Loopy (2 page)

He looked closely at the scanner that he had seen Norbert operate with such ease. He told himself that if someone like Norbert could work it, it had to be pretty straightforward.

“Try wiping the window thing. It looks as if something spilled on it.”

She tried—and it worked.

“Do you know what you are, Larry Lynch? You're a genius, a shaggin' genius. I thought I'd never get the bloody thing to work, and old Norbert would be leaning over me, breathing down my neck, and saying, ‘Maire dear, why don't you try pressing this little button here?' To be fair, he never laid a hand on me, though I don't like the way he looks at me sometimes.”

Larry thought to himself that Norbert was going to have plenty to look at when he got back. That miniskirt was almost up to her backside.

“Hard to blame him in a way. You've smashing legs!”

Maire did her best to sound demure, though she couldn't quite bring it off. “Glad you like them. They'll be at the dance on Sunday night, if you're interested.”

“You mean the ceili?”

“Will I see you there, so?”

She had no way of knowing that Larry would have preferred to be anywhere else on earth. There was to be no escape, however, as the ceili was run by the GAA on the night of the match between Trabane and their longtime rivals, Lisbeg. Norbert was in charge, and the posters that plastered every telephone pole and shop window in the village promised that both teams would attend—a supposed magnet to all the young and not-so-young girls for miles around. Larry feared the dancing much more than the match itself. The flailing hurleys of Lisbeg worried him less than parading his dismal dancing skills before the likes of Maire and her friends.

He tried to put a brave face on it. “Of course you'll see me there. I wouldn't miss it for the world. I'm not much of a dancer, though.”

“A dance isn't all about dancing, y'know!” she replied lightly, looking him straight in the eye as if daring him to contradict her, as the buzzer on the door announced the arrival of a customer. A middle-aged man in his fifties whom Larry recognized as the new owner of The Old Rectory was shrugging hailstones off his raincoat as he pushed through the glass door. Since the Protestant church had closed down, the vicar's residence had remained empty. Windows were broken and slates were missing from the roof. The once-manicured lawns were now kept in check only by the grazing of sheep, and the shrubbery had long since run riot. The avenue was virtually impassable with the rhododendrons on either side now almost meeting across the pot-holed tarmacadam. Its decline mirrored that of the town of Trabane.

Even good houses were hard to sell. The Creamery had laid off eighteen workers with rumors of more job losses to follow unless business picked up. With the Maltings shedding jobs at the end of every month and fewer tourists around than last year, even Foley's, the only pub in the village, was rumored to be in trouble. More empty wage packets made for fewer drinkers. All the more surprising then that a small, dapper Englishman had chosen to make Trabane his home. The Old Rectory had been on the market for ages when Edward Linhurst had bought it, and he had worked miracles on the place in quick time. Even the most skeptical could not fail to be impressed as what had once been little more than a derelict ruin quickly blossomed into the finest property for miles around. Even Seamus Norbert, who had hoped to pick it up for next to nothing if only he could think of something profitable to do with it, could not hide his admiration. He had said to Larry as they'd passed it on the delivery run around the outskirts of Trabane, “What Linhurst has done with that house is nothing short of a miracle, though what brought him to a place like Trabane is a mystery. The bloody man must have money to burn, that's all I can say.” With a sigh, the supermarketeer added, as much to himself as to Larry, “I wish to God he'd push some of it my way.”

Now Edward Linhurst appeared to be about to do just that. He was deep in conversation with Maire, and she appeared to be getting flustered for some reason. Larry could not help overhearing snatches of the exchange.

“Sorry, sir, but the boss is out just at the moment. I'll have to ask Larry, he might know if we have it.”

A moment later he was summoned. “Larry, come here will'ya. This gentleman is looking for his relish. Do you know anything about it?”

Larry thought for a moment. The only relish he knew of was from Yorkshire. He plucked a bottle of YR sauce off a nearby shelf and offered it to Linhurst. “Is that what you wanted, sir?”

Linhurst pursed his lips to hide his amusement. To laugh would have been unforgivable. He should have realized that Patum Peperium, better known as Gentlemen's Relish, might not feature on Norbert's shelves. Nevertheless he was very partial to it smeared across his morning toast. The tartness of anchovy paste with its hint of lemon was just the thing to kick-start his day. That morning he had used up the last of the jars he had brought from London. In what now seemed a moment of madness, he had resolved to seek it out in Norbert's supermarket. His predicament now was how to decline the bottle of YR, a sauce he particularly loathed, without offending either the girl on the checkout or the gangly youth in the long brown coat. It must have been at least forty years since he had seen a “shop” coat like that.

“Er, no, thank you very much. That's not quite what I wanted. Could I have an
Irish Times
instead?”

As he was leaving, he turned back to the girl. “Oops, I nearly forgot. I have to get cigarettes for my daughter. Trouble is, I don't smoke, but I vaguely remember what the packet looks like. It's white with a small, red square. Does that make any sense?”

Here Maire was on firmer ground. “Sounds like Silk Cut to me. Silk Cut Red, in fact.”

She plucked a packet from the shelf above the cash register. Norbert believed in keeping cigarettes well away from shoplifters. Maire inquired politely, “Do you think her packet looked like that?”

Linhurst hesitated, then murmured uncertainly, “Ye-e-s, I think so. To be honest, they all look pretty much the same to me, but I think those are the ones.”

“One packet, then?” Maire was anxious to resume honing her checkout skills before Norbert returned.

“Better make it a carton. Actually, make it two cartons, if you don't mind.”

He paid by a platinum Visa card, the first one Maire had seen.

*   *   *

Foley's Bar was next door to The Trabane Malting Company. Both had opened their doors within a month of each other over a hundred years ago, and neither had changed much since. The pub was lucky in that it had a captive market, being the only one in the village, whereas the Maltings had to compete in a wider market. This it had managed to do until a few years back, when the demand by the distillers of Irish whiskey for malted barley dropped off noticeably. So noticeably in fact that all further investment by the owners ceased, and jobs were being shed regularly. First the seasonal workers were let go, then last year the first of the full-time employees were dropped from the payroll.

The drinkers at the counter were discussing this when O'Hara, the schoolteacher, intervened.

“Sure, if the English hadn't had to pay back all that money to America after the last war, things might be different round here.”

His listeners looked mystified but unimpressed. No one questioned O'Hara's assertion, however, because of his famous short temper.

After another long silence, O'Hara held up his glass of whiskey and tapped it knowingly. “All because of this, lads, all because of this innocent drop of malt!”

The others remained silent as the grave, taking sips from their creamy pints of Guinness as they pondered this. After what seemed like an eternity, one of them was moved to ask, “How so?”

“They'd no money to pay America, y'see, so they sent them gallons and gallons of their very best Scotch whiskys, that's how so!”

This was greeted by another, longer silence. No one wanted to look a fool in front of his fellow drinkers, but eventually curiosity overcame one of them.

“What's that got to do with the Maltings going belly-up? Sure, all that war-repayments stuff was years ago, wasn't it?”

O'Hara nodded as if in agreement. “It was a while back, sure enough, but with all that Scotch floating around America, the Yanks got a liking for it and that put the kibosh on our own Irish whiskey.” He shook his head sorrowfully at the thought of it, but some were yet to be convinced.

“How come it took so long?”

O'Hara pricked up his ears—as if he had seen one of his pupils giggling at the back of the classroom. It sounded as if his wisdom was being doubted.

“Jaysus,” he exploded in exasperation, “I'm not saying America woke up one bloody morning and said, ‘Right, no more Irish whiskey!' No, nothing like that. Much more gradual. Scotch became
trendy,
y'see. The youngsters found it smoother to drink than this stuff.”

Again he tapped his glass as if to emphasize his point. Then he drained it in one mighty gulp, without flinching. Smacking his lips in satisfaction, he added, “And where America leads, the rest of the bloody world follows. Especially where being trendy and up-to-date is concerned. You only have to think of hamburgers and Coca bloody Cola and you'll get what I mean. It's the same with Scotch. Blander with much less flavor than this stuff.” He glared at his empty glass before signaling for another and ended, “But that's what they want nowadays. Smooth and safe, not sharp and strong like”—he paused dramatically before adding a tiny amount of water to the golden double measure of Irish whiskey and taking a swallow from it that reduced its level by more than half—“like this. I'll tell you this and I'll tell you no more, there's more nature in one ball of malt like this one than there's in a hogshead of the best bloody stuff that Scotland ever made!”

The bar sank into an impressed silence, wondering at the fickleness of their fellow drinkers worldwide and its disastrous effect on the huge but dilapidated stone building next door that was The Trabane Malting Company. Then the talk turned to Sean Lynch and his sudden departure for England. This was a topic not just for the regulars at Foley's Bar but for many of the townspeople. They wondered how the Lynch family were getting along without Sean. Did the family talk about him a lot—or not at all? Did Brona and the children long for the day when he would return or were they glad to see the back of him? Most agreed that the family was the better for his leaving.

The truth was that Brona had asked herself day and night since Sean had left how she might react if he ever did come back. After the first shock of his leaving, she had gradually come to where she secretly prayed that he would stay away forever. The family was getting along far better without him. There were no more explosions of rage. No more doors slamming or tears shed by the young ones as they were hustled out of harm's way. While Sean had never actually hit her, his arm had been raised to do so more than once. Her son was working and the girls were doing better at school. She was starting to go out more, meeting friends she hadn't seen in ages. Of course, as in any small community, some whispered behind their hands that Brona Lynch couldn't hold on to her husband. But for every one of them, ten more knew that she was well rid of him.

Father Spillane had been a great help: “God's will, Brona. Maybe Sean will make a better fit of things across the water. That's often the way of things, you know. A change of scenery might do him the power of good. In the meantime, aren't you all getting along fine?”

No recriminations, no talk of a woman's place being in the home or a wife being subject to her husband, as some of the older clergy might have told her. Instead he encouraged her to play a more active part in the community now that she was free to do so. For the first time since she had walked down the aisle with Sean Lynch, she had a life of her own. While she wondered to herself,
Would I give all this up if he came back?

Sean also wondered if he should return to Trabane as he trudged the streets of Birmingham in search of a job, any job that would pay enough for him to send something, however meager, back home to his wife.

*   *   *

Brona drew back the curtain and looked out into the yard to see who was blowing the horn. Hailstones were bouncing off the cobblestones and the hens had taken shelter inside the open door of the barn. She hoped they wouldn't lay among the bales of hay that filled the barn. It would take the children half the day to find the eggs if they did.

Brona would have recognized the white van even without
NORBERT'S SUPER STORE—FOR QUALITY AND VALUE
painted on its side. She waved at the face behind the windscreen wipers to signal him to come in. Norbert climbed out of the van with obvious reluctance and hunched his shoulders against the driving hail. Instead of making straight for the door of the farmhouse, he went around to the back of the van and lifted out a bright yellow gas cylinder. Looped over his elbow was a plastic shopping bag. Before opening the front door, Brona had time to reflect yet again that as his was the only supermarket for miles around, the van's sign's claim was difficult to refute. Yet whenever she shopped in the city, everything seemed to be much less than what Norbert charged. She told herself to be fair as she watched Norbert putting down the cylinder with a gasp of relief. After all, city stores did not deliver to the back of beyond, much less give employment to her eldest son in bad times like these.

“Will it be all right there, missus, or will I connect it up for you? I've a loaf of bread in the bag. Larry said he thought you might want it.”

“Great, the gas is fine where it is, Seamus. Would you like a cup of tea in your hand? I know you're in a hurry,” she lied easily, “Larry tells me you are run off your feet.”