out into the sunlight, warm granite under his bare feet, the sun’s heat penetrating bone and marrow. He gazes out over the lawn. In the field beyond, the cows are lying down, full now, chewing the cud. Full with the view too: the sloping fields and hedgerows, the river, everything radiating out from the house towards the river. From the corner of his eye, something moves. A magpie lands on the blue bloom of a hydrangea with something in its beak. A mouthful of old cork – wine cork. No. A turd. Short and thick and dry, stale enough to hold together. A cat turd. He never knew birds ate old shit. Pigs eat each other. He looks down the avenue as words trail across his mind. Coprophagia. Pica. Anorexia. Schizophrenic hunger.
MID-MORNING, HE IS stirred from reverie by the sound of an engine coming up the avenue. Jim Lynch’s jeep passes the window into the yard. Luke waits for the sound of his footsteps, the knock on the back door.
‘Come in, come in, Jim.’ He stands at the end of the table. ‘Sit down.’
Jim Lynch removes his hat, sits down, places the hat on his right knee. He is coming earlier and earlier each year, sensing some change.
‘Wasn’t that some wedding beyond in the castle at the weekend, Jim? Ha?’
‘Ay, an oligarch’s daughter, by all accounts,’ Lynch says. He taps the hat uneasily.
‘A million euros, I believe, just to hire the place for the week. Imagine! The Duke is fairly creaming it.’
‘He is, all right.’ Lynch narrows his eyes. His colour is high, like Dadda’s when he got anxious. He needs to watch that. Nearly a goner last year; had to be pulled out of the slurry tank by one of the sons. Must have slipped.
‘Jesus, Jim, no one knew what an oligarch was until a few years ago.’
Lynch nods.
‘And d’you remember the big bash that footballer had for his twenty-first last year?’
Another nod.
‘Premier league lad, what’s this his name is?’
Lynch shakes his head, impatient to move on.
‘They rent out the whole place, living quarters and all. Who’d have thought it, Jim, the commoners traipsing in and out of the Duke’s private quarters?’
‘It’s a turnaround, all right … Still, I suppose they bring a bit of business to the area, a few jobs.’
Fuck-all business they bring, Luke wants to say, with their big transport trucks coming over on the ferry to Rosslare, laden with everything from bottled water to truffles. Even bring their own chefs and barmen.
Lynch transfers his hat to the other knee. ‘How’s Ellen keeping? I haven’t seen her out for a while.’
His father’s sister, his maiden aunt. After a lifetime in America she retired to her bungalow on the hill where, from his own bedroom window every night, he can see the lights of her bedroom and knows if she’s gone to sleep. ‘She’s good. I call up to her every day. And we take the odd trip to Cork or Waterford for a bit of shopping or for a hospital appointment.’
Lynch nods. He runs a hand over his thin greasy strands of hair, then rubs his stubble. Itching to get down to business.
‘The bulls are thriving,’ Luke says, after a few moments.
‘They are,’ Lynch replies, a note of irritation in his voice.
‘They do fair leppin’ these nights in the full moon. Fair churning up of the ground too.’
‘Is that so?’
Lynch is trying to play a cool game. With his large dairy herd he needs Luke’s land to supplement his own farm. He knows Luke could easily re-let it in the morning for top dollar, leaving him in the lurch.
‘Apparently it’s common for bulls to go mad in a full moon – there was a piece in the Farmers’ Journal about it a few weeks back.’
‘Is that right?’
Luke turns to the window. ‘The milkers are looking great out there too,’ he says, signalling at the cows. ‘There’s what – eighty there now?’
There are one hundred and eight cows grazing in the field.
Lynch nods. He knows well Luke has counted them.
‘Ye must have a fine yield, with the growth we’re having this summer. Jesus, I’d nearly eat that grass myself!’ Lay it on, thick and fast. ‘And the bulls,’ he adds, ‘they’ll definitely be U’s or even E’s when they kill out.’ Big fat profit for you, Jim Lynch, he wants to say. Better not overdo it. Not right, either, scoring points at the expense of the poor beasts. They’ll be going to the factory soon enough. That time years ago he and Dadda brought a load of heifers to the Kepak factory – the halal place – and nothing would do Dadda but to go up the line. The Muslim guy in bloodied garb saying the blessing over each animal as he slit their throats. Allahu Akbar. Other prayers too, whispered in the ear. Thanking Allah … The way the heifers walked obediently down the gangway that day. The eyes of a human the last thing they saw.
‘Tis, tis good, all right. Of course we spread urea and nitrogen every spring – and slurry – so it’s well looked after.’
‘Great. I must take a soil sample one of these days.’ Keep him on his toes! He’d love nothing better than if I were clueless, but I’ll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me! ‘You know they reckon there’s only about sixty years’ worth of soil left in the world. With all the intensive farming – and with the loss of the rain forests and erosion and everything – we’re running out of soil.’ He shakes his head. ‘Sixty harvests, Jim … imagine that.’
The cat walks in and is about to jump up on the table when she sees Lynch and freezes. He throws her a look. Probably afraid of cats. A bad sign in a man. Probably held squirming sacks under water, waiting for the bubble-bubble. No prayer there to send them on their way.
‘Come on, Lily. Up!’ Luke leans down and sweeps the cat onto his lap in one swift, fluid movement. Lynch will think him a sissy. Who cares? They have him down as eccentric around here anyway with all the cats and the house full of books.
Lynch straightens up. ‘Brian and myself are drawing up a five-year plan for the farm. I’ll be sixty soon, so … Brian wants to phase out the Friesians and get into Holsteins instead.’
Brian Lynch, tall, handsome, brown-eyed, only two years younger than Luke. The other brother Kevin must be twenty-eight now. Always fond of Brian. He spent a year on an intensive dairy farm in New Zealand a few years back. A massive place, five thousand acres, he told Luke. Lived with the family, treated him like a son. Run off their feet, as many as twenty newborns every morning in the calving season. They kept the little heifer calves for breeding, got rid of the bulls. One morning there were twelve new arrivals – five heifers and seven bulls. The farmer handed Brian the humane killer and told him to go into the shed and shoot the seven little bulls. ‘And did you?’ Luke asked. ‘Did I fuck! I turned on my heel and walked away and he went in and shot them himself.’
‘We had a fellow out from Teagasc the other day,’ Lynch continues, ‘advising us about things. Anyway, the long and the short of it is I might take a five-year lease from you.’ He pauses, looks Luke in the eye. ‘I can give you two years up front.’
Five years, Luke thinks, you will in your hole! Trying to inveigle your way in here like that! Too long in situ, getting too comfortable, that’s the trouble.
Jim Lynch did Luke a favour by leasing the land when his father died, thus sparing Luke from returning from university in Dublin. In the early years Lynch did as he pleased – knocked gaps in ditches, put up gates, acted like he owned the place. He covets the farm. They all do. Finest land on the Sullane – they’d all give their eyeteeth to have this road and river frontage. Fishing rights too – the right to hunt, hawk, fish and fowl. Deed and title taken up by Luke’s grandfather and namesake Luke Carthage O’Brien