There Are Little Kingdoms. Kevin Barry

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       See The Tree, How Big It’s Grown

      He turned to check his reflection in the window of the Expressway bus and some old quarehawk turned to look back at him. He appeared to be a man of about fifty. He did not appear to have set the world on fire. He looked beyond himself, and it had the look of South Tipp out there, lush and damp-seeming, with good-sized hills rising to the east, which would be the Comeraghs. He knew more about the hills than he knew about himself, but lush, yes, as if it was May, a savage growth that made each small copse of trees livid with bunched ferocity. The face seen dully in the window was a sad face, certainly, with a downcast mouth and emotional eyes, but it was strangely calm too. He took a glance south and found he was wearing an anorak long past its day, a pair of jeans with diesel stains caked into them and shoes straight off an evidence table. There was a bag, he noticed, in the rack overhead and he reached to take it down, breathing heavily. It was a Reebok holdall, scuffed and torn, and by no means a classy piece of luggage. He sat on the Expressway as it motored north through Tipperary this afternoon in the apparent summer with the bag in his lap. What kind of condition are you in at all, he wondered, when you wake up on a bus in the middle of countryside and you have no idea of who you are, or what your name is even?

      The bus was quiet, with just a handful of sad cases thrown here and there, the elderly and the infirm, the free-pass brigade with their jaunty afflictions. He hefted the holdall, tested its weight. Come on now, what could be inside there? The head of John the Baptist? He opened it and with relief found just a sweatshirt and another pair of jeans. There was a box of fags, Bensons, and a yellow plastic lighter in a pocket of the jeans. There was a wallet in the other pocket, it held six hundred euro in cash and a scrap of paper folded over twice. The scrap of paper said ‘Rooney’s Auctioneers, 5pm.’ It was at this point that he got the first of the tremors. This is what he would come to call them: the tremors. A tremor was when a flash of something came to him. The nature of this was visceral, more a feeling than a thought, and this first tremor came in the form of music, a snatch of music, five sad slow notes played on a recorder.

      ‘Of course,’ said an old fella in the seat opposite, looking across. ‘I have the bus pass myself, I’d be going up and down the country on a regular basis.’

      ‘Is that right?’ he said, and his own voice was a surprise to him, a husky baritone.

      ‘Oh yes. I do be bulling for road, you see. And I find that the B&Bs these days are excellent value for money. They serve you a powerful breakfast. And at this stage, most of the rooms have tea and coffee making facilities. And the cable as well. You can be watching Sky News.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘And where’ll you stay above?’

      ‘The chances are,’ he said, ‘I’ll be in a B&B myself.’

      ‘Very good!’ said the old fella, as if this was the best decision a man could ever hope to make.

      There were certain pieces of information available. He knew, for example, that the course of Irish history was besmirched with treacheries and suppressions. He knew this because in some foggy classroom at the back of his mind he had been made to read it aloud to the rest of the children, despite or maybe even because of his terrible stammer. T-t-t-the course of I-I-Irish history is b-b-b-besmirched… You wouldn’t likely forget the treacheries and suppressions after that.

      The old boy looked over again, with rheumy eyes and gummy mouth, and he winked:

      ‘Listen, there’s every chance now we’ll get in before five. You’ll be able to get down to Rooney’s, get a hold of them keys.’

      ‘Do you reckon?’ he said, and there was more than a sliver of fear in him.

      ‘Ah we’ll be in before five easy.’

      A childish notion came. He thought that maybe he had died, and was in limbo, and that this old boy was some manner of gatekeeper. He shucked himself free of this sensation as best as he could, looked out the window: gloom floated down from morbid hills. The Expressway passed through a village, really more of a crossroads than a village, just a collision of a few byways and houses, a shop and, finally, a pub. As the bus passed by this establishment, СКАЧАТЬ