But it was Conor that Mags had in her sights. Mags just shrugged. Conor made himself meet her eye.
‘The boy was twelve years old,’ he heard himself say.
He saw his da pass a weary hand across his brow. Mags straightened her back and replied, ‘Jackie Duddy, Patrick Doherty, Bernie McGuigan, Hugh Gilmour, Kevin McElhinney, Michael Kelly, John Young, William Nash, Michael McDaid. I could go on.’
It didn’t surprise Conor that Mags could reel off the dead of Bloody Sunday like a kid listing off the Celtic first eleven. After all this was a woman who, when Conor as a boy was refusing to finish his cabbage or his cauliflower, would say, ‘And there’s Bobby Sands starving his poor self to death for you.’
Conor always wanted to say, ‘I never asked him to.’
He was aware of Robert nodding slowly and sententiously at Mags’s side.
‘You don’t care about your own people, Conor,’ Mags said. ‘You’re too busy with…with your cows and your chickens.’
Conor tried to bite back his anger.
‘Cows,’ he muttered, ‘don’t kneecap other cows ’cause they come from the wrong end of the farm.’
‘Only because they haven’t got Armalites,’ he heard Declan murmur under his breath. Martin laughed nervously – but now Mags was on her feet. All five foot one of her.
‘I’m talking about your people, son,’ she hissed at Conor. ‘We’re talking about family.’
‘Family!’
‘Aye, family. Don’t you ever forget that, son. However bloody clever you think you are.’ She cast a sidelong look at Christine and then added, ‘And however many Proddy slags bat their eyelashes at you.’
‘That’s enough!’ Conor shouted. ‘You’ve a bloody nerve! Coming to our house, taking about family.’ He looked sideways. Had Christine heard? It didn’t matter. ‘You don’t come to your own son’s wedding! You don’t have a thing to say or a question to ask about your first bloody grandchild!’
Mags stood her ground. She hardly blinked.
‘You—’ she began, but Conor had had enough.
‘Your own damn daughter,’ he cut her off, and saw her flinch, ‘left the bloody country just to get away from you. You drove her out, you and your war!’ He paused, took a breath. Mags’s face was always pale, but now it was bloodless with fury. ‘And you talk to me about family,’ Conor finished.
And that was that. Mags was out of the door before the final words were out of his mouth. Robert close behind. Declan, then, slope-shouldered, apologetic, but following Mags because following Mags was just what he did. Conor felt helpless as went after them. The full bowl of crisps still lay on the table. Cheese and bloody onion.
Martin led Hazel out and then paused on the doorstep. ‘Con,’ he said, struggling for words. ‘Don’t think… I mean, you know…’
‘I know.’ Conor nodded. ‘It’s all right. Look after yourselves.’
‘You too. Say sorry to Christine for me. For all of us,’ he added breezily. ‘See you again soon, I’m sure.’
Then he had to go – Robert would’ve driven off without him otherwise.
Conor, returning to the living room, found Christine with a glass of whiskey in one hand and a glass of wine in the other and an enquiring look on her face.
‘That went as well as could be expected,’ Conor sighed. He took the glass of whiskey from her and drank it right down.
HE HAD a crick in his back and a smear of pigshit on his cheek. His trousers were ripped where a boar had tried to get over-friendly with his left leg. He was sweaty, dirty, smelly and knackered.
Christ, I’ve missed this, Conor thought.
He’d spent his morning vaccinating Barry Lever’s pigs, all forty of the squealing little blighters.
‘Must be wishin’ you were back in Africa,’ Barry had grunted as together they manhandled another bad-tempered sow into the crush cage.
Conor had just smiled. He’d been smiling all day, feeling good to be back on the farms, back in the Castlereagh countryside doing the work he loved. He’d wanted to say, Barry, man, you don’t know how lucky you are.
But he knew that Barry’s wife was poorly with her heart and that his eldest lad had been suspended from school for drinking or drugs or something – and that if Barry missed another mortgage payment the farm was going to the wall, pigs and all – so he didn’t say anything.
After he’d packed up his kit and eased the gloves off his bruised hands he walked with Barry to the gate where his Land Rover was parked.
‘I’ll get my bill to you in a couple of days,’ he said as, bent over with a hand on the gatepost, he worked off his heavy boots.
‘I’m sure you will,’ Barry said ruefully. ‘The usual? Arm and a leg?’
‘No, I’ll do you a discount. Just a pound of flesh’ll do.’ He straightened up. ‘Listen, I’ll not charge you for my time today, Barry. Just the vaccine and the kit. I know how it is.’
Barry Lever frowned. ‘I don’t want—’
‘Don’t be so precious, Barry.’ Conor put his hand on the young farmer’s shoulder. ‘Besides, it’s not charity I’m offering. If it makes you feel any better it’s just plain old self-interest. Farmers like you pay my wages. I can’t afford to see guys like you struggle. Fact is, I need you more than you need me.’
Barry grinned slowly. ‘So you’re saying you’re a parasite,’ he said. ‘Like – like a mange mite.’
‘Well, that makes you a mangy pig, of course, but yeah, you could put it that way.’ Conor laughed. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Barry. Take care now.’
The farmer nodded, tugged his cap – ‘S’long, Conor’ – and trudged back across the farmyard. Conor watched him go. Then he stooped to pick up his boots and turned to unlatch the gate. The sun was warm and gentle. For a moment he paused with his hand on the top bar of the gate. He flexed his bruised fingers thoughtfully: the sunshine felt good on his skin. But sunshine meant Kenya and Kenya meant Kipenzi – the one thing Conor did miss about Africa.
Mzuka, she used to call him, poking fun at his pale Belfast complexion – mzuka, ghost.
She was an ecologist at the university in Nairobi, though you’d never guess it – a dancer, you’d think, or an artist. Slender as a reed, hair cropped short, skin the colour of strong coffee – or, when the late savannah sun caught it a certain way, the colour of red gold – or sometimes, in the quiet darkness of their shared tent, Conor recalled, the colour and scent and softness of black sable.
She’d thought he was a pasty Irish lunk and he’d thought she was a snooty African princess. Maybe neither of them was far wrong, come to that. He’d been lumbered with the job of driving her out to Olmisigiyoi, where a big bull had been found dead – she was studying the effects of pollution on elephants in the district, and she’d wanted to take a look, run some tests.
Normally Conor would’ve been interested himself. Sure, he’d had his reasons for leaving Ireland, but he’d had his reasons for choosing Kenya, too, and the Maasai Mara. Doctor Nkono, from the Mara Conservancy, had talked it up, of course: lions, rhinos, cheetahs, migrating animals in their millions – a far cry, Mr Maguire, from barnyards and piggeries…