Читать книгу The Lake - Sheena Lambert - Страница 12

The bar was a little busier than usual that evening. Although the local angling club’s competition had been cancelled due to the low water level in the lake, some of the more committed fishermen had decided to make the journey anyway. Since five o’clock, Peggy had already fed two groups of three, when another two strangers walked in through the door of the pub in sleeveless poacher jackets and bucket hats. They sat up at the bar, and one of them ordered two pints of Guinness. Peggy half filled two glasses and left them to settle.

‘Would ye like to see the menu?’ she asked.

‘Ara, no thanks love.’ The older of the two looked at his companion. ‘I’ll have to make tracks after this one. I told herself I’d be back for the dinner.’

Peggy nodded, and finished pulling the two pints. She thought of how busy the weekend could have been. Sometimes a hundred people attended the last competition of the season. They wouldn’t all have eaten in the pub, of course, but it could have been a really lucrative weekend, nonetheless. Even in the days before they had started serving food, the Casey teenagers would have been expected to hang around on competition weekends in case they were needed in the bar.

She put the two pints in front of the men and took the money handed to her. It would have been around this time of year when she had first been asked to help out herself. A rite of passage in their household, she still remembered the day clearly. She had been sitting outside under the big tree, reading Little Women, when her father’s bald head had appeared at the door of the pub. He had asked her to collect the empty glasses that had been abandoned on the wooden bench outside. After leaving them on the bar, she had stayed, listening to the fishermen talk as they stood drinking pints, hiding behind them so her father wouldn’t see her.

But after a while, she had realized that her father was too busy with customers to notice her at all, and she had started to clear empties from tables inside the pub too. She’d watched Carla, probably only fifteen at the time, flirting with strange men from Dublin as she wiped spills and stacked used pint glasses in the crook of her arm. Carla had been tall even back then. She could easily have passed for seventeen, or even eighteen. Hugo and Jerome had been behind the bar with her father. Peggy closed her eyes for a moment, trying to see her mother in the picture. She turned back to the two anglers who were ogling their untouched pints. She handed the older one his change. Where had her mother been that day? And then she remembered, and she could see her sitting in the back kitchen next to the Aga, her face pale with pain, her hands thin and anxious, her smile bright as she saw Peggy come in from the bar to make her a cup of tea.

That had been the first day she had worked for her father in the bar, but not the last. Who would have thought, that of the four of them, it would be Peggy working here alone now most days? Not for the first time, she tried to imagine her father’s reaction to the situation. He would certainly have been surprised. He would have expected Peggy to be working in one of the hotels in Galway or Dublin by now, maybe even assistant manager of one of the smaller ones. That had been the plan. But then isn’t that the way with plans? They have a tendency not to pan out as expected. And he would have been disappointed in Jerome and Hugo, that was for sure. Especially Hugo. Peggy thought about her eldest brother, away in London, working at God only knows what. He had been expected to take over the family business, like a million eldest sons before him. Their father had expected it, their mother had expected it, the whole village had expected it. Peggy herself had taken it as a fact of life. When her father needed him to, Hugo would come back from London, or wherever he might have been, and pick up where Patrick Casey had left off. It was generally assumed that Mr. Casey had died of a broken heart. But Peggy was of the opinion that the shock of Hugo’s refusal to stay on in Crumm after their mother’s funeral did more damage to their father.

‘Another round? Miss? Are you with us?’

Before Peggy could react, a voice from behind her said, ‘three pints? I’ll drop them down,’ and Carla materialized out of nowhere. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She took three pint glasses from the shelf and tilted one under the tap. ‘Are you asleep? It’s not Waterford crystal you know.’ She nodded at the tumbler Peggy was polishing with a cloth.

Peggy looked at the glass and put it down on the shelf. ‘Where did you come out of?’

‘I was just checking to see if you needed any help.’ Carla started on the third pint. ‘I can stay here for a while if you like. Do you want to get some dinner in the back?’

‘No. No thanks.’ Peggy stood up and flexed her shoulders. ‘I’m grand here.’ She walked out from behind the bar and went to collect empty plates from a table where three men were sitting.

One of them smiled up at her. ‘That was lovely now, thanks girl,’ he said, his ruddy cheeks and crackled nose telling of many seasons on the lake. ‘Did you make it yourself?’

‘I did.’ Peggy smiled back.

‘Beautiful, beautiful.’ One of the other two men at the table lifted his hand in thanks, his eyes never leaving the pint glass in front of him, his grey beard bouncing against his collar.

‘Could ye be tempted to a slice of homemade apple tart with cream?’ Peggy asked.

‘Oh Lord,’ the affable, red-faced man patted his ample stomach. ‘I’m sure we shouldn’t but if it’s as good as the stew, sure we’d better give it a go.’ He nodded at the other two who seemed happy to go along with whatever their companion decided.

Peggy smiled at him and took the plates behind the bar. ‘I’ll just be a sec’,’ she told Carla, and went in through the door to the kitchen.

Five minutes later, she walked back into the bar carrying three plates of warm apple tart; a little cloud of cream melting on each one. She sensed immediately that the bar was fuller, and noticed a new table of three men, younger than the usual fishermen, the three of them watching Carla as she placed their pints before them. She put the plates of apple tart down to appreciative grunts and gentle chants of ‘beautiful, beautiful,’ from the bearded man. Back behind the bar, when she looked up, there was a man sitting right at the end of the counter on a high stool.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she smiled. ‘I didn’t see you there. What can I get you?’

The man looked amused. ‘Have I stumbled onto some Amazonian public house?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Peggy looked directly at him.

He glanced over at Carla. ‘It’s not often you come across bars being run only by women,’ he said.

‘Who’s to say I haven’t got a big lump of a man out the back?’ Peggy cocked her head towards the back door.

The man laughed, but then seemed to collect himself. He sat up straighter on the stool. ‘I’m sure you have no need of one,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a pint, so.’

Peggy put a glass to the tap. He was a funny one. It wasn’t too often they got strangers on their own in Crumm. Even the anglers tended to come in little groups after a day on the lake. You might get the odd German passing through, but Peggy knew this fellah was no more German than she was herself. His accent was soft. A monied lilt. First generation Dublin, she guessed. Carla handed her some used glasses over the bar, winking at her. Peggy scowled back. She noticed the stranger stealing a glance at them both.

‘So,’ she said, topping up the pint, ‘are you here for the fishing?’

‘Not exactly.’ He put some coins down on the counter. He drew the pint over to him, and lifted it to his lips. ‘Sláinte,’ he said, and sucked back a third of it before it had a proper chance to settle.

Peggy could see tables that needed clearing, but she stayed where she was behind the counter, rinsing glasses that had already been rinsed.

‘So is this your place?’ he said at last.

‘It is,’ Peggy replied. ‘Well, mine and my siblings. It’s a family business.’

He nodded. Peggy watched him stroke the pint glass. She wondered if he might be one of the contractors in to help a local farmer make the last of the hay. His fingers were long and tanned. His fingernails were clean. She dragged his coins across the bar with the flat of her palm, catching his eye as she did so. Facing the till, she could see his reflection as he took another drink from his glass.

‘So if you’re not a fisher, and you’re not a farmer, what is it that you do?’ She spoke to his reflection as she slowly tidied the till drawer.

‘What makes you think I’m not a farmer?’ His mouth curled in a smile.

Peggy turned and leaned heavily against the drawer, closing it. She nodded at his glass. ‘They’re not the fingers of a manual labourer,’ she said.

Frank regarded his hand, turning it front to back.

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘So I’m too clean to be a farmer?’

She smiled despite herself. ‘Something like that,’ she said.

They were still looking at each other, when Carla came around the bar, dirty pint glasses dangling from each hand. She ignored Peggy and smiled openly at the man sitting at the bar as she left the glasses on the counter. He glanced from one sister to the other.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello.’ Carla smiled back. Peggy rolled her eyes and turned back to the till. Carla stuck her hand across the bar at him. ‘Carla Casey.’

‘Eh, Frank Ryan,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan.’

Carla’s kohl-streaked eyes were suddenly wide and she slapped her hands down on the bar. ‘Oh, are you up from Dublin for the body?’ She seemed to have forgotten about Peggy, who was standing behind her, watching Frank in the mirror. ‘So tell us, is it just one of the ones from the old graveyard?’ She leant on the bar opposite Frank and rested her chin in her hand. ‘Or was it new? Do you know who it is?’

‘Eh, well, I’m not really at liberty to discuss it right now.’ Frank sat back a little on his stool. ‘The pathologist will be here tomorrow. He’ll have to examine the body.’

‘So there definitely is a body?’ Carla asked him. ‘It wasn’t just some old, empty box left there? You actually found a body?’

‘Eh, yes.’ Frank looked from Carla to Peggy’s reflection and back. ‘There was a body. There is a body. It does appear to be old though.’ He coughed. ‘As in, of course we can’t be sure until the pathologist examines it, but it would appear to be, eh, old.’

‘Oh.’ Carla straightened up again. ‘Ah well.’ She lifted a cloth from the sink and wrung it out. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s a pleasure to meet you, Detective Ryan. Peggy here will look after you. I’m sure you must be famished having travelled all the way from Dublin. Peggy,’ she stared, wide-eyed at her sister. ‘Detective Ryan needs a pint.’ She tipped her brow to the glass of dregs still gripped in Frank’s hand, and turned to wipe down the counter with the cloth.

Peggy drew a calming breath and looked at Frank. ‘So, Detective,’ she said.

‘Frank.’

‘Frank. Another pint, Frank?’

‘Well, actually, if you are serving food … ’ Frank glanced around at the empty plates Carla was now clearing from a table behind him.

‘Oh Lord, of course,’ Peggy clasped her hand to her mouth. ‘Mrs. O’Shea told me to expect you. That you would need feeding.’

‘I think she had a prior appointment for this evening.’

‘Bridge night,’ Peggy nodded. ‘Even a Detective Sergeant from Dublin doesn’t come before bridge night, I’m afraid.’

Frank smiled. ‘Well, her husband offered to make me a sandwich,’ he said. ‘I think that was all he was getting himself.’

‘Poor Enda,’ Peggy smiled at Frank. ‘Well we can certainly feed you, Frank. If you like stew?’

‘Stew would be lovely, thank you. And I will.’ He tilted the glass in his hand.

‘You will?’

‘Have another.’

Just at that moment, the main door opened, and Peggy looked up to see Garda O’Dowd entering the bar. Even after he removed his cap, he had to stoop so as not to hit his head on the lintel. He glanced around the place, nodding at familiar faces, before approaching the counter. Carla pushed past him, her arms laden with dirty plates and cutlery.

‘Carla. Peggy,’ he said, tipping his head at the two women behind the bar, fidgeting with the cap in his hands all the while. ‘Detective Sergeant,’ he said looking at Frank.

‘Michael.’

Peggy noticed the beads of sweat on Garda O’Dowd’s brow as she pulled Frank’s pint. She tried not to notice the smell of sweat that the young guard seemed to have brought in with him. The perils of a young man left in charge of his own laundry, she thought to herself. He stood there, looking from one sister to the other, nervously passing the cap back and forth through his fingers. He seemed to be waiting for Frank to say something. Peggy could sense her sister’s exasperation rising.

‘Big day at the office for you, Michael,’ Carla said. Michael blushed madly as he looked from her to Frank.

‘Indeed,’ he said.

‘Oh, they’ll be looking for you over in New York after this, I’d say,’ Carla stood with the plates still in her arms. ‘I’d say the FBI will be looking to poach you. Don’t ye think?’ She elbowed Peggy, who stayed silent.

Michael just flicked his eyes at her again, before addressing Frank. ‘Sir? Eh, maybe we could, eh, talk a moment?’ He gestured with his cap across to a quiet corner of the room where there was a small table with two stubby stools either side of it.

Frank looked over at it. ‘Of course.’ He lifted his pint and stood to go. Then he stopped and pushed his free hand deep into the pocket of his jeans.

‘No, no,’ Peggy said. ‘I’ll get you your meal first. We can sort it out after.’

Frank nodded at her.

‘Will you be eating, Garda O’Dowd?’ she looked at Michael.

He shook his head. ‘No, no, Peggy. Thank you.’

‘Right. Well, why don’t you gentlemen sit over there, and I’ll be right out with your meal, Frank.’

Peggy noticed Michael’s eyebrows arch at her familiarity. She smiled to herself. Let him think her forward. She left Carla in the bar and went to plate out some stew for Frank. She’d put it on one of her mother’s Aynsley dinner plates. They looked nicer than the everyday ones.

Peggy hummed to herself as she stirred the pot on the Aga, looking for some good-sized pieces of meat. It wasn’t often there were interesting strangers in The Angler’s Rest. And she couldn’t help feeling that this weekend was going to be a little more interesting than usual.