In the Forest Read online

  Eily Ryan

  I WOULD COME HERE for the mornings alone. Everything fresh, sparkling, the fields washed after rain, the whole world washed. Daisies and clover and blue borrage springing up, and the young cattle on the other side of the fence, frisking, kicking their hind legs and their tails, as if they have taken leave of their senses. The apple and crab-apple trees are coming into flower, apparitions of white, cloaked in green.

  I went up the lane very early to give an eye to the ewes in Dessie’s field, like I promised him I would. They are due to lamb. There was a fox padding over the far field, out for its breakfast, and I wondered what I would do if it attacked the ewes. First it drank out of the stream and then crossed over, lifting its leg every other minute, and came at a trot to where I was. Its pupils are vertical like a cat’s. It’s the nearest I have ever been to a fox. A big heavy ewe was cropping the grass, and it stole up to her like it was invisible. It was sniffing, sniffing, when our Smokey came and charged it and chased it back over the stream and up the opposite hill, the pair of them ferocious, a chestnut coat and a grey coat savaging one another, then the fox vanishing into a burrow and Smokey coming back frothing.

  The nights can be long. My sister, Cassandra, says we won’t stick it in the winter, Maddie and me. We’ll have coughs and colds. We will stick it. We’ll wear loads of jumpers and thick socks, and anyhow, we have the summer to acclimatise. I leave the door open for the clean, fresh smells to come in. The house has had no one in it for years, so it smells mouldy, a reek of lime and damp mortar. Apple Tree House it was named.

  Up in Denny’s pub they said that a cobbler lived here once and most likely I would come upon odd shoes. I did find a bracelet in an old coal scuttle where someone must have hidden it. It polished up nicely. And I have Maddie gabbling away nonstop. He says the daftest things. He says this house is “yucky” and that we should go back to the “apportments.” That is his new big word. I say, “Wait until we have a bathroom and a tiled stove and a birdcage and a barbecue, just as in the garden of the ‘apportment.’” People think I spoil him, carrying him everywhere, little hulk that he is, but the field to the road is a swamp. I bought a lorry-load of chips to make a path and just stood there and watched them being swallowed into the mud as fast as they rolled out. The driver kept telling me I should have put big stones, rocks, in there first — “Ah, don’t let it get to you, missus.”

  Denny’s pub is two miles away. He keeps a roaring fire no matter what the season. He did all the smithy work himself, the fire grate, the fire irons, and the ornamental eagles on his piers. He has two washbasins that are a feature for tourists. The pedestal of one is a lady’s white porcelain legs moulded into black porcelain court shoes, and the other, in the gents, features a lady’s plastered protruding buttocks. He escorted me in to have a look at both. I wonder what they make of me. Anyhow, they’re all smiles. Once, he got a bit fresh and said that if I came at night I was to bring a change of underwear. Then to make amends he said he’d save me the sawn-off language some of them used.

  The townland is named after goats, except that there are only a few around. There is a herd of cattle and a reigning red bull. In the evening they all come to the fence and bawl and bawl, and Maddie bawls back. He pretends to be thwacking them with his stick and shouts some important new word. He’s the cop and they are the robbers. The “apportment” is a place we rented for two weeks before getting in here. More scenic than here, a lake, reeds, water birds, and cruisers that docked in the evening. Two city slickers invited Cassandra and me over for cocktails. The one with designs on her wore a ridiculous T-shirt, and mine took me on a tour of the inside, pointing to the amenities, the bunk beds, en suite, the cocktail cabinet, and the Scandinavian shower. He suggested that he and I motor over to Dromineer for a bite. Cassandra was miffed at being left outside and came in and said how naff that he served martinis from a plastic glass, then stormed off in her very high heels. She says it’s the Mars in her.

  Apple Tree House was waiting for me, or so Billy said. He had it on his books for nearly a year, but kept it for someone special, and that someone turned out to be me. He had to bring a slash hook to fight his way through the briars and the brambles across the field, the house itself and the chimneys smothered in ivy and different trees. He put a crowbar to the door and pushed it in, and as it heaved and creaked back, a startled bird flew out at us, a blackbird, a she. We’d scared it. It was then Billy said he would help me to find a loan, and he did. Cassandra always says that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

  The day we moved in, Billy helped us, brought things in his van, and Maddie and me drove on ahead in my little daffodil-coloured Beetle, hooting to let the world know. We had to park the car where the three grassy roads meet and walk across, lugging stuff. Billy brought an old sofa, pink velvet, with the nap worn down. I had cups and saucers and cutlery in a bucket. Maddie carried a lump of bog oak that Cassandra found for us. As we came around the house, there was our visitor, a dog on its haunches, a grey coat, the grey of steel wool, and the most pitiful expression in its eyes. It as good as spoke to us. Its coat had been burnt in places. It isn’t a frisky dog, it’s a thinking dog, and its hind leg is buckled so that it hops like a kangaroo. It took to us, jumped on us, yelped to make us welcome, and followed us up and down the lane while we got our bric-a-brac. Billy said it had been through fire, so we called it Smokey. It goes off nights and often isn’t back until noon, but back it comes, because it wants to be here, guarding us.

  We broke a bottle of red wine to launch our arrival. Billy only conked its neck and then strained it through a bit of muslin Brigit had left me to put over the milk. It’s a little muslin cap with coloured beads dangling from the edges. Billy knew all the history of the house, told us how a shopkeeper in a market town owned it and thought he would retire here but found it too isolated, too run down. At times he believed that people had broken into it, on account of finding ashes in the grate and a mattress and an old torch. Billy made me promise that I would get a phone, said a woman alone would need it, shouted me down when I said an army of spirits protected me. He won. We sat outside on a broken wicker seat, Maddie hugging his new friend Smokey, us drinking, and the light of the sky changing colour, from one deep blue to another, like paint on a palette.

  “Jaysus,” Billy said when he spotted an old coal scuttle with jewellery in it. It was a silverish bracelet showing through the black dust, and he took it out and wiped it in the grass.

  “Jaysus … it’s the crock of gold,” he said, spitting on it.

  “Jaysus,” Maddie said, and we laughed and laughed, and it was the beginning of everything, the buds on the trees, the birds scudding about in some sort of spring daftness, in the occasional gusts of wind, falling blossom, the very same as if someone had emptied confetti from a packet.

  Twice I went indoors just to look at the letter again, to look at the words, to drink them in: Thinking of you across two seas. Should one be upside down because of a beautiful crazy red-haired girlfriend. I guess yes. Your Sven.

  Homecoming

  SERGEANT WILEY is fixing up his hedge to keep McCarthy’s bloody bullocks out. It is a straggly hedge, hawthorn, privet, and different kinds of greenery tangled in together and sprouting with a will of their own. McCarthy’s bloody cattle have made big holes in it and keep coming in, time and time again, and trampling on his wife’s lawn and his wife’s flower beds. With a slash hook he loops down the high branched bits, and with his hands knits them together and packs them into where the gaps are.

  Coming across from the graveyard, he sees a youth in a bomber jacket carrying a rucksack, but he pays no attention, thinking him a hitchhiker on his way to the hostel. He has knelt to drive a peg into the ground when suddenly there is a face peering at him from the other side of the gap, the tongue forking in and out in obscene and apish mockery. The two faces are level, the one laughing, the other rigid with surprise, realising it is O’Kane, who should be in England, doing time
for mugging an old lady.

  “On maternity leave, are you?” O’Kane says, chuckling.

  “Sure now, I retired from the force over eighteen months ago … I potter … I’m fixing my hedge because it’s necessary to keep stock in or keep stock out.”

  “How far is the town?”

  “You’re looking across at it … you can see the smoke from the factory chimney.”

  “Didn’t expect to see me, did you?”

  “So you’re home for a bit.”

  “For keeps. They were shit scared of me … my negativism. Define negativism,” he asks, then answers in a gallop, “An act of striving against all attempts at contact, ergo, when a hand is offered I withdraw … Give me your hand.”

  The sergeant puts his hand through the gap, and the grasp is deadly, rage emanating and pulsing from it. Their faces are so close he can smell onions off O’Kane’s breath, and him raving: “The inmate’s behaviour is not likely to attract much publicity because of relatively minor offences, although it should be noted he is Irish. Reasons for refusing food, wants to die. Has no one to double up with. Sister, father, stepmother, staff all cunts. Fifteen minutes surveillance on wings C and D necessary. Shat in cell. Refused Mass visit. In padded cell for management purposes. Blood potassium fell. Laughs abnormally. Resents changing milieu. Changing milieu … You’re the bastard that had me put away … that started it all.”

  “It was for your own good. You were wild.”

  “Jail made me a man.”

  “I expect it did.”

  “And a monster. It’s a mismatch between us now and it’ll all end here,” he says with a fiendish laugh, then vanishes sprite-like.

  The sergeant, still kneeling on the ground, feels not the damp grass but the sweat pouring through his vest and the corkscrew vein on his temple throbbing.

  “It’ll all end here.” He keeps repeating it as he gets up and goes into the house to phone the barracks, to warn them that the Kinderschreck is back to persecute them.

  Druidess

  DECLAN HAS COME to do the roof for Eily. Eager, rake thin, a cigarette at the side of his mouth, he is carrying something precious in a piece of cloth which he lays on the table with a certain ceremony. His sculptures. They are polished figures in black wood, embracing couples, a goddess with pendulous breasts, and a warring goddess holding a sceptre.

  “Someone said you’d be interested … hope it’s not cheeky. Bog oak … very ancient, over five thousand years old, petrified, I think they call it. It’s how coal is made … What d’you think, missus?”

  “They’re lovely.”

  “Say hello to them. This is Druid at Dawn, this is Morrigan the Bloodthirsty, and that’s Diarmuid and Grainne, lovers that died together.”

  “And who is this?” Eily asks, picking out a figure whose hands are folded chastely across her chest.

  “Ah, now … she’s my favourite … little Lena. She must be the loneliest child that ever lived. Came from a bog five thousand years old. You don’t mind that I brought them to meet you.”

  “Not in the least. What’s your name?”

  “Declan … but I changed it to Shiva after I went to India,” and he winks and fiddles with an assortment of silver earrings in his left ear.

  “What was India like?”

  “Most intense experience of my whole life … great soul … great dignity … and the dancers, Jesus, their whole personality dances.”

  “Well, we’ll have to do a bit of dancing up on the roof, Declan.”

  “Jaysus, the roof, the roof. I’ll tell you what, missus, miss, I went up there yesterday evening. I got the loan of a ladder, and I tell you, there are piles of slates missing. That’s not the worst bit, it’s the joists … they’re like pulp, sawdust. You could puff them away in your hand.”

  “Oh no.”

  “It’s an old house, you’ve got to remember that. Empty for years … rotting.”

  “I can’t have a whole new roof, not this year anyhow.”

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll patch it up, we’ll put tarpaulin inside and we’ll paint it with pitch and we’ll get some new slates and tuck them in under the old slates, seal them with a bit of lead for the time being.”

  “Will that keep the rain out?”

  “Well, there’s always buckets, I’ll bring a good supply of buckets. One question … what made you settle here?”

  “Back to nature,” she says with a hoot of laughter.

  “Mystical … gorgeous.” He grips her hand, apologises for the dirt, says it’s on account of being a carpenter, a stonemason, a barman, a sculptor, and a small-time farmer.

  “A barman!”

  “I do weddings … me and my friend. We bring the barrels and we draw pints all night. I love weddings … I’m mad for them. Great craic, great singing … so if you’re thinking of tying the knot, give us a shout.”

  “Have you a girlfriend, Declan?”

  “Not exactly. There is a girl that kind of showed interest … Muriel.”

  As they are talking, Maddie comes whizzing in, puts down his big stick, and stands and stoops like an old farmer, one elbow on the table, looking at his visitor, sizing him up.

  “So what do you do?” Declan says.

  “I’m kept going … I make walls, I make lakes, I dig drains, I’m run off my feet,” Maddie says, affecting a worn voice.

  “That’s terrible altogether,” Declan says.

  “But wait till I tell you … I met a man up at the ash tree and I’m after buying a tractor from him. I gave him ten pounds for it. I sat up on it and I drove it home.”

  “Go away.”

  “Yep. I have it up by the crossroads. D’you want to see it?”

  “I’ll see it in a minute … I’ll have my tay first. Why don’t you have a cup?”

  “No time … I have to get my potatoes in … I’m always first with the spuds … June the twenty-ninth,” and he goes out running, shouting, “Duncan, Duncan.”

  “Who’s Duncan?” Declan asks.

  “Someone he’s made up … they have battles.”

  “Great little lad.”

  “He’s dying to be five … that’s his big agenda.”

  “What’s your big agenda, missus?”

  “To cut this bloody hair, to shave it all off. The plumbing here … well, it’s primitive, a tap outside in the yard.”

  “That’s kind of exotic, though …”

  “When will you be able to start the roof, Declan?”

  “It’s like this … I’m freelance. I work for a fecker over in the mills and he’s a right bastard, but the long evenings are coming in and I’ll be home while it’s bright and I’ll be down here … Mr. Fixit. Do me a favour, don’t cut that hair.”

  Dusk

  DUSK, and the figure on the roadside barely visible. He is thumbing. What with the baby and being late, Moira Tuohey thinks not to stop, but suddenly O’Kane throws himself in front of the car and she has to pull on the brakes so as not to run him over. “God Almighty, I could have killed you,” she says through the window. He is a young fellow in a bomber jacket with a rucksack, and he is holding an apple and an orange in either hand.

  “Let me in,” he says in a tough voice.

  “I’m only going a mile down the road.”

  “’Twill do.”

  She feels nervous but realises she has no choice. She has to get out on account of it being a two-door car and the baby is strapped in the front seat. As he jumps in the back, she notices a wooden handle jutting from inside his jacket.

  “I hope you’re not going to hit me with that,” she says.

  “Hardly … a nice lady like you.” Something about his speech along with his stare unnerves her. His speech is too slow, too clumsy, as if he has not spoken to anybody in a long time.

  “I’m only going to the next town,” she says, determined to be breezy, businesslike.

  “Is that baby teething?” he says, and leans forward and tickles the baby und
er the chin.

  “Don’t wake him, he’s only just gone off.”

  She notices how fidgety the passenger is, tapping on the back of the seat, looking out one window, then another, continuously wiping the mist off them and muttering to himself.

  “What’s worrying you?”

  “The guards are after me,” he says quite flatly.

  “For what?”

  “Robbery … I have to find somewhere to live. Do you have a sofa?”

  “Oh, I don’t live around here at all, I’m just back for a visit. Tell you what … there’s a caravan site about two miles from here. It’s supposed to be very nice, very clean.”

  “I’m a loner.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “O’Kane. Mich.”

  “Ah. My mother knew your mother,” she says, determined now to get on friendly terms.

  “Bastards. They said my mother was treated for depression … she was never depressed. She loved me. She knit me a jumper.”

  “You’ve been away?”

  “I was in jail in England … They wire you … They put wires on you and then they prod you the way they prod cattle.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “That’s why my fucking head is not good … they wanted my brain for experiments.”

  “Are you on your way home?”

  “Pigs. It makes me mad the things they say around here about my mother.”

  “Don’t mind them … they gossip. That’s why I moved … My husband and I, we have a little business farther west.”

  “Do you sell helmets?”

  “No.”

  “Pity. A helmet is good cover for the face. I’m thinking of going to France for the summer … after I’ve done a few people.”

  Her driving is reckless because all she wants is to get to the town and stop outside the chemist and pretend she has to get medicines urgently for the child. She has already rehearsed exactly what she will say, rehearsed unstrapping the harness, and in her mind has lifted the child out and run to safety. She won’t even put up a fight if he insists on taking the keys. It’s an old car and Jason will understand when she describes the look in the man’s eyes, the fidgeting, the crazy talk.