Chapter Fourteen
‘The shortest day,’ said Maura, as she handed Mark a mug of tea. ‘They’ll all have been out at Newgrange this past couple of hours.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’
‘You and Nuala used to have to write about it for your homework every year at this time when you were in primary school.’ She bit from a slice of toast spread thick with butter and marmalade. The rumpled cotton of her nightdress showed beneath her dressing-gown. Around her eyes, the lines seemed scored more deeply than they had the night before.
‘They built it in alignment to the solstice,’ Mark said. ‘The sunrise today comes in through a roof box and lights up the whole passageway. They’ve people buried in there. They don’t know who.’
‘Must be some sight,’ Maura said. ‘I’d love to get in to see it some day.’
‘Only clout would get you in this morning,’ Mark said. ‘It’ll be all politicians and journalists blocking the place up for a gawk. I’m surprised any light gets in at all.’
‘Only clout would have got you in there the first time round,’ said Maura.
Mark leafed through the pages of the local newspaper he had spread on his side of the table. It was all court reports and office-party photos and advertorials; there was a whole page about the cathedral in Longford and about how busy the priests were in the run-up to Christmas. ‘During this very busy season in the hustle and bustle of Longford, be sure to drop into St Mel’s Cathedral and be confronted by serenity,’ the piece ended. Mark had long been meaning to call into the small museum at the back of the cathedraclass="underline" he had heard that the nuns at the manor had donated a couple of boxes of old letters and documents from the Edgeworth family’s time. He should go in to have a look at the stuff, he knew. There might be something he could use. He would get around to it eventually.
‘She’s sleeping late,’ his mother interrupted his thoughts.
He nodded. ‘She always does, in this house. I don’t know why.’
‘Country air.’ His mother smiled. ‘You should bring her out for a walk in it later.’
Mark nodded. ‘I want to go down to see what Dad’s at in the fields. I’ll bring her in the pushchair.’
‘Well, wrap her up warm,’ his mother said. ‘I don’t want Joanne blaming me if you bring her back to Dublin with a cold.’
‘Joanne’s not going to do that,’ Mark said, glancing across the table.
‘I wish you could all be here for the day itself,’ his mother said. ‘I’d love to see her face when she gets her Santy presents.’
‘Come on, she doesn’t know Santy from Adam, Mam,’ Mark said, and he closed the newspaper and folded it away.
‘Still,’ his mother said. ‘You’ll be missed.’
It was strange being in Dorvaragh with Aoife and without Joanne. He was acutely aware, for some reason, of the child’s breathing as she lay in the cot at the foot of his bed. That was his old cot. His father — under orders from his mother — had taken it down from the attic and assembled it in Mark’s old room. Mark found himself looking at it as though he might somehow remember it, which was impossible; of course he could not remember it. Still, the worn smoothness of its wooden bars seemed familiar, somehow. That morning as he had watched Aoife sleep he had reached over and gripped one, held it tightly, the way he must have done thirty years ago when his hands were as small as Aoife’s were now. But nothing had come back to him.
An hour later he put Aoife in the pushchair and walked down the lane. From the gate to the lower fields, he could see that his father was fencing, using a sledge to hammer a paling post into the soft ground along the drain. Behind him, more posts jutted awkwardly from the transport box fixed to the tractor. Mark opened the gate and made his way over the bog, the thin frame of the pushchair jerking and rattling across the bumps. Seeing him approach, Tom stopped work. He was sweating, and one cheek was dirty with peat. He had taken his coat off and thrown it across the tractor’s front wheel.
‘These’re the sleepers?’ Mark asked, as he drew up beside him. He recognized the wood from the haul Tom had bought from the railway station in Longford a few years previously.
Tom nodded. ‘Time to be doing something with them,’ he said.
‘The ground must be hard enough, this time of year?’ Mark said, studying the spot where the last post had gone in. He pressed his foot to it. It felt nothing like bog. ‘Jesus, it’s like cement,’ he said. His father shrugged.
‘Bloody cattle are breaking out over this drain on me all winter,’ he said, and took up the sledge.
‘Right,’ said Mark, and he bent to check on Aoife. She was gazing at her grandfather from beneath her fleece hood, her cheeks so flushed they seemed chafed. Her nose had started to run; he pressed a tissue to it, and she tried to turn away.
‘They buy those in from Poland now, you know,’ said Mark to his father, over the noise of the sledge as it came down on the wood.
Tom stepped back to examine the post. He drew the back of his hand over his mouth.
‘Do they,’ he said, lifting a bottle of orange from the transport box. He took a long drink, his head back, and glanced at Mark as he replaced the cap. ‘Poland. Didn’t that used to be Russian? Communist, like?’
‘Communist, yeah.’ Mark pushed at the post with one hand; it seemed secure. ‘Heavy work,’ he said.
‘Mmm.’ Tom scratched his head. ‘Them posts aren’t from Poland anyway.’
‘No,’ Mark said uncertainly.
‘Matt Francis gave them all to me for fifty euro there, a few summers gone by.’
‘I remember.’
‘They were pegging them out ’ithin at the station.’ Tom took up the pointed iron bar he used to make holes for the posts. He aimed it at a new spot and broke ground. ‘Ah, old Mattie Francis looked after me, though,’ he said. ‘I’ve been using these sleepers for fencing ever since. This is the last of them.’ He gestured back to the pile on the transport box. ‘Don’t know what I’m going to do the next time.’
Mark made no effort to reply.
‘Hardly go to Poland,’ Tom said then. ‘Hardly go over to the Reds for a few posts of timber.’ Mark saw that he was quietly laughing. He let himself laugh, too, at the sight of it.
‘Hardly,’ he said, and he tucked Aoife’s blanket more tightly around her legs.
‘None of those boys would give me too much of a bargain, now, I think,’ Tom said. ‘I see them in the bank of a Friday evening lodging more money into it than the whole town put together. Clever as fuck, them boys. You ever see them in there?’
‘Who?’
‘Them Polish lads. In the bank. Jesus, they do be lodging thousands. Thousands. Every week.’
‘I doubt that,’ Mark said, and he handed his father the shovel. ‘I doubt they’re all doing that well.’
‘Ha?’ Tom stuck the shovel into the ground. ‘Sure when do you ever see them? You don’t see them working fifteen hours of the day above at the piggery. Or beyond where Corrigan is building all the houses. I’m telling you. They’re making serious money,’ he said. ‘Serious.’