HERE ON THE ISLAND?” Toby exclaimed.
“Yup. That’s what she said.”
“You don’t suppose we could—”
“No, I don’t.” I had enough on my mind with my uncle’s murder and worrying about my mother’s involvement. I didn’t need the distraction of a sex club, even as a topic of conversation. My move to table the motion was abetted by the fact that we were out in public, but I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. “Just drink your Guinness,” I counseled, pointing to the pint glass of black liquid crested by a thick layer of cream-colored foam. Toby shrugged and stared into his beer, daydreaming no doubt.
I was nursing a half pint of the bitter stuff myself but with a dollop of syrup swirled in to cut the aftertaste, strictly a ladies’ drink in Ireland. “Guinness is good for you,” they say. They do; signs all over Ireland say just that. It must be one of the most successful ad campaigns ever dreamed up. As I looked around the crowded pub, almost everyone had a glass of the dark brew in hand.
The musicians too had pints in front of them. When they weren’t playing, they were sipping. Angie sat up close to the players, to get the full benefit of Bobby Colman’s sexy baritone and flirtatious glances. There were three men in the band and six instruments among them. Bobby played the fiddle and a banjo, not at the same time. A huge, shaggy, copper-headed guy with an inflated chest and a bushy beard swapped between a tin whistle and a bagpipe. And a hunched-over elder kept time on the bodhran, a handheld drum resembling a tambourine. Now and again, he would switch to squeezing a small accordion. They played with raucous spirit, Bobby singing lead and the others joining on the chorus, with a combination of sentiment and defiance that only an Irish folk tune can evoke. The subject of this one was a young patriot named Roddy McCorley, who was hanged by the British during the 1798 rebellion. The pub was crowded; there was foot-stamping in the audience. “Up the rebels!” shouted a patron, and the cry was echoed by other men. Bobby Colman leaned forward and sang:
Up the narrow street he stepped, so smiling, proud, and young,
About the hemp rope on his neck, the golden ringlets clung;
There’s ne’er a tear in his blue eyes, fearless and brave are they,
For young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
I was ready to grab a pitchfork and march to the bridge myself, to stop the execution.
“They’re good,” acknowledged Toby. “You can’t beat the Irish for folk songs about martyrdom. It’s something in the national character. When you keep losing battles and you’ve got a harp as the official emblem of your country, it’s inevitable.” He took a swig and wiped the foam from his lips. “It’s the same with literature. Look how many of their writers have won the Nobel Prize—Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, Seamus Heaney. Joyce should have won but didn’t. For such a little country, that’s amazing.”
“Why do you think that is?” I asked.
“I had a lit professor who thought it was because the Irish were held down so long by the British. Because their national aspirations were suppressed, they channeled their political passion into stories and music. I think there’s something to it. There are probably more storytellers per acre in Ireland than anywhere else in the world.”
“That’s a clever theory you have there, Yank,” said a voice behind us. The tables in the pub were pushed close together to accommodate the crowd, and our conversation had been overheard.
“It’s meant as a compliment,” said Toby, turning to glance behind him.
“So taken,” said the man, reaching to pat Toby’s shoulder, but his hand withdrew as he recognized me. I took a few seconds to register who he was. Then I realized it was up to me to make introductions. “Toby, this is Frank Hickey. We met at Aunt Laura’s house. Mr. Hickey was Uncle Bert’s business partner. This is my husband, Toby Sandler.”
“It’s Frank,” he said, reaching over to shake Toby’s hand. “Again, I’m sorry for your trouble,” he said without meeting my eyes. “A terrible thing about your uncle.” There was a silence, magnified by the absence of music. The band was on break. I noticed that Bobby Colman had drawn a chair up to Angie’s table; he was elbow to elbow with her.
“Would you like to join us?” I asked. Frank seemed to be alone.
“Thanks, I will. I just stopped in to hear the boys,” he said, as if his presence required an excuse. “Can I get you another pint?” he asked Toby, whose glass was half-empty. Mine he could see was still nearly full.
“Not yet,” Toby said with a smile. “But thanks. It takes me a while to get through one of these.”
“A big fella like you?” Frank scoffed. “Is it the black stuff you’re drinking?”
Toby nodded, and Frank went up to the bar to order. While he was standing there waiting for the foamy heads to subside so the bartender could top off the pints, I filled Toby in on what I knew about Frank’s connection to my uncle.
When he returned with the beers, Frank picked up the thread of his earlier remark. “You seem to know a good deal about Irish culture.”
“Not really,” said Toby. “I took a course in college on the Irish Literary Revival, so anything I picked up is secondhand and probably outdated.”
“And are you a professor yourself?” Frank asked.
Toby put up a hand in denial. “Not me. I run an antiques gallery back home.”
“Antiques, is it? Well, now. It’s just that we see a lot of professors from the States here in the summer visiting Yeats’s grave and such. And Laura tells me your wife is a university professor.” He looked at me.
“Yes, I teach art history,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “I wonder what your opinion is of our Irish painters. Do you have a favorite?”
Maggie would be the right person to answer that question, but she was at her ex’s cottage tonight. My field is nineteenth-century European painting, mainly French. I would guess that anyone with a passing interest in art could name a French Impressionist, but how many could name an Irish painter of any type? Ireland’s artists aren’t as well known as her writers.
Of those I know, my favorite is Paul Henry, celebrated for his depictions of the Irish countryside. He was influenced by the Post-Impressionists, and he lived on Achill for a decade. I had brushed up on his work before the trip.
My answer seemed to please Frank. He clapped his hands and said, “Well, isn’t that lovely. I’m proud to say I have a painting by Henry, or a share in it. Your uncle paid a lot of money for it at a Dublin auction. It was for the business; even so, if you ask me, he paid too much for it. But, no matter. He left it with me, for safekeeping. He’s on and off the island, and an empty house is no place for a valuable painting. What’s to become of it now, I don’t know. Would you like to see it?” He reached into a pocket, withdrew his cell phone, and scrolled through some photos.
The picture showed a typical Paul Henry landscape. The first thing you noticed was the low horizon; a third of the painting was devoted to a white sky with billowing cumulus clouds. Pale mountains held the center. The foreground occupied less than a quarter of the canvas—white cottages, patchy grass, and a bit of the bay. The palette was delicate and subdued, at least as the photo showed it. For color, you can’t rely on a photo.
“It looks like a good example of his work,” I said.
“It’s hanging in my house at the moment. You’re welcome to come see it.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “But what’s the connection between the painting and your development plan? You said Bert bought it for the business.”
Frank explained that Henry’s work had become famous when it was used to popularize the west of Ireland as a tourist destination. In 1925 the railroad company used one of his paintings for a travel poster, and it became a national icon. So the idea was to promote their tourism project with a new Paul Henry poster. The original painting would grace the lobby of the planned hotel, and the poster would become a nationwide advertisement for the train ride.
Since seeing the Kildownet graves, I had a better understanding of why Bert’s railway plan was controversial. “Frank, did my Uncle Bert know about that eerie prediction that the first and last trains to Achill would carry the dead?”
“Of course he knew. I told him about it myself.”
“Well, didn’t he, didn’t you, wonder how it would go down with the public, getting them to take a ride on a train associated with death?”
“That was the whole point,” Frank responded. “The prophecy was the thing. We’d use it to draw people to the island. Bert was a marketing genius, you know. He was sure people would line up to ride the ‘Achill Death Train.’ That’s what he was going to call it. Chills and excitement, he said, that’s what people want. There would be a guide on the train to tell the story of the prophecy and the disasters, and even special effects, maybe a sound and light show for the ride at night. ‘It’s the sizzle that sells the steak,’ he used to say. Bert was going to do it up right.”
I was too stunned to say anything. Toby, who has an expansive view of humankind and who is generally less appalled than I am by instances of bad taste, asked, “What’s going to happen to the project now that Bert is gone?”
“I’ll push on without him. I have to, don’t I? I’ve invested too much to give up now.”
A voice behind us boomed: “That’s your plan, is it? I tell you, Hickey, if you try to push your shite death train down our throats, you’ll end up like your partner.” The speaker, a big man with a buzz cut and a red face, loomed over Frank’s chair.
Frank shot to his feet, knocking over his glass. The black beer pooled on the table and flowed to the floor. “You’ll not threaten me in a public house, Michael O’Hara. Are you confessing, then, to the killing of Bert Barnes?”
“Not a bit of it,” the other retorted. “But there’s many a man on this island who had reason to wish him harm. There were twenty-three God-fearing families waiting at the station to bury their dead on the day the first train to Achill arrived, and you want to capitalize on their grief. Have you no respect at all for the families? We’re all still here, you know.”
It suddenly became quiet. Gradually a chorus of grumbles arose from adjoining tables. “Some of my people were in those coffins,” O’Hara went on. “And I mean to stop you.”
“We’re with you, Michael!” someone called out. “Can’t you let the dead of Achill Island rest in peace?”
“Step away from me,” said Frank, his chin leading, in defiance. “I want to get by.”
“Oh, ya do, do ya?” said O’Hara, not moving. At which point everyone in the pub knew a donnybrook was at hand. A brawl is so common when the Guinness is flowing that the Irish coined a word for it.
I can’t say who threw the first punch, but in a matter of moments the floor was a battlefield. Someone shoving to get close to Frank pushed my chair over, with me in it. That brought Toby to his feet, with arms churning. The man who had pushed me went down himself, but an ally of his jumped onto Toby’s back. He must have thought Toby was a friend of Frank’s, since we had been sitting at the same table. For a minute it looked like Toby was in trouble. He tried to break the hold but couldn’t. He and his attacker halted, locked together by the force of opposing strength. Then, twisting to the left, Toby drove his right elbow into his assailant’s gut. Toby pivoted and broke free.
Meanwhile, Frank Hickey was beset by a pile of men who jabbed at him like a pod of killer whales toying with their prey. Toby stepped in to even the odds, and bystanders joined the fray. The band struck up a tune, with the aim of calming people down, but the music only added to the tumult. Bobby Colman had chosen “Finnegan’s Wake,” a comic ballad celebrating the fun had by all when a brawl erupts at a drunkard’s funeral. (That lad has a sense of humor, I thought.) By now, motive and grievance were overshadowed by the instinct to give blow for blow. Men were swinging at each other who had no reason for animus other than having been struck themselves. It became a general melee, which ended only with the arrival of the guard.
Garda Matt Mullen, who had questioned me at the Deserted Village after I found Bert’s body, strode straight to the barman, who was quick to finger the instigators. After huddling with Frank Hickey and Michael O’Hara, the good-tempered guard made no arrests but gave them cautions. I tended to Toby, who had minor abrasions. Finally, Mullen suggested we all go home. I looked around for Angie, but she and Bobby Colman had already taken that advice.