Himself(66)

A woman stood holding him across a sea of people, moving shapes in the light. How could she swim through them?

She was outside. There was blood in her mouth. They’d split her lip for her. She was running into the trees. When she reached the heart of the forest she slowed and stopped and started to feel by degrees.

She would curse them all to hell for this.

She came out of the forest just before dawn and circled the town, silent and iron-eyed. By the time the sun alighted on the rooftops Orla was standing in a dew-wet garden. The back door of the house was open. In the heavy silence of the morning she heard a baby cry and went to claim her son.





Chapter 35


May 1976


‘I just wanted to say fair play to you.’

Mahony, sitting outside the village hall, running through his lines and smoking, glances up.

Noel Munnelly is standing over him, tall and apologetic looking, with his right hand outstretched. His forehead is angry with blisters and his hair is badly receding. Behind him two curly-haired boys wearing matching sweaters are jumping on and off the kerb.

Mahony puts his fag in his mouth and stands up.

‘For the production an’ all,’ says Noel.

Mahony shakes Noel’s hand and manages a smile.

‘Róisín hasn’t been the same, since, you know. But since you’ve come an’ all this.’ Noel gestures at the empty car park. ‘It’s given her a new lease of life.’

The boys spin off whooping into a far corner where they slap each other and run back again.

Noel shrugs. ‘That’s all I wanted to say.’ He nods and turns and walks away. The younger boy runs to put his hand in his father’s, and Noel smiles down at him. The older boy lags behind, looking back at Mahony without curiosity.

Mahony lights another cigarette. He’ll go back inside in a minute just. He runs his fingers through his hair.

Around him the dead are crowding into the car park, drifting through the low wall to line up by the dustbins. They stand watching him with pale faces.

Mahony can make out Miss Mulhearne trailing through a parked car. She hovers near the group to the right of him, steadfastly studying her own shoes.

A hushed silence falls.

Mahony recognises a courtroom when he sees one.

A dim figure pushes through the crowd and staggers towards the steps, his right sleeve blood-soaked and flapping.

‘Here, Gobshite.’

Mahony looks at him.

The dead farmer glances around him and licks his lips. ‘Didn’t I tell you to get your own?’

In the empty car park the dead clap and jeer.

The dead farmer shuffles a little and grins. ‘Time to mend your ways.’ Mr McHale fondles the sodden end of his vacant shirtsleeve thoughtfully. ‘And that’s coming from a rotten one-armed bastard like me.’

The gathered dead agree. Their murmured assent echoes around the car park, metallic and distant, like a recording played backwards.

‘Settle down,’ urges Mr McHale. ‘One good woman and all that.’ He narrows his eyes and leans forward, so close that Mahony feels the dead man’s breath on his face, as stale as the crypt. ‘You’re gone on her anyway, son.’

Mahony closes his eyes. When he opens them again the car park is empty apart from a crisp packet skittering across the tarmac, filled momentarily by the breeze up off the bay.





Chapter 36


May 1976


Mrs Cauley and Bridget Doosey are amusing themselves in the kitchen with a game of cards and the last nippings from a bottle of Irish. Mrs Cauley is clad in brushed velvet and is wearing an alarming cascade of dark curls. Shauna is washing up at the sink. Now and again she scowls over at Bridget, who has her boots up on the table and is smoking a cigar.

‘I have a hand like a foot,’ says Bridget.

Johnnie, peering over her shoulder and pulling at his faint moustache, nods in agreement.

Mahony sits down at the kitchen table and declines Bridget’s offer of a Dominican.

Mrs Cauley glances up at him. ‘Where’ve you been? We have developments.’ She puts down her cards and pushes a folded piece of paper towards him.

Mahony picks it up and the two women grin at him.

‘What’s this?’

‘The name of your generous benefactor,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘The kind old soul who put up the money for your bribe.’

Mahony unfold the paper and looks at it. ‘You’re serious? I thought it was the priest’s money.’

‘That tight bastard?’ Mrs Cauley shakes her head. ‘He’d pull the socks off a dead man.’

Bridget blows smoke up to the ceiling. ‘You have to ask yourself, Mahony, what kind of an innocent bystander would put up that kind of money to buy a body out of town?’

Mrs Cauley pushes forward two coins and a matchstick. ‘And she had a motive.’

Mahony frowns. ‘Which was?’

Bridget deals another card. ‘Who would Orla really annoy?’

‘The sanctimonious, the bigoted and the pious.’ Mrs Cauley folds, pushing her cards across the table pettishly. ‘The Widow Farelly has always been head of that department.’

Bridget points with her cigar. ‘Full marks to old King Charles there.’

Mrs Cauley tosses her black curls and narrows her eyes.