‘She’s not getting an easy ride, your girl. Did you see that aul’ bitch in the audience go for her?’
‘No one made her go on,’ said Swan. ‘I’m not sure the nuns at her school will appreciate it.’
‘Pity about them.’ Mrs Swan took up the paper, folded it to the crossword page. ‘The spare bed is still made up, if you want to stay. Save you going back to an empty house.’
‘Ach, I shouldn’t,’ said Swan, but his attention had returned to the screen.
Mary was saying how we would do well to listen to young people rather than old men. Dr Beasley got personally offended and started tugging at his tie.
‘Eh— eh— eh—’ he said, attempting to find a gap in Mary’s tirade. Gay held his hands out, one palm facing the audience, the other towards his guests.
‘Please.’ Silence fell at once.
Out of the corner of her eye, Ali noticed one of the cameras rolling silently towards her.
‘Mary, you said back there that no one could understand what Alison had been through, and Alison herself said a curious thing. You said you thought things like this happen often. Last week wasn’t the first time you’ve seen this kind of tragedy, was it? Is that why it matters so much to you?’
Ali looked at Mary, but Mary was just staring back at her, waiting. She remembered Seán O’Loan talking to Mary at the Shelbourne. Her mother must have told Seán what had happened in Buleen. She wouldn’t discuss it with her own daughter, but she had told Seán.
‘Is there anything you can tell us about that?’ Gay was in touching distance now.
The camera moved a little closer. There was a red light beside the lens, like a little warning. She thought of all the people beyond that lens, watching her. Aunt Una and the rest them at the farmhouse.
‘I was very young … I can’t really remember.’
But that was a lie. The memories were turning up in force now, pressing their noses against the glass, wanting to be let in.
‘God help me, I shouldn’t have let her do this.’
‘Jesus,’ said Davy. ‘He’s meaning what happened at the farm. Isn’t he?’
Ali’s shocked face appeared in close-up on the old black-and-white screen at the foot of Deirdre Hogan’s bed.
I was very young … I can’t really remember. Her voice as thin as wire from the little speaker.
Gay moved the discussion back to Mary O’Shea, then rounded it up without going back to Ali. As the cameras drew back for the endshot, they could see she was looking at her knees, not up at the cameras like the others.
‘She was so excited – I should have stopped her.’
‘Well, you didn’t.’ Davy got up from a little armchair draped in clothes and leaned over the end of the bed to reach the set. ‘Do you want me to turn it off?’
‘No, just turn the sound down.’
‘You should never have told that policeman about Buleen,’ he said with his face turned from her. He heard her sigh.
‘Well, it was just so weird – you know, happening again. You remember it, don’t you?’
‘Not much …’
‘Ach, you were practically a child yourself.’
‘I was sixteen.’
Davy left his sister to her regrets and went down to the big sparse room he’d been using as his own. He pulled a suitcase from under the single bed. It was an old case that Una had turned up from somewhere in the farmhouse, made out of cardboardy stuff and reinforced with metal corners and clasps, sandy with corrosion. He dragged a pile of his things out of a corner cupboard, started throwing them into the case.
He surveyed the room, then snapped the clasps shut.
The only thing left in the cupboard was that cheap bottle of whiskey, plenty left. He grabbed it and spun the top off with a swipe of his hand. He remembered that Christmas all right, much better than his sister ever could.
The farmhouse had been full to bursting. Una’s four kids were home from school, and Deirdre and Ali were staying with them, ever since Ciaran’s funeral. The only peace he could get was late at night. He’d go down to the kitchen, drink a coffee, listen to the big radio. He could tune in to a foreign station and pretend he was somewhere else – somewhere with pavement cafés and jazz clubs, not a bog-hole in the middle of nowhere.
On Christmas Eve, it was, he’d gone downstairs at about two. The light over the range was on, as usual. There were presents for the kids on the table, some wrapped, some not. He didn’t even notice her at first. He filled the kettle at the tap and stepped over the dog on the way to the range.
‘You get up on the sofa, boy, I’ll tell no one.’
But the dog stayed where he was, his eyes fixed on the heap of rugs on the sofa, like he was scared of it, his tail sweeping slowly across the flagstones. The heap gave a groan and Davy nearly jumped out of his skin. A glob of water hopped from the kettle spout and hissed on the hot plate.
He’d felt annoyed. He couldn’t have his peace with her sleeping there. Why couldn’t she go home? She groaned again – deep, like a cow lowing – and the dog moved a step closer, keeping his belly to the floor.
She must have known he was there, but wouldn’t let on, her face turned to the sofa back. When he’d asked her about her condition before, asked her straight, she’d denied it, wearing a big man’s jumper to cover it, struggling to bend or rise.
He took the dog by the scruff and led him out to his kennel in the yard. Then he stood by the kitchen window and looked back in at her. She threw the blanket off after a time, and he could see everything: the sweat on her,
