Colm Brady

Rural Existentialism

He became aware, aware of awareness, stuck in a loop of the stuff. He lay unmoving in the state of paralysis that follows waking and wished to arise in a Garrett on the left bank. He knew today his prayers, no wishes, were unanswered as the woman pounded on his door.
“Will you ever get up Ronan and open the back gate for the cows.”
He mumbled and stuck one leg out of the bed. There had been a time when he respected the woman but now he had outgrown the relationship. She had bought his clothes and cooked his meals but no more. Since the emergence of his towering intellect she was an embarrassment to him and he knew he must soon go from here.
He reached for his favourite jersey, not a premiership striker but the Number One Goalies strip with “Camus” emblazoned over the number. He found the shirt ironic and the other lads wanted to know who the hell it was and who had he played for. Soon when his novel was published and they would regret their scorn of his greatness. He walked down the irregularly painted stairs and entered the kitchen. It was warm and an old woman sat by the range nodding to herself.
“Good morning Sonny, have you written that book yet”
“I told you before I have to experience life before I can write”
“Experience life me arse, you have all the schooling you need.”
He shrugged and tackled his porridge as the other woman came in.
“Did I hear bad language in this house?”
The older woman continued her nodding and the young man stared into the glutinous porridge. Poor Morrissey must also have had to overcome great ignorance and apathy from those surrounding him. How else could he have come up with a lyric like:
And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine
“ Go down and open that gate at the head of the road before your father gets there with the cows.”
“More drudgery for the son of the soil.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing “
He checked the side pockets of his black combat trousers and his notebook and Sartre paperback were there. At least he could read a bit while he waited for the herd.
He walked up the autumn lane trying to decide if he liked Bauhaus ; on one hand they were cool and pretentious while on the other they sounded like shite. He resolved to endorse them by writing their name on his army surplus bag but would stop short of buying their tape.
A girl’s voice filtered through the hedge.
“Well Ronan how is it hanging?”
He was startled and looked up to see a red haired girl in a green combat jacket staring down at him from the hedge. She had been in his class in the national school but was now going to the convent. She was considered a bit unpredictable like her parents. It was typical of her to interrupt his reverie – you wouldn’t see that in Montmartre.
“Hi” was all he said as he continued to walk up the lane. She kept pace with him along the ditch.
“Are you on for going to Paris on Friday?”
“Paris” he sputtered “ what do you know about Paris?”
“We are all going ; me, Murtagh and the twins”
“To Paris?”
“Yeah it’s the new name for the nightclub at the Fountain Blue”
He gave a gasp of relief - the image of the twins and Murtagh strolling down the boulevards was fading.
“We have a case of cooking sherry if you want to come.”
He was about to refuse when it occurred to him that this could be some of the life experience he was looking for.
“Do I need ID to get in?”
“That’s alright the twins have a birth cert that they can pass out the window when they get in. Are you going looking for the shift?”
“No I am looking to deconstruct the Jungian links in Irish relationships.”
“So you are going looking for the shift then.”

The girl wandered on humming a Rick Astley track – never gonna give you up – whoever was at the receiving end of that emotion was in for it. It reminded him of Nabakov in some ways he couldn’t put his finger on. He was interrupted by the arrival of a fresian heifer. She regarded him with her big cow eyes. How happy she looked chewing her cud not having to worry about the human condition. In fact she didn’t look too worried about the bovine condition either. A large man with hairy ears and shovel hands approached behind the herd.
“Jesus will you close that gate after them or we will be all day gathering them again. You are miles away, what is it stuck in a book again?”
“I need a tenner to go to the nightclub on Friday”
The man looked confused.
“Nightclub, you never had any interest in that craic before…..will there be young ones there at least?”
“Well I suppose”
This seemed to tick some box in the man's head and he reached into his boilersuit and produced a crumpled note.
“I saw the loonies daughter hopping up the road laughing to herself, is it with her?”
“Well her and Murtagh has the van for the night and the twins”
The twins were unrelated but were both so spectacularly unattractive that they became known as the twins. They were supplying the cooking sherry and Murtagh liked to have them around because they made him look good by comparison.
“We used to wear a suit to the dances - you can’t go like that sure you look like you are in mourning or something”
“All I need is a pair of shoes – the rest I have”
“It’s a sad day when a young lad can go to a disco all dressed in black and expect to get a ... well you know.”
The young man remarked to himself that the old man was a peasant. It was an old story, the poet son of a coal-miner or the painter with a butcher for a father. He supposed it would be a factor in his evolution as a great mind. Years later on chat shows he would sigh and gracefully acknowledge his parentage.
“Yes Gay my father gave me a great insight into life from his years looking up cows arses.”
Before Gay could reply the man turned around.
“You will have to give me a hand dosing the calves if you want to go.”
He nodded and followed him up the road wiping the muck off his fourteen hole doc marten boots. He didn’t have much idea what was involved in a country nightclub but he suspected it would not be a New York happening spot like CBGBs. The incongruity of Television or Talking Heads showing up here at the Fountain Blue was not lost on him – they would probably get stoned and not in a good way. New York was his next favourite fantasy location and would be his next stop after he cracked Paris. He spent the rest of Thursday mentally writing amazing reviews to his novel and Friday acceptance speeches for the Nobel Prize.
By the evening he was out of superlatives and had his tea. The old woman of the house gave him a fiver out of her pension and told him to go and get a woman.
“You are a bit young to be looking for a laying hen so have a bit of fun – theres enough misery around and if you commit a sin I have a lot of prayers saved up.”
He accepted the money and the wink and went off to find a pair of shoes. There were no black ones in the house but he found a pair of tan cowboy boots that looked quite fetching he thought. They were the right size and had a certain post-modern irony after all; who wanted to be a slave. One of the guys at school had actually invested in a pair of red slip-ons, he looked cool until he was repeatedly beaten up and had his scarlet footwear thrown up on a roof.
Ronan was watching the television when there was a commotion in the yard. Murtagh was attempting the physically impossible feat of doing a handbrake turn in a Toyota Liteace in a confined space. The farmer stuck his head out of the byre in a rage.
“Murtagh get that Hape out of my yard before I get the gun!”
The cosmetically challenged twins looked out from their spot in the back and the red-haired girl started singing these boots are made for walking. This started a stream of mirth from the van. He jumped in the back before the big farmer got really annoyed. Murtagh touched two wires together and a musical horn rang out, he tried two more wires and the lights came on – they were off. They screamed up the lane with the dogs following and U2 on the radio.
I wanna reach out and touch the flame –
Where the streets have no name.
“More sherry vicar?”
“What are you talking to me?”
“Yeah do you want some of this sherry before we get there?”
“Don’t mind if I do”
Ronan was sitting on a box of something lumpy, you could find anything in the Murtaghs van so he hoped it wasn’t anything obscenely biological. Murtagh was navigating them through the narrow roads at speed towards the national artery to a soundtrack of his only other tape – a sensitive little collection by AC/DC.
They rounded a corner, narrowly missing a minibus heading home from Bingo.
She ain’t exactly pretty….
The traumatised Bingo goers started a decade of the Rosary as the Liteace went over a hump-backed bridge breaking two of the sherry bottles.
She ain’t exactly small…
The ancient stereo in the van chose that crucial moment to chew up the tape and Murtagh lost 50% of his music collection.
“What am I sitting on back here?”
“Um well what day is it today?”
“Friday”
“Oh that would be turnips then – he sells them to the townies at the country market on a Friday – you’re lucky its not Saturday – Poitin day”
“Poitin is great stuff”
“Not the stuff the ould fellah sells; it would blind you if you were lucky.”
The driving style changed as they joined the main road – the nightclub was located half way between two towns and was a focal point for all of their aspirations and most of their bad habits. Originally built as a motel, it now served a clientele that wouldn’t be served in most pubs due to their tender years. The red haired girl nodded at it from the front seat.
“The inter cert results were out today – the tech boys will be out in force tonight.”
Just on cue a Cortina in front swerved and four lads in fleck trousers in the back seat hurled abuse at the driver. Murtagh connected the relevant wires and the musical horn rang out. The lads in the Cortina gave him the finger and pulled into the nightclub carpark. They pulled in as far from the bouncers as possible and as the Liteace passed them one of the twins hopped a turnip off their roof. The red haired girl grimaced - this was shaping up to be another memorable evening.
They pulled up near the entrance and polished off the last of the sherry. The twins produced a pair of ties, one red and one green for their off-white going out shirts. The ties are a good meter long and after the twins inexpert attentions they dangled around the nether regions.
“Now the twins go in first then they pass the birth certs out the jacks window. And their shoes – you will never get in with cowboy boots and Murtagh is wearing those bloody runners again.”
“If they are good enough for Abdul Jamal, they are good enough for me.”
“Ok we are all set”
They walked through the darkened carpark with its quota of worried parents and excited teenagers. The parents were demanding assurances that their offspring would behave and be ready to leave at two on the dot. The teenagers were just keen to get in there without anyone spotting their tragically un-cool parents.
The twins got past the bouncers without a hitch – those ties were the best investment they had made in years. Murtagh and Ronan hung around the appointed window and duly a couple of pairs of black slip-on shoes were passed out and the necessary ID. They swapped quickly and then up to the bouncers for round one – the entrance.
There were five bouncers busy looking big. Two scanned the crowd; the trusted one took the cash and the other two collected tickets.
“Any ID lads”
Ronan produced a birth cert that claimed he had been born in Kentish Town nineteen years earlier. Murtagh didn’t even bother showing his. The bouncers eyed the two boys’ footwear and nodded them in. As the door was opened for them a wall of air stinking of beer, deodorant and hormones hit them. This was accompanied by the soundtrack of Stock, Aitken & Waterman with its insistent bass and drum machine beat. The girl was at the bar and roared over the music.
“What are ye having?”
Ronan and Murtagh asked for whatever they wanted but she got them both a pint of tennants – it glowed green under the lights and as he had already started on sherry Ronan shrugged and took a drink. It wasn’t quite a jazz club in Berlin but it would have to do for now. The twins were performing some fairly random dancing with some girls on the floor. Their efforts were being followed by a sullen group who had been the victims of the Cortina turnip-gate incident earlier. The crowd were mostly concentrating on watching the dancefloor and laughing at the twins with their ties swinging in time to the music.
“You have to hand it to them – they don’t give up.”
The voice belonged to a girl he knew was a friend of Aoife, the red haired girl. He had to admit she looked better tonight than she usually did on the bus. He was about to reply when the DJ changed the tempo down for the first slow set of the night.
In a scene reminiscent of the Serengeti every female in the place made a dash for the toilets while the males tried to corner a victim.
“Dyawannadance?”
“No”
“Dyawannadance?”
“No”
“Ahgowan”
“Piss off”
Ronan looked up and one girl refused to run. Even the twins were afraid to approach her. She was tall and looked taller with her spiked hair and tall boots. Her pale face and black lips proclaimed her as a Goth. Surely she was an intellectual equal for him as they braved the ignorance of the herd. He walked up through the UV-lit hordes. She looked at him with scant interest.
“Jesus this place is shite isn’t it?”
She looked at him with contempt and then her manner softened.
“Yeah its crap – do you wanna buy us a drink or what.”
Inwardly he was jumping somersaults at the sophisticate he had found on his first night out. He legged it up to the bar, skipped the queue and got her the requested Pernod & black. The slow set was over and he found himself travelling against the flow of newly emerged females. When he returned to the neon-lit spot the vision in black was gone. He hunted around an area near the emergency exits, which were the designated shifting zones. In the darkness he spotted his Goth in a clinch with a male Goth – damn-it-to-hell. He skulled the Pernod and noticed a pleasant sensation as it mixed with the sherry – warming – maybe he had invented a new cocktail. He was congratulating himself when a bouncer knocked him out of the way on his way to a row across the dancefloor.
A big guy from the Cortina had one of the twins caught by the tie and his mate was pummelling Murtagh. The other twin dived in from the dancefloor and flattened the big guy. In time honoured protocol one of the turnip victims held the other one back, while one of the twins held Murtagh. Girls materialised and said things like “Leave it, they’re not worth it”.
The set-piece charade would have ended there but for the bouncers. They shoved the whole pantomime out the wide front doors. One of them hit a twin a glancing blow on the way out in and warned him not to come back.
“Ah, you can shove this kip anyway.”
“It wasn’t us – they threw a turnip”
The red-haired girl and her friend appeared and entreated with the bouncer to let the lads back in but to no avail. It was tacit that the barring order would expire the following Friday but form had to be followed. They hung around the van, drank sherry and watched a middle-aged woman try to gain entrance to find her daughter. She went in the emergency door which lay open and this was followed seconds later by a scream. She emerged with the squirming Goth girl by the ear. Ronan didn’t know much about what was cool in the world of the great god Goth but this was definitely not it.
They boarded the van with about six extra people and went to get chips. The red-haired girls’ friend whose name turned out to be Mary sat beside Ronan in the chipper.
“So you are an existentialist then.”
Ronan nodded over his burger.
“I used to think I was a nihilist but I’m not anymore.”
Ronan nearly choked.
“Do you think they will let us in next week?”
“If we go early enough we should be ok”
Murtagh was laughing into his snackbox.
“…and then we lobbed a turnip at them…”
The twins sang Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” all the way home and Murtagh set off the musical horn in the yard as usual.
In the morning Ronan appeared later than usual. The old woman scrutinised him from her seat beside the range.
“Well?”
“Well yourself.”
She seemed happy with the exchange. The farmer appeared but the old woman warned him off with a look.
She would get the story out of him at her leisure – old women have their ways.

posted by Colm Brady @ 10:52 PM