Read Online There Are Little Kingdoms by Kevin Barry - Free Book Online

whatchacallit.’
    The woman from the O.C.B., a tall, thin matron in a green wax jacket, takes a couple of nervous steps back.
    ‘Bastard!’ cries Mary Martin, and she runs screaming to the house, with the small howling dog in her arms.
    The worst of it was that he had crushed two Valium into hot milk and then poured it into his crying child to conk her out. It was Madge’s idea, and they were her tablets, but what kind of a father would do that? And for what turned out to be a five-minute special. And Madge lay there, for the rest of the night, yapping nonsense out of her, smoking her fags.
    ‘That young miss will sleep now sweet as a dream for you, John, you have nothing to worry about there. These are the English Valium, you see, these are the Valium we used get all along. Until they starts making them below in Clonmel. Clonmel! They’re not the same at all and I’m not the only one that’s saying it. Honest to God, John, you might as well be eating Smarties. But I have an arrangement about the English Valiums with the man in the chemist, the man of the McCaffertys. Have you ever noticed, John, the way every single last one of the McCaffertys has the big teeth?’
    He had never put down a night like it.
    He came from a town himself, it wasn’t as if he had background in poultry management. It was not a pleasant setup, not by any stretch, not when a smother of them would go on you, all the disease. There was a young fella in town wore one of the long coats with the badges and he was forever buttonholing John Martin with rants about cruelty. What about the quality of life, he’d say, getting himself all worked up. What about my quality of life, said John Martin. Do you think I’m outside in a palace?
    The poultry shed was bad now. It was bad. But he had mixed feelings about the poultry shed. He had mixed feelings because it was the one place his daughter was calm, it was the one place she never cried out or skittered. She would pull at him to take her there and he’d go. She’d sit there on a pail in her red coat and it was like she was in a chapel.
    He couldn’t get it out of his mind all the following week. Slugging around the place, trying to look after chickens, and it haunting him. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. Madge was handsome but crazy, and he didn’t need any more distractions. There was already the situation with Noreen. There was also the situation with Kelli Carmody at the sports centre, though that was most definitely over. Kelli was nineteen, for Christ’s sake, and they are unpredictable as snakes at that age. He had changed the hours of his workouts to avoid her, and he fully intended to continue doing so. There is only so much a man’s heart can take. He was still getting over Jenna. He knew whenever he saw her at the till in Lidl that he wasn’t fully over her yet. And Yvonne, too, Yvonne Troy was a heartbreaker. So no, there would be no more messing, there would be no situation with Madge. Even if she did have legs that went up to Armagh.
    The woman from the O.C.B. is polite but firm.
    ‘No way, John. I mean, seriously,’ and she half laughs. ‘You’re not even in the ballpark here. We have to maintain standards, you know?’
    ‘I realise,’ he says, through gritted teeth, because the pain is if anything increasing, ‘that there needs to be an improvement in the poultry shed.’
    The woman from the O.C.B. climbs into her jeep. She sits for a moment with her feet held out the door, and yanks off her Wellingtons, one then the other, and flexes her toes in the stockinged feet, then reaches in for the driving shoes. A slight colour comes into her cheeks from the exertion of this.
    ‘I realise,’ he says, ‘that I need to regulate the heat and get a decent run marked off. I realise I need to invigorate the feed.’
    She wears streaks in her hair and the faintest trace of lipstick and her left eye turns in slightly to regard a haughty nose. She isn’t bad at