‘Well,’ Mark said, through a mouthful of bread.
‘Well.’
‘You got the twine all right?’
‘All yours,’ Tom said to the neighbour girl, as he placed Aoife on the couch beside her. The girl looked at him with wide eyes.
‘Well?’ Mark said, staring at him, holding a mug in midair. There was a cut across his knuckles, Tom noticed. He must have skinned himself somehow.
‘I got it, I got it, of course I got it,’ Tom said, walking up to the table and putting his palm to the belly of the teapot. It was still warm. He poured a mug, heaped in two sugars and slopped milk in from the carton. He leaned against the sink to drink it down. It was sharp, almost bitter, and only warm. Mark must have been at the table a good twenty minutes. Regardless, Tom drained the mug. He had no desire to make another pot, and the girl was busy with Aoife. He laughed a short laugh, just loud enough for Mark to look at him, and gestured out towards the jeep. ‘Keogh’s a fierce fuckin’ nuisance, all the same.’
Mark took another bite of his sandwich and chewed slowly. ‘Why’s that?’ he said eventually, vaguely, the question hardly in his words at all. He pulled with finger and thumb at his earlobe. He’d had that ear pierced, Tom remembered; he’d worn a small silver ring in it through the pus and the swelling that came on after he’d had the hole made, and for days his mother had left the room every time he walked in. The ear would heal around it, Tom had warned him, but he would not listen; he kept on wearing the ring through the redness and the crusts. After a while, it had disappeared. The hole was no longer visible. Though maybe he was looking at the wrong ear.
‘Ah,’ he said, laying a hand down heavily on the edge of the sink. ‘You know yourself. Full of questions. He’s a bloody plague.’
Gathering his plate and his mug, Mark came to the sink. He said nothing as Tom stood aside, but ran the cold tap and bent to splash his face, rubbing the water up over the back of his neck. The skin there was brown as a saddle. The cut on his knuckle was matted with dust from the field. He pulled away from the sink, still gripping it, and exhaled hard.
‘Don’t bring Aoife off again without telling Miriam,’ he said.
Tom stared. Mark was running cold water into a mug now, the same mug he had drunk his tea from, his eyes straight ahead on the window to the yard. His jaw was tight. He was letting the tap run on even though the mug was full, letting the water spill over on to his hand, his cut hand.
‘Don’t bring her away without telling me,’ he said, and he shut off the tap.
Tom wanted to laugh. ‘Sure you knew I had her,’ he said. ‘Sure you saw me taking her with me when I went to get the twine.’ As he spoke he was admiring the sense that ran through his words, the straightness of what he was saying; he was basking in it, barely even ready for the possibility of a reply, when Mark lifted the mug a hand’s height and landed it on the bottom of the sink with a bang. Water went everywhere. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw the girl rise from the couch with the child and move quickly into the next room.
‘Miriam didn’t see you taking her with you,’ Mark said, swinging an arm towards where the girl had been. ‘Miriam came running down the fields, crying that she’d put Aoife up in her cot this morning at eleven and that she’d gone up to check on her twenty minutes later and that she wasn’t in the cot any more, and did I know where she was, or did you?’ He drew breath. ‘Because Miriam thought the two of us were out at the hay with the tractors, me and you, and that someone was after coming into the house while she was out with the washing, and that someone was after taking the fucking child.’
Now Tom’s laugh came, and it came like something hocked up. ‘For fuck’s sake. You’re not going to listen to that sort of giddy rubbish from her, are you? What does she think this is, the television?’
Mark faced him. ‘What did you take her out of the cot for?’ He turned the tap on again. ‘Miriam puts her to bed and you go up there without telling anybody and you take her down again. She was meant to be sleeping. She was meant to be on her nap. What did you do that for? Ha?’
His lips were pulled back from his teeth with anger. His fists were clenched on the counter. This was how it was getting with him: further and further from reason every day. He wanted to argue over everything, he wanted to agree over nothing, he wanted to pick and bicker and drag everything out past its natural end. Or else he was silent, going out to the fields in the mornings almost without saying a word, never stopping to ask Tom what needed to be done, never listening to Tom’s thoughts on how to do things — even that morning, Tom had to admit to himself now, he himself had done all of the talking, and all of the listening too. Mark would just sit there, waiting for the child to waken, and for the girl from over the road to arrive, and then as soon as the work outside was done he would be back in to the child, and then gone for the rest of the day, off in the car to Longford or Carrick or Cavan. What he did there he never said. At night was when they spoke, when the child was upstairs and they were in front of the television; at night Tom tried with him, tried the small things of the day on him, tried the weather, tried the neighbours, tried the jobs yet to be faced into that summer. Everything was simple. Everything was straightforward. But everything sent Mark further and further into himself. He never spoke about his mother. He never spoke about Joanne. Tom tried with him; he could, he supposed, have tried harder, but it was hard for him to know where to start talking about them himself. The best he could do was try to talk to him about the child, and even that much Mark seemed to resent.
‘The child was awake,’ Tom said. ‘She was roaring. I went upstairs and brought her down with me, and there was no sign of anyone to look after her. So I took her out with me. And then she was happy enough. What did you expect me to do? Leave her in there, screaming down the walls?’
‘But you knew Miriam was here with her. You knew Miriam had come down this morning to mind her.’
Tom shook his head. ‘I saw no sign of anyone. The dishes were in the sink and the child’s clothes were all over the floor and there was music on the radio there going full blast. Wasn’t much sign of anyone doing any minding as far as I could see.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ In three long strides, Mark was at the back door. ‘You’re great, aren’t you?’
‘Sure, for Jesus’ sake, the girl hardly thought someone had come in to take the child? For Christ’s sake, you can’t be blaming me because she let her mind run away with itself? Who in fuck’s name is going to come in here and take the bloody child? Ha?’
‘Watch your mouth.’
‘Sammy Stewart? Jimmy Flynn, racing up the stairs and snatching her off to live with him?’ He snorted. ‘Get a hold of yourself, would you? You’re as big a havril as the little girl.’
‘You should have let Miriam know you were taking her. You should have let me know you’d taken her up without Miriam knowing.’
‘Well, I’m telling you now.’
Standing on the step into the back kitchen, Mark ground with his foot at the floor. ‘Just leave her,’ he said. ‘Leave her be. She needs her routine. She needs things to be like normal.’
He walked off into the yard. From the next room, Tom could hear the girl talking to Aoife in a low voice, the child’s woozy laughter, the sound of some complicated toy plucking high notes above neighbours’ engines on the day’s hot air.
Part One
Chapter One
Everything was plastic in the beer garden. Plastic chairs. Plastic tables. Plastic pint glasses. The barbecue food tasted plastic — as, Mark noticed, did the beer. It was his second pint, or his third; he couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. It was a rare hot Saturday in a summer that was already halfway through, and there was no point in complaining.