CHAPTER ONE

‘..At the corner of the village, just across from the pub, half a dozen men stood passing the time of day, conveying all the gossip to each other, adding on their own little strands. The corner, as it was known, was the focal point for any of the men in the village who had time on their hands and nothing to do with it. It was there every evening as the night drew in they would stand smoking their pipes and puffing fags, that stories and jokes had been passed on for generations. And it was there at the corner, they passed judgement on everything from the price of coal to the size of the breasts on the new young Irish wife of Baldy Cassidy, the widowed baker who had just recently remarried a woman twenty years younger than himself and was the envy of every healthy man in Westerbank.
Inside the pub a fug of smoke hung in the air and clung to the wood panelled walls yellowed from years of pipe and cigarette smoke. In the small snug at the far corner, a couple sat close together, the stain glass window above the swing door disguising their shape and making them look mysterious. Wooden shelves all around the bar were cluttered with the bric a brac gathered from generations of village life. Old football trophies. Darts shields. Faded pictures of young men in ancient football shirts who had gone on to greater things with Celtic or Rangers. A miner's lamp, always polished, stood by a framed black and white picture of grinning teenagers, most of whom had perished in the disaster of 1948.
Frankie and Tom nodded to a group of farmers they knew who were laughing as one of them was relating some kind of story. They all burst into lusty guffaws at the punchline.
The barman, who they guessed must be Mulranney, shoved the two pints of beer Tom requested across the bar to them and smiled.
'On the house,' he said, as Tom was about to hand him a five pound note.
Tom and Frankie looked at each other, surprised, almost suspicious.
'Cheers!' Frankie said, lifting his pint. 'If Loughran had given anybody a free drink we'd have thought we were about to get measured for a wooden waistcoat!' He smiled, at the barman, referring to the frugal former owner of the pub.
'Just getting to know all my customers,' Mulranney said, his smile showing a gap between his two front teeth that gave him a rakish look. 'Everybody I meet for the first time, is getting a free pint. Just the one, mind.'
'Best of luck to you. Cheers pal,' Tom said, lifting his pint to his lips. 'You'd better watch the Badger Ryan over in the corner there! He'll be in here with half a dozen disguises on for the next two weeks to get as much free drink as he can!' Tom joked, loud enough for the Badger Ryan to hear as well.
'Kiss my arse, McBride!,' the Badger said, 'Mr Mulranney here has become a personal friend of mine. And I've put him straight about some of the miserable shites that stoat in and out of here! You know, I might have even mentioned your name!' the Badger was sarcastic, his words slightly slurred. But he seemed to be taking the ribbing in good part.
Tom and Frankie laughed to Mulranney who winked back as though he had already got the measure of Mickey Ryan. It was easy to see why he was nicknamed the Badger. A silver streak of hair ran from the front of his fringe to the crown, and a pinched face and pointed nose, giving him the distinct look of a badger. He would know by now that Ryan was the equivalent of the local newspaper who could tell you everything that moved in and around Westerbank. He was nearly sixty now and though his face showed the deep lines of a man who spent most of his life working outside in all weathers, he still looked fresh. His cheeks, though lean, were ruddy from years of drinking, because he had nobody at home to keep him in check since his mother died ten years ago leaving him to run the small farm on his own. The Badger Ryan was an expert on who was buying what and how much for, and he was always ready to whisper the details of who was cutting whose grass, the local expression for illicit sexual liasons. Tom always felt a little sorry for him because he was the butt of everyone's humour, and he used to think he had the look sometimes of a lonely man who had seemed to arrive at middle age without ever having any joy in his life. Now and again Tom cooked dinner for him, but he could never keep going to him with drink.’