to be done in the haybarn but, paradoxically, rather than putting Pat in bad humor and causing him to mutter, “Ah to hell with this!” or “Will I ever be bloody well finished here!” it had the effect of actually putting him in quite good humor. Indeed, he was smiling as he swept up all the dirt and dust and manure, wiping his brow and saying, “Have to make sure we have the place nice and tidy for them, don’t we? After all, there was nobody liked sheep better than me and Mammy. We used to look in at them every day when we’d be coming home from gathering the pussyfoots!”
As he swept vigorously, every so often he would pause and lean his elbow on the top of the brush, staring out the window as if it were a small television, upon which was displayed the image of Pat’s younger self in his green knitted V-neck pullover and short trousers, standing holding his mammy’s hand as they stared in through the wire fence at the sheep masticating quietly in the afternoon sunshine.
“Look, Ma!” Pat heard his younger self say. “Aren’t they lovely? And the way they look at you!”
He shivered a litde as he saw his mother smile.
“Yes, Pat,” she said, squeezing his fingers a litde, “they are.”
She squeezed his fingers again and crinkled up her nose a litde.
“Little fluffies!” she said.
Pat giggled and placed his hand over his mouth.
“Little fluffies!” he repeated. “Ha ha!”
At about half past three, all the work was done, and Pat set about preparing himself inside the house, polishing drinking glasses, plumping armchair cushions, and what have you. When he had everything completed to his satisfaction, he decided to treat himself to a litde nip of Bols Advocaat and sat beneath the window puffing on a cigarette and reflecting on recent developments. On the third puff of his cigarette, he was disconcerted by a small wave of melancholy which, unexpectedly, swept past within him, and he found himself thinking, “It’s a pity all the same that it had to be spoiled. That he had to go and spoil it. Because that seems to be what has happened really, isn’t it? O, you can say, ‘No. No, it isn’t’—and the pain you have in your stomach all the time now doesn’t come from everything being spoiled, it comes from something else. You can say it and keep on saying it but that’s only because you want it to be true. Simply because that’s the way you want it to be.”
A wisp of smoke grew from each of Pat’s nostrils as he contemplated the glowing tip of his cigarette and said, softly, “But it isn’t true. And deep down, you know it. You know it more than anything in the world.”
The sun was still coming through the branches of the trees like small shoals of arrows as Bat McGaw flapped along the road in his Wellingtons, guiding his flock of sheep with a straight and narrow switch and, tucked under his arm, a brown paper bag containing his ten-ounce bottle of “phwishkey.” As he came past the creamery, Bat had never been in better form. “Haw haw!” he chortled to himself. “What a laugh! God, but there’s some suckers about this town! Hup back! Ho! Whoa, boy! Get out of there, you effing bocketly melt of a God’s own hoor, you!”
The chastened blackface ewe withdrew from the culvert and complied.
Bat was chuffed to find Pat awaiting him at the back gate leading into his garden.
“Ah, there you are, Bat,” he said, extending his hand. “Isn’t it great to see such a stretch in the evenings?”
Bat had not expected such a display of friendliness and was somewhat flattered.
“It is indeed, Pat,” he replied brightly. “It’s always glad I am to see the back of that winter.”
“Oh now, don’t be talking!” replied Pat, taking his hands out of his pockets and rubbing them together. “Any how—let’s get these litde fellows into the pens over here in the haybarn so yourself and myself can sit down and have a right old natter!”
“Right you be, Pat!” answered Bat, now rubbing his hands together.
It took only twenty-five minutes before the rump of the last of the sheep disappeared through the door and into the haybarn. Bat wiped some perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand and said, “There we are now! Last leg of mutton all present and correct! Now you and me can have ourselfs a dacent drink—dealing