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Help with Irish dialogue
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10-08-2017 5:52pm#1
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Well, here it is. It's just a bit from the middle of the story. It's italicised as it's a flashback. Can't find the preview button so the formatting is probably all over the place.
Hopefully I haven't broken any forum rules
____________
—The First Communion of Carra McLeod (Chapter Title)
We’re driving home from church with every window wound down. The air is alive with summer bugs and the wind is hot sand in my eyes. Carra sits next to me on the rear seat; a knitted rabbit on her lap, her dark hair, now loose, whipping in the turbulence and making her laugh.
“When we get home, Joel, you’ve to go and see your Aunt Mil,” Da’ says.
“Aww, Da’. She’ll have me fetching wood. It’s so hot—”
“For Christ’s sake, just do as you’re told!”
“I’ll help you, Joel,” Carra whispers.
“No, Carra,” he tells her.
She hugs the rabbit to her chest and glowers beneath her frenzied hair.
#
Half an hour later, and I’m traipsing towards Braade with my hands deep in my pockets. The road bakes the air above it, pooling it with silver, while in the distance, beyond the surge and swell of the moor, the dark ridge of Cover’s Tor shivers in the heat.
Aunt Mil will give me iced lemonade, but not before I’ve piled wood thigh-high beside her stove, or pushed her ancient mower up and down the lawn until my arms shake. It isn’t fair that I have to sweat in the sun while Carra gets to play at home, even if today was her First Communion. I picture her sitting cross-legged on the sofa, drinking milk from a tall glass, cartoons playing out on the TV, and I squeeze my hands to fists.
Oh, she can have whatever she wants; Carra can. Because, she’s my father’s daughter. Because she’s Carra.
“Hoy Joel, what’s the craic?”
I hadn’t noticed the two boys sitting in shade by the side of the road: Robbie Quinn and his little brother, Niall, passing the stump of a cigarette back and forth.
“Not much,” I say.
Robbie stands up, stretches out his back. “Come on, we’re away up to Garrigan’s field,”
“Why?”
“See if we can’t get a chase from the old fella.”
“I’ve to go and see my Aunt Mil.”
“Ah, come on, Joel.”
#
Garrigan’s field is long and narrow and hemmed with tumbledown stone walls. We crunch across fresh stubble to a haystack at its centre.
“Look at the size of it,” Niall says. “Will we climb it?”
“That won’t fetch the farmer,” Robbie replies. He pushes his lighter between the bales and flicks the wheel.
“Jesus Christ, Rob!” Niall takes hold of his brother’s arm. “Come on, the whole field’ll go up.”
“Sure the stubble’s too short to burn. It’ll smoulder, is all.”
“Come on, though!”
“We’ll wait for the farmer.”
At first there’s just smoke. Lazy, grey tendrils, sweet as incense, drift out of the stack and disperse into the afternoon air. Within minutes, we hear the static crackle of burning hay deep within the bales, a lick of flame thickens and sheets, and now there’s no stopping it.
Niall is doing that thing he does when he’s scared or excited: bouncing on bent knees, feet primly together. He begins to cry and is told to be quiet and wait for the farmer. Robbie’s eyes flick between the burning stack and the gate at the end of the field — he takes a couple of steps backwards, and now I see the fear in him. He wants to run too, but he won’t. Not in front of his brother.
“Jeez, it’s really going now!” Niall says. “Robbie, I think the field will burn.”
“Wait.”
I want it to burn. I want the black, smouldering fingers creeping out into the stubble to thicken, gather pace, explode into flame like lit fuel. I want to see them coalesce and push out into the field, faster than I can walk. Faster than I can run. The blazing front will lengthen and build, orange to yellow to white. It will leap walls and trackways, whip up winds that will pull whole flocks of birds down into the flames like brief, fiery comets. Like flint-sparks.
“Keep your eye on that gate, Niall.”
“Here he is!”
Streams and rivers will boil. The tar of the roads will catch and the roads will become rivers themselves; rivers of fire snaking out across the moor and into villages and towns. Braade will burn. Calhame and Mullaghduff and Annagry — all will be ash and scorched stone. And, finally, when the smoke begins to clear and the moors are left charred and blackened, the fire will find a certain hillside. It will make its way along a dusty track to a neat, whitewashed house, and rub its back against the door.
#
Garrigan parks his Landrover in our front yard. I slip out of the passenger seat and watch him walk up to the porch door. It opens as he raises his hand to knock and Da’ pokes his head out, his face flushed and sweating.
“What’s he done?” he asks Garrigan.
“Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”
“I’m about to go out. What is it?”
“I don’t want to have to fetch the garda, Fin.”
My father glances over his shoulder and into the shadowed house.
“All right. Come in, Declan,” he says. “Joel, get yourself inside.”
The living room is dark and full of heat. There’s a half-finished glass of milk on a side-table and the television blares with an afternoon chat show. Da’ busies himself pulling back curtains and opening windows while Carra sits straight-legged on the sofa, her Communion dress rumpled, a single shoe on one foot.
“Away to your room, Carra,” he says, and she scoots off the sofa, squeezes past Garrigan in the doorway, and clatters up the stairs.
“Right, what’s this about?” Da’ asks, flicking off the TV.
I perch on the arm of a chair while Garrigan lingers in the doorway as if he doesn’t want to enter the small, airless room. There’s a dark smudge of soot on his forehead beneath his flat cap, and the warm scent of burnt timothy whenever he moves. He glances at my sister’s shoe lying upside-down on the carpet.
“Asleep, were ye?” he says.
“I’ve work to do, Declan. What’s this about?”
“Your boy there burned down a haystack.”
Da’ glares at me and I shrink back towards the doorway, towards Garrigan.
“Well, I can’t say it was your lad that set the fire, but he was there.”
“Is it out?”
“You can’t put out a bale fire, Fin. You just have to let it burn. I’ve pulled it down.”
My father stands in the centre of the room, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing the back of his neck. “Christ, have I not suffered enough?” he says, as if to himself.
“The hay will need to be paid for, Finbar.”
“And with your mother not long gone, God rest her.”
Garrigan pulls the cap from his head and holds it in both hands like he’s talking to a priest. “I’ll be speaking to Davey Quinn about it, too,” he says.
“I work my fingers to the bone for you and Carra.” It’s almost a whisper. “I work my hands bloody.”
“You hear me, Fin? The hay will need to be paid for.”
Da’ looks up at Garrigan as if he’d forgotten he was there. He crosses the room and takes him by the elbow, tells him that he will sort it, thanks him for not going to the garda, all the while ushering him towards the front door. Now I’m left alone, and there’s the slow tick of a clock on the wall, a creak of a floorboard in Carra’s room, and is that her I can hear crying?
“Your boy didn’t run, though,” Garrigan says. “There’s that, at least.”
The front door slams.
Da’ slips into the room, closes the door and leans his back against it, watching me.
“It wasn’t me, it was Robbie Quinn,” I say.
He undoes his belt and slides it from his jeans, thick leather hissing against denim.
“I swear it, Da’.”
“Come here,” he says.0 -
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