It was as if the first metallic click of her high-heeled boots on the tile floor had operated a swivel mechanism in the necks of the men lined along the bar. Sitting, or standing, the periscopic necks elongated or retracted to afford a better view of the stranger as she confidently strode to the bar. She was in her mid-twenties; straight, shoulder-length dark hair framed an interesting face, a high-necked red woolen sweater fell loosely from a strong chin. A quilted yellow jacket and red trousers tucked into knee length brown leather boots completed her attire. That is, apart from the tape recorder slung from a strap over her right shoulder and which came to rest under her left arm.
At the bar she ordered coke, a dash of lime, ice and a slice of lemon. With her drink in her hand she then leaned back against the bar and proceeded to scrutinize the drinkers even more thoroughly that they had accomplished in their examination of her. She found eyes, held them, then moved on as her disconcerting glare caused face after face to avert and speak once more to its companion face. The babble of the bar-room was gradually restored to its muted cacophony. In a corner, in what seemed to be self chosen isolation, a figure sat hunched over a table, gazing into a large glass of amber liquid. After a time the man hauled his attention from his glass and their eyes met. She held his gaze and he looked back with an expression of the most perfect indifference she had ever seen displayed. After a time he reached for his glass, gulped back the contents, went to the bar for a refill large scotch she noted, with just a touch of water – and resumed his seat.
The girl walked to the man’s table and sat in the seat opposite. “How do you do? My name is Anne Simmons, I’m an anthropologist.” The man lifted his glass, took a sip, gently swilled the contents and studied the amber movement. He looked about forty with a two or three day growth of beard on a face whose most remarkable characteristics were the piercing blue eyes. Even now, though they were somewhat glazed, they has a depth of penetration that was laserlike in its intensity. He was looking at her now. “Well Anne Simmons, have you found any good rock samples recently?” “No, you misunderstood, I’m an anthropologist, it comes from the…” “Greek,” he interrupted, “Anthropos, meaning man and logos, discourse.” “Yes.” “So you want to discourse on man. You think me to be a fitting representative of mankind?” “I think you look interesting. Would you mind if I switched on my tape recorder?”
He indicated his indifference with a shrug, followed by another sip of scotch. Anne noted that he didn’t gulp it down as he had the first. Maybe he wanted to talk; perhaps this indifference he portrayed was a front. She unclipped the leather flaps around the recorder and switched on. The microphone was encompassed in the unit and she had found this to be less intimidating to subjects than a hand-held mike. She noted also that the other customers cast glances in their direction from time to time and were obviously speculating on what was going on. This did not bother Anne and it certainly did not seem to bother her companion.
“What’s your name?” said Anne. “Tom.” “Is that all?” “It’s enough.” “Do you mind if I ask your age, Tom?” I feel it’s relevant in studying progressive development in different groups.” “Yeah, or even regressive development. I’m thirty-five.” “Are you married?” “No. And now you tell me something. You are from an English University Europe ? Don’t believe it, we are just as contaminated as the rest of modern society. Maybe you didn’t notice it, but the old-fashioned hospitality of poverty stricken Ireland Ireland
I suppose I’m not being much help. You’d rather I relate the tale of wrestling a living from nature – land and sea – winning the turf, saving the hay, lobster-potting and herring fishing in treacherous waters and cutting the bloody corn in Creeslough the day? He punctuated his sentence with a deep gulp of his drink.
The girl was nothing if not composed. “I don’t understand the last bit about the cutting the corn… where was it?” she said pleasantly. “Never mind,” he replied, “it’s pure corn.” “Anyway,” Anne went on, “I’d much prefer if you carried on talking about what you want to.” “Alright, but not here. We’ll go for a stroll and have a look at summer repeating itself. I wonder if it ever gets bored.” He looked right at her. “You’d better have a pee before we go – that coke and ice goes right through you.” Anne betrayed a trace of a flush high on her cheeks. Damn the man, she thought, it was bad enough the uncommitted way in which he looked at you, but to accompany the look with a remark, so casually thrown, such as that. We’ll she’d be better prepared now. Quickly recovering her composure she looked at him and smiled. “That’s a most practical suggestion?” Then excused herself as she headed for the ladies.
They walked down the main street to the stone bridge over the river bottom of the village. Tom paused and propped his elbows on the parapet and looked down at the river. The water was low, as was usual for the dry period of early June, and barely made a murmur as it navigated its path around the exposed rocks. As they looked upstream the banks sloped gently to the river and were still thickening with vegetation after the bareness of winter. Tin cans, cast-off clothes, plastic bags, cardboard boxes, broken and unbroken bottles and jars and various discarded household appliances littered the bank from the road which ran alongside the river. Some of the heavier junk had been carried by its own momentum through the growth and lay exposed in the shallows at the river’s edge. Almost directly below the bridge and wedged between two rocks was a bulging, hessian sack surrounded by fat, darting flies, their buzz clearly audible above the river’s low murmur.
Tom pointed to the sack. “Therein lies man’s best friend. And this,” he said taking in the rest of the river with a sweep of is arm, “is how the people of this rural Shangri-la bestow garlands upon it. Put that in your anthropological pipe and smoke it.”
Anne looked at the river and the growth along its banks, at the fields, with sheep and cattle, which ran down to it and, further beyond, from where the river came, the mountains. Amid this beauty lay the filth of human thoughtlessness. She felt Nature had been slapped in the face as its thanks for providing beauty. She turned to Tom. “Why do people do it?” she said. “You’re the student of human behaviour, you tell me.” They crossed the bridge and walked along the main road until they came to a little bog road which eased itself up to the heather tufted hills. When they came to what Tom thought was a sufficiently elevated position they sat upon the heather-covered ditch. A point in the ditch close by was bare of heather, sheep had used it as fording place and the lumps of peat kicked out by their passage had dried out in the warm, early summer sun. Below lay the village which in the sunshine seemed to snuggle safely in the protective embrace of the mountain. But on a dark day, Tom knew, the mountain seemed to glower down with powerful menace upon the little community.
Tom had already opened the bottle, whiskey, taken a long swig, offered it to Anne who had refused, and was now placing it capped upon the ditch. “beats the shit out of sitting on the plastic seats and doddling with the slops on a Formica topped table,” said Tom. Anne pointed to the bottle. “You called that your deflector. What did you mean?” “Well, that’s a bit of a misnomer, really. I used to think that it built up a force shield around me, but of course it doesn’t. Reality, such as it is, is not to be deflected so easily, it just hangs around outside until the bottle is empty and then attacks with a savagery all the more vicious for having been made to wait.” “Why do you drink so much?” “Fear,” he said, and took another swig from the bottle. “Fear of the real past and of its present past which gobbles up the future every second so that it seems the future is just fodder for the insatiable appetite of the past. The real past is not as bad – sometimes glimpses of it come echoing back. Always hurtful ones it seems.” “Such as?” Anne said, and Tom noticed she had switched on the recorder again.
“Well, the sadistic delight in the eyes of the priest as he eagerly questioned me on the joys of seminal release. And this to a kid who then thought that ‘coming’ was merely the opposite of going. His well-timed slap across my puzzled face caused my eyes to water and lower in a shame which I couldn’t understand, and there they spied the protuberance in the priest’s trousers. An ideal crumbled, A God made human. Then, when younger and thoughts form in an uncontaminated mind and want to be expressed, the humiliating embarrassment of being told in company to shut up by adults who thought I could have nothing to contribute. Or the heart failure caused when I farted loudly in a hushed moment at a birthday party while seated beside my favourite seven-year-old girl friend. That was bad. Going to school with the big, bright blue patch on the arse of my drab grey pants, and wearing my father’s cast-off shoes, several sizes too large. One wit said to me one day as he eyed my feet with astonishment: “Have you got a license to wear those?” then the snickers, and of course there were girls around, always seemed to be girls around at those moments.” He paused, then uncapped the bottle. “Are you sure you don’t want a blast of this? It’s a marvelous lubricant for the tongue. I noticed you don’t do much talking. Is that part of the psychology of interviewing – not to interrupt the verbal spree of the gabbling interviewee?”
“Doesn’t matter. I feel like talking. I don’t do much of it these days. Anyway, adolescence, late teens, early twenties – memories from these periods sometimes come filtering through, but not so keen as those from childhood. Perhaps we are more vulnerable and less resilient in childhood than the psycho-sociologists would have us believe.”
Anne looked at him closely. For all the drink he had consumed there was no trace of a slur to his words. In fact, he seemed to become more articulate in direct proportion to the amount he drank. “Tell me,” she said, “What is this present-past which you mentioned earlier? I find the concept intriguing.” “About ten years ago time did a somersault, a double flip, an about turn, or whatever the hell it was, and came to a halt. Until then one day passed after the other; scuttling like refugees, the events of each day hurried into the past, there to huddle and wait until, and if, my memory called for them. Then around this time the days began, not to pass, but to heap themselves one on top of the other. It was as if a portcullis in my mind came slamming down barring all transit from the present to the past. This barrier still allows memories from before that time to come trickling through, but it is one-way filter; nothing from that point can escape into the real past,” He uncapped the bottle and greedily drank.
“It’s a fascinating concept,” Anne said, hoping to prompt. “Fascinating? It’s bloody terrifying. And a reality, not a concept. Not to me.” Tom looked at her as if she had understood nothing he had said. “of course, I’m sorry. Was there something, some event which precipitated this phenomenon?” “yes, I was married and living in London Hastings Battle Rye and Eastbourne and dined on delicious and fresh sea foods. We wandered through the old town of Hastings Ireland
Anne looked at him and saw the pain in those strange eyes. She felt an overwhelming pity and reached out to touch his arm. “That’s terrible,” was all she could come up with. Tom looked at her said, “Thanks. Thanks for listening to me. I really do fell better. I don’t know why I’ve told you all this. Maybe it’s the tape recorder… inanimate; sometimes I mutter to the trees. I haven’t been much help to you. I started to speak of this place and the progress, or whatever, of its people but my own self took over. Perhaps that’s a good sign, maybe there is a way out of this for me. Look, if you don’t mind a cynical analysis of this area for the last two hundred years I could meet you here tomorrow. I’ll bring some literature on the place. I haven’t looked at it for years but I’ll dig it out.” “I’d like that,” said Anne, “I’m staying at the hostel. Say one o’clock tomorrow afternoon?” “That’s fine.” “I have to go now, my dogs will be hungry. I’ve been away for two days. I can take a shortcut over the hill on this lane.” “You can see your way back from here. Goodbye, and thanks for listening.” “See you tomorrow, Tom.” “Right.” And he picked up the now half-finished bottle of whiskey and turned towards the hill. Then he paused and turned. “Would you do something for me?”
From his inside coat pocket he had brought out a little brown covered diary, and was flicking through the pages. “Here,” he said, on finding the page he wanted. “Will you write in this on to-day’s date? Just write, ‘To-day I spoke with Tom,’ and sign it Anne Simmons. I know it sounds absurd but when I wake in the morning after finishing this,” and he indicated the bottle, “I want to be positive I really have spoken with you to-day. Sometimes I waken in the morning convinced I’ve spoken with someone the previous day but it turns out to have been a dream—real, but a dream. I know you are real; clothes, recorder etc., but still.” Anne took the little diary and wrote in it. Tom checked it and nodded, satisfied. They said their farewells again and went in opposite directions.
The next morning, as the fuzz in his head slowly dispersed like reluctant mist, images of yesterday came filtering through. He remembered the diary and stumbled to his coat, a thin smile of confidence creasing his stubbled features. He flicked the pages until he came to the previous day’s date. The page was blank.
~~Aidan Sharkey
