by Rachel Quinn
‘Some of the lads here are younger than me,’ Aileen said.
‘And so?’ Briana replied.
‘Well, why did I have to wait until I was eighteen?’
‘You’re not the only one, I can tell you. Mammy and Daddy decided we’re allowed here at eighteen and that’s that.’ Briana threw a glance of dismay across the river to the strip of cottages lining the coast road. ‘But you’re right, the turnout of worthwhile men is poor, so tis.’
‘Sure, they should have called Leetown “Tinytown”,’ Aileen said, raising her voice over the music. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been waiting until I was eighteen for this.’
‘Won’t you be patient awhile? Just try to enjoy it.’
Aileen herself now peered over toward to the cottages, each one white with a thatched roof but somehow boasting its own character. Her gaze then led to the line of shingle that tapered to a point on the horizon, as though fending off the unruly ocean.
Just like the scenery, very little in Leetown had changed since Aileen was first carried down the road to church in a basket. About ten years ago the footbridge across the Crannagh had lost a few planks and so had been repaired with new ones. A few years later another cottage had been built by the McDiarmids for their son and his new wife to start a family. And the summer before last Cready’s had painted the outside of their shop red, whereas it had always been green before.
Much more had happened, but those were the highlights.
For years Aileen had been dreaming of meeting a man who would take her somewhere more exciting – Dublin perhaps – although in the back of her mind she wondered whether she would end up settling for a man from Leetown or one of the many similar towns that dotted the Wicklow coast.
She looked again at the girls sitting the other side of Briana, and wondered how many of them had similar dreams, and how many would eventually lock those desires away and lose the key.
Briana had once told her she had ideas above her station, probably because she’d been the first one in the family to be so serious about what their father had called ‘the school thing with all its learning and books nonsense’. Aileen had told Briana not to be so daft, that the learning and books nonsense hadn’t made any difference.
Briana nudged Aileen. ‘Watch out. Men approaching.’
And she was right. Well, she wasn’t quite right. The boys – definitely younger than Briana and probably younger than Aileen too – were dragging their feet in the sand, heads bowed. The bigger one spoke for them both.
‘Would ye . . . ?’ His head twitched nervously.
‘What?’ Aileen said.
‘Would ye . . . sure, y’know.’
‘Do I?’
Briana jumped to her feet and kicked her shoes off. ‘Of course we would.’ She nodded to her sister. ‘Just excuse the sourpuss one here, will ye.’
Briana grabbed the silent boy by the hand, and Aileen stood up too, stepping out of her shoes with a little less haste than her sister had, to take the hand of the other one. He pulled her hand to his dirty mouth, kissed it quickly, then sniffed noisily.
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ Aileen said.
‘Ye what?’ the boy blurted.
Aileen grunted a laugh. ‘Nothing. C’mon and let’s dance.’
Ten minutes later a breathless Briana and Aileen sat down.
‘Tis grand, is it not?’ Briana said, a smile beaming from between her ruddy cheeks.
‘Tis, I have to admit,’ Aileen said. ‘Yer man’s nothing more than a wee boy. He’s half a foot shorter than me, and my toes are black and blue from his shoes stepping on my feet, but I haven’t laughed so much for an absolute age.’
‘And while The Emergency’s on, you take what laughs you can get.’
‘Ah, The Emergency,’ Aileen said, doing her best to mimic her father’s deep voice. She threw her eyes upward. ‘Sure, now you’re after spoiling it, mentioning that.’
‘Forget I said it. Let’s just listen to the music.’
Aileen tried, but it wasn’t easy. She didn’t follow politics, leaving that to Daddy and her brothers, but everyone knew there was a war on.
Daddy had recently had what he called ‘the electric’ installed in Sweeney Cottage. He told everyone it was so they could get rid of the oil lamps and have switched lights, but they all knew it was so he could have a wireless machine to listen to the latest developments.
The news bulletins made them all aware of the war – yet another unholy bloody mess, as Daddy would say. And judging by the snippets Aileen managed to hear, he had a point. It had been raging on for four years now, and apparently the rest of the world had gone mad, with every country declaring war on every other country and battles going on all over the place with no end in sight. But good old De Valera was resolutely keeping Ireland out of it. ‘And a bloody good job too,’ Daddy would say. ‘The twenty-six counties have enough problems of their own without helping the bloody Brits, and sure, those bastards in London are still holding on to the six counties of the North like they own them.’
Aileen felt her shoulder being nudged by her sister, who was tapping her thighs in time with the music again and egging Aileen on to do the same. Aileen fixed a grin on to her face and obliged, humming and tapping along.
But then the music stopped, and all they could hear was the hiss and whistle of the tide. Aileen’s father had told her when she was young that it was the gasp and blow of a snoring giant, and even now he occasionally mentioned it to remind her, so he said, that she was once his little girl. As Aileen smiled at the thought, a distant droning noise arrived to fill in the gaps between the giant’s breaths.
All eyes turned to the road. It was a truck, its colour hard to judge, winding along the road that dropped over the hill into Leetown. A vehicle was a rare sight since fuel had been rationed. Someone said the word ‘Army’ and people started nodding. That would explain it. It was the Army, exempt from the rationing that normal folk had to put up with. No pony and trap for them.
The truck pulled up at the far end of the wooden footbridge and two soldiers jumped out of the back. While they shared a cigarette and surveyed the coastal scenery, two more got down from the cab and started walking – almost marching – across the footbridge and toward the makeshift dance floor.
A few of the people around Aileen took a step away, as though steeling themselves for bad news or even to run off.
But the two men stopped some distance away, and one took the lead, taking another step forward and having a good look at them all – as though assessing them, Aileen thought. She also noticed he had darker hair than the average Irishman and stood bolt upright as if to make the most of his height. ‘Evening, everybody,’ he shouted across casually. ‘Will there be a grocery shop in this village?’
At first nobody answered, the break and suck of the waves the only sounds.
Then Aileen piped up. ‘Open at this hour?’ she said. ‘Sure, you’ll be lucky.’
Briana hissed her name, scolding her.
But the man just glanced at his fellow soldier, appearing to mumble something and laugh. Then he shouted across, ‘Could somebody with a little sense just tell us where this shop is, please?’
‘Just around the corner, past the Station Road,’ the accordion player said. ‘Red front. Name of Cready. But . . .’
‘But what?’
‘The girl’s right. She’ll be closed at this hour.’
‘I wasn’t asking about that,’ the soldier said. ‘But thank you for your help.’ He turned to go, but Aileen thought she caught him staring at her for a second or two before he and his fellow soldier started walking back to the truck.
‘Just who do they think they are?’ Aileen said to her sister.
‘They are the army, Aileen.’
‘And so what? I mean, the nerve of it, expecting the shop to be opening up just for them, just cause they’re the . . . aaiiirmeee. Sure, what are they going to do, break in and thieve?’
Briana’s face took on
a pained expression. ‘Aach, who cares, Aileen? They’re gone. Let’s just have ourselves another dance and forget it.’
One of the banjo players tapped his fingers three times on the wooden frame of his instrument and the music restarted.
Chapter 2
Twenty minutes later, Aileen and Briana were still waiting to be asked for another dance.
‘You’ve scared them all off,’ Briana said. ‘You with your talking to the soldier like that.’
‘Ah, c’mon,’ Aileen said. ‘Why don’t you and me have a dance?’
‘With who?’
‘With each other, y’big eejit.’
Briana folded her arms. ‘It’ll look like we’ve been at the Guinness.’
Then the sound of a truck approaching stole their attention. It was the same truck and it pulled up at the same spot just the other side of the footbridge. This time all four soldiers got out, each of the last two lugging a wooden crate. One by one the instruments fell silent as everyone watched the soldiers cross the bridge, bottles from the crates clinking all the way.
‘Good evening again,’ the soldier at the front said loudly, his broad frame swaggering slightly as he walked toward them. It was the dark-haired one – the one Aileen had taken a little dislike to and hoped everyone else had too. He walked on, leading the other three to the sandpit of a dance floor, and soon the crates of drinks were set down on one of the wooden boxes.
The soldier who Aileen saw as the self-appointed leader grabbed a bottle, held the top of it against the edge of the crate and brought his hand down against it. There was a little foam spillage, but it looked very much like he’d done it before. He handed the bottle to the fiddle player and offered a few words of encouragement. The fiddle player held the bottle up to him for a moment by way of thanks, then took a few slugs. He bent down, twisted the base of the bottle into the sand, and started playing again while more bottles were opened.
Briana leaned into Aileen. ‘If he offers you a drink of alcohol, the answer’s no.’
‘Might be, might not be.’
‘Aileen, I promised Mammy I’d look after you. Don’t make that hard for me.’
Bottles of beer were passed around the soldiers and the other men, then a few bottles of club orange and red lemonade were lifted out of the crates and opened. The self-appointed leader cradled a few bottles in his arm, approached the girls, and offered them around. He gave the last one to Briana, then turned to Aileen and grinned.
‘One minute. I’ll be getting another for the wee bold lady.’
‘No need,’ Aileen said. ‘I’ll not be touching stolen property.’
The man’s carefree smile started to sink away as if the sand beneath his boots was swallowing it. ‘Sure, that’s right, because we’ve gone and shot yer man and raided his shop.’
‘That isn’t funny,’ Aileen said.
The man huffed a breath. ‘You’re right. And being called a thief isn’t a barrel of laughs either.’
‘So you didn’t steal them?’
He cast a glance at his army garb. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you think you’re funny.’
‘And I think you think you’re special. Now, will you be having a free drink or not?’
Aileen thought for a second and nodded.
As the soldier turned to go, he pointed at one of the others. ‘That’s Kevan, by the way. And he wants a dance with you.’ He sauntered off, his boots dragging in the sand, before Aileen could say anything.
‘Do you have to be so abrasive to the man?’ Briana said to her once the soldier was out of earshot. ‘They do this all the time. They’re only wanting a dance and a laugh is all it is.’
Aileen looked at the back of the soldier in question, then at her sister. ‘Maybe. But he doesn’t have to be such an arrogant one with it.’
‘Aach, away with ye.’ One of the other soldiers approached Briana just as Kevan offered Aileen a drink. ‘And stay where I can see you,’ Briana said as a parting shot.
Aileen gave a wry smile. She grabbed the bottle from Kevan and started to pour it down her throat. She faltered halfway and coughed.
‘I’m Kevan.’
‘I know. I’m Aileen.’
‘Shall we dance?’
‘Wait.’ Aileen took a few breaths before downing the rest of the bottle and setting down the empty. ‘C’mon,’ she said, grabbing his hand.
Aileen had only ever danced properly with her brothers and father and the odd cousin, but knew a good dancer when she saw one – meaning when her toes didn’t get hurt. Kevan had a nice smile too, but above that nice smile rested a big strawberry nose about twenty years too old for him. So he was a nice man and nothing more.
‘Would you like to sit?’ he said after a while. ‘I could be getting you another drink.’
At first she hesitated, but a glance at the lonely women swayed her. Perhaps she should start to get to know him better before holding the nose thing against him.
‘That’ll be grand,’ she said. She sat, deliberately some distance away from the other women, while he trotted across the sand and fetched another bottle.
‘You’re a good dancer, so y’are,’ Aileen said when he returned and handed her the drink.
‘Thanks. I used to go twice a week with the wife.’
Aileen choked on her first mouthful.
‘Are y’all right there?’ Kevan said.
‘No,’ she spluttered. ‘You’re married?’
He took a slug of the Guinness and wiped the creamy froth from the corner of his mouth with a knuckle. ‘I am. Six years now and still happy.’ Aileen could tell from his frown that he meant it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t meaning to deceive you.’
‘Ah, no.’ Aileen shrugged. ‘Tis only a little dance. Nothing more.’
‘Grand. For myself too. I miss my wife and it’s nice to meet a pretty girl.’
‘Thanks. And you’re a bit of a catch yourself.’ She resisted the temptation to add, in spite of the nose thing you have going on there. To dispel the thought she said, ‘Have y’any children?’
‘We have. Two boys.’
‘Grand.’
He looked around, his eyes finally settling on the grey cloud creeping up on them. Aileen followed his lead and watched too.
He let out a sigh. ‘Sure, I’ve just killed the conversation, have I not?’
He was right, but he seemed a sweet sort. It didn’t seem right to agree.
‘Where have you come from?’ she said.
‘Ah, the barracks. The Curragh Camp just over the border in County Kildare. We just needed supplies. Potatoes, milk and bread.’
‘And the black stuff ?’ She nodded to his bottle.
‘Niall’s idea.’
‘Niall?’ She looked over at the other solder – the one who’d been forward with her before. ‘You’re meaning that arrogant sort?’
He laughed. ‘Arrogant? Sure, tis a strong word, but . . .’
‘But he’ll beat you up if you call him that?’
This time his laugh was a little too raucous for Aileen’s liking. ‘We’re best pals, me and young Niall. Tis only his way. He wouldn’t beat anybody up outside of battle. I’d say he was only thirsty.’
‘So how did you get into the shop?’
He winked at her. ‘Tis a secret.’
‘Ah now, you’re as bad as yer Niall fellow.’
‘No, no. I’m joking. We’re the army. Shops open up for us.’
‘So, you didn’t thieve anything?’
‘Ah, c’mon now, Aileen.’ He went to speak again but a raindrop hit him straight in the eye. They both looked up, neither surprised at how dark the sky had suddenly become.
‘Tis warm and wet,’ Kevan said as more drops hit his face. Then he looked where Aileen was looking, at the people now heading for the wooden bridge.
Aileen hurriedly shoved her feet back into her shoes. ‘We have a saying about the rain in Leetown,’ she said, checking the dark spots appe
aring ever more quickly on her dress.
‘What’ll that be?’
‘Run!’ she screamed out.
And, as the rain thickened to sheets, that was what she did. She heard Kevan laugh out loud behind her, then saw him overtake her as she approached the footbridge.
‘Sure, a soldier can’t be beaten by a girl!’ he shouted back as he ran on to the bridge, his boots thundering across the wooden boards.
And then Aileen felt her body twist to the side. She saw the full ashen sky and gasped in shock as her back thumped on to the ground. She was now still, and could feel the rain pattering on to her face, washing off her carefully applied make-up, most likely soaking her pretty dress too. But there was something else: a burning, throbbing pain shooting across the outside of her ankle.
She lifted up her head and shoulders and stretched a supporting hand out on to the cold sand. She started to get to her feet but shrieked in pain and instinctively reached to her ankle. For a few seconds the pain kept her body rigid. It was then that she felt a warm hand on her back and heard a voice.
‘Looked nasty,’ the voice said, heavy and strong enough to be heard above the hiss of the rain.
She glanced up and saw Niall, the water dripping off his cap like a leaky gutter. In his hand he had one of her shoes – minus the heel.
‘No wonder you stumbled and fell over,’ he said. ‘Right nasty thump it looked. Are you all right?’
‘I’m just grand. Sure, I’m forever breaking my ankle. Twice a day, sometimes.’
‘Would you like me to—’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
She glared at him for a moment. Was he trying not to laugh? Either way, he ignored her words and went to put his arm around her. He hesitated for a moment, then removed his cap, shook the excess water off and placed it on her head.
Then she felt herself being lifted, one of his arms under her back, one under her knees. For a second it was uncomfortably close for a man she didn’t know, and she knew Daddy would certainly have disapproved. After that second the pain in her ankle took over and she shrieked again.
