Solace (30 page)

‘Thanks,’ Mark said again. He opened the white rubber valve on the side of the armband and let out some of the air. Aoife complained as he pushed it up her arm, and when he put his
lips to the valve and blew until he could feel the plastic hardening, she tried to shake him off. When he reached for the second armband, she turned her back on him, and when he pulled her to him,
she began to scream. He put both arms tightly around her, turned her away from him, and held her still. She screamed more loudly and kicked her legs. Her fingernails dug into his forearms.

From the old man came a high-pitched laugh like a woman’s. ‘She’s a devil,’ he said. He was dressed. It hadn’t taken long. He wore brown linen trousers and a
short-sleeved shirt. He stepped into leather sandals.

Aoife let her whole body go limp. Mark kept his hands on her as she slid to the floor and lay there, sobbing furiously. He shrugged and looked to his neighbour, who gave him a grin. The man
slung a string bag over his shoulder and pulled at his beard. ‘Her first time at the pool?’

Mark nodded.

‘She’ll love it,’ the old man said. ‘Once you take her in.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mark said, and when he reached down to Aoife she lashed at his face with her hands. The sharp edge of her armband caught him on the cheek.

‘Ouch,’ the old man said, wincing.

Mark had done it before he thought about it. He found himself with a hand tight on each of her arms. He pulled her to her feet. He whipped the armband off her arm, not stopping to let any of the
air out, and Aoife screamed. ‘Stop it,’ he said to her, and she widened her eyes at him, and raised her cries to a higher pitch. She slumped to the floor. Sweating, his face feeling
flushed, Mark looked to the man.

The man looked at Aoife. His face was cautious. He stepped forward a fraction, then stepped back. He cleared his throat. ‘I expect it’s all just a bit too much for her,’ he
said, over the noise of her cries. ‘She is very young.’

Mark could not speak. The man checked the bench behind him and pulled the strap of his bag more firmly on to his shoulder. ‘Have a good swim,’ he said, touching his temple in a light
salute, and he was gone.

Mark realized that he was cold, and that Aoife, kicking and thrashing on the tiles, would be even colder. He picked her up; she resisted him. He bundled her into a towel and sat her on the
bench. He crouched in front of her, rubbing her shoulders through the towel, trying to soothe her where the plastic of the armband must have pinched and dragged.

‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he said, and she howled at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and she shook her head, her face glooped with snot and tears. He sat on the bench beside her, and leaned in close to her, and she grabbed him by the
cheeks with both hands and dug in her nails. It hurt. He didn’t stop her. He didn’t pull away. She continued to cry, and to scream, and to the sound of it he felt his chest cleave; he
felt himself cling to her cries as they climbed against the distant echoes of the pool. His teeth were clenched. His eyes were locked on hers. It was not cold enough for him to shake as much as he
did. When she finally quietened, he lifted her, and dressed her, and dressed himself, and he wheeled her out into the street. By the time they were back on the quays, she had fallen asleep, her
thumb in her mouth, her hand clamped to her hair.

Tom tried Mark’s number again. This time there was no ringing sound at all, just Mark’s voice, sounding lazy, saying to leave a message, and then there was a beep,
which was Tom’s signal to hang up. He would not talk to something that was not listening.

At first, Mark had answered the phone every time Tom called. They had talked several times a day, something Tom considered essential. There were things he needed to check with Mark, things he
needed to tell him. But over the last couple of weeks, Mark had started to pick up only now and again. Some days they did not talk on the phone at all; some days Tom could not get him. He had been
busy, he always said, when they finally spoke: something had happened with Aoife, or there had been some issue to do with his studies. Was there anything urgent, he always asked Tom, and Tom never
knew where to begin. Everything on the farm was urgent; nothing could wait a couple of days.

It was over two months now since Mark had gone back to the city. He had been back for a weekend only once, the first one after he had left, and since then there had been no visits. He had too
much on his hands, he said. He could not get away. There was too much to be sorted out in Dublin, and he was still trying to get Aoife settled. He would be down, he always said, the next weekend.
But then the next weekend came, and he was not there. Tom was not going to call him and beg him to come. That had never been Tom’s style.

He needed to talk to him, but he could wait no longer. He would have to go ahead on his own. That afternoon he drove over to Brady’s place, the new showroom he had built the year before.
Brady himself greeted Tom when he walked through the glass doors. When Tom told him why he had come, Brady murmured approvingly.

‘You know, you’re dead right,’ he said. ‘Sure, the farming is hardship enough. We’ll get you well kitted out.’ He reached up to a shelf over the till. He
lifted down three or four thick books and put them on the counter. On the cover of one, a huge John Deere pulled a round baler.

‘The new catalogues,’ Brady said, patting them. ‘All the specs, as they’d say.’

Tom felt suddenly nervous. He looked at his phone. He had tried Mark again before getting out of the car. There had been no reply.

‘The old mobiles are handy, aren’t they?’ Brady said, and he began to talk of the tractors he had, of engines and air compressors, drills and suspensions.

Tom nodded like a man who had long been hungry for the day when these things would come. ‘You’ve some place here,’ he said to Brady, looking to the high roof, the skylights
streaming sun, the huge machines arranged like mannequins around the floor. Outside, the cheaper equipment was marked in neat rows.

‘It’d fuckin’ want to be,’ Brady said, laughing. ‘The fuckin’ price of putting it up. Jesus, it’s like Knock. Or Old Trafford or something.’ He
looked up to the skylights, to the blue sky beyond. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘It’s something like it all right,’ Tom said.

‘It was the young fella was at me to do it. Sure they’re all like this now, all the good places around the country. Sure you have to keep up. What I had here for the last twenty
years, sure it was nothing better than a hayshed.’

‘Ah, you’re dead right,’ Tom said.

‘You’ve seen some changes around this part of the world, I’d say, no more than myself,’ said Brady, and he walked over to the huge tractor in the middle of the room.
‘Now,’ he said, putting his hand to the tread of the high front tyre. ‘If you want the best of everything, this is the lassie to climb up on.’

Tom laughed with Brady as he rubbed the tyre vigorously, slapped it. ‘Get up on her there, sure, can’t you?’ said Brady, but Tom shook his head.

‘No thanks,’ he said, and he saw how Brady’s face became careful. ‘What’s the next one you have after this one?’

Brady nodded. ‘Right you are,’ he said. Tom followed him outside.

‘Now this one,’ Brady said, as he walked ahead, ‘this one is an unbelievable tractor for the price.’

*

He had the whole lot picked little more than an hour later. Everything he wanted. Brady slid a docket across the counter, printed with the name of the shop, and with the price
of each machine written on it in Brady’s crooked hand. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘And we’ll call it that.’ He pointed to the figure on the bottom of the docket.
‘Sure, you’re buying in bulk,’ he said, spittle springing to his lips with his laugh.

‘What about cash?’ Tom said, and Brady froze for an instant. He looked again to the number he had written down. He looked to Tom.

‘All cash?’ he said, frowning.

‘About the half of it,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve the rest in a cheque.’

Brady glanced out to the yard. ‘You’re a hard man,’ he said, and he pulled out another docket. He scribbled on it intently. He totted the figures up, tapping them with the tip
of his pen. ‘How’s that?’ he said, and his face was serious as he slid the paper across the counter to Tom.

Tom looked at the price. ‘Now, you can do better than that for me, Gerry,’ he said, and he stepped back.

‘Ah, now, Jesus,’ said Brady, but by the way he glanced out to the yard, Tom knew he would come down again. They went back and forward, and Brady sighed and chewed his lip and shook
his head, and when they finally shook, it was on a price Tom knew was a good one, and Brady asked Tom where it was he had the new farm.

Tom looked at him, surprised. Then he remembered: he had told Brady he was stocking a whole new place. ‘Ah, I’ll be keeping them up in the sheds at home for a while,’ he said,
the words tumbling out in a hurry. ‘I haven’t the new yards ready for them yet. And you don’t need to worry about delivering them. The son will be down from Dublin tomorrow and
myself and himself can come in to you and drive them out. It’s just as handy.’ He thought of the neighbours watching: Keogh behind the shop door, Jimmy Flynn maybe going past on his
blue Ford as Tom and Mark turned the new tractors in at the lane.

‘Grand, so,’ said Brady. ‘You’re out near Edgeworthstown, isn’t it?’

‘Dorvaragh,’ Tom said. ‘Just ahead of the crossroads there as you go out the Bal road.’

‘I thought so all right,’ said Brady, and he looked again at the cheque Tom had handed to him. ‘Tom Casey,’ he said. ‘Sure I know you, of course,’ and there
was in his voice the note Tom heard in most voices now: the commiseration; the fascination. And as soon as the next thought flashed into his mind he hated himself for thinking it: that there might
have been more off the price still, had Brady recognized him, had he made the connection sooner. He was shaking his head to get rid of the idea when he realized that Brady was studying him.

‘I have you now,’ Brady said. ‘Didn’t you buy that Massey from me there a few years before?’ He did not wait for a response. ‘That Massey was a very nice
little runner,’ he said. ‘At the time. But, Jesus, you’ll get better satisfaction out of these two.’ He laughed. ‘And you never thought of trading her in? You’re
a man in a hurry.’

‘Ah, I’ll keep her,’ said Tom.

Brady nodded. ‘Fair enough, Tom. No harm in having her around the place. Sure, maybe the son can run her around.’ He winked at Tom. ‘Ha? Don’t let him get his hands on
these beauties.’

‘Ah,’ Tom shrugged. ‘It’s a lot of interest he’ll have in them anyway.’

‘I doubt that,’ Brady said. ‘Unless he’s blind altogether.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Tom, as Brady handed him the receipt. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Thanks yourself,’ Brady said, offering his hand. ‘And the very best of luck to the two of ye with the new place.’

*

The phone on the kitchen counter rang that evening as Tom was sitting down to his dinner. He was over to it and had the receiver to his ear before it finished the second ring.
It was Mark.

‘I was trying to get you earlier,’ Tom said. ‘What were you at?’

‘Work,’ Mark said. He sounded tired. ‘And then Aoife.’

Tom cleared his throat. ‘Working on the Edgeworthstown one, was it?’ he said. He hoped Mark would recognize the generosity of the question, the interest it showed in his life. His
heart speeded up as he waited for Mark’s reply. It took a moment to come, and it came flat.

‘Yeah,’ Mark said. ‘Edgeworth, yeah.’

Tom nodded. In his mind’s eye he saw the old manor at Edgeworthstown, the porch with its two black pillars where he used to wait in the car for Maura to finish her shift. When first he
started to call for her, when first they started to go together, it was like picking her up from school. There was always a nun watching from the door. And Maura would come down the steps like a
schoolgirl, her coat over her uniform, the thin strip of her handbag swinging from her shoulder. As she slid into the car, there was her perfume and her bare knees and her sideways hello. Granard
and Longford and Mullingar for the dances then. As far away from Edgeworthstown as they could. Wanting something different.

‘Anything new with you?’ Mark said then.

Tom hesitated. ‘Aoife’s asleep?’ he said, looking at the clock over the range. It was seven.

‘No,’ said Mark. ‘She’s here beside me. She’s watching one of her DVDs.’ He seemed to yawn. ‘What did you do yourself today?’

‘Ah,’ said Tom. ‘Just tipping around. You know yourself.’

‘Yeah.’

He took a long breath. Now was the time. Now was when he would have to tell him. He should have told him already; he should have phoned him from Brady’s again and again until he answered.
‘I went up to Brady’s for a while to look at a few things,’ he said.

‘To Brady’s?’

‘Aye,’ Tom said, carefully. ‘He had me looking at all his new machinery.’

Mark clicked his tongue. ‘That bollocks. He got the timing as wrong as he could get it with that place.’

In his chest, Tom felt a jolt. ‘How do you mean?’ he said, and he knew it sounded too anxious. ‘He says it’s doing well,’ he added then, more lightly.

‘Well, he’d say that,’ Mark said, in the same tone full of scorn. ‘But if he thinks anyone’s going to be stupid enough to shell out for his overpriced rubbish the
way things are going now, he’s mistaken.’

‘What do you mean, the way things are going?’ Tom said.

‘Do you not listen to the radio? The country is fucked.’

‘What the hell do I want with the radio?’ Tom said, and what came into his head was the radio that Brady had shown him in one of the new tractor cabs. You could plug all manner of
things into it, Brady had told him. There was nothing you couldn’t play through it, he had said. Tom had not asked him what he had meant.

‘Yeah, well,’ Mark said, and he sighed. ‘Anyway. Sorry. I just never trusted that guy Brady, that’s all. The prices he charges are ridiculous. But I suppose there’s
nowhere else to go if you need a part.’

On his forehead and underneath his arms, Tom felt himself sweat. His heart was thumping. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and he wanted to hang up the phone.