Old Ghosts: winning poem at Ballydonoghue Bardfest 2023

Until today, I’d thought of you as old,

But sixty-three is far too young to die,

And as I stand here in the rain and cold,

The question I am asking still is why.

Why pick on me to be your captive muse?

A toehold on your meteoric climb,     

Your love canard has made me a recluse,

Forever chained to your most hackneyed rhyme,   

And publicans not taken with your verse

Nor needful of your custom to survive,

Parade in sombre garb behind your hearse;

Your status greater now than when alive.

But fallen leaves and old ghosts must away

Like nightmares at the dawning of the day. 

Cuckoo        https://theplumtreetavern.blogspot.com/

by Neil Brosnan

I blame the parents more than the youngsters

Those most deceitful of our refugees.

Planners and plotters, ingrained imposters,

Covertly winging from far overseas.

‘Shush,’ snaps the dunnock from under the sedge,

The marsh warbler’s song cut short in his throat

Mute pipits cringe at the still meadow’s edge

High up above them resounds the next note.

Tunefully perfect, evolved to enthrall

Proclaiming his realm; his objectives clear

Shamelessly calling from dawn to nightfall

Stark confirmation that summer is here.

Have we ever heard this cuckoo before?

Will he return here - once, twice, or no more? 

Neil Brosnan: stories individually published in miscellaneous magazines and anthologies:

Fresh Water: Listowel Writers’ Week winners’ anthology, 2004, The Galway Review,  

Not Guilty: Ireland’s Own, Readwave USA,  

A Halloween Tale: Ireland’s Own, Readwave USA

On the train: Bill Naughton winners’ anthology (UK) ‘05

Last Dance: Ireland’s Own SS winner ‘06

Good Intentions: Dunlavin Anthology ’05. Five Stop stories, UK. Readwave USA,

Full Cycle: Duleek Anthology ‘10

Free Lunch: Ireland’s Own

The Sport of Knaves: Ireland’s Own

Innocent Sin: Five Stop stories, UK, Kleinkrieg Und Frieden (Germany), Readwave USA

Trumped: Ireland’s Own,

Driven: Bill Naughton winners’ anthology (UK) ‘08, Readwave USA,

Saddler’s Dance: Ireland’s Own, Kerry Writers’ Anthology.

Catnap: Ireland’s Own

Sonny’s Da: Ireland’s Own winners' anthology 2010.

Blinkered: Ireland's Own,

Final Fling:               “

The Southcott Cup:  “

Thrupence Worth:    “

Not Today: The Golden Pen, Readwave USA,

Chasing Rainbows: Northwest Words, Readwave USA,

Ghosts of Presents past: Ireland’s Own

Dancing to Silence: Solstice Shorts, Arachne Press, UK.

Make a wish: Under the fable, UK.  

Flip Side: Brilliant Flash Fiction, USA

Absence and Presence: Ireland’s Own.

Company: Darkhouse Books, USA

Christmas Goggled: Holly Bough 2019

Charlie: Maurice Walsh award winner 2019.

Duty: Ireland's Own winning story 2019. 

My sister's transistor: Maurice Walsh award winner 2020

Flying Solo: Maurice Walsh award winner 2021 

Friday's Child: Maurice Walsh award winner 2022

Christmas Bonus: Maurice Walsh awaed winner 2023

Bogmen (non fiction) : Ireland's Own winners' anthology 2021

Hypothetical Racehorses: Ariel Chart 2021 USA

Baker's Dozen: Potato Soup 2021 USA

Driftwood: Academy of the Heart and Mind 2022 USA

No Signal: Moss Puppy 2022 USA

Lady Mac: BS Literature 2022 USA

First Sub: Aethlon 2022 Dept of English, University of East Tennessee, USA

By the lake: Ireland's Eye 2022 

Presumed Guilty Fur, Feather, Pen 2022

Dial Zero: Ariel Chart (USA) 2023, nominated for 2024 Pushcart Award, USA.

Knock-on: Ireland's Own 2023

Four Roses: Academy of the heart and mind (USA) 2024

Barnahinch: Dearbooze (USA) 2024

Rhythm: Wixite (USA) 2024

Checking Out: Modus Operandi (USA) 2024

Connections: (WS) Soulmate Syndrome (India) 2024

My Granny's Hands: Witcraft (Australia) 2024

Wandering the Roads: Home Planet (USA) 2024

Outlaws: Willesden Herald (UK) Story of the month March 2024

Enough is Enough: Literary Heist magazine (USA) 2024

The Gate Lodge: Lit eZine (Australia) 2024

Old Ghosts: Sparks (Ireland) 2024

Crossroads: Suisun Valley Review, Dept of English, Solano College, CA (USA) 2024

Miss Gilbert's Sister: Live Encounters (Australia) 2024 

The Accident: Masticadores (Spain) 2024

Atlantis: Otherwise Engaged (USA) 2024

Before your time: Masticadores (Spain) 2024

Hanging On: The Writers' Journal (USA) 2024

Birdy: 2nd Prizewinner, Ireland's Own open SS competition 2023

Sam: Yellow House Publishing (Belfast) 2024:

Christmas Turkey: All your stories (UK) 2024

Sleeping Dogs: Maurice Walsh Award (Irl) 2024

Christmas Stockings: Lyreacrompane Journal (Irl )2024

We'll Never Know: Superpresent (USA) 2024

Street Angel: Doublespeak (India) 2024 

Magpie: Fabuly (Australia) 2025

Song for Sonja: Syncopation (USA) 2025 

Glebe House: (WS) Merry Creepmas (India) 2025

My other Aunt Mary: Live Encounters (UK) 2025

Uncle Johnsie: Weathervane (USA) 2005

(Collections) Fresh Water and other stories (2010)

                            Neap Tide and other stories (2013) http://newbinarypress.com/tag/neap-tide/ 

The following stories are in reverse order to the above listing, beginning with the most recently published.

Uncle Johnsey

It’s funny but I’d never noticed it before. Funny, in the sense that I’ve only noticed it now was because it isn’t there. Oh, the gateway is there, but overgrown, not cropped in readiness for Dad to park his car on the paved passage. Well, he wasn’t my real dad: I got him when I was about ten… Before that, just Mum and I would travel on the ferry from Liverpool, then by train to the town, where Uncle Johnsey would meet us and drive us to Gran’s in his blue VW Beetle.

         From my very first visit, the view from the summit of the hill above the village has sent my heart racing. The long hours spent on ferry and trains were all suddenly worthwhile. The dazzlingly whitewashed homestead was in sharp contrast with the greens, browns and gold of the land, the white-maned turquoise of the bay, and the brooding indigo of the mountains on the opposite peninsula.

         “The crooked wall at the hairpin bend, west of the house, is our boundary with Denny Collins, and the passage down to the shore bounds us on this side!” The pride in Johnsey’s voice was infectious. Just a couple of generations back, his ancestors had killed and died for these very stony fields. Our boundary, Johnsey had said, and ever since that moment I’ve felt part of it too.

         Later, when my baby brother arrived, I feared that the presence of a male child in the family might undermine my relationship with Johnsey; it didn’t. From the beginning, Johnsey had made me feel special and, even after my second brother was born, nothing changed. Each year, Johnsey continued to equip me with a new pair of red wellies to wear on our bird watching and fishing expeditions, or when collecting driftwood and shells along the foreshore.

         Warm dusty August was the highlight of my year, with her seasoned grasses wilting beneath bursts of flaming fuchsia, montbretia and rambling nasturtium; snow-freckled from Johnsey’s annual whitewashing of house, piers and walls in celebration of the emigrants’ return. Now, spreading blotches of moss and lichen bear testament to the protracted absence of brush and lime from the weathered stone. The flora too was unfamiliar, the roadside verges were now clad in cooler hues: ranks of wilting daffodil divided fragrant blizzards of blackthorn from sprinkles of timid bluebell and aromatic primrose.

         Heavy and unmoved by the joys of spring, my heart was pining for the wonders of Augusts past and childhood outgrown. Sighing, I hitch up my long dress and after struggling over the stone stile beside the gate pier; pick my steps past the turf shed at the leeward gable.

         It isn’t a shed by today’s standards, more of a lean-to really: a roof of rusting corrugated iron, supported by four discarded telephone poles, which Grandda had erected before Mum was born. I’ve never before seen it empty; Johnsey had always taken pride in having the fuel saved and home before the first meadow would fall to the mowing bar.

         Although Mum always brought a carton of duty-free cigarettes, I never saw her smoke in Gran’s presence. Her secret supply would be hidden at the back of Johnsey’s first aid locker in the dairy, to be visited whenever Gran took a snooze or the tension between mother and daughter became too much to bear. Once, when I was about nine, I recruited Marie Collins for a raid on Mum’s stash. We were just about to light up when Johnsey appeared from nowhere and caught us in the act.

         “Put them back and clear off!” He snapped. “If I ever catch you again…” He never did. I light a cigarette now and, after a furtive glance around, duck my head beneath the low lintel at the stall entrance. Momentarily startled by some creature scurrying along the slurry channel, I blink to adjust my eyes to the dim interior. It’s darker than I remembered but I soon realise that this is due to the thick layers of dust-laden cobwebs that cloud the few sheets of Perspex that were built into the iron roof. One-by-one, I lift the cows’ tie-ropes, remembering the names of the docile individuals who had stood, patiently chewing their cud, while Johnsey’s calloused fingers coaxed the rich bounty from their swollen udders. I can almost hear the rhythmic pess-pesh, pess-pesh of the twin needle-thin jets, squirting into the frothing bucket below.

         There were other sounds too: deep stomach rumbles, cloven hooves scraping against cobblestones, and the occasional stifled oath from Johnsey when a beast would chose the most inopportune of moments to relieve herself. Smells waft back through the decades, that uniquely bovine cocktail of steam, urine and faeces, tempered with disinfectant and carbolic soap from Johnsey’s teat-washing cloth. I can picture them now, their sleek sloping backs in an undulating row: the reds, roans, blues and greys of their British Shorthorn breed. Sighing, I return outside to the curious feral eyes of a skittish semi-circle of pale Charalois bullocks.

         I find my gaze drawn sideways to the dung-heap at the rear of the byre. Long free of the persistent scratching of poultry, the decaying mound has been colonised by a profusion of perennial weeds… What a change from the days when, just as soon as the last haycock had been crowned, Johnsey would tackle the donkey and draw the manure to stimulate the meadows into one last burst of growth, which would feed the livestock until housing time.

         Straying from the cobbled passage, my stiletto heels sink as I approached the hayshed: my all-embracing bolthole from unpleasant chores, feuding adults and sudden summer showers. Though empty, except for a solitary foraging robin, it’s chock-a-block with memories I’d thought forgotten.

         There is something about August rain that can drive people mad. For some, it’s the obvious concerns for the harvest; for others, the frustration of dampened holiday plans and unfulfilled hopes. For us, those determined drizzles foreshadowed the inevitability of visitors’ parting tears, while old sores still remained unsalved.

         I loved the odd rainy day and liked nothing better than to snuggle into a cosy hollow in the butt of the previous year’s fodder and listen to a thundershower batter and spatter against the high arched roof. I take a final drag before discarding my cigarette and allowing my thoughts to wander yet again.

         The cats were invariably the first farmyard refugees to seek the protection of the hayshed. Their approach was always cautious, making little darting runs, then pausing, suspecting danger around every corner. I would watch the cats, their heads oscillating as parent swallows swooped to dive-bomb all intruders. Gradually the birds would relax and resume the feeding of their nestlings, high up in the iron girders that supported the roof. The cats would soon settle and, except for an occasional upward glance, concentrate on meticulously grooming their colourful coats.

         The hens with their strutting rooster would come next, and a handful of precocious bantams and the few turkey chicks, hatched by a broody hen, specifically for the Christmas table. The poultry benefited on the double from the shed, not only did they gain shelter from the elements, but they had the bonus of a veritable feast of the various invertebrates they managed to unearth from beneath the musty hay.

         Charlie would always be the last to join our menagerie. While the black-and-white collie was much valued as a willing and effective cattle dog, he really saw his role as that of guardian, not only of the household but also of the roadway outside. His chosen sentry post was between the piers of the rarely used wicket-gate at the front of the dwelling house. It took more than a few drops of rain to deter Charlie from seeing off any vehicle that dared to encroach on his territory. He would be already saturated even before the gushing torrents from the gutter less roof gave him a final drenching. Once inside the shed, his first action would be to shake himself vigorously. As chickens squawked their protests, cats would dash for cover, sometimes retreating too far and ending up back out in the rain again.

         Oblivious to the consternation his arrival had caused, Charlie would nuzzle up to me, lay his head on my lap and promptly fall asleep. Soon the steam would begin to rise from his drying coat and the smell of wet dog would hang in the heavy air. From the moment I’d first met Charlie, I had wanted a dog of my own.

         “We can’t keep a dog in a flat”; Mum would say, “if we had a house…” Harry had a house. I called him Dad earlier, but his name is Harry. Harry had a great house and, when Mum and I went to live with him, it was like entering a different world. I had my very own room and there was a room for Mum too, but she usually slept with either Harry or me. Harry’s house had two gardens: the little one in front was full of flowers, but the back one was huge and had lots of room for a dog, but Mum said that we couldn’t get a dog until after the baby came…

         Even by the standards of the time, Johnsey’s farming methods would have been considered old-fashioned. His hayshed would stand empty for several weeks after the tardiest of his neighbours had completed the harvest.

         “It’s the swallows,” he’d argue, “If the hay was in now, sure the cats would be able to reach the nests!” But Johnsey’s harvest also began after everyone else’s.

         “How could I cut any earlier? Aren’t corncrakes scarce enough without me chopping them up with the mower?” was his perennial response to Gran’s nagging.

         Even though I’d never been there to see the conclusion of the hay season, I’d always played my part in the saving. At first, my job had been to ferry tea and sandwiches to Johnsey in the meadow but, as I got older, my duties became more technical. By the age of six, I was a dab hand at standing on the haycocks and stamping each new forkful into position on the growing mounds. Within a few years, I could turn, toss and rake as well as Marie Collins and any other local girl.

         It was in the meadow that I’d finally discovered Charlie’s secret. Though I’d never been awake for the morning milking, Charlie’s evening punctuality had never ceased to amaze me. Regardless of the weather or whatever the current farm task happened to be, Charlie would set off to bring the cows in for milking at six o’clock precisely. I had posed the question to each adult in turn: I firmly believe that neither Mum nor Gran actually knew the answer, but Johnsey was a different matter.

         “Dogs sometimes know things that we don’t.” He would repeat and then ruffle the dog’s scruff. “Isn’t that right, Charlie, isn’t that right?”

         It was one of those rare balmy evenings; even on the foreshore there was hardly a puff of wind. We had just finished raking Curlews’ Meadow, and while Johnsey swallowed a mug of water, I listened to the faint serenading of an amorous bull from somewhere across the bay. Suddenly, Charlie sprang from apparent sleep into instant action and after hurdling the open double-ditch between the meadows, headed for the pasture. I suppose, I’d only heard it because my ears had already been tuned into the bull. but there it was, a very faint peal. I waited a few moments and heard another, with two more in quick succession, then a pause and then another… Johnsey was studying me closely, a twinkle in his grey eyes.

         “You heard it; didn’t you?” Yes, I’d heard it all right, the six o’clock Angelus bell from the village church; the bell that tolled and told Charlie to begin the evening roundup. Yes, dogs do know some things that we don’t and, to this day, I’m grateful to Johnsey for allowing me to solve that particular little mystery by myself.

         I check my watch; I still have nearly an hour before… I’m facing the rear of the dwelling house now or, more correctly, the flat roofed extension that Johnsey added to the original structure, shortly after his father’s death. To Gran, for whom indoor plumbing had been an impossible dream, the addition of a scullery with running water and an indoor flush toilet meant unimaginable luxury. It mattered little that water would still have to be heated on the peat-fuelled, black Stanley range, which stood in the recess of the kitchen’s original open hearth.

         My heart pounding, I tentatively reach my hand towards the ledge above the door, my fingers trembling as they closed on their target. The key is still there! I unlock the door and slip through to the kitchen. If the house had a soul, this would be it. Occupying well over half of the ground floor area, it has a coped ceiling that extends all the way to the rafters that had supported the original thatched roof. The thatch had long since given way to slate but the dark cobwebbed hooks that cling to the high, blackened beams are a constant reminder of a more self-sufficient era. It was here that the home-salted bacon had hung to cure in the smoke of peat and wood, candle and pipe.

         I think I was about three when we’d first visited Johnsey and Gran. Despite my youth, I could sense the tension between Mum and her mother. Johnsey was aware of it too, and always attempted to whisk me away at the first hint of trouble, but even he didn’t get it right every time. The incident that sticks most in my mind happened after supper one night, at a time when it seemed that Mum and Gran were observing an uneasy truce.

         The little farmhouse had only two bedrooms. These were accessed by the doors on either side of the chimneybreast and were occupied by Johnsey and Gran. Mum and I were billeted in the little attic space between their bedroom ceilings and the rafters. The only natural light source in the loft was a tiny gable window, which faced east and caught the very first glow of dawn above the darkness of the towering mountain. It was after I’d gone to bed that night that I gleaned further insight into the family dynamic. I discovered that, by placing myself beside the disused fireplace, I could easily keep tabs on the goings-on in the kitchen below.

         Mum was teasing Johnsey again.

         “So tell us, when are you going to find a woman for yourself?” I could picture his sheepish grin but it was Gran’s voice that sounded.

         “Not everybody is in the hurry that you were, madam!” I heard the scrape of chair legs on flagstone before the backdoor slammed.

         “Now you’ve upset her again!” Johnsey sounded more defiant than usual.

         “Hah!” Gran snorted. “That’s her look-out; we can all be touchy when it suits us! Wouldn’t I look well if you brought some little trollop in under my roof? Isn’t it enough that she got herself landed and, after all her smartness, was left to face the music alone?”

         “She is better off alone and single than married to…”

         “And a lot you’d know about it!” Another chair scraped but this time it was a bedroom door that slammed. I promised myself right there and then that someday I would marry Johnsey and then everybody would live happily ever after. Moments later, the rich throaty warbles of a roosting blackbird banished the ominous silence and sleep released me from the painful world of grown-ups.

         I’ve never been in Johnsey’s bedroom, or Gran’s either, that is until after she died and I helped Mum to sort out her stuff. I find myself turning the handle of Johnsey’s door; it creaks slowly inward to reveal an iron-framed single bed, an open wardrobe, where a few items of working clothes dangle from wire hangers, and a little scattering of DIY tools, on top of a woodworm-riddled chest-of-drawers.

         On impulse, I grab the Swiss Army Knife, the tool that was so magical in Johnsey’s hands. The tool that could do anything from peeling a windfall apple or paring the donkey’s hooves, to lancing an abscess on a suffering beast or getting the Volkswagen moving again. Johnsey doesn’t need it now and, in spite of them all, I’ll have something tangible to remember him by. I slip the knife into my handbag and, after relocking the house, returned to my car.

         It seems like half of the county has gathering at St Matthew’s church. Passing the pub, I can smell the food being prepared for afterwards…

         “All fur coat and no knickers!” His big sister had said when she’d learned of Johnsey’s interest in the widowed publican. Gran will never be dead while Mum lives! Do we all eventually become our mothers?

         I watch the widow now, a shapely figure alighting from her designated car. Whatever about knickers, there is no fur coat, just a three-quarter-length navy dress beneath a wide brimmed navy had, with matching shoes and bag. I hasten my steps to assume my rightful place in the procession. Although I can never deliver on my promise to marry Johnsey, I’m determined to make the most of my role of chief bridesmaid at his wedding.  

 My other Aunt Mary

         Dad was the youngest of four; the eldest was Mary, but I only ever heard her referred to as Mother Perpetua. I never met Mother Perpetua; she died when I was in my teens, having spent forty-eight years in the religious order she’d entered immediately on leaving school. The story goes that in all that time she’d never ventured beyond the convent walls, and her only contact with the outside world had been an annual visit from Dad – and sometimes Mam – usually in August. The only image I’ve seen of her is the old sepia photo of Dad’s First Communion day, with their parents and brother and sister. I was never well disposed towards Mother Perpetua; I’d thought our daily family rosary – complete with The Apostles’ Creed, the relevant mysteries of the day, and The Hail Holy Queen – long enough without having to face another litany for the holy intentions of Mother Perpetua.

         To my memory, the first time we missed a rosary was a Thursday in May when I was nine. Uncle Willie, Mam’s brother, was in the kitchen when I came home from school, and Mam said that he had come to take her and Dad on a journey. They would be leaving once my sisters returned from secondary school, and Eileen, the elder of the girls, would be in charge. Eileen would check my homework; I was to be on my best behaviour, and go to bed at my usual time – or earlier, if told.

I wasn’t told, and nobody asked about my homework, and I don’t think my sisters did much homework either – unless it involved learning songs from some strange radio station called Luxembourg. Having the freedom to remain outside until dusk was a mixed blessing but despite the rain, I didn’t dare go indoors in case I’d have to say the rosary. My fears proved groundless: neither sister even noticed when I finally found the courage to sneak inside and creep upstairs to bed.

         My room was directly above the kitchen, and I was awakened at some ungodly hour by the rumble of muffled voices from below. Why was Willie in our house in the middle of the night? Why had Willie taken Mam and Dad away in the first place? Why was Willie arguing with Dad, and why were Mam and Dad arguing with each other? I couldn’t glean much from the general kerfuffle, but the words Mary, convent, and funeral were being spouted by Mam and Willie, while Dad would intermittently interject with parents, blame and shame. Finally, I heard the name I’d been waiting for: Mother Perpetua; Mam screamed it three times in rapid succession, and then everybody went silent. The last thing I remember was the slamming of a door and somebody creaking up the stairs.

         I was surprised to find Dad in my bed next morning. Only Mam had ever shared my bed – years before, when I was very small and had tonsillitis. If Mother Perpetua had gone to her eternal reward, would our rosary be reduced to more manageable proportions, or did nuns continue to have holy intentions even after death? I slipped out of bed and padded downstairs to the pong of cigarette smoke and a loud snoring from the parlour. A quick peek at the sofa revealed Willie’s arm protruding from beneath Dad’s heavy overcoat. I knew it was Willie’s arm because of the tattoo: only people who’d been to England – or to sea or prison – had tattoos. Willie had once lived in England – before I was born. Dad loved to joke that Willie had taken the first boat back home once he discovered that he’d actually have to work for a living in London. Willie had tattoos on both forearms: on the right was a red heart with the word Mary inside; on the left was a blue heart, pierced by a black arrow, with a single red droplet clinging to its tip.

         A hand touched my shoulder. I whirled around to see Mam holding a raised index finger to her pursed lips. Smelling of frying bacon and Sunday perfume, she steered me into the kitchen and explained that she and Willie would be leaving once they’d had breakfast, but she would be back for keeps on the following evening. When I asked if Dad would be going, she said that he’d be staying home to look after us and to cook our meals. I thought it strange that Mam was going instead of him: after all, Mother Perpetua was Dad’s sister – and Mam was a much better cook. Although I desperately wanted to know what was happening, I was afraid to ask my parents in case they might start arguing again, and whenever I’d ask my sisters about anything they’d just laugh and call me a stupid child. Knowing that Willie wouldn’t be any help – he was a bachelor, and believed that children should be seen and not heard – I decided to keep my eyes and ears open, and my mouth shut.

         Neither Dad nor my sisters came downstairs until after Willie’s car had left the yard. Strangely, although it was after eight o’clock, nobody mentioned school, and all three of us sat in silence as Dad set the kettle and a pot of eggs to boil on the new electric cooker. I was on my third slice of soda bread when Dad said he had things to do in town; he promised to call to our schools to explain our absences and assure our teachers that we were all studying hard at home. He seemed surprisingly cheery for somebody whose sister had just died, and he winked broadly at the bit about us studying hard at home. He brought us chips and burgers when he returned late in the evening, and then went straight to bed without any mention of study, or the rosary, or Mother Perpetua’s holy intentions. He did, however, lead the rosary on Saturday evening, but Mam was strangely silent during our prayers for Mother Perpetua’s holy intentions, and she remained kneeling long after Dad and my sisters had left the kitchen. Weeks and months went by with the daily rosary continuing unchanged, and neither Mam nor my sisters reacted when Dad made his customary August visit to Mother Perpetua. He would make seven or eight subsequent pilgrimages before Fr Keane arrived one dark November morning to inform us of Mother Perpetua’s death. Mam didn’t accompany Dad to the funeral; she led the rosary in his absence, and recited his decade as well as her own, but made no mention of Mother Perpetua or her holy intentions. 

***

         Aisling, our eldest, reminds me a lot of Mam. Theirs was a fraught relationship, which became ever more volatile as Aisling advanced through her teens and Mam entered her eighties. The last straw for Mam was when Aisling assumed the role of family archivist and began to quiz Mam about her family. Although she would never admit it to me, I’m sure Aisling hasn’t forgiven Mam for taking much of her clan’s history to the grave. Last May, Aisling went to New Jersey on a J1 Visa. As a bio-tech undergrad, she’d found a temporary position with the company she hopes to join when qualified. Prolonged periods of study haven’t dampened Aisling’s obsession with genealogy, and thanks to her knowledge of all things DNA, along with her mastery of the Internet, she has unearthed several hitherto unknown offshoots of our family tree.

         Aisling was Stateside for scarcely a wet week when she found a slua of descendants of an uncle of Dad’s who had supposedly died as a teenager in the Boer War. Nuala, my better half, was less than overjoyed with that news: having already endured years of surprise visits from her own scattered cousins, the last thing she needed was a queue of my relatives on her doorstep. I had almost convinced her of the unlikelihood of such a scenario when our youngest – nine-year-old Jack – pointed to a young lady in the local supermarket and remarked on her likeness to Aisling. We looked, and then we stared: first at the girl, and then – seeing that she was staring right back – at each other. No! I mentally echoed Nuala’s silent scream. It’s a coincidence, I told myself; there will be a perfectly logical explanation. Over the following weeks, however, scarcely a day went by without somebody asking if Aisling had returned from the States. By then, we had reverted to our Covid-19 Lockdown practice of shopping only twice a week – and very early in the morning. It wasn’t too difficult to convince Jack that unconnected people can sometimes look alike, especially after I pointed out one of his classmate’s resemblance to an unrelated family in the locality. I could have bitten my tongue when Nuala reminded me of an old rumour concerning the boy’s mother’s parentage. I’m since trying to convince myself that, unlike me at that age, most nine-year-olds rarely dwell on any thought for very long.

         Not so the fathers of nine-year-olds, especially when one overhears a work colleague comment that when he overheard our Aisling answer her phone on the previous evening, she’d sounded exactly like somebody in a Hollywood movie. That was something I decided to keep to myself, and neither Nuala nor I mentioned the doppelganger during our next webcam chat with Aisling. Just a week before her planned return home, Aisling announced that she’d been contacted by a girl who looked a lot like her and whose DNA suggested that she was a close relative. As the girl was holidaying in Ireland; would I mind meeting with her? Just me – not Nuala – what could I say? I couldn’t admit that we were already aware of such a girl, and she of us; that even Jack had noticed her similarity to Aisling. What was even more unsettling was my gut feeling that Aisling wasn’t being totally honest with me. She couldn’t possibly think that the girl might be her sister; could she?      

           Nuala wasn’t in the least offended by her exclusion from my face-to-face with the mysterious young lady, and she gleefully took Jack and his brother Ryan off to the beach for the day. By the appointed time, my sense of foreboding had morphed into acute anxiety, but I was absolutely terror stricken when I opened the door to find both Aisling and her lookalike on the threshold. They were virtually identical, and both uncannily similar to how my mother looked in her wedding photo. Despite my best attempts to delay the inevitable, the girls declined nibbles and refreshments in favour of getting straight to business. Aisling introduced the girl as Lucia D’Angelo, and described how Lucia had recently met with a woman in London to whom she was even more closely related than to us. Uncle Willie, I thought, and instantly blurted it out. Shaking her head, Aisling explained that something called mitochondrial DNA can only be inherited from one’s mother. That ruled Willie out – and me, I realised, and began to breathe more easily.

Lucia described how, following her DNA hit with Aisling, she had found us through Aisling’s Facebook page. She then explained that the woman in London was actually her biological aunt – my unknown first cousin: the daughter of Mam’s younger sister Mary – of whom I’d never heard. Apparently, teenage Mary had given birth to twin daughters in a now infamous mother-and-baby home. One girl’s birth had been registered to a childless Dublin couple who’d later settled in London, while her twin – Lucia’s mother – had been trafficked to a Catholic Irish/Italian family in Lower Manhattan. According to Lucia, my London cousin recently discovered that her birth mother – Mam’s disowned sister Mary – had spent her entire adult life as an unpaid labourer in the laundry of the convent which was then run by Reverend Mother Perpetua – my other Aunt Mary. 

Glebe House

    “No, let me; I’ll get them!” Mike was only too happy to buy the round of drinks. Cheap at twice the price, he thought, eyeing his brother’s female companions from his vantage point at the bar counter. Although John was Mike’s junior by almost two years, he was already the undisputed trailblazer in the family. How does he do it? Mike wondered; here am I, still a virgin, even after three years in Dublin, and there’s that little twerp, hardly a wet week in college and… The little twerp was on his feet now, shouting above the din of the DJ’s speakers.

“Come on, Mike; will we have to wait for Santa to bring those drinks? We could die of thirst over here.” Mike indicated his half-filled order, but John wasn’t watching; instead, he was talking and gesturing animatedly to the gorgeous smiling blonde beside him, while her dark-haired, Goth companion seemed equally keen to catch his words.

Mike forced his way towards the threesome; the arousing amalgam of cannabis and perfume filling his nostrils. At last, he manoeuvred his burden around one final flailing elbow, and sighed with relief as he placed the dripping tray on the edge of the table. John was shouting again.

“Sláinte, bro, here’s to the first of many!” John chinked his pint glass against the girls’ bottles; Mike followed suit but his lager remained untasted as he watched the dark-haired girl’s full lips close erotically around the neck of her bottle. John took a gulp of lager and then, bouncing to his feet, pulled the blonde girl upright with practiced ease. “Okay, Mike, you keep Judy entertained while I take Donna for a quick round of the floor.” Donna giggled and wriggled her body seductively before following John into the gyrating melee on the dance floor. As the immortal voice of Kirsty MacColl imparted some home truths to Shane MacGowan; Mike, eyeing Judy shake her head in mock disapproval of her friend’s antics on the dance floor, was already fantasising about his chances of another fairy tale, much closer to home.

      “I mean, really; what is she like?” Still smiling, Judy refocused on Mike. “So, Mike, what do you do in Dublin?” Mike stared in silence; Judy was like no creature he had ever encountered. It was almost like watching one of the better TV vampire series: her dark, deep-set eyes; the pale translucence of her skin; her gaunt high cheekbones; the pristine white of her teeth against her thick indigo lipstick.

“Oh, I’m in banking, the agricultural department at head office.” He finally managed. Judy was doing that thing with the bottle again; Mike winced, hoping that the heat he could feel rising on his cheeks wouldn’t explode into a full pubescent blush.

“Ah, so the odd culchie does come in handy, even in the capital? So tell me, Mike, how does Galway look to a Connemara man who’s grown accustomed to the bright lights?” Mike took a gulp from his glass.

“I like Galway; we played a lot of football matches here when I was in school.”

“Of course, you’re the sporting hero in the family. John was raving about you after that Club Championship game a few weeks ago.” She took a long pull from her bottle and swallowed slowly.

“What kind of a kip is this place?” John demanded as the dancers returned all too soon to the table. “There isn’t a sprig of mistletoe to be seen anywhere in the joint.”

Three drinks later, after a frenzy of Christmas jingles, the DJ signalled the end of the evening by playing a well-worn recording of the National Anthem. As scattered half-hearted ripples of applause were swallowed by a raucous amateur chorus of Fairytale of New York, John once again assumed the leadership of the foursome.

“Well, that’s all folks; sin a bhfuil for this place. Does anybody fancy going on to a night club?” John asked, donning his denim jacket.

Much to his surprise, it was Mike who replied as they reached the street.

“Why bother? I’ve got plenty cans in the car; we could just go back to the house.”

“That sounds good to me!” Judy cooed, fixing Mike with a long look of smouldering promise.

“Yeah; why not? Have you got enough grog for us all?”

“I’ve got a dozen of cider and two dozen of lager.”             

“That’ll do for me; but what about you and the girls?” John quipped, turning towards the girls “Okay with you two?” The girls nodded enthusiastically before pausing to light cigarettes and then following the brothers towards the car park. John’s face dropped when Mike handed him two plastic-bound bales of cans.

“What; are we walking?” John gasped; Mike shot him a chilling look.

“Forget it. I live in the real world, there’s no way I’m going to drive a car after four pints. How far is this house anyway?”

“Only about ten minutes!” Judy replied as she hefted Mike’s overnight bag and swung it onto her shoulder. Mike muttered his thanks and, cradling the cider to his chest, checked that the car was securely locked. Engrossed in their own hushed exchanges, John and Donna had already gone some distance ahead; as Judy fell into step beside the elder brother, Mike attempted to ease the silence between them.

“So, is it just the three of you in the house?”

“Tonight, yes; Paddy has already gone home for Christmas. We have the place to ourselves!” Their fingers touched; smoke drifted from Judy’s nostrils; the returning silence was no longer uneasy.

Suddenly, Mike noticed the strings of coloured bulbs and other festive regalia that seemed to dance on the surface of the tide-swollen river. It was as though somebody somewhere had flicked an invisible switch, not just by The Claddagh but over the entire world; perhaps there was some magic in Christmas after all.

Mike swore as John creaked open the rusting gate that led to the only unlit, undecorated house in the cul-de-sac. A startled black cat scuttled slithering and spitting, through a scraggly boundary hedge.

“Holy shit! Is this where you live?” Mike took a step back to get a proper view of the imposing two-storey building.

“Home sweet home, bro; welcome to our humble abode.” John bowed theatrically, each word forming a spectral plume in the frosty night air.

“How can just four of you afford a house this size in such a central location?” At Mike’s question the others exchanged a series of furtive glances. Finally, it was John who broke the silence.

“Come on in out of the cold and I’ll tell you over a drink.”

Donna opted for a cider; the others opened cans of lager. Undeterred by the obvious signs of neglect and decay within the house, Mike still wanted an answer.

“All right; so what’s the catch with the place?” His eyes flitted from face to face, his gaze finally resting on Judy’s exotic features. She lit a cigarette and, without flinching from his enquiring eyes, exhaled leisurely before uttering the incredible words.

“It’s haunted; we have our very own ghost!”

“Bollocks!”

“No, no bollocks; ours is a female ghost.” Judy countered with a throaty chuckle.

“Yeah, right!” Mike’s gaze shifted to his brother who seemed to be digesting Judy’s revelation. “John?”

“Okay, okay; nothing’s happened since we’ve been here but there is a story,” John finally admitted. “It’s part of college folklore. Glebe House was the residence of the old priest’s housekeeper; she was a widow with one daughter. About thirty years ago, the daughter, who was a teacher in the convent school, suffered some kind of a breakdown and was carted off to the loony bin – never to be heard of again. A few years later, when the old lady died, the priest put the house up for rent. The first tenants were a couple from the country with a young family; they lasted only a few weeks. After them there were several others who came and went just as quickly; by then the rumours were flying. Finally, at the start of term a few years ago, six students moved in. They were all tough country boys and anyone who knew them would have pitied any ghost – male or female – who had to share a house with them. Everything was going grand until the lads decided to have a Christmas party. The details are sketchy but whatever happened, the whole six of them baled out that very night, and nobody else has lived here until we moved in last September. That’s why we’re renting the place for less than half of what it should cost.”

“Bullshit!” Mike shot his brother a glance of wide-eyed incredulity.

“You wanted the story and now you’ve got it! Bullshit, it may well be – but don’t tell the bloody priest.” John produced a bottle of tequila from a kitchen cupboard and poured four small measures into an assortment of drinking utensils. He raised his glass. “Well, here’s to the spirits of Christmases past, present and future!”

Judy lit a couple of scented candles and then began to fashion a joint; Donna browsed through a little pile of freebie festive CDs. Soon, to the strains of A Spaceman Came Travelling, the ambience of alcohol and dope, of candlelight and frankincense began to blur the austerity of the draughty room.

About an hour later, unable to contain themselves any longer, John and Donna muttered their excuses and staggered up the stairs towards the privacy of their sleeping quarters. Now that he was finally alone with Judy, Mike’s sense of anticipation was fast outweighing his fear. I’ll play it cool, he decided, just like John says.

“Maybe I should also call it a night. Where is Paddy’s room?” A shadow of disappointment dimmed the gleam in Judy’s eyes.

“Oh, it’s at the top of the stairs, at the end of the corridor to the right; but what’s your hurry? Why don’t you stay and split one more can with me?”

“Oh, I’d love to but I feel really wasted, you know, after the drive and all…”

“Okay; goodnight so, Mike.” For one exhilarating instant, he thought she was about to lean over and kiss him. Instead, she reached for a can, pulled it open and took a long gurgling swallow.

“Goodnight, Judy. It’s been really great to meet you; watch out for the ghost of Glebe House!”

“Shit, Mike, don’t even joke about it. Whatever about the rest of you, I don’t want to even think about it.”

“Yeah, right; pull the other one…” He grabbed his bag and faced bare wooden stairs. So much for John’s seduction manual!

Even before he reached the bedroom, Mike regretted not having brought his headphones from the car. The amorous sound effects from his brother’s room left little to the imagination. Fortunately, there was a partial solution. A quick look around the room suggested that Paddy was something of a bookworm. Mike was soon engrossed in a classic whodunit and, almost before he knew it, the activities in the neighbouring room had faded to the contented snoring of the recently sated. Unable to resist the sandman any longer, Mike yawned and switched off the bedside light.

As for how long he slept, Mike had no idea, but it seemed like a matter of mere moment before the bedroom door slowly squeaked inward. Mike’s eyes shot open to focus on the outline of a shapely, tousled-headed, female form, silhouetted against the yellow glow from the hallway light. As the figure moved closer, an icy finger scurried from the base of his spine to the nape of his neck.

“Mike; Mike, are you awake?” He sighed with relief on recognising Judy’s hushed tone.

“Y-y-yeah! Wow, Judy? What’s wrong? You scared the…” The girl was on the bed in an instant.

“I’m cold, Mike; could I…” He amazed himself by casually raising the duvet and sliding over to the other side of the bed. Judy needed no further invitation. Her body felt cool as she slid beneath the cover, her arms encircling his shoulders as her eager lips sought his.

There’s nothing I can do, he told himself. She’s not of this world; she’s a ghost; I’m powerless against her; I’m enchanted.

A moment later, as Judy’s bra slipped free, Mike experienced the exquisite sensation of her ripe nipples against his bare chest. He shivered involuntarily as slowly she eased herself astride of him. He moaned softly as she teased him into position and commenced a slow rhythmic motion. Her fragrant tresses cascaded around his ears, her mouth as hot and hungry as his own. He gasped breathlessly at each quiver of her body, as the rate of her gyrations grew in intensity. Mike was fully aware of how wrong this was. He had watched the documentaries, he had seen the ads and he had read the health warnings on the brochures but, right now, nothing mattered except…

Judy went suddenly rigid.

“Oh, God; wha….?” Pressing her fingers to his lips, she rolled sideways. Shush!” She was sitting on the edge of the bed now.

“What?” Frustration added a whine to Mike’s stage whisper.

“Didn’t you hear it? I think it came from John’s room. It sounded like a cry.”

“I heard nothing; come back.”

“I’d better check on Donna first!”

She was gone in an instant. Then he heard it: the crying. It was not the kind of wail that comes from sudden physical or mental agony, nor was it the demanding tantrum-scream of a petulant child. This was different. This was that hoarse, choked, hopeless, heart-rending, almost silent whimper of one whose crying has been falling on heedless ears for far too long. Mike leapt from the bed and followed Judy into John’s room. Even in the semi-gloom it was clear that the couple in the bed were fast asleep, a tiny smile frozen on Donna’s lips.

Just then, Mike and Judy both heard it together.

“Jesus Christ!” Mike gasped, his hands self-consciously covering his nakedness.

“Oh, Mike! What…oh no, it’s getting louder.” Judy screamed; both John and Donna sprang upright on the bed.

“What the…?” John growled, blearily blinking as he switched on the bedside lamp. Mike stooped to retrieve his brother’s clothing from the floor.

“Get dressed, both of you; we’re getting out of here.”

“Wha…” The word died in John’s throat; the cry was far louder than those before.

Donna was struggling back into her clothes even faster than she had shed them. Judy was helping herself from Donna’s wardrobe. Mike waited until the others were ready to accompany him before returning to Paddy’s room to retrieve his own garments.

John detoured by the kitchen before following the others into the cold of the mid-winter night. The reason for his delay was soon apparent: he took a quick swig from the tequila bottle before handing it to his brother.

“Mike, what do we do now?” The question took Mike off guard; it was the first time in several years that John had looked to his brother for guidance. Mike surprised himself with both the alacrity and the assertiveness of his response.

“We’ll go back to the car until daylight and then we’ll come back to find out exactly what the fuck is going on in this hell-hole.” The others exchanged silent glances as Judy eased the tequila bottle from Mike’s fingers.

Dawn was breaking as Mike pilfered Judy’s last cigarette. Judy stirred as he flicked the lighter to life; she yawned, blinking as she glanced stiffly around her.

What…? Oh shit!” She took the cigarette from between Mike’s lips and drew on it greedily. “You’re not serious about playing detective, are you?” She was far from reassured by Mike’s non-committal shrug. “Mike, I’ve got a better idea. You drive us back to the house as soon as it’s bright; we’ll grab our gear and then we’ll see about getting our deposit back from that robber of a priest.”

“No!”

“No? What do you mean; no?” Donna whined.

“Yeah, Mike! What do you mean?” John was also wide awake.

“Okay, we will drive back, and you can do what you like with your stuff but, John, you and I are going to do some investigating…”

“Aw, Mike… shit!”

“John, just think about it; the stories you’ll be able to tell. You’ll be getting free drink for months!” Without waiting for a reply, Mike started the engine and turned the car back towards the road.    

The clear-out was done in whispered, tiptoed urgency. Mike took responsibility for the removal of Paddy’s property; having already decided to drive the girls to their homes, he could deliver Paddy’s gear on the same run. The entire operation took less than ten minutes. Buoyed up by the remaining tequila, and the knowledge that nothing untoward occurred during the exercise, a new sense confidence began to imbue the little group. When the final few items had been ferried to the car, Mike produced a powerful looking torch from beneath his driver’s seat and glanced enquiringly at his brother.

“Well?”

“What’s that for?” John indicated the torch.

“The attic!” John’s focus flitted from Mike to the girls; all nodded in unison.

“All right, let’s go for it!”

The brothers sealed the pact with a double-handed high-five; the girls hugged each other and, giggling nervously, trailed the boys into the echoing hallway of Glebe House.

The attic trapdoor was situated above the entrance to Paddy’s room. A bedside locker was promptly pressed into service as a launching pad for Mike’s ascension into the gloomy beyond. Once he had hoisted himself through the opening, he extended a helping hand to haul John up in his wake. The girls held each other in silence, their eyes averted against the clouds of choking dust that drifted down from the long-undisturbed aperture. Mike directed the torch beam in a slow arc, shuddering involuntarily at the scurrying sounds that emanated from every corner of the dank expanse.

“Jesus” Mike hissed; “will you look at all that stuff? It’s as though somebody was living here.” He resisted the urge to add or died here. The light revealed an assortment of makeshift furniture: a low coffee table, some chairs – one very small – a bookcase and, at the far end of the loft, what appeared to be a crumpled camp bed. John swore as his foot became wedged in something. Mike shone the torch on the obstruction.

“It’s only a piss-pot.” Mike grinned; John’s relief was palpable but brief.

“Mike, look at the dolls… there… on the bed. See the big one… Jesus! It’s not… is it?” The torch was now trained on the bed. The brothers inched closer, their eyes drawn to the flowing chestnut hair that hung towards the grime-encrusted, plywood floor.

“It is!”

“A woman? It’s the widow’s mad daughter; she’s been here all…” John’s fingers closed vice-like on Mike’s forearm. Mike continued forward until he was standing directly above the low bed.

“No, it’s too small …it’s…it was a child… a little girl…she’s been dead a long time…” Mike averted his gaze from the empty eye sockets of the fleshless cheek bones before him. “Look, John, look… that picture book beside her…” Mike’s voice faltered as he read the hand written inscription on the open fly page. “To Mary, Happy Christmas, Lots of love, Gran…” John was also reading; as his eyes reached the date he squeezed Mike’s arm even tighter.

“Oh my God; according to the story I heard, the old lady dropped dead as she came out of the chapel after Mass on that very Christmas Day!”

Song for Sonja

         Watching a hovering wasp flirt with the jam smudge of a child’s hand on the windowpane, Sonja complements herself on her choice of venue. She hadn’t been in these premises since her teens; it had housed a grocery then, a dim little cave of a place, to where boys from the Christian Brothers’ secondary school across town and girls from the nearby convent would flock to spend their pocket money and generally hang out. The opportunity to mingle with the opposite sex had been further gilded by the willingness of the senescent spinster shopkeeper sisters to sell cigarettes – in tens or twenties, or in ones or twos – to anybody who had the required tariff at the ready. Together, these factors had more than compensated for the lack of ambiance and the shop’s limitations in the confectionery department compared to the more salubrious establishments in town.

         Sonja needs to pee; she has been bursting for the past twenty-minutes, since commencing her vigil outside the café window, patiently waiting for her preferred table to become available. Absently, she wonders if the previous incumbent would share her memories of the café’s former incarnation. Marie Kearns had been a year behind Sonja at school; now, she is the mother of the mother whose blonde, pigtailed toddler has left her handprint on the glass.

         A waitress comes to cleanse the traces of the Kearns family from the table. Sonja orders a latté and exhales from puffed cheeks when it arrives. Her territory now well and truly marked, she can safely adjourn to the ladies’ room without fear of her vantage point being usurped in her absence.

         Titivating her make-up, Sonja eyes with satisfaction the face that beams back from the square of mirror tile. She has always looked younger than her years and while her petite stature had been a frequent cause of teenage embarrassment, it has become an increasing comfort as the years have begun to slide by. She smiles, recalling an incident during her first term teaching at her alma mater, when old Sister Pius had tried to drag her to the reverend mother’s office after seeing her sneak a cigarette between classes. Yes, she asserts, I could still pass for thirty.

         Savouring her latté, she can visualize Craig sitting opposite her. In today’s terminology he would be described as a ride; in any era he would be considered a fine thing: tall, dark and broodingly handsome, with perfect teeth gleaming through a mask of sculpted number-two stubble. He does look much older, she reaffirms; in the normal course of events, nobody would give us a second glance. And what if they did? Sonja doesn’t have a problem with an occasional turned head; has she not spent the greater part of her life running the gauntlet of older men who continue to vie for her favours?

         She quivers in anticipation as she tries to remember when she had last felt such exhilaration, such desire, such...such…such sheer lust. Although their only physical contact had been an artless, drunken fumble outside the bathroom in her brother’s house, she firmly believes she is on the brink of one of her most intriguing, most erotic adventures to date. She checks her watch against the digital clock beside the cash register. Only fifteen more minutes, she reminds herself, in just fifteen minutes time he’ll stroll through the doorway, glance around until he meets her eyes, and then start towards her, his lopsided grin broadening with each shambling step.

         Recalling her ingenuity in feigning technological illiteracy to access her niece’s smart phone, she allows herself a little smug smile; the rest had been easy. As an honours mathematics graduate, Sonja had little difficulty in retaining a seven-digit number for long enough to add it to her own contacts. It’s not as though she makes a habit of cruising twenty-first birthday parties for prospective conquests, but neither does she believe in looking gift-horses in the mouth. And, it wasn’t just their brief snog that had prompted her to proposition the amateur DJ; had he not played Lyle Lovett’s ‘Sonja’ as part of his second-last set of the night? She can still see him mouth the lyrics, “Man I need to impress her, ‘cause I’d like to undress her, I need a song about Sonja when I’m singing tonight.”

         Once the basic strategy had been agreed by phone, there was little left to organise. As it happens, Sonja had been browbeaten into agreeing to water her younger sister’s houseplants while she and her husband are taking a second honeymoon – in truth, it’s a last-ditch attempt to salvage their crumbling marriage. Better still, the sister in question lives in another town, almost twenty miles away, in a part of the county where Craig is unlikely to be recognised. Even allowing an hour for the journey there and back, they will still have over two hours together in the empty house, free from families, friends and foes alike. As yet, she has given little thought to the aftermath of the tryst, other than the necessity to have Craig safely back home before his parents return from work. But they would have two hours; two hours of intimacy, flavoured with the heady amalgam of cannabis and sex, in her little sister’s non-smoking home.

         While Craig physically resembles his father, he has inherited his mother’s presence and self-confidence. All in all, he seems more rounded, better balanced, than Brian had been at a similar age. Or at any age, she mentally adds, recalling her first love’s most recent attempts to rekindle the clinker of their brief teenage conflagration. What if Brian should find out? She shudders at the thought. Would the piling of this ultimate insult upon the injury of serial personal rejection finally and irreparably rupture the dam that has long been gagged by his past indiscretions?

         A shadow darkens the window. He is early – very early. Has the enormity of the occasion proven too much for his customary unflappability? She composes herself by taking a few moments to study each fingernail individually before slowly raising her head and allowing her eyes to drift towards the figure. But it’s not Craig. The man who has rested his buttocks against the window ledge is shorter, broader, older – balding. She swivels her neck to see what has caught the man’s attention. Across the street, a traffic warden is vainly trying to reason with an elderly lady. Even through the cacophony of street sounds, a shrill tirade filters through to the café.

         “I was only two minutes – in the vet’s – to get Mimi’s heart tablets.” As though in corroboration, a professionally pompommed poodle springs from behind the woman’s legs and, straining against her harness, leaps to snarl at the bemused official. The warden retreats a few steps, allowing his white-curled assailants to access their Nissan Micra. Flinging the scrunched-up paperwork through her open window, the lady drives off, while Mimi continues to voice her disapproval from the safety of her owner’s lap.

         As the warden begins to write what may well be a littering ticket, Sonja retrieves a tabloid newspaper from a vacated table. The bold print beneath the masthead promises an in-depth exposé on a minor TV celebrity’s latest suitor; sighing, Sonja switches to the back page where transfer speculation regarding the starlet’s footballer ex commands equally prominent billing. She can’t help wondering what the fallout would be if she and Craig should become tomorrow’s headlines. Unthinkable though the idea is, she savours the thought for several moments; her fingers trembling as she turns the pages to browse through the stories inside.

         Familiar voices wrench her concentration from the adventures of a philandering Welsh bishop. Two of her second-year students have occupied the table nearest the door. She listens for a moment to the girls’ excited chattering, her usual resentment of such invasions of privacy strangely absent. In truth, Sonja feels an almost sensuous pleasure at the prospect of her assignation being witnessed by girls’ incredulous eyes. She allows herself a tight smirk; today’s teens revel in the belief that they have invented sex, that nobody over the age of twenty – and certainly no teacher – could have any concept of the wonders of their unfolding universe.

         At the chime of a text alert, the girls’ stereophonic squeals still Sonja’s fingers on the flap of her handbag. Listening to the melody of the almost instant reply, she sneaks a quick peek at the animated spindles of arms and legs that flail from bright skimpy tee-shirts and cut-away blue jeans. iPhones! Sonja almost spits the word aloud. The little bitches have iPhones! How long was I working before I had any mobile phone? Realization clouds her features: back when she had graduated nobody had a mobile phone!

         A camera shutter sounds. Have the little twerps taken her photo? A new thought strikes Sonja, jerking her head sideways with its almost physical impact. Would those girls have Craig’s number? Was her image already on its way to him? Surely not, why should Craig bother with such little slips of things when he could have a real woman? His father had…Jumped-up little slut, Sonja scowls at the recollection, looking down her holier-than-thou nose at the rest of us. Water her plants, how are you? But it is high time that someone triggered some action between her sterile satin sheets.

         Her mind awhirl with a maelstrom of unassuaged angst, Sonja is unaware of the girls’ departure until the elderly couple that have replaced them begin to argue.

         “That’s not what I said.” A male voice quivers above the general hum.

         “It was!” The woman snaps.

         “Well, even if I did, it wasn’t what I meant.” Conscious of the blur of averting faces, he lowers his voice to a throaty whisper. From the house radio, Carly Simon’s ‘You’re so vain’ serves only to amplify the hush of expectancy.

         “It was!” Though still miffed, the woman’s tone has dropped a few decibels.

         “No, what I meant was that the Avensis would be too big for us – for just the two of us – it was never meant as a criticism of your driving.” Apparently mollified, the woman’s reply reaches only the ears for which it is intended. Studying the aged profiles, Sonja wonders if either of the pensioners had ever had a secret assignation; did people even do such things back in their day?  What am I like; she muses, entertaining thoughts more appropriate to the little waifs who’ve just left?     

         Across the room, a little boy in a buggy begins to whimper.

         “Mam-mee-go-o, Mam-mee-go…now-ow,” he chants, his cherubic arms straining in futility towards the exit, his chocolate-coated fists opening and closing with metronomic regularity. Her gaze involuntarily drawn towards this most recent disturbance, Sonja catches a glimpse of the clock. No! She inwardly screams. Who does he think he is? What does he think I am?

         Her phone is ringing. Heart pounding, she fishes it from her bag, but the name that lights up the screen isn’t Craig; it’s Mark, a work colleague and emergency socializing partner, who has the annoying habit of proposing to her on a half-yearly basis – at least.

         Which am I, she ponders, rejecting the call, am I the wasp or the jam? Though the wasp no longer hovers, she can hear a faint but frantic buzzing. Zoning in on the sound, she locates the wasp in the angle of window frame and sill. With morbid fascination she gapes at the exhausted creature, its striped body at an incongruous angle, its right wing blurring in futile frenzy, its jam-logged left wing terminally glued to the pristine white PVC.

         Rising to her feet, Sonja switches her phone off and returns it to her handbag. Squinting against the brilliant July sunshine, she pauses in the doorway to reposition her Ray-Bans from the crown of her head. Glancing up and down the street, she grins and thinks: Sonja, you silly old cow; be careful what you wish for. 

Magpie

No, I thought, as the mirage assumed corporeal form: a flash of familiar features between a lopsided baseball cap and a grey-green jacket – which was almost indistinguishable from the background rush and scrub. Magpie; what’s he doing here? I didn’t need the confirmation of nondescript denims or scuffed trainers: the gaunt features and streel of greying hair were enough. Watching him stop just short of the entrance to my son’s work-in-progress, future home, I tried to remember if I’d ever heard Magpie’s proper name.

    It had rained earlier; yet, there he was, down on one knee in the mucky boreen, like an Apache scout searching for Bison sign. I’d first noticed him years back – when Ireland introduced the smoking ban – leaning against the jamb of a pub or betting shop door, sucking on a misshapen roll-up, and scowling at the passing world. Although his location could vary, his vigil was constant, and he could be spotted in all seasons and weathers, at any hour during pub opening time.  

    Magpie got to his feet. I averted my face as he turned towards me, but I could sense his eyes follow me to the rain barrel beneath the gable downpipe. Resisting the urge to glance over my shoulder, I plunged my hands into the icy water in an exaggerated response to the media’s increasing reminders to wash your hands. With my fingers rapidly numbing, I summoned the courage to glance towards the boreen. Magpie had vanished. Shivering sighs of relief, I rushed indoors, dried my hands, and switched the kettle on.

         I’d had serious doubts when Liam, our eldest, first told me of his interest in the old dilapidated cottage. Built in the mid-thirties, it had been derelict for over twenty years prior to being offered for sale by the London-born grandchildren of its original occupants. It was typical of its time: stone-built, with front and back doors opening into a kitchen, and two interior doors at either side of an open hearth, each leading to a narrow bedroom. Standing on an acre of wilderness, it was the last of three cottages along the half kilometre of boreen linking the main road to the seashore. Location, location, location, Orla – Liam’s then girlfriend; now fiancée – had breathed when she first sniffed the saline air. Reluctantly, I’d found myself agreeing. With the shore about one hundred meters to the west, and the nearest cottage more than three times further to the east; with swathes of rocky moorland climbing to the distant mountains to the south, and nothing but ocean visible from the north-facing backdoor, the site was truly idyllic – and only a short hop from both of their childhood homes.

    In hindsight, it was an ideal project for the young couple: Orla, a qualified architect; Liam, an engineer of seven years’ experience with an international construction company. Orla had also taken her talents abroad for purely financial reasons, but both were now focussed on returning for an August wedding, and to subsequently settle in the revamped cottage. In fairness, the finished article bore little resemblance to the hotchpotch of five years previously. Gone were the tasteless additions of bygone eras: the wooden front porch, the block-built, flat-roofed kitchen and bathroom from the seventies, and the mishmash fuel shed that clung to the east gable. Now, with extensions to the north, east and west, built of matching stone and slate recycled from Liam’s contacts in the trade, the house was treble its original size. During breaks between their commitments abroad, Liam and Orla have been hands-on for much of the build, while the first and second fixes had been completed by reputable local firms.

    I had planned on working at the cottage over Easter; I’m no builder, but I can swing a billhook and handle a paintbrush, and Myra – my wife of almost forty years – had readily agreed when I suggested bringing my rural sojourn forward to check for possible damage from recent storms. After I’d retired in October, Myra had been thrilled to have my help with her pre-Christmas preparations for visiting offspring. The post-Christmas ritual of returning our home to normal saw us through most of January but just as soon as we’d begun to negotiate possible compromises for our altered circumstances, the shadow of Covid-19 loomed ever closer.

    With Liam’s house already boasting electricity, plumbing, a bed, terrestrial TV and broadband; a cooker, fridge-freezer, microwave, kettle, and basic pots and pans, it seemed an opportune time to give Myra some breathing space. Equipped with a fortnight’s supply of frozen dinners, teabags, bread, milk, biscuits, fruit, bed linen, radio, binoculars, several books, and a slab of cans from the off-licence, I’d felt ready for anything…and then Magpie appeared.

    My tea had gone cold. While rinsing my mug at the kitchen sink, the trill of robin song filtered through yet another radio discussion about Corona virus. Fascinated, I grabbed my jacket and cap and faced the chill of the lively mid-March breeze. Guided by his enchanting repertoire, I quickly located the feisty little songster beside the pile of unused stone by the back door. The robin, unperturbed by my arrival, casually hopped to the top of the cairn and resumed his recital with increased gusto. My ears quickly detected the songs of other birds, but while I can identify several species by sight – thanks to my dad’s influence during childhood – my aural cognisance is limited to generic terms like songbirds, crows, gulls. The pang of regret took me by surprise. I had totally neglected to share what little I knew with my own children; I had denied Liam, Fiona and Paudie the simple – but priceless - gift my dad had unassumingly bestowed upon me. Ironically, I had bombarded Myra with my knowledge of nature in the early days of our relationship – when I’d been trying to impress her.

    There was a new tune, an unfamiliar and disjointed tune; it seemed to be coming from the mountain. Shielding my eyes against the watery sun, I thought I detected a pale blob slowly ascend the dark backdrop of the foothills. I fetched my binoculars from the car and trained them on the uplands. My reward was almost instant; I adjusted the rangefinder to focus on a blue collie dog that worked a flock of ewes and lambs, to the whistles of an invisible orchestrator. I could actually hear the bleating of lambs. The calls seemed loud, too loud to be from the mountain, and then I noticed the little flock that grazed little more than fifty metres away, animals I’d been totally oblivious of until then.     

    While I didn’t do any work on the house that day, it was to prove one of my most fruitful in recent years. After grabbing my wellingtons from the car, I crossed the boreen and began the gradual climb towards the mountain. I noticed the primroses first, little sprinkles of forgotten gold between the lichen-encrusted stones of a crumbling boundary wall. I tried to remember when I’d last seen wild primroses, having become so accustomed to their multi-coloured primula cousins from the garden centre. I began to recognise other plants: cerise herb-robert, sky-blue speedwell, snow-white wood sorrel, and the yellows of dandelion, celandine and marsh marigold, beneath drooping fingers of willow and hazel catkins. Imagining my dad mouth the once-familiar names, I closed my eyes and, willing other long-forgotten terms to filter back through the mists of time, I savoured the childhood scents of heather and gorse…I’ll never know how far I might have gone if that frog hadn’t leapt across my path, forcing me to lurch sideways and trip over a stout thicket of fibrous heather. The pain in my right ankle was both instant and excruciating. Struggling to a crouch, I hobbled to the nearest outcrop and, easing my buttocks onto a cushion of damp moss, scanned my surroundings for an impromptu crutch. I had my phone; but whom could I call? Certainly not Myra: if she got wind of my mishap, she’d never let me live it down.  

    Was I imagining it, or had the birdsong that had so thrilled me just moments before suddenly developed a mocking tone? Surely not: nature was our ally; not our enemy…despite our mistreatment of her. I was overcome by an almost overwhelming desire to shout out: to warn nature; to tell spring to go back; that now wasn’t her time; that it wasn’t safe…

    “Are you OK?” A walleyed blue collie came crashing through the heather, followed closely by a man wearing a waxed jacket and cap. “Did I see you stumble?” Ruddy-cheeked from exertion, Magpie looked younger than I’d thought – early fifties, maybe.

    “No,” I spluttered, “I think I’ve broken my ankle…”

    “The wellingtons are lethal in this terrain; it’s boots you need,” he said, shaking his head as he eyed my footwear. “Did I see you at the old Fallon place?” He asked, taking a step towards me. “Can you stand?” Highly sceptical as to his personal hygiene standards, I recoiled. “You’re OK,” he grinned; “I’ll keep my distance. Here, try this,” he extended a stout blackthorn stick towards me.

    “Thanks,” I muttered. Leaning on the stick and concentrating my weight on my left foot, I struggled upright. Grimacing, I tried a tentative step forward.

    “No;” he interjected, “sit down; you’re going nowhere for the present and, because of this social distance thing, I can’t physically support you. Look, take off the wellington and the sock, and wrap this around the ankle,” he said, squatting to gather handfuls of sodden sphagnum moss, “and put the sock back on over it. The brother has crutches at the house. He got the hip done last month: that’s why I’m out here for the lambing. It won’t kill him – or you – to stay sitting for a while. Come on, Laddie.” He vanished as magically as he’d appeared.

    Difficult though it was to imagine Magpie being a shepherd, not to mention somebody’s carer, the idea of my welfare depending on him was totally beyond comprehension. The birds continued unabated; at one stage I thought I heard a swallow, but probably not. Was I hallucinating or had the pain eased? I chanced a step; it hurt, but not nearly as much as before. Encouraged, I tried another…and then another…Slowly but surely, I began to make progress.

    I was sipping a hot whiskey at the kitchen table when Magpie arrived with the crutches.

    “You made it,” he chirped, at the open front door, a broad grin brightening his features.

    “Thanks to you,” I answered. “I won’t invite you in, but can I offer you a hot whiskey?”

    “No, thanks all the same. I’d better take his crutches back to him. He’s the eldest of eleven; I’m the youngest. Mind you, he seems happy being housebound, he’s on the phone night and day with sisters and brothers he hasn’t contacted for years. Now, you mind yourself. I’m not usually very health conscious: I’ve never even had a ‘flu jab, but this virus thing sounds serious.”

    “How did you know about the sphagnum moss?” I asked, eager to know the person I’d been dismissive of for so long.

    “I read somewhere how ‘twas used to sterilise wounds during WW1. I reckon you only have a sprain, but I thought it couldn’t do you any harm – and might even have a placebo effect. The Spanish ‘flu killed twice as many as the war – maybe ‘twas the moss made all the difference. Oh, by the way, I have something for you,” he tugged a crumpled sliced pan wrapper from his jacket pocket and lobbed it onto the table. “I found it this morning. As children, we always picked our shamrock in your boreen. Just because the pubs are shut doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t celebrate St Patrick’s Day.”

    It was only after he’d gone that I realised I still didn’t know his name.                    

Street Angel

It’s a miracle she hasn’t frozen to death, or at least succumbed to double pneumonia! The burly inspector mused, eyeing the scantily-clad lady-of-the-night turn her back to the biting east wind in a fruitless attempt to light a cigarette.

         “I hate this job.” The young detective Garda muttered from the driver’s seat of the unmarked police car.

         “What’s wrong with you?” Mac glanced sidelong at his colleague.

         “Well, in any other job, I’d be either out on the town or tucked up in my bed at this hour.”

         “There’s fear of you; aren’t we out of the weather? Not like that poor misfortune over there.” Mac lowered his window. “Hey; over here.” To the young detective’s amazement, the inspector beckoned the girl towards him.

         “You can’t, we’re supposed to be on discreet observation.”

         “What better cover could there be than to be seen propositioning a working-girl?” Mac favoured his apprentice with a wink as the shivering girl cautiously approached the vehicle. “Sit in.” Mac prompted, remotely unlocking the rear passenger door.

         “Got a light?” She asked, ignoring the invitation.

         “Sit in for a minute,” Mac repeated, flourishing a brass zippo lighter.

         “Are you arresting me?” Her pale blue eyes flickered challengingly as she pulled the door shut.  “Because if you’re not, I must warn you that cops have to pay just like everyone else.” Sweeping her long fair hair back from her face with splayed fingers, she leaned towards the lighter.

         “Cops; what makes you think we’re cops?” Mac asked with feigned astonishment, flicking the lighter to life but holding it just beyond her reach.   

         “How much do you expect for a bloody light anyway?” As her hand darted towards the door handle, the central locking mechanism clicked home.

         “It’s alright, Angel.” Mac sighed, handing the lighter to her. Angel lit her cigarette and took a couple of deep drags.

         “If you already know my name; why are you watching me?” Smoke filtered through her crimson lips.

         “Maybe we’re just making sure that you don’t fall into bad company; these are dangerous times.”

         “Look,” she exhaled loudly, glancing from one amused face to the other, “it doesn’t matter a damn to me either way, but if it’s the coke boys you’re after, you’re wasting your time; they’re not there. If I were you, I’d try again in a few hours – maybe half-four or five. Can I go now?” At Mac’s pensive nod, his driver released the locks. Wordlessly, the girl slipped from the vehicle. Pausing at Mac’s window, she reached the lighter towards him. He shrugged.

         “Keep it.”

“Thanks, I will,” she said, spinning back towards her beat in a swirl of smoke.

         “Well, boss;” drumming his palms on the steering wheel, the driver eyed Mac expectantly, “do we go or stay put?”

         “Wait a while.”

         “I didn’t believe her either.” The Garda nodded, pleased that his superior concurred with his conclusion.

         “I never said that I didn’t believe her,” Mac corrected softly.

         “But she’s a whore; you can’t…”

         “Take the word of a whore? Danny, I know a few whores whom I’d trust far quicker than some of the brass in this job!” As Danny digested the inspector’s words, a dark Mercedes cruised to a halt beside the girl.

         “Get his registration.” Mac hissed as, after a brief discussion, the girl boarded the vehicle. “Right, now we can go.”

         “Follow them?” Danny prompted, starting the engine.

         “No, I think we deserve a cup of coffee.” As they turned right over the bridge and headed down the north quays towards the festive city lights, Mac had a question. “What are you doing for Christmas?”

         “I’ll be going home for a few days; yourself?”

         “Ah, the usual.”

         Four hours later, Mac returned the baleful glares of the five suspects in the Garda paddy wagon. Meanwhile, the white-suited forensic officers continued to ferry evidence from the terraced Georgian building to an awaiting armour-plated van.

         “You called it right: Mac, deciding to go along with Mother Teresa.”

         “Thanks, Danny, but the best Mother Teresa can achieve is sainthood; we have our very own Angel.”

         “What decided you to go for it?”

         “She spends more time patrolling this patch than we could ever hope to.”

         “But how did you know you could trust her?”

         “I didn’t, but in my experience people rarely lie unless they have a very good reason. Now, she knew we weren’t interested in her business, so the only reason she’d have to lie is if she was involved with the gang; in which case, the very least we stood to gain was another angle to the investigation.”

         “She knew you’d lean on her if she set us up?”

         “Not on her; on her punters, that’s where it hurts. Did you get the number of that Merc?”

         “What Merc?”

         “Good man!” The inspector lumbered towards the car. “Come on; let’s see if we can get a song or two out of those cherubs before their guardian angels show up!” 

         It was shortly before noon when Mac finally made it home to his Christchurch apartment; home to the same emptiness that awaited him every time he concluded a case. Free at last, he thought, flicking through the TV channels, free for a whole three days; free until the Santa shift on Christmas morning – free! Free to do what, and with whom? Sighing, he pulled off his shoes and swung his stockinged feet onto the couch. Almost instantly, he slept.

         He turned right at O’Connell Bridge and started up the south quays. Why was he driving; why was he alone in the car? Both quays were choked with Christmas shoppers: fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, babies; people everywhere. Smiling, chatting, gesturing; each one interacting with everyone else. All ages, all races, all languages; all going home; home! It was then he spotted her: Mary, snug in her new fawn coat with the fake fur collar. Swinging from her hands, Bobby and Jenny skipped along apace, the flashing multicoloured lights reflected in their shining eyes. Too late, he saw the Santa hat immediately in his path. Even as he leapt on the brake pedal, he felt the sickening thud, as flowing fair hair, low-cut white lace blouse and black leather mini-skirt shot over his windscreen, the scarlet nails of her long slim fingers clawing at the crisp evening air. Angel! He had killed Angel! “No!” he screamed.

         “No, no, no!” Falling sideways off the couch, his forehead hit the edge of the coffee table a glancing blow. Stifling an oath, he raised an exploratory hand, hoping against hope that the oozing clamminess on his brow was due to sweat; it wasn’t. A quick wipe with a dampened towel revealed only superficial damage. Mac grunted his relief: there would be some bruising for a few days, but he had survived worse.

         “Cut yourself shaving, Mac?” The barman grinned, placing the customary coffee before the policeman.

         “A perk of the job,” Mac replied eyeing the cup distastefully. “Give me a half-one as well.” The barman raised a questioning eyebrow; the inspector scowled. “It is bloody Christmas; isn’t it?” He downed the raw whisky in a single gulp and stormed towards the door. Back on the street, he shouldered his way through the little crescent of humanity that had paused to listen to a group of carol singers, and then headed towards Temple Bar. That’s the beauty of the city, he mused, rounding a corner, we’re always just a few steps away from anonymity.

         By the time he encountered the two younger men, Mac had long lost count of the number of drinks he’d had, and the number of bars he’d visited. Was the music here even louder than in the previous pub? It must be: his head was throbbing. He called another round; that was the great thing about drink: usually he wouldn’t be seen dead talking to his present company. Why are people so quick to pass judgement? Everyone should be given a chance; after all, it was Christmas. But something was wrong; why was the barman shouting, enough? Enough? Mac knew when he’d had enough, and it wasn’t now; but everything was okay, his friends were taking care of him. Cool night; the music fading; no traffic; darkness; he is falling. No, he is being forced to the ground; he is being mugged; mugged? Blindly he swung his right fist and was rewarded with the satisfying crunch of knuckle on nasal cartilage. Scrambling to his knees, he managed to deflect the kick that was aimed at his head. Grabbing the foot, he twisted it viciously; that was when he felt a weird numbing sensation, just to the left of his navel.

         The light hurt his eyes. As he blinked furiously, a face slowly swam into focus, Angel!? No, it wasn’t Angel but it was an angel, a real angel; she had a halo! The vision moved closer; the halo seeming to evaporate as she moved clear of the circular ceiling light: a nurse, he was alive! Her lips moved, but no sound came; he tried to speak but his throat burned. She pressed a tasteless lollipop against his lips; he tried to bite into its tantalisingly cool moistness. No, no! His brain screamed as lollipop, angel and ceiling all faded to oblivion.

         The scene was repeated whenever he opened his eyes: time after time the fleeting ecstasy of water on his lips, only for it to be withdrawn as suddenly as it had been applied. The nurse was talking again; this time he could hear.

         “Take it easy, you’ve been through a rough old time. Do you know what happened to you?” After a lot of effort he managed to croak.

         “No; was I mugged?”

         “Don’t try to talk; let me explain. You’ve had surgery – three days ago – you sustained a stab wound to your bowel. It was touch-and-go for a while but, fortunately, your colleagues got you here in time. You’re out of danger now and we hope to have you out on the ward in a day or two. It could have been a different story if you’d had to wait for an ambulance.”

         “Water, please?” She produced the lollipop again.

         “I know this isn’t much help but I’m afraid it’ll be a while before you can have a proper drink.”

         “Never again,” he mumbled, misunderstanding; “never again!”

         Three days later, Mac tested his throat on his first visitor.

         “It’s great. I don’t have to leave the bed for anything. I don’t eat, I don’t drink, I don’t even have to go to the jacks, and I don’t have to put up with your driving.”

         “Ah, you’re on the mend, it’s just a pity the surgeon didn’t remove the contrariness.” Danny grinned.

         “Thanks to you, Danny; I owe you.”

         “I only drove the bloody car; it’s your guardian angel you should be thanking, ‘twas she found you.”

         “She; who?”

         “Angel. Your snitch; she turned out to be your guardian angel after all. She nearly fell over you, and once she recognised you she called the station. As luck would have it, I was just across the river when it hit the radio.”

         “Have we got an address for her?”

         “She phoned anonymously, but she stayed with you until I got there.”

         “I’ll be out of here in about a week; you have until then to find her address.”

         Another three weeks went by before Mac was strong enough to make the visit.

         “Really, it’s no trouble to wait.” Danny teased as he stopped the car outside Angel’s Usher’s Quay apartment.

         “Scram! I’ll call you when I’m ready.” Mac growled, wincing as he eased himself from the car.

Mac was disappointed by Angel’s appearance. Instead of the expected revealing top and short skirt, she wore a loose Aran sweater over shapeless navy tracksuit bottoms. She was barefoot, and devoid of jewellery and make-up, and with her hair tied back in a ponytail, she looked the epitome of vulnerability.

         “Is this a good idea?” She asked, eyeing him closely.

         “I thought I should at least say thanks!” She stepped aside; he nodded and edged past her, pausing uncertainly in the narrow hallway.

         “It’s straight through!” Closing the front door, she waved him forward, following closely behind. “Tea?” she suggested “Or a drink; I think I have…!”

         “Tea is good, thanks.” He took the indicated seat. “You’re cosy here, Angel.” Mac scanned the lived-in order of the compact room. His arrival drew only a passing glance from the tiny tabby kitten that toyed with a bespectacled Santa doll in a box of rainbow tinsel.

         “It does the job, and my proper name is Angela!” She said, wiping a corner of the coffee table with her sleeve.

         “Is there anything you want; anything I could get for you?”

She poured two mugs of tea and then flopped into her other armchair. Flicking the zippo lighter to her cigarette, she shook her head.               

         “Look around you,” she waved a dismissive arm; “what could I possibly need?”

         “How did you find me?” He asked, nibbling at a chocolate-chip cookie.

         “I saw you in the pub with those guys. I don’t usually do the pubs but, it being Christmas, there weren’t many punters on the street; you know, with plenty available crumpet at office parties, or brownie points with wives and girlfriends! I was worried, so I followed you outside. I knew it was serious when they ran out of the alley. It didn’t take long to find you. I had the number of the cop shop in my phone; I remembered your name from the report of that drugs-bust in the papers.” She paused to take a pull of her cigarette and then nodded towards his midriff. “How bad is it?”

         “Well, the worst thing is this bag.” he patted his left side. “You see, they had to do a stoma on me – until the bowel recovers – it’ll be gone in a few months; I guess I’ll be grounded until then.” She nodded sympathetically.

         “I know;” she nodded sympathetically, “they’re messy things. My mother had one, towards the end.”

         “I’m sorry. How old were you?”

         “Fourteen; fourteen going on forty…” She took a final pull of her cigarette, emitting a little hollow laugh as she extinguished it in a Mickey Mouse ashtray.

         “Have you other family?” He probed gently; she shook her head.

         “Nope, that was it; just her and me.”

         “But how; how did you survive on your own?” Angela lit another cigarette.

         “How old would you say I am?”

         “I couldn’t really say; it’s always difficult with girls.”

         “Well, there you are. Even an old street-wise cop can’t tell.” She grinned at the horror in his eyes. “Relax, Inspector, I’m legal now, or should I say, of legal age…”

         “God, you’re younger than my daughter!” He gasped, shocked at the thought.

         “Maybe in years…” Her smile stopped someway short of her eyes. “It’s not that bad, Inspector, I wasn’t exactly a child prostitute! After Mum died, I was farmed out to an aunt, down the country. I went back to school and things were all right for about a year but then her husband began to take an interest in me.” Mac stifled a curse; Angela glanced at her watch. “Whenever she’d go out: to bingo or to the ICA or even to confession, he’d get fresh. At first he was all nice and friendly, giving me cigarettes and offering me drink, but I soon discovered that everything has its price. The day that I finished my Junior Cert, I raided his secret gambling fund and just took off. It was the summer holidays, so my old Dublin friends’ parents didn’t take any notice when I stopped for a few days here and there. While hanging around the city, I came to the conclusion that, if he had wanted me; others would, so why not get paid for it?” She checked her watch again; Mac stirred uneasily in his seat.

         “If it’s the time, I, I, I’ll pay you…” he stammered, fumbling with his wallet.

         “No, no,” This time her laugh was genuine. “It’s far too early for the street. I have a class, for the Leaving Cert, it’s at eight.”

         “Oh! Don’t worry, I…we’ll drive you…there’s plenty of time!”

         “How many have you; children?”

         “Two. Bobby is twenty-three and Jenny is almost twenty-one. They live with their mother.”

         “Oh, you’re on your own?” He nodded. “How do you manage with… with your wound?”

         “Oh, a nurse calls every few days to check up on me; it’s fine, really.”

         “What happened with your marriage?” She asked casually, draining her mug.

         “It was my fault. I was a drunk, so the top brass moved me up here to keep an eye on me. Mary stayed behind with the kids, and we just grew further apart; then she met someone else.”

         “Was that when you met Anne Browne?” Agape, he met her frank blue gaze. She handed him a dog-eared photograph. His arm was draped over Anne’s shoulders, her eyes smiled through the decades, just as deep and non-judgemental as her daughter’s had an instant before. As if from a great distance, he heard his voice.

         “I’d been here about a year and still married, we had an affair and she…”

         “Had me,” the words hit him like a shotgun blast; his mouth opened and closed as he groped for something to say.  “Well?” she prompted. 

         “She just vanished. I tried but…I never knew; I swear…”

         “She moved to England; it didn’t work out; she came back when I was two.”

Wordlessly, she pulled on a pair of grey woollen socks. “If I’m to make my class on time…” She tied her boot laces and donned a green waxed jacket. Together, they paused at her door – a wall of silence between them.

         “What now?” He finally croaked.

         “You could walk me to school… Dad,” she whispered, slipping her arm into his.             

We’ll never know

    As a child, I had always hated when an elder would end a story with the words, ‘we’ll never know.’ On winter nights, I’d listen to my grandfather and his cronies outdo each other with tales from their forefathers’ time; from a magical, mythical other world. No matter how often I’d asked whether the unearthly power had come from above or below, the answer was always the same, ‘we’ll never know.’

    In these enlightened days there are few opportunities to hear a hair-raising tale being told by the dying embers of a mid-winter turf fire. Though innocent by today’s standards, our forbearers were infinitely more resourceful than our generation in dealing with the vagaries and consequences of nature’s moods, and I am constantly grateful for having an elderly uncle living just a stone’s throw down the road. Catastrophes like dead vehicle batteries, electricity blackouts, and telephone and broadband malfunctions, which throw today’s world into chaos, were mere trivialities to his generation – until that Christmas Eve storm of 1997. 

    For as long as I can remember, Denny, my mother’s bachelor brother, came to us for Christmas dinner. In his later years, as we both lived alone, he had taken to staying over from Christmas Eve until St Stephen’s morning, so I wasn’t in the least surprised when he burst into my kitchen at around four o’clock on that fateful afternoon. The wind was at its height of destructivity and my electricity had already gone, and as the old man struggled to force the door shut, I reached the whiskey bottle down from the dresser.

    “No, boy,” he gasped, water streaming from his oilskin coat, “’tis your gun that I’m after.” That got my attention.

    “Gun; sure what would you want with a gun in this weather?” He was closer now and even in the dim candlelight, I could see that not all of the water flowing down his cheeks had come from the heavens.

    “It’s Biddy, the mare! That old spruce tree came down with the storm and landed on the stable. The off foreleg is broken; there’s bone showing through the skin…” He slumped into an armchair; I poured two small measures of Powers.

    “Drink this; go on, drink it.” Reluctantly he sipped from the glass. “The thing is, Denny,” I mumbled, “I still have the rifle, but I haven’t had a bullet in the house for years.” He seemed to deflate before my eyes. “What about the vet?” I ventured.

    “My phone is dead and I can’t get the tractor out because of the fallen tree…” He gestured helplessly. I checked my own receiver; the line was stone dead.

    “You stay put; I’ll drive into town and get him.” I said, hunting for my keys.

    “You won’t,” he sighed in resignation; “that big beech by the bridge came down; sending the river flowing down the road, and the lake road is been flooded since midday. So, unless you want to go climbing over Beenashee…” Out of ideas, I shook my head. In the awkward silence that followed, the howling of the wind seemed even more intense, ever more ominous. I was just about to refresh our glasses when an ear-splitting crash signalled yet another stricken tree; seconds later, we both started as a loud rapping shook the window behind our heads.

    Mystified, I braced my body against the opening door, catching a brief glimpse of flying Christmas cards, and a tall shadowy figure, before the candles blew out.

    “Sorry for the intrusion,” a cultured male voice spluttered as I forced the door shut. With a metallic clink, Denny’s zippo lighter briefly illuminated the stranger’s youthful features; once he’d re-lit the candles, the room seem familiar again.

    “It’s a bad night to be out.” Denny volunteered.        

         “It’s a bad night to run out of diesel,” he said; “I thought I’d make the service station in town but the lake road was blocked. I wouldn’t have enough for the extra dozen miles of the round trip…” He gestured helplessly.

    “Diesel, I have, but if the road is flooded…” I started towards the back porch.

    “I’ve a land cruiser; she’s just about clear of the water level. God, I feel such an idiot; for someone in the IT business to run out of diesel – on this of all nights.” He added, as I groped around the scullery for several moments before locating my emergency five-gallon drum. Perhaps we could help each other.

    “IT?” I asked.

    “Computers; I rectify software glitches…”

    “You’ll have a mobile phone, so?” He nodded animatedly, his hand disappearing into an inside pocket. “Can you dial this number for me?” I asked, calling out the digits.

    “It’s ringing!” He handed me the phone, and then plucked a pencil-sized twig from the collar of his waxed jacket.

    “You seem to know the locality.” Denny probed as the phone purred in my ear.

    “My family originally came from near here – Beenashee.” The stranger politely broke off as I explained our dilemma to the vet’s wife.

    The diesel did the trick. Happy that both stranger and vet were on their separate ways, I slid the kettle to the hottest part of the range. Denny had gone silent again. Misreading the situation, I began to reassure him of the vet’s imminent arrival.

    “The vet drives a jeep; if that man was able to travel…”

    “Beenashee; he said his people came from Beenashee. He had the pure stamp of a Fahey. That’s where they came from – the Faheys – Beenashee!”

    “The Faheys?”

    “You wouldn’t remember them, the Fairy Faheys they were known as. I only barely remember them; they had the healing – the old cures. Highly thought of, they were, until the clergy turned against them. I was only a toddler when the old Canon read them from the pulpit.”

    “Why?” I asked, scalding the teapot.

    “Power, boy; power, power and money! If your wife, or child, or even a beast was at death’s door, would you prefer to give your pound to the man who said a prayer for them or the man who made them stand up and walk before your eyes?”

    Thirty minutes later, it was as though the clock had been turned back many decades. No longer did the fury of the wind or the resultant devastation reach my ears; no longer did the faint flickering of the candles, or the demons that lurked in the dim shadowy corners, seem out of place. For Denny and the Fairy Faheys time had stood still, and I had been sucked back through generations to another world; reclaimed by the past.

    Another story finished, Denny refreshed his mug with the dregs from the teapot.

    “Did you know that the old people believed that a break in a horse’s leg would never mend? Now, with a Christian, or a dog or a cat, or even an old hen out in the yard, there was always hope, but when it came to horses, they never got a chance...”

    “But surely a horse’s leg would mend, if you could keep his weight off of it for long enough?” I argued.

    “Maybe so; but if you were lucky enough to get Flor the Fairy in time…”

         “Flor the Fairy?” I encouraged.

         Yeah, young Flor was the last of them in these parts. He tried to hang on after the family went, but he eventually took the Land Commission’s deal and moved up to County Meath. Flor’s land was divided, but nobody ever dared to live in the old house afterwards. Beenashee is a wild and lonely place now; Binn na sí: the hill of the fairies!”

    “So, Flor was good with horses?” I prompted, instantly regretting my insensitivity with regards to the predicament that had brought Denny in the first place.

    “Did you never hear the story of Bill Maher’s horse? Bill was Old Jack’s grandfather, and he kept as fine a Shire stallion as was ever shod. Mares came from the seven parishes to that horse; your grandfather claimed he once heard Bill swear that the horse was better to him than ten good cows. Bill was no daw, and he made sure that his bay horse was seen at every fair, sale and gathering in the barony. Anyway, Bill was heading over Beenashee, to flaunt the horse at the Kilteen pattern. He was in the pony’s trap, leading the stallion by rope and head collar. Well, as it happened, Fahey’s draught mare was in season and when the bucko got the scent, he broke loose, leapt the roadside dry-stone wall and galloped off across the mountain towards the mare. A heavy animal careering over rough ground…?” Inhaling sharply through his teeth, Denny shook his head sadly.

    “Don’t tell me he broke a leg?” I felt I had to say something.

    “Like you’d snap a match stick!” Denny mimed the action. Suddenly remembering the twig that had fallen from the stranger’s coat, I picked it from the floor and laid it on the arm of my chair.

    “There was no such thing as a vet in those days, so when the horse went down there was only one thing for it: the gun!” Eyeing the whiskey bottle, he drained his mug noisily. Taking the hint, I poured a measure and left the bottle within his reach.

    “The vet shouldn’t be long now…” Ignoring my contribution, Denny resumed.

    “Disturbed by the tatter-ah, Flor came to investigate.” Absently, Denny lifted the twig from the arm of the chair. “When Flor heard Bill’s story, he led him back to the house, breaking off of hazel sapling along the way…” Opening his penknife, Denny bisected the twig with a swift angled stroke. “He cut the sapling in half and gave the two ends to Bill.” He said, handing me the pieces of twig. “Go on, take them; hold them together…at the cut… good. That’s what Bill did while Flor ran into the house for a drop of buttermilk.” I gaped as Denny lifted the milk jug. “Flor poured the buttermilk over the spliced ends… like this...”

    The demanding blare of a horn shattered the spell. The twig pieces forgotten, I rushed for the door with Denny in hot pursuit. It was only when I was seated in the rear of the land rover that I noticed how the wind had eased and the rain had almost stopped. In front, Denny kept himself distracted by cajoling the overworked vet into sharing the highlights of his busy day. All too soon, we turned into Denny’s yard. The vet checked the charge in his humane killer and, grabbing a powerful torch, eyed Denny expectantly.

    “I’ll stay here.” Denny croaked. Nodding his understanding, the vet started towards the stable. Opening my door to follow, I felt the iron grip of my uncle’s fingers on my arm.  Dropping back into the seat, I tried to brace myself for the report of the imminent shot. A minute crawled by, then another. After what seemed like an age, a light bounced towards us; amazing words sounded from the darkness beyond.

    “Denny, what were you drinking? Old Biddy is fitter than any of us. Come and see.” We did; she was.

    The vet waited until the mare was re-housed, fed, watered and fussed over before dropping us home. Fully preoccupied by concern for Denny’s future independence, I had forgotten all about the Fairy Faheys until my electricity was restored and I noticed the twig on the kitchen table – the twig my uncle had sliced in half. Dumbstruck, I stared in awe: the twig was no longer in two pieces. Denny was also staring; at its centre; still wet where he had poured milk on its cut ends.

         “I thought he had the look of a Fahey, all right!” Denny murmured.

    “You mean that he…the twig; the mare?” I felt a cold shiver scurry up my spine.

         “We’ll never know,” Denny breathed, reaching a trembling hand towards the whiskey bottle. “We’ll never know…”

Christmas Stockings

         I wasn’t particularly jealous of my sister Alice; why should I be? Girls didn’t play football, or cowboys and Indians; they didn’t enjoy western and war films, and they didn’t climb trees, go fishing, or raid orchards. Girls only played with other girls; they liked to cuddle dolls and teddy bears, and never partook in horseplay in case they might dirty their blouses and dresses. Alice was four years older than me, but despite the difference in age, gender and interests, we coexisted in relative harmony and only rarely needed parental intervention when we didn’t. How ironic, then, that Christmas, the supposedly ultimate celebration of peace and goodwill, should be the spark to reignite past conflicts, resurrect real or imagined wrongs, and reopen old wounds.

    It got even worse in the years immediately after Santa stopped calling to our home; when the elements of wonder and surprise were replaced by the consequences of unrealistic expectation. Our parents really tried to preserve the magic, and stretched themselves beyond the bounds of duty to cater for our diverse emotional and physical needs. Situations will arise, however, for which nobody can legislate, particularly when one plays host to that most divisive of all intruders: the Christmas dinner guest. If one Christmas guest might be a mild inconvenience; three can mean absolute chaos.

    Regardless of weather conditions, Aunty Marie was always first to arrive. She would breeze in at about noon on the pretext of helping Mam, a bottle of wine firmly clutched in her right hand. Marie was Dad’s baby sister; she lived alone in their old family home on the other side of town. Marie chain-smoked cigarettes and drank lots of wine – before, during and after dinner – and could always be relied upon to cause some disaster to relieve the tedium which our other guests – the Bartons – perennially brought to the occasion. Whatever differences might arise between us, Alice and I were as one in our adoration of Marie.

    Mr Barton was the third generation of the family to run ‘Barton and Son’, the largest drapery outlet in town, where Dad had worked since leaving school in his mid-teens. I hated the Bartons. It really irked me that my parents should have to address a guest in their own home as ‘sir’, particularly when that person was their junior, and was availing of their hospitality. Mrs Barton was Mr Barton’s mother: a tiny wraith of a creature with a fractured halo of lilac curls. I’d harboured a childhood suspicion that Mrs Barton was Hitler’s mother, until Dad explained how it was her secret passion for snuff that caused the darkened patch the middle of her ample moustache. The Bartons usually turned up about an hour after Marie, leaving my parents ample time to banish Tibbs and Spot – our cat and terrier – to separate sheds, and to remind Marie, Alice and myself to show due respect to the Bartons.  

    Although Alice and I would have opened our main presents before breakfast, Mam and Dad insisted that we didn’t open our surprise gifts until after dinner; that they should remain beneath the tree to be joined by what Marie and the Bartons would bring. Marie was brilliant at choosing gifts, but I’ve always suspected a degree of collusion with Mam regarding who should buy what for whom. The Bartons, on the other hand, were painfully predictable: cigars for Dad – though he didn’t smoke – and gloves for Mam – which she would exchange for something more practical during the New Year sales. Marie would invariably receive a pair of out-of-fashion tights, Alice usually got a book token, but for me it was socks, always socks.

    There is nothing wrong with socks; I’ve always worn socks; most people I know wear socks; but there are socks…and socks. I’ve never quite managed to rid my mind of the image of a cavernous cardboard box, secreted in some cobwebbed alcove of Barton’s storeroom, and opened only once a year – probably late on Christmas Eve. I’m certain the socks in that box hadn’t been on display since the heyday of the late Mr Barton – which would have been sometime between the World Wars. They were the type of socks you would only see in old photos, when boys wore ‘short’ trousers that reached below their knees. Those socks were as long as football stockings but couldn’t be used as such because of their nondescript colours: dull shades of beige, brown, navy and grey – sometimes with zigzags or diamonds of mauve, green, or yellow. I prayed each year that the box might have finally emptied, or that its contents had been devoured by mice, or moths, or some other unlikely ally – that I might get a pair of football socks, or even a book token – but instead of diminishing, the Bartons’ stock seemed to grow, and my allocation increased from one pair, to two, to three…

    The annual ritual would begin with Dad relieving the Bartons of their coats and then seating them beside the specially-lit fire in the parlour. As ever, Marie would assume the role of cocktail waitress.

    “I never touch alcohol but because of the day that’s in it, I’ll take a very small sherry; and Mr Barton will have a glass of lemonade,” Mrs Barton would finally whine, having forced Marie to repeat the beverage options several times over. “Mr Barton doesn’t drink; he has never drank – nor smoked!” She would add, feigning a cough and exaggeratedly waving at the smoke spiralling from Marie’s cigarette. While Mrs Barton apparently disliked everyone, Marie clearly held a special place in her hate-list. The old lady always addressed Mam as ‘Missus’; Dad by his surname; Alice and myself as ‘child’ and ‘boy’; and if forced to attract Marie’s attention, she would simply squawk ‘you, girl!’

         With Dad entertaining the Bartons in the parlour, and Mam, Marie and Alice busy preparing the meal, the dining table was my responsibility from the time I could position the centrepiece by stretching on tip-toe. I was soon an expert on placemats, condiments, cutlery, side plates, serviettes, glasses, and, my favourite: crackers. I have to confess that I did occasionally modify the crackers at either side of Mrs Barton’s place at the head of the table, removing the banger from one cracker in order to make another extra loud. I’d long suspected that Mrs Barton’s deafness was more selective than profound, and I still like to view my actions as more scientific than malevolent.

    As our table was designed to seat six, Alice and I would be scrunched together at the end of the table – facing Mrs Barton. Everything on the old ladies plate would be too hot, too cold, too hard or too soft, except the Brussels sprouts – which nobody else ever ate. Mr Barton would sit at his mother’s right; with Dad on her left; Marie would be next to Dad, while Mam stayed nearest the cooker. After dessert, Mrs Barton would grumble her way to the parlour fireside for a snooze, and I’d have to watch over her in case she might fall into the fire while asleep. This was the very worst part of my day: with the TV turned off and all play forbidden lest I awaken the old woman, my only comfort was a well-thumbed Hotspur comic.

    I doubt if Mrs Barton ever actually slept on those occasions. Her head would constantly twitch, particularly at a belly laugh from Dad or Mr Barton, a giggle from Mam or Alice, or a shriek from Marie. As soon as Marie would break into her song about red feathers and a hula hula skirt – usually about six o’clock – Mrs Barton would jerk upright and waving aside Mam’s offer of a cuppa for the road, demand her mink coat and bustle her son towards the door. I especially remember that Christmas when I was ten, when Mr Barton tried exceptionally hard to convince Marie to accept his offer of a lift home. As Marie reached for her coat, Mrs Barton took a sudden turn and needed two glasses of brandy before being helped to the car by Dad and her son. Mrs Barton recovered well from that particular scare but about six months later, Mr Barton returned from work one evening to find her slumped in her armchair in front of the TV, an empty brandy balloon still cradled in her cooling right hand.

    It snowed that following December; and we got our school holidays a week early. Having never before seen proper snow, my friends and I took full advantage and enjoyed several days of the type of mayhem we had only previously experienced through the characters in comics like The Beano and The Dandy. Much to Mam’s relief, a thaw set in on the fifth day and by Christmas Eve only a carrot, two marbles, Dad’s old hat, and the red scarf I’d borrowed from Alice’s bedroom, remained of the snowman we’d built in the lane beside the house.

    Marie arrived about an hour earlier than usual on Christmas morning, and treated us to a display of domestic efficiency I would never have believed possible. So impressed were Mam and Dad that neither of them noticed when Alice disappeared into the yard with the newly-lit cigarette which Marie had just placed on an ashtray near the scullery door. Mr Barton’s arrival was also earlier than expected, and he was promptly ushered into the parlour by Dad.

    Before we sat down to eat, Mr Barton – whom my parents and Marie had greeted as ‘Bart’ – led us in a prayer for the repose of his mother’s soul, and then Mam proposed a toast in memory of the many happy times we had shared with Mrs Barton – all of which must have happened before I was born. Bart seemed to have developed a taste for wine since the previous Christmas, and offered only token resistance each time Marie insisted on refreshing his glass. Dad was restored to the head of the table, with me on his right, then Alice, and Mam at the end of the table. Marie now sat on Dad’s left, with Bart between her and Mam. It was like a Christmas on TV – only better.

    After the meal, Bart taught us how to play charades, and I was soon so sore from laughing that I was almost relieved when Dad finger-hooked me to the kitchen to help with the washing-up. Bart joined us within minutes and insisted on drying every single item of crockery, cutlery and cookware, and then – under Marie’s direction – returned everything to its unique niche in the dresser or kitchen cupboards.  Marie sipped regularly from her glass, but there were none of the excesses of previous years. Instead of singing about red feathers and a hula hula skirt, and then crashing-out on our sofa, she insisted on taking Spot and Bart for a walk along the lane. While Mam and Dad were watching TV in the parlour, Alice slipped out to meet up with her friends, and I had great fun throwing balls of torn wrapping for Tibbs to play with.

    “You haven’t opened Bart’s present,” Marie said, pressing its spongy bulk against my chest on returning from walking Spot and Bart. The dreaded moment had arrived. Wrapped in familiar brown paper and tied with the usual white twine, the parcel was bulky enough to hold six or seven pairs of socks. Imagine my surprise to find just one pair: a pair that perfectly matched the neatly-folded jersey underneath, in the red and white colours of my favourite team.

Sleeping Dogs

If there ever was a man who deserved two names, that man was John Jack McCormack. If you asked the builder Connolly how many men he had on a particular job, he would start by saying: ‘Well, I’ve John Jack…that’s two!’ Physically, John Jack was a giant: standing at six-foot five in his stockings, he was broad of shoulder, barrel-chested, with hands like shovels and thighs like milk churns. A shock of unkempt blonde curls and a perpetual coat of stubble contributed to the mountain-man image, but those who knew him well would tell you that the size of his heart left his physical attributes in the shade. As a youth, he had been courted by every sporting organisation in the area. The GAA and the soccer boys had been his earliest suitors but, despite being a six-footer at fourteen, his lack of basic athleticism grew ever more apparent as he reached his mid-teens. By his eighteenth birthday, even the basketball and rugby clubs had given up the ghost and then, a week after his twenty-first birthday, John Jack won the raffle.

“What am I going to do with a greyhound pup?” He asked of nobody in particular.

“Sell him.” His father said.

“And we’ll drink whatever he makes.” Flaherty quipped.

“Shoot him, before he breaks you.” Connolly cautioned.

“Race him.” suggested the barman.

“And from the way he’s bred, you’d probably beat him!” Flaherty chimed.

“D’ye know what, lads,” John Jack beamed, “wouldn’t it be great to be able to run faster than something?” That settled it. About a week later, John Jack took possession of the fawn sapling and, from that moment, his life would never be the same again.

To the amazement of all, John Jack took to the new challenge like a duck to water. Within a week he had built a sturdy pine kennel, around which he’d erected a six-foot chain-link fence, which encompassed about a quarter of the acre behind his father’s cottage. Glass Hammer, as the dog was named in honour of the pranks his owner had endured on his introduction to the building trade, grew into a beautiful animal. Over the following months, John Jack was far more likely to be seen in the butcher’s, the baker’s or the vet’s than in the pub. No animal was ever better fed than that dog: pound-after-pound of round steak, loaf-upon-loaf of brown bread and dozen after dozen of duck eggs were washed down with gallons of goat’s milk and an occasional bottle of stout. They made an unlikely pair, pounding the country roads, morning and evening, in the dark of winter: the huge hulk of a man dwarfing the lithe hound, both identically clad in yellow high-visibility jackets. On his first run, when he broke the track record in Limerick, John Jack didn’t have a bob on Glass Hammer. Six weeks later, when the dog broke two toes in the puppy sweepstake final, John Jack said goodbye to a month’s wages with a philosophical shrug. “Ah, sure, didn’t he give us a few great nights out?” It was the end of Glass Hammer’s racing career, but only the beginning of John Jack’s voyage into the opaque ocean of dog racing.

    Had Glass Hammer had a more experienced owner, his injury might have meant an end to more than just his racing days but, despite the best efforts of his new-found mentors, John Jack was determined that the dog would stay. In itself, this wouldn’t have been a disaster but the real problem was that John Jack had now developed a real taste for the track. His heart-felt pleas failed to impress Connolly.

         “If ‘twas anything else…a woman…a car…anything, you know I’d see you right…but another greyhound? A passport to the poorhouse is what ‘tis.” Ironically, when the solution to John Jack’s problem finally presented itself, it was directly due to Connolly. In addition to his great strength, John Jack was a scrupulous worker and quickly climbed the ranks of Connolly’s crew. When Jack McCormack decided to retire, nobody batted an eye when his son succeeded him as gang foreman and driver of Connolly’s battered blue Ford Transit van.

    A few weeks later, John Jack was dispatched to price an extension to one of the town’s leading hostelries. The elderly publican gave John Jack the grand tour of the premises, finishing with the back yard where the new toilets and smoking area would be situated. Everything was going well until a little brindle bitch pup scurried towards John Jack and began to worry his bootlaces. His estimates forgotten, John Jack seemed to melt to his hunkers, a huge finger probing playfully between the pup’s milk teeth.

    “Is she for sale?” he craned his neck upwards towards the publican.

    “Well, she’s not exactly for sale, but... You see, I usually I buy a pair of whelps and Billy Callaghan rears them on the farm. When they’re ready for training, I pick one and Billy keeps the other. The trouble is that Billy’s after marrying and the wife won’t let a greyhound near the place, high, low, big nor bad!” Another pup appeared: a sturdy black and white male.

    “I’ll rear them… but I’d want to keep this one.” He stroked the brindle pup.

    “Well, I was looking for two dogs but there was only one in the litter… if you’ll rear him; you’re welcome to her.”

    John Jack erected a new concrete structure in place of the wooden kennel and Glass Hammer was removed from the run to spare him from the rough and tumble of the boisterous newcomers. The older animal adapted well to his new status and quickly made himself at home on an old settee in his master’s tool shed. John Jack was soon on the road again, this time with a dog lead in either hand.          

    Responding to judicious nurturing, the saplings sprouted quickly and, within six-weeks of her littermate’s departure to the training kennels, the brindle bitch was introduced to the Limerick track. As John Jack was under no illusions as to his runner’s potential, he had decided not to inform his work colleagues of the animal’s debut. As it happened, she gave a reasonable account of herself, finishing fourth, several lengths behind the winning favourite but only beaten a head and a neck for second place. Pleased to see her return sound, John Jack retrieved his charge and led her back through the public enclosure.

    “Excuse me, but isn’t she the Katy’s Tipple pup?” A female voice asked as John Jack stooped to fasten the animal’s jacket.

    “Yes.” he said, half-straightened to meet a pair of deep brown eyes.

    “Is she for sale?” The young woman asked hopefully.

    “I’m afraid not… I…” He broke off, noticing the disappointment that darkened her striking features.

    “Her name… where does the JJ come from…?”

    “Oh, that’s… they’re my initials… John Jack…”

    “I’m Katy; her mother was named for me… I… we bred her…”

    “We?” They fell into step without either of them realising it.

    “Well, my dad, but he’s dead now…” She smiled wistfully, defencelessly.

    “Sorry, Katy, I have to go. She’s entered here again in a fortnight; will you be here?”

    “I’ll be here, JJ.”

***

    “That car is only three months old; there’s no way I’d let anyone put any animal into it.” Connolly was quite adamant.

    “But I’m not taking the dog.” John Jack pleaded.

    “You’re going to the track without the dog? That’s even worse: backing your own dog is bad enough, but gambling…?”

    “I’ve no intention of having any bet, I…”

    “It’s not a woman; is it? Glory be to God, it is a woman! Here, take it with a heart and a half, boyo!” The keys of the Mercedes came sliding across the site-office table.

    “I’ve been right through the card; she’s not there.” Katy’s greeting fell a long way short of what John Jack had been hoping for.

    “I had to scratch her, she’s in season!” He said, his voice dulled by disappointment.

    “Oh! I was looking forward to seeing her; that’s why…” Her words trailed off; self-consciously, she averted her eyes. 

    “There was nothing I could do; I had no way of contacting you… I… I don’t even know your surname…!” He gestured helplessly.

    “You look nice, JJ!” She managed a tight little smile.

    “So do you.” He muttered and then had an idea. “Do you want to stay here, or would you prefer to…to go someplace… maybe a film or a drink?”

    “Well, JJ, we’re all dressed-up; so why don’t we do both? And, if you behave yourself, I might even let you have my phone number.”

    JJ’s number did light up Katy’s mobile phone screen on the following Monday afternoon; her smile froze as she confirmed her name to the unfamiliar voice. It was Connolly, and his news was not good: John Jack had fallen from scaffolding and was in Limerick hospital. Katy unsaddled the filly she’d been about to school, pulled a jacket over her sweater and arrived at the hospital about thirty minutes later. Despite her best efforts, it took a further two hours before the nurse would allow her to visit the patient. She found JJ alert but in obvious discomfort.

    “So Connolly did phone you?” He lay on his left side, his head at an unusual angle.

    “My goodness, what happened?”

    “I was lucky,” his attempted smile tightened to a grimace. “I got away with a broken collar bone and a few cracked ribs!”

    “How long will you be here?” A tinge of relief brightened her voice.

    “They’d let me out now if I had someone at home. Dad’s visiting my sister in London, but it’s the dogs…!”

    “No, you’re coming home with me. I’m a qualified nurse; I’ll look after you… and the dogs.”

***

    JJ was convinced that he had been seriously over-medicated. Not only was he not in any pain, but also he now imagined that he was been driven through a long, tree-lined avenue towards a floodlit Edwardian house. Reality bit when he recognised the van – Connolly’s van – parked, right there, in front of the conservatory at the main entrance to the imposing edifice. Connolly alighted from the Transit and approached.

    “Oh, I am in the right place.” Introducing himself to Katy, Connolly opened the passenger door of the jeep. “Come on, boyo, we’ll get you inside.” Turning to Katy, he grinned. “You’re one brave woman, lumbering yourself with this heap!”

    Once JJ was settled on the drawing room sofa, Connolly had a question for Katy.

    “I have the dogs in the van; where will I put them?”

    “Just make sure they’re kept apart; the bitch is in season!” JJ spluttered. Connolly digested the interjection for a moment before meeting his foreman’s concerned gaze.

    “Ah, boyo, I’m afraid it might be a bit late for that.” He hurried towards the door, pausing only to fire a final volley. “Will I have pick of the litter?”

    On his journey home, Connolly succumbed to several bouts of laughter and, on subsequent visits, when he’d deliver JJ’s pay packet, he’d allow himself a covert smile when enquiring after the bitch’s wellbeing. In due course JJ’s Tipple produced just one whelp, a huge fawn dog. Connolly never stood a chance of claiming the pup, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he also lost his foreman. By then, JJ was far too busy helping Katy restore her two-hundred acre holding to what it had been before her father had lost the run of himself. But Connolly did go to Dublin in early October, along with Jack McCormack, Flaherty and the rest of the crew, on the night that Katy and JJ announced their engagement, just after Katy’s Crystal had won The Harold’s Cross Bookmakers’ Puppy Derby.

Christmas Turkey

I like turkey, the old fashioned kind of turkey: roasted, with drumsticks and wing bits, and the cavity filled with moist mixed herb and onion stuffing. The kind of turkey enjoyed by generations of Irish families before conceited cooks became celebrity chefs, and ousted Tom & Jerry from their rightful slot on afternoon TV. I mean, what’s wrong with a leg of turkey and a few thick slices of ham, with gravy, floury potatoes and peas and carrots, or even sprouts – if you’re that way inclined? These days, there’s a virtual tsunami of celebrity chefs, and so many cookery slots on our terrestrial stations that one would need a satellite dish to avoid them all – which is something I may well consider after retiring.

Just before last Christmas, I delivered a card, mistakenly posted through our letterbox, to an elderly neighbour, and was instantly ushered into to her parlour for the compulsory cup of tea. She’s a lovely little lady, smiley and bright as a new button, but quite hard of hearing. She hazed me into a giant armchair and then switched the TV on for my entertainment while she went to the kitchen to boil the kettle. Not only was I faced with a celebrity chef in full flow, but the volume of the TV must have been close to registering on the Richter scale. My hostess had taken the remote control with her, so I had to sit there with drizzles of this and essences of that, and the wonders of gravy concocted from Greek yoghurt and beetroot, bombarding my ears. The genius then glazed, macerated, blitzed, blanched, infused, sautéed and sweated his way through salsify, butternut squashes, artichokes, oca tubers, and numerous other oddities of which I’d never heard, but have probably accumulated more air miles than the Discovery space shuttle. Oh no, not him again, the little lady hissed on her return, and mercifully zapped the interloper from the screen.

What annoys me even more than these charlatans’ insistence on adulterating perfectly wholesome and delicious food, is the unpalatable fact that we won’t be having turkey this Christmas. It’s been eighteen years since we’ve had turkey for Christmas, not since Deirdre, our youngest, embarked on her save Tom Turkey campaign. In fact, no fowl of any kind has been cooked in our home in the interim, and what’s most galling is that I am totally to blame. Yes, I should have known better than to introduce a strutting, bristling, bronze turkey to our household, just as Santa was servicing his sleigh before his annual big night out. Until that Christmas GAA draw, I’d never won anything, and through all those years I never realised how lucky I was. I wouldn’t mind, but there were many other prizes on the night: whole hams, bottles of whiskey and wine, cakes, tins of biscuits, boxes of sweets. In hindsight, I’d have been better off with the personal grooming kit – even though I’m quite follically challenged – or the presentation pack of cosmetics from the local chemist. But no, I had to win first prize: ten monstrous kilos of glowering, gobbling tom turkey.

“Follow me,” the woman said when I presented my voucher at the farmhouse door. Mystified, I shadowed her across the frozen yard to a dilapidated stone outbuilding. “That’s him,” she said, pointing to the only bronze bird among the four that cowered in the furthest corner of their prison; “the white ones are hens; they’re all spoken for. God knows, I won’t be sorry to see them go.” I watched in fascination as she plucked a plastic fertiliser bag from beneath the rafters, grabbed the giant bird by the legs, and despite his flapping wings and flailing head, sat him, tail-first, into the bag. That was when I noticed the length of bailing twine interlaced around the mouth of the bag; pulling on both ends of the twine, she left just enough slack for the bird’s head to oscillate before knotting the ends together. “He won’t budge outa that; happy Christmas!”

When my better half declared at first glance that my prize wouldn’t fit in her oven, my mind instantly whizzed back to my first Irish Christmas. I was four, my big brother was nine, and my little sister had just turned two when our parents ended their ten-year exile in London and brought us to lodge with Dad’s parents while our new house was being built. They lived at the edge of town and had a half-acre plot behind their cottage, about a third of which was fenced off for Daddo’s vegetable garden, while Gran’s pigs and poultry had free range on the remainder.

Except for the pigs, all of Gran’s stock was home-bred. She kept about a dozen laying hens, two of which would be allowed to hatch a clutch each year; there was a succession of roosters, each lasted just a single season before being swopped with one of Gran’s many contacts to avoid inbreeding. The female chicks would ultimately join the laying ranks, while the males either got a breeding invitation to another flock or ended up as the Sunday roast. There were also some ducks, as Daddo preferred their eggs to those of the hens, but the king of the haggard was Gussie, a belligerent grey gander who fiercely protected his pair of timid mates and their baby goslings from anything audacious enough to venture within their orbit.

Dad became a postman soon after we’d arrived, and by the time we moved to our new house, his colleagues had roped him into playing cards for Christmas turkeys and other seasonal fare at the local pub. On Christmas Eve, utterly exhausted after weeks of delivering parcels, letters and cards, Dad collected the oven-ready turkey he’d won a fortnight before, brought it home, and then went straight to bed. It wasn’t until Mam got up before dawn on Christmas morning that she noticed how the bird was too big for the cooker in our new house. Reluctant to rouse Dad from his first proper rest in weeks, Mam bundled us into our coats and hats, sat the turkey in my little sister’s push chair, hoisted the protesting toddler onto her shoulders, and with my brother and myself steering the turkey’s conveyance, we all trotted off through the crisp morning darkness to her mother’s house across town. Nan, who already had a fire blazing in her range, put our turkey into her oven and then sent us on our way with cuddles and a selection box each. To this day, I don’t know if anybody witnessed our morning flight, but I’m sure Mam did turn a few heads some hours later when she took the empty push chair on a solo trip to retrieve the bird, while Dad cooked the vegetables and we played with our presents.      

***

“I’d say he’d fit if we removed the legs,” was my helpful suggestion, after I released my bird into the temporary pen I’d assembled in the corner of the garage. He seemed content with his new surroundings, and occasionally pecked at the loaf heel-end we’d left beside his water bowl. Having spent much of my teens helping Gran and Daddo prepare their home-bred geese for their regular Christmas clients, I was almost looking forward to dispatching, plucking and gutting the bird. While I hadn’t actually stalked him in the wild, the rest of the ritual would satisfy the primeval hunter-gatherer instinct that lurks deep within the psyche of all hominids.

“If we removed whose legs?” Eight-year-old Deirdre asked, wriggling in between us.

Having been fully preoccupied with constructing my turkey-proof barrier, I’d totally lost track of time and hadn’t realised that the girls were due home from school. While her mother and I struggled for an answer, Clodagh, her eleven-year-old sister, broke the silence.

“Oh, we got a live one this year. Yuck, he pongs; I don’t want him for Christmas.”

“But can we keep him anyway, please; can we keep him forever and ever?” Jigging from one foot to the other, Deirdre had adopted her most beseeching tone.

“You should have let us keep that stray puppy, Mam. Clodagh sighed, in the weary I told you so manner we were growing accustomed to. “Nobody would want to eat him for Christmas!”

“Nooooo, we’re not going to eat him for Christmas; sure we aren’t, Dad…Dad?” The penny had dropped with Deirdre, a lot quicker than it had with me a lifetime before.   

***

While all of Gran’s fowl was homebred, and much of Daddo’s spring seed had been saved from previous harvests, each summer saw the purchase of two just-weaned piglets. That year’s pair appeared soon after our arrival from London, but nobody told me that one would be sent to market when fattened, while the other would be slaughtered and salted for household consumption during the winter months when the plot would be at its least productive. Spoiled for choice with the freedom and wonders of rural life, having previously known only the confines of our London flat, I was far too busy to pay much attention to any of Gran’s creatures – including the pigs, until one of them died. Suddenly, my four-year-old self could relate to that little pig: he had lost his playmate, while I was stuck with a sister who was too small to play with and a brother who was too big to play with me. I don’t know where the name Watty came from, but he seemed to like it, and would rush to the gate at my first call each morning. Pigs are truly amazing animals; they can play ball, shake hands, roll over, and they’ll eat almost anything. We were best friends from the first bowl of lumpy porridge to the day our family moved into town.

With Mam and Dad busy titivating the new house, several weeks passed before we went back to Dad’s parents for a special Sunday lunch. It was a dreadful day, with torrential rain and a biting squally wind. I took a quick glance over my shoulder as we raced from the car to the back door; it was no surprise that there wasn’t a single creature to be seen in the plot. The meal was truly delicious: stuffed pork steak with apple sauce; and potatoes, peas and carrots from Daddo’s garden. The rain eased as we were leaving, and various feathered bodies began to emerge from their shelters. Breaking free of Dad’s grip, I sprinted towards the gate calling, calling…calling…

***

“No, love; we won’t eat him for Christmas,” I said, confident that I’d found the perfect solution. “No, we’ll get an oven-ready one in the supermarket and…”

“Nooooo, it might be his b-brother or sis-sister; I’m…never, e-ever, going to eat…t-t-turkey, never, e-e-ever, again,” Deirdre continued to sob inconsolably until we finally calmed her with a bag of crisps and a bottle of cola, followed by two packets of Jelly Tots – most of which disappeared down the gullet of her new best friend: Tom the turkey.

That was the first of five roast beef Christmases, until Deirdre became vegetarian when Snoop, our overweight labrador, was about five years-old. After a few initial scuffles, Snoop and Tom more or less reached an understanding which would last for over a decade: Snoop, with lolling tongue and wagging hindquarters would greet all-comers to our front door; while Tom, with vociferous gobbling, fanned tail, trailing wings, and iridescent snood, wattles and caruncles, terrorised anything that would dare to even glance towards his backyard.

While I still can’t abide the smell of pork steak, I’ve always enjoyed bacon, sausages, puddings and any pig product which I don’t associate with Watty or that fateful Sunday lunch. Deirdre, who is now vegan, has recently become a partner in the county’s largest veterinary practice. I’m already looking forward to having both our girls join us for Christmas dinner – Deirdre will cook, as usual.   

Sam

Although my watch doesn’t reflect it, I know I’ve been here for some considerable time. This is most unlike her. She usually keeps me bouncing from one situation to another, from Ireland to the UK or the US; from calm to calamity, from conundrum to conclusion, and back again – scarcely leaving me enough time to draw breath.

    Has she had some mishap; an illness, a family crisis – does she have a family? Perhaps her laptop suffered a technical glitch; or been stolen? Whatever the reason, she has left me ill-equipped and poorly positioned for such a delay – alone, among strangers, in alien surroundings. Not that I’m unaccustomed to public houses: hostelries have been pivotal to some of my more significant moments, but there is something very wrong with the picture I now find myself part of.

    I have come to expect more of her. Except for that winter when she abandoned me to freeze for more than two months in some godforsaken Dublin squat – without a word to say, or anybody to say it to – she has usually kept me at the heart of things. But for her, I would never have seen how a Burren spring can blossom into a summer of west Clare music sessions, climaxing in Lisdoonvarna’s month of autumn love. The west of Ireland had real pubs: with live musicians, accommodating staff, natives willing to bid you the time of day, and snugs and other little nooks and crannies where one’s words reached only the ears for which they were intended. 

    Marooned in this voluminous hangar of a place, festooned with strobe-lit mirrors, space-age gadgetry, plastic and chrome, I long for smoke-tinted oak beams, cob walls, and flagstone floors. Intermittently, I can hear another blare battle above the monotonous techno boom of the house speakers – it might be a TV commentary on some sport event, but I can’t be sure. I can see two massive screens from my position by the main entrance: one shows grotesque, huge-wheeled mutations of 4X4s perpetrate unspeakable atrocities against a once pristine rural hillside; the other screen flashes out blinding images of hideously pierced visages and gaping mouths, while tattooed, prick-marked arms strive to destroy what would appear to be perfectly serviceable musical instruments. Thankfully, both devices are muted.

    A buzz of expectation emanates from the gathering assembled in front of what may be a third screen, and hovers uncertainly for a few moments before erupting into a full-blooded primeval roar. Even more bodies rush to swell the jubilant throng, leaving the bar counter to a few little scatters of young women who seem totally absorbed with their phones and utterly oblivious to the commotion nearby.

    I’m particularly drawn to one young lady. Although she sits alone at the end of the counter, it isn’t just space that distances her from her neighbours. No, this girl is modestly dressed in a fitted three-quarter-length cotton dress, with a printed poppy and cornflower design; she’s wearing tan seamed stockings and flat-heeled, black patent shoes. My gaze locks on her illuminated profile as she strikes a match to an unfiltered cigarette. Amazingly, none of the bar staff shows the slightest reaction as she exhales onto the match before dropping it into a circular Sweet Afton ashtray. When she swirls her neck to blow a stream of smoke over her right shoulder, I notice how her short dark hair has that just permed look, and for some inexplicable reason I find this view of the back of her head eerily familiar.

***

    Though sensing his stare, she doesn’t dare turn to take a proper look. She regrets not having studied him more closely when she had first noticed him, but once she’d decided that he wasn’t Sam she had kept her eyes averted lest he might get the wrong idea. She lights a second cigarette and then steals a furtive glance towards the door. He has gone – vanished – just as silently and mysteriously as he had appeared. Perhaps she should also leave; but where would she go? Where is she, anyway? She has no idea, neither has she any inkling as to why she is here in the first place. Emitting a smoke-laden sigh, she beckons a barman and orders another gin. She is no stranger to waiting for Sam, and wait she must, regardless of how long it might take.

***

    That’s it, I realise; that’s what was so familiar about the way she had tilted her head, it was precisely how Letty would react when I’d done something to annoy her; but how can it be? Besides, the age difference is all wrong, and is totally in the wrong direction. Although I’m now back home – it’s not my real home but it’s where I’ll be until Sam decides to move me again – I still can’t shake that bar scene from my thoughts.   

    Perhaps I’m dreaming, but I can hear her voice now – Letty’s voice. She is trying to comfort my seven-year-old self about something, about someone – about Mam. It’s a bright morning in early summer; I’m still in my pyjamas, standing in a flurry of dust motes, shielding my moist eyes against the shaft of sunlight that slants through our parlour window. I’m barefoot, and the balls of my big toes are tracing the spaces between the shrunken floorboards that lie beneath a threadbare beige carpet. Letty places a tray with tea and chocolate fingers on the low trolley-table she has wheeled close to the settee. I feel her hands on my shoulders as she gently steers me to the seat before raising a cup to my lips. She smells of carbolic soap, lavender floor polish, Mam’s perfume – and Dad.

***

    Try as she might, she simply can’t get him out of her mind; but why? There was nothing exceptional about him: he was just another middle-aged man, sitting alone in a pub designed with a younger generation in mind. His face was pale and gaunt; his thinning pepper-and-salt hair needed a trim, a crumpled slate-grey suit hung loosely from his spare frame, and an open-necked, off-white shirt served only to accentuate the scrawniness of his throat. She hadn’t noticed his shoes but she doubts very much if they had seen polish since his suit had last been pressed. He may well have been just another emigrant returned for a parent’s funeral, but the more she thinks about him, the greater her certainty that he is connected to her in some inexplicable way.

***

    The harmony of the April morning is shattered by the discordant clamour of squabbling birds. Intrigued, I open the back door of the cottage and look outside. The rain has stopped, and there are several magpies cackling and flitting among the branches of the willows that fringe the overgrown cottage garden. I spot another bird, very different to the others: it is slightly smaller and, while its peachy plumage resembles that of a male chaffinch, the brilliant splash of azure blue against the black and white patches of its wings tells me that this creature could possibly be a jay. My knowledge of wildlife being rather sketchy, my first instinct is to do a Google search, but Sam has left me neither laptop nor iPhone to ease my isolation.

    The magpies have quietened, I manage to catch a brief glimpse of the more colourful bird as it arrows towards the cover of the beech wood to the left of the cottage. Is there a mate waiting there, maybe even a brood? My gaze is drawn to the emerging leaves of the ash and oak saplings that skirt the wood. How long has it been since I’ve actually stopped to admire a tree, or an animal or bird, or paused to smell a flower? When did I last walk simply for the sake of taking a walk; when have I last stood still for long enough to savour the nature-embellished peace of an early summer meadow, or to breathe fresh country air. Are these my own memories or somebody else’s? Who’s life am I living; my own, or another of Sam’s?

***

    Sam has a lot to answer for, Letty decides, tucking the eiderdown snugly around the sleeping boy. Why had the child chosen that night above all others to wander into her bedroom: the one night the doctor had plucked up the courage to abandon his wife’s bed for hers? If it had been difficult for the boy, it had been unbearable for his mother. Already of a nervous disposition, her son’s words had finally pushed her beyond the brink. Yes, she would physically recover from the overdose but despite Letty’s attempts to reassure the boy, she didn’t need her lover to tell her that his wife would not be coming home.

***

    Realising I haven’t yet had my coffee, I return indoors, turn on the gas and place the cooling kettle back on the circle of blue flame. As I reach for a mug, my eye is drawn to a movement beyond the front window. It’s her; she is standing in the lane, dressed exactly as she had been in the pub. There is no sign of a vehicle and even though it was raining steadily until about fifteen minutes ago, she seems perfectly dry. I feel I could reach out and actually touch her; but how can this be?

    As the kettle comes to the boil, I find my resolve being tested to the limit, but I refrain from glancing outside until I’ve make a second coffee. She is still there, motionless, staring directly at my window. I lay my mug aside, comb dampened fingers through my tousled hair, take a couple of deep breaths, and then open the front door.

    “Hello,” I call from the doorstep. Unflinching, she continues to stare.

    I give it another try.

    “Hello; are you looking for somebody?” She shrugs; she has heard.

    I take a few steps towards her.

    “Can I help you with something?”

    “Do I know you?” She asks; the timbre of her voice glues me to the spot.

    “I’m not sure. I don’t actually live here; well, not usually. I’m Aloysius Appleton,” I add, almost apologetically.

    “You can’t be,” she says, half-turning back towards the lane.

    “No, don’t go, please; I mean you no harm, I swear, but my name really is Aloysius Appleton…” She stands quite still; I feel her eyes on my face – my body.

    “I’m Letitia Templeton – Letty.” She speaks slowly, deliberately, enunciating each syllable. She pauses, as though to analyse my reaction.

    Though it doesn’t make sense, I think I’m beginning to understand.

    “Do you know Sam?” She asks, apparently satisfied that I don’t present an immediate threat to her person, and takes a few hesitant steps towards the cottage.

    “You mean the Sam who decides where I go, what I do, what I say and think? Of course I know her,”

    “Her? No, Sam is not a woman; Sam is definitely a man!”

    “No! Sam has to be a woman; no man could possibly expect another man to...”

    “Sam is a man; he knows nothing of how a woman’s mind works.”

    “She knows even less about a man’s. Look, I can make neither head nor tail of this; I haven’t a clue from one moment to the next whether I’m coming or going…”

    “I know. It’s as if he has lost or deleted part of a file, or dropped some pages and then picked them up in the wrong order. Perhaps he is drinking again; nothing would surprise me when it comes to Sam.”

    “But, Letty; is Sam writing about you, or me, or what?”

    “Allie, one never knows where any of Sam’s stories might go next, but I think this one is about us – all of us. It’s about you; your mam; your dad and me – and our daughter. Yes, you will have a sister.”

Birdy

I heard it by chance, during a TV update from the US Masters Golf tournament in Augusta Georgia. Oblivious to the pomp and paraphernalia of global media, the game’s elite, and hordes of fervent fans, an unseen bird called from a tree-lined fairway. I haven’t yet learnt its breed, but its song took me back more than a half-century – to the last time I heard Cha whistle.

Cha had many whistles; all were produced by inserting a curved thumb and forefinger between his lips, and each resonated only with the ears for which it was intended. At the punchy High Do quadruplet of the song thrush, two black cows would raise and toss their handlebar-horned heads, before ambling towards their milking post. The repeated Do>So ‘teacher-teacher’ triplet of the great tit never failed to bring a white donkey trotting from the umbrella shade of the horse chestnut tree, while the doleful arc of the curlew’s Fa<Do couplet was the cue for a shaggy tri-coloured terrier to wag his expectant way to Cha’s doorstep. I’d named the dog Rover, because he’d turned up soon after a convoy of Travellers had decamped to the annual August renewal of Killorglin’s historic Puck Fair. An aloof black cat appeared shortly afterwards; I called him Shadow – not that he ever responded, but he was certain to materialise from some parallel universe at Cha’s whistle for Rover at feeding time.

The two-room stone cottage to the east of our river field had been vacant for as long as I could remember. It had a north-facing doorway with a kitchen window to the left, while a west-facing gable window lit the narrower room at the rear. High on the east gable, a tiny window welcomed the sun’s first rays into a chilly loft – accessible only by ladder – while the south-facing wall, dwarfed by a high shoulder of limestone, was totally blind. I still recall my six-year-old’s excitement on the bright April morning when I first noticed a waft of blue smoke from the long-idle chimney. I gulped down my breakfast, slipped into my wellingtons, and then charged through scattering poultry to my mucky, downhill short-cut to the little house.

Over many doorless years the building had been a mecca for exploring children, nesting birds, and miscellaneous other creatures. It had also been a refuge for anglers – driven from the riverbank by sudden downpours or rumours of approaching water bailiffs. Despite the comings and goings of such interlopers, I’d always regarded the house as my private den and was particularly fascinated by the huge open fireplace – where you could see all the way up to the sky. I was further captivated by the creaking arm of its rusting iron crane, after Mam explained how essential the device had been for cooking and baking in the days before stoves, ranges, and gas cookers had greatly alleviated the hardship of rural life prior to the arrival of electricity.        

Slaloming through the little copse of catkinned willow and hazel at the boundary of our river field, I wondered if some fisherman or other trespasser had lit the fire: perhaps a weary knight of the road, or possibly a fleeing robber – or maybe an escaped murderer – had sought temporary sanctuary, and then I noticed the new door.

With curiosity outweighing fear, I sneaked a peek through the west gable window. The narrow room had been cleared of rubbish, the mud floor swept clean, and a black Raleigh bicycle rested against the cross wall. Emboldened, I risked a quick glance through the front window – and then froze. Seated on an upturned butter box, beside the open hearth, was a huge man; an earthenware mug was engulfed in one calloused hand and a black briar pipe nestled in the other. Judging from his massive hairless head, he could well have been a robber – or even a murderer. My mind awhirl, I scrambled up the slippery slope towards home and safety.  

Speculation was rife in the village regarding the newcomer’s identity. Jacko Flynn – who knew everything about everybody – said the man was a gangster, on the run from the English police; Foxy Black-Tom suggested that he might have been farmed out in his teens from some orphanage, while Moll Connor thought he resembled the Daly family who had occupied the house in her youth, and then Dad heard on good authority that the man was from back west, he was working part-time with a local cattle dealer, and had recently bought the smallholding.

Favouring Dad’s explanation, I decided to monitor the man’s movements. On the first few mornings he was already up and gone before I’d begun my vigil, but I still didn’t dare approach his house – just in case Jacko Flynn had been right. I finally spotted him on Sunday morning, pushing his bike up the winding grassy passage to the east of his house, and I then waited until he had freewheel past our gate before investigating further. The man had been busy: he had whitewashed the house, inside and out, painted the new door and the window frames a vibrant green, and fenced off a small haggard between his west gable and our river field. Through the kitchen window I observed a makeshift table which held a tin bread bin, some basic crockery and cutlery, a mirror oil lamp, a half-burnt candle, and a brass mantel clock. A súgán chair sat close to the open hearth, and a blackened kettle and some pots hung from hooks on the arm of the crane. It looked as though our neighbour had come to stay. If further proof were needed, it appeared a few days later in the shape of two black heifer calves, and then the man arrived home one evening in early May in a bright red cart pulled by a spritely white donkey. Dad said the man’s name was Cha – just Cha, he hadn’t heard his surname.         

With his distinctive donkey and cart, Cha was soon as recognisable in the village as the priest, the Garda or the postman. I have a memory – whether factual or fanciful – that he gave me a friendly wave as he passed our gate with a cartload of turf one evening in late June. About a week later I saw him wave in my direction again, from the riverbank, but that wave was different – urgent. I could hear a strange whistle as he beckoned me towards him, while fervently trying to shoo a black calf back from the brink. Only one calf; where was the other? Cha was in trouble; I had to help.

I hurried down the bumpy path, no longer mucky but dry after more than a fortnight without rain. I could hear splashing, and the panicked cries of a beast in distress. From the high riverbank I correctly interpreted Cha’s backhand wave, and managed to shut the loose calf inside the haggard. I rushed back in time to see Cha haul the other animal from the gluey silt that had become exposed at the water’s edge during the dry spell. Once freed, the trembling creature stumbled back towards her bawling companion, allowing Cha to sluice her down and then usher her inside the enclosure. Grinning toothlessly, he finger-hooked me indoors and then handed me a freshly-carved model aeroplane; it was nearly as long as my sister’s school ruler, and had two propellers which really turned. As I was strictly forbidden to go anywhere near the river without Dad’s supervision, my parents never did learn the full truth of that particular escapade.

Because Mam was expecting a baby in September, I got to spend much of that summer at Cha’s. Whether in the meadow, the vegetable plot, or caring for the animals, we were a good team, and – unlike Dad – Cha always assigned me tasks that I could cope with and learn from. When my big sister was sent to our grumpy Aunt’s for our little sister’s birth, I was allowed stay the whole day at Cha’s. He fed me salty bacon with homegrown cabbage and buttery potatoes, and I was already falling asleep when Dad came to take me home at nightfall.  

My plea to invite Cha for Christmas dinner was granted, and by the time spring had lengthened into summer, he could be frequently seen helping Dad around the yard and in the fields. No longer did I envy classmates who had grandparents living nearby: I had Cha. In his grimy tweed cap, off-white collarless shirt, and with his baggy brown trousers held up by broad black galluses, Cha could well have been a grandfather, but he wasn’t – he was my best pal.

 Only the bitterest cold or the heaviest rain could force Cha to don a pullover or overcoat. Although I had seen a pair of long johns drying on the length of twine he’d string across the open hearth in winter, Cha dreaded heat more than cold. Sultry summer days were particularly challenging, causing him to frequently pause from haymaking or gardening to soak his cap in the river. I sometimes wondered if Dad had got the story wrong; maybe Cha wasn’t from back west after all, but from the snowy north – where Santa lived. But I never tried to pry into his past: being sandwiched between a pair of sisters, I fully understood a man’s need for privacy.              

Cha whistled for me early on Good Friday morning, and I arrived just in time to see one of the black heifers give birth to a healthy bull calf. I distinctly remember the almost cherubic glow on his weathered features, something I’ve only subsequently seen on new parents, or young children on Christmas morning. The second heifer calved about a week later – another bull – that was when Cha introduced me to milking. I learned quickly, and took it upon myself to have both cows milked before he would return after a day away with the cattle dealer. One evening I brought my Beano comic to read while waiting for Cha to get home. After a supper of cold bacon and cheese we spent a couple of fruitless hours fishing, until rain forced me home well before dusk. Cha wasn’t working the next day and as I approached his door I could hear an eerie, almost unearthly sound. I entered to find Cha red faced, bent over my Beano, his pale blue eyes streaming tears of laughter at the timeless antics of The Bash Street Kids.

At about lunchtime on a scorching July day, I was helping Mam peg a second wash on the clothesline when I heard Cha’s whistle. Heedless of the heady fragrances of honeysuckle, meadowsweet and new-mown hay, and the sting and slash of nettle and briar, I vaulted the boundary fence and with more than a dozen years of memories swimming before my eyes, sprinted towards Cha’s prone form. Aware of his susceptibility to heat, I fetched a bucket of water from the river. When he hadn’t respond after several splashes, the gravity of the situation hit me and I shouted for Mam to get help. Once the ambulance driver had confirmed my worst fears, we stretchered Cha aboard the vehicle and then sped off to the hospital in the town.

Cha didn’t regain consciousness. Sitting with him in the quiet of the hospital mortuary, I relived lengthening spring evenings when only the ticking of his clock, the warble of a roosting blackbird, or the turning of a Beano page would disturb the tranquillity of his kitchen. Cha’s relatives were overwhelmed by the send-off the villagers gave him, but in the pub afterwards I felt my hackles bristle at every mention of the dummy. His nephew referred to him as Birdy when confirming that Cha had been deaf and dumb from birth. I still wonder at my shock at hearing the actual words, and it continues to amaze me how somebody from a world of absolute silence could have become the most eloquent communicator I’ve even known.

Hanging On

    Although she’s been gone for less than twenty-four hours, I can’t but wonder if I’ll ever see her again; I have my doubts – she wasn’t even properly dressed. Has her day finally come; time and tide, and all that? Mind you, she has probably spent more time on tides than  Jason of the Argonauts or Long John Silver’s parrot, and has possibly accumulated enough air miles to qualify for a free flight to the moon and back. Am I jealous? Naturally, I’ve been envious at every suitcase packing, and each removal of a passport or piece of jewellery from the wall safe. But regardless of how exotic her destination, I’ve never begrudged her a single junket. In all honesty, if I ever had to choose a single individual to represent us, there would be no contest.

    Don’t get me wrong, we all crave those moments in the spotlight. Yet, I can’t recall a single personal adventure that has given me more pleasure than listening to her describe a recent jaunt. She has been everywhere: New York, Boston, LA, Florida, Hawaii, London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and The Caribbean – the list is endless. She has had stays in Hiltons, Waldorfs, Dorchesters, Marriotts, Ritz-Carltons, and many more. She can reference aspects of distant cultures and exquisite cuisines with everyday fluency – not in a superior way, but as if they were equally familiar to us all.

    Between ourselves, we like to think that the garment is nothing without the hanger, and she is the ultimate in hangers: she can carry off anything from Victorian furs and Elizabethan lace, to shell suits and dungarees. She displays Victoria’s Secret or Ann Somers with all the grace and aplomb more suited to the couture of Saint Laurent, Versace, Chanel, Dior or Lauren. Whatever the creation, whatever the occasion, she takes it all in her stride.

    Today, I am more conscious than ever of how tenuous our existence really is. Only she has been here longer than me, and I dread to think how many others have come and gone in the meantime. My present colleagues are a motley collection: some flashy in the extreme, some quite wooden; some steely cold, others with more sparkle than substance. Most are functional, adequate, but I don’t see a single future star among them. They may have arrived in a swirl of labels, buttons or zips, their inflated egos and naked ambition constantly testing the seamstress’s craft, but which – if any – of them, could ever aspire to don her mantle?

    Predictably, one or two will garner more favour than others, whether for reliability, versatility, durability, or just plain novelty. Yes, they will each enjoy their moments in the sun, the thrill of to-ing and fro-ing, the sensations of contrasting textures and designs – both the conservative and the controversial – but mostly they’ll just keep hanging on the wardrobe rail until that fateful day when the door will close behind their naked truth for one final time.  

 Before your time

       Before your time: the phrase still sends a shiver up my spine. As a child, teenager, and young adult, it seemed that everything worth talking about had happened before my time; that I was destined to exist behind a veil of sepia photographs and yellowed newspaper cuttings. Being an only daughter, wedged between two pairs of brothers, and with no girl of a similar age within a mile of our house, I spent much of my childhood exploring the vacillating frontier between land and sea, to the aromas of bladderwrack and brine, and the interminable, mercurial symphony of wind and wave. Our eighteenth-century home was built in the lee of the thirty-foot finger of Customs’ Rock, overlooking a steep track to an isolated beach some fifty-feet below. I’ve no idea who first coined the term Customs’ Rock, but I presume it dates back to the days when smuggling was the primary industry in our area. Legend has it that my ancestors had imposed a levy on all goods transported from the beach, through our path, to the public road. Dad would joke that his great-granddad had rated his sideline as profitable as five milch cows, and I’m sure that my home owes its very existence to such enterprise.

Even by modern standards, it’s an impressive edifice. Sturdily built of hewn limestone, it has four bedrooms upstairs, with a sitting room, living room, kitchen and bathroom at ground level. My grandparents added the bathroom in the late fifties, when electricity and indoor plumbing came on stream, thereby continuing the practice of each generation’s efforts to better the lot of its successor. Dad had continued the tradition by installing a primitive but efficient central heating system, and had later fashioned the large metal weather vane which still stands at the entrance to the bay. Despising all types of motorised water toys, Dad had mischievously reversed the vane’s compass points to confuse and frustrate the yuppie thrill-seekers who had become a noisy nuisance to our household, and a danger to all life, human and wild alike, on both land and sea. My personal input is less dramatic: I’ve had an enclosed wooden deck constructed outside the back door. I consider this an absolute necessity, as my brothers’ broods – though smarter in many ways than their forebearers – have no concept of boundaries or of the dangers of the precipice at the edge of our backyard.

My childhood was a succession of boundaries, constant reminders of my limitations. One of my earliest memories is of trying to evade adult supervision for long enough to totter on my tiptoes to marvel at the wondrous array of flotsam and jetsam; sea glass and shell, that adorned the deep sills of the kitchen windows – a display which I still daily endeavour to embellish. I can’t imagine not waking up to the effervescent vista of sea and shore, and the little explosions of spume that infuse the dark weathered ribs of the old wreck to the west of the point. As a small child I’d imagined her as a Spanish Armada vessel, or perhaps the galleon of legendary Irish pirate queen, and fellow redhead, Gráinne Mhaol, who had escaped to sea against her father’s wishes, having shorn her lustrous locks to masquerade as a cabin boy. Fathers don’t always indulge their daughters’ fantasies, and Dad had scuppered mine by explaining that the old wreck was that of a French fishing trawler, abandoned following a collision in the Bay of Biscay, and driven onto the rocks during an early twentieth-century gale.

  The unpredictability of wind is the only downside of my location. Last night, I lay awake for hours both enthral and in trepidation of a virulent Atlantic storm. Robbed of the mesmeric twilight chirruping of drowsy waders, I’d tried to visualise what bounty the ebbing springtide might leave behind. My brothers hadn’t shared my fascination with the foreshore, and it appears that my visiting sibspring have sadly inherited their fathers’ apathy towards beachcombing. Other than an occasional yuck at a putrefying bird or fish carcass, the beach experiences of today’s youngsters are limited to infrequent bouts of bathing or jousts involving footballs or tennis racquets. All too soon their malleable brains again become hostage to the power of earbud and screen; the all-encompassing confines of their impenetrable cyber cells forever denying them the wonder of the tangible exhalations of lugworm and razor fish, and the ever-evolving panorama that had fuelled my youthful imagination.

To the customary cries of wheeling gulls, I open my curtains and then gape in awe through my salt-encrusted window. Customs’ Rock has vanished. I slip into my crocs, pull on my dressing gown, hurry downstairs, and pull open the back door. I stop dead in my tracks. It seems that the entire cliff edge has collapsed; everything from the clothesline’s anchor pole – which had stood several meters from the edge – has sheared off and plummeted to the foot of the precipice. I take a few cautious steps forward. The pathway has virtually been obliterated; no longer could the wicker creels of pony or donkey squeeze through the choked chasm. Gingerly, I begin the descent; the volatile debris scaling and sliding beneath my feet. Not until I reach the beach can I locate the remnants of Customs’ Rock, virtually indistinguishable from a surround of age-old outcrops; the rubble half-buried beneath a shroud of sand, shale, and shingle. My throat constricts; I feel bereft, as though I’ve lost a family member or a lifelong friend. Blinking against a teary sting, I’m aware of an odd twitch of my cheeks. Am I smiling? Yes, I am smiling; I’m smiling in anticipation of next August, when my youngest brother will bring his new family from their Australian home on a first visit to mine. I can visualise taking him and his lovely young wife back in time, to relaying the history of Customs’ Rock to my four-year-old nephew, and then adding the words: before your time.

Atlantis

    “Look,” Poppy squeals, her left arm hugging me closer as her right index finger points out to sea. “Can’t ya see it? It’s out there; look!”

    I look, and I keep looking, but all I can see is a solitary gull wheel high above the wrinkles of turquoise that shimmer into a distant azure sky. We are perched high on a rocky outcrop overlooking Sickle Cove – the little arc of sand we regard as our private beach. The only land access to Sickle Cove is through The Split, a narrow ravine which separates our grans’ properties, and bisects the cliff behind them.

    “It’s OK,” says the strange nymph-like creature of whom I’ve always been aware but have only recently befriended. Relaxing her grip on my shoulder, she uses her other hand to pinch a breeze-blown ringlet from the corner of her mouth while muttering that most people can’t see it; but she can, because her da lives there… I make no comment. Only yesterday, she showed me the cave where the fairies sleep.

    She is fifteen; I’m thirteen. She has lived all of her life in Glennascaul; I’ve come with Mam to spend our summer in the house where my gran was born and reared. Although our holiday has just begun, the year that changes everything is already half-way through.

***

    Gran was in her early-teens when she first met Granda Duffy, who was holidaying with his family in the nearby seaside resort. Their relationship strengthened over subsequent summers until, at the age of eighteen, Gran left home to work in the Duffy family’s bar and grocery in the Irish midlands. The pair married a few weeks after Gran’s twenty-first birthday, and then set up home with Granda’s mother in the rooms above the shop. Four years later, when a car accident claimed Granda just weeks after his mother’s death from heart failure, Gran was suddenly alone in the world, with a two-year-old son to rear and a struggling business to keep afloat. Under Gran’s guidance, the Duffy business not only survived but thrived, ultimately evolving into two distinct entities, and incorporating the buildings on either side of its original site. Despite her increased commitments, Gran always found time to bring her growing son to Glennascaul for a few weeks each summer.

    I doubt if Gran ever holidayed anywhere other than Glennascaul, and I can’t remember a single July when she didn’t drag Mam, my brother Pat, and me to the renovated cottage. Dad would join us for the first fortnight of August, after which we would all head back to our individual challenges of school or work, and the ambiguity of our disparate lives in the real world. I particularly looked forward to Dad’s visits, when he would take Pat fishing or playing golf. Pat is five years older than me and – other than blood – we’ve never had much in common. Even when Dad wasn’t present, it seemed that Pat was exempt from most of the restrictions which Gran would impose on me. Pat is older, or, it’s different for a boy, were Gran’s stock replies whenever I’d query yet another anomaly. There was only one constant with Gran: whether in the pub, the shop, her home upstairs, her childhood home in Glennascaul, or – after she had come to live with us – our home across town, Gran’s decision was final.

    You can play around the square, but don’t attempt to go near The Split. And if that wilding approaches you, you’re to come back indoors – straight away. Your mother will take you to the beach after she’s finished her housework, was typical of how Gran would start my mornings in Glennascaul. The ‘square’ was a little triangle of patchy grass between three pairs of semi-detached holiday homes, built by a Dublin developer on a half-acre she’d bought from Gran before I was born. Our nearest proper neighbour was Mamie Madden, who lived on the other side of The Split in a cottage similar to Gran’s. The cottages were about one hundred metres apart, in parallel cul-de-sacs off the lane leading to the village and its renowned Long Strand.

    The old witch and the wilding were Gran’s least offensive terms for Mamie and her granddaughter, and I was strictly forbidden to go anywhere near their cottage or to bid either of them the time of day should our paths accidentally cross. Although the regular comings and goings at the holiday homes virtually guaranteed me an ever-changing choice of playmates, it was the wilding who most occupied my thoughts during those summers. It was more than a mere forbidden fruit thing: I was totally enthralled by the barefoot, flame-haired will-o-the-wisp; she seemed as sure-footed as a mountain goat and as elusive as the kittens she would adopt from the colony of feral cats that inhabited the inaccessible caves overlooking Sickle Cove. It was as if the wilding was an integral part of the landscape, a force of nature that ranked somewhere between the durability of the age-old rocks and the fragility of the wildflowers that briefly bloomed in their jagged crevices. With cascading waves of rust-red hair, freckled pink skin, and an array of floral-print cotton dresses, she could materialise before one’s eyes as suddenly and as magically as a rainbow between August showers.

    I was truly envious of the wilding’s freedom, of her licence to roam the hills at will – as, ironically, Gran admitted to having done in her childhood. Only once ever had I seen the wilding up close: I must have been about four or five when, one July morning, Mamie brought her to Gran’s house, her forehead gashed and bleeding, allegedly, from a stone thrown by Pat – of whom nothing had been seen or heard since breakfast. As the old women traded insults and circled each other like bellicose tomcats, Mam scooped the wilding in one arm and me in the other and hefted us inside the house. The girl greatly impressed me on that occasion: remaining stoically aloof, her cornflower-blue eyes impassive and dry, as blood trickled along her nose to drip onto the bodice of her lime green skirt. Apparently oblivious to the commotion in the yard, Mam had me hold the girl’s hair back from her forehead while she swabbed and disinfected the wound, and then covered it with a broad strip of Elastoplast.

    Though Mam had prattled on continuously throughout her ministrations, the wilding and I were not impervious to the ongoing hostilities outside. I could picture Mamie: tall, gaunt and toothless, with her weathered cheeks, prominent nose and chin, and tangle of yellow/grey hair streeling around the shoulder-straps of her shabby, shapeless black frock; Gran: short and stocky, her plump face glowing and contorted beneath a halo of permed copper curls. Yes, Mamie could well have passed as a witch but, when it came to sheer vitriol, Gran more than held her own. I caught phrases like whore’s melt, and, should be locked away along with her lunatic of a mother, while Mamie, possibly spellbound by the venom of Gran’s tirade, kept ranting about Gran’s precious son – instead of her precious grandson. Patched up and attired in one of my older dresses, the wilding briefly twiddled a lock of my hair between her grubby fingers before darting through the doorway and vanishing into The Split. As if by unspoken agreement, the grandmothers’ kafuffle instantly ceased, with the antagonists turning their backs on each other and stomping off in opposite directions.

         Strangely, neither Mam nor Gran questioned Pat at lunch, nor – to the best of my knowledge – was he ever called to account for his movements on that particular morning. Had Pat deliberately ambushed the girl, or had she accidently blundered into the path of a missile he had aimed at another target? Had the pair been involved in some private war, like the on-going conflicts between some of the more regular visitors to the holiday homes and the village children? One never knew what was going on inside Pat’s head; Gran would occasionally hint that he might have inherited more than just height, lank dark hair and a pallid complexion from Mam. When I was really small, Gran would say how I was the image of her at that age, but I prefer to think that I brought my stocky build, and my hair and skin colouring, from Dad.

    Our loss at Gran’s passing – peacefully, in her sleep, early last February – was greatly compensated for by the luxury of having our home to ourselves again. Dad, however, soon began spending more time at the shop or the pub, and I doubt if Pat – who was approaching the end of his first year in college – was any more surprised than me when Mam told us that Dad would be sleeping in the flat above the pub for a while. Pat soon announced that, as he would be working with Dad for the summer, it would be more convenient if he could also stay over the pub. Surprisingly, Mam took it all in her stride and when my school holidays began in June, she decided there was no reason why the two of us shouldn’t drive down to Glennascaul straight away.

***

    Two weeks into our holiday I’m still struggling to come to grips with life in Glennascaul without Gran. Her absence is everywhere, and knowing that Pat isn’t lurking around the next corner sends my sense of liberty to unprecedented heights. Mam is also having a real holiday, and spends much of her time with Clara, her friend who owns the holiday homes. Clara is almost a full-time summer resident in Glennascaul, taking full advantage of every vacancy in her properties. She and Mam have always got along well, even when Clara has had other friends staying over. Clara is alone at present, and Mam visits her every evening after tea. Mam says that, as neither is interested in watching TV, they sometimes stroll up to the village hotel but mostly they just open a bottle of wine and chat until the small hours. I’ve never seen Mam so chilled out, it’s as if she has discovered a deep inner peace; perhaps it’s the result of being able to have a morning lie-in. I suppose that’s the whole point of being free: not only can you do things you’d have never previously believed possible, but you can grant yourself leave to do absolutely nothing whenever the notion takes you. I’m glad Mam isn’t missing Dad too much, even if Gran had frequently reminded her how totally meaningless her life would be without him.

         “At-lan-tis,” Poppy mutters, as though savouring each syllable. Engrossed in the flitting of a peacock butterfly between clumps of pink thrift, I’ve momentarily forgotten that I’m not alone.

    “What’s that about Atlantis?” I ask. While I am vaguely aware of the legend of the lost city, I’m surprised that such a story would have reached Poppy’s ears.   

    “Ya can’t see it now… it’s too foggy. Are ya hungry?”

    Mam doesn’t cook much these days. She gives me money to buy food in the village chippers, but while I like an occasional take-away, I prefer to eat at Mamie’s – where meal times are dictated by hunger rather than clocks. As Mamie is virtually self-sufficient, I rarely have to contribute to the larder more than once a week. Mamie grows vegetables, herbs and salad greens in her garden; she keeps chickens and ducks, and she milks the pair of nanny goats that browse the cliff behind her cottage. She has taught us to fish for mackerel and pollock from the rocks between Sickle Cove and Long Strand, and we regularly harvest crabs, razor fish, whelks and sea grasses on the foreshore at ebb tide. Unlike Gran’s house, Mamie’s home has changed little in the century since its construction. I adore the kitchen sounds and smells: the rattle of pots and pans; the aromas of baking bread, scones and tarts.  Through the open front door come the fragrances of honeysuckle, sweet rocket and rose, their blooms effervescent with dancing butterflies and buzzing bees. From the backyard, the chattering of contented fowl is further embellished by the chirping of the songbirds that swoop to pilfer tit-bits from the feed pans of their earthbound cousins.

    “I’ll race ya,” Poppy says, starting down the treacherous track as though her life depends on it. Although two years older and much better developed, even though slightly shorter than me she can run faster than most of the senior girls in my school. Even if I did have the courage to go at full tilt, Poppy would still be out of sight before I’d even reach the path to The Split. Standing still, I simply admire her grace and balance as, legs pumping like pistons, arms extended like errant wings, hair bouncing like released springs; she slaloms between splashes of fuchsia, hebe and montbretia, disturbing nothing but air. I briefly fantasise that, like Sonia O’Sullivan, Poppy might one day bear our Nation’s colours to international success – even Olympic glory. As reality stings, I marvel at how fortunate I am to share Poppy’s unique world in a way that she can never hope to experience mine.

         “Who’s this Sonia O’Sullivan wan, anyway?” Poppy asks, when I mention the forthcoming Olympics during dinner in Mamie’s.

         “She’s a great runner – the world champion – she’ll be on the telly…” I say, “and in the newspapers,” I add, when I fail to spark a reaction.

    “Our telly is broke,” Poppy says between chews, “and we don’t buy papers. Mamie says there’s enough bad news on the radio without paying good money for more.”

    “We can watch her at Gran’s,” I suggest. “It’ll be sometime next week; I’ll remind you nearer the time.”

    “Your ma’ll be delighted, I’d say.” Mamie snorts, dropping another peeled potato onto my plate.

    “She won’t mind,” I counter, my confidence growing; “she knows I hang out with Poppy.”

    “Will ya help me do a letter?” Poppy asks. As Mamie grimaces, I nod and wonder how Mam and Mamie would react if they knew all of what Poppy and I have been getting up to – not that they are likely to be comparing notes anytime soon.

    Despite her many shortcomings, Poppy is surprisingly knowledgeable when it comes to boys. She speaks with stark frankness of her intimacies with lads from the holiday homes and the village. She has been showing me how boys like to kiss, and I’ve been teaching her to smoke cigarettes like they do in the movies.

    “Yer wan from the holiday houses kisses women,” Poppy says, as we head to Gran’s to watch The Olympics on telly.   

    “Who kisses women?” I ask, only half-listening. It’s one of those dreamy, balmy nights which darkness never quite claims; when the moon is at its most radiant and even the tiniest stars are allowed out to play.

    “Yer posh wan with the little red car. Don’t ya know? She has a phone in her handbag. I seen her loads a nights – in the window.”

    Poppy has my full attention now: Clara drives a red Triumph Spitfire, and she owns one of the few mobile phones in Glennascaul. No! I submerge the thought almost as quickly as it surfaces. Kissing isn’t Mam’s thing: I don’t think I’ve ever seen her kiss Dad, and the last time she kissed me was after Gran had slapped my face for kicking Pat in the shin – when I was about eight or nine.

    “I’m Sonia O’Sullivan!” Poppy says as, arms akimbo, she launches into an exaggerated jaunty stride. I sprint past her and, for once, race her to Gran’s door.

    Over late-night bowls of corn flakes and ice cream we watch Michelle Smith claim Olympic gold for Ireland.

    “She looks like me,” Poppy squeals, as her new heroine removes her swimming cap, “look at her hair.”

    “She looks more like me,” I scream even louder, knowing that Mam hasn’t yet returned from Clara’s. “Listen to her voice, Poppy; she even talks like me.”

    “Will ya help me do a letter to me da?” Poppy asks, knuckling her eyes.

    “Of course,” I say, stifling a yawn. She opens the door, and, waving drowsily, melts into the shadows as the first cloud creeps across the moon.

         It has rained for the first time in several weeks, leaving the morning sky a strange unfinished canvas with flashes of blue and white peeping through several shades of grey. Poppy is eerily silent as we get dressed after our swim. I tear my eyes from the choughs and fulmars that ride the thermals above us, and steal a sidelong glance as Poppy’s fingers trace the pallid lopsided V of scar tissue in the centre of her forehead.

    “It’s back…” she hisses, rising almost in slow motion as she squints through coils of saturated hair. “Can’t ya see it?” I feel her fingers dig into my forearm.

    “I can see something… I think…” I hear myself say, “but…”

    While the opaque mass on the horizon does look like an island, I know from my atlas that there is nothing but saltwater between us and Newfoundland.

    “Betya I can swim that far…”                           

    “Even Michelle Smith couldn’t swim that far.” I force a laugh, but I’m worried now: I’ve never seen Poppy so intense – so intent.

    “Me ma nearly did… and she’d ha’ made it only for the lifeguards catching her in their boat. That’s why they locked her away, but she was only trying to tell me da about me. Ya know me da, ya seen him on the telly: he’s called Mark Harris in The Man from Atlantis, but his real name is Patrick Duffy.”

The Accident

         “Graham! Graham; please,” her plea cut through the cacophony of Grafton Street on that fresh, mid-December, Saturday afternoon. I was strangely drawn to the young blonde woman. She had that rare, intangible, special something. I stared in fascination, temporarily oblivious to the urgent buzz of festive activity.

         “Gra-ham!” Her voice quivered; he did a half-turn and paused. The girl bounded forward, renewed hope brightening her eyes. I felt myself praying that her efforts would be rewarded, thinking what a perfect couple they would make: the youthful athletic strength beneath his pristine navy business suit was a complimenting contrast to the ripe softness that oozed through every hugging fibre of her skin-tight blue jeans and navy woollen sweater. Hesitantly, she reached a conciliatory arm towards the young man.

         “Graham, I’m sorry; but…”

         “No, Lisa! No!” Lisa recoiled as he pirouetted dramatically away from her and melted into the vibrant tide of humanity – out of sight, beyond her reach.

         My focus returned to the girl. She stood as though frozen: her arm still extended; still reaching towards the space between; her eyes locked on some invisible, inaccessible goal. I was powerless to avert my gaze. As realisation dawned, her arm dropped to hang limply as her whole body seemed to deflate before my eyes. I was aware of an uncanny sense of inner guilt. I had intruded on her privacy, witnessed her moment of painful rejection. There just had to be something I could do – or say – to make amends. I felt duty-bound to at least try. 

         I was about to take a step towards her when the transformation took place. Lisa straightened to her full height, zipped up her red windcheater, and clamped her hands against her hips. For a split-second I could have sworn that our eyes met. After a few deep breaths, the colour seemed to flow back into her cheeks. With a spirited toss of her long blonde hair and a defiant shrug of her shoulders, she juggled a bunch of keys between her hands and brushed past me.

         From that moment, I’d found myself wistfully scanning the faces of passing strangers, hoping against hope that I might chance upon the beguiling creature again. Alas, fate had decided that Graham was the person whom I was destined to encounter. As luck would have it, we met by accident – and I was absolutely to blame. The incident occurred on my first day back at work after an extended Christmas break. I’d stopped at a service station on my way home to buy an evening paper, when I was distracted by a flash of flowing blonde hair. Disappointed, I pushed open my car door in total ignorance of the approaching vehicle. My door was instantly slammed shut by the fender of a silver BMW. The inevitable had finally happened; after weeks of driving around in a daze, my luck had finally run out. Thankful that the incident wasn’t more serious, I forced open my damaged door, my mouth full of abject apologies. Then I got a proper look at the driver as he alighted from his vehicle; Graham! There was no mistaking the strong tanned features, the immaculate attire, the…the…little upstart had crashed into me! A quiver surged up my spine; a primal voice screamed inside my head.  Attack! Attack!

         “Where the hell do you think you are; on a bloody Grand Prix circuit?” I yelled, glaring up at him, showing scant regard for his obvious physical advantage. To my utter amazement, he raised his hands submissively.

         “I know…I’m sorry. It was my fault; I wasn’t thinking. I…we don’t want any trouble…” It seemed that his complexion paled with each additional blustered word; I could taste victory. The instinctive, primitive, testosterone-driven lust for blood had taken over. I would make him pay…I would make him pay for my car, I would make him pay for my disappointing Christmas, I would make him pay for my lousy day at work, I would make him pay for my days and nights of miserable longing, and I would make him pay for what he had done to Lisa!

         “Trouble is it? Listen, Sonny, you have no idea what trouble is! I’ll…” Today, it was his turn to plead.               

         “Listen to me, please. I accept full responsibility but it’s not my car; it belongs to my boss. If you would just follow me back to the hotel everything can be sorted out. My boss is waiting for the car…” The prospect of witnessing him suffer further humiliation at the hands of his employer was just too enticing to resist.

         “All right,” I conceded with feigned magnanimity, “if that’s the way you want it; lead the way!” For one terrible hair-raising moment, I feared he was going to shake my hand. To my immense relief, he nodded and returned to the car.

         I waited, poised at my steering wheel, while Graham spoke animatedly on his phone. When he finally indicated that all was in readiness, I started my ignition and tailed the BMW through the evening rush-hour traffic, until the vehicle veered into the car park of a reputable suburban hotel. I killed my engine and walked towards his lowered window. He leaned sideways, pointing as he spoke.

         “I have to leave the car around the back. You can park here and we’ll meet you in the lounge.” Had I detected a hint of a smile? Surely not! Then he was gone. Gone? I had been duped! How could I have been so stupid? I had allowed him to get away – but hold on, I thought. Was it not I who had really escaped? Shrugging philosophically, I locked my damaged door; anyway, I did need a coffee – at least.

         Business was slow in the hotel lounge. The relaxing aromatic cocktail of freshly brewed coffee and expensive perfume tantalised my nostrils. I selected a stool at the bar counter, silently cursing the absence of my forgotten newspaper. A white-bloused assistant appeared as if my magic from somewhere beneath the counter, a tray of steaming glasses in her hands.

         “Yes, sir; can I get something for you?” My lips moved but no words would come. I gaped at my fantasy in dumbstruck awe. Lisa studied me questioningly. “Excuse me, but don’t I know you from somewhere?” Her deep blue eyes narrowed in concentration; I swallowed dryly, groping for words.

         “No…no, I don’t think so. I mean, yes…yes, I’d love a coffee, please?” A tiny smile played about a corner of her mouth. Oh no! I thought. On top of everything else, she has to work for that cad. I resolved to show her exactly how a low-life like Graham should be treated. She deserved that much at least!

         “One coffee, sir.” She placed a china cup on the saucer she had set before me. “Help yourself to cream and sugar. Are you quite sure that we haven’t met before? You really do look so familiar; perhaps I’ve seen you in here?” I shook my head, unwilling to trust my voice until I had lubricated my throat. Taking a welcome swallow from my cup, my every thought remained focussed on the image of efficient perfection before me.

         The jangling thud of metal on mahogany jarred me back to reality as Graham tossed the car keys on the counter beside me. I sprang to my feet, primed for battle, determined to humiliate this upstart before employer and admirer alike. But there was something wrong; Graham was alone! My eyes turned in surprise at the musical tinkle of Lisa’s chuckle, all too aware that my inability to comprehend the cause of her mirth must have been written all over my face.

         “Oh, but of course, I am so sorry! You must be the other driver…the injured party! I do apologise! I’m Lisa Stewart, the owner of the BMW.” I accepted the proffered hand; her grip was firm, warm in a business-like way. “Unfortunately, you have already met our Graham. “Now that you are finally here, Graham, you might bring in some mixers and stock the bottle coolers!” She turned and motioned for me to follow her through to the reception desk. “Ah yes, sorry about that and thank you for being so understanding, Mr…?” Her eyes melted through me; I hesitated, silently wishing that I’d been blessed with a more exotic handle.

         “Murphy; John Murphy!” I finally managed.

         “You are a kind man, John. What can I tell you about poor Graham? He’s a good lad basically, a reliable worker and does all my fetching and carrying. I’d honestly be lost without him!” She unlocked a wall safe and withdrew her chequebook. “But like little boys of all ages, he can sometimes lose the run of himself when driving a powerful car, but what you do not want to see is how badly he behaves when he’s not allowed to!”        

Miss Gilbert’s Sister

         There were two Miss Gilberts, but which was Miss Gilbert and which was Miss Gilbert’s sister depended entirely on the gender of the perceiver. Spinsters both, the Misses Gilbert – as Dad referred to them – still lived in the house where they’d been born and reared, and they both spent their entire working lives in their home town. They were primary school teachers: Rachel, in St Mary’s girls’ school; Sarah, in St Malachy’s boys’, where she had been responsible for three of my first eight years of schooling. Teaching was in the sisters’ blood: their father, known as The Master, was principal of St Malachy’s during Dad’s and granddad’s schooldays, while Mam had been taught by his wife Ursula, who was the first lay teacher to attain the position of deputy to Mother Damien, the reverend principal of St Martha’s convent secondary school. The Gilberts were a true teaching dynasty and excluding pre-teens and blow-ins, there wasn’t a person in our town at that time who hadn’t encountered one or more of the Gilberts in their formative years.  

    I was seven when I first encountered Sarah, in second class, where she treated me as if I was the only boy who’d ever stolen an apple from her orchard. There were no allowances for time already served when we met up again in fifth class, and then – insult to injury – in sixth, when she ‘passed’ with us before finally following Rachel into retirement. Hers was one face I thought I’d never forget, but midway through secondary school I began to understand my parents’ difficulty in distinguishing one Gilbert from the other. Even to me, it seemed that the sisters grew more alike with each passing day.

         The Miss Gilberts were actually our next-door neighbours but although our homes were separated by no more than fifty metres, our houses were centuries and worlds apart. The Gilberts lived in Woodlands House, an impressive Georgian edifice which had stood in solitary splendour at the western edge of town for almost two centuries. The economic lift of the mid-nineties saw a serious invasion of the Gilberts’ privacy, with the construction of ten semi-detached, two-storey houses, known as Woodside, along the narrow cul-de-sac between Keeldowl wood and the crossroads at the bridge where the Suanamon River bisects the town. As we lived in number ten Woodside, both Miss Gilberts would pass our gate at least twice each day during their many decades of school terms. Mam – who is sharper than most – would freely admit that she could tell the sisters apart only because Sarah would usually leave home about five minutes before Rachel, as St Malachy’s – being south of the river – was a slightly longer journey. Though Rachel was a few years the elder, the tall, gaunt, ramrod-straight sisters could have easily passed as twins, and their outdated tweeds and headscarves – which Mam believed they regularly interchanged – did little to soften the sharp angular features or their spectrally pallid dials.

    Though curious to the point of downright nosiness, Mam has never been a gossip. Mam treasures the power of knowledge, and she fully understands that – like most commodities – the more it is shared; the less valuable it becomes. On the other hand, Dad is a disaster when it comes to news: it seems to go in one ear and out the other. I’ve witnessed many occasions when Mam couldn’t wait for Dad to return from work to pass on some juicy titbit, only for him to say that he’d heard it days before. He would then explain that the facts – as relayed by Mam – were not only out of date but also quite erroneous. When asked why he hadn’t kept her informed, he would simply shrug and say something like: ah sure, don’t the dogs in the street know that?

    In retirement, the Gilberts had become even more reclusive than ever. Unconfirmed rumours that the sisters had been spotted together at first mass, or taking a summer stroll along the river walk, did little to allay Mam’s concerns. Dad hadn’t helped, suggesting that perhaps only one of the Gilberts was still alive; that one had murdered the other in order to appropriate her pension, and had then buried the body in the orchard behind the house. Part of me hoped he was right, that Rachel had done Sarah in; but what if Rachel was buried inside the high orchard walls; what if Sarah wasn’t just getting away with murder but also reaping the rewards of her victim’s pension? From the various punishments I had suffered at Sarah’s hands, I could well believe her capable of murder, but the idea that she could not only cheat justice but also profit from such a heinous crime roused the sleuth that had long slumbered deep in the darkest depths of my psyche.

    By August, I had decided to use the last few weeks of freedom before my sixth and final year in secondary school to put Dad’s theory to the test. My bedroom was at the rear of our house and, as Woodlands House is set about fifty metres further back from the road than ours, my window offered the best view of the Gilberts’ hall door. By mid-September, my dossier told me that the Gilberts’ gardener had been on three occasions: mowing lawns, dead-heading roses, weeding flowerbeds, trimming hedges, and raking the gravelled driveway. There had also been regular Friday afternoon deliveries from Tesco, when a tall, thin female would admit the van driver through the front door. A TV & satellite contractor had visited about a fortnight into my vigil, a day or two after the electricity metre man had made his rounds.

    While I’d caught several glimpses of some Miss Gilbert, there had been nothing to indicate that both sisters were still operational. I had intended to check out first mass on some Sunday but since returning to school I had really needed my weekend lie-ins. Also, I knew that the sisters parked their little Fiesta at the back of the house – which was blind to my vantage point – and by using their rear entrance to access the slip road they could drive wherever they wished without my knowledge.

    About a week into my vigil I wasn’t surprised to learn that Mam has been carrying out an investigation of her own.

    “I didn’t know what to do;” she was saying to Dad when I arrived at the Saturday breakfast table, “so I just smiled and nodded. She did the same, and then headed to the checkout. Thanks, Sarah, Tommy Mac says, and off with the Gilbert woman about her business.” Mam paused for a sip of tea.

    Dad continued to chew a mouthful of sausage; a mischievous twinkle brightened his eyes as Mam resumed.    

    “So, when I reach the checkout, I say: Sarah is looking well, Tommy, and I then mention how I hadn’t seen Rachel for a while. To be honest with you, Dorothy, Tommy says, I couldn’t say when I’ve last seen Rachel in the shop. You see, Dorothy, Tommy says, if it wasn’t for the cigarettes I’d never know which one of them I have. Oh, I used to know who was teaching in which school, all right; didn’t I have Sarah in first class? But if they were both standing in front of me this minute, I couldn’t tell one from the other…So, I ask him about the cigarettes; he tells me that Sarah has always smoked Rothmans, while Rachel has recently changed from Benson & Hedges to Silk Cut, as a first step towards trying to give up. So, Tommy, I say, you have it all sussed out, but then he says, I’m fine when they both buy their own fags, but if one of them buys for both, I’m none the wiser…Don’t you see?” Mam asked. before pausing for breath, her eyes flickering between Dad and me, “I’m as badly off as ever…”

         “By God,” Dad muttered, lighting a Benson.

    “So, Jim,” Mam said, “maybe you should try cutting down to the Silk Cut; what do you think, Jim?”

    “I think,” Dad said, exhaling a long stream of smoke, “that when I quit, I’ll do it cold-turkey – after Christmas – like I do every year.”

    As twilight enveloped the late September evening, I switched my desk light on and went to close my curtains. There was a figure on the Gilberts’ doorstep – pressing the doorbell. The door swung open; a thin little man with stooped, sloping shoulders was briefly illuminated in the glow from within. I kept watch until the undertaker stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind him.

    “Mr Wallace has just gone into the Gilberts’ house…” I blurted from the hallway.

    “What; Ned-the-dead is courting?” Dad gasped; “won’t he make some toyboy?”

    “Jim!” Mam scolded; “has it not occurred to you that one of our neighbours may have died?”

    “Which one do you think it is this time?” Dad chuckled, winking in my direction.

    Unwilling to dignify the taunt with a reply, Mam despairingly rolled her eyes skywards. Undeterred, Dad nudged my elbow.

    “Did you see any sign of a doctor, or a priest, or an ambulance, or a hearse coming or going beforehand?” I simply shook my head.

    Even though several days passed without further news of the sisters, I continued to monitor their door. Ned Wallace reappeared on the sisters’ doorstep exactly a week later – almost to the second. I didn’t report this visit, but when he turned up again on the following week I resolved to be particularly vigilant on future Thursday evenings.

    With the pre-Halloween buzz in full swing, and with ghosts and ghouls lurking around every corner, it seemed that Mam’s darker side had come to the fore.

    “I didn’t say anything, but I’ve met her at least half-a-dozen times in the last month. It’s definitely the same one; no doubt about it. She’s had those scratches on her right cheek – Tommy says she got them while pruning a rosebush – they’re completely healed now. So, where is the other one; what was the undertaker doing there a few weeks ago?” Mam was looking directly at me.

    Deciding that the moment had come to reveal my findings, I took a deep breath.

    “A rosebush, you say?” Dad interrupted. “Hah, that’s a likely story! I’ll wager ‘twas a last dying swipe from her sister’s fingernails. Sure, neither of those two has ever done a moment’s gardening. Doesn’t that simple lad from the hill do all their tidying-up? Ah, I have it now: she probably got him to bury the sister as well!”

    “Ah, Jim;” Mam groaned, blessing herself; “this has gone way beyond a joke.”

    “Mr Wallace has been calling every week,” I blurted; “I’ve seen him four Thursdays in a row, always at around eight o’clock.” Mam blessed herself again – even more reverently than before.

    “That’s it!” Dad was in his element. “They’re in it together. Her toyboy is taking the body parts, one piece at a time, and slipping the odd arm or leg into other people’s coffins; you know – whenever he has a funeral, like. I can’t wait for Gabriel’s trumpet…to see who appears with an extra…”

    Our doorbell buzzed. Dad jumped highest of all, but it was Mam who tiptoed into the hallway. The hollow rattle of the holy water font echoed through the silence.

    “Tomm-eeee?” she gasped, relief rising like a treble clef between syllables.

    “Sorry to disturb you, Dorothy; but is there any chance you could lend me a deck of cards, please?” It was Tommy Mac, the newsagent.

    “Cards? Oh, playing cards,” Mam’s titter was bordering on hysteria.

    “Ned the…em…Ned Wallace asked me to bring a new deck from the shop, but I forgot. You see, we play bridge at the Gilberts’ on Thursday nights. The sisters haven’t lost a hand since God knows when; Ned is convinced that they’ve been playing with a marked deck...”                 

Crossroads

    Ordering a lager, I regret having already eaten at the hotel. Almost a quarter century may have passed since my introduction to The Crossroads Bar’s seafood chowder, but the aroma wafting from a nearby table reminds me that I have yet to sample its equal. I was seventeen then, on the first of two wonderful summers at either side of my Leaving Cert, working in a west Clare hotel. Looking back, I sometimes think those few months may have taught me more than all my years in formal education.

    Although the glory days of Jack Charlton’s Boys in Green had drawn to a close, it was a great time to be young and Irish. Sonia O’Sullivan had our Nation’s flag flying high on the world’s athletic tracks, and new names like Steve Collins, Aidan O’Brien, Roy Keane, Keith Wood and Michelle Smith were commanding increasingly bolder print in international sporting headlines. A visit from America’s President Clinton, U2’s world acclaim, a Nobel Prize for poet Séamus Heaney, signs of real progress in The North, and positive rumours regarding our economy, were all helping to boost our national self-esteem. A divorce referendum was fuelling further challenges to the infallibility of the Catholic Church, and there were ever-increasing whispers that sex might not be a mortal sin after all. Eager to embrace an enlightened new world, I made the two-bus journey from my parents’ pub in Tipperary to the seaside village of Caladhlee, on the Friday of the June Bank Holiday weekend.

    “You’re sharing with Sully,” the receptionist at The Coast Hotel informed me, once I’d confirmed that I was appropriately equipped with six white shirts, two black neckties, three pairs of black trousers, and two pairs of shoes – also black – but not Doc Martens. “You might catch him in the kitchen; go through the dining room,” she pointed to the left. “By the way, you’re on duty at nine am. Don’t be late!”    

         At my query, a scrawny youth raised his acne-ravaged face from the enormous pot he was scouring and tossed a streel of lank, mousy hair towards the kitchen’s rear exit. In a secluded alcove, beneath stacks of racked vegetables, I saw two young men sitting side-by-side at a long table, shoving forkfuls of lasagne into their mouths.

    “Excuse me, please;” I ventured, “I’m looking for Sully.”

    “Who might you be?” A burly redhead asked in a broad Kerry accent.

             “I’m John Ryan; I’m supposed...”

    “Told ya,” he grinned, nudging his darker, slimmer companion. “Sit down, Ryano,” he indicated the chair opposite. “Are you hungry?”

    “My name is John...” I began, thinking he must have misunderstood.

    “Correction!” The other lad chimed in, his eyes twinkling. “Your name was John…like Speedy in the bar was called John, as was Handsome in the wash-up. I used to be John Andrews; now I’m Andy. Sully, here,” he pats the Kerry man’s head, “was John O’Sullivan. Do you understand, Ryano? I think that’s fair; don’t you?”

    I didn’t, but once Sully had shown me to our room in the nearby hostel – a former boarding school – and after we had played several games of pool in The Crossroads Bar, I found my reluctant tolerance of my new moniker morphing to something approaching phlegmatic acceptance. The two lads, who had both attended the same catering college, were on their second season at the hotel: Sully was a commis chef; Andy – a native of the town – a second-year waiter. I could be stuck with worse, I decided, tucking into the burger and chips which Sully and Andy had prepared for me before commencing their official dinner duties.

    “Ryano?” The word sounds hollow, almost an echo – but through time rather than space. I take my drink outside the back door to where we would hunker on our haunches, or straddle kegs and crates purloined from the yard, to escape the heat, bustle and smoke of the crowded bar. I wonder how many of the twenty-or-so diners seated on the railed deck – effectively an open-air restaurant – had fumbled, groped and snogged in the heady highs of teenage summer sunsets.

    My senses are drifting beyond the amalgam of food smells to the saline tangs of brine and drying kelp. The drone of voices and the clinks of cutlery, glass and crockery are a fading backdrop to the piping of waders and the disjointed snatches of human exchanges that drift up from the beach below. Pre-teen footballers are bizarre dancing silhouettes being absorbed into fading twilight, adolescent boys caffle around little iPhone glows of giggling girls, while older teens merge to form surreal quadruped shadows among the waves of marram grass that skirt the cooling sands.     

    “Ryano!” It’s that voice again, an eerily familiar voice, a voice on which my old nickname sails easily. I’d quickly warmed to Ryano; it had suited the new me: the working man, the cider drinker who was no longer dumb-struck in the presence of attractive girls. John Ryan may have been perfectly adequate for an average country schoolboy, but Ryano was eminently more appropriate for a dynamic young man who had not only touched, but tasted, the forbidden fruits of Caladhlee’s Garden of Eden.

                     “Macker?” I say, spinning around in feigned surprise. Macker – John McCarthy, as was – had joined the hotel staff about a month after my arrival. Having completed his Leaving Cert, he had set off from his north Cork home to hitchhike around the west coast. After his wallet had been lifted by ‘some young one’ he had bedded in Galway, Macker had seen the hotel’s HALL PORTER WANTED, accommodation provided sign as an instant solution to his straitened circumstances.

                 Macker’s handshake is as firm as ever, his lopsided grin just as ready, and neither a thickened waistline nor the silvery highlights in his thinning golden hair can dull his aura of boyish bonhomie.

         “How did you hear?” he asks, eyeing me quizzically. “You did cross my mind, but I had no way of contacting…”

         “I found out this morning – totally by chance. A rep mentioned it in passing, but he didn’t have any details. Poor old Sully; it’s hard to believe. How…?”

    “That’s the first question I asked Andy when he phoned. Apparently, Sully had been drinking heavily since they sold the hotel. Andy says…”

    “Hotel? They? Who?”

    “The Coast – our hotel. You must remember Triona – Trí-na-chéile.”

***

    Yes, I remember Triona; I remember her very well, and with good reason. I first saw her through the drizzle of the Tuesday morning after the Whit weekend, when Speedy sent me out to the yard to sort a mountain of empty bottles. I was both surprised and delighted to find that somebody had already made a start – somebody whose crouched figure was partially concealed behind the half-dozen plastic cases already packed. I called out a hesitant hello, raising my voice against the constant chinking of glass on glass. A stocky girl whirled upright, her long blonde ringlets spilling from beneath the hood of her olive-green windcheater. Fixing me with a steely-grey gaze, she peeled off a pair of yellow Marigold gloves and asked who I was. I introduced myself as Ryano, explaining that I had recently joined the bar staff. More curious about my name than my station, she asked if it was Rhino, like those great lumbering animals with big horns, or maybe she was thinking of hippos. I assured her that hippos didn’t have horns, and began to explain Sully’s and Andy’s solution to the problem of too many Johns. Stifling a yawn, she teased a squashed Marlboro pack from the hip pocket of her jeans, pinched a flattened cigarette into shape, and then lit it with a practiced flip of a brass Zippo. I’m Triona, she said, exhaling smokily. Then, with an impudent grin, she added. Wanna a fag, Hippo?

***

    “Sully and Triona?” I gasp, “But I thought...”

    “Andy?”

         “Yeah!”

    “I know, but when Triona discovered she was pregnant...”

    “No!”

    “Yeah, ‘twas that summer, after I’d left. Well,” he shrugs dismissively, “Sully always did want a hotel of his own. Andy stayed on, though; he still works there.”

    “You seem bang up to date.” I’m surprised at my accusatory tone, but Macker appears not to take offence.”

    “Human frailty isn’t confined to the cities, Ryano; even County Clare has an occasional crime. I use the hotel whenever I’m in the area.”

    “Like our pub, when you were back and forth to Templemore?” I’m rewarded with the briefest flicker of an eyebrow. He gives a slight nod and then takes a decent swig of his pint. “So,” I resume, “Triona had that baby?” a longer, slower nod. “Are there other children?”

    “No, there’s just Ryanne.”

    Over chowder in The Crossroads Bar, Triona had explained how sorting bottles had been her dad’s idea of punishment for a less than satisfactory school report. Sully and Andy had already given me the lowdown on our boss’s wild-child daughter. They’d explained how Chef had dubbed her Trí-na-chéile, due to her haphazard approach to school, work, and life in general. I was in love ever before we moved our pints of cider outside to watch the sunset shimmer on the lisping waters of a full moon tide.

    “So, you’re still in the Guards?” I say, hoping to circumvent anything that might further defile my memory of Triona. As he nods, I ask where he’s currently stationed.

    “I’ve been based in Limerick for over four years – since my promotion to Detective Inspector. Weren’t you studying architecture, if I remember rightly?”

    You remember rightly, all right, I want to say, but I can’t but wonder how many Detective Garda Inspectors wouldn’t know how to trace somebody in whose home they had been regularly fed over a period of several months – even if the name was Ryan, if that home was in a county of Ryans, and many years had passed.

    “I did,” I say, forcing a grin. “I had a few good years with a Dublin firm during the boom, but I moved home to work from the pub before the crash came.”

    “You always did have good timing.” Although he is smiling, the words sound like a slight, an imputation of blame. “I suppose you’re married?” The smile has vanished; I can sense him scrutinise my thick dark hair for any hint of cosmetic enhancement.

    “Yes, to Sarah; we have a boy and a girl: Jack is seven; Molly is four; you?”

    “It didn’t work out.” Again, he shrugs. “No kids; nobody’s fault. We were young – too young – and having to move around so much didn’t help.”

    “Sorry…” I hear myself say, and wonder exactly what I think I should be sorry for. If anybody should be sorry, it’s Macker.

***

    Although Macker had already applied to the Garda College before his arrival at the hotel, he was far from the most law abiding among us. Within days, he was sourcing dodgy booze and cigarettes, and was on first name terms with purveyors of everything from pirated CDs, bootleg T-shirts, jeans and runners, to varieties of weed one only ever heard of in 18+ movies. Even the aloof bronzed lifeguards had warmed to Macker, and seemed amazingly tolerant of his regular abductions from their harem.

         Despite – or because of – Macker’s extracurricular pursuits, Triona’s dad had taken a definite shine to him, and I found myself being increasingly redeployed to assist Billy, the middle-aged porter, with his cleaning and luggage duties. All the while, Macker was basking in his self-styled role of executive hotel dogsbody. Not only had Triona’s dad insured him to drive the hotel’s minibus, he had also furnished him with a mobile phone (a rare enough item in those days) which made him the go-to guy for management, staff, suppliers and guests, alike.

    I was aware from the outset of Triona’s fascination with Macker, but she was rewarded with nothing more than the basic forbearance due to any co-worker. Macker was enjoying a bumper summer and, having traded his way into the good books of the student brother and sister who ran their mother’s hostel, was never short of someplace to entertain his conquests. Macker’s criteria were simple and strict: locals, staff, and long-stay hotel guests were all taboo. After all, who would want a bevy of exes hanging around to cramp one’s style? Casual tourists were Macker’s prey of choice, ideally those whose departure dates were imminent; anyway, who ever noticed an extra young brunette, redhead or blonde girl entering or leaving a busy hostel?

    I’ll never know how I managed to retain Triona’s interest throughout that summer, but I can only surmise that the fear of being single has no equal when it comes to re-evaluating ones standards. Triona was the absolute embodiment of everything Mam had warned me against, but Mam was also a great believer in not looking gift horses in the mouth. Andy’s parents’ foreign holiday was an unexpected godsend, allowing Sully to move into Andy’s home for the duration. With Macker busy bed-hopping, and Triona’s parents preoccupied with high season at the hotel, Triona and I had my hostel room all to ourselves for an entire fortnight.

    “Where are you staying?” Macker jolts me back to the present.

    “The Coast,” I reply, “You?”

    “With Andy; he offered me a bed. I couldn’t refuse – under the circumstances…”

    “That’s very good of you,” I say, thinking: you’re still playing at being all things to all people…

    “I’d prefer to stay at the hotel, of course, but Andy did ask. Andy is the forgotten one in all this, you know! I’ll probably stay on for a few days; he shouldn’t be alone just now. Speaking of which,” he consults an expensive-looking watch, “I’d better head. Goodnight, Ryano; see you in the morning.”

    I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t, I conclude, wondering whether to take a scout around town on the off-chance of bumping into Triona.

    Strong fingers close on my right shoulder. I whirl in surprise, and then utter an oath of relief. It’s Billy, the old porter from my holiday job days. Feeling the alien tingle of a smile for the first time that evening, I pump his proffered hand.

         “Billy? It’s great to see you; how’re things?”

    “I thought ’twas yourself, all right, but I didn’t want to intrude on your chat with Golden Boy. I’m grand; sure, devil the fear of me. You’re looking well, yourself, and ‘tis awful good of you to come; she’ll appreciate it.”

    “Ah,” I shrug, instantly regretting the Macker-like gesture.

    “All the same, it can’t be easy,” he says, draining his glass and sighing with obvious relish. “You’ll take a drink with me?”

    Famous last words, I reflect, ordering a bowl of chowder in The Crossroads Bar shortly after opening time next morning. Thanks to too many pints, and too little sleep, I’ve missed breakfast at the hotel. I can’t blame Billy: he’d left after two drinks. I, on the other hand, feeling that I needed time to digest what Billy had imparted, had ended up having a very late night in the hotel with a bunch of golfing Cork publicans. While Triona hadn’t crossed my path, she had haunted every moment of the few hours I’d spent alone in my silent bedroom.

         Triona and I had exchanged several letters in the weeks following my return home after that first summer, but I’d had a growing sense of foreboding through the weeks prior to her finally spelling out that she and Macker had become an item. Macker was still ruling the roost when I returned for my second season at the hotel. He had actually remained there throughout the winter, painting, decorating, gardening, and generally sprucing-up the old building and its grounds. Also, Macker had passed his medical and was scheduled to enter the Garda Training College in mid-September. I had grown accustomed to Macker and Triona acting out love’s young dream, while I – intent on showing Triona the error of her ways – was giving a spirited, if somewhat anaemic, impression of the Macker of yore.

    Macker’s going-away party lasted the better part of a week, but he finally managed to drag himself away from Caladhlee in mid-August – just before my Leaving Cert results were due out. Triona and I, along with two girls from up-house, the new porter, and the girl from the stillroom, represented our hotel in the general mayhem that was The Crossroads Bar on that results’ Wednesday afternoon. While I will never be certain whether it was due to Triona’s surprisingly good points total or my practiced Macker impersonation, she was suddenly mine again…for all of my remaining ten days in Caladhlee.

    The chowder has helped, but I still can’t face the prospect of sympathising with Andy, Triona and her daughter. The barman lights a pillar candle, places it on my window table, and then pushes the front door closed. I wait until the hearse noses into view before moving closer to the window. Black suits her; she looks slimmer, almost girlish. Her blonde hair, now short, curls beneath a jauntily-angled bucket hat. A poignantly familiar scent teases my nostrils; I pretend it’s not from the candle.

    Grim-faced, greying and gaunt, Andy shuffles along on Triona’s near side, his eyes glued to the hearse’s hatch-door. The girl is on Triona’s right. She is tall, taller than Andy, her free-flowing long hair seems almost black, and her deep brown eyes glisten with tears. Reminding myself that Ryanne is mourning the man she has known as ‘dad’, I feel my grip tighten on the window ledge. Squinting against a flash of reflected sunlight, my gaze moves with her until the heads of Macker and those following obscure her from my view. My head spinning, I button the jacket of my suit and, giving the barman the ghost of a wave, escape through the rear door to the temporary sanctuary of my car, and the impending agony of the long drive home. 

Old Ghosts

I’d thought you old – until now – but sixty-three is far too young to die. I was aware of your health issues, of course, but I must have subconsciously believed that your bloody-mindedness would somehow get you through. Now, in view of your professed leaning towards atheism, I don’t think it irreverent of me to picture how you might report on your own funeral. I’m sure you would get great mileage out of describing the length of the cortège; the plethora of luminaries from the worlds of religion, politics, music, literature and theatre: all the trappings of celebrity. The people of Mucker, and of Inniskeen and its surrounds, will be well represented, as will the farming community, the GAA, and other local groups. I also imagine there might be some representation from The Plough and the other London pubs you’d frequented during your periods of exile. I can see them now: solemn-faced men in damp, dark overcoats, shuffling bareheaded through spits of slanting rain; middle-aged women, lipsticked and rouged, shivering and whispering beneath sombre hats and black headscarves, all taking great care to observe the time-honoured protocol of speaking no ill of the dead.

Later, after the scents of candle and incense have dissipated, when the rattle and rustle of rosary beads and prayer book have stilled, when the slap and hiss of handshake and kiss have silenced, little huddles will form in hallowed Dublin haunts like Searson’s, The Bailey and McDaid’s. In hostelries where you’d never wet your lips, heads will nod in grave agreement to mentions of a warm-hearted nature, boyish humour, engaging disposition, and all will agree that we were indeed blessed with your genius. As dusk gathers, dense as the phalanxes of drained whiskey and porter glasses that clog bar tables and counters, tongues will loosen and words like cantankerous, irascible and obstinate will ricochet like demented bluebottles beneath smoky ceilings. You will be called a drunk, a toper, a user, a bum – and worse. On a furm in some secluded snug, a woman sipping sherry or slugging stout will confess that she has always despised you, another will call you a chauvinist, and a voice from inside the service hatch will recall your well-worn mantra: ‘a woman’s place is in the wrong’. After counting today’s takings, a village publican – who wouldn’t have served you as much as a mouthful of water – will pour a nightcap in your honour, and agonise over which of his barstools to designate as your favourite perch.

It’s funny. No, it will never be funny, but it is bizarre that I now find myself wondering what I would say to you should our ghosts one day meet on a quiet street – or any street, for that matter. Every street: quiet, busy, cobbled, paved, concreted, was the same to you – as was each towpath, lane and alleyway. As far as you were concerned, they were just as much yours as had been the pathways you’d worn through the stony grey soil of your Monaghan youth. I imagine you stayed close to the headlands back then, screened by blooming hawthorn from the eyes of whichever dark haired – or blonde, or flame-haired – maiden on whom you had most recently bestowed the burden of muse. But you would have kept your passions in check in those days, outwardly content to wax lyrical about family, fields, farm animals and fodder. The boldness would have come later – fuelled by your growing notoriety – after your move to Dublin. I consider notoriety a more appropriate term than fame, as those to whom you would pander continued to regard you as nothing more than another peasant upstart. In time, you began to see them for the charlatans they were, but it must have been a rude awakening to realise that not only was Dublin not the stimulating environment you had imagined, but it was no less petty or insular than the world you’d chosen to abandon.  

Recognition did eventually come, and I won’t deny that it was deserved. I would never attempt to demean your talent as a poet, and I was genuinely pleased when others – far better qualified than I – began to appreciate your worth. And yet, while I was honoured to buy lunch for a maverick whose work I had come to admire, I was oblivious to a greater hunger – a craving which I could never contemplate sating. I was flattered that you had taken on board my suggestion to feature people rather than beasts and bucolic scenery in your verse. I might even have flirted with the notion that I could have been responsible for a scatter of whin bushes morphing to three wise men. We don’t call it whin where I come from. Aiteann would be our local name for gorse or furze, but when I first read those lines I could instantly visualise three mounted dromedaries crossing a snowy Burnham skyline.       

It is to the memory of such moments that I send these roses – I would have sent wild bluebells, had they been in season. Why red? People will ask. Well, the florist was out of pink, and I’d already discounted white as being too pure. I fancy you might have approved of yellow, but yellow would validate your greatest hit; it would give credence to your claims of an affair ended – an affair which had never existed outside of your own narcissistic fantasies. Yes, there will be talk; this time, however, I’ll be the one giving them something to talk about. You see, the blooms in your wreath do not form the letter K, for Katherine, neither a C – for Claire, or even Cecilia – nor do they depict the M of Miriam. Not that I would have any difficulty with passing my chalice to another – whether corporeal or ethereal – far from it. Would that I had never attained such status; would that your interest hadn’t escalated from infatuation to obsession, would that I could stand unnoticed at your graveside – just another observer.

Yes, I was naive, but that was my only sin. I had given no more thought to our country walks than I would to a stroll along Slaudeen or a wander up Conor Hill with a neighbour or family friend – common practices on a Kerry summer evening. I suppose, being little more than a girl, I’d thought the company of a mature man safer than that of boyos nearer my own age. Believe me, I had no interest in weaving snares of any description; had I been scouting for a future husband, you wouldn’t have merited as much as a pencilled footnote to any wish-list of likely prospects. No, my studies were my priority; after all, it was the dream of a career in medicine that had brought me to Dublin in the first place. 

After I’d explained myself to you, I’ve often wondered how you’d found the time to get any writing done. It seemed that you were everywhere, or, as you might have said, ubiquitous. I’m sure I could count the number of times I’d managed to join the girls in Mitchell’s, or in Roberts’ café, without your peering eyes materialising through a plume of cigarette smoke at a neighbouring table, or your palm-winkered lenses pressing against the pane of a street window. My jaunts to Grafton Street had meant so much to me, whether shopping for something special, or just having a cup of tea with a sticky bun or a slice of tart. You robbed me of those small pleasures, the simple little things which ordinary people do: I haven’t been able to look at any type of tart for years. You haunted me: I never knew when you might appear from behind a parked car outside Switzers, or in the doorway of Slyne & Co – like a circling vulture, your oversized jacket flapping about you. Yes, it was I – and I alone – who had to walk along that ledge – that ever-heightening, ever-narrowing ledge.  

         As for your secret signs; could you not have foreseen that others would notice; begin to gossip? Had it never occurred to you, that you – and me, by association – would become a laughing stock, the butt of bawdy jokes? Clearly, you had little regard for how such talk might have impacted on me. Yes, there were dark clouds, all right – and they weren’t just confined to the month of May. Did you really think I would sit down to recite your words once I’d recovered my breath, having had to run all the way home from college? Oh yes, I ran. I ran through Grafton Street, through St Stephen’s Green, through Earlsfort Terrace, through Fitzwilliam Square, and only God knows how many other places.

My cheeks still burn when I think of that Christmas when you followed me home to Dingle. Not only were your antics the source of great personal embarrassment, but the cause of unbearable family tension during what should have been the happiest days of the year. News of your presence spread like wildfire throughout the area – not just the town, but also back west. You were more talked about than the hijinks of The Wren’s Day. West Kerry is no stranger to the arts: proportionally, we have produced as many writers, poets, painters and musicians as any place on this island. It was inevitable that you – we – would be the main topic of conversation in every pub, rambling house and chapel doorway in Corca Dhuibhne. I shouldn’t have forgiven you that intrusion so readily; I should have drawn a line in the sand, right there and then.   

Why me, anyway? Could you not have left me alone to enjoy the surreal sense of freedom Dublin allows, the liberty to hide in plain sight, to be there at the heart of it all, and only me knowing who I am? Had you decided that I’d be too starstruck to tell you where to get off – as an urbane city girl would? Could you not see that I had been quite content with my lot, with my own little circle of friends? I had neither aspired to nor desired fame. It was you who wanted to be the centre of attention: you were the one who forced your way into the limelight – which was your entitlement – but you had no right to push me ahead of you. I was never yours to be blown and buffeted like a fallen leaf: swept, spun, swirled and stilled by the vagaries of autumnal squalls.

And what about that last note you sent to me, asking for a friendly letter? Why would you would want any communication from a creature made of clay; one so unworthy of the shelter of your angel wings? Anyway, this is as close as you will ever get to a reply.

How I will react when I next savour the redolence of bluebell wafting from a sun-dappled glade? Under a starlit sky in Cooleen, or Grafton Street, or St Stephen’s Green, or Earlsfort Terrace, or Fitzwilliam Square – or wherever life might find me – will I still glance over my shoulder; am I doomed to forever battle the urge to flee?   

The Gate Lodge

    Liam tells it exactly as he had rehearsed it on the drive to Dublin, and through his every waking moment of the previous week. He relates how Emma had been waiting for almost an hour before he’d arrived for his appointment; how the secretary had explained that the solicitor was further delayed in court and wasn’t expected back in his office for at least another thirty minutes. He describes how Emma had pressed the sole of her right shoe against his instep as he was about to accept the secretary’s offer of a coffee. He recounts how Emma had then whispered that she’d already tried the coffee but had later sneaked it into the pot of the anaemic rubber plant on the waiting room table. Smiling, he recalls how Emma had then suggested they try a little nearby cafe. He does not, however, mention that, subsequent to their treat of cappuccinos and éclairs, Emma had finally closed the sale of her parents’ Dublin home, two years after her widowed mother’s death.

    Dorothy, Liam’s father’s elder sister, listens in silence until he mentions that Emma is the daughter of Rev Robert Barton, their onetime local vicar, who had briefly rented the Kyleduff gate lodge while the parish’s rectory was being refurbished.

***

    About five hours after our chance encounter at the solicitor’s office, Liam had phoned to invite me to dinner; we agreed to meet at an intimate city restaurant on the following Saturday evening. My mind in a tizzy, it was inevitable that my thoughts should meander back to my childhood days in Kyleduff. Mum hadn’t shared my enthusiasm with our move to the two-bedroom gate lodge. A city girl to the core, Mum had equally despised each of the provincial towns Dad’s bishop had dispatched us to, and the prospect of having to live even closer to the middle of nowhere was nothing short of insult added to injury. Dad had been philosophical about our frequent moves, insisting that each was another step in the right direction, towards a wealthy city parish which could keep us all in the comfort we deserved. Dad’s finances had always been precarious, even our ancient Volkswagen Beetle was a luxury he couldn’t really afford. But Mum would insist that the only thing that made life bearable in such godforsaken places was the knowledge that one could escape, however briefly, back to civilization.

    Our six-week stay in the gate lodge coincided with my school summer holidays, and gifted me a taste of rural freedom of which most urban-based nine-year-olds could only dream. At the edge of the wood which had given Kyleduff its name, the gate lodge was the centre of an ever-changing visual and aural tapestry, and the springboard for countless childhood exploits and adventures. In the three homes I’d known before the gate lodge, my quest for nature had been restricted to fleeting glimpses of startled songbirds, hovering insects, scuttling rodents, spinning spiders and miscellaneous other creepy-crawlies. In the gate lodge, awakening to the sounds of woodland and farm, and being lulled to sleep by the evensong of a roosting blackbird and the transcendental redolence of hedgerow honeysuckle, I felt instantly at home and sorely wished to remain there forever.

    I was equally fascinated by Kyleduff House and the people who lived inside the nine front windows of the imposing Victorian edifice. Mum was less enchanted with our nearest neighbours, and would refer to the young man as The Crown Prince, his parents as Lord and Lady Muck, while dubbing his frequently visiting aunts The Snoop Sisters. I longed for a proper look at the house – and its occupants – but Mum had strictly forbidden me to venture within a hundred yards of the building. According to Mum, all of those big old houses had a ghost or two hovering in their environs, and anyone who would even glimpse one of these spectres would, almost certainly, end up in the mental asylum at the other side of town.

***

    “Are you telling me that you are seriously considering marriage to a woman who, for all you know, may be into her forties; how could you not have established her age?” Dorothy asks incredulously. “William, she is the daughter of a penniless clergyman, and she has spent all of her adult life in the city. You, dear boy, are the last of the Trent-Thompsons. The futures of both our name and our bloodline are entirely in your hands; you need a wife of appropriate breeding, a wife who understands country life and, above all, a wife who is young enough to give you an heir – not some superannuated choir girl without a penny to her name.” Dorothy pauses to light a cigarette.

         “Emma is a decent, caring lady,” Liam counters, annoyed by Dorothy’s use of William – the British form of his name. “She nursed her father through two years of terminal cancer, and then spent the next seven years coping with her mother’s Alzheimer’s. Having put her life on hold for almost a decade, Emma has since resumed her career in interior design. She is wonderfully talented; she has great plans for the gate lodge.”

    “Interior design… gate lodge? She may be very capable with curtain ruffles and chintz cushion covers; but that hardly qualifies her for a life in farming!”

    “With respect, Aunt Dot, I think I’ve coped pretty well on my own for over twenty years. I don’t need another farm labourer.” Liam says, inwardly wincing at his plaintive tone.

    “My dear boy, I fully appreciate what you have achieved at Kyleduff since your poor father’s heart failed him.” Dorothy’s pacing of the room slows a fraction. “But you will be a superb father and, with the support of the right woman, your children will have the best possible start in life. It is vital that you choose correctly. I will help in every way possible.”

    “As will I,” adds Florence – the baby of her generation – a slightly shorter, somewhat less wan, less gaunt, sometimes smiling version of Dorothy.

***

    One glorious July morning I was exploring through the shrubbery of the front garden when a little brown-and-white terrier materialised beside me. We’d never had a dog, Mum was terrified of anything that had more than two legs – and many things that didn’t. The little animal seemed friendly, wagging his stumpy tail furiously when I reached out to pet him.

    “He likes you,” a disembodied voice said softly; “his name is Rascal.”

    The front gate creaked open, silencing the trilling of a robin from a nearby buddleia bush. A tall woman, wearing a pale, flowery dress, hunkered down beside me.

    “What have you got there, child?” she asked, her blonde hair brushing my cheek.

    “A ladybird,” I replied, raising my jam-jar to within inches of her nose.

    “She is beautiful, but she will die if you keep her in there…”

    “I won’t, I’m going to release her on the rose bush in the back. It’s infested with aphids; she’ll have a proper feast.” I said, springing upright.

    “Aphids; infested? My goodness! What a clever girl you are. You do that, child; I need a quick word with Mrs Barton.” She smiled, getting to her feet as Mum appeared in the doorway. 

    There was no sign of the lady when I returned with my empty jam-jar. About an hour later she reappeared and leaned across the gate to hand me a little brightly-wrapped package from the wicker basket attached to the handlebars of her black Raleigh bicycle.

    “I saw this in town,” she said. “I hope you will find it interesting. Bye for now.”

    Undoing the wrapping, I decided that this was one book I would have to keep hidden from Mum: she wouldn’t sleep for weeks if she saw the multitude of colourful creepy-crawlies on the front cover.

***

    Liam has long been in awe of both aunts but, whether on their patch or his, he feels particularly inadequate in Dorothy’s presence. Dorothy has always been the trailblazer; Florence the one who had followed her lead: to their midlands’ boarding school, to teacher training college, to a position in a private girls’ academy in Dublin, to sharing the detached Terenure house their father had purchased for them almost fifty years before – a house which Liam has only recently finished paying for. Both now retired, the sisters continue to live in that very house but, despite having almost a century of city living between them, Dorothy and Florence still regard Kyleduff House as their rightful home.

    In boyhood, Liam would eagerly anticipate each visit from his aunts. Whether for Christmas, Easter, or summer holidays, or brief Halloween breaks, the aunts’ return to their childhood bedrooms had not only meant presents, but also a temporary cessation of hostilities between Liam’s parents. Father had adored having his sisters back at Kyleduff. Both Dorothy and Florence were keen horsewomen, and Father would take great pride in parading his latest equine prospect before their admiring eyes. Never content with the progeny of his own brood mare, Father’s Epsom and Ascot aspirations would be regularly reignited by the pedigree of some yearling in a sales catalogue, and Mother’s choking sobs would again be heard from the rear guest room. Forgotten names stampede through Liam’s thoughts: Kyleduff Leader, Lord of Kyleduff, Kyleduff Run, Kyleduff Dancer, Kyleduff Gale and, almost fondly, the home-bred Kyleduff Native, the only one of Father’s string to have ever come close to paying its way. 

    There are no thoroughbreds grazing Kyleduff’s three-hundred-plus acres these days – Liam’s only equines are the bay draught mare which he harnesses to salvage storm-felled trees from Kyleduff wood, and her filly foal – her eventual successor. The dairy herd inherited by Liam had numbered less than thirty head, but he now milks over one hundred pedigree Friesians, while more than fifty Aberdeen Angus cows suckle almost twice as many fattening calves.   

***

         Next to wildlife, drawing was my favourite hobby and whenever I’d tire of stalking the creatures that ran, hopped, crawled, burrowed, swam or flew in Kyleduff wood, I would try to capture the timeless majesty of the big house itself. With Mum’s limitations always in mind, I would conceal myself among the beeches at the bend of the avenue, or at the edge of the grove behind the gate lodge. One sultry August afternoon, crouched in a clump of montbretia by the avenue, I was adding a tinge of red to the creeper that softened the sculpted grey of the limestone walls when Rascal appeared from nowhere and stretched out beside me.

    “That is very good, child,” a vaguely familiar voice sounded, “very good, indeed.” Startled, I swivelled my neck to find the lady of the house smiling down at me.

    “Would you like to have it?” I heard myself say.

    “Oh, may I? But I must pay…” Her hand strayed towards the basket of her bicycle.

    “No, it’s free; it’s a present for you,” I said, meaning it.

    “Thank you, dear child; but I really should give you something…”

    “You gave me a lovely book,” I said, carefully removing the latest crayoned page from my jotter and handing it to her.

    “Thank you,” she said, taking a last look before rolling up the sheet and placing it in her basket. “I shall treasure this until my dying day. Bye for now,” she said, mounting her bicycle and, with Rascal performing a series of yapping pirouettes, pedalling off towards the house. Though we exchanged waves on a few occasions afterwards, we never spoke again. She died about two years later when a truck clipped her bicycle as she crossed the road at the avenue entrance. It was shortly after Dad had finally been granted his Dublin parish,

***

    Though Liam and I had known each other for less than three months, I wasn’t exactly shocked by his proposal of marriage on our seventh date. I suppose I should have given such a life-altering event more thought but, as I had never been more certain of anything in my life, I accepted on the spot. Within another week we had finalised the date; it was time I was presented to Liam’s aunts. By then, I had been to Kyleduff House on several occasions, but the first will live long in my memory. Despite my initial pang at what three decades of neglect had done to the gate lodge, my heart had positively soared as Liam’s Land Rover rounded the bend mid-way along the tree-lined avenue. This was the closest I had ever been to Kyleduff House, and even the persistent September drizzle couldn’t dampen my excitement at the thought of crossing Liam’s threshold for the first time.  

    I felt no such anticipation at the prospect of meeting the Trent-Thompson sisters. The ladies both got to their feet as Liam ushered me inside the smoke-filled drawing room.

    “Emma, may I present my aunts: Dot and Flor; ladies, please meet Emma Barton,” Liam said, taking an involuntary backward step.

    “Dorothy Trent-Thompson,” the taller of the pair hissed; I felt the brief chill of a thumb against my right palm. “This is my sister, Florence.” Her arms akimbo, she inclined her head towards what could have been her slightly distorted shadow.

    “I’m delighted to finally meet you, Dorothy; and you, Florence,” I muttered, turning hopefully towards the second woman.

    “Likewise, Emma; and I am pleased to welcome you to Kyleduff,” Florence said, smiling self-consciously as I grabbed her trembling hand. Yes, I was assertive; I felt it was my right. After all, I was looking at my framed drawing hanging in that very room, alongside several more worthy studies of Kyleduff House – exactly where Liam’s mother had placed it all those years before.

***

    Our wedding took place exactly five months after our chance meeting at the solicitor’s. Both aunts attended, along with several neighbours, some personal friends, and a sprinkling of distant relatives. A cousin of Dad’s travelled from Belfast to officiate at the ceremony; a London-based niece of Mum’s proved a worthy matron of honour, and then we all sat down to dinner at the hotel in town. After a week spent touring around Connemara, we returned to Kyleduff, waved the aunts off on their way back to Dublin, and settled down to the peace and tranquillity of our beautiful home.

***

    “She is pregnant; definitely?” Dorothy gasps, flopping back into her chair. “How far along?” She finally manages, reaching for a cigarette.

    “About four months.” Liam says, feeling as though he has been caught doing something very naughty.

    “About four months?” Dorothy stares quizzically from beneath raised, pencilled eyebrows; Liam tries to shut out the image of bony fingers sliding beads across an abacus.

    “Seventeen weeks, according to the gynaecologist…”

         “Oh? Very well; that will be it, then. Congratulations, dear boy. I simply cannot wait to relay our wonderful news to Florence; she has had her doubts, you know! We must make preparations; we shall most certainly be needed at Kyleduff. I cannot imagine why it takes that girl so long to exchange a couple of library books.”

***

    Within twenty-four-hours of learning of my pregnancy, the aunts descended upon us with a display of bonhomie that had been sadly lacking on our wedding day. Over the ensuing weeks, while Florence did occasionally display some Nightingale-like qualities, I was finding it increasingly difficult to think of Dorothy as anything other than the wicked witch of the west. Dorothy clearly regarded me as a necessary inconvenience, a mere vessel to bear the future of the Trent-Thompson line to safe harbour.

    “I’ll get rid of them,” Liam had promised, but as the weeks grew into months his resolve wilted to an occasional undertaking to have a word.

    We waited until the thirty-eighth week to inform the aunts that I was carrying twins: identical boys – an heir and a spare. Taking umbrage when Liam refused the woodworm-skewered cradle which she had unearthed from amongst the dollhouses and rocking horses in the attic, Dorothy went into an incommunicative, gin-laced sulk – a sulk that might have lasted even longer had I not gone into labour five days later.

***

    “She is preparing to leave you. Why else would she have squandered so much money on the gate lodge? Mark my words, William,” Dorothy stabs the air with her cigarette, “she will take your sons, and she will then steal Kyleduff out from underneath us all!”

    It is the evening of the twins’ first birthday. Emma has just taken William and Robert up to bed, and Florence has gone to fetch another bottle of wine from the cellar.

    “You are a shrewd woman, Aunt Dot, but you’ve got this very wrong. The gate lodge is Emma’s, to do with as she pleases; it’s her hobby – her pet project. She has totally transformed it, and what she hasn’t done with her own hands she has paid for out of her own pocket. At the very least, she will have a shop window in which to showcase her talents!”

***

    I’ve heard that most new mothers fantasise about placid, sleeping babies; Billy and Bobby have been anything but, and that suits me very well. Immediately after the christenings Liam’s aunts fled, bleary-eyed, back to Dublin and, except for their occasional flying visits, our home has become our own again. Liam is a wonderful husband and an amazing father, and has spent much of the spring taming the jungle around the gate lodge. The twins and I have passed many a fine summer day there: they sleeping soundly, while I work around them. The old place is quite cosy now; we’ve added a few new bits and pieces, along with the aunts’ personal stuff from their bedrooms in the main house. Liam jokes that even Dorothy might be acclimatised to her new surroundings by our twins’ second birthday.

Enough is Enough

    “She drove straight at me; she was trying to kill me…Hey; where are we?” He blinks, his shaven head momentarily raised from the hospital trolley pillow.

    “He’s all yours now, Clodagh; I don’t envy you!” The orderly says, wheeling the patient into the empty private room.

    “What’s the story?” Clodagh asks, her eyes widening in recognition.

    “That bitch cop drove straight at me, she…”

    “Are you Michael Reilly?” Clodagh asks, glancing at the file notes relating to her most recent patient.

    “Mikey Reilly, but…”

    “You’ve had a shock, that’s why you’re here…for observation. Have you taken any alcohol or drugs in the past twenty-four hours?”

    “I’m under twenty-one; who’d serve me alcohol at this time of night? It’s discrimination! But I’m not like that; I’ll supply anyone who has the brass…” Forcing his squat body to a sitting position, he swings his short legs towards the floor.

    “You’re not supposed to get…”

    “Give us somethin’ for the pain!”

    “Where have you pain?”

    “It’s every fuckin’ where! She tried to kill me…and, she tried it before!”

    “Now Michael…” Clodagh says soothingly.

    “It’s Mikey!”

    “All right, settle back there and I’ll see what I can do.”

         “And I want to sue that bitch cop! Get me a lawyer; I deserve compo! She drove straight at me, she meant to…”

    Clodagh leaves the room and enters the tiny kitchenette behind the nurses’ station.

    “Did I just see the teenage drug baron being wheeled into Room Four?” Her colleague asks, rinsing her coffee mug.

    “Correction, Denise; his file says he turned twenty a few weeks ago. Just my luck; he’ll need constant watching.” Clodagh sighs, dropping a tea bag into a cup.

    “Is that tea for him?” Denise asks; Clodagh nods. “Ok, I’ll take it to him after I’ve popped to the loo; you can go on your break.”

    “Thanks, you’re a life saver. He says he’s in pain; could you give him a couple of paracetamol, please? They might shut him up for a while.” Clodagh manages a tight smile. As the enormity of her opportunity dawns on her, the colour drains from her face. Once alone, she tiptoes back to the station, unlocks the drugs cabinet, and then slips a selection of capsules into the pocket of her uniform. Back in the kitchen, she stirs the contents of the capsules into her patient’s tea, and then rinses the empty shells under the tap before gulping them down with a mouthful of water. She makes an instant black coffee and takes her first sip as Denise returns to the kitchen.

    “Go on, and take your time, I’ll text you if anything happens.” Denise says, and placing the teacup on a saucer, sweeps past Clodagh into the corridor.

    Hastening through the A&E exit, Clodagh lights a cigarette and, deaf to the pre-dawn trilling of a territorial robin, holds it between pursed lips as she fishes for her mobile phone. Speed dialling, she arcs her eyes skyward, oblivious to the sickle of silver moon that brightens the balmy calm of the early June morning. Her call completed, she drains her mug and, with trembling hands, lights a fresh cigarette. The phonecall has confirmed her worst fears: it seems that Mikey Reilly is intent on making life very difficult for Tara. As the possible repercussions flash before her, Clodagh winces at the irony of the situation. It was directly due to Mikey Reilly that she and Tara had first met. About seven months previously, after a late night fracas in the city, the young policewoman had presented at A&E, following a head butt from a youth who’d resisted arrest. In addition to temporary concussion, Tara had sustained a fractured cheek bone and multiple contusions to her nose and eyes.

    Within a week of Tara’s discharge from hospital, a chance afternoon meeting in a city centre coffee shop had triggered a spontaneous burst of window shopping, which had led to an impromptu early-bird meal in a side-street restaurant. Ten days later, both nurse and policewoman  had thrilled their respective superiors by volunteering to work the despised Christmas and New Year shifts – the prospect of spending sundry marginal hours together being infinitely more appealing than running the annual gauntlet of parents’ questions and siblings’ innuendo. The couple had then marked Valentine’s Day by moving into their new apartment, and ever since have shared almost every out-of-uniform moment.

    ‘I’ll swing for the little bastard!’ Tara had announced on returning home after her St Patrick’s Day shift. ‘I know he’s not much more than a kid but he seems to be on first name terms with everybody in the bloody city between the ages of fourteen and forty. I hate to admit it, but he does have charisma…he’s so plausible, and he can turn on that naive charm just like you’d flick a light switch…you’d think butter wouldn’t melt…He was about fourteen when I first met him and I genuinely believed that there was hope; that education might actually work. He attended school fairly regularly, played with the local football team – he even sold the club’s lotto tickets. He seemed better adjusted than some of the more privileged kids! But it was all just part of his master plan; he has always had his own agenda; all the time he was building his street-cred! If anyone ever knew how to play the system, he did! And look at him now, the proof of evolution…driving a brand new Lexus…I swear to you, Clodagh, he is probably the scariest individual I’ve ever encountered!’

    Clodagh has become well accustomed to Tara’s regular rants about Mighty Mouse – their code name for the younger Reilly. There have been times when she has almost envied the variety offered by Tara’s profession, the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with the seedier side of city life. While Clodagh is all too familiar with many of the stars of Tara’s edited highlights, she has little knowledge of their roles in the bigger picture. She has, however, first-hand experience of the fallout from some of their more unsavoury exploits: she has cleaned them up, bandaged their wounds, and ministered to their injuries – both genuine and imaginary. In the course of a normal week’s work, she regularly suffers verbal and physical abuse, and is frequently subjected to threats of further violence to both her person and her property. Yet, despite her access to a mountain of case files, Clodagh knows nothing of the dynamic of their community. Tara knows them all; she can name their brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins, in-laws and outlaws; she can trace their pedigrees back three generations…Not only can Tara reel off who is married whom but she can relate details of actual wedding days, what a bride wore, the number of bridesmaids and flower girls, where receptions were held, who was arrested at which, and who was hospitalised and when…

    After about twenty minutes of relative calm, the persistent ringing of Mikey’s bell summons Clodagh back to Room Four.

    “What’s wrong?” She snaps, unable to contain her rising anger

         “Have you any pink sauce?” Mikey mumbles between chews, while a morsel of lettuce clings precariously to his lower lip. Clodagh’s eyes widen at the scene before her: her patient comfortably propped against a mountain of pillows, his over-bed table littered with fragments of food and take-away containers. “What about that pink sauce?” Mikey prompts, fingering chips into his mouth in the wake of a chunk of chicken breast.

    “You can’t…where did that food come from?” Mikey takes a long swig from a two-litre bottle of Coke and burps loudly before replying.

    “My babe brought it, but she forgot the pink sauce; get me some!” Eyeing her expectantly, he chomps on a quarter-pounder burger and continues to chew noisily. Clodagh takes a couple of steps towards her patient and then pauses.

    “This is a hospital; not a take-away. No, we don’t have pink sauce. Besides, it’s against the rules to bring food in here!” Mikey isn’t listening; instead, he is conveying whispered instructions to whoever he has called on his iPhone. With a sigh of despair, Clodagh grits her teeth and storms from the room.

    Back at her desk at the station, Clodagh admits that, possibly for the first time ever, she can genuinely empathise with Tara’s frustration. Sitting on that bed, wolfing his food, Mikey could be easily mistaken for an innocent fifteen-year-old; yet, once he puts that phone to his ear, his features contort to those of a hard-nosed businessman. This guy is something else, a genuine leader who is equally proficient with either carrot or stick. Correctly focussed, this young man could become anything. Tara’s words come to mind again. ‘His father is a money lender. I’ve seen him on dole and pension days, sitting in his Range Rover with a couple of heavies, making sure that his clients make their exorbitant repayments. Then, once he has concluded his business, he wanders in and collects his own dole, without as much as batting an eye! That bastard is a bloody millionaire without ever doing an honest day’s work in his life! That’s what we’re up against!’      

    “All is quiet, thank God!” Denise sighs, returning from her tour of the ward.

    “What’s Mighty Mouse up to?” Clodagh asks, stifling a yawn.

    “Who; oh, is that what you call him? He’s slurping a giant milkshake, wherever it came from.”

    “There’s a young one ferrying grub to him, a little scantily-clad blonde; she looks about twelve. I suppose I’d better check that she hasn’t hopped in beside him.” Clodagh forces a smile and starts towards Room Four.

    “I’m dying for a smoke; have you a light?” Mikey eyes her levelly as he swings his short legs from the bed and exaggeratedly hobbles towards her. She can feel his gaze wander all over her; she shudders as his focus rests on her left breast. “Clodagh,” he adds, raising his eyes from her name badge.

    “This is a no smoking campus, but some people go downstairs, past A&E, and out through the side door…”                                                             

    “I can’t walk that far; she fuckin’ crippled me. Look!” He undoes the belt of his dressing gown and lowers his underpants to his knees. “Look!” He insists, indicating a slight bruise on his right hip. Grinning, he turns to face Clodagh, his erect penis scarcely a foot from her uniform.

    “Save it for the doctor!” Clodagh hisses, taking an involuntary step backwards.

    “But you’re supposed to observe…”

    “Cover yourself up and go over to the window,” she places her lighter on the sill before releasing the window catch and turning towards the door.                   

    “You remind me of that bitch cop…the little blondie ponytail…only her hair is curly…Mikey’s eyes have a glazed look; he struggles to light his cigarette. “You’re sound, Clodagh, if you ever want anything…anything!”

    “How do you mean?”

    “Everyone wants something, Clodagh; what do you want?”

    “You haven’t brought drugs in here; have you?”

    “I ne-never carry…but just say the word…and…phew, ‘tis f-fuckin’ hot in here…” He slumps against the windowpane.

    “Hold on!” Clodagh adjusts the safety catches allowing the window to swing a full ninety degrees; stifling a yawn, Mikey rests his buttocks on the windowsill. Clodagh watches while his eyes droop and slowly close, and the cigarette slips from his lifeless fingers. Calling his name, she vigorously shakes his left shoulder. When he doesn’t respond, she takes a deep breath and then, raising her other hand, presses hard against both his shoulders. Her blood-curdling scream sounds an instant before the sickening thud from three floors below.

         “You’re dead right, Mighty Mouse;” she breathes, retrieving her lighter after eyeing the shapeless crumple beneath the lights of the almost empty car park. “I do want something, and neither you nor your likes will take her from me. Enough is enough!”

 Outlaws

It’s bizarre; four women travelling together and not a single word being exchanged between us. It’s not as if we’re not all acquainted: his sister is driving, my sister is the front-seat passenger, and the driver’s daughter is sitting beside me in the back – doing something on her iPhone. My sister is also busy with her phone, but I think I know what she is doing. Not that I’m complaining: talking is the last thing I want to do right now. What I’d really like to do is scream…or shout…or swear…or…No, I can’t; not now; not here. His sister is a nervous driver at the best of times, so I bite my lower lip, squeeze my fingernails against my mounts of Venus, and continue gazing through the rain-splashed side window. 

The town is going through that phase of September readjustment; the schools have reopened; the tourists have returned to their real worlds, and the locals have tired of retelling, or listening to, edited highlights of summer forays abroad.  Although the suntans have paled and the outrageous summer garments have been consigned to their camphor-infused crypts, there is still an odd pair of sunglasses incongruously perched on a rain-dampened crown. Very soon, unprinted digital photos and persistent credit card bills will be the only reminders of those few weeks of upheaval at the mercy of unaccustomed heat, unreadable menus, and unpronounceable dishes. Mind you, he has never said much about his lads’ golf trips to Spain or Portugal, or their horseracing pilgrimages to Cheltenham or Epsom, nor did I ask. I was quite content for him to do his thing while leaving me at liberty to enjoy the autonomy his absences afforded me.    

I’ve never seen the point of skimping and saving for months on end just to swop my comfort zone for unfamiliar surroundings, excessive drinking, and new-found friends – most of whom are even more boring than the ones I try to avoid at home. Home? It will always be his home: where he was born and reared, where his parents had lived and died, where his emigrant brothers have continued to holiday as if nothing has changed since his bachelor days. They never stay with their sister – the driver – whose house is much larger, and within spitting distance of their cousin’s pub. Their visits with her are brief in the extreme, usually just a quick hello on their way to us. Us? Oh, and no sooner will a brother – with or without a partner or brood – have unloaded his car, than she’ll flounce in through the back door for a proper catch-up with everybody.

Braking hard, she stifles an oath as the car slews towards the footpath. She hisses something about morons who don’t look where they’re going. Nobody comments, but both my sister and his niece are briefly distracted from their screens, I feel two pairs of eyes momentarily flash in my direction. Determined not to react, I keep my face towards the window. This is when I realise that I’ve been staring past everything, and at nothing.          

The rain has stopped; the near footpath is now a roiling sea of teal and sky blues. Trying to isolate individual features from the blur of faces above the school uniforms, I find myself empathising with the travails of a Serengeti lioness attempting to stalk a herd of wary zebra. What am I hoping to find: a flash of azure eyes, a bounce of blondie curls, or an elfin nose illuminated by a phone screen? Would she still be in secondary school? I’m counting fingers. No, she’d be in college by now – unless she’d chosen to do transition year, or perhaps sit her final exams a second time. Has it been that long since I’ve thought of her – or him? No, I’d have known if I’d been carrying his son for those ten weeks. Should I have told him; should I have told his sister; should I not have sworn my sister to silence? Would he have been ecstatic or distraught; supportive or indifferent? I shudder at the thought.

The car comes to an abrupt stop. I’m suddenly aware of the driver’s window whirring shut against the staccato of mechanical drills, the beep-beeping of reversing trucks, the fumes of diesel, hydraulic fluid and boiling tar, and the acrid tang of consaw dust. My sister-in-law is muttering something about the lack of joined-up thinking where pipe-laying and roadworks are concerned. While I find myself nodding in agreement, I wonder what her hurry is: every minute lost is one less I’ll have to spend explaining to nosey neighbours.

A lone school girl brushes past my window. I can’t see her eyes, but I’m enthralled by the rise and fall of her coils of blondie curls with each jaunty stride. Approaching the works’ cordon, she calls out, waving towards the hi-vis vested road crew. A middle-aged man nudges a younger colleague and inclines his head towards the girl. The youth straightens; a pearly grin brightens his stubbled visage as he turns towards the girl. His smile broadening, he drops his shovel and then removes his yellow hardhat to release a thick shock of dark shoulder-length hair. After a quick snog across the barrier, he ducks beneath it and flourishes a pack of cigarettes from inside his vest. They both select cigarettes; he lights hers first. They huddle together beneath a dissipating smoky cloud to watch something on her phone. My niece is also glued to her screen. I fancy I can hear the tinkle of the blonde girl’s laughter as she waves animatedly towards our car. Suppressing a giggle, his niece responds with a thumbs-up as the car finally begins to inch forward.

I swivel my neck in an effort to keep the young couple in view. I get a fleeting glimpse of her eyes: they are just as blue as the shirt collar that protrudes above the neck of her navy rain jacket. I feel a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. I want to be her – right now – if only for a moment. I want to feel the sting of her cigarette smoke deep inside my lungs. I want to breathe his musky sweat, feel the strength of his grimy fingers on my skin. My sister asks if I’m okay. Momentarily thrown by her question, I mutter something about the magic of young love. Apparently nonplussed, she nods vaguely and slowly averts her face. As the car rounds a corner, I take a final furtive backward glance and marvel at the flutter of his niece’s laughter against my arm.

I wonder what age she might be; fourteen? Fifteen at the most. It’s so difficult to tell these days. Give a twelve-year-old a mirror and a handful of cosmetics and, within minutes, she can pass for twenty-one. Boys are much easier to assess. Her lad is older: late teens, at least; a throwback to the days when being part of the workforce was the norm for young men of his age. To her, he is a man of the world, assertive, self-reliant, not dependant on the whim of a parent for pocket money. She could have been me, twenty-five years ago, when the future shone bright with possibility and nothing had yet been lost.

I toy with the idea of asking my sister-in-law to stop the car; to let me off – right here. I am overwhelmed by a desire to dwell a little longer in the girl’s moment – her Friday feeling. I wonder if they’re making plans for the weekend; a disco, perhaps; would she be allowed into a night club? Will they hang out with her contemporaries, drinking cans in an alleyway, or the town park, or the Millennium Garden – where his niece sometimes goes when she is supposed to be visiting me? No, I don’t think so, he will be past all that; he will have already splashed from the shallows into the main stream; no bartender or bouncer would ask him for ID. Perhaps they’ll meet at some secret hangout, or in a friend’s flat, just the two of them, until her curfew time. Do teens even have curfews these days? Either way, his night won’t climax until long after hers has ended.

My urge to return to the scene is even greater now – but as mentor rather than voyeur. She deserves to know; she should be warned that their playing pitch isn’t level; that the odds are hugely stacked in his favour. Would she listen? I doubt it; I didn’t. I suppose we must all make our own mistakes; suffer our own wounds. Most scars will heal – some more quickly than others – but there will always be one or two which must be carried all the way to the grave. I steal a glance at his niece. She is grinning broadly at something on her phone, listening through her earbuds. I take no pleasure in knowing her better than her mother does.

Even as the car stops I’m still wondering if any two of us can ever know somebody else in exactly the same way. I’m mildly surprised to see his Audi in the driveway. Then I remember that my car is still at the hospital. I’d done as his GP had instructed over the phone and driven to A&E rather than call an ambulance. The second heart attack must have struck when I’d run to the shop outside the hospital car park. Afterwards, it simply hadn’t occurred to me to drive my car back home, not after his sister had assumed responsibility for everyone and everything else. God, did I leave that Insomnia coffee cup on the dashboard? I’ll ask my sister to drive me back for my car once his sister has dropped me home. I doubt if his sister would understand how badly I’d needed that caffeine boost before entering the hospital.

I’m the last to leave her car; I wonder why she is unlocking my hall door. Has she taken possession of his keys, or has she always had a key to my home? Why not? His brothers come and go as they please; I suppose the house will be full of in-laws by this time tomorrow. No, I no longer have in-laws: just outlaws – but my outlaws are not wanted!

My sister is making tea; his niece is placing a plate of biscuits on my kitchen table, his sister is on my landline. Absently, I wonder to whom she is speaking: the undertaker; his solicitor, her hair stylist; her bridge cronies? In truth, I couldn’t care less – so long as she isn’t talking at me.

His niece pours four mugs of tea, milks one, and takes it outside through the back door. I milk the remaining mugs, and then nibble on a chocolate finger. I hear my phone being returned to its cradle. His sister is making a bee-line towards me, notepad and biro in hand. Something in her demeanour suggests that she has been making a list, perhaps several lists…lists of things for me to do. I stuff the remainder of my biscuit into my mouth, grab a mug, and follow her daughter outside.

There is no sign of the girl in the yard. On a hunch, I skirt the gable and head towards the front gate. She is hunkered down outside the left gate pier, obscured from the house by a thick hawthorn hedge – his only concession to gardening. She tugs her cigarette from her lips, undecided whether to inhale, exhale or choke. I reach out, she surrenders the cigarette. I take a couple of deep drags, return it, and then cross the road. In a blaze of sunshine, I check the meadow before opening the gate. Inhaling the redolence of meadowsweet and honeysuckle, I no longer feel the need to scream…or shout…or swear…but I know exactly what I have to do – and I will, just as soon as I’m beyond his sister’s earshot.     

Wandering the roads 

Although I’ve been travelling for more than three hours, I’m still almost five miles from my destination when the bus drops me at the edge of town. It takes me back to my boarding school days, when Dad would meet me at the crossroads to drive me home for the holidays. Isolation is one aspect of rural living which I haven’t missed. Even the village shop was almost two miles from home – as were the primary school and church. We are three in family: I’m the youngest, with my sisters three and five years older. The girls had later attended the convent secondary school in town – where the bus has stopped – but Mam decided that my academic prospects needed the benefit of boarding school, away from the distractions of football, fishing, and my friends from The Plots – a little cluster of council cottages about a mile outside the village. Built in the forties on a patch of the former landlord’s demesne, four of the six cottages were initially occupied by siblings – two brothers and two sisters, along with their spouses and offspring – while the tenants of the remaining two houses were unrelated. In time, the house numbers swelled to more than a dozen, the occupants of which were all related to one or other of the original residents, thus creating a virtual ghetto which was frowned upon by both natives and blow-ins alike. Of course, he’ll go to boarding school, was Mam’s stock reply to all who sought confirmation of the spreading rumour. You won’t see him wandering the roads like a Plotter.

Time not being of the essence, I’m actually looking forward to walking the most familiar of those roads: from town to my parents’ house. It is shortly after midday on an idyllic April day: warm spring sunshine; full-blooded birdsong; and hedgerows, fields and margins resurgent with spring growth. It’s the kind of day when Mam would wash woollen jumpers and blankets; the heavy winter stuff that would need an entire rain-free day to dry. It’s a day for gardening, for mowing lawns and trimming edges, a day to turn soil and add new colour to reawakening flower beds; a day to paint doors and window frames. The mowing, trimming and painting had been my department, all infinitely preferable to spending my Easter holidays in the bog with Dad. I wouldn’t have thought so back then, but there have been many Easters since when I would have gladly joined Dad in the bog, or in any of the other tasks that had devoured every moment not spent managing the town’s creamery co-op.  

I’m enjoying the walk. Traffic is light and mostly oncoming. Almost before I know it, I’ve covered the first mile and I’m on the straight, downhill stretch before the bridge. This is where I realise just how narrow the road is: it stretches before me, a tapering grey ribbon, bordered by verdant new grass, embellished with striking splashes of yellow celandine, the pale lavender of cuckoo flower, and silver orbs of dandelion down, poised like fragile pearls, to catch the first breath of a dispersing breeze. The spaces between passing vehicles are a riot of exuberant birdsong, subtly complimented by the droning and buzzing of a myriad of insects that flit between fragrant huddles of bluebell and primrose, and fluffy clouds of hedgerow blackthorn.

I’m not aware of the red Jaguar until its driver calls from his lowered window.

“Sit in, Donie; I’ll drop you to the house.” He seems strangely familiar and the thought of tramping another three miles is suddenly quite unappealing.

“Thanks,” I manage, crossing the road and opening his passenger door.

“My condolences,” he says, proffering his hand; “she was some woman, God rest her.”

“Thanks; she was that,” I reply, shaking his hand, still totally at a loss as to his identity.

“Did you have a breakdown?” he asks, easing back onto the road.

“Stolen,” I lie, unwilling to bare the truth to my benefactor. “I stopped for a coffee, and twenty minutes later…” I gesture helplessly. “Luckily I had the rucksack with me,” I hastily add.

“You did report it?”

“Yes, I gave all the details to the Garda in Roscrea, but…I wouldn’t mind, but my suit; shirts; shoes; everything was in the car; the whole lot gone; as if things weren’t bad enough.”

“Look, I’ve a couple of suits in the back. We’re roughly the same build; here,” he hands me a business card, “just give me a bell if you need anything. There was a time when your mam virtually clothed our whole family. We were terrified of her, mind you, but she had a big heart.” I nod silently; perhaps he had known her better than I had.

The penny drops. It’s Jimmy Horan – from The Plots – a primary school classmate who had followed his brothers to England in his early teens. Jimmy had been smaller than me, and in the days before school uniforms, much of Jimmy’s clothing had seemed bizarrely familiar.

“Thanks, but Noreen has organised funeral suits – for Mam’s brothers as well as me. This is a great car,” I add, hoping to change the focus of the exchange.

“She’s the I-Pace; a bit fancy, but fully tax deductible.” He winks conspiratorially. “You accountants will know all about that; eh? Seriously, give me a buzz next week, or whenever you have a chance; I might have something of interest to you – no office required, nor certificates or diplomas; all you’d need is an email address and good broadband – I’d supply the iPhone and laptop. By the way, I’ll be heading back tomorrow evening… if…Anyway, I hope it goes okay,” he says, stopping by the gate to my parents’ bungalow.

Somebody has trimmed the griselinia hedge and mown the lawn, but the gate, the front door, and window frames are in need of attention. Andy – her youngest brother – responds to my knock. His grip is firm; his words ring sincere. I’ve always got along with Andy. He was our postman, and would bring me on his rounds in his orange van during school holidays. Draping an arm around my shoulders, he outlines the funeral arrangements as he steers me towards the sitting room and Mam’s coffin.

“You’re not to as much as look at a drop of drink…or…or…anything,” is how Joan, our eldest, greets me. The only surprise is that she’s not yet attired in funereal black. Joan has always prided herself in being dressed for the occasion, and chief mourner is potentially an even greater role than her tour de force as chief bridesmaid on our sister’s wedding day.

“Don’t worry,” I say, surprised at the resolve in my voice. I take a step towards the coffin. “It’s been over six years since…”

“Hah, it’s not as if you’d had much choice for the first couple of them. Anyway, I’m telling you now that if…”

“Donie? Oh, Donie, thank God; I knew you’d come.” Noreen – my second sister – enters the room and instantly enfolds me in a fierce embrace. Her shudders reverberate through me as her tears trickle down inside the collar of my polo shirt. Swallowing hard against the dryness in my throat, I wish I could share her grief, her sense of loss…feel something – anything – but my crying for my mother was done many years ago: when I was twelve; when she sentenced my childhood to life in boarding school.

“Where are you staying?” For once, I’m almost relieved to hear Joan’s voice.

“He’ll stay here, of course; won’t you?” Noreen splutters between sobs.

“No!” Joan retorts. “Absolutely not; that’s not on!”

“Look, it doesn’t matter to me,” I lie, “but one of us should do the all-night vigil, and you’re both in need of serious bed rest.”  I hear myself say.

“He’s right, Joan…Joan?” Noreen eyes our sister expectantly.

“Oh, I suppose – but on a chair, and only for tonight, and absolutely no...”

“That’s all I…” I begin, hoping my relief doesn’t show.

“Fine, that’s settled. Go clean yourself up!” She turns towards the door. “Noreen, I need you in the kitchen.” Before releasing her hold, Noreen whispers in my ear that dinner will be served in about thirty minutes, and that I can then change into the suit, shirt and tie that are hanging behind the door of my old bedroom.   

Fed, shaved, showered and suited, I take over from Andy at the front door. It is still more than an hour to the official wake time, and I soon find myself counting the cars that bypass the gate: three blue – two white – seven silver – four red – oh, one yellow…After a few covert glances, I light a badly needed cigarette and try to keep it concealed beneath my palm, as in my boarding school days.

“Here, give me that.” A black-clad figure materialises beside me. I almost gag, but then release a smoky sigh when Noreen reaches for my cigarette. Bemused, I watch as she takes a deep drag and inhales with obvious relish.

“You don’t…” I begin.

“Shush, you’re not the only one with secrets,” she exhales noisily before taking an even deeper drag.  “Thanks,” she returns my cigarette. “Just try to stay out of her way for the next hour, she’ll be all sweetness and light once her audience arrives. Good luck!” She gives my arm a little squeeze before disappearing back indoors.

So it’s not just me, I tell myself, as a forgotten confidence reawakens within. Maybe it hasn’t all been my fault. All through childhood, Joan had been an able lieutenant whenever Mam wasn’t on hand to personally enforce her rule of law. Has she already donned the mantle of Mam’s representative on earth? On Mam’s retirement, nobody had been in the least surprised when Joan had returned from Dublin to succeed her as principal of the village school. Corporal punishment may be an alien concept to today’s pupils – and most of their parents – but I don’t envy any pupil, parent or teacher who has to contend with Joan’s regime on an ongoing basis. The only upside is that Joan doesn’t have a husband and children to torture in her leisure time. While I had not initially left home by choice, my decision – five years later – not to return, had been an easy one. Dad hadn’t been so lucky: his sentence had been life without parole; ended by a massive coronary just three weeks into his retirement. Will Mam’s funeral be as big as Dad’s? I’ve never doubted Noreen’s estimate of forty-four minutes of handshakes and hugs in the church following his funeral mass. Tomorrow will be the ultimate test: how will Mam’s power fare against Dad’s popularity?

The muffled staccato of closing car doors filters through the hedge. I take a final pull of my cigarette and then grind it out underfoot. Her only sister approaches; the resemblance so striking that I shiver as her arms brush my shoulders in a silent, fleeting embrace. Her husband is next – a firm handshake – followed by two of her brothers, one of their wives, some adult offspring, and a straggle of grandchildren whose names I daren’t hazard to guess. Their progress through the doorway is faltering, in direct proportion to the rise and fall of voices from within. At the tail of the queue, a gangly youth hovers for a few moments before doubling back to me.

“You’re him; aren’t you?” It’s almost an accusation. He seems tense, as though poised for fight or flight. After a wary glance over his shoulder, he lights a cigarette.      

“I suppose I am,” I say, trying to keep a straight face.

“I’m supposed to be like you,” he puffs on his cigarette. “How are we related?”

“That depends on who you are,”

“I’m Shay: Sonny’s grandson.”      

“Hello, Shay, I’m Donie,” his grip is stronger than before. “Sonny is my uncle,” I begin, “that makes us first-and-second cousins or, if you prefer, first cousins once removed.”

“Whah?” Shay’s reaction suggests a need for further enlightenment, but the expression on the middle-aged, female face that appears in the doorway brings an abrupt end to our interaction. As individual voices melt into a monotonous drone inside the house, my ears retune to the aural backdrop of a rural spring evening. What is it with birds, anyway; how is each individual’s song so distinct whatever the level of competition, while human voices, like instruments in an orchestra, become absorbed within the overall synthesis?    

A car stops directly in front of the gateway. I’m about to ask the driver to move when I recognise him as Dad’s brother, he is accompanied by a younger woman who is a stranger to me. He introduces his daughter, sympathises, and apologies in advance for being unable to attend tomorrow’s funeral mass. Ushering them inside, I thank them for coming and assure them that I understand. I also understand what he doesn’t say, and that these are the only members of Dad’s family who will attend any part of Mam’s funeral. I wonder if it’s something her other in-laws will live to regret; my aunts, my cousins – however much removed – perhaps they’ll send wreaths, or cards, or simply phone? Who would they call; Joan, Noreen? I doubt if they’d want to speak to any of Mam’s siblings, and they certainly wouldn’t want to talk to me. Dad’s brother is saying something to me now, from a distance. Having escaped through the scullery door, he is hurrying back to his car. ‘Thanks for coming,’ I repeat. He waves, she waves, I wave; and we all know it’s our last wave. The gateway is clear again.

From across the road, a hi-vis jacket catches my eye, followed by another: Joan’s traffic stewards, I presume. A car doors slams and seems to reverberate along the roadside. People are approaching from all directions and funnelling towards us, lots of people.

“This is it; brace yourself.” Andy’s words are barely audible as he positions himself by the opposite door jamb. Andy’s standing is immediately obvious; if this was a game of rugby or American football, he would definitely be first receiver. He is their go-to man, the one they all know; his is the first hand they all want to shake. Many of them eye me uncertainly as they queue for Andy, but he spares their blushes, and mine, with the words: sure, don’t you know Donie? I simply continue to nod, resisting the urge to add: by reputation. On and on they come, relentlessly. At first they are just a blur, but I’m increasingly surprised at how many of the older ones I recognise. The formula is simple: I study them as they interact with Andy; I add a few pounds here, a few wrinkles there, while making allowances for the greying and thinning of hair. At first glance, it seems that some haven’t changed in the slightest, but then I recognise an aged contemporary and remember that I’ve missed an entire generation. My radar continues to improve; I find myself increasingly greeting people by name, my efforts seem to meet with general approval, particularly from Jimmy Horan and his fellow Plotters. The flow becomes a trickle as the pitter-pattering of late-comers increasingly resembles the sprinting of tailed-off no-hopers over the final few strides of a foot race. Recalling Mam’s intolerance of unpunctuality, I suppress a smile.

“That’s it.” Andy says, closing the gate behind his brothers after the final dawdlers have departed. “Come on, we’ll see if there’s any tea left in the pot.”                

Joan stays to mutter some final prayers while Noreen and her daughters finish tidying up.

“She’s all yours now,” Joan snaps from the doorway. “I’ll be back before nine to get things ready for the removal. One more thing: I don’t expect to find you anywhere near this house ever again once Mam has been buried.”    

Once back in my travelling clothes, I mentally thank Andy for mentioning the vigil almost as soon as I’d arrived; I’d assumed that Mam would be taken to the church after the wake, rather than on the morning of the funeral mass. Surprised to find the spirits’ cabinet unlocked, I’m momentarily tempted to remove a bottle of something and hide it someplace else – just to see Joan’s reaction in the morning. Instead, I make a pot of tea, claim the two surviving slices of apple tart, select Dubliners from Mam’s bookshelf, and then settle into her recliner chair.

I awake from almost nine hours of deep sleep to the most rambunctious of dawn choruses. After a breakfast of left-over cocktail sausages, I grab a quick shower, brush the funeral suit, don my travelling clothes and resume my reading of Dubliners. Shortly after eight o’clock, the doorbell sounds. Wondering why Joan should have to use the bell, I open the door to find an old school friend whom I’d met at the wake only hours before. Once I’ve assured him that I’m alone, he sidesteps into the hall and gets straight to the point.

“Jimmy Horan phoned last night to run something by me, and your name came up. As your mam’s solicitor, I thought I should give you the heads-up regarding her will before you disappear again.” He goes on to say that Joan and I will each inherit ten thousand euro, while the residue of Mam’s estate, including the house, will go to Noreen. There is, however, a proviso: I will have full access to the house for life. Twice tapping his right nostril with an index finger, he reminds me to keep his confidence, saying that he’ll be reading the will to my sisters at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Recalling Joan’s comments after the wake, I push the hall door shut and then flop back against it. Fishing out Jimmy Horan’s business card, I concede that Mam might have known me better than I’d thought.          

 Connections

    This is when the struggle is at its height, with the relentless march of winter ever eroding the year’s weakening resolve. Now, in late October, hostilities peak as light and dark vie unto the afterglow of each shortening day. But the writing is already on the walls; it’s on the pathways, on the beaches, on the cliffs; it’s in the fog-grey fields, in the shedding woods, and in each squiggle and ooze of shadow that lengthens to nothingness beneath the weary visage of a battle-bruised sky. Only the sea emerges unscathed from the conflict, her effervescent waves all the warmer for the precious months of sunshine she has absorbed and stored within her timeless turquoise depths.

    The summer visitors are long-gone: scattered to the four winds. Settled back to work or school; to college, crèche or care home; their footprints faded, their shrill sibilance stilled. Even the neighbourhood dog-walkers have given up the ghost, leaving me to wander alone where footballs were dribbled; where new love was kindled and old love remembered, and where ecstatic barefoot toddlers had splashed, shrieked and stamped in shallow foam.

    Nature’s scent and voice has reclaimed the shore. Only the Morse-code peeps of drowsy waders now challenge the ripple and roar of wind and wave, as the saline exhalations of furtive subterranean creatures percolate unheard through the sighing ebb of every flow. The tidal cycle has already cleansed much of our human detritus from the sand: the pees and poos of short-taken tots; the puke, the cans and bottles of partying teens; the spent protections from chemically-fuelled liaisons; the scars, scabs and slime trails of every plot, tryst and rite of passage. No longer subjected to the mocking merriment of others’ transient joys, my heart is temporarily inured to the poignancy of yesterday, the pain of today, and the pointlessness of tomorrow.      

    A sickle moon creeps above the clifftop, its hesitant glow heartened by its shimmer on the water’s surface. New shadows emerge to assume tangible form: the skeletal stalactites of fractured rock, the splintered ribs of a skinless currach, and the geometric rigidity of the lifeguards’ abandoned hut. I can discern the little row of sturdy wooden benches at the base of the cliff. There are five seats in all, rallying points for generations of ice-cream and periwinkle slurpers, many of whom will later return to savour home-cut ham sandwiches and flasks of tepid tea.

    “Excuse me; sorry…” I’m taken aback by the disembodied female voice. There is a hint of movement on the middle seat: a foraging animal; a waving arm? Intrigued, I alter course. “Sorry,” the voice is clearer now; “have you got a light?”

    “Of course,” I say, as a vague outline inches to the left. Interpreting the move as an invitation, I fish out my lighter and ease onto the other end of the seat.

    “Sorry,” she repeats, “but could I borrow a cigarette as well, please?”

    “You’re welcome to a cigarette,” I say, rocking to my feet, “but that’s all.”

    “Thanks,” she says, accepting the cigarette without further comment. I lean towards her; I feel the chill as her hands cup mine to protect the flickering flame.    

    Although illuminated for only the briefest of moments, and partially obscured behind shielding fingers, her face is hauntingly familiar. I resume my seat.

    “Thanks, again,” she says, swivelling her neck to blow a stream of smoke over her left shoulder. “I’m sorry; I don’t…I thought you were somebody else.” She takes a deep drag. “I had quit,” she says, her cigarette tip dancing like a firefly as she exhales towards her knees, “I’ve tried vaping…but…” She stifles a sob.

    My hand automatically starts towards her arm, but I instantly redirect it to the cigarette pack in my jacket pocket.

    “Sorry; I’ve interrupted your walk,” she says, springing up from the seat.

    “No; stay, please.” Hastily lighting up, I can sense the intensity of her gaze.

    “Have we previously met?” she asks. I shudder, it’s as if she has spirited the words directly off the tip of my tongue.

***

    If we had met, it might have been in Dublin, on a Friday morning, almost exactly three years before. Again, I’d checked my wristwatch against the Heuston Station clock, and although still thirty-nine minutes short of my train time, I was three-quarter-way through what seemed like the longest wait of my life. Again, I’d flicked through the lead stories in a discarded tabloid newspaper. Bold though the headlines were – scandal, after sensation, after revelation, in heavy black print – they paled in comparison to the newsflash that looped continuously inside my head. 

    “I’m going out for a smoke; want to join me?”

    I’d been only vaguely aware of the girl seated beside me; it wasn’t until I tried to focus on her that I realised how blurred my vision had become.

    “Come on,” she urged, opening her handbag. “The sun is shining.” 

    I hadn’t smoked for some time: my girlfriend had disapproved – but I no longer had a girlfriend.

    “I’m sorry,” she said, half-turning; “I shouldn’t…”

    “Not at all,” I assured her, grabbing my rucksack, “but I haven’t any cigarettes; I’ll…”

    “It’s OK; come on. It’s only a cigarette; it won’t break the bank.”   

    My delight at learning that she was waiting for my train was short-lived: she had reserved her seat; I would have to take pot luck. Once we had scoured the bottom of the proverbial barrel for clichés about the unseasonably pleasant October weather, a self-conscious silence had frozen between us. We were standing almost back to back as we finished our cigarettes; decaying leaves swirled between our feet.

    “Well, take care,” she said, mercifully breaking the ice. “Have a good journey,” she added, gliding past me to re-enter the station.

    “You, too,” I forced a smile, “and thanks for the cigarette.” After a pathetic attempt at aping her little arcing wave, I loitered for several minutes before returning inside. A pair of canoodling teens had claimed our seat and, although I dallied until the last possible moment before joining my train queue, she did not reappear.  

    The train was thronged. Having expected to remain in the safety of my girlfriend’s fourth floor apartment until the Halloween hijinks had passed, I had totally forgotten about the Cork Jazz Festival. After running a four-and-a-half carriage gauntlet of backpacks, instrument cases, and elbows and knees, not to mention giant spider webs, ghoulish pumpkins, and grotesque balloons, I finally spotted a vacant seat. Mumbling apologies to the territorial teenage girl I’d had to clamber over, I squeezed into what little room her sprawl allowed me. Unmoved, she remained glued to her phone, probably WhatsApping, TikToking, Instagramming or Facebooking about the ignorant old fogey who had invaded her personal space. When my reluctant neighbour eventually decamped at Thurles, I briefly considered gambling the luxury of my double seat on a final search for my erstwhile smoking partner. I was to regret my cowardice at Limerick Junction station as, through the window, I watched her sneak a swift smoke on the platform before boarding the Limerick/Ennis connection.

***

    “I think I’ve owed you that cigarette for a while.” I hear myself say. “Does Heuston Station, about three years ago, ring any bells?” Although her expression is inscrutable in the gloom, her posture tells me all I need to know. It’s as if a weight has lifted from her shoulders; as if her body is suddenly free of some invisible shackle.

    “Three years ago? Oh, I did take the train one weekend; I’d left him my car for a few days. Actually, I do remember you – even if I did mistake you for somebody else. You seemed upset, as I recall, like you’d had some bad news. I didn’t want to intrude, but I’ve often wondered if someone close to you had died.” She stubs out her cigarette on the arm of the seat.   

    “Sorry,” I say; when I startle her with an involuntary snort. “It wasn’t quite that bad. My relationship had just ended…well, a few hours before.” I brace myself for the customary pang; strangely, it doesn’t come.

    “Oh, sorry; I didn’t mean to pry…”

    “It’s OK,” I shrug, “’twas a long time ago…” Eerily, the ache remains absent.

    “Was it a long relationship?”

    “Seven years,” I say, wondering why three years can suddenly seem so much longer than seven.

    “The seven year itch,” it’s almost a guffaw. “I’m sorry,” she says, instantly sobering, “but my relationship ended a year ago…after seven years…”

    I know I should say something, but all I can manage is a slow, silent nod.

    “God, I don’t envy you that journey…” she says, with an audible shiver.

    I remove my waxed jacket; she doesn’t object as I drape it over her shoulders. After a brief pause, I offer her a cigarette.

    “No thanks; I…Well, maybe one for the road. Thanks.” She accepts a light. 

    “Do you have far to go?” I ask, feeling it’s time I said something.

    “No, just to the cliffs…I need to...”

    “You don’t have to explain… ”

    “No, I’d like to…if you don’t mind?” I nod my encouragement. “You’re easy to talk to; I haven’t really spoken to anybody for…since…” She takes a long drag and exhales noisily before resuming. “We’d got engaged at Easter. Then, just before Halloween, I had an unexpected work thing in Dublin. I didn’t tell him, thinking I’d surprise him; take him out for a meal.” She forces a hollow laugh. “But it was me who got the surprise! I let myself into his apartment. I could hear them from the hallway: they were at it – at six in the evening – they didn’t even notice when I opened the bedroom door. She had him pinned on the candlewick bedspread I had bought for us! I tiptoed to the kitchen, removed my ring and left it, and his keys, on the table – beside her bag. I hot-footed back to my car and, after a quick sandwich in An Poitín Still, I just drove. My phone rang several times before I reached Limerick; I didn’t answer. I deleted all his messages and texts as soon as I got home, and then blocked his number. So, here I am. You are a great listener. Thanks, I really appreciate it, but I must go.” Already on her feet, she begins to shrug out of my jacket.

    “No, keep it on. I’ll walk with you; it’s on my way…” It’s only a white lie.

    Though cheerfully lit, the street is eerily quiet, accentuating the hint of a howl in the strengthening breeze. As we pass the padlocked amusement arcade, the smells of chips, popcorn, and candyfloss are noticeably absent. From somewhere nearby comes the hollow echo of a door slamming shut.

    “It’s weird,” she murmurs, “but just as I arrived here my rearview mirror fell off. The garage man said it’s an omen: it’s time I stopped looking back.”

    My thoughts awhirl, I detour to the pub across the street and peer through the window. She is at my side in an instant, her long dark hair billowing against the glass.

    “The Starfish,” she mutters absently. “Our holiday local, but it’s so empty.”

    “I used to play here – back in the day. Maybe you caught one of my gigs?”

    “Ah,” she says, with a wan smile, “that’s it; that’s why you seem so familiar. You used to sing a rather risqué version of Smokie’s Alice. Am I right?”

    “Guilty,” I smile, and as I duck to avoid a windblown string of orange and black bunting, I notice a faded poster lying on the inside window ledge. The face on the poster is unmistakably hers, above it is the word ‘MISSING’ along with some contact telephone numbers; below is her name and the date she was last seen – a year ago today. I whirl round, desperately glancing right and left; I am alone on the street.       

My Granny's Hands

    You have your granny’s hands, all right. You are living proof that some talents do skip a generation. I still get a warm fuzzy feeling whenever some unrelated event causes Mam’s words to echo through my subconscious. I don’t remember Granny: I was barely two when she died, but her handiwork has outlived all of her children, and will very likely see me out as well. My childhood home was full of Granny’s creations: curtains, quilts, sheets, pillow cases, cushions, tablecloths, doilies and tea cosies. From an early age I’d been in awe of Granny’s redundant sewing machine and the huge wicker workbasket it sat beside. Despite Mam’s frequent warnings about the dangers of pins, needles and other sharp objects, she had to be at her most vigilant to prevent me from trying to snuggle up with my favourite doll inside Granny’s basket’s woven walls of wonder.

    When, more than a decade later, transition year decision time arrived, my choice was an easy one. A quick chat with old Miss Sloan – our neighbourhood seamstress and patch-and-matcher – sealed the deal: my love/hate relationship with wrap-around pinnys had begun. After several days of drudgery with Miss Sloan’s jack-the-ripper, as she referred to her seam ripper, I was steered to the Formica-topped work table and finally introduced to Miss Sloan’s fully-functional antique sewing machine.

    As I’d struggle with bobbins, shuttles, hand cranks, tension springs, winder guides, drive shafts, needle clamps and dog feeders, Miss Sloan would relate how she’d learned her trade through watching Granny transform the outlandish contents of parcels from aunts and cousins in America to practical garments for growing children in a small Irish town. At tea break, Miss Sloan would sometimes share titbits of Granny’s legendary exploits during Ireland’s War of Independence – she had, however, refused to confirm the rumour of Granny’s propensity to regularly conceal revolvers, ammunition, and bomb components in her knickers. But whatever the story might have been, a strange sensation would slither along my spine when she’d finish by adding: you have your granny’s hands, all right.

    It was in the middle of the pre-Christmas rush that Helen Grogan appeared in Miss Sloan’s workshop. According to Mam, school life had been far easier for my generation than for hers: we had avoided having to contend Hell, as Miss Grogan was known to generations of secondary school students in the bad old days of corporal punishment – but I’m not so sure. Deprived of the option of inflicting physical pain, Hell had proven extremely efficient at waging a campaign of psychological warfare on any day’s chosen victim. All too often her ice-blue glare would mock me from above her varifocal lenses, before her thin, bloodless lips would quiver apart as she would virtually vomit her venom through ill-fitting, nicotine stained dentures. On many occasions I had cursed the intervention of a grandfather I’d never known when, according to Mam, he had physically restrained Granny from confronting Hell after Mam had received a particularly vicious beating from the teacher. Apparently, Granny – armed with her favourite scissors – had been intent on wreaking the ultimate revenge for Hell’s most recent act of cruelty.  

    Miss Sloan presented me with Jill – my very own seam ripper – after lunchtime on the day of Miss Grogan’s visit to her sewing room. I still use Jill at home, but I have to be extra careful when my grandchildren visit as I’d broken off the little pink safety ball on the evening that Hell had collected her alteration from Miss Sloan. I will, however, always regret not having waited until after the teachers’ Christmas party – when Hell would have been still dressed in her Mother Clause suit – to spring from the gloom inside her backyard gate and plunge my Jill-the ripper – minus its pink safety ball – into her left carotid artery.   

Checking Out 

During all of my years in both school and college, I could never quite understand the compulsive desire of certain individuals to scratch their initials onto items of other people’s property. Nowadays, the aerosol can seems to have replaced the crucifix of the rosary beads, the humble horsenail or the more sophisticated penknife, as the instrument of choice of those wishing to leave their mark behind for posterity. While still a child, I had resolved to make my mark in a more significant and enduring way.

What had fascinated me most were the brass plates of the various professionals in town: doctors, veterinary surgeons, solicitors, accountants and the like. None of your T O’S, J McC or B G business for me; I mean, who was B G anyway? Bob Geldof? I don’t think so. T A, however, I had my suspicions about; Teresa Andrews, a native of the town, was our primary school principal, and had been a classmate of my mother’s. After a little detective work, I was certain that it all fitted together, because T A hadn’t just left her initials; she had also scratched a date and the following words: goodbye to this old dump forever…Well, I suppose, that’s life…and death.

A few weeks ago, the town said goodbye to the old school building. The Minister for Education, herself a former pupil, marked the official opening of its successor by unveiling a bronze torch-of-learning plaque in the school’s foyer, dedicated to Teresa’s memory. The old dump had seen Teresa out.

Some six weeks before the new school was opened, and eighteen months short of her retirement date, Teresa’s body was discovered in the hallway of her home. Initial reports had suggested that she’d suffered a stroke, fallen down the stairs, and broken her neck.

Although an only child, and a spinster to boot, Teresa had the biggest send-off ever seen in the parish. Her forty-plus years of service to the generations of young minds who’d sat before her, was reflected in the throngs that had huddled outside the gates of the crammed church, in September rain. They had come from every county, scores of countries and five continents. Yes, T A had left her mark, all right.

Not that I can claim any personal credit for being there, it was work that caused my presence…that, and the diligence of a young GP, yet another graduate of Teresa’s academy. I don’t know what came over me; perhaps, it had something to do with actually checking into the hotel: the hotel that I had always considered to be the preserve of my betters, and well beyond the aspirations of simple townsfolk like me.

The instant I set foot in that room, I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to leave my mark in it…somewhere. My mobile rang; I muttered an apology, grabbed my case and headed for the car park. Strictly speaking, the morgue of the regional hospital should have been my first port of call, but I’d reasoned that if Teresa’s mortal remains had already waited for nearly thirty hours, another thirty minutes wasn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. Yes, it was because of Teresa that I was back in my hometown…and the fact that young Gillian Kiely G. P. had requested a post mortem into our mentor’s unexpected death.

Eight hours later, I finished my solitary meal in the hotel dining room, only vaguely aware of the banter of my erstwhile colleagues from the adjoining public bar. This was one problem that I hadn’t foreseen prior to my recent surprise elevation in status. Suddenly, I was that angel of death, the vulture descending to desecrate the corpse, to the horror of the bereaved, to the chagrin of local police and the hostility of all would-be suspects – likely or not. As fifth assistant to the State Pathologist, the most field action I could have reasonably expected would have been an occasional call-out during the peak holiday season. Now, thanks to an attack of gout, a difficult pregnancy, a femur fractured on a football pitch, a hush-hush spell in rehab and a honeymoon, I found myself in charge of my third case in less than a fortnight.

My baptism of fire – well, blood actually – had been back in Dublin. It had proved a straightforward stabbing case, complete with the murder weapon still in the chest of the victim and conveniently covered with the fingerprints of a long-suffering wife. The new widow had been only too willing to put her hands up and confirm, in addition to her intent, motive and opportunity, her satisfaction in a job well done. That had been just twelve days before and, afterwards, I had simply driven back to my apartment, opened a bottle of wine and watched a DVD. A drink, that’s what I needed now. With a last wistful glance at the dessert menu, I wandered into the hotel lounge.

After a disappointing perusal of the bar’s wine stocks, I decided to settle for a fruity Australian red, which I brought to an armchair in the front lobby, beside a street-facing bay window. Although I had grown up in town, I no longer had any family there. Both of my brothers were now married abroad and, after Mum’s death seven years before, Dad had gone to live with a widowed sister back in his native Cork. So there I was, an insider looking out through a hotel window, an outsider looking in at my past.

It was that time of evening when streets experience a little final flurry of pre-dusk activity. As I recalled the names behind the ageing faces that chatted their way home from evening Mass, a wave of nostalgia swelled in my throat. Occasionally, a furtive glance from a driver who might have dallied for more than just the one, reminded me that it wasn’t just the worshippers who had aged.

Then I saw her; even after almost two decades there was no mistaking the catwalk strut of those lithe, supermodel limbs, propelled by confidence and vivacity. And that hair: waving tresses of burnished copper, rebounding from her collar bones as though spring-loaded …Rachel had stood out even in primary school: bright, precocious, wilful and loved by all…well, almost all...

She had been my very first best friend. We were classmates, neighbours and, as neither of us had a sister and both our dads were policemen, it was inevitable that we should play together. It was on my seventh birthday that I’d visited Rachel to show off my first bike. She didn’t have a bike but was well able to cycle, so I let her have a go on mine before I took a turn around the little grassy plot behind her house. As I was just learning and wasn’t really able to steer and pedal at the same time, I needed the occasional push to keep mobile.

At the edge of the lawn, there was a drop of about six feet into an old drain, then concealed beneath a profusion of summer growth. By my third lap, I felt that Rachel was really warming to her role…Suddenly, I was going too fast, but, before I could get my feet to the ground, Rachel gave a mighty heave and down I went, bike and all, into a tangle of nettle and bramble.

Rachel had almost reached my window; she was smiling…greeting someone…a woman…a younger woman. Had I seen that woman in Galway last week? Galway, I just couldn’t get Galway out of my mind…even during my examination of Teresa’s body…but how could it be? What possible connection could there have been between a twenty-eight year old Galway nurse and my old schoolteacher?

“Excuse me, hello.” It was Rachel’s friend.

    “Yes?” What else could I say?

    “Sorry for disturbing you, but didn’t I see you in Galway last week?”

    “Yes, you might have…”

    “Are you the pathologist?” I nodded. “May I?” She indicated the chair opposite.

    “Please do, I was just leaving.”

    “No, don’t!”

         She took a half step towards me, as if about to restrain me in my seat.

“I…I mean, please don’t…I need to talk you. I’m Karen, Karen Shields.”

    “The journalist?” I asked, recognising the name. “I’m sorry but I can’t talk to you. If you contact the press office…”

    “I don’t want to question you; it’s about Mandy Joyce, the girl who died in Galway, she was…we were…”

    “I am so sorry, but…”

    “Mandy was the fourth lesbian – whom I know of – to die in mysterious circumstances, since last June…” That got my attention.

    “Four? Who…?”

    “I’ve got the details back at my B&B…If you have the time…” She arose and hovered uncertainly. I downed my wine in a single gulp and found myself saying,

    “This has to be totally off-the-record. If a single word appears in print…”

    “It won’t, I promise. This isn’t just another story; this is personal!”

         An hour later, back in the privacy of my room, my laptop was working overtime. It was soon evident that Karen had done her homework: four young women had died unexpectedly and four different pathologists – including me – had carried out their autopsies. While I couldn’t speak for three of the cases, I knew for an absolute fact that none of my colleagues had expressed more than a casual interest in my findings regarding Mandy Joyce’s death. Now, thanks to a bereaved journalist, it seemed that at least four victims were connected: not only had all four women been in same-sex relationships, but toxicology tests had revealed unusually high levels of Diazepam in all four bodies. Jesus, a shiver ran through me, surely it couldn’t be? Still…I grabbed my phone and dialled.

Dr Kiely was actually in the hotel when she received my call. Two minutes later, her face was a maze of questions when I joined her in the residents’ lounge. She handed me a brandy balloon and indicated a pair of armchairs in the far corner.

“I thought we could both do with a proper drink. If you don’t like brandy, I guarantee you that it won’t go to waste.” I shook my head and took a sip.

    “It’s perfect.” I assured her, easing into the plush leather chair. “Cheers!”

    “Cheers! Yes, I did prescribe Diazepam for Teresa, but you surely can’t think that the cases are linked.”

    “Why not; just because Teresa was much older…and straight?” My question was rewarded with a splutter as Gillian’s drink went with her breath.

    “Straight? I thought you knew…” It was my turn to gag.

    “You mean…?”

    “I thought everybody knew; the whole town has known for years…” Her giggle was infectious.

    “Who…?”

    “Miss Baker.”

    “Miss Baker, the little lady who sold the holy pictures and the statues?”

    “And the First Communion missals and the rosary beads…Yes, even in this little town!”

    “But, didn’t Miss Baker spend some time in the nuns?” My question brought another giggle.

    “That’s where their nickname came from, and from the matching navy anoraks that they always wore on their walks: The sisters of the hood!”

Gillian’s phone chimed. She pulled a face and composed herself before answering. After a few OKs, all rights and u-hums, she finished with a single thanks, and then sighed heavily before fixing me with a steady gaze.  

         “That was the hospital. Teresa’s bloods are back and yes, your hunch was correct: Diazepam, an awful lot of Diazepam…too much to have come from her own prescription.”

         So Teresa had been murdered, as had the young Galway nurse who had been found floating in the Claddagh, as had three other young women of whom I knew nothing, except for their sexual orientation. Was Karen Shields now also a target and, if so, who else? There were already five dead women, in four different counties, all with huge doses of Diazepam. It had to be a serial killer – a very mobile serial killer – one who disapproved of same-sex relationships…

         Or, could it be another lesbian, one whose advances had been spurned by all of the victims? I instantly dismissed the thought: Teresa had been in her sixties, decades older than the others…so, where did she fit in the big picture? For that matter, where did any of us fit?

         During breakfast next morning, Head Office phoned. The staff shortage had eased and my request for a few days’ leave had been granted, on condition that I would remain within the State – on stand-by – just in case of emergencies. While the iron was hot, I requested copies of my colleagues’ reports on the other deaths and arranged for a senior Garda to accept my call from my temporary office at the hospital. Less than an hour later, my pulse raced at the sound of the Assistant Commissioner’s voice on the line. Anticipation soon cooled to despair, he was adamant that there was no forensic evidence to connect the cases.

         Apparently, Mandy Joyce had accidentally drowned following a high intake of alcohol and prescription drugs. The death of the young couple in a Dublin apartment was due to an apparent suicide pact, following their families’ disapproval of their relationship, and the young sales rep, whose car had crashed near Athlone, had merely fallen asleep at the wheel following a weekend of serious partying. As for Teresa, she had simply fallen down her stairs and broken her neck, having misjudged her dosage of Diazepam. He did assure me, however, that there were still some toxicology tests outstanding and, should any new evidence emerge, any – or all – of the cases would be reinvestigated, even to the extent of ordering exhumations.

         Badly in need of cheering-up, I decided to invite Gillian to dinner but alas, she had a previous engagement. The wave of isolation that washed over me was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Here I was, a stranger in an anonymous hotel room in my hometown. Another thirty-something, without family or friends, with nothing to show for my life except cases full of white plastic suits and grotesque sharp instruments, and a string of failed relationships, one of which continued to be the source of great pain…

         Pain? Karen Shields was in pain; perhaps she could use some company too. I was wrong: from the way that Karen answered her phone I instantly realised that she was feeling no pain. She’d had lunch with a friend and had gone overboard on the wine. She had just recently returned to her B&B and was about to take a nap but thought that she might resurface for a nightcap later.

    As it happened, my after-dinner company was provided by an unlikely source. As I was leaving the dining room, I literally bumped into Rachel. My instinctive apology was stifled by her fierce hug.

    “It is you, my God! Come on, let’s have a drink, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” I allowed myself to be led by the arm into the main bar.

    “Rachel, you look wonderful!” I stated the obvious. She half-turned and flashed me a smile that bore testament to the success of the braces that had been the bane of her teen years. I opted for wine; Rachel ordered a gin and tonic.

    “You’re here for the funeral?”

    “Yes.” I nodded, taking a sip of wine to dilute my lie.

    “God, I can’t believe it. They’ve come from all over! But of course, you were always one of her favourites…except when we played Cagney and Lacy…You’re a doctor now, aren’t you?”

    “Yes.” I deliberately kept it as vague as possible. “And you’re a nurse?” She gave me that old condescending look.

    “My nursing days are long past. I was never cut out for bed pans and puke – no offence intended, Doctor.” My smile was genuine enough; I had never considered her nursing material in the first place.

    “So what do you do these days?” She glanced over both shoulders before leaning loser; I could smell her perfume, her hair…

    “I peddle drugs.” She whispered throatily. My surprise was mostly feigned. “Not that kind of drugs; legal ones!” This time I was genuinely surprised but responded with an exaggerated sigh of relief.

    “Ah! You’re a company rep?” I could see that she still delighted in teasing me.

    “I’m with Pharmaveld.” she announced, picking up her handbag. “Coming out for a smoke? Oops…I suppose not!”

    “Actually, I really should be going,” I lied, finishing my wine with an un-ladylike gulp. “It’s been great meeting you, Rachel, next time the drinks are on me.”

    “I’ll hold you to that.” She was already on her way to the door. I toyed with the idea of phoning Karen again but, deciding against it, ordered another glass of wine and retired to my room.  

    I had just finished breakfast when my phone rang; the caller introduced himself as Detective Inspector Ryan and he informed me that he wished to meet with me urgently. Wondering how he’d got my number, I almost choked on my last mouthful of tea when the detective entered the dining room and marched directly to my table.

    “That was fast.” My quip made little impression on his stony features.

    “Doctor,” he said formally, ignoring my invitation to sit, “did you phone Karen Shields last night?”

    “Yes, at about eight o’clock….”

    “Four minutes past, to be precise. Why did you phone her?”

    “I invited her for a drink but she was about to take a nap…”

    “You didn’t actually meet her so?”

    “No, I…”

    “Have you ever been to her B&B?”

    “Yes…once…but what’s this all about?”

    “When she didn’t report for breakfast, her landlady went to check on her and found her dead. Where were you between eight o’clock last night and now?”

    “Am I a suspect?”

    “Doctor, please…It looks as though you were the last person to speak to her, even if it was on a mobile phone and you’ve admitted to being to her B&B…I just want to eliminate you from…”

    “I was here…in the dining room until about nine-thirty, then I had a drink in the bar with an old acquaintance – until about ten – and then I went to my room, where I stayed until breakfast.”

    “Can anybody verify that?”

    “I was online until after midnight. In fact, I exchanged several e-mails with a colleague in Dublin. I’m sure you’ll be able to track my movements in cyberspace.” He seemed to relax.

         “Thank God for that,” he almost smiled, “and thanks for your time, Doctor.”

    “I suppose you’ll want me at the scene.” I said, getting to my feet.

    “Well, no…actually, they’re sending somebody from Dublin. Your office thought that you might be too close to this one.” Christ, I thought after the detective had left, I am a suspect. With frustration-fuelled resolve, I returned to my room and opened my laptop.

         As luck would have it, the pathologist who had been assigned to Karen’s case was the young man who was my immediate senior and with whom I had an excellent rapport. He returned my call immediately after concluding his preliminary examination and readily agreed to join me at the hotel. Even though he declined my invitation to dinner in favour of returning to the morgue, he did leave me in a better frame of mind than that in which he had found me. At least, I now felt that there was somebody else who was willing to consider the potential enormity of the situation.

         After Teresa’s removal to the parish church, I partook of another solitary meal and then decided to do something that I hadn’t done since my graduation: go for a pub-crawl around town. My instincts were proven correct, the town was buzzing with old school friends. It was almost like the Christmases of my college years: it seemed that everybody had come home. My first drink was a very quick one: I bumped into the Sheehan sisters just as they were about to leave my first watering hole to meet up with the rest of their gang. Accepting their invitation to join them, I ordered a small vodka and orange and threw it straight back. We were on our way.

         Two pubs later, we were seven strong and determined to paint the town red. Then my heart sank: Rachel had spotted us. Within minutes it was obvious that all of the girls were in awe of her, they hung onto her every word and readily agreed with her most outlandish comments. Then it happened.

         “Isn’t that Sandra O’Toole, over by the pool table?” I asked of nobody in particular.

    “Has she got the little wife with her?” Rachel grinned and I then noticed that Sandra was indeed accompanied by a plain little creature, with lank mousy hair and protruding teeth. Rachel’s glare was one of sheer contempt.

    “Disgusting cunts!” She snarled. “I’m not staying here to watch that; who’s with me?” Despite a few murmurs of ‘live and let live’ and ‘it’s their own business’ drinks were finished with inappropriate haste and our troop was back on the crawl.

         While one of the Sheehan girls ordered our next round, I forced my way to Rachel’s side.

         “Were you serious earlier, about Sandra O’Toole?” She looked at me aghast.

    “Serious? That little dyke was at it even when we were in secondary school; she almost tried it on with me at the Christmas hop.”

    “That isn’t what I meant. So what, if she is that way inclined? This is the twenty-first century.”

    “Ah, you’ve burnt your bra too, have you? Well, Doctor, whether it’s the first century or twenty-first, it’s still an abomination. What about Romans 1:26-27? ‘For even their women exchanged the natural use of what is against nature…and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.’ Or Revelations 2:21: ‘And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent.’ So, Doctor, what do you say to that…or perhaps I should call you the sister of death…?” I felt as though my colon had frozen solid but I forced my dirtiest belly laugh.

    “Good on you, Rachel, always the right answer at the right time.” Somebody handed us our drinks. “Cheers!” I clinked my glass against Rachel’s and was rewarded with a knowing smirk.

    “Cheers…sister!”

         I was suddenly weak at the knees. Rachel ticked all the boxes: she had unlimited access to all types of drugs, she was constantly crisscrossing the country and she believed that the only good lesbian was a dead one. I had never been more certain of anything in all of my life and, if Rachel knew what I thought she knew, then we both knew that she had identified her next target.

    It was as though we had psychically agreed a demilitarised zone: despite the constant milling of bodies in our corner of the crowded bar, there always seemed to be at least two neutral pawns between us. Rachel slipped a cigarette from her bag.

         “Who’s with me?” She waved the cigarette in a circling motion above her head. All responded except the Sheehan girls. 

    “Hold on!” I hadn’t realised that I’d shouted; they turned back as one. “My round; the same for everyone?”

    “Not for me!” Rachel said.

         “Go on, go on, go on!” Mentally, I joined the chorus.

    “Ok so, but this is my last. I’m on the road in the morning, so it’s across the street to bed after this!” She turned with a swish of iridescent hair. The Sheehan sisters were also on the move – to the bathroom – and I was left alone in crowd of preoccupied strangers.

         The Sheehan girls were first to return, just as I ferried the last glass of Guinness to our table. I delegated my handbag-minding duties and rushed towards the toilet; I badly needed to pee and didn’t really fancy leaving my drink unsupervised in Rachel’s presence.

         Rachel did leave after my round, muttering something about us making sure that the old cow got put in the ground. After Rachel’s departure, I suggested that we should wind up our session back at my hotel. The Sheehan girls opted for home, but the rest of us slipped past the disapproving glare of the doorman, seconds before closing time.

         “We’re residents,” I said, waving my room key, “I’m in 207.” We adjourned to a little room at the rear of the residents’ lounge, and it soon became clear that Rachel’s absence had done wonders for the mood of our group. The atmosphere was suddenly less charged…laid-back, even, and the prettiest girl in the bunch was sitting right next to me. I hadn’t met her before that night; she was a friend of the younger Sheehan girl, who was younger than any of us…

         “What was that Rachel one on about…earlier I mean?” She asked, meeting my gaze full on.

    “I suppose she has her hang-ups, lots of people do…” I shrugged dismissively; her eyes never flickered.

    “She was quoting scripture…” I stared into her dark pools of temptation.

    “I seem to remember scripture saying something about casting stones too…”

    “I think I need a smoke, would you…”

    “No…I…”

    “…have one with me?” An eyelid fluttered, causing a tiny fragment of mascara to fall and rest on the curve of her left cheekbone. I swallowed hard, rose light-headedly and followed her through the doorway.  

         After Teresa’s burial, we returned to my room for a proper goodbye. Despite our silent acceptance of the inevitable, we submitted our phone numbers for a new WhatsApp group before finally parting. A further twenty minutes saw me packed and ready for the road back to Dublin. I was just about to do a final check of the room when a blaring siren drew me to the open street window.

         As I leaned through to watch the police car slide to a screaming halt, I did a quick calculation…Yes, that building would be directly opposite the pub where Rachel had abandoned us…A glance at the post office clock reminded me that it was past my checkout time, and it wouldn’t be too long before the police realised that they should be searching for a serial killer.

         Mentally, I reviewed my alibi, as I’ve done many times in the subsequent months...I had six solid witnesses, all of whom had seen Rachel leave our company, and I had two more that were absolutely unbreakable: one surly night porter who would confirm my time of entry to the hotel and one devoted dark-eyed girl who would swear that I hadn’t left her side until just before noon on the following day.

         For certain, not one of them had seen me hold a half-pint glass between my knees, beneath a table, while I broke open a succession of Diazepam capsules and stirred the powder into Rachel’s lager with the straw from my own black Russian cocktail. On impulse, I removed the copy of Gideon’s Holy Bible from my bedside locker and wrote the day’s date at the top of page 997, above the words: Then He said to her, “For this saying: go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter.” Mark 7:29.

Rhythm      

    Even before I’ve finished my pre-run stretches, I’m glad I’m not wearing headphones. Don’t get me wrong: I like music, but head-space is what I need right now: room to think. My ex – wow, this will take some getting used to – is a musician, and when I booked this week of annual leave, my plan had been to join him on the last leg of his band’s summer tour. Yes, I’ve been dumped – last Friday – at work – just before lunch – by text. He has met someone who really gets him: some backing singer who joined the band for the Galway concerts. They’ve been inseparable ever since: ten whole days… Hah! What about the previous five-hundred-and-something days? What about the twelve hundred euro I advanced him – less than six months ago – towards the Fender Stratocaster guitar he simply had to have for that gig in Whelan’s? What about all the mornings I’ve had to walk to work, in hail, rain, wind and snow, because he’d been too drunk, or too high, or – in the light of recent events – too preoccupied to drive my car back to my apartment after a performance?

    It hadn’t taken Moira – my boss – very long to wheedle it out of me, and to subsequently spirit me off to the pub for the afternoon. Therapy, she’d said, but I still can’t decide if the experience hadn’t been more therapeutic for her than for me. It was through Moira I’d first met him, after she’d dragged me to a solo gig in town in his pre-band days. Although she has always vehemently denied it, I still suspect that Moira’s interest hadn’t been confined to his accomplished covers of Clapton, Waits, Petty and Croce. Our Friday afternoon in the pub did little to allay my suspicions; there had been moments when I’d detected considerably more schadenfreude than empathy in the atmosphere.

    Although not yet nine-o-clock, the early August sun is pleasantly warm. I take a couple of deep breaths and then break into a jog. I’m no fitness fanatic – far from it – but following a spell of overindulgence, I know I need to sweat some toxins out of my system. In truth, I’d slipped into something of a rut after he’d gone on tour: trying to compensate for my lack of a social life by seeking comfort in a glass or two of wine while watching telly. My hangover on Saturday was a serious wake-up call – I even have a vague recollection of smoking some of Moira’s cigarettes during our binge. Now, bearing in mind my sudden change of status from in a relationship to SINGLE, I’ve decided that, should I be allotted a hashtag, fit and free to mingle would be far preferable to gone to seed.

    Dad is thrilled that I’ll be home for an entire week. Mam is making all the right noises but there is no escaping her furtive sidelong glances: that old I wonder what you’ve done this time look. In fairness, I can’t really blame her: I don’t think I’ve spent more than three or four weekends with my parents in any year since I first left for college at the age of eighteen. Only very recently have I begun to appreciate the sacrifices they must have made to put all three of us through university. I am the youngest, and the only one still based in Ireland. My eldest brother has been living in Dubai for over twelve years; he is married, with two daughters – the younger of whom has never seen her grandparents in the flesh. My other brother is a high-flier in Silicon Valley, he’s still single, but has visited only twice in the fifteen years since my parents’ silver wedding anniversary. Ironically, if our parents hadn’t been so thorough in preparing us for life, some of us might have settled closer to home.

    Attempting to shake such thoughts from my head, I try to focus on the sights, sounds and smells of a distant past. I leave the public road and swing left into the narrow lane that overlooks the path to the beach, a place that had served as both crèche and finishing school: the backdrop to many early childhood adventures, and to a few landmark teenage escapades. Above vibrant swathes of orange montbretia and purple loosestrife, the blood-red fuchsia is at its blazing best, interspersed with the violet of hebe, and intertwined with the old gold of fragrant honeysuckle. The still, heady air is alive with a myriad of hovering and darting insects, while the ebb and flow of the nearby tide is an undulating accompaniment to the hypnotic drone of foraging bees. Breaking stride to monitor the haphazard fluttering of a red admiral, I wander a few steps from the path, and then freeze.       

    Would I have noticed him if he was older, or younger, or dishevelled, or foreign-looking? I doubt it. After all, it’s not unusual to see a figure – male or female – gazing out to sea from the little stretch of pebble beach below. The guy is fit, tanned and barefoot; he stands at the water’s edge with his back towards me; his curling dark hair nestling against the collar of a pristine white polo shirt. His right hand clasps his left wrist above the mounds of his buttocks, while his muscular calves seem rock-solid below his knee-length khaki shorts. Battling the urge to stand and stare, I force my unwilling legs some fifty metres further along the path and, after taking a long swig from my water bottle, flop onto the seat of a wooden picnic table which offers an unobscured view of the only other human in sight.

    When, after about twenty minutes, the man hasn’t moved, I get to my feet, repeat my stretching routine and then begin to jog back towards the road. The lane is suddenly alive with enthusiastic scatterings of preteen children, armed with various combinations of hurleys, racquets, buckets and spades. A little posse of women follows close behind, hefting bulging holdalls, or pushing buggies laden with picnic baskets and towels. As the mothers draw to one side to let me pass, I hear my name – the pre-college form of my name, the one my parents still use – it’s more a question than a call. The name sounds again, but it’s now a summons. I break stride and, jogging on the spot, scan the line of unfamiliar faces before me. A ruddy-cheeked, matronly figure takes a step forward. Smiling self-consciously, she tells me I haven’t changed a bit. Realising that I’m dumbfounded, she introduces herself and then points to a little sun-freckled redhead and identifies her as her baby. 

    I remember the feeling; I muse, reflecting on Sadie’s comment that her elder daughter would rather die than be seen in public with her. I step from the shower and, towelling myself dry, wonder what sequence of words I had used to decline her invitation to drop by after supper for a catch-up drink. In a vain attempt to assuage my guilt, I tell myself that my response had been instinctive, an automatic defensive reaction; but why should I need to protect myself from Sadie in the first place? She had been my best friend, my closest confidante, throughout our childhood and teenage years. In all that time she had never done me a moment’s wrong: she had been both ally and alibi, and had discouraged more than one of my unwelcome suitors. Assisting Sadie with the odd essay or procuring an occasional pack of cigarettes had been a small price to pay for having a personal bodyguard living just a few doors away. It wasn’t even as if we had ever actually fallen out: circumstances had simply conspired to send us in opposite directions – me to college; Sadie to single parenthood.

    I go to my room and check my phone. There’s a WhatsApp message from Moira; I ignore it. After pulling on a sky-blue tee-shirt and a pair of maroon cotton shorts, I tidy my bed and then take a critical look at my surroundings. Wow, I am stuck in a teenage time warp: although the ceiling, door, window frames and book shelves have been painted, everything is exactly as it was on the day I left for college. The walls are festooned with posters of Westlife, Oasis, Leonardo DiCaprio and David Beckham. Dynasties of teddy bears and miscellaneous other furry creatures sit on the shelf above my bed, and twin stacks of CDs stand to attention on the dressing table, at either side of my old Walkman. Can I survive being surrounded by this mishmash for an entire week? What would Neptune – I think Neptune is a good name for the mysterious man by the shore – or any man think if he were to walk in here tonight? Not that there’s much chance of that happening. What would Moira, or even Sadie, or any of my contemporaries say?    

    It’s amazing how quickly one can obliterate almost half of one’s life. Gone into Mam’s bin are Westlife, Oasis, Leo and Becks; gone to Mam’s friend’s charity shop are the CDs and the Walkman, gone with them are two bags of clothes, a few pairs of shoes, some hand-painted runners, and a box of books that spans everything from my earliest Ladybirds to Harry Potter. The teddy bears and their friends, however, are a different matter. The charity shop manager is adamant: toys are one donation she cannot accept. Citing health and safety, she shakes her head and says that my former bedfellows may be destined to end their days in the council’s landfill site at the other end of the county.

    I cook dinner for Mam and Dad and, after a relaxing evening, followed by a great night’s sleep, I’m in the perfect frame of mind for a morning run. Once my warm-up has eased the aches and twinges of yesterday’s efforts, I’m into a steady rhythm well before I enter the lane. All seems just as it was twenty-four hours before: the brine and bladderwrack scented breeze, the flowers, the insects… and him. Yes, Neptune is there, standing in precisely the same spot, looking out to sea. Only his polo shirt has changed: the white of yesterday now replaced by the primrose yellow of today. I continue to the picnic table, take a swallow from my water bottle, and then resume my vigil.

         I check my watch, scarcely believing that thirty minutes have flown by. He hasn’t moved, neither is there any sign of Sadie or her gang. I take the footpath through the sand hills to the public car park by the main road. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find: a car; a motorbike; a skateboard; some hint as to how he got here? Who is he, where has he come from, what is he looking at? Anyway, why should it matter to me? I stifle a smile when Mam asks if I’ve met anybody on my run. I tell her about the fuchsia, the loosestrife, the montbretia, the hebe, the insects, the scents of honeysuckle, hay, brine and kelp… Shooting me another of her looks, Mam says that my phone has been noising. Moira has left two voice messages, both asking if I’ve got any news. I don’t respond. Anyway, what could I tell her; that I’ve seen a man?

    Deleting phone content has proven more traumatic than bedroom decluttering. A further wave of emotion engulfs me as my trembling finger reaches the doorbell. From within comes the clamour of discordant female voices. The paint-parched door is jerked open and a scantily-clad Barbie lookalike flounces past me without as much as a glance. My presence on her doorstep brings an instant halt to Sadie’s pursuit of her daughter. Regaining her composure, she embraces me just as fiercely as her three-year-old hugs the pink teddy bear which her sister’s hip has dislodged from the yawning mouth of my black bin bag.         

Barnahinch

Other than a weakness for drink, I was the only thing the three of them had in common. I’d first met Des, an unemployable college dropout and extrovert singer-songwriter, while working as a barman in Cork in the mid-seventies. Des’s infectious toothy smile was never more than a glance or a nudge away from a contagious braying laugh, and his only complaint with life was that he’d been born too late to experience the sixties. About ten years later I spilt the pint of a huge, hirsute biker at a Munster Fleadh Cheoil in Dungarvan. Raising a silencing shovel of a hand against my abject apologies, Paudie waited until the musicians had finished playing The Pinch of Snuff and then asked me where I was from. After telling me I was a dirty low type of a mountainy bastard, he said I couldn’t be blamed for my county of birth, and insisted on buying me a pint. A decade along, in a Dublin suburban pub, I found myself on a table quiz team with Tony, a shy, erudite, college lecturer who was driven to daily alcoholic oblivion by his only true love: the Times cryptic crossword.

Though all three were of similar age and had grown up within a ten-mile radius of Barnahinch, they had never met. I’m pretty sure I’d never have encountered any of them had the sins of my past not ricocheted me throughout the length and breadth of the country. While, in turn, I had pitied all three, I had also envied them: their fathers had taken them to the annual Barnahinch cattle fair; mine hadn’t.

Barnahinch, situated close to the intersection of three counties in the heart of Munster, had overshadowed much of my childhood. We farmed more than thirty miles to the west of the village and, despite Mam’s perennial disapproval, Dad was a regular at the renowned May Eve event. Dad never actually dealt at the fair but considered himself indispensable as wingman to the jobber who bought all of our surplus livestock at the farm gate.

‘I deserve a break’, Dad would argue; ‘I’ve scoured the drains, repaired the fences, calved the cows, and set the garden. It’s long enough I’ll be tied to the bog and the meadow!’ And tied to bog and meadow he’d be, but once the harvest was saved and the cows were chewing their cuds of after-grass, he would again hop into the front seat of the jobber’s pick-up, and the pair would head west to Listowel’s harvest horseracing festival. 

A few weeks after our farm, home, furniture, livestock and machinery had been sold, Mam loaded my sister and I, the sheepdog, two cats, the rest of our belongings, and herself, into her bachelor brother’s black Morris Minor, and we headed off to our new lives in his north Cork village pub. Dad wasn’t with us, he had already left to find work in England, promising to send money and visit at Christmas – he never did.  

With each advancing year it became increasingly obvious that there was more of Dad in me than I’d have readily admitted. It seemed I also needed time out, but while Dad had confined his skites to Barnahinch fair and Listowel races, I was spending all of my off-duty time on the wrong side of bar counters. It was such behaviour that led me into the paths of Des, Paudie and Tony, and, ultimately, to Barnahinch fair.

The night is well along when I bump into Tony in the smoking shelter of some pub.

“The very man,” Tony beams, hugging me like a long lost brother, totally out of character with the man I’d known years before. “We’re all going; are you game?”

“Going where?” I ask, still marvelling at the brashness of my old drinking pal.

“Barnahinch,” he says, nodding as though he’s explained everything. “It’s May Eve. Didn’t you say that you’d never been to the fair?” he grins, draining his glass.

“But there hasn’t been…” I begin, but my protests fall on deaf ears.

I try another approach.

“I can’t drive…” I shrug helplessly; “I’m way over the limit.” 

“We’ll walk,” Tony burps, and then lurches sideways towards the street.

“That’s a hell of a walk.” I gasp.

“You’re on my patch now. I know a short-cut through the valley; ‘twas my route home when the old lad would take to the drink at the fair.”

Before I know it I’m stumbling along the bank of a broad, lazy river, following one of the few people I’ve ever known whose link with sanity is more tenuous than my own.

Whether it’s the full moon, the balmy air, or my rising sense of anticipation, I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge of each double ditch, tangle of briar or barbed wire, and electric fence. Undeterred by the hoof-pawing of angry bulls and the yapping of wary dogs, we make every hurdle a stile and each post a winner as field after farm fades in our wake.

Occasionally, I pause at the whish-splash of a leaping salmon or the blood-curdling shriek of a startled heron. As my razor-sharp senses detect the forgotten redolence of wild garlic, primrose and bluebell, I rejoice in the recovered agility of younger days. Gone are the searing pains of arthritic knees and hips, and the scything agonies they refer to every bone, muscle and sinew of my back and legs. Inexplicably re-invigorated, I overhaul Tony as an exultant blackbird raises the first dawn chorus challenge from his perch amid a blaze of blackthorn blooms.

In clear early light we scale the final hill, and the village street materialises below us. The general sense of chaos and bustle sends my pulse racing anew: I’ve waited over a half-century for this moment and I now intend to savour it to the full. There are at least a dozen vans scattered along the street, many with canvas awnings to shelter the array of hawkers, hecklers or hucksters that vie for custom. I’d nearly swear that the swarthy jowls beneath a swathe of off-white turban belong to Mr Sangi, the Indian who used to call to our farm with suitcases full of exotic tapestries, scarves and neckties; town shoes, hobnailed boots and wellingtons.

A few places along is a little butt of a man who sounds a lot like Belfast Billy, purveyor of animal feed supplements, doses and drenches – and illegal antibiotics – essential to the farming, horseracing and greyhound communities. Beside the Marian grotto sits a wizened old lady who must be related to the tinker-woman who would seasonally test my mother’s faith with over-priced Rosary beads, blessed relics and medals, and statues and pictures of saints and martyrs of whom we’d never heard.

My ears draw me towards the little huddles of frothing calves that bawl incessantly for forever-lost mothers, while their pre-teen herders peer wistfully from beneath the peaks of oversized caps towards the laneway which had swallowed their fathers almost as soon as they’d arrived. Scatterings of adolescent cattle head-butt or mount each other flirtatiously, while superannuated beasts stand stock-still, chewing their cuds or hanging their handlebar-horned heads in stoic resignation to their fate. Hipshot cobs and ponies are lined, shoulder to steaming shoulder, with droopy-eared donkeys, all equally oblivious to the squealing piglets crammed inside the rails of their carts.

I’ve almost forgotten about Tony; scanning the street, I notice him weave his way along the opposite footpath, and then pause beside a burly Garda Sergeant who is leaning casually against the window of a closed public house. The sergeant greets Tony warmly and, slipping a hipflask from beneath his greatcoat, takes a deep draught before passing the flask to Tony with a knowing wink. Beckoning me forward, Tony slips into the alley beside the pub, and then raps a secret code on a peeling backdoor.

The door swings inward and we find ourselves swept forward in the crush to the bar counter. An attractive redhead reaches for the flask and promptly fills it from the brandy optic; she indicates that there is no charge. Dumbfounded, I watch as Tony shoulders his way towards the window, where a disembodied hand reclaims the flask.

“My shout,” An eerily familiar voice sounds at my shoulder. My surprise at seeing Des’s tousled head is surpassed only by my shock at his volunteering to actually buy a drink. His smile is as broad as his handshake is firm; he points to a corner where Paudie sits, an almost empty pint glass raised in silent greeting. “Go on over and sit down; we’ll bring the drinks.” Des urges; Tony nods in enthusiastic agreement.

Such is the craic that I never get around to asking the trio how or when they’d all eventually met. Daylight comes and goes in a blur of faces and noise, imbued with a fug of tobacco smoke, the pong of unwashed bodies and the hauntingly evocative essence of bovine urine and dung. Hatted, whiskey-faced jobbers force bottles of stout into bleary-eyed, flat-capped farmers, while callow youths wash down doorstep ham sandwiches and mutton pies with mugs of milk or fizzing bottles of red lemonade.

At some point I spot Dad. He stands tall at the end of the bar counter, his hand resting on the arm of the red-haired barmaid. Much later, I try to intercept the couple as they slip towards the backdoor; I want to ask how he’s been, to tell them that I now understand, but there are too many bodies and too much drink in my way.           

I awake with the mother and father of all hangovers, and blink in awe at my unfamiliar surroundings. It seems I’m in a hotel room; but where – why? I wade through undulating waves of black and white bathroom tiles, swallow two glasses of tap water and then force my aching head beneath a freezing shower.

Returning to the bedroom, I boil my electric kettle and, halfway through a second coffee, my brain clicks into gear. Realisation strikes with almost physical force; I cling to the edge of the dressing table until my legs recover sufficiently to carry me back to the bed.

It’s finally beginning to make sense: I’ve come here for Tony’s funeral – that’s what has knocked me off the wagon. I’m still in Tony’s hometown – in a hotel room in Tony’s hometown. Yes, I remind myself, Tony is dead; his liver has finally succumbed to the inevitable. ‘The slowest suicide in history!’ some wag had quipped during the priest’s eulogy.

Des is also dead; it’s nearly thirty years since he choked on his own vomit after a cocktail of cider and cocaine in a Cork City squat. Paudie, too, is long gone; even the skills of the surgeons who had sewn, screwed and bolted him back together after countless earlier spills were powerless against decapitation. I try to recall who’d told me how Paudie had ploughed into a stone wall when returning from a bikers’ rally on Valentia Island. Yes, one way or another, drink has done for them all, and yet, in some perverse way, my own binge has reunited me with them all again.

         Needing to go outside for a cigarette, I struggle into my shirt, pants and shoes, and then retrieve my jacket from the floor. There is something in the inside pocket: an alien shape which I haven’t put there. I fish it out and stare for several moments at the plastic-coated blue Y frame, connected to a black leather missile pouch by a pair of stout rubber bands. But how can this be? Surely it was all just a dream: meeting Tony, the shortcut to the fair, seeing Des and Paudie, and Dad and his redhead in the pub; and yet, the catapult in my hand is identical to that which Dad brought me back from his very last visit to Barnahinch fair – more than fifty years ago.         

Christmas Bonus

Although it was the most talked about case during Dad’s long career in the police, it was the one he was least willing to discuss. At any mention of the incident at the bank sub office in the village, his eyes would glaze over and one could almost hear his ear shutters slide down and click shut. Even without the robbery, 1985 would still have been notorious for both its rain-soaked summer and the nationwide phenomenon of moving statues. Regardless of one’s opinion of the statues, they did offer a distraction from the weather, give affirmation to the faithful, and cause the lukewarm and lapsed to think again. Any boost would have been welcome at the time, as the hope that supposedly springs eternal in the human breast had barely survived the seventies, and there was little optimism that the eighties would be any better. The statues’ story grew legs throughout the summer and even ousted The Troubles and the recession as the main topic of conversation outside creameries, chapels and pubs.

With unemployment on the increase, inflation rampant, and emigration fast approaching the levels of the nineteen-fifties, one local wag was heard to suggest that even the Blessed Virgin was trying to catch a boat to England or a flight to America. Interest and mortgage rates were at a record high, and the bank in the nearby town was threatening some debt defaulters with imminent foreclosure. Meanwhile, farmers up and down the country were struggling to replace the fodder lost through a washout of a summer and a broken harvest. Turf was also at a premium, and the rising cost of other winter fuels was being felt by rural and urban communities alike. As winter progressed, anxiety displaced the usual pre-Christmas anticipation, and parents were warning young children that Santa might not be able to bring enough presents for everyone.

Close on the heels of the first twitching statue, our local amateur drama group staged a production of Tom Coffey’s comedy Anyone Could Rob a Bank. After the customary Lenten run, it was brought back by popular demand for a further two Saturday nights immediately after Easter. The play had first been produced in the early sixties, in innocent times when bank robberies happened only in English and American films, but with the Troubles of the seventies intensifying through the eighties, news reports of bank and post office holdups had become almost as frequent and as predictable as daily weather forecasts. In truth, by the mid-eighties we had become so inured to TV images of Closed due to robbery signs from up and down the country that the appearance of such a notice on the door of our bank sub office on the first Monday of December was seen almost as a badge of honour in some quarters of the village.

Our village doesn’t have the architectural pomp and symmetrical precision of settlements spawned by a great house or a landlord’s demesne. There are no geometrically perfect blocks of uniform homes, nor is there a central thoroughfare with imposing retail outlets and opulent professional premises. Our village is a product of evolution; a higgledy-piggledy sprawl that has grown organically in fits and starts, in direct proportion to the fortunes of its inhabitants. Our main street is a winding lane of three-hundred- year-old two-storey houses, bookended by a pair of chicanes that would challenging the nerve and guile of most rally drivers. The bank sub office was formerly a poultry merchant’s office; wedged between Daly’s newsagency and Murphy’s pub, and a mere seven doors from the Garda Station, a noted traffic black spot since the days of the ass and cart and penny-farthing bicycle. As an escape route is vital to the success of any robbery, I doubt if anyone from Jesse James to The Hatton Garden gang would have given our part-time bank a second thought.

Even after all this time the debate occasionally resurfaces as to which four of the six rumoured suspects actually did the job. Subsequently dubbed The Santas, they are all still with us: bachelor brothers Tom and Ned Foley continue to work their family farm, while newsagent Jim Daly, hardware and electrical goods merchant Jack Connolly, and carpenter Mick Kelly have all become venerable grandfathers. About to become a great-grandfather for the third time, Pat Burke no longer repairs Honda 50s or fits tractor tyres, but he continues to operate his courier service throughout the county and beyond. When the six get together we only need to add a deck of playing cards to produce arguably the most intriguing forty-five rubber in the entire county. From Halloween to Easter, the six have met every Friday night at the same corner table in Murphy’s pub where they first battled it out for Christmas turkeys on a bleak November night in 1980. The six cast for partners before each rubber, allowing the fall of the four aces to decide the game’s pairings. While the stakes have increased from the original 20p per rubber to today’s €5, the passage of time has lessened neither the intensity of their play, nor the ferocity of the post mortem that follows each hand.

Unlike many pub Olympians, none of the six is in anyway precious about his status at the card table. In common with most of the pub’s regulars, I’ve played with them all and have been both praised and lambasted according to the merits of my performance. Although many topics are discussed at the card table, one subject is absolute taboo: our 1985 bank robbery. I’ve often wondered if Dad had concurred with the village’s conclusion regarding the robbery; if he had subsequently studied the six over a Friday night pint in Murphy’s pub or if he had wondered during a midweek game if his temporary partner had actually participated in the act. As the local Garda Sergeant, it was Dad – together with his two officers – who had done the legwork, made house-to-house enquiries and taken statements, while a team of detectives from Dublin had conducted the high profile investigation.

The detectives had arrived in the village just before dusk on the day of the episode and, together with reinforcements drafted in from neighbouring stations, proceeded to set up a series of roadblocks and checkpoints at every crossroads from the outskirts of the village to the county bounds. Ironically, one of their first checkpoints was set up less than a hundred yards beyond the entrance to the Foley brothers’ farm – something that would become a cause of great merriment over subsequent weeks. With news of the incident spreading like wildfire throughout the hinterland, vehicles of every shape and hue began to converge on the village, and at the same time many locals were venturing out of the village simply to experience being stopped at a Garda checkpoint. Gridlock ensued for miles around and by the time a blue Ford Transit van, laden with bicycles, footballs, dolls and a variety of other traditional Christmas presents, rolled up late on Thursday evening, the visiting Detective Inspector had already called it quits and ordered his crew back to Dublin.

***

After Dad’s month’s mind mass our family, friends and neighbours adjourned to Murphy’s pub for light refreshments. As I waited to pay the bill, an elderly stranger addressed me by name and introduced himself as a former colleague of Dad’s who had come to pay his belated respects as he had been abroad at the time of the funeral. I hadn’t seen the man for over thirty years, but time seemed to melt as he reminisced on The Skipper, which was how he and his fellow Gardaí had referred to their sergeant. While he hadn’t always seen eye to eye with Dad – particularly regarding GAA matches – his respect for his old boss was palpable. After many anecdotes, and some poignant laughter, I finally managed to steer him back to the first Monday of December 1985. After some hesitation, he assured me that Dad had put it all together ever before the detectives had mounted their first checkpoint. Although I’d had my suspicions for years, I’d never found the courage to ask Dad straight out – something I’d been regretting even more since his passing. Faced with what could be my last chance to learn the truth, I was determined not to let the opportunity slip away.

I may not have inherited Dad’s physique or his athletic prowess, but I do possess his dogged persistence. I persevered with my questions and saw the man’s eyes gradually brighten from the gloom of doubt to a gleam of relief. With his dull monotone lightening to a lilting narrative, I realised that he had wanted to tell the story as much as I’d needed to hear it.    

Back then, the assistant bank manager and a female clerk would arrive at the sub office from the bank in the nearby town at about 10.30am. They would remain open for business until 12.30, closing for lunch until 1.30 – or later, as both were partial to a lunchtime tipple in Murphy’s pub. At 3pm the bankers would lock up and return to their headquarters in town. On that particular afternoon, the office didn’t reopen after lunch, because when the officials returned from the pub they discovered that a person – or persons – unknown had made a withdrawal in their absence. The assistant bank manager instantly blamed the Foley brothers, claiming that one of them – but he wasn’t sure which one – had plied them with drinks while the other had done the deed. He did admit that he’d found Foley’s generosity somewhat surprising, as the brothers hadn’t been on good terms with the bank for some time. According to Bud Murphy, however, both Foley brothers had been in his pub for the full duration of the bankers’ stay. Meanwhile, mechanic Pat Burke had been servicing Jack Connolly’s van in the yard behind the hardware shop, and carpenter Mick Kelly had been fitting a new backdoor for newsagent Jim Daly during the entirety of the bankers’ lunch break. According to Dad’s interviews, neither the shop proprietors nor the craftsmen had noticed anything untoward in the lane at the rear of the bank building.

There was no evidence of forced entry, and even the Dublin detectives agreed with Dad’s conclusion that the perpetrators must have had a key – probably to the front door. The building had neither alarm nor camera, and forensics failed to reveal a single unexplained fingerprint. Only one eye witness came forward: Mrs Mac, a widow who lived next door to the Garda station. Aware of her attention seeking history, Dad had given little credence to her claim to have seen four masked men running from the laneway at the rear of Main St at one-twenty that afternoon. Neither of the bankers ever returned to the village: the assistant manager took early retirement, and the lady clerk was transferred to banking’s equivalent of Siberia. Nobody has ever been charged in connection with the robbery and while the case is still theoretically open, it seems unlikely that anybody ever will.

Legend has it that no sooner had the detectives cleared the county bounds than the shopping frenzy began. TVs, VCRs and stereos were suddenly flying off Jack Connolly’s shelves, and bicycles, dolls’ prams and roller skates were wheeling their way to homes in and beyond the village. Turkey producers and butchers were swamped with orders, and the bakery had to take on three extra staff to cope with the unprecedented demand for cakes and other confections.

Over a parting drink, the man assured me that he’d never heard Dad speculate as to how the missing cash had found its way to the most needy households in the area, nor had he ever mentioned 1985 as the year of the moving statues, the year of pouring rain, or even the year of our bank robbery; no: he would only ever refer to 1985 as the year of the Christmas bonus.

Four Roses: Academy of the Heart and Mind, USA, Jan '24 

‘You’ll be more comfortable down here; in your favourite room.' So typical of Lillie: ever the pragmatist. She is right, of course. This has always been my favourite room, and I will be more comfortable here. Not only does the bay window offer a triptych view of my flower garden, but I can also monitor my driveway; the comings and goings of my nearest neighbours; events on the footpath beyond the garden wall, and the hustle and bustle to and from the town. Lillie is my only child, and while her features grow more like mine with each passing year, the resemblance is only skin-deep. Beneath the surface, she is much more her father’s daughter than mine. There was little room for grey areas in Brendan’s outlook: everything was simply black or white; right or wrong; true or false.

I’ve never tried to influence Lillie’s relationship with her father. Yes, it has caused me more than a little hurt; yes, it has triggered prolonged periods of jealousy – whether irrational or justified – and yes, there have been times when I’ve wished him dead – yes, dead, and not just gone. Thankfully, Lillie has never been particularly close to her half-sisters, nor – to my knowledge – has he ever tried to force the issue. I sometimes wonder if Lillie begrudges the childhood stability his younger daughters have had – growing up with a full-time father – while she has effectively been fatherless since the age of four. I suppose I should be grateful that Brendan’s second family has grown up several hours’ drive away. Thankfully, neither of Brendan’s illegitimate daughters bears the slightest resemblance to Lillie, but I never know whether I should be relieved or concerned that both girls are now married and settled in New York. I’ve never quizzed Lillie about her father’s status in her life: if he is in regular contact, whether or not he sees my grandchildren. I’m probably better off not knowing, but I’m well aware that Lillie hasn’t brought her two younger children to visit me since I’ve come home from hospital.

“It’s only me,” Lillie calls from the back door, “I’ve brought your favourite: cottage pie.” It’s the Saturday of Lillie’s first week back at work after the summer holidays. She is a wonderful teacher, by all accounts, but her version of cottage pie – and her cooking in general – leaves a lot to be desired. Maura Connolly – one of my nearest neighbours, and a friend since childhood – provides my lunch from Monday to Friday. I never know what might be on Maura’s menu: she simply puts my name in the family pot and delivers a piping hot meal at about one o’clock every weekday. I would gladly pay her fifty-euro a week, but she won’t take a penny more than thirty-five. I also have a regular home help; Mrs Hegarty cycles across town three times a week, she stays for about two hours, does more talking than anything else, and drinks gallons of tea. Mrs Hegarty doesn’t cook, nor – having tasted her tea – would I want her to. Her duties are to vacuum, dust, wash-up, and generally clean and tidy. I’m sure she does her best, but she is almost as useless as Lillie in the housekeeping department. Between the pair of them, I dread to imagine what my upstairs must look like.

I don’t begrudge Mrs Hegarty the few euros she earns from her home help efforts, and I sometimes slip her a few bob extra. Mrs Hegarty is married to an idle drunk, and she has a fleet of unruly children – the eldest of whom is barely fifteen and already pregnant. Mrs Hegarty makes no attempt to hide her family’s shortcomings; if anything, she is only too ready to bare her soul to anybody who might be willing to listen. I don’t really have a choice: I can’t exactly run away, but I do find her entertaining in a bizarre sort of way. Mrs Hegarty has a turn of phrase that can make even the most grotesque of circumstances sound amusing and, while she is better at telling than listening, I have to confess that I’ve shared some things with her that I wouldn’t dare mention to my own daughter. It’s been over a fortnight since Mrs Hegarty casually mentioned that she had seen Brendan in town, and how she had heard that his relationship had broken up. She’d said it casually, with neither implication nor insinuation. As yet, Lillie hasn’t given any indication that she is aware of this, and I’m damned if I’m going to ask.  

“How are you, today?” Popping her plate in the microwave, Lillie asks her usual nonsensical question.  

 “Still dying,” My reply is greeted by something between a dismissive humph and a sigh of exasperation. If she dislikes my answers so much, why does she persist with the questions? Continuing to scowl, she arranges a placemat, cutlery, condiments, and a glass of water on the coffee table. It’s been six months since my diagnosis, five months since my surgery, three months since my last Chemo treatment, almost two months since the hospital finally sent me home to die, and over a month since a nosey neighbour has called to gawp.

“Evan has done a good job on the garden,” Lillie affirms, placing my lunch before me. It’s my turn to humph. Her sixteen-year-old has been gouging his way through my lawn on a fortnightly basis since my return home. For over forty seasons of growth, I’ve rarely allowed more than a week go by without mowing the grass, and edging, feeding, weeding, dead-heading and replenishing the flower beds. Even before she had started school, I realised that Lillie didn’t share my love of gardening, and it’s a bitter disappointment that she will never feel the passion for the soil which my mother had engendered in me as a toddler.

“I’ll have to get somebody in to tidy up the flowerbeds before winter,” I say, parking my knife and fork on my half-cleared plate. “Can you suggest anyone?”

“I could ask Evan… I suppose… ” she says, doubtfully.

“Ah no; thanks… I’ll phone the garden centre: they’ll know someone… ”

“Fair enough, but don’t say I didn’t offer…” she says, removing my plate.

“No, don’t put that in the bin,” I blurt; “the birds will eat it… ” Lillie could fill bins for Ireland: I’d live for a fortnight on what she dumps in a single week. Her profligacy doesn’t just apply to food: if you’re not wearing it, holding it, or sitting on it, Lillie will find a bin for it. I wouldn’t mind, but it’s not as if she had been reared in the midst of plenty. No, there were some very lean years before I’d been able to return to the workforce and earn some half-decent money. I was proud to be able to give Lillie opportunities which I never had: she had gone to college, and had graduated at a time when new teachers were in great demand. OK, she’d had to work in Dublin for a few years before finding a school close to home, but the wait had been well worthwhile.

Mam had never needed outside help with her garden. In Mam’s time, when glossy magazines were few and far between, her Suttons Seeds catalogue was her bible. She was a wonderfully imaginative gardener, and would always have something new to plant, even in the dark, dead months from October to February. Mam had lived for sunny summer Sundays, when she would sit on her rustic seat, hidden beneath the roadside wall, to eavesdrop on the townsfolk who would break their after-lunch strolls to admire her blooms. Modesty, like most things, has its limits, and when the inevitable moment would arrive when she could no longer restrain herself, Mam would pop her head above the wall, shrug, and say how the bit of sunshine makes everything look so much better. Within minutes, the question and answer session would lead to a general invitation to all and sundry to avail of her guided tour. It was a long established tradition that all visitors received not only a detailed history of what was currently in bloom, but what had been recently planted, what she intended to plant next, where and when it would be planted, and its expected flowering season.

Considering that we are now on the cusp of October, there are still reasonable splashes of colour in the rose beds. As my gaze drifts from the pink and peach of Ladies Waterlow, Marmalade and Hillingdon, through the yellows of Amber Queen and Baby Love, to the cream/white of Snowdrift, Iceberg and Tranquillity, my eyes moisten in inverse proportion to my drying throat. Buck up, Rosie; I tell myself, remember the deal? In all honesty, on the morning they had wheeled me from the ambulance to my front door, I hadn’t expected to see another October – back then, surviving the Agapanthus had seemed like a very good deal.                

The shedding willows beyond the opposite footpath remind me that the chills of winter will soon test the mettle of our windows and doors. Lillie has had Mrs Hegarty move my bed next to the radiator on the other side of the room, but I can still see the distant mountain tops through the thinning foliage. I supress a shudder at the thought that even before the ghosts and ghouls of Halloween will have returned to their crypts, we shall again be subjected to the ever-extending, commercially-fuelled, Christmas preamble. Thankfully, Lillie hasn’t yet mentioned my least favourite season. I wonder – providing that I’ll still be here – if she will invite me to spend the big day with herself, Shane and the children. I certainly won’t be suggesting that they come here: while I can tolerate small doses of Lillie, Shane and Evan, the prospect of being held captive to the eternal whinging and whining of Tressan and Verran is simply too terrifying to contemplate.

Mrs Hegarty helps me to the bay window. The girl from the garden centre has done a tasty job, even if Lillie had been horrified at her fee. Ideally, I’d like to have the girl come back to give the place a final once-over, but Lillie won’t hear of it: she says she knows someone who’ll do it for a fraction of the cost. All too aware of the futility of arguing with Lillie, I’ve given her the go-ahead, but I insisted that the roses shouldn’t be touched until the final petals have fallen.

Today, after a midmorning sandwich of yesterday’s roast beef, I feel strong enough to shuffle unaided from my armchair to the wooden ledge of the bay window. It seems that Lillie has been as good as her word: there are definite signs of recent work in and around the flower beds. Incredibly, there is still a blaze of colour – not on any of the cultivated varieties, but on the July/August flowering, wild hedge rose that intrudes from next-door though the chinks of the drystone boundary wall. I have to smile at the irony: Mam had spent years trying to exterminate this native upstart, terrified that it might taint the purity of its aristocratic cousins. I check my mobile phone against the mantle clock. Maura won’t be here for at least an hour, Lillie is busy at school, and Mrs Hegarty doesn’t do Mondays. 

Swopping my dressing gown for my old gardening anorak from the hallstand, I venture outside for the first time in four months. Invigorated by the December chill on my cheeks and the crunch of shore gravel beneath my slippers, I feel my grin broaden as I reach the drystone wall. It’s just as I’d suspected; the four roses are simply too red, too pristine, and too flawless to be real: they are just as perfect as those on the label of Brendan’s favourite Christmas tipple.      

Dial Zero: Ariel Chart USA, Sept '23 - nominated for the Pushcard award 2024

While it’s a pity that the en-suite doesn’t have a bath, the balcony is a definite plus, I decide, surveying what will be my universe for the next fourteen days. Childhood memories of my parents’ stories of their emigrant aunts and uncles bring a wistful smile. Back then, the journey to New York had meant anything from seven to eleven days at sea; my return from JFK has taken less than seven hours, even if it will be another fourteen days before I can travel the final fifty miles to my interim destination – my sister’s home in the midlands. The joys of quarantine! What price progress? I wonder, recalling my visit to the Ellis Island Museum about fifteen years ago. Post-Famine immigrants to the US had also faced confinement on arrival, not to mention a barrage of medical checks and, judging from the range of primitive surgical instruments on view at the museum, I have to admit that a Covid-19 swab test scarcely qualifies as a minor inconvenience. As for those unfortunates who were quarantined in Ellis Island, I shudder to think how their accommodations might have compared with my present quarters. I know I’ll be paying for my stay here but relative to the cost of the fare to America in bygone days, it’s a bargain.

I browse through the printed list of dos and don’ts on my bedside locker. It’s more or less the standard hotel list – but with the relevant Covid-19 restrictions. Not noticing any great conflict with what I might have expected following my pre-booking research, I test the quality of the broadband with a quick video call to my sister. She is busy at work, so I arrange to have a proper catch-up with her and Mam after she gets home. I unlock my smallest trolley case and after spreading a few items of clothing across the bed, grab my wash bag and head to the shower.

Refreshed, dried, and dressed in jeans and white sports shirt, I notice that the clouds have parted and my balcony is bathed in bright sunshine. I try the balcony door; it’s locked, and there is no evidence of a key. As recommended in my printout, I dial zero for reception; there is no reply. I disconnect and retry; still no reply. I open the zipped pocket of my large trolley case and locate my wallet of lock picks – an essential part of every locksmith’s kit. Yes, I did once train as a locksmith and, even though I’ve mainly worked in personal security in recent years, I’m still certified on both sides of the Atlantic. Following the loss of two of my major clients, a couple of very narrow escapes, the dissolution of a disastrous marriage, and reaching the grand old age of fifty, I decided to tender my list of clients to my colleague and return to the auld sod in search of a more mundane pathway through life. Ironically, there was little I could have done to prevent the demise of either client: while both mogul and mobster had paid top dollar for protection from each other, they had been equally defenceless against a new, invisible assassin – Covid-19.

    I suppose few of us go through life without sacrificing some scruples at the altar of Mammon. It’s a basic fact, it’s universal, and it’s probably as old as mankind itself. After all, I was simply striving to keep both parties alive; not enabling either to kill the other. I will long remember my sense of relief the first morning I left my Bronx apartment without my Arcadia .38 Saturday night special strapped to my lower calf. My legally held weapon, a .38 Glock, I continued to carry in its shoulder holster until surrendering it on the eve of my departure from The States.

    I shiver at the thought that what had been the norm for over a decade of my life should instantly seem so absurd on my return to Ireland. Was that person really me? Had I become so seduced by New York life that I could no longer differentiate between right and wrong? I know I’ve saved lives, but to what degree was I culpable when an individual whom I’d protected subsequently caused the death of another? No; I mentally scream and shaking my head as though to dislodge the thought, turn my attention back to the balcony door.

    The lock offers little resistance and in less than a minute I am breathing the north Dublin air. My nose tells me that somebody nearby has been mowing grass; it’s an aroma so different to what I’d experienced in New York’s parks and suburban lawns. Even five floors above ground level Irish city grass has that elusive moist earthiness that I associate with the carefree innocence of childhood summers, one of the many things we don’t realise we’ve missed until we stumble across them in later life. Like silence – not total silence, but the absence of intrusive industrial and traffic noise. Instead of revving engines, honking horns, screaming sirens, and the incessant hum of air conditioning systems, my ears are filled with glorious birdsong: everything from the sweet trilling of robins and the warbling of blackbirds, to the harsh grating of squabbling corvids. Even the lofty gulls sound pleasantly melodious, wheeling and soaring beneath a backdrop of azure sky, still thankfully devoid of lopsided grids of polluting vapour trails.

    It’s as if my spirit has somehow soared free of my quarantined body, and my thoughts are already drifting towards the weeks and months ahead. While I don’t have a definite plan for the future, I am assured of a roof over my head and I also know I have no immediate worries about where the price of my next meal might come from. New York may have left me morally bankrupt but it had worked wonders for my financial wellbeing. Of how I might adjust to life in the rural village of my childhood, I have no idea. My sister was thrilled when we reached agreement on our old family home, which had become hers ten years ago when Mam went to live with her following Dad’s death. Mam is still in good health, and bright as a button, and has promised to be my first visitor just as soon as I’ve made her old home habitable again.

    It’s a useful way of passing the time, I decide, trying to visualise the refurbishment of the old homestead from a blueprint of rose-tinted childhood memories. I am, however, somewhat conflicted: while my head wants the domestic mod-cons I’ve become accustomed to Stateside, my heart craves the simple, homely security of a more innocent time. Should I reclaim my childhood bedroom, or assert my position as owner by moving into my parents’ room? No; I couldn’t banish Mam to one of the two smaller rooms on her very first visit; I should keep her room as close as possible to what she remembers. Besides, there will be many other tasks requiring more immediate attention. It’s a good time to take on such a project; even after completing my quarantine I will still have most of July to get things in motion. Short of any serious hiccups, I would hope to be reasonably comfortable before the onset of winter.     

    I am somewhere between insulating the attic and designing a new sunroom when I hear it: the hesitant tapping of metal on glass. For a fanciful moment I imagine a future neighbour tapping on the glass of a wall not yet constructed. The tapping grows louder, more insistent; even demanding, and I then realise that it’s coming from the adjacent balcony. There’s a young woman waving frantically from inside her French door; I vault the dividing rail and approach. She flourishes a pack of Marlboro lights cigarettes, her pretty face contorting as she presses fruitlessly against her unyielding door handle. I nod my understanding, raise a pausing index finger, and rush back to my room to retrieve my lock picks.

    The yielding lock and her Zippo lighter sound in unison. She bursts past me, dragging furiously on her cigarette. Conscious of social distancing, I reverse a couple of steps.  She waves an apology, her long, dark hair partly obscuring her features as she exhales.

    “Thanks,” she sighs; “you’re a lifesaver…” she double-pumps on her cigarette.

    “You’re welcome, but I don’t think the Surgeon General would agree,” I jest, wondering why she looks so eerily familiar. Perhaps I had noticed her on my flight…

    “I’ve been locked in there for nearly eight bloody hours…even though my test was negative…You?”

    “I’ve just arrived…from New York…” I say, realising that while she hadn’t been on my flight, our paths may have previously crossed in the Big Apple; that would explain why she looks so familiar.

    “Geneva. I’d gone there on a six-month contract, but ended up having to stay another twelve – thanks to travel restrictions. Luckily for me, as my replacement wasn’t able to travel either, my contract was extended. I suppose things could have been worse.”

    “Geneva? Wow, the financial capital of the world. That must have been a blast.” She doesn’t seem impressed. Shrugging dismissively, she takes another drag of her cigarette.

    “I’m a sous chef: I was cooking food; not books.”

    “An army marches on its stomach…” I quip, instantly regretting my remark as her narrowing eyes silently scream seriously; are you for real? I guess she has already heard that cliché more than once too often.

    “Thanks again,” she says, deadpan, and takes a final drag before stubbing out her cigarette. “I hope you won’t get in trouble over picking that lock,”

“What’s the point of having a PSA licence if I can’t assist a damsel in distress?”

“A PSA licence?” She asks, pausing in the doorway

“I’m a licensed locksmith.” I explain. Eyeing me oddly, she slides her door shut.

Hours later, her parting look continues to haunt me. I’m certain I’ve seen those penetrating dark eyes before; but when…where…who? I hear her balcony door slide yet again but decide it might be wiser to remain indoors rather than risk another disapproving look from my intriguing neighbour. As a distraction I browse through the TV channels, finally settling on a CNN report on the disappointing uptake of Corona vaccines in several US states.

    “Sorry…” Her voice jolts me back to reality. I spring upright on the bed. She leans against the jamb of my open balcony door; a smile tugs at the corners of her perfect mouth. “I mean for earlier…I was really stressed; I’ve chilled a bit since…you shouldn’t miss out on the use of your balcony because of me…”

    “No, you’re grand,” I gasp, feigning nonchalance, “these are trying times…”

    “I’ve brewed some coffee. Bring a cup if you’d like to join me…and milk and sugar if you use them. We’ll observe social distancing, of course,” she says, vanishing just as magically as she’d appeared.  

    After a quick check in the bathroom mirror, I grab one of the hotel’s courtesy cups and go outside to find her already seated on her bedroom pouffe beside the rail that separates our balconies. Wordlessly, she takes my cup and pours a steaming dark liquid from a stainless steel flask. Instantly hit by its exquisite aroma, I inhale deeply as I raise the cup to my lips. My eyes widen at the first sip; I’ve never tasted better coffee. She seems pleased at my reaction.

    “This is amazing,” I breathe; “is it from your hotel in Geneva?”

    “No, it’s from much closer to home.”

    “You mean this is Irish? Wow, I’ve never tasted anything like this; what’s it called?” It seems that Ireland’s coffee standards have improved greatly during my exile.

    “It’s Ciarona. Remember the name…” Basking in the intensity of her gaze, I savour another sip and nod animatedly. I decide not to mention that I’d consider the name more appropriate to a model of automobile, a medication, or a luxury confection.

“I will,” I affirm; “it has something special…in the flavour…I can’t quite pin it down. Do you know what it is?” Her smile broadens; again, a finger of deja-vu tingles up my spine.

    “I do, but if I told you I’d have to shoot you.” I stifle a shudder: for too long I’d been dicing with the possibility of a surprise bullet. She seems oblivious to my flashback. “It’s my Mum’s formula…I…she…we have a little hotel in…”

    I can’t be sure if I nod, shudder or gulp, but I have a vague sense of my mouth opening and closing. If ever an answer had raised more questions; this one has; she continues speaking, unknowingly answering another question.

    “Mam named it Ciarona: my sister is Ciaragh, and I’m Bronagh. Although we’re nothing alike physically – I’m dark like Mam; Ciaragh is a blue-eyed blonde – we both love the hotel game.” She pauses to light a cigarette; I feel my dormant tobacco craving scream more loudly than at any time in more than a decade. “So,” she exhales; “what’s yours?”

    “What…how do you mean?” I meet her enquiring gaze with a blank stare.

    “Your name; I can’t spend the next two weeks saying hey you…”

         “Oh sorry; I’m Kieran…Kieran with a K…” I add, and then wonder why I’ve emphasised the K. The ensuing silence is mercifully shattered by a businesslike rapping on my room door. Waving an apology, I slip back inside and slide the balcony door shut behind me.

    The dinner trolley is already some way along the corridor when I open my door. I pick up my tray and bring it to my dressing table. I’m not averse to an occasional chicken and ham salad but right now I would have liked the option of steak and fries. I tuck in, nonetheless, and even as I chew I find myself having imaginary discussions with the hotel’s chef about possible menu choices. Perhaps I should get Bronagh onboard; she’s a chef, while my knowledge of food has become limited to side street diners and TV ready meals. Besides, there is so much more I need to know about Bronagh, about her family, their hotel, and her coffee-blending mother. Feeling suddenly jetlagged, I remove my shoes, stretch out on the bed and close my eyes.

    At the ringing of my bedside telephone, I awaken to semi-darkness. Was somebody finally responding to earlier attempts to contact reception? Bronagh’s voice sounds in my ear. 

    “Sorry,” she breathes; did I wake you?”

    “It’s OK,” I croak. “What time is it?” I ask, fishing in my trousers’ pocket for my iPhone.

    “It’s almost midnight.” I hear her lighter rasp; a deep inhalation. “It’s my birthday…”

    “Oh, happy birthday…happy birthday to…” I begin my best Marilyn Monroe impression.

    “OK, OK, I get it. Thanks, but I think I’d rather have you drink with me than sing to me. I have champagne…and proper glasses!”

    “I have Jameson.” I counter. “Meet you at the usual place in five?”   

    “What if we combine your whiskey and my coffee? I also have some aerosol cream.”

    It’s undoubtedly the finest Irish coffee I’ve ever tasted; the most exquisite fusion of whiskey, coffee and cream I’ve ever experienced; and she’s served it in authentic Irish coffee goblets.

    “Here’s to your birthday,” we clink.

    “And here’s to the shortest night,” she grins; “happy solstice…” While I’m well aware of the actual date, its solar significance hadn’t occurred to me.

    “Wow; you were born on the solstice? How fantastic is that?”

    “And my sister Ciaragh was born on the autumn equinox: She’ll be twenty-three in September…Hey, aren’t you going to ask me how old I am?”

    I wasn’t; I’m thinking of another person’s age.

    “It’s not your twenty-first; is it?”

    “Yes, I’m a real millennium baby…”

    We dispense with the coffee and cream after a second round, and then trade anecdotes from our contrasting careers until finally dragging ourselves off to our respective beds to the first hesitant notes of the dawn chorus. I don’t suppose Christmas features very prominently in the minds of many people on the summer solstice, but one particular Yuletide totally dominates my thoughts throughout my first morning of isolation.

    In December ninety-seven I was the junior of three technicians dispatched by our Dublin-based company to update the security system of a recently-burgled computer warehouse down the country. Already booked for a two-night stay at a nearby hotel, we arrived on site early on Monday morning and got straight to work. The job went well, so well that by midmorning on Tuesday the boss was confident that we’d be heading for home well before dusk. Our optimism looked well-founded until the final test, when one-by-one a series of junction boxes began to sparkle like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. When we still hadn’t located the short by eight-thirty, the boss called a halt and suggested we resume on Wednesday morning – Christmas Eve.

    We identified the fault within the hour and by noon everything had been rewired, tested and retested within an inch of its existence. My colleagues departed straight away in their Transit van, leaving me the use of the smaller Renault over the holiday period.  I knew that I too should have headed home right then, before the storm, before the power cut that set every bell of our new alarm system jangling with cacophonous abandon – but I simply had to see the gorgeous young daughter of the widowed hotelier one last time.

    I had just parked after resetting the alarm when a huge pine tree fell, narrowly missing the van but totally blocking the only exit from the hotel car park. With the storm intensifying throughout the afternoon, the kindly hotelier insisted that I should remain at the hotel for another night as his guest rather than risk the fifty-mile drive home.

    Yes, Bronagh is the image of her mother, but I can’t help wondering if Ciaragh might look anything like me…   

Knock-on: Ireland's Own, '23

“You’re new here,” declared the trim, middle-aged man at my bank teller’s window; there was a mischievous glint in his slightly bloodshot eyes. A quick glance at his lodgement book identified him as the town’s foremost auctioneer.

“Yes, Mr Daly; I’ve just been transferred here.” I replied; starting to pinch my way through the wad of banknotes he’d pushed towards me.

“Call me Mick;” he said, and then added, “are you a rugby man, by any chance?” I wasn’t, and I told him so and other than his perfunctory thanks when I stamped and returned his lodgement book, that concluded our first interaction.

What I hadn’t told him was that my roots were deep in the GAA, and ‘Caid is God’ was the unofficial mantra of my home village. Even if Gaelic football wasn’t exactly a religion, no parish priest – past or present – was more revered than our village’s two All-Ireland winning footballers. Growing up in the 60s, long before terms like Sin Bin, HIA and TMO had been conceived, the playing of rugby and other foreign games ranked somewhere between divorce and extramarital sex in the moral psyche of the faithful; an aberration guaranteed to bring enduring infamy to one’s seed, breed and generation.

While I’m not certain of the year of my first football match, I know it happened on my way home from school. I scored a point – well, they allowed me a point but it was really a goal; I was wearing wellingtons and even if there had been a crossbar between the two whitewashed uprights in Murphy’s haggard, I wouldn’t have been able to kick the heavy leather ball over it.  Soon afterwards, when a pair of hand-me-down boots arrived from an older cousin, I was ready for serious action. I was on a proper team by the age of twelve: we even had a set of almost matching jerseys, and so it continued until I got my first start at wing-back on the parish’s senior side a few weeks after my seventeenth birthday. Although the shortest person on the team, I had a good pair of hands and I could leap as high as most six-footers, and while I lacked the silky skills of many more gifted, I was hard, fast, and more persistent than most. In short, I was a pure nuisance to play against, and I’ve frequently shaken the hand of a more vaunted opponent after an hour’s endeavour during which neither of us had actually caught or kicked a ball.

Propelled into the big bad world at the age of eighteen, my total knowledge of rugby had been gleaned from RTÉ television’s coverage of what was then The Five Nations Championship. Rugby Union was amateur in those days, and the concept of a rugby world cup or European club competitions was as inconceivable as intergalactic tourism.

My first banking post was in Dublin; I was a long way from home, but as two car-owning clubmates – an accountant and a Garda – were also city-based, I’d been able to continue playing with my home team. About ten months later, my transfer to the southeast changed everything: not only had I lost my regular lifts to and from home, but there was no public transport combination that could get me back to base on the night of a Sunday match.

For six months I shared the box room of Mrs Mac’s terraced house with a factory worker whose shifts began at 6am. Mrs Mac’s son, his wife and their two-year-old daughter occupied the larger of the two double rooms, while four ANCO trainees were billeted in the back bedroom. With her three bedrooms occupied, Mrs Mac slept on her sitting room sofa bed and, being thrifty in the extreme, introduced us to the concept of pay-per-view TV long before Sky and similar providers would discover the knack. Like me, the ANCO lads were Kojak fans and as they were very poor – I’d seen all four share curiously fragrant roll-up cigarettes – I felt duty-bound to feed Mrs Mac’s TV meter for our weekly fix of ‘who loves ya baby?’ A pattern soon emerged: at the first ad break, with my 10p coins still warm in the slot, Mrs Mac’s would yawn and release the reclining mechanism of her sofa. That was our cue to vacate the room, head upstairs, and try to sleep through the mocking wails of police sirens from the mean streets of New York.

  Sleep was a constant problem as my roommate’s alarm clock would erupt at 5am, by which time Mrs Mac would already have his egg boiled and waiting on the kitchen table. The ANCO lads, who breakfasted at 7am, reckoned that she boiled all the eggs at the same time so when I’d sit down an hour later, my egg would be as hard and cold as a brass bullet. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I would then leave for work with the aromas of frying rashers and sausages, and Mrs Mac’s Sweet Afton cigarette smoke, wafting from her kitchen.

Lunch wasn’t part of Mrs Mac’s package, but she did provide an evening meal: a couple of thin slices of ham or cold chicken, and a half tomato – except on Fridays, when she’d substitute a hardboiled egg for the meat. As the ANCO boys would have already gone home for the weekend, my roomie and I would frequently arrive in the kitchen to find Mrs Mac wearing her Sunday coat above her bedroom slippers, a sure sign that she’d spent the afternoon in the pub where her son worked. On such occasions the teapot would be almost as cold as the egg.  

I got a good Christmas break that year. Due to my distance from home, I was excused on Monday – the Christmas Eve half-day – on condition that I’d be back in harness on the morning of the 27th. After a disjointed, six-hour, coast-to-coast, bus and train relay on Saturday 22nd, I enjoyed four blissful evenings of free RTÉ viewing with my family, but the return journey on St Stephen’s Day grew more dismal with each darkening mile. As my various conveyances rattled east through alien territory, I envied every household I’d glimpse through a festively-lit window, and once I’d reached my destination, I dropped my bag of clean shirts, socks and jocks at the digs and then headed to Ryan’s pub in search of solace.

At the bar counter, John – a counterpart from a rival bank – insisted on buying me a pint. I reciprocated; John bought a third, and with a fourth toasted my agreement to take the recently vacated box room in the house John rented along with two schoolteachers. They had a colour TV, and I wouldn’t have to share or worry about early alarm clocks. On Thursday evening, I paid Mrs Mac two weeks digs in lieu of notice, loaded my worldly goods into John’s car, and bid farewell to my fellow lodgers, and to Mrs Mac, her family, her hardboiled eggs, and her TV meter slot.  

About a week into my tenure, I was amazed to hear John announce that he was going rugby training. John was the least likely athlete imaginable: only slightly taller than me, he was almost three stone heavier, and I had great difficulty imagining him chasing a ball of any size or shape. The C-team, he explained, was a kind of transcendental state – somewhere between purgatory and limbo – where enthusiastic wannabes, superannuated has-beens, serial no-hopers, and those under temporary censure, would tog-out on Sunday afternoons. After the game, they’d shower and then sit down to a steak dinner before enjoying the post-match camaraderie of the clubhouse bar in the presence of a bevy of prospecting female fans. As the club was always on the look-out for new members, John suggested that I join. Having spent six months at Mrs Mac’s, where hot water – or hot anything – was unheard of, the prospect of regular showers, not to mention steak dinners, was too good to ignore. Besides, if John could cope with the training regime; how difficult could it be?

After a few stretches, star-jumps, some half-hearted push-ups, and a half-dozen lukewarm sprints, I found myself selected at right wing on the C-team for the following Sunday – without knowing the difference between rucks and mauls and having never kicked an oval ball. The game was a surreal experience; John, although officially a sub, never left the clubhouse bar, and little of note happened on my wing until a wayward grubber kick bounced into my arms on half-way. I sprinted as if my life depended on it and crossed for a try under the posts. Later, after the A-team had returned from an away game, Mick Daly favoured me with a nod from his seat at the head of the dining table.

My career with the Cs was brief; after scoring two tries in my second game, I was promoted to the Bs and got an instant start at left wing. It was a steep learning curve, a world away from the amiable complacency of the Cs. The B players meant business, and were all out to catch the eyes of the selectors, not to mention those of Mick Daly’s three drop-dead-gorgeous daughters – who attended most training sessions and never missed a home game. The practice sessions were just as combative as the actual matches, as the A players were determined to maintain their status, while their B understudies were equally hell-bent on displacing him.

With the season approaching its conclusion, and both grades progressing in our particular competitions, the training intensity was at an all-time high. In the final A versus B showdown, the A’s fullback rolled his ankle while attempting a mark inside his twenty-five. Conjecture was rife in the pub afterwards as to who would don his number fifteen jersey in Sunday’s cup semi-final, and what the knock-on consequences might be for our B line-up. We were fancied to go all the way in our grade, while the A-team had a tough assignment against the champions of the previous two seasons. Our fullback was adamant, he wasn’t going to risk his place on a successful B-team for the dubious honour of a one-off appearance on a losing A side.

Shortly before eleven on Sunday morning, about forty of us assembled at the clubhouse. From the bar window, we watched two chartered coaches enter the car park through swirling sheets of icy April rain. Our muttered speculation was soon silenced when Mick Daly marched in with a sheet of folded foolscap in either hand. He named the B-team first and as I sat wondering why I hadn’t been included, he nudged in beside me and whispered that after watching my fielding and kicking on Friday night, he reckoned I could cope as stand-in A-team fullback.

Despite the atrocious conditions, I played well, regularly nullifying the strategies of my illustrious opposite number, who’d won two international caps on an Australian tour some years before. Clinging to a two-point lead, and with only seconds remaining, I braced myself as the veteran star shaped to kick for touch. With our line-out seriously malfunctioning, the last thing we needed was another set-piece loss inside our twenty-five. My leap from outside the touch line was worthy of a Croke Park final; I fielded cleanly and spun infield, but as I slalomed past their advancing centres our overenthusiastic out-half  crossed my line, causing me to fumble and knock-on. They pulverised us in the resulting scrum, and pushed-over for a winning try.

Later, as John and some of his C-team friends tried to console me in Ryan’s pub, I overheard Mrs Ryan ask a question. Even after fifty years, the guttural response is still as clear as ever: ‘there’s a young lad from Kerry working in the bank; he’s a lovely little lad, but he knows damn all about rugby’ – but Mick Daly didn’t actually say ‘damn’.                           

Friday's Child (Maurice Walsh award winner, '22)

Dusting the array of photographs on the living room sideboard, his vision blurs. His parents’ wedding day; his father’s mortuary card, the family communions and confirmations, his elder brother’s ordination, the youngest lad’s graduation, the girls’ weddings, their children’s baptisms…

“It’s only me,” a voice calls as the hall door clicks shut. “How’re things, Pat?”

“The same, Mrs Mac; and how’re things with yourself?”

“Ah, the same, Pat; the same; will I make a quick cuppa?” She asks, shrugging her jacket off.

    “Yes, you work away; I’d better go if I’m to be back before twelve...”

    “OK, Pat. You’ll bring her all the news?”

“I will.” He returns his dusting cloth to the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and then stuffs a pair of folded shopping bags into the pockets of his anorak.

“Two bags this week, Pat? Is it her birthday or something?”

“Ah no; we need a few extra bits and pieces…”

“You’re very good to her, Pat; she’s lucky to have you.”

“No, Mrs Mac; ‘tis I’m the lucky one.”

***

In the Post Office queue, Pat acknowledges an occasional enquiry or greeting before collecting her payment and resuming his weekly ritual. In the Aldi store at the far end of town, he buys soda bread, butter, eggs, sugar, tea, coffee, two packets of chocolate biscuits, and a couple of tins of peas and beans. At the checkout, his hand hovers briefly beside a display of sugared jellies. Returning to the town centre, Pat treats himself to a take-away tea and once settled on his favourite bench on the fringe of the open-air farmers’ market, he removes two chocolate digestives from the new packet. Here he can watch the town come and go, his averted gaze holding no threat to the female conversations that buzz around his ears. Unnoticed, he listens for almost an hour, recognising many of the speakers, not just from their voices but from the slanders they trade. How she’d love this: greeting friends and neighbours, savouring the aromas of freshly-baked breads, scones and pastries; sifting through the rainbows of local handknits and crafts, listening to the forgotten childhood sounds of farmyard fowl… Grimacing at a final swallow of cold tea, he checks his wristwatch before hefting his grocery bag and taking his reluctant leave of the colour, vibrancy and pageantry of a sunny Friday morning in late spring.

    “How’re things, Pat?” The publican greets, some five minutes later.

“The same, Jim; the same,” Pat indicates his shopping. “Can I leave the bag for a few minutes?”

“No problem, Pat. Ah well, I suppose that same is something, all the same.”

“Thanks, Jim.” Pat says, turning towards the door.

In the Eurospar store opposite, Pat buys extra milk, cheese, two sliced pans, lamb chops, minced beef, rashers and sausages, and a pound of sliced ham.

“The usual, Pat?” The publican asks on Pat’s return.

“Please, Jim.”

“I’ll bring it over,” Jim says, nodding towards a table by the window.

A moment later, to a tinkling of ice cubes, Jim delivers a glass of sparkling water and the week’s local newspaper.

“I’m afraid someone took the sport section.” Jim says, grimacing in apology.

“No matter; thanks again, Jim.” Pat says, pretending to scan the headlines while his ears home in on the hushed tones from a nearby table. Once or twice, he almost looks up when a particularly tasty snippet filters through from some other part of the bar. Isn’t it always the same? He muses. Just when the drink starts to loosen the tongues, it’s time for me to go

“Another?” Jim asks, surprised to see Pat approach the counter a second time.

“No; no thanks. Jim. Tell me, can I buy a bottle of whiskey from you, please?”

“Whiskey?” Jim gasps. “Will I give you a baby or a noggin, Pat?”

“Can you give me a big bottle, please? One like those...” His hand trembles as he points towards the inverted spirit bottles on the row of optics behind the counter.

“I thought you were looking tired, Pat; maybe ‘twill help you sleep.”

“Maybe it will, at that,” Pat nods, glancing at the wall clock as he pockets his change. His noon deadline is fast approaching.

***

“She never made a sound, Pat.” Mrs Mac says, drowning the song of an exultant thrush from the back garden. She dons her jacket, and then accepts her payment which she zips inside a pocket. “You look tired, Pat; I hope she’ll sleep for you tonight. Anyway, I’ll see you at the same time next Friday, Pat,” she adds, pulling the hall door shut behind her.

Once he has stored the groceries, emptied Mrs Mac’s ashtray, and washed and dried her teacups, Pat starts up the stairs. He knows he should have made the phone calls before Mrs Mac arrival, but his mother deserves one final day’s gossip before they come to take her away for ever.

 Presumed Guilty (Fur, Feather, Pen, 2022)

I know I’m not the first. I’ve heard them talking: among themselves, and with others: in the house, on the street, with passing neighbours. I’ve also heard rumours from further afield, from across town, and even beyond the river – where Cleo, my mother, was born. I’m sure I have cousins there, some may resemble me: dark, lean, but with the piercing ice-blue eyes of our aristocratic ancestors; perhaps one of them has been mistaken for me.

Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself; they call me Charlie, but I was originally named Leo. I’ve never known my dad, but I’ve heard he might be called Tom. I doubt I’ll ever get to meet him, as each change of address takes me still further away from my birthplace. In itself, moving is stressful enough but when relocation means a whole new identity, life can become truly traumatic. In addition to Leo and Charlie, I’ve been called Ollie, Jack and Max, so I’ve decided that it might be best not to respond to any name.

While I won’t pretend that life is perfect, I do have a roof over my head and food in my belly, and I can come and go as I please – most of the time. In actual fact, I’m almost as independent as I’ve ever been. It does, however, take time to get ones bearings; to adjust to new surroundings; to suss out strangers; to avoid unnecessary conflicts; to find the path of least resistance. It’s by mistakes we learn, they say, and with my history I should be a walking encyclopaedia by now.

I will never be perceived as a saint, nor would I wish to be; I am a product of natural selection, of evolution, designed to behave precisely as I do. We are all powerless against the imprint of our DNA, and no one has the right to judge another by their own standards. In truth, there are few of us who haven’t jumped to conclusions at some stage or other, and part of me can understand the fallout from the incident with Polly from next-door – it’s classic give a dog a bad name syndrome. While I wouldn’t agree that I actually stalked Polly, I did hang around her house, and there were nights when I did peep through her curtains, but she started it: the constant teasing and preening; flaunting her prettiness before me. They recognised me, of course, with my ice-blue eyes, but why did it never occur to any of them that Polly might have been already dead before I pulled her from beneath the hedge? Was it my fault if somebody left a door open and the silly creature sneaked outside to ultimately die of exposure?

I can’t imagine what my next name might be, or where I’ll eventually end up. Probably with some kindly old lady who won’t allow me in her bed until after I’ve had the snip. In the meantime I’ll just continue as I am, like any normal tomcat.  

First Sub (Aethlon - University of East Tennessee)

I’m not very tall now, but on my sister’s seventh birthday I almost had crick in my neck from looking up at her guests – most of whom were two years my junior. The strange thing was, by then, I had fully accepted my lack of inches compared with other boys of my age, but girls – especially younger girls – were a different story. But that wasn’t the only reason I refused a party for my ninth birthday: no party could outdo the present my parents had already agreed to give me: a replica of the full Leeds United home strip, complete with Johnny Giles’s number ten on the back of my pristine white shirt.

I thought Saturday would never come. When it did, with typically chilly November squalls, I was the first boy on the plots, the little patch of threadbare grass at the end of our cul-de-sac. I’d arrived fully decked out in my new gear and a new pair of second-hand boots, dribbling the football I’d bought with my birthday money from grandparents, uncles, aunts and neighbours. The regular Saturday footballers began to arrive after about half an hour – first in ones or twos, then in little groups of three or four. They were all in my school: some in my class, a few were a year ahead, while most were a year or two behind. Whatever about my Leeds strip, they all admired my new ball, and wanted to feel its pressure and get a few kicks at it before Mack and Shanny – Jim McCormack and Richie Shanahan, two of the elders from third class – began the task of selecting their teams for the game proper.     

It was a great match. We played nine-a-side and I was on Mack’s team. We won 7-6, and I passed the ball to Mackóg – Mack’s younger brother – for the winning goal. I told Dad when he came home from work, he was delighted and, while Mam had tut-tutted at my state of dishevelment following the match, she didn’t rant too much when scrubbing the muck out of my gear. My sister, however, was a different story, she yucked from the moment I walked into the kitchen, and continued to yuck until I’d crept upstairs for my bath. If that wasn’t bad enough, she would yuck intermittently for days afterwards, whether at home, on the street, or even in the schoolyard, whenever I’d incur her wrath – as brothers of that age frequently do. 

Our playing pitch didn’t have goalposts, but we improvised with coats and jackets, and we observed an imaginary crossbar which was determined by Mack or Shanny standing on the imaginary goal line and stretching a raised arm to its optimum extent. Strangely enough, disputes about whether a particular shot had been under or over the crossbar were rare, but whenever we would reach an impasse, the matter would be settled by the captain of the offensive team taking a penalty kick, with the opposing captain in goal. Mack and Shanny were captains, managers, referees and linesmen. They were also best friends, and both were star members of the town’s under-twelves team. The origins of the crossbar resolution are vague, but Dad was adamant that nothing so conciliatory had existed in his day. 

I wasn’t first to the pitch on the following Saturday: Jamie Clarke beat me by almost thirty seconds – with his new football. We had a good knock-about, with our number steadily growing until the captains finally arrived. Pick quick! I mentally urged, as a covert headcount of our waiting semi-circle revealed a total pool of twenty players. But it wasn’t that simple. The previous week’s form had to be carefully considered and as the selection progressed it became increasingly obvious that both line-ups would be greatly changed from the previous week. We were down to the last three no-hopers when Willie Nugent shambled towards us from the footpath. Mack instantly nominated Willie, Shanny deliberated for a moment before giving his vote to Mikey Roche, and then there were two… I squeezed my eyes, invoking the intercession of every saint I’d ever heard of, and every ancestor whose name I could remember, but to no avail. When Mack waved young Dessie Dunne to his side, Shanny shrugged helplessly and assured me that I was first sub.

I was already well aware of the benefits of being first sub and, although I didn’t need to hear them again, Shanny pointed out that I would get a game just as soon as somebody else turned up, or should any player have to leave the game for whatever reason. Alas, saints and ancestors remained equally heedless of my entreaties: there were no broken legs or collar bones, no torn hamstrings or pulled muscles, not even a single blackened eye or bloodied nose; neither did any of the figures that would briefly appear between the rows of nearby houses materialise into the necessary counterbalancing player. I still don’t know which side won that game, nor do I care. I think I might have prayed that both sides would lose.     

I’ve no idea who first coined the maxim, you win some; you lose some, but my situation throughout the rest of that winter was more a case of sometimes I play, sometimes I don’t. As spring progressed, I noticed that the number of lads who wore coats and jackets to the plots grew fewer by the week, with a resulting scarcity of goalpost material. Fortunately for me, Mam was dead against shedding one’s layers too soon and insisted that I wore a pullover and jacket over my Leeds colours, even on the sunniest of April days. As the number of shirted boys continued to increase, so did the currency of my jumper and jacket, but I refused to have either garment used as a goalpost until I had secured my place in one or other of the teams. Despite repeated pleas from both Mam and Dad, I continued to wear my jumper and jacket to the plots until the summer break. With regular game-time my confidence grew in direct proportion to my team mates’ appreciation of my greatest natural asset: a half-decent burst of speed from a standing start. Also, I had earned a nickname: Gilesie.

I was delighted with my moniker: Johnny Giles was my hero. Looking back now I thank my lucky stars that mine was an era long before the arrival of Sky TV and the razzmatazz of the English Premier and UEFA Champions leagues. Whenever I see star line-ups walk hand-in-hand with delighted togged-out children, I cringe. Had such sights existed in my time, I’d certainly have been more Mascot than Messi. Much has changed since the day I introduced that first Leeds jersey to the plots. Jerseys of any kind were scarce back then, as were proper shorts, and, while most lads had some degree of appropriate footwear, Willie Nugent would play in wellingtons whenever his big brother would commandeer their household’s only pair of boots. Only two other lads had jerseys with club crests: one Liverpool and one Chelsea. Plain blue or red jerseys were common, but many of the lads wore T-shirts or bright gender-neutral tops discarded by – or purloined from – sisters, mothers or parcels from America.

I presently coach our under-tens. We train on an all-weather pitch; we have goalposts, nets, markings, cones, bibs, corner flags and covered dugouts, and we have dressing rooms with hot showers available at all times. While these are necessary, and not before time, virtually all of the lads not only have their favourite Premier League club’s current home and away strips, but also those of Celtic, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Ireland, Argentina, Germany and Brazil. I often smile, recalling how some of my contemporaries ended up adopting the club whose colours most closely resembled whatever ensemble of cast-offs had come their way.

Summer coaching camps were still unheard of when I was nine, but I spent almost every day of those holidays in the plots, kicking my ball towards anybody whom I thought might pass it back. Many didn’t, but I frequently managed to lure some of my younger neighbours into an impromptu kick-about. Our weekly game resumed on the last Saturday of September, and I was thrilled beyond words when Shanny finger-hooked me to his side with five other options still available. It got better: I scored my first ever goal mid-way through the second half. We lost 8-6, but the result didn’t matter. Shanny picked me again on the following Saturday, this time ahead of seven others. I didn’t score, but we won 5-4.

Within a year, I found myself getting an occasional game with the town’s under-twelves. I was usually the smallest on the team but what did size matter, anyway? In subsequent years, I established myself at each new age level and finally made my senior debut, as first sub, at the age of eighteen. Ours is a small club, in a small town, but it took another two years before I would become the automatic choice at number eleven. I loved soccer, it was so important to me that I never considered applying for any job which would have necessitated a move away from home and the club. By then, Shanny and Mackóg were work colleagues as well as team mates, with all three of us gainfully employed in the club chairman’s electronics firm. Wellies Nugent, Mikey Roche and Dessie Dunne had also made the transition from the plots to the senior squad, and we all drew inspiration from the cross-channel exploits of our former team mate: Mack – who, after being capped by Ireland at youth level, had trials at First Division Everton and Sunderland before becoming one of the most charismatic characters in the English second tier.

In my third season, the club gained promotion to the first division of our district league and quickly established itself as solid mid-table force. We also had some good cup runs, reaching two semi-finals. Twenty years – almost to the day – after my first goal in the plots, I was appointed club captain – with Mackóg as vice-captain – when a knee injury forced Shanny to hang up his boots. By then I was coaching our under-sixteens, arguably the most gifted bunch of youngsters I have ever encountered.

My captaincy coincided with the club reaching new heights, finishing third, fourth and third, again, in the following three seasons. Where hope had once flagged, belief now flourished. Several of my former under-sixteens were maturing into staunch performers, and I harboured secret hopes that some of these lads would soon provide us with the missing ingredient, that elusive something which transforms also-rans into champions.

After three weeks of preseason training, I was even more impressed with my former charges and I thought it a pity that no more than two or three of the young stars would get an early opportunity to claim a place in our side. These lads had it all: skill, speed, size, strength, not to mention an appreciation of the game that belied their tender years. I delayed showering after our final training session and watched the youngsters play a quick five-a-side. I could almost visualise life beyond my playing days, a time when I might possibly find pleasure in watching others do what I used to do – what I will always want to do. Yes, I smiled, deciding on the three that could finally push us to the top. The outlook was bright: I would captain our very first league winning team.

The match day tension was palpable in the dressing room. Watching young eyes focus covetously on the jersey bag, my heart ached for those facing imminent disappointment. But Shanny, our new manager, understood; he’d been there before. He didn’t prolong the agony.

“OK, lads; listen up. The team is: Dropsy, Jacko, Lukey, Wellies and Chilly – welcome, Chilly. Mackóg, Tosh – welcome, Tosh; Sully, Dessie, Jockey and Spud – welcome, Spud. Subs: Gilesie…”            

Driftwood

Angela isn’t exactly sure when her loathing of public holidays first began, when each impending break from work had become a source of anguish rather than joy. She had once adored such breaks, and had perfected the art of manipulating isolated bank holidays into an extra week of annual leave – providing a more senior colleague hadn’t beaten her to the punch. She had never understood her co-workers’ obsession with sun holidays and foreign travel. To Angela, time off had mattered more than the time of year; time off had meant time at home: with her parents, her brother and sisters, her old school pals, in the place she still loves and had never wanted to leave.

Both her parents are long gone, and it’s almost eleven years since her brother lost his brave battle with cancer. Her estranged sister-in-law now rules the roost in the old family home – the house into which, as the eldest, Angela had felt duty-bound to plough every spare penny of her first decade’s earnings. Angela has seen her three sisters marry and bear children – the youngest, Martha, is granny to a pair of toddlers. It’s been over ten years since Angela last spent a night in any of her siblings’ homes; her only remaining family contact is with twice-divorced Martha, who frequently escapes the chaos of real life to spend a weekend with her in Dublin.

While Angela dreads all holidays, the ever-lengthening yuletide preamble sends a particularly cold shiver up her spine. She doesn’t need to be reminded of that first Christmas she’d had to stay in Dublin, without family, without presents, without God. That was when she’d had to part with her car, having failed a breathalyser test when driving home from the office party. Not that she misses the car: cars are only of use to those who have someplace to go. Nowadays, two buses get her to and from work and, whenever office protocol calls for an after-work drink, she takes a cab home.

Angela came home by cab yesterday, Sunday, after another wasted afternoon in the city centre. He had purported to be a widower, living alone since his youngest son had decamped to Australia. She’d had her suspicions even before his muted phone began to vibrate on the café table, just moments after he’d gone to the washroom. The sight of Home calling on the illuminated screen had brought little surprise and even less disappointment: Angela hadn’t spent the greater part of her adult life listening to tales of woe without learning to identify the tall from the true.

Though she does enjoy browsing the profiles of those who contact her online, she hasn’t uploaded her photo, nor has she disclosed her real name or occupation on her page. In truth, she is thankful to Martha for browbeating her into joining up. Angela now accepts that fifteen minutes spent surfing a dating site is more appealing than the thought of wasting another fifteen years trawling the hostelries of Temple Bar in the forlorn hope of unearthing an eligible bachelor. Martha, although living in the middle of nowhere, is having a cyber-dating ball; she says her only regret is not having signed up years sooner. But that’s Martha for you; Martha’s criteria are somewhat more fluid than Angela’s: Martha’s priority is the now, the Mr-right-now, while Angela still harbours hopes of meeting the Mr Right.

Angela describes herself as a single, mature, career lady – non-smoker, seldom drinker – with own home, who would like to meet a professional, or business type, with a view to friendship, beach walks, evenings out, and maybe more. During a recent stay Martha had quipped that Angela should consider approaches from married tradesmen – or even randy handymen – before her house falls down around her ears. What Martha doesn’t know, however, is that Angela is now active on three further sites – two of which she joined over Christmas, with details and aspirations similar to those of her first venture. She found a new site on St Patrick’s Day, a free site, where she is less specific about the occupations and locations of possible matches.

Studying her reflection in the overmantle mirror, Angela sees a face that would not look out of place at a parent/teacher meeting, ploughing match or ICA do. Though it could never have been described as beautiful, hers is an open face – uncomplicated, unpretentious. It’s the family face, her mother’s face, shared by all four sisters – despite Martha’s best efforts to disguise hers with an endless series of makeovers.

While Martha insists she and Angela are quite similar, Angela believes that any resemblance is merely skin-deep. Angela had never caused her parents a moment’s bother; Martha was smoking at twelve, drinking at fourteen, dropping out of school before her Junior Cert, and pregnant at sixteen. Even motherhood hadn’t deterred Martha from a series of dysfunctional relationships, including two disastrous marriages, leaving her with neither father nor guardian for any of her four children.

Angela opens her laptop but doesn’t power it up. Absently, she re-closes the lid, her attention now drawn to a movement on the sunlit ledge of her living room window. She paddles her office chair closer to watch an industrious spider secure thread after gossamer thread between the forked arms of a piece of weathered driftwood. Apparently oblivious to Angela’s presence, the little creature seems totally focussed on spinning her intricate geometric pattern across the interior of her trap.

“I suppose I’m safer looking at this web than the world-wide one,” Angela sighs, but her ghost of a smile soon darkens to a scowl as her gaze wanders beyond the relentless march of black mould along the PVC window frame, to her peeling wallpaper and the foreboding expanse of cumulus on her once-white ceiling.

“Bloody bank holidays,” she hisses; “too much time to reminisce, to notice, to ponder.” But the obvious aren’t the only problems with Angela’s bungalow. What if she hadn’t paid for those improvements to her parents’ home? What if she’d begun saving on her own behalf in the eighties instead of the nineties? What if she’d bought this, or any house, before the property boom? Yes, she might have found a place she’d actually liked – a home she could have grown to love – and, she’d probably be mortgage-free by now. Instead, she had paid more than double what her two-bedroom money-pit is actually worth, and she had then been faced with the enormous task of finding people to carry out the repairs necessary to make the old building habitable.

Every phonecall had yielded the same result: any builder worthy of the name was engaged on bigger projects, and those she had eventually found through leaflets and fliers – though exorbitant in the extreme – had proved nothing more than botch-jobbing fly-by-night cowboys. Even when reputable builders had again become available, tougher mortgage and insurance conditions, pension levies, service charges, property tax and universal social charges had left her disposable income far short of what she’d anticipated when pledging a quarter-century of repayments to a toxic cocktail of lending institutions.

“And thanks to Covid-19 and Brexit, it’ll happen all over again,” she groans. “I’m just a piece of driftwood, at the whim of every wave and wind.”

Her kettle has boiled; she doesn’t remember switching it on – she hadn’t even realised she was in the kitchen. She reaches for the coffee jar in the overhead cupboard. No; coffee is no good without a cigarette, and she hasn’t smoked for over a month, not since Martha’s last visit. She scalds the teapot but, deciding that a single mug is all she wants, returns it to the hob. She pours water on a teabag, swirls it a few times, squeezes it with a spoon, and then removes it before adding a splash of milk.