James slotted a straight red into the top left pocket, and he applied top spin to the cue ball so that it rolled onto the top cushion and allowed him to line up the last of the reds. This would be tricky, because great precision was required when the cushions came into play, and he lit a cigarette to consider it. Carmody was his opponent, again, and he was all but beaten anyway, Carmody was beaten in the mind even before they began to play, but all the same James liked to win stylishly and well, he liked to make little gasps escape the habituees when he achieved the unlikely shots. He paused now to draw attention to the table before he attempted the difficult red.
‘You’re putting it up to me tonight, Carm,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s after getting into you but you’ve moved on to a new level of expertise altogether. Are you practicing on the sly?’
The habituees quietened, and moved in closer, because they could sense a put-down in the making. James had gone into the familiar pose, with the head held at a slight incline, and he regarded Carmody down his nose, and there was a thin set to the mouth, and he expelled air from the nostrils with a powerful snort, and he said:
‘You’re practicing on the sly in the barn, aren’t you? You’re like…’
He put the cue down and danced a two-step.
‘You’re like an auld farmer hitting off to a matchmaking festival. He’s had the first bath of the year. He has the hair slicked back with strong tea. He’s dragged a comb through his teeth…’
The titters and giggles built nervously, as the habituees waited to see where James would take it.
‘…and he’s set the hens on automatic. He’s worried about the dancing, of course he is, the man has titanium hips, so he’s clearin’ back the floor of the barn, of an evening, when the working day is done, and he’s trying out a shtep.’
And he did a high-kick step in the air, and the laughter rumbled, and built.
‘And he’s saying what I need for myself now is… a nice good little nurse. Do you know the way? A nice little nurse from an ear, nose and throat ward. He’s always maintained a bit of a grá for nurses, because they’d be kind to you, wouldn’t they, of a cold winter’s night, with the big thighs wrapped around your throat?’
The girls gasped and tssked. The habituees shook their heads, embarrassed with mirth. They never knew where to look when James roamed abroad on a course.
‘It’s the way I see it, Carm. You’re practicing on the sly in the barn, like the auld farmer, by the light of a lonesome moooooooon!’
And as he crooned the word, cowboy-style, he leaned in to attend to his shot: full attention had now been secured for the pool table. He made his bridge, tapped the baize three times with his middle finger, rolled the white along the cushion, it kissed the red, and gave it momentum to move at a slow even pace, and the red yawned for a moment on the lip of the pocket, as though he hadn’t given it enough, but of course he had, and it dropped.
‘Shot, James!’
‘Shot, Jamesie.’
‘Shot boy.’
‘You’re a fucking lunatic, James,’ said Carmody, and tapped the butt of his cue three times on the concrete floor.
‘Sure I know that.’
Moloney put the petrol takings into a tin box, turned off the transistor and locked up the kiosk. He crossed the forecourt, carrying the tin box reverently, and he cursed at the weather. Ten o’clock at night and you were walking around the place in soup. He put his head around the door of the arcade.
‘Ye’ve an hour till I close it up.’
‘Not a bother,’ said James.
‘And keep it down a bit, for Jesus’ sake.’
‘Absolutely,’ said James.
‘An hour,’ said Moloney. ‘D’ye hear me?’
James laid the cue on the table, goose-stepped across the floor, threw his right arm into salute and cried out:
‘Selbstverständlich, mein Kommandant!’
‘And you watch yourself!’
Moloney tried and failed to keep the smile from his face, and he left them to it. This was the signal that the night was truly rolling, and for the more dangerous talk to begin. The younger of the habituees, earlier indulged, would now be pushed to the peripheries. The older ones would draw up schemes of devilment for the small hours. The girls became nervous.
‘Atlantic City. Feel The Force!’
‘Ah for the love and honour of God,’ said James, who had been lining up the black to continue his evening-long winning streak. He crossed the floor to the pinball, considered the new hi-score, patted his young usurper on the head and said:
‘Knacky. Knacky alright. As a matter of fact, you’ve put it beyond my reach. Let it be known that from this moment forward, the young fella here is the king of the pinball. Give the boy a banana.’
Walking back to the pool table, James suddenly stopped, gasped, and collapsed onto his knees. He clutched at his chest. His face was frozen in a terrible grin, and it became a grimace, and he gasped out the last words…
‘I… leave… every… thing… to… to… to Jamesie!’
The arcade throbbed with laughter. This was one of the most famed routines. It was James’s impression of the heart attack that had killed his father on the kitchen floor.
Though the girls had become shyer, shyness can fold in on itself and be transformed on a summer night: when there is possibility in the air, shyness can say what the hell and trade itself for a brazenness. They fed coins to the jukebox and summoned a couple of slow numbers.
James saw to the black, and allowed his next opponent to step forward and rack for a new game, and he moved his great rolling flesh to the jukebox, and he said:
‘Ladies? Ye’ll have me red in the face now for the want of it. Do ye hear what I’m saying? Is there no such as thing as a bit of mercy? Ye know full well what I’m like when I hear that one. I hear Bonnie Tyler and I go to pieces.’
The younger of the habituees began to drift off, in ones and twos, and those who left early would be furious the next morning, when they learned that they’d missed the great drama of the night. A little before eleven, the squad car rolled into the forecourt of Moloney’s, and Garda Ryan got out, with a face on him like turned milk. He stood on the forecourt and regarded the arcade, and everybody crowded to the door, and he addressed them.
‘There was a windscreen of a car put in below in the square last night,’ he said. ‘Is that news for ye?’
James moved to the front of the habituees, crossed his arms sombrely, and stroked his chin with his forefinger.
‘At what time precisely, Garda Ryan,’ he said, ‘was the mechanically propelled vehicle interfered with?’
‘Watch yourself.’
‘Have you no note made of it, guard?’
‘I won’t warn you again. Believe me! I don’t care who your family is. There was a windscreen put in. That’s a hundred pound damage. There’s been other incidents. There’s been nothing but trouble since this place was let open late. I’m marking yere cards for ye now, all of ye. I’ve eyes in my head and they are wide open. I’m not going to let this messing go on a night longer. Not a single night, d’ye hear it? I’m watching ye.’
Garda Ryan, in shirt sleeves, stepped back into the squad car, and with a flinty gaze he looked over the small group from his rolled-down window, and the more nervous of the habituees stepped back into the gloom, but it could not be left at this, and it wouldn’t be, and one of them stepped out onto the forecourt, and everybody