Loopy

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Last Chapter

  Also by Dan Binchy

  Praise for the Works of Dan Binchy

  Copyright

  TO JOY, WHOM I LOVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Set deep in a bay of shingle and rock, the village of Trabane stood tiny and unprotected from the elements. Even at the height of summer, out of a clear blue sky sudden rain squalls would send parents and children alike scampering for shelter in the sand dunes that protected the village from the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Even now a gale rattled the slates of the schoolhouse roof hard enough to disturb Larry Lynch from his daydreams at the back of the classroom.

  Trabane Boys National School had been built in 1848, and apart from electricity and running water, little had changed since then. The gray walls of carved granite looked as forbidding now as they must have when the first scholars traipsed past them to take their places in one of the three classrooms separated only by thin wooden partitions. Larry had tilted his chair backward until it rested against one of these, making it easier to catnap and also to overhear what was going on in the adjoining classroom.

  If this were not distraction enough, to his left a window looked out on the road, and if he craned his neck, he could just catch a glimpse of the flagpole. It stood outside the golf club, and a pennant stuck out from the pole, stiff as cardboard. The wind that stiffened it had started somewhere in mid-Atlantic and gathered strength until it struck the sand dunes. Across the road, the twin spindles of the goalposts bent gracefully against the howling gale. Drowsily he wondered if the training session would still go ahead despite the weather. It was going to be a waste of time in a wind like this.

  The flag flying outside the golf club indicated that their weekend competitions were going ahead, whatever the weather. Suddenly his reverie was interrupted.

  “What did I just say, Lynch?”

  Larry turned pink with embarrassment. Patrick O’Hara was the vice principal of Trabane National School and someone not to be trifled with. Of late his moods had become more changeable. He had a temper to be feared and now Larry was about to bear the full brunt of it.

  “I dunno, sir.”

  “I dunno, sir.” O’Hara’s mimicry was spot-on. He had caught the boy’s rural accent to perfection but with an added sting that boded ill for its owner. “How in the name of all that’s holy do you expect to graduate if you keep on looking out the window and not listening to one bloody word I say?”

  Larry sang dumb. Anything he might say would only make matters worse. As for going on to university, the thought never even crossed his mind. He prayed hard that O’Hara would not go on about the grand family he had come from and how he would have a lot to live up to. A siren buzzed. He had been saved by the bell.

  “Right, off home with the lot of you.” A pause, then, “Stay back, Lynch. I want a word with you.”

  Larry groaned inwardly. If he left now and ran all the way to the hurling field, he would just make the practice on time. The rest of the team had long since graduated from school, making him by far the youngest of fifteen players. Should the practice be canceled, he could still get in three hours of shelf-stacking before the supermarket closed on the stroke of six o’clock.

  “Have you anything fixed for this afternoon?”

  A bolt from the blue but far better than the dressing down he was expecting. He saw that O’Hara was now taking quick gulps from a soda bottle.

  “There’s training for the hurling team at three o’clock, sir. If they cancel it on account of the wind, I promised Mr. Norbert I’d stack his shelves till closing time.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Six o’clock, sir.”

  “Too late for me so, I’m afraid.”

  Larry waited for some explanation. When none came, he ventured, “Too late for what, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Suddenly O’Hara looked older. As he drained the bottle, he grimaced as if in pain before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nothing much. I just thought you might like to earn some money caddying for me rather than wasting your time and energy on that silly, brutal game.”

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  “Hurling’s as bad as ice hockey in America, worse if you ask me!” O’Hara muttered.

  Larry was not going to get into an argument over the merits of his beloved game. Both of them knew that it had been the national game for centuries past. In ancient times warring tribes fought with clubs shaped like hurley sticks, but nowadays the warfare was better organized—teams of fifteen doing battle on a field the size of a football pitch. The players wore no protective padding, and helmets were optional. Larry declined to wear one because it gave him a headache. For now, he decided it was wiser to let O’Hara’s unfair comment pass. Instead he observed quietly, “Well, at least, sir, it’s played on solid ground, not ice.”

  O’Hara merely grunted, before mumbling as much to himself as to Larry, “Y’see, I need someone to carry my bag around the golf course these days. I find I can’t quite manage the full eighteen holes on my own. No matter, there’ll be other times.”

  He dismissed Larry with a tired wave of the hand toward the open door. On his way out, Larry stopped and turned back to face the teacher. O’Hara was unscrewing the top of another bottle of soda.

  “Sir, I’d really like to carry your bag anytime. It’s just that I’d given my word to Mr. Norbert that I’d practice taking seventies this afternoon. He said he’d pay me just the same as if I was stacking the shelves.”

  Larry had been immensely proud of this. The supermarket owner was not renowned for his generosity—quite the opposite. It showed how much Norbert thought of him as a hurler that he would actually pay him for striking a leather sliotair the size of a tennis ball between two posts seventy yards away. His speciality was the taking of frees. From seventy yards out, he could send the hard leather ball between those posts with an ease that belied his years. In a real match every strike that he converted was worth a point for his team. It was a rare skill that required constant practice.

  This time O’Hara’s grunt was followed by an unmistakable hiccup. “I declare to God the GAA’s going professional at long last. Paying their players to practice, no less. Well, that beats the bloody band.”

  With that he put the bottle back in his battered attaché case and got to his feet with some difficulty. Larry knew that Lucozade was an energy drink more suited to athletes and sportsmen than frail and elderly schoolteachers. Still, O’Hara looked tired.

  * * *

  The wind had turned into a howling gale that was suddenly spitting out hailstones. They stung Larry’s face as he leaned forward into the storm. Everyone he passed on his way to the hurling practice roundly cursed the weather. Norbert was waiting for him, snug in his car, and gazing out forlornly on a deserted pitch. He was a large m
an with what little hair he had carefully arranged in strands to cover a bald pate. Some of these broke free of their moorings and flapped in windblown disarray as Larry opened the car door. Oblivious to how ridiculous he looked, Norbert shouted to make himself heard above the gale.

  “Get in.… Shitty weather for April, huh.”

  It was a statement, not a question, yet Larry thought it better to make some response as he settled into the soft leather seat.

  “Sure is, Mr. Norbert. Is the practice off?”

  “Is the pope a Catholic? You can be damn sure it is. You wouldn’t put a dog out in that.” He gestured at the hailstones ricocheting off the windscreen and forming an intricate pattern of white lace on the bonnet of the elderly BMW. Norbert started the car and switched on the wipers. “Still, a late spring is just what you want, am I right?”

  Larry was mystified. “How do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that ’twill give you a chance to sell the hay your father left behind him.”

  Larry nodded but didn’t say anything. The hay was a family matter and had nothing to do with Norbert—or anyone else. There had not been a word from his father since he’d left without telling anyone but the family, and Larry hated him for that. His mother, Brona, was pale with worry, and she had warned him not to discuss his father with anyone. She said, and he agreed with her, that it was their own business and no one else’s. When asked about his father, he said he had gone to England in search of work. It was something more and more men from the town were doing of late. It had started with the Creamery, now it was the Maltings that were laying off workers. Three more men were let go last month, and there were whisperings of still more jobs to be lost once the barley harvest was in and dried on the vast wooden floors of the Maltings.

  To change the subject, Larry asked Norbert, “Do you still want me to fill the shelves for you this evening?”

  “Yes, of course. You can look after the shop for an hour or so. I have deliveries to make in the van. Does your mother want anything? I’ll be passing that way.”

  “I’d say she could use a cylinder of gas. Oh … and a loaf of bread, if you don’t mind. Will I pay you for that now?”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll take it out of your wages on Friday.”

  * * *

  The big plastic sign read NORBERT’S SUPER STORE. Once a small, comfortable cinema, it had been transformed into a supermarket—if only in name. It had just three checkouts, and at least one of the cash registers was usually out of order. The trolleys, too, had seen better days and tended to lurch sideways in an alarming manner. The carpark at the rear of the store was too cramped, and in one corner a rusting incinerator smoldered day and night with burning rubbish. Norbert was as deaf to the complaints of his neighbors as he was to the awful smells coming from it. The public health inspector had warned Norbert that he could be prosecuted if the complaints persisted. Two Stand tickets for the County Final had removed any immediate threat of legal action, but the problem remained.

  The shop was empty of customers as Larry pulled on the brown coat with SPAR embroidered over the left breast. He noticed that Maire was wearing a white nylon shop coat that was almost transparent over a very short skirt. Perched on a high stool behind a cash register and showing rather more leg than she needed to, she was checking through a sample basket of groceries. She paused with a finger raised dramatically before stabbing a key with venom.

  “Oh, shite,” her anguished cry greeted him just as he finished buttoning the shop coat. “I’ll never get the hang of this shagging thing!” She turned to him in exasperation. “Do you know anything about these things?” She gestured helplessly at the keyboard.

  He shook his head his head. “’Fraid not. Anyway, I’m no good at sums.”

  “That’s the whole point, you eejit. You don’t have to be any good at sums. All you do is push the stuff across this little window here and it automatically scans in the price. Except that it shaggin’ well isn’t doing it now for some reason.”

  He looked closely at the scanner that he had seen Norbert operate with such ease. He told himself that if someone like Norbert could work it, it had to be pretty straightforward.

  “Try wiping the window thing. It looks as if something spilled on it.”

  She tried—and it worked.

  “Do you know what you are, Larry Lynch? You’re a genius, a shaggin’ genius. I thought I’d never get the bloody thing to work, and old Norbert would be leaning over me, breathing down my neck, and saying, ‘Maire dear, why don’t you try pressing this little button here?’ To be fair, he never laid a hand on me, though I don’t like the way he looks at me sometimes.”

  Larry thought to himself that Norbert was going to have plenty to look at when he got back. That miniskirt was almost up to her backside.

  “Hard to blame him in a way. You’ve smashing legs!”

  Maire did her best to sound demure, though she couldn’t quite bring it off. “Glad you like them. They’ll be at the dance on Sunday night, if you’re interested.”

  “You mean the ceili?”

  “Will I see you there, so?”

  She had no way of knowing that Larry would have preferred to be anywhere else on earth. There was to be no escape, however, as the ceili was run by the GAA on the night of the match between Trabane and their longtime rivals, Lisbeg. Norbert was in charge, and the posters that plastered every telephone pole and shop window in the village promised that both teams would attend—a supposed magnet to all the young and not-so-young girls for miles around. Larry feared the dancing much more than the match itself. The flailing hurleys of Lisbeg worried him less than parading his dismal dancing skills before the likes of Maire and her friends.

  He tried to put a brave face on it. “Of course you’ll see me there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m not much of a dancer, though.”

  “A dance isn’t all about dancing, y’know!” she replied lightly, looking him straight in the eye as if daring him to contradict her, as the buzzer on the door announced the arrival of a customer. A middle-aged man in his fifties whom Larry recognized as the new owner of The Old Rectory was shrugging hailstones off his raincoat as he pushed through the glass door. Since the Protestant church had closed down, the vicar’s residence had remained empty. Windows were broken and slates were missing from the roof. The once-manicured lawns were now kept in check only by the grazing of sheep, and the shrubbery had long since run riot. The avenue was virtually impassable with the rhododendrons on either side now almost meeting across the pot-holed tarmacadam. Its decline mirrored that of the town of Trabane.

  Even good houses were hard to sell. The Creamery had laid off eighteen workers with rumors of more job losses to follow unless business picked up. With the Maltings shedding jobs at the end of every month and fewer tourists around than last year, even Foley’s, the only pub in the village, was rumored to be in trouble. More empty wage packets made for fewer drinkers. All the more surprising then that a small, dapper Englishman had chosen to make Trabane his home. The Old Rectory had been on the market for ages when Edward Linhurst had bought it, and he had worked miracles on the place in quick time. Even the most skeptical could not fail to be impressed as what had once been little more than a derelict ruin quickly blossomed into the finest property for miles around. Even Seamus Norbert, who had hoped to pick it up for next to nothing if only he could think of something profitable to do with it, could not hide his admiration. He had said to Larry as they’d passed it on the delivery run around the outskirts of Trabane, “What Linhurst has done with that house is nothing short of a miracle, though what brought him to a place like Trabane is a mystery. The bloody man must have money to burn, that’s all I can say.” With a sigh, the supermarketeer added, as much to himself as to Larry, “I wish to God he’d push some of it my way.”

  Now Edward Linhurst appeared to be about to do just that. He was deep in conversation with Maire, and she appeared to be getting flustered for some reason. Larry could n
ot help overhearing snatches of the exchange.

  “Sorry, sir, but the boss is out just at the moment. I’ll have to ask Larry, he might know if we have it.”

  A moment later he was summoned. “Larry, come here will’ya. This gentleman is looking for his relish. Do you know anything about it?”

  Larry thought for a moment. The only relish he knew of was from Yorkshire. He plucked a bottle of YR sauce off a nearby shelf and offered it to Linhurst. “Is that what you wanted, sir?”

  Linhurst pursed his lips to hide his amusement. To laugh would have been unforgivable. He should have realized that Patum Peperium, better known as Gentlemen’s Relish, might not feature on Norbert’s shelves. Nevertheless he was very partial to it smeared across his morning toast. The tartness of anchovy paste with its hint of lemon was just the thing to kick-start his day. That morning he had used up the last of the jars he had brought from London. In what now seemed a moment of madness, he had resolved to seek it out in Norbert’s supermarket. His predicament now was how to decline the bottle of YR, a sauce he particularly loathed, without offending either the girl on the checkout or the gangly youth in the long brown coat. It must have been at least forty years since he had seen a “shop” coat like that.

  “Er, no, thank you very much. That’s not quite what I wanted. Could I have an Irish Times instead?”

  As he was leaving, he turned back to the girl. “Oops, I nearly forgot. I have to get cigarettes for my daughter. Trouble is, I don’t smoke, but I vaguely remember what the packet looks like. It’s white with a small, red square. Does that make any sense?”

  Here Maire was on firmer ground. “Sounds like Silk Cut to me. Silk Cut Red, in fact.”

  She plucked a packet from the shelf above the cash register. Norbert believed in keeping cigarettes well away from shoplifters. Maire inquired politely, “Do you think her packet looked like that?”

  Linhurst hesitated, then murmured uncertainly, “Ye-e-s, I think so. To be honest, they all look pretty much the same to me, but I think those are the ones.”