Loopy (3 page)

“The boy's right. I have hardly time to draw a breath. Still and all, 'twould be worse if I was idle, I suppose. There's enough of them idle around the town as it is.”

He might have expounded further on the virtues of honest toil had not Brona forestalled him, “What do I owe you, Seamus?”

“Nothing, missus. Not a red cent. Larry said to take it out of his wages at the end of the week. You have a grand lad in him and no mistake. I only wish to God he'd pack in the school and come to work for me full-time. I'd give him all the time off he wants for the hurling. If we had a few more like him, we'd beat those Lisbeg shaggers out the gate. We might even win the county championship!”

This topic she was not keen to discuss. Only last week Pat O'Hara had taken the trouble to drive out the four miles to her farmhouse when he knew Larry would safely be out of the way stacking shelves in the supermarket. O'Hara's mission had been to persuade her to keep Larry on at school until he had graduated: “With that piece of paper in his pocket, there'll be no stopping him!”

She hadn't the heart to tell the schoolteacher that it was all she could do to keep Larry at school until the end of this term. Graduation was completely out of the question now that her husband had taken the boat for England—leaving a mountain of debt and four children behind him.

She had been alarmed that the schoolteacher had reeked of whiskey so early in the afternoon, something the mints he sucked on failed to hide. Having extracted a half-promise from her that she would at least talk to Larry about it, he left. He did not, she noticed, make any reference to her absent husband. Now here was Seamus Norbert trying his level best to get Larry to quit school in favor of hurling and a job. It might not be much of a job that he was offering, but anything was worth considering at a time when the talk was of little but recession and hard times.

After much agonizing, Brona had decided that she would leave it up to Larry himself to decide. She had more than enough to do in running the farm and looking after the young ones without having to decide the future of her eldest child. Though still a month short of seventeen years old, Larry had a good head on his shoulders. And a brave heart, too. She smiled as she remembered how he had stood up for her when her husband had ranted and roared about there being no food in the house. Where others might have cowered with fright, Larry had stood up to him with clenched fists: “If you gave Ma half of what you give to the bookies every day of the week, we'd have all the food we could eat.”

Of course the boy was right, but Sean, she supposed halfheartedly, had done his best. Backing horses was the only luxury he allowed himself, even if it was an increasingly expensive one since they had let him go at the Creamery. He had tried to get work around Trabane but without success. The work just wasn't there for anyone. It wasn't until after he had left that she'd found out he had borrowed money from his friends. The last straw was the letter out of the blue from Leo Martin, the bank manager. It had arrived that very morning and she had had to sit down after reading it. Little wonder then that she found hurling a safer topic than Larry's future to discuss with Norbert, who showed no signs of leaving despite his claims to be run off his feet. She tried to sound concerned as she asked, “Will they beat Lisbeg this time?”

“I certainly hope so. Lisbeg have beaten us for the past three years, though we should have won it out last year. Only for that blind bastard of a referee—in pardon to you, missus—sending two of our best men off in the first half, we'd have beaten them fair and square.”

“It's being played in Lisbeg this year, isn't it?”

“Indeed it is and that's no help, I can tell you. Their supporters are the biggest bunch of savages I've ever laid eyes on. I'd say half of them would eat their young without salt if they got the chance. How they managed to steal that factory from under our noses is something I will never understand till the day I die.”

Brona laughed ruefully. A call center with sixty jobs that would handle subscription lists and renewals for several international magazines had been promised to Trabane before the last election, but it had gone to Lisbeg in the heel of the hunt. As for Norbert, he was a fanatic where the GAA and hurling were concerned and could see no further than Trabane Gaels. Brona regarded the Gaelic Athletic Association as just another sporting organization, neither better nor worse than the others, and hurling just a game the same as any other. Not that she would speak such heresy to someone like Norbert. Instead she chided him ever so gently, “Are you forgetting that my husband comes from Lisbeg?”

Norbert could have kicked himself for the oversight. Of course Sean Lynch was born and reared in Lisbeg. That could explain a lot, he decided. Sean, the useless bastard, would bet his last shilling on two flies going up a wall, and look where it had got him.

“Indeed I was, missus. I was forgetting he was born and bred in Lisbeg.” A pause, then: “Any word from him yet?”

Brona didn't answer, and Norbert, fearing that he had overstepped himself, hurriedly changed the subject.

“That's a fine lot of hay you have outside in the barn. Should be worth a few bob, I'd say.” Hurrying across the cobblestones from his van to the farmhouse, he had seen the hay barn full of bales. They could be worth a lot if this unseasonable weather continued. Farmers who had expected to leave their cattle out on grass by the end of March were still feeding them dwindling winter fodder indoors. Bales of hay that were selling for less than a pound before Christmas were now fetching nearly four pounds each—if they could be got. The Lynchs might yet sort out their money problems if only they could get rid of what was stacked in the barn before the end of the month.

Brona shook her dead distractedly. “You're right, I suppose. But it's only worth something if we can get rid of it. Someone called a few days ago and offered me two pounds a bale for the lot of it. I refused him. Do you think I was right or wrong?”

“You were dead right. It's worth twice that at the very least. Delivered, of course.”

“That's the trouble, you see. We've no one to deliver it. Larry's too young yet to take the tractor out on the road, and it would cost a fortune to hire a lorry, never mind the driver and a helper.”

They both lapsed into silence. By prolonging it, Brona hoped that it might encourage him to leave. Sure enough, after a minute or two Norbert shifted uneasily from one foot to another before announcing that he must be going. His parting words were “Good luck with the hay. If there's anyone with a lorry and driver going cheap, I'll let you know. Try to persuade that son of yours to pack in the school, he's only wasting his time at the books.”

After he'd accelerated briskly out of the yard and was gone, Brona made herself a fresh pot of tea and took the letter from the bank down off the mantelpiece. It did not improve with a second reading.

*   *   *

Class was over for another day and Larry was putting his books back in his schoolbag when O'Hara crooked a finger at him. He walked up to the schoolteacher's desk as the rest of the class disappeared, pushing and shoving each other, out the door.

“I'm asking you again, do you want to caddy for me or not?”

Larry wanted to say no. He couldn't care less about golf and the kind of people who played it. Anytime he passed by the course, it was dotted with small groups dressed up like eejits who dug holes in the short grass as they tried to hit a small white ball. It seemed a pointless game even for those with nothing better to do. However, Pat O'Hara knew that the supermarket closed for a half day on Thursdays, so Larry could not use that as an excuse. The money, however small, he reflected, would be welcome.

“Of course I do, Mr. O'Hara. Whenever you say.”

The teacher put away the Lucozade bottle and dabbed at his lips with the corner of a spotted handkerchief before answering.

“I have a game arranged in half an hour. I'll pay you two pounds to carry my bag. On the way round, I'll tell you what to do, but the main thing is to watch where my ball goes and mark where it lands. The other thing is to shut up. Golfers are easily upset, and talking or standing too near them while they are trying to play a shot is a hanging offense. Now put your schoolbag in the car—I'll drop you home after we're finished.”

They drove past the large sign that read
TRABANE GOLF CLUB—VISITORS WELCOME
and down the short drive that led to the parking lot at the back of the clubhouse. This was a long, rambling building in need of a fresh coat of paint. Larry had never been inside the clubhouse before. Sometimes he would sneak onto the course to look for golf balls as the sun went down. He was usually chased off by the greenkeeper, who did not welcome competition in selling used balls to golfers too cheap to pay for new ones.

The changing room was worlds apart from the corrugated-iron lean-to used by the Trabane Gaels. It had a carpet, wall-to-wall clothes lockers, and hot showers with individual cubicles. The hurlers had to make do with a communal outdoor water trough to wash off the mud.

O'Hara, having changed into a pair of shoes with spiked soles, opened a wooden locker with his name on it and took out a bag of clubs. He hung his jacket on a hook beside the locker, pulled a heavy pullover over his head, and a had quick pee in the nearby toilet before announcing, “We're about ready. The priest wasn't sure if he could make it. We'll give him five minutes more, and if he doesn't show up, we'll head off on our own.”

They went out to the first tee, where O'Hara embarked on a series of loosening-up exercises. Larry had difficulty in keeping a straight face at the ridiculous contortions of someone who had ten minutes earlier been expounding on the theorems of Euclid. O'Hara abandoned his gyrations in favor of swishing a golf club at a daisy in much the same way as Larry swung a hurley stick. The way the hands gripped the club looked the same to Larry even if the actual swing was different, being much slower and, in O'Hara's case, more labored. Hitting the ball with a hurley came naturally to Larry, but the teacher seemed to be putting as much concentration into his practice swing as he did in solving a theorem on the blackboard.

When the priest failed to appear, they set off on their own. O'Hara stood poised over the ball for what seemed an eternity. Suddenly, without warning, he unleashed a sudden, vicious swipe at the tiny white sphere perched daintily on a small wooden peg, as if hoping to catch it unawares.

“Did you see that?”

Larry nodded, though he didn't think much of what he had seen. Thus far golf seemed to consist of complicated gyrations that resulted in sending a small white ball to God knows where.

“What I mean is, did you see where it
landed?
”

O'Hara's face was still flushed with the effort as Larry, taken aback by the sharpness of the questioning, could only stammer, “I—I—I think it went over there.”

He pointed toward a sand dune to the left of a long green pathway ending at a distant flag fluttering in the breeze. Looping the strap of the bag over his shoulder, he was surprised at its heaviness. He set off at a trot, keeping his eye glued on the spot where the ball had disappeared into the side of the sand dune. It was easier to find than he had imagined. As O'Hara was still some distance away, he picked it out of the thick grass and waved it above his head.

“Here it is, sir. I found it!”

As he struggled up the steep incline, O'Hara complained, “I should have warned you before we started. You see, you're not supposed to move the ball. In future, just find the bloody thing, but don't touch it.”

This did not make sense. “How am I to know if it's your ball so? Couldn't it be someone else's?”

By now O'Hara had joined him on the flank of the sand dune, but he was much too breathless to reply there and then. When he eventually got his breath back, a note of exasperation was in his voice.

“By any chance, did you see what kind of golf ball I was playing?”

Larry shook his head. He felt that to answer “small and white” would only make matters worse.

“I was playing a Dunlop Maxfli. I suppose you didn't get its number either?”

This time Larry merely shrugged his shoulders. He had expected praise for finding O'Hara's ball in the long dune grass, instead of which he was getting a lecture.

“Well, luckily I did! It was a number two. So if that ball you found is a Maxfli number two, we'll put it back where it was and we can carry on. Always, of course, assuming I can dig the damn thing out of that grass.” Only the top half of the ball was visible. O'Hara moved it with his index finger as gently as if it were a live grenade until he could identify it properly. Then he eased it back to its original position, deep in the grass. It was obvious, even to Larry, he had not given himself any advantage whatsoever.

“Good man yourself! That's my ball all right. Now all I have to do is to hit it onto the green.”

O'Hara selected a weird-looking club from the bag and made several practice swishes before drawing a mighty, slashing blow on the partially hidden ball. It flew upward and landed about halfway to the green. O'Hara seemed pleased, so Larry risked a “Good shot, sir.”

“Yes, it was, wasn't it? Didn't really think I'd get it out of there so cleanly. Now all I have to do is to pop it up onto the green and sink the putt.”

The way he said it made it sound as if doing so would be the easiest thing in the world. It proved to be nothing of the sort. The next shot would indeed have landed on the green had it not taken a sharp deflection off a small mound and skidded sideways into a deep bunker. Larry could not be certain, but he thought he heard a strangled expletive of impressive obscenity. O'Hara selected a different club from the bag and descended into the deep, sand-filled hole beside the green. There followed a lot of scuffling about in the sand before the ball climbed high in the air and landed on the green. After some time it was joined there by a furious O'Hara.