He smiled. Yes.
• • •
THAT MORNING HE DROVE INTO birr and organised his banking. He had a cheque made out to Peter Keneally as part payment. He bought a leg of New Zealand lamb and a sprig of rosemary at insane cost. He found oranges from Spain, olives, anchovies, tomatoes, things with the sun still in them. Men and women greeted him as he humped a sack of spuds to the Transit in a light drizzle. He bought an Irish Times and read about the mad bastard in Melbourne killing eight in the Australia Post building. Jumped through a plate glass window on the tenth floor. Someone else in Miami, an estranged husband killed his whole family with a ball peen hammer and gassed himself so they could all be together again. Shit, was it just men?
Two kids in fluorescent baseball caps walked by singing. He started the van. Yes, at least they sing here, whatever else happens.
• • •
ALONG THE WINDING LANES HE drove, contained between hedges and walls, swinging into turns hard up against the brambles, skidding mildly on puddles hard as steel, until he came to a tree in the middle of the road, with rags in its stark branches. It stood on a little island of grass where the road had been diverted around it. Scully pulled up alongside and saw the shards of cloth tied here and there, some pale and rotten, others freshly attached. A sad little tree with a road grown around it. It looked quite comical and forlorn. He drove on.
• • •
AT COOLDERRY HE PULLED UP outside the village school. He got out into the light and stood by the hurling pitch as the bell clanged for lunch. The bleat of children made his heart soar.
A car idled down the hill.
‘How are you, Scully?’
He turned and saw that it was Pete-the-Post with his arm out of the van.
‘Me? A bit toey, I’d say.’
‘Toey?’
‘Anxious, impatient, nervous…’
‘Antsy, then.’
‘No, toey.’
Pete smiled and turned off the motor. ‘Not long, son. Two days now, isn’t it?’
‘How’s Conor?’
The postman pursed his lips and looked out across the muddy pitch where gangly boys began to mill and surge, their sticks twitching. ‘Auld Conor’s losing, moment by moment. The drink, as if you didn’t know. It’s the saddest sight to see, Scully, a man lettin his own life slip through his hands.’
Scully scuffed his boots in the gravel. ‘Any reason for it?’
‘Aw, too long a story to bother you with. Somethin terrible happened in the family, five or six year ago. Somethin… well, somethin terrible. Conor’s the kind of man who’ll not let it be. He never mentions it, of course, never utters a word. But he broods, you know. There’s things that have no finish, Scully, no endin to speak of. There’s no justice to it, but that’s the God’s truth. The only end some things have is the end you give em. Now listen to me goin on in your ear like a radio.’
Scully waved his apology aside. ‘You’re a good brother to him.’
‘There’s a grand singin pub over to Shinrone I’m goin to tomorrow night. Why don’t ye come with me and we’ll celebrate your last night as an Irish bachelor.’
Scully squinted, hesitating. He felt as reluctant as a hermit, and foolish for feeling so.
‘Come on, Scully, be a divil!’
‘Okay,’ he smiled. ‘Thanks.’
Scully stood in the blue cloud the AN POST van left behind and heard Pete go crashing gears through the village. He stamped his feet and heard girls squealing behind him. The little van suddenly braked on the hill, U-turned and came whinnying back. Pete pulled in again, blushing fiercely and shoved an arm out the window.
‘Knew I stopped by for somethin. Telegram, Scully.’
He opened it while Pete drove off again.
SETTLEMENT THROUGH. CONFIRMED AE46 SHANNON SUNDAY MORNING. JENNIFER.
He stuffed it in his pocket and stood uncertainly there by the school, imagining them suddenly here with him. His hands shook. And then he realized — the bastard had read it. Peter knew before be did. Country life!
• • •
SATURDAY NIGHT SCULLY SHAVED and pulled on his best jeans, his roo-skin boots and a black pullover. From the tin trunk in the Transit he pulled the sleek black greatcoat bought one day in Place Monge in the desperate days of Paris. Four hundred francs secondhand. He shook his head even now at the thought. He’d worked hard for that coat. He brushed it down by the hearth and hung it up a while to air while he scrubbed his teeth with iron concentration. Scully, he thought, you look like a convict. You confirm every Englishman’s deep and haughty suspicion. You can’t help the face, but for goodness’ sake get a haircut.
He stoked the fire and loaded it with turf, and then gathered up the house keys, big medieval things, that felt heavy as a revolver in his pocket.
He read the crumpled telegram again. CONFIRMED, SUNDAY. The paper lay pale and odd on the scrubbed pine table, casting shadows from the firelight across the wood.
He thought of the night they bought this place. When he woke in the wide musty room above Davy Finneran’s pub to see Jennifer standing naked at the window, lit by the neon of the chipper across the street as the last drinkers rolled home down the street. Her body was dark from the Greek sun. The bed held the scent of their sex. Billie slept on a sofa by the door, her limbs every which way. Scully didn’t move for a while. He lay in the hammocky bed, his mouth dry from celebrating. He just watched her over by the window as the church bells tolled. Her shoulders twitched; she sniffed. Scully loved her. He was not going home, he would never see his house and all his stuff again, but he loved her and she must know it. She wiped her eyes, wiped them and turned, startled to see him awake.
‘A… a dream,’ she whispered.
But she seemed not to have even been to sleep.
‘You alright?’
She nodded.
‘Come to bed.’
For a moment, her body suddenly graven, she hesitated before padding across to him. She was cold, almost clammy against him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.
‘About a dream?’
Her breath was warm against his shoulder. He held her to him and slept.
Now Scully heard the Renault labour up the hill. He stoked the fire and switched out the light and went outside to meet Peter.
• • •
PETE-THE-POST DROVE THEM slowly through the gathering rain to Shinrone, passing the half-pint of Bushmills to Scully now and then who sipped and watched the tunnel the headlights made between the hedges and stone walls.
‘That’s a grand coat.’
‘Bought it in Paris.’
‘Paris. Friggin Paris, eh?’
Scully laughed. ‘Paris.’
‘Is it like the movies?’
‘Not so you’d notice.’
‘I liked them Gene Kelly sorta fillums, you know with the dancin and the umbrellas and the kissin by the fountain.’
‘Well, we did a lotta that, of course.’
‘So what the frig did you do?’
Scully sighed. ‘Worked me arse off, Pete. I painted and Jennifer wrote.’
‘Painted? You didn’t tell me you’re the artist type.’
‘I painted apartments, mate. Cash money. Worst job of my life, don’t ask.’
‘And the writin?’
Scully took a pull of the hot, peaty Bushmills. Paris really wasn’t the kind of thing he had in mind on a fun night out. He wanted to forget the damn place once and for all. The long miserable days scraping the ceilings of tight-arsed Parisian skinflints. The desperate scuffle outside the school every morning with Billie, and those evenings of tears and rage when Jennifer’s frustration was like an animal in the room with them. It was a kind of affliction for her. After the early buzz, the heady weeks of hope and excitement, the days she slugged it out in the tiny apartment alive with ideas, and new friends to try them on, she became this thwarted creature.