There Are Little Kingdoms. Kevin Barry

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СКАЧАТЬ the road as the pub went out of view again. The throat was after going pure dry. He straightened himself and cast a wary glance across the aisle.

      ‘He’s making good time today,’ said the old fella.

      ‘He is.’

      A bigger town announced itself with garden centres and D-I-Y warehouses and a large sign in the middle of a new roundabout that read:

      BULMER’S CIDER WELCOMES YOU TO CLONMEL

      ‘He’s sucking diesel today,’ said the old fella. ‘Twenty to five!’

      ‘Faith, he is,’ he said.

      Taking the Reebok holdall, he stood as the bus eased into the bleak station and he made a whistling attempt at nonchalance.

      ‘Listen to me,’ said the old fella, ‘the best of luck to you now with everything. Something tells me you might have done a good deal here. And don’t mind what the crowd below are saying.’

      ‘Thanks very much,’ he said, and he stepped off the Expressway and into the mysteries of Clonmel.

      He wasn’t long getting directions to Rooney’s—Davitt Street, first left—and he wasn’t long noticing that it was beside a small pub name of The Dew Drop Inn. He had a few minutes to spare, and there was a strange draw from this place, a magnet drag. The next thing he knew, he was inside at the counter, in the dank half-light, throwing the holdall down to his feet and putting his elbows up on the bar.

      ‘What’ll it be?’ said the young one behind the bar.

      ‘Pint b-bottle of B-Bulmer’s,’ he said, ‘and a b-b-baby Powers.’

      It appeared that he knew full well what he was doing in this type of situation. There was a bottle put down in front of him, and a pint glass filled with ice, and the small whiskey appeared as a cheerful companion. He made short work of this order, and he started to feel somewhat philosophical. What, after all, he said to himself, is an identity? Surely it is only a means of marking yourself out in time. And what is time in itself, only an arbitrary and entirely illusory system designed to remind us of death? To separate us from the eternal present enjoyed by the beasts of the fields. So why need you bother with either one, when you have the bones of six hundred euro in your fist, and a fag lit in the corner of your mouth? The five o’clock news came on the radio. It said Orla was missing since March 14th and the one clue for investigators was a red baseball cap.

      ‘That’ll be me,’ he said to the young one, and she responded with a lazy smile and a stretching movement like a cat would make. There might be sport to be had in this place yet.

      He strode in the door of Rooney’s like a man who owned the rights to the whole of love. There was another young lady there, neat behind her desk, with a poignant mouth and agreeable knees.

      ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I had an appointment for five?’

      ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It must be Mr Tobin, is it?’

      ‘Correct.’

      ‘Mr Tobin,’ she explained, ‘Mr Rooney is actually out at present. He is showing a pig operation in the direction of Knockbawn, but listen now, I have the keys and the lease here for you.’

      ‘Outstanding.’

      ‘The money has cleared. Everything is ready to go. All you have to do is sign your name. So if you’d like to take a seat, you can have a quick read through and make sure everything is in order.’

      ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the w-weight off my feet.’

      He felt that he was doing very well. His manner was charming, and if he didn’t look exactly dapper, than at least he had a benevolent aura. Unfortunately, he noted, there was a smell of drink off him, which was something he would have to watch, but still and all he was presented with the necessary document. The lease shook a little as he read through it. It turned out he was after buying a chipper in Clonmel.

      With the keys swinging, he set off into a most pleasant evening: the town swooned with glow, like a back-lit ale. He searched out No. 15a McDermott Street, which turned out to be no more than a hundred yards around the corner from Rooney’s. After some trial and error with the keys, he managed to get the shutters up and the door opened and he crossed the threshold into a new era for both himself—Mr R.K. Tobin, apparently—and for the Uptown Grill.

      So what do you do? What do you do when you wake up on a bus in South Tipp, and you don’t know who you are, or where you’re going, and the next thing you’re inside in an auctioneers being presented with keys and then you’re stood in the Uptown Grill, which is fourteen foot long by ten wide and contains a large deep fat fryer, a griddle, a glass-doored fridge, a full stock of supplies, a counter and a cash register? What do you do?

      You start peeling spuds.

      *

      It quickly became clear that R.K. Tobin was not without some experience in the catering trade. The operation of the Uptown Grill didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest. He wasn’t in the door a half hour and he had wire baskets of nicely cut chips waiting for the fryer, he had the burgers battered, he had the haddock in breadcrumbs, and the potato cakes rolled, he had a griddle full of onions frying up nice and slow, releasing their sweetness to the air. Everything was waiting for the off, and as he worked he whistled a selection of show tunes from the early 1950s: ‘If I Knew You Were Coming I’d A Baked A Cake’, ‘Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White’, ‘Moon River’. His domestic arrangements, as it turned out, were all to hand, for he had climbed a greasy stairway out back and found a room above the chipper, same size, with a sink, a couch, a half bottle of Cork gin and a selection of golf magazines. He felt utterly alive with entrepreneurial swagger, and who was to say he wouldn’t be taking up the golf himself? He brought the gin down with him as he prepared to open up for the teatime crowd. It just seemed like the thing to do.

      Business came in fits and starts but overall it didn’t seem a bad trade. It was steady enough through to seven o’clock, then you had lads late from work coming in for feeds, then a good crew around half-nine or ten in severe need of soakage. Quiet moments, he took a hit of gin from under the counter, looked out the door, saw the town fall away down the slate rooftops of terraces, turn into farmland and fields, melancholy hills. The light was pleasing—a softness to it—and there was an amount of birds, though he did not know the names of birds.

      How much did he know? You could say he had the broad strokes of things. He was only too well aware that he was an Irishman. He had a fair idea about the kind of lads who were coming in for burgers and chips: ordinary fellas, big eaters, red in the face from wind, hands like the buckets off JCBs, you’d imagine pulmonary disorders, midnight visitations. They were polite enough, made a certain amount of small talk. Nobody questioned or made direct comment on the fact of a new proprietor at the Uptown, but they were not unwelcoming of the stranger. One chap left a newspaper on the counter, which let him know he had a Tuesday on his hands. Somehow, this came as no great surprise. He had a quick look through the paper: odd, as if he knew things and at the same time, did not know. The way that a cow looks at you in the moonlight. A cow will incline its head to one side, and it’ll stare at you with big wet eyes, as if it is sure it has seen you somewhere before but can’t quite place you. This is the way he was reading the paper. Captains of industry, streels of girls at dinner dances, young lads hurling, planning applications, weddings, births, deaths. All of it was strange but familiar.

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