But instead, one day when Mum was at the off-licence, Fergal began to swear again about having to raise a dirty little towelhead. And Rasher had gone on a rampage through the house.
He didn’t know how long it lasted, but when he’d stopped hitting things he’d looked round and seen the devastation. The telly was smashed and so was the couch, and he’d thrown Mum’s laptop at the mirror in the living room. Upstairs, her bedroom looked like a bombsite and downstairs half the stuff in the kitchen was on the floor.
Fergal had made for the door as soon as the furniture started flying, but Rasher had known he wouldn’t call the guards. There was no way he could face Mum when she came back, though. So, he’d taken the roll of twenties Fergal kept upstairs with his stash and, with a vague notion of selling it, robbed the weed as well. Then he’d shoved some clothes and his passport into a backpack and taken off. And on his first night on the Dublin streets he’d given the weed away to a guy who’d threatened him with a knife.
Chapter Twenty-One
Orla McCarthy cracked an egg into the sizzling frying pan and, having given it a shake, turned to the sausages under the grill. It was seven a.m., the day promised to be fine, and Conor and Joe would soon be in for their breakfast. She’d propped the back door open as soon as she’d begun her work in the kitchen: there was no fear of field mice running in at this time of year and anyway Marmite was curled on his chair by the range. Having begun life as a barn cat and a famous mouser, he was getting more domesticated in his old age. Nevertheless, he remained lord of the farmyard, and even the rats still kept their distance, as if word of his exploits had become part of their folklore and they knew better than to approach his realm.
Though the ginger kittens had hardly been in the house ten days, they, too, had learned to respect him. When Orla crossed the sunlit kitchen, she could see four bright eyes peeping out from under the range. In a week or so they’d be old enough to be banished up to the sheds to hunt for their food; right now, they were anticipating their breakfast, knowing that when Marmite had eaten his they’d get their own share of the scraps she’d place on a tin plate in the yard.
Orla smiled, thinking of how pleased Aideen had been to hear that the kittens were staying. Whether or not they’d let her touch them when they’d gone up to the barn and the sheds, and were practically feral, was another matter. But Marmite, now that he’d taken to his chair, was willing to accept a certain amount of petting, and Aideen was as softhearted about old age as she was about the fuzzy babies mewing under the range.
As she moved from the dresser to the table, laying out plates and cutlery, Orla glanced at Paddy, who was sitting opposite Marmite, reading the Farmers Journal. He was far too sedentary for a man of his age, but what could he do? Chronic pain and depression made for a miserable combination, and on bad days, which could stretch into weeks, he couldn’t even face going out for an evening in the local where, because of his medication, he wasn’t allowed his pint.
There was the sound of the tap being turned on in the yard and vigorous splashing as Conor and Joe cleaned their boots. When they came into the kitchen in their stockinged feet Bid, the sheepdog, stuck her nose round the door. To Orla’s dismay, Paddy scowled at the sight of the enquiring, furry face. Getting to his feet, he snarled, ‘Geddout, you,’ with such force that the dog, who’d never been known to cross a threshold uninvited, jerked back with a yelp. Aware that the rest of his family was carefully avoiding comment, Paddy went and sat at the table and asked where his breakfast was. Conor watched as Orla controlled her face with an effort and turned back to the pan.
They’d all become so used to such moments that their shared responses were both dulled and heightened, the sharp sense of each other’s distress routinely smothered by the need to act as if nothing untoward had happened. The fact that Paddy was frequently guilt-stricken didn’t help matters either. Now only Bid reacted without constraint: bewildered by this injustice from the master who had trained her, she continued to whimper pathetically outside the door.
As he joined his dad at the table, Conor wondered if it was wise to say what he and Joe had been doing. As sometimes happened, they’d set out that morning with one job in mind and been sidetracked by another. It was a case of taking a decision promptly to avoid wasting time and they’d both known that, if Paddy had been with them, he’d have made the same call. The trouble was that Paddy could flip if he heard you hadn’t stuck to what had been agreed. It was just frustration and mostly he said sorry afterwards, but neither Conor nor Joe could bear to see him humiliated by the need to apologise.
Sometimes Paddy was relaxed enough about the role they’d agreed to call farm manager. There was plenty of planning and form-filling to be done, and masses of changing government regulations that someone had to keep tabs on or they’d all be up the creek. Things had been difficult immediately after the accident, because Joe had already transferred the management stuff from paper to digital and Paddy hadn’t been handy with the computer. He’d gone on a course, though, and properly got to grips with it. And, while it wouldn’t be Paddy’s way to say so, Conor reckoned his dad was proud of what he’d managed to achieve.
But the bottom line was that a real farm manager didn’t just sit in behind a desk. Not on a farm their size anyway. He’d be operating machinery, too, or overseeing maintenance, or standing in a muddy field talking to a vet. Paddy couldn’t even get himself up on a tractor without his back going crazy, and even when he was just out walking, on bad days he’d have to use a stick.
Sometimes the kind of irritation he’d shown to the dog was a sign of a bad day to come. But as Mum put the sausages and eggs onto the table you could see him making the effort to give her a smile. Relaxing, Conor told him they’d found a few yards of fence down and got it fixed before getting on with the ear-tagging. It was a mobile-library day, so Joe was going to be finishing up there, then tailing the lambs, while Conor was on the road.
Paddy shrugged. ‘You did right, I suppose. Well, you couldn’t do otherwise. Did you say Aideen was coming for her tea this evening?’
It was great the way Aideen always seemed to lift Paddy’s mood. Often he’d complain that he’d been awake half the night, and stump off to bed in the evening before they’d sit down to their tea. But if Aideen was coming he’d usually make the effort to stay up. There were even times when he’d hardly speak a word all day long and she’d manage to have him chatting before she left. Old Dawson’s injection of money was going to make a big difference on the farm, and two full-time workers instead of one and a half would be great. But Conor’s mum had told him a while back that the thought of Aideen as part of the household was the thing about the double wedding that pleased Paddy most.
When they’d finished breakfast Conor got a couple more hours in with Joe before setting off for Carrick on his Vespa. He left the bike in a staff place in the County Library car park and picked up the keys of the van at Reception. Today his route would take him along the southern side of the peninsula. The landscape was gentler there but the roads were just as narrow as those through the foothills of Knockinver to the north. Among the books in the back of the van was a copy of Brooklyn, which had been returned by a borrower and was now going out to the classroom assistant of the school in the seaside village that was his first stop.
Kids were playing in the May sunshine as he cruised downhill towards the school. Beyond the yard there was a little pier and a narrow cove where gulls and gannets floated above jade green waves. As Conor pulled in by the school gate, the children formed a straggling queue, and Marian, the classroom assistant, came to greet him.
It was a two-room national school, exactly like the one that Conor had been to himself, and it had two entrances to the lobby, with ‘Girls’ carved on the lintel over one and ‘Boys’ over the other. One of these was now blocked by wheelie bins and clearly hadn’t been used for some time. As Conor jumped down to open the van, a stream of kids of all genders appeared on the steps of the other door and ran into the yard.
For the next while he was fully occupied taking returns, handing out loans, and listening to enthusiastic critiques of books the kids had just read.
One small girl confided in a throaty whisper that I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen was the best book in the world. ‘Actually, not just the world. The universe. The galaxy. Honestly, Conor, you have to read it. It’s seriously great.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘A bear. He’s lost his hat. And nobody anywhere in the whole world has seen it.’
‘So what happens?’
‘Well, I can’t tell you that, can I? If I did you’d know the end.’
‘But sometimes that doesn’t matter. People read books over and over. Especially if they like them.’
‘Yes, but the first time is the best because it keeps you in suspense.’
Marian winked at Conor over the little girl’s head. ‘We learned that word in reading class yesterday, didn’t we, Shauna?’
The child looked conspiratorially at Conor and lowered her voice even further. ‘Actually, I knew it already but I didn’t want to be rude.’
Having delighted Shauna by offering to bring her Klassen’s This Is Not My Hat next time, Conor dealt with the rest of the kids and the few adults who’d joined them, and set off in the van for his next stop. Making his way back up the hill from the village, he told himself that he really ought to read Brooklyn. Marian now had one of the last copies for loan from a Finfarran library but he could whip in and borrow it when she returned it. It’d be good to have it read before the next film club discussion, especially as Miss Casey had known damn well that he hadn’t read Death in Venice when he’d stood up last time and dissed Mr Maguire.
What with the farm and the library, it wasn’t easy to find time for reading. Maybe if there was an audiobook he could get that and play it as he made his rounds in the van. The thing was that every spare minute he had was spent with Aideen, and when he stayed over at her place they didn’t exactly sit around analysing books. The other night, when he’d been there, Bríd had started teasing, saying they’d be totally jaded before they got to the altar. According to her, the fashionable thing now was to take a sexcation before you went off and got married.
‘A what?’
‘Like a vacation or a staycation.’ Bríd had made big eyes at Aideen. ‘It’s a total break from having sex.’
‘That’s mad.’
‘No, it’s not. It makes the wedding more romantic and exciting.’
‘So how long is a sexcation supposed to last?’
‘Don’t ask me. I’m not an expert. You could google it.’
‘Yeah, right. Like you haven’t made it up.’
They did google it later and found that, instead of being a break from sex, it meant the exact opposite. Basically, you went to bed together and didn’t get up for weeks. Which Bríd had probably known all along.
Now, driving between hawthorn hedges loaded with white flowers, Conor remembered Aideen lying on her stomach with her laptop on a flower-patterned pillow, and the look she’d given him when she read out the Google definition. There was nothing more romantic or exciting than Aideen’s bedroom when she’d lit candles on the dressing table and poured wine into the long-stemmed glasses they’d bought when they were in Florence.
They hadn’t done much more talking that night, though the following day Aideen had told him that they’d need to get themselves sorted fairly soon. Apparently Eileen was being a dork about how they’d organise the wedding so, at some stage, they’d have to sit down and thrash the whole thing out with her and Joe. According to Aideen, they’d better get Bríd and Jazz there, too, and make a plan before Eileen lost the run of herself entirely.
Wrapped in dreams of Aideen’s bed reflected in her flickering dressing-table mirror, Conor happily steered the van towards his next destination. Sooner or later he’d probably get around to reading Brooklyn. And it’d be time enough to get wedding stuff fixed when he and Joe had the muck and the fertiliser spread, the cattle off the silage, and the last of the lambs castrated.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Midges were dancing in shafts of sunlight as Hanna drove home from the library. There were swifts nesting in a cattle shed near the corner where she turned off the motorway, and the light on their wings almost dazzled her as they swooped past her windscreen catching insects. This meandering back road, which led to her house and the fields around it, delighted her. At this time of evening, after the thundering rush-hour traffic on the motorway, its tranquillity was almost startling.
On the seaward side, where the fields were narrow and sloped to the cliff edge, not much thrived without constant care and protection. Hanna could remember Maggie stumping down to her newly made potato ridges, carrying seaweed hauled from the beach by a farmer who’d taken annual pity on his elderly, bad-tempered neighbour. In Maggie’s childhood every cliff field here had had its stone cabin; and households, often composed of three generations, were fed with the produce of those salt-scoured strips of land. Now Hanna’s was the only remaining house on the cliff side of the road and the little fields around it had long regressed to scrubland.
On the opposite side the land, which was better, was protected by high, earthen ditches. The former patchwork of stone-walled plots had disappeared, and larger fields had been established, wide enough to support bigger herds or be worked by machinery. Hanna could see cows gathering by gates as she passed, ready to be herded back to farmyards for milking.
Up ahead, where there was a pull-in by her own gate, she saw a red van she recognised at once as Fury O’Shea’s. As she drew in behind it, The Divil appeared round the gable of the house. His demeanour was proprietorial. Back when Hanna had restored Maggie’s place, Fury had been her builder and, as always happened when he worked on a house, he and The Divil continued to treat it as if it belonged to him, rather than to her.
Walking down the path at the side of the house with the little dog behind her, Hanna saw Fury at the end of the field staring up at her roof. She moved down to meet him, the waving fronds of tasselled grass almost touching her elbows. Except for the herb rockery and a couple of flower beds close to the house, this year she’d allowed the field to turn into a meadow. Now it was starred with wildflowers, and full of the quiet drone of bees and insects. Millions of small, noisy lives were being lived out all around her and, though Maggie would certainly have castigated the waste of a good vegetable plot, the sense of busy wildness enchanted Hanna.
‘How well you didn’t call me out earlier!’
Fury was standing with his back to the ocean glaring up at her roof. A ridge tile had come off in a storm a couple of months ago, and though Brian had offered to borrow ladders and fix it, Hanna had known she’d not be forgiven if he did. It was still Fury’s roof and no one else could touch it. She’d also known that phoning Fury was useless. He never picked up calls or responded to texts on his mobile, so the only way to summon him was to engage in a process he always referred to as ‘putting out the word’.
When she’d first encountered him, this had driven her to distraction. Accustomed to employing tradesmen in London, the thought of mentioning a vital repair to the postman or the hairdresser and waiting for Fury to pick it up on the grapevine had seemed absurd. In time, however, she’d discovered it worked and, though they’d fought like a bag of weasels to begin with, he was now someone she thought of as a friend.
Propping herself on the wall beside him, she looked up at her roofline, where the missing ridge tile showed like a broken tooth. ‘I told Brian weeks ago to let you know it was off.’
‘And I suppose it’s smashed to bits, too, is it? You never told him to tell me I’d need a replacement.’
‘Actually, it’s not. I found it next morning.’
Leading him up the field to the shed, she produced the terracotta ridge tile. ‘See? Slightly chipped but absolutely fine.’
Fury sniffed dismissively. ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ He turned the tile in his hands and
said he’d be round to fix it tomorrow. ‘I’ve no roof ladder in the van now and I’m not risking me neck without one. So you’ll have to wait.’
Hanna, who’d waited patiently for weeks and had just been accused of failing to act promptly, smiled and asked if he fancied a mug of tea.
Fury glanced down at The Divil and shrugged. ‘Maybe. If you’re making one. You’ll have a saucer for himself.’
‘Does he still take sugar?’
‘No, he had to give it up. The vet said he’d have his teeth ruined. I’d say he’d take a biscuit, though, if you happen to have one to hand.’
Indoors, she put the kettle on and made tea while Fury wandered round inspecting things. The Divil settled down with his nose in the silken ashes of last night’s fire. Having fiddled with window locks and frowned at a light switch, Fury considered the dresser by the chimney breast, which filled its alcove, reaching from floor to ceiling, a solid piece of hand-built furniture made of driftwood collected from the beach. With cracked glazed doors and jammed drawers, it had been in a sad, shabby state by the time Hanna inherited it, and she’d thought of pulling it out and installing shelving instead. But Fury had refurbished it without consulting her and sanded back the grubby paint to reveal the original colour underneath. ‘And, as it happened I had the makings of it back in my shed so I mixed it for you.’
Faced with the fait accompli, Hanna had blinked. It was a peculiar shade, somewhere between wine and brick red, which clashed violently with the rest of her colour scheme. To begin with she’d said nothing, planning to repaint it in dove grey as soon as the place was finished and Fury was gone. Later, and to her surprise, she’d come to welcome the jarring colour as a continuing token of Maggie’s acerbic presence in the house.
Fury had observed her initial reaction with a shrewd glance and no comment, and they’d never spoken of it since. Now he remarked casually that the paint was wearing well. Hanna nodded. In fact, it had darkened with time to a more acceptable muddy brown.
The Month of Borrowed Dreams Page 13