The Lake (13 page)

‘Ah, Peggy.’ Jerome pulled over the stool Frank had been sitting on and sat up on it next to her.

‘You know that’s true, Jerome,’ Peggy went on. ‘He will never come home to Crumm. Not to live. His life is in England now. And he has no interest in the business. Sure he had no interest even when he was here.’

Peggy glanced up at Jerome, but he just sat twisting a coaster on the counter.

‘And you,’ she said.

‘I’m here, amn’t I?’

‘No, Jerome. You’re not.’ Peggy sighed heavily. After a moment she stood and walked around behind the bar. She took down a glass and held it under the gin bottle again, emptied a bottle of tonic in after it. Then she stood, staring at the space next to the till.

‘Lemon.’

‘What?’ Jerome looked up from his coaster.

‘We’ve no lemon,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Never mind.’ She sat back down on her stool. Only five minutes before she had been sitting in the same spot next to Frank, an evening of possibility lying ahead. A whole lifetime of possibility. She swigged from her glass.

‘I’ll be here more,’ Jerome said after some time. ‘I said that already. I know I leave you too much. I’ll be better.’ He reached out and took her hand in his. ‘I’ll spend more time here.’

For a moment Peggy stopped feeling angry, and only felt sorry for Jerome. She knew he felt no joy in his pledge. His face was full of burden and duty, not excitement or happy anticipation.

‘But you won’t, Jerome,’ she said softly. ‘You might try. You might even be around more for the next few weeks, or months. But you don’t want to be here either.’ She took another swig from her glass. ‘None of you do.’

She noticed Jerome watching her drink, but she chose to ignore it. She deserved a bloody drink. Suddenly she was reminded of what had instigated this whole conversation, and she felt the anger rise within her again. She pulled her hand away.

‘Why were you so rude to Frank?’

‘Ah, Peggy.’

‘No. No, Jerome. He had been nothing but pleasant to you. Sure you’d only just met him when you took the head off him earlier. What did he do? What could he have possibly done?’

‘Now Peggy. Let’s not go there. You really don’t want to go there.’

‘But I do, Jerome.’ She banged her glass down on the counter, noticing that it was already half-empty as she did so. ‘I do want to go there. That’s exactly what I want to do.’ She pushed her hair away from her face to get a clearer view of her brother. ‘I liked Frank. I invited him in here this evening. He was my guest. I liked him.’ She knew she was repeating herself, but she didn’t know how to articulate what she felt. She couldn’t admit the truth to Jerome, that she thought she might really like Frank. That Frank might really like her back.

Jerome said nothing, but kept tapping the edge of the coaster on the bar.

‘Well?’ she said. She reached out and slapped her hand down over his and the coaster. ‘And what was that all about? The guy in Dublin? Was that even true?’

Jerome swung around to face her. ‘Was it true?’ He yanked the collar of his shirt down and tilted his shoulder towards her. A taut, shiny scar ran part of the way around his neck, like a line of red ink on white paper.

Peggy’s mouth fell open. ‘Jerome,’ she whispered, and put her hand up to touch her brother’s marred skin. The tears came again. In her mind, Peggy could hear her own questions: when? … what happened, Jerome? … why did they do that to you ? But all that she heard coming from her mouth was her brother’s name.

Jerome reached up and took his sister’s hand from his neck. He stepped down from his stool, and opened his arms to her and she wrapped herself in his warm, strong embrace, and she wept.

‘You’re right,’ he said after a while. ‘I’m not being fair to you.’ He ran his hand down Peggy’s long dark hair, pushing it gently over her shoulder. ‘I’ll never come back to Crumm for good. I can’t … I can’t live here.’

Peggy could hear the honesty breaking him. She turned her head and rested it against his chest.

‘I’d like to move to Dublin. To live in Dublin. For good. I should have said it before. I should have said it two years ago.’ He looked down at her. ‘I haven’t been fair’, he said, ‘to you.’

Peggy wiped her hand across her cheek. She wasn’t sure what to say anymore. The hurt of Frank’s sudden departure had been muffled somewhat by Jerome’s admission. Although he hadn’t really admitted anything. But Peggy knew. She had always known. And now she knew how hard life was for Jerome. He felt unloved and unwelcome in his home town, and it seemed that things weren’t much easier for him in Dublin either. Dublin; where Peggy had assumed Jerome was totally happy. But where, it seemed, he had been persecuted and vilified. Where life, it now appeared, was every bit as difficult and unforgiving as in Crumm.

But what if he was to stay there? To leave Crumm for good? What if she really was left here alone with just Carla’s weekend appearances to look forward to? Carrying on as things were, hoping that another Frank might appear out of nowhere to save her? Was that what she wanted? To be like sleeping beauty, held by the brambles and thorns of Crumm; waiting in a deathlike trance for a prince or a knight in shining armour? And what if Frank had been that knight? What if her chance was gone?

But the alternative – selling The Angler’s Rest, leaving Crumm, starting somewhere new – was that what she wanted? For herself and her siblings to be scattered, with no bar, no base, no homestead? Peggy thought of her parents. Were they still living, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. Were they still living, she would most likely be in Dublin herself. Or London. Or America. But there was little value in thinking that way. She rubbed her face against Jerome’s shirt.

‘What do you want to do?’ he said, his arms still tight around her. ‘Peggy? What do you want to do?

Before she had a chance to think what she really wanted herself, the door behind the bar burst open, and Carla appeared. Her eyes were red, and there were clear lines of black eye make-up running down her cheeks. She stopped when she saw her two siblings in their embrace. She locked teary eyes with Peggy for a moment, before she turned and took a bottle of cider from a shelf.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, ostensibly to the bottle in her hand.

Peggy pulled away from Jerome. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

Jerome busied himself lifting stools from the floor onto the tables in readiness for sweeping in the morning. Peggy stood down from her stool, and went to dampen the last embers of the fire.

‘It emptied out very quickly,’ Carla said, glancing up at the clock.

‘There’s some benefit to having the guards around,’ Jerome muttered.

‘Oh, so was lover-boy back?’ Carla sneered. ‘Maybe you’re in with a chance after all, Peg.’

Peggy clutched the iron poker tightly and thought how she’d enjoy giving Carla a good whack with it across her skinny arse. ‘I doubt that very much,’ she said into the grate. She looked over to where her sister stood behind the bar, one hand on her hip, the other holding a tall glass of cider. The sight of her suddenly made Peggy feel sick. ‘So where’s your own lover-boy?’ she said.

‘Fuck off, Peggy.’

‘No, no, Carla. You’re well able to dish it out. You come home every weekend and dish it out to me. Where is he? Or did you start on him too, and he saw sense? Did he realize that his wife isn’t actually half the cow you are after all? Has he gone scuttling back down to Wexford?’

Peggy could tell that Jerome had stopped moving and was standing watching her, a stool turned in his hands, midway between the floor and the tabletop.

‘Shut up.’ Carla banged her glass down on the bar. ‘You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Sure how could you? You wouldn’t know a man if he came up and slapped you across the face.’ She took a drink from her glass. ‘Which is all you deserve.’

‘Fuck you, Carla.’

‘Right back at ya, little sister.’

‘Girls … ’

‘Oh don’t you even start, Jerome,’ Carla said. ‘You probably ran him out of the place.’

Peggy looked at Jerome. He shook his head.

‘Oh yes, is that what happened?’ Carla laughed. ‘I can see it now. Sure it wouldn’t suit our darling brother for you to have any sort of life now Peggy, would it? How could he spend half his time … oh no, more than half his time, up in Dublin, cavorting, or whatever it is you boys call it these days, unless he had you tied down here to The Angler’s Rest? Sure it wouldn’t suit him at all for poor little Peggy to have a boyfriend in Dublin too. Or Galway, or wherever the hell he was from.’ Carla leaned forward on the bar, clearly enjoying the reaction she was getting. Her siblings stood, one by the fire, one by the wall, looking across at each other.

Peggy didn’t know what to think. Jerome was still standing, stool in his hands, shaking his head.

‘Oh Peggy, it suits us all for you to be stuck here in Crumm till the end of your days. I sure as hell won’t do it, and neither will Hugo. And sure aren’t you making a grand job of it?’

‘It’s not true, Peggy.’ Jerome didn’t take his eyes off her.

‘Ah now, Jer. It’s probably a little bit true,’ Carla said, swigging from her glass.

‘Shut up, Carla.’ His voice was dark. Menacing. ‘You’re only happy when you’re causing trouble. Trouble here, trouble in Wexford. Trouble for the poor gom wife of that gombeen man. Why are you always causing trouble? You’re the same your whole life, Carla. You’ve never changed.’

‘Ara feck off with yourself, Jerome Casey. Like you’ve never caused any trouble yourself? Don’t get me started on you and your little exploits with Sean Hogan.’

‘You’re such a little bitch, Carla.’

‘Stop it!’

Carla and Jerome stopped. Peggy was standing with her eyes shut tight, tears coursing down her cheeks, the poker still tight in her grasp.

‘Stop it.’ She opened her eyes to them both staring at her. Jerome put the stool back down on the floor.

‘Why are you being so horrible?’ Her words were almost lost through her sobs.

‘Ah for Jaysus’ sake,’ Carla said under her breath. Then she seemed to notice Peggy’s empty glass on the Smithwick’s coaster next to her. She picked it up and smelled it, before making a face and leaving it down again.

‘Oh Peggy, now I can see what the problem is.’ She stood up straight and stretched, as if the whole episode just past had been no more than a boring interlude. ‘You know you shouldn’t drink gin. How many have you had?’ She put her own glass and Peggy’s into the sink. ‘You don’t want to end up like our darling mother now, do you?’ she said, turning on the tap and rinsing the glasses.

Peggy opened her mouth and closed it again. She looked from her brother to her sister and back, and then she very deliberately left down the poker against the fireplace, before dropping her gaze to the floor and running behind the bar, past Carla and through the door into the house. She could hear them start to scream at each other as she went into the kitchen, but their voices got lost in the thick stone walls of the bar as she ran upstairs into her room.