Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“It’s okay,” he told them. “I can talk about it.”

Miki shook her head. “Not tonight. Tonight we’re not going to think about depressing things. Only fun things.”

“What’re you drinking?” Donal asked.

“Anything but Guinness,” Hunter told him.

Donal shook his head and gave a deep, theatrical sigh.

“To think you can say that without a hint of guilt,” he said mournfully.

He was up and out of his seat before Hunter could reply.

“Now I feel like I should apologize to him,” he told Miki.

“Oh, don’t let him guilt you out. The stuff’s way overrated, anyway. Or at least what we get on this side of the Atlantic. Now the last time I was in Ireland…” She got a dreamy look on her face. “Sure,” she said, affecting a brogue, “and didn’t it have the flavor of the very nectar of life?”

“I’ll have to try it if I ever get over myself.”

“I think I lived on it the whole month.”

“You probably could,” Hunter said.

“Well, not Guinness alone. There was also the soda bread and jam. My gran’s soda bread melts in your mouth like a scone.”

She licked her lips at the memory and Hunter had to smile. He nodded towards the musicians. “How come you’re not playing?”

He’d noticed her accordion case tucked under her chair.

She shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Because,” she told him, eyes twinkling, “I plan to get feet-trippy drunk and have fun hanging with you instead.”

“Go ahead and play a few tunes,” he said. “I haven’t heard your accordion in ages.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Donal told him, returning to the table. He set a shot glass of whiskey and a pint of Smithwicks in front of Hunter and waved off Hunter’s attempt to pay for them. “You wouldn’t be so thrilled if every night you had to listen to a few hours of her teaching herself Coltrane solos on that box of hers.”

Hunter raised his eyebrows. “Why don’t you just learn to play the sax?” he asked.

“I don’t have one,” she said and stuck out her tongue at her brother.

Donal ignored her. “She probably doesn’t even remember how to play a decent Irish reel on her box anymore.”

Hunter took a sip from his pint, the foam moustaching around his lips.

“Go ahead,” he said. He tapped his pint glass with his index finger. “Give me a chance to catch up to you.”

She hesitated, obviously torn. “Well… maybe just one or two tunes, if you’re sure you don’t mind…”

“Really,” Hunter said.

The piper had just started up “The Bucks of Oranmore”—a favorite of Miki’s, Hunter remembered—and he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. Moments later she had the button accordion out and strapped on, her chair pulled closer to the musicians, and she was happily playing away with them. Hunter drank some more of his beer and tapped his foot in time to the music.

“Drives me mad,” Donal said.

Hunter turned to look at him. “What does?”

“The punters,” Donal explained. He indicated the noisy crowd with a wave of his hand. “They’re so busy talking they don’t hear a note, but you can bet that before they leave they’ll be telling the players how grand the music was.”

But that was the whole point of a session, Hunter thought. It wasn’t for the audience. It was for the musicians, a chance to share tunes and play with each other. Unlike a concert, they were playing for themselves here. The audience could listen to the music or chat with their friends as they pleased.

“Oh, I know,” Donal said. “It’s not like a gig, but still. They’re so bloody loud I wonder why they don’t go someplace where they don’t have to compete with the instruments to be able to hear themselves talk.”

The crowd was loud tonight, Hunter thought. Or maybe it was just that he hadn’t been here in such a while and wasn’t used to it.

He tried a sip of his whiskey, chased its warm burn down his throat with a swallow of beer, and looked around the room. There were people two-deep at the bar, all the tables and booths were full, everyone talking and laughing and paying no attention to the music except for a group of men in one booth who seemed somewhat out of place from the rest of the crowd.

In some ways, things hadn’t really changed since the days Hunter had been a regular patron of The Harp. There were the usual older men nursing their drinks, bohemian types up from Lower Crowsea, a gaggle of university students who appeared to be too young to be legally drinking, a handful of yuppies drawn by curiosity who’d probably leave after they finished their first round to be replaced by more of the same.

But there was something different about the men sitting in the booth. For one thing they were completely attentive to the music, dark gazes fixed on the musicians, no conversation passing between them at all. Their table was littered with pint glasses, mostly empty, though each had a Guinness he was working on in front of him. The lighting was no different where they sat, but shadows still seemed to pool in their booth. Or perhaps it was simply a darkness they carried with them—swarthy-skinned, black-haired, their dark suits shabby, shiny at the elbows, but clean.

Hunter nodded to them with his chin. “They’re listening,” he said. Donal followed his gaze. He looked quickly away.

“The hard men,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Donal shrugged. “That’s just what our da’ used to call men like them. Moody, hard drinkers, always ready for a fight—though Thomas won’t let this lot start trouble in here. It’s because of their kind that the Irish still carry the stereotype of being nothing more than hard drinkers and quick-tempered fighters.”

“They don’t look Irish,” Hunter said, thinking they were too dark-skinned.

“They’re more Irish than Michelle or myself, and we were born there. They still speak the Gaelic—some of them can barely speak English.”

“How do they get along over here?” Hunter asked.

“Who knows? But they’ve always got the money for their drinks and they’re here every Tuesday night when Amy’s hosting the session.”

As soon as Donal said her name, Hunter realized why the red-haired woman on pipes had seemed so familiar when he’d first noticed her coming in. Amy Scanlon was something of a fixture on the Newford Celtic scene, playing with any number of bands over the years. Her musical partner Geordie was in the store at least once a week, always trying to convince them to open up and play this or that new release for him.

“Funny thing, though,” Donal said. “They’re never here the other nights, but let an impromptu session start up and they’ll come drifting in within the half-hour. It’s like the music calls to them and brings them in.”

He touched Hunter’s arm. Hunter’s gaze had drifted back to the booth where the men were sitting. He returned his attention to his companion.

“Don’t stare at them,” Donal said. “They’re quick to take offense. I should know. I did the same as you one night, kept looking at them, and later, on the way home, they were waiting for me, shouting in Gaelic.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened? They thumped me something terrible and then went on their way.”

“Didn’t you call the cops?”

Donal shook his head. “That would just have made for more trouble. Men ’ike that, they don’t forget a wrong. Jaysus, I’ve seen enough of them back home. The pubs are full of them, brooding over their pints, remembering every hurt, imagined or real, that was ever done to them.”

Hunter felt his gaze being pulled back to the men’s booth, but he managed to overcome the impulse.