his way. He stands in the yellow artificial light, like a figure in a frieze, stands as he has done for years, drawing pints, never once remarking on his customers or entering into any conversation with them. The wall clock seems both loud and slurpish.
‘It’s not like you to have a third pint’ he says and she knows that that is his way of being friendly.
She thinks she will sit a while longer, then drive out to the lake road and Sven will be under a tree sheltering from the summer rain and she will stop and he will get in. At first he will be quite formal, talking with a kind of evangelism of some new theory of his and in time taking her hand, holding it, and then they will park the car and go in their little lost road, the trees all in bud, catkins like feathered tapers, the blossom in mazed and snowy whiteness, thralling in the moonlight, bridal trees in the brief ravishment of springtime.
But he was not there and she wept at her rashness, her false pride and her grandiloquent speech about being alone. Alone alone alone, the word galled her, like the hungry cry of some cormorant, far out at sea.
Joy Ride
Cissy’s new car is outside her front door, a chocolate coloured ornament, the sheer metal a mirror in which passers-by can glance at themselves. Cissy doubles as sacristan and hackney driver, is run off her feet and has gone in to grab a cup of coffee before taking a French man to the airport. From the windscreen an ivory virgin dangles down, a relic to protect her, and her rosary beads are in the glove box along with a bag of peppermints and a map.
O’Kane, sporting a new growth of moustache, jaunts down the tow path and stops to admire it, reaches in and as he turns the key the engine comes to life and he thrills to it. Within seconds he is tearing down the street and sees her in the rear mirror, a grey haired harridan, flapping like a turkey. Dogs and children scatter before him and two older men on a street bench stand up and gape after him. He drives towards the next town but bypasses it and goes on up towards the mountain, over the bumpy roads where he can give her a good ride. Ursula he named her, after that cow in the jail. She is full of juice. She bounces and rocks and sways and swags as if there is no ground, as if he is flying it. Wild horses and wild ponies appear in speckled splashes, leaping and whirling into the air, the needle jigging, the engine racing and a high that he hasn’t had in over two years. Yelling with excitement he talks to himself -‘Ride her cowboy . . . yonder yonder.’
It is evening before he makes his way over the rim of the mountain and down a rough ravine to the edge of the wood that is his favourite, the wood where he hid as a kid, before the scumbags got him and with a squealing and sprawling suddenness the car comes to a stop and he knows why it is that he has come here. He gets out. ‘Welcome home son . . . you did us proud . . . didn’t let the bastards get to you.’ It is the wood talking to him, the trees thicker now, the trees where he hid and where his mother came and found him, the spot where he kept old cushions, the mass of cover dark even in daylight. He searches in his pocket for a rag and finding none he tears a strip from the tail of his shirt, unscrews the nozzle and dunks the cloth in it, then lays it on the front seat, about to witness his first glorious spectacular. No sooner had he struck the match than the seat caught, like it had been waiting for it, the flames breaking free and spreading, sheets of flame, flags of flame, orange, crimson, roaring and crackling. The tyres starting to burst, their bursts like priests farting, the windows beginning to crack, beads of glass falling onto the ground, flame flitting across his face and he sucking big scoops of air, flouting his importance, Davey and Lazlo and fuckers all cheering him on.
He decides to make a party of it, ask people up. He puts his arm out to catch a burning lady, an Ursula, a cunt.
‘It’s not like you to have a third pint’ he says and she knows that that is his way of being friendly.
She thinks she will sit a while longer, then drive out to the lake road and Sven will be under a tree sheltering from the summer rain and she will stop and he will get in. At first he will be quite formal, talking with a kind of evangelism of some new theory of his and in time taking her hand, holding it, and then they will park the car and go in their little lost road, the trees all in bud, catkins like feathered tapers, the blossom in mazed and snowy whiteness, thralling in the moonlight, bridal trees in the brief ravishment of springtime.
But he was not there and she wept at her rashness, her false pride and her grandiloquent speech about being alone. Alone alone alone, the word galled her, like the hungry cry of some cormorant, far out at sea.
Joy Ride
Cissy’s new car is outside her front door, a chocolate coloured ornament, the sheer metal a mirror in which passers-by can glance at themselves. Cissy doubles as sacristan and hackney driver, is run off her feet and has gone in to grab a cup of coffee before taking a French man to the airport. From the windscreen an ivory virgin dangles down, a relic to protect her, and her rosary beads are in the glove box along with a bag of peppermints and a map.
O’Kane, sporting a new growth of moustache, jaunts down the tow path and stops to admire it, reaches in and as he turns the key the engine comes to life and he thrills to it. Within seconds he is tearing down the street and sees her in the rear mirror, a grey haired harridan, flapping like a turkey. Dogs and children scatter before him and two older men on a street bench stand up and gape after him. He drives towards the next town but bypasses it and goes on up towards the mountain, over the bumpy roads where he can give her a good ride. Ursula he named her, after that cow in the jail. She is full of juice. She bounces and rocks and sways and swags as if there is no ground, as if he is flying it. Wild horses and wild ponies appear in speckled splashes, leaping and whirling into the air, the needle jigging, the engine racing and a high that he hasn’t had in over two years. Yelling with excitement he talks to himself -‘Ride her cowboy . . . yonder yonder.’
It is evening before he makes his way over the rim of the mountain and down a rough ravine to the edge of the wood that is his favourite, the wood where he hid as a kid, before the scumbags got him and with a squealing and sprawling suddenness the car comes to a stop and he knows why it is that he has come here. He gets out. ‘Welcome home son . . . you did us proud . . . didn’t let the bastards get to you.’ It is the wood talking to him, the trees thicker now, the trees where he hid and where his mother came and found him, the spot where he kept old cushions, the mass of cover dark even in daylight. He searches in his pocket for a rag and finding none he tears a strip from the tail of his shirt, unscrews the nozzle and dunks the cloth in it, then lays it on the front seat, about to witness his first glorious spectacular. No sooner had he struck the match than the seat caught, like it had been waiting for it, the flames breaking free and spreading, sheets of flame, flags of flame, orange, crimson, roaring and crackling. The tyres starting to burst, their bursts like priests farting, the windows beginning to crack, beads of glass falling onto the ground, flame flitting across his face and he sucking big scoops of air, flouting his importance, Davey and Lazlo and fuckers all cheering him on.
He decides to make a party of it, ask people up. He puts his arm out to catch a burning lady, an Ursula, a cunt.
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