There Are Little Kingdoms (6 page)

‘Take your ease, John,’ he says. ‘I’ll give yez a tinkle later on, soon as I’m done in Shinrone.’

John Martin walks into the fields of the farm. It is all around him, and there is a vague hissing at its edges, as in a sour dream. She is due for twelve and the place is an out-and-out disaster. Meadowsweet Farm is a concern on the brink. The O.C.B. runs a tight ship, and if they cannot get on board, they might as well turn the place over for sites. Be done with it. He notes a rusted gate and fetches a scraper and opens a fresh tub of the white paint and rinses out a brush under the tap in the yard. He sets to. Madge Howe is an attractive lady but mad. The glazed look, the grey tongue. There is going to be hell to pay. What was he thinking?

He takes rust off the gate. A fine mist of copper-coloured particles lifts into the air and causes him to sneeze. He cannot shake the fear that his daughter has been permanently damaged. She is a spaced out kind of child at the best of times, but she has gone even deeper into herself since. Fear is a black wet ditch on a cold night. It is hard to claw yourself out, your fingers slip in the loam. He puts an undercoat on the gate. He takes a couple of fertiliser bags out of a hedge. He cannot even think about going to have a look at the few cattle. There is a white nervous sky, and magpies are everywhere on patrol, stomping around, like they own the place. He takes one of the phones from his pocket and puts in a call to Noreen.

‘Can I come over?’ he says

‘Oh John,’ she says. ‘No way. I don’t know how long he’s going to be gone.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he says.

‘Shut up!’ she says.

‘I want you now, Noreen.’

‘I’m warning you!’ she says.

‘How long is he gone?’

‘No.’

‘Can we not chance it?’

‘No.’

‘I’m in love with you, Noreen,’ he breathes it, a whisper, a husk on the breeze.

‘Park on the L_______ road,’ she says, ‘and come over across by Tobin’s field.’

He climbs into the 4x4. It’ll be chancy on time but what are you going to do? The bayou howl, the bayou howl. He backs out of the yard, goes down the drive, turns onto the road. He will need to stop off in town to pick up condoms. He is in the thirty-seventh winter of his life. The other phone goes, the official line. Caller i.d. says ‘mry’.

‘What?’

‘Where you goin’?’

‘I’ve to head into town.’

‘What for?’

‘I’ve to get rope.’

‘Pick up the dog while you’re there’

‘You’re not serious, Mary? She’s not!’

‘What?’

‘She’s in
again
?’

‘Yes.’

‘Arra the fuck, since when?’

‘I’d to drop her in this morning. She was bad. You were told this. You were in the back fields. I’m talking to a wall is what I’m talking to. She’s ready since eleven. They rang. They said pick her up.’

‘She’s in
again
?’

Picking up the dog will not be straightforward. The pregnancy has been a nightmare, she’s even been snapping at the child. When John Martin interfered with her supper one night, pushing it out of the way with his foot, she nearly took his face off. She is a fast-tempered spaniel bitch, high-bred, with taut nerves. He breaches the tearful peripheries of the town. He makes it through to the central square under a tormented sky; he parks. The vet’s clinic is on one of the terraces that traipse from the square. There are feelings strong enough to overwhelm the physical laws. There are feelings that can settle in stone. There is an age-old malaise in the vicinity of this terrace. It has soaked into the grain of the place. The afternoons looking out on sheeting rain… The nights staring into the dark infinities… How would a place be right after it?

The vet’s clinic, however, is ignorant of such desperation. It has by force of will and riches wiped it from the hard-drive. The clinic is styled in chrome and blonde wood, there are slate tiles and extravagant leather couches in a reception expertly wardened by a seething goddess of Slavic extraction: a limbre Svetlana. Matronly ladies on the couches nurse trembling small dogs: this time of morning, the vet’s is poodle terrain.

‘Hiya,’ says John Martin. ‘About the dog?’

‘Name, please.’

‘Martin. John Martin.’

‘Dog name!’ spits the ice queen.

‘De Valera.’

She speaks into a headset. Clearance comes through and he is allowed access to the shimmering depths of the building. How the fuck much are vets making these days?

‘Hiya John!’

A headful of tousled locks emerges from a doorway. The vet has a stevedore handshake and millionaire teeth. He is a tan, highlighted guy of maybe sixty five. Dev reclines on a space-age gurney. She wears an expression of sainted pain. She averts her gaze from John Martin. She has the look of a brittle heiress cruelly sectioned in the ripe years.

‘Clearly, yes, it’s a moody little thing we got on our hands,’ says the square-jawed vet, and he flicks at his bleachy flop of hair.

‘I imagine the pregnancy would be…’

‘There are hormonal events, absolutely, but from what I’ve been told, things are cutting a little deeper with Dev. I’ve done bloods, they’ll go for checks, and what can I say? We’ll play wait-see.’

‘And, eh…’

‘Now maybe a lot of this stuff will resolve itself in the very near future.’

‘Once she has the litter?’

‘It should do an amount for her temperament, John, but even so I feel things have got to a stage where I’m going to prescribe an additional treatment. At least for the time being.’

‘Oh?’

‘To be sure to be sure. Belt and braces.’

He presents John Martin with a small white packet containing forty-eight sachets of K-9 Serenity.

‘You sprinkle it on her dinner, just the one a day.’

‘What is it, exactly?’

‘It’s an anti-depressant.’

‘The dog is depressed?’

‘It would seem so, John, yes.’

John Martin settles with glowering Svetlana; cash, as he no longer holds an account at the vet’s. Dev’s treatment costs about the same as a week in France. He is not in a position to grizzle about this, as he has a more pressing concern. De Valera is refusing to walk. He tugs on the leash, but there is venomous resistance. He tugs again, and she yelps. The matrons on the couches mutter. De Valera moans. He drags her across the slate tiles. He bends to pick her up and finds there is an unpredictable amount of spaniel to deal with, and the thought of the litter inside is queasy. On the street, she snarls at him. He has to hold her at arm’s length to prevent blood being drawn. He puts her down on the pavement with more force than is necessary.

‘For fucksake, Dev! Behave!’

An assault of fresh rain is carried slant-wise from the west. A tuneless brass band strikes up inside. Nervous agitation works like water on stone. It is a slow, steady dripping that can meet no answering force. Over time, it washes everything away.

With De Valera livid in the passenger seat, John Martin drives out the far side of the town. He stops at Lidl and pops in for some German condoms. There is a twilight beach scene on the pack: a big blonde couple, arm in arm, up to their eyeballs in it by a dusk-marooned sea.

The town recedes in the rear-view mirror. He pulls onto the bare, desolate stretch of L_______ Road. He parks at the usual place. He is about to set off when Dev begins to rave and foam again. The dog might be heard, might draw prying eyes to this quiet place. He rips open two sachets of K-9 Serenity and sprinkles them on the floor in back—it is a greyish mica dust, and De Valera is drawn to it like love.

John Martin slips away, and cuts across by Tobin’s field. He feels a familiar guilt—not two weeks previously, he had dosed also his daughter.

It was a Saturday evening, at the hotel bar. It was the usual run of things.

You’d do a few bits in town, and then hit back to D_____’s Hotel for a feed of drink. All the other couples would be around, all the old familiars. John and Mary Martin fell in as always with Frank and Madge Howe. Frank had been making cracks about it for months. He said they’ll be talking, John, they’ll be asking questions, mark my words. Who’s with who, they’ll say. He had brought it up, again and again, and it seemed less jokey each time. Then he took John Martin aside in the gents.

‘What about it?’ he said. ‘Grown adults so we are?’

John Martin blushed, and chuckled, but Howe continued.

‘No objections on our side,’ he said. ‘Sure yez could come on up after?’

John Martin tried to laugh it off but there was a tension. In the lounge, he told Mary, and she smiled and said:

‘Arra. They’re lively at least.’

‘I don’t think he’s messing any more, Mary. I think he’s full in earnest.’

‘Sure what harm in it?’ she said.

Then they were back in the front room of the terrace house the Howes were renting. Curry boxes everywhere, vodka and beer. Frank was messing with the stereo and singing along, red in the face. Madge and Mary were skitting and whispering. Frank went up the stairs and came back down with a huge pile of sports jackets in bright colours.

‘My new line,’ he said, ‘they’re selling like hot dogs so they are.’

‘Cakes,’ said John Martin. ‘Hot cakes.’

‘Will you do a spot of modelling for me, Johnnie boy?’

And the two of them paraded up and down, in the jackets, and pushed the sleeves up, play-acting.

‘Crockett and Tubbs!’ roared Madge.

And ‘The Best of The Eagles’ was put on and they all danced and Frank said, what about it, Tubbs?

Then it blurred, and Frank and Mary walked out of the living room.

‘Come on, John,’ said Madge, and she grabbed the car keys, ‘we’ll head for yours.’

You imagine the whole wife-swapping business would take four decisions but really it only takes three.

He moves across the low dip of the bottom fields, rat-faced with need and longing. His long arms swing with intent, one then the other in slow pendulum. He mutters onto his breath as he walks. He climbs over the fence and onto the Flaherty land. An old horse they keep, spared the knackers out of sentiment, regards him with due suspicion, with a knowingness, and returns to its cud with patent disgust. The Flaherty house arises, and he squints towards the yard to make sure there is no Rover jeep there. Lit with nerves and excitement, priapic in the sour light of noon, he approaches the kitchen window, and taps, and she comes to it at once. He blows a fog onto the pane. She unlatches the door, with a scowl, and he steps inside, with a quick squint over his shoulder, and he goes for her.

‘Back off!’ she says.

‘What are you talking about, Noreen? You told me come!’

The long arms swing out, beseeching.

‘I made a mistake. You can take off from here now and don’t mind the old shite talk. He’s only gone in for diesel.’

‘Don’t be telling lies! You wouldn’t have told me come if it was diesel. I have yokes.’

He shows the condom packet.

‘You come around here sniffing like a mutt!’ she hisses, and begins to cry. ‘I made the mistake before, I won’t make it again! Out!’

‘An hour ago, Noreen! Park by the L_______ Road, you said. Cut across by Tobin’s field. Am I making this up?’

‘You’re under stress, John. This isn’t the answer! Just go, okay?’

‘I see,’ he says, ‘I see what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying to turn it back on me. You’re…’

The Rover jeep pulls into the yard. Noreen freezes, then goes into convulsions, her breath rolls through her system in heavy gulps, and she grips the fridge to keep the feet beneath her. John Martin almost smiles: ah not this old dance again. From the window, he can see big Jim Flaherty pounding across the yard. This Flaherty is no gentle giant. He is carrot-topped, with a hair-trigger temper, and a specific distaste for John Martin on account of a previous situation involving lambs. Now he fills the kitchen door. Now he lays his eyes on John Martin.

‘Jim! The very man. I was only in looking for you. What I wanted to know, Jim, was had you the loan of a wire-cutters? I’ve only an auld bevel-edge below, no use at all for the job at hand. It’s a new boundary I’m putting up for the chickens, give them some bit of a run at least. They’d reef themselves if I went at it with the bevel-edge. What I’d need would be a semi-flush. Of course it’s a last-minute job, as usual. I have herself from the O.C.B. coming around to me. Today, would you believe, and I’m still at it. So would you ah… would you ah… The last minute man! Dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.’

‘God, John, a semi-flush? I don’t know. I…
don’t
think so. No, John, no. I’m afraid not. Apologies. Nothing I can do to help you out there. Have you thought of Mangan, or Troy?’

‘True, I suppose, I could nearly ah… I could nearly… I could knock in, I suppose?’

‘You could, John. Especially given they’d be five miles nearer to you. Given they’d be neighbours.’

‘I ah…’

‘And tell me, by the way, while we’re at it,’ and Jim Flaherty takes a dainty step back, a little dancing step back, and he blocks off the door with an arm to the jamb, an arm with the reach of a mid-sized crane. ‘Tell me, John. Where you parked?’

‘Oh, I ah… I left it down by L_______ Road. Actually.’

‘I see. You decided to park twelve hundred yards away. At a spot that is hidden from the open view. I see.’

‘Listen, anyway, folks, I’ll knock away out of it. I’ll see ye.’

‘I’ll tell you now, John, we can do it easy or we can do it hard. Which way would you want it to be?’

‘Easy.’

‘Good man. So how long have you been sleeping with my wife?’

‘Jimmy!’ she cries. ‘This is crazy talk!’

‘Noreen, love, would you ever go upstairs and lock yourself into the bathroom and put the key out under the door for me? I’ll deal with you in due course. John, you might take a seat by the fireplace, please.’

Noreen trots for the stairs. John Martin sits down on a straight-backed chair. Jim Flaherty takes a length of rope from beneath the sink. He comes across the floor, smiling softly in a pair of well-pressed denims.

‘I was wondering all along who it was,’ he says, ‘but you know I never once thought it’d be a Clare man! Then again, you’re nearly always surprised at what looks up at you out of the trap.’