot but there are others that take a little time. You’ll know when it’s there for you. Trust me.’

  ‘I’m starting to have my doubts here,’ says Ralph Coughlan.

  The genie’s superiors consider the case. They raise their eyebrows. They know that for the Ralph Coughlans of this world, things can go either way. The slightest intervention and your Ralph Coughlan has a suitcase on the bed and a taxi called for the station. He’s thinking, will I bring a towel or will they have towels there?

  Ralph and the genie observe the city groaning past outside. The traffic is choked, and it’s warm for March, the car windows are rolled down and you can hear all the radios. A headbanger on a death metal show responds to a texted request: Sorry, girl, he says, I got nothin’ with me by Slayer.

  ‘Let’s do it again, Ralph,’ says the genie. ‘Let’s do it so we can get home to our teas.’

  Ralph Coughlan is troubled. Small worms of concentration wriggle on his brow.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘What kind of thing do people ask for?’

  ‘Open your mind to it, kid. That’s all I’d say to you. Imagine where I could send you. There’s no end to the possibilities. But at the same time, don’t be ridiculous. I mean, I get fellas looking at me, in all seriousness, and asking for the control of their thoughts. And I have to tell them straight, Ralph. Behave, I say. Get real.’

  Ralph seems downhearted.

  ‘But look,’ says the genie, ‘let’s see if we can’t rustle something up.’

  The genie sketches a fresh design. He rethinks Ralph Coughlan. The new Ralph will have enough salt in him to meet a crisis head on. The new Ralph will parade the intimate streets with a sense of vigour and purpose. The lease on a new store will be arranged. It will be an elegant space in one of the nice laneways off the Mall, with Deco-style frontage. It will be high-end, without a brass monocular in sight, and handsome Ralph will tool around town in a low-slung Mercedes. Almost always as he rides he will get the run of the lights.

  ‘All possible, Ralph,’ says the genie, ‘with just a wish or two. You see, one thing leads to another. This is how it works out. You make your fortune, then your fortune will make you.’

  He paints a beautiful picture, this genie, but Ralph has had enough.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘We’re going in the wrong direction here. As it happens, I’ve no great interest in material wealth.’

  ‘Don’t be distracted by the surface details,’ says the genie. ‘Surface is surface. All I’m asking you to do is to live intelligently.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘The only way to live a life elegantly, Ralph, is to live it with intelligence. And if you’d just use what you’ve already got, there is no reason why you can’t do that. I can’t tell you what to wish for. But I can tell you that each and all of us have boundless possibilities and if you know where to look, if you know where to search, if you reach deep within yourself and…’

  ‘Genie?’ Ralph interrupts. ?
??If you don’t mind me saying, this is all getting a bit Whitney Houston.’

  ‘Change or perish, Ralph.’

  ‘Now what’s that mean?’

  ‘It means you have two choices.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Cluckety cluck. Try your luck.’

  ‘You’re… who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Eat the world up, Ralph. Make a meal out of the place. Stop hiding in a junk shop down a filthy fucking quay. Get on with it! And name for me your second wish, please.’

  Ralph pales.

  ‘Is this about my wife?’ he says.

  The genie sighs, and throws his hands up. Why is he always given the fuckwits? Ralph Coughlan comes out from behind the counter and stalks the floor.

  ‘I have you now,’ he says. ‘I have you now! And you know what, genie? You’re absolutely spot on! That bitch is the bane of my life! She’s ground me down! So okay, fine, right, let’s do it. I wish that I…’

  ‘Ralph? Oh, Ralph. I really didn’t take you for that type of client.’

  ‘But you’ve brought it all home to me!’ says Ralph, ‘Jesus, do I ever need to have that weapon out of my life!’

  The genie shrugs and takes a seat. He has heard it all before.

  ‘She’s sat on the couch above in Luke’s Cross,’ says Ralph, ‘and the whole thing has her fucking mangled. If I hear another word about ovaries! And she isn’t going to go anywhere, is she? Unless you can actually overdose on Chocolate Hobnobs, she isn’t going to go anywhere, is she? So can you do anything for me there, genie? Can you do anything about that situation?’

  ‘You’re being sentimental, Ralph.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You’re asking me to send you back. You want it to be all fluffy and lovely again, you want to turn the clock back.’

  To when they’d walk on the long evenings to the Esso across from the brewery. They’d buy Cornettos: mint and pistachio for her, original flavour for him. They’d walk by the river, feeling pretty jaunty, because you’re self-important with it when you’re young, you carry it like a small dog carries a stick. She says, I hear there’s going to be a heat wave. Yeah right, Brid. The windows of flats are left open and people play records—dub reggae, all the crooked-smiling dopeheads with their elbows on the sills—and the angles of the rooftops lean in on you. They make plans. They cross the shaky bridge and go up to one of the pubs in Sunday’s Well. She gets amorous with a couple of drinks in her. The walk back home can be eventful and when you come outside, in the night-time, it’s like you spiral, you spin out, and your lungs fill up with the cold-starred air. She says, do an Elvis, and he curls his lip and does the thing:

  ‘Aw-haw-huh.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Ralph. ‘Fine. You got me. I wish I could go back to that place. Can you send me back there?’

  ‘You just been.’

  The streets are thinning out. The traffic has started to bolt free of itself, atom by atom. Shadows slide down from the rooftops.

  ‘You’ve one left, Ralph.’

  ‘I’d just like an outstanding day. Alright? How about one outstanding day for me? And no fucking about. I wish, genie, for an outstanding day.’

  The genie smiles.

  ‘I’ll do that for you now,’ he says. ‘Take it easy, killer.’

  He clicks his fingers and is gone. He has given Ralph what’s left of a dreary Tuesday in March. Ralph douses the bad lamp and drags a sweeping brush across the floor. Tomorrow might bring nostalgic people or at least somebody with an open-minded attitude to monoculars. He locks up and walks with squared shoulders down the street. He nods to the white-haired old dude pulling the shutters on the second-hand bookstore.

  ‘How’s business, Ralph?’

  ‘Rockin’ altogether. I’m beating ’em back with my bare hands.’

  He steps into the corner shop and gets down on the floor and unplugs the chicken. He looks at the woman behind the counter and he says:

  ‘I hear this asshole again, he goes in the river.’

  He cuts across town to catch a number eight. He has it timed perfect. Just as he reaches Eason’s, an eight pulls up. He pays for his ticket and goes upstairs. He takes a seat at the front, top right, overhead the driver. He’ll be in at twenty past six for the tea. If there is any kind of God at all, it won’t be the Shepherd’s Pie. He wonders if he should try a few notes. Or give it an hour? The bus takes off and crosses the bridge and revs itself up to ascend into the northside… Oh where are the angels? Where are the trumpets? But all we’ve got is the teatime traffic, and the grey stone hills of the place, homicidal, and a deranged gull flies low over the water, then wheels away downriver for Little Island, Haulbowline, and points south.

  There Are Little Kingdoms

  It was deadening winter, one of those feeble afternoons with coal smoke for light, but I found myself in reliably cheerful form. I floated above it all, pleasantly distanced, though the streets were as dumb-witted as always that day, and the talkshops were a babble of pleas and rage and love declared, of all things, love sent out to Ukraine and Chad. It was midweek, and grimly the women stormed the veg stalls, and the traffic groaned, sulked, convulsed itself, and the face of the town was pinched with ill-ease. I had a song in my throat, a twinkle in my eye, a flower in my buttonhole. If I’d had a cane, I would have twirled it, unquestionably.

  I passed down Dorset Street. I looked across to the launderette. I make a point always of looking into the launderettes. I like the steamy domesticity. I like to watch the bare fleshy arms as they fold and stack, load and unload, the busyness of it, like a Soviet film of the workers at toil. I find it quite comical, and also heartbreaking. Have the misfortunes no washing machines themselves, I worry? Living in old flats, I suppose, with shared hoovers beneath the stairs, and the smell of fried onions in the hallway, and the awful things you’d rather not hear late at night… turn up the television, will you, for Jesus’ sake, is that a shriek or a creaking door?

  And there he was, by the launderette window. Smoking a fag, if you don’t mind. Even though I was on the other side of the street, I couldn’t mistake him, he was not one you’d easily mistake. Steel-wire for hair, a small tight mushroom-shaped cloud of it, and he was wizened beyond his years, owlish, with the bones of the face arranged in a hasty symmetry that didn’t quite take, and a torso too short for his long legs, heron’s legs, and he was pigeon-chested, poetical, sad-faced.

  I walked on, and I felt the cold rise into myself from the deep stone centre of the town. I quickened my pace. I was too scared to look back. I knew that he’d seen me too, and I knew that he would flee, that he would have no choice but to flee. He was one of my oldest and most argued with friends. He had been dead for six years.

  I didn’t stop until I reached the river. The banks of the river were peopled with the foul and forgotten of the town, skin-poppers and jaw-chewers, hanging onto their ratty dogs for dear life, eating sausage rolls out of the Centra, wearing thin nylon clothes against the seep of the evil-smelling air. The river light was jaunty, blue-green, it softened and prettified as best as it could. I sat on a bench and sucked down some long, deep breaths. If I had been able to speak, the words would have been devil words, spat with a sibilant hiss, all consonants and hate. Drab office workers in Dunnes suits chomped baguettes. People scurried, with their heads down. People muttered; people moaned. I tried to train my thoughts into logical arrangements but they tossed and broke free. I heard the oompah and swirls of circus music, my thoughts swung through the air like tiny acrobats, flung each other into the big tent’s canvas maw, missed the catch, fell to the net.

  I was in poor shape, but slowly the water started to work on me, calmed me, allowed me to corral the acrobats and put names to them. A car wreck, in winter, in the middle of the night, that had done for him, and there is no coming back from the likes of that, or so you would think. The road had led to Oranmore.

  I tried my feet, and one went hesitantly in front of the other, and they sent me in t
he direction of Bus Áras. I decided there was nothing for it but to take a bus to the hills and to hide out for a while there, with the gentle people. I walked, a troubled man, in the chalkstripe suit and the cheeky bowler, and this is where it got good. A barrier had been placed across the river’s walkway and there was a sign tacked up. It read:

  NO PEDESTRIAN ACCESS BEYOND THIS POINT

  Fine, okay, so I crossed the road, but the throughway on Eden Quay was blocked too, with the same sign repeated, and I thought, waterworks, gasworks, cables, men in day-glo jackets, I’ll cut up and around, but there was no access from Abbey Street, or from Store Street, everywhere the same sign had been erected: Bus Áras was a no-go zone. I saw a man in the uniform of the State, and he had sympathetic eyes, so I approached and questioned him.

  ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘There are no buses from here today. There are no buses in or out.’

  I stood before him, horrified, and not because of the transport situation, which at the best of times wasn’t great, but because this man in the uniform was undeniably Harry Carolan, a.k.a. Harry Cakes, the bread-and-fancies man of my childhood. The van would be around every day at half three, set your watch by it, loaves of white and loaves of brown, fresh baked, and ring doughnuts and jammy doughnuts and sticky buns too. The creased kind folds of his face, the happy downturned mouth, eyes that in a more innocent era we’d have described as ‘dancing’. Éclairs! Fresh-cream swiss rolls! All the soda bread you could eat, until 1983, when Harry Cakes had dropped down dead in his shoes.

  I went through the town like a flurry of dirty snow. This is a good one, I said to myself, oh this is a prize-taker. Now the faces of the streets seemed no different. It was the same bleary democracy as before. Some of us mad, some in love, some very tired, and all of us, it seemed, resigned to our humdrum affairs. People rearranged their shopping bags so as to balance the weight. Motorists tamped down their dull fury as best as they could. A busking trumpeter played ‘Spanish Harlem’. I took on a sudden notion. I thought: might a bowl of soup not in some fundamental way sort me out?