Thin Air (24 page)

It took a bit of time and a few failed attempts but at last, proud as punch, Aine led her mount through the orchard gate on to the boirin. She didn’t close it behind her but took the cob back to it and parked him beside it while she clambered up on the rungs and swung a leg over his wet back. Amazed at her own success, Aine settled herself behind Specks’s withers and kicked hard.

Specks set off up the track. At the gate to the yard, Aine hauled on the lead rope attached to the head collar and ordered a halt. Specks took no notice. Tossing his head up and down, delighted to be out of his boring quarters, he set out to see what was on the menu at Lena’s.

Aine pulled on the rope and called him names. She considered jumping off but it was a long way down and, since she was in no apparent danger, she stayed where she was. At the top of the boirin Specks turned left. Aine made one more attempt to stop him then gave up and settled down to enjoy the ride.

Nobody saw them go.

Brigid might have seen them if she had still been up among the rocks. But she had gone into the woods again and was slowly making her way back. The ravens flew over, like sentries, and when they were gone, the rain gave rhythm to the quiet.

Thomas noticed the open gate of the orchard when he drove up to Gerard’s house. He was going in to town and he wanted to bring Aine with him. He thought they might look at some bicycles together. He thought they might do more than look at them.

It was sill raining. Trish was in the yard, washing off the mare. The session had deteriorated into a bit of a battle and had gone on much longer than Trish had expected. The mare was sweating heavily.

Thomas leaned on the gate. ‘Did you bring Specks out of the orchard?’

‘No. Is he gone?’

‘He is, I’d say. The gate’s open anyway.’

‘Maybe Gerard moved him?’

‘Hardly,’ said Thomas.

He went into the house to find out. Gerard was there, sweeping the kitchen floor. Aine was nowhere to be found.

Gerard hit the roof. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘That fucking horse! If I ever see it again I swear to God I’ll murder it!’

‘Get a grip on yourself,’ said Thomas.

‘You bought him,’ said Gerard, pointing a finger which shook with rage. ‘You bought the bastard, that tinker’s horse!’

Thomas wanted to answer but Gerard was striding towards the door, slapping at his pockets, taking out his keys.

Trish saw him come out and ran to stop the car. Gerard rolled down the window.

‘I’ve an idea where they could be,’ she said.

Gerard reached across and opened the passenger door. Trish got in. Gerard’s face was grim and he pulled off at full acceleration so that the wheels of the pick-up skidded and threw gravel out behind them.

Trish hoped that she was right. The road seemed endless, far longer than a child on a sloppy old cob could cover in half an hour. Gerard drove in a terrible silence, like a boiler about to blow. When a turn in the road brought the horse and its small rider into sight he almost drove into the ditch and Trish made an instinctive grab for the wheel.

‘It’s all right,’ he snapped, swerving clear. ‘I’m perfectly capable.’

He pulled over in front of the sauntering cob and got out. Trish got out too, dreading what was about to happen. Gerard took the lead rope from Aine’s hand.

‘He just went, Daddy!’ she said, sensing the coming violence. ‘I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t!’

Gerard reached up and pulled her off and put her behind him.

‘I’ll take him,’ said Trish, but if Gerard heard he gave no indication of it. She took Aine’s hand and led her back to the car as Gerard went for the horse, kicking him in the belly and slapping him around the head.

Aine screamed. ‘No, Daddy, no Daddy!’

But Gerard was deaf. He carried on laying into Specks until the cob was running backwards along the road, sending up sparks from his shoes. Trish turned Aine to face her and hugged her tight, blinding her.

‘He’ll be all right. You’ll see.’

Aine sobbed and clung to Trish’s arms with hands like claws.

‘He didn’t do anything bad! It wasn’t his fault!’

Gerard’s steam ran out. He came back towards the car, dragging the terrified horse behind him. Trish took the lead rope. Gerard picked up Aine and held her, but she pushed away from him and wriggled to get down.

‘I thought you were gone, Aine,’ he said. ‘Like Martina. I thought you were gone.’

She wouldn’t answer. Gerard put her into the pick-up and turned it, and drove home.

Specks was steaming in the rain. Trish put a hand on his neck and spoke to him and patted him. After a moment or two he let out a great sigh and dropped his head, and the fear faded away from his kind, brown eyes. He had been hammered before and he would be hammered again. There wasn’t much left in life that would surprise him.

Trish found him a few nuts, then jumped up on to his wet back and turned his head towards home.

Aine dreamed that she was riding on a bull that walked on two legs. She was on its back, piggyback, trying to control it with a bridle. It lunged and plunged, and its horns swung wildly within inches of her ears. She knew that if she fell off she was done for. But if she stayed on the bull-man would take her away, to the place where Martina was.

She woke. The door was open a crack and the landing light was on. She listened for sounds from downstairs. There was nothing, just the rumble of the Neolithic fridge in the kitchen. She turned and snuggled down again but it was no use. The thing on the island came back into her mind and she could smell its dead smell and see its long legs and hear its empty hooves rattling on the end of its bare bones. She was making herself more scared, not less. She needed some help.

Outside her parents’ room she stopped and listened. Her father had frightened her and she didn’t want to be near him. But her mother frightened her more, in some ways, with her tight hugs that went on for too long and her eyes full of dreams.

She looked along the landing. Martina’s bedroom was empty. Kevin had gone away again. There was only Joseph. She stood at his door and listened. He was snoring lightly. She pushed the door open. The smell was strong, almost animal, but it was known to her. She crept in and shook him by the shoulder.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

They all slept lightly those days.

‘Can I come in with you?’

‘Why?’ His eyes closed and Aine could tell that he was dropping off again.

‘Joseph?’

‘What? What is it?’

‘I had a bad dream. Can I come into your bed?’

He was awake now. He propped himself on his elbow.

‘Why can’t you go in with Mam and Dad?’

Aine shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You can. Why can’t you?’

Aine said nothing. Joseph looked at her. She was frightened and terribly alone. The realisation sent a small jolt through him and he understood, without trying too hard, why she couldn’t go into their parents’ bed. He moved over and held up the covers for her.

She got in carefully, on her back. She smelled of nothing. Biscuits, perhaps. She was warmer than he was and it reminded him that when they were younger they had often shared a bed together. They had been good friends, despite the huge gap in their ages. He was the big brother and she worshipped him; laughed at his worst jokes as hard as at his best. How long ago was that?

‘What was your dream about?’ he asked.

Aine thought for a minute. In the light from the landing Joseph watched her face. It was grave, guileless.

‘I can’t tell you,’ she said.

‘Bad one, eh?’

She nodded. He felt strong and protective, but guilty as well. There was some reason that they had stopped sharing a bed.

‘Do you like going to school, Joseph?’ she asked.

He shrugged, ‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I suppose it’s a bit more like normal, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

They were silent again and then he remembered. They had been having a fight together, just the two of them, underneath the bedclothes. He had been tickling her and she had been doing a lot of squealing and giggling. How long ago was it? It was great fun. He had always known how to wind her up. But something had made him look up, and he had seen his father standing at the door with a face as hard and as dark as bog oak.

‘Come out of there, Aine,’ he had said.

‘Oh! Why?’

He strode into the room and grabbed her wrist and yanked her bodily from the bed.

‘When I say “out” I mean “out”.’

She ran off, hurt, crying. Joseph sat on the bed, dreadfully vulnerable, expecting the worst.

‘You’re too old for that kind of carry-on now, Joseph,’ his father had said. ‘I don’t want to ever catch the two of you in the same bed again. You hear?’

Joseph didn’t know why. It had made him and Aine strangers and from that day on he had begun to feel dirty, sinful, and to believe that Aine must be as well. And then the things that began to happen to his body were wrong things, bad things, things to be ashamed of. Dangerous things.

Beside him Aine turned towards him and rested a knee on his thigh and put her thumb in her mouth.

‘Any more bad dreams and you wake me up, you hear?’ he said.

She nodded, her forehead against his ribs. As her breathing began to slow into a sleeping rhythm, tears of indignation rose to Joseph’s eyes. She was his little sister. If anyone suggested there was anything wrong with his feelings for her, he would take their eyes out.

On the day before Aine’s birthday Thomas collected her from school and took her into town to the bicycle shop. Aine vanished into the heart of it while Thomas talked to a young salesman. He told him that he wanted the best bicycle money could buy. They discussed bull horns and braking systems and different kinds of gears. By the time they got round to looking at the different models, Aine had already chosen a bright yellow mountain bike with fifteen gears.

‘I want this one,’ she said.

The assistant explained that there was a newer version of that model with a better gearing system and front fork suspension.

‘I want this one,’ Aine said again.

‘It’s also a boy’s bike,’ said the salesman.

‘I don’t care if it’s a donkey’s bike,’ said Thomas. ‘If she wants it she can have it.’

They left the bike at the shop while they went and had tea and buns in the new smart cafe under franchise from a popular Dublin chain. Thomas had never been in it before and didn’t take long to decide that he would never be in it again. It was full of people of a type he had never seen in town before; executive types in smart suits and skirts. He couldn’t imagine what they did with themselves; how they earned money to buy clothes like that; why they would want to. He stood out like a sore thumb in his plain trousers and worn jacket. And the prices shocked him. He would have paid a small fortune for Aine’s bike, but eighty pence for a cup of tea was robbery.

Aine finished her own cake and then finished Thomas’s. Afterwards they went to buy a pair of shoes for him in the last of the town’s old-fashioned drapers. He made a great show of choosing, of humming and hawing and getting Aine’s opinion. In the end he bought a pair identical to the ones he had on, which were the same as the last pair he had owned and the one before that.

The bike fitted in the Golf with the front wheel hanging over the passenger seat across Aine’s chest. She sniffed the clean rubber smell of the tyre.

‘Is Specks mine now as well?’ she asked.

‘Well, you told me he was!’ said Thomas.

‘But is he? Really, I mean?’

Thomas thought for a moment. ‘He isn’t, no,’ he said. ‘He’s Martina’s.’

‘But we don’t know where Martina is.’

‘That’s for sure,’ said Thomas. ‘But she’s somewhere, anyway.’

‘Joseph said she could be dead.’

Aine knew he was trying to conceal his sorrow. ‘We don’t know where she is,’ he said.

There was a long silence. The car chugged along the road, past the new bungalows that lined it for the first mile or so outside the town.

‘I think she’s a swan,’ said Aine.

‘Do you, begod?’

‘I do.’ Aine felt more courageous. ‘I think she’s a swan like the children of Lir. For nine hundred years.’

‘Is that right? And why do you think that?’

‘Because I saw her. On the lake. And I heard her singing.’

‘I didn’t know Martina was one for singing.’

‘She is,’ said Aine. ‘She was singing Tub Thumping.’

‘Was she, now? My God.’

‘So is Specks mine?’

Thomas laughed. ‘Let’s just say you’re minding him for Martina, shall we?’

‘Yeah,’ said Aine. ‘For nine hundred years.’

When they got back, Brigid said that the dinner was nearly ready and that Thomas’s name was in the pot. Aine brought the bike into the kitchen to show her.

‘Oh, what a beautiful bike,’ said Brigid. ‘Can I have a go on it?’

‘You can’t ride a bike!’ said Aine.

‘What do you mean I can’t ride a bike? Of course I can. I was riding bikes before you were born, young lady!’

Aine was puzzled. It didn’t fit her picture of her mother. She looked at the skirt which came below her knees.

‘Well, anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s a boys’ bike.’

She manoeuvred it, with some difficulty, into the front room, where Gerard and Thomas were watching the six o’clock
News
.

‘Look at that!’ said Gerard. ‘What a bike!’

‘It’s all right,’ said Aine, grinning from ear to ear.

Gerard reached out and scruffled her hair, then turned back to the news.

‘Grandda says I can mind Specks for Martina,’ she said.

Gerard made no response. The newscaster was talking about the murder of a crime boss in Dublin. He had been shot in the head at point-blank range. There were pictures of the taped-off scene.

‘For nine hundred years,’ said Aine.

‘What?’

‘For nine hundred years,’ Aine repeated. ‘While she’s a swan.’

Gerard stared at her.

‘Jesus, Dad,’ he said. ‘Why do you do it? Why do you fill her head with that stuff?’

Thomas nodded towards the television. ‘What are you filling her head with, then?’