“Ah, Jaysus, no. We’ve the twenty-first century here now. They’ve as much right to a night out as anyone. But they change the atmosphere of a place. You can’t deny that. Look at that, now.” Mart nods at the girl in the pink dress, who has started dancing with one of her girlfriends in a few square inches of space between the tables and the bar. A large guy in a too-tight shirt is hovering hopefully nearby, making spasmodic movements that are presumably intended to match theirs. “Is that what you’d expect to see in this pub on a Monday night?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that in here,” Cal says truthfully.
“That’s disco behavior, is what that is. That’s what you get when there’s women in. They oughta have pubs of their own, so they can have their pint in peace without some potato-faced fucker trying to get into their knickers, and I can have mine without your man’s hormones getting in the air and spoiling the taste.”
“If they weren’t here,” Cal points out, “you’d be stuck looking at nothing better’n my hairy face for the evening.”
“True enough,” Mart concedes. “Some of the women in here tonight are a lot more scenic than yourself, no harm to you. Not all of them, but some.”
“Enjoy ’em while you can,” Cal says. “Tomorrow the scenery’ll be back to normal.”
“Near enough, maybe. Not all the way back, as long as we’ve got Bono over there drawing the crowds.”
They both glance over at the alcove. Rushborough has launched into a song about some guy getting killed by the British.
“Whatever the Croppy Boy sounded like,” Mart says, “he didn’t fuckin’ sound like that.”
“You show him how it’s done,” Cal says.
“I will, in a while. I’ve to lubricate the vocal cords a bit more first.”
Cal, interpreting this correctly, catches Barty’s eye and points to Mart. Mart nods, accepting his due, and goes back to watching Rushborough, between moving shoulders. All the men in the alcove are gazing at the guy. Cal is out of patience with them. As far as he’s concerned, Rushborough has a face that would make any sensible man want to walk away, not sit there goggling at him like he hung the moon.
“Will I tell you something, Sunny Jim?” Mart says. “I don’t like the cut of that fella.”
“Nope,” Cal says. “Me neither.” He’s been trying to guess what this guy might do, if he figures out he’s been taken for a ride. He finds he doesn’t much like the possibilities.
“He’s who he says he is, anyway,” Mart informs him. “I thought he mighta been some chancer that spun Johnny a line, trying to scam a bitta cash outa the lot of us. Johnny’s not as cute as he thinks he is. A real first-class scam artist could make mincemeat outa him, and be long gone before Johnny ever noticed a thing.”
“That’s the impression I got,” Cal says. He hasn’t decided which option he likes less: Trey’s father being a good con artist, or being a bad one. He accepts the pints from Barty and hands Mart his Guinness.
“But this fella knows about that fairy mound, and putting cream by it. He knows about the time Francie’s great-granddad fell down the well and it took two days to get him back up. He knows the Fallon women had a name for being the finest knitters in this county. And didja hear when he sang ‘Black Velvet Band’? I never heard anyone but Ardnakelty people sing ‘A guinea she took from his pocket.’ Everyone else has the girl robbing a watch. His people came from around here, all right.”
“Maybe,” Cal says. “But he still doesn’t strike me as the type to go misty-eyed when someone sings ‘The Wearing of the Green.’ ”
“That article there,” Mart says, eyeing Rushborough over his glass, “doesn’t strike me as the type that’s ever gone misty-eyed over anything in his life.”
“So what’s he here for?”
Mart’s bright glance swivels to Cal. “A coupla year back, people were asking the same about you, Sunny Jim. A few of them still do.”
“I’m here because I landed here,” Cal says, refusing to bite on that. “This guy’s come looking.”
Mart shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t give a shite about the heritage; ’tis gold he wants, pure and simple. And he thinks it’ll be easier to slip a quare deal past us if we take him for a sap that’d be happy with a handful of shamrock.”
“If that guy believes there’s gold out there,” Cal says, “he’s got more to go on than some story his granny told him.”
“I’ll tell you this much, anyway,” Mart says. “Johnny believes it’s there. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble, dragging himself away from the bright lights and the film stars back to an inferior environment like this, just for the grand or two he’ll get if there’s nothing in them fields.”
“You figure he knows something we don’t?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe he’s saving it up for the right moment, or maybe ’tis something he’s planning on keeping to himself. But I’d say he knows something.”
“Then why’s he fucking around salting the river?”
