We present an extract from Experts in a Dying Field, the debut novel by journalist and author Patrick Freyne.
The Heathens thought of themselves as ‘the 1000th best band of all time’. Then their tour van crashed, and one of their members died.
Twenty years later, weird things are happening in Dublin, bringing the surviving members of the band together in ways none of them could have anticipated and lifting the lid on mysteries from their shared past.
Rex Casey is visiting the High Times Tavern. There he is with his cowboy hat, biker jacket, aviator sunglasses and gleaming teeth – not the teeth he had the last time he was in the High Times Tavern – and he’s greeting people like they’re all old friends. Snoopy behind the bar tries to smile while keeping the scarred side of his face away from the camera.
Róise, the owner, comes over and greets Rex warmly – or as warmly as she can manage. Jimmy sits at the end of the bar scribbling on pieces of paper, as is his way. Other assorted barflies line up beside him.
‘Rex,’ says Róise. ‘Back from America.’
‘Róise,” says Rex Casey as Róise embraces him.
‘Still here, Jimmy?’ says Rex Casey fondly, over Róise’s shoulder to Jimmy.
Snoopy doesn’t much like the tone of this.
‘Check out “hat prick”,’ says Barfly number 1 to Barfly number 2, throwing his thumb in Rex’s direction.
‘Cut!’ shouts Rex Casey’s manager.
‘That’s my job,’ says the director.
Rex’s manager – Cressida, of all things – glowers at him. The cameraman takes the camera off his shoulder.
‘Who vetted these guys?’ says Cressida to Róise, gesturing towards the barflies.
Snoopy knows that nobody vetted these guys. They were just the first four people to realize that the bar was unaccountably open on a Sunday morning. He suspects that Jimmy, the venue’s living ghost, can feel a disturbance in the force whenever the front door is unlocked.
Listen: Patrick Freyne talks to Brendan O’Connor on RTÉ Radio 1
Róise, normally in control, looks uncharacteristically chastened. ‘I’m so sorry, Rex,’ she says, as though Rex were a visiting priest or a duchess, or indeed, the minor popstar he is, and not someone she once barred from the venue for stealing pints.
‘That’s okay, Róise, we want authenticity,’ says Rex, though he doesn’t demur when his manager and some of the crew hustle Barfly number 1 out of the building.
‘So what brings you back here, Rex,’ murmurs Jimmy.
‘You already asked that, Jimmy,’ says Snoopy who, not knowing what else to do, is pretending to dry a glass for the tenth time. Jimmy has started to forget things.
Snoopy is normally in bed at this time on a Sunday and doesn’t want to be here. He stares at Rex and finds he can’t quite believe what he is seeing. Reconciling the hungry scenester he once knew with a celebrity abstraction wasn’t too hard. Reconciling the celebrity abstraction with this flesh and blood man – a flesh and blood man who wears sunglasses indoors – is something different.
The crew are setting up to capture Rex Casey’s big entrance again. The director has it in his head, now that he’s seen it, that he wants to catch it all from a different angle. Rex is talking with Róise about old times, though Snoopy, who remembers those old times, doesn’t recognize all of the things they’re talking about. He notices that Rex still covers his face with his hand when he talks – an old instinct to hide his bad teeth, his old teeth – and he softens a bit when he sees that.
‘I knew from the first time you played here that you had a spark,’ says Róise.
Snoopy knows that Róise can’t actually recall the first time Rex played here. Snoopy was the one running the open mic night by then. Róise wasn’t there. But Rex has mythologized that night in several major magazine interviews since then, so it has to be part of the documentary.
‘Do you remember what you said to me?’ says Rex.
Róise frowns, genuinely trying to remember this thing that never happened.
‘You said to concentrate on my lower register.’ Rex smiles at the thought – the idea that he would sing in anything but the rich baritone for which he is beloved. ‘And from that day forward I did. It’s kind of my trademark.’
‘Oh, I do remember,’ says Róise, and Snoopy can see from her face that she’s visualizing it in her head, something that never was. That’s how many memories are formed, Snoopy guesses. He wonders how many of his own memories are suspect.
Snoopy knows what he said to Rex, because it’s what he said to most people who played the open mic night: ‘Keep going. The next time will be better.’ He stopped running those nights when he stopped believing that and started to feel himself drowning in other people’s disappointment.
Experts In A Dying Field is published by Penguin