There was another two weeks that went by before the feck Patrick Martin was sat in here again on a Saturday morning. The curtains had only just opened and it wasn’t past midday but he sat here on one of those tall stools and put his arms on the bar.

“Mary. Mary, can I have a pint now and be quick with it. I have no time today to let it rest and Mary can I have a follow up quick to help it go down.’

Mary filled the pint glass as she always does and she didn’t give it any hurry. As she let it rest on its tray she filled a small glass with Powers and put it front of him. He drank at it quickly.

‘I’ll have another one Mary.’

One of the other men stood at the bar was about to say something but he paused when he saw Patrick’s face. He was clean shaven and on each of his cheeks could be seen the distinct mark of a mackerel, its head and eye and half opened mouth etched a faint pink on his skin.

‘You can see it can’t you. How the feck now did I get marked with a mackerel like this. I am here last night and I have a few pints, I go home and I go to bed and I stand in front of my mirror and as I shave my feckin’ beard off this morning these feckin’ fish appear on my cheeks. And I come downstairs after that and she’s cooking the feckin’ things for my breakfast. I told her, give them to the cat, I’m not eating them today. What the feck did I do to a mackerel to have them on my cheeks like this.’

“You had for breakfast didn’t you?’ the man said.

‘Every feckin’ man has mackerel for breakfast but that doesn’t mean he starts his day with the feckin’ things on his cheeks. If I wanted a tattoo there’s a place in Bantry that does it but I don’t want a feckin’ tattoo and I don’t want a mackerel on my face.’

‘Were they there yesterday?’ the man asked.

‘How the feck should I know if they were there yesterday. Yesterday I had a beard. I shaved the thing off this morning and now I have these on my cheeks.’

Mary put the pint in front of him and he drank at it greedily almost half the glass gone before he put it back on the bar.

‘Have you thought about not shaving?’

‘No I have not thought about and do you want to know why. I don’t want a beard not all the time. I want to be able to shave on a Saturday morning and not have a fishes eye looking back at me in the mirror.’

‘Did Siobhan say anything?’

‘Siobhan isn’t talking to me and on the whole I am happier with that. the woman is nothing but tongue when she does talk. All she does is give me a plateful of fish and expect me to eat it looking like this. She does not say a word.’

The man doesn’t say anything and he lets Patrick Martin finish his pint. But the man has in his mind the bucket of mackerel he saw Siobhan Martin pick up from the pier that Friday afternoon and her determined walk as she took it back home.

Having shaved his face Patrick Martin sat down in his kitchen and ate four thin fillets of mackerel, dredged in plain flour and cooked in bacon fat. The rich taste of the fish, which had been out of sea less than 24 hours, settled his stomach from the disturbances of the previous evening and he put out of his mind the the white flakes he’d seen is beard that morning. Having finished his fish he put on a dirty green coat and pulled on a pair of muddy grey boots and went out for his day. There was a field of heifers that needed moving. He would not be back before evening.

Siobhan had kept out of his way the time he had shaken himself out of bed, shaved and eaten his breakfast. She knew he had been full on drink the night before but she worried that somewhere in the clamour of his brain he might have caught the image of her bearing down on him with a mackerel in her right hand. But apart from the questioning over the dandruff on his chin he had suspected nothing. She went about her day and tried not to remember the pleasure that had coursed through her as she had taken the fish to his chops.

Three weeks went by and there was no further incidents with mackerel. He continued with his drinking and she resumed her cursing and shout as he sat dumb and stupid late at night at their kitchen table.

But it was early summer and the fish were coming back to the bay to feed in quantity and there were not many days that went by when there wasn’t a man and his boat by the pier ready to giving a bagful of the fish away. If she past past the pier Siobhan would eye up the silver fish and then walk on quickly putting the thought behind her.

But there was one Friday she had to pause and before she could stop herself she was walking up the length of the pier to were Joe Tobin was tying up his boat. She pulled out a plastic bag from her pocket and asked if he had a few fish to spare.

He had and he passed over four of them which she carried back home in her bag.

The following morning Patrick Martin was again stood in front of his mirror and for a second time he paused before lifting the water to his chin puzzling over the white silver flakes that covered the lower part of his face. But he was unthinking man and having stopped with his blinking he lifted right hand and ran the hot water over his face. When he had finished his shave and rinsed the residue of of foam away he looked again in the mirror and there on his left cheek he could see the faint red and blue shadow, the mark of where he had been slapped with a mackerel.

As well of being too proud of his name Patrick Martin was a lazy man. If there was an opportunity to turn over and pull back the covers for another few minutes more in his bed he would take it.

It had taken him some years to realise that a shave in the morning was all but a waste of time if all that he was going to do in a day was walk through the field with his cows and take a drive at his tractor before stopping in the pub. There was no one to bother him about his stubble, at least no one that mattered after his mother had died, and so he took to taking an additional few minutes in bed each morning during the week, Monday to Friday, and he would leave off a shave until Saturday. Siobhan, his wife, would tell him for a while that he was too rough to kiss, but then there were benefits in not kissing him so she kept quiet after that.

On the Saturday morning after he’d been slapped round his chops with a mackerel Patrick Martin stood in front of a dirty mirror and blinked and then stared in his face. The sink was full of hot mild water and he had ready in his left hand a dab of white shaving foam and his right hand was in the water ready to cup it up to his face so that he could rub the softening foam into his whiskers. He blinked and stared again.

The mirror was dirty and old and and silver sheen at the back that gave the reflection to his face was cracked. But he had been looking at this mirror for twenty odd years and he could see that something was wrong.

‘Siobhan,’ he shouted. ‘Are you down there? Come look at this and tell me if I have some  dandruff here on my chin.’

He stared again peering close now at the mirror trying to look down focus as he did so. His eyes were still bleary from the beer and as he stared the colours started to blur.

If he had been able to bring his eyes into line then he would have seen that caught in the rough black scrub on his cheeks and chin were the fine silver pink flakes of a slapped mackerels scales. Their colour was dull in the dim light of his bathroom but if it had been bright then there was enough of them caught there to have lit up the bottom of his face.

But Siobhan was ignoring him and he lifted his right hand and washed the flakes from his face before rubbing in the shaving foam. As his fingers moved over the skin there was a slight tingle and tightening of the nerves from the forgotten wet slap of the previous night.

Now did you hear about the feck Patrick Martin and his disappointed wife.

He was a bit too pleased with that name and would let no man call him Paddy.

‘If it was the Saint Patrick standing here in front of yer you would not be calling him Paddy. So if was good enough for a saint it’s good enough for me and so you can call me Patrick.’

He’d say that sitting in here and there wouldn’t be a smile on his lips and the feck couldn’t see those that might be smiling about him. So we kept him happy and when he was here we called him Patrick and he’d knock back a glass with us but once he was out of the door we called him anything but.

‘Mostly we called him The Feck,’ the man said. ‘Give a man enough rope and any of us could answer to that after enough time has passed.’

There may have been that talk of his name and a saint but that didn’t stop him coming in here on a Friday night and drinking his way through the evening.  And when he had finished he’d climb into his car and make his way back up the hill to his home. There are corners on that road and plenty of trees and after a few years his car became just a bent corner of rust with the things he’d knock into to get home. When he was there he’d sit for a while at the table he had his kitchen listening to his wife have her say at him for being drunk again and the damage he’d done to the car and then he’d take himself off to bed.

His wife was Siobhan and there was a mystery as to why she had married him and after twenty five years it was just as much a mystery to her as to anyone else. She worked for the two of them and had his meals on the table.

‘Now that is right,’ the man said. ‘There was a mystery around Siobhan Martin.’ He wiped at his mouth with his fingers.

There was nothing Siobhan could say after twenty five years to get him to put a halt to his Friday nights and on the Saturday morning he’d forget what had been said to him and she would put it behind her.

But there was one Friday night she was having her say at him and he was sat at the table a stupid look on his face and his eyes half up in his forehead as he got ready for sleep and some of the frustration of the wasted twenty five years took a hold of her and words were not enough for once and she needed to take something up against him. She had sense enough not to hit him with something hard but there by her sink there was bucket of mackerel she’d picked up from the pier that afternoon. She took up one of those fish by its tail and held it tight in her fist and forcefully lay it across his two cheeks. First on his left cheek and then back across the right.

He sat there still his eyes up in his forehead and so she took the fish to his cheeks again. She did it again but this time with more force and with that the fish slipped from her hand and slid across the kitchen floor.

He took himself up then standing with a bent back and shaking his head he made for the stairs and to bed.

Siobhan gathered herself together and picked up the fish. She filleted it along with the others in the bucket so the evidence was gone and then she went to sleep to dream of mackerel and she put to the back her mind any thought of the morning.