It was freezing cold. The trees swayed and bent at the front of the house as the wind began to pick up and bite. Conor buttoned up his coat and walked toward the front of the house. His Doc Martin boots squelched through the muddy yard.
He could see a light on in the front window. He stumbled across what felt like a cat as he reached out to tap the shabby front door. No reply. He knocked harder and waited again. Still no reply.
Maybe there was no one home, but the lights were on and the curtains weren't drawn. Conor peered through the net curtain. Inside he could see Sarah sprawled out asleep on a couch with a book and a newspaper lying on her stomach. He could also hear music playing.
He admired Sarah's form for a minute and then rattled the window. Sarah sat up slowly, scratching her neck and rubbing her eyes. She stood up, turned off the music and walked slowly towards the door, stopping to put her feet into a pair of boots. She cautiously opened the door, calling, “Hello? Who is it?”
“It's me. Conor.”
“Oh, Conor. Come in.”
The front door opened into an average-sized farmhouse kitchen. The room felt cosy and warm, with a strong smell of burning timber coming from the old, smoke-stained stove. In front of the stove was a battered old orange-coloured couch with a multi-coloured woollen throw hanging loosely over it. Beside the stove was a ripped leather armchair with black tape holding the leather together.
On one side of the kitchen sat a brown table with three chairs. The table was untidy, with dishes, mugs and papers strewn across it. To Conor's left were a sink, electric cooker and a few creaky old cupboards, which looked like they'd been there since the sixties. Two of Darragh's paintings were leaning against the wall next to a door leading to a scullery.
“Sorry, Conor. Jaysus. I was asleep. I must have dozed off reading. Come over to the fire and sit down. I'd say it's feckin' bitter cold outside,” Sarah said.
Conor walked towards the leather armchair.
“Watch that tin of paint beside the chair. Darragh had great plans to paint the kitchen; I was nagging him to do it for months. As you can see he made a start at it.” Sarah pointed to the wall beside the window. Half of it was painted a lilac colour and the rest was a dull lemon.
“He gave up after a few hours and said he had a sore wrist. Sore head more like. Well, the tin of paint is sitting there for the last two weeks. He reckons he's too busy to finish it,” Sarah said, smiling.
“Darragh was never a man for decorating or DIY,” Conor replied.
“You can say that again. You should see the state of the bookcase he put up in the sitting room; it's collapsed five times.” Sarah laughed. “Take off your coat, Conor. Will you have a cup of tea or coffee?”
“Tea please. No sugar and plenty of milk,” he responded.
“Darragh went for a walk with the dog about two o'clock. It's dark now. He should be back soon,” Sarah said as she went over to the kitchen area to make the tea.
Conor stared at Sarah as she stood filling the kettle at the sink. Her long, dark, wild and wavy hair hung down her back. She was dressed in a woolly purple jumper that fell over a pair of tight-fitting, faded blue jeans. She was tall and athletic looking, with the stature of a model. She seemed out of place in the shabby surroundings of the kitchen.
The pair chatted for an hour about old times in Galway and what each other had been up to over the last few years. At about five o'clock, Darragh walked in and stood up to warm himself against the stove.
“Conor, how are you?” Darragh roared at his old mate. “Sorry I'm late. I got held up in Castlederry.” He winked slyly at Conor, who smiled knowingly back.
“Were you boozing?” Sarah asked.
“Me? God no. I was in saying a few prayers in the church. Here, smell my breath.”
Sarah moved over towards Darragh and he pulled her towards him and gave her a big sloppy kiss. “You have, you bugger. You bloody stink of whiskey.”
“Ah, no, Sarah, it's communion wine.”
“Well, maybe we'll all have a shot of this,” Conor said, placing the bottle of whiskey he'd brought with him up on the kitchen table.
“Good man, Conor, you never let me down. Sarah, get the glasses,” Darragh cheered.
Sarah obediently got up and went to the cupboard.
“Well, Conor baby, how's the craic? How's it hanging today?” Darragh asked as he downed a glass of whiskey.
“Ah, I'm still a bit rough, but I'm sure I'll get over it.”
“Sure ya will. You'll be right as rain after a skin full of drink tonight.” Darragh laughed.
The three old friends chatted for hours. Time passed quickly and it was twelve o'clock before they knew it.
Darragh passed out on the coach. Conor and Sarah had a mug of coffee.
“So you and Darragh seem happy enough. You like it here?” Conor asked.
“Yea, it's grand. It's a bit quiet though. I miss Galway sometimes, the bit of buzz about it. It gets a bit dark and miserable here during the winter, especially when Darragh is in the pub. It gets a bit lonely. I miss my friends in Galway and Donegal. Some of the locals here are a bit weird, especially that John McKeever guy who lives down the lane. He gives me the creeps sometimes. He called up here a few nights when Darragh was out. He never calls when Darragh's here. He's a bit freaky,” Sarah said as she shook herself as if a shiver had just run down her back.
“So what are your plans for Christmas day?” Conor asked.
“Myself and Darragh are going up to Donegal tomorrow evening to my parent's house. We'll probably stay there till after Stephen's day.”
“That sounds good,” Conor replied.
“I hope so. Darragh and my dad don't really get on that well.” Sarah paused and stared into space for a few moments. She sipped her coffee and smiled over at Conor. “So how's things for you in London? Any romancing? You must have plenty of girls over there. You always had a couple on the go in college. You were a real ladies' man.”
Conor blushed. “No, nothing serious. Sure, you know yourself, a bit of a fling or a shift every now and then, but nothing you could call a romance.”
“Ah, that's a shame, Conor. The right woman will turn up yet.”
There was an awkward silence and to break it, Conor got up and said, “God, it's getting late. I better be heading off.”
“Don't be driving home. You're half-scuttered!” Sarah laughed. “Stay in the spare room and I'll make up the bed.”
“Ok, maybe you're right,” Conor said. “I don't think I could find my way around the roads near here. It's hard enough in the daytime when you're sober.”
A half an hour later and Conor was asleep in bed in the spare room. He woke up around half two and heard Darragh falling over something in the kitchen as he staggered to bed. Conor dozed off again and woke up around nine.
It was barely light outside. He got up, got dressed and went into the kitchen. He rinsed out a mug under the tap in the sink and had two cold mugs of water. Sarah and Darragh were still in bed, so he decided to leave a note for them.
Thanks for a good night's craic and for the bed. I will see you when ye come back from Donegal.
All the best, Conor
Oh, and have a happy Christmas.
After placing the note on the table, he went through the back door off the scullery and out into the yard. The daylight burnt his eyes. He got into the car, which was freezing.
He put on the heater and scraped frost off the windscreen, then sat in the car for a few minutes as the frost slowly melted on the windscreen. As he sat there, still half-asleep and half-drunk, he looked around the yard outside Darragh's house.
He spotted what must have been Darragh's car. The car was parked hidden in behind an outside shed. Darragh probably had no tax or insurance on it and so was hiding it away from the Guards' view, Conor thought, not that the Guards ever called up this way.
It was a Blue Toyota Starlet. One of the front headlights was missing and the wing beside it was driven in. It l
ooked like a fairly recent bang, because grass and muck were still stuck to the side of the car. Conor smiled to himself and laughed, picturing Darragh driving home from the pub some night and getting too close to a ditch. Typical Darragh, he thought to himself, doesn't give a fuck.
Parked out at the front of the house was a newer, cleaner looking car, a blue Ford Mondeo. Probably Sarah's car, Conor thought.
Finally, after five minutes, the frost had cleared from the windscreen and Conor headed back for Ballinastrad.
Chapter IV
In the Bleak Midwinter
In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Traditional, Christina Rossetti
Saturday, 24th December 1988
When Conor arrived home, it was around ten o' clock. He had a mug of tea and a slice of toast with his father in the kitchen and followed that with two aspirins washed down with two more aspirins an hour later. His head still felt muggy and he shivered as he sat in the freezing cold kitchen. He decided to go back to bed for a few hours because he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before.
Conor lay in bed tossing and turning and couldn't get to sleep. He looked around his old bedroom. The walls were wallpapered with big red and blue flowers that made him dizzy as he looked at them. The wallpaper was covered in many places by posters and pictures he had collected out of music and football magazines.
Staring straight at him was a poster of Liam Brady in his Arsenal kit. As a teenager, Conor had been an Arsenal fan and he'd idolised Liam Brady. He'd gone to Highbury a few times when he first went to London, but by then he'd begun to lose interest in football.
Next to Liam Brady was a poster of the cover of Thin Lizzy's 1979 album, Black Rose. Conor had spent many an evening up in this room listening to Black Rose. He knew every song and scratch on the record. He'd often stood in front of his mirror imagining he was Scott Gorham, throwing cool shapes on stage and checking out the chicks in the front row.
Across the room was a poster of Debbie Harry from Blondie. She'd been every Irish adolescent male's dream in the late seventies.
Conor lay in bed for a couple of hours and drifted off to sleep for a while. When he woke up, he realised it was Christmas Eve and he still had a few presents to buy. He had a quick wash and borrowed his father's car to pick them up. Aftershave and a jumper for his dad, even though he must have ten bottles of the stuff in his bedroom, and a necklace for the mammy.
He drove to the nearby town of Rathalgin. As he strolled around the town, the streets were buzzing, full of last minute shoppers. In the old market square, a tall fir tree was decorated with brightly coloured lights and they appeared magical as they danced in the cold, frosty wind. Music poured out of shops; the Pogues' Fairytale of New York echoed across the street from a speaker outside a music shop. It was a beautiful but poignant song that clearly evoked the joy, sorrow and desperation felt by the Irish who were dispersed across the Earth.
As Conor continued his journey through the busy streets and shops, he watched a drunk stagger by him. The man must have been in his early fifties. A fag hung out of his mouth. Oily, greasy hair was hanging lank across his forehead. His eyes were red, bloodshot tired and he was dressed in a filthy, dark brown suit. His grey tie was loosely opened around his neck and the collar of his shirt was bent up. The crumpled shirt was covered in Guinness stains and his black shoes were worn and bleached in piss stains.
Conor thought about how many times he had seen such a character in Irish towns, or in Irish pubs in London. So many of the Irish who had emigrated to England in the fifties as bright, enthusiastic young men, excited to start a new life had now, thirty years later, ended up like the drunk on the street in front of him. Their life stories were etched into their faces by too much booze and fags, too little sleep, and too little hope on a path of self-destruction.
After looking through a few shops and picking up some of the presents, Conor decided to stop off in a pub for a mug of tea and a toasted sandwich to get a break from the shopping and the cold.
The pub was called O'Flaherty's and it was fairly full, as the evening crowd was coming in. Several men sat at the bar as they listened to well-dressed returning exiles telling their bullshit tales of their epic adventures overseas. A pretty blonde barmaid sat behind the bar on a stool, looking bored as she listened to the bar chat and tried to watch the Australian soap 'Neighbours' on the television on the shelf at the end of the bar.
She caught Conor's eye and they smiled awkwardly at one another. She was attractive, but it was hard to figure out her age; she could have been eighteen. Maybe older. She was tall with a slim figure. Perhaps she dreamed of being with the bronze, blonde beach hunks holding their surfboards on the television. She probably would end up there someday, like thousands of others who had started new lives in sunny Australia.
The eighteen bells of the angelus rang out on from the T.V. to remind the customers and the barmaid that they weren't on a bright, sunny, sandy beach in Australia but instead in a nation choked by the iron grip of the Catholic Church. A nation that was very slowly releasing itself from the church's grip, finger by finger, thanks to a slightly more enlightened younger generation. It was six o'clock and time to make a move.
Conor went back out on to the street, wrapped his long black coat around him and finished off his shopping. He returned home about eight o'clock and spent Christmas Eve with his parents, even managing to drag himself up to midnight mass. This was a novelty for Conor, but it felt right being there with his family, listening to the carols and watching the young kids with bleary eyes who were dreaming about what Santy would bring them in a few short hours.
Conor always enjoyed the innocence and goodwill of Christmas. It was a time to be with family and it reminded him of the magic of Christmas twenty years ago, when he was a young lad. Christmas Eve then was full of wonder and anticipation, a bright beacon in the dreariness of Irish winter. A time of celebration, a time of hope for renewal.
Whether you were a Christian or not, the days around the Winter Solstice had been celebrated in Western Europe since pre-Christian times. It marked mid-winter for the ancient people, who had celebrated that they had survived the dark, cold season and the days would slowly start to get longer and warmer. The light would soon return and there was hope spring would come in a few months, and that was worth celebrating. The solstice celebration would keep their spirits, morale and strength up so they could face the last two winter months, which were usually the harshest.
Chapter V
The whole of the Moon
Monday, 26th December 1988
Around four o'clock on Stephen's Day, Conor needed a break from the reheated turkey, sprouts, ham and Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner films. You can only watch The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven so many times. He decided to go out for a few jars and hopefully meet up with some of his old mates who might be knockin' about.
Conor headed into O'Brien's Bar. It was a small, old-style bar and there was a good crowd gathering in for the evening's craic. A traditional group played in the corner and everybody seemed to be in good form, all probably glad to get a break from the goggle box at home. Conor got chatting to a couple of lads he used to play football with ten years previous and they reminisced about past glories on the pitch and winning the junior county final against Glengarrif in 1980. The pints of stout were cool and creamy and they flowed down easy.
Time passed quickly as the conversation moved away from achievements in football to other conquests at Xanadu's Nightclub in Kelly's Hotel in Rathalgin. The lads informed Conor they had a taxi booked for ten o'clock to take them to that very fine aforementioned establishment, and they tried to twist Conor's arm to go with them to try to relive past adventures. Conor made his apologies and said he would give it a miss for now, but he might meet them there later on.
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Around ten, Conor's old school mates left O'Brien's, singing The Boys Are Back in Town as they half-staggered out the door. Conor sank the end of his pint of stout, followed it with a shot of whiskey and decided to cross over to Sheehan's for a change of scenery. He went into the lounge and was surprised to see Darragh sitting up at the bar.
“Darragh, good man,” Conor said.
“Conor, how's it goin'?” Darragh asked as he got off his barstool and smiled to greet his old buddy. “Will ya have a pint?”
“I will. I thought you were meant to be in Donegal 'til tomorrow.” Conor grabbed the free stool beside Darragh at the bar.
“Don't mention the war. I had a big bloody row with Sarah's auld fella. He's a fuckin' bastard—I can't stand him. He doesn't think I'm good enough for his little princess. Thinks I'm a layabout and a bad influence. Well I've had enough of his shite. I couldn't bite my lip much longer and I let him have it last night.”
“Jesus, did you hit him?” Conor asked.
“No, I didn't, just gave him a piece of my mind. Ended up in a big bloody shouting match. I left Donegal early this morning.”
“How's Sarah? Is she okay?”
“Yea, I think so, but she's upset as fuck and mad as hell at me. She stayed up there and said she didn't want to see me again.”
“God, sorry to hear that. Ah, you'll patch things up. It will work out,” Conor said as he sipped his pint.
“I hope so. God, I don't know anymore—maybe I'm better off on my own. Perhaps Sarah's auld fella was right; maybe I'm just no good for her. I'm not a good person, Conor.” Darragh was silent for a few minutes, staring into his pint glass and then he held his face in his hands and sighed. “I'll be back in a few minutes—I'm going for a piss,” he said, getting up from his stool.
It wasn't like Darragh to get so down in himself; he usually brushed things off fairly quickly. He was taking this row very badly, Conor thought.
The Whole of the Moon Page 3
