Ashes In the Wind (45 page)

James laughs. ‘Dad was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church, became a monk, renounced all his worldly possessions. I go to church only once a week, with no incense and not much religion.’

A week after Georgia’s visit, James is in Drimnamore buying groceries. He has tied Mick to the Staigue Fort bench. When he comes out of the shop he sees a young boy stroking Mick’s head and getting his face licked in return.

‘He’s a friendly dog. His name is Mick. What’s your name?’

‘Mum says I’m not to talk to strangers.’

‘Dogs don’t count?’

‘Dogs can’t talk. Here she comes, anyway. I can talk to you when she’s here.’

James looks up and sees Anna Pearson walking towards him. She hugs James, and he kisses her cheek, holding her tight.

‘Mum, you told me not to talk to strangers, and you’re hugging this man.’

‘We’ve met before. He’s the one I told you about, that we’re coming to visit.’

‘It’s lovely to see you. And to see Jack James Zachariah again.’

‘How do you know all my names? I’m called Jack. The other ones are spares.’

‘How did you track me down?’

‘I heard from Imogen you’d moved to Drimnamore. Jack knows Zachariah, and I thought he should meet his other, his other namesake. I didn’t think it would be hard to find you in a village this size. She said you were still on your own.’

‘Nosy woman. For all she knows I’ve a string of Irish mistresses. How long are you here?’

‘Days, weeks. You know I don’t like timetables. We came over on the ferry to Cork. That’s my little car outside the Seaview B&B.’

‘You’ll have to stay till the first Kerry Oyster Festival next weekend. Come down to Oysterbed Pier this afternoon and I’ll show you the reason I’m here.’

‘Mum, what’s a namesake?’

Anna and Jack arrive at Oysterbed Pier and James shows them round.

‘At Allenmouth you said you wanted to be a fisherman, and I said you’d left it a bit late. I was quite wrong.’

‘We’re two packers short this afternoon. You and Jack can make yourself useful at a packing station. Look, I’ll fill the basket. Jack, you put on the seaweed and the cover. Anna, you strap the basket round.’

Anna is happy to be put to work, Jack talking non-stop to the other three women on the line as they work. By five o’clock they have filled a hundred baskets.

‘That’s our quota. Now let’s have tea.’

They walk to the new kiosk. James brings over smoked oysters, soda bread and butter, and a piece of cake for Jack. They sit at one of the trestle tables Danny has made from old railway sleepers.

‘It’s always quiet in the afternoon. When the Ring of Kerry tours arrive in the morning there are plenty of customers. Try some lemon on your oyster.’

‘They’re delicious.’

They finish the oysters and walk back to the village.

‘Join me in The Liberator later, once Jack’s in bed. If it’s a good day tomorrow we’ll go for a sail.’

‘What do you say, Jack?’

‘Thank you for showing me the oysters.’

James picks Jack up, hugs him, feels his eyes pricking with tears, and puts him down. Anna comes over to the Liberator after half an hour and they talk for a long time in a quiet corner of the bar.

‘I hope you stay a while. I do miss you. And seeing Jack... he felt like my son when I held him just now.’

‘You hardly know each other. And we’re not going to have a DNA test. He’s your son only if you both agree. But I did want Jack to meet you. He needs a man, not all the time, mind. I can’t teach him to sail or fish.’

‘I can do both. But I want to be more than just an Outward Bound instructor.’

‘That’s up to you and up to him. And I have missed you. I’d forgotten how calm and competent you are. Let’s see how the three of us get on. I’ll bring a picnic for tomorrow.’

‘I’ll see you both at the pier at ten. We’ll sail over to Derrynane if there’s enough wind; the races are on in the afternoon.’

James hoists the dark red sails once they have motored away from the pier; the boat heels over as the sails fill and there is a generous gurgle of water under her lee. Jack sits with his arm around Mick.

‘Mum, is it meant to tilt like this?’

‘Ask the captain.’

‘There’s a heavy keel to stop it going over. It’s called a Galway Hooker. This one is a
leathbad
in Gaelic, a half-boat.’

‘I remember you told me Kerry was beautiful.’

‘On a day like this. In November, in the rain, with the low cloud blotting out the mountains, it’s altogether different. Mind your heads as we go about. We’ll anchor on the edge of the channel and try for some mackerel. They’ve been around since the beginning of the week.’

They each take a line with half a dozen feathered hooks and drop them over the side. Jack has never been fishing before, and shouts with excitement when he pulls up two gleaming blue, black and silver fish. James shows him how to gut a mackerel, and Jack, doubtful at first, manages to clean one on his own.

‘That’s for your supper. The ones that go in the pots are just slit open. We’ve got three for supper, six for the lobsters. We’ll check the pots on our way back.’

James persuades Anna to take the tiller as they sail in a warm breeze down the estuary and sits beside her as she steers. He puts his hand over hers on the tiller, doesn’t take it away. Anna looks at him, smiles, brushes his cheek with hers for a moment as the boat heels over in a gust of wind. It is a rare, cloudless Kerry day, with enough wind to take them to Derrynane, where they anchor off the point. Anna has made sandwiches, James has brought a bottle of wine and some lemonade, and they eat in the cockpit of the boat. They can see the tractors dragging the sand flat for the races and the crowds beginning to gather.

‘Can we swim? I’m very hot,’ asks Anna.

‘The tide’s on the turn, there’s no current. I’ll put the ladder over the stern so you can get back in.’

‘Mum, I don’t have my swimming costume.’

‘Underpants will do fine.’

Anna kicks off her sandals, pulls her dress over her head and before James has a chance to look at her dives into the water.

‘It’s – it’s bracing.’

‘It is the Atlantic. It takes a while to get used to it.’

James puts down the ladder, then watches as Jack, very slowly, lowers himself into the sea.

‘Aren’t you coming in?’

‘You always need one on the boat.’

Four minutes are enough. James helps them both up the ladder and they dry themselves on the small towel from the galley. Anna walks forward, her back to James, and slips out of her bra and pants and puts on her dress. She lays the wet clothes on the hatch.

‘They’ll be dry in twenty minutes.’

‘Shall we go to the races? Have you ever been to a horse race? We can take the dinghy over to the pier and walk round.’

‘Won’t the boat float away?’ says Jack.

‘This is a safe anchorage in this weather. We can keep an eye on the boat from the shore. Mick stays on board to keep off pirates. He wouldn’t be able to resist chasing the horses if we brought him along.’

It’s a holiday crowd at the races, determined to enjoy themselves.

‘It’s the only race meeting in the world on sand under the proper rules of racing,’ says James. ‘In the Irish Racing Calendar they give the start time as “depending on the tides”.’

They watch the last three races, Jack perched on James’s shoulders to see over the heads of the crowd.

‘This was how my father earned his living, training racehorses.’

James explains the mechanics of betting to Jack, who likes the idea, likes it less when he loses the euros James has given him for the first two races.

‘We need a long-odds saver in the last,’ says James. ‘There’s a horse come all the way from Limerick, and that’s a fair distance if it doesn’t have a chance. Eight to one.’

They look at the horses in the makeshift parade ring, Jack holding James’s hand tightly. This time Jack puts on the bet himself. The bookie looks at him, says, ‘Are you certain now you’re eighteen? Tell you what, I’ll give you ten to one.’

‘Is that better?’

‘It’s the best.’

They find a spot close to the winning post.

‘Look out for the green and red colours, red cap, that’s your horse,’ and Jack, bouncing with excitement, shouts his horse home. They collect their winnings, Jack talking about his plans to spend the money as they walk back to the pier. Anna is sitting on a bollard watching them.

‘Mum, I won ten euros, that’s ten pounds nearly.’

‘You’ve set him on the road to ruin,’ says Anna as they sail back up the estuary.

‘There’s still the women and the drink to look forward to.’

They motor back as the wind dies away, then pull up the lobster pots. Jack watches as James puts a mackerel head-down in each bait bag, draws the top of the bag tight and hooks the door shut.

‘If they can get in, why can’t they get out?’

‘The shape of the door makes it difficult.’

The first four pots are full of small crabs, but the last two each has a good lobster. Back at the cottage James shows Jack and Anna how to kill a lobster with a sharp knife into the brain.

They eat the lobsters in front of the fire, Anna admiring the bitter-sweet smell of the turf. Jack is amazed at the change in colour of the lobsters from deep blue-black to red, but is doubtful about eating them, preferring his mackerel.

After supper, Jack asks, ‘Mum, can we stay here tonight?’

‘You’ll have to ask James.’

Jack sleeps on the sofa, and James shares his bed with Anna. He lights the fire in the bedroom, watches as Anna undresses, her body glowing, then holds her to him the rest of the night. He rediscovers her smell, her taste, the warm feeling of her skin. He thinks about Anna’s assumption that they would make love again almost at once after several years apart. Being taken for granted, he decides, has its advantages.

The next morning Anna and Jack are still asleep and James is in the kitchen making coffee when Danny knocks on the door.

‘You’d better come to the Pier. We’ve been burgled.’

James goes with Danny to the shed; the door has been broken open and the stock they had been building up for Saturday’s festival has gone.

‘They’ve gone off with two hundred boxes. You can see the tyre marks on the grass. Looks like a small truck or a van. I rang the Garda and they said they’d get a man here on Monday. Once I told them no one was hurt they lost interest. I should have said I’d been beaten up.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘You might try your man Michael Sullivan. He knows everything that goes on around Drimnamore.’

James rings Michael, who says he’ll ask around. He walks back to the cottage where Anna and Jack are having breakfast and tells them what has happened.

Jack is outraged. ‘That’s not fair, that’s stealing. Can you fish up some more?’

‘Not by tomorrow. Never mind. There’s not much we can do about it. Let’s go and play crazy golf.’

Danny finds them in the coffee shop later that morning.

‘Now what?’ says James. Danny is smiling.

‘We’ve got them all back. I don’t know what Michael Sullivan did, but I got a message to go to the lay-by outside the big hotel, and there were our boxes, every single one.’

The next day, the day of the first Kerry Oyster Festival, is again fine.

‘It’s a Kerry record, two good days in a row,’ says Danny. ‘We’ve work to do. I’ve put a banner above the road to show we’re here, and I called the coach companies yesterday. They said it was the driver’s decision where and when to stop. But most of them stop off in Drimnamore. Anna, could you handle the till? Jack, go you and help behind the lemonade table.’

At ten the coaches start to arrive, but the first three pass through Drimnamore without stopping.

‘You’d think we’d have got at least one,’ says Danny. He looks worried.

‘Did you not come to an arrangement with the drivers last time through?’ asks Michael Sullivan, who is manning an oyster table with Aisling.

‘I did not.’

‘Better do something, maybe on the Drimnamore Bridge on the far side of the village.’

The something is a puncture. Danny leaves the fishery van jacked up and without its near-side front tyre on the bridge. No buses can cross for the next two hours, and the passengers are happy enough to make the short walk back into the village. By noon they have almost run out of oysters, the van’s puncture has been repaired and the bus drivers made happy.

‘It will be bigger and better next year. I can’t thank you enough for recovering the oysters,’ says James.

He and Anna are having dinner with the Sullivans in the big hotel. Jack and the youngest Sullivan boy are playing in the hotel’s games room.

‘It wasn’t too difficult. It’s always the Kellys round here. It would have been a shame if we hadn’t had our festival. Anna, James is a good man, and they’re not easily found, I can tell you. Here,’ he says, embarrassed by his little speech. ‘Take a look at this. It’s the last letter Tomas wrote to Annie, my gran. I found it a week ago in a box of old letters, Communion cards, exam certificates and my father’s commission as a Garda inspector.’

James reads the letter once to himself, once out loud.

The Ebro,

Catalonia,

September 1938

Dear Mam,

A lot has happened since I last wrote from Teruel. We recaptured the town after some pretty fierce fighting. The weather had cleared and our planes did real damage to the Republican troops.

Our section was one of those leading the advance, and we got ahead of ourselves, to be honest we got a bit lost, and were taken prisoner by the Republican rearguard. We were disarmed, sitting waiting to be shot, which is what we would have done if it had been the other way round, when one of the Republicans called out my name.

It was John Burke from Derriquin. He prodded me in the ribs with his rifle and took me round the corner. He’s going to shoot me himself, I thought, and, do you know, it seemed fitting, as I’d been one of the men who executed his mother. I told him how to do it in case he botched the job. ‘One to the heart, one to the head,’ I said. So he pointed his rifle at me, I could see his hands shaking, then he raised the muzzle and fired two shots into the air. ‘Your troops will be here within the hour,’ he said and walked away.