When he is getting into his car, a stranger who holds his cards close to his chest approaches.
‘I understand you have a dog you’d sell.’
‘A dog?’ says Deegan.
‘Aye,’ he says, ‘a gun dog. Do you still have him?’
‘Well, I do.’ Deegan is set back on his heel but he recovers quickly. ‘I bought him last September but I’ve little time for hunting and it’s a shame to see him wasted.’
Deegan goes on to describe a retriever. He begins to talk easily about pheasants and how his dog can rise them, how the soup off a pheasant tastes finer than anything you can find in a hotel. He talks about the turf basket and how it is never empty since the dog came to the house. As soon as he mentions turf, the man smiles but Deegan does not notice, for he is remembering the girl on her birthday and how she and the retriever now bathe in the same water. But it is too late to back down.
‘How much would you be asking?’
‘Fifty pound,’ says Deegan. It is a crazy price – he will be lucky to get the half of it – but the man doesn’t flinch.
‘If he is what you say, I might be interested. When can I see him?’
Deegan hesitates. ‘Let me think –’
‘Would now suit you?’
‘Now? Aye. I suppose it would.’
‘Right. I’ll follow you, so.’
That night Judge recognises O’Donnell before he comes through the door. He always leads with his bad foot and the foot always hesitates before crossing the door. If there is any speck of doubt in Judge’s mind, it vanishes when he gets the hunter’s scent. It is a mixture of silage and some kind of oil he uses to keep his hair in place. Deegan comes in first. Judge leaps up and rips his velvet jacket on the corner of the armchair.
‘Well, look at you in your finery,’ O’Donnell says, and begins to laugh.
Deegan, feeling slightly embarrassed, joins in the laughter. ‘’Tis only a thing the child put on him.’
Judge does his best to escape but every door off the kitchen is closed and it is only a matter of time before the two men catch him and place him, whimpering, in the boot of O’Donnell’s car.
‘There now,’ says Deegan. It is all he can do not to hold out his hand. ‘You won’t be sorry you bought him.’
‘Bought him?’ says O’Donnell. ‘When did you ever hear of a man buying his own dog?’
As Deegan watches the tail-lights sailing down the lane he tries not to think of the girl in her yellow dress, thanking him. He tries not to think of her sitting on his lap. He tells himself it doesn’t matter, that there is nothing he could have done. When he turns to go inside, something above him moves. He looks up. Martha is standing at their bedroom window in her nightdress, watching. She raises her hand and Deegan, feeling surprised, raises his. Maybe some part of her is glad the dog is gone. While he stands there watching, his wife’s hand closes into a fist and her fist shakes. So, it is all out in the open.
Needless to say, the girl wonders why Judge doesn’t wake her the next morning.
‘Where’s Judge?’ she says when she comes down. She looks at her parents. Deegan is sitting at the head of the table forcing hard butter into a slice of white bread. Her mother is holding a cup of black tea to her lips staring at her husband through the steam.
‘Ask your father,’ Martha says.
‘Daddy, where is he?’ Her voice is breaking.
Deegan coughs. ‘A man came looking for him.’
‘What man?’
‘His owner. His owner came looking for him.’
‘What do you mean, his owner? I own him. You gave him to me.’
‘In truth,’ Deegan says, ‘I didn’t. I found him in the wood and brought him home, that was all.’
‘But Judge is mine! You gave him to me.’
She runs outside and calls his name. She searches the land and all their hiding places: ‘The Spaw’ where he buries his bones, the tunnel in the hayshed, the grove beyond the hazels where the pheasants sleep. She searches until the knowledge that he is gone sinks in and changes her state of mind. Her father never loved her, after all. She decides she will run away but finds she isn’t even able to go to school. She eats little more than a sparrow. By the time a week has passed she has stopped talking. Every evening she goes out on the bicycle calling his name:
‘Judge! Judge!’ is heard all around that parish. ‘Judge!’
Deegan knows the girl has gone a bit mad but the girl will get over it. It is only a matter of time. Everything else in Aghowle stays much the same: the cows come down to the gate to be milked, the milk is put in creamery cans and collected. Martha’s hens peck at the seed, roost for the night and lay their eggs. The pan is taken down early in the mornings, put back on its hook and taken down again. And the boys fight as always over what is and isn’t theirs.
Sometimes, sitting in the wood with his flask and sandwiches, Deegan regrets what happened with the dog but most of the time it doesn’t cross his mind. The consequences, not their origin, strain him most for his wife no longer speaks to him, no longer sleeps at his side.
Sometimes Martha sees herself back in that morning in the wood, throwing stones at Judge. His tail is between his legs and he is running away. He is looking back and she is feeling sorry but she knows she is doing the right thing. So much of her life has revolved around things that never happened. She grills cheese on toast but the girl won’t have it. Martha sits on her bed and tries to convince her that she should get another dog, a little pup who can be the girl’s own, a dog that she can love.
‘We can look at the paper. There’s a litter for sale outside Shillelagh. Jim Mullins has them. You’d love a –’
‘What would you know about love?’
This strikes her sore. ‘I do know about love,’ Martha insists.
‘You don’t even love Daddy. All ye care about is money.’
