The fox had paid a visit in the early hours. Mairead had been awoken by the hullabaloo out in the hen run and she'd given Joe a sharp nudge with her elbow.
"Joe. Wake up. The fox is back." |
| Like a greyhound out of the traps, Joe was out of the bed and down the stairs and flinging open the back door, making such an unholy racket that even the dumbest of foxes would have got the message and abandoned the mission. |
| "Did he take any?" Mairead called out the window. |
| "Don't think so. Don't think he got in." |
| "What state are the hens in?" |
| "You can hear for yourself. The bastard has the life scared out of them." |
| Mairead climbed back into bed, thinking that there will come a night when the hens won't be so lucky, when there'll be more wrong with them than merely having the life scared out of them. |
| |
| Lincoln's hands were what she had noticed the first time she'd laid eyes on him. She and Joe were only moved in, not nearly settled, when a knock on the open back door brought her down the stairs and in through the kitchen. She was wearing tight-fitting light blue jeans and a red t-shirt that clung to her breasts. She became aware of how she must have looked when she saw the stranger's eyes roam freely and without shame or embarrassment all over her. He'd kept that look well hidden ever since. |
| "Just thought I'd welcome ye to the parish," he'd said, in a husky, not unattractive voice, a voice coarsened and honed by a lifetime on the fags. The clean jeans and the ironed shirt, the lighted roll-up that hung off his lower lip, the elegant hands; these were the things she remembered most about that first meeting. He'd said hello, is the man of the house around at all? and when she'd led him round to the front of the house, to where Joe was busy cutting back the overgrown hedge of hawthorn and alder, he'd introduced himself. |
| "I'm Lincoln Savage. I'm over the hill." |
| He smiled as he caught them glancing at each other. |
| "I mean literally over the hill," and he raised his arm and pointed towards the hill behind the house. |
| They'd gone inside and Mairead had made tea. Joe took down a couple of plain wooden chairs that were turned upside down on the kitchen table. Lincoln remained standing, placing his backside against the unlit range in a manner that betrayed long familiarity with the once always-warm stove; in its own subtle way, his casualness seemed to Mairead to insinuate some sort of tribal possession of the room. He appeared completely at ease as he rolled one cigarette after another with his immaculately groomed fingers, his clear blue eyes coming to rest on Joe's open, friendly face, and occasionally, though not often, on that of Mairead. There was something edgy and unpredictable about his demeanour that both appealed to and repelled her. She caught herself staring at him in a way that she had never stared at anyone. He intrigued her. Perhaps, she thought, the clean, newly pressed jeans and crisp blue shirt were a deliberate attempt to camouflage this edginess, this thinly disguised volatility. Joe, she knew well, would see none of this in him. Joe only saw surfaces in people; he wasn't literate in the language of interiors. |
| She liked Lincoln Savage's slimness, and his long legs, and above all she liked his hands. Several times she caught herself staring at his fingers as they nimbly rolled another cigarette. Seven cigarettes he'd smoked in the space of an hour that summer afternoon. She had never in her life been so struck by a man's physicality as she was by his intense presence. It took her completely by surprise. Until that afternoon, she would not have thought of herself as a sexual person. She had had sex only with Joe, probably hundreds of times, and she had taken pleasure in at least some of these intimate exchanges, though of late, she had to admit to herself - she would never, could never discuss it with Joe - lovemaking had become a chore, something that had to be engaged in, because that's what happily married couples do. |
| She hoped he hadn't noticed her staring at Lincoln. She hoped even more that Lincoln hadn't, though she suspected he had. He seemed the type who would notice such things. Was this what they called pure physical sexual attraction? Whatever it was, it frightened her, for she knew intuitively that it would be too strong for her to resist were the situation to present itself. |
| As the weeks passed, however, it became clear that Lincoln was only interested in Joe. Joe was the archetypal outdoor man. He'd grown up on a farm, studied horticulture at college, worked for a few years with a large landscaping contractor before setting up on his own eight years ago. He was as strong as an ox and could stay on his feet from morning till night without it taking a feather out of him. He worked within a radius of fifty kilometres and was kept busy all year. |
Everything he had - the van, the trailer, the high quality machine tools, the rotovator, the strimmers, the mowers - he owned outright. He led a simple life that was dominated by work, and by the slowly stagnating marriage to Mairead.
Lincoln took to Joe and Joe to Lincoln because they suited each other, temperamentally and practically. Lincoln, like Joe, spent his days out in the open; erecting and mending fences, digging and clearing drains, cutting and pruning hedges, tending his cattle and his sheep. He became a regular caller to Joe and Mairead's, though it didn't take her long to notice that he rarely landed if Joe was not around. The two men struck up an easy friendship, one that excluded Mairead. Joe lent Lincoln the rotary mower, the chainsaw, the strimmer with the hedge cutting attachment. In return, Lincoln, who had a magician's touch with machinery, fixed whatever needed fixing. This aspect of Lincoln's life intrigued Mairead, for Lincoln's fingernails and his hands were always impeccably clean. Joe was not a dirty person by any manner or means, but he could let a couple of days go by between hot showers and think nothing of it. By contrast, she imagined Lincoln in his shower every morning without fail, probably every evening, too. He was that clean. He smelt that fresh. |
| In July of the following year, Joe and Lincoln went off to the National Ploughing Championships together. They left at six in the morning, for they wanted to get in before the crowds built up and the car parks descended into the usual chaos. Going so early also meant they could see what they wanted to see and still get out of the place before the late afternoon exodus would add an hour or two extra to their long journey home. Mairead was glad to see Joe happy. Things had run aground at home, in the bedroom specifically, with Joe claiming exhaustion and Mairead drawing on her usual store of excuses whenever Joe was in the mood, which wasn't often. She waved the two of them off, having cooked them a dawn breakfast. |
Joe called her at eight that night. They were in a pub in Carlow.
"We ran into one of Lincoln's cousins and between one thing and another we've all ended up in a pub with half his bloody family." |
| "Have you been drinking?" |
| "I've had a fair few." |
| "And Lincoln?" |
| "Same." |
| "So does this mean you won't be home tonight?" |
| "Got it in one baby!" |
| "You are drunk. Where are you going to stay?" |
| "Lincoln has it arranged. One of his cousins is putting us up." |
"What about Cleary's? Are you not meant to be there all day tomorrow?" |
| "I haven't forgotten. We're leaving here at five. I'll be home by eight." |
| She cooked up a big fry, assuming Joe would invite Lincoln in, but the fry died a slow death in the oven. She tried phoning his mobile, but it was turned off. She didn't have Lincoln's number. Just after one, Joe's van pulled in to the driveway. He was alone. |
| "Jesus, where on earth were you? I was up the walls. I was sure something terrible had happened." |
He said nothing. Mairead had never seen him look so pale, so exhausted.
"Where's Lincoln?" |
| "I left him home." He reached out with his right arm and propped himself against the frame of the door. His head dropped and he stood without moving a muscle for half a minute. |
| "Do you want me to call the doctor?" Mairead asked. |
| "No. All I need is sleep." |
| "Tom Cleary rang." |
| "If he rings again, tell him the van broke down." |
| He slept through the afternoon and into the evening. At nine, he surfaced, made a pot of tea, buttered four slices of bread and went back up to the bedroom to watch TV. When Mairead came to bed an hour later, he was fast asleep, and when she woke early the following morning, he was already up and gone. He came home late that evening, complaining of a sore throat and a temperature. She made an attempt to ask him about Carlow, but getting information out of him was like wringing water from a dry sponge. |
| "Where did you end up sleeping?" she asked. |
| "What? Where?" |
| "Where did you end up sleeping in Carlow?" |
| "Leave it, will ya? Can't you see I'm not well?" |
| "Why are you like this? I'm only asking where you slept." |
| "Christ woman will you leave me in peace? Is it a federal investigation you're carrying out or what?" |
| "Where did you sleep, Joe?" She was angry now. "I'm your wife. I've a right to know where my husband sleeps when he doesn't come home to his marriage bed and refuses to answer simple straightforward questions." |
| "You're being completely fucking ridiculous." |
| "Was Lincoln as drunk as you?" |
| "Lincoln could drink most people under the table." |
| "Were there women there?" |
| "The pub was crawling with them. And they were all asking for it." |
| He realised he had gone too far. He had never used such a bitter, sarcastic tone with anyone in his entire life. |
| "Look it Mairead, if you have to know, I can't remember where I slept. I was drunk as a skunk." |
| She was sitting on her armchair and he was standing in front of the unlit fireplace. When he told her he couldn't remember where he had slept, she decided she didn't believe him. It was the first time since she had known him that he had lied to her. She was certain of that. |
| "You must remember waking up," she said, staring straight at him. |
| To this she received no reply, just a tired shrugging of his broad shoulders, and a look she had never seen him wear. Their eyes met for no more than a second or two, yet in that bleak, momentary engagement she was no longer sure who her husband had become. |
"I'm off to bed," he said, and he walked out of the room and climbed the stairs.
She sat in her armchair for a long time and was oblivious to the slow retreat of the light of the day from the room. Later, in the silence and darkness of the house, she rose from her chair and had to sit down again, for her legs were shaking so badly they wouldn't hold her up.
|
| |
| Lincoln stood warming his arse against the range. It was where he always stood when he came to call. Outside, under the dark November sky, the rain was coming down in great sweeping gusts. |
| "Joe told me the fox nearly got in. Ye were lucky to have heard the hens." |
| "When were you talking to Joe?" |
| "He dropped by on his way to the garden centre. He said the fox would have killed the lot if you hadn't heard them." |
| "They were making an awful racket." |
| "Isn't it a good job you're a light sleeper," he said. "Joe would sleep through an earthquake." |
| He had taken his tobacco out of his jacket pocket and was halfway through rolling a cigarette. |
| "I don't understand what Joe was doing over at your place," she said. "When he left here he said he was running late." |
| Lincoln frowned and tilted his head slightly and gave her a curious look. He didn't appear in the least perturbed by the turn in the conversation. It was her face, not his, that reddened. She had suspected for several months - since the Carlow incident, in fact - but the notion was so outlandish, so utterly laughable, that whenever she thought she might say something to Joe, she gasped at her own stupidity, at her newly discovered ability to consider the impossible possible. But sometimes when she was making the bed, or when she was peeling potatoes or chopping an onion, or when she was out in the vegetable plot doing a bit of weeding, her suspicions came over her like a tidal wave and engulfed her. When this happened, she had no doubts. She saw the two of them in Lincoln's barn, or wedged behind his half-open back door, or on the landing, Lincoln's long hands bringing Joe to a sweet, silent climax. She even imagined them kissing, long sensual kisses as the hot water of Lincoln's shower cleansed their naked, exhausted bodies. |
| Following these visions, she would be dizzy and disorientated and she would have to go upstairs and lie down on the bed and close her eyes and force her mind away from the torrent of suspicions that were running amok inside her head. Now, in the kitchen, alone with Lincoln, she was bringing the horror out into the open. She hadn't planned to, but now that she had started she thought she wouldn't be able to stop herself. |
| "You look like you've just been caught halfway up a ladder with no knickers on," Lincoln said. He had his back to the warm range. His eyes penetrated her skull. |
| "You think me and Joe are up to some funny business, don't you? You think he comes over the hill for more than a chat and a fixing of the strimmer." |
She reddened even further. Lincoln appeared to be several steps ahead of her.
"I think the time has come for me to dispel those suspicions," he said. He seemed to glide across the kitchen tiles towards her. |
After their lovemaking, which was messy and unpleasant, she made him a cup of tea and he drank it at his usual place. |
"Do you think Joe will suspect?" he asked. |
| "You and me doing what we've just done is probably the last thing Joe would suspect. He trusts me, and he thinks the world of you." |
| "It will be better the next time. You won't be as tense," he said. |
| Mairead looked at his hands as he rolled a cigarette. They were no longer a thing of beauty to her. They had, in the space of a confusing hour, become an extension of Lincoln's detached personality. The hands, soft as they were, had been cold and unfeeling as they moved over her. The long, elegant fingers found their way effortlessly, but they lacked sensuality inside her. They switched her off instead of on. |
| She knew nothing about him now. That which she thought she knew lay in ruins. There was no longer any physical attraction on her part; something closer to revulsion inhabited that space inside her now. She had no idea how he would take the rebuttal. Neither did she know how the three of them would manage from now on. A new notion, that he had seduced her in order to put her off the scent, was beginning to make her dizzy all over again. Only one thing was certain: it was the last time Lincoln Savage would lean his cute arse against her range. She steeled herself to tell him how it was going to be between the three of them from now on. |
