Some nights they stayed up and drank too much pastis while he tried to console her but she lashed out like something wild and cornered. It was his fault, she said. He was lazy, under — motivated — he had no ambition, no guts, which struck him as a bit rich, considering his circumstances. He did shit work all day so she could write. And gladly. God how he wanted her to break through into some kind of success, some new version of herself that made her happy.
But Paris was a black hole, somewhere where Jennifer came hard up against the wall of her limitations while all he could do was stand by and watch.
‘Scully?’
‘Hm?’
‘Tell me about the writing. Are you asleep or drunk already?’
‘Well, I liked it.’
‘What did she write? For certain, she’s the poetical type, takin the bothy the way she did.’
Scully smiled and passed back the bottle. ‘Actually she’s very businesslike, Pete. Likes things neat and sharp, you know. Comes from a very proper family. Escaped from them really. She’s always thought her parents held her back from doing what she’d like to try. They pressured her into a career in the public service and stuff. She says they made her ordinary when she wasn’t. Safe, dull, that kind of thing, which she isn’t. I liked her because she was so… straight, I guess. But she hates that, being straight. Writing was one of those things she always thought of doing. You know, weird, risky things, the kind of things parents hate. All this travelling was her chance. She quit her job, had her heart set on Paris. Paris was poetry for her. And she wrote some nice poems, showed em to people and was kind of… crushed. Those bastards, her mates, they thought it was a bit of a joke. Well, fuck them. I thought the poems were good.’
‘You liked them cause you love her.’
‘No, I liked them cause I liked them.’ Scully watched the ragged hedges peel by. ‘Anyway, it didn’t work out.’
‘So much for dancin by the fountains.’
‘Yeah.’
Pete chugged on the whiskey bottle and gasped with pleasure. He steered with his knees a while and hummed theatrically.
‘By God, Scully, you’ve seen the world!’
‘On the cheap, mate, on the cheap.’
‘And what did you do in Greece, lie in the bakin sun and drink them little drinks with hats on em?’
Scully laughed. ‘No, I worked for a stonemason humping granite up a hill. Loved it. Great place. Greece is like Australia invaded by the Irish.’
‘Good gravy, man!’
‘It’s true. Nothin works and no one gives a shit. Perfect.’
‘And what did Jennifer do?’
‘She painted.’
‘Houses?’
‘No, art painting. Well, you know, she had to have a try. She was okay, I thought. Trouble with Jennifer is she can turn her hand to anything. She’s quite good at a lot of things, but she wants to be a genius at one thing. Maybe it’ll happen. One day. She deserves a break.’
‘You love the girl.’
‘I do.’
They coasted into Shinrone, rain drifting oblique in the lights of the little town which seemed choked with parked cars.
‘Arlo Guthrie was here last year, Scully. I came to see him myself. Remember that song:
Comin into Los Angeles
Bringin in a coupla keys
Don’t touch my bags
If you please, Mr Customs ma-aan!’
‘I remember. That’s a drug song, Pete.’
‘It never was!’
Scully took the bottle from him and laughed till it hurt.
‘One of them U2 lads was down from Dublin to see the auld Arlo. I nearly knocked him over in the pisser. Where would we be without music, eh? It’s not really a drugs song, is it?’
Scully only laughed, nodding.
‘Fookin hell!’
• • •
IN THE HOT WILD FUG of the pub that night, Scully lost the anxiety that had come upon him a couple of hours ago. The band tossed from jig to reel and the dust rose from the foul floors with the stomp of dancing and the flap of coats and scarves. The fiddle was manic and angular, the tin whistle demented, and the drum was like the forewarning of the headache to come. Someone came in with a set of pipes and an old man grabbed up the microphone and the fever of the place subsided as a ballad began. Scully couldn’t recall a sweeter sound that the sad soughing of those pipes. This was no braying Scots pipe; this was a keening, a cry loaded with desire and remorse. The old man sang with his tie askew and his dentures slightly adrift, a song of the Slieve Blooms, of being left behind, abandoned in the hills with winter coming on. Scully listened, transfixed, until in the final chorus he put down his glass and shoved his way to the door.
Outside it was raining and there was no one in the street but a sullen black dog chained to a bicycle. Across the road the chipper was heating up his fat for closing time, his hard fluorescents falling like a block of ice into the street. Scully’s face was numb in patches, and he stood with his cheeks in the rain, trying to account for his sudden moment of dread in there. That’s what it was, dread. It’s a song, Scully.
Pete stood in the doorway, peering out. ‘You’re not goin to puke, now are ye?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘You don’t like the music?’
‘The music’s great. Grand, in fact.’
‘By God, there’s some rascally girls from Tullamore in there.’
‘Go to it, son.’
‘You alright, then?’
‘I’ll be in in a moment.’
Pete slipped back into the hot maw of the pub and Scully shook the rain from his face. The black dog whimpered. He went over and let him off the chain. It nipped him and bolted into the night.
• • •
AMID THE GREASY STEAM OF a parcel of chips the pair of them drove home singing.
Keep your hands off red-haired Mary
Her and I are to be wed
We see a priest this very morn
And tonight we’ll lie in a marriage bed…
They came to the odd little tree in the middle of the road with its sad decoration of rags, and Scully asked about it.
‘A wishing tree,’ said Peter, stopping beside it and winding down the window to let in a blast of cold air. ‘People tie a rag on and make a wish.’
‘Does it work?’
Pete guffawed. ‘Does it fookin look like it, son? Does the country seem so much like the island of Hawaii? Not many of us get our wish in Ireland, Scully.’
‘Things aren’t that tragic here, surely,’ said Scully, feeling the mood slip from him.
‘Jaysus,’ yelled Pete. ‘Can you imagine how fooked it’d be if we did!’
The postie’s teeth were huge and hilarious in the gloom.
For a long way up the hill behind Binchy’s Bothy, a hare ran doggedly before them at the roadside, his tail bobbing in the headlights as they slowed. On and on it ran, weaving now and then to seek an opening in the stone wall, skittering across glassy patches of mud, until finally, it veered left into a boreen and claimed the darkness of the field. Scully and Peter Keneally cheered him all the way to the crest of the hill.
At the cottage, Scully climbed out and stood a moment by the van.
‘Cheer up, Scully. It’s tomorrow already.’
‘Tomorrow it is.’
‘God bless you now.’