‘You never got that wound looked at,’ she says at last, her voice warm and melodious. I put my hand up to the weak skin above my eye and feel a piquant twinge. Maggie looks like Mildred Harris. I love Mildred Harris. Although Mildred’s only a skinny wee girl. Maggie is a proper woman. Like Florence La Badie. I love Florence La Badie. Maggie’s lips. Let me choose, in this very moment, and I’ll choose those lips over revolution.
‘It’s good to see you,’ I say. She smiles and glances down to where I’m sticking into her. I blush as the dance takes us away from each other and into a quick spin with other partners. Maggie pairs up with a gangly young lad with boils on his neck who looks totally smashed. I’m with a toothy girl with dark hair and dark eyes and I’m trying to be polite and distant but the toothy girl doesn’t seem to want to let me go. When eventually I get Maggie back in my arms, I say: ‘So Charlie tells me you never married.’
I shouldn’t have said that. Jesus Christ, Victor, you haven’t seen the girl in ten years. Stupid bastard. Always the young bull, never the old. Her shoulders shoot up. She pushes away my hands and gives me a look that says I have a bloody nerve, and she’s at the door by the time I catch up with her. I put my hand on her shoulder out on the steps of the Parochial Hall, and I try to look as plaintive as I can. The cool night air is a relief. She waits, her patience dwindling.
‘I had to leave my mark on the world,’ I say.
She blinks and her lips curve softly. ‘I know, Victor.’
She turns and walks away and I watch, thrilled by the swing of her hips. She’s halfway down the street before I think to ask if I can walk her home. She pauses a second and without turning, says over her shoulder: ‘No.’
I keep staring up the street long after she has disappeared out of sight. When at last I turn back to the Parochial Hall Charlie is waiting in the doorway. He’s giving me a look. I ignore him and go back inside. I approach the ruddy-faced fellow with the poteen and ask him has he any more. Surreptitiously he takes the bottle out from his inside pocket – no mean feat to conceal such a large bottle there. Charlie’s in a huff about something and stays silent instead of helping me identify the fellow. I smile and nod like a simpleton as I drink the man’s poteen and tell him what good stuff it is. It definitely goes down easier second time around.
‘From your own da’s own still,’ he says.
He’s tall and rangy with teeth like an old graveyard and eyes that shift here and there. I have him now: TP McGahan. We were in school together. I take another sip. It is good stuff. Should’ve walked Maggie home regardless. She was glad to see me, no matter what she said, she was glad to see me. Who knows, might’ve even marked my first night back home. It’s been a while and a man has needs.
‘Take it handy with the drink, Victor,’ says Charlie.
‘I’m all right, Charlie, sure I used to be in the Pioneers,’ I say. He laughs, but I’m serious. ‘It was the Pioneers that drove me to drink in the first place.’ It was true, I had been secretary of the Monto branch. I fell out with the rest of them the time Findlater’s gave us a donation of ten pounds. It was ridiculous for a temperance movement to take money from a wine merchant, but the rest of them said I was right in theory but I had to be realistic. ‘There was a priest on the committee said I was being dogmatic. Can you believe the neck on him? A bloody priest!’
‘So what did you do?’ says Charlie.
‘I flung my Pioneer pin at the chairman, the fat, red-faced bollix, and went straight to the nearest pub away from the fucken hypocrite gombeen bastards.’
I take another drink. Charlie’s right, I’d better slow down. It takes a lot less poteen than whiskey to reduce a man to his hands and knees. There’s a bit of a spin to the room. TP McGahan has a notebook and pencil in his hands. ‘How about a few quotes for next week’s paper? I work for the Armagh Guardian.’
‘You don’t have a camera? I don’t want no photographs.’
‘Go away and leave him alone, he’s giving me a dance,’ says the toothy girl with the dark hair and dark eyes I danced with before. She grabs my hand and leads me through the crowd before I can protest. We line up alongside three other couples and start into a lively reel, and though I’m supposed to dance with everyone in turn, my partner, whoever she is, keeps seizing me back. Her arms are surprisingly strong. Eyes dark and wild. Thick, black, black hair. White skin. Red lips curled in a pout like a spoonful of jam in a glass of milk. She’s probably about twenty-one and looks like Theda Bara. She could be gorgeous or she could be hideous. She smacks against me violently and I notice the other dancers stand back and give us plenty of room. I’m not sure if I want to hop on her or run for my life. ‘What’s my name?’ she says.
I grope around for the faintest memory of this primal, kinetic creature, but there’s nothing. ‘Of course, I know you surely.’
She laughs and throws her head about, sending her hair flailing, but her eyes, spread wide, never seem to waver from me. ‘Have I changed a lot?’
‘Not a bit.’
She’s strange. The dance ends and I’m glad to retreat from her. Charlie, Turlough, Sean and TP are standing by the door sipping poteen and watching me. Charlie shakes his head. TP still has his notebook out. He asks again if I have any quotes for him.
‘I don’t think Victor wants his name going in the paper,’ says Charlie.
‘Fire away, TP,’ I say.
‘Why are you home?’
‘To see my family. And I’m delighted to be back among my own people.’
‘Is it true that you want Ireland to become communistic?’
His eyes shift in his beak-nosed face. I shouldn’t indulge him, I really shouldn’t. Journalists are all the same. Weasels. Sometimes they can be harnessed and directed towards some useful work, but they’re no less verminous for that. ‘Are you going to stitch me up, TP?’
‘Och, Victor, I’m just an old friend writing a puff piece for the local paper. I’m just wondering if you think people in County Armagh are ready for communism? Cardinal Logue in particular has taken a very strong line against it.’
The girl, the one looks like Theda Bara, reappears and thrusts a bottle into my hand. Her eyes sparkle like the Liffey under gaslight, all treacherous depth. I sense, vaguely, that the lads around me are uncomfortable. I screw the cork from the neck and take a glug. I see Theda’s luxurious lips make an open-mouthed smile and I want them. The room sways. There was something I wanted to say.
‘Victor? Cardinal Logue has taken a very strong line against communism,’ says TP, face expectant, pencil poised. There’s a bit of a crowd around us now.
‘Let me tell you something about Cardinal fucken Logue,’ I begin.
TWO
Stanislaus sorted through the great ring of keys to the parish properties as he walked, coming to the correct key just as he reached the Parochial Hall. Someone had cleaned up around the side where Aidan Cavanagh had been sick. There were no windows smashed. In fact they looked clean – but if there was one thing broken or one item not put back where it was supposed to be … He opened the door