Free Wild Decembers by Edna O’Brien Page B

know?”
    “I saw him . . . He rode up home after six . . . and the gas thing . . . he was in his birthday suit.”
    “Holy smoke!”
    “The sisters kept his trousers as proof.”
    “They’re demons,” the vet said, and reminded Sinead of the night he was called for a sick yearling and the way they didn’t want to let him go.
    “I’m disappointed in him,” Joseph said, looking from Breege to them and back to Breege again.
    “I’m not . . . He’d go with anything in a skirt,” Sinead said.
    “Ah yes . . . But he’s engaged to be married,” Joseph said.
    “Go on.”
    “To who?”
    “A lady in Australia . . . a Rosemary.”
    “And you never let on,” the Crock said, irked.
    “He asked me not to . . . He asked me to keep it to myself.”
    Breege hears it and gives a little involuntary jump like some of the animals after the prod. She went quite peculiar. She felt empty. What is empty. What is full. Full is when she couldn’t wait for night, when she lay down, piecing together moments, seconds, his wave from the tractor, the “Howya, Breege” and the can of mushrooms that he left on the step, small mushrooms, the pink insides, so evenly, so daintily, serrated as if a razor had slit each one, and that other time down at the pier when a lady politician in a maroon suit unveiled a plaque for the victims of the famine and Bugler had turned to her and said, “You’re better looking than she is.” Things. Things she had made too much of and would have to let go.
    “We’ll see how they take,” the vet said, peeling off his plastic gloves, which Sinead refolded for him.
    “We don’t want any sick ones. We don’t want any lumps . . . It would break me,” Joseph said.
    “Sure you have piles of money,” the vet said, and jumped the wall, and then hoisted Sinead over to cries and giggles as to what would his wife say.
    “What’s wrong with you?” Joseph said scoldingly to Breege. “You’re miles away, you always give these people coffee and cake.”
    “We’ll have it when we come back,” Sinead said.
    “You always give them coffee and cake,” Joseph repeated, even more stern.
    “Ah now . . . She’s probably thinking what prezzie to give Bugler . . . whether it should be an eiderdown or bed linen. Aren’t you, ducks?” from the Crock.
    The day would have to be got through. Then the night. Emptying. Emptiness.

 
     
     
     
    B Y NOT ASKING HIM IN , Lady Harkness showed her hand. Each year Joseph had sat in her little study with its red lacquered walls, two heaters, a rug over her knees, the opened ledger, and the pen and ink ready to mark the date of the renewal. She would even pour a glass of sherry. For well on ten years he had rented the grazing of her field down by the lake, he had kept half of his herd there. It was a good field, better than mountain grass, sweeter. He used to love going down there, he used to joke to Breege about having two kingdoms, one on the mountain and one in the valley. Sometimes of a summer’s evening he would sit and look out at the water, dotted with islands, reflecting and thinking that God had set him down in one of the loveliest places on earth. No more. She broke it to him snappily, said that sadly she had had a better offer for the field and had gone ahead with it.
    “I’ll top it,” he said.
    “I gave the other party my word.”
    “May I ask who the other party might be?”
    “Mr. Bugler,” she said, irked at being questioned so.
    “You could at least have discussed it with me.”
    “This Bugler chap was so insistent, called, telephoned, so friendly.”
    “But you and I are friends for a long time . . . Breege comes to help you out.”
    “I know. I know . . . I’m just a silly old woman. All I could think of was—the roof’s rotted, the greenhouse has fallen down, the tennis court is all nettles.”
    “You could still cancel it.”
    “Oh no . . . It wouldn’t look good,” she said, and she rose then and with a