The world outside Casey’s was quiet again. Was that it? Had she just realized that nothing lay in her future except bidding goodnight to the same old faces every evening, for the rest of her days? That with the satisfaction that came with being in charge of The Angler’s Rest public house in Crumm, came the realization that that’s all she might be? Ever? That far from visiting exotic cities in distant countries, far from working in plush hotels and an exciting and varied career, she might be stuck in Crumm for the rest of her life, placing orders and totting up ledgers until her long, dark tresses were silver, and there was no one left to remember how she had once been a young girl with dreams and plans outside of Crumm and The Angler’s Rest? Peggy couldn’t remember a time when her heart felt so heavy. She felt like standing up at that moment and walking away. Leaving Crumm and heading for anywhere else.
But where? She had no one to go to. Her college friends were almost all working abroad now. And anyway, she hadn’t been good at staying in touch with any of them when she had moved back to Crumm. And they hadn’t stayed in touch with her.
She thought of Frank, and immediately chastised herself. What was she like? Dressing up with kohl eyes and her pearl necklace, pretending to herself that it wasn’t on the off chance that he might have appeared tonight. And he hadn’t. And why would he have? She’d been fooling herself, thinking there was more to their afternoon walk by the lake than there actually was. What would a man like Frank Ryan see in a girl like her? He had a life and a career and probably a girlfriend in Dublin. She’d been a fool, reading more into his soft tone and probing questions than there was. He was a detective, for God’s sake, she thought, chewing her nail. He was supposed to ask questions.
Peggy looked down at her hands. The skin on her fingers was dry and rough from washing glasses and shifting kegs. Her nails were in varying stages of bitten and broken. What would any man see in her? Maybe being stuck forever in Crumm was all she deserved. She shoved her hands into her skirt pockets out of sight.
‘Tough night?’
She jumped with the fright. Partly because she hadn’t heard the man approaching in the darkness, partly because she immediately recognized the strong, assured voice just feet away from where she sat.
Frank.
‘Hello.’
Hello. Really? Was that the best she could do? She squeezed the hairclip in her pocket.
‘Eh, I’m sure Jerome would serve you inside,’ she said. Then she remembered she was talking to a Garda, and she looked at her watch. ‘Eh, I mean, you know. If you wanted him to.’
‘Relax, Peggy.’ Frank smiled at her and walked slowly over to where she sat. The pallid, second-hand light thrown from old sash windows of the bar gave him an almost ghostly appearance. ‘I’ll leave the after-hours drinking criminality to Garda O’Dowd. I’m sure he hasn’t much else for doing. Ordinarily.’
She laughed nervously. ‘Yeah. Poor Michael has never been so busy, that’s for sure. Although there was the day last June when the Leaving Certificate students built a bonfire out of their school desks down at the bleachers. That had him occupied for a day or two.’
Frank smiled. ‘I’ll bet it did.’ He was standing right next to her now. She had to strain her neck to look up at him.
‘May I?’ He pointed to the seat next to her on the bench.
She was suddenly very aware of her stomach. ‘Of course. Sure. Yes.’
Frank sat down, and the old bench creaked under them both. He leaned back with his legs splayed in front of him. He exuded a confidence she could feel. His hands were clasped in front of him, and he surveyed the darkness before them.
‘It’s a lovely night,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the bushes and trees that separated the front of Casey’s Bar from the wilderness and the lake beyond.
‘Yes.’ Peggy coughed. ‘It is.’ She was very conscious of the denim-clad leg that was so close to her own bare knee. He was actually here. Sitting next to her. He had come.
‘Still busy inside?’ Frank glanced back at the bar, and then out in front of him again, as if he really didn’t care about anything that might be going on inside.
‘Yeah. Saturday night, you know. I had to get out for a breath of air.’ She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them again. ‘Saturdays are always busy.’
‘I remember that,’ he said. ‘I grew up in a pub too, you know.’
Just then, the door opened, and Jerome’s head appeared.
‘Are you coming back in or … ’ He stopped abruptly.
‘Jerome,’ Frank said without standing.
‘Detective. You’re still here? Not gone back up to Dublin?’ Jerome came a little further outside and stood sulkily by the door, his arms crossed.
‘No,’ Frank said, unmoving. ‘Still here.’
Jerome looked at Peggy. She wondered if he could see the pleading in her eyes.
‘Right,’ he said after a moment. ‘Well, when you’ve rested yourself Peggy, you might come inside and help me get these guys moving. Some of the visitors look like they’re in for the night.’
But then Peggy saw him hesitate, just for a moment. His eyes flickered from her to Frank and back again.
‘You know what? Never mind. I’ll manage. Frank.’ He nodded quickly at the detective and disappeared back inside the bar without another word.
Peggy smiled to herself. ‘No harm in letting him cope now and again,’ she said, half to herself, half to Frank. He smiled at her. She shivered.
‘So you grew up in a bar you said?’
‘Yeah. Are you cold?’
‘No.’
She shivered again. Frank looked like he didn’t believe her, but he said no more about it.
‘My father has a pub in Salthill. He owned it with his brother, but his brother’s dead now.’
‘Oh.’ Peggy suddenly saw Frank in a different light, although she wasn’t sure why. ‘And you never thought of staying on there? To run it?’
‘No.’ Frank’s response was quick and emphatic. Peggy thought she felt him regret his tone, but neither of them said anything. ‘We never lived there. I have a sister,’ he said. ‘No brothers. We lived a little further out west. I worked there summers and at weekends, of course, but then I joined the guards, and that was that. I was never going to take it on. They never expected me to. Anyway,’ he looked at her, ‘my father’s still in good health. Thank God. He doesn’t need me there. He’s well able to manage it himself.’
Peggy nodded. As it should be, she thought.
Frank looked off into the distance again. ‘Maybe one of my cousins might take it on one day,’ he said.
‘Not your sister?’ Peggy said with a smile.
Frank laughed. ‘Oh, no. My sister’s not the type.’
He turned slightly towards her, and Peggy thought she might spontaneously combust. Or at least throw up.
‘She wouldn’t have the temperament for it.’
Peggy knew that she should make some light-hearted comment about his idea of the type of woman who would run a bar, but she didn’t want to spoil the moment. Because Frank’s tone, and the way his eyes softened when he spoke, made her sure he wasn’t being derogatory. Quite the opposite.
They sat in silence for a moment. Peggy imagined him turning suddenly in his seat and putting his arm around her shoulders. She imagined his face right up near hers, his breath on her lips. She imagined him kissing her, his lips strong and firm against hers, his arm pulling her to him, his stubble scratching her cheek. She could almost imagine what it would be like, how he would taste, how she would surrender under his strong embrace.
‘’Night now, Peggy.’ She was startled from her reverie by the three Maher brothers leaving the bar, the two younger ones a little worse for wear. Fergal smiled at Peggy and tipped his head at Frank.
Peggy knew she was blushing. ‘’Night lads. Enjoy your day tomorrow.’
A few more regulars filed out of the bar, nodding their thanks to Peggy. She wished they’d all either stay or go.
She didn’t want them disturbing her chance to have Frank to herself. She saw him look at his watch, and clasp his hands together again on his lap.
‘Were you busy all evening? Have you finished for the night?’ She wanted him to stay here with her. To keep talking to her as he had been.
‘Ah yeah. I was waiting on a call back from Washington, actually. They were checking up on the dog tags for me. There’s quite a time difference.’ He looked at Peggy as if she might not understand.
‘Eight hours,’ she said.
He looked surprised. ‘Yes. Eight hours. Well anyway, they’re looking into Mr. Maxwell for me. I was hoping to hear tonight, but looks like it might be the morning now.’
‘So they’re American?’ Peggy asked. ‘The dog tags?’
‘Yeah.’ Frank glanced at her. ‘It would appear so.’
‘Wow.’ Peggy didn’t know why it mattered, but she couldn’t help thinking how strange it was that the girl had on the tags of an American soldier. She had assumed they had belonged to an Irishman.
‘Anyway, I should know more tomorrow.’
‘Right.’ Peggy examined her fingers again. ‘So you’ll be here tomorrow?’
‘I’ll be heading back up to Dublin in the morning.’
‘After Mass?’
Frank laughed a little. ‘Yeah. Maybe. After Mass.’
Peggy wanted to slap her own face. She could sense that he was about to leave, could almost hear the words coming from his lips, I’d better be off, so goodnight now, Peggy, sorry things haven’t, you know, worked out, it’s been nice being here with you, but hey, you know how these things go …
‘So can I tempt you to a nightcap?’
She heard the words as though someone else had spoken them. She had thought them all right, but she had no recollection of actually asking her brain to send them to her mouth. But they were said now. She might as well go with it.
‘I realize it’s too late to sell you a drink.’ She looked at her watch again. ‘But I don’t believe there is any law against offering you one free of charge. As a … ’ she took a shallow breath, ‘as a friend.’
Before Frank had a chance to answer, some more customers exited the bar. Fishermen, visitors to the area unfamiliar to Peggy, who walked past the couple sitting on the bench outside Casey’s without even noticing them. She watched them stumble off into the night, arguing about the direction back to their lodgings. Then she stood and looked down at Frank.
‘Sure if I’m not imposing,’ he said, and Peggy released the breath her lungs had been holding for what felt like several minutes.
‘And your brother won’t mind?’
‘Huh.’ Peggy pushed against the door. Something about the familiar weight of it, the feel of the thick layers of paint under her hand, instilled a confidence in her. This was her door. The door to her pub. She had put that last layer of paint there, covering the previous layer that had been put there by her father, obscuring it, superseding it. This was her pub now, and she was inviting her guest in for a drink. And it felt good. ‘Of course he won’t mind,’ she said. And at that moment in time, Peggy didn’t care whether Jerome minded or not.
SIXTEEN
Peggy kept her head high as she walked in through the door ahead of Frank, although she could feel the edge of her bravado as she scanned the bar for any reaction to their entrance.
The room had thinned out considerably. The Delaneys were busy putting their musical instruments away, swaddling them like a mother might a child in cotton and felt. Half-finished pints sat on the table next to them. Enda O’Shea sat on a stool just adjacent, silently watching the brothers at their task, an absent-minded smile on his lips, his crossed legs swaying to the memory of music that had ceased. Bernie O’Shea was turned in her seat, clearly gossiping with another woman, but she stopped speaking at the sight of Frank. She laid a hand firmly on her husband’s shoulder and drained the glass she was holding. Peggy could guess that she was disgusted with herself for being caught by Frank drinking after closing time. Cow, she thought. She’s never in that much of a hurry to leave when it’s only me calling time. Peggy took an exaggerated look at the clock on the wall for added impact.
‘Goodnight now, Mrs. O’Shea,’ she called across the room. Bernie O’Shea’s face reddened as she glanced up at Frank who was making his way towards the door leading to the toilet, seemingly oblivious to it all.
Peggy went behind the bar and began pulling a pint. She ignored Jerome who had been clearing glasses from tables and was leaving them on the counter before her. Peggy noticed that most of the remaining locals were now standing and draining their glasses. None of them seemed too keen to hang around while there was a detective on the premises.
Frank reappeared, pausing for just a second before approaching the bar and settling himself up on a high stool. Peggy watched without comment as himself and Jerome silently acknowledged each other.
‘We could do with you around here every Saturday night,’ she said, tipping her head at the door where there was a minor crush of punters leaving. ‘I’ve never seen them so keen to get home.’
‘We’re not great for business, on the whole.’ Frank observed the full glass of stout Peggy left before him. Then almost as an afterthought, he leaned over on the stool and reached into his pocket.
‘Oh no,’ Peggy said a little too loudly. ‘We don’t entertain paying customers at this time of night. You’re a guest in our home now. No charge.’
She saw Jerome raise his eyes to heaven and shake his head, but she decided to ignore him. Her arms instinctively reached for the empties he had left on the counter, but then she stopped. Sod him. He could clear without her. She did it often enough. She turned and looked at the rows of bottles sitting innocently enough on the shelf in front of the mirror. It was unusual for her to observe them as a customer might, and she rarely drank anyway. But right now, that was what she wanted to do. She wanted to sit and have a drink. With Frank. She wondered for the briefest of moments about the type of girl that Frank usually socialized with. What she might drink. Something more sophisticated than might be found on Casey’s shelves, no doubt.
‘Too much choice?’
He was looking at her reflection in the mirror.
‘Oh, you know. Coals to Newcastle and all that.’ She grabbed a glass and held it under the neck of the upturned bottle of Cork Dry. Coals to Newcastle? Did that even make sense?
‘I’m actually not a big drinker.’ She opened and poured a bottle of tonic into her glass. ‘It’s not a great pastime for a publican.’
She hated the word ‘publican’. Why had she used it? Publicans were old men with rolled-up shirtsleeves and comb-overs. Publicans were not modern, self-sufficient women with business plans, and marketing models, and … and menus. She took her drink and walked around to Frank’s side of the bar. She sat on a stool next to him, crossing and then uncrossing her legs. Sitting this side of the bar felt odd, and she was unbearably conscious of Jerome’s raised eyebrows.
‘My father is a card-carrying Pioneer,’ Frank said. ‘He took his pledge at his confirmation, and he never touched a drop since. He won’t even eat my mother’s sherry trifle. Although,’ he smirked at Peggy, ‘I wouldn’t eat it and drive a car afterwards either.’
Peggy laughed far too loudly. She took a sip of her drink, feeling the fizz make its way down to her stomach. She also felt the accompanying flush in her cheeks. A good flush. A happy, confident flush. She took another sip.
‘No ice and lemon?’ he asked.
She looked at her glass in mortification. ‘Well, we do, of course, I didn’t … ’
Frank laughed. ‘I’m only teasing. My Da got one of those ice machines. The ones that automatically pop out ice cubes?’
‘It’s on my list,’ she said. ‘After the telly.’
‘I wouldn’t bother. Gets jammed up more often than not. It’s more of a hindrance than anything else.’
Peggy nodded, trying to look earnest. In reality, she had just
noticed that she could see both of their reflections in the mirror at the back of the bar. She tried to observe them from a third party’s perspective. Did they look like two people who might have a drink together? A couple even? She didn’t think he looked much older than she was. A little older, sure, but that was a good thing, wasn’t it? And although he was sitting facing the bar, his eyes fixed on his emptying glass before him, his body was turned ever so slightly towards her. Yes, if some stranger were to walk in here right now and see them sitting together, there was nothing to suggest that Peggy and Frank were not a couple, enjoying a quiet evening in their local bar.
Although he did look very fair against her dark head of hair. And his tanned, warm skin contrasted strongly to her own pale countenance. Not that her cheeks were pale. Christ, they were the colour of the gin bottle label now, Peggy thought. She pressed her glass against her left cheek, wishing she had put the damned ice-making machine higher on her list of priorities.
Suddenly, her reflection was blocked by Jerome.
‘So, you must be kept busy these days in Dublin?’ His eyes were fixed on Frank as he rinsed glasses under a running tap. ‘I’m surprised they could spare you to attend to something so trifling as a dead body in Crumm. What about all the law-breaking hooligans in Dublin that need corralling and locking up? On a Saturday night? It must be anarchy up there without you?’
Peggy’s jaw dropped. Not again. What was he doing?
Frank took a drink from his glass. ‘The guards are only interested in arresting genuine lawbreakers,’ he said. His tone was flat. Uninterested. Like he had had this argument a thousand times before.
Jerome put down the two glasses he was holding. ‘Yes. And you might think, what with all the IRA lads hanging around, making real trouble, that the Garda Síochána would concentrate their resources on real criminals.’
The tap was still running, but Jerome didn’t seem to notice. Frank stayed quiet, his eyes focused on his pint glass.
‘What would you say, Detective?’ Jerome said in a softer tone. ‘What would you say if I told you the story of a man, innocently walking home one night past Saint Stephen’s Green with a friend, not overly intoxicated, not being noisy or violent in any way, simply walking home after a night out with his friends. What would you say if I told you that an unmarked squad car drove up next to where those two men were innocently walking home, and that one of your colleagues got out, and, without any explanation, shoved that man into the back seat of that unmarked squad car, and drove off with him? His friend was left standing on the footpath with no idea what had happened to the man, until he shows up at their flat the next morning with a black eye and a split lip? And on that very same night, Detective, while your colleagues were busy torturing an innocent man, the IRA were busy abducting and knee-capping some poor fool on the other side of the city. I needn’t tell you, sir, what they are capable of. It’s no time since they gunned down one of your own in cold blood, in broad daylight. Now tell me, Detective. Wouldn’t you say that An Garda Síochána’s time might be better spent trying to stop real criminals from committing real crimes, as opposed to exhausting their resources abducting innocent people as they walk home from a night out in town?’ He took a step closer to Frank and leaned over the bar towards him. Frank didn’t flinch; he kept twisting his glass on the coaster in front of him. ‘Well?’
The Lake Page 12
