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There’s a fairytale shimmer to the darkening evening.
The lights of cottages in the distance glow like Bedouin fires in the night and Eoin only feels a slight race of his heart as the sun leaves the sky.
Wind in the trees, the distant rush of the occasional car, and hooves upon cobblestones.
Nothing out here frightens him.
Though, he muses, the first time he’d ridden Percy through miles of desert behind enemy lines - he hadn’t felt particularly scared either.
In retrospect, that had probably been because of the amphetamines.
For all that Percy had been practically bomb-proof back in Africa, in Ireland he’d seemed to spook at every streetcorner and shadowy patch on the ground.
But it’s been months of taking him out along the roads and muddied leaves and now his gait is its usual stubborn, determined plod beneath the sun.
(Or, more accurately for this side of the world, grey skies and near-constant rain).
Eoin, for his part, has gotten back into the rhythm of riding everyday and no longer winces each time he swings himself down from Percy’s back.
(“Honestly, Eoin. When the postmen told me you’d sent me something back from the desert, I thought it might be a nice bit of local jewellery.”
“I sent letters, too,” Eoin had protested, even as his Ma gave him a firmly arched brow.
“A horse, Eoin.”
Cautious of a smack, he decided against mentioning that his Ma had set Percy up in a lovely paddock and that his ruddy coat was well-sheened with oil).
There’s been a sense of joy in the air ever since he and Paddy and Ambrose set foot in England and made their pilgrimage back home. Though they’re still licking their wounds, the boys, or what’s left of them, are home for Christmas.
For the first time in years, the McGonigal family home is filled to the brim.
It makes sense it had also been the first time in years that Eoin had felt the need to escape the chaos and disappear off somewhere no one could find him.
Eoin leans forward over Percy’s neck and wraps his arms around him. His mane is soft and lightly tousled from the evening breeze.
The cold threatens snow.
Percy snorts at a kiss to his head and flicks an ear, more than used to being at the receiving end of Eoin’s affection.
“Where are we going, huh?” he asks and Percy doesn’t bother to respond. If there’s a method to the turns he’s taking, Eoin’s not in on the secret.
They’ve been heading through fields and down muddied trails and across ill-paved streets for hours now.
“Alright,” Eoin says, shrugging and straightening up. He lets his face tip upwards into the wintery air, closing his eyes and almost feeling the ghost of snow on his lashes. Sometimes, he loses himself and wonders if this is all a desert dream.
A mirage.
Pretending he’s back home, free from duty and death and dysentery.
Anytime now the heat will creep back in and he’ll realise the stinging of his cheeks is from sunburn. That scurrying hedgehogs are scorpions and the distant rumble of thunder is artillery.
Logically, he knows all the boys have their hang-ups. Even Paddy sometimes startles and looks around as if there’s some place he’s meant to be. But Eoin’s head has always had a tendency to reside within the clouds.
It’s just worse these days.
That’s how the hours or minutes pass.
Time disappears into the ether.
The roar of a motorcar doesn’t creep up on them in a peace like this.
Eoin doesn’t even really react.
At this stage, it’s just part of the ambient soundtrack to his ride. The occasional car, the occasional cart - sometimes, other horses or men out walking their dogs. Or sheep toddling across the road, providing Percy with ample opportunity to stop for a rest and nose at some foliage.
But the car doesn’t slow as it approaches, which is more of an indication than anything else about precisely who is behind the wheel.
Regular, civilised people tend to have more care.
Eoin doesn’t spend much time with regular, civilised people.
The rattle of the engine, louder and louder, isn’t so dissimilar from an army jeep. Neither is the disregard for road rules as it swerves and sidles up alongside where Eoin and Percy maintain a steady pace.
“Your Ma says dinner’s ready,” Paddy yells from the car, revving its stupid engine until it makes a choking sound that definitely cannot be healthy.
If he’s trying to spook the horse, it doesn’t work.
Eoin looks over and gives Percy a firm pat on the neck for being such a good boy.
“I told her I’d be back by six,” Eoin complains, nudging Percy into a trot just to force Paddy to change his stupid gears to catch up.
He hadn’t been around when Eoin fell asleep the night before and he hadn’t been there when Eoin had woken in the morning. But it hadn’t been hard to guess where Paddy had gone.
The absence of a patriarch in their homes is a sting that hasn’t yet dulled. Eoin’s Ma had invited Paddy’s Ma around for Christmas but, like her son, she seemed to prefer to stew in solitude.
Eoin’s not entirely sure Paddy would have ventured from Mountpleasant House and the boat on the lake if it weren’t for Eoin.
He’s swearing under his breath as the cobblestones crunch beneath the car’s wheels and then he’s rattling along at the same pace as Eoin and Percy.
“It is six,” Paddy points out and Eoin glances up at the dark skies. He hadn't noticed the last of the light vanish.
He shrugs. “So it is.”
It’s not clear when Paddy turned into his Ma’s errand-boy, but it’s always been oddly endearing - the way he jumps to obey her every command. Typically unsettled by women, the exceptions seem to be maternal figures and those he doesn’t consider really count as members of the opposite sex - namely, Eoin’s feral sisters.
Eoin fiddles with the little plait he’d put in Percy’s mane and wrinkles his nose at the exhaust coming from Paddy’s car.
So much for a peaceful ride.
Still, Paddy’s dressed in what passes as his Sunday best. A thick roll-neck sweater, face only slightly littered with stubble. It’s almost like before the war.
He looks very handsome. And irritated.
“Where the fuck is your army watch, huh, lad?”
“They’re covered in radium,” Eoin tells him, very matter-of-fact. “I’m not going to wear poison.”
“So get a different one.”
Eoin’s not sure he wants one. He’s kind of liking not knowing if perhaps time has ceased to exist around him. It’s a pleasant, floaty kind of feeling. Like maybe he’s simply one of those snowflakes floating down from the sky. Caught on the wind and drifting so aimlessly.
“I’ll think about it,” he concedes, though he doesn’t mean it.
Then, Eoin looks out at the road, and across the darkened fields around them. He knows where he is now. The surroundings have a greater clarity. Old stone walls, a signpost that’s seen better days, and a letterbox at the top of a winding driveway.
“Alright. Dinner time,” Eoin says, sighing and briefly stretching his shoulders. He has no intention to attract his Ma’s ire. Or for Paddy’s brow to furrow further than it already has - edging into a territory that looks dangerously like concern.
“Race you back, yeah?” Paddy says, sounding half as if he might be joking. But Eoin’s never been one to back down from a challenge.
“Sure,” he agrees and, without warning, nudges Percy firmly with his legs and steers him sharply to the left.
It’s not as if Eoin’s not going to cheat. Paddy’s car confines him to the roads. Eoin has no such restrictions.
“Motherfucker,” Paddy mutters as he scrambles to put the car in gear, but Eoin only just manages to hear it over the rush of wind through his curls as Percy shifts like a fire’s been lit beneath him.
The roar of the car disappears into the distance.
Percy is all too happy to jump small fences and stone walls to take a wild shortcut across the paddocks.
Even Eoin is surprised at the speed they manage, shrieking with laughter as Percy charges through a ford and sends shocks of cold water up both their legs.
Old McLennon’s sheep watch them in bemusement as the two go careening past, Eoin clinging for dear life to his saddle and grinning like a maniac.
If he closes his eyes, it’s like flying through the sky. Hurtling towards the ground but not reaching it. Trapped in a hurricane.
Both Eoin and Percy are panting when they come to an abrupt stop, directly between Paddy’s advancing car and the front of the McGonigal house. The squeal of brakes doesn’t make either of them flinch.
Eoin strokes a trembling flank and tries not to look smug.
“You’re insane, you know that?" Paddy says, kicking his door open and dragging himself out.
Eoin’s smiling. “But I won, didn’t I?”
“I’d call it a draw,” Paddy says, eyeing Percy suspiciously as he walks around the car and reaches up to pat Eoin’s leg affectionately.
“Of course,” Eoin says, accepting Paddy’s steady hand on his hip as he swings down onto the ground.
Here, in the dark, it’s easy to press close. Paddy’s mouth is cold and wind-chapped but Eoin melts into it anyway, raising a hand to touch his cheek.
He smells like whiskey and cigarettes and petrol.
Eoin kisses him again. “Thank you for coming to get me,” he murmurs, as Paddy touches his cheek and presses a curl back behind his ear.
“You’d better wash up before anyone sees you.”
He’s probably got a point.
Eoin’s splattered with water and mud, curls askew, and a few scratches on his arms from where Percy had dragged him through tree branches.
“You’re right,” he says, before pressing Percy’s reins into Paddy’s cold hands. “You don’t mind cleaning Percy up for me, do you? Thanks, love.”
Eoin kicks off his boots at the front door and strides inside before Paddy can protest the unloved task of untacking, watering, and giving Percy a brush.
He can hear Percy snorting and backing up on the cobblestones. Perhaps he should feel bad, but the only regret he’s experiencing is being unable to watch the chaos that is about to ensue.
–
Having dried himself thoroughly and styled his wretched curls, Eoin pads from the bathroom to his room and smiles at the sight of the man on his bed.
Paddy has, very suspiciously, changed into a different shirt.
“Everything go alright with Perce?” he asks, casual and non-chalant as he begins to dress in nicer, cleaner clothes.
Paddy glares.
His hair is also distinctly less tidy than it had been thirty minutes ago.
“That’s good,” Eoin says, leans in to kiss Paddy’s cheek, and then heads for the open bedroom door.
“Come on. We don't want to be late.”
–
“Everyone, this is my girlfriend Patty,” Ambrose announces, and Eoin can’t help his raised brows.
“Who’s copying who now?” he mumbles under his breath and watches as his sister Letty hides a laugh in her drink.
Gathered around the dining table, most of them are already a few wines deep by the time Ambrose bustles in through the front door, covered in snow and with a lovely young woman tucked beneath an arm.
“It’s lovely to meet you, darling,” Ma gushes, grasping Patty by her freckled arms. “We were beginning to think Ambrose might be alone forever.”
“On account of all the venereal diseases,” Letty mutters, and then swears under her breath as one of Eoin’s other sisters kicks her under the table.
“You’d know all about those, with that English husband of yours, wouldn’t you?” snipes Cattie and Letty smiles sweetly in return.
“People in glass houses, Catherine.”
Cattie’s jaw sets. “I’ll have you know, there’s nothing wrong with my husband’s -”
“Could you all please behave for ten fucking minutes?” Ina snaps, the oldest of the bunch and clearly sick of having to listen to all of this carry-on.
Ma graciously pretends not to notice.
There’s a slight rearrangement as everyone sits down and food is set out across a collection of tables pushed together that’s had to become larger and larger by the years. Ma sits at one end and Dick, as the eldest son, gets the rickety chair on the other.
There’s good-natured quarrelling over slicing up a roast chicken, a gripe about Ma’s inclusion of turnips, and Peggy returns to the kitchen to grab another couple of bottles for the table before anyone’s started eating.
“Paddy wants to say grace,” Letty pipes up, throwing him under the bus with such ease it might appear to an outsider that he was simply another of her troublesome brothers.
“Oh, don’t tease him, Violetta,” Ma huffs with a roll of her eyes as Paddy glares daggers at a smirking Letty.
“I’m a very Godly man,” Paddy says, deadpan, and Letty opens her mouth - presumably to say something rude - when Dick talks over her in the world’s hastiest ‘thank you for this meal, Lord’ that a Catholic family has ever seen.
And then it’s not entirely unlike an army mess hall as Yorkshire puddings disappear and gravy is heaped indiscriminately over their plates.
“So, Eoin,” Patty says, smiling over her glass, all perfect honey-blonde curls. She seems more at ease now than when she’d first arrived to the madhouse. The extra liquor he’d slipped into her glass had clearly worked. “I hear you had a wild animal shipped home from Africa.”
“Patty, sweetheart, his name is actually Blair,” Ambrose corrects, then swears under his breath in a way that leads Eoin to believe Patty’s stepped on his foot with her respectable heels
Eoin, for his part, rolls his eyes and spares an amused glance with Paddy - whose own raised brows indicate Ambrose will be paying for that comment later.
“A horse,” Eoin clarifies. “His name is Percy. He’s in the field out back.”
Ma smiles at this. “I planted those clovers for him,” she says, and Eoin nudges his shoulder against hers affectionately. “And I found some sugar cubes for him this morning.”
“Good,” Paddy says. “Fatten him up for the glue factory,” and then yelps as Eoin smacks him.
“They only use the hooves, I think,” Dick points out. “No point in fattening him up for the glue factory.”
“Hush, the both of you. No one’s selling Percy,” Ma tries, unsuccessfully, to mediate.
“I never said sell,” Paddy points out. “I’m thinking of it more as a donation.”
Rolling his eyes again, Eoin sighs and reaches for his glass.
“We can go for a ride tomorrow, if you’d like,” he offers, meeting Patty’s warm gaze. “Old McLeary next door doesn’t mind us borrowing one of his geldings.”
“I like the idea of a gelding,” Patty says, smile razor-sharp, and Eoin immediately mirrors it.
“Oh, you’ll fit in just fine around here,” Letty remarks, tipping her head back as she laughs.
Ambrose rubs at the bridge of his nose.
“Perhaps introducing you all was a mistake.”
–
There’s barely enough space in the living room for all of them. Letty takes possession of the couch to sprawl atop it, hand on her food-swollen belly like it’s the babe they’re all expecting.
Eoin has to take the floor and isn’t surprised when Paddy collapses beside him on the rug.
Everyone’s had too much to drink and too much to eat and they’re all hazy-sweet in the joy of being home.
Ambrose is groaning when he lowers himself to the floor, leaning against the couch. It seems that Patty is the only one who’s adequately paced herself, delicately stepping over to tuck herself into Ambrose’s side.
Ma’s already put herself to bed and both Cattie and Peggy have been collected, more than a little bit merry, by their long-suffering husbands.
“Don’t step on the sleepy puppies,” Dick warns as he takes his brandy to what was once their father’s chair.
Eoin would bite at the gentle teasing but, curled up by the fire like this, he can’t deny the comparison is apt.
Paddy raises his head up only as he takes a swig from a glass of whiskey.
Their fingers brush against the faded burgundy of the rug.
Eoin feels a liquor-sweetened smile on his mouth. It’s like being a teenager again. The barest touch makes his heart start up into action.
He curls his index finger around Paddy’s middle one and laughs quietly as he meets Paddy’s gaze and the man winks at him.
It's not even a very good wink. More of a blink if anything.
Eoin spares Paddy this criticism.
It’s a secret. Just for them.
They’re both a little too drunk. No one cares.
Least of all Letty, who’s demanding Paddy relinquish possession of his whiskey and pass it to her instead.
“Should I get the guitar out?” Ambrose mumbles, to a chorus of ‘No’s’ from everyone including his darling Patty.
Instead, Ina comes in from where she’s been drying the dishes and turns the radio on. There’s a crackle as she tunes it and then soft Christmas carols fill the evening air.
A fitting companion to the crackle of the fire.
Eoin doesn’t expect to fall asleep like this. He’s not even aware he’s drifted off until he feels the brush of his mother’s hand through his hair.
It’s already morning.
His head hurts as he sits up and leans against the couch.
“You two shouldn’t be sleeping on the floor like that,” she scolds, even while she passes him a fresh coffee and eases herself onto the couch above him.
“At least there’s carpet.”
They’ve slept on worse. Mud, rocks, flat-packed dirt.
“His back’s not what it used to be,” Ma points out, nodding towards Paddy who’s quirked lip reveals he’s not as asleep as he seems.
“Careful, woman, I’m still young yet.”
Ma simply rolls her eyes and pats Eoin’s curls where his head rests against her knee.
“Well, what am I meant to do about it?” Eoin reasons. “He’s as stubborn as a mule.”
“Stubborn as that awful horse of yours,” Paddy mutters, grimacing and raising himself up from the floor.
Ma and Eoin share a look. Paddy notices.
“My back’s fine,” he insists, leaning down to steal Eoin’s coffee as if he can prove this despite the wince.
“Sure thing, love,” Ma says. “In that case, would you mind helping out with the fence? That post's been broken since last Christmas.”
“I thought Letty’s useless man was going to do that,” Paddy mutters, leaning against the arm of the couch and drinking Eoin’s coffee.
“Well, you know,” Eoin says. “You can’t trust a Major to get anything done.”
“Not without his Captain, no,” Paddy replies, pointedly, and stares at Eoin until he relents.
Eoin groans and scrambles up to his feet. “Alright, alright, I’ll help. But you’ve got to give me back my coffee.”
“Make your own.”
Eoin laughs, leans down to kiss his mother’s cheek, and makes his way into the kitchen. As he makes another pot of coffee, he watches his Ma lean close to say something to Paddy that makes him roll his eyes.
Paddy says something back that makes her touch his arm gently, and then gets up to follow Eoin into the kitchen.
“What are you two talking about?” he asks, as Paddy looks around, and then presses up against Eoin’s back and nudges his face into a bony shoulder.
“You.”
“What about me?”
Paddy huffs. “Do you always have to know everything?” he complains, though there’s a fondness to his tone as he tugs Eoin around to face him.
Eoin’s brows furrow. “Yes? Obviously.” He’s always been insatiably curious. And easily distracted, it would seem, as Paddy presses a kiss to his mouth, and then another.
“Be patient,” he insists, and Eoin sighs.
“Fine. But only because I’ve not got a watch.”
He’s still laughing as Paddy pinches his hip and abandons him in the kitchen to head outside.
Eoin’s going to find out what it is.
Eventually.