The Lost Souls' Reunion Read Free Page B

Scarna days. The town would see Carmel and Noreen then, slipping into the back row when the performances had started. Dreaming with the town and aching with the town for the stories that happened on makeshift stages – Noreen and Carmel were seen and not noticed. The town had its mind and heart on the stories too.
    Carmel watched one woman one year, a woman called Sive who played the leads in plays best forgotten in a way she could never be. Carmel watched her on stage and in the town from a discreet distance.
    The woman called Sive had seemed more fine and free than any woman. She had sauntered through the town with men all following with reasons to talk to her, with women all watching their men. She had caught Carmel watching once, out walking on the Shore Road. Her male company was not pleased when she had called Carmel over and touched her hair and said, ‘Like fire.’
    From that day, Carmel was allowed to follow her. Until the day when Carmel went to the theatre tent and found it gone.
    This was one week in a life which went on in a manner where little changes, until Eddie’s eighteenth birthday. His father took him for his first pint to the Slip Inn on the harbour front at Scarna – where fishermen and farmers met in a back bar where no stranger stayed for more than one drink. Too many eyes on them; even enemies in the town of Scarna united against the unknown who entered. The men were talking of Joseph Moriarty, who had just been asked to leave.
    If the drinking men did not bait him, and they tried not to, he would rise to imagined insults. That night’s had been a concern about the state of Joseph’s crop in Stone’s Throw Field, which ran right along the shoreline. The only thing that could grow in it was cabbage. The rubbery leaves fought the salt winds well, but the first, tender shoots were not able for the fight in the same way.
    The farmer whose family had acquired good Moriarty fields in other years and done well from them, put it to him, ‘No way a cabbage will raise its head now, Joseph. Not after the fourth week of salt winds. This is no summer.’
    â€˜Is that right?’ Joseph had spoken back, with a calm they all knew to come before a blow-up.
    A good foot or two of space round him cleared, the enquirer drew back also. From behind him, someone who knew his face could not be seen, said, ‘Mark you, everyone loves a bit of salt on their cabbage.’
    The laughter lasted for as long as it took for Joseph to rise and belt the initial enquirer. Belt the smugness his fat and happy fields gave him.
    It was done quickly – four lifted him and four put him outside and bolted the door as Eddie and his father came through it.
    â€˜Why do you keep him as a customer?’ one asked the barman. The barman did not have to answer that Joseph was in most nights and worth the trouble for that reason.
    The usual insults were thrown at Joseph’s back once he was safely gone. Then the conversation turned to his family and they talked of the daughter, who roamed at will, as they would one of the beasts they farmed.
    â€˜A fine thing, well stacked at the front.’
    â€˜You’d have to hobble her to keep her still.’
    â€˜Don’t go getting ideas about Carmel, lads. She has the colouring of a fox and she scrawms like one too!’ Poker O’Toole cackled. He was forty if a day.
    â€˜And how would you know?’ Eddie asked.
    â€˜Well I tried to get acquainted with the mite once. I went home the beach way and came across her, in her nip, having a wash in the sea. In the dead of night! Took off like that when she saw me,’ he clicked his fingers sharply. ‘When I caught up on her she took the arm off me, bit into it she did.’
    Eddie was not outspoken on any occasion and did not utter a sound as he smacked his fist home, nor did he say a word, but left with the stunned silence still about them all.
    His father looked long and hard at