The Lake. Sheena Lambert

pace himself. He suspected that he was going to be in Casey’s a little later than he had intended.

      Coleman looked as if he were deciding whether to answer Frank or not. After a moment, he spoke. ‘’Twas my father’s land. And his father’s before him. And then mine and Desmond’s. Ours alone. And we farmed it together.’

      ‘Desmond is Coleman’s brother,’ Peggy said quickly to Frank.

      ‘They came with the army. After everyone had left. In ’51 I think it was. They came with their explosives and they blew the lot up.’

      Frank looked up from his pint. ‘They blew it up?’ he said. ‘Your house?’

      ‘Our home … place, the Kilty Bridge, the old mill. Some other buildings in the village. They blew them up. Thought it was a great sport. They clapped each other on the back and took photos for the paper.’ Coleman pursed his lips. ‘We watched from the bleachers. Those of us who were still around.’

      ‘Did many leave altogether?’ Peggy asked. Frank glanced at her but her eyes were fixed on the old man’s face.

      Coleman looked up at her with a furrowed brow and flicked his cigarette into a big ceramic ashtray she had left down on the bar near to him. ‘Hardly a soul stayed,’ he said at last. ‘The land was gone. There was nothing to stay for.’ He fell silent for a moment, his eyes trained on the ashtray. ‘Most went up to Dublin. A few of the older ones moved in with family in Crumm. Tom Clancy,’ he looked up at Peggy who nodded. ‘Tom moved in with his daughter and her family in Ballyknock, Lord have mercy on him.’

      A punter gestured to Peggy from across the room and she acknowledged him and reached for a bottle of stout.

      ‘Coleman worked as a postman in the village,’ she said to Frank as she flicked the cap off and tilted the bottle into a glass, ‘until he retired a few years back.’

      More than a few, Frank thought to himself, trying to picture the old man cycling the roads with his bag of letters. But he couldn’t help but be struck by the man’s story. He had sensed it, down at the lake. Aside from the finding of the body, there was an eeriness about the place. Echoes of bitterness and loss were in the wind that blew up from the water. As he watched Peggy take the bottle and glass over to a man seated by a window, he tried to imagine Coleman and his brother, watching from a distance, as their home was legally blown up before them. Bachelor brothers, probably in their forties at the time, and all they owned in life taken from them without their consent. Too young to retire, too old to move up to Dublin and start anew. It couldn’t have been easy. Then he thought of something.

      ‘But I thought I saw the top of a building in the distance today? Out in the middle of the lake?’ he said.

      ‘You might well have, the water is so low.’ Coleman pushed another empty glass away from him across the bar. ‘Part of the mill remains. It didn’t all fall like they had wanted it to.’ He slapped his hand down on the counter and brandished his toothless grin at Frank. ‘Them army boys didn’t have it all their own way, Detective Sergeant.’

      Peggy came back behind the bar, empty pint glasses in her arms. ‘Now, now, Coleman’, she said, glancing up at Frank, ‘there’s no need to frighten the customers. You need a drink, I see.’

      She went to refill his glass, while the old man sat back into himself, growling something about not being made into a sheep farmer by any army hoor. Frank was thinking of how best to approach the subject of the body with him, when the phone rang loudly on the wall. Peggy turned to answer it, and Coleman eased himself off his high stool and shuffled off towards a door that led out the back to the toilet. Peggy turned in towards the wall and covered her ear with her hand.

      ‘Hello? Casey’s?’ The line crackled. She could tell someone was there, but the connection was so poor, she couldn’t make out what they were saying. ‘Hello?’ The static stopped, and her ear was assaulted by a man’s voice, booming through the receiver.

      ‘I know she’s there. Hello? Just let me speak to her. Please. I know she’s … ’ The last part of the man’s plea was drowned out by a particularly loud burst of static and Peggy put some distance between her ear and the handset. Something made her notice Carla, who was still sitting with her three admirers, but who was staring at Peggy with an accusing look on her face. Peggy tentatively brought the phone back to her ear.

      ‘Hello?’

      ‘Just let me talk to her. Please. Just for a minute.’

      The man’s speech was slurred, as if he were crying, or drunk, or possibly both. But the line was clearer and Peggy recognized Tom Devereaux’s voice, pleading. She glanced back up at Carla, who was stalking across the room towards her, eyes burning. The handset was snatched from her hand and she was met with the back of Carla’s head. She hesitated for a moment, before moving away from her sister, and back behind the bar. Coleman had returned and was hoisting himself back up onto his stool.

      ‘You’re drunk.’ Carla spat the words into the receiver; her head bowed low, her back to the bar. Peggy hovered, moving glasses unnecessarily around on a shelf beneath the bar. She caught Frank’s eye, but his face was expressionless.

      ‘You’re full of shite, Tom.’ The tirade continued behind her. ‘Off home with you now. I’m sure she’ll have your dinner waiting.’

      Peggy wasn’t shocked at her sister’s tone exactly, more at the fact that some other person could be on the receiving end of it. She’d assumed that Carla only spoke to her siblings like that. She almost pitied Tom Devereaux. He might be an adulterous ass, but she couldn’t wish Carla’s ire on anyone. She looked at Frank who seemed to be concentrating on looking disinterested. Coleman was busy muttering nothing good into his pint glass.

      ‘Don’t you dare Tom.’ Carla’s voice was getting louder. Peggy looked anxiously around the room, but no one seemed to be taking any heed of her.

      ‘It’s bad enough I’ll have to look at you on Monday morning. Go to bed. Sleep it off. With your wife.’

      The handset was slammed up against the phone and Carla stood staring at it for a moment. Suddenly, she swung around and glared at Peggy, her eyes blazing.

      ‘What?’ she spat at her. ‘What are you looking at?’ Then she seemed to notice Frank watching her, and she turned and walked through the door leading to the house. Peggy watched her go. She considered following her for a second, but quickly decided against it. Turning back to the bar, she looked at Frank.

      ‘That’s Carla. She’s the quiet, reserved one.’

      Frank smiled at her. ‘So how many of you are there?’

      ‘Four.’ Peggy lifted a mineral glass from the little draining board next to the sink under the bar and started to polish it dry. ‘Two brothers, Carla, and me.’ She smiled. ‘I’m the baby.’

      ‘I see.’ Frank twisted his pint glass on the bar. Peggy noticed his eyelashes. They were long and fair. Not blond, but fair. Funny, she thought. She’d never noticed any man’s eyelashes before.