Tipper knew that Ireland was the Emerald Isle; but he’d never seen a real emerald. Ma owned a necklace made of green stones, which, his father had once told him solemnly, were mined straight out of the Mountains of Mourne. Da was a drunk. But when he said that was why they called it the Emerald Isle, Tipper believed him. The uplands of the country, said Da, were stuffed with emeralds like currants in a slice of barmbrack. There were places you only had to take a spade to the ground and you’d turn up a couple of handfuls. It was later, long after Da had disappeared to England, that Ma let on. As far as she knew there wasn’t an emerald ever found in Irish ground, and her necklace was only paste from Woolworths. A pure emerald would be something else, she said, with all the different shades of green glowing and gleaming inside of it. People like us would only dream of owning such a thing, she said.
Some of the colours Tipper was seeing now, through the dirty window of the local CIE bus, matched his mother’s idea of the gem. There were greens of every description here with yellows and golden colours mixed in. The hedgerows bobbed with red fuchsia and there were scarlet poppies in the oats. This part of Tipperary was called the Golden Vale and after the place Tipper had come from, it lifted his spirits. He saw no concrete tower blocks on rubble-strewn land, no charred shells of stolen cars, vandalized bus shelters or overflowing rubbish bins. Here the land sparkled in the summer sunlight. It may not have had buried gemstones, but it was a rich land, and an ancient one.
Then there were the horses. The road passed field after field of patient mares grazing, attended by their spindle-legged foals. Every second farm in the Irish midlands was also a stud farm, and every other farmer a horseman whose only desire was to breed a Grand National or a Derby legend. Tipper was heading to one of these stud farms, and he was beginning to sense he’d feel at home there. The open spaces of the midlands might be a novelty to him, but horses were not. He already knew something about them.
‘They want me in the hospital,’ Ma had told him abruptly, a few days back. ‘I got to have an operation and it might be weeks before I can look after myself, let alone you.’
‘Jesus, I’ll be all right, Ma. What sort of operation?’
‘Never mind what sort. And you will not be all right. Your brother will be leading you into temptation. So I fixed it with your uncle Pat in the country—he’ll have you for the summer.’
As a matter of fact, she was spot on about Tipper’s brother Liam. When they grew up there had been nothing to do on the estate but kick a football or get into trouble, and you couldn’t play soccer all day every day. So trouble it had been, and that was how Tipper learned he could ride.
Liam had bought a pony for a few pounds at the old Smithfield market in central Dublin. They kept it tethered on some waste ground between two tower blocks. It was the only decent thing Liam ever did. They say that everyone has good in them, but they were wrong when it came to Liam.
They never got round to naming the pony. He was just referred to as ‘Himself’ and, in the O’Reilly family, it was Tipper that got on best with Himself. Bareback, and with nothing more than a head collar and string reins, he would ride races against the other boys’ ponies, never showing a trace of fear. Tipper also developed a talent for cowboy rope tricks. He would put a bucket on top of a gate-post then gallop towards it and lasso the bucket with a length of clothesline. When he tired of a stationary target he lassoed stray dogs. He never missed.
Liam couldn’t ride one side of Himself and he resented his younger brother being such a natural. He enjoyed throwing his weight around once his Da had gone. When he got a few cans inside him he cuffed Tipper hard enough to hurt him. In a playful sort of way.
Tipper and Himself would jump fences made from abandoned supermarket trolleys. But Liam had better use for his brother’s talents. He’d get Tipper to ride Himself into the actual supermarket and create a diversion whilst he helped himself under the cover of confusion.
When Tipper was about nine, Liam developed a new interest—joyriding. Tipper went along with it. Faint praise from his brother was better than a smack. They’d trek across town to an affluent area and pick a side street without too much traffic. Tipper would lie spread-eagled on the tarmac with Himself—who knew how to play his part—seemingly lying on top of him, while Liam lurked nearby waiting for a driver to stop his car and investigate the apparent riding accident. While walking up to Tipper, these Good Samaritans would soon enough hear the screech of tyres as Liam reversed their car away at speed. It was the cue for Tipper and Himself to jump up and get the hell out of it.
But inevitably the scam came to an end. One particular driver was too quick for Tipper and collared him before he could mount up. The result was a visit to the Juvenile Court, and an ultimatum from his mother; Himself must go back to Smithfield Market.
And now, years down the line, it felt like a different world to Tipper as the bus rattled into Fethard, an old town still ringed by its medieval defensive walls. Tipper stepped down into a wide Main Street with his bulging luggage. All his things stuffed into the big loop-handled bag that Ma always used to take washing to the launderette. His