As he makes his way out of the plantation he is gripped by a spasm of pain. The pain is behind, in the vicinity of his kidneys. He rubs his back. If he dropped dead now, he might not be found for days. No one would miss him. After a day or two of not hearing from him Ellen would be worried and walk up to the house and let herself in, and, finding the remains of his breakfast on the table and the scavenging cats, she would raise the alarm.
At the end of the avenue he turns left and walks along the road towards the town. To his right the glitter of water, familiar, beautiful, unknown too. You get used to beauty, he thinks, you grow immune, you devour it with greedy eyes. On the other side of the stone wall, little black and white, thin-legged birds hop along the riverbank, turning their heads jerkily to the right and left. Some kind of tits or finches or wagtails. The luckiest of all creatures, birds. Escaped from reptilian existence eons ago to flit through sunlit meadows and rise into the heavens. Soul carriers in the running sky, translating nature’s vibrations into song for human ears. No worries either, God will always provide. The way they fly down and befriend captive men, men in camps, men at the edge of reason.
He looks across the river to the Boathouse on the wharf, and beside it, among the willows, eight architect-designed houses with exposed stone and glass walls and red cladding. Built during the boom five or six years ago and over-priced at the time, scarcely half of them are occupied now. Susceptible to gleam and glass and glossy brochures, he almost bought one as an investment. Up above the town, Clonduff House, partly concealed behind trees, nestles into the hill. From this perch the Blake family look down on the town and the surrounding countryside. If they deign to look at all, that is. Behind the house and the sloping lawn, the barns, stables, milking parlour, glasshouses and poly-tunnels are well hidden from the town. Unmarked trucks with their cargo of Clonduff Farm organic fruit and vegetables come and go through the back gates of the estate, the fruit and veg destined for the shelves of Fortnum & Mason’s and Harrods. Modelled on the Prince of Wales’s enterprise in Cornwall, Luke thinks, though more discreet and with not as much as a nod to the townspeople below. Still, the Blake place is not a patch on Dunmore Castle and estate, the Duke of Berkshire’s place three miles away. There are hierarchies everywhere and, compared to the Berkshires, the Blakes are only second-fiddle aristocrats. As a young man Luke’s father and grandmother were invited for the pre-hunt hot toddies on the lawn of Clonduff House every St Stephen’s Day – a nod, Luke supposes, to their almost castle-Catholic status. From up there, his father told him, there’s a splendid view out over the town and surrounding countryside and Ardboe House – their house – below on the river plain, the closest of all the big houses in the valley.
A car drives out of the town along the Dunmore road, then slows and turns left onto the bridge. Luke salutes the driver, then walks on. As he enters the town, a huge SuperValu truck edges its way up Main Street between parked cars. A band of gulls passes over the rooftops, a long way from the sea at Errish now. Luke pauses on the footpath outside SuperValu and the glass doors slide open. A jeep turns into the yard of O’Donnell’s Hardware and, as it disappears, the grey double doors of O’Grady’s garage next door open and John O’Grady secures the bolt in the ground. There’s no stir yet at either the Tavern Bar or the Sportsman’s Inn across the street.
‘Luke O’Brien, you should fuck off back to Dublin.’
Startled, he turns. Dilly Madden is beside him. Wild snow-white hair, pale face, red lipstick, red dress, pink beads – in full manic regalia today. She puts a hand on his arm. She must feel the hop in his nerves. Still, he welcomes this intrusion into his thoughts. This is my life now, he muses, when the yelp of a madwoman and the clasp of a madwoman’s hand are the most welcome things in my day. He has a soft spot for Dilly. She was his mother’s only friend in her last years. Two brazen, broken, outspoken women. Drinking, throwing back their heads laughing. Sans decorum.
She is clacking her tongue now. ‘What’s keeping you here, Luke?’ She sounds sane. Her voice is soft, concerned. ‘In the name of God will you go back to Dublin, like a good lad. Sure there’s nothing for you here.’ The tiny lines of a smoker radiate out from her mouth. She’s whiskery too. His mother was the same. Hormonal, more testosterone in some women, or something to do with the menopause maybe. Josie was the worst, always sprouting tough black hairs. ‘Hairy baconface’, Lucy called her. His cruel sister.
‘I know, Dilly, I know. You’re right.’
He wonders when she got out of St Declan’s. She was sectioned in April – the daughter put her in. Sometimes she goes in of her own accord, taking Dillon’s hackney into Waterford. In for the shelter, she says. She was inside when his mother died. He visited her a few weeks later, having a great need to talk to someone who knew and loved his mother. Dilly didn’t want to hear about the funeral. She wanted only to talk about herself. She told him things that day that he wishes he never heard.
‘Lock up that house, Luke, and go back to your teaching job. This bloody town’ll kill you if you don’t. I’m telling you, it’ll eat you alive. Mark my words.’ She had cancer a few years ago and wore a bad wig for a while. ‘Above there in that big house on your own … A young man like you? It’s not right! You should be living your life.’
He nods. Wonders if she remembers what she told him that day in Declan’s.
‘I will, Dilly, I’ll go back at some stage. But … ah, you know yourself, I don’t like leaving Ellen.’
‘Don’t mind Ellen. Ellen is grand, there’s not a bother on Ellen. She has a nice warm house and a good pension. You can’t be nursing old women all your life – you’ve done enough of that now.’ She tut-tuts again. ‘Where’s that nice girl you used to bring down here before? Your mother thought a lot of her. Go back to her!’
Poor Dilly in Declan’s day room that day, doped to the eyeballs. What do you do here all day, Dilly? He was only trying to make conversation. Do you read, Dilly? I’m not here to read, she said, I’m here to be mad. And then the talk came in torrents. She gave birth to a child when she was sixteen, fathered by her eldest brother, Michael. Michael Madden, respected town councillor, prosperous businessman, married for forty years with a grown-up family. Down the toilet it went with a plop, she said, I didn’t know what was happening. She tapped her head with her index finger. There’s a kink in every family, she whispered.
He touches her shoulder gently. ‘I have to go, Dilly, I’m in a bit of a hurry.’ He has to get away from her pained body.
He enters SuperValu and picks up a basket. Potatoes, carrots for the eyesight, McCloskey’s granary bread. Comté cheese. Coke. He buys the same staples every time. A sirloin at the meat counter. From the fridge, Denny’s hickory flavoured rashers, a half-pound of Denny’s sausages … Always Denny’s. Around a long time, 1904 at least. Leopold Bloom waiting at the butcher’s counter and the next-door girl asking for a pound and a half of Denny’s sausages. Bloom sneaking a look at her, fine pair of swinging hips on her. A bit mean of him, all the same, calling them hams. He puts his hand on a Clonakilty black pudding, then changes his mind. Cooked spicy pig’s blood. He moves along the fridge to the chickens, naked under cellophane, open pores where feathers were plucked, fat breasts injected with God-knows-what to plump them up. Short painful life in cages. Never eats them any more. Joyce liked chicken. His eye doctor in Paris called to the flat one evening. Clothes strewn everywhere, the state of the place, and Joyce and Nora sitting on the floor, a pan with a chicken carcass between them, a half-empty bottle of wine beside them.
At the end of an aisle he casts a quick glance up ahead. Tea, coffee, breakfast cereals, Mrs Whelan, his old English teacher from St Mary’s, now retired. He nods, smiles. ‘Lovely day, Mrs Whelan.’ It is indeed. He dawdles a bit, not wanting to be seen rushing to the wine. Aisle of flour, sugar, raisins, currants, sultanas, cornflour, Bird’s Custard. Cowardy cowardy custard. The sight of the red, yellow and blue container brings a flash of nostalgia. Sunday dinner, Mammy, Dadda, Josie, Lucy and, every summer, Ellen home from America. As he reaches for a microwaveable carton it strikes him that, other than Ellen, Dilly Madden might be the last person in the town who cares about him. As he places the carton of custard into his basket