Wild Decembers (22 page)

“You have a palace,” Joseph says, staring up at a plaster maiden offering a basket of fruit to a knight.

“Francini Brothers . . . Swiss . . . Did all the great ceilings in the country,” and Mr. Barry tries to recall the exact locality which the brothers came from, then smites his failing brain cells and laughs jubilantly as he swishes the whiskey over the knuckles of ice, then winks at it.

Either to put his guest at ease or because the memory of it has just surfaced, Mr. Barry thinks aloud of his childhood, his beautiful childhood, the young nurse in the nursery ladling the porridge, a Miss Delany with a marvellous crop of auburn hair, an incitement to every young man who clapped eyes on her. Wicked Miss Delany, stealing out at night to meet the gamekeeper in the malt-house, all of which, as he said, was hunky-dory were it not for the peeping Tom. A man with a flash lamp, who felt it his business to keep up with the erotica of the day or the night, spied on their courting, then went to the padre, who could not tolerate this on two counts, the commission of a mortal sin and with a man who was married. The upshot was that the priest called to the house and poor Miss Delany was dismissed and went to Spain to work for a duke and duchess, letters written back about her little dark-eyed charges, then no communication at all as she was put up against a wall, along with the royal family, and machine-gunned, by the Reds. He paused for a moment, blinked to correct a tear, and said how he always had a great interest in people, people were his adrenaline, he soaked them up. With an easy smile and wagging a finger, he said his antennae told him that there was something bothering his visitor.

“I’m worried sick,” Joseph said, blurted it out. Then, in as concise a way as possible, he described Bugler’s arrival to a farm that had been unoccupied for a few years and in no time at all lording it, first a field, then a bog, then a mountain.

“A grabber.”

“You said it.”

“Without a yea or a nay,” Mr. Barry says, taking the letter which Joseph wishes him to read. He resorts to a more formal voice, occasionally looking through the open door lest they be overheard.

We are obliged to tell you that the area between the lands marked red and blue, in other words the area marked brown, is not yours and desire you to give up all rights to it and to pay arrears for your usage of it for the last five years, profit made by you yourself without paying any rent or making any apologies for same. Our client intends to finish the road which he began some two months ago. His reason is quite logical, it is to make egress to his house more possible. All we desire to know is that you do not stop him in this endeavour. Our application to the Courts will be to establish the registration of the ownership of the brown section to our client and to warn you that servants or agents entering that disputed corridor or causing obstruction therein will lead to further proceedings, which would be strenuously pursued.

“And you are quite sure that the brown area is yours?”

“Certain . . . My great-grandfather got it from a grand-uncle of his who had no issue . . . He won it. It was signed and sealed above in their parlour. The uncle was a gambler. My father told it to me often and repeated it on his deathbed . . . The papers are missing. That’s my problem.”

“And we need that piece of paper to take action against the depredations of the fly boy.”

“If he finishes the road, I’m finished . . . The mountain becomes his.”

“You’ve tried mediation.”

“I hit him.”

“Good man . . . A bar-room brawl. He deserved it.” Looking to the ceiling Mr. Barry wonders whither the next step and whispers aloud: “
Regain de vigueur.
”

“Grimes and O’Shaughnessy are the firm of solicitors,” Joseph says, and as Mr. Barry hears it, he is struck once again by a bolt from the past, the distant past, and his eyes water as he remembers a Mr. O’Shaughnessy senior, a grandfather or possibly a grand-uncle of the present incumbent, who walked around with half his office in his overcoat pockets, yes, his big frieze coat with the pockets stuffed with all the evidence he needed to go into court, kept to himself, and hence earning him the sobriquet of Foxy O’Shaughnessy.

“The present man won’t give it to me. Won’t even see me,” Joseph says balefully.

“That’s very unprofessional.”

“I go in every day and the secretary says to come tomorrow.”

“Does she pass on the information?”

“That’s what I don’t know.”

“He is moody . . . He does go hot and cold. But he’s an okay fellow, likes a drink and so forth.”

“I was wondering . . . Since you know him . . . Since you were partners, if. . .” Joseph begins, but Mr. Barry has already guessed.

“Now, my dear Joseph, I will, if I may, interrupt you . . . If I ring Mr. O’Shaughnessy . . . And of course I could . . . Nothing simpler . . . It will seem presumptuous. Think on it. He’ll feel cornered. One of his ilk pulling him over the coals . . . It wouldn’t look good. It wouldn’t help. Now, the real solution . . . The cat’s pyjamas, you might say, is for you yourself to compose a letter . . . A nice letter. A human
cri-de-coeur.
In a twinkle you will have his sympathy and eventually your piece of paper.”

“I tried that.”

The, fire has gone down, the burnt sods like bars of molten pink, a few sparks intermittently bursting. Out in the hall Joseph can hear people arriving, greetings being called out and answered back, some with foreign accents as Mr. Barry explained that they take paying guests to keep their beautiful Kincora from going to some fly boy. On impulse he threw a kiss of gratitude in the direction of the hall. There was a smell of roast at intervals as when a door swung open, and Mr. Barry tried to recall whether it was lamb or pork for dinner. Distantly, there came the sound of a bell, light, appealing. Joseph knew that he should be going, but sat there forlorn, hoping that he might be pressed to stay.

“You and I should keep in touch,” Mr. Barry said, rising, then he bent down and removed a smear of cut grass from his velveteen slipper, saying he could not look ragamuffinish in front of paying guests.

Joseph thanked him, thanked him profusely for the advice, even while knowing that he was going away disappointed.

Out on the road, away from the talk, the painted ceiling, a hallstand with only one hat on it, and cars coming at a hectic speed, he is lost, frazzled, directionless.

He stops to let the night air fall on his face and his features, trembling with disappointment, as if he were just finding out that there is only him. . .

To help himself along, he starts to recite, bits of poems, poems that he learned at school and others when he was away in that place and a nurse brought him back to his senses, made him read poems and learn them by heart. A line, lines, comes into his head.

We met

At the Hawk’s Well under the withered trees
I killed him upon Baile’s Strand.

A car has stopped, a driver with his head out to ask directions gets for answer Cuchulain’s adage: “And drew my sword against the sea.”

“Oh, a basket case,” the driver shouts, and tears off.

A
HARVEST MOON LIKE
an orange gong appeared over the ridge of the mountain, and soon it seemed to sail down in stately pearliness to hang above the lake, slits of moonlight creeping into the bottom of the boathouse as Bugler unties the rope, then, lifting an oar, he steers a slow passage through a lattice of tall bamboo and gold-rusted rushes. Water birds start up in revolt, their cries strangled, signalling outrage that the nighttime solitude of the lake is interrupted. A windless night, the water a mirror in which piles of moving cloud make soft, expiring patterns.

They sit facing one another, Breege directing the route, steering him away from the rocks towards the island with its tall tower as grim and admonishing as some elongated monk. Their shadows tilt and dance in the water and moonlight spills over onto her lap. They rode in silence and in silence he tied the rope to the makeshift jetty and they picked their way over the wet grass where a herd of cattle, some with wheezing breaths, were guarded by a young bull who looked as if he might charge.

The graveyard beyond the stone wall was divided into two sections, one for the remains of saints and ecclesiastics and the other for a few local families, including her own. There were several churches and a roofless stone oratory naked to the moonlight.

The tombstones glittered and the rings of stone which circled their double crosses held haloes of silver light. The only sound came from the lake, water being sucked in, a slurp-slurp that became muted as it was drawn back out. On the tombs splotches of moony shadow in contrast to white medallions of lichen, black flowers and ashen flowers, both.

It was Breege now showing him her world as if it were her house, a place she moved about in as easily as in her own yard or her plantation, walking over the graves, calling out the names, old people and not so old, young people, infants, handwritten mildewed messages under the broken glass domes where obviously the cattle had broken in and trampled. Last of all, she read him her own family names and then pointed to a strip of ground next to theirs but bordered off with smooth round stones which she had painted white.

“Why do you want your own bit of grave?”

“A bit of peace.”

“Do you not have peace?”

“Not much . . . There’s always something,” and by the way she said it he knew what she meant and said that he was sorry, he was really sorry, but that maybe one day her brother and he would be reconciled.

“We’ll forget about it for this one night,” she said, moving across under the shadow of the tower, then opening a little gate that creaked and beckoning him into the cold oratory that smelt of mortar and limestone. Alone, in pairs, in triads, were the carved faces, solemn, bulbous cheeks and hollowed cheeks, the stone eye sockets filled with a grainy nothingness, all around the spectres of death that were a spur to the living.

“This church is named after you . . . St. Michael’s,” she told him.

“What was he good for?”

“A dragon slayer,” and as she said it they laughed.

“We could live here,” he said, his hand touching the stones, saying that with a bit of heat the place would be half habitable.

“We could an’ all,” she said saucily. Her shyness had lessened and she even accepted a cigarette to keep her warm. It was better than any hotel or any dance. Her reward for months and months of looking out at wet grass, or a bit of wet path drying in the sun, and sometimes even thinking that a garment blowing on the line prefigured the arrival of a visitor that just might be him. The tractor near or far, music to her ears and a gall to her brother’s.

“Sometimes up at home at night I’d think of you only half a mile down the road,” he said.

“Ah, men!” she said, pretending to be wise.

“Except I didn’t know what would happen if I knocked on your door . . . What you would feel . . . What you do feel.”

He stood before her, the light of the moon full on the top half of his body, so that his white shirt and his chest underneath it was like a ladder of dark stripes and lighter ones.

“Is it all right if I take your hand?” he said softly.

“I suppose so,” she said, but she did not let him hold it for long.

Outside, she led him once again over the graves, telling him stories of the different families, loving families and feuding ones, families who had fought and wrangled and died wrangling, wills that had been changed on deathbeds, a husband and wife, Jack Darling and Betty Love, as they were known, dying within a week of each other and exiles brought from across the sea to be buried at home.

“When you marry, will your husband have a share of your grave?”

“Who said I’ll marry?”

“Of course you’ll marry . . . A beautiful girl . . . A beautiful woman.”

“Talk!”

“It’s not talk, Breege.”

“That’s the first time you ever said my name.”

“Well, there’s always a first time,” he said, as if rebuked.

When she told him to look away he did, and he waited for her to recall him, but after he had finished the second cigarette he decided that he must go and look for her. He called, then whistled, then repeated her name, and the echoes came close upon one another, eerily distinct in that lonely place. He would not want to be there without her, and maybe neither would she.

He searched behind the gravestones and felt his way around the base of the round tower, expecting at any moment that he would feel her hair or her thin hands stretched out to be held. In the end he decided that she had left and gone down to the boat. It was only as an afterthought and on his way out that he looked in the moon-drenched oratory.

He finds her in the far corner, prone against it, like someone flung there, shivering with fear and cold, excitement and terror, her body a vessel with a zip of fire running through it. He is kissing her now, kissing her face full of tears. Holding her, he can feel the agitation as she both rests in his arms and wrestles to get out. He smooths and resmooths her hair, sparks of electricity shoot out of it, zoom out of it, and her face, always pale, is blanched and votive in the moonlight. She is like one of the stone figures except for her eyes, which are mad and shiny. He speaks fond hushed words, the two clasped bodies like one, their shadows one, and what seems like only one heartbeat hammering out.