In the field beyond Nuala’s vegetable garden the tethered goat jerked up its head and stared at her. She loosened the chain on the tether post and watched while the goat pawed at the new grass before eating it. The fresh, cool air was sharp on her face and for a moment, in spite of the trouble, she was happy. At least this place was theirs: the field, the garden, the small, remote house that she and Corry had come to when Mrs Falloway lent them the asking price, so certain was she that Corry would one day be a credit to her. While still savouring this moment of elation, Nuala felt it slipping away. Naturally, it was possible that Corry would not succeed in the mission she had sent him on: optimist or not, she was still close to the reality of things. In the night she had struggled with that, wondering how she should prepare him, and herself, for the ill fortune of his coming back empty-handed. It was then that she had remembered the Rynnes. They’d come into her thoughts as she imagined an inspiration came to Corry; not that he ever talked like that, but still she felt she knew. She had lain awake going over what had occurred to her, rejecting it because it upset her, because it shocked her even to have thought of it. She prayed that Mrs Falloway would be generous, as she had been before.
When he reached the crossroads Corry waited at the petrol pumps for the bus to Carrick. It was late but it didn’t matter, since Mrs Falloway didn’t know he was coming. On the way down from the house he’d considered trying to telephone, to put it to her if she was still there what Nuala had put to him, to save himself the expense of the journey. But when first she’d brought the subject up, Nuala had said that this wasn’t something that could be talked about on the phone even if he managed to find out Mrs Falloway’s number, which he hadn’t known in the past.
In Carrick, at Hosey’s bicycle shop, he waited while the tyres of an old Raleigh were pumped up for him. New batteries were put in the lamp in case he returned after dark, although he kept assuring young Hosey that it wouldn’t be possible to be away for so long: the bus back was at three.
It was seven miles to Mountroche House, mostly on a flat bog road bounded by neither ditches nor fencing. Corry remembered it from the time he and Nuala had lived in Carrick, when he’d worked in the Riordans’ joinery business and they’d had lodgings in an upstairs room at her mother’s. It was then that he began to carve his statues, his instinctive artistry impressing the Riordan brothers, and Mrs Falloway when the time came. It surprised Corry himself, for he hadn’t known it was there.
Those times, the first few years of marriage, cheered him as he rode swiftly on. It could be that Nuala was right, that Mrs Falloway would be pleased to see him, that she’d understand why they hadn’t been able to pay anything back. Nuala had a way of making good things happen, Corry considered; she guessed what they might be and then you tried for them.
The road was straight, with hardly a curve until the turf bogs eventually gave way to hills. Hedges and trees began, fields of grass or crops. Mountroche House was at the end of an unkempt avenue that continued for another three-quarters of a mile.
The Rynnes lived in a grey, pebble-dashed bungalow at the crossroads, close to the petrol pumps they operated, across the main road from Quirke’s SuperValu. They were well-to-do: besides the petrol business, there was Rynne’s insurance agency, which he conducted from the bungalow. His wife attended to the custom at the pumps.
When Nuala rang the doorbell the Rynnes answered it together. They had a way of doing that when both of them were in; and they had a way of conducting their visitors no further than the hall until the purpose of the interruption was established. An insurance matter was usually enough to permit further access.
‘I was passing by,’ Nuala said, ‘on my way to the SuperValu.’
The Rynnes nodded. Their similar elongated features suggested that they might be brother and sister rather than man and wife. They both wore glasses, Rynne’s dark-rimmed and serious, his wife’s light and pale. They were a childless couple.
‘Is it insurance, Nuala?’ Rynne enquired.
She shook her head. She’d just looked in, she said, to see how they were getting on. ‘We often mention you,’ she said, taking a liberty with the facts.
‘Arrah, we’re not bad at all,’ Rynne said. ‘Game ball, would you say, Etty?’
‘Oh, I would, I would.’
The telephone rang and Rynne went to answer it. Nuala could hear him saying he was up to his eyes this morning. ‘Would tomorrow do?’ he suggested. ‘Would I come up in the evening?’
‘I’m sorry, Etty. You’re busy.’
‘It’s only I’m typing his proposals. God, it takes your time, and the pumps going too! Twenty-six blooming pages every one of them!’
