Trey has seen all these men since she was a baby, but she’s seen them giving her a brief neutral glance on the road or in the shop, or—the last couple of years—discussing furniture repairs over her head with Cal. She’s never seen them like this, taking their ease together with a few drinks on them. She’s never seen them here. Her dad’s friends, before he went away, were quick-moving men who picked up bits of work here and there, on other men’s farms or in other men’s factories, or who didn’t work at all. These are solid men, farmers who own their land and work it well, and who four years ago would never have thought of coming up the mountain to sit in Johnny Reddy’s front room. Her dad was right in this much, anyway: he’s brought a change with him.

The tight-wound, glittery buzz that was coming off him earlier is gone; he’s breezy as spring. He’s poured the men lavish drinks, and put ashtrays at the smokers’ elbows. He’s asked after their parents by name and by ailment. He’s told stories about the wonders of London, and stories that make the men bellow with laughter, and stories where he has to skip bits with a wink to the men and a tilt of his head at Trey. He’s charmed stories out of each one of them, and been enthralled or impressed or sympathetic. Trey’s feeling towards him, which was pure anger, is becoming shaded over by scorn. He’s like a performing monkey, doing his tricks and somersaults and holding out his cap to beg for peanuts. She preferred her fury clean.

She did her own tricks for the men when they arrived, just like her dad wanted, showing them into the sitting room and asking after their furniture, nodding and saying That’s great thanks when they praised it. Her anger towards them is untouched.

Johnny waits till halfway into the third drink, when the men have relaxed deep into their chairs but before their laughter takes on an uncontrolled edge, to thread Cillian Rushborough into the conversation. Bit by bit, as he talks, the room changes. It becomes focused. The overhead bulb isn’t bright enough, and the fringed lampshade gives its light a murky tinge; when the men stay still to listen, it smears deep, tricky shadows into their faces. Trey wonders how well her father remembers these men; how many of the fundamental and silent things about them he’s forgotten, or overlooked all along.

“Well, holy God,” Mart Lavin says, leaning back in his armchair. He looks like Christmas just came early. “I underestimated you, young fella. Here I thought you’d be offering us some shitey music festival, or bus tours for Yanks. And all the time you’ve got the Klondike waiting at our doors.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Bobby Feeney says, awed. Bobby is little and round, and when his eyes and mouth go round as well, he looks like a toy that’s meant to roll. “And me out in them fields every day of my life. I never woulda guessed.”

P.J. Fallon has his gangly legs wound around the legs of his chair, to help him think. “Are you positive, now?” he asks Johnny.

“Course he’s not fuckin’ positive,” Senan Maguire says. “A few bedtime stories, is all he has. I wouldn’t cross the road for that.”

Senan is a big man, with a ham of a face and a low tolerance for shite. Trey reckons Senan is her dad’s main obstacle. Bobby Feeney and P.J. Fallon are both easily led, Francie Gannon goes his own way and lets other people be fools if they want, nobody listens to Dessie Duggan, everyone knows Sonny McHugh would do anything for a few quid, and Con McHugh is the youngest of eight so it doesn’t matter what he thinks. Mart Lavin disagrees with everything he encounters, often purely for the pleasure of arguing about it, but everyone is used to that and discounts it. Senan has no patience. If he decides this is foolishness, he’ll want to stamp it out altogether.

“That’s what I thought, at the start,” Johnny agrees. “Some aul’ story his granny heard, and maybe misremembered, or maybe just made up to keep a child entertained; sure, that’s not enough to go on. Only this lad Rushborough, he’s not a man you’d write off. Ye’ll see what I mean. He’s a man you’d take seriously. So I said I’d sit down with him and a map of the townland, and listen to what he had to say.”

He looks around at the men. Francie’s bony face is expressionless and Senan’s is pure disbelief, but they’re all listening.

“Here’s the thing, lads. Whatever’s at the bottom of this story, it’s not made up outa thin air. And if it’s been misremembered along the way, it’s funny how it’s been misremembered to add up awful neat. Them spots Rushborough’s granny told him about, they’re actual places. I can pin down every one of them, within a few yards. And they’re not just scattered around here, there and everywhere. They’re in a line, give or take, from the foot of this mountain down through all your land to the river. Rushborough reckons there usedta be another river there, that’s dried up now, and it washed the gold down from the mountain.”

“There was another river there, all right,” Dessie says, leaning forward. Dessie always raises his voice a little too loud, like he expects someone to try and talk over him. “The bed of it goes across my back field. Gives me a pain in the hole with the plowing, every year.”

“There’s dried-up riverbeds everywhere,” Senan says. “That doesn’t mean there’s gold in them.”

“What it means,” Johnny says, “is there’s something in Rushborough’s story. I don’t know about the rest of ye, but I wouldn’t mind finding out how much.”

“Your man sounds like a fuckin’ eejit,” Senan says. “How much will this cost him, hah? Machinery, and labor, and fuck knows what else, and no guarantee that he’ll get a cent out of it.”

“Don’t be codding yourself,” Johnny says. “Rushborough’s no fool. A fool wouldn’ta got where he is. He can afford to indulge himself, and this is what he fancies. The way another man might buy a racehorse, or go sailing his yacht around the world. It’s not about the cash—although he wouldn’t turn down a bit more of that. This fella’s mad on his Irish roots. He was reared on rebel songs and pints of porter. He’d get tears in his eyes talking about how the Brits tied James Connolly to a chair to shoot him. He’s after his heritage.”

“Plastic Paddy,” says Sonny McHugh, with tolerant scorn. Sonny is a large man, with a spray of dusty-looking curls and a spreading belly, but he has a small man’s quack of a voice; it sounds stupid coming out of him. “We’ve a cousin like that. In Boston. He came over for the summer, three or four years back, d’ye remember? The young fella with the big thick neck on him? He brought us a digital camera for a present, in case we hadn’t seen one before. Couldn’t believe we knew The Simpsons. Shoulda seen the look on the poor fucker when he saw our house.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your house,” Bobby says, perplexed. “You’ve the double glazing and all.”

“I know, yeah. He thought we’d be in a thatched cottage.”

“My land’s not a tourist attraction,” Senan says. He has his feet planted wide apart and his arms folded. “I’m not having some gobshite trampling all over it, frightening my ewes, just because his granny sang him ‘Galway Bay.’ ”

“He wouldn’t be trampling all over your land,” Johnny says. “Not to start with, anyway. He wants to start off panning in the river; easier than digging. If he finds gold in that river, even a small little biteen, he’ll be delighted to pay each and every one of ye a lovely chunk of cash for the opportunity of doing some digging on your land.”

That gets a brief, vivid silence. Con glances at Sonny. Bobby’s mouth is wide open.

“How much digging?” Senan asks.

“Samples, he’d want, first off. Just stick a wee tube down into the soil and see what it brings up. That’s all.”

“How much cash?” asks Sonny.

Johnny turns up his palms. “That’s up to yourselves, sure. Whatever you can negotiate with him. A grand each, easy. Maybe two, depending on what mood he’s in.”

“For the samples, only.”

“Ah, God, yeah. If he finds what he’s after, it’ll be a lot more than that.”

Trey has been so focused on her dad, she hadn’t thought about the fact that these men would be making money from his plan. The surge of helpless rage burns in her throat. Even if he knew about Brendan, Johnny would be grand with filling up Ardnakelty’s pockets, as long as he got what he wanted. Trey isn’t. As far as she’s concerned, all of Ardnakelty can fuck itself to eternity and beyond. She would rather pull out her own fingernails with pliers than do anyone here a favor.

“If there’s gold there…” says Con McHugh. He’s the youngest of the men, a big lad with rumpled dark hair and a handsome, open face. “My God, lads. Imagine that.”

“Ah, it’s there,” Johnny says, as easily as if he was talking about milk in the fridge. “My young one over there, she learned all about it in school. Didn’t you, sweetheart?”

It takes Trey a second to realize he means her. She forgot he knew she was there. “Yeah,” she says.

“What did Teacher say about it?”

All the men’s faces have turned towards Trey. She thinks about saying the teacher told them the gold was round the other side of the mountains, or that it was all dug up a thousand years back. Her dad would beat her afterwards, if he could catch her, but she doesn’t consider that worth factoring into her decision. Even if she said it, though, the men might not be swayed by what some teacher from Wicklow thought. Her dad is a good talker; he might still talk them round. And she would have wasted her chance.

“He said there’s gold at the bottom of the mountain,” she says. “And people usedta dig it up and make things out of it. Jewelry. It’s in the museums in Dublin now.”

“I saw a program about that on the telly,” says Con, leaning forward. “Brooches the size of your hand, and big twisty necklaces. Beautiful, so they were. The shine offa them.”

“You’d look only gorgeous in one of them,” Senan tells him.

“He wants them for Aileen,” Sonny says. “Great big lad like him fits in her pocket—”

“How’d you get out tonight, hah, Con?”

“She thinks he’s off getting her flowers.”

“He went out the back window.”

“She’s got one of them GPS trackers on him. She’ll be banging on the door any minute.”

“Get in behind the sofa there, Con, we’ll say we never saw you—”

They’re not just having the crack. Each of them, even Con reddening and telling the rest to fuck off, has one eye sliding to Johnny. They’re making time, to assess what they think of him and his story and his idea.

While they’re doing it, Trey’s dad gives her a tiny approving nod. She gives him a blank look back.

“I’m only saying,” Con says, when he’s shaken free of the slagging and the other men have settled back, grinning, into their seats. “I wouldn’t say no to a shovelful or two of that stuff.”

“Would any of ye?” Johnny asks.

Trey watches them picture it. They look younger when they do, like they could move faster. Their hands have gone still, letting their cigarettes burn away.

“You’d have to keep a bit,” Con says. His voice has a dreamy hush. “A wee bit, only. For a souvenir, like.”

“Fuck that,” Senan says. “I’d have a Caribbean cruise for my souvenir. And a nanny to mind the kids on board, so the missus and meself could drink cocktails outa coconuts in peace.”

“California,” Bobby says. “That’s where I’d go. You can go round all the film studios, and have your dinner at restaurants where your woman Scarlett Johansson does be sitting at the next table—”

“Your mammy wouldn’t have any of that,” Senan tells him. “She’ll want to go to Lourdes, or Medjugorje.”

“We’ll do the lot,” Bobby says. His color is up. “Feck it, why not? My mammy’s eighty-one, how many more chances will she have?”

“And this drought can go and shite,” Sonny says, on a rising burst of exuberance. “Bring it on, hah? If there’s no grass and no hay, I’ll buy in the best feed, and my cattle can eat like lords all year round. In a brand-new barn.”

“Jesus, will you listen to this fella,” Mart says. “Have you no sense of romance, boyo? Get yourself an aul’ Lamborghini, and a Russian supermodel to ride in it with you.”

“A barn’ll last longer. A Lamborghini’d be bolloxed in a year, on these roads.”

“So would a Russian supermodel,” says Dessie, snickering.

“The Lamborghini’s for your road trip across America,” Mart explains. “Or Brazil, or Nepal, or wherever puts a glint in your eye. I wouldn’t say the roads in Nepal are much better than ours, mind you.”

Johnny is laughing, topping up Bobby’s whiskey, but Trey catches his watchful eye on Mart. He’s trying to figure out whether the encouragement is sincere, or whether Mart is playing at something. Obviously he remembers this much, at least: Mart Lavin is always playing at something.

He remembers Francie, too. Francie is saying nothing, but Johnny leaves him to it without so much as a glance. Francie doesn’t like being nudged, even a little.

Trey adjusts her thoughts on her father. With her, he’s so ham-fisted he doesn’t even realize it, but with other people he’s deft. Scuppering his plan is likely to be harder than she thought. Trey has little practice trying to be deft with anyone.

“I’d have the finest ram in this country,” P.J. says with decision. “I’d have that young fella from the Netherlands that went for four hundred grand.”

“Sure, you’d have no need to wear yourself out raising sheep any more,” Mart tells him. “You could just sit back and watch the gold pop up outa your land. With a butler bringing you food on toothpicks.”

“Jesus, hold your horses there, lads,” Johnny says, raising his hands, grinning. “I’m not saying ye’ll be millionaires. We won’t know how much is in there till we start looking. It might be enough for butlers and road trips, or it might only be enough for a week in Lanzarote. Don’t be getting ahead of yourselves.”

“I’d have the sheep anyway,” P.J. tells Mart, after some thought. “I’m used to them, like.”

“We’d have all the newspapers coming down here,” Dessie says. The thought makes him glow a bit, all over his baldy head. Dessie, as Mrs. Duggan’s son and Noreen’s husband, has always been one step away from the center of things. “And the lads off the telly, and the radio. To interview us, like.”

“You’d make a mint offa them,” Mart tells him. “They’d all buy their lunches outa your missus’s shop. They’d be Dubs, sure. The Dubs would never think of bringing their own sandwiches.”

“Would I have to be interviewed?” P.J. asks, worried. “I never done that before.”