“That’ll be ating cheese too late at night,” Noreen advises her. “Once we had a baked Camembert at Christmas, and I dreamed I was after turning into a llama in a zoo, and I was annoyed ’cause my good shoes wouldn’t fit on the hooves. Leave the cheese alone and you’ll be grand. Now, Theresa”—Noreen abandons her dusting to lean over the counter and point the duster at Trey—“did your daddy say who this fella’s granny was?”
“Nah,” Trey says. “Don’t think he knows.” She can’t see the jam they normally get. She grabs some weird-looking apricot thing instead.
“That’s men for you,” Noreen says. “A woman woulda thought to ask. Myself and Dymphna, that’s Mrs. Duggan, we spent half the morning trying to get it straight who she mighta been. Dymphna reckons she musta been Bridie Feeney from across the river, that went over to London before the Emergency. She never wrote back. Dymphna says her mammy always thought Bridie had gone over to have a baba and was hiding the shame, but I suppose it might be that she just didn’t bother her arse writing at first, and then she married some fancy doctor and got too many notions to write to the likes of us. Or both,” she adds, struck by the idea. “The baba first, and then the doctor.”
“Bridie Feeney’s sister was married to my uncle,” Tom Pat says. “I was only a wee little lad when she went off, but they always said she’d do well for herself. She was that kind. She coulda married a doctor, all right.”
“I know Anne Marie Dolan,” Mrs. Cunniffe says triumphantly, “whose mammy was a Feeney. Bridie woulda been her great-aunt. I rang Anne Marie straightaway, as soon as I got my breath back, didn’t I, Noreen? She says neither her granddad nor her mammy ever said a word to her about any gold. Not a peep outa them. Would you credit that?”
“I would,” Tom Pat says. “I’d say that’s only typical. Anne Marie’s granddad was aul’ Mick Feeney, and Mick had no use for girls. He thought they were awful talkers, the lot of them, couldn’t hold their water—no harm to the present company.” He smiles around at them all. Mrs. Cunniffe titters. “And he’d only daughters. I’d say he told no one, and waited for Anne Marie’s young lad to get old enough that he could pass it on. Only didn’t Mick take a heart attack and die, before he got the chance.”
“And no surprise to anyone but himself,” Noreen says tartly. “I heard his back room was that full of bottles, they had to get a skip in. No wonder he never done nothing about the gold. He’d other things to keep him occupied.”
“And if it wasn’t for this English chap,” Mrs. Cunniffe says, a hand to her face, “the secret woulda been lost and gone forever. And us walking over the gold our whole lives, without a notion.”
“That’s what you get when people do nothing,” Noreen says. Having stood still for as long as she’s capable of, she goes back to her dusting. “God knows how many generations of Feeneys, every one of them doing feck-all about that gold. At least this English lad got sense enough from somewhere to do something. About feckin’ time.”
“You’ll be meeting this English chap, won’t you, Theresa?” Mrs. Cunniffe asks, edging closer to Trey. “Would you ever ask him if there’s any of it in our bitta land? Noreen was telling me it’s in the river, and sure we’re only a few yards away. I couldn’t be digging myself, my back does be at me something terrible, but Joe’s a great man for the digging. He’d have the garden up in no time.”
Somewhere on its way down the mountain, the gold has apparently turned from a possibility into a solid thing. Trey isn’t sure what she thinks of this.
She dumps her shopping on the counter and adds a packet of crisps, as her fee for taking Maeve’s turn. “And twenty Marlboro,” she says.
“You’re too young to be smoking,” Noreen tells her.
“For my dad.”
“I suppose,” Noreen concedes, throwing her one more suspicious glance and turning to get the cigarettes. “Cal’d malavogue you if he smelled smoke off you. Remember that.”
“Yeah,” Trey says. She wants to leave.
“Come here to me, a chailín,” Tom Pat orders Trey, beckoning. “I’d come to you, only I used up all the strength in my legs getting here. Come over and let me have a look at you.”
Trey leaves Noreen to ring up the shopping and goes to him. Tom Pat takes hold of her wrist, to bend her down so he can see her—his eyes are filmed over. He smells like a hot shed.
“You’re the spit of your daddo,” he tells her. “Your mammy’s daddy. He was a fine man.”
“Yeah,” Trey says. “Thanks.” Her granddad died before she was born. Her mam doesn’t talk about him much.
“Tell me something, now,” Tom Pat says. “Yourself and that Yankee fella up at O’Shea’s place. Do ye ever make rocking chairs?”
“Sometimes,” Trey says.
“I fancy a rocking chair,” Tom Pat explains, “for in front of the fire, in the winter. I do be thinking about the winter an awful lot, these days, to keep myself cool. Would ye ever make me one? A small one, now, so these little legs of mine can touch the ground.”
“Yeah,” Trey says. “Sure.” She says yes to just about any work that comes their way. She’s aware that, for government reasons she doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about, Cal isn’t allowed to get a job here. One of her fears is that he won’t make enough money to live on and he’ll have to move back to America.
“Good girl yourself,” Tom Pat says, smiling up at her. His few teeth look as big as horses’ teeth in his fallen mouth. “Ye’ll have to come down to me, now, to sort the ins and outs of it. I can’t see to drive any more.”
“I’ll say it to Cal,” Trey says. His hand is still around her wrist, loose bony fingers with a slow tremor shaking them.
“Your daddy’s doing a great thing for all this townland,” Tom Pat tells her. “A thing like this doesn’t stop with a few diggers in a few fields. A few years from now, we won’t know ourselves. And all because of your daddy. Are you proud of him, now?”
Trey says nothing. She can feel silence filling her up like pouring concrete.
“Sure, when did the childer ever appreciate their parents?” Mrs. Cunniffe says with a sigh. “They’ll miss us when we’re gone. But you tell your daddy from me, Theresa, he’s a great man altogether.”
“Listen to me now, a stór,” Tom Pat says. “D’you know our Brian? My Elaine’s young lad. The redheaded fella.”
“Yeah,” Trey says. She doesn’t like Brian. He was in Brendan’s class. He used to wind Brendan up till Brendan lost his temper, and then run to the teacher. No one ever believed a Reddy.
“Your man, the Sassenach, he’ll be needing someone to help him go scooping about in that river. Hah? He won’t want to get his fine shoes wet.”
“Dunno,” Trey says.
“Brian’s not a big lad, but he’s strong,” Tom Pat says. “And it’d do him good. All that lad needs is a bitta hard work, to get his head on straight. His mammy’s too soft on him. You say that to your daddy, now.”
“Brian’s not the only one that’ll want that work,” Noreen puts in, unable to stay silent any longer. “There’s plenty of lads around here that’d only love to get a foot in the door there. My Jack’ll be in the pub tomorrow night, now, Theresa. You tell your daddy to introduce him to that English fella.”
“I dunno if he even needs anyone,” Trey says. “I never met him.”
“Don’t be worrying about that. All you’ve to do is say it to your daddy. Can you remember that?”
All of them are focused on Trey with an intensity she’s not used to. Everything feels very weird, like some crap old film where people’s bodies get taken over by aliens. “I’ve to go,” she says, moving her wrist out of Tom Pat’s hand. “My mam needs the dinner.”