Read Online There Are Little Kingdoms by Kevin Barry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kevin Barry
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with croissants. Then they put in a flower stall and started selling disposable underwater cameras—the better, presumably, to document the coral reefs of the Shannon. Foley went to the supervisor.
‘Come here I want you,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘I want to get one thing clear,’ he said. ‘Just for my own information.’
‘Yes?’
‘Are we a petrol station? Or are we an amusement arcade?’
‘I must say your tone is slightly…’
‘Don’t mind tone. Are we a supermarket?’
‘Now listen…’
‘What the fuck are we?’ cried Foley. ‘Are we Crazy Prices?’
‘There’s no need for your tone, I find it…’
‘I’ll give you tone!’
He lunged for him and that was that. Don’t come around here no more, they told Foley, and it was the end of the seventeen years.
Foley was six foot five on the morning of his fourteenth birthday and half as wide again. This is the original brick shithouse we’re talking about. He was a clown of a child. His father informed him daily he was fit for Fossett’s. There wasn’t a school jumper could be got in the town to fit him. The best his father could do was a chandlers on the Dock Road that stocked a heavy-duty v-neck designed for vast trawlermen sent to face the wrath of the Irish Box. Foley at fourteen wore it to face the Brothers. In cold weather, the rad in the classroom would seize up and to free its workings it needed to be hit a wallop and this became Foley’s job. The teacher would roar down in a hoarse, booze-scratched voice:
‘Foley! Hit that rad an auld slap, boy. You’re good for something anyway, you big eejit.’
And he’d slug across the floor, Foley, and the other boys would do the Jaws music—dah-duh, daaaah-duh, daaaaaaah-duh—and he’d wind up the shoulder, take a swing at the thing with an opened palm and it’d gurgle back to life from the pure shock of force.
Quiet awe would swell in the classroom.
The shovelers call from the reedbeds but they could stand up on tippy-toes and sing Merle Haggard and Foley wouldn’t pay the blindest bit of attention. He’s thinking about the time he had the fucker down and a knee on his throat and he could have closed that windpipe lively but no, what possessed him but he let the bastard go.
He has been told he should try accentuate the positives. And certainly, it hasn’t been Crapsville all the way. He has had small blessings. He has never, for example, had to journey through the regions of romance. That would have been on the rich side. Of course there are sugary men who will croon that love, at length, shines on each and all of us—woo-oooh! woo-oooh!—but no, thanks be to God, love never came next nor near Foley. Not that till he was twenty-six or twenty-seven, and six foot ten in the full of his growth, the big ape, not that he didn’t maintain a glimmer of hope: maybe, oh just maybe… This was a young man listening to enough country and western music to believe just about anything. But he never tried to foretell the detail of it. He never tried to picture it actually come true. Was she really going to float down from the starry sky and put in an appearance on O’Connell Street some Saturday? Walk up to the big tank called Foley and tap him on the shoulder? Settle down and raise enormous children? It wasn’t going to happen, and it never did, and it was sweet relief to give up on even the notion.
He walks on. There has been an unpromising start to the new season—two draws and a loss—and black squalls cross his brow when he thinks of the remarks that have been made. Do not say the wrong thing about Manchester United in the vicinity of Foley. Then the storm clouds will gather. Then you’d want to leave a wide berth. He wears the number seven jersey that says ‘Cantona’ on the back. It’s the biggest size the mail-order people can do but still a tight fit. See him of an evening, sat on the corner stool, there in the shadows, with the dry-roasted nuts, and the pint glass like a
‘Come here I want you,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘I want to get one thing clear,’ he said. ‘Just for my own information.’
‘Yes?’
‘Are we a petrol station? Or are we an amusement arcade?’
‘I must say your tone is slightly…’
‘Don’t mind tone. Are we a supermarket?’
‘Now listen…’
‘What the fuck are we?’ cried Foley. ‘Are we Crazy Prices?’
‘There’s no need for your tone, I find it…’
‘I’ll give you tone!’
He lunged for him and that was that. Don’t come around here no more, they told Foley, and it was the end of the seventeen years.
Foley was six foot five on the morning of his fourteenth birthday and half as wide again. This is the original brick shithouse we’re talking about. He was a clown of a child. His father informed him daily he was fit for Fossett’s. There wasn’t a school jumper could be got in the town to fit him. The best his father could do was a chandlers on the Dock Road that stocked a heavy-duty v-neck designed for vast trawlermen sent to face the wrath of the Irish Box. Foley at fourteen wore it to face the Brothers. In cold weather, the rad in the classroom would seize up and to free its workings it needed to be hit a wallop and this became Foley’s job. The teacher would roar down in a hoarse, booze-scratched voice:
‘Foley! Hit that rad an auld slap, boy. You’re good for something anyway, you big eejit.’
And he’d slug across the floor, Foley, and the other boys would do the Jaws music—dah-duh, daaaah-duh, daaaaaaah-duh—and he’d wind up the shoulder, take a swing at the thing with an opened palm and it’d gurgle back to life from the pure shock of force.
Quiet awe would swell in the classroom.
The shovelers call from the reedbeds but they could stand up on tippy-toes and sing Merle Haggard and Foley wouldn’t pay the blindest bit of attention. He’s thinking about the time he had the fucker down and a knee on his throat and he could have closed that windpipe lively but no, what possessed him but he let the bastard go.
He has been told he should try accentuate the positives. And certainly, it hasn’t been Crapsville all the way. He has had small blessings. He has never, for example, had to journey through the regions of romance. That would have been on the rich side. Of course there are sugary men who will croon that love, at length, shines on each and all of us—woo-oooh! woo-oooh!—but no, thanks be to God, love never came next nor near Foley. Not that till he was twenty-six or twenty-seven, and six foot ten in the full of his growth, the big ape, not that he didn’t maintain a glimmer of hope: maybe, oh just maybe… This was a young man listening to enough country and western music to believe just about anything. But he never tried to foretell the detail of it. He never tried to picture it actually come true. Was she really going to float down from the starry sky and put in an appearance on O’Connell Street some Saturday? Walk up to the big tank called Foley and tap him on the shoulder? Settle down and raise enormous children? It wasn’t going to happen, and it never did, and it was sweet relief to give up on even the notion.
He walks on. There has been an unpromising start to the new season—two draws and a loss—and black squalls cross his brow when he thinks of the remarks that have been made. Do not say the wrong thing about Manchester United in the vicinity of Foley. Then the storm clouds will gather. Then you’d want to leave a wide berth. He wears the number seven jersey that says ‘Cantona’ on the back. It’s the biggest size the mail-order people can do but still a tight fit. See him of an evening, sat on the corner stool, there in the shadows, with the dry-roasted nuts, and the pint glass like a
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