Himself(16)

‘You’re kicking your heels up there, Mahony. On the way into town, is it? Get in and I’ll bring you down with me. Watch me jill.’

Mahony gets in, minding the ferret in the footwell. A length of string is looped in a harness around her long back and tied to the gear stick.

‘We’ve been catching wabbits for the Widow.’

‘Has she given in to you?’

Tadhg resumes his driving position, with his nose just short of the windscreen. ‘She hasn’t, but I’m wearing her down. Her resolve is weakening. Soon me slippers will be under her bed and me teeth will be in the glass next to hers. If only the church biddies would stop putting a bad word in. Mind you, Father Quinn is the top one there, advising her against me.’ Tadhg throws Mahony a look of disgust. ‘He’s a teetotaller. Would you credit it? Not a natural vice in him.’

‘I met him today – a sly cast on him like your ferret there.’

‘Jaysus, don’t insult the creature. Was Mrs Cauley dancing rings around him?’

‘She was.’

Tadhg accepts a cigarette and Mahony leans in to light it for him. Tadhg’s two hands grip the steering wheel and the fag bounces in his mouth. He murmurs through the smoke. ‘Mrs Cauley has Quinn in her pocket, lulled by the clink of her gold.’

Mahony puts his hand down to the ferret; she shudders all down her back but she lets him touch her. Under her oily fur she is muscle, roped and hard. She turns her head to him and shows him one long fang.

‘What are you doing in town now? Come by for a pint?’

‘I will. I’ll take a wander first, make myself known about the place.’

Tadhg looks at Mahony closely, as if he is burning to say something, then thinks better of it and switches on the radio.

The old ones are still where Mahony left them by the pump, but today there’s a bit more life about the place. Vehicles roll up and down the main street; the doctor’s black car passes twice alone. Villagers stand chatting outside shops and on corners. Babies sit on hips or in prams where they drool over pounds of sugar and babble at tins of cocoa. Some of the younger women nod and smile at Mahony, the older ones just nod.

Beside them stand their dead shadows, gossiping well into the afterlife. They squint at Mahony with mild interest before turning to call out to the frocked children who run hoop and stick through delivery vans and bicycles. A dead man in shirtsleeves passes by with his hat pulled down low over his eyes. He is singing, he tips his brim at Mahony and is gone, leaving the ghost of a song behind him. Mahony picks it up and whistles it as he walks.

A gaggle of girls sit on the edge of the pavement sucking aniseed balls and spitting the pips across the road. As Mahony walks by they get to their feet and scatter laughing, each with a wide red grin of stolen lipstick.

‘Have you a girlfriend, Mister?’ says the ringleader, a big girl wearing the last goodness out of an ugly dress.

Mahony shakes his head. ‘Didn’t I tell you I’m waiting for you? When you’re grown we’ll run away together.’

And he goes on his way, leaving her a queen in the eyes of her friends.

Today the shop doors are propped open, welcoming sea breeze and custom. Commanding the best view of the quay and spilling its wares freely onto the surrounding area, the Post Office and General Store sits back on its haunches and disregards the competition. For here Marie Gaughan will sell you anything: from rat traps to knicker elastic, from duck eggs to feather dusters.

Outside, reels of chicken wire jostle against sacks of potatoes with turned-down tops. There’s spades and buckets hung up for the children to eye. Measuring the merits of colour and function, round turrets over square ones, pale blue over space-dust pink. Here Marie Gaughan will cut you a yellow ice from a thick block and sandwich it in wafers. Here rabbits are sold in cardboard boxes, along with water butts and garden hoes, banned books and jam made from hedgerows.

Mahony steps in off the street. Just inside the doorway a dead woman is standing on a pile of newspapers leaving neither print nor wrinkle. From her basket black beetles fall. They spiral through the air to melt, wriggling, into the floor.

‘I wanted carbolic,’ she whispers, near to tears, and disappears.

Mahony looks around him.

Marie Gaughan is behind the counter pretending to price dishcloths. Mrs Lavelle and her daughter Teasie are pretending to buy a tin of peas, and the lovely Róisín Munnelly is pretending to help them.

Here is a handsome stranger.

And here is more than one woman with the hairs rising on her neck nape and an unwanted memory shifting in the back of her mind. Past the place where old songs go to pass the time of day with forgotten hymns and nursery rhymes. Where long-ago cats are put out along with lost schooldays and expired coupons.

Later it will hit them. When they are waiting on the kettle or turning down the bed sheet.

His dark eyes are her eyes, the shape of his face, hers. The way he stands with his weight shifted back on his heels and his nose in the air, hers.

Then they will start up and call out, drink a hot cup of tea or something stronger and firmly tell themselves to cop themselves on.

But right now this memory is jumbled deep, tucked firmly behind the shopping lists and the ironing, the Friday fish and the Monday-morning gossip.

‘Now,’ says Marie Gaughan when Mahony gets to the counter. She spreads her arms out over the folded newspapers and squares her jaw.