Wild Decembers (6 page)

“I couldn’t stop him.”

“You half-baked, big-arsed pollop, you let him go . . . You didn’t even try . . . All you had to do was hold your bush up against him.”

“He wasn’t interested in me.”

“Plan A—tell me what was Plan A.”

“We were going to bring Bugler home and get our hooks in him.”

“Plan A, we were going to bring Bugler home, and Plan B we were going to bring Bugler home and every fecking plan in the alphabet . . . Now he’s with that bitch with her lands in Tipperary . . . She’s loaded.”

“Oh, Reet.” Reena starts to cry, the tears dropping onto the posy of chrysanthemums which she took from the table. Everyone grabbed something, but all she managed was this small bouquet and half a red candle. Eamonn sweeps around them while they outscream each other, tells them the party is over. Soon they are screaming at him, saying they are not fecking leaving, they want reimbursement. With shooing arms and the broom handle he herds them towards the exit, saying very quietly, and very gently, “Girls, girls,” then gets them to the front door, pushes them out, shuts the door, bolts it, and whistles a sweet Jesus of relief. The last thing he wants is to be up in court for assaulting them.

Once out of the town they hit a fog so thick that it is impossible to see twenty yards ahead. The car is like a sled on the icy road, not a glimpse of a house or a light of any kind, only Rita cursing and plotting her revenge on one and all. She is driving recklessly, her cabbage crown askew, the little bubble car like a cauldron because of her invective.

“I’m sorry, Reet,” Reena said, picking off shreds of the chrysanthemums as if they were coconut, then spitting them out.

“Sorry, feck . . . Two times twenty-seven pounds fifty, the price of a load of hay.”

When they passed their turning, at the top of the town, Rita tore down the hill, through the fog, knocking some tar barrels put there because of roadworks. “Where are we going, Reet?” “See if that tin of turpentine is in the back.” “Why?”

“His fecking tractor is in for a surprise.” “How so?”

“Teach that bastard Bugler a lesson while he’s getting laid in the luscious Golden Vale.”

T
HREE MEN ARE
around the tractor, clutching it as though in a fervent embrace. Their hands and clothes already muddied and their faces taut with effort. They have been there the best part of an hour and tempers are fraying. At first it was quite jocular, Bugler giving the orders and the others complying, Joseph and the Crock at the back wheels and the salesman, a stranger, at the side, Bugler on the driver’s seat with the open manual shouting out the several orders, the men pushing and sweating, trying to rock it out of its inertia.

At dawn he had got back and slept a couple of hours on a chair and then to work. He feels cranky. A mistake to have tarried in horse country. Daddy’s girl, the lady crooner, acting the helpless maiden in the foyer of the dance hall, with no one to bring her home. Her cousin hadn’t shown. Jonathan hadn’t shown. Nearly in tears. Silent in the car. A drive of thirty-odd miles, little towns fast asleep except for the neon glare of the petrol stations, then a country road, a big front gate, a cattle grid, a stately home, but ending up in the saddle room with all the gear, the rods and the brushes and a rocky horse, things to turn a bloke on. The gee-gees. Where did a nice girl like her learn the tricks? “Oh, I started when I was twelve.”

“You’re sure it’s not the diesel?” the Crock calls out.

“Dead sure.

It was the first thing he had tried, had put a rod into the tank thinking that maybe some hooligan came in the night and siphoned it off. Eventually, he ran up home to get the manual, and like a pupil calling instructions out to an adult he checked and rechecked every single thing—pistons, crankshaft, gasket, nozzles, clutch, stabiliser, bar and brackets, everything.

“You should never have put it under a tree . . . The ground is always loamy,” Joseph says.

“Fuck your loamy,” Bugler hisses between his teeth. If only they would push, if only they would put some brute strength into it.

“Rock, lads, just rock,” he says. He is by turn coaxing and then abrupt. Once again he turns the ignition on, waits for the fuel to heat, and yells at them to push. As it moves a fraction, mud flies from the back wheels, flicking onto their faces, almost blinding them.

“Push . . . Feck . . . Push,” Bugler shouts.

“We are pushing,” Joseph shouts back, but already it has stopped and sunk with a deadliness. Bugler jumps out, tightens the axles, and says he thinks he knows what to do. It needs more pressure on the one side, it needs tilting to set it off.

“It could swing around and do for us,” the Crock says.

“It won’t . . . It’s rock solid.”

“I have to go in a minute,” the salesman says. An hour of his day is wasted, and so few houses in sight, no one to sell cattle feed to.

Bugler has slunk in under it, his legs as long again as the top half of his body, jutting out, his leather gaiters not nearly so swanky as in the dance hall, mud on them.

“Tom-catting . . . You can tell.” The Crock whispers it. From underneath Bugler is ordering Joseph to do this, do that.

“Hold on . . . Hold on,” Joseph says.

“Use your eyes . . . Use your brain,” he shouts back, telling Joseph to turn the key, to turn the blasted key. Suddenly it starts to move, and as Bugler crawls out, they give a huzzah of victory. Within seconds it has stalled again, an ugly look to it, the brick-red bonnet mutely saying, “I am not moving out of this spot.”

“We’ll tie it to the car and tow it,” Bugler says, pointing to the stranger’s very new Fiesta.

“That’s not my own car, that’s a company car,” the man says, apologetic.

“The company won’t know,” and turning to Joseph, he asks for a rope.

“It’s in the shed,” Joseph says sullenly. Calves and cattle are lowing to be fed, milk has to be brought to the creamery and Breege fetched to Lady Harkness’s house with the laundry. It is something she does privately, for a bit of pin money. He thinks of the care she takes with those garments, the washing, the rinsing, the starching, and when they are ironed they look so regal on the big table in the front room.

Bugler uncoils the rope quickly, knots the one end twice around the seat, and positions each of them so that they draw on it now like a team, like four oarsmen together in a race, their cheer restored, their eyes anxious, giving a show of strength almost superhuman. They get it almost to the gate when the rope breaks, and united in their frustration they each say “Feck” at the exact same instant, as if they had rehearsed it.

“She’ll have to go to emergency,” the Crock says, and touches the mudguard almost fondly.

“Come on . . . Come on, Dino,” Bugler said imploringly, and strove to lift it between his knees, hugging it, remonstrating with it as if the fault was a mere moodiness, not wanting, not yet able to admit that he had been sold a pup.

“I’m afraid I have to be off . . . I have appointments,” the salesman said.

“Wait . . . Wait,” Bugler said, and picking up a hen’s trough he wedged it under the back wheels.

“What good will that do?”

“The juice isn’t getting through . . . There’s a blockage.”

“Aren’t you working arse-wise . . . It’s the back wheels you should be jacking up,” the Crock says.

Tempers have risen again, and he thinks of that yard of tractors, useless ones, piled on top of one another and the rotten luck of picking a goner. Rosemary’s money, or rather Rosemary’s daddy’s money, who prided himself on his wealth and his agnosticism.

“Maybe someone wanted it banjaxed,” the Crock says with a wink.

“Or maybe witchcraft . . . I was told of a famous witch in these parts, she had a blue bottle for cures,” the salesman says.

“She had the power,” the Crock answers back.

“Did you or your sister notice anything fishy?” Bugler asks.

“We’re not your caretakers,” Joseph says, nettled.

Conceding at last that he will have to get help, Bugler asks where the telephone is.

“Where do you think it is?” Joseph says, irked at the thought of him going into the house where Breege is, taking her unawares.

“It’s a dead Dino,” the Crock says once he has gone.

“Do you have anywhere l could wash?” the salesman asks.

“That’s clean grass,” Joseph says, and to prove his point he bends down and wipes his hands in it and the salesman does likewise, flinching. They commiserate with each other on how they have been exploited.

“He’s not bloody up,” Bugler says, hurrying back and flinging the various tools into his bag.

“It’s early,” the Crock says.

“If he was in any other country he’d be up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joseph says, resenting the gall of a man new to the place coming to conclusions.

“They’re not on the ball . . . None of you are,” Bugler says tauntingly.

“The sooner you take that machine out of here, the better for all concerned.”

“It will be out of here.”

The look that passed between them so vicious then it might have been their two dogs, Goldie and Gypsy, in one of their sparring matches.

It was dark when the tractor was to be heard chugging out of the yard.

“Good riddance,” Joseph said. All day he had been grumbling about this and that, a heifer that had got sick, a bill from the opticians that was astronomical, and his own yard a public convenience for Bugler. Earlier, when he saw her bringing out tea and sandwiches, he asked sarcastically why she had forgotten the lace tray cloth to go with it.

“They must be frozen stiff,” she had said.

Mattie, the mechanic, hadn’t come until after work, and they were out there working with torches, the engine stopping and stalling as it had in the morning, and then quite suddenly the sound of it no longer sluggish, strong, repetitive, chafing, ready to go again.

When she came back in, Joseph asked if by any chance she had been inveigled to push the yoke.

“You drank too much last night,” she said.

“A showman . . . nothing but a showman . . . the way he hogged the limelight . . . up on the stage with the crooner . . . singing a song he only just learned. What does he know about the North or the South either?”

“Someone put turpentine into the diesel tank . . . that’s why it wouldn’t go.”

Bugler had showed it to her out there, pointed to the black-green spew of oil, the higher blades of grass leaky with it, and for some reason she had felt ashamed, as if it was their doing.

“He makes waves and he makes enemies,” Joseph said, then drew his watch up close to his face to confirm the time the squatter had left.

Much later she stood in the place where the tractor had stood. There was only the patch of trampled grass, the spew of spilt diesel, and a pullover which he had forgotten. She would miss it. It had been company. She would hear him at all hours doing things to it, making improvements to the inside. Once she was in her plantation, she’d gone out there to think, and when he passed by, it gave him a start to find her in the leafed darkness, on a bench. He asked her what the hushed border of flowers were and she told him that they were dahlias, deep-red dahlias.

Dear Rosemary,

I know you’re cross. The thing is, I work from dawn till midnight and after. You’d be surprised with the amount that there is to be done. Everywhere I look there’s another job, another problem, another. No time off. Today for instance was a drama. The tractor wouldn’t go. Someone poured turpentine into the diesel, one of those dear friends and gentle people who live on this mountain. It’s ten o’clock and I’m sitting down to my supper of leftovers. Don’t be cross. We will have a wonderful house yet, but everything takes time. I intend to go into farming in a big way so we will be rich. I miss my little ducky, especially at night! But it is better that my little ducky does not come until the spring, the daffodils and all that. Don’t ask about the weather. Rain rain rain. It’s dropping onto this letter. Your fiancé is builder, builder’s mate, carpenter, plumber, and farmer, but he is still your Shepherd.