A Greyhound of a Girl

  “No corners.”

  “Who spoke?!”

  “I did,” said Emer.

  “You’re awake!”

  “That’s good to know.”

  Mary was suddenly aware: she’d been asleep. She was awake now, though—definitely. Her granny’s voice had woken her—she thought.

  She turned so she could see her granny.

  “What did you say, Granny?” she asked.

  “No corners,” said Emer.

  “What d’you mean, like?”

  “I mean, there aren’t any corners on the road,” said Emer. “And there should be. Are we going the right way at all?”

  “Yes!”

  “Where’s Ashford, so?” said Emer.

  “It’s bypassed!” said Scarlett.

  “It’s what?”

  “Bypassed!”

  “My God.”

  They were quiet for a while.

  “Are there no corners at all anymore, Scarlett?”

  “No!” said Scarlett. “At least, I don’t think so. It’s straight all the way. Sorry.”

  Tansey spoke now, for the first time in ages.

  “I always liked a good corner,” she said.

  “Ah, sure, stop,” said Emer. “There’s nothing like a good corner.”

  “You never know what you’re going to get.”

  “Now you’re talking … Mammy.”

  Mary heard the two women behind her giggling.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Me,” said Emer. “Calling this one here ‘Mammy.’ It’s gas.”

  “She is your mammy.”

  “I know,” said Emer. “But it’s still gas. Sure, I’m eighty-something, I forget how much. And this one here’s well over a hundred.”

  “I am.”

  Mary smiled, but she began to worry as she watched her granny’s eyes start to close again. There was something about it—even in the dark, or maybe because of the dark. Her granny’s face seemed to close too, as her eyes closed. As if she’d stopped being her granny, or anyone. But she kept looking, even though it was awkward, trying to look behind her while the car was moving fast and she was strapped in. She wanted to see something first, something to reassure her, a yawn or a little twitch, something to tell her that her granny was just asleep.

  “We should maybe have waited till daylight,” said Tansey. “There’s nothing to look at.”

  “Only the dark,” said Emer, her eyes still shut.

  Mary laughed and turned around, to face forward again.

  “Where would we be now, if there was anything to look at?” Tansey asked.

  “We’re going past Arklow!” said Scarlett.

  “Thank God for that,” said Emer. “That’s one town I’ll happily bypass.”

  “We’re not too far, so,” said Tansey.

  “No!”

  No one spoke after that.

  For a good while.

  There were farmhouses, away off the road. It was nearly midnight and most of the windows were dark, but there were some lights on, over the front doors. Mary started to count them until she got to seven, and there was a gap and she forgot that she’d been doing it.

  “Gorey!”

  “Where?”

  “We’re going past it.”

  “Which side?”

  “I don’t know!” said Scarlett.

  “That’s just daft,” said Tansey. “Can you not go into Gorey anymore, only past it?”

  “You can go in!” said Scarlett. “You just go off this road.”

  “I used to work in Gorey,” said Tansey. “’Twas in Gorey I met Jim. Emer’s father.”

  “Do you want to go through Gorey?!”

  “No,” said Tansey. “It wouldn’t be the same. I’m better off not looking.”

  “Ah, now, Gorey isn’t too bad,” said Emer.

  The women in the back were giggling again. This time Mary didn’t look. The giggling stopped and it was quiet again, just the wheels on the road—there was no other sound that Mary could hear till her mother sighed. Mary looked, and watched her mother yawning.

  “Tired?”

  “No!”

  “Liar.”

  “Oh,” said Scarlett. “Look!”

  They were coming to the end of the long straight road. There was a roundabout ahead. It felt like years since the car had slowed. Mary could feel it in her chest as she was pressed, very slightly, against her seat belt.

  “Are we there?”

  “Not yet!”

  They could see the shape of Enniscorthy ahead of them, the cathedral and, over the river, the blunt top of Vinegar Hill.

  “Oh, look,” said Tansey. “The castle’s still there.”

  “Course it is,” said Emer.

  They drove slowly through the town.

  “There’s more of it than in my day,” said Tansey. “More buildings and corners.”

  “No harm.”

  “But it’s still the town.”

  “It is.”

  “A good ol’ town.”

  “Not the worst.”

  They crossed the river.

  “What’s the river called?” Mary asked.

  “The Slaney!”

  “It’s the exact same, the river.”

  “I’d say the water’s new.”

  “True.”

  “Nearly there!”

  “Oh, we know,” said Tansey. “We know. We’re on the home stretch, all right.”

  “I’d know it off by heart,” said Emer. “Every little swerve.”

  “Me too!” said Scarlett.

  “Why don’t I know it?” Mary asked.

  “What do you mean?!”

  “Like, you all know the way,” said Mary. “But I don’t. I’ve heard about it, the farm, like, but I’ve never been there. Have I?”

  “No, you haven’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “It was sold.”

  “Why?”

  “No one left to farm it,” said her granny, behind her. “James the Baby never married. I think he was afraid to. The granny was a great woman, but she could be a bit fierce.”

  “But Tansey lived there with her!” said Scarlett. “Didn’t you, Tansey?”

  “I did,” said Tansey. “But, then, I was a bit fierce myself.”

  “The fierceness came as the granny got older,” said Emer.

  “That’s often the way,” said Tansey.

  “Anyway,” said Emer. “I don’t think James the Baby thought he could bring another woman into the house. And by the time she died, sure, poor James the Baby was getting old himself.”

  She coughed, once.

  “God, now, I’m exhausted after all that talk,” she said.

  “Who called him James the Baby?” Mary asked.

  “What?”

  “All of us did,” said Emer. “That was his name.”

  “James the Baby, like?”

  “He was always James the Baby.”

  “And you expected someone to, like, marry him? A man called James the Baby?”

  There was silence in the car.

  “I can see your point, all right,” said Emer. “Now. Poor James.”

  Scarlett spoke, after they’d all stopped laughing.

  “Who bought the farm?!”

  “What?”

  “Who bought the farm?!”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “I used to know the name!” said Scarlett. “I think it was—”

  “I remember now,” said Emer. “It was the Furlongs.”

  “They had the farm up the lane!”

  “They did,” said Tansey. “Coolnamana.”

  “That’s the one,” said Emer.

  “And they bought our farm, did they?”

  “They did,” said Emer. “There was Ollie Furlong had four sons. And poor James the Baby—sorry, James the Man—who used to play the hurling with Ollie, was all by himself and no one to work for him. And he broke his arm, you see. He was always breaking som
e bone or other, was James the Man. So—”

  “He sold it to Ollie Furlong.”

  “No,” said Emer. “Not for a long while. He kept it up, he loved the farm. But then, only when it was too much for him. He gave it up. It was sad.”

  “Where did he live?” Mary asked.

  “He stayed on in the house,” said Emer. “But then, sure, he died.”

  “Nearly there!”

  “It’s a grand wide road.”

  “Who lives there now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Emer. “A Furlong, I suppose. Or someone belonging to a Furlong.”

  “Or no one at all.”

  “Empty?” said Tansey. “No, it couldn’t be. It was a grand house. There’d have to be someone in it.”

  “And,” said Mary, “we’re, like, dropping in for a chat after midnight, are we?”

  “It is a bit odd!”

  “They’ll set the dogs on us,” said Tansey.

  Mary heard a little yelp. She turned and saw her granny—or, her granny’s face—and the terror that had taken over her.

  “There, there,” said Tansey, and Mary watched her as she patted Emer’s arm. “We won’t do it. What sort of eejits are we, at all? Thinking we can go knocking on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night.”

  “We could wait till it’s bright.”

  “Where?”

  “In the car!”

  “It’ll be hours, sure,” said Emer. “And another thing.”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “I don’t want to be marching through a yard full of greyhounds, in the dark or in the daylight. I won’t do it—even if I could march.”

  The car was slowing again. Mary watched her mother turn on the indicator and look in the rearview mirror as she moved the car off the road, onto the hard shoulder.

  “Well!” said her mother. “We’ll have to make our minds up! One more minute and we’re there!”

  She stopped the car. They could see the village right ahead of them.

  “So!” said Scarlett. “Are we staying here or going?”

  She turned to look back at her mother and dead grandmother at the same time Mary did, and they nearly knocked their heads together. But, actually, their heads hardly touched at all, and what Emer and Tansey saw was two faces, squashed in the gap between the front seats, looking at them.

  “So,” said Mary. “What’s it to be?”

  hey decided to walk.

  Scarlett and Tansey did most of the deciding. They’d walk, and that way they’d see the old house and the yard, but there’d be no car lights or engines to disturb whoever was sleeping in the house.

  “That’ll be grand, so,” said Tansey.

  “Great!”

  “There’s one problem,” said Emer.

  “The greyhounds!”

  “No. We’ll deal with them if they’re there.”

  “Let me guess, Granny,” said Mary. “You’re very sick.”

  “Oh!” said Scarlett. “I forgot that.”

  “Actually,” said Mary. “You’ve, like, been in hospital forever. Isn’t that right, Granny?”

  “Don’t rub it in, Mary,” said her mother.

  “But,” said Mary, “how do you propose to get around the granny-can’t-walk problem?”

  “Simple!” said Scarlett. “I’ll just get the wheelchair out of the boot and that should solve the granny-can’t-walk problem, I’d say! What do you think, Mary?!”

  “Scarlett got you there, lovey,” Emer told Mary.

  “I forgot about the wheelchair,” said Mary. “Sorry for being rude.”

  “That’s fine,” said Scarlett.

  It was fun for the first couple of minutes, as they walked along the side of the road, into the village. There were streetlights, on one side, so they could see everything clearly. The road had been resurfaced a few years before. There were no potholes or cracks. Mary pushed the wheelchair, and it was easy. All they had to do was walk, and push—and talk.

  “The church hasn’t changed.”

  “No.”

  “Look at the shop, though,” said Tansey. “Who’s this Spar fella? He wasn’t around in my day.”

  “That’s the name. They’re all over the place. Like Woolworths, maybe.”

  “The pub’s the same.”

  “It is.”

  “I was never in it.”

  “No more than I was.”

  “They let the women into the pubs these days, I think.”

  “I was never in that particular establishment,” said Emer. “But I’ve been into plenty of other pubs.”

  “Good for you.”

  Mary listened to her granny and great-granny. She loved the way they spoke, and the way they seemed to bounce off each other. She looked at her mother, and she could tell: she was enjoying it too. They strolled along, the older women at the front and the two younger ones behind them, chatting and listening.

  Then they came to the lane.

  It wasn’t much more than a gap in the hedge, a very narrow road that disappeared quickly into darkness. The smooth surface of the road was gone, and they were on gravel and muck and small holes and the possibility of much bigger ones ahead. The streetlights were behind them, and useless once they reached the first of the bends.

  “How many bends to the house, Emer?”

  “Seven,” said Emer. “Unless they’re after adding or subtracting a few.”

  “I’d say it’s still the seven,” said Tansey.

  “I can’t see!”

  “That’s the problem,” said Emer.

  She tried to turn—so she could look up at Mary.

  “And, no offense, Mary. But it’s a bumpy ol’ ride now that we’re off the road. And I’m not liking it a bit.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Here goes!” said Scarlett.

  “What?”

  Scarlett leaned down in front of her mother, and turned. Emer knew immediately what she was expected to do. She put her arms around Scarlett’s neck and hung on as Scarlett stood up straight. Scarlett put her hands behind her back, gently grabbed her mother’s legs and pulled them to her sides.

  “Oh, my God,” said Emer.

  “All right there, Mammy?!” said Scarlett.

  Mary laughed at the sight of her mother giving her granny a piggyback. But even while she laughed, she felt sad. Her granny had lost so much weight. That was the only reason her mother—her daughter—could carry her.

  “Put the wheelchair up on the ditch and we can collect it on our way back.”

  Her granny shouldn’t have been that easy to carry. It was weird and terrible. But it was funny too.

  “Gee up there, horsey!” said Emer to Scarlett.

  Emer’s legs stuck out in front, like the handles of a wheelbarrow. Mary felt a hand touch hers. It was Tansey’s. It was very dark, but Mary could see her clearly.

  They were all moving again. Mary and Tansey moved to the front and Scarlett and Emer came along behind them.

  “This’ll be the second bend.”

  “You’re right there,” said Tansey. “And if we ignored the bend and kept going straight we’d come up to the Furlongs’.”

  “That’s right. It’s coming back to me.”

  “It never left you.”

  The ground was very uneven and Mary’s feet slapped it because she couldn’t judge exactly where her feet were going to land. But she held on to Tansey’s hand and that made her feel more sure-footed. While she walked beside Tansey she knew she was going the right way.

  There were tall hedges on both sides of the lane.

  Emer coughed.

  “Are you all right there, Emer?” Tansey asked.

  “I think I’m after swallowing a leaf,” she said.

  “Would you like a little rest?”

  “Not at all,” said Emer. “This is great.”

  As she spoke, one of the hedges seemed to fall away and they could see much more clearly.

  “The low field.”


  “That’s right.”

  “Exactly where we left it.”

  Mary could make out the fence, and the field behind it, and the hill that went down to—

  “What’s that down there?”

  “That’s a bit of the Slaney.”

  “The river?”

  “The river.”

  “Cool.”

  The Slaney was in her geography book. It was one of the major rivers of Ireland and it was flowing near her. It flowed past the farm where her granny and her great-granny came from—and, in a way, where Mary came from.

  “That’s amazing.”

  “Sure, it’s only a river.”

  “What’s in the field?” Mary asked.

  “Only muck, by the look of it,” said Emer. She coughed again.

  “What grows in the muck?”

  “It used to be barley,” said Tansey.

  “And it might still be barley.”

  “Bend number three coming up!”

  They’d walked past the field and there were hedges on both sides again and trees that touched each other over their heads, so it was dark and even darker again. Mary could hear the branches rasping and complaining in the wind. She was glad she wasn’t alone, although she liked the sound and she always had.

  “We used to think that the people who were gone lived up in these trees,” Emer told them.

  “You mean, people who’d died?” said Mary.

  “The very same,” said Emer. “The noise of the leaves—that was them whispering, and the like.”

  “Was that you?” Mary asked Tansey.

  “Was what me?”

  “Were you up in the trees when Granny was a girl?”

  “I was not, faith,” said Tansey. “I’d have more to be doing than shaking around in trees.”

  “I was only asking,” said Mary.

  “And I was only answering,” said Tansey. “But I’ll tell you. It’s the right kind of sound, all the same.”

  “The leaves?”

  “The leaves.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “It is.”

  “Bend number four!” said Scarlett. “I remember!”

  “We’d better be quiet from here on in.”

  “Is Mammy asleep?!”

  “I am not.”

  “Sorry!”

  “No harm.”

  “Shhhhh!”

  Mary could smell the cows. It wasn’t an old or a distant smell, as if the cows were in a field a good bit away. It was a new, fresh smell, like the cows were right beside—

  She screamed.