Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [64]
‘Really, Benjy.’ Lorcan tutted in disapproval. ‘What a thing to say. That’s no way to treat people!’
23
The first summer that Fintan, Tara and Katherine were pals was a magic time – though Frank Butler declared Fintan O’Grady was a very bad influence. He declared it long and loud to anyone who’d listen in O’Connell’s snug. Not that he drummed up much support for his cause.
‘Sure, what harm is he doing?’ Tadhg Brennan asked, visualizing Fintan in batwing sleeves and harem pants. ‘He livens the place up. Anyway, ‘tis only a phrase he’s going through.’
‘And when he’s finished going through his phrase, phase, he’ll have my daughter well and truly corrupted.’
Frank’s buddies fell silent. It wasn’t fair to blame Fintan O’Grady. Tara Butler would have been corrupted sooner or later. Even aged fourteen she had that look about her.
She was highly popular with the local gurriers, who made a full-time job of wearing flares and leaning against the corner of Main Street and Small Street – professional corner boys, who could probably put it on their CVs.
‘Here’s my chest, the rest is coming.’ They’d nudge each other, when they saw Tara approaching.
‘You’re a fine hoult of a woman,’ they’d shout, as she swept past, curvy and sexy, her nose in the air. ‘I wouldn’t mind having you in my herd. Will we go away and find a gable end?’
‘Romance Knockavoy style.’ Katherine laughed.
No one suggested that straight-up-and-down Katherine was a fine hoult of a woman. In fact the corner boys sometimes shouted after her, ‘G’wan, yuh dhroopy dhrawers. I’d sooner coort a shtick.’
Tara was worried about her. ‘Do you mind…?’
‘Do I mind what?’
‘That they don’t say…’ Tara faltered ‘that they’d like you in their herd.’
The look Katherine gave her redefined the concept of scornful.
‘No? Good,’ Tara murmured nervously.
As a fourteen-year-old Tara was very interested in lads, though she’d have nothing to do with the locals. She lived for the summer months, when the famine became, if not quite a feast, then certainly a square meal, with a fresh batch of boys arriving at the caravan park every week. Tara and – to a lesser extent – Fintan had their work cut out to get around to everyone.
‘No one goes home disappointed!’ Fintan was fond of saying.
During the evenings that went on for ever, Tara, Katherine and Fintan sat for hours on the sea wall in the pinkish light, until the sun finally got around to setting far out to sea.
‘Over there’s America,’ they were fond of saying. ‘Next stop New York.’ Then they’d strain their eyes, in case, shimmering on the horizon, they could see the top of the Statue of Liberty.
‘Some day.’ They’d sigh. ‘We’ll go there some day.’
‘What do they do?’ Frank Butler demanded angrily of Fidelma. ‘Just sitting there all that time. I drove past at half past five and they were there and when I was coming home again at ten o’clock they were still there, not a budge out of them.’
Fidelma sighed. She knew how easy it was to spend four hours on a damp wall, unaware of time passing, building castles in the air, then moving into them. She remembered being young, certain that a wonderful future awaited you, like a flower ready to blossom. ‘Maybe they’re admiring the view,’ she suggested.
Frank snorted, and with good reason. Tara, Katherine and Fintan never even noticed the vast expanse of sky and sea, except as something to escape over. The only view they were interested in was that of the crowds of boys who gravitated to the sea wall most evenings. There was a flourishing social scene with up to twenty there on any one night. Visitors from Limerick, Cork, Dublin, even Belfast.
To Tara’s dismay, visiting girls also appeared, in their sophisticated, trendy city clothes. Even when they realized they were wasting their time with Fintan they still kept coming. But at least none of the locals tried to muscle in. Sometimes girls from school hovered on the edge, but when no one welcomed them into