Barefoot Over Stones (19 page)

Ted Clancy was mighty proud that his two daughters knew enough to turn up at the funeral to show their gratitude for everything Con had done for them over the years. He had taught them well and as he took another slug from his pint that thought was some consolation for the fact that neither was showing any sign of coming over to talk to him.

Ciara’s face had turned scarlet with rage. How dare Leda presume to know anything about the way she felt about Dan – and was it really that obvious that she fancied him? More than she would even admit to herself? ‘You are unbelievable. You shouldn’t judge the rest of us by your own lousy standards. Alison is my friend and Dan is her boyfriend. End of story.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I believe you. Not. Anyway, where is the man of the moment? I feel he could do with some company at a time like this. You know, a shoulder to lean on, a bridge over troubled water, etc.’

Dan was coming towards them and Ciara knew she had only a few seconds to bring this conversation to an end. Leda didn’t know where to stop. She was likely to say anything.

‘He’s up at the house. Said he might come down later. For what it’s worth I think you should have the decency to leave him alone. He’s with friends and relatives and you, Leda Clancy, are neither.’

‘Thanks for the information, sis.’ Appraising the approaching Dan, Leda added, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

Dan tapped Ciara on the shoulder. ‘You OK?’ He eyeballed Leda, knowing that her presence meant only trouble. His father could not be relied on to do the right thing when she was around. She flattered his ego and he lost any iota of self-restraint he possessed. Leda smirked at him and turned with a flourish and left.

‘As OK as I can manage when my wrecking ball of a sister comes to town. She’s looking for your dad. Told her I didn’t know where he was but she is determined to find him. Said she would try the house.’

‘Oh, great! The relations will love that. I suppose he can pass her off as just another constituent; the place was coming down with callers all last night and this morning so she won’t look too much out of place. I was going to suggest we head off after this one but I think I will get us another drink. I don’t think I could stomach Leda this evening and I can’t depend on my father to act properly. He is totally brain dead when she is around.
No offence, but she should have known better than to come.’

‘I think she feels I have no business here either, thinks I am being hypocritical after all I have said and I suppose she is right.’

Dan took Ciara’s hand in his and she hoped that the wave of weakness she felt at his touch didn’t show on her face. ‘I know we have had our differences, Ciara, and I know it took a lot for you to overcome your blanket hatred of the Abernethys to let me in. I appreciate it very much and I know that Alison does too, because she never tires of telling me how grateful to you I should be – and I am. I truly am. It’s nice to have you here this evening. It would be hard otherwise, and I would be lonesome for Alison even with every sodding relation I never knew I had and all the old crowd from school.’ He waved to the gang of young people he had left at the bar who had come to show their friendship to Dan by paying their respects to a woman they didn’t really know.

The mention of Alison’s name brought Ciara back to the reality from which she had allowed herself to drift. Of course, that’s why she was here. She was an inadequate substitute for his real girlfriend and Dan knew her place even if she had momentarily forgotten it. Some crazy mix of pity – for him, for herself and her own miserable selection of men – and discomfort at being back in Leachlara had messed with her mind. Thank God she hadn’t made a fool of herself by saying or, worse still, doing anything. Leda’s presence had been her unlikely saviour. There was always a first time for everything, she supposed.

‘Well, seeing as neither of us has any real home to go to at the minute maybe we should have a drink. I know I said I wouldn’t because of the day that’s in it and all, but I am gasping. And Shanahan’s without a drink in your hand is hard on the spirit.’

‘A pint?’ Dan ventured.

‘I would mow you down for one.’ She followed him as he strode back to the bar and as she watched him weave with ease into his childhood company she warned herself nothing beyond friendship and sympathy was appropriate. He had just lost his mother. His girlfriend was her best friend. It was all pretty clear if you managed to stop and think about it.

It was close to midnight and the perennial deadline of last orders when Con Abernethy made it to the door of Shanahan’s. He had company. Columbo had not left his side in the last few days and some other party workers had stood their ground too. His wife’s death seemed to have ameliorated some of the smell of defeat that had lingered after the road accident and the promotion that had rapidly transformed into a shameful demotion. He had shaken off the last of the relatives who had clung to the house like glue over the preceding days. He told them he would need their company far more in the lonesome weeks that stretched ahead and he said he was worried about Dan. He should go out and find him and bring him home. They left unwillingly, feeling their work wasn’t done, and Columbo had got rid of the last of the stragglers. Con wasn’t sure what he had said to them, but it had worked and that was the main thing. There were advantages to this bereavement process; being too upset to talk for long was chief amongst them.

Leda left a decent amount of time before she followed Con to the pub. He had been shocked to see her at the house because he had most decidedly kept as much distance as he could manage from her over the past months while Mary’s health had deteriorated. Mary had at least that much respect due to her and to Leda’s credit she hadn’t made a fuss. He showed her to the room that he used as his home office and told her to wait there until he got rid of everyone downstairs. Before he left with Columbo he gave her his car keys and told her to meet him at Shanahan’s in a little while. He wasn’t sure what he would do about her but he felt sure that their sharing a drink could not do any harm. Tonight he could hardly do any wrong.

Dan knew his father would turn up at the pub eventually. The place had been his living room all his life. He knew that there would be loads of people who would use his mother’s death to
pick up the thread of a conversation that had paused with his father’s dismissal from the cabinet. Dan would not be surprised by that hypocrisy because he had spent the last few days on the receiving end of the same sort of heavy but well-meant sentiment. He had planned to go over and talk to his father and see how he was doing, but something about the way Leda slithered in so easily to stand alongside his father made his stomach turn. He knew he had had too much to drink long before the barman came to offer himself and his friends a round of drinks from Con, who had taken up his usual position at the snug corner of the lounge. As alcohol penetrated the inner reaches of the company the noise got louder, smoke clouds filled the space above their heads and any air of bereavement evaporated with every pull and slug.

‘Tell him to keep his money and his drink,’ he told the puzzled barman and then he turned to Ciara. ‘I’m off home. I’m knackered. I’m getting the seven-thirty train in the morning. I need not to be here any more watching him not giving a shit.’

‘Here, I’ll come with you. Can I be cheeky and stay the night in your house? It’s just I don’t fancy sharing a room with Leda at home tonight. Please?’

‘Whatever, Ciara, but I wouldn’t be too sure that you won’t be seeing her over toast in my house. Take a look at them.’

‘He wouldn’t take her to your house, would he?’

‘With Mam gone anything is possible. That’s why the less I see of him at the moment the better.’

Ciara turned to look for her sister before she left the pub. Leda was leaning in towards Con, enjoying a joke. Apart from the sombre suit, Con looked nothing like the grieving widower. He was in his element, at the centre of a crowd who once again hung on his every word. He did not notice that his son was gone until Paddy Shanahan, having suffered two Garda raids in quick succession, got cranky about closing time and his duty to observe it. At that stage Ciara and Dan, with hunger born of huge amounts of alcohol, were milling through the platters of sandwiches left over from the funeral that littered every surface of the Abernethys’ kitchen. Dirty cups filled the sink and Dan knew his mother would never have stood for this level of disarray, nor would Con have allowed it to happen in her temporary absence. Except now she wouldn’t be arriving back to bawl them out about it.

‘God, if Mam could see this mess now she would freak out. She asked him to have the house private, you know, and instead of that he got the caterers in and let anyone from miles around through the place.’

‘Do you mind? About the people coming here for the past few days?’

‘It’s not my house, Ciara. I don’t give a shit except for her. I think he could have done his best to do things the way she would have wanted them done but there are more votes in a prolonged Irish wake than in what she had in mind. Last wishes and all that. They should mean something, shouldn’t they?’ Dan did his best to hold back the tears but they ran down his face in spite or maybe because of his efforts to contain them.

Ciara had been sitting opposite him at the kitchen table. She didn’t have to think twice about going to comfort him. ‘Oh Dan,’ she murmured as she crouched down on her knees by his seat, taking his hand in hers, hoping her touch would bring him comfort or pleasure or perhaps both. ‘I’m sure he was trying to do the right thing and maybe he needed loads of people around him to cope with all this.’

The shock of hearing Ciara saying something almost positive about his father gave Dan enough of a jolt to control his tears. ‘God, don’t get carried away now. This is my father we are talking about. You know, the biggest rat in Leachlara, evil incarnate and all that. Surely you haven’t forgotten what you think of him.’

‘I don’t even believe myself. Sorry, I am crap when people break down. I say anything to pull them back together.’

Dan laughed and pulled her into an embrace. ‘It’s good that you are here. I’m glad I am not alone.’

Afterwards Ciara would know exactly what he meant. She would know that the house felt strange and empty and that company eased the loneliness he was feeling in a house that was home but felt anything but. She would know that when he hugged her the right thing to do would have been to accept his gratitude and move away. But they had both drunk oceans during the course of the evening and reason and straight thinking were in short supply. When he tentatively offered his kisses to her she took them shyly at first and when he pulled back, shocked by what they were doing, Ciara’s lips found his hungrily, confident her touch could erase everything that had been wrong with this most difficult of days. She relished the feel of his hands, burning through her flimsy clothes to her skin. She unbuttoned her shirt and placed his hand on the soft rise of her breast and she pulled at his shirt buttons to reach his smooth skin beneath. When he rose from the chair she thought she had prompted him to take control of what she had started and that his initial shyness had dissipated. She closed her eyes ready for him to decide what happened next to her and to them.

Suddenly sobering and with a rising sense of disgust at her and at himself, Dan pushed her away as if he had been stung. Ciara stumbled across the kitchen, reeling from desire and rejection bundled together in the same split second.

‘I think you’d better go home, Ciara. We have had too much to drink. This is insane. What about Alison?’ Dan was dishevelled and shaken and he clung to the kitchen doorframe as if he might collapse but for its support.

‘Fuck Alison, she is not even here. Her job interview was more important than you or your blasted mother. Besides, don’t blame her for starting what you couldn’t finish. At least your father is man enough to do the deed when he gets the chance. Obviously he has all the red blood in this family.’

‘Go home. I have a phone number for Leachlara Cabs. I’ll ring them.’

‘Stuff your cab up your hole, Dan. I’d rather walk to Dublin than spend another second here.’

He pleaded with her to have common sense but she was already walking away, struggling with her coat in drunken awkwardness and embarrassment. He ran after her but she ran faster, her heels crunching the gravel in mortified anger. Dan stood for a while shell-shocked as she disappeared from view. He returned to the kitchen, locking the door behind him, and went to climb the stairs to bed. The red light was flashing on the answering machine. He heard Alison’s voice telling him that she loved him and hoped the day hadn’t been too hard after she had left. The interview had gone well. She would talk to him in the morning. She loved him, but she had said that already, hadn’t she? He went to bed with her voice whispering in his head and the salted memory of what had just happened with Ciara waiting for him and taunting him on every step of the stairs.

Ciara made it on foot back to the middle of Leachlara, rapidly sobering with every passing minute. Her feet were killing her and the remnants of make-up, so carefully applied earlier in the day, streaked down her face, mingling with her embarrassed tears. She felt more stupid than she had ever felt in her whole life and her head spun every time she allowed herself to think about what had just happened. She didn’t see Columbo where he stood next to his car outside Shanahan’s. He had spotted her the moment she had started to walk up the main street illuminated by the harsh orange of the street lights.

‘Are you stuck for a lift, Ciara?’ he enquired kindly when she was close enough to hear him.

‘I am, yeah,’ she answered, startled to hear her name but relieved that it was only Columbo and not anyone else she knew.

‘Get in and I will run you home. If you were here ten minutes ago you could have shared a lift with your sister. I am just back from dropping her home.’

‘I am surprised she didn’t stay until the bitter end,’ Ciara said, nodding at the door of Shanahan’s.

‘There’s a bit of a lock-in going on all right, it being the night that’s in it, but Leda had no real interest in staying. Your father on the other hand will be there until the last drop is drained from the last bottle. I’ve never met a better man to drink.’