cracked tenor with surprising volume, jaunty songs about girls who are all the prettiest in town, with some of the words missing. Cold air streams through the open windows, and the clouds are breaking up so that stars and darkness whisk dizzyingly across the windshield. At every pothole the car soars. Cal figures either they’ll get home or they won’t, and joins in on the choruses.
“Now,” Mart says, pulling up with a jolt outside Cal’s gate. “How’s the aul’ stomach holding up?”
“Pretty good,” Cal says, fumbling for his seat-belt clip. His phone buzzes in his pocket. It takes him a moment to work out what on earth that might be. Then it comes to him that it must be Alyssa, WhatsApping him: Sorry I missed you, catch you later! He leaves the phone where it is.
“It is, of course. No better man.” Mart’s wispy gray hair is sticking straight out on one side of his head. He looks beatifically happy.
“Barty looked pretty glad to get rid of us,” Cal says. The last time he looked at his watch, it was three in the morning.
“Barty,” Mart says with magnificent scorn. “Sure, that pub’s not even rightly his. He only got his hands on it because Seán Óg’s son fancied himself sitting in an aul’ office, the big jessie. He can put up with us having a wee carouse every now and again.”
“Should I have given Malachy a coupla bucks?” Cal asks. “For the”—he can’t come up with the right word—“the ’shine?”
“Sure, I looked after all that,” Mart tells him. “You can sort me out some other time. You’ll have plenty of oppornoon—opteroon—” He waves a hand at Cal and gives up.
“Whoops,” Cal says, as he clambers out of the car. He regains his footing. “Thanks for the ride. And the invitation.”
“That was some night, bucko,” Mart says, leaning over a little too far to talk through the passenger window. “You’ll remember that one, hah?”
“Not sure I’ll remember a damn thing,” Cal says, which makes Mart laugh.
“Arrah, you’ll be grand. Get a good sleep, that’s all you need.”
“I intend to,” Cal says. “You too.”
“I will,” Mart says. His face crunches into a grin. “Here I was planning on taking over guard duty from P.J. halfway through the night, d’you remember? I shoulda known better. That was never on the cards. But I’ve been an optimist all my life.” He waves to Cal and revs off up the road, taillights weaving.
Cal decides not to bother getting as far as the house just yet. Instead he lies down on his grass and looks up at the stars, which are thick and wild as dandelions right across the sky. He thinks about that telescope Mart suggested, and decides it wouldn’t suit him. He feels no urge to understand the stars better; he’s contented with them as they are. It’s always been a trait of his, whether for better or for worse, to prefer setting his mind to things he can do something about.
After a while, he sobers up enough to feel the rocks poking at his back and the cold seeping into him. It also occurs to him, gradually, that it might not be smart to lie out here with something or someone on the loose that takes the throats out of sheep.
When he picks himself up his head spins, and he has to lean over with his hands on his thighs for a little bit till it stops. Then he trudges across the lawn, which feels very wide and bare, towards his house. There’s no movement in the fields, and no sound in the hedges or the branches; the night has come to its deepest point, the deserted pre-dawn borderland. His clump of woods is a dense smudge against the stars, silent and still. Mart’s house is dark.
TWELVE
Cal wakes up late: sun is pouring in at his bedroom window. His head is a little tender and feels like it’s been stuffed with sticky carpet fluff, but apart from that he’s in surprisingly OK shape. He runs his head under the cold tap, which clears it a little bit, and fixes himself some fried eggs and sausages, a couple of painkillers and a lot of coffee for lunch. Then he tosses his bag of dirty laundry into the trunk of his car and heads for town.
The day is deceptively bright, with a hard chill in the shadows and a little breeze that flirts its way close and then slices right in. The Pajero bumps rhythmically