The visit, p.15
The Visit, page 15
‘Who did?’
‘Patrick Hatten. A couple of hours before his brother came in. He didn’t say what it was about, only that he wanted to talk to you.’
I thought of him. Cornered and with nobody to turn to, then settling on me. I remembered telling him he knew where to find me if he needed me, and forgot Flood was in the room. They could have had him in Senan’s by this morning.
‘Jim?’ he said, stirring me from my thoughts. ‘Can I put those hours at Hatten’s down as overtime?’
The look I gave him was enough for him to bow his head and shut the door after him.
I stood and pulled my coat on, the joints of my shoulders, elbows and wrists hurting as I shuffled into it. My day of rest. I was passing through the station, showing the lads a cold shoulder, when I saw Trevor Penrose at the front desk, the trousers of his fine suit tucked into wellingtons, saying something about a stolen Weatherby Mark V.
Colfer took the report and I sent Penrose on his way with a reminder that if he’s going to hoard enough guns to arm every guard in the district, then he should have the good sense to lock them up. If it’s been stolen, smart money would say it’s somebody that knows his gun room well – a cleaner or some fella who joined him on a Sunday trek once, blowing animals to pieces before tea in the conservatory. Patrick was there in my thoughts too, gone missing at the same time as the rifle.
Turning between the huge wrought-iron gates, their gateposts crowned by the golden shapes of horses’ heads, I realised that it was my first time at Casey’s stud. A flat slab of granite stood on a plinth to the left of the gates, the name of the stud not yet carved. The driveway was smooth and tarred, with empty paddocks on both sides, fenced in and lined with young birch trees.
Rounding the last bend, a farmhouse came into view, modernised and painted, windows decorated with flowerboxes like something from a postcard. A glossy black door with a golden handle in the shape of a horseshoe, to match the gates. I parked in front of it, next to Casey’s Jaguar. A couple of Land Rovers with tow bars were parked further along, before a row of horseboxes that had been recently washed and stood in drying pools of water.
I stood out and breathed sawdust and varnish, the warm smell of horses and straw. Across the way, Casey emerged from the stables, in a flat cap and waistcoat, shirtsleeves rolled up, trousers tucked into wellingtons. Rose sloped a couple of paces behind like an old dog following its master’s scent. Casey spotted me and said something over his shoulder to Rose, who went and sat next to the feeding station, beside a round yard of smooth sand. Beyond it, a small man-made lake mirrored the sky and in the far distance where the land dipped, I could just about make out the row of trees that shielded Casey’s eyes from the sight of the Hatten house.
‘So, this is it,’ I said as Casey neared.
He smiled, and say what you want about the man, it was a smile like a child’s and the closest thing I’ve ever seen to sincerity in his face. He had the same energy as Siobhán at the Opera House.
‘Come on,’ he said, patting my shoulder as if we were old friends. ‘I’ll give you a tour before we get down to why you’re here. Unless you’re here to invest, that is.’ He laughed at the notion.
He told me that the main building would house offices and a bar. He looked over the fields and talked about soil pH levels and grass and straw in scientific terms that suggested feeding this variety to his thoroughbreds would lead to offspring that would be closer to unicorn than horse. He cast a hand towards the paddocks, six in total, with field shelters at the southern end of each. He talked about expansion plans and didn’t bother explaining what direction it would be taking, since we both knew. He might as well have owned the sky above us.
‘When will you be finished?’
‘We’ll never be finished. This place will be breeding winners long after I’m gone. But the first chapter will close once we’ve bred a Grade One Champion.’ He pointed behind me, in the direction of the car park. ‘There’ll be a big bronze statue of our prized possession there eventually, to remind everybody in future decades about the standards we set from the beginning. That’s how sure I am that he’s going to sire some of the best racehorses in the world.’
Rose wandered over, looking from me to her father.
‘Hello, Rose,’ I said, and of course, she said nothing.
‘Say hello to Sergeant Field, Rose,’ Casey said and some sort of noise came from her. ‘She has her exams next year. Isn’t that right, Rose?’ I felt him tighten at her silence, as if he wanted to take out the riding crop and lash her into life. I thought of Catriona floating above me like a weightless astronaut, laughing down while I move her back and forth. I wondered how Casey could feel such contempt for his daughter.
‘Well, you’ll need brains and hard work, Rose,’ I said. ‘I was never one for exams.’
‘Ah, you can buy brains,’ Casey said and put a hand on my back, steering me away from her and towards the stables.
‘On that we disagree, Peter.’
He laughed, a short boom he likely used regularly, for guests to the stud, or salesmen who’d just named their opening price. ‘Add it to our list of disagreements, Jim. We’re working hard to refine her a bit. I have a bright young woman that comes to her three times a week. Rose loves the horses too. She gets that from me. When you know there’s something they want, you can get them to work for it. So, when Rose does well, she earns more time around here. That business with Hatten woke me up to how bad things could get if I didn’t take a tighter hold of the reins. She’s coming along well, thank God.’
The stables were cool and cavernous, an arc of light at the other end where the doors were open. It was like an enormous, hand-carved warehouse, with stalls either side of a wide aisle and an indoor wash stall at the far end, woodwork tried and tested for centuries holding Casey’s vision together – mortise and tenon, dovetail, and birdsmouth joints made by a master. I had the feeling of stepping into a grand hotel or home of old money, or even sitting in Cormac’s study, allowing myself to believe that it was my life, just for a second. I’d never as much as been to the races, and there I was, picturing myself in a three-piece and pocket square, clutching a race card trackside, watching my own horse bound for the finish line.
‘How many stallions?’
‘I’ll have twelve when the place is ready for them. Just the one now and we’ll do well to ever have one as good.’
Everybody in New Ross knew about Casey’s prized horse. I’d heard it spoken about in whispered voices, as if something sacred was being discussed. We stopped walking and he turned to it, a black horse looking out from its stall, the skin tight around muscles and visible veins that curled through its neck and legs. Near 17 hands high and about 80 stone of muscle and bone that it had the strength and heart to vault over ditches, racing around tracks at near the same rate as my Zephyr, all while carrying a man on its back. I was moved to silence, as if I’d travelled back in time to see something from folklore, something mythical creature that people doubt ever existed. And there it was, under Casey’s total command.
‘Altair,’ he said, reading the name engraved on the gate.
‘The brightest star in the Aquila constellation.’
He smiled. ‘Very good, Sergeant. I’m reminded that you have your passions too.’ He turned back to Altair. ‘An incredible horse.’
‘I’ve seen horses nearly every day of my life, Peter. Pulling carts, or tethered to fences and staring into empty fields. I’m not sure that’s what this is.’ I resisted the urge to reach out and touch it, preferring to keep the part of me that wanted to believe it wasn’t even real. I saw my shape in its large eye and couldn’t help but feel that it was a wise and quiet animal, making sense of me that I couldn’t make of myself.
Casey spoke as if we were standing in front of an altar. ‘His sire won the King George. Grandsire won the Gold Cup. This,’ he said, reaching out a hand and patting the horse, ‘is as fine an animal as you’ll find anywhere in the world. This is how big Ireland needs to think, Jim. Kennedy needs to represent the beginning of something more. He has to. We’ve to seize this moment.’ He looked at the horse with all the pride he hadn’t extended to Rose and his eyes burned brightly with the certain success of its future, whereas Rose’s exams would likely end with him even more unsure of what to do with her, bought brains or not. I wondered if he’d ever ridden a racehorse, or if his size had made it nothing more than a dream. He lifted a stray horseshoe from the top of the fence and held it up.
‘I’ve a farrier who makes these, in demand from here to America. This place locks up tighter than the cells in your station, and I’ve a Roscommon man who knows his way around a shotgun coming on as full-time security. He’ll live up there.’
I followed his finger to the ceiling, then spotted the wooden stairs to the living quarter.
‘Is he up there now?’
‘I’m here now. There’s no man stupid enough to try. Here,’ he said, handing me the horseshoe, heavier than I expected. ‘Give this to your little girl.’
Walking out from the stables was like the slow resurfacing from a dream. A breeze passed and we looked out at a sloping field, littered with daisies. He turned to me and raised his eyebrows to alert me to the end of the tour.
‘You were busy while I wasn’t around last night, Peter. What was the plan? Kidnapping?’ I pocketed the horseshoe.
The laugh again. ‘Colm Hatten was concerned for his safety. You heard about the threat, I’m sure. He was terribly shaken by it. I had a meeting with him yesterday and it’s all he could talk about. He wanted to act as soon as possible. You no more need a doctor to tell you that his brother isn’t wired right than I need a vet to tell me that my horse has what it takes hanging between its legs.’
‘A doctor and two guards with you. What did you think would happen?’
He shrugged. ‘He could have opened the door with a shotgun for all I know.’
I shook my head. ‘Didn’t I tell you he’d be better kept where he’s not causing any harm?’
He tossed a hand. ‘If I never see that lad again, it will be too soon.’
‘You might not ever see him again. But that doesn’t mean he won’t see you.’ He studied my face, a confused half-smile on his own, unsure if he’d just been threatened or warned. He swallowed and raised his chin in defiance.
‘Tell me, Peter. How do you know for sure that he can’t see the pair of us right now? Do you feel safe now you don’t have a clue where he is?’
He scanned the horizon and the boundaries of his little kingdom, rocking on his heels with his hands hidden in his pockets. The thin mask of confidence couldn’t hide his doubt.
‘Imagine somebody came and took all this away from you.’ I eyed the land and he stiffened, indignant at the notion even being put to words. ‘That’s what you did to him. You might not think his home is fit to house your dogs, but to him, it’s worth more than what you’ve built here. You didn’t even need it, Peter. That’s where our disagreement really is. An old house, somewhere beyond those trees, well out of sight. Why bother with it?’ I took my keys from my pocket. ‘Come to me if you get even a smell of him. Lock your doors at night or you might wake with him looking down at you. Don’t let that idea keep you from your sleep, and don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. Thanks for the horseshoe.’
I left him to think about it and he called after me.
‘Chief Superintendent Broderick was telling me how important the next couple of weeks are for the guards in this county.’ Of course, Casey knows my chief more than I do. ‘The eyes of the world on you all, or at least on the man ye’ll be looking after. I know Broderick is feeling the pressure something awful. You know he’s a big horseman? Oh yes, he was out here only recently, in fact. He told me a man’s career could be made or broken by how he handles himself while Kennedy is here. An uncovered sneeze could see him stuck on his rung of the ladder at best, or pushed off the ladder at worst.’
He bit his lip as if to trap any more words inside, and it was his turn to leave me to think about something, while he returned to scanning where his land met the sky. On the way out, I slowed to let a van come through the gates, with three workmen behind the windscreen. Two of them I recognised – Matty Whelan and Eamon Doran, who Patrick had supposedly aimed a gun at. The skinny one behind the wheel, I didn’t.
22
The setting sun through the window made it seem as if the cottage was being lowered underground. It was his first evening in Roche’s and he held his mother’s knitting needles in his right hand, rolling them together. He used to visit on his way to town in the morning, and before that, his father was always well warned to be home before dark – one of his mother’s conditions in allowing them to visit Roche at all, who she regarded as a man hardly worth her disgust. She’d concede a thin smile on the occasions he helped to kill the pig, then trot him to the door and send him away as quickly as possible, with the ears and snout for his efforts.
He sat and remembered her as he saw her most clearly. In her cardigan and blue dress, knitting or lacemaking, her hair short and mannish. He remembered the lengths she went to before heading to town, wearing clothes she bought with money from selling the land, head-scarfed and perfumed, her face powdered and blushed. How she wore it all uncertainly under his gaze, as if she knew that he understood her efforts were for people who wanted nothing to do with her. The well-off and respectable. How he wanted to tell her she looked well, even if he didn’t really know if she did or not, but knew it wasn’t the sort of thing boys tell their mothers. In life and in death she remained a mystery and seemed to carry the weight of some secret whose telling would be her undoing and whose keeping undid her just the same. He remembered coming up behind her once, while she was hanging clothes on the line and didn’t hear him approach and for the first and only time, he heard her sing, some upbeat song he couldn’t remember the words to. He watched her tapping her foot on the grass, her head moving side to side and backed away, not wanting to break the scene. She may as well have been a stranger, an apparition in spring sunshine.
Outside, he lifted his face to the sky, with the new rifle across his shoulders and a hand curled around each end. A fine mist of midges hung in the air by the shed. The pregnant cat had abandoned the place, probably scared off by his coming and going, missing the peace and quiet Roche had given her. He drank a couple of handfuls of water from the trough and wet his chest and back. The sky would soon run out of daylight, which meant he could move unseen as he neared his home, over land that was less sparsely populated than Roche’s outpost. Land where people might lie in wait.
He left his bike, not wanting to carry it over stiles and walls and hedges, and turned to look back at Roche’s as he found his footing in the first rocky field. In the half-light, the place looked like the land itself, dark and ravaged by time and weather, the thatch like a forgotten bale, sagging at its centre.
He crossed some of Wexford’s least fertile fields, the rifle in his left hand. The ground softened after a couple of miles and he was watched by the gloomy faces of unsheared sheep. Their dark droppings littered his path. If they recognised a rifle, they pretended not to. He climbed between fields of crops and cattle, the cool air soothing his skin through the open buttons on his shirt. He crouched by a spring so still and so clear he was only sure it was water when his hand broke the surface. He rinsed his hands and wiped them across his face and hair, the edges still stubbled by Gerry Foley’s razor. On the near side of a small wood, he took a knee next to the remnants of a fire left by some other wanderer. The ash was still warm to touch.
The sky lowered like the lid of a coffin, darkening the county. He passed the unvisited graves of men, women and children – held captive then set alight by rebels and deserters at a barn in Scullabogue nearly two centuries back. He imagined those fleeing the blazing barn like screaming stars, the four points of their legs and arms burning like sticks of firewood. Their skin melting to bone until they were shot by muskets or skewered by pikes and the flesh-fuelled flames were stamped out by vengeful boots. He wondered if there was a field in the country that hadn’t seen a life extinguished by violence or hunger, or seen a man reduced to his knees by the blighted crop it offered.
The road to his house was familiar and foreign, and returning was enough to distract from the empty stomach that slowed him for the last mile. He felt like an unwelcome guest as the charcoal roof came into view. In Casey’s field, the Masseys had retreated from the wall and were taking their rest. A pale moon shone on the damage done by their day of work. The trees that lined the east of his home as far back as his father’s birth were felled and stacked like firewood that could sustain a never-ending blaze. He looked at the space for a long time, as if he might make them grow again. A gap in the limestone wall beyond. A mound of earth and rubble piled next to it. A wall that had been built by Hatten hands over a hundred years ago, knocked in an afternoon’s effort. Patrick imagined its builder, sitting on it when he was finished, sore, proud and exhausted, believing it might stand forever.
A breeze carried the smell of sawdust and wood oil from Casey’s stables. A van idled in his yard, back doors open and the engine running. He heard voices through the open front door of the house. He crouched behind the bucket of a tractor and watched as three men went in and out, laughing and carrying things from inside, recognising two of them as the men who drove the tractors to his wall. They loaded the van with whatever they could pass off as presents for wives or mothers, or sell for the price of a drink. He imagined his father’s slippers, askew on a folding table at some country market, next to his mother’s perfume, being pawed and smelled and inspected and bartered for.
He thought about going to them and telling them to unload the van before he went to Sergeant Field, but decided against it, reasoning that three against one were odds that meant he’d either be caught, or forced to use the gun. He couldn’t even be sure that Field didn’t know what they were up to, that Field wasn’t part of the whole thing.
‘Patrick Hatten. A couple of hours before his brother came in. He didn’t say what it was about, only that he wanted to talk to you.’
I thought of him. Cornered and with nobody to turn to, then settling on me. I remembered telling him he knew where to find me if he needed me, and forgot Flood was in the room. They could have had him in Senan’s by this morning.
‘Jim?’ he said, stirring me from my thoughts. ‘Can I put those hours at Hatten’s down as overtime?’
The look I gave him was enough for him to bow his head and shut the door after him.
I stood and pulled my coat on, the joints of my shoulders, elbows and wrists hurting as I shuffled into it. My day of rest. I was passing through the station, showing the lads a cold shoulder, when I saw Trevor Penrose at the front desk, the trousers of his fine suit tucked into wellingtons, saying something about a stolen Weatherby Mark V.
Colfer took the report and I sent Penrose on his way with a reminder that if he’s going to hoard enough guns to arm every guard in the district, then he should have the good sense to lock them up. If it’s been stolen, smart money would say it’s somebody that knows his gun room well – a cleaner or some fella who joined him on a Sunday trek once, blowing animals to pieces before tea in the conservatory. Patrick was there in my thoughts too, gone missing at the same time as the rifle.
Turning between the huge wrought-iron gates, their gateposts crowned by the golden shapes of horses’ heads, I realised that it was my first time at Casey’s stud. A flat slab of granite stood on a plinth to the left of the gates, the name of the stud not yet carved. The driveway was smooth and tarred, with empty paddocks on both sides, fenced in and lined with young birch trees.
Rounding the last bend, a farmhouse came into view, modernised and painted, windows decorated with flowerboxes like something from a postcard. A glossy black door with a golden handle in the shape of a horseshoe, to match the gates. I parked in front of it, next to Casey’s Jaguar. A couple of Land Rovers with tow bars were parked further along, before a row of horseboxes that had been recently washed and stood in drying pools of water.
I stood out and breathed sawdust and varnish, the warm smell of horses and straw. Across the way, Casey emerged from the stables, in a flat cap and waistcoat, shirtsleeves rolled up, trousers tucked into wellingtons. Rose sloped a couple of paces behind like an old dog following its master’s scent. Casey spotted me and said something over his shoulder to Rose, who went and sat next to the feeding station, beside a round yard of smooth sand. Beyond it, a small man-made lake mirrored the sky and in the far distance where the land dipped, I could just about make out the row of trees that shielded Casey’s eyes from the sight of the Hatten house.
‘So, this is it,’ I said as Casey neared.
He smiled, and say what you want about the man, it was a smile like a child’s and the closest thing I’ve ever seen to sincerity in his face. He had the same energy as Siobhán at the Opera House.
‘Come on,’ he said, patting my shoulder as if we were old friends. ‘I’ll give you a tour before we get down to why you’re here. Unless you’re here to invest, that is.’ He laughed at the notion.
He told me that the main building would house offices and a bar. He looked over the fields and talked about soil pH levels and grass and straw in scientific terms that suggested feeding this variety to his thoroughbreds would lead to offspring that would be closer to unicorn than horse. He cast a hand towards the paddocks, six in total, with field shelters at the southern end of each. He talked about expansion plans and didn’t bother explaining what direction it would be taking, since we both knew. He might as well have owned the sky above us.
‘When will you be finished?’
‘We’ll never be finished. This place will be breeding winners long after I’m gone. But the first chapter will close once we’ve bred a Grade One Champion.’ He pointed behind me, in the direction of the car park. ‘There’ll be a big bronze statue of our prized possession there eventually, to remind everybody in future decades about the standards we set from the beginning. That’s how sure I am that he’s going to sire some of the best racehorses in the world.’
Rose wandered over, looking from me to her father.
‘Hello, Rose,’ I said, and of course, she said nothing.
‘Say hello to Sergeant Field, Rose,’ Casey said and some sort of noise came from her. ‘She has her exams next year. Isn’t that right, Rose?’ I felt him tighten at her silence, as if he wanted to take out the riding crop and lash her into life. I thought of Catriona floating above me like a weightless astronaut, laughing down while I move her back and forth. I wondered how Casey could feel such contempt for his daughter.
‘Well, you’ll need brains and hard work, Rose,’ I said. ‘I was never one for exams.’
‘Ah, you can buy brains,’ Casey said and put a hand on my back, steering me away from her and towards the stables.
‘On that we disagree, Peter.’
He laughed, a short boom he likely used regularly, for guests to the stud, or salesmen who’d just named their opening price. ‘Add it to our list of disagreements, Jim. We’re working hard to refine her a bit. I have a bright young woman that comes to her three times a week. Rose loves the horses too. She gets that from me. When you know there’s something they want, you can get them to work for it. So, when Rose does well, she earns more time around here. That business with Hatten woke me up to how bad things could get if I didn’t take a tighter hold of the reins. She’s coming along well, thank God.’
The stables were cool and cavernous, an arc of light at the other end where the doors were open. It was like an enormous, hand-carved warehouse, with stalls either side of a wide aisle and an indoor wash stall at the far end, woodwork tried and tested for centuries holding Casey’s vision together – mortise and tenon, dovetail, and birdsmouth joints made by a master. I had the feeling of stepping into a grand hotel or home of old money, or even sitting in Cormac’s study, allowing myself to believe that it was my life, just for a second. I’d never as much as been to the races, and there I was, picturing myself in a three-piece and pocket square, clutching a race card trackside, watching my own horse bound for the finish line.
‘How many stallions?’
‘I’ll have twelve when the place is ready for them. Just the one now and we’ll do well to ever have one as good.’
Everybody in New Ross knew about Casey’s prized horse. I’d heard it spoken about in whispered voices, as if something sacred was being discussed. We stopped walking and he turned to it, a black horse looking out from its stall, the skin tight around muscles and visible veins that curled through its neck and legs. Near 17 hands high and about 80 stone of muscle and bone that it had the strength and heart to vault over ditches, racing around tracks at near the same rate as my Zephyr, all while carrying a man on its back. I was moved to silence, as if I’d travelled back in time to see something from folklore, something mythical creature that people doubt ever existed. And there it was, under Casey’s total command.
‘Altair,’ he said, reading the name engraved on the gate.
‘The brightest star in the Aquila constellation.’
He smiled. ‘Very good, Sergeant. I’m reminded that you have your passions too.’ He turned back to Altair. ‘An incredible horse.’
‘I’ve seen horses nearly every day of my life, Peter. Pulling carts, or tethered to fences and staring into empty fields. I’m not sure that’s what this is.’ I resisted the urge to reach out and touch it, preferring to keep the part of me that wanted to believe it wasn’t even real. I saw my shape in its large eye and couldn’t help but feel that it was a wise and quiet animal, making sense of me that I couldn’t make of myself.
Casey spoke as if we were standing in front of an altar. ‘His sire won the King George. Grandsire won the Gold Cup. This,’ he said, reaching out a hand and patting the horse, ‘is as fine an animal as you’ll find anywhere in the world. This is how big Ireland needs to think, Jim. Kennedy needs to represent the beginning of something more. He has to. We’ve to seize this moment.’ He looked at the horse with all the pride he hadn’t extended to Rose and his eyes burned brightly with the certain success of its future, whereas Rose’s exams would likely end with him even more unsure of what to do with her, bought brains or not. I wondered if he’d ever ridden a racehorse, or if his size had made it nothing more than a dream. He lifted a stray horseshoe from the top of the fence and held it up.
‘I’ve a farrier who makes these, in demand from here to America. This place locks up tighter than the cells in your station, and I’ve a Roscommon man who knows his way around a shotgun coming on as full-time security. He’ll live up there.’
I followed his finger to the ceiling, then spotted the wooden stairs to the living quarter.
‘Is he up there now?’
‘I’m here now. There’s no man stupid enough to try. Here,’ he said, handing me the horseshoe, heavier than I expected. ‘Give this to your little girl.’
Walking out from the stables was like the slow resurfacing from a dream. A breeze passed and we looked out at a sloping field, littered with daisies. He turned to me and raised his eyebrows to alert me to the end of the tour.
‘You were busy while I wasn’t around last night, Peter. What was the plan? Kidnapping?’ I pocketed the horseshoe.
The laugh again. ‘Colm Hatten was concerned for his safety. You heard about the threat, I’m sure. He was terribly shaken by it. I had a meeting with him yesterday and it’s all he could talk about. He wanted to act as soon as possible. You no more need a doctor to tell you that his brother isn’t wired right than I need a vet to tell me that my horse has what it takes hanging between its legs.’
‘A doctor and two guards with you. What did you think would happen?’
He shrugged. ‘He could have opened the door with a shotgun for all I know.’
I shook my head. ‘Didn’t I tell you he’d be better kept where he’s not causing any harm?’
He tossed a hand. ‘If I never see that lad again, it will be too soon.’
‘You might not ever see him again. But that doesn’t mean he won’t see you.’ He studied my face, a confused half-smile on his own, unsure if he’d just been threatened or warned. He swallowed and raised his chin in defiance.
‘Tell me, Peter. How do you know for sure that he can’t see the pair of us right now? Do you feel safe now you don’t have a clue where he is?’
He scanned the horizon and the boundaries of his little kingdom, rocking on his heels with his hands hidden in his pockets. The thin mask of confidence couldn’t hide his doubt.
‘Imagine somebody came and took all this away from you.’ I eyed the land and he stiffened, indignant at the notion even being put to words. ‘That’s what you did to him. You might not think his home is fit to house your dogs, but to him, it’s worth more than what you’ve built here. You didn’t even need it, Peter. That’s where our disagreement really is. An old house, somewhere beyond those trees, well out of sight. Why bother with it?’ I took my keys from my pocket. ‘Come to me if you get even a smell of him. Lock your doors at night or you might wake with him looking down at you. Don’t let that idea keep you from your sleep, and don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. Thanks for the horseshoe.’
I left him to think about it and he called after me.
‘Chief Superintendent Broderick was telling me how important the next couple of weeks are for the guards in this county.’ Of course, Casey knows my chief more than I do. ‘The eyes of the world on you all, or at least on the man ye’ll be looking after. I know Broderick is feeling the pressure something awful. You know he’s a big horseman? Oh yes, he was out here only recently, in fact. He told me a man’s career could be made or broken by how he handles himself while Kennedy is here. An uncovered sneeze could see him stuck on his rung of the ladder at best, or pushed off the ladder at worst.’
He bit his lip as if to trap any more words inside, and it was his turn to leave me to think about something, while he returned to scanning where his land met the sky. On the way out, I slowed to let a van come through the gates, with three workmen behind the windscreen. Two of them I recognised – Matty Whelan and Eamon Doran, who Patrick had supposedly aimed a gun at. The skinny one behind the wheel, I didn’t.
22
The setting sun through the window made it seem as if the cottage was being lowered underground. It was his first evening in Roche’s and he held his mother’s knitting needles in his right hand, rolling them together. He used to visit on his way to town in the morning, and before that, his father was always well warned to be home before dark – one of his mother’s conditions in allowing them to visit Roche at all, who she regarded as a man hardly worth her disgust. She’d concede a thin smile on the occasions he helped to kill the pig, then trot him to the door and send him away as quickly as possible, with the ears and snout for his efforts.
He sat and remembered her as he saw her most clearly. In her cardigan and blue dress, knitting or lacemaking, her hair short and mannish. He remembered the lengths she went to before heading to town, wearing clothes she bought with money from selling the land, head-scarfed and perfumed, her face powdered and blushed. How she wore it all uncertainly under his gaze, as if she knew that he understood her efforts were for people who wanted nothing to do with her. The well-off and respectable. How he wanted to tell her she looked well, even if he didn’t really know if she did or not, but knew it wasn’t the sort of thing boys tell their mothers. In life and in death she remained a mystery and seemed to carry the weight of some secret whose telling would be her undoing and whose keeping undid her just the same. He remembered coming up behind her once, while she was hanging clothes on the line and didn’t hear him approach and for the first and only time, he heard her sing, some upbeat song he couldn’t remember the words to. He watched her tapping her foot on the grass, her head moving side to side and backed away, not wanting to break the scene. She may as well have been a stranger, an apparition in spring sunshine.
Outside, he lifted his face to the sky, with the new rifle across his shoulders and a hand curled around each end. A fine mist of midges hung in the air by the shed. The pregnant cat had abandoned the place, probably scared off by his coming and going, missing the peace and quiet Roche had given her. He drank a couple of handfuls of water from the trough and wet his chest and back. The sky would soon run out of daylight, which meant he could move unseen as he neared his home, over land that was less sparsely populated than Roche’s outpost. Land where people might lie in wait.
He left his bike, not wanting to carry it over stiles and walls and hedges, and turned to look back at Roche’s as he found his footing in the first rocky field. In the half-light, the place looked like the land itself, dark and ravaged by time and weather, the thatch like a forgotten bale, sagging at its centre.
He crossed some of Wexford’s least fertile fields, the rifle in his left hand. The ground softened after a couple of miles and he was watched by the gloomy faces of unsheared sheep. Their dark droppings littered his path. If they recognised a rifle, they pretended not to. He climbed between fields of crops and cattle, the cool air soothing his skin through the open buttons on his shirt. He crouched by a spring so still and so clear he was only sure it was water when his hand broke the surface. He rinsed his hands and wiped them across his face and hair, the edges still stubbled by Gerry Foley’s razor. On the near side of a small wood, he took a knee next to the remnants of a fire left by some other wanderer. The ash was still warm to touch.
The sky lowered like the lid of a coffin, darkening the county. He passed the unvisited graves of men, women and children – held captive then set alight by rebels and deserters at a barn in Scullabogue nearly two centuries back. He imagined those fleeing the blazing barn like screaming stars, the four points of their legs and arms burning like sticks of firewood. Their skin melting to bone until they were shot by muskets or skewered by pikes and the flesh-fuelled flames were stamped out by vengeful boots. He wondered if there was a field in the country that hadn’t seen a life extinguished by violence or hunger, or seen a man reduced to his knees by the blighted crop it offered.
The road to his house was familiar and foreign, and returning was enough to distract from the empty stomach that slowed him for the last mile. He felt like an unwelcome guest as the charcoal roof came into view. In Casey’s field, the Masseys had retreated from the wall and were taking their rest. A pale moon shone on the damage done by their day of work. The trees that lined the east of his home as far back as his father’s birth were felled and stacked like firewood that could sustain a never-ending blaze. He looked at the space for a long time, as if he might make them grow again. A gap in the limestone wall beyond. A mound of earth and rubble piled next to it. A wall that had been built by Hatten hands over a hundred years ago, knocked in an afternoon’s effort. Patrick imagined its builder, sitting on it when he was finished, sore, proud and exhausted, believing it might stand forever.
A breeze carried the smell of sawdust and wood oil from Casey’s stables. A van idled in his yard, back doors open and the engine running. He heard voices through the open front door of the house. He crouched behind the bucket of a tractor and watched as three men went in and out, laughing and carrying things from inside, recognising two of them as the men who drove the tractors to his wall. They loaded the van with whatever they could pass off as presents for wives or mothers, or sell for the price of a drink. He imagined his father’s slippers, askew on a folding table at some country market, next to his mother’s perfume, being pawed and smelled and inspected and bartered for.
He thought about going to them and telling them to unload the van before he went to Sergeant Field, but decided against it, reasoning that three against one were odds that meant he’d either be caught, or forced to use the gun. He couldn’t even be sure that Field didn’t know what they were up to, that Field wasn’t part of the whole thing.
