Free The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley Page A

room and returned to her seat, she felt that change in atmosphere, the quickening of her heart that told her Eoin was watching her. At first she thought maybe it was just wishful thinking, but then she caught him, twice, eyeing her as he wiped down tables with a bar rag, or carried towers of empty pint glasses behind the counter to be washed. The first two times, he looked away as soon as she made eye contact, but on the third, as he stood behind the counter dunking glasses in soapy water, when she looked at him, he held her gaze, steady and unashamed, a half smile, a dare, on his face.
    Near closing time, Nanny Ei stamped out her final cigarette of the evening and helped a bleary-eyed Ronnie into her coat.
    â€œIt’s getting late, Mags. Why don’t you come home in the taxi with us?”
    â€œI think I’ll stay for a bit,” Maggie said, still dizzy from Eoin’s lingering, inscrutable smile.
    â€œAren’t you tired? Tomorrow’s Christmas, remember.”
    But Christmas was for children, and Maggie wasn’t one of those anymore. How could she possibly go home when, all around her, life was
finally
starting to happen?
    â€œJust for a little longer, Nanny,” she said. She kissed her grandmother’s talcum cheek and watched her lead Ronnie out by the hand. Rosie Horan closed the velvet curtains and a singsong began among the local men: minor key ballads, mostly, about Ireland’s sad past. By now, every adult in the place was drunk, but Laura was loudly so. Maggie wasn’t bothered by the men who lurched quietly and watched the singing with glassy-eyed reverence, but her mother, whose low-cut sweater revealed cleavage that was just beginning to crack into faint wrinkles at the surface, and who was slugging down Bulmers glass by watery glass, dribbling condensation onto the lap of her jeans, was another matter.
    When a potbellied old farmer began to sing in the Sean nós style, a form of Gaelic singing unaccompanied by instruments, his rich voice lingered over the high notes and the foreign words in a way that was so hauntingly beautiful the whole pub fell into a reverential silence. He finished the last trembling note, and the place shattered with cheers and applause. Then Laura stood up, wobbly and hippy, and cleared her throat.
    No.
Maggie said silently.
No no no no.
    But before she could run across the room, put a hand over her mother’s mouth and drag her out of the bar, Laura was belting out, with tone-deaf joyfulness, the first verse of “Dancing Queen,” destroying the magic spell the farmer’s traditional singing had cast over the dark pub.
    Maggie sat in the booth, horrified, as her mom leaned her head back, waving two pint glasses above her head like a pair of castanets, and bellowed the first verse of the song while the locals rolled their eyes and drifted toward the door.
    â€œYou think that’s bad?” Eoin was suddenly next to her, drying a glass with a dirty towel. “You should get a load of my old lady sometime.”
    He smelled like stale smoke and clean laundry, and the Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling glinted off his blacklashed eyes. Maggie could feel her nerves begin to tremble.
    â€œShe’s not usually like this,” she apologized. “She’s usually more … normal.”
    â€œHey, you don’t have to explain it to me.” He put his towel down and sat across from her at the empty table. “So, do you know how to find your way home now?”
    â€œYeah. Thanks.” She smiled down at the table. “I wish I was there right now so I wouldn’t have to witness this.”
    â€œAh, this is nothin’.” He waved a hand. “This bar’s seen much worse. Besides, I’m glad you’re still here.”
    Before she could let this comment sink in and begindissecting it for meaning, her mom began to strut around in her tight, stained sweater, eyes closed, red mouth wailing