‘Well, like any fish the pike needs oxygen, not for its lungs because they don’t have human lungs or animal lungs even, they don’t have any lungs so to speak of. Not lungs as we’d know them.’
‘Could you tell us what they do have instead of what they don’t, please. Start again.’
‘Pike have to take in water through their mouths and in that water there’s a bit of oxygen like there is in the air. And they let it out the gills. But that’s what all fish do. So what’s different about the pike? The pike has a bad reputation like a wolf has in the animal kingdom. They say he preys on the other fish, and lies in wait for them in the reeds on the river bank. But in a way that’s all to the good
because a pike is carrying out a function, he’s making the river bed a cleaner better place. It’s his nature to go for what he can. It’s only ignorance, really, to condemn the pike, we’d all be pike if we could, and the world might be a better place if there were more pike in it ready to go out and scavenge for themselves.’
The boy’s face was red and angry. Nobody had said a word against the pike. Not ever, to Brother Keane’s knowledge.
Out in the yard earlier Brother Keane had heard voices raised about the court case which was being decided at this very moment.
The boy was said to be very friendly with the daughter of the house and it was probably a question of divided loyalties.
Brother Keane liked Michael Ryan. Compared to his younger brother Eddie he was like the Archangel Gabriel.
‘That’s very informative and well explained,’ he said, to the mystification of the class. ‘Now, Tommy Leonard, may we have your discourse please on the benefits of the Rural Electrification Scheme.’
‘Ah God, Brother, that’s much harder than pike,’ said Tommy Leonard, who had been discovering that life was very far from fair.
Mrs Daly asked Rita Walsh when would there be any news from the courthouse.
But Marian Johnson answered first, she said that it could be any time from eleven in the morning on. It might be settled outside without their having to go in. She knew this from the highest authority. A Mr Kennedy who was representing the Ryans had stayed in the Grange last night.
A very pleasant man, from Dublin. He was going to spend a second night there no matter what the outcome. He said it was too far to drive back to Dublin, and the Grange was exactly the kind of place he had always wanted to stay in but never come across.
Marian patted her hair reflectively and Rita Walsh sensed another reason to bring Miss Johnson and her thin flyaway hair back on a regular basis to the Rosemarie hair salon.
Canon Moran and Father Hogan had been asked by several parishioners to pray for a special intention. And indeed to offer mass for that intention. Nowhere had the intention been defined.
The priests agreed that it must have to do with the court case, and that one side definitely wanted the Ryans to get a great deal of money and the other wanted them to get very little in case it would somehow offend O’Neill.
‘It’s a poser, isn’t it?’ young Father Hogan had said.
‘Not at all, we will just pray that justice will be done in the courts today. That covers it all,’ said Canon Moran, who had lived a very long time and understood almost everything.
‘I’d better leave you and stop hiding here in this nice quiet place.’ Sheila Whelan had drained the teapot.
‘It
is
a nice quiet place. You were very good to settle me here.’ Mary Donnelly spoke gruffly in her gratitude.
‘Wasn’t it lucky they got you, just when they needed someone? They’d never have survived without you.’
Mary hardly remembered that summer and its shock and sadness now. She rarely thought of the man who had let her down so badly. Even when she was condemning
men in general the face of this one did not come easily to mind.
Sergeant Sheehan passed by as the women came out into the sunshine.
‘Starting early, Sheila,’ he said jokily.
‘Lord, I’ve been discovered,’ she laughed.
She looked thoughtful when he had gone.
‘What is it?’ Mary noticed her face.
‘I don’t know, I was tempted to talk to him there about something, but I can see I’m getting as bad as the rest of them.’
‘What was it?’
‘Probably nothing, but I saw a lot of activity over on the towpath. You know, beyond the bridge on the other side of the river. Lights in the middle of the night over there, and banging about.’
‘What on earth were
you
doing on the towpath in the middle of the night?’
Sheila had been walking because she couldn’t sleep.
She had heard that Joe had died. The nurse had let her know quietly, as she had asked.
She would go to no funeral in Dublin nor would she tell anyone but Kate Ryan of his death.
Still, it had been impossible to close her own eyes, knowing that Joe Whelan was lying in the mortuary of that Dublin hospital where they had all been so kind to him, and where presumably his woman would recover enough to go and pay her respects, and three of his four children would be with her. The fourth mightn’t dare come back from England in case he faced charges.
It had been too hard to try to sleep, so she had walked instead.
‘Oh, you know me, Mary, I’m as odd as two left shoes.’
‘Maybe you imagined it,’ Mary said.
‘Maybe I did,’ said Sheila.
Fergus felt his hands shaking when he started to shave so he had put down the razor immediately. He didn’t need to come to the court spattered with blood. He wondered what would make them steadier. He thought absently of a small brandy and port, his father used to take that concoction sometimes when he had what was called a chill.
But Fergus rejected it. Warming and steadying it might be, but very soon he might need one every day before shaving, even before getting out of bed.
By the time he was ready to leave the house his hands had calmed down. He’d done a magnificent job on his face, he thought, not a nick anywhere, and he tied a firm knot on his dark grey tie.
He knew that Kevin Kennedy would barely comb his hair, and yet here was he – the poor country solicitor, an unimportant figure – titivating himself like a peacock. Like a medieval champion going to battle wearing his lady’s favours.
God, let him be right, urging them to go on. Kevin Kennedy had said to him a dozen times that it was impossible to know with country juries, but then Kevin was a city man who always feared the country and was never at ease when milk didn’t come from bottles and when land didn’t mean small manicured gardens.
Fergus gave a wan wave across the street to Sheila Whelan before he climbed into his car and drove to the
town. He knew she was the one person in Mountfern who would have the tact not to wish him luck as if it was all a bet on the two-thirty.
Please God let them get £12,000. A sum that would see them right for the next fifteen years, until the 1980s. Let them get that. Let Kate know no more anxiety and fear.
Kate sat in the car looking out calmly left and right as they drove the straight road into the town. The September countryside was beautiful this year, it had been a good summer but not too dry. They passed through villages as small as Mountfern, but places with somehow more importance because they were on the main road. Of course that would all change soon. Already there were new sign-posts; they wouldn’t be a little midlands outpost for much longer.
‘I should come out driving with you more,’ she said to John, who frowned furiously at the road. ‘You went to all that trouble to learn to drive for me, and I hardly ever get into the car with you. From now on we’re going to have grand drives together, the two of us.’
Martin White said gruffly that he hoped they’d be able to afford a better car than this one when the day’s work was finished.
‘I never thought of getting a new car, did you, John?’ Kate was startled at the very idea.
‘Lord, not at all, isn’t this one fine for us and whatever we want to do in it?’
‘Well, what will you do with the money?’ Martin White had known them long enough and well enough to ask that question.
‘The future, the children . . .’
‘Shore the place up a bit . . .’
‘Try to keep the business we have . . .’
‘And maybe attract a few of the nobs that come to the place across the river.’
Suddenly they both laughed.
‘We’re like the twins,’ Kate said, wiping her eyes.
They were driving up to the steps of the courthouse.
It was a big ugly building. Neither John nor Kate had ever been in it. Dr White said he had, a few times, and it was the most disappointing place you ever saw. From outside it was all pillars and steps and looked very imposing. But inside you wouldn’t give it the time of day.
The Garda station was attached to one end, and the library to the other, so most people had some kind of knowledge of bits of the building anyway.
It was right slap in the middle of the town, otherwise they might have been able to pull it down and build something more suitable. Nobody would regret its passing, it was no national monument. It came from a time when justice was administered by the English anyway, so nobody would have any sentimental attachment to it.
But to take down the courthouse would mean dismantling the town. It would also mean losing the only landmark. ‘I’ll meet you on the courthouse steps’ was as good a way of making sure you’d find someone in the crowded narrow streets as any other. The bus stop was opposite the courthouse. There were always a few people gathered on its steps, most of them having nothing at all to do with the business of law and justice.
But today they recognised a few people who had to do with their own case.
Mike Coyne, a cousin of Jack, who worked on the local
newspaper. Two of the hospital staff who would have been called as witnesses. And parked right at the bus stop where he was certain to be moved on was Fergus.
Fergus stood beside his car like a soldier on point duty. He could hardly believe it when John Ryan drove Kate and Dr White into his sights and all three of them were laughing aloud, as if they hadn’t a care or a worry in the world.
People stood around in little clusters. Kate’s wheelchair was taken without fuss from the back of the car and moved up to where she was sitting. Gracefully and without making any big production out of it, she slid from one seat to the other. She looked at ease in her chair.
She had been told that there were seventeen steps up to the courthouse door, and there were two choices: either two strong men lifted the chair with her in it – Dr White and John would do that – or else she could go in a back way through damp long corridors.
She said she preferred the back way. It would be too nerve racking for those carrying and those watching. And she said that somebody should write a letter to the local paper on the lack of facilities for wheelchairs.
They headed towards the back door.
But they didn’t get there. Down the steps at a fast pace came two men, the Dublin solicitor and a local man; more men followed – one was in robes, a barrister – and behind him Kevin Kennedy, also in robes.
Fergus felt his heart turn over, and realised there had been a last-minute offer.
‘Wait for a moment,’ he called in a strangled voice to the little procession with the wheelchair.
‘Is anything wrong?’ Kate asked, turning round.
John narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s Mr Kennedy, he seems to want to talk to us.’
‘Oh, Jesus, let them not have an adjournment,’ said Dr White, who had often made it known that he had little respect for lawyers.
Far, far away, it seemed, Patrick O’Neill stood by himself at the other side of the wide steps.
Kate thought it was strange for him to be alone, she had so many people with her. Then who would have come? Grace was at school, Rachel was back in Ryan’s pub, and Kerry? Who knew where he would be?
Patrick looked nervous and very much alone. She longed to call out to him. She wished she could send him a message saying his own words back to him, telling him that they would always be friends. It was as he had told her, a formality that was necessary to maintain their friendship.
But she couldn’t speak. And anyway they were coming towards her, her side. Kevin Kennedy, and Fergus. Their faces were impassive. Neither of them spoke, they each looked at the other.
‘You say it, Fergus,’ Kevin Kennedy said, standing back a little to give the stage to Fergus Slattery.
‘They have made a suggestion.’ Fergus felt his voice was very thin.
‘Yes, Fergus, and what do you think?’ John asked.
‘What do they say?’ Kate was calm.
‘They say eight thousand pounds,’ Fergus said in a voice that came from a million miles away.
‘Eight thousand pounds.’ John said the words.
‘Two thousand pounds more than they said yesterday,’ Kevin Kennedy said, as a further explanation.
‘My goodness,’ said Kate.
There was a silence.
Behind Fergus and Kevin the other side stood in a little group. Patrick was still at a distance from them. He was not joining in.
Kevin Kennedy spoke then. ‘As your counsel, I can only give you my opinion, you do not have to take it. You do understand that, Kate?’
He hadn’t called her Mrs Ryan. Nobody noticed.
‘Yes indeed, and what do you say?’
‘I say that you should have a quiet moment with your husband, and ask each other do you believe that you can live with this as fair and reasonable compensation, and if you can, then I will accept it for you.’
There was a pause. Nobody moved.
‘And if you think that you will always wonder and worry about what you would have got if you fought on, then we will fight on.’
Almost imperceptibly Fergus, Kevin and Martin moved away, and John and Kate were left looking at each other.
John bent down and looked into her eyes. They didn’t say anything, neither of them said a word nor did they nod a head. Then after the long look John stood up.
‘We’d like to take it,’ he said simply, his hand in his wife’s cold hand.
Fergus let out his breath like a whistle. ‘You’re doing the right thing, I’m sure of it. I’m sure of it,’ he said happily.