Wild Decembers (23 page)

All of a sudden there is commotion beyond the low stone wall as the cows and bull race around frenziedly.

“Why do they keep a bull here?”

“It’s the butcher . . . He rents the grazing. My brother says it’s to stop people getting across to their own graves. . .”

“Your brother,” he says, half apologetic and half annoyed, and then asks her if she too thinks that he is a scoundrel.

“I do.”

“Then why are we here?”

“We’re here because you’re two people . . . Like everybody.”

“Are you two people?”

“Yes. My brother always said I was. He used to give me parts to play out in the fields. He said that I was Persephone.”

“Who’s she?”

“She’s in a fable.”

“So why her?”

“Because I loved picking flowers, primroses and things . . . She picked flowers.”

“And what happened to her?”

“She was half the year in Hades and half on earth.”

“Oh, Breege,” he said, and then adds quite contritely, “I was sorry about Violet Hill . . . Really sorry.”

“I know you were . . . He’s never mentioned her again. He’s like that.”

“You’re very good to him.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“If we stay here, you know what will happen,” he says, solemn.

“I want to stay here.”

“You’re a dreamer.”

“Would you rather I wasn’t?”

“No . . . I would not. I wouldn’t change a single second of this.”

“Still, in the year you barely spoke to me.”

“There was a reason for that and you know it.”

And they would stand a little longer in that sphere of moonlight, among the stone likenesses of saints and martyrs, not doubting, not hesitating, looking into one another’s carved face as if for the first time and for all time, saying nothing at all, full of happiness and dread, as though love and fatality were one and the same.

“You’re trembling,” he said.

“So are you,” she said, and they held each other then in that ordained nearness in which self is lost, self and other becoming one, one against cold desperate death and cold ravenous life, in that nimbus of heat and light, that ravish of courtship, that covenant which would be theirs for ever and yet never theirs, like flowers that are hatched in the snows.

They rode home before dawn, the swish of the oars, then the creak of the timbers in steady alternate regularity, the sky streaked pink and mirrored in the glassy water, low hills all around plunged in a lilac drizzle, the water birds busy, bossy, preening and grooming, perched on whatever matting of reeds they could find. She felt strangely detached. Going back to the same life and yet different. She did not think that she would miss him. She did not know. He dropped oars as they passed into the thicket of bamboo and he began to whistle. It was a low whistle, rapt, sustained, attenuated; it was for her, for the pink of the sky, for the pink shimmer on the water, and even when it hurt his windpipe and his lungs felt as if he were being punched, he went on whistling, the pain in exact and excruciating ratio to the happiness that he felt, a whistle with joy and exhilaration and suspense in it.

“A
T LAST
, at long last.” Joseph is clasping his hands together in a celebration and praising himself for having persevered.

Very soon it will be in his hands and he will walk out of there down the street a free man, then later to the bus station with his suitcase and a shop cake in a white box. They are on the first floor, with Moira knocking on a door marked
Private,
a yellowed lace curtain over the panel of glass. She is beaming, nudging him with “Didn’t I tell you.”

It is a big gaunt room with a desk, a chair on either side, and a surprising lack of clutter. In the excitement of being allowed in, he is slow in starting to talk, taking in all the features of the room, surprised by how shabby it is, a carpet full of cigarette holes and lifelong dust settled over everything. The fire grate is empty, but on the slate mantelpiece is a statue of the Infant of Prague, the little boy with his plastered and curled orange locks, and on the opposite side a carved black figure that could be man or woman. A bare room, a cold room even in summer, but what does it matter, he is in. The man who has agreed to see him is not the Mr. O’Shaughnessy whom he has been seeking for days, as he is now abroad on business and with no knowledge of when he is coming back.

“It’s good of you to see me,” he says, feeling at home with this man, who is not in the least bit crusty, big darns on his old jacket and a sty in his left eye.

“I’ll take down all the particulars,” he says formally as he opens a diary on which there is not a single entry. He flicks the pages, and all of them are bare, unwritten in.

“I’ve given Moira the particulars, it’s a document about my father’s ownership of a dirt road on the mountain near Derry Goolin . . . Where I was born.”

“I’ve never been out to that part. I believe it’s very scenic,” the man says.

“You ought to. It’s as near to heaven nature-wise as you could get. . .”

“And you’re in litigation over it?”

“Not yet. That’s why I’m here, you see . . . It’s an old track that belongs to me and he has a right of way.”

“So how can I help?”

“The proof is here. The piece of paper is here somewhere in this building.”

“How far back was it?”

“Eighty or ninety years.”

“We’ve had the odd fire and things.”

“Jesus Christ, it can’t be burnt . . . Don’t tell me it’s burnt.”

“I’m not saying it is. All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be easy to find.”

“Can’t we look . . . Even if you’re a busy man. You could let me root around. I have plenty of time.”

“I couldn’t do that. I haven’t the power. All I can do is make a note of your case and talk to Mr. O’Shaughnessy on his return. . .”

“He’s no use. Just let me open the files and search.”

“That would be a breach of the profession. Every solicitor takes an oath.”

“Goddamn your oath . . . Can’t you see that I’m desperate. And I’m stuck.”

The man seems to melt for a moment, then clears his throat and says, somewhat haltingly, “Unfortunately, I’m not a solicitor myself.”

“What are you?”

“I’m just helping out. I used to be their bookkeeper.”

“This is crazy . . . Craziness.”

“As I said, I will bring it to Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s attention.”

“Don’t send me out empty-handed.”

“I have no choice. It all hinges on Mr. O’Shaughnessy.”

“On Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” Joseph says bitterly, and asks the man in the name of God to recognise how big a thing it is to him, his mountain, his life, his all.

“I can appreciate that.”

“No, you can’t, because you’re a crook like him and you cover for him.”

“I have to ask you to retract that.”

“Think . . . Just think how easy it would have been any day this week for him to have seen me . . . To have helped me. But he didn’t. He slunk away, either because he was too lazy or too busy or too afraid. And what does it do to me . . . It sucks up every ounce of hope. It finishes a person.”

“That’s a bit extreme,” the man says, puzzled, and looking into the face with stark intensity up to and into the tortured blue eyes, he says, “I can’t promise, but I’ll look around for you.”

“You won’t let me down?” Joseph says, leaning across now and wanting to grip the man’s hand.

“Ring me tomorrow to remind me again.”

“Don’t let me down.”

H
E ARRIVED PANTING
in O’Dea’s office just before closing time bearing a ribboned box of chocolates for Miss P.

The document which he handed over was thin as parchment, so that O’Dea held it gingerly as if it might disintegrate. It had obviously been torn from a larger sheet and it was a very faint copy, the boundary lines a spotted and fading brown. It carried the name of the mountain. There were divided sections within it, but no names and no entitlement, no writing save that of a blind lake and an area liable to flooding. It was over a hundred years old and bore the signature of an English colonel. At the bottom were the three capitals UND, which meant Undefined.

“This is like the Turin Shroud,” O’Dea said, holding it up to the light to make sure there was no faint likeness concealed in it.

“We’re in mighty order,” Joseph said, excited.

“It has neither appurtenance rights nor servient rights . . . In short, it’s a bollocks.”

“We have him.”

“We can’t go into court with this, we’d be laughed at.”

“Whose side are you on. . .”

“Common sense, God help me.”

“If you don’t help me there are others who will.”

“Of course they will. They’ll take your money. Think on it. Eight hundred quid a day for counsel. Two firms of solicitors. Ourselves and the boys in Ennis. . . Tot it up,” and then recalling Breege’s desperate visit to their house late one night he relented, leaned across, and said, “Play ball . . . Let him cut his road and give us x number of pounds. That’ll cover some of the outstanding bills.”

“I always pay my way.”

“Look, Joe . . . Stand back from it. Take the / moral high ground.”

“I’d sooner die.”

“Jesus . . . Why are you driving yourself nuts?”

“I hate him.”

“Sad. For sure that’s sad.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You need a doctor. You need to get yourself sorted out.”

“I never felt saner.”

“Okay, then. Hear it from the horse’s mouth . . . This document can’t deter him from building his road, and if you go into court the most you’ll win is a partition suit. They’ll make the road a yard or two narrower.”

“He’ll die doing it.”

“Christ, you’re warped.”

“He’s out to get me.”

“What does that mean?”

“I met him late one night . . . I was out at our own gate and he asked me if I would care to come for a ghost ride on the mountain.”

“That’s bizarre. Why didn’t you go to the guards?”

“They wouldn’t believe me. They’re on his side.”

Looking at the frazzled eyes, hearing the rapid jerky breathing, O’Dea saw the first dangerous sign, but because he had seen it so often, had seen men and women in that very same chair shouting murder, he thought, He’ll get tired . . . He’ll give up . . . They always do.

“Forget Mick Bugler. Go home and stock your farm. Get back on your feet,” he says with a fatherly touch.

Sensing some slight, some slur, Joseph rises and leans towards him in that pose of useless and aping belligerence.

“Just because your daughter’s pony is allowed to graze on his lands.”

“Listen, Rambo, I’m no whipping boy. . .”

“You’re on his side. I could report you . . . I could have you struck off.”

They are standing now about a foot apart, the one chalky, fanatical, the other with a ruddy expression and the eyes emptied of everything except the terror that he would be reported on once again to the Law Society and this time it would be curtains.

“I take it back,” Joseph says, quashed, as O’Dea lunges at him with bruising punches.

“You can’t take it back. But you can take your junk,” O’Dea says, handing him a folder that is bulging open, and then he pushes him out onto the stairs.

He stumbled out into the street with the folder. He was alone and evicted. He bought himself a naggon of whiskey and drove straight to the mountain. He parked his car at the point where work on Bugler’s road had been begun and then halted. Looking in at it was like looking in at a crater, a wet hole with a few tins and bottles dumped in it.

He went up the mountain shouting, roaring against Bugler, who had loosed such grief and harm upon it. With each swig of whiskey he got braver, the roars more bellicose, like the bulls of old across the provinces shouting the commands of their kings and their queens. He felt brave. He sat himself on a height of rock, drinking, and every so often roaring, to confirm his claim. The mountain became nearer and dearer to him, like it was a woman, like he could embrace it, like he could pick it up and put it down again, like he could defend it against all marauders.