Free Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry

arrived back on the scene.
    ‘Oh, Alvie!’ she cried. ‘You’ll never guess!’
    ‘Oh?’ said the landlord, all the jauntiness instantly gone from him.
    ‘This is
Maurice
!’
    ‘Maurice?’ he said. ‘You’re joking …’
    It was polite handshakes then, and feigned interest in Mo on the landlord’s part, and a wee fat hand he slipped around the small of his wife’s back.
    ‘We’ll be suppin’ up,’ said John Mosely, sternly.
    Mo had a last, whispered word with Barbara but her smile was fixed now and the landlord remained in close attendance. As we left, Mo looked back and raised his voice a note too loud. Desperate, he was.
    ‘Barbara?’
    We dragged him along. We’d had word of notable pork scratchings up the Mangy Otter.
    ‘Do tell, Maur
ice
,’ said Tom N.
    ‘Leave him be,’ said John Mosely.
    ‘An ex, that’s all,’ said Mo.
    And Llandudno was infernal. Families raged in the heat. All of the kids wept. The Otter was busyish when we sludged in. We settled on a round of St Austell Tributes from a meagre selection. Word had not been wrong on the quality of the scratchings. And the St Austell turned out to be in top form.
    ‘I’d be thinking in terms of a seven,’ said Everett Bell.
    ‘Or a shade past that?’ said John Mosely.
    ‘You could be right on higher than sevens,’ said Billy Stroud. ‘But surely we’re not calling it an eight?’
    ‘Here we go,’ I said.
    ‘Now this,’ said Billy Stroud, ‘is where your 7.5s would come in.’
    ‘We’ve heard this song, Billy,’ said John Mosely.
    ‘He may not be wrong, John,’ said Everett.
    ‘Give him a 7.5,’ said John Mosely, ‘and he’ll be wanting his 6.3s, his 8.6s. There’d be no bloody end to it!’
    ‘Tell you what,’ said Mo. ‘How about I catch up with you all a bit later? Where’s next on the list?’
    We stared at the carpet. It had diamonds on and crisps ground into it.
    ‘Next up is the Crippled Ox on Burton Square,’ I read from my printout. ‘Then it’s Henderson’s on Old Parade.’
    ‘See you at one or the other,’ said Mo.
    He threw back the dregs of his St Austell and was gone.
    We decided on another at the Otter. There was a Whitstable Silver Star, 6.2 per cent to volume, a regular stingo to settle our nerves.
    ‘What’s the best you’ve ever had?’ asked Tom N.
    It’s a conversation that comes up again and again but it was a life-saver just then: it took our minds off Mo.
    ‘Put a gun to my head,’ said Big John, ‘and I don’t think I could look past the draught Bass I had with me dad in Peter Kavanagh’s. Sixteen years of age, Friday teatime, first wage slip in my arse pocket.’
    ‘But was it the beer or the occasion, John?’
    ‘How can you separate the two?’ he said, and we all sighed.
    ‘For depth? Legs? Back-note?’ said Everett Bell. ‘I’d do well to ever best the Swain’s Anthem I downed a November Tuesday in Stockton-on-Tees: 19 and 87. 4.2 per cent to volume. I was still in haulage at that time.’
    ‘I’ve had an Anthem,’ said Billy Stroud of this famously hard-to-find brew, ‘and I’d have to say I found it an unexceptional ale.’
    Everett made a face.
    ‘So what’d be your all-time, Billy?’
    The ex-Marxist knitted his fingers atop the happy mound of his belly.
    ‘Ridiculous question,’ he said. ‘There is so much wonderful ale on this island. How is a sane man to separate a Pelham High Anglican from a Warburton’s Saxon Fiend? And we haven’t even mentioned the great Belgian tradition. Your Duvel’s hardly a dishwater. Then there’s the Czechs, the Poles, the Germans …’
    ‘Gassy pop!’ cried Big John, no fan of a German brew, of a German anything.
    ‘Nonsense,’ said Billy. ‘A Paulaner Weissbier is a sensational sup on its day.’
    ‘Where’d you think Mo’s headed?’ Tom N cut in.
    Everett groaned:
    ‘He’ll be away down the Prom View, won’t he? Big ape.’
    ‘Mo a ladykiller?’ said Tom. ‘There’s one for breaking