At the port of Algeciras, in October 2018
Maurice Hearne sits alone in the café bar at the ferry terminal. He turns the remains of a third brandy in its glass. You keep going any way you can. The motions of the alcohol are familiar: the easy warming, the calm sustain, and now the slow grading into remorse. A melancholy hour falleth. As afflicts a gentleman of colourful history. But, if he has nothing else to his name, he has his regrets, and these are not without value to the martyr’s self-portrait displayed in his mind’s eye. I am fifty-one years old, he thinks, and still at least halfways in love with meself. All told you’d have to call it a fucken achievement.
He turns a swivel on the barstool, curiously. He lets the good eye roam – he checks the place out. Spain again – its old, tatty charisma. You wake up again and it’s Spain again. There is another gap between boats. There may be disruptions once more on the Tangier side. Charlie Redmond is having a mad half-hour and is doing the stations of the cross around the terminal – male energy, the excess of. Maurice feels somehow that Dilly is nearby; he knows in his blood that she is near; there is a stirring inside.
And now from the vantage of his years a terrible swoon comes down on him; Cynthia, for a moment, descends all the way through him. This is not a rare occurrence. He will never lose the feeling of the love that they had together, or the nausea of its absence.
Hate is not the answer to love; death is its answer.
*
Night and day an amusement to himself – and he’d want to be, the way the nerves are set – Charlie Redmond approaches at a relaxed, limping pace the hatch that’s marked INFORMACIÓN. He leans on its tilted ledge. With a comedian’s poise he waits on the timing’s beat. As it falls, he addresses, with courtesy, the informaciónista – it’s the same lad, with the bitter face on.
How’re you getting on inside? Charlie says.
He receives no reply.
Good man yourself, he says. You’ve a lovely little face and you’re a great worker. Anyhow. While I have you. I’m looking for three pieces of . . . información. Numero uno. Does this man here, Charlie Redmond, of Farranree, Cork city, in the Free State of Ireland, does he have a sad kind of a look to him?
He pauses with great interest, inclines his head, as if listening to the informaciónista’s response, which is not forthcoming.
I hear you, boy, he says.
He turns to the terminal at large and addresses it, with his arms wide, his palms turned up.
He reckon so. Me soul is in me boots. By this fella’s account? Charles Redmond? A blue-hearted old cove. And is it any wonder? After what these poor eyes have seen? The night I opened a throat up in Dillons Cross? The lad was trying to eat a chicken supper at the time. Mushy peas bouncin’ off the wall. But that’s all in the dim and distant. I’ve more to be dealing with now. Of course my arse isn’t right since Málaga. Since the night of the recent unpleasantness in Málaga. The octopus looking up at me out of the plate? And the octopus wasn’t the worst of Málaga. Not by any means. We needed a steer. We fucken got it too. Anyhow. While I have you?
He turns again to the hatch, leans on it, offers the homicidal grin. His volume control is shot –
Información! Numero dos! This man here, Charlie Redmond, of Farranree, in Cork city, do you reckon he has a vicious kind of a look to him?
He listens, carefully, his face warm and open before the hatch, as if the informaciónista is again giving a detailed response, which he is not. At length, Charlie shakes his head and he turns to the terminal again.
Total savage altogether, he says. By this man’s account. And no wonder, some of the lanes that I’ve been down? Oh, quare lanes, quare lanes. I tell you this. You would not want to see Charles Redmond coming, at a peculiar hour of the night, up the northside estates, in Cork city, and the black eyes on him. I’m talking about back in the day. I mean I’m a pussy cat now. I’m weak as a kitten, in fact, but back in the day? Charlie at the door and the dog beside him? Uh-oh. Especially if there was money owed. You want to talk to the fucken dog about it? And listen. I mean dogs? I had some mighty dogs in my day. There was one fella, Shortie, an outstanding hound, he used to lick the Rizlas for me and I building a number and he could smell a squad car from three quarters of a mile off. Approx. He’d do a special little howl for it.
The ferry terminal at the port of Algeciras is by no means put out by the spectacle of Charlie Redmond addressing its haunted air – we take this very much in our stride.
I mean ye’re looking at a man here, his most auspicious relationships in life have, in many ways, been with dogs. Oftentime.
He returns his attention to the hatch.
And finally, he says. Numero tres. It’s the one we’ve all been waiting for. Three Qs is all you get and I’m not going to argue with that. You can’t beat the machine. So, finally . . . Does this man here, Charlie Redmond, of Cork city, Ireland, on the evidence of what you can see right now, just here, before thee, through your busy little masturbator’s eyes, does this poor Charlie have the look of a man who’s known love in his life?
He listens carefully to the response that is not given.
Okay, he says, and he returns to sit on the bench.
You have me, he says. You can see it all too clearly. The nature of Charlie Red’s affliction . . . I knew love but I lost it.
*
There is a ripple of energy through the building and it’s anticipatory – it feels as if a boat may be about to come or go. Maurice Hearne lugs his unease from the bar downstairs to the waiting area. There comes a time when you just have to live among your ghosts. You keep the conversation going. Elsewise the broad field of the future opens out as nothing but a vast emptiness.
Think about the fucken good times, Moss, he tells himself.
The first six months on heroin with Cynthia were the most beautiful days of all time. Love and opiates – this is unimprovable in the human sphere. Like young gods they walked out. Some night coming down Wellington Road from St Luke’s. Some Friday night in the rain. That was the best night that ever was.
It was kind of wild, Cynthia, wasn’t it? It was all a bit too fucken wild, really.
He goes to the bench just west of the hatch marked INFORMACIÓN and joins Charlie Redmond there. His oldest friend; his old rival.
*
What’s it they got now, Maurice? The word?
For which is this, Charlie?
The hydro-what’s-it, Moss?
Ponic, Charlie. You mean the hydroponic?
Hydro-cuntology is what it is, Maurice. You know what it means? It means the end for the likes of you and me.
Ah, listen. We’re the Antiques Roadshow. The little fuckers growing it in their own bedrooms? Under lights? The dope they’re growing in the West of Ireland now you wouldn’t get it in the Rif Mountains.
Or they’re buying it off the fucken internet.
It’s very sad to see, Charles.
It’s not right, Maurice.
It’s an end to a whole way of being.
The likes of you and me won’t pass this way again, Moss.
They turn to look at each other, softly – the air is weighted, memorial.
We been through a lot, old pal.
Where would we even begin, Charlie?
Nights in Berehaven we kicked each other around the road?
Nights on the high seas?
The night at the Judas Iscariot?
Ah, don’t go there, Charlie . . . Please.
We had our good times too, Moss.
We did, yeah.
There were times the luck turned right. Hardly the arse of a trouser between us and we’d find ourselves in Casablanca. We’d find ourselves in Puerto Banús. We’d be atein’ rings around us in Marbella. There was a time the business was booming.
You know why, Charlie? Because if Irish people are martyrs for the drink, they’re worse again for the dope, once they get the taste for it, because it eases the anxiety, and we’re a very anxious people.
Why wouldn’t we be, Moss? I mean Jesus Christ in the garden, after all that we been through? Dragging ourselves around that wet tormented rock on the edge of the black Atlantic for the months and years never-ending and the long gawpy faces screamin’ for the light and the jaws operatin’ on wires and the pale little yellow arses hanging out the back end of us?
Dope be the only thing get us through, Charles.
*
A ferry boat arrives from the port of Tangier. Its tired crowd straggles through the terminal. It’s as if an ordeal has been passed through. The short crossing to Algeciras can play an odd music inside – trouble has passed this way before, and the old journeys reverberate still.
The men watch on as a new crowd starts to congregate – the ferry may sail again later.
Dilly Hearne enters the terminal and now she is among the crowd.
Her hair is worn in a bleached pixie crop shorn high and tightly at the sides. She wears vintage Polaroid sunglasses, a pair of men’s pinstripe trousers buckled high at the waist and a white zip-up Veja hoodie. She pulls a trolley case behind her. She moves inside an aura of calm – at twenty-three years old she is already queenly.
She sees the two men on the bench by the INFORMACIÓN hatch, the way that they scan the crowd, and at once she averts her face from them, and veers away.
She goes to the bar upstairs. She watches from there and she allows her breath to slow, or she tries to. Her heart slaloms and thumps in its cage. Her blood races. She watches over the top of her sunglasses –
Yes, it’s Maurice, turning his good eye around the floor, and yes, it’s Charlie, rising now, heartbreakingly, and limping slowly towards the hatch on his old drag-along step.
Okay, Dilly says, and she turns to the bar and orders a brandy.