Wild Decembers (7 page)

He signed it, read it over, and for some reason added, “Don’t expect miracles.”

Where in Paris can you see a glass pyramid?

What is the Swahili word for journey?

Which county in Northern Ireland is known as the Orchard County?

What nut is used in the manufacture of dynamite?

Patrick H. Pearse led the 1916 Rebellion—what does H stand for?

According to the Ordnance Survey, at what point does a hill become a mountain?

Where did Michelangelo depict God’s creation of Adam?

What chemical element is the sun partly made from?

By the time they had got to round eight of the final quiz night, the tension and excitement had escalated, as those who supported Joseph’s team and those who supported the schoolteacher’s were at loggerheads, shouting each other down, some accusing Dunny, the quizmaster, of rigging, of favouritism, even nepotism. “What the hell is nepotism” came from the back of the room. It was because there had been a question as to which Greek god was conceived through a shower of gold, and with Joseph being something of a Greek scholar, he would know the answer easily.

“Jesus Christ,” shouted one of the hecklers, but he was hushed. For nine weeks they had assembled every Tuesday, sat themselves at their appointed tables, joked, sparred, bit on their pencils, smote themselves for not knowing such and such an answer, and vociferously objected to questions such as how many windows in the vocational school or which classroom had a picture of Granuaile the pirate queen. Those who had dropped out along the way had been given consolation prizes of pottery mugs which they banged on the table to confirm or withdraw their support. Speculation abounded as to what the prize would be, the biggie, as it was touted. Some thought a cut-glass bowl, others in the know said it was massive.

During the lull after the first batch of questions, Derek the barman passed around plates of sandwiches as a surprise gift. It was neck and neck. Joseph and Alfie, the schoolteacher, fighting it out alone because they were so erudite, those on their teams merely sitting there to lend moral support. Every chair, every stool was taken, and latecomers including Bugler had to be content to stand in the hall.

Joseph was in his best suit and white shirt, with Miss Carruthers, the Crock, and Eily, the new bank clerk, beside him. The side of his cheek next to the fire was scalding, and he drank tumblers of water. His opponent, Alfie, had taken off his jacket and sat in his shirtsleeves, studious, ponderous, like a young cleric discussing some article of theology with his own group.

“I went wrong over the emeralds,” Joseph said, embarrassed. The question had been which country exported the most, and mistakenly he had said Peru.

“I tried telepathy,” Miss Carruthers said, her voice high, hysterical, and scolding. Despite the heat, she wore her fox-fur collar, and the little buttony amber eyes seemed to glare across at Alfie and the burly man with him, whispering in his ear. They were unpopular because they always came first in quizzes and at the debating societies. Always when they won they looked very smug and shook hands with each other several times, proud of how knowledgeable they were.

“It’s neck and neck.”

“Keep the cool.”

“Deep breaths,” Eily said. She liked Joseph; she knew that he had come to the bank one morning to ask for a loan and had seen the bank manager privately.

“I’ll be all right if the questions are classic or mythological.”

“You’ll be all right . . . period.”

They might have been in an examination room with the locked boxes being opened, so solemn did it all become. Dunny stood in front of the bar, arms folded, while Derek shouted for quiet—lads, ladies, lads.

What is the biggest-selling brand of spirits in the U.S.A.?

Joseph looked from one to the other of his group, every least muscle in his face tightened as he searched for an answer. Himself and his opponent caught each other’s eye and looked away.

Give the name and age of the newest star in the firmament.

When the last question was given, the crowd sat back, relieved, as if they had weathered some great hazard, and the two pieces of folded paper were handed over to Dunny, who withdrew to do his sums. Drinks were called for, with Derek trying to appear impartial and serving everyone in their right turn.

When Dunny returned waving the sheets of paper in either hand, it was thought that the result must be a draw. He valued this moment, basked in his importance, thinking of the homework he had done, week after week endeavouring to find questions that had not been asked before. He looked from one contender to the other. The celebrants now were restless, what with the room very warm, the glaring neon strips, and his scouting the faces, daring them to guess. Then, opening the home-made calendar in which he printed all the scores, he shouted out in a formal voice, “Table 4 scores 10.94. Table 5 scores 9.72.” There was clapping and cheering, people rushing across to hug Joseph, to share in his victory, drinks being sloshed from overfull tumblers, and suddenly the burly man getting himself up onto a tiny round table, calling “Objection . . . Objection.” The result, he assured them, was null and void due to a foul in the rules.

“Name it,” Dunny said, piqued.

“The last question contained two questions in one . . . That’s an irregularity.”

“I make the rules . . . And I break the rules,” Dunny said, triumphant.

“We want a recount.”

“You can have it . . . He got both right and you only got one.

He got Bacardi as the most popular drink and Protostar as the name of the new arrival.”

“Jesus . . . Was it Bacardi?” Eily said, and lolled back, asking Derek to kindly bring her a Bacardi and Coke so that she could celebrate.

“I chanced my arm on the Bacardi,” Joseph said.

“Don’t be a crybaby,” Dunny said as the burly man refused to come down off the table. There were shouts and boos then, people asking for Maxie, the hotelier, to come forward with the bloody prize.

“It hasn’t come yet,” Derek said, and was shouted down, all agreeing that Maxie was too bloody mean and so was Maxie’s missus, and why wouldn’t they be, being foreigners.

When a car pulled up at a hectic speed, Derek jumped over the counter in answer to the horn being hooted repeatedly. The crowd waited, then Maxie in his chef’s hat and Mrs. Maxie beside him came in carrying something in a blanket. Mrs. Maxie turned out the lights as she always did when carrying a birthday cake or even a slice of birthday cake, while her husband followed slowly, singing some song from his own country. At first people speculated that it was a little piglet as Maxie found his way between the tables, opening the blanket a fraction, and then he stood before Joseph and the lights were turned on. It was a fawn greyhound with black spots like inkspots all over its body, its snout moist.

“Cripes,” Joseph said, abashed.

“The compliments of Heidi and myself.”

“Oh, Breege,” Joseph shouted to Breege in the corner as if calamity had occurred to them.

Then slowly Maxie pulled the blanket aside like a blazoned toga and stood the little hound on the counter for everyone to see. It looked so pristine, the fawn of its body fading into a paler fawn and the smudged ink markings the very same as if they were dripping, its eyes looking out at its new world and the column of people.

“It’s too much altogether,” Joseph said then.

“You mean Heidi and I can keep it?” Maxie said, and made as if to present it to Heidi. Derek, unable to hide his feeling for it, crumbled a few salt nuts from the end of a packet and set them down on the counter along with a saucer of water. The hound looked, sniffed, then decided on the water, and drank daintily, spilling out the last few drops. Its eyes were a pale green from which the darker pigment had been drained and they were shaped like almonds.

“Boy or girl?” someone called.

“Girl,” Cahill, the old man, said swiftly. He had known greyhounds all his life and he had bred greyhounds until they broke him, but he loved them still.

“What will you call her?” someone shouted.

Names were suggested, names that were usual for dogs, then fancy names, names of tennis players and film stars, and even one of a saint, which was booed out.

“I’ll call her Cecilia,” Joseph said, turning to Miss Carruthers, who had been such a stalwart on his team.

“Oh no,” she said, stricken with embarrassment and rising with tears in her eyes.

“Why not call her Violet Hill . . . Where she’s come from,” Maxie said.

“Is that okay, Breege?” Joseph said, then running his hand down the foreleg of the hound, he lifted one of her paws and brought his face close to it and christened her Violet Hill. The crowd applauded. Stroking the delicate bone of her back, he thought he had not felt so happy or so popular in years, maybe never. Looking at him Breege thought, He’s happy now . . . He’s proud, and looking towards Bugler in the doorway, she thought that he was thinking that too.

“You’ll course her first,” Cahill said, and everyone waited and deferred to him, because he always kept silent until he had something to say.

“You’ll help me, Cahill?”

“I will so . . . We have to blood her . . . Let her taste blood, because that’s what she wants. That’s what they want.”

“Is that what you want, Violet Hill?” Joseph said, and snuggled her to himself as if she were an infant, and felt her trembling within.

I
T WAS RUGGED TERRAIN
, the tractor bouncing and hacking its way through a wilderness of briars and bushes, all tangled together, fighting for life, fighting for light, the branches scraping the bonnet, scraping her face, wisps of old man’s beard clinging to her hair, the wheels slurping in the mud, then spitting it off and ploughing forward.

She sat in the back, swaying from side to side, a devil-may-care feeling reminiscent of being in the bumper cars at a carnival. Bugler had given her a rug, which kept slipping off her knees. She could have sat beside him, but she declined and instead chose the wooden trailer fixed to the back, and lay there bumping and dipping as the tractor either lurched in mossy ground or reared up when the wheels snagged in another freakish growth. The place smelt of dank, of leaf mould, of fungus, a place where none had ventured in years. He drove slowly and with a tremendous concentration. She could tell by his rigid back, the set of his shoulders, and the way his head kept swivelling from side to side to be prepared. Now and then he turned to look at her with the broad sweep of a smile, but she could not hear what he had said.

It had come about by chance, her painting a gate, painting it silver because she was sick of how rusted it looked, and his going by and asking if she was having a party.

“I wish I was” was what she had said and what prompted him to say, “Get in . . . We’ll go for a spin.”

As they climbed higher, they could hear the sound of a river. It came as if from afar, wild and vigorous and whizzing, then the sight of it so thrilling up there in the emptiness, a deep amethyst-coloured, plashing river, clean and icy cold.

They had got out and stood on the humped bridge to watch it, to marvel at the way it rushed along, so carefree.

“I always thought rivers were green or brown,” he said.

Through a lattice of trees there was the remains of a house, a cabin, weeds and grass sprouting from the roof, fruit trees and rose trees gone wild, entwined, disfigured, everything mutated, mutating, except for one little birch tree so spindly it looked like a lonesome ballerina.

“My mother used to tell me about this place,” he said, amazement in his voice at having come on it. He went on to tell her how his mother used to walk up on a Sunday, all by herself, to get a biscuit, and one day when she went the woman was washing her hair in a basin and when she lifted her head up the long black stream of hair gave her a witchlike look. His mother thought the woman was going to a dance, but it was to the asylum she was sent.