door-frame.
'Some incident a few years back. More than three, let's say, if my memory is sound. We'll be working near him, so I'd like to size him up.' spacebarthing
Iseult's wooer, Pat Muldoon, was over six feet tall. His clothes were black again today, save for a dark grey shirt which was not ironed and not meant to be ironed. A long face on him and a bony nose, missing two days' shaving but with lively eyes atop. The eyes were blessed-virgin blue, with a touch of mockery not far behind them. During the tea, Minogue felt he was sitting next to a priest. Pat never laughed outright but smiled enough and gave considered nods of his head. Minogue was a little nervous. Iseult was very animated. She was on guard against lulls in the talk, filling in details which Pat sometimes forgot. What Pat really means, what Pat is getting at…
'He got first in his class last year, so he did. Didn't you, Pat?' Iseult enthused. Kathleen's eyes widened in approval. Pat looked up under his eyebrows as he worked the rind off a rasher, as though to remonstrate with her. Iseult beamed. Kathleen made herself busy with her knife and fork. Was her subconscious leading her to toy with the cutlery, the better to drive away a suitor to her overloved daughter? Minogue wondered.
'Da worships the sun, don't you, Da?' Iseult said guilelessly.
'And the moon and the stars,' he said, feeling his cheeks redden. 'A bit of everything.'
'More luck to you,' said Pat. 'Nice sermons, I'd say.'
Everyone laughed. Pat was studying psychology. When Kathleen had asked before, he allowed that it was very interesting. Was there anything in particular? He liked experimental psychology. Minogue thought about rats with wires attached to their heads.
Kathleen stabbed the Bewley's cake and apportioned slices to the plates stacked by her side. The sun was peeping around the back of the house now. It was Minogue's time of day. He could almost feel his planet turning. Daithi plugged the kettle in and remained leaning on the edge of the sink. No one spoke. The chairs had been pushed back from the table. Birds called out to one another from the garden. Minogue stole a look at the faces around the table. Kathleen was smoothing an imaginary fold in the tablecloth. As his gaze swept by Iseult, she winked at him. Her face seemed bigger. It was entirely possible that his faculties were declining with age, he thought. Damn it, he thought then, her face was glowing. She must have fallen for this lad. The kettle whispered. Minogue looked over to Daithi. He was fidgeting, restless. No doubt he'd want to go out tonight and have a few jars with his cronies. Kathleen had now joined her hands under her chin, elbows on the table.
'Here, Da. Tell us a bit about Paris,' Iseult said. She turned to Pat.
'The pair of them are like love-birds so they are, Pat. They up and went to Paris a few years ago.'
'To see the sights,' Kathleen insisted.
'Some sights you'd see there, too, I'm sure,' Iseult taunted. 'And they wouldn't take their only daughter to give her a bit of culture. The meanness of it.'
'Do you know, Pat,' Kathleen countered by turning to the one who might well steal her daughter, 'maybe you know something from your studies, but why is it that children turn contrary and get to being punishments for their parents?'
'I don't know, Mrs Minogue,' from a diplomatic Pat.
'Here now,' Minogue rose from the table, 'if ye are really interested in talking about Paris, there's only one proper way to do that.'
'And how's that, may I ask?' Kathleen inquired.
'With a bottle of anise and a few tumblers. You bring up the tea if you want, and we'll lay waste the rest of that cake, too,' Minogue said, rubbing his hands. 'We'll away up to the end of the garden and catch the last of the sun. Now, where's the tape-recorder? We'll bring up your man Offenbach and a bit of Chopin. Who in their right minds wants to be indoors on a summer's evening?'
A Dublin-born Daithi rolled his eyes at the vagaries of a bogman father.
'To hell with poverty, we'll kill a hen!' said Minogue.
The batteries on the tape-recorder died after twenty minutes.
'I thought that Offenbach sounded a bit off-colour,' Minogue remarked indolently as he watched Kathleen walking up the garden toward them. She stopped by the rhubarb, toed something delicately in the clay, and continued her slow walk. My wife, I'm her husband, he thought. He had watched her at mass on Sundays for years, her head bowed after communion, eyes closed in prayer. A fine-looking woman.
The sun leaned into the garden now, lighting up the shrubs and branches from the side. Iseult was fidgeting.
Minogue poured more Marie Brizard. He could think of nothing to say. Kathleen was helloing a neighbour across the wall. Then she stood by the garden chair where Minogue was dishing out the anisette. Pat, formerly quiescent with the food and drink, led with a high card.
'You're County Clare, aren't you, Mr Minogue?'
'Absolutely,' Minogue affirmed. He raised his glass. Iseult sniggered. Pat raised his glass the length of his arm. Had Iseult primed Pat?
'A hundred and one percent,' Minogue added with feeling.
'I heard recently what a Clareman's idea of heaven was, you know,' he continued.
'Tell us so,' said Minogue.
'Cork beat, the hay saved and a girl in Lisdoonvarna.'
Even Daithi laughed. Kathleen and Iseult poked each other, laughing both.
'You should be on the stage,' Kathleen said to Pat. She was standing behind Iseult now, absent-mindedly patting the dark hair that fell on Iseult's shoulders. Iseult didn't notice. In Minogue's uncodified religion, Kathleen's gestures had the force of a transfiguration. For several seconds the garden and the orange wash of the sun, the smiles, the smell of clay, the birdsong fell away from him. It will be very hard on Kathleen if this Pat fella does win her, Minogue thought.
'The next stage leaves town at eight,' Iseult said.
Minogue was thinking that the unconscious was too strong a force in life entirely when he heard Daithi calling from the kitchen window. He walked down the lawn and entered the kitchen. Daithi was doing the dishes and that gave Minogue pause to wonder. Perhaps the boy was washing his hands in advance of some divilment later on tonight. Neurotic. A girl?
'Phone, Da. It's from work,' Daithi murmured.
It was Hoey.
'Sorry to disturb you at home, sir. Stepaside station phoned. Driscoll. They have a fella that maybe we'd be wanting to talk to. A fella that was snooping around Mr Combs' place, like.'
'Yes, go on.'
Minogue believed his anisette breath would surely stick to the phone like spray paint.
'It was by chance that someone saw him going up the lane. He went into a field and then came back up to the house and started looking in the windows. He tried to get in the door, too.'
'Did he try to make off with anything? Use any force trying to get into the house?'
'No, sir.'
'Who is he?'
'He's a tinker, sir. He calls himself Michael Joseph Joyce. He's living in a caravan down the back of Loughlinstown somewhere. He has a lot of drink on him and he's not inclined to be very direct with answers.'
'Did he resist being brought to the station or that class of thing?'
'No, sir. He was spotted fiddling with a horse in a field belonging to Combs.'
'Right, of course. That's it,' Minogue said.
'That's what?'
'The horse. I knew there was something I was trying to remember. When I saw the horse, I was wondering who'd be feeding it now that Combs was gone. The horse was tethered up to the gate.'
'That's what Joyce said he was about. The arresting Guard wasn't impressed with that one, I'm afraid.'
'Hold on there a minute. You said 'arrest.''
'The Guards here told him that he was under arrest for trespassing. Just to keep him in and question him, sir. They'll keep him overnight so we can see him in the morning. No harm will come of him staying over. You can go straight to Stepaside in the morning, sir. When Joyce is sober, you see.'
Minogue noticed the tentative tone in Hoey's voice now.
