“If he does, will the place believe him?”
“Dunno. Some of ’em will.”
“Francie fuckin’ Gannon. That dry aul’ shite’s just looking for an excuse to wreck everything.” Johnny spits blood into the pan. “I can do without Francie. Everyone knows what he’s like, sure. How about the rest? Do they trust Hooper?”
The question is a complicated one, and Trey has no intention of going into the details. “Sorta,” she says.
Johnny gives a harsh laugh. “Look at that. A fuckin’ cop, and a Yank, and my own home place’d take his word over mine.” His voice is rising. “Every fuckin’ time, any chance they get, spitting in my face like I’m—Aah!” He flinches and slaps Sheila’s hand away furiously. “The fuck was that?”
“I said not to wake the children,” Sheila says.
They stare at each other. For a second Trey thinks he’s going to hit her. She readies herself.
Johnny slumps back into the sofa. “Sure, it’s not the end of the world,” he says. His nose is still bleeding; Sheila mops up the trickle. “No need to panic. Some of the lads’ll stick. And they’ll bring in more. We’ll find a way. It might take a wee bit longer, but we’ll get there in the end, so we will.”
“Course,” Trey says. “It’ll be grand. I’ll help.” She’s not going to let her dad give up and do a legger, when he’s only taken a few hundred quid off each of those men. Brendan is worth more than that.
Johnny focuses on her and brings out a smile, which makes him wince. “Someone’s got faith in me, anyway,” he says. “Daddy’s sorry for giving out. I shoulda known better, isn’t that right? I shoulda known you’d never say a word.”
Trey shrugs.
“That was only brilliant tonight, the way you walked into the pub. I shoulda thought of that. The faces on those great eejits, hah? I thought Bobby Feeney’s big fat head was going to explode.”
“They fell for it,” Trey says.
“They fuckin’ did. Hook, line, and sinker. ’Twas only beautiful; I’da watched that all night long. We’ll teach them to fuck with the Reddys, hah?”
Trey nods. She expected to hate bringing out the gold in the pub, talking shite with everyone staring at her; she was unprepared for the burst of power. She had those men by the noses, to lead wherever she wanted. She could have made them get up out of their seats, leave their pints and traipse obediently around the mountain, along every trail she took when she was hunting for Brendan. She could have walked the lot of them straight into a bog.
Sheila turns Johnny’s chin towards her so she can get at the other side of his face. “Now,” he says, rolling an eye over his shoulder to catch Trey’s, “I’ve another wee job for you. Tomorrow morning, you go down to that smartarse Hooper and ask him, nice and polite like, to mind his own fuckin’ business, as a favor to you. Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah,” Trey says. “No problem.” She wants Cal out of this as much as her dad does. She doesn’t like being on the same side as her dad. It leaves her with a strange, prickly sense of outrage.
“You explain to him that no one’ll believe him. If he meddles, he’ll do nothing but get you in trouble. That oughta do it.” Johnny smiles at her, lopsided. “And after that, it’s plain sailing all the way. Happy days, hah?”
The door creaks. Alanna stands half in, half out of the room, wearing an old T-shirt of Trey’s, with her stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm. “What happened?” she says.
“Go back to bed,” Sheila says sharply.
“Ah, sweetheart,” Johnny says, snapping alert to give Alanna a big smile. “Your big silly daddy fell over. Wouldja look at the state of me? Your mammy’s just tidying me up a wee bit, and then I’ll be in to give you a good-night hug.”
Alanna stares, wide-eyed. “Get her to bed,” Sheila says to Trey.
“Come on,” Trey says, steering Alanna back into the hall. Johnny waves to them both as they go, grinning like a fool through the blood and the dish towel.
“Did he fall over?” Alanna wants to know.
“Nah,” Trey says. “He got in a fight.”
“With who?”
“None a your business.”
She’s heading for Alanna and Liam’s room, but Alanna balks and pulls at her T-shirt. “Want to come in with you.”
“If you don’t wake Maeve.”
“I won’t.”
The bedroom is too hot, even with the window open. Maeve has kicked off her sheet and is sprawled on her stomach. Trey guides Alanna through the tangle of clothes and who knows what on the floor. “Now,” she says, pulling the sheet over the two of them. “Shh.”
“I don’t want him to stay,” Alanna tells her, in what’s meant to be a whisper. “Liam does.”
“He won’t stay,” Trey says.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause. That’s how he is. Shh.”
Alanna nods, accepting that. In no time she’s asleep, snuffling into her rabbit’s head. Her hair smells of gummy bears and is faintly sticky against Trey’s face.
Trey stays awake, listening to the silence from the sitting room. The curtain stirs sluggishly in the feeble breeze. Once there’s a sudden strangled roar of pain from Johnny and a sharp word from Sheila, which Trey reckons is her setting his nose back into line. Then the silence rises to wall them off again. Alanna’s breathing doesn’t change.
It takes Cal a long time to get home. The adrenaline has leached out of him, leaving his limbs heavy and unwieldy as wet sandbags. The moon has sunk behind the mountains, and the night is dark and simmering hot. When he finally rounds the bend and his house comes into view, the living-room windows are lit, small and valiant against the black huddle of the mountains.
Cal stands still among the moths and rustles, leaning on the roadside wall with both hands, his mind groping for what intruder this might be and where he’s going to find the force to drive them out. His thigh and his forehead are throbbing. For a second he considers just lying down and going to sleep under a hedge, and dealing with this in the morning.
Then a shape crosses the window. Even at this distance, Cal knows it for Lena, by the line of her back and by the moving sheen of the lamplight on her fair hair. He takes a breath. Then he straightens up and heads down the dark road, his big old sandbag feet catching in potholes, towards home.
The dogs signal his arrival early enough that Lena is at the door to meet him. She’s barefoot, and the house smells of tea and toast. She’s been waiting awhile.
“Hey,” Cal says.
Lena’s eyebrows go up, and she moves him into the light so she can examine his face. “Johnny, yeah?” she inquires.
“He looks worse’n I do.”
“That’s nice,” Lena says. She turns his head to one side and the other, assessing the damage. “Dessie went home and told Noreen about Trey coming into the pub,” she says, “and Noreen was onto me so fast she left skid marks. So I thought I’d call round and see what you made of it. I guessed right, or near enough.”
Cal takes her hand away from his cheek and wraps his arms around her. He stands there for a long time, with his face down in the warmth of her hair, feeling the steady thump of her heart against his chest and the strength of her hands on his back.
Mart, whom Cal has been expecting, shows up in the morning, as Lena is leaving. He hangs back at the gate, being discreet as obtrusively as possible and grinning his head off, while Lena kisses Cal goodbye on the doorstep. When she starts up her car, Mart opens the gate for her and gives a big wave as she drives past. Lena lifts a hand without looking at him.
Cal, not wanting to be obliged to invite Mart in, heads down to the gate. “D’you see what I mean, now?” Mart says, sighing. “That one’s got no time for me. If I was the sensitive type, I’d be wounded right to the heart.”
“You were just aiming to see if you could fluster her,” Cal says. Rip and Kojak gallop off to inspect the perimeter together.
“I wouldn’t waste my time,” Mart says. “Lena Dunne’s not easy flustered.”
“You’d have to do a lot better’n that,” Cal agrees.
Mart watches the car disappear behind the hedges. He’s given no sign of noticing Cal’s various injuries, which this morning are pretty tender and hard to miss. “What would ye be talking about, the two of ye?” he inquires.
The question startles Cal. “Like what?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. One way or t’other, I’ve never had much opportunity for conversation with the women—apart from my mammy, and sure, I knew what she was going to say before she did. She was a fine woman, my mammy, but she’d no truck with variety; the same conversations she’d been having for seventy year were good enough for her. I don’t count that. What would a man be talking about with a woman?”
“Jeez, man,” Cal says. “I dunno.”
“I’m not asking you what sweet nothings you go whispering in her ear. I’m asking about conversation. What kinda chats you’d be having over a cuppa tea, like.”
“Stuff,” Cal says. “Like I’d talk about with anyone. What do you talk about with the guys in the pub?”
“Stuff,” Mart acknowledges. “Fair point there, bucko. Ah, well; if I get curious enough, I’ll have to hunt out a woman that’s willing to have a cuppa tea with the likes of me, and find out for myself.” He gazes meditatively after Lena’s car. “That’s what Bobby’s planning to do, if Johnny Reddy makes him a millionaire: get himself a woman. I don’t know does he think he can order one off Amazon, like a DVD, but that’s what he says.” He throws Cal a sharp glance. “What d’you reckon there, boyo? Is wee Johnny going to make millionaires of us all?”
“Who knows,” Cal says. Rip comes zooming back from his circuit with Kojak and butts up against Cal’s leg, looking for attention. Cal runs a hand over him. He’s picked up a nice coating of burrs somewhere along the way.
“Johnny musta been drunker than he looked, last night,” Mart informs Cal. “Didja see him yet today?”
“Nope,” Cal says.
“He was down at Noreen’s, lolling about taking up space, when I went in. D’you know what he done last night, on his way home? Walked straight off the path and went arse over tip halfway down the mountainside. You oughta see the state of him. Like he got bet up by every rock on the way down.”
So Johnny has weighed up his various risks and has no intention of skipping town, and he wants to make that clear. “He didn’t look that drunk to me,” Cal says. “Not when I left, anyway.”
“Isn’t that what I’m saying to you? I wasn’t counting the man’s pints, but he musta been lashing them into him, to go astray on a path he’s been walking half his life. What d’you reckon about that?”
“I don’t rate Johnny’s brainpower too high,” Cal says. “Drunk or sober. I’m not gonna get surprised by any dumb thing he does.”
“True enough,” Mart acknowledges. “I wouldn’t rate you a fool, though, Sunny Jim. Did you fall down the mountainside too, didja?”
“Nope,” Cal says. “Slipped in the shower. I musta been drunker than I thought, too.”
“The shower’s a terrible man,” Mart agrees obligingly. “My cousin up in Gorteen, he slipped in the shower and smacked his head. He’s got a mad squint on him ever since. It does be fierce hard work talking to him; you wouldn’t know which eye to look at.”
“Guess I got lucky,” Cal says. He squats down and starts picking burrs out of Rip’s coat.
“So far,” Mart points out. “I’d watch that shower if I was you. Once they get a taste of blood, there’s no holding them.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “Maybe I’ll get one of those non-slip mat things.”
“Do that. You wouldn’t want matters getting outa control.” Mart squints meditatively up at the sky, apparently gauging the weather, which looks exactly the same as it has for the last two months. Cal is getting more and more resentful of the weather. He’s coming to the conclusion that at least half of what he loves about Ireland is the smell of it under rain. Without that smell, complex and melancholy and generous, he feels obscurely ripped off.
“D’you know something,” Mart says, “I might haveta find myself that woman to talk to. The men do be awful predictable.”
“Sorry ’bout that,” Cal says. Rip is squirming and licking at him, making the removal process as difficult as possible, not because it bothers him but just for kicks.
“D’you know another thing about men that drives me mental altogether?” Mart says. “The way they’d hold a grudge. The women, now”—he settles his elbow on the gate, getting comfortable for some in-depth explaining—“if a woman has a grudge against someone, the whole townland knows. You’d know what the person done, and why they had no right, and what they oughta do to clear the air, and what’s on the cards if they don’t do it. You’d be hearing about it on the regular for as long as it takes, and if it’s not sorted in your lifetime, your childer’ll hear about it when you’re gone. But a man, sure: he’ll hold a grudge for ten or twenty or thirty year, and never say a word to anyone. Even the fella he’s got the grudge against mightn’t have a notion. What’s the point in that? What good does the grudge do you or anyone, if it never gets an airing?”
“Search me,” Cal says.
“And then,” Mart says, “when ’tis after bubbling away all that time, and no one any the wiser, one fine day something goes a wee bit wrong—the man sees his chance, maybe, or maybe he just has a bad day or a bit too much drink—and it all boils over. I know a lad beyond Croghan that was at his own daughter’s twenty-first, and he hit his brother-in-law a skelp to the head with a bottle, near kilt him. Outa nowhere, like. All they could get outa him was that the brother-in-law deserved it for something he’d said at that same daughter’s christening.” He shakes his head. “And him a lovely quiet lad that got on with everyone. That’s not the kind of unpredictability I like. Revenge can be awful disconcerting, Sunny Jim, when it comes outa the clear blue sky.”
Rip has got bored and started dancing and curvetting, trying to make Cal’s job difficult enough that he’ll give up and let Rip go back to Kojak. “Stay,” Cal says. Rip lets out a martyred sigh and flops down.
“There’s exceptions, now,” Mart allows. “Your young one’s a girl, but I’d say she’d hold her tongue about any grudges she might have stored up. And myself, I like to get the good outa them; I haven’t many, but I’ll tell all the details to anyone who’ll listen.”
“Hashtag, not all men,” Cal says, shoving Rip’s nose out of his way. He’s been in Ardnakelty long enough to understand that Mart isn’t just shooting the shit here. He’s trying to figure out whether Mart is telling him something, or asking him something, or both.
“Holy God, wouldja listen to that,” Mart says, delighted, poking Cal in the leg with his crook. “We’ve Mr. Social Media here, with the hashtags. Are you one of them influencers on the side, Sunny Jim? Are you on the TikTok shaking yourself to Rihanna? I’d watch that.”