Cast A Cold Eye, page 10
He wiped his hand across his lips as the poteen burned its way down his throat. “You’ll be having something for me, I suppose,” he said.
John MacMahon shifted his stick to the left hand and reached inside his jacket with the right. He withdrew a piece of grayish bone, very like the color of the mare they’d just been looking at. It was a little smudged from the handling of grimy fingers, but polished smooth with ages of use. It was a comb, long-toothed and jagged in places. Without looking at it, John MacMahon handed it to Willy Egan. Willy took it without a word and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Well, we’re done, then,” John MacMahon said, “for the time being, at least.”
“That we are,” Willy said. His tone did not invite them to stay longer. His gaze did not waver from John MacMahon’s face.
All five of them went outside together and Willy Egan stood in the yard before the house, watching the others start slowly down the road.
When a bend in the road and the height of a wall had hidden them from view, he turned and walked slowly back to the barn. Inside, he took the comb from his jacket and laid it carefully on a shelf. Then he went out through the back and walked to where the mare stood, her steady eye fixed on his approach.
He patted her shoulder a few times, then ran his hand down her neck, feeling the coarse bristles of her hair even on his calloused palm. Then he stepped back and looked her over critically. Her coat and mane needed a lot of work and her legs were muddy up to well above her knees.
“You’re a beauty underneath the mud,” he said, “and a good cleaning up is all you need. And a combing, too, and ye shall have it every day from here on in. Ye’ll like that, my old girl,” he said softly, “such a nice combing ye’ll have.”
He came around and stood in front of the animal’s face. He held her long nose in both hands and she made a sound in her throat at his familiar touch.
“Ah, my old girl,” he said, and put his face close enough to feel her whiskers on his cheek.
The mare lifted one great foot, then put it down in the same place.
“Ah, Maureen, my babe,” he whispered, “it’ll only hurt for a bit and then it’s all over and done.”
“Well, will you look at the sleeping beauty!” Grainne said with a laugh when Jack finally stirred on the couch and opened his eyes.
The house was filled with the warm, sweet smell of recent baking. Sunlight was just beginning to angle into the room at one end of the windows.
Grainne was stretched out on the floor in front of the couch. She slipped a bookmark into place and got up on her knees, then sat back on her heels, facing him.
Jack stared at her groggily for a few seconds until his mind cleared.
“Morning,” he mumbled.
“Well, I see you’re an early riser,” Grainne said brightly.
Jack blinked at her, then managed to sit up on the couch.
“And you’re an early sleeper,” he muttered, but there was a hint of a grin in his sleepy face.
“Oh, Jack, I’m sorry,” Grainne said at once. “I just went out on you like that. I only thought to rest for a minute so we could sit up and talk. I was looking forward to it. Really, I’m sorry. And it’s a shame you were put out of your own bed. That couch was never meant to be slept on.”
“Grainne, stop apologizing,” Jack said. He pushed the blanket from around him and stretched out a hand to help her up. They stood together and their eyes met. Jack stepped closer to her and she moved into his arms. They lingered, lips caressing, fingers spread wide on each other’s back. When they drew apart, Jack held onto both her hands.
“Good morning,” he said gently.
“Good morning to you. Now get on with you to the bathroom while I get some breakfast together. I made fresh scones. Will you want eggs and bacon? And do you take tea or coffee?”
“Grainne, I’ll take anything you want to put in front of me.”
“Tea, then. And a good meal to keep off the cold, although I don’t mind saying it’s a shameful hour for a man to be eating his breakfast. Now be off with you, and don’t be taking all day or it’ll be time for dinner before you’re done with this. Here, leave the blanket where it is. I’ll put it away. You just get a move on.”
Over the meal, they talked about school and family and childhood and friends. Jack ate six scones.
“You’ll spoil me,” he said when he finished.
“Don’t be getting accustomed to it,” she said. “You’ll be on your own soon again.”
“I know. I wish I didn’t have to be.”
The silence hung awkwardly in the air for a moment, then Grainne rose and began gathering up the plates.
“You never answered my question last night,” she said as she piled the dishes in the sink.
“What question was that?”
“About Doolin and County Clare. All the country roundabout. Is it what you were after for the book?”
Jack lit a cigarette. “Pretty much so,” he said.
“Have you much done?”
“Of the book?”
“Yes.”
“About fifty pages or so.”
“How many do you need?”
“Three hundred. Four hundred. Depends.”
Grainne turned to face him and leaned back on the edge of the sink, her arms folded lightly beneath her breasts.
“Why will you not talk about it?”
“You mean the book?” Jack said. He inhaled on the cigarette and would not look at her.
“Yes, the book. You were so excited when you talked of it before, on the telephone, and now you seem hardly willing to speak of it at all. Is it not coming out the way you wanted?”
“Well, it’s going slower than I thought it would. But the beginning is always difficult.”
“I don’t believe you for a minute,” she said. “There’s something else that’s wrong, I can tell from the way you talk. You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to, but if you do, I’ll be glad to listen. I’ve read all your books I had at the shop, you know. And I found another in a store elsewhere.”
“You went looking in another bookstore?”
“Yes. And you’re changing the subject. Do you not want to talk about it?”
Jack crushed his cigarette out slowly. “Let’s talk about it later.” He stood up. “Come on, I’ll show you around outside. I could use a breath of air. And it’s not often we get a bright day like this.”
“Oh,” Grainne said. “I was outside before, while you were sleeping, just to take a look around. Who are all your visitors?”
Jack was standing up from the table as she spoke. He paused, stared at her. Her expression was perfectly composed.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“I went outside and took a walk around the house. The dirt is all dry, with no rain, and I saw all the footprints. Have you been giving wild parties or what?”
“That’s . . . That’s strange,” Jack said. “I don’t know what they are. Come on. Show me.”
They went outside and Grainne led him to the side of the house facing the road. The weather was still beautiful, the sunshine bright, the air crisp and clean, but a scattering of low gray clouds had appeared out to the west, above the ocean, and seemed to be hurrying in toward shore.
“There,” Grainne said.
With his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his corduroy jeans, Jack examined the ground. It was dry here from the wind and sun, and the gravel of the makeshift driveway stopped short of the base of the house, leaving a patch of exposed earth. This was the same spot where Jack had thought he’d seen scurrying shadows in the headlights of the car the night before. It was covered with what appeared to be footprints, many of them, all crisscrossing each other, as if a small crowd of people had passed over and over the spot, milling and pacing impatiently.
Jack squatted and looked more closely at the ground. Yes, here and there he thought he could just make out the impression of a small bare foot. He rose and moved a few yards to his right, still facing the side of the house, then squatted again. He saw it again, the clear imprint in the dirt, only partially obscured, of a small bare right foot. It appeared clearly only that once, so many feet had moved over the spot, but there was no mistaking it.
Jack stood up and scowled at the violated earth.
“Do you know who it was?” Grainne asked.
Jack kept his eyes on the ground, still searching it for a clue, an explanation, something—anything—other than what came immediately to mind.
“No,” he said. “Local people, probably. I don’t doubt they’re curious about me, since I’m a stranger here. I gather they don’t see too many strangers, at least not at this time of year.” He looked up at her and managed a thin smile. “I’ll keep an eye out from now on. Maybe I can catch somebody at it. If I can catch one of them, it’ll keep all the rest away.” A thought struck him. “I could speak to Father Henning, too, if it keeps up. He’s the local priest. I’ve met him. He’s a bit of a character himself, but he probably rules like a god around here.”
They strolled away, around to the front of the house that faced down the hill toward the water. Grainne took his hand and held it tight.
“You’ll not have much standing with the priest when he gets a look at your weekend guest,” she said.
“I can’t help that. He’ll just have to get used to it. And the rest of the town, too.” He stopped walking and turned to look at her. “Do you go to church on Sundays? To Mass?”
“I don’t go all the time but I go more often than not. I suppose it’s the upbringing of the sisters. They put the fear of God into you that you’ll burn in hell for all eternity if you miss Mass even once. Did you have the same training in America?”
“Yes. I had nuns in grammar school and then the Jesuits for eight years.”
“Ah, the Jesuits,” Grainne said, grinning. “Well, there’ll be no saving your soul after eight years of that.”
“I suppose not,” Jack said. Then he swept his hand in an arc to cover the scene before them. “Look.” To the south, they could see a little way along the coast until the hills and one sharp cliff cut off their view. The coastline itself was edged in the white froth of waves, forever curling in from the sea and striking at the rocks. The air was so clear that they could just make out, off to their left, the promontory of Doolin Point, which was usually hidden from them in a cloud of spray and wet mist. If they watched carefully, they could see an occasional crashing wave shoot a high white geyser of foam against the rocks. Before them, the hill sloped down from the house in a gradual long descent to the water. And to their right, across the cut of a valley, at the innermost point of which lay the village of Doolin itself, was the gray-white expanse of the Burren, stark, treeless, ancient and unmoved.
“Have you been there?” Grainne asked, pointing to the north. “To the Burren?”
“No, actually,” Jack answered slowly. “I guess I was saving it till you got here.”
“I’d like to explore it.”
“Tomorrow?”
“All right.”
“Grainne, how long are you going to stay?”
She was still looking at the Burren. “I’ll have to see,” she said. “I can’t stay long.”
They started back toward the house, as if suddenly conscious of the time.
“I’ll go to church with you tomorrow, if you’d like.”
“I would,” she said. “But the priest still won’t believe I’m your sister.”
“Cousin?”
“Not a chance.”
He didn’t mean to say it, but the words were spoken before he could stop them.
“I want to sleep with you, Grainne. I want to make love with you.”
“I know,” she said, and her hand suddenly tightened around his. “I want that, too.”
They continued climbing back toward the house.
“And when you’re ready, you’ll tell me what’s bothering you,” Grainne said quietly.
“All right,” Jack said. “But I want to think about it a little more first.”
When they reached the door, Jack avoided looking toward the side of the house where the footprints were pressed in the dirt.
Father Malcolm Henning was reading the Irish Times in the sitting room when the knock came at the door. Deirdre Corcoran was at the back of the house, changing the sheets on his bed.
“I’ll answer it, Father, don’t trouble yourself,” she called out.
The floorboards of the old cottage creaked beneath her heavy step as she walked through the short hallway to the front door.
“It’s you,” she said when she pulled the door open and saw John MacMahon standing in the path.
“It is,” he said, “and it’s not you I’ve come for to see. I’ve come to speak a word with himself.”
Deirdre stepped into the doorway and pulled the door partly closed behind her. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress but the cold never seemed to affect her.
“Speak with him, then,” she said. “But see that you’re quick about it and not taking up his time. He’s due in the church shortly to be hearing confession, and I’ll not have him coming late. And it’s there you should be yourself, John MacMahon, pouring out your bloody sins and asking God’s forgiveness and that of all His saints.”
“Deirdre!” Father Henning said behind her.
“It’s John MacMahon, come to see you,” said Deirdre, ignoring the sharp tone of the priest’s voice. She held the door back and the gesture was as much an invitation for the priest to step outside as it was for John MacMahon to enter the house.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, John,” Father Henning said past her shoulder. “I’m on my way to the church. I’ll just get my scarf and coat.”
She waited at the door for him and when he passed her, he said, “Now mind the time, Deirdre, so’s not to be late meeting me.” She was never late meeting him—he always told people you could set your watch by her—and she knew the warning was meant as a reproof for her treatment of John MacMahon.
When she’d closed the door on him and he stood with John MacMahon in the path, Deirdre hurried inside and pressed herself against the wall near the sitting room window. It was open an inch at the bottom and she could just make out what the two old men were saying.
“ ’Tis done,” said John MacMahon.
“Well, then, I suppose, we must,” said the priest. Deirdre thought his voice sounded sad and resigned, as if he’d lost a long-standing dispute with John MacMahon and now had to live with the consequences.
“Aye.”
“Well, what’s your choice, then?”
“It’s Willy Egan’s old mare,” said John MacMahon. “We seen her today. She’ll do fine.”
Deirdre could hear the priest’s long exhalation of breath. “Has he the proper comb?”
“I gev it him today.”
After a moment, the priest said, “Well, that’s that, then. Till the time, at least. Now, John, don’t be troubling me about it till then, will you. I’ll do my bit, of course, but don’t be going at me all the while. It’ll be on us soon enough without rushing it.”
Deirdre heard their slow steps on the gravel as the two old men moved down the path to the road.
She stepped to the window and watched them for a moment as they reached the road and turned up it toward the church. Then she walked back to the bedroom and finished the job of putting fresh white sheets on the priest’s narrow bed. All the while her hands moved automatically at tucking and folding, she was praying that God would look after the two old fellows and that everything would come right in the end.
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, Michael Mullen!”
Michael glared at his mother across the kitchen table.
“I’ll not have my mother going into service, not at your age, and you a widow, besides!”
Peggy Mullen was doing her best to face the strength of her elder son, but the argument would have to end soon or she’d lose her resolve.
“It’s not for you to decide,” she said.
“But it is!” he said. “But it is! Are you forgetting that himself is laying in the ground up the hill there? That leaves me the eldest, so it’s up to me to see what becomes of us all. And I say you don’t do it.”
“And I say I do. Your father, God rest his soul, never spoke to me this way, Michael, and I’ll not start listening to it now. I’m just after telling you, Father Henning was the one put it to me, and it’ll bring in a few pounds besides, cash and not a penny of taxes to pay on it. And we’re not so wealthy we can turn down a chance at a few pounds more. Now, Michael, there’s the end of it. I’m doing it and that’s that. Michael, it’s Father Henning that wants it.”
“At your age,” Michael grumbled at the table.
“And what’s wrong with my age, will you tell me that?”
They sat in tense silence for a long minute. Michael tapped one meaty forefinger on the table.
“I’m coming with you,” he said, “the first time you go there. Just to look things over, like.”
“Come, then,” said his mother, who was short of breath with her sudden victory. “But see that you’re civil. I’ll not be embarrassed in front of a stranger by my own flesh and blood.”
“A stranger is what he is,” said Michael darkly, but they spoke no more about it after that.
The sun had climbed the sky and then started its slow decline to the ocean in the west, casting longer and longer shadows across the hills. As the afternoon advanced, so did the low-flying ragged clouds scudding in toward the shore. They were just reaching it now, appearing to pick up speed, so close to the ground did they move, as they neared the hills of Clare. The wind had picked up too, growing harsher, louder on the rocks, and colder, promising dirty weather for the night.
Willy Egan had finished other chores on the small farm and now he was in the back with the mare. He had filled a pail with cloudy water and carried it out and set it on the ground beside her.
She turned her head to look at it and snorted a couple of times.
