“Aye,” said Cashel. “Jeffries.”
“Jeffries,” repeated Durkin. “But the rest were from the village.”
Cashel seemed disappointed. He frowned and put his glass down.
“Except fer the fella passin’ through.”
“Passin’ through?”
“Oh, aye. A fella. Down from Derry, he was, in Ulster. Down to Kerry, he’s goin’ to see his aunt. Derry to Kerry.”
“And he went t’the funeral, did he?”
“Oh, aye. I saw him there. D’ya not see him?”
“Was it the fella with the black, glitterin’ eyes—”
“Oh, aye. Now what eyes those are. Fer a speaker in the Dáil t’have.”
“A powerful speaker, is he?”
“Powerful, sir. He come into the village last night on the road, walkin’ down it was. And we drank last night and he told us good tales about the North. About the Protestants,” continued Durkin. “They’re a bad lot. I’ve never met one, but the stories he told me.”
“Lord Slough is a Protestant,” said Cashel gently.
“Oh, aye. But he has to be, don’t he? I mean, he’s English. But I meant I never met an Irishman who was like that.”
“They’re Scots-Irish,” said Cashel.
“Who are, sir?”
“The Northern men. The Prods. Protestants. Scots and Irish.”
“All mixed up, is it? That might explain it, then. The Scots are English, are they not? Well, then, perhaps they can’t help being Protestants any more than the English can. But the stories this fella told, about the way they treated the Catholics and then about the civil rights march. And y’know, he says he saw Bernadette Devlin speaking herself in Derry.”
“Did he?”
“As close to her as this,” said Durkin. “Oh, what stories. It was wonderful to hear him, sir.”
“I wish I had heard him,” said Cashel. “Did he say his name, then?”
“He did,” said Durkin. “Faolin, it was. Faolin.”
“Faolin,” said Cashel. “I knew Faolins in Cork.”
“Cork,” said Durkin with wonder, as though Cashel were speaking of Timbuktu. “I’ve been meaning to go to Cork someday.”
Cashel smiled. “Can I buy ye another?”
Durkin grinned with his young, toothless mouth. “I won’t say no t’a policeman from Dublin City.”
“You better not,” said Cashel. He got up and brought the glasses to the bar and waited for them to be filled.
Faolin, he thought.
16
Cashel could not sleep well in a strange bed. They had invited him to spend another night in the great house in the burren, but he had declined Lord Slough’s invitation with work as an excuse; if the truth were known, it was because he much preferred the company of young Durkin, the local garda, and the villagers to sitting again in the presence of Slough and his daughter.
So he had bedded down at Durkin’s in the little cottage the garda shared with his mother. Cashel and Durkin had spent the evening drinking at the two public houses in the village and they had wandered home late, a little drunk, staggering up the blind-dark country road to the old white-walled cottage.
There they had sat a while longer in front of the gentle, hypnotic turf fire, no longer talking of the funeral or of Deirdre or of Lord Slough. They spoke instead of ghosts and wee ones and of the times of the great emigrations to the United States after the Irish civil war. Durkin brought out the poteen — he explained he had seized it from an illegal still uncovered in the burren — and they sat and drank the powerful potato whisky, and ghosts came more easily to mind, ghosts and sadness and thoughts of times past, all conjured up in the thin wisps of smoke from the pungent turf fire.
This morning Cashel’s head hurt, and when he opened his eyes, he realized he was not home in Dublin, safe in the old bed with his wife beside him. He wished he were there.
It was no use; he could not sleep. He rose and shaved and dressed and finally walked out into the gloomy air of a Clare morning. The hills were shrouded in smoky fog blown in from the sea.
The chill rouged his cheeks; he stretched and told himself he felt better; he breathed deep and then filled his pipe, bending his head to light it against the breeze blowing in from Galway Bay.
He started down the road to Innisbally.
The fields were dry and bare for winter, as though they had donned a severe dress for the season.
At the bottom of the road was the village: There was the steeple of the old, ugly church at the edge of the settlement. He saw the first of the old women scurrying along the same road to early Sunday morning Mass. He felt a nostalgia then, for Mass and his own mother and his own time for church. It had been a long time since he had gone to Mass — unless you counted funerals. He did not. Yesterday’s funeral — he had been scarcely aware there was a Mass going on. He had been looking at the congregation, trying to find any faces that did not fit. It was an old trick and he was always surprised how often it worked.
Faolin.
He saw again the black, glittering eyes in that thin, haunted face. A face too pale for a farmer’s face; the open coat — the farmers wore their best to the funeral, but Faolin had work a dark shirt and no suit, only the old open coat.
Cashel had stared at Faolin across the heads of the kneeling villagers in the church. And Faolin had caught his eye. They had stared at each other for a moment; then Faolin had turned away.
Faolin. He had a name. Gone down to Kerry to see his aunt.
Cashel had telephoned the gardai there; they were looking for him. Cashel had called the police liaison in Belfast and they had checked the unemployment rolls in Londonderry — no easy task on Saturday afternoon. But there had been no Faolin.
No Faolin anywhere, but suddenly this hollow-eyed fellow appears at a funeral Mass in the tiny village of Innisbally, passing through he was, and it happened to be the funeral of a woman caught as a victim in an assassination attempt on the richest man in England and Ireland. A man who was the cousin of the English Queen, titled, owner of a half a hundred newspapers in Britain, Ireland, and Canada, and Lord knows what else.
Cashel walked into the deserted village. He felt thirsty. He knocked out his pipe on the post-office wall. The sparks flickered as they fell and then went damp and dead. He felt the bowl absently with his thumb as he shoved the pipe back into his pocket and looked around. Was there anything as morose as an Irish village on Sunday morning?
Cashel stared sadly at the closed face of MacDermott’s public house across the road. For a moment, his memory conjured childhood’s certainty in wishes. Give me three wishes and the first will be that MacDermott come to the door and open his pub for me. Smiling, Cashel crossed his fingers. And then stared.
There was someone at the door. And it was MacDermott. Opening the door and beckoning to him. The magic was still good. He smiled to himself and crossed the road.
MacDermott’s red, mottled face of the night before was now sober and gray.
“Mr. Cashel,” he said.
“Mr. MacDermott. You’re the answer to my wishes,” said Cashel.
“It is a coincidence I saw yer just now on the road. Yer were on yer way to Mass, was it?”
“No. I was not. Could I trouble you fer a pint of Smithwick’s?”
MacDermott frowned. “Ah, yer a bit done, is it? If I didn’t know yer was a policeman from Dublin, I’d not do it, but since yer a guest of Durkin, I cannot deny you,” said MacDermott as he pulled the policeman inside and shut the door. “Besides that, I was after wanting to talk to you.”
Cashel went to the bar and took the proffered glass of the light ale. There was a time to pay the piper, he thought, but not now. His headache receded.