“Sure, it's not a bit like Christmas,” Conor's toilet companion stuttered. “Ah sure, I remember this pub twenty years ago. You wouldn't get a seat in it during the Christmas time. Sure, it's all changed. I blame that bloody television, everybody stuck at home staring into it. I don't have one myself; I have no interest in it. There's nothing but a load of bollox on it anytime I see it. Anyway, they say it can give you cancer. It gives off radiation, you know,” he said, pulling one last drag on his fag before throwing it into the urinal and walking out. “Good luck to ya and happy Christmas” he said as he departed.
After using the payphone in the dark hall outside the toilets to call home to tell his father he had arrived, Conor ordered a half one of whiskey at the bar to warm himself up. The conversation amongst the other customers went quiet as he stood at the bar, the way conversation often does in an Irish pub when a stranger walks in. The few lads at the bar eyed him up under the corner of their caps.
The bar had a sense of despair about it. It was dark, dingy, dirty and depressing. It was a place where men drank beer and time. The radio behind the bar blurred out some mutant Irish country dirge. The melancholy song matched the lonesome mood of the pub.
After finishing his drink, Conor decided to wait outside. He'd had enough of Maguire's and didn't feel comfortable inside it, so he walked down to the corner to wait for his lift. It was now half four and a wet, grey mist was falling over Ballygalvin.
His father's Opel Kadett pulled up. His father, Hugh, got out, grabbed Conor's hand, shook it and welcomed him home. Conor threw his bag in the back and they drove out the Ballinastrad road.
“Are you home for long, Conor?”
“I'm not sure,” Conor replied. “Maybe a few weeks.”
“Your mother's looking forward to seeing you. She misses you a terror.”
“It's good to get home,” Conor said.
“How's the job in England goin'?” Hugh asked. “It's going well. Are you busy yourself, Dad?”
“I'm not doing a lot. The carpentry work has dried up. There's no building work going on. I do bits and pieces from time to time. If it wasn't for the farmin', I don't know what I'd do and there's not much money in that game either, only feckin' hardship.”
The car moved on as an awkward silence stretched out between father and son.
“Sorry I was a bit late picking you up, son. Tom Kearns is dead and I was over at his house helping to get things ready because his daughter is due home in a day or two. Not that there was much cleaning or tidying to do around the yard. Tom kept the place spotless, God rest him,” Hugh said.
“Who?” Conor asked.
“Tom Kearns, from up in Shemore. Remember, he used to help us with the hay a few years back.”
“Oh yeah, old Tom. He was a nice man. What happened? Was it a heart attack?”
“No. Poor bastard, he was knocked down the other night and killed walking out home from the pub,” Conor's father replied.
“Jesus, who did it?” Conor asked.
“Don't know. It was a hit and run. The Guards are still looking for whoever did it. He was mowed out of it sometime after twelve o'clock, after leaving from O'Brien's Pub. He was out walking home on the Rossbeg road,” Hugh said.
“God, that was a rough way to go. Poor Tom, the poor guy. Hopefully they get the scumbag who killed him,” Conor responded.
“Well if the Guards don't get him, his own conscience will. How could you live with yourself if you left a man to die on the road like that and just drove off?” Hugh asked, shaking his head in disgust.
Eventually, they reached the village of Ballinastrad. Conor's family lived on the main street. Hugh parked in the yard at the side of their family home.
Conor felt a sense of warmth as he saw the light on in the kitchen in the back of the house. It was Christmas; it felt right to be coming here, to see his parents, to feel at home again. He was happy enough in England, but he always had emptiness inside him, a void he couldn't fill with anything. Maybe the time had come to fill that empty space.
His mother, Mary, welcomed him in with a hug and a kiss at the door. Her eyes were red and tears came into them as she held him. She had always been the more tactile and warm of his parents.
Mary had been heartbroken when Conor moved to England. She was always posting him cuttings from the papers of available jobs in Ireland in the hope that he might come back home and get work.
The smell of cooking flared through Conor's nostrils. After a good meal, the family sat down to a chat and caught up on the local gossip.
“I like your hair. It suits you short like that. I never liked that long hair on you. It made you look very scruffy,” Mary said as she gave Conor the once over.
“Thanks, I think,” Conor replied. “Have you seen Sean lately? Is he coming home for Christmas?”
“I was talking to him on the phone at the weekend. He isn't coming over this year. He's working, he's on duty in the hospital over Christmas. He said he'll be over some weekend in the New Year with Dolores and the kids.” Mary looked disappointed, staring down at the table.
Sean was Conor's older brother. He was married now and living in Dublin. Conor always felt his parents would be happier if he settled down around the area, got a good secure job, married and had a few kids himself. He often thought about that.
Realistically, though, it wasn't an option. There just wasn't any work in the area. No prospects, no hope.
Conor's home was a happy home growing up. Especially at Christmas time. His parents were never too well off, but money was always found somewhere at Christmas to ensure that Conor and Sean were content, happy, safe and warm.
Around nine o'clock, Conor decided to go out for a few pints in the village. Ballinastrad was a typical Irish village with a church, a national school, a few grocery shops and three pubs: Sheehan's, Dolan's and O'Brien's. He walked across the street to Sheehan's, the largest of the three.
Sheehan's had a bar and a lounge. The bar was for the auld fellas and the lounge catered for the young ones. The lounge was usually empty. Ballinastrad, like many towns in the west of Ireland, had been plundered by emigration. But now it was Christmas time and Conor hoped there would be a good few knocking about.
The car park outside the pub was full and the place looked like it was buzzing inside. Conor entered the main door and turned left into the lounge. Where the Streets Have No Name by U2 was blaring out of the jukebox and the laughing, jeering and shouting was interrupted by the crack of pools balls crashing together. On the small stage at the end of the bar, a band was setting up their gear.
Conor recognised one of the guys lifting an amplifier. It was his old schoolmate and former bandmate Eamonn Roddy. Conor and Eamonn had played in a rock band together for a few years. Eamonn played lead guitar and Conor played bass. It was mainly a covers band, but Eamonn had written a few original songs.
The band had broken up when Conor emigrated. Conor hoped to get chatting to Eamonn later and catch up and tell tales about their days together playing gigs and shifting women. He struggled through the crowd to the bar and ordered a pint of stout.
“There's a seat for you now, young fella,” a middle-aged, red-faced man said to him at the bar. “I'm leaving now before this racket starts. Would you look at all the speakers those fellas in that band have? Is there any need for them? Jaysus, they're going to be feckin' loud. And would you look at the state of them? Ha! I won't be here to feckin' listen to that shite. I'm off down to Dolan's. There's a great band there tonight, Willy Rogers and the Kentucky Mountain Ramblers. All the best.”
“Good man, thanks,” Conor replied. He was glad to get a stool at the bar.
The pints of stout went down well and the pool table was pushed away from the middle of the floor, revealing a small dance floor, as the band began to play. Conor got chatting to a few of the local lads at the bar and was welcomed home and asked how long he was staying. However, much of the chat was about the hit and run the night before.
<
br /> An hour or so quickly passed on. At around eleven, Conor was nearly thrown out of his stool by a slap on his back.
Conor wheeled around and there was his old buddy, Darragh Lonigan. Darragh was tall and strongly built with long, wavy, shoulder-length red hair. He had about three days' beard growth and a fresh-looking flesh wound over his left eye. Beside Darragh was a strikingly beautiful woman. Conor recognised her immediately.
Sarah Gallagher. She was dressed in a formal navy business outfit that made her seem out of place beside Darragh's hippy look. He was dressed like your typical west-of-Ireland-bohemian-type in a brown, baggy jumper, dirty, ripped denims and a pair of ex-army boots. Both Darragh and Sarah seemed a bit worse for wear, as if they been on the piss all day.
“Good to see you man,” Conor said with a wide boyish grin as Darragh grabbed him in a bear hug. “Jesus, I haven't seen you in ages. I thought you were still in Galway.”
“We're living out in Rossbeg out by Lough Oughter for the last year. Fuck, it's good to see you Conor,” Darragh replied in a lazy, slurred drawl. He exuded coolness, holding himself with a self-assured and confident air. The kind of guy who didn't really give a fuck what anybody thought, he was content with himself.
“So how's your love life, Conor?” Darragh asked. “Are you tipping any skirt over there?”
“Not great, to be honest. Here and there, now and then. Sure, you know yourself. Ah, you know me, Darragh. I could never settle down—too much of a free spirit, like a free bird.” Conor laughed. “You and Sarah seem nice and cosy up in the hills of Rossbeg. Jesus, Darragh, you're finally a settled man. Next thing you'll be telling me you have a steady job and you're getting married.”
“That's right. I'm finally settled, a one-woman-man,” said Darragh, eyeing Marie the barmaid's legs and winking back at Conor. “I'm a changed man, a reformed character. My wild days are behind me. As for the accommodation, well now, I'm not exactly living in the lap of luxury up in Rossbeg. You should see the state of the place. But it's cool up there in the wild, rugged and windy hills of Rossbeg.” Darragh sang the words as if they were a lyric from a corny folk song.
“You were always the hippy, Darragh. You always ranted in college about finding a rural hideaway where you could dedicate yourself to your painting, deep thinking about life the universe, everything, and rearing sheep. You were always fond of the old sheep, you old sheep-shagger you.” Conor laughed as he gave his old mate a dig in the ribs. Darragh grimaced a bit. “Sorry, man, you all right?”
“Yea, I'm fine. Had a bit of a fall the other night. Slipped out in the yard on the frost on the way to the turf shed.”
“Yea, I noticed that cut on your forehead,” Conor said.
“Ah, it's nothing. Too much whiskey left me a bit unsteady on my feet and I fell over. It's just a scratch and a bit of bruising—it will be grand in a day or two,” Darragh replied, looking a little embarrassed.
The three friends drank on, laughing and chatting about their times together at university in Galway until three in the morning. Marie the barmaid finally got fed up with them and refused them any more drink despite Darragh's attempts to charm her. Conor got up from his stool and said good luck and he agreed to call up to Darragh's house the following day.
Chapter III
Rossbeg
Friday, 23rd December 1988
When Conor woke up the next morning, he felt rotten. His head was throbbing and his kidneys felt like they were about to bust. His tongue was welded to the roof of his mouth with a sickly-tasting glue like slime. His eyes stung and his stomach was churning like a washing machine on spin cycle.
Was he going to die? He felt like it. Just too much porter the night before. He wasn't as used to it as he once was during his student boozing sessions.
After a half hour in the toilet and a bit of a wash, he made his way downstairs at about 11:30. His mother made him a slap-up, artery-hammering, fry up cholesterol special, which was washed down with a strong mug of tea and two aspirins. He began to feel almost human again, despite the cloudy and dizzy feeling in his head that made it feel like his brain was wrapped in a thick wet sock.
He sat around for a while in the sitting room talking to his parents and watching repeats of Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman on RTE 1. Who was better looking, Lindsay Wagner or Lynda Carter? He could never make his mind up.
At about one o'clock, he decided to go for walk to clear his head. It was cold outside, but bright and fresh. The air felt clean in Ballinastrad in comparison to London.
He walked through the village, looking around. Not much had changed in the time he had been away. The houses, shops and pubs all looked the same. Overhead, he could hear the clang of the bulbs of the Christmas lights as they hit off each other in the gentle breeze. He stopped and chatted briefly to old friends and neighbours on the street, then went into Maguire's shop and bought a pack of fags and a bottle of coke.
“Well Conor, how's things? Are you home for the holidays?” Joe Maguire asked as he counted out the change from the till.
“I am, Joe. Home for a few weeks. Nothing has changed much around here.”
“Well that's for sure. It's quiet about here; there's no life about the place. Half the young people are in England or America.”
“They are surely. Well, it was terrible about Tom Kearns. Have the Guards found out anything about who hit him?” Conor asked, changing the subject.
“I've heard nothing new about it apart from the fact that the Guards were searching around the road where Tom was hit to see if they can find anything that might lead them to who was responsible,” Joe replied.
“Well, the whole thing is horrific. Poor auld Tom,” Conor said, opening the pack of fags.
“Tom was a gentleman and a great worker. Despite the booze he knocked away every night, he was always up in the morning and ready for work at 8:30. He always had work; if he wasn't helping Dan Smyth with the building work during the spring and autumn, he was on a tractor during the summer tending to hay or silage. He was working with John O'Brien on the farm for the last few months. John will miss him,” Joe Maguire said as he handed Conor a box of matches.
“Tom will be missed, surely. Look Joe, I'll be off. I'll see you again,” Conor said as he walked out of the shop.
After Maguire's shop, Conor's journey brought him up to the primary school where he and Darragh had gone to school together. Next door to it was the vocational school, or Tech, as it was called, where he'd spent five good years.
He'd enjoyed secondary school. He remembered the craic he'd had there with his mates, mitching classes, smoking fags in the trees behind the basketball court and the first awkward fumblings with girls behind the old prefab.
Darragh, being the son of a county councillor, had gone to boarding school in St Enda's in Ballygalvin. The Tech wasn't good enough for the Lonigans.
Conor walked on for a half hour or so out of Castlederry road. His hangover was starting to wane, or perhaps he was getting too numb with the frosty cold to feel it. He checked his Casio digital watch: it was 2:30. He decided to head back home.
After spending a few hours back with his parents, Conor borrowed his father's car and drove out to Darragh's house to catch up on the craic. As he drove out of the village the daylight was growing faint and he could see the sun setting over the Rathalgin Mountains. He headed out the Sligo road towards Castlederry, which was only a small village with a pub, a post office and a grocery shop. In Castlederry, he turned left and drove out the Belgooley road.
It was getting hard to see, particularly since one of the headlights of the car wasn't working. The fog was brewing up around Lough Oughter. Conor almost missed the sharp turnoff for the back road up to Rossbeg, where Darragh lived.
The fog dissipated for a time as the car climbed the hilly, narrow lane. Looking down, Conor could see Lough Oughter and the surrounding valleys and hills. It was a wild, barren place, harsh but beautiful in its greyness and bleakness. He could see the reflect
ions of the lights of Castlederry on the lake water and the lights of Ballinastrad and Clarebridge further on. The valleys surrounding the lake began to twinkle as sporadic lights of houses and cars glowed as dusk fell on the country.
Darragh had given Conor directions the night before in Sheehan's Pub, but they were a bit of a blur. Conor remembered Darragh telling him the shortest way was to head out Bridge Street and out the Rossbeg road, but then there was a series of narrow lanes and crossroads that Darragh had probably known Conor would get lost on. That was the route Darragh always took home; it was a quieter route for avoiding the Guards.
Darragh had told Conor to take a longer route along the main road, the Sligo road towards Castlederry. It was about three miles longer, but easier to find your way, with fewer crossroads and narrow lanes. Conor thought, well, if this way is direct, I wouldn't like to take the other route, because he was fucking lost.
He remembered Darragh saying something about an old red Fergusson Twenty with one of its front wheels up on a few blocks. He was to turn left at the next junction after that. Darragh's house was the fourth on the right-hand side.
After what seemed like half an hour he spotted the tractor and continued to creep along the narrow road, having to pull in a few times to let cars go by. He stopped to ask one of the drivers of the cars that he met if he knew where Darragh Lonigan's house was.
The reply was, “Darragh Lonnigan, never heard of him. Oh, hold on. Is he Councillor Lonigan's son, that long, red-haired fella living next to Pat Joe Leddy's auld house? Oh, yea, go on about half a mile on this road and turn left and up a narrow lane. It's the first house on the left. You can't miss it; there's a big hayshed beside it.”
The guy's directions were spot on. Conor pulled up in the rough, muddy yard at the side of the house. He got out of the car and lifted out a bottle of Powers Whiskey wrapped in a brown paper bag from the back seat.
The Whole of the Moon Page 2