The Barrytown Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dean blushed when he wet the reed and let his lips close on it.
    —Make it a particular lady, someone real.
    Dean chose a young one from across the road. She was in the same class as his brother, third year, and she was always coming over to borrow his books or scab his homework. It didn’t work though. Dean couldn’t go through with it. She was too real. So the saxophone reed became one of Madonna’s nipples and Dean’s playing began to get somewhere.
    Joey The Lips was a terrific teacher, very patient. He had to be. Even Joey The Lips’ mother, who was completely deaf, could sense Dean’s playing from the other side of the house.
    After three weeks he could go three notes without stopping and he could hold the short notes. Long ones went all over the place. Joey The Lips played alongside him, like a driving instructor. He only shouted once and that was really a cry of fright and pain caused by Dean backing into him while Joey The Lips still had his trumpet in his mouth.
    Billy Mooney blammed away at his drums. His father was dead and his brothers were much younger than him so there was no one in the house to tell him to shut the fuck up.
    Jimmy told him not to bother too much with cymbals and to use the butts of the sticks as well as the tips. What he was after was a steady, uncomplicated beat: —a thumping back-beat, Jimmy called it. That suited Billy. He’d have been happy with a bin lid and a hammer. And that was what he used when he played along to Dancing in the Streets. Not a bin lid exactly; a tin tray, with a racehorse on it. The horse was worn off after two days.
    The three backing vocalists, The Commitmentettes, listened to The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, The Ronettes,The Crystals and The Shangri-las. The Commitmentettes were Imelda Quirk and her friends Natalie Murphy and Bernie McLoughlin.
    —How yis move, yeh know ———is more important than how yis sing, Jimmy told them.
    —You’re a dirty bastard, you are.
    Imelda, Natalie and Bernie could sing though. They’d been in the folk mass choir when they were in school but that, they knew now, hadn’t really been singing. Jimmy said that real music was sex. They called him a dirty bastard but they were starting to agree with him. And there wasn’t much sex in Morning Has Broken or The Lord Is My Shepherd.
    Now they were singing along to Stop in the Name of Love and Walking in the Rain and they were enjoying it.
    Joined together their voices sounded good, they thought. Jimmy taped them. They were scarlet. They sounded terrible.
    —Yis’re usin’ your noses instead of your mouths, said Jimmy.
    —Fuck off slaggin’, said Imelda.
    —Yis are, I’m tellin’ yeh. An’ yis shouldn’t be usin’ your ordin’y accents either. It’s Walking in the Rain, not Walkin’ In De Rayen.
    —Snobby!
    They taped themselves and listened. They got better, clearer, sweeter. Natalie could roar and squeal too. They took down the words and sang by themselves without the records. They only did this though when one of them had a free house.
    They moved together, looking down, making sure their feet were going the right way. Soon they didn’t have to look down. They wiggled their arses at the dressing-table mirror and burst out laughing. But they kept doing it.
    * * *
    Jimmy got them all together regularly, about twice a week, and made them report. There, always in Joey The Lips’ mother’s garage, he’d give them a talk. They all enjoyed Jimmy’s lectures. So did Jimmy.
    They weren’t really lectures; more workshops.
    —Soul is a double-edged sword, lads, he told them once.
    Joey The Lips nodded.
    —One edge is escapism.
    —What’s tha’?
    —Fun. ——Gettin’ away from it all. Lettin’ yourself go. ——Know wha’ I mean?
    —Gerrup!
    Jimmy continued: —An’ what’s the best type of escapism, Imelda?
    —I know wha’ you’re goin’ to say.
    —I’d’ve said that a bracing walk along the sea front was a very acceptable form of