Torn Apart Read Online Free

County Clare and visited Tipperary like the tourists we were. We stopped here and there to take in the scenery, have a drink and some food. I experimented with the new phone camera Megan had given me as a birthday present but had trouble sorting out its functions. As befitted men for whom the cardiac alarm had sounded, we went for longish walks around the stopping places, climbing some pretty steep hills and not rewarding ourselves too handsomely in the pubs and eating and sleeping well. The Irish have the bed ’n’ breakfast thing down to a fine art.
    It was evening when we reached Galway. Good time to arrive, with mist shrouding the bay and giving the town itself a nineteenth-century feel. Like mine, Patrick’s mental image of Ireland had been formed by reading about the slaughters under Cromwell and William of Orange, the famine and the troubles; by films and photographs and music—the Clancy Brothers, the Chieftains, Sinéad O’Connor. The strange thing was that the picture in the imagination and the reality were pretty close. The green of the fields and hills was intense, almost too much for Australian eyes used to more muted colours. And the sea was grey-blue and I imagined I could hear Ewan MacColl’s voice as I looked at it.
    We walked down to the water’s edge, crunching across the pebbles, and Patrick unzipped his fly.
    â€˜I swore I’d do this,’ he said. ‘It’s out of respect.’ He let a strong stream of urine arc into the lapping water.
    I picked up a pebble, worn smooth and white by wind and waves, and put it in my pocket. ‘I’ll settle for this as my symbol,’ I said.
    Over a pint in O’Leary’s in Eyre Street, Patrick filled me in on our destination. He’d spoken vaguely about Galway and I’d been happy to go along with that. Who, visiting the Emerald Isle, doesn’t want to go to Galway? My mother had vamped the chords of the Bing Crosby song on the piano and warbled the words with an accent thicker than any Irish stew.
    â€˜We’re heading for Ballintrath—inland a bit, back towards Dublin.’
    â€˜Okay, why?’
    â€˜They hold a big fair there—not as big as the one in October but pretty big and a lot of horse trading goes on. I mean, literally. The Travellers are great horse breeders and traders and the Malloys have a reputation in that game.’
    â€˜So we just bowl up, find some Malloys and say, “How’re you going? We’re Malloys from Australia”?’
    â€˜Something like that. Why not?’
    Strange to say, that’s pretty much how it worked out. Ballintrath was a well-preserved medieval town geared up for tourists and visitors. This fair was a scaled down version of the one in October apparently, but it was pretty busy with the usual market stalls, events in pubs and other venues around the town and the equestrian side of things taking place on the Fair Green—a big expanse that was slowly turning to mud under the pressure of feet and hooves.
    The events centred on competitions for the best in a number of categories, most of which didn’t mean anything to a city man like me. Best foal I understood.
    Patrick hunted out an organiser and asked if there were any people by the name of Malloy present.
    â€˜To be sure. Why’re you askin’?’
    Patrick explained.
    â€˜Travellers, is it? Well, they keep pretty much to themselves. They have a camp outside the town somewhere. But Old Paddy Malloy you’ll find over yonder at the farrier judgin’. He’s a judge and plays the fiddle as the shoein’ goes on.’
    We wandered over to where three farriers were engaged in a competition to see who could shoe the horses the quickest and the best. The crowd was four or five deep around the roped off area where the contestants, but not the spectators, were protected from the drizzle by a sail. It was only that Patrick and I were taller than most of