John Brady - A stone of the heart

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Kilmartin whispered with a grimace.

"So he went to juvenile court, but they didn't send him to reformatory. Took counselling afterward and never looked back since. That's where he got the interest in psychology."

"That's not one bit funny at all," said Kilmartin.

"It caught up with him," Minogue speculated. "The whole thing."

"Like…?"

"His mother. Nothing he did was ever good enough for her. He couldn't be Irish enough for her. No wonder his Da died young. Allen, or O'Donohue, was left to her mercy more or less. It's no wonder he did what he did."

"You don't believe that stuff about Irish mothers or parents in general, Matt, do you?"

Minogue didn't answer.

"What possessed that fella to be like that? I ask you. Couldn't he leave things well enough alone. I mean to say this hop-off-me-thumb helped to get people killed, do you follow me?" asked Kathleen.

Minogue was following a lorry on the road into Tulla. The hedges and trees almost met over the road. The ditch was full of grass and brambles. Small fields, stonewalled, secretive patching over hillocks. Clare: fields like a quilt.

They had passed the holy tree on the Limerick road, coins jammed into the bark, pieces of cloth tied to its branches. Minogue was daydreaming, waking, daydreaming. Words and verses had stayed circling in his head since he had woken up, thinking of his own parents.

Will you come out tonight, love

The moon is shining bright, love

His mother hanging clothes across the bushes from the haggard, air sweet and close on a May morning, the birds filling the air with sound.

"I mean. All this lu-la would never have happened. He must be a twisted man entirely. In Trinity College Dublin with them nobs. There one in the eye for that crowd. I'm glad Daithi and Iseult go to UCD, I don't care what they say. Where's your man from? Loftus is it?"

"He's Cork. Well-to-do, I suppose. A career soldier who should have stayed in," Minogue murmured.

"They all want power, isn't that the be-all and end-all," Kathleen asseverated.

"I suppose. Some notion of duty mixed in with an inferiority thing, I'd wager. A powerful mixture, that…"

"And he didn't budge," Kathleen added.

"Even after your man being shot out in Dun Laoghaire," Minogue said.

"Go on. Tell us a bit," Kathleen said.

"Well. There was a watch on for this fella. Very brash he was, brazening it out by trying to get on the boat to Holyhead. It's not that he was stupid or anything. He calculated things, that's my feeling. But he got annoyed at some point."

"How do you mean?" Kathleen asked

"Well, frustrated maybe. He shot that Garda Connors. Maybe they were hounding him."

"Who's'they?'" Kathleen asked.

"The likes of that gangster, McCarthy. The old crowd. Maybe he just imagined it though."

"Isn't it the strangest thing?" Kathleen said.

Minogue was half driving, half looking around, half thinking. There were cars behind now. One had a Clare flag stuck out the window. No sign of the Kilkenny mob; the Kilkenny Cats, a sharper crowd of hurlers hadn't been let on the face of the earth. The Clare goalie would have to do Trojan work today.

Minogue had smelled deep from a cattle lorry on the way into Portlaoise, They had been unable to pass for ten minutes. The smell was still with him. It had left a lingering unease which surprised him. He wondered if he had detected a fear in the animals, perhaps knowing they were on the way to be slaughtered. Minogue tried to laugh off the persistent memory still locked in his nostrils. Middle age, dotage-he tried all the sneers to keep himself in line.

By the time they turned off the Limerick road to Killaloe and the Shannon, he had let his efforts slide. Though rested and jockeying a desk for a week, he felt the strangeness flood through him again. He had the baffling notion that things had changed again, that old things had faded and been eclipsed by something new. It was like waking up to know something was gone but that something else was imminent, a rejoinder. Without looking at her, Minogue sensed that Kathleen's thoughts had gone elsewhere too. She stared out the side window at the drumlins, the hedges, the tight and secret fields. Worrying still, Minogue knew.

Within ten minutes, Minogue and Kathleen were in sight of the village of Tulla, home of the resurgent Clare hurling team. The overcast sky hung still over streets glutted with cars. Men with caps down over their eyes, dogs, children with ice cream. The pubs had just closed. Sunday hours. They'd have to go out the Ennis road to get parking.

"You should do this more often so you should," Kathleen said. "The rest is a tonic, isn't it? Does for the both of us."

Minogue's thoughts edged onto irritation. He didn't want reassurance this way, people circumspect as if he were an invalid again. He couldn't even think of the questions he wanted to ask. The words fled away on him like pigeons disturbed off a roof. He fought off the resentment.

"Well now, if I'd known you were a fan, I'd have brought you here a long time ago, wouldn't I?" he said.

"I'm getting pointers for the Dublin team so we can leather ye when we get the chance," Kathleen replied with a laugh.

The traffic had been stopped for nearly five minutes. Minogue switched off the engine in the middle of Tulla. People walked around between the stranded cars on their way to the pitch. Then the cars ahead began to move. Stop again, wait.

"Look," Kathleen said "It's Mick. Maura-and Eoin."

Minogue looked out and saw his brother about to walk beyond the car.

"Mick. Maura!" Kathleen called out.

Mick turned, recognition dawning on him. He looked beyond Kathleen to Minogue. Maura came over too. Eoin, their oldest, looked on.

"Off to the match, so we are," Kathleen said.

"God bless ye," from hearty, pious Maura. Minogue imagined Maura tying bits of cloth onto the twigs over the holy well, polishing statues of the Blessed Virgin around the house. He watched his brother's face.

"Aye, aye," Mick said.

The wives began talking. Mick strolled around the driver's side. Minogue listened to Maura and Kathleen laughing. Eoin stood away. Like his Da, Minogue thought.

"How'ya Matt?" and his arm resting on the door of the car.

"Struggling," Minogue said, protected in ritual.

"Great goings on above in Dublin I hear," Mick said.

Minogue nodded and looked ahead. Maura and Kathleen were touching each other, laughing. Eoin stood like a sentry, frowning off into the distance, his arms folded.

"Hard to know these days, isn't it? Who's who, I mean?" Mick said.

Minogue nodded.

"I saw your name in the paper, Matt, in connection with it."

"Marginal, Mick. Very marginal."

"We all do what we can, I suppose. Or do what we must?"

Minogue saw cars moving ahead.

"A bit of both, I'm thinking," Minogue said.

Mick nodded his head slowly and studied the chrome rim on the gutter.

Minogue started up the engine.

"That's the way of it, isn't it now? There's always another day, so there is," Mick said.

"God bless ye! " Maura waved.

That day, Clare beat the socks off Kilkenny thereby overcoming a superstition about losing vital games on their home ground of Tulla.

To Minogue the land, the hills, the hedges, the clouds were as parts of a stage. Kathleen had done more cheering than he had. Minogue began reciting "The Ballad of Tommy Daly":

On the windswept hill of Tulla

Where the Claremen lay their dead,

Three solemn yews stand sentinel

Above a hurler's head…

The crowds began to disperse. The pubs were opening, cars starting up. Only once during the game did he feel himself falling away, but he recovered quickly. His chest felt like a damp house for a while afterward.