Sheena Lambert - The Lake

‘Worse, I’m afraid.’ Frank was conscious that the disappointment of this conversation was going to be predominantly one-sided. He turned his head on the pillow and wondered briefly what that meant. Yellowed paint was peeling from a patch of ceiling above their heads. ‘I have to go to Crumm. Overnight.’ He looked at her again. ‘I should be back tomorrow.’

‘Should be?’ She spoke quickly, but then seemed to check herself. A moment passed before she sat up and swung her legs out of the bed. A stripe across the middle of her back was paler than the rest of her skin. Frank thought it strange that he had never noticed it before. She reached down to the end of the bed and lifted a black T-shirt from where it been discarded, not long after they had come in the previous night.

‘You know you promised.’ She pulled the T-shirt over her head. ‘This weekend. You promised that you would really look.’

She turned and glanced at him, briefly, over her shoulder, before standing up and pulling at her jeans that were lolling over a chair. Frank exhaled and rolled his eyes to the ceiling; throwing his arm up and over his head to touch the buttoned, velour headboard. This seemed to have the effect of speeding her up.

‘What can I do, Rose?’ He sat up in the bed. ‘It’s work. You know how it is. If I want to get on, I have to do these things.’

‘They own you.’

‘Yes, they do.’ Frank nodded manically. ‘For the moment, they do.’

Rose stopped dressing, and stood at the foot of the bed, staring at him. Frank stared back. She would own him too if she had her way. She pulled a band from the pocket of her jeans and twisted it into her hair. But then her face clouded with a sadness he couldn’t bear to see. He patted the bed beside him, and she sat.

‘Look,’ he lifted his hand to her neck. ‘I will get a place. Of my own. And you may paint it whatever colour you desire. And I will designate a drawer in my bedroom for your sole use. And we will have some privacy.’

She looked up from twisting a loosened blanket thread through her fingers. ‘And then what?’

Frank paused. Then he would almost be thirty, and then it would be ridiculous not to ask her to marry him, and then he would be tied down forever to a life and a person he wasn’t convinced he really loved. ‘And then we’ll see,’ he said.

Peggy stood still for a moment, eyes straight ahead, waiting for the dizziness to abate. Then, with the spent light bulb held, tentatively, in a vice-like grip between her teeth, she lowered her hands, slowly, onto the leather seat of the high stool, bending her knees as she went, mindful of the unevenness of the century old flagstone floor. Crouched in this position, like a sprinter waiting for a gunshot, she paused again, before dismounting. She waited until she was sure she was stable, and then lifted the stool and plonked it back down at the bar with a clatter.

‘You should have joined the circus when you had the chance,’ a voice from the front door said. Peggy turned and grinned at Maura with the bulb still tight between her teeth.

‘You shouldn’t be climbing barstools, or changing light bulbs, anyway. Where is that brother of yours when things of that nature need doing?’ Maura flicked her duster in the direction of the errant light fitting before closing the door, and taking her apparent displeasure out on the plaques and framed photos of men with fish that adorned the walls of the little porch; her disapproving head rocking all the while in perfect time with her behind.

Peggy flicked an ancient-looking switch on the wall next to her and the new bulb turned white, although it made no obvious contribution to the small square room that was already bright with midday sunlight. She didn’t need her brother around to change light bulbs. Or bring in the coal. Or change a keg. Or pull a pint. Or all the other things Maura thought she needed a man for. She cast her eyes around the room, before going behind the bar and stooping to lift Coke bottles from a crate on the floor. She regarded every bottle an amazing feat of engineering and design; positioning each one with reverence on the old wooden shelves. Some were more worn than others, their glass opaque and almost sandy to touch. The odd time you might come across a brand new one. A new little bottle on its first journey. Crumm today; who knew where next? Peggy would hold each new bottle and imagine its next trip to be to a Jurys Hotel, or maybe even the Shelbourne, in Dublin. Peggy liked stocking the mineral shelves. She liked the order to it, the neatness. Although she would never admit it to her siblings. They would laugh at her. Or worse.

‘So the village is full of talk of the find.’ Maura’s voice floated over the bar to where Peggy knelt on the cold floor by the Coke crate. She could tell from Maura’s breathlessness that she had started on the windows. ‘Do you hear me? Peg?’

‘I do.’ Peggy clinked two bottles in a sort of wordless signal.

‘Mrs. McGowan says that they’re sending someone up from Dublin.’

‘Yes?’

‘A detective, I suppose.’ Maura spoke with some reverence. ‘Sure they’d have to send someone.’

‘They would?’

‘Well they could hardly let young Michael deal with it by himself.’

Peggy shook her head at the shelf of bottles. Poor Garda O’Dowd. They’d never give him a chance. He had been a guard for four years now, and they still saw him in short pants. ‘I’m sure Garda O’Dowd would be well able to manage,’ she offered.

‘Huh.’ Maura looked over the bar; her grey, lacquered curls defying gravity as she did so. ‘He’s all right for directing traffic at a funeral, or ordering the stragglers out of this place,’ she said, flicking her duster at nothing in particular, ‘but a body?’ She leant on the bar with the self-assured enlightenment of any of the old men that might take her place in a couple of hours’ time. ‘I don’t think he’s cut out for that sort of thing.’

She took herself back to the windows and Peggy resumed emptying the crates and filling the shelves. She could see the wooden uprights beginning to rot where they met the floor close to her knees. The corner of one wobbled in her hand like a child’s tooth. She cast her eyes to the ceiling. The plaster had dried out well over the summer, but it was bound to start raining again soon. They should really get the roof tarred while they had the chance. A rare flush of irritation deepened the colour of her naturally rosy cheeks. That was something Jerome could have taken care of. If he were ever here. But no sooner had the thought barged into her head, than she showed it the way out. She would rather climb stools, and pay one of the local lads to tar the roof, than have Jerome here with her seven days a week.

The shrill ring of the phone interrupted her thoughts, and she stood to answer it, her knees aching as she lifted them one by one from the hard floor.

‘Hello?’ She tried to massage the life back into them with her free hand.

‘You all right? You sound like you’re in pain.’

‘I’m fine.’ Peggy flexed one leg, then the other in an effort to get the blood back to her feet. ‘I was kneeling on the floor.’

‘Saying your prayers again?’ Jerome’s voice was mocking. ‘I thought we talked about that.’

‘No, smart-arse, I was stacking shelves. You know … working. You might have come across the concept.’

‘Ah now, baby sister. Only kidding. And amn’t I working here too? I am this very moment on my way out to meet a fellah about the television.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. And a friend of mine happens to know one of the guys this man works with, so we might get a good price on a colour one.’

‘Really?’ Peggy found she couldn’t contain her enthusiasm for this bit of information. She’d been arguing for the installation of a television in the bar for months, but she’d only hoped to get a black and white one, second-hand. This was news.