At the Edge of the Game Read Free

the relatively moist west of the country. It’s
got an escort of two cycle cops, armed. Seems like every other week there’s a
news story about a tanker hijacking, as often as not involving gunfire.
Sometimes it’s the crime gangs, sometimes the Unity IRA. One thing that never
changes is that it’s always scum attracted by the promise of easy money.
    The tanker is
leaving behind a trail of water on the asphalt sucked almost instantaneously
into the dry air.
    In the front
door now, the smell of some sort of casseroley thing reaches my nostrils.
    Heathshade’s
sitting in front of the TV. He’s got a black eye. No doubt his night on the
town was a suitably sordid affair.
    ‘Lunch smells
good. Eh, mate? Your lady’s a hell of a cook.’
    ‘Where is she?’
    ‘Kitchen.’
    She’s sitting at
the table waiting for me.
    ‘How are you
feeling?’ I say.
    ‘Worried.’
    ‘I promise you,
things will turn around.’
    ‘Don’t promise
things you can’t control.’
    ‘But…’
    I don’t say what
I was going to say. She knows what it was anyway, and I know she doesn’t want
to have to give the answer she’d give.
    Yes, my graphic
novel might end up making us some money, but that it is not very likely.
    There is nothing
to be gained from covering that territory again.
    Heathshade
appears for his lunch, and whatever more there is to be said on this matter -
not much, I expect - will have to wait until later.
    Eat in a silence
sullied by Heathshade’s slurping.
    ‘Nothing so good
as real food,’ he says.
    He steps over to
the fridge, takes out a couple of cans of his Dutch Gold.
    ‘I shall enjoy
these all the more now.’
    Up to his room
he goes. Some sort of industrial sonic gunk starts to boom through the floor,
accompanied by his own crashing and banging. I imagine him pogoing, moshing
around the dark box room, head pummelling the lightshade like a punchbag.
    He has almost
nothing in the room. A coarse blanket and worn sheets on the bed, one drawer
with some socks and underwear, another with two pairs of jeans and two white
shirts – his uniform – and the third containing a can of tuna. The wardrobe is
completely empty. There was on the wall a print of an 18 th century
painting of a sailship moored outside the Custom House in Cork, but for some
reason he’s taken that down and put it under the bed with his stash of
pornography and weaponry magazines. The walls are now completely bare.
    ‘I’m not mad at
you, George,’ she says.
    ‘No?’
    ‘Really, I’m
not.’
    I hope she means
it but the look on her is not reassuring.
    ‘I feel
terrible.’
    ‘I know. We’ll
make do.’
    I do the
washing-up. A penance. Time now to retire to the spare room to spend the
afternoon working on the graphic novel, which I do freely admit is my refuge.
    Been working on
the design for a key plot point in which an emissary from the Neanderthal
kingdom rides down the long road through the dry Mediterranean basin to the
capital city of the modern humans, which I’ve opted to locate a few miles east
of the Straits of Gibraltar. Here the present-day sea-bed slopes downwards from
the shallow straits into the depths of the Mediterranean.
    It’s rather
interesting, actually. A few million years ago, the Mediterranean dried up, leaving
behind a desert of salt. The Atlantic poured over the Straits of Gibraltar as a
kind of super-waterfall, but the heat caused the water to evaporate, leaving
behind ever-increasing deposits of salt. Far to the east the Nile also poured
into the Mediterranean basin.
    Those are
scientific facts, and the discovery of them was the genesis of my graphic
novel. I thought that it would be a great choice of unknown land in which to
set my saga involving the Neanderthals and the Sapient humans.
    Anyway, flanking
the Neanderthal emissary is a troop of Neanderthal guards dressed in chain
mail, carrying maces and axes. I’m trying to give them a North-African look,
with a hint of Celtic. I’ve been working on