“ARE YOU all right, Dermot love?”My wife, in a Mayo 5000 sweatshirt and the inevitable jeans, had thundered into our bedroom with the same serenity as that of a herd of cattle en route from Texas to Dodge City.
I had been sitting on the bed reading Eddie Fitzpatrick’s book and identifying with his feelings of being a callow youth. I looked up at Nuala Anne and grinned.
“As best as can be expected after the attack on me in my own bed.”
“Och, Dermot Michael Coyne, aren’t you a desperate man altogether!”
She threw herself on the bed and embraced me.
“Didn’t I say to meself that night at O’Neill’s pub that it would be grand to slip into bed with that big blond Yank and tumble with him? Didn’t I know then that he would be the greatest lover in all the world?”
The history of our encounter that foggy evening was subject to constant revision. I very much doubted this new essay in revisionism. Moreover, I had hardly been the aggressor in our earlier romp.
“As I remember this afternoon,” I said, putting aside the manuscript, which was a good deal less compelling at
the moment than my wife, “I was hardly the active partner.”
“Go ’long with you, Dermot Michael Coyne.” She slapped my arm. “Wasn’t I just the defenseless woman overwhelmed by your violent desires?”
Total lie. I had, however, enough sense not to argue.
“Well,” she continued exuberantly, “haven’t I forgotten to take me pill? So, lest I be divorced and lose the custody of me children, I’m going to take it right now, in your presence.”
She produced a pill from the pocket of her jeans and gulped it down.
“See, am I not a good and obedient little wife?”
“Good, anyway.”
She laughed as though I had said something wildly funny.
I wondered if her new-found exuberance was an indication of a manic phase. How would one be able to tell the difference between a manic Nuala Anne and the ordinary garden-variety Nuala Anne?
“Well, now, aren’t we going off to O’Donnell’s pub tonight for a bowl of soup and a bit of a sandwich and a drink for you and a glass of Evian water for me?”
“Are we?”
“Haven’t I just said so?” She hugged me more tightly. “And not to worry about them shiteheads with guns? Won’t we have ourselves a bodyguard like we’re really important people?”
“Will we?”
“Haven’t I just said so? Now will we have our shower and yourself sitting here on the bed without any clothes on?”
The woman was conniving again. However, as exhausted as I was from the terrors and the pleasures of the day, hadn’t she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse?
Our fun and games in the shower were limited to gentle
kisses and caresses—which, all things considered, was just as well.
“How did you know that the young murdered woman was blond?” I asked.
“Well, she was blond, wasn’t she? Very pretty, poor little thing.”
“Her terror is long since over, Nuala Anne.”
“Indeed, and her tears wiped away. Still, you hear a noise in your house, you come running into the room, and a man has just shot your father and then they beat you to death.”
“Why would they do such terrible things?”
“Hate, Dermot. And the drink!”
“I suppose so.”
“What about Ethne?” I asked as I covered my wife’s breasts with suds.
“What about her?”
“Does she come home with us to get her Ph.D. in history?”
“Och, Dermot Michael, what do you know about that?”
“I’m fey on occasion, though only when fondling a woman in the shower.”
“Any woman?”
“Any woman, so long as she’s my wife.”
“Well,” Nuala adopted her fishmonger’s tone, “don’t the kids simply love her? And doesn’t she want to study in America? And won’t it be nice for me to talk to someone who has the Irish?”
“About me.”
“Sure, we could do that in English when you’re not around, couldn’t we now? … So, what would you be thinking about it?”
Actually, I didn’t get a vote. However, I did earn some points for guessing one of the schemes that were going on. Not many, however.
“I think it’s a brilliant idea!”
My wife hugged me.
“You’re a wonderful man, Dermot, always so kind and generous.”
I was no such thing, but I let it pass.
“I’ll read some of your man’s manuscript,” Nuala continued, “when we come back from O’Donnell’s. What’s it like?”
“Painfully candid.”
“Och, I don’t need that at all, at all! … You know, Dermot Michael Coyne, wouldn’t I like to stay in this warm shower with you for the rest of me life!”
However, we eventually left the shower, dressed, kissed the children (whom Nuala had already fed), and left them in Ethne’s charge.
“Aren’t there enough Gardaí outside, Ethne Moire, to put down a revolution? There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Who’s worried?” the young woman asked. “Except about passing me comprehensives?”
Fiona bestirred herself from her close watch on our children.
“No, girl,” Nuala admonished her, “stay here and take care of the wee ones.”
The wolfhound settled down, happy perhaps to have a peaceful evening after an exciting day. And herself expecting, as my wife would have said.
Two Garda cars waited in our driveway. Peig Sayers, in jeans and a sweater like my wife’s, was in one, and two uniformed constables were in the other. We entered Peig’s car.
Both sweaters represented the current women’s fashion of leaving uncovered the navel and varying amounts of associated flesh. As I had remarked to my wife, navels aren’t as erotic as asses or teats, but in a pinch—you should excuse the expression, Nuala Anne—it will do.
“Don’t be vulgar, Dermot Michael. Besides, would
women be doing it these days if it weren’t difficult to get men’s eyes off the shameless hussies on the telly?”
There was a lapse in logic there to which I wisely did not point.
“No, don’t you dare ogle her tonight, Dermot Michael Coyne,” my wife whispered to me, “and yourself exhausted from almost raping me this afternoon.”
“Love one woman,” I whispered back, “love them all.”
Inside the car, I congratulated Officer Peig on her promotion to the rank of detective.
“Sure, isn’t it only for the night, Mr. Coyne? … We have the house surrounded, Nuala Anne. Nothing to worry about at all, at all.”
“Unless the Russians land commandos from one of their subs.”
“Their subs don’t work anymore, Mr. Coyne. And, if they did, wouldn’t your American navy pick them up long before they got to shore?”
“Right,” I said, slipping into silence.
Mr. Coyne, indeed.
O’Donnell’s was filled with people that night, noisy, contentious, difficult people. Which is to say, mostly fishermen. I quite agreed with my wife’s judgment that they were eejits. Peig came in with us while the two uniformed officers waited outside. A table was reserved for us in a corner, as far from the door as possible, so that if any Mafia types entered, they would have to walk across a crowded room.
I collected two pints and one Evian water at the bar. “You an alcoholic or something?” a redneck American fisherman asked me.
It would have been very easy to get into a fight with him. People look at me and think I’m a pushover, probably because I have a boyish face and a sweet smile and curly blond hair. They learn the hard way that such appearances can be deceiving. However, an elderly man now
with two children, I tended to act mature. So I ignored the guy. I carried the drinks to our table. My wife never complained about her forced abstinence from the “creature.” She hardly seemed to notice the glass. She was busy scanning the room, as though looking for a face.
My heart did a flip-flop. She was looking for the man who had shot at her on the lake. What would happen if she found him?
It didn’t seem that he was in the room. Nuala abandoned her search, temporarily at least, and joined the conversation.
Then a tall, rather striking woman in her early forties ambled over to our table. Her body had been poured into tight jeans and tight sweater, her long black hair hung defiantly around a face that displayed more makeup than it needed. She carried a half-empty pint of Guinness in her ring-bedecked hand. All in all, she was worth a second look. Maybe even a third.
“Mind if I sit down?” she asked as she sat down.
We didn’t say no, but we were less than enthusiastic about her joining us, even Nuala Anne, who normally personified West of Ireland courtesy towards strangers.
“My name is Margot Quinn. I’m an estate agent down in Clifden. I understand you’ve bought the bungalow next to the one that was blown up yesterday?”
“’Tis true,” Nuala Anne said, “and a brilliant bungalow it is.”
“Well, its lost a lot of its value since yesterday, hasn’t it now?”
She sipped from her pint.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Curiosity value.”
“You put it on the market tomorrow and you’ll find out how much curiosity value it has!” Margot Quinn sneered.
Not a word about our experience on the lake earlier in the afternoon. Perhaps she didn’t know about it.
“We’re not about to put it on the market tomorrow,” I
said firmly. “We’ve just bought it, and we like it. A couple of years from now, people will have forgotten about the explosion.”
“If there are not any more.” She smiled knowingly. “Once these things start out here they tend to continue.”
Peig Sayers was listening attentively. No one would imagine that this pretty young woman was a police constable in mufti.
“You expect there’ll be more explosions?”
“Someone is up to something, aren’t they now? That prick MacManus has a lot of enemies. If you ask me, they’ve only begun to work him over.”
“Och, sure, our bungalow isn’t for sale at all, at all,” Nuala said firmly.
Margot Quinn looked at Nuala as though she were out of her mind.
“Well, it’s up to you, but, if I were in your situation, I’d think about a quick sale. It happens that at the moment I have some clients who are interested in constructing condos along this stretch of the coast, and they’d be willing to pay pretty much what you’ve put into it.”
“Ah, no,” Nuala said gently.
“Well, here’s my card,” Margot Quinn said, rising from her chair. “Call me when you change your mind as I’m sure you will.”
My two companions stared after her as she walked away.
“Aren’t those jeans a size too small?” Peig observed.
Me good wife, who is catty only when the situation absolutely demands it, disagreed: “Two sizes.”
The sweater was apparently beneath their notice.
“Feminism has apparently created gombeen women in Ireland,” I offered.
“Sure, she didn’t know you were a constable, did she now?”
“Och, that one wouldn’t care at all, at all!”
They exchanged a couple of sentences in Irish that I thought might be a more clinical comment on Ms. Quinn.
“It’s almost like she wants to be a suspect.”
“Wouldn’t it give her more publicity?” Peig said, sniffing disdainfully.
“So what DO the Gardai think is happening out here on Long Island East?” I asked.
“Officially, we’re continuing our investigations. Unofficially, we think someone is trying to scare people away from Renvyle, depress property values around here, and then buy up a lot of land for development. However, there is no evidence that anyone has made any offers for the hotel or the land. The bomb at the T.D.’s house was planted several days before the explosion and then detonated by remote control.”
“Them things cost a lot of money, don’t they?” my wife asked, frowning. “And I suppose there’s some expense in hiring a man to take wild shots at harmless waterskiers … .”
“Was it the kind of bomb the lads would use?” I asked.
“It was,” Peig agreed, “but a lot of people know how to make them bombs. We’re inclined to think that the man who made the bomb has some experience with the paramilitaries up above. It doesn’t follow that he is working for the paramilitaries now.”
“He could have planted the bomb,” Nuala reflected, “given the remote control to someone else, and be far away when the bomb went off. ’Tis dark enough out here at night that someone could have done it very quickly and not been noticed.”
“We’re afraid that we’ll never find him.” Peig sighed. “We hope we find the man with the rifle.”
“We’ll find him all right,” my wife said softly.
“Even if we do,” I cautioned, “the people behind these events probably covered themselves.”
“If they are as clever as they seem to be,” Peig agreed,
“that is undoubtedly true. Still, no one is perfectly clever. They’ll make a mistake, and we’ll get them.”
I did not find that hope terribly reassuring.
Nuala stiffened next to me. She seemed to be watching three men who had just entered the pub as they picked their way through the crowd and found a table at the far side of the room.
“Peig, would you ever check the car of that little fella who just came in with them big fellas? I wouldn’t be surprised altogether if you found a thirty-caliber rifle with a telescopic lens in the boot.”
Peig glanced towards the three men.
“Just a quick look, mind you. We don’t want them to know that I’m suspicious.”
Peig slipped away.
“Are you sure, Nuala?”
“Of course I’m sure, Dermot Michael. Would I send herself out to search the shitehawk’s car if I wasn’t sure?”
Good enough for you, Dermot Coyne.
I waited anxiously and fervently hoped that my wife would not engage in any mayhem. The little fella was little all right, but the other two fellas were big enough.
Peig entered the door of the pub and nodded briefly. There were two Gardai behind her.
Nuala bounded out of her chair and thundered across the room like an NFL tight end. I tried to follow.
“You know,” I heard her say to the little fella as she picked up his pint of Guinness, “I’m not going to try to throw this in your face. I hope to miss it. Still, I make mistakes occasionally, don’t you know!”
Thereupon she splashed the contents of his glass right in the middle of his face.
“Oh, shite! Didn’t I miss now! What a shame! Here I’ll try again with this man’s pint! Och, didn’t I miss again!”
“What the fock!” the man cried as he rose to his feet.
The two other fellas bounded up. One of them tried to
grab Nuala’s arm. For his pains, she hit him in the throat with the edge of her hand. He gasped sickly and fell back against the wall. Somewhere in her career, long before she met me, my wife had learned how to be an alley fighter, though only when someone she loved was at risk.
The other fella found himself on the floor, nursing a very sore jaw, before he knew what hit him. In this case it was my fist. I only look sweet.
Nuala shook the little fella, who, his spectacles askew, was cowering in terror.
“You focking little gobshite! Endanger my husband and children’s lives will you! And too much of a focking eejit to take your focking gun out of your focking car!”
“Alfonse Ryan”—Peig took charge—“I arrest you on the charge of attempted murder. I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used against you in a court of law … . Nuala Anne, please put the focker down!”
The pub exploded in applause. They all knew what had happened earlier in the day. They did not quite understand how the Gardaí, with my wife’s assistance, had apprehended the gunman. If we explained it to them, they probably wouldn’t believe it—or would make the sign of the cross and run home for their holy water.
“Good on you, Nuala Anne!” someone shouted.
“Serves the focker right!”
“Hooray for Nuala Anne!”
My wife waved her hand in appreciation.
“A round of drinks,” she announced, “on meself for the whole house!”
Then she whispered to me, “I hope you have one of your credit cards, Dermot Michael.”