Himself(3)

Tadhg withholds a fart, just while he’s thinking. ‘Shauna Burke rents out rooms to paying guests at Rathmore House up in the forest. That’s about it.’

‘That’d be grand.’

Tadhg takes a thorough glance at Mahony. He’ll admit that he has a sort of bearing about him. He’s not a bad height and he’s strong looking, handy even. He’s been into his twenties and he’ll come out again the other side none the worse for it; he has the kind of face that will stay young. But he could do with a wash; he has the stubble of days on his chin. And his trousers are ridiculous: tight around the crotch and wide enough at the bottom to mop the main road.

Tadhg nods at them. ‘They’re all the rage now? Them trousers?’

‘They are, yeah.’

‘Do you not feel like a bit of an eejit wearing them?’

Mahony smiles. ‘They all wear ’em in town. There’s wider.’

Tadhg raises his eyebrows a fraction. ‘Is there now? Well, you wouldn’t want to be caught in a gust of wind.’

Tadhg can see that the girls would be falling over themselves if this fella ever had the notion to shave himself or pick up a bar of soap. And Mahony knows it too. It’s there in the curve of his smile and the light in his dark eyes. It’s in the way he moves, like he owns every inch of himself.

Tadhg stakes a smile. ‘You’ll need to watch the other guest who lives up there, Mrs Cauley. The woman’s titanic.’

‘After what I’ve been afflicted with I’m sure I can handle her.’ And Mahony turns his laughing eyes up to Tadhg.

Now Tadhg is not a man given to remarkable insights but he is suddenly certain of two things.

One: that he’s seen those eyes before.

Two: that he is almost certainly having a stroke.

For the blood inside Tadhg has begun to belt around his body for the first time in a very long time and he knows that it can’t be good to stir up a system that has been sumping and rusting to a comfortable dodder. Tadhg puts his hands over his face and leans heavily against the saloon door. He can almost feel a big fecker of a blood clot hurtling towards his brain to knock him clean out of the living world.

‘Are you all right, pal?’

Tadhg opens his eyes. The fella who is having a break from Dublin is frowning up at him. Tadhg reels off a silent prayer against the darkest of Mulderrig’s dark dreams. He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his forehead. And as the hairs settle on the back of his neck he tells himself that this fella is really no more than a stranger.

Whatever he thought he saw in his face has gone.

In front of him is a Dublin hippy passing through the arse end of beyond.

‘Are you all right?’

Tadhg nods. ‘I am, of course.’

The stranger smiles. ‘You open? I could do time for a pint.’

‘Come inside now,’ Tadhg says, and resolutely decides to lay off the sunshine.

Luckily the sun has a desperate struggle to get in through the windows of Kerrigan’s Bar, but if it can seep through the smoky curtains it can alight on the sticky dark-wood tables. Or it can work up a dull shine on the horse brasses by the side of the fire, unlit and full of crisp packets. Or it can bathe the pint of stout in Sergeant Jack Brophy’s hand to an even richer, warmer hue.

‘Jack, this is Mahony.’

Mahony puts his rucksack by the door.

Jack turns to look at him. He nods. ‘Get the man a pint, Tadhg. Here, Mahony, sit by me.’

Mahony sits down next to Jack, a strong square wall of a man, and, like all mortals, he begins to feel soothed. Mahony isn’t to know that Jack has this effect on the mad, the bad, the imaginative, and skittish horses, whether off duty or on. Ask anyone and they will tell you it’s what makes Jack a good guard. For here he is working his stretch of the coast, sorting out the wicked, the misjudged and the maligned without having to once raise his voice.

Tadhg puts a pint in front of Mahony.

‘Now, tell me about it,’ says Jack, barely moving his lips.

Mahony could tell him about it. Mahony could start by telling Jack what happened last Thursday.

Last Thursday, Father Gerard McNamara walked into the Bridge Tavern with a black leather folio in his hand and an envelope inside the folio. He was seeking one of St Anthony’s most notorious alumni and had started by visiting the bars within a one-mile radius of the orphanage. For Father McNamara was heeding the advice of the local guards along with the principle that a rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; it usually lands and festers right next to it.

Mahony was emanating from the jacks with a cigarette in his mouth as Father McNamara came round the side of the bar.

‘I’ll have a word with you, Mahony.’

Mahony took out his fag and squinted at the priest. ‘Sit yourself down, have a drink with me, Father.’

The priest threw Mahony a caustic look, put the folio on the bar and unzipped it.

Mahony pulled himself back up onto his stool and took hold of his pint with serious dedication. ‘Ah, excuse me, I didn’t shake your hand, did I, Father? You see I’ve just touched something far from godly but just as capable of inflicting great bliss.’

Jim behind the bar grinned.

Father McNamara extracted the envelope from his folio. ‘Sister Veronica passed away. She asked for this to be given to you.’