Page 5 of Heart of the Wren
“Have you no cousins? I don’t think I’ve ever been on a farm without a gaggle of relatives working on it.”
“Mam and Dad didn't get on with their siblings. They all fell out years ago, before I was born. I know I have a few cousins in Cork but I've never spoken to them.”
One of the dogs, Daisy, rubbed herself up against my leg. I idly stroked her head.
“Have you any family yourself?” Lorcan asked.
“No, no,” I said. “I’m on my own.” My guts tightened. “It’s always just been me, more or less. No family and no strings. Best way to be. Free as a bird. I travel around a lot and I bet I’ve seen more of this island than anyone. I sleep when I’m tired. I eat when I’m hungry.” I slapped my hard, round belly. “Which is often! And I never stay anywhere for too long. Itchy feet, you know how it is.” I flashed a smile. “I found some lanterns in theshed. Would it be alright if I borrowed them sometime? I have my own candles.”
Lorcan thought for a moment. “I have plenty of torches you could use.”
“Ah, but I love a candlelit lantern,” I said. “There’s something fierce romantic about roaming a moonlit country lane with a flickering lantern.”
“Like our ancestors used to.” A smile twitched the corner of his lips.
???
A ten minute drive took us along a hedge-lined, sloping, twisting lane and into Tullycleena village. The heart of the village was a slanted road with a handful of shops, two pubs, and a national school. A tiny roundabout island with a decrepit stone Celtic cross stood in the centre of Tullycleena with everything else in the village radiating out from it. Rows of cottages topped and tailed the road.
Lorcan parked by the path. “Over there is Murphy’s shop. Don’t talk to Mrs Murphy. She’s an awful aul gossip and I don’t want her knowing my business. Go and get yourself an alarm clock.”
“Sure wasn’t I up in time this morning?”
“You were but for all I know it was a fluke and I don’t want to take any chances. Go on, now.”
While Lorcan made a beeline to Regan’s butchers, I ambled into the shop. A two-storey affair which from the outside resembled a house like any other on the road except the name was proudly displayed over the entrance and hadvictuallerspainted on the gable wall. The large windows held awhite paint promise offresh eggs, sausages, rashers, and ham. A flaking sign declared the shop was also home to the localoifig an phoist —the post office.
I started poking through the cluttered and unsorted shelves, whistling all the while. Mop heads, clothes pegs, and dishcloths burst out of boxes next to long rolls of poplin and flowery cotton. Bottles of ketchup and brown sauce lined one shelf with shampoo and some bleach. I moved some bars of soap aside and from behind a tin of pea soup I took out a small, blocky, plastic alarm clock. Bright red with a black face and white hands, I found it modern and gaudy, but functional. I brushed the dust from the top and took it to the counter where a flinty woman rang it up for me on the ancient till. I fished in my pockets for some change.
“Was it Lorcan Fitzgerald’s car I saw you getting out of?”
I grinned. “It was indeed. He’s taken me on at the farm.”
She lifted her head to suggest she didn’t entirely believe me. “And will you be keeping him company up there as well?”
I shifted from foot to foot but my grin never faltered. “I’m lodging with him, if that’s what you’re asking. You’re Mrs Murphy, aren’t you? Lorcan spoke very highly of you.”
Her nose wrinkled. A door to one side of the counter led to the post office and beside it hung a paperback book-sized painting of Jesus Christ known asEcce Homo. The name always made me giggle.
Behind the counter and beneath a shelf of cereal boxes, a shrivelled and wrinkled man sat fixing the sole of a woman’s shoe. He swore and searched around. “Where has my feckin’ awl gone now?”
Standing close to the counter with my arms by my side, I closed my eyes and touched my thumbs to the tips of each my fingers, one after the other. Under my breath I muttered three words. “Find, find, find.” A battered awl rolled out from under a bookcase. “I think I spy it over there?” I pointed to the floor.
“Ah! It is. Thank you.” The old man, already bent almost in two, shuffled over to retrieve it.
“You’re very welcome,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll be in again.” I slipped the clock into the pocket of my coat and went outside to wait for Lorcan.
The air was nippy and I rubbed my hands together for warmth. A small orange lorry with dodgy suspension bobbed past, belching out black smoke from the exhaust. I smiled at a couple of people walking on the other side of the road and they nodded in return. Sitting on a low stone wall, I closed my eyes and listened. Listened to the wind, to the rustle of leaves, to the birdsong, to the creaking of the tin Calor Kosangas sign swinging outside the shop. Wide open fields rolled and rose before me. A handful of cottages peppered the landscape to one side and to the other rows of newer houses, but barely a couple of dozen in total. Built in the last decade, I guessed from the identical, boxy, uninspired shapes. A robin redbreast sat in the ring of the Celtic cross, picking at the moss which cloaked it like rust on an abandoned car.
All in all a perfectly normal day in a perfectly normal village. And yet. Something had been gnawing in the pit of my stomach since yesterday. Something tickled the backs of my ears. I scanned the horizon, over the hedges, over the fields, to the top of the hill. Yes, there was definitelyelectricity in the air. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a mouse under the scrutiny of a hungry cat.
“Did you get sorted?” Lorcan startled me out of my daze. For the first time, his aura made itself visible to me. The colour of strong tea surrounded him.
I tapped my pocket. “I did indeed.”
“Grand. Grand.” He rubbed his nose. “Will you have a pint?”
Chapter 4
