After the Lockout by Darran McCann Read Free Book Online Page A

Maggie’s father is perched in his usual armchair. God knows what he makes of you; one eye lolling madly is the only sign he’s alive at all. Maggie goes out into the scullery and comes back with her father’s old leather medical bag, towels and two bowls of water. She puts one bowl on the range and heats it.
    â€˜Look up at the ceiling, we have to keep the wound elevated. If we can’t stop the bleeding you’ll have to go and see a proper doctor.’ She immerses a towel in hot water, wrings it out and sets it against your eyebrow. ‘Help me apply pressure to the wound.’
    From your good eye you look at the graceful curve of her neck and want to take a bite out of it. She’s wearing a red and brown dress with little lace frills at the edges. She’s close enough that you can smell her distinctive smell.
    â€˜I told you to look at the ceiling,’ she says. Her father’s daughter.
    When the bleeding stops she washes the wound with a soft wash-cloth. You grip the sofa tightly and grit your teeth while she pours liquid from the spirit bottle over the cut – ‘Isopropyl. It’ll prevent infection,’ she says – and uses tweezers to remove what she calls debris. She makes up a dressing with surgical adhesive tape and gauze. ‘But it won’t be enough,’ she says. ‘The broken skin won’t knit together on its own. You need stitches.’
    You nod quiescently. You’re so tired. You ask if you can sleep in her shed. You are grateful she doesn’t ask for an explanation.
    â€˜What will you do tomorrow?’ she asks.
    â€˜I’ll bury my mother.’
    â€˜Afterwards?’
    You’re too tired to think. ‘I know if I stay here I’ll kill him.’

    From his window Stanislaus watched everyone arrive. He had a dusty volume of theology in his lap, lit by a single candle, but it was a mere prop. It took two hundred people to fill the Parochial Hall and from early on, the place was full. The cheering and clapping from the Parochial Hall grew louder and rougher as the night got later, and Stanislaus was relieved as eleven o’clock approached and the guest of honour hadn’t appeared. Themoon, full and large in the cloudless sky, shone across all but the darkest corners of the parish, so Stanislaus would have seen him. But eleven o’clock came and went and there was still no sign of things winding up. Eventually Stanislaus rose and readied himself to intervene, but he wobbled and sat back down. He gripped the arms of the chair. His vision swirled before him. He held his face in his hands and felt the cold sweat on his brow. But this was not a stroke and it soon passed. He looked at the bottle. It didn’t seem like he’d had all that much to drink. He had gone for years of his life without a drink, it wasn’t something he was a slave to, but it was true that he had acquired a taste for brandy in his old age.
    Outside in the distance the light of a lantern appeared and as it grew bigger Stanislaus made out three figures atop a buggy, drawing closer. Charlie Quinn’s leg stuck out in silhouette. Hulking Turlough Moriarty drove the buggy. Typical. The Moriarty boys were perennial foot-soldiers, from their grandfather, a locally famous Fenian of the sixties, on down. It was no surprise that they would regard Victor Lennon as a great fellow altogether. The third man sat between Charlie and Turlough with the brim of his hat pulled low over his face. It had to be him. He watched Father Daly emerge from the Parochial Hall and speak to the men on the buggy. They spent a moment looking at their watches. Obviously Father Daly was explaining the time, and that the dance was over. The third man got down from the buggy. Father Daly made to go back inside but as he opened the door he was almost knocked aside by Aidan Cavanagh, who dashed round the corner and heaved up his guts on the wall of the Parochial Hall.