Rejection

I'm half and half. Me Dad's a Muggle. Mam didn't tell him she was a witch 'til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him ...

Seamus Finnigan, PS, p. 93.

Rejection

by Niall Finnigan

She was sitting in the corner of The Stag's Head, sipping a lager and laughing at something her sister had said. She was wearing a classy red dress that clung to her in interesting ways, and her curls glinted red-gold in the firelight. She looked such a nice, natural girl, not like the screeching show-offs from Dublin city. After I had edged into the seat next to her, it only took me ten minutes to establish that her name was Maeve O'Brien, to find out that she loved old castles and folk music and to ask for her telephone number.

"I don't have a telephone," she said. "Give me your number instead."

Surprised, I wrote it out on a beer mat, promising to pick her up from where she lived. "I don't think so, Niall!" she replied. "I live in County Roscommon. Let's just meet at the cinema."

"What?" I must have heard wrongly. "If you live that far away in Roscommon, how do you plan to get to Dublin?"

"Sure, it'll be easier for me than for you, so it will now," she said cryptically.

When a stunning woman is sending out the come-hither, a man can ignore the obvious. I realise now that she was keeping secrets from me for months, but Maeve was such an entrancing girl that I completely overlooked it. When she shook her head and closed her mouth and laughed, I decided that she would probably tell me later. Or else there was nothing to tell; women sometimes pretend to have a secret on them just to tease men.

Two nights later, we went to see The Medusa Touch. Maeve stared and gasped at the screen, and after only fifteen minutes whispered, "I've never seen photographs that move so much!" It was indeed a fast-paced thriller, so I didn't really notice what she said.

After the film, we bought fish and chips, and I asked what had brought her to the The Stag's Head in Dublin the other day.

"I was meeting my sister for a quiet drink after work."

"What! Do you work in Dublin?"

"Sure, why not? You do." She smiled that entrancing smile again.

"So do you stay with your sister while you're working? Is that where you're going tonight?"

"I do not; I'll be going home. My grandparents are expecting me home tonight."

"Do your grandparents live in Dublin?"

"They don't. Didn't I just tell you now, we live in Tulsk – that's a village in Roscommon. I'll take the bus home."

Was she taking a bus all the way to County Roscommon? She let me accompany her to a bus stop – an ordinary stop, not the Busarus terminal – and asked me all about my job and my family while we waited. When the number 46A rolled up, she commented, "It's a rather low bus, isn't it? And I never thought it would be yellow!" That was odd, since the bus was a double-decker, and what other colour would it be?

Before I had time to ponder it, Maeve grinned, waved, darted through the queue and vanished! She couldn't have literally vanished, of course; she must have boarded the bus; but in the dusk, it certainly looked like a vanishing.

That was how the next six months progressed. Maeve let me write to her, or she would telephone from a public call box, and she always seemed to appear out of nowhere. Sometimes she seemed to be hiding great secrets, yet she shared other private information quite freely.

One time we were walking through a park, we overheard someone's transistor radio blasting out the news of the latest Loyalist atrocity. Maeve listened with interest, almost as if she didn't know about the Troubles and how the terrorists were making a mess of the country, then casually told me, "My cousin Gordius works for the Death Eaters. That's a terrorist group like the Loyalists; sort of Hell's Angels thing. We all stopped talking to him when my parents found out about it. How do Mug – I mean, how do you think they managed make that wireless so small?"

Maeve could spend hours asking me about my family – what they did for a living, how we amused ourselves on the weekends, what it was like in Cork – but she was selective about what she would say about her own relations.

"My grandparents have a farm out near the peat bog. I help them with it because they're on the elderly side. My da is a kind of plumber and my mam – oh, does it matter what she does? My sister married a Dublin man. She stays at home with her babies, and her husband is in... you could say he works for the drinks business."

"What is it you do in Dublin? Is that part of your work for your grandparents?"

"It's not, for I've my own job here. I'm a shop assistant. So tell me again about the school you went to. Why did you hate your numbering teacher so much?"

We'd been going out together for weeks before Maeve told me that the shop where she worked was a bakery. I couldn't imagine why that was a secret or why a girl from County Roscommon would commute all the way to Dublin for such an ordinary job. I had moved to Dublin to look for work and I would have returned to Cork if the large ironmonger's in Grafton Street hadn't hired me when it did. But commuting all that distance between counties? No shop assistant did that!

School was another touchy subject. Maeve would tell me all about teachers and classmates, detentions and library books, without a care in the world. But certain topics – an owl that hooted in the middle of the night or the vandalism of a school flower bed – brought her close to panic.

"Niall, I shouldn't have said that!"

"All right, I won't ask why you don't like owls or flowers now. Why were you at school in the middle of the night anyway?"

She blushed guiltily and admitted, "It was a boarding school way up north." Her arm fluttered, as if to show how far away up north her school had been.

I was surprised that a plumber's children had been to boarding school; Maeve had always seemed such a solidly working-class person, just like me. But I didn't understand why she was embarrassed about having gone there.

Maeve came to Cork to meet my family three times, but somehow put off taking me to Tulsk to meet hers. "My grandparents are too old to cope with much excitement, and my parents are busy looking after my nephew. You can come round to my sister's if you like, but you met her that time at The Stag's Head anyway."

"Why does your nephew live with your parents?"

"My brother was killed in some sort of accident caused by the Death Eater gang," she said, with no emotion at all. "His wife was... rather like you, so the terrorists came after them."

Like me? But I'd never fallen foul of the Loyalists or any similar group. If it came to that, I'd never heard of a group that called themselves Death Eaters. However, it seemed tactful not to ask about a dead brother, so I pestered her to arrange dinner with her sister.

"It'll take Brigit a week to tidy up the house enough to have us to dinner. But if I Floo – ummm, I mean, speak to her tonight, it should be all right for next Saturday."

Brigit's house, when we entered, was fair tidy. I was impressed by how a mother with two babies had such sparkling windows and such fluffy carpets. But the house was tidy because it was bare – not a toy or a loose paper in sight. It was also rather old-fashioned: there was no central heating or gas fire, just a roaring open peat-hearth. They didn't even seem to have electricity, for the lighting was entirely by a mass of candles, and there was no sign of a television or telephone. Oddly, the candlelight was glancing off shiny-clean paint, for there were no photographs or pictures on the walls, and there was no clock of any kind.

Brigit had taken trouble with the dinner, too: salmon mousse, beef and bacon roll with potato cakes, and a caramel-apple cake with Irish coffee to follow.

"That's a class coffee now, Patrick," I commented to the brother-in-law. "Was the whiskey from your workplace? Maeve said you were in the drinks business, but I forget whether she said it was whiskey or beer."

Patrick hesitated for a moment before admitting that he was in beer and offering to brew everyone another glass of coffee.

That was odd, too. Why did it matter what kind of drink he brewed?

And why on earth didn't they have a clock in the house?

A week later, Maeve agreed to marry me, and before I knew where I was, her relatives had decreed that the wedding would be on 23 June at their home parish church of Saints Eithne and Fidelma. They had it all worked out: a local hotel where we could hold the reception, a friend who would take the photographs, another who would make us a present of the flowers, and of course Maeve's bakery would donate the cake. There was almost nothing for me to do, which was grand.

On my day off, I took Maeve to the jeweller's to buy the rings. She soon picked out a pair of gold bands with shamrocks engraved around the edges.

"Try it, Niall. Oh... it's too loose. We need a smaller size, please."

"Sorry, madam," said the shop assistant. "That's the last one in stock. We can have one made up for you, but it will take ten days."

"No good!" wailed Maeve. "The wedding is next week."

"Let's choose something else now," I said, helplessly rolling the outsized ring around my fourth finger. "Look, that one is nice..."

"Wait," interrupted Maeve, pinching the ring between her thumb and forefinger. "I was wrong. This ring does fit my fiancé. It's all right. We'll take these, sure they'll do nicely!"

It was odd how Maeve pinched that ring. She just touched it, and it suddenly closed in around my finger as softly as wax. I saw and felt for myself – the ring fitted perfectly, and I didn't understand how I could possibly have rattled it around.

Maeve seemed nervous after that. We had drop in at a china boutique to collect a glass unicorn for the top of the cake, and Maeve's hand was shaking so much that she dropped it on the floor. For a second, I thought I saw shattered pieces, but Maeve swiftly cupped her hand around the unicorn and picked it up. It was whole, not even scratched, so the "glass" that I had seen on the floor must have been dust.

The wedding was quite surreal: the church was decorated with exotic hothouse flowers that I couldn't name, and the white stones were almost singing along with the organ. The O'Briens had invited the whole village to the reception, and most of the guests seemed ordinary enough. But Maeve's own family was decidedly eccentric. A middle-aged man with a shock of sandy hair pumped my hand until I thought my arm would drop off while he kept repeating his name: "Clancy O'Brien, lad. Clancy O'Brien."

"Are you Maeve's uncle?"

"Sure I am not, me lad. I don't like me son-in-law! Amn't I her grandda?"

Yet Maeve had told me that her grandparents were "elderly"! Clancy didn't look a day over sixty, and Maeve was already twenty-three.

A huge man with a trollish face pushed Clancy aside and planted his hands on his hips. He scowled as he informed me, "I'm their son-in-law – Garvan Goyle of Goyle's Greyhounds. I expect you'll want bring our Maeve to the greyhound races soon. Today's your lucky day, because I can get yez some half-price tickets."

"Daa-aa-aa!" wailed a fat teen girl. "D'ya have to talk about the dogs at a wedding?"

"Shut your gob or ye'll feel the back o' me hand," Garvan told his daughter.

Brigit and Patrick looked embarrassed by this exchange, so perhaps not all of the family was weird.

But finally the toasts were drunk, the cake was eaten down to a pile of crumbs, the fiddles were played out, and Maeve and I were climbing into the horse-drawn carriage that would bring us on our honeymoon. That carriage was a romantic touch – it looked just like Cinderella's coach. I never thought to ask where it came from.

The first day of our honeymoon was a fairy-tale. Maeve's blue eyes were sparkling as we made a leisurely drive down to Killarney in a hired car.

"It's much smoother than a train," she commented, as if she had never been in a car before. "No matter how fast you go, it purrs like a cat and never rattles at all."

We ate soda bread, farmhouse cheeses and grapes on the banks of Lough Leane before wandering hand-in-hand around the ruins of Muckross Abbey. The brush of Maeve's arm sent electric shivers up my spine, and everything she said sounded profound.

"You're magic now."

"Of course I am. How did you know?" Her blue eyes stared into mine as if she were trying to second-guess me. Then she shrugged mysteriously again. "It's the abbey that's magic, sure. You must be catching the vibes."

Even at that moment, I wasn't suspicious. I was just looking forward to an early night. We played a handy round of golf before eating a pub dinner while Celtic fiddles played under the rafters. It couldn't have been a more normal day.

On the second day we caught a tour bus to Torc Waterfall. I hadn't actually booked the Ring of Kerry tour, but Maeve wanted to see the waterfall, and when she waved something in front of the driver's face, he gave her a kind of dazzled look and let us on the bus anyway. We were sandwiched between crowds of European tourists all shouting at one another in foreign languages, so under the cover of their babble, I asked Maeve if she'd paid the driver.

"Paid? He had not one of those bus-collection-box yokes. There was nowhere to put money."

"I mean, did you have a ticket on you?"

"Sure, don't I have this now." She pulled a strip of card from her bag, and it looked like two adult tickets for the Ring of Kerry tour, yet I was sure she hadn't had it a minute before she stepped onto the bus. "Niall, when we were at the bus stop, I could have sworn I saw... Oh, never mind..."

"Who did you think you saw?"

"My cousin Gordius – the one who joined the Death Eaters. But it couldn't have been. His gang are mostly in Great Britain."

When we first reached Torc Waterfall, we had a fair view of the other tourists, who were all shoving one another around as they flashed cameras and noisily exclaimed. We hung back, tacitly agreeing not to follow them back to the bus; and when they left, we had the scenery to ourselves. It was a grand cataract, and I wondered if we could climb up the rocks to the source.

"Let's do so," said Maeve, and made a daringly long jump from the bank across to a rock in the middle of the pool. She held out her arm, so I leapt after her, and then began to scramble across to the wet cliff-face.

"It's probably illegal," I said.

"Who'd be watching us?" asked Maeve, now drenched and clutching at the moss.

"We are!" announced a voice above us. "We've caught you now, Maeve, y'blood traitor!"

All the colour drained from her cheeks as she lifted her eyes to a laughing Goon looming ten feet above us on the cliff. He had a flat, pasty face with tiny eyes and stubbly hair, and the bullet-shaped head was stuck on the wide, oversized shoulders without any neck at all.

"Gordius," she whispered.

"You are trapped, Mrs Finnigan." A different voice was speaking this time, an Englishman.

I couldn't see the second man, but his voice was so unpleasantly cold that I grabbed Maeve's arm, looking for an opportunity to draw her back to the dry bank.

"So tragic," continued the cold voice. "Poor Maeve, so happy on her honeymoon with the man of her choice. The wrong man, of course, but her family was polite enough not to say so. Her bridegroom tried to climb a cataract, but it's so easy to lose one's footing on these boulders. Maeve tried to save him, but she only ended up falling down with him. And of course they both dashed their brains out before they even had time to drown. It's an accident that could happen to anyone. Poor Maeve."

"You're going die, Maeve," said Gordius, laughing childishly.

Maeve clutched at me painfully, and suddenly all the breath was sucked out of me. I staggered and fell off the rock, except that the rock wasn't there any more; I didn't seem to be standing on anything. It was like being turned inside out, and the whole world was black as I was squashed into nothingness. I hadn't expected dying to feel like this, but I had time to conclude that Gordius must have used a gun before I found myself on solid ground after all.

We were not at Torc Waterfall. Warm air and light shimmered around us, and then I saw clearly. There were copper kettles hanging from the hearth, bread baking in a warm peat oven, and old Clancy O'Brien drinking whiskey at the kitchen table. We were in the kitchen of the Tulsk cottage that Maeve shared with her grandparents. Was I dreaming?

"Back from the honeymoon already, Asthore?" Clancy asked Maeve. He was wearing an outlandish, tent-like robe, which I mistook for a kind of dressing-gown until I saw that there were no buttons. "Did the two of ye quarrel now?"

"Niall, are you all right? Sure this must have been a shock. We did not quarrel, Grandda." She drew a painful breath, very obviously still shocked herself, and forced out the words. "Gordius stalked us all the way to Killarney – him and his disgusting friend Lucius – and they tried kill us."

Clancy clicked his fingers, and a goblet of whiskey sailed through the air into my hand. I drank without comprehending what I had just seen. He asked Maeve if she wanted to report the incident.

"Maybe. I managed to do a Side-Along before they could throw a spell, so nothing actually happened. But sure they'll try again another day. We need get Niall dried up before we do anything else now. Niall, are you really all right?"

"What just happened?" I asked. "How long was I unconscious? How did we travel a hundred miles from the middle of nowhere?"

"You haven't been unconscious," she said. "We travelled a hundred miles by Apparition."

"Wha... what's Apparition?"

"It makes you feel sick because you get squeezed inside out to fit into an atom and then reappear somewhere else. But you haven't been splinched, so you should be all right."

"She used magic," said Clancy, as if that explained everything. "Niall, a vick, you've married into a family of wizards."

"What?"

"Magical people," said Maeve helplessly. "People who do magic. We're not supposed tell outsiders about it, but you're allowed know now we're married. Today I used magic to save our lives!"

There was one thing in this barmy sequence of events that made sense – hostile Gordius and his threatening friend. I could believe that Maeve had saved us from a real danger. "Who is Gordius? Why does he want kill us?"

"Gordius Goyle is my cousin," she said. "He joined the Death Eaters – they're a kind of wizarding terrorist gang. They're trying take over the world and they despise Muggles – that is, ordinary people without magic."

I was too stunned to ask any more questions. After a moment of silence, Maeve began to explain. She was a witch. She had been born with magical abilities, as had every O'Brien for hundreds of years. Yes, of course I had been told that magic did not exist, but that was because the magical community had a policy of hiding itself. Magic was still there, and wizards had a whole society hidden away from prying eyes – their own school, hospital, shops and politicians.

"And we also have our own criminals," added Clancy. "There's a very bad wizard who's trying to control the whole world. His henchmen are called Death Eaters, and they kill anyone who stands in their master's way."

"A few years ago," Maeve continued, "I was working in the resistance against the Death Eaters. So was my brother, but they killed him. I gave up on the resistance at that point; it seemed we were losing, and there was nothing I could do. But Gordius warned me that if I wanted to be safe, I'd have to marry one of his despicable Death Eater friends; otherwise they'd keep me on their list of people to eliminate. I've lived very quietly since then. But when I married a Muggle – that's you, Niall – Gordius must have decided I was an enemy of the Death Eaters, so it was time to kill me after all."

"To be fair," said Clancy, "poor Gordius is a howling eejit. He hasn't the brains God gave a mushroom. So it had to be his friend Lucius who was behind the whole plot."

"So what do we do?" I asked. "If you have wizard shopkeepers and wizard politicians, do you have wizard policemen who can use magic to stop the wizard terrorists?"

The look on both their faces told me that I couldn't expect any guarantees there.

Then something else struck me. "Maeve, you said your brother's son lives with your parents. So what happened to the boy's mother?"

"Didn't the Death Eaters kill her too? Muggle life means nothing to them. She was standing next to her husband, so they took her out in the same blast."

"Does that mean they'd kill me?"

"For sure. Didn't that Lucius say so? Niall, I told you, Death Eaters are dangerous people, and that's why I was fighting against them! So we need lie low and keep out of their way now."

Grand. So I had just married into a family who could travel a hundred miles in a second and pull a glass of whiskey out of thin air. And I hadn't even noticed that in a space of minutes, they had made me believe in fairy tales, because they were also related to a family of killers.

That was the end of our honeymoon. I skulked at the O'Briens' cottage for a few days, not knowing what to do with myself, but feeling I was probably safer around friendly wizards than around non-magical people. Maeve tried to behave calmly, but she hardly knew what to say to me.

One day I heard her grandmother telling her: "Be gentle with your husband, mavourneen. He's had a thundering shock. That was the worst possible way a Muggle could find out about magic."

That was it! I wasn't going to lie around having fairy-tale people feel sorry for me! I announced I was returning to work at the ironmonger's.

"I'll bring you there," said Maeve, reaching out for my arm.

"That you won't, my girl! No more of that sickening hundred-miles-a-second business. Save that one for the real emergencies!"

"Then I'll show you how the Floo works. You need a wizard to call the address, but anyone can travel through the network." She threw some green stuff into the kitchen hearth and commanded, "Bruidne Atha Cliath!"

Suddenly there was green fire in the hearth, and Maeve pushed me right into it! But it was cold, and I found myself whirling through mazes of brickwork, like an old-fashioned box-lift gone wrong, not knowing whether she was there or not. After a moment or two, the whirling stopped, and we were both standing in what was very obviously a different hearth. It felt strange, but not as sickening as her other method of magical transport, so I conceded it was as efficient a way as any to reach Dublin.

We stepped out into what seemed to be a small pub. Maeve waved at the barman but pressed right on to the door, which brought us out into a narrow, cobbled street of a dozen shops. The pub, it seemed, was called The Burned Elephant. Next to it was an old-fashioned bakery, the bay windows piled high with cobs, baguettes, rolls, buns and muffins. Maeve didn't need to tell me that this was her bakery – a home business with an exclusive clientèle of wizards only.

"There's a larger shopping centre in London," she told me, "but wizards who can't Apparate don't have efficient ways of crossing the Irish Sea, so they use Bruidne Atha Cliath for everyday things." We passed a tailor's shop that seemed to sell only those fantasy robes that Maeve's grandparents wore at home, then a perfectly ordinary greengrocer's, and then a tiny boutique with a row of owls perched in the window, which Maeve told me was the post office. I was beyond surprise by the time she told me this.

"And this is where I let you out!" she concluded. "Alohamora!"

A door that hadn't even been visible swung open, and suddenly I was in Adam Court off Grafton Street, just as if I'd never been away! I could walk to work from here. I didn't know if the terrifying Cousin Gordius could track me down at a Muggle ironmonger's, but I was going to give my day's work a try.

So we settled down for a while. I reasoned that Gordius would probably stalk his prey in isolated places, so a big city like Dublin was as safe as anywhere. Work at the ironmonger's proceeded as usual. I told my normal friends that married life was grand.

In some ways, it really was. There was nothing wrong with Maeve herself, who was beautiful, classy company and interested in everything around us. The O'Brien family seemed ordinary once I allowed for their being wizards: kindly, accepting, full of fascinating stories and enthusiastic about weekend excursions. Sometimes we went to the greyhound races together, and I even had some friendly chats there with Garvan Goyle, whom we didn't blame for the way his son had turned out. Tulsk was a welcoming community with a normal pub that had a normal dartboard and television. Only three of the Tulsk families were wizards; nine folk out of ten knew nothing about magic. Seamus was born after nine months, and by the time he was a year old, I was almost comfortable with my extraordinary new life.

Then the Death Eaters came back.

Like vultures on their broomsticks, they swooped down on the local handball alley. Gordius Goyle was laughing his head off as he shot sparks of red light that shattered its stone walls into a cloud of dust. The noise pulled half the village out of our houses, and suddenly, with a ghastly flapping of the black capes, we found the coloured lights were being fired at us. Neighbours screamed with terror as rocks from the damaged handball alley ricocheted towards our heads.

"Get those Muggles!" shrieked Gordius, and as he waved his arm, I saw the postmistress upended and suspended, dangling upside down in thin air.

"Stupefy!" Maeve's parents were both hurling themselves into the chaos, followed by members of the other two wizarding families and then by Maeve herself. "Stupefy! Stupefy! Finite Incantatem!"

There were more screams, then suddenly the chaos stopped. The black-caped Death Eaters were all lying unconscious on the ground. Maeve was trying to repair the handball alley while her grandmother sent out an emergency message to the Mediwizards and magical police.

"It's all right now," said Maeve's father. "It was just a baiting raid. They've landed three Muggles in hospital, but there hasn't been any murder." He entered on a debate with his own father about whether they should modify anyone's memory now or leave it all to the experts. The experts took about five minutes to arrive, and they set to work casting forgetfulness spells on every Muggle in Tulsk.

That part was almost more horrible than the baiting raid itself. There were magical hooligans in their community, people who could have destroyed our whole village, and all those wizards cared about was covering up the evidence!

"It's all right now," Maeve repeated as the postmistress was loaded onto the last magical stretcher and sent off to be subjected to the jiggering and jinxes of the wizarding hospital.

"It is not all right!" I gave out to her. "How can you say it's all right when your own cousin might swoop down and kill us at any moment? If that was just a 'baiting raid', what happens when Gordius remembers his old plan to murder you?"

"Gordius has been arrested now – and he's an idiot. Most of them don't attack where they can be so easily caught. Sure we still have a police force with us, Niall! Even the Death Eaters don't kill without some reason, and they will lose the war eventually. We'll be all right if we keep close to our community now."

"After how many murders?" I demanded. "You know you're on their hit list, Maeve. Sure they'll come back for you another day. Maeve, can you promise me that Seamus is safe?"

Her blue eyes glittered with tears as she slowly turned her face away.

I went home, sat Seamus on my lap and thought hard. I didn't believe the wizarding war was going to end any time soon, any more than the Muggle police could stop the Loyalists dropping bombs. The Death Eaters would return for Maeve another day for sure, and they would probably wipe out every Muggle in Tulsk when they did. They could slaughter Maeve's husband with a wave of the wand; but they probably wouldn't bother with hunting me down if I happened not to be there. Maeve herself would be safer without me; after I had left, she could pretend to Gordius that she hated Muggles after all. She probably would hate me if I left, but I might begin to hate her whole family if I stayed.

Even before the evening news on the Wizarding Wireless Network announced that Gordius had never reached the wizarding prison because his Death Eater friends had rescued him on the journey, I had finalised my decision to leave.

I packed by night while the household slept, and all my necessary possessions fitted into one bag. I thought about writing a farewell letter, but I soon realised I had nothing to say, so I just kissed Maeve, who stirred but did not awaken, and tiptoed past the cot. I did not dare look at Seamus for fear that sight of him would have made me change my mind. I found my way to Tulsk Cross by dark and I hitched a lift with a passing lorry before dawn.

I'm back in Cork now. I don't really know where Maeve is; when she tried to send a couple of those owl messages, I just sent the birds away empty. I didn't completely abandon her; I arranged to make a monthly deposit to her magical bank vault so that she and Seamus wouldn't be destitute, and my bank manager says the money is still transferring. It doesn't keep them in luxury, but I expect Maeve still works in Dublin. I'm well out of it. I'm living with another woman now, whom I'd marry if the Church allowed it, and I have responsibilities to my new family.

I wonder about Seamus sometimes. Is he alive? Does he look like Maeve? Did he turn out well or is he a junior Death Eater? The horrific images aroused by that last question are enough to keep me away from the Roscommon road forever.

A/N. Thanks to Rory O'Farrell for a very intensive beta-read and for sharing his huge store of background information about Ireland and the Irish. He even knew the name of Niall's ironmongery.