by Tara Heavey
‘But I haven’t done anything.’ ‘You’re a lovely girl – isn’t she, Hannah?’ Hannah’s smile seemed to agree that, yes, I was indeed a lovely girl.
‘We won’t take up any more of your time. You must be busy. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you in the post office very soon. Goodbye now, and God bless.’
And they left.
Was it time to go home yet?
Chapter Seven
It was with sweet relief that I entered the front door of Power’s Cottage that evening.
And then I thought of the rats.
The first thing that caught my eye was a scruffy note on the kitchen table. It was scrawled on the back of an old delivery docket.
Vermin dealt with. Shouldn’t have any more trouble. Have filled in all obvious points of entry. Traps set in attic. Radar deterrents in all rooms. Call me if any more problems. Invoice sent to Tyrone Power & Co. in Dublin.
S. Murphy
Nice one! Thank you, Mr Rat-Catcher (excuse me – Mr Pest-Controller). I could kiss you!
What was that about radar deterrents? I looked around the room and spotted a strange, grey plastic object plugged into the wall. Patricia had told me about these earlier on: they emitted a high-pitched noise, which humans couldn’t hear, but which was meant to drive rodents insane and send them packing. On further inspection I discovered that there was one in every room, including the bedroom. Relieved, I threw myself onto the bed.
I was awoken some time later by a loud knocking noise. I sat bolt upright on the bed. My initial thought was that the rats had returned with a vengeance. Then I realised that someone was knocking on the front door.
A visitor? For me?
Who could it be?
It was dark outside. The clock said nine. I got up and searched groggily for my shoes, which were exactly where I had kicked them – one underneath the wardrobe and the other on top of the blanket box. I slipped them on and adjusted my skirt, which was back to front.
I could see through the glass that there was a man at the door. I didn’t recognise the back that was presented to me. Perhaps it was Billy the Axe Murderer.
‘Hello, who’s there?’
My visitor turned around. How could I not have recognised that broad expanse of back? Jack Power smiled his devastating smile, and I was devastated.
‘Oh, come in, Jack!’ I simpered. (Stop simpering!)
Jack was laden down with an armful of logs. ‘The mother sent me with wood for the fire. She reckoned you’d be cold, up here in the hills. She thought I should warm you up.’
Did he mean to be suggestive, or was it just my filthy mind?
‘That was very nice of her. You can put them down here.’ I gestured to a free corner beside the wood-burner. He unburdened himself and turned to face me, massive hands on narrow hips, slightly out of breath.
‘Well, what do I get for my trouble?’ He smiled flirtatiously.
Anything you like.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ The Queen of England couldn’t have been more proper.
‘Cup of tea would go down nicely, thanks. And I even brought something to go with it.’
He reached into his pocket. Instead of the packet of Toffee Pops I’d been expecting, a mostly-full bottle of Paddy emerged. Yippee!
‘Do you always carry a bottle of whiskey around with you?’
He winked. ‘Only for special occasions. Put the kettle on, girl, and I’ll get this fire going.’
Seemed like a good trade.
I watched Jack furtively as he expertly built up the fire. As he squatted in front of the wood-burner, I checked for bum cleavage while pretending to check for milk in the fridge. His overalls had been replaced by relatively clean jeans and a navy fleece. His brown, wavy hair was as tousled as before. I noticed that his eyes were an intense bluey-green: Fisherman’s eyes, I thought. As I fussed around the kitchen, organising tea and biccies, I realised that his overtly masculine presence in the house made me feel all feminine and fluffy. The big strong man comes in from a day’s physical labour, bringing fuel for the fire. The man stokes the flames while the woman prepares the food. I was disturbed by how nice it felt. Call yourself a feminist? Maybe he had some shirts I could iron.
In no time at all, the fire blazed triumphantly in the hearth and I settled down gratefully before it; my body temperature had dropped several degrees due to my impromptu nap. Jack sat down beside me on the two-seater. Did he have to sit so close? I felt embarrassed by my proximity to this man, who was, let’s face it, a total stranger. I crossed my legs away from him and tugged involuntarily at my skirt to make sure that it covered my knees. He seemed unabashed by the physical closeness – seemed to be relishing it, even. He grinned at me as he held the uncapped whiskey bottle above my mug.
‘Say when.’ He started to pour.
‘When!’ I shouted, just as my cup was about to overfloweth.
He laughed. ‘Are you sure you don’t just want to empty out the tea and I’ll start again?’
‘No, this will be fine, thank you,’ I said primly.
He laughed again as he sloshed a generous measure of whiskey into his own mug. What nice dimples you have.
I held my mug aloft. ‘Cheers.’
‘Bottoms up,’ Jack agreed, as he clunked my mug with his own.
There was a moment of strained silence, filled only by the merry crackling of the logs on the fire. I broke it.
‘I don’t suppose you happen to know who that woman in the photo is?’
‘Do I what? That would be my granny, Mary Power. She used to live here.’
‘Really? That’s a lovely idea, keeping a photo of her in the cottage. What was she like? She looks pretty formidable.’
‘Oh, by God, she was. Ruled my grandfather with an iron fist. A true matriarch.’
Hmmm, I mused. I wouldn’t mind being a matriarch myself one day. I had a feeling I’d be very good at it. My family were always telling me how bossy I was.
‘Did you know her well?’
‘God, yes. I spent half my childhood here. Granny used to mind us a lot of the time. It wasn’t easy for my mother, running the pub and raising seven boys.’
I bet it wasn’t.
‘She was great, was Granny Power. Wouldn’t let you away with a thing, mind you. And she always smelt of roses. That’s what I remember best about her. Every time I smell roses I think of her.’ He looked away, seemingly a little embarrassed by this revelation. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what do you think of the cottage?’
‘Oh, it’s gorgeous,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I just love the way it’s been done up. I’d really like to get the name of the interior decorator.’
Jack, who had been in the process of taking a gulp of his Irish tea, spluttered it down his fleece and all over the coffee table in front of him. He narrowly missed the edge of my skirt. I jumped and stared at him in surprise. Then I realised that he was laughing. His laughter was replaced by embarrassed coughing as he leapt up to get a cloth.
‘Are you all right?’ I was concerned. Usually, even I didn’t poison my visitors with my refreshments this early on in the proceedings.
‘Fine, thanks. Jesus, that was pretty disgusting. Sorry about that. Here, lift up the tray and I’ll wipe it up properly.’
I lifted objects out of his way as he cleaned up the spillage as thoroughly and efficiently as a professional housewife. I was temped to offer him a pinny (or perhaps a bib).
‘Now!’ He finished his clean-up with a flourish and a satisfied smile. Then he looked down at his fleece and frowned.
‘I’ll have to do something with this too.’ He pulled the garment over his head in one swift movement, and as his T-shirt rode up I was treated to a flash of his delectable six-pack. He caught me checking him out and I looked away quickly, but not so quickly that I didn’t notice a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. He did that on purpose, I thought.
He went over to the sink and started rinsing out his fleece, his back to me. He was wear
ing a plain grey T-shirt. I thought disloyally of the way the sleeves of Paul’s T-shirts flapped around the tops of his arms like flags. Jack’s biceps were barely contained beneath his sleeves. And those buns! Like two ripe peaches in a handkerchief. By God, I could do him some justice! I was reminded of the scripts for bad American porn movies (I’d once seen a documentary about them):
Heroine: Oh, Chip, have you been working out?
Hero: Come over here, honey, and find out for yourself!
I was still trying to come up with a cunning plan to get him out of the rest of his clothes (nudge his arm next time he took a sip, so he’d spill the rest of the tea; throw the contents of my cup into his lap while pretending to look at my watch; turn on the central heating, so that the combination of that and the blazing fire would force him to strip off; hell, just throw him fully clothed into the shower) when the real man, having completed his ablutions, sat down beside me again. Was it my imagination or was he sitting closer this time? The hairs on his arm brushed gently against mine, making me shiver.
It was my turn to spring to my feet. ‘Music! Why don’t I put on a CD? What would you like to hear?’
He looked up at me and smiled a slow, lazy smile. ‘Something mellow.’
Mellow, I thought as I made my way to the stereo in the bedroom. Mellow. Does he mean something smoochy? What did I have in my extensive (not) collection that was mellow?
Paul always jokingly called my motley selection of CDs ‘the Best-of collection’. Almost every single one was a ‘Greatest Hits’ or ‘Best of’. I reasoned that this made practical good sense: what was the point in buying an album unless you were sure you liked at least seventy-five per cent of the songs on it? Anything less was a pure waste of money. I was aware that this attitude made musical purists such as Paul shudder as if someone had just walked across their graves, but I was unapologetic. I pushed away all further uncomfortable thoughts of my boyfriend (boyfriend? what boyfriend?) and, instead, concentrated hard on my musical selection.
Tina Turner. Prince. The Beatles. The Eagles. Fleetwood Mac. The Best Love Songs Ever (definite no-no). The Soppiest Lurve Songs in the Universe. Chaka Khan. Hits of the Screaming Sixties. The Greatest Soul Classics of All Time. Now That’s What I Call Music 4, 6, 17 and 43. I was uncomfortably aware of just how uncool, unhip and downright middle-aged my collection was. At last I happened upon a copy of Blur’s Greatest Hits that I had acquired accidentally on purpose from Paul (who?). It didn’t occur to me at the time that it was perhaps a tad disloyal to play this in the circumstances (what circumstances? I wasn’t doing anything).
I found a song I liked, about a bloke from the city who goes to live in a house in the country, and turned the volume up several notches before returning to Jack.
‘That all right?’
He screwed up his face. ‘I don’t really like Blur.’
‘Okay. Let’s try something else.’
I went back into the bedroom and began calling out the names of CDs at random. He stopped me at George Michael’s Greatest Hits, Volume I.
‘Oh, that’s a great collection. Play that.’
A man after my own heart! Paul always went mad when I tried to play this particular CD.
I returned to the couch and, without looking at Jack, took a swig of my ‘tea’. I winced. I think my mug had received a top-up while I wasn’t looking. The bad American porn movie was still running in my head:
Heroine: Are you trying to get me drunk, kind sir?
Hero: Do I need to, young miss? (Probably not.)
I took another sip. Not only did I have a very pleasant warm strip running from my throat to my heart; a nice, fuzzy sensation was also beginning to develop across the crown of my head. I looked across at Jack. I thought his eyes looked a little blurry around the edges too. There’s nothing like a few home measures to get the party started.
‘What were you laughing at, anyhow?’ I asked him.
‘Hmm?’
‘When you spewed whiskey-tea all over the furniture.’
‘Oh, that.’ He smiled enigmatically and took another sip. ‘I know the name of the interior designer.’
‘Really? Who?’
‘Jack Power.’
In my less-than-alert state, it actually took me a few seconds to work out who he was talking about. ‘Jack Power? Oh, you mean ... Oh!’
He nodded.
‘You’re kidding! You?’
‘The one and only.’
‘By yourself?’
‘By my own self.’
‘Wow! I mean, I don’t mean to sound so amazed,’ I said, sounding amazed. ‘It’s just that you’re – well, I mean, you’re a farmer.’
‘A man can wear many different hats, you know.’ This time he was definitely slurring his words.
I pondered this revelation for a while.
‘You’re not really a typical farmer, are you?’
‘A typical farmer being?’ His eyes seemed to lose their good-humoured haze, and he was no longer slumped but sitting upright on the edge of the sofa. Oops. Now I’d done it.
‘I mean ... well, you know – the usual image of a farmer is, like....’
I trailed off, unfortunately not drunk enough to be immune to embarrassment. Jack continued to look at me, long and hard.
‘You mean when I came here tonight you expected me to have a piece of straw sticking out of the side of my mouth.’
‘No, not at all, that’s not –’
‘Perhaps you’d be happier if I said “Begorrah and begob” every now and then.’
I was silent. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. His eyes looked kind of angry to me. He got up. Without taking his eyes off me, he slowly eased off his boots. Then his socks. A shiver of fear and anticipation prickled up and down my spine. Then he started to roll up his trouser-legs. What was he doing?
Then, to my amazement, he planted his feet wide apart and gripped the material of his T-shirt just below his shoulders, as if holding on to an imaginary pair of braces. And then he started to sing.
‘Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O,
And on that farm he had a cow, E-I-E-I-O.
With a moo-moo here, and a moo-moo there,
Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo-moo ...’
On every ‘moo’, he kicked his leg up in the air. This was so unexpected that I dissolved into a fit of giggles. Oops, looks like our Lainey’s drunk again....
He stopped singing and joined me on the couch, laughing somewhat manically. We eventually managed to calm down. Jack leant across and wiped away the tears that had formed on the outer corners of my eyes with his left thumb. His right arm had somehow ended up across the back of the couch, practically around my shoulders. Perhaps this would be a good time to tell him I have a boyfriend, I thought.
‘You have a lovely laugh, you know.’
Tell him!
‘And lovely hair, too.’ He stroked a thick strand of my hair, which had long since escaped from its sedate ponytail. I gulped. I appeared to have lost all power of speech. His face drew even nearer to mine. I was nearly knocked sideways by the hot smell of alcohol off his breath. He must have been drinking whiskey neat for some time.
Then, without warning, Jack leapt off the seat and started pulling on his socks and boots as if he was late for an urgent appointment.
‘I have to go, Lainey. Thanks for the tea.’ He had a strange, almost wild look in his eyes.
‘That’s all right. Thanks for the whiskey. And the logs.’ I knew I must look and sound confused. I followed him to the front door, which he was already holding open with a strange, hunted look on his face. Had I done something wrong? Maybe he just had to be up early to feed the chickens.
‘See you.’ He bent to kiss me on the cheek. I moved my head at the wrong moment and he got me on the ear by mistake. Before I had the chance to consider whether to kiss him back or not, he was out the door and in his jeep. Surely he wasn’t going to drive home in that state? As the car skidded
on the gravel of the driveway and disappeared with a screech down the hill, I realised that, in fact, he was. I also realised that his father had probably taught him how to drive. What could I do? I could hardly invite him to stay the night.
As I staggered into the bathroom, I could have sworn that Mary Power threw me a disapproving look. Leave me alone, Mary. Somehow managing to stay upright, I hiked up my skirt and pulled down my tights and knickers. As I peed, I kicked the tights off my feet and sang happily to myself. ‘And on that farm he had a pig, E-I-E-I-O. With an oink-oink here....’ I collapsed into drunken giggles again.
I got up and flushed, then slumped over the sink and looked up into the mirror. Oh, no! Horror of horrors! I had panda eyes! I must have rubbed at them in my drunken state and smeared mascara everywhere. No wonder Jack had run off in fright. I looked like a zombie. And as for the hair ... my fringe had morphed into a parody of an Elvis quiff.
For the second time that night, I went to bed without getting undressed. I knew I should probably spend some time beating myself up about my behaviour – which had been entirely inappropriate for someone who was supposed to be a girlfriend – but instead I pulled a Scarlett O’Hara and decided to think about that tomorrow.
Chapter Eight
Fortunately, I overslept, so I didn’t have time to agonise about Paul the next morning. I was too busy agonising about the fact that I was going to be late for my first morning in Ballyknock District Court. Luckily, the courthouse was directly across the road from the office, so I just had time to grab the relevant summons and charge over.
What a dive! I’d been in nicer garages. The courthouse consisted of one massive, high-ceilinged room. I was to find out later that there was no heating and no toilet – lack of facilities seemed to be a common problem in Ballyknock. The judge’s raised seat was high up at one end of the room, and beneath this was what looked like a giant’s dining-room table. This was where the solicitors and court reporters sat. At the back of the room were a few rough benches for hoi polloi – clients, criminals, kids on school trips and nosy members of the public. To the right, another set of benches held various members of the local constabulary. The first people who caught my eye were the two gardaí who had come to my aid on the Night of the Rats. As I came in, they nudged each other and whispered to their colleagues. A few of them started to smirk.
