The New Policeman by Kate Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

heard it. Just Lad. A great fiddler, though. The best my grandparents ever heard. And handsome enough to charm the birds out of the trees.”
    She took the photo from J.J. and gazed at it wistfully. “I wish he hadn’t turned away just at that moment,” she said. “I dream about him, you know. I’d give anything to know what he looked like.”
    “What happened to him?”
    Helen shrugged. “He came and went for a while. He and my mother started courting; became lovers, eventually. Then one day he went away and he didn’t come back.”
    “Another disappearing act,” said J.J.
    “Yes. Not such an unusual one, though. When the priest—a different one, obviously—found out that my mother was pregnant, he tried to persuade myparents to send her away and have the baby put up for adoption. Single mothers weren’t acceptable in those days.”
    J.J. nodded. The Magdalene Laundries had been all over the news recently. A lot of innocent girls had been locked up to keep them hidden away from society.
    “My grandparents wouldn’t hear of it, thank God,” said Helen. “So there was another reason for the Liddys to be scorned by some of the locals. An unmarried mother in the family.”
    “Two in a row now,” said J.J.
    Helen laughed. “The thing was,” she said, “they were all convinced that Lad would come back. The last time he went away, he left something behind at the house. It was the only thing he owned, and they couldn’t believe he wouldn’t come back for it.”
    “What was it?” said J.J.
    “His fiddle,” said Helen. “You have it there in your hand.”

     
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THE FAIR-HAIRED BOY
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16
    Mary Green had never, to her knowledge, been in the position of having to throw a policeman out of her pub. She felt obliged to do it all the same. Larry didn’t look as though he was about to jump up and arrest everyone, but you could never be sure.
    She waited for a break in the music. “I’m going to have to ask you to finish up now,” she said.
    Phil Daly stopped tuning his guitar and looked up. “You’re joking,” he said. “It can’t be that time already?”
    Everyone turned to look at the clock behind the bar. It was a new one, with hands that were designed so that the observer thought they were suffering from double vision. It meant that it took awhile for everyone to figure out what it was actually reading.

    “I don’t know what happens to the time these days,” said Laura, the flute player.
    “It’s mad,” said Jim, letting the air out of his melodeon’s bellows and fixing the strap.
    “It’s mad, all right,” said Larry. “It never used to be like this.”
    “True for you,” said Patrick O’Hare.
    “What started it all?” said Larry. “When did time start disappearing so fast?”
    “It’s just because we’re getting older,” said Laura.
    “It isn’t,” said Phil. “Even the kids are running round like headless chickens these days.”
    “’Twas the EU started it,” said Patrick. “There was all the time in the world before we joined Europe and started getting all the subsidies.”
    “What have subsidies got to do with it?” said Laura.
    “All the time-saving devices we bought with the new money,” said Patrick. “Big fast tractors and bale wrappers and washing machines. And do we have more time on account of them all?”
    “I think it was the Celtic Tiger,” said Jim. “We sold our souls to the stock market.”
    Larry plucked his strings and adjusted his tuning. The conversation, as far as he could see, was going nowhere. “One for the road,” he said.

    Mary Green was hovering. “Please, lads,” she said. “Come on now.”
    “They’ll hardly arrest him,” said Jim, unfastening his bellows again.
    “They might,” said Laura.
    Larry was already starting a tune. “Let ’em try,” he said, and unleashed the power of his bowing arm.
     
    J.J. lay in bed. He had a hurling match the following day, and he had to be up early to get a few things