Two Parts

“Three-quarters,” said Mr Kinsella. “Then you stop.”

“Stop?”

“Stop. Put it down. Walk away from it. Go and do something else.” He set the glass on the bar under the tap, at the angle, and pulled, and the stout came out of the tap not black but brown, a pale, churning, milky brown, like a river in flood, and filled the glass to about three-quarters, and Mr Kinsella pushed the tap back and took his hand away and set the glass down on the bar, on the drip tray, and stepped back from it. “Now you wait.”

Frederick looked at the glass.

The stout was doing something. It was moving. Inside the glass, from the bottom up, the brown was separating, the dark sinking and the pale rising, in a slow tumbling surge, like weather seen from very high up, and as he watched, the black came down through it from the top and gathered at the bottom and rose, and the pale went up and up and settled at the top in a band, and the band got narrower, and the black got blacker, until the glass was three-quarters full of something as dark as a church at night with a band of cream on top of it about two fingers deep.

“Right,” said Mr Kinsella. “Now the second part.”

---

The pub was called Daly’s. It was in a street off Smithfield, on the north side of the river, between a hardware shop and a place that sold second-hand bicycles, and it had been Daly’s since 1798, which Mr Kinsella said was a year that nobody in Ireland needed reminding about, and it had a long mahogany bar with a brass rail and a snug at the end with a door and a hatch, and a mirror behind the bar so old that the silver had come away from the back of it in patches and you saw yourself in it in pieces, like a map.

Mr Kinsella was seventy. He had been behind the bar of Daly’s since he was eighteen. He had poured, by his own estimate, which he had worked out on the back of a beer mat in 1997 and updated every Christmas since, about one million, one hundred thousand pints of stout, and he had poured every one of them in two parts, with a rest between them, the way his father had taught him and his father’s father had taught his father, and he had never once, in fifty-two years, been hurried.

“How long?” said Frederick. “The rest.”

Mr Kinsella looked at him.

“As long as it takes,” he said.

Along the bar, eleven men looked at their watches.

They were the regulars. Frederick had met them at four, when he arrived, when the pipe band had stopped playing in the street outside and the guard of honour of the Irish Army had marched away and Mr Kinsella had shaken his hand on the step and said you’ll have to learn the stout, so, and taken him inside. They sat along the bar on eleven stools, in order, the same order, Mr Kinsella said, for thirty years, and they were all over sixty and all wearing caps and they all had watches, real ones, on their wrists, and some of them had stopwatches as well, on strings round their necks, and they all, every one of them, timed every pint Mr Kinsella poured, and had done for thirty years, and had never yet agreed on the figure.

“A hundred and nineteen seconds,” said the man on the first stool.

“A hundred and twenty-two,” said the man on the fourth.

“It’s not about the seconds,” said the man on the eighth.

“It’s always about the seconds,” said the man on the first.

“It’s about the settle,” said the man on the eighth, and they began to argue, quietly, the way men argue who have been having the same argument for thirty years and would be lost without it, and Mr Kinsella, behind the bar, picked up the glass, three-quarters full and settled, and held it under the tap again, straight this time, not at the angle, and pushed the tap away from him instead of pulling it towards him, so that the stout came out slowly, and filled the glass to the top, and the cream rose to the rim and a little above it, in a dome, and stopped.

He set it on the bar.

It was, Frederick thought, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in a glass.

“Now you,” said Mr Kinsella.

---

The first attempt was at a quarter past five.

He did the first part. He did it well, he thought. The angle, the glass three-quarters full, the tap back. He set it down on the drip tray. He stepped back. He watched the surge, the weather, the black coming down and the pale going up. Eleven men watched him watch it, with their watches.

The pale settled. The band narrowed.

He picked it up.

“No,” said Mr Kinsella.

He put it down.

“Not yet,” said Mr Kinsella.

“It’s settled.”

“It’s not settled. It’s nearly settled.” Mr Kinsella did not look at the glass. He was looking at the King. “There’s a difference. You’ll see it, when you’ve seen enough of them. It goes still at the top, the way a pond goes still. Then you wait another bit. Then you go.”

Frederick waited another bit.

He did not know how long another bit was. He stood behind the bar of Daly’s in front of eleven men with watches and Mr Kinsella and a photographer at the window and the guard of honour’s officer, who had come back in for a drink, and Kimura on a stool at the far end by the snug with a glass of something he had made for a woman at a quarter to five and got wrong, and Theo, beside him, in the long white Cranwell apron that came down past his knees, holding a cloth, very still, the way he held a cloth when somebody was about to be ill, and Mr Quennell in the snug with the door open and a notebook, and the stout settled, and settled, and he could not tell, he could not for his life tell, whether it was still at the top the way a pond goes still.

He picked it up.

He did the second part. He pushed the tap away. The stout came out. The cream rose. It rose to the rim, and then it did not stop at the rim. It went over. It went over in a slow, thick, cream-coloured wave, down the side of the glass and onto his hand and onto the bar, and the cream on top of the glass, which should have been a dome, sank in the middle like a soufflé, and stayed sunk.

He set it on the bar.

Nobody said anything.

The man on the first stool looked at his watch.

“Ninety-four seconds,” he said.

Along the bar, eleven men took off their caps.

---

It was on the news at six.

It was on the news because the photographer at the window was from a Dublin paper, and had been told by the Taoiseach’s office that the King would be learning the stout and that it would make a lovely picture for Christmas, and it did make a lovely picture, of a sort, which went onto the paper’s website at twenty past five under the headline KING’S FIRST STOUT: 94 SECONDS, with the subheadline Regulars “in mourning”, says barman, and was on the evening news on the national broadcaster at six, as the third item, after a storm in the west and a row about a hospital in Galway, with a short film of the eleven men taking off their caps.

At half past six a man came into Daly’s from the Oireachtas.

He was a member of the Dáil for a constituency in Dublin Central, which was the constituency Daly’s was in, and he had come, he said, because he had been telephoned by forty of his constituents since six o’clock, and he wished to make it clear, on behalf of all of them, that while he and they were honoured beyond words by the King’s presence in their constituency, there were limits.

“Ninety-four,” he said, at the bar, to the King, more in sorrow than in anger. “Sir. Ninety-four.”

“I know.”

“In Smithfield.”

“I know.”

“There are men in this constituency,” said the deputy, “who have not been the same since six o’clock.” He looked along the bar at the eleven regulars, who had put their caps back on and were looking at their watches. “I’m not saying you have to get it right, sir. I’m saying you have to try again.”

“I’m going to.”

“Good,” said the deputy, and stayed, and was served by Theo, a pint of lager, which Theo got wrong, and drank it anyway.

---

The second attempt was at seven.

He waited longer. He waited, by the first stool’s watch, a hundred and eight seconds before he picked up the glass for the second part, and he was so careful with the second part, and so slow, pushing the tap away by about a millimetre at a time, that the cream rose to the rim and stopped there, perfectly, in a dome, and he took the glass away from the tap and looked at it and felt something like the thing he had felt in the New Inn with the Speyside, and set it on the bar.

“A hundred and fifty-one,” said the man on the first stool.

“Too long,” said the man on the fourth, in anguish.

“It’s not the length,” said the man on the eighth. “Look at the head.”

They looked at the head. The head was a dome. But it was not, Mr Kinsella said, gently, after looking at it, the right kind of dome. It was a dome that had been made, carefully, by a man pushing a tap a millimetre at a time. It was not a dome that had happened, because the stout had been given the right amount of time and the right amount of pressure and then left alone.

“It’s a good pint,” said Mr Kinsella. “It’s a very good pint. For a man who’s been thinking about it the whole time.” He picked it up and looked at it in the broken mirror. “The trick is to stop thinking about it.”

“How do you stop thinking about it?”

Mr Kinsella considered the question.

“You pour a million of them,” he said.

The second attempt was on the news at nine, as the second item, after the storm, under the headline KING’S SECOND STOUT: 151 SECONDS, “TOO LONG”, with a short film of the man on the fourth stool with his face in his hands.

---

Jack arrived at nine.

He came in through the door of Daly’s at five past, in his coat, with a rucksack, straight from the airport, having flown from Bristol on the evening flight, and he stood in the doorway with snow on his shoulders, because it had started to snow, very lightly, at about eight, and looked at the long mahogany bar and the broken mirror and the eleven men on their stools and the King behind the bar in a black T-shirt with stout down the front of it, and said, very loudly, so that the whole of Daly’s heard:

“Right. Move over, Hanover. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

The eleven men turned round.

Mr Kinsella turned round.

“And who,” said Mr Kinsella, “would you be?”

“Jack Fennell,” said Jack. “New Inn, Coln Saint Aldwyns. Gloucestershire.” He took off his coat. “Four years behind a bar. I taught him.” He came down the bar and lifted the flap at the end without asking and came behind it, and stood beside Frederick, and looked at the stout tap. “I’ve seen it on the telly. Three-quarters, stop, wait, top it up. How hard can it be?”

The eleven men looked at each other.

Mr Kinsella stepped back from the tap, slowly, and folded his arms.

“Go on, so,” he said.

Jack took a glass. He held it at the angle. He pulled. He filled it to three-quarters, fast, with total confidence, the way he pulled a bitter at the New Inn while talking to his father about the van, without looking, and set it down on the drip tray, and did not watch it settle, because Jack never watched anything, and talked to the man on the first stool about the weather for what the man on the first stool later reported was forty-one seconds, and picked it up, and pushed the tap away, and the stout came out, and rose, and went over the top in a great slow cream-coloured wave, all down Jack’s hand and his wrist and his sleeve and onto the floor of Daly’s, and the head sank in the middle, and stayed sunk.

Jack looked at it.

The whole of Daly’s looked at it.

“Forty-one seconds,” said the man on the first stool, and took off his cap, and so did the other ten.

---

It was on the news at ten. It was the first item. The storm had moved to the second.

The headline was ENGLISHMAN ATTEMPTS STOUT, and the film was of Jack Fennell standing behind the bar of Daly’s with stout up to his elbow, looking at a sunken pint with an expression of total betrayal, and eleven men in caps taking them off, and beside Jack, very slightly behind him, the King of Ireland, with his hand over his mouth, not quite managing to hide that he was laughing so hard he could not stand up straight.

“That’s not fair,” said Jack, at a quarter past ten, in the snug, with a towel. “That’s not fair. I’ve been doing it four years.”

“You’ve been doing bitter four years.”

“Bitter’s harder.”

“Is it?”

“No,” said Jack, after a moment. “No, it’s not, is it.” He looked through the hatch at the bar, where Mr Kinsella was pouring a stout for the man on the first stool, three-quarters, set it down, walk away, serve somebody else, come back, without looking at a watch, without looking at the glass, and top it up, and the dome rose and stopped, and he set it on the bar, and the man on the first stool looked at his watch and said nothing at all, because there was nothing to say. “Look at him. He’s not even looking. He’s like you said I was. In August.” He wiped his arm. “He’s like Mum.”

Frederick sat on the bench in the snug beside him.

“You don’t watch,” he said. “Mrs Haverfield said. You just know.”

“Not with that I don’t.” Jack looked at the stout tap as though it had insulted his family. “That’s a different language.”

“Then you’ll have to learn it.”

Jack turned round on the bench and looked at him.

“When?”

“St Patrick’s Day,” said Frederick. “I’m coming back. In March. Ireland’s demanding it. There was a motion put down in the Dáil this evening, after the second one. Mr Quennell’s got a copy.” He looked through the hatch at the snow coming down past the window of Daly’s in the light from the street, onto the hardware shop and the bicycles and the pipe band’s van, which was still outside. “Three months. Both of us. We’ll both learn it.”

Jack thought about this.

“I’m not coming back to Dublin in March to be humiliated on the national news by eleven old men with watches,” he said.

“Yes, you are.”

“Yes, I am,” said Jack, and put the towel down, and for a moment, in the snug of Daly’s, with the hatch open and the snow outside and Mr Kinsella pouring a million and one, he did not say anything at all, which for Jack was the same as a speech, and then he leaned over and kissed the King of Ireland very briefly on the side of the head, by the ear, where nobody could see, and stood up, and went back out to the bar, and said to Mr Kinsella, loudly, “Right. Again. Show me again,” and Mr Kinsella, who had poured a million pints and had never once been hurried, looked at the boy from Gloucestershire with stout up to his elbow, and smiled.

---

On the beer mat by the snug, Kimura had written: 21.07. Englishman. 41 secs. Head sank. And under it: Detail drank Fennell’s, being an error. It was all right.

In the car back to the hotel, Mr Quennell drafted a Rule Thirteen, which said The Sovereign shall not attempt the stout, and then crossed it out, and then wrote under it, in very small letters, on reflection, he must.