The Hunter

Seven

Over breakfast, Cal does some hangover-related calculations. He wants a talk with Johnny Reddy, as early as possible, to prevent Johnny from claiming he’s too late; but that requires Johnny to be awake, and he was still going strong when Cal left the pub at midnight. He doesn’t want Rushborough there, and while Cal figures Johnny won’t want to leave Rushborough unsupervised, Rushborough looked a lot drunker than Johnny did, so he’s likely to take longer to surface. Cal also doesn’t want to encounter Trey, but she has football training on Tuesday mornings and mostly hangs out with her friends afterwards, so she should be out of his way at least until she gets hungry.

In the end he reckons ten-thirty should find Trey gone, Johnny conscious, and Rushborough not yet functional. At a quarter to ten he gets three hundred euros out of his emergency-cash envelope, puts it in his pocket, and starts off towards the mountain. He leaves Rip at home. As far as Cal is concerned, Rip made his opinion of Johnny plain on their first meeting, and shouldn’t be subjected to a second one.

The mountain is sly. From far off, its low, rounded curves look almost harmless, and even as you go up the trail, every step seems gentle enough, until all of a sudden you realize your leg muscles are juddering. The same goes for straying: the path is clear, until you look down after a minute’s distraction and find yourself with one foot slowly pressing deeper into watery bog. It’s a place whose dangers only come into focus when you’re already engaged with them.

Cal, knowing that, takes it slow and steady. The heat is already starting to build. On the purple bogland, the bees fill up the heather with a ceaseless, intent hum and a rustle so tiny that only their sheer numbers make it audible. The view shifts with the twists of the path, over crumbling stone walls and stretches of tall moor grass, to the spread of trim, busy fields far below.

In the Reddys’ front yard, Liam and Alanna have found a broken-handled spade and are building earthworks in the shade of a bedraggled tree. They come running over to explain their construction to Cal and investigate him for candy bars; finding he’s brought none today, they zoom back to their project. The sun is drawing a rich, restless scent from the spruce grove behind the house.

Sheila Reddy answers the door. Cal makes a point of finding chances to speak with Sheila often enough that she doesn’t feel her daughter is off with a stranger. Mostly she smiles and seems pleased to see him, and tells him how well the mended roof has held up to the weather. Today, her face has the same shuttered wariness it wore years ago, when he first came here. She holds the door like a weapon.

“Morning,” he says. “Looks like another hot one coming.”

Sheila barely glances at the sky. “Theresa’s at football,” she says.

“Oh, I know that,” Cal says. “I was hoping to speak to Mr. Reddy, if he’s free.”

Sheila looks at him for a minute, expressionless. “I’ll get him,” she says, and shuts the door behind her.

Liam starts kicking at a corner of the earthworks, and Alanna yells at him. Liam kicks harder. Alanna yells louder and shoves him. Cal resists the urge to tell them both to knock it off.

Johnny takes his time coming to the door. Today the first thing about him that irks Cal is his shirt, which is a blue pinstripe, freshly ironed, with the cuffs neatly rolled. It’s set to be another sizzling day, the kind where even the shriveled old ladies who arrange flowers in front of the Virgin Mary grotto dig out short sleeves, but this little schmuck feels the need to express that he’s too fancy for everything about Ardnakelty, right down to the weather.

“Mr. Hooper,” he says pleasantly. This time he doesn’t try to shake hands. “Did you enjoy last night? You were an addition to the party: you’ve a fine voice on you.”

The guy’s not even outside his door and he’s managed to irk Cal a second time over, acting like last night was his personal party and Cal was some gatecrasher he decided to humor. “Thanks,” Cal says. “You sounded pretty good yourself.” Johnny, inevitably, sang “The West’s Awake,” in a poignant tenor with plenty of grandeur on the big notes.

Johnny laughs that off. “Ah, I can carry a tune, is all. It’s in the blood, sure: everyone from around here can hold their own in a singsong.”

“Sure sounded like it,” Cal says. “You got a minute?”

“I do, of course,” Johnny says graciously. He strolls across the yard towards the gate, letting Cal follow and leaving the door open, to make the point that this can’t take long. In the sunlight, his hangover shows; there are bags under his eyes, and redness in them. It sits poorly with his boyish mannerisms, giving them a tawdry, used-up air. “What can I do for you?”

It’s been Cal’s experience that men like Johnny Reddy don’t deal well with being taken off guard. They’re used to picking the easiest victims, so they’re used to being the ones who set the agenda, the pace, and everything else. If someone takes that away from them, they flounder.

“I hear you’re looking for investors to get some gold into the river,” Cal says. “I’m in.”

That wakes Johnny up. He stops walking and stares for a second. Then: “Holy God,” he says, bursting into extravagant laughter. “Where’d that come out of?”

“The buy-in’s three hundred bucks. Right?”

Johnny shakes his head, grinning, blowing out air. “My God, Theresa musta got the wrong end of the stick altogether. What’s she after saying to you, at all?”

“She hasn’t said a word,” Cal says. “About that or any of it. And I haven’t asked her.”

Johnny hears the edge in his voice and backs off fast. “Ah, I know you wouldn’t do that,” he assures Cal. “Only you have to understand, man. This’ll be a wonderful opportunity for Theresa, I’ll be able to give her all kinds of things that she’s never had up till now—music lessons, she’ll be able to have, and horseback riding, and whatever she fancies. But I won’t have her put in the middle of it all. Being quizzed about what she knows, having to worry about what she should and shouldn’t say. ’Twouldn’t be fair on her.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I’m with you on that.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Johnny says, nodding gravely. “It’s great to be on the same page.” He brushes off the gate rail and leans his forearms on it, narrowing his eyes to gaze out over the mountain slope. “Then, if you don’t mind me asking, who was it said this to you?”

“Well,” Cal says, settling his back against the gate, “I gotta admit I was kinda surprised you didn’t mention it to me yourself. What with my land being right on the gold line, and all.”

Johnny’s face registers a twinge of embarrassed reproach, like Cal has committed a social error. “I’da loved to bring you on board,” he explains. “I need a chance to repay a wee biteen of all the kindness you’ve shown Theresa, while I was away. But that’ll have to wait a little longer. Man, no harm to you and no offense meant, but this is Ardnakelty business. Mr. Rushborough’s going to stick to taking his samples on land that’s owned by Ardnakelty men. You heard him last night: where to find the gold, that’s been passed down through his ancestors, and ours. Not yours.”

Cal is out of practice. He let Johnny use Trey as a sidetrack, and now Johnny’s had enough talking time to recover his footing and come up with an angle.

“Well, I can see why you’d take that into account,” he says, smiling at Johnny. “But it was an Ardnakelty guy that told me the whole story, and invited me along last night. He said I oughta remind you about me and my land being involved, just in case you’d forgotten. Does that set your mind at ease?”

Johnny laughs, his head going back. “Go on, let me guess. Mart Lavin, is it? He’s always been a terrible man for stirring the pot. I thought he’da outgrown it by now, but some people never learn.”

Cal waits. He’s had squirrelly little conversations like this with squirrelly little fucks like this before, hundreds of times: two-layer conversations where everyone knows what’s going on, and everyone knows that everyone knows, but they all have to keep playing dumb for the squirrelly little fuck’s convenience. The wasted energy always irritated him, but at least back then he was getting paid for it.

Johnny sighs and turns serious. “Man,” he says ruefully, rubbing at his face, “let me tell you what I’m dealing with. I’m in a bit of a delicate position here. I can’t take a step offa this mountain without people coming up to me asking why they’ve been left out, why your man won’t be digging on their land. That’s people I’ve known since I was a wee baba. I’ve tried to explain to them that I’m not the one that decides where there’s gold and where there isn’t, and if they just let the hare sit, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to go round. But…” He spreads his hands and gives Cal a world-weary eye-roll. “Sure, you can’t make people hear what they don’t want to hear. What would they all think if I let a stranger in on this, while I’m keeping them out? Half the townland would go mental on me. I’ve enough on my plate without that.”

“Well,” Cal says. “I sure wouldn’t want you inconvenienced.”

“It’s not just that,” Johnny explains. “Mr. Rushborough’s not looking for a lucrative business venture. He’s looking to get in touch with his heritage. No harm to you, but an American who blew in with a few grand in his pocket to buy up Irish land…that’s not the buzz he’s after. He wants to hear that there’ll be no outsiders in this, because then he knows he’s no outsider. If it starts to look like a free-for-all, the whole idea might turn sour on him, and then where would we all be?”

“Hate to think,” Cal agrees. He looks over the house, at the thick grove of trees rising up the mountainside. Even in this weather, a breeze nudges among the branches, languid but not restful, saving its force.

“Like I said,” Johnny reassures him, “there’ll be plenty to go round, all in good time. You just sit tight. You’ll get your share. You never know: Mr. Rushborough might even fancy having his own wee bit of Ardnakelty, and come looking to buy your land.”

“Gee whiz,” Cal says. “Imagine little ol’ me being bought out by a millionaire.”

“The sky’s the limit,” Johnny tells him.

“What happens if the guy decides to head out panning first thing this morning?” Cal inquires. “Once his hangover wears off.”

Johnny laughs, shaking his head. “You’ve some mad ideas about all this, man. D’you know that? You talk like Mr. Rushborough’s only here to grub up all the gold he can get his hands on. He’s here to see the land where his ancestors lived and died. He’s got plenty to do before he gets around to the river.”

“Let’s hope so,” Cal says. “Be a shame if your gold rush was over before it even got going.”

“Listen to me, man,” Johnny says indulgently. “This story about putting gold in the river, or however it went. I don’t know who told you that, but whoever he was, he was taking the mickey—having you on, that means; having a wee joke with you. We’ve a fierce mischievous sense of humor around here; it takes a while to get used to. Don’t you be doing anything foolish with that story, now, like maybe bringing it to Mr. Rushborough. Because I can tell you right now, he won’t believe a word of it.”

“You don’t think?” Cal inquires politely. He has no intention of discussing this with Rushborough. He’s under no illusion that he has Rushborough’s measure yet.

“Ah, God, no. I’ll tell you what to do. Don’t let on you fell for the story—don’t be giving Mart Lavin, or whoever ’tis, the satisfaction. Go back home and say nothing about this morning. And when he comes asking how you got on with me, you laugh in his face and ask him if he takes you for a fool.”

“That’s an idea, all right,” Cal agrees. He turns around to lean his arms on the rail, shoulder to shoulder with Johnny. “I got a better one. You cut me in for my share, and I won’t go up to town and tell Officer O’Malley what kind of scam you’re running on his patch.”

Johnny looks at him. Cal looks back. They both know Officer O’Malley would get a great big handful of nothing out of Ardnakelty, but that doesn’t matter: the last thing Johnny needs right now is a cop all up in his business, making everyone wary.

Johnny says, “I’m not sure I oughta let Theresa hang around a man that’d want in on a scam like that one.”

“You’re the one that came up with the idea,” Cal says. “And let her hang around to hear it.”

“Didn’t happen, man. And if it had, I’m her daddy. That’s why I want her around me. Maybe I oughta look a little harder at your reasons.”

Cal doesn’t move, but Johnny flinches anyway.

Cal says, “You don’t want to try that, Johnny. Trust me on this one.”

The heat is building. The sun up here is different; it has a scouring quality, like it’s scraping your skin raw to make it easier to burn. Liam and Alanna have started chanting something giggly and triumphant, but the high air of the mountain thins it to a wisp of sound.

Cal takes the three hundred bucks out of his pocket and holds it out.

Johnny glances at it, but doesn’t move to take it. After a moment he says, “That’s nothing to do with me. If you want to do something with it, talk to Mart Lavin.”

Cal more or less expected this. Mart said no one wants to trust Johnny with cash, so they’re buying the gold themselves. Johnny is keeping his hands clean, and making the men think it’s their smart idea.

“I’ll do that,” he says, pocketing the cash. “Good talk.”

“Daddy!” Liam yells, and he starts pointing at the earthworks and calling out some long excited story. “I’ll see you round,” Johnny says to Cal, and he saunters over to Liam and Alanna’s construction, where he squats down and starts pointing at things and asking interested questions. Cal heads off all the way back down the mountain, to find Mart.

Pissing Noreen off comes at a price. Lena is the last person in several townlands to hear about Johnny Reddy’s Englishman’s granny’s gold. Contrary to Noreen’s opinion, Lena is not a hermit and in fact has a respectable number of friends, but the close ones are women from the book club she did in town a few years back, or people from work—Lena does the accounts, and whatever else needs doing, at a stable out the other side of Boyle. She can go for days without talking to anyone from Ardnakelty, if she feels like it, which under the circumstances she has. She hasn’t been into the shop, on the grounds that if Noreen starts shoving her down the aisle again, Lena might tell her to fuck off and mind her own business, which would be satisfying but unproductive. She hasn’t been round to Cal’s, either. The easeful rhythm they’ve established, over the past two years, has them meeting a few times a week; and Lena, who has never before felt the need to worry about what Cal might read into her actions, doesn’t want him thinking she’s hovering and fretting over him because Johnny bloody Reddy is back in town. She expected Trey to come back looking to stay the night again, but there’s been no sign of her.

So the first Lena hears of the gold is when she calls round to Cal on Tuesday to give him some mustard. Lena likes finding small gifts for Cal. He’s not a man who wants many or fancy things, so she enjoys the challenge. At the food market in town, on her way back from the morning’s work, she came across a jar of mustard with whiskey and jalapeños, which should both please Cal and give Trey’s face the look of mingled suspicion and determination that he and Lena enjoy.

“Fuck me,” Lena says, when Cal has put her abreast of the situation. They’re on the back porch, eating ham sandwiches for lunch—Cal wanted to try the mustard straightaway. A few of the rooks, who zeroed in on the food before Lena and Cal even sat themselves down, are stalking the grass at a safe distance, turning their heads sideways to keep an eye on the prize. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“I thought Noreen would’ve told you before now,” Cal says.

“We annoyed each other, the other day. I was giving it some time to wear off. I shoulda known. I miss two days of Noreen, and I miss the biggest news in years.”

“Go tell her you just found out now,” Cal says. “She’ll be so smug, she’ll forgive you anything.” Rip is twitching to go after the rooks. Cal runs a hand down the back of his head, settling him.

Lena is thinking back to Johnny lounging on her gate, telling her about his fortune under construction. “Ha,” she says, struck by a thought. “Here I thought that little fecker was calling round to me trying to get his leg over. And all the time it was my wallet he had his eye on, not my pretty face. That’ll teach me to flatter myself.”

“He’s only looking for cash from people whose land is on this line,” Cal says. “So far, anyway. I reckon what he mostly wanted from you was someone to tell people he’s a great guy and they oughta back him up.”

“He was barking up the wrong tree here,” Lena says, tossing a scrap of bread to the rooks. “I reckon anyone that gets involved with that eejit wants his head examined.”

“That’d be me,” Cal says. “I gave Mart three hundred bucks this morning, for my share of the gold.”

Lena forgets about the rooks and turns to look at him.

“Probably I need my head examined,” Cal says.

Lena says, “Is that fucker getting Trey mixed up in this?”

“He had her in the room while he talked the guys into it,” Cal says. “Had her telling them how her teacher says the gold’s there. Beyond that, I dunno.”

He sounds calm, but Lena doesn’t mistake that for taking it lightly. “So you’re going to keep an eye on him,” she says.

“Not much else I can do, right now,” Cal says. He pulls a chunk of crust off his sandwich, avoiding the mustard, and throws it to the rooks. Two of them get into a tug-of-war over it. “If something does come up, I want to be there to catch it.”

Lena watches him. She says, “Like what?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m just gonna wait and see. That’s all.”

Lena has only ever known Cal to be gentle, but she’s not under the illusion that he has no other side. She doesn’t underestimate his anger. She can almost smell it off him, like heat off metal.

“What’s Johnny think of having you on board?” she asks.

“Doesn’t like it one little bit,” Cal says. “But he’s stuck with me. Specially if he doesn’t want me.”

Even if Lena had any inclination to try and turn him from this, she would get nowhere. “It’ll do him good,” she says. “He’s too fond of getting his own way, that fella.”

“Yeah, well,” Cal says. “Not this time.”

Lena eats her sandwich—the mustard is good and strong—and examines what she’s learned. Her first guess was right, and Noreen’s was wrong. Johnny didn’t just drift home because his girlfriend had dumped him and he couldn’t figure out how to work himself on his own. Johnny needs money, badly. For him to go to this much trouble, it’s not just rent arrears or an unpaid credit card. He owes someone; someone dangerous.

Lena doesn’t give a shite what Johnny personally is facing. What she wants to know is whether the danger is going to stay over in London, waiting trustingly for him to show up with the cash, or whether it’s coming after him. Lena wouldn’t trust Johnny to come back with her cash from down the road, let alone from over the water. If she wanted the money, she’d be going after him.

Cal, not knowing Johnny as she does, is unlikely to have reached the same conclusions yet. Lena considers sharing hers with him, and decides against it for the moment. It’s one thing to refuse responsibility for Cal’s moods; it’s another to deliberately whip up his fears and his anger, when she has nothing to go on but conjecture.

“Next time I see Trey,” she says, “I’ll ask her to come stay with me for a few days.”

Cal throws the rooks another piece of crust and shifts, trying to get the sun to attack a different part of his face. “I don’t like this weather,” he says. “Back on the job, this kind of heat was when we knew things were gonna get messy. People lose their minds, do the type of crazy stuff where you figure they must’ve been high on half a dozen things at once, till the tests come back and nope, stone-cold sober. Just hot. Whenever it stays hot for too long, I’m just waiting for things to get messy.”

Lena, although she doesn’t say this, has been liking the heat wave. She appreciates the change it brings to the townland. It transforms the muted blues and creams and yellows of the village houses, lifting them to an expansive brightness that barely seems real, and it rouses the fields from their usual soft somnolence to a spiky, embattled vividness. It’s like seeing Cal in a new mood: it lets her know the place better.

“That’s a different class of heat, sure,” she says. “From what I’ve heard, the summer in America’d melt your brains. This is just the kinda heat you’d get on holiday in Spain, only for free.”

“Maybe.”

Lena watches his face. “I suppose there’s a few people getting edgy, all right,” she says. “Last week Sheena McHugh threw Joe outa the house, because she said she couldn’t stand the way he chews his food one minute longer. He had to go to his mammy’s.”

“Well, there you go,” Cal says, but his mouth has quirked in a smile. “You’d have to be losing your mind to dump anyone with Miz McHugh. Did Sheena let him back in yet?”

“She did, yeah. He went into town and bought one of them fans, the big tower ones. It’s got an app and all. She’da let in Hannibal Lecter if he was carrying one of those.”

Cal grins. “The heat’ll break,” Lena says. “Then we’ll all be back to giving out about the rain.”

The two rooks are still fighting over Cal’s sandwich crust. A third one sneaks up on them, gets within a couple of feet, and lets loose an explosion of barking. The first two shoot into the air, and the third one grabs the chunk of crust and heads for the hills. Lena and Cal both burst out laughing.

Late at night, Trey’s parents are arguing in their room. Trey extracts herself from the sweaty tangle of sheets and Banjo and Alanna, who’s come into her bed again, and goes to the door to listen. Sheila’s voice, low and brief, but sharp; then a load of Johnny, with a note of outrage, controlled but building.

She goes out to the sitting room and turns the telly on, to give herself an excuse for being there, but muted so she can keep an ear out. The room smells of food and stale smoke. The mess has started to silt up again, since she and her dad tidied it the other night—half the carpet is taken up by an arrangement of small staring dolls, and there are a bunch of Nerf bullets and a dirty sock stuffed with sweet wrappers on the sofa. Trey throws them in a corner. On the telly, two pale women in old-fashioned clothes are looking upset about a letter.

Cillian Rushborough came for dinner. “I can’t be cooking for some fancy fella,” Sheila said flatly, when Johnny told her. “Bring him into town.”

“Make Irish stew,” Johnny said, catching her round the waist and planting a kiss on her. He’d been in great form all day, kicking a football around the yard with Liam, and getting Maeve to teach him Irish dancing steps on the kitchen floor. Sheila didn’t kiss him back, or turn away, just kept moving like he wasn’t there. “Heavy on the aul’ spuds. He’ll love it. Sure, your stew’s fit for a billionaire, never mind a millionaire. That’s what we’ll call it from now on, won’t we, lads? Millionaire stew!” Maeve jumped up and down and clapped her hands—ever since their dad got home, she’s been acting like a four-year-old—and Liam started banging his chair legs and chanting something about millionaire stew being made of goo. “Come on, Maeveen,” their dad said, grinning, “get your shoes on, and you and me’ll go down to the shop and get the finest ingredients. Millionaire stew for everyone!”

The little ones had to eat in the sitting room in front of the telly, but Trey and Maeve were let eat in the kitchen with the adults, so Trey got her look at Rushborough. He praised the stew to the skies, went into raptures about his day wandering around the boreens (“Is that how you pronounce it? Honestly, you must correct me, you can’t let me make a fool of myself”), asked Maeve about her favorite music and Trey about carpentry, and told a funny story about getting chased by the Maguires’ goose. Trey has an aversion to charm, which she’s encountered on only a few occasions, mostly in her father. Rushborough is more skilled at it. When he asked her mam about the little watercolor landscape that hangs on the kitchen wall, and got nothing out of her but a few brief words, he backed off instantly and gracefully, and went back to discussing Taylor Swift with Maeve. His deftness makes Trey more wary of him, not less.

She didn’t expect to like Rushborough, and doesn’t consider that to be important. What matters is what she can do about him. She was expecting him to be, not thick, but like Lauren in her class, who believes stupid things because she doesn’t bother to check them enough in her mind. One time Trey’s mate Aidan told Lauren that one of Jedward was his cousin, and she went around telling people that for a whole day, till someone called her a fucking eejit and pointed out that Jedward are twins. But Rushborough checks things. Maeve would say something meant to be funny, and Rushborough would laugh his arse off and then move on; only a minute later Trey would catch his eye resting on Maeve, just for a second, checking what she said against things in his mind.

What Trey reckons is that he wants the gold to be real so badly that he’s decided not to check too hard. If he finds out it’s fake, or at least partly fake, he’ll be raging double, because he’ll be raging at himself as well. But he won’t find out, unless he has no choice. She could tell him straight out what her dad said the other night, and he’d brush her off as a contrary teenager trying to stir shite.

The voices in the bedroom gain in intensity, although not in volume. Trey is weighing up whether she needs to do anything when her parents’ door opens, hard enough to bang off the wall, and Johnny comes down the hall and into the sitting room, buttoning his shirt. Trey knows from the looseness of his movements that he’s about half drunk.

“What are you doing awake?” he demands, when he sees her.

“Watching the telly,” Trey says. She doesn’t think there’s any immediate danger—when her dad hit her before, he mostly went for their mam or Brendan first, and for her only as an afterthought, if he had some left over; and none of the sounds from the bedroom implied that. Her muscles are ready to run if she needs to, all the same. She feels a sudden, savage anger at her body for still having the habit. She had come to believe she was done with this.

Johnny drops into an armchair with a sigh that’s close to a snarl. “Women,” he says, wiping his hands over his face. “Honest to God, they’re the fuckin’ divil.”

He appears to have forgotten that Trey is a girl. People sometimes do. It doesn’t bother her from them, and it neither bothers her nor surprises her from her father. She waits.

“All a man needs from a woman,” Johnny says, “is for her to have a bitta faith in him. That’s what puts the strength into you, when things are tough. A man can do anything in the world, once he knows his woman’s behind him all the way. But her…”

He flicks his head in the direction of the bedroom. “God almighty, the whinging out of her. Oh, she’d a terrible time altogether while I was away, all alone, afraid for her life, ashamed to walk into the shop with the women looking sideways at her, the Guard coming down from town trying to make ye go to school, having to borrow money for the Christmas— Did she do that, even? Or was she just saying it to make me feel guilty?”

“Dunno,” Trey says.

“I said to her, sure what’s there to be afraid of, all the way up here, and what do you care what them bitches say—and if that Guard’s got nothing better to do than give out to kids for mitching, then fuck him anyway. But there’s no talking to a woman that’s looking to make a big fuckin’ deal outa nothing.”

He digs through his pockets for his smokes. “She’s never satisfied, that one. I could bring her the sun, moon, and stars, and she’d find something wrong with them. She wasn’t happy when I was here, and she wasn’t happy when I was gone. And sure”—Johnny’s hands fly up in outrage—“sure, I’m back now. Here I am. Sitting here. I’ve a plan to put the lot of us on the pig’s back. And she’s still not fuckin’ happy. What the fuck does she want from me?”

Trey isn’t sure whether he wants her to answer or not. “Dunno,” she says again.

“I even brought your man Rushborough here for her to meet. Does she think I wanted to bring him into this kip? I did it anyway, just so’s she could see I wasn’t talking shite. That man who complimented your mammy’s stew, he’s eaten at the finest restaurants in the world. And she looked at him like he was some latchico I picked out of a ditch. Did you see that?”

“Nah,” Trey says. “I was eating the stew.”

Her dad lights a cigarette and pulls hard on it. “I asked her for her opinion and all. Told her the whole plan—what d’you reckon, says I, that oughta make for a better Christmas this year, amn’t I right? D’you know what she did?” Johnny stares past Trey’s ear and gives an exaggerated shrug. “That’s it. That’s what I got offa her. All I needed was for her to look at me and say, It’s great, Johnny, well done. Maybe give me a smile, even, or a kiss. That’s not a lot to ask. And instead I get—” He does the stare and shrug again. “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads.”

“Maybe,” Trey says, feeling that some response is required of her.

Johnny looks at her then, taking a second to focus his eyes, and appears to recall who she is. He makes the effort to smile at her. Tonight, with the spring and shine taken off him, his boyish look is gone; he seems small and wispy in the armchair, as if his muscles are already starting to shrivel towards old age. “Not you, sweetheart,” he reassures her. “Sure, you’re Daddy’s great girl. You’ve all the faith in the world in me, haven’t you?”

Trey shrugs.

Johnny looks at her. For a second Trey thinks she’s going to get a slap. He sees her ready to bolt, and closes his eyes. “I need a fuckin’ drink,” he says, under his breath.

Trey sits there looking at him, slumped with his head leaned back and his legs splayed at random. There are purple shadows under his eyes.

She goes out to the kitchen, takes the whiskey bottle from its cupboard, and puts some ice in a glass. When she gets back to the sitting room, her father hasn’t moved. A thin trail of smoke trickles upwards from his cigarette. She squats beside his chair.

“Daddy,” she says. “Here you go.”

Her dad opens his eyes and looks blankly at her for a second. Then he spots the bottle and lets out a small harsh burst of laughter. “God,” he says, softly and bleakly, to himself.

“I’ll get you something different,” Trey says. “If you don’t want that.”

Johnny stirs himself, with an effort, and sits up straight. “Ah, no, sweetheart, that’s lovely. Thanks very much. You’re a great girl altogether, looking after your daddy. What are you?”

“Great girl,” Trey says obediently. She pours some whiskey and hands him the glass.

Johnny takes a deep swig and lets his breath out. “Now,” he says. “See? All better.”

“I’ve got faith in you,” Trey says. “It’s gonna be great.”

Her dad smiles down at her, pinching the top of his nose like his head hurts. “That’s the plan, anyhow. And sure, why shouldn’t it be? Don’t we deserve a few nice things?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “Mam’ll be delighted once she sees it. She’ll be all proud of you.”

“She will, o’ course. And when your brother comes home, it’ll be great for him to have a nice surprise to come back to. Isn’t that right? Can’t you just see the face on him, when he steps outa the car and gets an eyeful of a house the size of a shopping center?”

Just for a second, Trey does see it, as vividly as if it could actually come true: Brendan’s head tilted up to the shining rows of windows, his mouth opening, his thin mobile face exploding like a firework with delight. Her dad is good at this.

“Yeah,” she says.

“He’ll never want to go roaming again,” Johnny says, smiling at her. “He’ll have no need.”

“Mrs. Cunniffe says can you ask Mr. Rushborough is there any gold on their land,” Trey says. “And Tom Pat Malone says can their Brian help dig the gold outa the river.”

Johnny laughs. “There you go. See? Everyone’s dying for a hand in this, except your mammy, and we’ll get her there in the end. You just tell Mrs. Cunniffe and Tom Pat that Mr. Rushborough appreciates their interest, and he’ll keep them in mind. And you keep on telling me who comes looking to get in on this, just like you’ve done now. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “Sure.”

“Good girl,” Johnny says. “Where would I be without you?”

Trey says, “When are you gonna put the gold in the river?”

Johnny takes another swig of the whiskey. “It’ll arrive sometime tomorrow,” he says. “Not here—sure, the courier’d get lost on the mountain, amn’t I right? He’d end in a bog, him and the gold, and we don’t want that. It’s going to Mart Lavin’s. The next day, first thing in the morning, we’ll put it in. Then we’ll be all ready for Mr. Rushborough to go treasure hunting.” He cocks his head at Trey quizzically. The whiskey has braced him up. “Do you want to come along, is that it? You’re going to give us a hand?”

Trey definitely doesn’t want to go along. “What time?” she asks.

“We’ll have to go bright and early. Before the farmers are up, even. We don’t want anyone spotting us, sure we don’t? It’ll be daylight by half-five. We’ll want to be down at the river by then.”

Trey makes a horrified face. “Nah,” she says.

Johnny laughs and ruffles her hair. “My God, I should’ve known better than to ask a teenager to get up outa her bed before noon! You’re grand; you get your beauty sleep. There’ll be other ways you can give me a hand, won’t there?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “Just not that early.”

“I’ll find you something,” Johnny assures her. “Sure, with the brains on you, there’ll be a million things you can do.”

“I can keep an eye on Rushborough for you,” Trey says. “Tomorrow. Make sure he doesn’t go down to the river before you have it ready.”

Her dad turns from his glass and looks at her. Trey watches him, slowed by the drink, trying to assess this idea.

“He won’t see me,” she says. “I’ll stay hid.”

“D’you know something, now?” her dad says, after a moment. “That’s a great idea. I’d say all he’ll do is wander around seeing the sights, and you’ll be bored to bits—but sure, no need to put your whole day into it. I’m bringing him to see Mossie O’Halloran’s fairy hill in the afternoon; you just mind him for the morning. If you see him heading down towards the river, you go up to him and say hello, nice and polite like, and offer to show him that aul’ bit of a stone tower off the main road. You tell him it belonged to the Feeneys, and he’ll go along with you like a lamb.”

“OK,” Trey says. “Where’s he staying?”

“He’s in that gray cottage over towards Knockfarraney, on Rory Dunne’s farm. You go down there first thing tomorrow morning, once you drag yourself outa the bed, and see what Rushborough does with himself. Then you can come tell me all about it.”

Trey nods. “OK,” she says.

“That’s great,” her dad says, smiling at her. “You’re after doing me a power of good, so you are. That’s all I needed: my own wee girl on my side.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “I’m on your side.”

“You are, o’ course. Now go get some sleep, or you’ll be fit for nothing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll get up,” Trey says. “Night.”

This time he doesn’t try to hug her. As she turns to close the door behind her, she sees his head go back again and his fingers pinch at his nose. She reckons possibly she should feel sorry for him. The only thing she feels is a cold spark of victory.

Trey is not, by nature, one to go at people or things sideways. Her inclination is to go in straight, and keep going till she gets the job done. But she’s open to learning new skills when the necessity arises. She’s learning them from her dad. The part that surprises her isn’t how fast she’s picking this up—Cal always says she’s a quick study—but how easily her dad, who’s never gone at anything straight in his life, can be taken in.