Chapter 15: Victory Mask

“Damn, I’ve missed you,” I whispered.

She giggled. “Wow, I didn’t realize how much!”

“Hey now! Hands above the waist!”

Heather cuddled up closer to me on the couch as the hubbub carried on in the rest of the great room. After all the greetings and chats following our guests’ arrival, dinner was soon going to be ready. With Frej volunteering to help with what remained of meal preparations, we’d been told to go hang out. Not being one to deny my parents’ wishes, I didn’t think twice to drag Heather to the comfort of the cushions while the twins and Lara sat at the table engaged with the Martins.

“Well, I was talking more about the long kissing session in your driveway,” Heather remarked.

“Yeah, I kind of forgot everyone was watching.”

“I loved it.”

“And I’m still flying too high to care!”

I couldn’t stop gazing at her, and she at me. I got so lost in her eyes that even the frequent outbursts of laughter from the table were far, far away. And to hold her, feel her form and warmth and energy against me ... absolute giddiness.

“What’s the plan this week?” she asked.

“Oh, the usual. Skiing, photography, music.”

“And when are we allowed to start ... behaving?”

“Behaving?” I echoed.

“Yeah ... Or was it misbehaving?”

I laughed, suddenly remembering. “Oh, I see. I’m sure we’ll find time to squeeze that in.”

She smiled suggestively. “There’s a blanket there.”

“Go for it, if you’re cold.”

She stretched her leg out and used her foot to drag the throw toward us. In another moment we were covered up, even cozier. Heather gave me an amused look as I felt her hand rubbing my chest, ever so gently. I stole a furtive glance at the others, but we were ignored for the moment.

“Also, you and me are going for a hike, day after tomorrow,” I said, only slightly distracted.

“Ooh, just the two of us?”

“Yeah. I thought you might like to go to this place that has these really cool cliffs and rock scrambling.”

“That sounds great!”

“Tomorrow everyone will probably want to go skiing. After that ... We’ll see. Anything you want to do... ?” I hissed. “Uh, besides that!”

“Lots of things I want to do. But like you said, we’ll have to... squeeze... them in.”

And what if I just carry her to my room and...

“Dinner!”

Heather giggled as she hopped up, eyeing the front of my jeans. “Behave, Matt!”

As she walked away, I just sat there, watching her. Heather is here! It still hadn’t completely sunk in. Apparently, it took longer than half an hour for her to transform from dream into reality. She grabbed a stack of plates from the counter, sharing a pleasant word and a room-brightening smile with Melissa. I could’ve sat there all night, just watching and taking her in. Surely I was the luckiest kid anywhere.

At last, I was forced to the table by my mom. It was a damn shame, because when Heather eventually noticed that I was following her around with my eyes, she started impishly throwing little faces my way.

I took my seat as Melissa set the platters of food on the table. We easily got swept into the lively discussion between the Irish quartet.

“Yes, Donegal, for all time it would seem. Where were you raised?” Tommy asked Aongus.

“County Lough.”

“Aye, you’re from the home of mighty Cú Chulainn, hi? How’s the weather there, hi?”

Aongus roared with laughter.

“What’s so funny? Who’s Coohullen?” Lara asked.

Tommy was laughing too. “No, we don’t laugh about that, hi!”

“To be fair in Donegal everyone uses the ‘hi’ too,” Muireann said.

“Except for us,” Tommy said. “Mam beat it out of us when we were young, since she’s Munster-born, hi?”

“She’s far from home then,” Aongus joked.

“As are we over here,” Tommy said. “Thankfully!” he added, gaining a sharp phrase in Irish from Muireann.

Mairead laughed and said something as well, and the rest of us could only grin as the conversation temporarily shifted languages.

“But let’s not keep everyone waiting,” Tommy returned, taking Mairead and Lara’s hands in his.

We paused to say a word of thanks for the food, but the Irish contingent immediately returned to discussing their homeland, though more calmly now as savory distractions abounded. The feast was delicious.

Eventually louder conversation took over the table again as the wine bottles became lighter and the eating itself slowed down. It was quite animated, what with Tommy and Aongus sparring and laughing about pretty much everything, Lara egging them on with all manner of questions, and Frej needling everyone as if he were Dublin-born himself.

“Imagine Aongus, Frej, and Tommy together in a room, completely drunk,” Heather whispered to me.

“I’m not sure I even have to imagine it!” I whispered back.

“I know, right... ? Tommy’s pretty funny,” she added.

“I told you he was.”

“Do you think he’d switch beds with me?” she asked innocently.

“Oh, I’m sure he would. Not sure if Muireann would like that, though.”

“Why not? Then she could chaperone for him and Lara.”

I frowned at her. “Huh? I meant about us being in my room.”

“Why would Muireann care about that?”

“I get the feeling she’d find that weird.”

“Come on, she must know that we, you know, behave.”

I sniggered. “I see that’s going to be the word of the week.”

“I sure hope so!”

“Anyway, why would she have to chaperone Lara and Tommy?” I asked.

“Lara likes him quite a bit, I’d say.”

I frowned. “Sure she does. But in that way?”

“Maybe not ... Not yet, anyway.”

Abruptly, Lara looked our way. I knew she couldn’t hear us, but perhaps she felt our glances in her peripheral vision. Or maybe she heard our thoughts.

“What are you two whispering about?” she asked.

Heather and I just laughed.

As soon as dinner had been cleared, the twins and Heather’s parents gathered their instruments and set their chairs before the couches.

“Time for music!” Aongus cried, clearly excited beyond measure.

Heather leaned close to me, whispering, “Quick, go save us the small couch. I’ll be right there!”

I laughed as I went to secure the seats. I didn’t think anyone would mind, though; the Irish quartet would be sitting on the chairs to play, and that left Frej and my moms to share the long couch. I’m sure they won’t mind!

Heather had gone into Lara’s room, and she soon returned with a big bundle of patterned cloth in her arms. As she bounced onto the cushion next to me, I gave her a funny look.

“What’s with the extra blanket?”

“It’s a quilt!” she corrected, rather chipper about it.

As she tossed our fleece throw aside and spread hers over us, I realized I was going to be quite warm during the music session, probably for more reasons than one. Then I noticed the print on the quilt.

“Dinosaurs?”

She grinned at me. “Yep!”

“That’s random...”

“Uh, no it isn’t.”

I frowned at her for a moment as something tried to surface, but my thoughts were interrupted by Tommy calling out to us.

“Heather, come on, join us! Aongus says you brought your flute.”

“Brought it, sure. Play it, not really,” she quipped. She then held up her hand, which sported a Band-Aid on her index finger. “But you’ve been saved by the fact that I cut my finger yesterday.”

“Naw, that’s a shame!”

The ruckus continued as Tommy and Heather’s dad tuned up their guitars. Mairead was showing her concertina to Muireann as she rosined up her bow.

“Aren’t you going to play?” Heather asked me.

“Electric guitar?” I laughed.

“Well, no. But my dad brought his bodhrán.”

“His what?”

“It’s a drum. He’d totally let you play it.”

“Um ... I think I’ll stay here next to you on the love seat.”

“The love seat? Hmm, when you put it that way, forget the drum ... Hey, Lara!”

She bounced over to us. “You two look cozy,” she chirped. Then she leaned over and whispered, “Are you wearing the red heels?”

I rolled my eyes as Heather stuck her foot out rather dramatically from under the quilt.

“Aw, that’s too bad,” Lara whispered again, eyeing her sock.

“It is!” Heather agreed. “Very sad. But hey, ask my dad to show you what’s in that round bag.”

Lara shrugged and then did as asked.

“Nice one,” I said, watching as Aongus unpacked the frame drum with obvious pleasure and handed it to her. Lara was a mix of childlike hesitation and eagerness.

“She obviously wanted to play,” Heather remarked. “More than you, at any rate.”

“But less than you want to play,” I remarked, shifting in my seat to make sure that the blanket covered us well again.

Heather giggled as her hand slid away from my middle and up to my chest again. “It’s not my fault if you feel good.”

“I never said anything about fault.”

“Oh good. I’m still misbehaving, then.”

“Come, call out a set, then,” Aongus announced. “Muireann, what do you have?”

She suggested a few tunes, and they quickly settled on something that Heather’s parents knew.

“Rathlin Island, followed by Michael Kennedy’s then,” Muireann confirmed.

“And not too fast. Don’t kill us first thing,” Mairead said, smiling.

Tommy laughed. “Plenty of time for that later!”

He established a rhythm on his guitar, a loping yet energetic feel. Muireann raised a brow at Mairead, and with a nod they began sounding a melody, in unison.

“That’s pretty neat, how they can play the same thing together!” I whispered to Heather.

“It’s kind of like a common language,” she agreed.

“If you speak it. Do you know this song too?”

She shook her head. “Not especially. There’s a lot of tunes out there. I recognize it, but I couldn’t play it.”

My surprise grew as they continued for a couple of minutes. How do they learn all this? But then I started picking up on the fact that the melody was being repeated. Specific figures stood out to the ear and kept coming back, even if a little varied each time.

Aongus was showing Lara how to use the bodhrán, holding the frame drum vertically in his lap and beating the skin with a wooden stick. Lara was grinning, since he made it look easier than it probably was.

“Hup!” Tommy called, and Mairead and Muireann switched to a different melody a moment later.

It was fascinating and certainly made me wish to participate, as impossible as that was. That Heather’s mom and the twins could be making this music not more than a few hours after first meeting was pretty damn cool.

Lara had the drum now, and Aongus was having her stroke simple beats on it, a much simpler pattern than what he’d demonstrated. The sound was rather boomy, until he showed her how to put her palm in the back side and dampen the vibrations.

Tommy kicked his leg out in front of him, and the music came to a close. We all clapped and hooted.

“Wonderful!” Mairead cooed.

“Lara, fantastic on the goat skin there,” Tommy called out.

“Um ... I have no idea what I’m doing! But it’s not really goat skin, is it?”

Aongus laughed. “It is. But if you don’t believe me, I can put a little water on it and smell it.”

Lara wrinkled her face. “No thanks! I trust you.”

“Muireann, do that set you were working on a few weeks ago,” Tommy called out.

“Sure.” She turned to Mairead. “It’s Apples in Winter followed by Humours of Whiskey and then Silver Spire into Green Fields of Glentown?”

Mairead kept nodding until the last one. “Not the Glentown, though it’s an excellent tune. But please, play it regardless. I will need a rest by then, surely!”

“We can stop after Silver Spire.”

“Nonsense, play it through.”

“So Lara,” Aongus instructed, “in this one, you’ll find that there’s a different sort of beat, at first. We call the last set of tunes we just played ‘reels’, and this set will begin on ‘jigs’ ... I’ll help you.”

I leaned in to Heather. “These song names are pretty funny.”

“Yeah, and these are pretty normal ones! They probably ran out of normal names a long time ago.”

Muireann established a pulse with her foot, which Tommy heard and joined with light taps on the body of the guitar. Then the fiddle began to sound. Mairead listened for a bit, and then merged in on her concertina. The pulse was addictive and I was tapping my foot even though Tommy kept waiting to play. Even Aongus held Lara at bay.

The two women played together for a time, smiling at each other as they pushed the notes around. As the energy heightened, Tommy let out a whoop and then set himself in position. All at once he entered, but this time playing the melody on his guitar, adding a crisp attack to the sound.

I sat up a little more, giving Heather a glance. She smiled at me. I was starting to get the hang of hearing the repetitions of the music. The tunes seemed symmetric: one phrase would be played twice, and then a second phrase would be played twice, and then it would all start over. Indeed, as I felt that another round of the tune was completed, Tommy switched into chords right then, confirming that I was on to the structure.

Aongus had given Lara a cue to start thumping out a beat. It was very exciting as Tommy added a cool syncopation to the busy notes singing out from the two higher instruments. My knee was bouncing, and Heather joined me, moving her body up and down, teasing me.

“Hup!” Tommy called.

Well, I thought I was getting it. As Mairead and Muireann switched into the second tune, I started getting turned around. The phrases weren’t lining up where they should, as if the women were adding extra beats by mistake. But obviously not, because they stayed together note for note. Tommy didn’t help me out either, playing with weird accents that keep my head spinning.

Heather was chuckling beside me.

“What?” I asked.

“Confused yet?”

“A little! How did you know?”

“Your foot tapping got a little weird there!”

“It’s a weird beat, I think.”

“You’ll get used to it,” she whispered, patting my leg.

Even Lara had stopped, and Aongus was leaning in, moving his hand. He was counting to three with his fingers, I noticed. I said the numbers in time with his hand movements, and slowly it started to make a little more sense. It still felt a little drunken, but by the time I thought I might just be hearing it, Tommy called out again – “Hup!” – even as his strumming abruptly changed to a faster pace. And a different feel...

The sound brightened considerably as they switched to a major key and the energy picked up. Mairead was grinning and clearly on the edge of keeping it going. Muireann was quite into it, moving her body in time with the rhythm Tommy was laying down. She drove on with her fiddle. She certainly wasn’t struggling like Mairead, though, as her notes sounded out loud and clear, the fast melody flowing from her as naturally as our creek outside.

“Woo!” Aongus cried. He’d stopped working with Lara and was looking back and forth between Tommy and Muireann, grinning a mile wide.

“My dad is impressed,” Heather whispered.

“You don’t say!”

“Because they’re really good,” she added.

“You don’t say! This is fucking awesome.”

The music grew in intensity for a minute and Mairead was clearly tiring out. Muireann saved her by issuing the “Hup!” this time, a pure sound that added a flare to the excitement. Tommy changed keys, playing even faster now, a pulsing single chord that sounded almost like he was playing the strings with drumsticks. He stopped abruptly, muting the guitar dead and leaving a sudden hole...

And then the twins bit into the start of the tune together. It was a dark and driving thing that was a bit more complicated. Muireann’s fiddle mostly stayed on the lowest strings at first, growling at us. She was leaning in toward Tommy, her long skirt dancing as her legs flexed, her body moving in time with the continued guitar pulses.

“Sorry, but I need to take this blanket off!” I whispered to Heather.

“Getting too hot bouncing around?” she said, grinning.

“For sure!”

“Aw, and I thought it was me!” she pouted.

“Well, that too!”

She started giggling. “I didn’t realize you liked this music so much! Haven’t the twins played for you?”

“Not this stuff!” I whispered back.

Everyone was riveted, unable to keep from moving at least a foot or a hand. Lara, who wasn’t about to interrupt the twins, passed Aongus the bodhrán. He took it and quietly added a pattering beat to the proceedings. Tommy encouraged him with a yell.

The intensity picked up even more. Muireann wasn’t struggling, but this definitely was a challenge now! Her bow flashed, every so often flicking back and forth to add a biting edge to a note, or bouncing on the strings to clatter through a phrase. Tommy was getting rather crazy on the guitar, throwing in accents in all manner of places, which only drove the energy on even more. He was all smiles as he threw his head back and rode his sister’s playing in bliss, his chords moving all over the neck as his fingers danced. Even Mairead started again, though not the melody but a rhythmic figure, her delicate hands pushing and pulling the bellows and helped along by her knee.

“Jesus, this is killer!” I whispered to Heather.

“You don’t say,” she teased.

Muireann called out with a hoot and Tommy stuck his foot out before him. With a few sharp notes, the tune ended, and we all erupted in yells and clapping. Heather whistled loudly beside me, making everyone jolt and laugh.

“Wow, you’re quite a fiddle player, Muireann,” Mairead said with respect, once the energy had settled a little.

“She better be!” Tommy cried. “She placed second at the All-Ireland last summer.”

“Tommy!” Muireann scolded.

But at the same time, Mairead’s eyes widened, and Aongus cried out in surprise. In another second he was raising and lowering his arms at her in praise. Muireann turned quite red and gave Tommy a glare, though I wasn’t sure why she’d bother, since he’d never see it. Though maybe he feels it... !

“My dear, did you really?” Mairead said, her voice enthused.

“It was in my age group, not the senior division,” she explained quietly.

“Regardless, that is fantastic!” Aongus chimed in.

Tommy was smiling as wide as I’d ever seen him. “Next summer she’ll win, I’m sure of it! And that’s saying something, for someone from Donegal!”

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Heather.

“I’m not really sure.”

Melissa asked before I could. “What are you talking about?”

“In Ireland there’s a yearly fleadh where music competitions are held, for the honor of All-Ireland title,” Aongus explained. “Mairead and I have been to it many times, though it was ages ago now. Remember dear?”

“Certainly,” Mairead said. “Though I don’t recall when we last went. And come on, it wasn’t ages, man!”

“Bobby Casey won the fiddle title that time, I’m sure of it.”

“Oh, then that surely puts us to be older than we’d like to admit,” Mairead joked.

“Maybe only with Muireann and myself,” Tommy quipped back, eliciting a giggle from her. He gestured to the rest of us. “They all surely don’t know Bobby, so your secret is safe...”

“Fantastic that you saw him back then!” Muireann said, her eyes alight.

“It was a great time,” Mairead agreed. “But Muireann, how incredible to place second!”

“As I say, it was in the junior division.”

“You’re far too modest,” Mairead dismissed. “At least back then, you had to be a county winner if not a provincial winner to even enter.”

“Indeed, she is both of those, mam,” Tommy said, the pride in his voice evident.

Muireann again seemed to want to sit down and shrink into the cushions, but my moms and Frej were sitting there already. Everyone was smiling big though, and congratulating Muireann on her previously secret accomplishments.

“Well, this is grand!” Aongus bellowed, stretching in his chair.

“Can I get you more wine, Mairead, Aongus?” Melissa asked.

Mairead gave a nod. “I will certainly need it to keep up with these two!”

“Yes, please, dear,” Aongus answered. “Frej, liven up there! I thought I saw you half-asleep during that set!”

The Dane raised his wine glass as he sat on the end of the couch next to Sarah. “Oh, I am lively. But also quite comfortable. Carry on!”

“Aongus, give us a song, yeah?” Tommy called.

“Oh, I don’t know. What should it be?”

“Anything, man. But something to wake up the folks.”

As he took up his guitar, Aongus considered. “Ah, I have one referring to your part of the country. The Bold Doherty?”

Tommy laughed. “Aye, we know the one...”

“Please, join in,” he urged the twins. “I will take any help you can offer!”

He played through some introductory chords on his own and then began to sing. “Me name is Bold Doherty from the north country... “

Heather’s dad had a rich voice, and even if it wasn’t very refined or practiced, it had a certain charm to it that let me follow this Doherty character around the hills of the northlands, arguing with his mother, drinking and generally having a good time with the ladies.

“And if I had a glass with a mile to the bottom, I’d drink to you Molly, beside Donegal, with me: fol de dol day, fol de dol laydiddy, fol de dol day ally fol de dol day... !“

Tommy and Muireann had joined in, and that emboldened his voice even further. By the last two verses, we all were singing the syllables at the end. Aongus threw in an extra repeat for the pure joy of it all.

“A cracking version, man!” Tommy complimented as Aongus waved his hands in protest. “But this Doherty, what a scoundrel!”

“Indeed,” Aongus said. “Though be careful what you say of him. Mairead is a great fan of the man.”

That elicited a smirk from his wife. “I feel for Nora McGlynn,” she said.

“Oh, she sends her regards to you, mam,” Tommy returned, gaining a laugh. “Between us, I think Doherty is really a Scot, though,” he added. “We are much better behaved than this man makes us out to be!”

“Is that so,” Aongus replied. “But are ye not all practically Scottish up in Inis Eoghain?”

Tommy guffawed. “Aye, man, aye aye aye! We are indeed. Perhaps that’s why me mam gives me such trouble after all, the star of Munster herself!”

Even though half the time I had no idea what anyone was talking about, I found my face hurting from all the laughing. I knew I was far too caught up in things when I even laughed at something Muireann said in Irish. Heather gave me shit about that for a good while.