‘Gone half past, I make it,’ I say, glancing at my watch. The others look at theirs, then back at me confusedly.
Of course, they’re all twenty-five minutes behind me, I keep forgetting. They didn’t bother to tell us in Fron Goch about the so-called Daylight Saving Hours. Apparently we’re in line with Greenwich now. After being released I walked around for weeks not knowing about it.
‘I seem to be ahead of everyone. My watch still gives Dublin Mean Time,’ I say.
When we get the Republic we’ll fix the clocks, and no more of this Greenwich nonsense. How supine are people who allow the government to overrule the clock – the clock? It’s frustrating, though, that everyone else’s watch is slow. Being right is cold comfort when the whole world is wrong. ‘I’ll be in directly,’ I tell the priest.
He nods and turns but as he opens the door he is almost knocked over by a boy of maybe seventeen, who staggers out and around the side of the building. Out of sight, he retches violently. The priest shakes his head and goes inside. I take my suitcase around to the other side of the building, looking for a shadow so I can change back into my uniform. When I’m changed, I spit on my hands and pat down my hair. A shave would be good, a bit of soap could do wonders, but perching the sloped hat on my head, I suppose I probably look all right.
‘Come on, you’re gorgeous,’ Charlie calls, and I step into the light just as a tall figure all in black strides past Charlie and Turlough, ignoring them as they call out their salutes. He walks with an impressive sprightliness, gripping his cane like Phil Shanahan grips a hurl, and throws open the door of the Parochial Hall without breaking his stride. The old bastard looks like he hasn’t aged a day.
Maggie answers the door with a grimace of condolence but her expression gives way to horror when she sees the battering you have taken. She rushes you inside the house, scattering her younger brothers and sisters with matriarchal authority, and lies you down on the sofa by the range. It’s warm and smells of baking bread. Maggie’s father is perched in his usual armchair. God knows what he makes of you; one eye lolling madly is the only sign he’s alive at all. Maggie goes out into the scullery and comes back with her father’s old leather medical bag, towels and two bowls of water. She puts one bowl on the range and heats it.
‘Look up at the ceiling, we have to keep the wound elevated. If we can’t stop the bleeding you’ll have to go and see a proper doctor.’ She immerses a towel in hot water, wrings it out and sets it against your eyebrow. ‘Help me apply pressure to the wound.’
From your good eye you look at the graceful curve of her neck and want to take a bite out of it. She’s wearing a red and brown dress with little lace frills at the edges. She’s close enough that you can smell her distinctive smell.
‘I told you to look at the ceiling,’ she says. Her father’s daughter.
When the bleeding stops she washes the wound with a soft wash-cloth. You grip the sofa tightly and grit your teeth while she pours liquid from the spirit bottle over the cut – ‘Isopropyl. It’ll prevent infection,’ she says – and uses tweezers to remove what she calls debris. She makes up a dressing with surgical adhesive tape and gauze. ‘But it won’t be enough,’ she says. ‘The broken skin won’t knit together on its own. You need stitches.’
You nod quiescently. You’re so tired. You ask if you can sleep in her shed. You are grateful she doesn’t ask for an explanation.
‘What will you do tomorrow?’ she asks.
‘I’ll bury my mother.’
‘Afterwards?’
You’re too tired to think. ‘I know if I stay here I’ll kill him.’
From his window Stanislaus watched everyone arrive. He had a dusty volume of theology in his lap, lit by a single candle, but it was a mere prop. It took two hundred people to fill the Parochial Hall and from early on, the place was full. The cheering and clapping from the Parochial Hall grew louder and rougher as the night got later, and Stanislaus was relieved as eleven o’clock approached and the guest of honour hadn’t appeared. The moon, full and large in the cloudless sky, shone across all but the darkest corners of the parish, so Stanislaus would have seen him. But eleven o’clock came and went and there was still no sign of things winding up. Eventually Stanislaus rose and readied himself to intervene, but he wobbled and sat back down. He gripped the arms of the chair. His vision swirled before him. He held his face in his hands and felt the cold sweat on his brow. But this was not a stroke and it soon passed. He looked at the bottle. It didn’t seem like he’d had all that much to drink. He had gone for years of his life without a drink, it wasn’t something he was a slave to, but it was true that he had acquired a taste for brandy in his old age.
Outside in the distance the light of a lantern appeared and as it grew bigger Stanislaus made out three figures atop a buggy, drawing closer. Charlie Quinn’s leg stuck out in silhouette. Hulking Turlough Moriarty drove the buggy. Typical. The Moriarty boys were perennial foot-soldiers, from their grandfather, a locally famous Fenian of the sixties, on down. It was no surprise that they would regard Victor Lennon as a great fellow altogether. The third man sat between Charlie and Turlough with the brim of his hat pulled low over his face. It had to be him. He watched Father Daly emerge from the Parochial Hall and speak to the men on the buggy. They spent a moment looking at their watches. Obviously Father Daly was explaining the time, and that the dance was over. The third man got down from the buggy. Father Daly made to go back inside but as he opened the door he was almost knocked aside by Aidan Cavanagh, who dashed round the corner and heaved up his guts on the wall of the Parochial Hall. Stanislaus gripped his stick in his fist and bounded furiously down the stairs. By the time he reached the Parochial Hall Aidan was gone and only Charlie and Turlough sat on the buggy. They called their greetings but he didn’t stop to acknowledge them.
Inside, smoke, sweat, music and colour blasted Stanislaus’s senses. Musicians clattered ever faster, all aggression and artless volume, and the wood floor vibrated like the skin of a drum under thudding feet and bodies crashing to and fro. It barely passed as dancing, this hauling and mauling. Overhead was a banner fashioned from an old green tablecloth that read Erin Go Bragh Welcome Home Victor. Stanislaus felt suddenly vertiginous. Standing near the door, tapping his foot and observing passively, was Father Daly. He turned white when he saw Stanislaus.
‘Is this how you supervise an event? I said teetotal,’ Stanislaus seethed.
‘I haven’t seen anyone taking drink.’
‘Open your eyes, man.’ People would always come up with schemes for concealing liquor but a good priest would be wise to them. Stanislaus tutted disgustedly at the curate’s failure. ‘It’s well past eleven.’
‘Victor has just arrived. I thought another few minutes wouldn’t be any harm.’
Stanislaus stalked away. Further discussion would only aggravate him. He moved towards the stage at the top of the hall, and word of his arrival spread perceptibly as he moved through the crowd. The dancers became less frenetic, then stopped altogether. It was like water dousing a flame. As Stanislaus ascended the stage, the musicians stopped playing and held their silent fiddles and banjos and bodhrans guiltily. Standing centre stage, he didn’t have to wait long for silence.
‘It’s very late. The dance is over. Don’t anyone make any noise on your way home,’ he said. The crowd looked back dumbly. ‘I said this dance is over. Good night to you all.’
‘Victor is here!’ cried a voice from the back of the hall.
Everyone turned. The hall seemed suddenly bigger with two hundred people facing away rather than towards him. Men wrestled past each other, women too, to converge on the doorway, where Victor Lennon now stood. He wore a tattered