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“Go on, ask her!” his mouth shielded by his left palm, Mick Nevin’s right elbow nudged at his brother’s ribs.                    

            “You ask her. It’s you that…” Matt hissed, tired of the weekly ritual.

            “Go on; it isn’t as if you’d be asking for yourself. Quick; she’s going!”

            “She’s gone!” Matt grinned, draining the dregs of his stout. “It’s your round.” He craned his neck and eyeballed his sibling. “Well? I bought last!” Abruptly, Mick got to his feet and pushed himself back from the bar.

            “You call it; I’ll be back in a minute…” Without further explanation, Mick hurried towards the door; Matt’s bemused eyes following each lopsided step.

            The drinks arrived as Mick slowly resumed his seat.

            “Well?” Matt ventured before taking a long swallow from his fresh pint. “Sláinte!”

            “Sláinte! No good, I’ll have to wait until someone drops out.”

            “Or drops off!” Matt chuckled softly.

            “Oh, you can laugh, you have Mary to…”

            “To cool my soup? You’d be married too, only you couldn’t find a dowry big enough. Now pay from them drinks and stop your maudlin!”

***

            Hannah greeted her daughter’s return to the car with a scowl.

            “You said you wouldn’t be long.”

            “It wasn’t my fault; there was a huge queue!” Elaine handed over the cash and pension book.

            “I don’t know why you couldn’t bring me this evening…at my usual time. You know as well as I do how busy the mornings are!” Hannah counted the cash carefully before consigning it to her purse. “And the supermarket will be just as bad, all those old fogies crawling around the place…”

            Old fogies, Elaine thought, and you pushing eighty, yourself.

            “You could stay in the car, Mother, there’s no need…”

            “No need, you say? No need? Isn’t it bad enough that I’m housebound all week, without locking me in the car when I get my only chance to do my bit of shopping?”

            “Nobody is locking you anywhere. You go across to the centre nearly every day; you go to bingo twice a week and you go to the pub with the holy water hens every Saturday after Mass…” She pulled into a wheelchair bay beside the supermarket’s main entrance.

            “Go on, like a good girl, and get me a trolley. Collect me in the coffee shop in about an hour.” 

            An hour? Shit! Elaine thought, watching her mother wheel her trolley through the entrance. Lighting a cigarette, she activated her mobile phone.

***

            Mick Nevin clamped his hands – right over left – on the knob of his blackthorn stick, its shaft warping beneath his leaning weight. From behind and above came the excited bleating of lambs, revelling in their first experience of the freedom of the mountain. The ewes were calling too, their tones betraying the concern born of previous visits to the high pasture, a world away from the crèche-like security of the home paddock. A blue collie emerged, tongue lolling, from a clump of blooming gorse, and flopped wearily at its master’s feet.

            “I know, boy, I know. I’m feeling it too. We’re getting too old for this lark, but what are we to do? Lie down and die like Dan Murty, beyond? Wouldn’t he gladly swap places with us today? But no, he had to up and sell. Well, he didn’t enjoy much of his money below in the town. I doubt he spent a month’s interest…” The collie yawned, making a squeaking sound, and stretched to lie prone on his right flank. “Not one month’s interest.” Taking his right hand from the stick, Mick crouched and ruffled the thick scruff around the back of the sheepdog’s neck. “Not one month’s interest, I’d wager! What do you say to that, Bogey; what do you say to that, hah?”

***

            Once the evening roast was in the oven, and Hannah happily tut-tutting over the court reports in the local paper, Elaine took her keys from her bag and started towards the door.

            “How long will you be?” Hannah demanded without removing her eyes from the account of a neighbour’s drink-driving case.

            “I’ll be back by four… at the latest.”

            “I hope so. The child will be expecting her dinner.” The door slammed.

            Child indeed! Elaine grimaced. Her daughter was almost nineteen and studying to repeat her Leaving Cert in a final attempt to gain enough points to join her brother at the university in Cork.

            I’d better be finished by then, an ironic gleam brightened Elaine’s eye; Sarah isn’t the only one who’ll be coming home at four…

***

            From across the river, Mick Nevin monitored the progress of the white Toyota Corolla from his doorstep. He sighed, shaking his head as the car swung left into the tarmac driveway of a pristine dormer bungalow.

            “There’s no justice, Bogey!” The collie looked up enquiringly at the sound of his name. “No justice at all.” Mick checked his watch and whistled softly. “I thought ‘twas a bit late all right; we’ll have to keep an eye out.” He chuckled dryly, “This could be a close one. Yes, sir; this could be a very close one. Come on, Bogey, we’ll have time for a mouthful of tea anyway.”

***

            It was a close one, but not close enough for Mick’s liking. The white Corolla had just cleared the driveway when a black Golf appeared on the brow of the bridge.

            “There’s no justice, Bogey!” Mick swirled the remaining tea and leaves around in his mug before emptying them on the ash heap in the corner of the haggard.     The dog chose to ignore the words in favour of licking the final morsels of food from his enamel bowl.

            “That’s right, you’re as bad as the rest of them: why should you worry as long as your own needs are satisfied? There’s no justice, Bogey, no justice at all!” The dog eyed his master for a moment before stretching to nuzzle Mick’s arthritically misshapen fingers. “You’re a good boy, Bogey; where would I be without you?”

***

            Hannah plonked her teacup on her empty dinner plate. “It’ll be on the Thursday next week.” She muttered.

            “What will?” Elaine rose from the table and began to gather the used cutlery.

            “Pension day! They’re paying us on Thursday – because of Good Friday. And don’t you try to tell me that you won’t be able to take me in the afternoon… not after all the torture that you’ve put me through today.”

            “Torture, my eye. Look, I’ll do the best I can but I’ll have to change a few things around.” Elaine’s reward was a dubious humph from her mother.

            Good Friday! Easter, how did I forget? Elaine agonised, running the hot water tap. Even the slightest disruption to Elaine’s schedule had consequences. Single bank holidays were awkward enough, but Easter was as bad as Christmas – maybe worse, without any of the yuletide distractions and with all the problems that resulted from an extended school closure, and no night classes either. Good Fridays were a total disaster: no pubs, no bingo, even the bloody choir practice wouldn’t be on!

***

            Mick knew the timetable as well as any man in the parish. He hadn’t missed a visitation on his side of the bridge for almost five years, and it was the change of car that had fooled him on that occasion: after three years of watching for a red Fiesta, he could be forgiven for not noticing the white Corolla.

            Other than the ticking of the ancient eight-day clock, the only sound in the kitchen was the occasional clinking scrape of Mick’s dinner plate, propelled across the flagged floor by the sheepdog’s eager tongue.

            “There’s no justice, Bogey; no justice at all.” The clock chimed seven times. Mick removed his grimy cap and got stiffly to his feet. He had plenty of time for a bath before cadging a lift into town on the bingo bus.

***

            “Mum?” Rachel hovered uncertainly in the kitchen doorway.

            “How much?” Elaine asked resignedly.

            “Please, Mum, I need a hundred…” Elaine drew her daughter into the kitchen, pulling the door shut behind her.

            “A hundred? What do you need a hundred for?”

            “The girls are going to Cork for the weekend, to check out possible accommodation for college. They have a place to stay and…and…they’ve invited me along.” She shrugged pleadingly. Elaine wasn’t quite convinced.

            “Girls… what girls…who…?”

            “Judy Russell, Emma Cunningham and Sharon Joyce. Sharon’s mother is our science teacher; she’s driving us down and collecting us again on Sunday evening. Come on, Mum, you know them all.” Elaine knew who they were all right, but she was no longer listening. The names had seared through her flesh like lead-weighted treble-hooks, the barbs now lodged deep within her gut. She reached for her purse and withdrew three crinkled fifty-euro notes.

***

            “Nothing strange?” Matt asked, when Mick joined him at the bar counter.

            “I let the lambs off today; I’d say we’re over the worst of the weather.”

            “It must have been lovely up there today; any sign of a swallow yet?”

            “Ah, ‘twill be a few more weeks. Tell me this, Matt, do you miss it, the land I mean; were you ever sorry for bailing out?” Matt seemed to digest the question for a moment before replying.

            “On days like today, maybe; but if you ever hear me saying that I miss the meadow or the bog or pulling buachaláns or scouring drains, sign me into the mad house straight away! I suppose you heard that Din Joe took a turn?”

            “A pity ‘twasn’t the brother!” He paid for the drinks. “Jojo had a close one today; she was late arriving and was barely out the gate when the wife came home from school.”

            “There’s still no guarantee that you’d get Jojo’s place.”

            “But I wouldn’t have to be watching week-after-week.”

            “You shouldn’t be watching any week. Down on your knees you should be, with your rosary beads around your fingers, praying for a happy death!” Both bodies shook with mirth.

            “Sure isn’t there a bed ready above for me for years. Doesn’t The Almighty well know that I haven’t had an occasion of sin since the shillings and pence went out?”

***

            It was on the following Monday morning that Mick’s phone rang. Directly after the call, he drove his Range Rover into town and parked beside the bank. Four times he punched his PIN into the ATM before slipping a wad of crisp fifty-euro notes into his wallet. His next call was to the drapers, from where he ferried an assortment of large carrier bags back to the jeep before returning home. Less than an hour later, the activity within the stone farmhouse had become too much for Bogey to endure. With a half-hearted snarl, he tucked his feathery tail between his legs and withdrew to a shady spot beneath the holly tree in the corner of the haggard.

***

            By Friday morning, Mick had conceded that the crowd below the bridge mightn’t be that bad after all. George the Major, Sonny Connor, Jack Cunningham and Curly Russell were all good neighbours; even Jojo Joyce had his good points, despite not appreciating his luck in being married to a teacher.

            The white Corolla finally arrived just after four o’clock. A moment after her soft curves had darkened the doorway, Elaine’s blonde hair brushed Mick’s cheek.

            “I hope you’ve had that bath, Mick; first impressions matter!” She whispered, undoing the buttons of her black lace blouse.