There Are Little Kingdoms Read Online Free PDF Page A

winked:
    ‘Listen, there’s every chance now we’ll get in before five. You’ll be able to get down to Rooney’s, get a hold of them keys.’
    ‘Do you reckon?’ he said, and there was more than a sliver of fear in him.
    ‘Ah we’ll be in before five easy.’
    A childish notion came. He thought that maybe he had died, and was in limbo, and that this old boy was some manner of gatekeeper. He shucked himself free of this sensation as best as he could, looked out the window: gloom floated down from morbid hills. The Expressway passed through a village, really more of a crossroads than a village, just a collision of a few byways and houses, a shop and, finally, a pub. As the bus passed by this establishment, the eyes nearly came out of his head. Was this, he wondered, a clue as to the character of the individual? He swivelled in his seat and looked desperately back down the road as the pub went out of view again. The throat was after going pure dry. He straightened himself and cast a wary glance across the aisle.
    ‘He’s making good time today,’ said the old fella.
    ‘He is.’
    A bigger town announced itself with garden centres and D-I-Y warehouses and a large sign in the middle of a new roundabout that read:
    BULMER’S CIDER WELCOMES YOU TO CLONMEL
    ‘He’s sucking diesel today,’ said the old fella. ‘Twenty to five!’
    ‘Faith, he is,’ he said.
    Taking the Reebok holdall, he stood as the bus eased into the bleak station and he made a whistling attempt at nonchalance.
    ‘Listen to me,’ said the old fella, ‘the best of luck to you now with everything. Something tells me you might have done a good deal here. And don’t mind what the crowd below are saying.’
    ‘Thanks very much,’ he said, and he stepped off the Expressway and into the mysteries of Clonmel.
    He wasn’t long getting directions to Rooney’s—Davitt Street, first left—and he wasn’t long noticing that it was beside a small pub name of The Dew Drop Inn. He had a few minutes to spare, and there was a strange draw from this place, a magnet drag. The next thing he knew, he was inside at the counter, in the dank half-light, throwing the holdall down to his feet and putting his elbows up on the bar.
    ‘What’ll it be?’ said the young one behind the bar.
    ‘Pint b-bottle of B-Bulmer’s,’ he said, ‘and a b-b-baby Powers.’
    It appeared that he knew full well what he was doing in this type of situation. There was a bottle put down in front of him, and a pint glass filled with ice, and the small whiskey appeared as a cheerful companion. He made short work of this order, and he started to feel somewhat philosophical. What, after all, he said to himself, is an identity? Surely it is only a means of marking yourself out in time. And what is time in itself, only an arbitrary and entirely illusory system designed to remind us of death? To separate us from the eternal present enjoyed by the beasts of the fields. So why need you bother with either one, when you have the bones of six hundred euro in your fist, and a fag lit in the corner of your mouth? The five o’clock news came on the radio. It said Orla was missing since March 14th and the one clue for investigators was a red baseball cap.
    ‘That’ll be me,’ he said to the young one, and she responded with a lazy smile and a stretching movement like a cat would make. There might be sport to be had in this place yet.
    He strode in the door of Rooney’s like a man who owned the rights to the whole of love. There was another young lady there, neat behind her desk, with a poignant mouth and agreeable knees.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I had an appointment for five?’
    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It must be Mr Tobin, is it?’
    ‘Correct.’
    ‘Mr Tobin,’ she explained, ‘Mr Rooney is actually out at present. He is showing a pig operation in the direction of Knockbawn, but listen now, I have the keys and the lease here for you.’
    ‘Outstanding.’
    ‘The money has