“Do people know?” Cal asks. And, when Mart cocks his head inquiringly: “That Johnny’s aiming to salt the river.”
Mart shrugs. “There’s no telling who’d know what, around here. I’d say there’s a dozen different stories going around this same pub, and a few dozen different ways that people wanta get in on the action. We’re in for an interesting wee while. Now come on back, before that chancer robs our seats on us.”
The night proceeds. Gradually the singing runs out of momentum; Con puts his guitar back in the corner, and Rushborough buys him and everyone else in the alcove a double whiskey. The pub has started to run out of momentum, too. The non-locals have reached the maximum level of drunkenness at which they still consider it reasonable to drive home on unfamiliar roads. The old people are getting tired and heading for their beds, and the young ones are getting bored and taking bags of cans back to each other’s houses, where they’ll have more scope. The girl in pink leaves with the potato-faced fucker’s arm around her waist.
By midnight, all that’s left in the pub is a dense fug of sweat and beer breath, Barty wiping down tables with a rag, and the men in the alcove. The ashtrays have come out. Rushborough smokes Gitanes, which lowers him further in Cal’s esteem: Cal feels that, while people are entitled to their vices, anyone who isn’t a dick finds a way to pursue those vices without giving everyone in the room a sore throat.
“I’m proud,” Rushborough informs them all, throwing an arm around Bobby’s shoulders, “I’m proud to claim this man as my cousin. And all of you, of course all of you, I’m sure we’re all cousins of some degree. Aren’t we?” He looks about half drunk. His hair is ruffled out of its sleek sweep, and he’s tilting a little bit, not drastically, off center. Cal can’t get a good enough look at his eyes to decide whether it’s real.
“ ’Twould be a miracle if we weren’t,” Dessie agrees. “All this townland’s related, one way or another.”
“I’m this fella’s uncle,” Sonny informs Rushborough, pointing his cigarette at Senan. “A few times removed. Not far enough for me.”
“You owe me fifty years’ worth of birthday presents, so,” Senan tells him. “And a few quid in communion money. I don’t take checks.”
“And you owe me a bitta respect. Go on up there and get your uncle Sonny a pint.”
“I will in me arse.”
“Look,” Rushborough says, with sudden decision. “Look. I want to show you all something.”
He lays his right hand, palm down, in the middle of the table, among the pint glasses and the beer mats and the flecks of ash. On the ring finger is a silver band. Rushborough turns it around, so that the bezel is visible. Set into it is a pitted fragment of something gold.
“My grandmother gave me this,” Rushborough says, with a wondering reverence in his voice. “She and a friend found it, when they were children digging in the friend’s garden. About nine years old, she says they were. Michael Duggan was the friend’s name. They found two of these, and kept one each.”
“My great-uncle was Michael Duggan,” Dessie says, awed enough to talk quietly for once. “He musta lost his.”
The men lean in, bending low over Rushborough’s hand. Cal leans with them. The nugget is about the size of a shirt button, polished by time on the high surfaces, ragged in the crevices, studded with small chunks of white. In the yellowish light of the wall lamps, it shines with a worn, serene glow.
“Here,” Rushborough says. “Take it. Have a look at it.” He pulls the ring off his finger, with a reckless little laugh like he’s doing something wild, and passes it to Dessie. “I don’t really take it off, but…God knows, it could have been any of yours as easily as mine. I’m sure your grandparents were digging away in the same gardens. Side by side with mine.”
Dessie holds up the ring and peers at it, tilting it this way and that. “Holy God,” he breathes. He lays one fingertip on the nugget. “Wouldja look at that.”
“ ’Tis beautiful,” Con says. Nobody makes fun of him.
Dessie passes the ring, held over a cupped hand, to Francie. Francie, giving it a long stare, nods slowly and unconsciously.
“That’ll be quartz,” Mart informs them all. “The white stuff.”
“Exactly,” Rushborough says, turning eagerly towards him. “Somewhere in that mountain, there’s a vein of quartz, shot through with gold. And over thousands of years, much of it was washed down out of the mountain. Onto Michael Duggan’s land, and all of yours.”
The ring passes from hand to hand. Cal takes his turn, but he barely sees it. He’s feeling the change in the alcove. The air is drawing in, magnetized, around the shining fragment and the men who surround it. Till this moment, the gold was a cloud of words and daydreams. Now it’s a solid thing between their fingers.
