The Riders (2 page)

As mist rolled back from the brows of the Slieve Bloom Mountains, the quilted fields opened to the sun and glistened
with frost. Scully swung the mattock in the shadows of the south wall. The earth was heavy and mined with stones so that every few strokes he struck granite and a shock went up his arm and into his body like a boot from the electric fences of his boyhood. His hands stung with nettles and his nose ran in the cold. The smoke of valley chimneys stood straight in the air.

In the hedge beside him two small birds wheeled in a courting dance. He recognized them as choughs. He mouthed the word, resting a moment and rubbing his hands. Choughs. Strange word. Two years and he still thought from his own hemisphere. He knew he couldn't keep doing it forever. He should stop thinking of blue water and white sand; he had a new life to master.

The birds lit on an old cartwheel beside the hedge to regard him and the great pillar of steam his breath made.

‘It's alright for you buggers,' he said. ‘The rest of us have to work.'

The choughs lifted their tails at him and flew. Scully smiled and watched them rise and tweak about across the wood below, and then out over the crenellations of the castle beyond where he lost them, his eye drawn to the black mass of rooks circling the castle keep. A huge ash tree grew from the west wing of the ruin and in its bare limbs he saw the splotches of nests. He tried to imagine that tree in the spring when its new foliage must nearly burst the castle walls.

He went back to his ragged trench against the cottage wall. The place had no damp-coursing at all, and the interior walls were chartreuse with mildew, especially this side where the soil had crept high against the house. The place was a wreck, no question. Ten years of dereliction had almost done for it. The eastern gable wall had an outward lean and would need buttressing in the short term at least. He had neither power nor plumbing
and no real furniture to speak of. He'd have to strip and seal the interior walls as soon as he could. He needed a grader to clear centuries of cow slurry from the barnyard and a fence to keep the neighbours' cattle out of his modest field. He needed to plant trees – geez, the whole country needed to plant them – and buy linen and blankets and cooking things. A gas stove, a sink, toilet. It hardly bore thinking about this morning. All he could manage was the job at hand.

Scully went on hacking the ground, cursing now and then and marvelling at how sparks could still be made off muddy rocks.

He thought of the others, wondered how long he would have to be alone. He wasn't the solitary sort, and he missed them already. He wondered how Jennifer and Billie would cope seeing Australia again. Hard to go back and go through with leaving it forever. He was glad it was them. Himself, he would have piked out. One foot on the tarmac, one sniff of eucalyptus and he'd be a goner. No, it was better they went and finished things up. He was best used to get things ready here. This way he could go through with it. Scully could only feel things up to a certain point before he had to act. Doing things, that's what he was good at. Especially when it had a point. This was no exception. He was doing it for Jennifer, no use denying it, but she appreciated what it had taken for him to say yes. It was simple. He loved her. She was his wife. There was a baby on the way. They were in it together, end of story.

He worked all day to free the walls of soil and vegetation, pulling ivy out of the mortar when the mattock became too much. He ran his blistered hands over the old stones and the rounded corners of his house and smiled at how totally out of whack the
whole structure was. Two hundred and fifty years and probably not a single stone of it plumb.

Ireland. Of all places, Ireland, and it was down to Mylie Doolin, that silly bugger.

Scully had originally come to the Republic for a weekend, simply out of respect. It was the country boy in him acknowledging his debts, squaring things away. They were leaving Europe at last, giving in and heading home. It seemed as though getting pregnant was the final decider. From Greece they caught a cheap flight to London where they had things stored. The Qantas flight from Heathrow was still days away, but they were packed and ready so early they went stir crazy. In the end, Scully suggested a weekend in Ireland. They'd never been, so what the hell. A couple of pleasant days touring and Scully could pay his respects to Mylie Doolin who had kept the three of them alive that first year abroad.

Fresh off the plane from Perth, Scully worked for Mylie on dodgy building sites all over Greater London. The beefy Irishman ran a band of Paddies on jobs that lacked a little paperwork and needed doing quick and quiet for cash money. On the bones of his arse, Scully found Mylie's mob in a pub on the Fulham Road at lunchtime, all limehanded and dusthaired and singing in their pints. The Paddies looked surprised to see him get a lookin, but he landed an afternoon's work knocking the crap out of a bathroom in Chelsea and clearing up the rubble. He worked like a pig and within a few days he was a regular. Without that work Scully and Jennifer and Billie would never have survived London and never have escaped its dreary maw. Mad Mylie paid him well, told him wonderful lies and set them up for quite some time. Scully saved like a Protestant. He never forgot a favour. So, only a weekend ago now, Scully had driven the three of them
across the Irish midlands in a rented Volkswagen to the town of Banagher where, according to Mylie, Anthony Trollope had invented the postal pillar box and a Doolin ancestor had been granted a papal annulment from his horse. That's how it was, random as you please. A trip to the bogs. A missed meeting. A roadside stop. A house no one wanted, and a ticket home he cashed in for a gasping van and some building materials. Life was a bloody adventure.

He worked on till dark without finishing, and all down the valley, from windows and barns and muddy boreens, people looked up to the queer sight of candles in the bothy window and smoke ghosting from the chimney where that woollyheaded lad was busting his gut looking less like a rich American every day.

S
CULLY HACKED GRIMLY AT THE
claggy ground, his spirits sinking with every chill roll of sweat down his back as he inched his way along the last stretch of trench in the mean light of morning. He was beginning to wonder if maybe this job was beyond him. After all, he was no tradesman and he was working in a country where he knew none of the rules. And he was doing it alone. Every time he saw that forlorn heap of clothes and refuse out behind the barn he'd begun to see it as his own. Would it happen? Sometime in the future a lonely pile like that marking his failure? Man, he was low this morning. He wasn't himself. He watched a blur tracking uphill across the ridge. A hare. Funny how they always ran uphill. It dodged and weaved and disappeared into fallen timber.

Dogs barked in the valley below. He rested again, leaning on the smooth hickory handle of the mattock, and saw a car, a little green Renault van, labouring up the lane. Scully threw down the mattock hopefully and slugged across the mud in his squelching wellies to the front of the house where, thank God, the AN POST van was pulling in cautiously. He wiped his hands on his mired
jeans. The driver killed the motor and opened the door.

‘Jaysus,' said a long, freckled shambles of a man unfolding himself like a piece of worn patio furniture. ‘I thought it was the truth all along.'

Beneath the postman's crumpled cap was a mob of red hair and two huge ears. Scully stood there anxiously.

‘So there's someone livin back in Binchy's Bothy.'

‘That's right,' said Scully. ‘My third day.'

‘Peter Keneally. They call me Pete-the-Post.'

Scully reached out and shook his freckled hand. ‘G'day.'

The postie laughed, showing a terrible complement of teeth.

‘Would you be Mister F. M. Scully, now?'

‘That's me.'

‘You're the Australians, then.'

‘One of them, yeah.'

‘By God, you're famous as Seamus around here already. Jimmy Brereton down there by the castle says you saw this place and bought it in less time than it takes to piss.'

Scully laughed. ‘Close enough.'

‘Signed the papers in Davy Finneran's pub, no less.'

‘Yeah, did it on the spot. And they say the Paddies are stupid.'

The postman roared.

‘My wife had . . . a feeling about the place,' said Scully, needing to explain himself somehow, knowing that no explanation could sound reasonable enough for what they had done.

‘Well, I suppose that's nothin to be laughin at, then.'

Scully shrugged. ‘It does seem stupid at certain moments of the day.'

‘Ah, but it's a fine spot up here, high and away. And you're very welcome.'

‘Thanks.'

Scully scraped mud from his boots and looked now at the pale envelope in the postman's hands. The two men stood there poised awkwardly for a moment.

‘Thirsty work, no?'

After a long moment Scully realized the man needed a drink.

‘Don't spose you fancy a nip?'

‘A nip?' The Irishman squinted at him.

‘A dram,' said Scully. ‘I know it's early.'

‘Ah. Weeeell, it is a bit sharp out still.'

‘I've got some Tullamore Dew inside.'

‘That's a mornin whiskey alright,' the postie said with a wink.

They went inside by the fire and Scully threw on a rotten fencepost. In the pale light of day the interior was foul and dismal.

‘Excuse the mess.'

‘That Binchy always was a dirty auld bastard, rest his soul. This is the best I've seen the place.'

‘I'll get there.'

‘That you will, Mr Scully.'

‘The name's Fred. Everyone just calls me Scully, even the missus.'

‘Well, if it's good enough for her . . .'

‘They still had all his clothes and everything in here.'

‘Ten years, so. It just laid here rottin. Got to be people were nervous of it. Still, the Irish love to frighten emselves half to death.'

‘I would have thought his family might have come and taken his things.'

‘There is no family, poor man. He was gardener to the castle like his father before him. Everyone's dead.'

‘Including the castle,' said Scully. ‘When was the last time anyone tended to that garden?'

‘Oh, it was burnt back in the Troubles. No one's lived in it since. The lords and ladies went their way and the Binchys stayed in the gardener's bothy. It was left to them. Binchy and his Da grew some spuds and did a bit of poachin. They liked to drink, you might say.'

‘Oh, here.' Scully dug the bottle out of his cardboard box and poured a little into tin cups.

‘Cheers.'

‘Slainte:'

The whiskey ran hot all through him. He only really liked to drink after dark.

Scully looked anxiously at the pale envelope in the postman's hand. It was a telegram, he could see it now. He curled his toes inside his boots.

‘Your wife had a feelin, you say?'

Scully squirmed, lusting for the telegram, glad of the company and a little embarrassed about his own presence here. He couldn't imagine what the Irishman must think of him.

‘Yeah. Yeah, she just went all strange and said this is it, that she felt she'd been here before, like
déjà vu
. She had this odd feeling that this is where we should live.'

‘She's Irish, then.'

‘No. There's no ancestral pull. People talk about things like that but . . . no, nothing.'

‘Well, you are. With a name like Scully.'

‘Well, bog-Irish maybe a long way back. Desert Irish by now.'

‘Ha, desert Irish!' The postie stomped his feet.

The fire hissed and spat. The walls steamed and the house smelled like a locker room hosed down with fish blood. Scully looked at the black work cracks in the Irishman's fingers.

‘D'you know where I could hire a cement mixer? I thought there might be a place in town.'

‘Ce-ment mixer? Conor's your man.'

‘Conor.'

‘My brother from Birr. He's the electrician, but he does a bit of this and that, you know.'

‘Terrific. Maybe I could get a phone number, or something?'

‘Be damn, I'll bring it meself tomorrow,' said Pete-the-Post slamming his cup down on the battered mantelpiece. ‘In that little green machine out there, piled in on the mail of the Republic, no less.'

‘Look, don't go to any trouble.'

‘No trouble at all.'

Scully watched the postie lick his lips, as though tasting the last of the whiskey on them, with eyes shut to the wan light bending in through the window, and he wondered if he'd ever get his telegram.

‘Rightso, time to go.' The postman whanged himself on the cheek with the heel of his palm. ‘Ah, nearly forgot – something from the Dublin Telegraphs.'

He handed over the envelope and Scully did his best not to snatch at it in his excitement.

‘Good news, I hope. Never liked telegrams, meself.'

‘Thanks,' said Scully, stuffing it in his pocket and following Pete-the-Post to the door.

‘See you in the mornin!'

As the van pulled away, motor racing horribly, Scully tore the envelope open and the telegram in half so he had to stoop to the mud and fit the pieces together.

HOUSE ON THE MARKET. AGENT ASSURES QUICK SALE. PACKING NOW. BILLIE AT YOUR MUM'S. WILL BE BACK
BEFORE CHRISTMAS. USE TELEGRAMS TILL PHONE ON THERE. JENNIFER.

A light drizzle began to drift in. Rooks and jackdaws came and went from the castle keep down in the misting hollow. Scully shifted from foot to foot, inexplicably deflated.

It was good news. It was contact, confirmation. But so damn businesslike. What was the result of the ultrasound? How was everybody? What did the wide brown land look like? Was it summer, real acetylene summer? And did she miss him half as much as he missed her? Though it
was
a telegram. You couldn't exactly get hot and sweaty in a telegram.