The Tour by Jean Grainger Page A

down on him.
    ‘Oh God! I’m sorry Gerry, I shouldn’t have hit you...it’s just...’ Still wearing more or less the same smug expression, Gerry walked back into the house, lay down on the sofa and continued watching TV while holding a tea towel to his bleeding mouth.
    After Sheehan’s Hardware, there were several more jobs, but none lasted more than a few months. Either he was fired or he got bored and stopped turning up for work. Eventually, Conor resigned himself to supplementing Gerry’s weekly dole money out of his slim earnings. The strange thing about Gerry was that outside the house he was considered by his peers to be a great fellow, full of fun and devilment, a great hit with the girls. Along with his dark, Brylcreemed hair and startling blue eyes, Gerry O’Shea had charm and style – all far too exotic for Passage West. He listened to Jerry Lee Louis and Elvis Presley – the glam rock of the seventies didn’t interest him at all. He made retro seem so cool. He was an expert in all things American and was frequently heard saying that the minute he got a chance he’d be out of Passage West and off to the States, never to return. In the meantime, the local girls fought for his attention, and the younger lads wished they had his sex appeal.
    Everyone else in the village considered Gerry O’Shea very bad news indeed.
    Conor was seen as the opposite of his younger brother, hardworking and decent. When his boss, Joe Kelly, got arthritis, Conor kept the business going. Joe had long since been the father figure in Conor’s life, allowing him to tinker around the garage when he was a young, never losing his temper with him, no matter what the circumstances. He knew that someday he would make Joe an offer for the business, and he worked hard so that he could save enough to get a loan from the bank. Joe and his wife felt very protective of the young apprentice and he even had hopes that their daughter and only child Noreen would catch his eye. But while Conor was always friendly to Noreen, he never thought of her in any romantic way. He even drove her and her father to the church the morning she married Tom Butler, the butcher from the next parish.
    Conor pulled up outside what had once been Kelly’s garage. These days, Mary Harrington had told him, someone was renting it as a lock-up. His mother’s old friend was the only person from Passage West with whom he kept in touch. Joe and Eileen were both dead now. He didn’t go to either funeral because he was away travelling on both occasions, but he sent flowers, and he wrote to Noreen expressing his sadness at her loss. He was glad he didn’t recognise the two girls crossing the street and therefore wouldn’t have to make conversation with them. Once again, he thought how much he hated coming back here, how he dreaded making conversation with old neighbours. The village itself was fine and the people very nice and friendly but the place held nothing but bad memories for him. If it weren’t for Mary, he thought as he stood there waiting for her to answer the door, he would never again bother with this Godforsaken place.
    ‘Conor!’ she exclaimed ‘Why didn’t you ring me? I’d have made a few scones or something.’
    Conor gave her a hug, noting how thin and old she had become even in the few months since he’d last seen her.
    ‘Spur of the moment thing,’ he replied, ‘it’s great to see you. I have a group over in Kinsale, so I just thought I’d call in to see how you are.’
    ‘Ah sure you know how it is Conor. Dragging the divil by the tail the whole time. I had a mass said for your Mam last week, for her anniversary. Hard to believe its thirty-one years isn’t it?’
    ‘Indeed it is,’ Conor agreed. ‘A lot of water under the bridge since then.’
    ‘Actually I’m glad you called. That young couple renting your place wanted to know if they could put up gates to make the garden secure for the little one. I told them that would probably be