he resented his younger brother being such a natural. He enjoyed throwing his weight around once his Da had gone. When he got a few cans inside him he cuffed Tipper hard enough to hurt him. In a playful sort of way.
Tipper and Himself would jump fences made from abandoned supermarket trolleys. But Liam had better use for his brother’s talents. He’d get Tipper to ride Himself into the actual supermarket and create a diversion whilst he helped himself under the cover of confusion.
When Tipper was about nine, Liam developed a new interest—joyriding. Tipper went along with it. Faint praise from his brother was better than a smack. They’d trek across town to an affluent area and pick a side street without too much traffic. Tipper would lie spread-eagled on the tarmac with Himself—who knew how to play his part—seemingly lying on top of him, while Liam lurked nearby waiting for a driver to stop his car and investigate the apparent riding accident. While walking up to Tipper, these Good Samaritans would soon enough hear the screech of tyres as Liam reversed their car away at speed. It was the cue for Tipper and Himself to jump up and get the hell out of it.
But inevitably the scam came to an end. One particular driver was too quick for Tipper and collared him before he could mount up. The result was a visit to the Juvenile Court, and an ultimatum from his mother; Himself must go back to Smithfield Market.
And now, years down the line, it felt like a different world to Tipper as the bus rattled into Fethard, an old town still ringed by its medieval defensive walls. Tipper stepped down into a wide Main Street with his bulging luggage. All his things stuffed into the big loop-handled bag that Ma always used to take washing to the launderette. His cousin Sam was supposed to meet him, but Tipper saw no sign of him. Not that he had a clue what he looked like. Instead he found McCarthy’s, a famous pub that Sam had said everyone knew. It stood on Main Street, in view of the church. And as Tipper settled himself to wait on a low wall opposite the pub, he watched a funeral procession forming up outside the churchyard gate.
‘All right, Tipper?’
It was Sam, sauntering up on Tipper’s blind side. Tipper swung round and nodded.
‘Yourself?’ he smiled. Tipper was immediately struck by Sam’s strength. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he was solid.
‘I’m grand. See the pub?’
He nodded towards McCarthy’s.
‘What about it?’
‘It’s haunted. Every time one of the family’s going to snuff it, a picture falls off the wall. See that funeral?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s the McCarthys too. They have the undertakers as well as the pub.’
‘That’s warped.’
‘It’s good business. They do the funeral and the wake all in one package. Come on. We’ve got to walk.’
The funeral cortege was just passing, led by the coffin borne in a smart Mercedes hearse, with wreaths and bouquets piled on the roof. Grimfaced mourners flanked it or trailed behind on foot. Sam and Tipper kept pace as the procession crawled towards the top of the town where, at the end of Main Street, a sign pointed the way to the cemetery, up a street to the left. But the funeral turned right.
‘They’re going the wrong way,’ observed Tipper.
‘No funeral in Fethard ever goes the right way.’
Sam nodded towards the street that had been avoided.
‘That’s Barrack Street. Cromwell came in that way, and the funerals have never used it since. They turn right here, and take the long way down Burke Street and round the back.’
Sam and Tipper left the funeral marchers and forked right by the Castle Inn.
‘See those walls there?’
Sam indicated with a wave of his arm.
‘They’re only the oldest complete town walls in Europe.’
‘How d’you know that? Jesus, you’re like a guide book.’
‘Me Da tells me. He knows all the history. Come here, there’s something I’ll show you.’
He led Tipper to a place under the town wall and pointed mid way up the stonework.
‘See? There’s an old witch in this wall.’
Set into the stonework Tipper could just make out a distorted head, grinning with a gap-toothed mouth, above a decayed body and arms that reached down below the stomach. Heavy weathering made it difficult to make out the detail of the carving.
‘She’s called Sheela Nagig,’ said Sam. ‘There’s little statues of her all over Ireland. Nobody knows who she is. Come on, we’ve miles to walk.’
He led the way to the stone bridge across the Clashawley River, and set his course along the Kilsheelan road. They took turns to carry Tipper’s unwieldy bag. Sam was setting a fast pace but Tipper found himself constantly slowing down, so he could take in the scene: the geese inspecting the river bank, the horses loose in the fields or tethered to a stake on the roadside, the birdsong in the air and yellow wild flowers billowing from crevices in the drystone walls. They stopped to look at the imposing ivied ruins of Kiltinan Castle, and again to view the shell of an old church by the roadside.
‘Cromwell,’ said Sam. ‘He knocked the shite out of everything.’
After ten minutes they turned into a boreen leading towards the escarpment of a steep ridge that seemed to climb up into the clouds. It was laid out in a patchwork of hedged fields in which horses, sheep and cows grazed, the shining grass patched here and there with clumps of brilliant yellow gorse. This pasture rose as far as a thick belt of pine trees, above which lay an expanse of moorland that stretched up to and beyond the horizon. Sam stopped at last and leaned on a gate to look fondly at this view. Coming up behind, Tipper joined him, his eyes tracing the network of hedges on the hillside, strong barriers of beech, laurel and whitethorn, bursting their buds as they flowered.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘This is some place.’
Sam’s response was reverent.
‘This is the Golden Vale,’ he said. ‘The home of champions and God’s Own Country.’
Nikolai Nikolayev, universally known as Nico, sat on a chrome bar stool in the Voile Rouge. The beachside restaurant was heaving. Its tender rushed busily from the small pier on Pampelonne Beach out to the floating gin palaces that had cruised round from St Tropez. The music was beginning to step up a beat and the ‘models’ from the fashion boutique next door were provocatively working the tables.
At the other end of the bar an overweight, eurotrash rich kid made some desperate girl go down on her knees while he poured Louis Roederer Cristal over her face; he laughed loudly for attention. Nico gave him a sycophantic smile of approval and deftly nodded his head. The girl pretended she was having a good time and squealed. That was what she was paid to do. Her team-mate clapped, yelled and tossed her hair over her shoulder. And adjusted her loose
