Free Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry Page A

news.’
    ‘No harm if it meant he smartened himself up a bit,’ said John.
    ‘He has let himself go,’ said Billy. ‘Since the testicle.’
    ‘You’d plant spuds in those ears,’ I said.
    The Whitstables had us in fighting form. We were away up the Crippled Ox. We found there a Miner’s Slattern on cask. TV news showed sardine beaches and motorway chaos. There was an internet machine on the wall, a pound for ten minutes, and Billy Stroud went to consult the meteorological satellites. The Slattern set me pensive
    Strange, I thought, how I myself had wound up a Real Ale Club stalwart. 1995, October, I’d found myself in motorway services outside Ormskirk having a screaming barny with the missus. We were moving back to her folks’ place in Northern Ireland. From dratted Leicester. We were heading for the ferry at Stranraer. At services, missus told me I was an idle lardarse who had made her life hell and she never wanted to see me again. We’d only stopped off to fill the tyres. She gets in, slams the door, puts her foot down . Give her ten minutes, I thought, she’ll calm down and turn back for me. Two hours later, I’m sat in an empty Chinese in services, weeping, and eating Szechuan beef. I call a taxi. Taxi comes. I says where are we, exactly? Bloke looks at me. He says Ormskirk direction. I says what’s the nearest city of any size? Drop you in Liverpool for twenty quid, he says. He leaves me off downtown and I look for a pub. Spot the Ship and Mitre and in I go. I find a stunning row of pumps. I call a Beaver Mild out of Devon.
    ‘I wouldn’t,’ says a bloke with a beard down the bar.
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Try a Marston’s Old Familiar,’ he says, and it turns out he’s Billy Stroud.
    The same Billy turned from the internet machine at the Ox in Llandudno.
    ‘37.9,’ he said. ‘Bristol Airport, a shade after three. Flights delayed, tarmac melting.’
    ‘Pig heat,’ said Tom N.
    ‘We won’t suffer much longer,’ said Billy. ‘There’s a change due.’
    ‘Might get a night’s sleep,’ said Everett.
    The hot nights were certainly a torment. Lying there with a sheet stuck to your belly. Thoughts coming loose, beer fumes rising, a manky arse. The city beyond the flat throbbing with summer. Usually I’d get up and have a cup of tea, watch some telly. Astrophysics on Beeb Two at four in the morning, news from the galaxies, and light already in the eastern sky. I’d dial the number in Northern Ireland and then hang up before they could answer.
    Mo arrived into the Ox like the ghost of Banquo. There were terrible scratch marks down his left cheek.
    ‘A Slattern will set you right, kid,’ said John Mosely, discreetly, and he manoeuvred his big bones barwards.
    Poor Mo was wordless as he stared into the ale that was put before him. Billy Stroud sneaked a time-out signal to Big John.
    ‘We’d nearly give Henderson’s a miss,’ agreed John.
    ‘As well get back to known terrain,’ said Everett.
    We climbed the hot streets towards the station. We stocked up with some Cumberland Pedigrees, 3.4 per cent to volume, always an easeful drop. The train was busy with daytrippers heading back. We sipped quietly. Mo looked half dead as he slumped there but now and then he’d come up for a mouthful of his Pedigree.
    ‘How’s it tasting, kiddo?’ chanced Everett.
    ‘Like a ten,’ said Mo, and we all laughed.
    The flicker of his old humour reassured us. The sun descended on Colwyn Bay and there was young life everywhere. I’d only spoken to her once since Ormskirk. We had details to finalise, and she was happy to let it slip about her new bloke. Some twat called Stan.
    ‘He’s emotionally spectacular,’ she said.
    ‘I’m sorry to hear it, love,’ I said. ‘Given you’ve been through the wringer with me.’
    ‘I mean in a good way!’ she barked. ‘I mean in a
calm
way!’
    We’d a bit of fun coming up the Dee Estuary with the Welsh place names.
    ‘Fy … feen … no. Fiiiif … non … fyff …