“That’ll be thirty-six eighty,” Noreen says, neatly backing off. “Them cigarettes are awful dear. Would your daddy not try the vaping instead? I’ve Dessie on the vape yokes a year now, and he’s off the cigarettes altogether—don’t be giving me that look, I know what he was at last night, I’ve the use of my nose. But mostly.”
The shop bell dings cheerily and Richie Casey comes in, smelling of sheep shite and scraping his boots on the mat. “Fuckin’ roasting,” he says. “The sheep’ll be coming up and begging to be sheared, if the wool doesn’t melt offa them first. How’s it going, Theresa? How’s your daddy?”
Richie Casey has never said a word to Trey before in her life. “Grand,” she says, shoving her change into her pocket, and escapes before anyone can get even weirder.
It takes her most of the walk up the mountain to get her head clear and understand what’s happening. All these people want something from her. They need her help, the same way her dad needed her help last night.
Trey isn’t used to anyone except her mam needing her help. What her mam needs is stuff like going to the shop or cleaning the bath, straightforward things about which Trey has no choice and which have no implications or consequences. This is different. All these people need her to do things for them that she can decide whether or not to do; things that, either way, have implications.
Trey has always preferred straightforward things. Her first instinct was to reject this new situation, but slowly, as she jolts the trolley behind her up the rocky path, it shifts in her mind. For one of the first times in her life, she has power.
She turns it over, testing the flavor. She’s pretty sure Cal would consider her dad’s plan, and her involvement in particular, to be a bad idea, but that doesn’t seem relevant. Cal is separate. She doesn’t waste much effort on wondering whether he’d be right, because he mostly is, and because it makes no difference.
The heat scorches the top of her head. Insects spin and whine above the heather. She remembers Tom Pat’s fingers, frail and shaking, around her wrist, and Mrs. Cunniffe’s pop-eyes fixed on her hungrily. Instead of rejecting the situation, her mind moves to meet it. She doesn’t know how yet, but she’s going to use it.
Six
Normally, on a Monday night, Seán Óg’s would be close to deserted. Barty the barman would be leaning on the bar watching the racing on TV, having intermittent shreds of conversation with his scattering of daily communicants, old bachelors in faded shirts who come in from the far reaches of the townland to see another human face. A clump of them might be playing Fifty-Five, a card game to which Ardnakelty brings the level of ferocious dedication that Americans reserve for football, but that’s as intense as the action would get. When Cal goes to the pub on Mondays, it’s because he feels like having a pint in peace.
Tonight it’s crammed. Word has spread, and everyone for miles around wants to check out Paddy Englishman. There are people in here whom Cal has never seen before, and who are either the wrong gender or decades younger than this place’s usual clientele. Everyone is talking at once, and some people are wearing their going-out clothes. Bodies and excitement have turned the air so muggy that Cal feels like he’s not breathing. He checks around for Lena, but she’s not there. He didn’t really expect her to be.
“Pint of Smithwick’s,” he says to Barty, when he manages to reach the bar. “You’re doing some business tonight.”
“Jaysus, wouldja stop,” Barty says. His face is sweating. “Hasn’t been this packed since Dumbo’s funeral. It’s fuck-all good to me, but. Half of these are grannies or teenagers; they order one fuckin’ sherry or a pint of cider, and take up space for the night. If you see any of these shams spill a drop, you tell me and I’ll throw them out on their ear.” A couple of months ago Barty replaced the splitting bar stools and banquettes with new, shiny, bottle-green ones. Ever since then he’s been, according to Mart, like a woman with a new kitchen, one step away from going over you with a duster before he allows you in. He didn’t do anything about the worn-out red linoleum flooring, or the lumpy painted-over wallpaper, or the faded newspaper clippings framed on the walls, or the frayed fishing net draped from the ceiling and festooned with whatever random items people feel like throwing in there, so the place looks pretty much the same as always, but Barty doesn’t see it that way.
“I’ll make sure they mind their manners,” Cal says, taking his pint. “Thanks.”
Cal can tell where Paddy Englishman is—in the back alcove where Mart and his buddies usually hang out—because it’s the corner everyone’s carefully ignoring. He makes his way through the crowd, shielding his pint and nodding to people he knows. Noreen waves to him from a corner, where she’s squeezed in between two of her enormous brothers; Cal waves back and keeps moving. One girl is hopping around in a neon-pink dress not much bigger than a bathing suit, presumably in the hope that Paddy Englishman will notice her and whisk her off to a party on his yacht.
A sizable proportion of the regular occupants of Seán Óg’s have condensed themselves into the alcove. All of them are a little redder in the face than usual, but Cal figures this is heat rather than drink. They’re here for a purpose tonight; they wouldn’t let drink blunt them until that purpose was thoroughly accomplished. In the heart of the alcove, with his shoulder to Cal, laughing at some story of Sonny McHugh’s, is a narrow fair-haired guy in a noticeably expensive shirt.
The guys are scrupulously, methodically providing Rushborough with a normal night out. Dessie Duggan is giving out loudly to Con McHugh about something to do with shearing, and Bobby is explaining his mother’s latest blood tests to Francie, who doesn’t appear to have registered that he’s there. None of them have dressed up for the occasion. Bobby has washed till he’s even pinker and shinier than usual, and Con has flattened down his unruly dark hair, or else his wife has, but they’re all in their work clothes—except Mart, who has given free rein to his sense of the artistic and is wearing a flat tweed cap, a threadbare grandfather shirt, and a hairy brown waistcoat that Cal had no idea he even owned. He could do with a clay pipe, but apart from that, he’s a tourist board’s dream.
Mart and Senan are sitting next to each other so they can argue more conveniently. “That hat,” Senan is telling Mart, in the voice of a man repeating himself for the last time, “is no loss to you or anyone. You oughta be thanking God it’s gone. Say there was a news reporter here, and he caught that yoke on camera—”
“What the hell would a news reporter be doing here?” Mart demands.
“A report about…” Senan lowers his voice a notch and tilts his head at the fair-haired guy. “That, sure. And say he put you on the telly, wearing that yoke. This town’d be the laughingstock of the country. The world, even. It’d go viral on YouTube.”
“Because the rest of ye are a shower of fashion icons, is it? Linda Evangelista wore that there polo shirt on the catwalk? That hat of mine had more panache than anything you’ve ever been next nor near. If that news reporter ever arrives, I know what you’ll be wearing to greet him.”
“I wouldn’t wear that fuckin’ offense against nature for—”
“You’re both beautiful,” Cal says. “How’s it going?”
“Ah, ’tis yourself!” Mart says with delight, raising his pint high to Cal. “Shift over there, Bobby, and make room for the big fella. Senan oughta thank you, Sunny Jim; I was working on him to give me my hat back, but now that’ll have to wait. Mr. Rushborough!”
Rushborough turns from laughing with Sonny, and Cal gets his first good look at the guy. He’s somewhere in his forties, probably, with the kind of thin, smooth, pale face that’s impossible to pin down any closer. Everything about him is smooth: his ears lie close against his head, his hair is slicked down neatly, his shirt falls cleanly with no bulges, and his light eyes are set flat in his face.