Page 42 of For Love or Money
‘Huh!’ Jane said. ‘He’s changed, then. He never used to worry about doing the right thing when he was with me.’
Just as they finished their drinks, Liam appeared with another round.
‘From Sean over there,’ he said, nodding across the bar. Soon he was beating a regular path to their table with round after round of drinks, compliments of Jane’s many admirers.
Several rounds later, they were all slightly tipsy, and as the evening wore on, the pub’s clientele loosened up and there was a parade of locals stopping by their table to have a few words with Jane. They seemed quite in awe of her, shyly shuffling up to her and enquiring about ‘the book’ in reverent tones. But the talk always came back to Peter. They’d all heard about his recent brush with death and were avid for news of him.
‘Ah, sure you can’t kill a bad thing,’ a weather-beaten man named Matthew said cheerfully when Jane told him Peter was making a good recovery. ‘He’s an awful divil, Peter.’ He shook his head with a fond smile.
‘Oh, a holy terror!’ Sean said admiringly as he joined them. ‘D’you remember the time he had that old fella from Hollywood staying and they broke into Buckley’s field in the middle of the night and tried to get a rise out of his bull. Playing at matadors, they were – legless, the pair of them.’ He gave a wheezing cackle.
‘Lucky for them it was a cow, not a bull.’
‘Aye. The poor cow was never the same after it, though,’ Sean said, sobering up. ‘Suffered terrible from her nerves, she did. I believe she never gave a drop of milk since.’
‘What about the time they took your goat up to Dublin for the rugby?’ another said to Liam as he appeared with yet another round of drinks.
Liam laughed. ‘That bloody goat’s got a better social life than I have.’
‘You’re joking!’ Lesley said.
‘No, true as I stand here. And there’s the picture to prove it.’ He nodded to the wall behind the bar. Lesley peered, and sure enough there was a framed photograph of a younger Peter with a huge grin on his face brandishing a pint, his arm around a white goat wearing an Ireland rugby shirt.
‘You’d miss him around the place, all the same,’ Matthew said sadly.
‘Well, tell him we were asking for him.’
‘I will,’ Jane told them.
Finally they all drifted off and went back to the bar for last orders.
‘My husband was very popular around here,’ Jane told Lesley when they were alone again.
‘You’re not doing so badly yourself,’ Lesley said, nodding to the large collection of drinks that had accumulated on the table.
Jane gave a little shrug. ‘Peter was so good at this sort of thing,’ she said, looking around the pub. ‘Being one of the fellows – salt of the earth. And of course he’s – hewas– a great drinker, which helped. They all adored him. “Like one of our own”, they’d say, which is the highest compliment an Englishman can get in these parts. I don’t think they’ve ever quite forgiven me for divorcing him and depriving them of his company.’ She drained her glass. ‘It’s not bloody fair,’ she said. ‘Iamone of their own. They should be on my side.’
‘Maybe you just didn’t make as much of an effort with them,’ Al suggested gently.
‘He did always have that desperate need to be liked,’ she said with a bitter smile. ‘That stood him in good stead.’
‘And he is very likeable,’ Al said tentatively.
‘Yes. I’ll give him that. He’s very bloody likeable.’
‘Well, I’m sure you could get him back,’ Lesley said. ‘And it’d solve all your problems,’ she said to Al. ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’
‘But she doesn’t want him back,’ Al said, frowning at her. ‘Do you?’ He looked to Jane for confirmation.
But Jane was silent, toying thoughtfully with the rim of her glass. ‘It doesn’t seem fair, does it, that I put up with him all those years when he was taking goats to Dublin on benders, and someone else gets to have him now that he’s apparently a reformed character, and finally ready to settle down? At seventy-two,’ she added drolly.
Lesley reckoned that that was answer enough. ‘That’s decided, then. You have to come to France.’
‘I don’t know. But in the meantime, why don’t you go and see Conor?’ Jane said to Al. ‘He might have some ideas about what we should do.’
‘What madeyou think Jane wanted Peter back?’ Al asked later that night when they were alone in their room. Lesley was in the high double bed, and Al was on the pull-out mattress on the floor beside her.
She propped herself up on an elbow, looking down at him. ‘It seemed obvious, the way she was talking about him.’
