Soon she was driving down a one-track road towards trees that disappeared and reappeared as she navigated dog-leg bends. Up ahead, the sky steadily darkened to a pewter colour. Then, out of nowhere, a gust of wind hurled a shower of hail against her windshield. Switching on the wipers, she leaned forward. Beyond the windshield, the road seemed almost in darkness, so she hit the fog lights. Flying hailstones were hitting the road like bullets, and leaping back into the air. Fiddling with the controls, Cassie tried to work out if she’d do better relying on the headlamps without the fog lights, or whether she might see more with no lights at all.
As she inched on down the road, the weight of the hailstones seemed to be too much for the wipers, so she pushed their speed up to max. Briefly, it made a difference. Until the arm passing in front of her suddenly stopped at upright, then floated randomly left and right, doing no good at all.
Up ahead was a T-junction. Turning onto it, she realised there was a passing place about ten yards away, where she could pull in by the forest edge. But now, to see anything at all, she had to lean over and peer through the passenger side of the windshield, where the single wiper was still working. So, even travelling the short distance to the passing place was horrible, with her right foot stretching for the accelerator, and the frightening awareness that her instinctive responses belonged in a left-hand drive car.
As soon as she pulled in, and the wipers were off, the windshield caked up altogether. Opening the door, she stepped out into the bitterly cold wind in order to squint at the sky. The heavy clouds were still as dark as pewter and the hailstones blown sideways against her face felt like tiny shards of glass. She was about to get back into the car to call a garage when a battered red van appeared, coming towards her. It pulled up as it drew alongside, and Fury O’Shea leaned over to shout out of the window.
‘Are you having trouble?’
‘One of my wiper blades broke.’
Fury climbed down from the cab and strolled over to her car. ‘You’re Ger and Pat Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, aren’t you?’
‘That’s me. Cassie. The car’s Pat’s but I guess she didn’t fit winter wipers.’
Fury was scraping at the coat of hailstones on the windshield. ‘You never know what to expect of the weather round these parts, girl – we don’t do seasonal.’
He was wearing the same oversized waxed jacket she’d seen him in previously, and the ends of his corduroy trousers were stuffed into wellington boots. Rubbing his hands together to warm them, he jerked his head towards the van. ‘I’d say I might have a fix for that wiper in the shed. The house is just down the road. I’ll give you a cup of tea till the hail clears, and then we can drive back and set you right.’
He ordered his little Jack Russell terrier into the back of the van, and Cassie climbed into the passenger seat. The heater in the cab was going full blast and there was a smell of linseed oil, sawdust, and extra-strong mints.
As they rattled away, Cassie tried to thank him.
‘Well, I couldn’t go leaving you at the side of the road, could I? You wouldn’t have frozen to death, mind, but, even with that grand tinfoil coat, you would have got nippy.’
‘I was on my way to Ballyfin. Pat said I could take the old road over the mountain pass if I skirted the forest.’
‘Well, if you were navigating by eye, you weren’t making a bad fist of it.’ He swung the wheel and the van crunched down the gravel drive of a house that backed onto the forest. It was set at an angle to the road, so that trees were on three sides of it, and Cassie could see a dog kennel and a group of sheds at the rear.
The big room that Fury led her into had a kitchen at one end, a table and chairs in the middle, and an easy chair angled to face a TV that stood on a large fridge-freezer.
‘This is really kind. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’
Fury grunted and went to fill the electric kettle. The Divil, who had pattered in behind them, jumped on one of the chairs and settled his chin on the table.
‘Is this where you grew up?’
Fury shook his head. ‘Not in this house, no. I built it. The place I grew up in has fallen to bits now. It was down the road.’ He assembled mugs, milk, and sugar on a corner of the table, most of which was taken up by something covered with a cotton dust sheet. There were curls of wood shavings scattered on the floor beneath The Divil’s chair.
‘Are you a wood-carver?’
Fury cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Aren’t you the inquisitive one?’
‘Well, I just wondered.’
‘I was raised a forester, if you must know.’
‘That’s what your dad did?’
‘And his father before him. Back for generations. The forest got sold off, though.’
As he went to put water in the teapot, Cassie sat down by The Divil. When Fury handed her a steaming mug she wrapped her cold hands around it gratefully. ‘Who sold off the forest?’
Dipping his beaky nose into his own mug, he gave her a sharp look. ‘What do you do for a living yourself?’
‘I’m a hairdresser.’
‘Oh, right. I thought you might be an investigative journalist.’
He didn’t seem particularly cross, though. Cassie ran her hand through her fringe and shook it back into place. ‘I guess Irish people don’t like straight questions.’
‘You’ve noticed that, have you?’
‘Well, yeah. Since I’ve been here.’
‘Bet you grew up thinking you were Irish yourself, though.’
Cassie laughed. ‘Well, half Irish. My mom’s from Québec.’
‘Will you be wanting biscuits?’
‘Because my mom’s from Québec?’
‘Because I’ve never known a woman who didn’t want a biscuit with her tea.’
‘Oh. Okay. Well, I won’t say no.’
‘I wouldn’t doubt you.’ He produced a tin of fig rolls from a cupboard and looked severely at The Divil. ‘Yer man there is the same, of course, and now he’ll want his saucer as well.’
With The Divil sitting beside her lapping tea and crumbled fig roll from a saucer, Cassie tried another angle. ‘How come you wanted to be a builder, not a forester?’
‘I didn’t say that’s what I wanted.’
Feeling repressed, she returned to her tea. Fury said nothing for a minute. Then he laughed. ‘Well, if you want the story it’s no secret, and I suppose you may as well have it from the horse’s mouth. I went away, like your dad and your uncle Jim. To England, in my case, to work on the sites. My older brother fell in for the house and the land here at home. And by the time he died of drink he’d let the house go to ruin and sold off most of the forest.’
This was rather more information than Cassie had bargained for. Glancing up, she found Fury looking amused.
‘There you have it. A straight answer to a straight question. Will we change the subject?’ He reached forward and lifted the dust sheet from the table. On sheets of newspaper, among more shavings, was a range of chisels, several pieces of wood, and a group of carved figures.
Cassie gasped in delight. ‘You are a wood-carver!’
‘Well, I know my trees, I can tell you that.’
She picked up one of the figures. It was a donkey. You could see every hair in his coarse, bristly mane. Grouped together on the table were three half-carved sheep. They were made of paler wood than the donkey. Beside them was a man leaning on a stick. He was wearing a rough jacket and trousers and his feet were bare.
Cassie picked up another figure, similarly dressed, but with a sheepskin tied round his shoulders over his jacket. He had a close-fitting cap on his head and held a little lamb in his arms.
The men were about four or maybe six inches high. On the table, propped against a little pile of sawdust, was the half-carved figure of a baby wrapped in a blanket. You could see that the fabric was thick and tightly wrapped, and that the baby was deeply asleep.
Putting the shepherd back on the table, Cassie lifted another carving.
‘You’re making a Nativity scene.’
‘You’d call it a crib round here.’
‘And this is the ox.’ She turned the piece in her hands, admiring the curved horns. You could see how the marks of different tools had defined the folds of its dewlaps and the curly hair on its poll. ‘Are you going to paint them?’
‘Name of God, girl, are you thick or what are you?’ Fury slammed his mug on the table and, troubled by disturbed sawdust, The Divil sneezed. ‘Why do you think a carver chooses different kinds of wood?’
Cassie hadn’t thought about it at all. ‘Because they’re easy to work? Or they’re what you’ve got?’
Fury sopped up his spilled tea with a corner of the cotton dustsheet. ‘Well, that too. But because they give you different colours. You don’t want to clog up your work with layers of paint. Different trees give different colours. Sapwood or heartwood makes a difference too. If you know your trees you’ll make your choice.’
‘Do you get it all from the forest?’
Fury shook his head. ‘The little fellow is cherry sapwood. So are the lambs. I know a fella that has an orchard. But there’s pine and ash there from the forest. And the ox is red oak.’
‘How do you know what animals looked like back then? Wouldn’t they have been different? I mean, like, different breeds?’
‘I wouldn’t know, girl. Chances are you’re right.’ Fury pointed to a little piece so dark it was nearly black. It was a border collie, with a thick ruff of shaggy hair and a pointed face. ‘You probably wouldn’t get herd dogs like yer man there over in Bethlehem either. But he’s what you’d see round here.’
Yesterday Conor had told Cassie that Hanna was turning a new page of the psalter each week in the run-up to Christmas and, since she’d never seen the exhibition, she’d gone in to take a look. She hadn’t waited to check out the meaning of the text, but she’d been fascinated by a little illustration in the margin of the left-hand page. It was of a flock of sheep strung out across a green field, with the sun setting behind distant mountains, and it looked exactly like a photograph she’d taken last week.
Now, looking at Fury’s carvings, she realised it had never occurred to her that visual artists expressed images in what amounted to a language, and that the artist could choose to make it foreign or native, or to weave one into the other, to create a conscious effect.
When she said so, Fury nodded at her. ‘Ay, well, if you’ve noticed that you’ve noticed more than most people. And I’ll tell you something else, girl. Most people stand still the whole of their lives and see things from one point of view.’
34
Sitting at the kitchen window with her notebook, Pat told herself this was another task that she wouldn’t be able for. Concentrate on looking at an animal and write about what you see. An ‘exercise’, Hanna called it, which was a funny word when you thought about it, because nowadays you’d think of exercise as kicking up your legs.
Pat had grown up in a house like a little English villa on the outskirts of Ballyfin, with a garden in front and behind and a few apple trees. Nothing like a farm, and they’d never had pets either. Not even a dog. When she’d married Ger they’d always had a couple of yard cats. In those days Ger wouldn’t let her feed them, so they’d keep down the rats.
Fuzzy, the cat they had now, was more of a pet. He was a handsome cat but he wouldn’t be indoors. Mostly you’d hardly see him, unless he was sunning himself on the shed. Pat had gone into the lads’ old bedroom, which looked out on the yard, to concentrate on him, like Hanna said. It was a cold day, though, so he wasn’t there.
Sister Benignus used to call copybooks ‘exercises’. They had pictures of round towers and wolfhounds on the back cover. Or maybe it was the front. Anyway, the wolfhound was a big, tall dog, with long feathery legs on him that would make you think of Cassie’s feathery fringe. But Hanna’s exercise was about looking at a real animal, not a picture. Time was, you could look out in the street and see all classes of animals. Back before the new mart was built in the 1960s, there used to be fair days here in Lissbeg. Broad Street would be crowded with stock, and farmers and dealers, and every beast was driven to town on foot. Pat’s mam used to take her to the fair.
She could remember groups of cattle and sheep standing on street corners, and the shaggy dogs with watchful eyes that minded them. You’d see the dogs running low to the ground with their ears pricked if a beast broke away. They’d snake to and fro between other men’s cattle till they’d cut out their own bullock or cow, and turn it back down the street. You’d almost think the cattle were grateful, too, when the dog found them. As a child, she’d felt the same way herself, when she’d let go of her mam’s hand one day, and got lost among legs and swishing tails.
Nowadays, the only memory of the fair was the horse trough in Broad Street, and you’d hardly see a dog in the street that wasn’t on a lead.
Ger’s dad used to drive his stock fifteen miles to a fair in the days when he was farming. She’d never asked Ger if he’d been brought along. You’d see little lads in the streets all right, running messages for their fathers, or holding a horse or a donkey for a few pence.
Back then, Pat had been slightly afraid of her mam’s cousins from the country. The women would smell of turf smoke and clove rock, and the men would spit in the street. Some of the boys holding the horses were probably her own relations but, at the time, she’d kept away from them because she wouldn’t be used to a farm.
That changed after she was married, of course. But because Ger had the shop and Miyah had the farm, she’d really only gone out there to visit his mam. The women would rear the poultry then, but they wouldn’t have much to do with the farm animals. Ger would go off to the mart with Miyah and their dad – like he still went now on his own – and Pat would take Frankie and the other lads to sit in the farm kitchen. Oftentimes they’d spend the afternoon washing eggs with Ger’s mam.
Sitting at her own kitchen window, looking out at Broad Street, Pat laid her notebook and biro down on the sill. She wished she hadn’t said a word to Frankie the other day about Ger. You couldn’t get a better son than Frankie. He was always looking out for her, like the way he’d bought her the car. Ger had never been happy about her driving but he hadn’t made a fuss at all because the gift had come from Frankie, who’d always been able to twist him round his thumb.
The only reason she’d said a word to Frankie was that, for the last while, she’d been getting more and more worried about Ger. Lately he’d moved into Sonny and Jim’s old bedroom. And, before that, she’d woken once or twice and found him standing at the window, leaning out. That was when he told her he’d change bedrooms. He’d been sleeping badly, he said, and he didn’t want to be waking her up all hours. You could see it was still going on, even in the lads’ room, because, when she’d go in to make his bed, he’d have three pillows up in a heap, like he’d been sitting up half the night.
It had struck Pat that maybe he’d been worried about the business. So, when she’d bumped into Frankie in the street the other day she’d asked him to come for a coffee. Ger had got up at the crack of dawn, and spruced himself up in his good suit, and gone off again to Cork. Frankie was in town picking something up for his wife. He’d time for a coffee, though, he’d said, and he’d taken Pat into a pub.
They’d sat in the lounge bar where the coffee you got was a Rombouts that came with its own filter sitting on your cup. The filters were fierce fiddly things, and she’d been so distracted that she’d hardly managed a sip. In the end she’d just come straight out with it, and told Frankie she was worried about his father. Was there anything going on, she’d said, that would have Ger in a state? But the way Frankie responded had left her none the wiser. He’d offered her a cream cake, as if she was a child, and came out with a lot of platitudes, with half an eye on his watch.
Besides he might not have been the right person to ask. To begin with, if he did know something was wrong, he probably wouldn’t tell her, because he w
ouldn’t want her worried. And, then again, he might just be embarrassed by the question. As far as the rest of the town was concerned, Frankie was his father’s partner, but she’d often thought that he might know no more about Ger’s business deals than herself.
Anyway, she’d got no good from that conversation, and she hoped to God that Frankie wouldn’t go telling Ger that she’d asked. The chances were that he wouldn’t, though, because Frankie was never one to go stirring up trouble. From the time he was a toddler Pat had watched him learn that the way to keep in with Ger was to start no battles. He was cute, too, like his dad, when it came to money. Another man might resent the fact that his father wouldn’t step down and let him take over, but so long as Ger was in harness, that was a manager’s salary saved. And that’d be game ball by Frankie. He always had an eye to the main chance, which was why he hadn’t minded at all when Sonny and Jim had had to go off, because there’d been no work for them, while he’d drawn the long straw and had a cushy life at home.
She’d often wondered why Ger had been the one who’d ended up as a butcher. He hated blood. When he was a child he used to run away when his father would be slaughtering. You had no legal slaughter on farms, these days, but back then every family with a bit of land would be killing their own meat.
Pat supposed that many a child had been scared by the blood and the screaming, but it sounded like Ger had had a worse time than most, because his father had seen him as a coward. One day, when Ger was about seven, he’d dragged him in when a pig was being killed, and made him hold a bucket for the blood. Pat only knew because Ger’s mother had told her. He’d run to his mam, roaring, and she’d cleaned the blood off his face and his clothes under the yard tap.
You could tell by the way she’d told the story that his mam had worried ever since that she should have stopped his dad. But how could she? And maybe the poor man thought he was doing it for the best.
You’d wonder, too, if Ger had been given the shop as the least worst option. Handling carcasses might not be as bad as coping with beasts in pain. Pat knew that Ger always hated being on the farm when the vet came. Even the sound of a bawling cow upset him. And, according to Miyah, who’d thought it was hilarious, he’d got sick on his boots years ago when he’d had to stick a screwdriver in a sheep that had bloat.
The Mistletoe Matchmaker Page 18