Chapter 4
PATRICK
Seán looked the same as ever. That big smile and blue eyes, his hair cut short and that spiky bit which never lay down flat.
He’d filled out a good bit, with the kind of arms and chest that were the result of a gym habit, but the two brothers had always been strong.
Growing up on a dairy farm in East Cork does that to a fella because you’re not spending your childhood playing computer games in a darkened room – much as they wished they were at the time.
Instead, you’re out in the cold and the damp lifting the kind of things that city boys and girls wouldn’t imagine could be lifted.
Bales of hay, sacks of feed, pitchforks, shovels, hauling broken gates, loading cattle onto the trailer on Mart day.
It never stopped. They were bred for early mornings and hard graft, and it never left you, that feeling that you have to be up and at it, and you couldn’t rest at night unless you were bone-tired with a good day’s work behind you.
It was the cows themselves that made it all worthwhile, sensing you from a mile away, however softly your boots sink into the mud or however quietly you walk along the lane, they begin to rustle and low.
And it’s not because they know you are there to feed them, it’s because they trust you.
And like you. It was ridiculous now to realise how much Patrick needed those cows and their affection, the way they would press against him, their soft noses, the ears which would flick when they saw him, those intelligent brown eyes, their hot nostrilly breath on his hand.
Had anyone asked him at the time, he would say he hated the milking parlour and couldn’t wait to get away from the thing.
But he could still transport himself back there, that slow rhythm to life, the cold dawns, the sun beginning to rise over the hill, the walk down the lane to the sheds, the sound of the cows as they knew he and Seán were close by.
He could still name every single one of those girls and tell you about them.
The cows were just part of the family. As they attached the milking machine, he and Seán would stroke the cows, talking gently, asking how they were that day and how did they sleep.
Their father had no such sentimental feelings for them and barely grunted at them, as truculent with them as he was with the boys and their mother.
The farm had belonged to the Fitzgeralds, his mother’s family, and passed down to her, their father probably seeing a good thing, but his heart was never in the farm or the way of life.
When the boys left home, he milked the cows and maintained a cursory control over it, mainly to still be in receipt of various EU payments and schemes.
Crucially, he never divorced his wife, the boys’ mother, and so never completely lost the farm.
When she died, he was still legally entitled to it and retook possession, leasing the land and the house to their neighbours while maintaining a small herd.
Now, all these years later, Seán had his eyes on the road, heading away from the airport, making for the hotel. His little brother, soon to be a married man. Hard to believe.
‘Do you ever think of the dairy?’ Patrick asked him.
Seán laughed. ‘There’s not a day I don’t think about it.
Every time I walk into my office, sit down at the desk, breathe in a noseful of that stale air, people’s tuna sandwiches, last night’s leftovers slowly turning in the shared microwave, and we can’t open the windows because of the air conditioning.
And there’s no craic to be had, everyone staring at screens and all that and I wish every single day that I was back with those girls in the shed…
’ He smiled across at his older brother. ‘You the same?’
‘Now and then,’ said Patrick. In Boston, some mornings, before he’d opened his eyes, he’d think for a moment that he was in his old childhood bedroom, the sound of his mother downstairs getting the day on, knowing he had to get up and start the milking and he was almost always disappointed that he was in bed in Boston and that his mother wasn’t downstairs making breakfast. There is nothing that makes you feel safer than your mother close at hand, hearing her move around the house.
She’d call up to them. ‘Paddy? Seán? Time to get up!’ And they’d emerge, bleary-eyed, into the kitchen and eat the porridge she’d made, the stove beginning to warm the house and the sound of the news on the old radio, their mother listening with half an ear to that and the other to Seán talk on about a match at school.
Dark winter mornings took on a different hue once you were in the sheds with the cows, the sense that you were doing good work.
Being with animals was like that, though, wasn’t it?
Intelligent, sentient, sensitive beings who knew when you were in a bad mood and literally nudged you out of it, or on bright spring days when you let them out into the field and some would break into a kind of skip and you could only laugh from the sheer joy that you shared the planet with these wonderful creatures.
And it was the rhythm of the day, up and out and down to the sheds, and then the evenings again, checking in on them.
You’d know by a turn of their head that something was up.
It attuned you, taught you perception skills you didn’t know you had.
Who knew that growing up on a dairy farm would prepare you for life in business?
But it had. Patrick had skills that he knew came directly from the farm, the ability to soothe and smooth, the hypersensitivity when it came to assessing someone’s mood, having a place in your mind to retreat to.
One stressful day and he could transport himself back there, still feel the rough straw, the velvet noses, the soft ears, the sounds they made, the smell of clean straw and clean manure.
It never left. And then he opened his eyes and it was a lifetime later and he was a grown man and he was in Boston, a thousand light years away from the farm.
‘We were lucky to have it,’ he said now to Seán.
‘Would you ever think about coming home, for good?’
Patrick shook his head. ‘It’s going well over there. We’re thinking of opening up a new restaurant and a small bar, just waiting to hear about finance… things are happening. So where are we going?’ he said. ‘Where’s the wedding? You didn’t send me an invitation.’
Seán smiled at him. ‘I knew you’d be here so we didn’t bother.
We’re getting married where I proposed. Anyway, Niamh had already got you down as a yes…
’ He paused. ‘You could have brought someone. A plus-one? No? Niamh is determined to find you someone nice here this weekend. Someone who might entice you back to Ireland. I don’t want my brother on the other side of the Atlantic… ’
Patrick laughed. ‘The day I allow my little brother to set me up is the day when hell freezes over or when Mayo lift the cup.’
He didn’t want to be introduced to any of Niamh’s friends. He was sure they would be as nice as Niamh was but his only plan was to be there for Seán, fly back to Boston and pick up his life again. His head was full enough.