He sits still, watching the sunlight shift across Trey’s thin shoulders as she pulls out lengths of wood and discards them, until Lena texts back. Fuck’s sake. I don’t blame her. Yeah she can stay no problem.
Thanks, Cal texts. I’ll send her over after dinner. “She says you’re welcome to stay,” he tells Trey, pocketing his phone. “You gotta tell your mama where you are, though. Or ask Miss Lena to.”
Trey rolls her eyes harder. “Here,” she says, thrusting an old oak sleeper at him. “This?”
“Yeah,” Cal says. He goes back to the chair. “That’s good.”
Trey marks the end of the sleeper with a swipe of black Sharpie and puts it back in the corner. “That stuff coming off?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Cal says. “It’s fine. Easy as pie.”
Trey finds a clean rag, dips it in the vinegar mix and wrings it out hard. She says, “What if he’s not OK with me coming here?”
“You reckon he’ll have a problem?”
Trey considers this. “He never gave a shite where we went before.”
“Well then,” Cal says. “Most likely he won’t give a shit about this, either. If he does, we’ll deal with it then.”
Trey throws a quick glance up at him. Cal says, “We’ll deal with it.”
Trey nods, one decisive jerk, and starts in on the chair. The fact that his word can reassure her makes Cal want to sit down all over again.
Reassured or not, she’s still not feeling talkative, even by her own standards. After a while, Rip and Banjo get thirsty and come in the open front door, take a long noisy drink from their bowls, and bounce into the workshop for some attention. Trey squats to make a fuss over them, even laughing when Rip nudges her under the chin hard enough that she falls on her backside. Then the dogs flop down for a rest in their corner, and Trey picks up her rag again and gets back to work.
Cal doesn’t feel much like talking either. He never for a minute expected Trey’s father to come home. Even made up entirely of anecdotes, Johnny Reddy has always struck Cal as a type he’s encountered before: the guy who operates by sauntering into a new place, announcing himself as whatever seems likely to come in handy, and seeing how much he can get out of that costume before it wears too thin to cover him up any longer. Cal can’t think of a good reason why he might want to come back here, the one place where he can’t announce himself as anything other than what he is.
—
Lena is hanging her washing on the line. She takes an unreasonable amount of private pleasure in this job. It makes her keenly aware of the air around her, warm and sweet with cut hay, of the generous sunlight covering her, and of the fact that she stands where generations of women have stood, doing the same task against the greens of the fields and the faraway outline of the mountains. When her husband died, five years back, she learned the skill of taking every scrap of happiness where she could find it. A fresh bed or a perfectly buttered piece of toast could lighten the weight enough to let her catch a breath or two. A small breeze swells the sheets on the line, and Lena sings to herself, low fragments of songs she picked up off the radio.
“Well, would you ever look at that,” a voice says behind her. “Lena Dunne. Large as life and twice as gorgeous.”
When Lena turns around, it’s Johnny Reddy, leaning on her back gate and looking her up and down. Johnny always did have a way of inspecting you like he was remembering, with approval, what you were like in bed. Since he was never in Lena’s bed and isn’t going to be, she has no time for this.
“Johnny,” she says, looking him up and down right back. “I heard you were home, all right.”
Johnny laughs. “God almighty, word still travels fast around here. The place hasn’t changed a bit.” He gives her an affectionate smile. “Neither have you.”
“I have,” Lena says. “Thank God. You haven’t.” It’s true. Apart from the first smattering of gray, Johnny looks the same as he did when he used to throw pebbles against her window and bring her and half a dozen others to the disco in town, all of them piled on top of each other in his dad’s rickety Ford Cortina, speeding through the dark and shrieking at every pothole. He even stands the same, easy and light as a young lad. He confirms Lena’s observation that the men who age best are the feckless ones.
He grins, running a hand over his head. “I’ve still got the hair, anyway. That’s the main thing. How’ve you been getting on?”
“Grand,” Lena says. “How’s yourself?”
“Never better. It’s great to be home.”
“Lovely,” Lena says. “That’s nice for you.”
“I was in London,” Johnny tells her.
“I know, yeah. Off making your fortune. Did you?”
She’s expecting a flourish-laden story about how he was within touching distance of millions when some villain swooped in and robbed the chance from under his nose, which would at least make his visit interesting enough to be halfway worthwhile. Instead, Johnny gives the side of his nose a mischievous tap. “Ah, now, that’d be telling. It’s under construction. Authorized personnel only.”
“Ah, shite,” Lena says. “I forgot my hard hat.” She goes back to her washing, feeling that Johnny could at least have waited until she was done enjoying it.
“Will I give you a hand with that?” he asks.
“No need,” Lena says. “It’s done.”
“Brilliant.” Johnny opens her gate wide and sweeps a hand towards it. “You can come for a walk with me, so.”
“This isn’t the only thing I’ve to do today.”
“The rest’ll keep. You deserve a bit of a break. When was the last time you skived off for the day? You used to be great at that.”
Lena looks at him. He still has that smile, the wide impish crinkle that woke your reckless side and lured you into thinking the stakes were low. Lena kept them that way, except for that speeding Cortina. She had a laugh with Johnny, but even though he was the finest thing and the biggest charmer within miles of Ardnakelty, he never stirred enough in her to get him beyond the outside of her bra. He had no substance; there was nothing in him to hold her. But Sheila Brady, who was Lena’s friend back then, kept believing the stakes were low and the substance was in there somewhere, till she came up pregnant. From there the momentum just kept on rolling her downhill.
Sheila was big enough and smart enough to make her own decisions, but Johnny’s momentum took their kids along too. Lena has got fonder of Trey Reddy than she is of just about any other human being.
“You know who’d only love to skive off for the day?” she says. “Sheila. She used to be great at it, too.”
“She’s at home with the kiddies, sure. Theresa went off somewhere—she’s a chip off the old block, that one, got itchy feet. The rest are too small to mind each other.”
“Then away you go and mind them, and Sheila can go for a walk.”
Johnny laughs. He’s not putting it on; he’s genuinely not shamed, or even annoyed. This was one of the things that stopped Lena from ever getting drawn in by Johnny: you could see right through him, and let him know you had, and he wouldn’t be one bit bothered. If you didn’t fall for his shite, there were plenty of others who would.
“Sheila must be sick of the sight of these fields. I’m the one that’s been missing them for years. Come on and help me enjoy them.” He waggles the gate invitingly. “You can tell me what you’ve been at all this time, and I’ll tell you how I got on in London. The aul’ lad upstairs from me was from the Philippines, and he had a parrot that could swear in their lingo. You wouldn’t get that in Ardnakelty. I’ll teach you how to call anyone that annoys you a son of a grasshopper.”
“I’ve sold that land you’re standing on to Ciaran Maloney,” Lena says, “is what I’ve been at. If he sees you there, he’ll run you off it. You can call him a son of a grasshopper.” She picks up her wash basket and goes inside.