Wild Decembers Read online

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Joseph says, resenting the gall of a man new to the place coming to conclusions.

  “They’re not on the ball … None of you are,” Bugler says tauntingly.

  “The sooner you take that machine out of here, the better for all concerned.”

  “It will be out of here.”

  The look that passed between them so vicious then it might have been their two dogs, Goldie and Gypsy, in one of their sparring matches.

  * * *

  It was dark when the tractor was to be heard chugging out of the yard.

  “Good riddance,” Joseph said. All day he had been grumbling about this and that, a heifer that had got sick, a bill from the opticians that was astronomical, and his own yard a public convenience for Bugler. Earlier, when he saw her bringing out tea and sandwiches, he asked sarcastically why she had forgotten the lace tray cloth to go with it.

  “They must be frozen stiff,” she had said.

  Mattie, the mechanic, hadn’t come until after work, and they were out there working with torches, the engine stopping and stalling as it had in the morning, and then quite suddenly the sound of it no longer sluggish, strong, repetitive, chafing, ready to go again.

  When she came back in, Joseph asked if by any chance she had been inveigled to push the yoke.

  “You drank too much last night,” she said.

  “A showman … nothing but a showman … the way he hogged the limelight … up on the stage with the crooner … singing a song he only just learned. What does he know about the North or the South either?”

  “Someone put turpentine into the diesel tank … that’s why it wouldn’t go.”

  Bugler had showed it to her out there, pointed to the black-green spew of oil, the higher blades of grass leaky with it, and for some reason she had felt ashamed, as if it was their doing.

  “He makes waves and he makes enemies,” Joseph said, then drew his watch up close to his face to confirm the time the squatter had left.

  Much later she stood in the place where the tractor had stood. There was only the patch of trampled grass, the spew of spilt diesel, and a pullover which he had forgotten. She would miss it. It had been company. She would hear him at all hours doing things to it, making improvements to the inside. Once she was in her plantation, she’d gone out there to think, and when he passed by, it gave him a start to find her in the leafed darkness, on a bench. He asked her what the hushed border of flowers were and she told him that they were dahlias, deep-red dahlias.

  Dear Rosemary,

  I know you’re cross. The thing is, I work from dawn till midnight and after. You’d be surprised with the amount that there is to be done. Everywhere I look there’s another job, another problem, another. No time off. Today for instance was a drama. The tractor wouldn’t go. Someone poured turpentine into the diesel, one of those dear friends and gentle people who live on this mountain. It’s ten o’clock and I’m sitting down to my supper of leftovers. Don’t be cross. We will have a wonderful house yet, but everything takes time. I intend to go into farming in a big way so we will be rich. I miss my little ducky, especially at night! But it is better that my little ducky does not come until the spring, the daffodils and all that. Don’t ask about the weather. Rain rain rain. It’s dropping onto this letter. Your fiancé is builder, builder’s mate, carpenter, plumber, and farmer, but he is still your Shepherd.

  He signed it, read it over, and for some reason added, “Don’t expect miracles.”

  Where in Paris can you see a glass pyramid?

  What is the Swahili word for journey?

  Which county in Northern Ireland is known as the Orchard County?

  What nut is used in the manufacture of dynamite?

  Patrick H. Pearse led the 1916 Rebellion — what does H stand for?

  According to the Ordnance Survey, at what point does a hill become a mountain?

  Where did Michelangelo depict God’s creation of Adam?

  What chemical element is the sun partly made from?

  By the time they had got to round eight of the final quiz night, the tension and excitement had escalated, as those who supported Joseph’s team and those who supported the schoolteacher’s were at loggerheads, shouting each other down, some accusing Dunny, the quizmaster, of rigging, of favouritism, even nepotism. “What the hell is nepotism” came from the back of the room. It was because there had been a question as to which Greek god was conceived through a shower of gold, and with Joseph being something of a Greek scholar, he would know the answer easily.

  “Jesus Christ,” shouted one of the hecklers, but he was hushed. For nine weeks they had assembled every Tuesday, sat themselves at their appointed tables, joked, sparred, bit on their pencils, smote themselves for not knowing such and such an answer, and vociferously objected to questions such as how many windows in the vocational school or which classroom had a picture of Granuaile the pirate queen. Those who had dropped out along the way had been given consolation prizes of pottery mugs which they banged on the table to confirm or withdraw their support. Speculation abounded as to what the prize would be, the biggie, as it was touted. Some thought a cut-glass bowl, others in the know said it was massive.

  During the lull after the first batch of questions, Derek the barman passed around plates of sandwiches as a surprise gift. It was neck and neck. Joseph and Alfie, the schoolteacher, fighting it out alone because they were so erudite, those on their teams merely sitting there to lend moral support. Every chair, every stool was taken, and latecomers including Bugler had to be content to stand in the hall.

  Joseph was in his best suit and white shirt, with Miss Carruthers, the Crock, and Eily, the new bank clerk, beside him. The side of his cheek next to the fire was scalding, and he drank tumblers of water. His opponent, Alfie, had taken off his jacket and sat in his shirtsleeves, studious, ponderous, like a young cleric discussing some article of theology with his own group.

  “I went wrong over the emeralds,” Joseph said, embarrassed. The question had been which country exported the most, and mistakenly he had said Peru.

  “I tried telepathy,” Miss Carruthers said, her voice high, hysterical, and scolding. Despite the heat, she wore her fox-fur collar, and the little buttony amber eyes seemed to glare across at Alfie and the burly man with him, whispering in his ear. They were unpopular because they always came first in quizzes and at the debating societies. Always when they won they looked very smug and shook hands with each other several times, proud of how knowledgeable they were.

  “It’s neck and neck.”

  “Keep the cool.”

  “Deep breaths,” Eily said. She liked Joseph; she knew that he had come to the bank one morning to ask for a loan and had seen the bank manager privately.

  “I’ll be all right if the questions are classic or mythological.”

  “You’ll be all right … period.”

  They might have been in an examination room with the locked boxes being opened, so solemn did it all become. Dunny stood in front of the bar, arms folded, while Derek shouted for quiet — lads, ladies, lads.

  What is the biggest-selling brand of spirits in the U.S.A.?

  Joseph looked from one to the other of his group, every least muscle in his face tightened as he searched for an answer. Himself and his opponent caught each other’s eye and looked away.

  Give the name and age of the newest star in the firmament.

  When the last question was given, the crowd sat back, relieved, as if they had weathered some great hazard, and the two pieces of folded paper were handed over to Dunny, who withdrew to do his sums. Drinks were called for, with Derek trying to appear impartial and serving everyone in their right turn.

  When Dunny returned waving the sheets of paper in either hand, it was thought that the result must be a draw. He valued this moment, basked in his importance, thinking of the homework he had done, week after week endeavouring to find questions that had not been asked before. He looked from one c
ontender to the other. The celebrants now were restless, what with the room very warm, the glaring neon strips, and his scouting the faces, daring them to guess. Then, opening the home-made calendar in which he printed all the scores, he shouted out in a formal voice, “Table 4 scores 10.94. Table 5 scores 9.72.” There was clapping and cheering, people rushing across to hug Joseph, to share in his victory, drinks being sloshed from overfull tumblers, and suddenly the burly man getting himself up onto a tiny round table, calling “Objection … Objection.” The result, he assured them, was null and void due to a foul in the rules.

  “Name it,” Dunny said, piqued.

  “The last question contained two questions in one … That’s an irregularity.”

  “I make the rules … And I break the rules,” Dunny said, triumphant.

  “We want a recount.”

  “You can have it … He got both right and you only got one. He got Bacardi as the most popular drink and Protostar as the name of the new arrival.”

  “Jesus … Was it Bacardi?” Eily said, and lolled back, asking Derek to kindly bring her a Bacardi and Coke so that she could celebrate.

  “I chanced my arm on the Bacardi,” Joseph said.

  “Don’t be a crybaby,” Dunny said as the burly man refused to come down off the table. There were shouts and boos then, people asking for Maxie, the hotelier, to come forward with the bloody prize.

  “It hasn’t come yet,” Derek said, and was shouted down, all agreeing that Maxie was too bloody mean and so was Maxie’s missus, and why wouldn’t they be, being foreigners.

  When a car pulled up at a hectic speed, Derek jumped over the counter in answer to the horn being hooted repeatedly. The crowd waited, then Maxie in his chef’s hat and Mrs. Maxie beside him came in carrying something in a blanket. Mrs. Maxie turned out the lights as she always did when carrying a birthday cake or even a slice of birthday cake, while her husband followed slowly, singing some song from his own country. At first people speculated that it was a little piglet as Maxie found his way between the tables, opening the blanket a fraction, and then he stood before Joseph and the lights were turned on. It was a fawn greyhound with black spots like inkspots all over its body, its snout moist.

  “Cripes,” Joseph said, abashed.

  “The compliments of Heidi and myself.”

  “Oh, Breege,” Joseph shouted to Breege in the corner as if calamity had occurred to them.

  Then slowly Maxie pulled the blanket aside like a blazoned toga and stood the little hound on the counter for everyone to see. It looked so pristine, the fawn of its body fading into a paler fawn and the smudged ink markings the very same as if they were dripping, its eyes looking out at its new world and the column of people.

  “It’s too much altogether,” Joseph said then.

  “You mean Heidi and I can keep it?” Maxie said, and made as if to present it to Heidi. Derek, unable to hide his feeling for it, crumbled a few salt nuts from the end of a packet and set them down on the counter along with a saucer of water. The hound looked, sniffed, then decided on the water, and drank daintily, spilling out the last few drops. Its eyes were a pale green from which the darker pigment had been drained and they were shaped like almonds.

  “Boy or girl?” someone called.

  “Girl,” Cahill, the old man, said swiftly. He had known greyhounds all his life and he had bred greyhounds until they broke him, but he loved them still.

  “What will you call her?” someone shouted.

  Names were suggested, names that were usual for dogs, then fancy names, names of tennis players and film stars, and even one of a saint, which was booed out.

  “I’ll call her Cecilia,” Joseph said, turning to Miss Carruthers, who had been such a stalwart on his team.

  “Oh no,” she said, stricken with embarrassment and rising with tears in her eyes.

  “Why not call her Violet Hill … Where she’s come from,” Maxie said.

  “Is that okay, Breege?” Joseph said, then running his hand down the foreleg of the hound, he lifted one of her paws and brought his face close to it and christened her Violet Hill. The crowd applauded. Stroking the delicate bone of her back, he thought he had not felt so happy or so popular in years, maybe never. Looking at him Breege thought, He’s happy now … He’s proud, and looking towards Bugler in the doorway, she thought that he was thinking that too.

  “You’ll course her first,” Cahill said, and everyone waited and deferred to him, because he always kept silent until he had something to say.

  “You’ll help me, Cahill?”

  “I will so … We have to blood her … Let her taste blood, because that’s what she wants. That’s what they want.”

  “Is that what you want, Violet Hill?” Joseph said, and snuggled her to himself as if she were an infant, and felt her trembling within.

  IT WAS RUGGED TERRAIN, the tractor bouncing and hacking its way through a wilderness of briars and bushes, all tangled together, fighting for life, fighting for light, the branches scraping the bonnet, scraping her face, wisps of old man’s beard clinging to her hair, the wheels slurping in the mud, then spitting it off and ploughing forward.

  She sat in the back, swaying from side to side, a devil-may-care feeling reminiscent of being in the bumper cars at a carnival. Bugler had given her a rug, which kept slipping off her knees. She could have sat beside him, but she declined and instead chose the wooden trailer fixed to the back, and lay there bumping and dipping as the tractor either lurched in mossy ground or reared up when the wheels snagged in another freakish growth. The place smelt of dank, of leaf mould, of fungus, a place where none had ventured in years. He drove slowly and with a tremendous concentration. She could tell by his rigid back, the set of his shoulders, and the way his head kept swivelling from side to side to be prepared. Now and then he turned to look at her with the broad sweep of a smile, but she could not hear what he had said.

  It had come about by chance, her painting a gate, painting it silver because she was sick of how rusted it looked, and his going by and asking if she was having a party.

  “I wish I was” was what she had said and what prompted him to say, “Get in … We’ll go for a spin.”

  As they climbed higher, they could hear the sound of a river. It came as if from afar, wild and vigorous and whizzing, then the sight of it so thrilling up there in the emptiness, a deep amethyst-coloured, plashing river, clean and icy cold.

  They had got out and stood on the humped bridge to watch it, to marvel at the way it rushed along, so carefree.

  “I always thought rivers were green or brown,” he said.

  Through a lattice of trees there was the remains of a house, a cabin, weeds and grass sprouting from the roof, fruit trees and rose trees gone wild, entwined, disfigured, everything mutated, mutating, except for one little birch tree so spindly it looked like a lonesome ballerina.

  “My mother used to tell me about this place,” he said, amazement in his voice at having come on it. He went on to tell her how his mother used to walk up on a Sunday, all by herself, to get a biscuit, and one day when she went the woman was washing her hair in a basin and when she lifted her head up the long black stream of hair gave her a witchlike look. His mother thought the woman was going to a dance, but it was to the asylum she was sent.

  “What was her name?”

  “I’m ashamed to say I forget.”

  They looked at the little ruin, absorbed into and dwarfed by the brooding wilderness, and at the wild garden, the only testament to a woman whose name nobody remembered.

  In the river below, a salmon rose up out of the water, bowed like a bright sword thrust up into the air, then down in the water again and up again, glinting, playful.

  “That salmon has been all around the world,” he said.

  “Like you,” she said.

  The summit had the emptiness of desert, no trees, no birds, no shelter, a vista of dun brown, the two of them standing so close as if they had coalesced and his voice quiet,
ruminative, telling her how he had always wanted to come back because his mother had kept the memory of it alive for them and had instilled in him the certainty that one day he must go home.

  “Some of this was her dowry,” he said, and wished that he could have brought her back before she died.

  “What was she like?”

  “Lovely … She had a beautiful voice. There was a song she used to sing about a young girl in the grounds of a castle … ‘The Castle of Dromore.’ Maybe you know it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I’ll try and find it for you,” he said.

  “Do you feel you have come home?”

  “I do now, here … With you … But not otherwise. I’m not liked … They say I’m bad news. I don’t know why.”

  Without asking, he took off his jacket and draped it around her. “You’re freezing,” he said. A quick shiver passed between them, lonesome in its wake. Bending, he broke off a stalk of tough grass, ocherish in colour, and gave it to her. A braided keepsake.

  REENA IS IRONING HER HAIR, her cheek almost resting on the ironing board, ironing strip after strip of it as if it is a long garment, then smelling the clean soapy smell and envisaging the thought of him tossing it. The fire is on, the flames cracking and playing on the whitewashed walls, making funny-bunny shadows. They have opened a bottle of the tonic wine and put it in the hearth to warm, loot got from Desi the publican for a kiss in the back passage of the hall. Mad to see her garters. She has the Sunday ones on for Bugler, black lace with red rosebuds.

  Here in their little abode he will stand, in the middle of the floor probably, look around, screw up his eyes, and stroke his beard, surprised at how cushy it all is. They will have candlelight for that extra romantic touch. Her hair completely ironed, without even a crinkle, she starts to pin the organza bows and stands before the long mirror puffing out her pink cheeks as if she is blowing bubbles or balloons. She can’t stop kissing him in her mind, good kissing, wild kissing, not like the peck she gave Desi, with his stained teeth and his stained tongue, trying to make a dinner out of it.