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  ‘We need a nurse. Where is Maggie?’ Gillespie asked.

  ‘She’s down in Paddy Óg’s—his wife’s in labour,’ the girl answered.

  ‘What ails you?’ She turned to Potter.

  ‘My ankle,’ he said, stretching out his leg on the settle and leaning forward to feel the source of his misery. ‘I slipped as I was coming up Gara’s Brae.’

  ‘Take off your shoe and sock and I’ll bathe your foot for you.’

  ‘You mustn’t go to all that trouble. I’ll take him down to Paddy Óg’s to see Maggie,’ Gillespie promised.

  ‘The lane is rough, and it’s dark under the trees,’ Nora advised. ‘Stay as you are and I’ll see what I can do.’

  She put on the kettle, and while she was getting a bandage from the bedroom Gillespie told him that Nora was not the kind of light-hearted girl he’d had in mind, and that Maggie was more his type. He was so eager to take him to meet Maggie that Potter soon put two and two together. Nora poured warm water into an enamel basin and placed it on the floor beside the settle. He put his foot in the basin as she knelt beside him with a sponge, her black hair, pale complexion, and hollow cheeks forming a picture of light and shadow that reminded him of a figure from El Greco. As she looked up, he felt the light of her smile on his face, a short burst of sunshine on a January day turning all that was mutable to silver rather than gold. She was wearing light-blue jeans and an open-collared shirt of darker blue which crinkled rather than swelled where her breasts were. Her unpolished toenails peeping through her sandals reminded him of Maureen’s before she took to reading the fashion pages. He told himself that here was a girl who had nothing in common with any girl he’d ever met, a girl who might unthinkingly lead a lost man out of a labyrinth.

  ‘You’re the first girl I’ve seen here in jeans.’

  ‘It’s my day off. I don’t wear them usually because Canon Loftus doesn’t approve.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with you?’

  ‘I’m his housekeeper.’

  ‘Have you sold your soul to him?’

  ‘He’s only a parish priest, not the devil.’ She searched his face with wide, black eyes.

  ‘You’d make a good nurse, Nora. The pain is going already.’

  ‘All you needed was sympathy,’ she smiled. ‘Men are like that. Even the Canon likes being pampered.’

  She towelled his foot and went outside to empty the basin into the runnel. As she crossed the floor, he noticed that her feet were not white but brown, as if she’d been standing all day in bog water, a thought he found curiously affecting.

  ‘We’ll go now,’ said Gillespie. ‘We’ll go down to Paddy Óg’s to see Maggie.’

  ‘Enough is enough,’ said Potter firmly.

  While they were inside, a great continent of cloud had risen in the east, propelled by a wind from the land. Expanding in all directions and thinning at the edges, it passed over the face of the moon which had become a dull plate, all its brilliance gone. The cloud continued to expand until its black heart swallowed the moon and only a few uncertain stars in the west provided what light there was in the sky.

  They walked down the lane in silence, surprisingly sober after the evening’s drinking. As they reached the road, Gillespie said, ‘Now don’t get any ideas about Nora, will you? She’s my girl and no one else’s.’

  ‘Something I noticed about her toes. The third is longer than the second.’

  ‘She’s an interesting girl, but wait till you see her sister Maggie.’

  5

  ‘Can anyone be happy who thinks of happiness every day?’ Roarty asked himself as he polished a pint tumbler.

  It was just after opening time and the empty pub looked shipshape to his approving eye: the floor swept, the seats neatly ranged, a clean ashtray on each table, the beer and stout shelves full, and a fresh bunch of ferns in the empty fireplace. Turning to the big west window, he watched an open boat running on lobster creels in the bay. Though he couldn’t see the head of the red setter in the bow, he could just make out Rory Rua’s red pullover, and he wondered with satisfaction how many of the men who came into his pub could recognise a man on the far side of Rannyweal. For that you needed a keener eye than most men, even most countrymen, could lay claim to. He wasn’t boasting but he could count the loopholes and parapets of the tower on Glen Head from where he stood. It was one of the reasons he was as good a shot as Dr Loftus, though Loftus was reckoned to be the best in the county.

  His eye wandered over the fields by the sea where men in shirt sleeves were mowing and women in aprons were turning hay with rakes. It was a bright morning; it would be another warm day. And the men bent over their scythes would be sweating and thirsty, imagining a cool pint of ale or stout at the end. There was no denying; it was a great summer for the trade. He looked up Gara’s Brae, and sure enough Crubog was already halfway down, keeping to the green selvage with irregular hops, avoiding the rough centre which would irritate the corns and bunions of his old feet. He was always the first customer, apart from the odd commercial traveller who fancied a quick one between calls.

  ‘Can anyone be happy who thinks of happiness every day? Yes,’ said Roarty. ‘I am happy, and I think of happiness all the time.’

  He had the murder to thank for this unaccustomed state of bliss. It was a perfect murder and a triumph of intelligence in the most testing circumstances. And far from falling prey to Macbeth’s rooted sorrow or ‘that perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart’, his perceptions had quickened, his joy in life had intensified. On the morning after the fateful night he had looked at a rose and felt himself being drawn into a dimension whose existence he had never suspected. Its beauty seemed to hint at worlds beyond his wildest yearnings, yet entirely within his grasp if only... He brushed a petal with his forefinger and experienced a pleasure so rare and immediate that it could only have come from having made the world safer for simple innocence. It occurred to him that in ending life he had acquired a keener sensibility and sharper and more subtle powers of penetration.

  It had been a week of potential catastrophe but because he had been born with the perception of misfortune he was not unprepared; he’d had the presence of mind to convert possible danger into actual security. On the morning after the murder, as he was enjoying his breakfast in the kitchen, Allegro wandered in, looked at him indifferently, and yawned.

  He could barely believe his eyes. How could he have forgotten Eales’s cats? Allegro must have been out all night, ‘doing what tomcats do best’, as Eales used to put it. But where was his comrade in lechery, Andante? And how could he convince anyone, especially McGing, that Eales had willingly left his cats behind? Instinctively, he knew there was only one thing to be done: take the bull by the horns. When McGing came in for his morning pint, he told him that Eales’s bed had not been slept in, and asked if he’d heard anything. McGing did not take the question casually. He said it was something that must be looked into.

  ‘He can’t have done a bunk,’ Roarty said. ‘He’s left Allegro behind. I don’t believe for a moment he’d ever willingly desert one of his cats.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting there’s been foul play?’ McGing said sharply.

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m worried. If Eales doesn’t come back, I’ll be saddled with two cats I don’t want. Andante, you see, is missing. Neither cat would desert the other. They were like David and Jonathan.’

  You obviously know nothing about cats, Roarty,’ McGing assured him. ‘Cats are as cold-blooded as mackerel. Unlike dogs, they have no feelings. All they’re interested in is where the next saucer of milk is coming from.’

  The following morning McGing came in again. Roarty was reading the paper and Allegro was sitting on the counter, rubbing his cheek against Roarty’s arm.

  ‘You see what I mean,’ McGing said. ‘Cats have no morals. They’ll cosy up to anyone who gives them milk. As far as that cat is concerned, you’re just a substitute for Eales.’

  ‘Now, you’re talkin
g nonsense, Sergeant. I used to have a cat that was very fond of me. She used to sit on my shoulder as I sat up reading at night, and she’d tickle my ear with the tip of her tail.’

  ‘I’ll prove otherwise. I’ll take Allegro off your hands, if you’re agreeable. I’ll bet he’ll be every bit as happy taking milk from me as he is taking milk from you. Cats are like people; they’re activated entirely by self-interest.’

  When McGing had departed with Allegro under his arm, Roarty couldn’t help laughing. It seemed too good to be true, until he began wondering if McGing was about to conduct some kind of clandestine investigation. For a moment he felt distinctly uneasy. He asked himself if in mentioning Allegro to McGing, he’d made a terrible mistake.

  The following morning Roarty opened the front door to find Allegro waiting on the threshold. He was pleased that Allegro preferred him to McGing because he’d always seen Allegro as a cat with a distinct sense of intellectual discrimination. On the other hand he suspected that the return of the tomcat might be a deliberate ploy by McGing.

  ‘You haven’t seen Allegro?’ McGing asked when he came in for his morning black-and-tan.

  ‘He’s disproved your theory that cats are without feelings. He was waiting on the doorstep for me this morning. That cat is fond of me.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said McGing. ‘He just likes the strong smell of stout and ale. Don’t think I’m jealous. I couldn’t care less. I was only trying to help you out by taking him off your hands.’

  He could see that McGing was miffed. Allegro remained in the pub, and McGing never mentioned him again.

  Two days later Eales’s mother rang from Dingle, and he told her that her son had left without saying where he was going. That was only common sense; what was intelligent was his decision to tell McGing of the phone call, so that when there was an SOS on the radio for ‘Eamonn Eales who is thought to be travelling in southwest Donegal and whose father is dangerously ill’, he could dismiss it without further thought. He also took certain other precautions: he thoroughly washed the boot of his car as well as the spade and slane, burned his old clothes and wellingtons, and wiped the floor where Eales had fallen. However, he did not clean the whole bar because a pub without the barman’s fingerprints would only heap suspicion on his head. He had taken measures against every conceivable contingency, yet from time to time doubts arose to gnaw at the edges of his mind.

  Still, the execution of Eales had conferred its own unexpected benefits. It prompted him to think about the world in ways he had not done since he left the seminary over twenty-five years ago. Arguably, it had made him a better man—if a thinking man is better than a non-thinking man. He supposed that a theologian or even a secular humanist would see the execution of Eales as evil but he could not for the life of him feel that it was evil. He saw himself rather as a benefactor of humanity; even after much thought he could not find in his heart a scintilla of regret or sorrow for what he had done. And it was the blinding light of his conviction, this unaccustomed lack of shadow, that made him think. Now he wished that he had his annotated copy of De Malo, with its simple distinction between moral and physical evil, if only to experience again the divine clarity of the Angelic Doctor. Would Aquinas, who saw the world through God’s eyes, blame him for slaying Eales? Would he not concede that the murderous blow had been as involuntary as a patellar reflex? He went upstairs and looked in Britannica but there was no article on ‘Evil’, only a brief entry on ‘Evil Eye’.

  Susan Mooney, his new barmaid, came in from the kitchen with a mug of black coffee. It was her second day, and already she was bent on pleasing, a willing girl who would improve with tutelage. It was enlivening having a young woman about the house again. She moved in silence, and wherever she went she left her mark. Apart from working in the bar, she scrubbed and cleaned and cooked in the kitchen—a vast improvement on her slovenly predecessor. In time he would instruct her in the essentials of the drinking man’s diet and how to make a hot toddy in the mornings and serve it in the bathroom while he shaved. He smiled as he took the coffee and noted her relaxed walk back to the kitchen. She was sturdily built, wide in the beam, with a belly that protruded pleasingly beneath the belt. A pity that he no longer had the old hand pumps so that he might watch her breasts swelling as she pulled. His late wife was light-boned and somewhat lacking in those pneumatic qualities that make for bliss and somnolence simultaneously. His mind was working well this morning; all that was something that had never occurred to him before.

  A hawk and a shuffle at the door told him that Crubog had arrived.

  ‘So we live to drink another day,’ the old fox croaked.

  ‘It’s the only pastime in this weather,’ said Roarty, choosing a tumbler.

  ‘There’s nothing as heartening as the sight of an empty pub in the morning, the shelves full and everything spick and span before the barbarians come in and destroy it all. Them that drinks bottles ruin the look of the shelves but draught is a different story—you never see the barrel going down.’

  Crubog hoisted himself slowly onto a stool and placed his peaked cap on the counter to cushion his rheumatic elbow.

  ‘Four thousand, two hundred and fifty,’ said Roarty, placing a pint of stout before him.

  ‘Is it on the house?’ Crubog enquired while he fished in his pockets for loose change.

  ‘It is, seeing we’re just the two of us alone. Four thousand, two hundred and fifty is what I said.’

  ‘I hate to turn down a friend, but four thousand, two hundred and fifty doesn’t tempt me. You see, it isn’t the money I’m after; it’s a say in what happens when I’m gone.’

  ‘You want to make history after your death!’

  ‘Wouldn’t we all if we could?’

  ‘You’re a contrary man, Crubog. Your land is lying under the crows, and you won’t lift a finger to...’

  ‘Make me an offer I can’t refuse. And I don’t mean money, I mean a programme. What would you do with the land?’

  ‘It all depends... I’m not short of ideas.’

  ‘It’s an unholy nuisance, the self same land. I’d sleep sounder without it, there’s no denying. Offers on all sides and ne’er a programme.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Last night Rory Rua came up with a bottle of whiskey to buy me out lock, stock and barrel. He came in the door and said he wouldn’t leave till we’d made a bargain. He stayed till midnight but he left empty-handed and without his bottle.’

  ‘He’s a mean man, is Rory Rua. He bought Nabla Dubh’s and Den Beag’s, and still he’s not satisfied. Can’t you see he’s just a grabber. He doesn’t see your land as special; he wants to buy it just because it’s land.’

  ‘And isn’t that why he didn’t get it! What I’d like to do is sell to a young man with a young wife, a man that would husband it like the snug holding it’s always been and raise children that would in their turn look after it. You can see my predicament, can’t you? You’re a businessman and Rory Rua is a fisherman with a mania for land. What I want is a hardworking farmer.’

  Crubog was impossible. He listened to him with increasing impatience until the other village codgers came in for their morning tipple. Even then there was no stopping him. He rambled on about his land as if it were the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate. Roarty wasn’t sorry when he finally left to collect his pension.

  Almost on the stroke of twelve McGing arrived for his only drink of the day.

  ‘And what’s on your mind this morning, sergeant?’ Roarty asked as he poured him his black-and-tan.

  ‘Ragwort and brucellosis. Here, would you mind putting up this poster?’

  Roarty cast an eye over the yellow sheet: Brucellosis Eradication—Controls on the Movement of Cattle. Issued by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.

  ‘No mention of ragwort here,’ Roarty said.

  ‘Isn’t every field yellow with it? Some farmers seem to grow nothing else. They must know it’s poison; you’d think they’d do
something about it without waiting to be pestered by me.’

  ‘It’s the way of fallen flesh,’ said Roarty. ‘No respect for the law.’

  ‘It’s a disgrace that a policeman of my experience should have nothing better to think about than ragwort,’ said McGing, hooking his thumbs in the breast pockets of his well-filled tunic. He was a tall man, about six foot two, pink faced and heavily built. Though within two years of retirement, he was still fresh skinned and light on his feet in spite of the miles he had trudged over soft bogland in search of the ever-elusive poteen still and worm. Among the glen people he had a well-deserved reputation for officiousness. He was particularly hard on publicans who failed to clear their pubs at closing time. Some ten years ago he summonsed Roarty for not opening the door to his knock at midnight. He swore in court that he’d heard the hum of drinkers’ conversation and muffled laughter inside.

  ‘Did you hear the knock on the door?’ asked the judge.

  ‘Yes, your honour,’ said Roarty.

  ‘And why didn’t you open it?’

  ‘I was sure it must be some drunk trying to get in, and I wasn’t having any of that.’

  ‘And what about the hum of conversation?’ the judge asked.

  ‘That was me,’ Roarty said. ‘I always talk to myself doing the washing up.’

  ‘And what about the laughter?’

  ‘That was me, too, I’m afraid. I always laugh at the jokes I’ve heard during the evening. It’s my way of unwinding, you see.’

  Sergeant McGing laughed so derisively and dismissively that he was reprimanded by the judge who swallowed Roarty’s story hook, line and sinker, and let him off without as much as a warning. Ever since, Roarty and McGing treated each other like two wary antagonists—with polite but distant respect.