Himself(17)

Mahony asks for fags and a local rag. ‘What’s the news about the place?’ he says in his hardest Dublin orphan voice.

You are.

Marie takes his money and gives him change. ‘Ah, not much happens about the place. Sure, there’s not much to keep a body here.’

‘There seems to be a lot going on.’

‘Not for those such as yourself, from out of town.’

Mrs Lavelle watches from behind the dry goods, where she’s been having a scratch of her scalp, salting her shoulders with a fresh cascade. Marie has advised her to seek out a medicated shampoo and avoid black to lessen the effect, but Mrs Lavelle has been in mourning since the death of de Valera.

Mahony smiles at her and she draws nearer, followed by her daughter, Teasie, who clutches a can of peas to her narrow chest as if it would stop a bullet. Teasie’s eyes flitter in the far-off depth beyond the surface smear of her spectacle lenses.

Mrs Lavelle tries out her voice. ‘You’re the fella from Dublin staying up at Rathmore House?’

‘I am.’

‘Is it comfortable there?’ Mrs Lavelle breaks the long word into separate syllables, for she is speaking polite.

‘It’s grand.’

‘And the breakfasts?’

Mrs Lavelle ignores Marie’s little headshake. Mrs Lavelle had helped Shauna with the housekeeping for years only to be dismissed after a misunderstanding over a silver-plated cruet. She would like to know the place has gone to the dogs without her. Although she doesn’t blame Shauna; it’s the other one. Either way, it drew on an attack of her nerves, which put her in her bed for nigh on a month.

‘Breakfast is grand too. Shauna does a good fry.’ Mahony takes up his paper and pretends to read. ‘I’ll be staying on for a bit. I’m taking a holiday for meself.’

The women glance at each other.

Mahony looks up and smiles so brightly that most of them smile back. ‘It’s a breath of fresh air to be out of the city.’

He speaks low and kind about the lovely trees and the sea so that Marie’s hands start to stroke the corners of the newspapers and Teasie Lavelle puts down her can of peas. Then he’s asking if any of them have been to Dublin.

‘No.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Marie, you have.’

Mahony gives Marie a soft kind of look. ‘Then you’ll know what I mean better than anyone else. It’s not a patch on here, is it?’

Marie finds that she is leaning halfway across the counter gazing into the hot dark eyes of an unwashed stranger young enough to be her grandson.

‘It was busy, the streets were dirty and you couldn’t get a decent cup of tea,’ she says, entranced.

‘That’s right.’

Mahony gives her an impossibly slow smile and Marie Gaughan is astonished to find the corners of her mouth responding of their own accord. She coughs herself red and begins to thumb through a copy of Ireland’s Own.

Mahony folds his paper under his arm. ‘Well, I’ll be seeing you around the place no doubt, Marie.’

Marie nods, speechless. Behind the counter her toes are curling in her carpet slippers and the locked cash box of her heart is opening.

Words are capable of flying. They dart through windows, over fences, between bar stools and across courtyards. They travel rapidly from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth. And as they go, they pick up speed and weight and substance and gravity. Until they land with a scud, take seed and grow as fast as the unruliest of beanstalks.

By the time Mahony reaches Kerrigan’s Bar everyone knows he’s on holiday from Dublin, loves a fry and is capable of causing a smile on Marie Gaughan’s face, a sight not seen in living memory.

The pub is heaving; even the plush seats are taken. Here are the farmers and the fishermen, the postman and the shopkeepers of Mulderrig. The dead have been pushed out by the living today. They sulk in the cellar and listen on the landing.

In the corner sits a bodhrán player. The music will start directly, once the rest of the band is here and the tall tales are toppled.

Tadhg nods to acknowledge Mahony as he steps in through the door but doesn’t miss a beat; he’s on fine form behind the bar.

‘So there we were, me and this whale on the end of the hook, and the line reelin’ out like judgment and this unholy bastard trying to pull me out of the boat and into me death.’

Mahony catches sight of Jack Brophy in the same place as before.

‘So then this fella,’ Tadhg points the nose of a bottle at a laughing man with hair like a wind-blasted bush at the far end of the bar. ‘He says, “Ah, Tadhg, give it a flick of your wrist – isn’t it all in the wrist action?”’

The pub howls.

‘And Tadhg landed a monster of a two-pound mackerel!’

‘It was a mermaid, wasn’t it, Tadhg?’

‘One with a new perm for herself?’

‘Ah, watch it. Half the lies Tadhg says aren’t true.’

Tadhg grins benevolently at his audience and spreads his hands wide. ‘Ye can all ask me arse. Now, Mahony?’

There’s a lull and Mahony feels the eyes of Mulderrig upon him.

Jack raises his finger half an inch from the bar towel. ‘I’ll stand him a pint. Take a pew, Mahony.’

Mahony takes the seat made free next to Jack, and the eyes of Mulderrig see the big man pat Mahony on the back. It’s a benediction; Mahony knows it and is grateful. Jack smiles at Mahony, then turns back to listen to the man with the swollen face to the right of him talk with authority about the terrible malignity of horseflies.