‘Have you twine left?’ Tom asked.
Keogh laughed at the question. ‘Have I twine, Tom? Plenty of twine. Too fuckin’ much of the stuff. That’s what I have.’
Tom moved past him into the shed. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw another dog move between tractor tyres.
Keogh came up close behind him. ‘Got in too much twine, Tom, and hardly a one about the place lookin’ for it the summer. Sure they’re all hirin’ them contractors from up at Granard this weather. Sure them lads brings their own twine. Fuckers.’
‘Give us a couple, so.’
‘You’re in a hurry, Tom?’
Keogh was looking for news. He was hungry for a complaint. Tom glanced at the rafters of the shed and shrugged out the beginning of a laugh. ‘I’m under orders, Paddy.’
Keogh nodded. ‘Ah, you have Mark at it above.’
‘Aye,’ said Tom. He did not turn.
‘Very good, very good.’ Keogh pulled a bale of twine from a pile. It thudded to the ground. Before the dust had settled, Keogh knocked a second bale.
‘You’re keepin’ on at things anyway,’ he said. ‘Here, take a hoult of this one, you, and I’ll bring the other.’
The gate out of the yard was still broken, its top hinge sagging low. As they passed through it, Tom glanced at Keogh over his shoulder. ‘You never thought of getting that gate fixed.’
‘I thought about it all right, Tom.’
Keogh pushed out a short laugh, as if by way of apology. It was a laugh almost like the girl’s, a laugh high and fearful of how best to land. Hearing it, Tom felt something in his stomach turn. Not you, too, he wanted to say. Not you, too, still at this shit like the rest of them. It had been three months. He was not an invalid. Not a child. Keogh had always been the dirtiest of them all, always the first to notice, the quickest to remark, and now here he was like the rest of them, swerving his words off on to harmless ground. Keogh would have known full well why Tom had remarked on the gate; to gibe at Keogh’s laziness, his tightness. Before, Keogh would have fought back with a dig about the farm or the cattle or, most likely, about Mark; with a question, all innocence, about how long Mark would be around this time, with a sigh about how short a stay that was, with a shake of the head about how badly Mark must be needed up in Dublin, for him to have to leave again so soon. There was no sincerity in such comments, but if he could hear them now he would draw succour from them, would lean into them and come up stronger, surer, stocked with grit enough to steer him through the day. Faced with this silence that was Keogh’s kindness, he felt only light and bloodless, emptied of himself and of everything that fixed him to his standing. He needed something to shoulder against, something at which to pitch himself, muscled with the old fury, with the old contempt. But there was nothing. There was only this air struck with summer, and even that was a thing that seemed to set everyone around the place smiling like a fool.
‘That’s you ready to go now,’ said Keogh, slamming shut the back door of the jeep after he had stowed the twine.
Tom stood with his back to the other man, his eyes fixed on the faded green wood of the shopfront, the stickers and notices pasted inside the window pane, the woman’s bicycle against the sill. The briquette stand was empty. Through the window, he could see the girl holding the child, talking to an older woman who held another child, a boy. He knew the older woman, not to talk to, but to see. She and the boy held ice-cream cones. As Tom watched, both women glanced his way at the same time. From him they both looked down to the counter, from there to each other, and from there to the child on the shopgirl’s hip. It was as familiar to him by now as the sight of his own eyes in the bathroom mirror, the look that he had caught on their faces: fear and thrill and greed and pure excitement; a glimpse right into the wreckage on the side of the road.
‘Who’s is the babby she has?’ Keogh said. He was watching the same scene over Tom’s shoulder. He snorted and prodded Tom in the arm. ‘Jasus, if it’s hers I surely missed that happening.’
‘That’s Mark’s,’ Tom said. ‘I asked that lassie to hold on to her for me for a minute.’ Inside, the girl was coming around the counter. Tom put his hand up to signal to her not to bring the child out to him yet. She nodded, smiling, and took the child over to the other woman and child in a quick, light dance.
‘I saw the child’s seat ’ithin in the jeep, all right,’ Keogh said quietly. ‘Ah, she’s a nice little one, isn’t she.’
Tom said nothing.
‘Lovely little one,’ Keogh said.
In the shop, the two women were pushing the children up close to each other; they seemed to be encouraging them to kiss. The boy stared, sullen, at Aoife as his tongue kept a steady stroke on his cone. As the shopgirl moved closer to him, he slowly and carefully moved the ice-cream out of Aoife’s reach, almost above his head, his gaze still dull on her face. Aoife, throwing her head back and twisting herself, caught sight of Tom. Her cry came as a long moan of protest; she flung one arm towards him and, screaming now, arched her back higher still. The boy stared. The women’s faces crinkled with sorry-eyed smiles.
‘Here.’ Tom rummaged in his pocket and drew out the notes he knew to be there. He handed them to Keogh. ‘Fifteen a bale, isn’t it?’
‘Spot on.’ If it had been too little he would have been told. Nothing made it all right to give Keogh too little.
‘Yous are great to be doing so well with her,’ the girl said, as she came outside with the child. ‘She’s a real little pet.’
Aoife, sobbing now and sticky-faced with snot and tears, her yellow dress driven high over the fat plastic of her nappy, looked ready to thrash her way out of the shopgirl’s arms. She pushed sharply into Tom as he took her.
‘She’s her granddaddy’s girl,’ Keogh said, and as he reached out a hand to Aoife she howled and buried her face in Tom’s chest. Keogh laughed. ‘She knows well where she wants to be.’
‘Good luck,’ said Tom, and he walked away from them. As he settled Aoife in her seat she quietened and began to reach towards the radio knobs. When he had the key turned in the ignition he clicked through the stations for her, watching her eyes following his moving hand, her wet fingers reaching out for his. He stopped at a music station and backed the car out between the petrol pumps, keeping one eye on Keogh and the girl in the rear-view mirror. They were talking and nodding and shaking their heads. They were putting the whole world to rights. Beside him, the child shouted with happiness at the music so close to her hands.
*
The tractor was stopped on the crest of the hill when Tom turned into the lane for home. As he drew nearer, he could see that the cab was empty.
‘What’s your daddy at?’ he said to the child.
She ignored him, her steady chatter all for herself, her attention now on the toy set of keys she gripped and shook with one fist. From her lips hung a heavy thread of drool. He reached over to wipe at it; she jerked her head away, her babble pooling into a squeal. But he got it, caught its glooping wetness on his cuff, wiped it into the thigh of his trousers as he turned in for the house. Aoife whined and banged the toy against the side of her seat. As Tom carried her in he gave her his keys to play with as well as her own.
Through the glass of the hall door he could see Mark sitting at the kitchen table, chewing, a thick-sliced sandwich in his hand. His eyes were on the child as Tom brought her into the room. The neighbour girl who had come that morning to mind her was on the couch, a magazine open on her lap.