Sheila stirred and came awake. She saw me staring into space and elbowed me lightly in the ribs. 'I've remembered something.'
'Mmm?'
'I don't think Paddy ever mentioned anything about this Irish Traveller stuff…'
'I think he only found out about it after you split.'
'… but Seamus did. He knew about it. He told me about moving around in Ireland from one place to another. Something about dogs and horses. He said he missed it. I think I made fun of it, said something about gypsies, and he got angry. He did that a lot-got angry. I gave him reason, but he was angry by nature. Which made him exciting, back then, as screwed up as I was.'
'Well, I gather they had a hard time, the Travellers, until fairly recently. A sort of minority. The kids' education would've been buggered up, and Ireland was in a mess until the IT and the tax people got together.'
'Yes, but the point is, he's come here for this gathering and paid good money for it. And you say he looks unwell but he came anyway. If he's got any say in it, I reckon he'd be at this dinner. Don't you?'
25
It seemed a reasonable assumption, and it was the only one we had to work with. We had our tickets to the dinner and surely there was safety in numbers. If Cummings showed up at the dinner he was hardly likely to cause trouble with so many people around. Also, to judge by the men I'd seen out at the farm and the few arriving at the caravan park as I left, there were some pretty formidable faces and bodies among them.
I moved into Sheila's room with my baggage and we set about making ourselves presentable for the evening. We showered; Sheila dealt with her hair and face while I shaved. The event was bound to be far from formal, but Molly Maguire had been pretty dolled up with rings and with little mirrors on her skirt and her velvet jacket, so I guessed people would go in a certain amount of style. Best I could do was a clean white linen shirt, black slacks and shoes and a newish olive jacket. Sheila teamed her boots with black velvet pants, her red sweater and a jacket with silver threads running through it. She wrapped her scarf round her neck and paraded for me.
'What d'you reckon?'
'Can you flamenco?'
'If I have to. How about you?'
'Love, I can barely waltz. Jive a bit if I'm pissed enough. Come to think of it, I know your married and stage names but not your maiden name. Don't tell me it's Kelly or Higgins.'
'Fitzsimmons; Cornish. My great-great-something grandfather was transported for smuggling.'
'Good for him,' I said.
'Jesus, it's like night football,' Sheila said.
The lights were visible from a kilometre away. The road to the gate and the area around the farmhouse were lit up and the building itself glowed like a beacon. An attendant directed the car to a parking area and we joined a troop of people heading for the house. The women, of all shapes and sizes, wore colourful dresses, skirts and blouses, nothing drab. I was more or less in tune sartorially with the older men except for one thing-no hat. Hats and caps were in-green, white, black, red-and feathers were popular as well.
We presented our tickets at the door and were ushered by a young woman, in a floor-length dress and jangling bangles, around the verandah to the back of the house. The wide verandah had been built in to form a long room with trestle tables and chairs down the centre. There looked to be seating for a couple of hundred, with place cards propped up beside the cutlery and a very encouraging array of bottles. About half the places were already occupied with more people flooding in, and the noise level was going up. The background music, fiddles and pipes and drums, was battling against the chatter and the clink of glasses and bottles. The air was smoky. Potbelly stoves at either end of the room were dealing with the chill.
'Like the old days,' Sheila said, 'when you could have a smoke with your tucker.'
'Problem for you?'
'We'll see. Anyway, this could be fun.'
The band was grouped at the end of the room on a raised platform. Three men and two women with a variety of instruments in use and others propped up waiting to be played. The girl who'd brought us in had a list and she directed us to seats near the middle of the room. We sat down with a pair of Hennessys next to me and an ancient Clancy next to Sheila. The protocol was printed on the place card: Say 'Burl talosk' to your neighbour, shake hands or kiss, fill your glass and toast each other. We did, me with Guinness, Sheila with red wine. I squinted through the haze. If it got much worse, I'd have trouble seeing people at either end of the table, but, so far, there was no sign of Seamus Cummings.
We went through the ritual, chatted to each other, the people on either side, and the ones opposite. The menu featured leek and potato soup, casseroled rabbit and apple pie. The wines were all cleanskins from the Hunter Valley. The Guinness ran out quickly before the soup arrived. I tried not to be looking too obviously as the places filled up. There were bound to be no-shows for one reason or another, but there were only about five or six chairs unoccupied when the music stopped and a man identified by the old fellow next to me as Corey O'Loughlin, our host, got up and announced the order of business. There was to be a welcoming address at the end of the first course by himself and a short speech about the history of the Irish Travellers in Australia by Dr Brian O'Keefe…
'And then youse can dig into the apple pie and the sweet wine and dance the calories off as we clear the room.'
There were cheers, hoots and hollers as the band struck up again. O'Loughlin was a two-metre giant, built in proportion. I couldn't help watching him as he drained a glass, took up a fiddle and joined the band. When I looked back at the table I saw Seamus Cummings, deeply tanned, skeletally thin, sitting on the opposite side a few seats away, staring at Sheila, who was deep in conversation with the woman next to her. When she stopped to take a drink she saw Cummings. She could hardly miss him, his gaze seemed to send out a beam of hot light.
Sheila turned to me. 'He looks like death.'
She didn't mean deadly. Cummings was much thinner than when I'd seen him in Ireland. His shirt and jacket hung loosely on his bony torso and his hands around a glass of wine were like thin, brown, articulated sticks. He nodded at Sheila who nodded back. He shot me a look that was hard to interpret-indifference, or contempt-and turned his attention to his food.
Sheila had finished her soup and just pushed the rabbit around on the plate. I'd eaten half of mine but now I lost all appetite.
'What do we do?' Sheila whispered.
'We wait.'
It was difficult not to stare at Cummings, who seemed to have abandoned interest in us and was listening to what his neighbour was saying while alternating bites of his food with sips of his wine. He nodded and smiled and the smile was ghastly in that fleshless face.
The music stopped and the gigantic O'Loughlin called for quiet in a roaring voice none would disobey. He introduced the small, dapper man at the top table as Brian O'Keefe and yielded the floor to him.
I can't say that I took in a word of what O'Keefe said. I was aware of laughter and people nodding in agreement and an occasional clap, but my mind was fully occupied with two questions: Where was Jack Casey and what was Cummings likely to do?
O'Keefe finished and sat down. The apple pie and cream arrived and the talk started up, louder as some of the diners got oiled and competed with the music. Plates cleaned, mouths wiped, people began to get up from the table and drift away to form groups. The music picked up pace and started to sound like the introduction to a jig. Cummings levered himself up slowly and walked to the end of the table. I stood but he gestured for me to stay where I was as he approached, bracing himself now and then on the backs of chairs. He reached us and stood, wheezing and sucking in the smoky air.