Night Boat to Tangier

  Kevin Barry is the author of the novels Beatlebone and City of Bohane and two short story collections, Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. He was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2007 and won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize in 2012. For City of Bohane he was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Award, and won the Author’s Club First Novel Prize, the European Prize for Literature and the IMPAC Prize. Beatlebone was the winner of the Goldsmith Prize and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards.

  Also by Kevin Barry

  There Are Little Kingdoms

  City of Bohane

  Dark Lies the Island

  Beatlebone

  First published in Great Britain in 2019

  by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  canongate.co.uk

  This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Kevin Barry, 2019

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78211 617 2

  eISBN 978 1 78211 619 6

  For Olivia

  ‘In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.’

  Federico García Lorca

  Contents

  Chapter One: The Girls and the Dogs

  Chapter Two: The Tattooed Tit

  Chapter Three: Coast of Barbary

  Chapter Four: Lovers at the North Gate

  Chapter Five: Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters

  Chapter Six: An Enchantment

  Chapter Seven: Their Afflictions

  Chapter Eight: The Judas Iscariot All-Night Drinking Club

  Chapter Nine: Natural Mystic

  Chapter Ten: The Gesture Wound

  Chapter Eleven: The Last Night of Our Acquaintance

  Chapter Twelve: It’s Movie Night at the Bughouse

  Chapter Thirteen: Cynthia and Dilly – The Quiet Story

  Chapter Fourteen: A Rainy Night in Algeciras

  Chapter One

  THE GIRLS AND THE DOGS

  At the port of Algeciras, in October 2018

  Would you say there’s any end in sight, Charlie?

  I’d say you nearly have an answer to that question already, Maurice.

  Two Irishmen sombre in the dank light of the terminal make gestures of long-sufferance and woe – they are born to such gestures, and offer them easily.

  It is night in the old Spanish port of Algeciras.

  Oh, and this is as awful a place as you could muster – you’d want the eyes sideways in your head.

  The ferry terminal has a haunted air, a sinister feeling. It reeks of tired bodies, and dread.

  There are scraps of frayed posters – the missing.

  There are customs announcements – the narcotraficante.

  A blind man roils in night sweat and clicks his teeth to sell lottery tickets like a fat, rattling serpent – he’s doing nothing for the place.

  The Irishmen look out blithely at the faces that pass by in a blur of the seven distractions – love, grief, pain, sentimentality, avarice, lust, want-of-death.

  Above them a café bar reached by escalator hisses with expectancy, clinks of life.

  There is a hatch with a sign marked INFORMACIÓN – tell us more – and a small ledge tilts out from it, questioningly.

  Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond sit on a bench just a few yards west of the hatch. They are in their low fifties. The years are rolling out like tide now. There is old weather on their faces, on the hard lines of their jaws, on their chaotic mouths. But they retain – just about – a rakish air.

  Now, in precise tandem, they turn their faces to the hatch marked INFORMACIÓN.

  You want to hop back there, Charlie, have another word? See about this next boat that’s due in?

  Yeah, but the same lad is still on. The lad with the bitter face on him. He’s not a talker, Moss.

  Try him, Charlie.

  Charlie Redmond rises up from the bench in a bundle of sighs. He unfolds his long bones. He approaches the hatch. He’s lame, and he drags the right peg in a soft, brushing motion, with practised ease. He throws his elbows onto the counter. His aura is of brassy menace. He wears a cornerboy’s grimace. His Spanish pronunciation is very much from the northside of Cork city.

  Hola y buenos noches, he says.

  He waits it out for a long beat, looks over his shoulder, calls back to Maurice.

  No response, Moss. Bitter face on him still.

  Maurice shakes his head sadly.

  I fucken hate ignorance, he says.

  Charlie tries again.

  Hola? Excuse me? Trying to find out about this next boat coming in, this boat from Tangier? Or . . . going out?

  A blue silence; a gesture.

  Charlie looks back to his friend and mimics the informaciónista’s shrug.

  All I’m getting here is the shoulders, Maurice.

  Habla Inglés is what you say to him, Charlie.

  But Charlie throws up his hands and shuffles back to the bench.

  Habla my hole, he says. All he’s doing is giving me the shoulders, giving me the eyes.

  Face on him like a bad marriage, Maurice says.

  He turns sharply and screeches at the hatch –

  Lose the fucken face!

  – and now humorously grins.

  Maurice Hearne’s jaunty, crooked smile will appear with frequency. His left eye is smeared and dead, the other oddly bewitched, as though with an excess of life, for balance. He wears a shabby suit, an open-necked black shirt, white runners and a derby hat perched high on the back of his head. Dudeish, at one time, certainly, but past it now.

  You’ve him told, Maurice. You’ve manners put on the boy.

  Charlie Redmond? The face somehow has an antique look, like a court player’s, medieval, a man who’d strum his lute for you. In some meadowsweet lair. Hot, adulterous eyes and again a shabby suit, but dapper shoes in a rusted-orange tone, a pair of suede-finish creepers that whisper of brothels, also a handsome green corduroy neck-tie. Also, stomach trouble, bags like graves beneath the eyes, and soul trouble.

  Laid on the floor, between the men’s feet, there is a hold-all – it’s a fucked-up old Adidas.

  All the years we been coming here, Charlie?

  I know it.

  You think we’d have the lingo got.

  Slow learners, Maurice.

  Tell me about it. Poor little Maurice Hearne, from Togher, down the back of the class, minding the coats.

  Now the bone-tip of Charlie’s snout twitches to read a change on the terminal’s air.

  Policía, he says.

  Where at?

  You watching? Over.

  Fear of God in me. Arrange your face, Charlie.

  Tell you what, Moss? I wouldn’t fancy your chances in the Algeciras jailhouse. Know what I’m saying? Inside in a mixed cell?

  I’m too pretty for a mixed cell, Charlie. I’d be someone’s missus inside half an hour. Pedro, come in there, your dinner’s ready.

  The policía fade into the crowd again.

  The crowd is by the moment thickening.

  Nobody knows what’s coming or going over the Straits tonight – there are disputes on the far side; there is trouble in Tangier, and not for the first time.

  There could be hours in this, Maurice.

  They won’t move until the 23rd. It’s not midnight yet.

  Yeah, but which end of the 23rd? They move at five past twelve tonight? Five to twelve tomorrow night? It’s still the fucken 23rd. We might have a day to wait it o
ut.

  Through the high windows there is an essay on the complicated light at the port of Algeciras. From the glare of the arclights, the lingering of pollutants and the refraction of heat left by the late October sun, the air is thick and smoky, and it makes the night glow a vivid thing, and dense. It is more than heavy enough for the ghosts that it holds suspended here above us.

  A tannoy announcement cranks up – a rush of fast Spanish consonants in the fierce Andalusian idiom – and the men are annoyed by the intrusion.

  The announcement becomes more breathless and complex as it goes on – we are in the suburbs of hysteria – and, lacking the language, the men are puzzled by it, and irate.

  At length, the announcement fades out, and ends, and they turn to look at each other.

  That’s not telling us a whole lot really, is it, Maurice?

  No, Charlie. No, it is not.

  Maurice Hearne rises from the bench and stretches out to the full extent of himself. He listens with concern to the creaking of his joints – mother of fuck. He feels out the lizardy nodes of his spine.

  How Jesus at Gethsemane wept, he says.

  He squints morbidly towards the high windows and now, with a quick silent look, he questions his old friend; from Charlie Redmond comes a sigh in tired assent.

  From the Adidas hold-all the men take out bunches of laser-printed flyers. Each flyer shows the image of a girl about twenty years old. The girl is Dilly Hearne. Her whereabouts now are uncertain.

  *

  It’s about a young girl we’re looking for, Maurice says.

  This man’s daughter we’re looking for. The man haven’t seen his daughter in three years.

  Photo’s a bit old now, but she’d still have the same kind of gaatch to her, I’d say.

  Maurice? They’re not going to know gaatch from their fucken elbows.

  Photo’s old now, but she’d still have the same kind of . . . Same kind of look to her, I’d say.

  She’s a small girl. She’s a pretty girl. She’d probably still have the dreadlocks.

  Dreadlocks, you know? Bob Marley? Jah Rastafari?

  She might have a dog or two with her, I’d say.

  Dog on a rope kind of thing?

  She’s a pretty girl. She’s twenty-three years of age by now. She’ll be dreadlock Rastafari.

  You know what we’re going to need, Charlie?

  What’s that, Moss?

  We’re going to need the Spanish for crusty.

  Crusty types? Charlie tries. Hairy bastards? New Age-traveller types? That what ye call them?

  And, in an aside –

  I wouldn’t mind, Maurice, but these cunts invented the whole concept of crusty.

  On account of they’d have the weather for it, Charlie. Lounging on their black-sand beaches. With all the girls and the dogs.

  *

  I suppose I do have the odd word, Moss. Thinking on. I mean, lingo-wise.

  Hit me up, Charlie.

  Supermercado.

  What’s that when it’s at home?

  Tesco.

  I’ve a few I remember. Like . . . Gorrión?

  Go where?

  Gorrión! From a time I spent in Cádiz . . . Did I ever tell you one time, Charlie, I was in love with an older lady, in Cádiz?

  I’d nearly have remembered, Maurice.

  We used to make love all night, Charles.

  You were younger then.

  And you know what she’d do for me in the mornings?

  I’m all ears.

  She’d feed me sparrows, Charlie.

  They’d fucken ate anything, wouldn’t they? This crowd.

  Gorrión! Sparrow!

  If it’s not nailed down, they’ll ate it. Into the frying pan, down the gullet. But it must be class of greasy first thing, Moss? A little sparrow?

  Greasy like John Travolta. And not a lot of atein’ on them bones, it has to be said.

  Personally speaking, Maurice? My arse isn’t right since the octopus we ate in Málaga.

  Is it saying hello to you, Charlie?

  It is, yeah. And of course the octopus wasn’t the worst of Málaga.

  No, it wasn’t.

  Not by a long shot, boy.

  *

  The sound of the night at the Port of Algeciras –

  The newsy static of tannoy announcements.

  The hard insect drone of police boats on the harbour.

  The soft hubbub of the ever-moving crowd in the terminal building.

  Outside –

  An attack dog barks a yard of stars.

  A jet from the army base breaks the sky.

  Inside –

  A soft-headed kid in singsong makes an Arabic prayer.

  An espresso spout gushes laughingly.

  And, stretching out his long, spindle legs, crossing them at the ankles, knitting his fingers, clasping his hands behind his head, Charlie Redmond looks high to consider the vaulted reaches of the terminal building, and the vagaries of life that are general.

  You know the tragic thing, Maurice?

  What’s that, Charlie?

  I haven’t enjoyed a mirror since 1994.

  You were gorgeous in your day, Charles.

  I was a stunner! And sharp as a blade.

  Maurice turns left, turns right, to loosen out the kinks in his neck. Images slice through him. The wood at Ummera, in north Cork, where he spent his first years. And Dilly as a kid, when he’d walk her through London’s grey-white winter, Stroud Green Road. And Cynthia, in the place outside Berehaven, on the morning sheets as the sun streamed through.

  I suppose I was an unlikely sex symbol, he says. I mean you put this old mug together, on paper, and it don’t make any sense. But somehow?

  There’s a magic. Or was, Moss. There was.

  They look into the distance. They send up their sighs. Their talk is a shield against feeling. They pick up the flyers and rise again. They offer them to passers-by – few are accepted. Sympathy is offered in the soft downturn of glances. The missing here make a silent army.

  Her name’s Dill or Dilly, Charlie says.

  She was in Granada maybe? Not long ago.

  She might be with a gang of them, I’d say. They kind of move in packs, like?

  They move in shoals, the crustaceans.

  Dilly Hearne, twenty-three, a pretty girl, with dreadlocks, and dogs, and she have pale green eyes.

  Off the mother she took the eyes. The mother was a left-footer from Kinsale.

  God rest her.

  Green eyes and low-size. Dill or Dilly?

  Maurice?

  Charlie has clocked a young man’s arrival in the terminal. Now Maurice notes it too. The man is in his early twenties, dreadlocked, wearing combat trousers and army-surplus boots, and carrying a rucksack in a state of comic dis-habille. He has a dog on a rope. He throws down his rucksack. He is deeply tanned. Dirt also is grained into his skin – the red dirt of the mountains. He takes out a litre carton of vino tinto. He takes a saucer from the rucksack, pours a little wine onto it and offers it to his dog. When he speaks, it is with an English accent, countryish, from the West Country.

  Cheers, Lorca, he says. Your good health, mate.

  Maurice and Charlie watch on with interest. They exchange a dry look. The dog laps at the wine; the young man pats the dog and laughs. Maurice and Charlie approach the man. They stand silently smiling before him. He looks up at once with a measure of fear, and he takes the rope, as if to hold the dog back. Maurice turns his smile to the dog, and he clenches his tongue between his teeth, and spits a hard

  Ksssssssstt!

  *

  But Charlie Redmond? He’s a natural with dogs. He reaches a long hand for Lorca, takes the paw, shakes it. He bats at the dog with his free, open palm, gently, about the eyes, as though to mesmerise, just little back-and-forth movements of the palm, and the animal is at once besotted.

  Maurice and Charlie sit on the bench just west of the hatch marked INFORMACIÓN at the Algeciras ferr
y terminal on an October night with the ragged young man wedged firmly between them.

  All three consider the laughing, the lovestruck dog.

  He’s a lovely fella, isn’t he? Charlie says.

  He’s a dote, Maurice says.

  A dotey old pet, Charlie says. What you say his name was?

  His name’s Lorca.

  And your own name?

  I’m Benny.

  Good man, Ben.

  Benny and Lorca. Lovely. He’s named for the little winger lad, is he? Used be at Real Madrid? Around the same time as Zidane?

  Little dazzler fella? Maurice says. A jinky winger type?

  I always loved a little winger, Charlie says. A slight fella and fast.

  Nippy little dazzler, Maurice says. Twist your blood and you trying to mark him.

  That was kind of your own style and all, Moss?

  Oh, I definitely had a turn of pace, Charles.

  You were very quick over the first five yards.

  But I lacked a first touch, Charlie.

  You were always hard on yourself.

  Benny rises and reaches for his dog – he wants to get away from these odd gentlemen.

  Boys, I got to think about making a move, he says.

  But Charlie reaches out a friendly hand and lets it hover there, for a moment of comic effect, and now it snaps a clamp on the shoulder and presses the young English firmly down to the bench.

  There’s no rush on you, Ben. You know what I’m saying?

  But listen, Benny says.

  Maurice flicks to a stand and pushes his face close in to Benny’s.

  Dilly Hearne is the girl’s name, he says. Dill or Dilly?

  She’d be twenty-three years of age now, that kind of way? Charlie says.

  I don’t know no Dill or Dilly! I don’t know no . . .

  Irish girl?

  I known some Irish.

  Is that right? Charlie says.

  But I don’t know a Dill or Dilly. I mean . . .

  Where’d you know these Irish? Where at, Ben? Was this in Granada, was it?

  I don’t know! I mean I’ve met loads of fucking . . .

  Benjamin? Maurice says. We’re not saying ye all know each other or anything, like. Sure there could be a half million of ye sweet children in Spain. The way things are going.

  Charlie whispers –