Page 22 of Heart of the Wren (Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch #2)

DARA

I ADJUSTED my position on the bar stool.

The black and white television fizzled with static, cutting in and out of a handsome moustachioed man being interviewed on The Late Late Show .

It took me a minute to recognise one of my favourite radio DJ’s, Ronan Collins.

At the far side of the bar, Big Tom stood with Bullseye.

“They've just been sitting there for—” Big Tom checked his watch. “—three hours. And they haven’t spoken a word to each other.”

“Who?” Bullseye asked.

“Dara and the Monk.”

They either didn’t realise how loud they were being or they didn’t care if we heard them.

Bullseye glanced in our direction but was a good deal more discrete about it than Big Tom. “Well, they're not hurting anybody, are they?”

Big Tom rolled his shoulders. “No. But…”

“But what?”

“It’s weird .”

“There are no laws against being weird. More’s the pity.”

Big Tom huffed, blowing out his chubby cheeks.

“One silent customer is alright but two is starting to look like a motif. I tried to talk to yer man about Lorcan’s knee and he only sort of nodded at me.

I thought he was more talkative, maybe Lorcan’s rubbed off on him.

It’s bad enough we lost the match, I can’t even ask after one of my own players? ”

“I was going to call up to the farm on my way home,” Bullseye said. “See how he’s getting on.”

“You know yer man hasn’t been to mass since he’s been here? Not once.”

“Still nothing illegal there, Tom.”

He scrunched up his face and waved his hand around. “I'm simply... pointing it out.”

“Great,” Bullseye reached over the bar and lifted the telephone receiver. “You keep talking, I’ll ring the guards and let them know. Here I go. Are you watching? I’m dialling the number now.”

“Don't make me bar you, Bullseye.” He grabbed the telephone from Bullseye’s hand and slammed it down. They turned away to watch the end of Ronan Collins’s interview on the television.

“They think we can’t hear them.” The Monk’s voice was raspy and creaked. His beard — long, and thin as his voice — wobbled as he talked.

I didn't respond. Not so much as a nod.

His face was heavily wrinkled and his eyes sunken.

“When you don’t talk, people think you don’t hear.

” He pushed his glass away. We were alone at that side of the pub.

“I was twenty one when I met Fergus,” said the Monk.

“We worked at a quarry for ten years. Side by side.

Every day. And we drank together most nights.

He kissed me first. We were at his house by the seaside.

He kissed me and I kissed him. And then we did some more things.

And then we kept doing them for the next year.

We were the same age. He was a beautiful boy with curly hair and a rich laugh.

They were bleak days — working at the quarry was tough, back-breaking labour — but he was always there to brighten my day.

“I still remember the night he came to my door and stood outside. He wouldn’t come in.

He had his cap in his hand and he spun it round and round like a steering wheel.

He told me his parents insisted on him getting married.

They’d found him a nice girl and they wanted him to settle down and start a family.

To stop his gallivanting around town, they’d said.

And he was going to do it. He was going to marry some innocent girl who hadn’t a clue about what he got up to with me.

And, of course, he’d have to stop seeing me.

All or nothing, that was Fergus. I was so angry with him I thought I’d explode.

I slammed the door in his face and I didn’t speak to him for weeks .

“The night before his wedding he came to my house again and told me he wouldn't marry her if I admitted I loved him. But I was still angry. I felt betrayed. He didn’t love her but he was scared and I resented the weakness in him. I didn’t say anything to him.

I couldn’t. And so he married her. And they had a bunch of children.

And he was so unhappy that within a few years he drank himself into an early grave.

“I’d see his widow and his children around town and I hated them for taking him away from me.

They hadn’t done anything wrong but I felt how I felt.

So I came here, to Tullycleena. I bought a cottage and I didn’t speak a word to anyone.

The first time I walked in here, I sat on this stool, and I pointed to the whiskey bottle, and I sit here every night and hope I can drink enough of the stuff to be reunited with Fergus.

But I can’t manage more than one glass a day.

I wonder if it’s God protecting me from myself.

Or maybe he’s keeping me and Fergus apart for as long as he can.

“And then I see you. And I see Lorcan. And I see what you have brewing between you. And I hope you can see it too. And I hope you're not here with me when you could be there with him.”

I finished my drink. “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

“I know you are,” the Monk said. “I’m Maurice, by the way. Maurice Walsh.”

“A pleasure to finally meet you, Maurice.” I tenderly shook his bony hand.

“Tom!” Maurice said.

Big Tom spun around as though something had flicked his ear. His mouth dropped open when he realised who had called him. “Y-yes? ”

“Another one for Dara. And whatever you’re having yourself. And turn the TV up a bit, will you? I can hardly hear it.”

???

Maurice and I chatted until closing time, at which point he walked home.

I hesitated by the old pitted Celtic cross at the roundabout.

The wintry clouds had parted and the moon hung directly above it, giving its moss a silvery glow.

I thought about what Maurice had said to me and my stomach tied itself in knots.

My walk home was slower than usual. At the flat bridge, I hesitated.

The stream gurgled beneath. I could cross over, let myself into the house, and talk to Lorcan.

Tell him how I was feeling. Tell him I’d overreacted to the news of him digging up the fairy ring.

Tell him how my spell might have contributed to his injury.

Face the consequences for it all. Or I could go to my van and spend another night cold and alone.

I spotted Bullseye’s car parked by the side of the house.

The lights were on in the living room window, though the curtains were closed.

I turned left and made for my van.