on a light, there she’d be at the window …”
The words hung in the air as if each one was ringed with fire.
The turfman seemed to take half an hour to draw his breath. Then he lowered his head and said, “I’m sorry. I’d best be on my way. I knew I made a mistake coming here. They never liked the Ardee people about this town.”
He lifted his bag of turf and placed it across his left shoulder.
“Well—good-bye, mister. I’ll go on down to the station so and be off about my business. I hope I didn’t trouble you too much.”
Pat gulped.
“The station?” he whimpered.
The turfman contemplated his blackened thumbnail and nodded.
“Aye. I want to have a few words with the sergeant, you see. About doing a bit of digging.”
Pat’s skin grew clammy all over as his eyes instinctively traveled—as two small cameras whose lenses came to rest upon a particular spot adjacent to a laurel bush.
“Digging?” he asked, hesitantly, and somewhat hoarse.
“Aye. There’s a bog below in Ardee full of turf. But I need a permit, you see. Aye. Well—I’d best be off. I have my ass round here at the back where he’s been standing all this time. Isn’t he a patient soul? Good man, Neddy.”
Some moments later, he was gathering up the frayed rope which was tied around the ass’s head and leading the sad-eyed donkey down the lane toward the main road. But before he reached the elm tree, Pat found himself crying out, “No! Wait! Turfman—please!”
Both animal and hawker of peat hesitated.
“Eh?” he called back.
“Why don’t youse stay the night?” cried Pat. “I mean, like—it’s a long way to Ardee from here!”
The turfman shook his head.
“Oh, we couldn’t do that, now. The sergeant is below waiting for me.”
“No! Please!” Pat pleaded. “We can put on a big roaring fire and make caraway cake! Griddle bread! Toasted griddle bread—wouldn’t that be nice?”
The turfman scratched his head and said, “Now I don’t mean to be a class of what you might call ungrateful—but you wouldn’t be lying to me, would you? You wouldn’t be trying to make a cod of the Ardee man, would you?”
Standing there in a shaft of evening sunlight, Pat thought, “Oh no! Now why on earth would we do that when all they do is come about your own private place with stupid, droopy-eyed animals! Oh no, why Neddy, we’ll have to get him a mouthful of hay too, after we’ve bought some of your shitty old bags of turf!!”
Words which he did not utter, of course, or give the slightest indication of ever having harbored. Instead, rubbing his hands and buoyantly crying, “Absolutely not! Please! Please accept my invitation—both of you!”
Which, happily, they did, with the result that that very evening they found themselves as he had promised, devouring large slabs of hot, butter-soaked griddle bread and reclining beside a nice roaring fire, with Neddy giving all his attention to the hay that Pat had liberally forked for him into the plywood crate that had once housed Jaffa oranges. Pat smiled as he considered the industriously masticating jaws.
“He likes it, doesn’t he, turfman?” said Pat. “He sure does like that old hay!”
The turfman beamed.
“Oh indeed and he does! The Ardee asses like their dinner, sure enough! They’d ate you out of house and home if they were let, Pat!”
Pat handed the donkey another handful of hay.
“There you are,!” he said. “Come on now—eat up! Eat up, you auld divil you!”
There can be no doubt but that there is something idyllic about the surroundings in which Pat McNab resides—the spacious and well appointed if somewhat cobwebbed rooms and fabulous whitewashed outhouses could not but be the envy of many in these property-coveting days, not to mention the stables. Especially the stables, indeed, which in days gone by housed all the trusty steeds which ferried gentlemen in their galloping pursuits of unfortunate foxes. In the month of September, there is something particularly peaceful and poignant about the house and its surroundings, and if a visiting tourist or even just casual stroller, perhaps, happened to be passing by, they would be hard-pressed not to produce a camera and take any number of photographs to record the scene for posterity. Thoughts which occupy the mind of Pat McNab as he stands by the window once more, peering out through the curtain now that some months have passed and all is quiet again and the telltale creak of the garden gate announces no more unwanted callers. “By