What the Piper Promised

I retrieve my phone from my trouser pocket first, almost lying on the rank couch briefly as I root for it. The yellow box of Swan filters follow with less of a chore. Perching on the edge of that couch well-worn by the arses of countless backpackers, I place the filters on top of a ragged-edged travel guide on the coffee table to the side of the cleared plate of Szechuan chicken. I unfurl a cigarette skin and, as focussed as laboratory scientist, dribble some loose tobacco onto it. I then rest the filter upon the skin which is now in my left hand. I caress the skin with my moistened lower lip and tongue. I then roll it, fastening the cigarette closed with my calloused fingers. And repeat for the second one. I do need to quit, and would never have gotten addicted in the first place if it wasn’t for the spliffs, but for now I am looking forward to enjoying it in the sunshine in the unkempt rear courtyard. Those habits formed while destitute students and dole-queue loiterers lingered so that now we still bought rollies and will definitely be stocking up on cheap drink before crossing back down to the Republic again.

‘Here it is…’ Dave says, and I glance across to him slouched on the battered armchair briefly before the frayed map of the world across the room behind his head diverts my attention, first to our little koala-bear-shaped island and then everywhere else except it and I imagine throwing a dart, aiming for China and somehow hitting Peru.

’A Corncrake Calls… Not a bad title I suppose. Well, you know,’ he continues.

He has the magazine he’d found in the Independent held open in front of him.

‘I suppose it works. Do you want to read it outside?’ I ask, nodding to the two rolled cigarettes resting on the ragged-edged Northern Ireland travel guide. I squint out through the French doors at the end of the common room. ‘I think I can see those to Australian girls we were chatting to in the kitchen out there.’

He looks around briefly, and squints himself. ‘Ah yeah, just a sec,’ he replies though he is clearly more interested in the article. ’Their songs drip with effervescence yet incline to folk balladry,’ he quotes in a feigned pompous voice. ’They played any festival that would have them over the following summer hoping to strike a chord with their home audience.’

‘It’s a fucking recession. We had to do something.’ Not that I’d mind doing something else. ‘Sure you couldn’t be living on just the dole.’ You could emigrate though. I catch myself looking back up to the map of the world behind him, to Central Asia and wonder why I don’t know the names of countries that big aside from knowing they end with stan.

‘Oh she mentioned Georgia. Geraghty will not be pleased.’ The pompous voice returns as he reads; ‘The album clearly concerned some precious muse. Although on that subject, Geraghty is at his most evasive.’

‘Ah… that’s hardly shocking stuff Dave. Come on, let’s go out the back.’

’Rumours continue to circulate, though remain unconfirmed, regarding Geraghty’s perceived writer’s block.’

‘Writer’s block me hole. He told Siobhán he hasn’t got writer’s block at all.’

Dave shuffles in the armchair as his face pops up. ‘What? What’d she say?’

’Well. She said that he said the songs he’s coming up with just aren’t appropriate... or something.’

‘Appropriate for what?’ Dave snaps.

‘Not appropriate for the direction we’re going... or where he wants us to go... I don’t know.’

‘Right,’ he says making himself comfortable again. ‘Well fuck him.’

‘Yup.’

‘He was bollocksed last night.’

‘He was.’

‘There’s too much cheap booze up here.’

‘Well. That probably didn’t help.’

‘Did you hear what he said to the girls?’

‘Nah... Go on.’

‘Well. He called Fiona a fat dyke, he told Siobhán she needed to be more of a slut like Oonagh Kane,’ Dave rhymes this off before his tones shifts down. ‘She wasn’t there. And she is, tragically, most definitely, not a slut,’ he laments.

‘Still no joy?’

‘Nah. Oh and he told me I was a cunt... But I’ll let him away with that. He might be right.’

‘Jays, he let rip,’ I console.

‘Yeah.’

I don’t know what Geragthy thinks he would be without Siobhán and Fiona doing the necessary donkeywork getting us gigs and whoring us out to anyone who’d listen to make us someway successful. Talented he may be but organised and motivated he is not. If he’s got tomorrow planned he’ll have been having a good day.

‘What’d they say? And where was I for this?’

‘Fiona clocked him,’ he laughs.

‘Wow. Why’d he say all of that for anyway?’

‘I don’t really know. I think it was a fairly innocuous conversation; she didn’t agree with something he said so he called her a fat dyke... and then let rip on us.’

‘Fuck... And she hit him?’

‘Yeah. And then,’ and Dave pauses for effect. ‘He seemed to completely forget all about it.’

‘He probably felt guilty.’

‘I’m not sure he felt anything at all... He was out of it.’

‘You’d know Georgia was away.’

‘Yeah...’

‘Jesus, I hope he’s not like that when it’s just the two of them.’

‘Yeah. I don’t know what she sees in him...’

‘He was good craic up till he got halfway through that bottle of whiskey.’

‘Ah sure...’ Dave begins to pardon him. ‘Sure that’s how it goes. We’re all fairly good craic till halfway through a bottle of whiskey.’

‘True enough.’

‘Any sign of him today?’

‘Nah. He’s been going very quiet during the days.’

‘Is he okay?’ I wonder.

‘How’d you mean?’

‘Well like.... I don’t know. Is there something wrong with him like?’ My voice trails off. I want the answer to be Nah, or something even more disposable.

‘Yeah. Hangovers!’

‘That’ll do it... Georgia’s on her way back from Dublin anyways so he might settle again for a few days.’

‘And the writer’s block thing is definitely not true?’

‘Not according to Siobhán.’

’Why did we think he had writer’s block?’

‘Dunno... I think someone needs to have a chat to him.’

‘Yeah. But like...’ Dave struggles a moment. ‘He was fairly excited about the tour, like it was going to be our big break and whatever. But sure in fairness, I suppose you’d wonder how long we’ll stay at this. I love it n’all, but like...’ He recoils in his seat and doesn’t finish.

‘Yeah, sure Plan B wouldn’t be a bad idea. Whatever that might be...’ I trace circles on my knee with my finger. I look to the rolled cigarettes, then to Dave, his head turning back into the magazine. The notion of backup plan is something that loves to come tugging my consciousness. It usually emerges a day or two after a gig, the roaring crowd, the sloshing beer, the giddiness of it all, and then the euphoria goes. And there descends the sourest mood, darkening every thought, invoking a crippling fear of seeing anyone and of even getting out of bed. The tugging at every thought becomes violent. Why are you wasting your life on the whims of popular taste? Why are you not on a meaningful career path yet? Wasting years only to end up going back on a graduate’s salary... That Fear persists for two excruciating fucking days.

’Ha! She called him an apprentice,’ Dave giggles. ‘He’ll be cranky when he gets a gawk at this.’

‘He will be. But sure it wouldn’t take much.’

‘No.’

‘And is Swansong Leary his master then so?’

‘Eh yeah, I think so,’ he replies as he scans the next paragraph. ‘And Dylan, and how’s he’s fucking off to Leonard Cohen in Sligo at the end of the tour and stuff.’

Gazing back to the map, I tilt my head to the right to confirm that Africa still looks like the head of a rhino.

‘What you make of the legendary Swansong Leary anyway? The northern mystery man?’

I reset my head, and look to Dave gawping at me curiously waiting for a reply. ‘Well they say you should never meet your heroes.’

‘Was he not much craic?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘I thought he’d plenty of stories.’

‘Ah he does. But sure they all contradict each other.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well yeah. One day you’ll hear him banging on about how his grandda was on Endurance with Crean and Shackleton, and the next you’ll hear him on about his other grandda working the steam boats on the Congo river back in the day... and then it’s the Mississippi, then the Yangtze, and then sometimes it’s the Trans-Siberian fucking Railway...’ I find my eyes squinting as they drift between those places on the map.

‘Well, I’m sure he has two granddads...’ Dave argues.

‘I don’t know. He seems to have about ten!’

‘You listen to him much growing up?’

‘Yeah. I got into him just before the Leaving Cert. I quoted him in my English exam pretty ridiculously,’ I concede.

‘Ah well, sure it’s poetry.’

‘Yeah...’

‘What was he saying last night anyway?’

‘He was saying how he missed being on the road. He felt it was his calling; it was so much part of his identity. And he was glad we agreed to come with him.’

As if we’d have refused. The story goes that the legendary Swansong Leary happened upon us while refuelling his van at a petrol station on the Ormeau Road as the tannoy blared out Geraghty’s rasping voice singing the song about a young fella out hunting rabbits. He stood there listening to the whole song on the forecourt before going to pay. Or so the story goes. Some say Swansong Leary is one of the greatest storytellers in the world – many others just say he’s a compulsive and compelling liar.

‘Well Geraghty didn’t give us much choice.’

‘He was sound though once you got chatting to him... as allusive as he is. He was saying how he ran away to a travelling fairground over in France when he was a kid. He just fucked off one summer...’

‘Did his parents not mind?’

‘Ehm... he didn’t say. But anyway, he was saying how that gave him a love for being a travelling showman, and how it was always his dream to do something similar again.’

‘Did he say where he’s been the past twenty years?’

‘Yeah.’ I turn to Dave. ‘He built a straw-bale house on Rathlin Island as an environmental architectural experiment.’

‘Huh...’

‘And once it was finished he bought a typewriter and started writing his memoirs.’

‘Right...’ Dave is nodding. ‘Obviously...’

‘But he struggled with remembering what went on back in the eighties... and with learning to type.’

’That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll for you.’

He glances back down to the magazine he had let drop to his crotch and inclines it back up again so that he can continue reading.

‘Shall we smoke these so?’

‘Jesus Geraghty can waffle some amount of shite.’ Which apparently means no, we are still not going outside. ‘Listen to this.’

My loud exhale leaves him undeterred.

’Entertainers are inclined to being more than what we are and not what we actually are. I suppose we’re all wearing masks; it’s this weird… schizophrenic… idiosyncrasy kind of thing that entertainers all have about them. It’s almost expected of us in some ways.

‘You have people who like to dream their dreams and then others who go and live them; and there’s this constant struggle for one to be the other. No one wants to work! Like I said, people have less to be doing these days, so they dream... or... or they get bored and need entertaining. And I suppose that’s our job and the consumers will decide what happens to us...’

‘Why did I have to listen to that? His nonsense is bad enough coming from him.’

‘She then goes on about wondering if his name is a mask.’

‘But sure Bo is just short for Boland. She fucking knows that. She’s shit stirring.’

‘She’s a cunt.’

’Was your sole purpose in reading that article just to come to that conclusion?’

‘No. I already had that conclusion.’

‘Well then why the fuck did you read the article when you know it’s going piss you off?’

‘I think we need to have a chat to Greener as well.’

‘Tell him his ride of a girlfriend is a cunt?’

‘She is.’

’Well sure let’s have a chat about that over a cigarette.’

‘Grand.’

And finally he throws the magazine to the coffee table, and we stand and make for the rear courtyard. Sometimes I miss it just being me, Dave and Greener; the Lamps. It was easier when we were just jamming in Dave’s basement and Greener was still with us; just three mates doing more drinking, ping pong playing, and computer gaming than actual music making. Then Greener’s sister rambles along all disillusioned with singing Ace of Base songs for Technodrome, and brings bloody Geraghty with her and it goes and gets serious. I miss Greener not being involved. I miss when Geraghty wasn’t – the moody prick. Even if he is a talented moody prick. He can be sound when he wants to be, if only he wanted to be a little more often. It’s a serious pity he doesn’t care about sport or about anything other than beer, music, and the awful state of the world… and Georgia of course.