The Pig Comes to Dinner (2 page)

Aaron and Lolly now stood before Kitty, smiling, signaling that Kitty's good nature was about to be taxed.

“We brought you the pig,” Lolly said.

“Really?” said Kitty.

“We thought it would be better off here,” Aaron added.

“How considerate.” Kitty, too, smiled.

At that moment, like a cavalry reinforcement coming to the rescue at the most needed time, there came around the turn onto the castle road Kieran and the cows.

The truck pulled up at the far side of the courtyard. Kieran jumped out, slammed the cab door, nodded to Lolly and to Aaron, went to his wife, took her into his arms, and put his mouth against hers—crunching his tawny, welltrimmed beard against her tender cheek, keeping open his blazing blue eyes even when they could see no more than the right side of Kitty's forehead, a strand of sweet black hair, and the upper curve of her lovely ear.

Kieran removed his lips, let his beard spring back into place, and reclaimed his arms, all the while, with still blazing eyes, piercing Kitty to the pit of her stomach with the now familiar warning that she prepare herself for further stirrings yet to come. Kitty, in good wifely fashion, seared his eyes with hers, neither of them blinking—a metaphor, perhaps, for the marriage recently contracted. Kieran turned and strode back toward the truck.

Lolly called to Kieran, “You want some help with the cows?”

“I think I can manage, but thanks.”

With an overly casual walk indicating she was trying to make an unnoted departure, Lolly moved toward her own truck. “Maybe we should just go, then,” she said airily.

With an overstated indifference all her own, Kitty, not without an undercurrent of resolve, said, “I think you might want first to go fetch your pig.”

Kieran caught the word. He paused in his efforts to move the cows. “Pig? What pig?”

“Kieran, sweetheart,” said Kitty, “there's only one pig. And it's here.”

“What's it doing here?”

“That has yet to be explained.”

“First, let me get the herd down to the mire.”

The cows, huddled together, seemed reluctant to accept the invitation to go wallow in the bog. Some raised their massive heads and bellowed, convinced that it was to the slaughter they'd been brought and not to the greener ground awaiting at the bottom of the ramp.

Kieran, with the agility of a goat, jumped aboard and, with a nudge here and a slap there, began more of a shifting than a movement toward the incline. The cows stepped daintily, their hooves touching lightly on the weathered planks, proving to one and all that they were ladies of considerable refinement, their swaying udders and a single deposit of cow flop notwithstanding.

Now that the work was mostly done, Sly, Kieran's border collie, entrusted with disciplining the cows, bounded down the hill, having already left territorial claims at the sheds, the foundation stones of the castle, and the rock wall that hedged the apple orchard west of the roadway. Tail wagging, it happily moved among the cows, nipping shanks, barking, and generally making sure that the time for serenity had come to an end.

The pig returned from the stream and presented itself to its old acquaintance, Kieran Sweeney, snout raised as if it detected on the man's person some hidden delectable that would now be surrendered.

“
Faugh a Ballagh!
” “Get out of the way!” Kieran, who was returning to the truck to shovel out manure left behind by an indifferent cow, bent down and clapped his hands close to the pig's ears and repeated the words any Irish pig should understand, “
Faugh a Ballagh!
” He then jumped up onto the truck, shovel in hand.

The pig trotted into the castle courtyard, stopping mid- way to lower its head and slowly move its snout over the pebbles like a mine detector searching out buried objects. That it refrained from rooting and turning the entire courtyard upside down allowed Kitty to return her attention to Lolly and her nephew. “Should we assume,” she said, “that your place has been destroyed by our friend here and now it's our turn?”

Lolly jerked her head back, aghast. “Not at all!”

“It's become quite docile.” Aaron weakened his smile to indicate that he was lying.

“It's our present to you. The two of you,” Lolly said, expressing a newly arrived thought. “A gift. Since you'll be doing some farming now, surely you should have yourselves a pig.”

“All right, then,” said Kitty. “Now tell me what's wrong. Why the pig? Why here? Why us?”

“Well …” said Lolly.

“Yes. Go on.”

“Well …” Lolly turned toward her husband and whispered, “You tell her.”

“No, it's all right. You're doing fine.”

“All right, then.” Lolly looked directly at Kitty, raising her head so that her chin and her nose made a show of being loftily indifferent to how her words were to be received. “We can't have it in the herd.” She took in a quick breath to strengthen her resolve. “It's a lesbian.”

“A lesbian?”

Lolly took in a longer breath. “It—it keeps—well— performing ‘proprietary acts' on the females.”

Before Kitty could respond, Aaron spoke up. “The females don't seem to mind, but the males, they—well—they get a bit exercised.”

“Men!” said Kitty, snorting.

“Then you'll keep it?” Lolly's eyes widened in hope, then deepened into pleading. “I can't find it in my heart to sell it or, well, you know.”

“Slaughter it? Is that what you mean?”

Aaron, no longer finding it necessary to whisper, said in a voice first hoarse, then closer to his normal pitch but with tenorial overtone, “Oh, no. We couldn't do that.”

“Especially since you're here to dump it.”

“Take it,” Lolly pleaded. “Save it from a fate worse—”

“For a pig, there's only one fate.” Kitty drew her index finger across her throat.

“Oh, don't say that.” Aaron was horrified.

“And don't do that.” Lolly shuddered.

Kitty, to make manifest the radical changes marriage had wrought in her life, called over to her husband, who had just shoveled the inconvenient flop off the bed of the truck onto the pebbled ground. “Kieran, do we want a pig? It's a lesbian.”

“Which pig? That pig?”

“Yes. That pig.”

“How can it be a lesbian?”

“Don't ask me. Ask God. She's the one should take full credit.”

Lolly exchanged pleading for a lesson in etiquette. “It's a wedding present. You can't return it.”

Kieran jumped down and scooped the manure back onto the shovel. “Then we should have had it for the wedding feast. But you'd taken it home with you.” He paused. “Of course we could always use a bit of bacon.”

“You wouldn't!” cried Lolly.

“If he wouldn't,” said Kitty, “I would.”

Lolly turned her pitiful gaze toward her husband. “Maybe we could build a separate pen. And maybe put a sow or two in with it from time to time.”

“Well.” Aaron breathed in and breathed out. “If that's what you prefer.”

“It's not what I prefer. It's what I'm being forced to do,” Lolly said, as Aaron reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. “Look at it,” she added. “Look at how it wants to be here.”

Kitty looked in the direction Lolly's out-thrust hand demanded. There was the pig, standing transfixed near the castle terrace, its gaze focused on the second-floor gallery that ran above the great hall. It didn't move, a rare moment for this particular animal.

“See?” said Aaron. “It likes the castle.”

Kieran yelled back from the pasture where the flop was being recycled to improve—if such were possible—the planet's greenest grass. “Sure. And I like Dockery's pub, but that doesn't mean they're going to let me live there.”

Kitty raised her hand, demanding silence. Aaron was relieved, since he had no answer to what Kieran had said and didn't want to say something stupid in front of his wife. Lolly moved closer to him, a show of solidarity for the verdict about to be handed down. They both looked at Kitty, who was now staring at the castle.

“Who's that in the window the pig's so interested in?” Kitty asked.

“What window?” Aaron squinted to hide his lack of interest.

“I think you mean
which
window,” said Kitty.

Aaron didn't flinch. “Which window?”

“There above the great hall, the gallery, the second window from the left. The man standing there.”

“What man?”

“The second window. The young man watching us. Brown jacket.”

Lolly shook her head. “I don't see any brown jacket.”

“Then get the hair out of your eyes. He's there; he's wearing a brown jacket and looking at us, and the pig's looking at him.”

“Kitty,” Aaron said, “I'm confused. I don't see a man with or without a brown jacket. In the second, third, or fourth window.”

“Are the pig and I the only ones not blind, then?”

Lolly stretched her neck outward, Aaron crinkled his nose, each straining for a closer look. Kieran ignored the entire exchange and with noisy emphasis shoved the ramp back onto the bed of the truck.

“There,” Kitty said. “Now he's gone, so don't even bother.”

The pig clattered onto the terrace and began snuffling among the uneven stones.

Kitty gave a short laugh. “He must be one of the squatters come back for something left behind. We threw out all the bottles and filthy mattresses littered all over the place. They're in a heap in the far shed. But still inside is a loom. Up in the turret. And a harp with no strings. Would you believe the like? And a Ping-Pong table with paddles and Ping-Pong balls.” She raised her head and yelled, “Don't take the Ping-Pong table. Or the loom or the harp. We'll buy them from you.” She stopped. “There he is again, at the other window, at the end. Now can you see him?”

Again Lolly and Aaron looked.

“I still can't see him,” said Lolly.

“Kitty,” said Aaron, “there's no one there. You're seeing shadows, or maybe a mist is coming up.”

“I'm seeing one of the squatters. And I'm going to go bargain with him.”

Kieran busied himself with securing the back of the truck. “Do you want me to go with?”

“No need. If he's not as skinny as he looked, maybe he'd like a job. Help with the repairs they never finished. Like thatching the sheds.”

Kieran gave the tailgate a good rattle. “I don't need any help. If I can't take care of a castle and a few cows and do a bit of roofing—with slate—”

“With thatch!” Kitty inserted, reviving a previously stated preference.

“To be discussed another time,” Kieran concluded. “For now, don't expect me to train an apprentice in work you have to learn from the day you were born.”

How fine he is, thought Kitty. Just like me: stubborn. Her impulse was simply to stand and admire her husband, but she knew that would unnerve him. “He's as good as hired,” said Kitty. Then, to goad her husband into another point of contention, she added, “And we'll keep the pig. It is, after all, the one being besides myself has eyesight enough to see what's there for anyone to see.” She swept past them all, moving with elegant determination toward the castle. Raising her right arm, she waved at the young man in the window. That he failed to wave back distressed her not at all. That he simply vanished gave her only the slightest pause.

She stepped onto the terrace. As she passed through the heavy doors into the great hall, the pig followed, but stopped in the middle of the vast room and stared into a corner at the far end. There in the shadows was the young man, cap in hand. He wore a brown, crude-weave jacket over a tunic cinched with a cord that looked like rope. His pants legs went just below the knee. His feet were bare. He was looking at the pig, his brown eyes mournful yet expectant, his mouth and his entire face taut as if preparing themselves for whatever might happen.

“There you are.” Kitty took a step forward. “I'm Kitty McCloud. I've taken the place, as you probably know. You're one of the squatters. I'm offering you a job, if you'd like.”

She spoke to him in Irish, the language the squatters had come from Cork to learn. But he made no response; then ceased to be where he had been. He had simply disappeared. Kitty herself, unmoving, did not take her eyes off the spot where the youth had stood. She blinked twice, then said in a whisper, “Well, then; I guess he doesn't want the job.” The pig sent out from behind a parabola of urine to water the flagstone floor. It was then that Kitty remembered where she'd seen the young man before. At her wedding feast.

2

K
itty McCloud had astonished even herself when she realized she had wanted not Aaron's and Lolly's simple marriage ceremony but a lavish event starting with a nuptial mass presided over by Father Colavin—the pastor of St. Brendan's for as long as anyone could remember—and followed by a feast in the great hall of her newly purchased castle.

So profitable were her novels that she felt almost obliged to appropriate this enduring relic of Kerry history, installing herself and her newly acquired husband, both from County families of ancient lineage, within precincts too long desecrated by foreign usurpers bearing the signal name of Shaftoe. The
Lords
Shaftoe, to be exact. These usurpers had occupied Castle Kissane for more than a century, starting with the Cromwellian conquest in the sixteen hundreds. (It is possibly significant that Kitty invariably referred to her book
profits
rather than her
royalties,
eschewing a terminology dating back to the royal percentages exacted from the gold and silver mines operating within the kingly or queenly imperium. It is also possible that in the light of the Shaftoe dominion, in her present circumstance she was even a bit loath to use the term
chatelaine,
insisting that she was no more or less than a “steward” holding the castle in trust during the times she might be its humble and unworthy occupant.)