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  “One packet, then?” Maire was anxious to resume honing her checkout skills before Norbert returned.

  “Better make it a carton. Actually, make it two cartons, if you don’t mind.”

  He paid by a platinum Visa card, the first one Maire had seen.

  * * *

  Foley’s Bar was next door to The Trabane Malting Company. Both had opened their doors within a month of each other over a hundred years ago, and neither had changed much since. The pub was lucky in that it had a captive market, being the only one in the village, whereas the Maltings had to compete in a wider market. This it had managed to do until a few years back, when the demand by the distillers of Irish whiskey for malted barley dropped off noticeably. So noticeably in fact that all further investment by the owners ceased, and jobs were being shed regularly. First the seasonal workers were let go, then last year the first of the full-time employees were dropped from the payroll.

  The drinkers at the counter were discussing this when O’Hara, the schoolteacher, intervened.

  “Sure, if the English hadn’t had to pay back all that money to America after the last war, things might be different round here.”

  His listeners looked mystified but unimpressed. No one questioned O’Hara’s assertion, however, because of his famous short temper.

  After another long silence, O’Hara held up his glass of whiskey and tapped it knowingly. “All because of this, lads, all because of this innocent drop of malt!”

  The others remained silent as the grave, taking sips from their creamy pints of Guinness as they pondered this. After what seemed like an eternity, one of them was moved to ask, “How so?”

  “They’d no money to pay America, y’see, so they sent them gallons and gallons of their very best Scotch whiskys, that’s how so!”

  This was greeted by another, longer silence. No one wanted to look a fool in front of his fellow drinkers, but eventually curiosity overcame one of them.

  “What’s that got to do with the Maltings going belly-up? Sure, all that war-repayments stuff was years ago, wasn’t it?”

  O’Hara nodded as if in agreement. “It was a while back, sure enough, but with all that Scotch floating around America, the Yanks got a liking for it and that put the kibosh on our own Irish whiskey.” He shook his head sorrowfully at the thought of it, but some were yet to be convinced.

  “How come it took so long?”

  O’Hara pricked up his ears—as if he had seen one of his pupils giggling at the back of the classroom. It sounded as if his wisdom was being doubted.

  “Jaysus,” he exploded in exasperation, “I’m not saying America woke up one bloody morning and said, ‘Right, no more Irish whiskey!’ No, nothing like that. Much more gradual. Scotch became trendy, y’see. The youngsters found it smoother to drink than this stuff.”

  Again he tapped his glass as if to emphasize his point. Then he drained it in one mighty gulp, without flinching. Smacking his lips in satisfaction, he added, “And where America leads, the rest of the bloody world follows. Especially where being trendy and up-to-date is concerned. You only have to think of hamburgers and Coca bloody Cola and you’ll get what I mean. It’s the same with Scotch. Blander with much less flavor than this stuff.” He glared at his empty glass before signaling for another and ended, “But that’s what they want nowadays. Smooth and safe, not sharp and strong like”—he paused dramatically before adding a tiny amount of water to the golden double measure of Irish whiskey and taking a swallow from it that reduced its level by more than half—“like this. I’ll tell you this and I’ll tell you no more, there’s more nature in one ball of malt like this one than there’s in a hogshead of the best bloody stuff that Scotland ever made!”

  The bar sank into an impressed silence, wondering at the fickleness of their fellow drinkers worldwide and its disastrous effect on the huge but dilapidated stone building next door that was The Trabane Malting Company. Then the talk turned to Sean Lynch and his sudden departure for England. This was a topic not just for the regulars at Foley’s Bar but for many of the townspeople. They wondered how the Lynch family were getting along without Sean. Did the family talk about him a lot—or not at all? Did Brona and the children long for the day when he would return or were they glad to see the back of him? Most agreed that the family was the better for his leaving.

  The truth was that Brona had asked herself day and night since Sean had left how she might react if he ever did come back. After the first shock of his leaving, she had gradually come to where she secretly prayed that he would stay away forever. The family was getting along far better without him. There were no more explosions of rage. No more doors slamming or tears shed by the young ones as they were hustled out of harm’s way. While Sean had never actually hit her, his arm had been raised to do so more than once. Her son was working and the girls were doing better at school. She was starting to go out more, meeting friends she hadn’t seen in ages. Of course, as in any small community, some whispered behind their hands that Brona Lynch couldn’t hold on to her husband. But for every one of them, ten more knew that she was well rid of him.

  Father Spillane had been a great help: “God’s will, Brona. Maybe Sean will make a better fit of things across the water. That’s often the way of things, you know. A change of scenery might do him the power of good. In the meantime, aren’t you all getting along fine?”

  No recriminations, no talk of a woman’s place being in the home or a wife being subject to her husband, as some of the older clergy might have told her. Instead he encouraged her to play a more active part in the community now that she was free to do so. For the first time since she had walked down the aisle with Sean Lynch, she had a life of her own. While she wondered to herself, Would I give all this up if he came back?

  Sean also wondered if he should return to Trabane as he trudged the streets of Birmingham in search of a job, any job that would pay enough for him to send something, however meager, back home to his wife.

  * * *

  Brona drew back the curtain and looked out into the yard to see who was blowing the horn. Hailstones were bouncing off the cobblestones and the hens had taken shelter inside the open door of the barn. She hoped they wouldn’t lay among the bales of hay that filled the barn. It would take the children half the day to find the eggs if they did.

  Brona would have recognized the white van even without NORBERT’S SUPER STORE—FOR QUALITY AND VALUE painted on its side. She waved at the face behind the windscreen wipers to signal him to come in. Norbert climbed out of the van with obvious reluctance and hunched his shoulders against the driving hail. Instead of making straight for the door of the farmhouse, he went around to the back of the van and lifted out a bright yellow gas cylinder. Looped over his elbow was a plastic shopping bag. Before opening the front door, Brona had time to reflect yet again that as his was the only supermarket for miles around, the van’s sign’s claim was difficult to refute. Yet whenever she shopped in the city, everything seemed to be much less than what Norbert charged. She told herself to be fair as she watched Norbert putting down the cylinder with a gasp of relief. After all, city stores did not deliver to the back of beyond, much less give employment to her eldest son in bad times like these.

  “Will it be all right there, missus, or will I connect it up for you? I’ve a loaf of bread in the bag. Larry said he thought you might want it.”

  “Great, the gas is fine where it is, Seamus. Would you like a cup of tea in your hand? I know you’re in a hurry,” she lied easily, “Larry tells me you are run off your feet.”

  “The boy’s right. I have hardly time to draw a breath. Still and all, ’twould be worse if I was idle, I suppose. There’s enough of them idle around the town as it is.”

  He might have expounded further on the virtues of honest toil had not Brona forestalled him, “What do I owe you, Seamus?”

  “Nothing, missus. Not a red cent. Larry said to take it out of his wages at the end of the week. You have a grand lad in him an
d no mistake. I only wish to God he’d pack in the school and come to work for me full-time. I’d give him all the time off he wants for the hurling. If we had a few more like him, we’d beat those Lisbeg shaggers out the gate. We might even win the county championship!”

  This topic she was not keen to discuss. Only last week Pat O’Hara had taken the trouble to drive out the four miles to her farmhouse when he knew Larry would safely be out of the way stacking shelves in the supermarket. O’Hara’s mission had been to persuade her to keep Larry on at school until he had graduated: “With that piece of paper in his pocket, there’ll be no stopping him!”

  She hadn’t the heart to tell the schoolteacher that it was all she could do to keep Larry at school until the end of this term. Graduation was completely out of the question now that her husband had taken the boat for England—leaving a mountain of debt and four children behind him.

  She had been alarmed that the schoolteacher had reeked of whiskey so early in the afternoon, something the mints he sucked on failed to hide. Having extracted a half-promise from her that she would at least talk to Larry about it, he left. He did not, she noticed, make any reference to her absent husband. Now here was Seamus Norbert trying his level best to get Larry to quit school in favor of hurling and a job. It might not be much of a job that he was offering, but anything was worth considering at a time when the talk was of little but recession and hard times.

  After much agonizing, Brona had decided that she would leave it up to Larry himself to decide. She had more than enough to do in running the farm and looking after the young ones without having to decide the future of her eldest child. Though still a month short of seventeen years old, Larry had a good head on his shoulders. And a brave heart, too. She smiled as she remembered how he had stood up for her when her husband had ranted and roared about there being no food in the house. Where others might have cowered with fright, Larry had stood up to him with clenched fists: “If you gave Ma half of what you give to the bookies every day of the week, we’d have all the food we could eat.”

  Of course the boy was right, but Sean, she supposed halfheartedly, had done his best. Backing horses was the only luxury he allowed himself, even if it was an increasingly expensive one since they had let him go at the Creamery. He had tried to get work around Trabane but without success. The work just wasn’t there for anyone. It wasn’t until after he had left that she’d found out he had borrowed money from his friends. The last straw was the letter out of the blue from Leo Martin, the bank manager. It had arrived that very morning and she had had to sit down after reading it. Little wonder then that she found hurling a safer topic than Larry’s future to discuss with Norbert, who showed no signs of leaving despite his claims to be run off his feet. She tried to sound concerned as she asked, “Will they beat Lisbeg this time?”

  “I certainly hope so. Lisbeg have beaten us for the past three years, though we should have won it out last year. Only for that blind bastard of a referee—in pardon to you, missus—sending two of our best men off in the first half, we’d have beaten them fair and square.”

  “It’s being played in Lisbeg this year, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is and that’s no help, I can tell you. Their supporters are the biggest bunch of savages I’ve ever laid eyes on. I’d say half of them would eat their young without salt if they got the chance. How they managed to steal that factory from under our noses is something I will never understand till the day I die.”

  Brona laughed ruefully. A call center with sixty jobs that would handle subscription lists and renewals for several international magazines had been promised to Trabane before the last election, but it had gone to Lisbeg in the heel of the hunt. As for Norbert, he was a fanatic where the GAA and hurling were concerned and could see no further than Trabane Gaels. Brona regarded the Gaelic Athletic Association as just another sporting organization, neither better nor worse than the others, and hurling just a game the same as any other. Not that she would speak such heresy to someone like Norbert. Instead she chided him ever so gently, “Are you forgetting that my husband comes from Lisbeg?”

  Norbert could have kicked himself for the oversight. Of course Sean Lynch was born and reared in Lisbeg. That could explain a lot, he decided. Sean, the useless bastard, would bet his last shilling on two flies going up a wall, and look where it had got him.

  “Indeed I was, missus. I was forgetting he was born and bred in Lisbeg.” A pause, then: “Any word from him yet?”

  Brona didn’t answer, and Norbert, fearing that he had overstepped himself, hurriedly changed the subject.

  “That’s a fine lot of hay you have outside in the barn. Should be worth a few bob, I’d say.” Hurrying across the cobblestones from his van to the farmhouse, he had seen the hay barn full of bales. They could be worth a lot if this unseasonable weather continued. Farmers who had expected to leave their cattle out on grass by the end of March were still feeding them dwindling winter fodder indoors. Bales of hay that were selling for less than a pound before Christmas were now fetching nearly four pounds each—if they could be got. The Lynchs might yet sort out their money problems if only they could get rid of what was stacked in the barn before the end of the month.

  Brona shook her dead distractedly. “You’re right, I suppose. But it’s only worth something if we can get rid of it. Someone called a few days ago and offered me two pounds a bale for the lot of it. I refused him. Do you think I was right or wrong?”

  “You were dead right. It’s worth twice that at the very least. Delivered, of course.”

  “That’s the trouble, you see. We’ve no one to deliver it. Larry’s too young yet to take the tractor out on the road, and it would cost a fortune to hire a lorry, never mind the driver and a helper.”

  They both lapsed into silence. By prolonging it, Brona hoped that it might encourage him to leave. Sure enough, after a minute or two Norbert shifted uneasily from one foot to another before announcing that he must be going. His parting words were “Good luck with the hay. If there’s anyone with a lorry and driver going cheap, I’ll let you know. Try to persuade that son of yours to pack in the school, he’s only wasting his time at the books.”

  After he’d accelerated briskly out of the yard and was gone, Brona made herself a fresh pot of tea and took the letter from the bank down off the mantelpiece. It did not improve with a second reading.

  * * *

  Class was over for another day and Larry was putting his books back in his schoolbag when O’Hara crooked a finger at him. He walked up to the schoolteacher’s desk as the rest of the class disappeared, pushing and shoving each other, out the door.

  “I’m asking you again, do you want to caddy for me or not?”

  Larry wanted to say no. He couldn’t care less about golf and the kind of people who played it. Anytime he passed by the course, it was dotted with small groups dressed up like eejits who dug holes in the short grass as they tried to hit a small white ball. It seemed a pointless game even for those with nothing better to do. However, Pat O’Hara knew that the supermarket closed for a half day on Thursdays, so Larry could not use that as an excuse. The money, however small, he reflected, would be welcome.

  “Of course I do, Mr. O’Hara. Whenever you say.”

  The teacher put away the Lucozade bottle and dabbed at his lips with the corner of a spotted handkerchief before answering.

  “I have a game arranged in half an hour. I’ll pay you two pounds to carry my bag. On the way round, I’ll tell you what to do, but the main thing is to watch where my ball goes and mark where it lands. The other thing is to shut up. Golfers are easily upset, and talking or standing too near them while they are trying to play a shot is a hanging offense. Now put your schoolbag in the car—I’ll drop you home after we’re finished.”

  They drove past the large sign that read TRABANE GOLF CLUB—VISITORS WELCOME and down the short drive that led to the parking lot at the back of the clubhouse. This was a long, rambling building in need of a
fresh coat of paint. Larry had never been inside the clubhouse before. Sometimes he would sneak onto the course to look for golf balls as the sun went down. He was usually chased off by the greenkeeper, who did not welcome competition in selling used balls to golfers too cheap to pay for new ones.

  The changing room was worlds apart from the corrugated-iron lean-to used by the Trabane Gaels. It had a carpet, wall-to-wall clothes lockers, and hot showers with individual cubicles. The hurlers had to make do with a communal outdoor water trough to wash off the mud.

  O’Hara, having changed into a pair of shoes with spiked soles, opened a wooden locker with his name on it and took out a bag of clubs. He hung his jacket on a hook beside the locker, pulled a heavy pullover over his head, and a had quick pee in the nearby toilet before announcing, “We’re about ready. The priest wasn’t sure if he could make it. We’ll give him five minutes more, and if he doesn’t show up, we’ll head off on our own.”

  They went out to the first tee, where O’Hara embarked on a series of loosening-up exercises. Larry had difficulty in keeping a straight face at the ridiculous contortions of someone who had ten minutes earlier been expounding on the theorems of Euclid. O’Hara abandoned his gyrations in favor of swishing a golf club at a daisy in much the same way as Larry swung a hurley stick. The way the hands gripped the club looked the same to Larry even if the actual swing was different, being much slower and, in O’Hara’s case, more labored. Hitting the ball with a hurley came naturally to Larry, but the teacher seemed to be putting as much concentration into his practice swing as he did in solving a theorem on the blackboard.

  When the priest failed to appear, they set off on their own. O’Hara stood poised over the ball for what seemed an eternity. Suddenly, without warning, he unleashed a sudden, vicious swipe at the tiny white sphere perched daintily on a small wooden peg, as if hoping to catch it unawares.

  “Did you see that?”

  Larry nodded, though he didn’t think much of what he had seen. Thus far golf seemed to consist of complicated gyrations that resulted in sending a small white ball to God knows where.