As a father, he struck me as being on the eerie side.
In daylight, being lost and without money presented no problems. After a sleep I could walk from now till tomorrow even if I had to hop the last hours one-legged. If I kept going I might spot a taxi and he could wait at the Kennedys’ while I fetched the fare. Three notes were tucked in the toe of a shoe under my bed so I wasn’t flat yet. There was a bye-law too, someone had told me, to the effect that you could ride a bus as long as you gave your name and address so the fare could be collected later. Or was that only children? Anyway the chances were that nobody would ever have told the hard-faced bus conductress.
‘Who’s boss!’
I glanced up and there was an old lady before a gate smiling complacently at a woman lugging a howling child up the steps. What I’d heard was the splash of the old lady shoving her oar in: Show him who’s boss: don’t let him dominate you. Him looked about three years old. As they struck a tableau on the top step, you could see her underskirt was grubby, and her legs just legs with the usual taut strings behind the knees, but still it never failed to be interesting how far up they went. Bent over, she let her irritation get the better of her and smacked the boy’s face. The howl shrilled up from assertion to outrage. And at that second he writhed round and saw my grinning face. It was the kind of straw that might help set a character for life. How could I explain to him that I wasn’t joining in the female conspiracy against him but only looking up his mother’s skirt?
‘Hey! you there!’ A remembered brogue turned me in my tracks.
A car had pulled up beside me. Mr Briody was leaning across the passenger seat. The door clicked open and he beckoned to me. ‘Get in!’
I had a conviction this was the pay off. Like most Irish, he would have been in America. He had been a slater in Chicago and learned from some Sicilian how to avenge the family honour by taking you for a ride.
Since my foot hurt, I got in.
‘Where to?’ he asked.
‘I’m going back to my digs, but anywhere—’
‘Would they be near the University?’
‘Two or three streets away.’
‘Right then. I can find my way to the University. I’ve given Margaret a run there. You can guide me from that. Right?’
‘Great. Thanks a lot.’
He put the car in gear and pulled away.
‘It occurred to me you might really have a bad foot and since I’m on holiday with nothing to hurry for I came after you.’
‘That was decent of you.’
After a time, I recognised a corner, then some shops. My neck was stiff with not looking in Briody’s direction.
‘Nearly there,’ he said, and added casually, ‘I wouldn’t have been surprised to see you running up the road like a two-year-old.’
‘Mr Briody,’ I said with a world of sincerity, ‘believe me – I mean Margaret and I haven’t – I’m trying to say that I’ve nothing but respect for your daughter.’
‘Margaret? Daughter?’ He twisted round to look at me while the car took care of itself. ‘You must think I’m a boy from the bogs or the greatest Christian since Matt Talbot gave up the drink. If it had been my daughter, I’d have degutted you.’
‘You’re not Margaret’s father.’
No slouch, I had worked it out.
‘Not an unwashed glass or a crumpled crisp bag the length and breadth of the house. But there, I suppose as well as making her bed she tidied up this morning before she went to work. It must have been a hell of a party.’ He made a creaking noise and I realised he was laughing. ‘Hand it to you for a quick tongue and the devil’s cheek. It beats Flaherty running bare-arsed up the lane from the widow’s.’
The moment for explaining how shamefully innocent I was seemed to have gone.
‘I’m Danny Briody’s cousin. Liam. He and Mary are over staying at the farm and we’ll be at their house a day or two. Then on to London and home again.’ He grinned. ‘And it’s nice to meet you too since you’re a friend of the family, as you might say . . . Don’t misunderstand me, mind. Danny’s a good skin. It’s not the first time Danny’s helped with the farm rent in a bad year. And there’s never a Christmas but I send over the plump birds that make a holiday a feast . . . It’s just that Mary and him go on about that girl of theirs until you’d have thought she was another Alfred Einstein.’
I didn’t correct him, reckoning that I’d drawn heavily enough for one day on my good luck account. Anyway for all I knew he might be thinking of another Einstein: Alfred the shyster lawyer or one-armed sheep-gelding champion of County Clare. Something like that.
‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘I’m fond of Margaret. It’s just that I’ve wondered if she was as quick on the uptake as they say . . . You’ll be at the University yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ll be in the same class as Margaret?’
‘In the same year. We share a couple of subjects.’
‘Do you tell me that?’ He paused, cleared his throat and then asked in a rush, ‘Now, would you say she was doing well? I mean that she was doing well? young pretty girl Was she able for it, would you say?’
‘We’re only in first year,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure how she got on in the degree exams.’
He nodded satisfied as if, without quite realising how, I had answered his questions. Then we were at the University and for the next five minutes we were busy as I called the turns.
‘Left at the next corner. This is me. You could let me out here.’
The car stopped as if he had hit a brick wall. Thrown forward, I caught the padded edge of the dashboard before my head battered the windscreen. Sputtering to the surface again, I saw him gaping through the windscreen at Kennedy. My landlord had one hand on his gate and in his turn was staring at us. The car must have squealed to a stop.
Kennedy looked at me through the glass. I saw his gaze shift to my companion. He took his hand from the gate and walked towards the car.
‘Mother of God,’ the man beside me whispered. ‘What’s he wanting with us?’
‘It’s Mr Kennedy – he owns the house I stay in.’
Kennedy was almost on us.
‘Don’t tell him who I am or where—’
The door opened and Kennedy bent in to me.
‘It’s yourself. We wondered where you got to last night.’
He was studying Briody across me as he spoke, but unexpectedly a hard fist in my side shoved me out, forcing Kennedy back as I sprawled from the car. The slam of the door made one noise with the roar of the engine as the car leaped from us.
‘Your friend’s in a hurry,’ Kennedy said. He watched the car squeal round the corner as if chased.
‘I don’t know him.’ Without knowing why, I had decided to do as Liam Briody had asked. ‘He gave me a lift.’
‘Where’d you come by him then?’
We were moving towards the house.
‘I thumbed a lift.’
‘Oh, yes.’
We turned in at the gate and he took out his key to open the door.
‘I finished up at a party last night. Got a bit too merry and stayed the night.’
‘At your age you want to watch the drink,’ he said, but not as if his mind was really on it.
‘I started walking home this morning and discovered I’d no money. Lucky I got a lift.’
‘Lucky,’ he said. He still hadn’t turned the key. His hand rested on it. ‘Especially with him being in such a hurry.’
In the hall, he asked, ‘Where was the party then?’
I started up the stairs.
‘It was a fellow I met,’ I said without looking back. ‘I got a lift to it.’
‘You’ve done well with the lifts,’ he said, but I kept going.