Chapter One #2
“Grand,” Noreen says, getting to her feet—Tommy, unlike Cal, warrants standing up—and dusting off the knees of her slacks.
“Up to my ears in mini Mars bars and Twix, lookit—I got them in for the trick-or-treating, the same amount as every year, but only half of them went. I heard people were getting theirs cheap off some fella that went round in a van.” She throws a rubber rat into the box with a vengeful snap.
When she finds out names, which she will, Cal doesn’t envy anyone who bought their candy on the down-low.
“I’ll take a few of them off your hands,” Tommy says magnanimously. “I’m a great man for the aul’ Mars bars. You can keep your fancy artisan chocolates, isn’t that right? Give me the good old-fashioned stuff.”
“Clodagh won’t have Mars bars in the house,” Noreen informs him. “She’s going on the diet again, the one with the curly kale. I’ve that ordered in for her; tell her it’ll be here on Thursday.”
“Ah, go on, give us a few packets there. What the missus doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
” Tommy winks at Cal. “Howdy, pardner.” Cal has been American for the entire three and a half years he’s lived here, so the novelty should have worn off by now, but Tommy is apparently proud enough of spotting it that he needs to point it out every time they meet.
“Well, how de do,” Cal drawls, tipping his baseball cap. Noreen shoots him a behave-yourself glare behind Tommy’s back. Cal gives her a mock-sheepish flinch and goes back to detaching skull-and-crossbones bunting from the shelves.
“Flying form,” Tommy says, rocking back and forth on his heels and surveying the shop. “Flying form. We’ve Eugene down from Dublin for the weekend, so the missus says we need a bag of spuds and a rake of sausages. We can’t be feeding a young lad on curly kale, amn’t I right?”
Cal follows his nod to the window. Two people are standing outside, in the gray day that looks like twilight against the shop’s brightness.
Eugene—on the weedy edge of good-looking, wearing a long dark coat that’s probably sophisticated business gear in Dublin but down here is just weird—is bent towards a tall blond girl, talking fast. The girl has her head down and her hands tucked deep in her pockets.
She’s wearing a white puffy jacket and some kind of black leggings, but the leggings are erased by the dimness so that she looks like she’s floating, about to drift away from him on the eddies of rain.
“Eugene’s looking well,” Noreen says, peering out the window and rubbing away condensation. “Who’s that out there with him? God, I think my eyes are going on me, I’ll be on the bifocals before I know it. Is that Rachel?”
“It is, o’ course,” Tommy says. “You couldn’t keep them two apart.
Young love, isn’t it great?” This explains why Eugene is waiting outside, getting his pretty coat wet: he’s too careful of his dignity to risk Noreen puncturing it in front of his girlfriend.
Eugene has some hotshot job in finance, Cal isn’t sure what and doesn’t care as long as he doesn’t have to hear about it, which means he avoids Noreen’s when Clodagh Moynihan is in there.
“There you go,” Noreen tells Cal, pouncing on the fresh opportunity. “D’you see them two out there? They’ll be getting engaged any day now. Won’t they?” she shoots at Tommy.
“Ah, now,” Tommy says, tapping the side of his nose and smiling. “I’m saying nothing.”
“Ah, they will. I knew as soon as Clodagh said she was back on the diet: she has to look her best for the engagement do. And I’ll tell you one thing, mister”—this is to Cal—“they won’t be waiting any year and a half to set their date.
They’ll have the Breggan Court nailed down before the ring’s properly on her finger.
And that’ll be one less date for you and Lena. ”
“Oh-ho-ho,” Tommy says, clapping his hands together. “Who’s got cold feet?”
“Just leaving room for the young ’uns to get down the aisle,” Cal says.
He drops the bunting into the storage box and goes to find his eggs.
Noreen has earned the right to give him a hard time; Tommy hasn’t, seeing as they’ve probably spent a grand total of less than ten minutes in conversation.
Tommy, although he makes sure to grace the lower orders with his notice, represents a different echelon of local society from the guys Cal hangs out with.
He dresses the same way, work pants and fleeces and puffer vests, but on him the getup looks like a costume, probably because it’s always clean.
“Fair play. They’re in a lot more of a rush than us aul’ fellas, amn’t I right?” Tommy guffaws and mimes elbowing Cal in the ribs, even though Cal is halfway across the shop. Noreen titters obligingly. Cal keeps inspecting eggs.
“I’d say it’s Lena that’s dragging her heels,” Tommy says, still grinning at Cal. “Hah? She’s been in that house a long time; she mightn’t fancy leaving it to move down to your wee place, no harm to it.”
“You figure she oughta move?” Cal inquires politely.
“A change is as good as a rest,” Tommy says, like that means something. “Will I have a word with her for you? Give her a nudge?”
Cal would pay good money to watch Tommy try to have a word with Lena. “More haste, less speed,” he points out, since apparently this is what they’re doing. Tommy laughs like he said something hilarious.
“There you go,” Noreen says, ringing up Tommy’s sausages and adding them to the impressive heap of Mars bar packets on the counter. “Keep those well hid from herself.”
“It’ll be our little secret,” Tommy says. “Don’t be giving me away, now.” Noreen titters again, and Tommy pays and strides himself out.
“There’s a bitta luck,” Noreen says with satisfaction, once the door’s closed behind him.
“I thought I’d be stuck with them Mars bars; no one wants any more sweets in the house, after Halloween.
But Tommy can’t pass up a chance to be the big man.
” She rings up Cal’s eggs. “And he won’t be feeding Eugene feckin’ sausages and spuds for the Sunday dinner.
Tommy and Clodagh go into town for the big shop, is what they do, so she can get all the fancy ingredients for her Ballymaloe recipes.
Then they come in here to honor me with their little bits and bobs. ”
She frowns out the window at Tommy, who’s clapping Eugene on the shoulder and talking up a big hearty storm.
“D’you know something? The pair a them don’t look great.
Eugene and Rachel, like. The way she wasn’t even looking at him.
” Noreen’s warmth is even bigger than her nosiness; she’s genuinely concerned, not just scouting for gossip.
“I know Eugene’s an awful dose, but Rachel’s pure mad about him.
They’re together since she was sixteen, sure; she’s never been without him.
If he’s after getting himself some Dublin one, it’ll break her heart. Do they look all right to you?”
“Dunno,” Cal says. He’s disinclined to give the Moynihans any more conversational space than he has to.
“I’m not acquainted with either one of ’em enough to tell.
You know anything about making soufflés?
Trey read about them in some schoolbook and wanted to know what they were, so I said I’d give it a shot. ”
Noreen goes off into a barrage of soufflé-related tips and variations. The window has misted over again, turning Tommy and Eugene and Rachel into blurred shapes swaying like scarecrows.
Lena has somehow found herself spending her Saturday afternoon driving over the mountain in a car full of teenagers.
Seeing as she doesn’t have kids, she didn’t choose her car with this scenario in mind, but Trey had a football match in Lisnacarragh and her mam picked up an extra shift at the supermarket in town, so now Lena’s Skoda has five kids squashed into each other’s laps, elbowing and sniping and snickering and having a whale of a time.
Trey and Kate’s team won the match—the other three are just along for the crack, there not being much else to do around here at the weekend—so they’re all on a high.
Lena has already threatened to make them walk home twice.
The narrow mountain roads, switchbacking and dipping, make for dodgy driving at the best of times; in this weather, with the spruce groves rising out of gray haze and the fields below veiled by the fine rain, their danger presses in close.
In general, Lena sees no reason why teenagers should behave themselves—most of them will do that for long enough—but she draws the line at them sending her car down the mountainside.
“Missus,” says the freckly boy in the back—Ross, Lena thinks—leaning forward between the seats. “Here, missus.”
“She’s Missus Dunne, ya thick,” Aidan tells him from up front.
“She is not. She’s married to your man Whatshisname, the Yank that lives at O’Shea’s old place.
Ya fuckin’ thick.” Somewhere along the way, Trey’s mates have filed Lena under Noncombatant Adult, meaning they don’t worry that she’ll squeal on them to the real adults for minor infringements like cursing.
“She is not,” Trey says. “Why would he be in O’Shea’s and her in her place, if they were married?”
“Exactly,” Aidan says triumphantly.
“If I was married to you I’d live in Australia,” Kate tells him.
“You won’t be.”
“Fuckin’ right I won’t.”
“Missus,” Ross says, not to be sidetracked. “Should Ciara here go out with Aidan?”
“Shut up, ya fuckin’ Teletubby,” Aidan says, twisting around to hit him. He ducks. Lena slaps Aidan’s arm back into place.
“She should give him a lash, amn’t I right? He’s a fine-looking fella—”
“Jesus,” Ciara says, covering her face with her hands and trying to disappear into her corner. Trey and the rest are laughing.
“You’d take him out for a spin at least, wouldn’t you? If you were our age, like?”