Chapter 24
As they approached the Three-Legged Goat’s front door, Liam took Maeve’s hand.
“It’s the only way through this madness,” he explained when she raised a questioning eyebrow. “We plow straight through the middle. I’ll run offense, you stay close or I’ll lose you for sure.”
True to his word, Liam tucked his head down and, with Maeve’s hand clutched tightly in his, he elbowed his way through the throng.
The pub was dimly lit, with strings of multicolored fairy lights looped around the windows and along the bar back, which extended the length of the narrow room.
There was a makeshift raised stage at the rear of the room, covered in threadbare red carpet.
The Hooligans, three men and two women, were setting up folding chairs and mike stands.
Around the middle of the room, the wooden tables and booths—of cracked red plastic upholstery, were packed with people, and more stood, three deep, at the bar.
Liam scanned the crowd with a practiced eye. Finally, he spotted a towering bearded man waving frantically from a spot by the bar. “There’s Donal,” he told Maeve, his voice nearly drowned out in the din produced by the crowd and the band’s warm-up tinkering.
“Come along.” He steered her now, with one hand placed lightly on the small of her back.
“There you are,” the giant’s voice boomed. “Christ, I thought for sure you were ghosting me as payback for yesterday.” He pointed at two vacant barstools, across which a jacket had been draped.
“I coulda sold these seats for twenty quid, several times over tonight.” He held out his hand.
“Donal Moody,” he said, crushing Maeve’s hand into his. “Sit down quick now, before I change my mind and sell your seat.”
“Maeve Dunagin,” she said, hopping up onto the barstool he’d indicated.
“Is that an American accent I detect? How in the hell did a lovely like you have the misfortune to meet up with this character?” He jerked a thumb in Liam’s direction.
“Well, actually…”
“Obviously, she won the lottery,” Liam cut in, pulling his barstool closer to hers to allow his friend to wedge into the space.
“I took the distillery tour, and then he volunteered to give me the traditional Irish music experience tonight,” Maeve said.
“A shame you slagged off work yesterday, or you could have met her first,” Liam said. “You know, if your mum hadn’t been sick…” He made finger quotes around the last part of the sentence and turned to Maeve. “That’s Donal’s code for banjoed.”
“Terrible sick with a migraine, she was,” Donal protested, then added with a wink, “… Or maybe that was me.” He picked up a half-full pint glass on the bar and drained it.
The bartender appeared and Liam nodded at Maeve.
“I’d like a Tarrymore on ice with water back,” she said, and he nodded approvingly.
“And the same for me,” Liam said.
The bartender glanced at Donal’s empty glass.
“Sure, why not?” he replied.
“Band’s about to start their set,” the bartender said. “Put in your food order now, or not at all. The kitchen’s short tonight.”
“They do a decent burger,” Liam advised, so she nodded.
A wizened man with a shiny bald head stepped onto the makeshift stage. He cleared his throat and adjusted the mike, and the loud conversation around them turned still.
“All right then,” he boomed. “It’s the Hooligans, back like we promised. So shut yer yaps, will ya?” He turned and nodded at the band, and they swung into a tune that seemed, from the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction, clearly a favorite.
The lead singer was bare-chested beneath a black leather jacket and wore a stovepipe hat atop his flowing blond locks.
He played guitar, and was backed by a petite brunette who played fiddle, another woman with what looked like a concertina, a burly bearded man who played what looked to Maeve like a cross between a flute and a pipe, and the percussionist, a middle-aged professorial-looking type in a button-down shirt, whose drum looked like a flattened bongo that he played by resting the instrument vertically on his knee, and flicking the drum head with both ends of a wooden stick.
“What kind of drum is that?” Maeve leaned in closer to Liam in order to be heard. He smelled like lavender and woodsmoke, and she had an almost irrepressible urge to rest her head on his shoulder.
“It’s called a bodhran,” Liam said, turning his face slightly so that his eyes looked directly into hers.
“Sorta a bogtrotter bongo.” His gray eyes crinkled at the corners, and he brushed her cheek with his lips so lightly, she wasn’t sure whether it could technically be considered a kiss.
Whatever it was, it left her longing for more of the same.
Just a few bars into the number, half the patrons in the bar were up and dancing, clapping and singing along.
Their food arrived in plastic baskets, the burgers nestled on a mound of still-steaming French fries.
“Eat the chips first,” Liam advised. “It’s a sin to let the Goat’s chips get cold.”
She did as advised. The fries were searingly hot, salty, and greasy, and before she knew it, she’d devoured all of them, half the burger, and all of her drink in an embarrassingly short time.
When she looked up, the bartender was sliding another full glass her way.
Donal, on the other side of her, had three empty pints on the bar, and was gesturing to the bartender to bring him another.
After another raucous, foot-stomping number, the band segued into a slower, down-tempo song, and the combination of fiddle and flute, and the girl singer’s high, plaintive voice made Maeve feel every note of the poignant ballad. Her eyes unexpectedly filled with unwelcome tears.
Liam put his lips to her ears. “‘The Fields of Athenry,’” he said.
“Been hearing it all my life, yeah, and it still gets me here.” He touched his hand to his chest. “A real heartbreaker, it is. Young lovers separated when he gets caught stealing corn to feed his babies during the potato famine, he’s sent to prison, then shipped off to Australia. ”
Donal, it seemed, had already had his fill of poignant. “Enough of these pussy sad songs,” he roared, heaving himself to his feet and pounding on the bar top with his now-empty glass. “Let’s have a banger!”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Steady, big fella. It’s just one song.”
“‘You’ll Never Beat the Irish,’” Donal yelled, and the crowd roared their approval. The song, seemingly a sort of unofficial anthem, prompted waves of fist-pumping and foot-stomping as the band tore into the song.
“And he’s off,” Liam said, pointing to his friend, who was now dancing an improvised jig with a silver-haired senior citizen who’d been seated nearby.
Maeve smiled and sipped her whiskey slowly. “Having fun?” Liam asked. “I realize it’s a bit wild, but it’s all good craic, y’know?”
“Craic?” Maeve asked.
“Fun,” Liam explained. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Maeve replied. “I’m sorry my sister Therese isn’t with us. She’d love all of this … craic.”
“We’ll bring her another night,” Liam said. “She can have a go at Donal.”
“Now that I’d love to see,” Maeve said, chuckling.
“Another round?” Liam asked, pointing at her glass.
“No thanks,” she said primly. “Therese warned me I need to keep my wits about me tonight—strange man in a strange country, you know.”
Liam lifted an eyebrow. “Me, strange? Besides, you’re Irish, so this can’t be a strange country to you, can it?”
“No,” she admitted. “I’ve only been here a couple days, but Ireland feels … right. Like a pair of shoes you’ve already broken in. Does that sound weird?”
“Not weird, but not very poetic, either,” he said.
The Hooligans played the last notes of “You’ll Never Beat the Irish,” and the lead singer bent down to take a swig from the glass that rested on the floor beside his chair. “We’re gonna take a break and hit the jacks.”
“Nooooo!” Donal yelled, cupping his hand to make a megaphone. “Not ’til you play feckin’ ‘Galway Girl.’”
“Sorry, lad,” the singer said, putting his mike aside, but in the next minute the crowd was standing and chanting.
“‘Galway Girl’! Play ‘Galway Girl’!”
Now Donal climbed atop his barstool, his barrel-shaped body teetering precariously. “‘Galway Girl’!”
“Get down from there, ya fool,” the bartender said sternly. “Before I throw yer ass out the door.”
“Christ,” Liam said, shaking his head. He threw a wad of bills onto the bar and reached for Maeve’s hand. “We’d better leg it out of here before this eejet starts a riot.”
“Donal,” Liam called to his friend. “We’re out.”
“And miss ‘Galway Girl’?” Donal looked incredulous. “It’s the whole reason for coming tonight.” He teetered again, but somehow steadied himself.
Liam began shouldering his way through the crowd, with Maeve in tow. “Bye, Donal,” she called. “Nice to meet you.”