Wild Decembers Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the town two youngsters are assaulting the hedges and terrified of the dark, marauders scrambling for holly.
    “Noreen said it has to be with berries, otherwise it’s not festive.”
    “Her and her berries.”
    They snap a few sprigs off a young rowan tree.
    Breege won’t know until six o’clock whether or not they are going . . . Joseph won’t say. She has clothes airing by a paraffin heater upstairs. White blouse, black pleated skirt, black stockings.
     
    Bugler stands in the doorway saluting with the warm smoulder of his eyes. Taller than all the rest. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Breege sees him. Shivers. All of her agog at being there—the excitement, the hollers, cigarette smoke, bare arms, bare shoulders, precious wineglasses gilded in the back mirrors and music flooding out. Mrs. Flannery keeps jabbing her to emphasise her fury with Patrick J. Flannery gazing at that American girl and talking God knows what bull.
    “Watch. He’ll light her cigarette now.” And so he does. She predicts how the match will be kept alight to roam over the girl’s gloating face, and so it does until it burns down to his grimy fingernails. Sue-Anne, a cousin from Boston, having to have her beauty sleep until six in the evening. Patrick, as promised, went up to waken his guest. Asked what kept him so long, he simply said he was learning about life in the fast lane.
    Joseph and the Crock are at the bar, with spare pints of porter, each pressing hospitality on the other to make up for the recent imbroglio. Joseph had caught the Crock stealing timber and ordered him and his wheelbarrow off their lands for
saecula saeculorum.
    “I can’t take much more of it,” Mrs. Flannery says, searches in one pocket, then another for a handkerchief, and blows her nose repeatedly.
    “She’ll be gone back soon.”
    “You don’t know the agony of love.”
    Breege feels colour starting up and down her neck, zigzags behind the sheath of her white blouse. Bugler is smiling across at her. The smile has made up for those times when he passed her so abruptly, jumped over a wall to search for an animal because some dolt had left a gate open. As if she was the dolt who had left the gate open. She must not be seen to be overhappy, Joseph would suspect.
    “Tickets, ladies,” Eamonn says, pointing to the prizes with the rim of his straw boater—a big television, a set of Waterford glasses, and a vegetarian cookbook. Mrs. Flannery asks tartly if she could win a husband along with a television set.
    “Thought you had one.”
    “Him,” she says. Patrick is standing over them boyish and bashful. He is made to pay for the tickets. The Crock has arrived with two vodka-and-lemonades for the ladies. Bugler crosses, his smile preparatory to asking her up.
    “Later,” she says to the barely audible invitation. The floor is empty except for two old men dancing ceilidh in defiance of the boppy music that is being played, shouting to one another. “One, two, three, one, two, three,” to keep the beat.
    “Please yourself,” he says, and moves off as if a little daunted, tapping the tables that he passes in some kind of pique. The Crock lisps a low whistle.
    “Bet you’re the first lady ever to say no to him.”
    “Oh, he’ll siphon off all the talent till he gets to the last dance.” That from Josephine, standing above them, her body like a blancmange in her off-white crocheted dress.
    “Oh, Jesus, look,” from the Crock. They look. They see. Bugler is dancing with Lady Harkness, steering her solemnly, as if she were an ocean liner in her peppermint green; her smile seems to be saying that there is nothing in the whole world more beautiful than an old-time waltz.
    Gradually, the floor fills up. Young men with young girls in bold improvisations. Breege thinks that by the time he asks her again she will be prepared. She will have gone down to the ladies’ and dabbed herself with Mrs. Flannery’s powder. It is in a floppy pink swansdown