Free Beatlebone by Kevin Barry Page A

worried about the number nine. He starts to have a thing about the elevator. He listens to strange music. He obsesses about the number fucking nine. He stays up all night. He reads about Stockhausen. He reads about Howard Hughes. He reads about what’s-his-face, fucking Rimbaud. He watches bits of telly. He does all the telly voices. He is Greta Garbo. He is Captain America. He has mad energy sometimes and sometimes he has fucking zero. He is the Peanut Farmer Carter, he is Mao Tse-tung. Strange thoughts come unbidden—the world is full of hollows and the world is full of graves. Sometimes he plays the guitar but not often. He does all the telly voices—he is a cowboy, he is a spaceman, he is a pimp. He sends out for books on the occult. He talks on the phone to California, to Liverpool. He hums and coos and burps the baby—the baby spews. He sends tidy sums to radical causes. He is bone dry in terms of actual fucking songs is the sorry fucking truth of it all. He reads some Aleister Crowley—he’s a right fucking laugh. He has zero fucking songs is the point of it all. He finds a channel that shows Monty Python at five in the morning. Baby spew the sour milk smell the bloody motherhood. He orders in. Bring us your raw fish and your pizza pie. One night he catches himself having a right good weep in front of a Pete-and-Dudley. He sits and looks across the sky and across the park and towers and it means nothing to him at all. He has no fucking songs. He is that happy he wants to Scream.
    ———
    Violent confrontation, John.
    This is Joe Director.
    It’s the only way to strip it all down and see what lies beneath. We’ve got to peel our skins back.
    You reckon?
    I do. And it’s never easy. It causes a lot of pain. We’ve got to open up the clam shell. It’s shut so very tight. I mean let’s look at you, John. On the surface? Deviant genius.
    Thank you very much.
    But deep inside? I’d very much like to know. And I think you would, too, John.
    From upstairs a dead velvety hush is loaded with the weight of their listening.
    Sometimes it’s difficult, John. I won’t deny it. It can be very bloody difficult. We go in hard and we go to very tricky places. It can be deeply fucking unpleasant. But the rants can soften us, too, and sometimes we move very gently through the process. We can deal with tenderness. We can deal with love.
    John fetches another splash of brandy for his mug of nettle tea. The bottle has an odd label in Spanish that shows a black lizard. Okay. The taste of fields in his mouth; the burn of the sexy brandy. Not unlovely.
    The rants are unpredictable, John. Especially ’round here.
    Joe Director: his grin soft with rue.
    Cornelius: his face lit with happy wattage, an idea.
    Mightn’t it be the best place for you, John?
    I beg your pardon?
    I’ll head for the mainland. I’ll see who’s around. I’ll come back by the van and road bridge. I can see at least if the fuckers have cleared.
    You’re saying leave me here?
    They wouldn’t think to spot you at the Amethyst Hotel, John.
    Outside the hills have collapsed into each other and the iron sea moves and he makes for another nip of the firewater.
    Cornelius?
    Yes, John?
    When are we going to get to my fucking island?
    Are you telling me you want to be sat there with eighteen thousand fucken cameras on you and the
News of the
fucken
World
? A few hours, John. I’ll be back with the van and we’ll be away.
    Joe Director aims for a basement stair—
    There’s more where that brandy’s come from.
    He pauses, a bright notion—
    Would you like to burn off some cocaine, John?
    And from upstairs a sky-opening Scream.
    Did I not tell you? They are your own kind precisely, John.
    ———
    Frank and Sue?
    He’s a stunned-looking beanpole with matted blond hair in fag-ash ropes—a honky Rastafari. There is something canine or wolfish. As though born to the dog star. She’s tiny and elf-eyed with busy, travelling tits. Attractive, a-gleam, but