The Boatman's Wife(39)

‘There’s Brendan!’ she said to Jesse, and dragged him through the crowd to her cousin. Better to get the introductions over with right away.

She waved like a maniac at Brendan and he gave her a big grin, waiting for her and Jesse to catch up to him.

‘There’s a great turnout,’ Brendan said to her. ‘The lads have some big telegraph poles. And we’ve a digger coming, too. I reckon it won’t take many hours to get the road up again.’

‘Brendan, this is Jesse.’ Niamh’s voice was jagged with nerves as she introduced them. She felt Jesse’s eyes on her in surprise at her awkwardness.

‘How’s it going?’ Brendan said, deadpan. No hint he’d already seen the American butt naked in Niamh’s shed. But she could already sense the hostility coming off her cousin in waves. What had she been thinking of? She should never have persuaded Jesse to come with her.

‘So, does this happen a lot?’ Jesse asked Brendan, evidently trying to be polite for Niamh’s sake.

‘What do you mean? The Brits blowing up the roads, or us building them back?’ Brendan said, in an arsey tone of voice. Niamh wanted to give him a slap. For the past four years, she’d had to be nice to Deirdre, although she hadn’t liked her from the minute she’d laid eyes on her. But she had done it, for Brendan’s sake. Could her cousin not do the same for her?

‘Well, both,’ Jesse answered, clearly a little unsure of how to take Brendan.

‘Well yeah, the road building has been going on since the seventies.’ Brendan looped his arm around Niamh’s back, the intimacy of his action in front of Jesse making her blush. ‘All these blown-up border roads are our Berlin Wall.’

‘It’s not really the same,’ Jesse said, his eyes on Brendan like a hawk. Her cousin gave her a possessive squeeze before turning to her, as if Jesse wasn’t even standing in front of him.

‘You told me his dad was Irish, Niamh?’

‘I’m American,’ Jesse said, staring at Brendan’s hand on Niamh’s waist.

‘Yeah, I got that,’ Brendan said, his tone sarcastic as he released his grip on Niamh.

She didn’t even need to look at Brendan to know what he was thinking. In her cousin’s eyes, Jesse was an ignorant American who knew nothing of their real lives.

No one said anything for a minute, but the tension was thick between the two young men. Luckily, one of the bands started up. It was a Wolfe Tones cover band and went straight into a very loud version of ‘Come Out, Ye Black and Tans’.

‘Come on, let’s listen to the band before we help with the road,’ Niamh said, dragging Jesse away from Brendan, who now had his hands in his pockets and his head on one side, looking at her critically as if to say: What are you doing with the American eejit?

Why did she always feel she had to impress Brendan?

After the band finished, they shared a bag of chips from the chip van, before joining the others at the roadside. Their job was to clear some of the debris with the digger so Brendan and some other men could drag the telegraph poles over the cratered road and build it up from there.

Despite his evident dislike of Brendan, Jesse worked hard. They flung their jackets down on the grassy banks of the River Finn, and got stuck in. One of Brendan’s friends, Liam, passed her a joint, and she took a big drag before passing it on to Jesse. A folk singer from Cavan, Dolores Sheehy, played her guitar and sang some old Gaelic ballads. Some in Irish, and some in English.

‘Ah, I adore this song,’ Niamh said, stopping in her work and tugging on Jesse to listen as Dolores began to sing ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’.

For a brief while, it felt good. They were all as one, working together for a common cause. Niamh had always liked the border road rallies. Made her feel like she was doing one small thing to honour her daddy’s memory. By being together, they were all safe.

It was late afternoon by the time the road was completed. One of the local men drove a red Ford Fiesta slowly across its wobbly surface to the sound of cheers all round. It wasn’t going to be too safe a road, although the locals were determined to use it, but that wasn’t the point. It was the symbolism of what they were doing which was important.

‘Want to join us for a pint in town?’ Brendan asked Niamh as she and Jesse gathered up their jackets.

‘Let’s just go for one,’ Niamh said to Jesse.

Now they were all a bit stoned, and Brendan had seen how hard Jesse worked on the road, surely having a pint together would break the tension between them? Besides, it was rare that Deirdre wasn’t around. An opportunity for Niamh to talk to her cousin without the blond girl listening in.

‘Okay,’ Jesse said as they gathered up their helmets and jackets, although the expression on his face told her he didn’t want to.

As soon as they were out of earshot of Brendan and his friends, Jesse turned to her.

‘Let’s go, Niamh,’ he said. ‘We might make it back in time for a swim in the sea.’

‘But we agreed to meet them,’ she said.

‘So? I doubt he’ll care if we take off,’ Jesse said, kicking his bike off its stand.

‘No, he’ll be really mad with me,’ Niamh said, aware she was sounding petulant.

Jesse raised his eyebrows at her in surprise. ‘Do you care that much what he thinks?’