they’d have agreed on a woman for me. I’d be where I am now, free and single, and without the consequences of Sheila Reddy’s foolishness to deal with.”
“You’d just find something else to get mixed up in,” Cal says. “You’d get bored.”
“I might, all right,” Mart acknowledges. “How about yourself?” He squints at Cal, evaluating. “I’d say your mammy would have found you a nice cheerful young one with a good steady job. A nurse, maybe, or a teacher; no eejit for you. We’re not looking at any Elle Macpherson—she wouldn’t want you having the hassle of that—but pretty enough. A girl that was up for a few laughs, but no nonsense about her; no wild streak. And your daddy wouldn’t have given a shite one way or another. Am I right or am I right?”
Cal can’t help a half smile. “Pretty much,” he says.
“And you might be better off. You wouldn’t be halfway up a mountain with a banjaxed knee, anyway.”
“Who knows,” Cal says. “Like you say, it’s a mad world.” He realizes that Mart is leaning hard on his crook. His steps are jerkier and more lopsided than they were on the way up, or even at the start of the way down, and the lines of his face have tightened up with pain. His joints have paid for the journey.
The path gradually levels off. The heather and moor grass give way to tangles of weeds pushing in from the verges. Birds begin to chirp and rattle.
“There you go,” Mart says, stopping where the path leads between hedges into a paved road. “D’you know where you are?”
“Not a clue,” Cal says.
Mart laughs. “Head down that way about half a mile,” he says, pointing with his crook, “and you’ll come to the boreen that goes round the back of Francie Gannon’s land. Don’t worry if you see Francie; he won’t go telling tales on you this time. Just blow him a kiss and he’ll be happy.”
“You’re not heading home?”
“Ah, God, no. I’m off to Seán Óg’s for a pint or two or three. I’ve earned it.”
Cal nods. He could use a drink himself, but neither of them has any desire for the other’s company right now. “You did the right thing, taking me up there,” he says.
“We’ll find out, sure,” Mart says. “Give Lena an extra squeeze for me.” He lifts his crook in a salute and hobbles off, with the low winter sunlight laying his shadow a long way down the road behind him.
The house is cold. In spite of all his layers and all the exercise, Cal is chilled to the marrow; the mountain has burrowed deep inside him. He showers till his hot water runs out, but he can still feel the cold spreading outwards from his bones, and it seems to him that he’s still soaked inside and out with the rich smell of peat tainted with death.
That evening he stays indoors and leaves the lights off. He doesn’t want Trey to come calling. His mind hasn’t come all the way back inside his body yet; he doesn’t want her to see him until today has had time to wear off him a little. He puts everything he was wearing in the washing machine and sits in his armchair, looking out the window as the fields dim towards a frosty blue twilight and the mountains lose their detail to become one dark sweep at rest. He thinks about Brendan and Trey somewhere within that unchanging outline, Brendan with the bog slowly working its will on him, Trey with the sweet air healing her wounds. He thinks about how things will grow where his own blood soaked into the soil outside, and about his hands in the earth today, what he harvested and what he sowed.
Trey comes the next day. Cal is doing his ironing on the table when she knocks. Just from that tight tap, he can feel what it’s taken for her to stay away this long. Mostly she thumps that door like the whole point is to enjoy the noise.
“Come in,” he calls, unplugging the iron.
Trey closes the door carefully behind her and holds out a loaf of fruitcake. She looks a whole lot better. There’s still a big scab running down from her lip, but the black eye has cleared to a faint yellowish shadow, and she’s not moving like the rib catches her. She looks like she might have grown another half inch.