‘God, you are worse than Mrs Doyle, or Linda, even,’ Bee muttered, thinking of the postmistress back home in Tarabeg.
She stared at the envelope in her hand and, glancing towards her back gate, wondered should she step indoors before she read the contents. She opened all the post that came to the house, Bob’s too. He had no interest in dealing with bills or the occasional brief letter from his wife demanding more money. Nell was the only one he wanted to know about. She was a loving girl, prone to fits of temper and bouts of strange behaviour, but, given a little encouragement, she always reverted to her loving self in time. Bob’s wife knew of his affection for her and had not mentioned her since the day he left.
Bee scanned up and down the entry. No one had emerged through their back gate at the sound of the postboy’s bell. From her bedroom window a few minutes earlier she’d seen that almost everyone was out the front, hair in pin-curlers held in place by headscarves tied around the back, ready to be unsprung just before they left for the bingo or the Irish Centre on Friday night. Every docker’s wife went out on a Friday night, even if they had to beg, borrow or steal to get there. Cigarettes waved in the air as they chatted and watched the kids playing in the gutters. They sat on hard-backed chairs or leant against the stone windowsills, drinking tea from stained, chipped cups, complaining that it was too hot to do any housework. The lives they led could not have been more different from how Bee’s had been as a young mother back in Ireland, but, luckily, having no children at home, Bee didn’t need to try and fit in with them.
Cat was at the water pump at the end of the street round the front, pumping the handle up and down until the water splashed all over the naked toddlers who were running in and out of the flow, screaming and relishing the refreshing coldness. ‘Come on, one at a time. I can’t keep this going – me bleeding arms are aching.’ Cat grinned and shouted as she squinted through the smoke from the damp and rapidly extinguishing cigarette dangling from her bottom lip. She was thirty and would very soon look fifty. Bee wondered why, if life in Liverpool was supposed to be so good for the Irish immigrant, these people were so poor and the women always so exhausted.
She could hear the distant screeches of the splashing children and, feeling alone and safe, she tucked her finger under the flap of the envelope, eased it open and pulled out the slip of yellow paper. As she read the contents, she gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth and tears rushed to her eyes.
Bernice Tooley dead – 17 July – Galway Hospital – Contact family immediately.
She read the words half a dozen times before they began to sink in. Captain Bob’s wife was dead. Could this be a mistake? No, how could it be.
The consequences of this news made her hands tremble and her knees go weak. They could marry! And, more than that, much more, they could go back home, to Tarabeg. To her own cottage, as man and wife. She would be able to open her eyes in the morning and hear the sound of the ocean, not the dockers’ klaxon. Captain Bob, an experienced seaman, could get work anywhere on the coast. Bee gasped. Only upon realising she could return home did she truly recognise how unhappy she’d been in Liverpool for all these long and lonely years, in exile from her family, from the graves of her sister and niece, from everyone and everything she knew.
She heard Cat’s back door slam.
‘Bee, is that you? Are you there? The postboy just came down the end of the road and he said he had a telegram for you. I’m just in the front, soaking the kids. You should see them! What was it? Not bad news, I hope. Give it here so I can ’ave a read.’
By the time Cat had opened her back gate and stepped into the entry, Bee was gone.
5
The journey home from St Catherine’s to Tarabeg was cramped and not uneventful.
‘I wanted that parquet floor to swallow me when you opened your big mouth. Did you see the look on the nuns’ faces? I swear to God that novice had tears in her eyes, so she did. I thought she was about to explode with the laughter. Oh, but the shame. I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for keeping the shine on that floor, would you, Rosie? Seamus Malone, it is now official, you are more like Daedio every day. Would you like a bit of chocolate, Mary Kate? Here, I have some in me bag.’
‘No chocolate in this car, Mammy,’ Michael roared from the front seat.
‘I notice I wasn’t offered any,’ said Seamus, still smarting from being told off for having spoken out during the graduation speech.
‘Oh, stop your sulking, you big baby,’ said Nola. ‘I can take you nowhere, so I can’t.’
They were all laughing at his indignation until he blurted out, ‘Well, you can take me to the party tonight. I’m not going anywhere else until this young colleen has been welcomed back into the village.’
Mary Kate had Finn on her knee and he was almost entirely blocking her view through the window. ‘What party?’ she said, trying but failing to sit forwards under the weight of her brother.
Nola reached over and with half of her usual force bashed Seamus over the head with her handbag. ‘God in heaven, you’ve done it now. What in God’s name is wrong with you? Will you shut your big mouth! Michael, would you tell him? Was there ever a more stupid man that lived in Tarabeg?’
But Michael was too busy dodging the flying handbag and trying to see the road through his tears of laughter to answer his mother’s many questions and retorts.
Seamus glanced sideways at Michael and rolled his eyes, too afraid to laugh himself.
‘Mammy, give Daddy a break – the man only asked you a question during the speeches back there. I’m stopping for a pull on my pipe.’ Michael turned the wheel of the car onto the road to Tarabeg and across the magical musical bridge at Bellacorick. The river sparkled in the sunlight and they would follow its glittering path all the way home.
Michael was a happy man. His daughter was coming home. Nine full years had gone by and for the first time it felt as though the ghosts of the past could be laid to rest. He looked up into the rear-view mirror and froze as the face of Sarah stared back at him. He blinked, he smiled, she was gone. A chill ran down his spine. Something was wrong, he was sure of it. That was twice in one day.
Nola leant forwards. ‘Here you go, here’s your pipe. I’ve had everything in my bag today, it’ll be all the lighter now. And mind the ash doesn’t fly back in through the window, I don’t want it all over this hat.’
‘Daddy, can we stop and play a tune on the bridge?’ said Finn.
Mary Kate, feeling very grown-up, and afraid of sounding childlike, said nothing.
‘Go on then,’ said Michael.
‘Oh good,’ said Seamus. ‘I’m desperate for a piss after all that tea. Aren’t ye wanting one yerself, Nola?’
They all erupted into laughter again as Nola’s handbag came down on Seamus’s head once more. Even Nola laughed this time. ‘You’ll poison the fish,’ she said, ‘the amount of Guinness you put away last night.’ And, turning to Mary Kate and Finn, ‘Don’t be vexing the faeries, now. That’s the last thing we want today.’
Mary Kate and Finn picked up stones from the river’s edge and, taking up positions at either side of the road, ran the stones along the top of the bridge. Both of them grinned as the bridge played out a tune. The faeries had blessed them: the bridge had sung to them. Nola tiptoed to the riverbank and, removing her hat, dipped her hands into the cool water, shook her fingers and then traced them across her brow. Seamus had disappeared out of view, down the side of the bridge.
Michael was sitting on the bonnet of the car enjoying his pipe, and Rosie was standing next to him. ‘Don’t you sit on the car,’ he said, ‘it’ll burn your legs. The sun is mighty fierce.’
They both watched Finn and Mary Kate doing what they had always done on the musical bridge. In Michael’s eyes, Mary Kate was a little girl of six all over again. She raced Finn along the road but dropped her stone and, according to the family’s rules, had to pick it up and go back to the beginning. ‘Drat and drat,’ she shouted and bent over
from laughing too much as Finn dashed ahead.
‘We are going to have to make a decision soon,’ said Rosie, breaking into Michael’s thoughts. ‘She has had a grand education, better than my own, and she won’t want to be wasting it in Tarabeg.’
Michael tapped his pipe against the wall of the bridge, spilling the last of the smouldering tobacco onto the road, and ground the embers with the heel of his boot. ‘Well, she’s too young to be going off anywhere else,’ he replied. ‘I’ll take her to Dublin with me, show her the ropes of running the business, or maybe she’ll want to join you and Declan teaching at the school.’
Rosie placed her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun as she watched Finn and Mary Kate but also to hide her thoughts from Michael. ‘Aye, you could be right. I’m sure she would be happy with either of those,’ she said, all the while thinking that they were about to face a crisis. Mary Kate was bursting with a hunger for life – accompanying her father on his buying trips to Dublin would not satisfy her, and nor would life in a village school, of that Rosie was certain.
When the car finally turned into Tarabeg, the first person Mary Kate saw outside the shop was Daedio, being pushed in his wicker wheelchair by Bridget McAndrew. Mary Kate had attended many a party in Tarabeg, the most notable being the end-of-harvest celebrations, which were thrown on the first full moon after harvest and always carried on through the night. She knew who would be there – it would be the same people she’d grown up with – but there had never been a party thrown in her honour before; this was a first. She beamed with pride as Keeva rushed across the main street from the bar and pulled open the car door.
‘Welcome home! My God, would you look at the cut of you. Come on, I have to take you straight over to Paddy and Josie – she’s cooking up your favourite pork belly for you, I hope you’re starving. Michael, Seamus, Tig has your drinks poured. They phoned ahead from Ballymara to Mrs Doyle as you passed through to let us know you were on your way. Come on now, before Tig drinks them down himself and uses the excuse that he thought you weren’t coming. Finnbar, go on, you too, your food and the boys are waiting for you.’
Finn dashed across the road, and Michael and Mary Kate walked over together.
‘How was it?’ said Keeva to Rosie and Nola, who were unloading their baskets and handbags from the boot as everyone else headed for the noise coming out of the Devlins’. They heard the roar of delight as the door opened and Mary Kate walked into the bar. The light was fading and the new electric lamps were already lit in the bar windows, throwing a yellow glow onto the street.
‘It went well enough, if you didn’t mind being humiliated by Seamus,’ said Nola, folding her arms and trying her best to look indignant.
‘Oh, come on, Nola, Josie has an answer for that, and ’tis called a glass of the Powers.’ Keeva turned and smiled at Rosie as she took Nola by the arm and steered her across the road. ‘Are you coming, Rosie?’ she asked over her shoulder.
‘Aye, I’ll just unpack the bags, as Michael hasn’t bothered,’ she said, only slightly affronted. ‘Is Peggy over there?’
‘She is that. She’s already dancing with Declan Feenan, I think.’
Rosie grinned as she walked around the back of the shop and into the house. She could hear the fiddler playing, the sound of glasses chinking and laughter floating all the way across the street and she wondered, if she didn’t make her way over, if she just put the kettle on, made a nice cup of tea and took herself off to bed, would anyone actually notice?
The drinks flowed, as they always did, and the music continued without a break, one fiddler or mouth organ taking over from the other as they danced into the early hours. The doors of the Devlins’ were wedged open and the party had spilt out into the street. Mary Kate was taking a rest on a hay bale and Declan Feenan came and sat next to her. She had removed one of her shoes and was rubbing her stockinged foot.
Declan had arrived in the village just before Mary Kate left for St Catherine’s, employed as the new teacher of the boys’ class. Nine years later, everyone still referred to him as ‘new’. ‘Are you glad to be home, Mary Kate?’ he asked as he handed her a drink.
‘I am, in a way.’
He clinked pots with her. ‘“In a way”? And what is that supposed to mean? In what way would that be?’
While the village danced in the moonlight, Mary Kate unburdened her heart to Declan, her tongue loosened to a precarious degree by the porter Daedio had made her drink to mark her end of schooling. ‘And so I need a lift to Galway, so that I can get the train to Dublin and then the boat to Liverpool to surprise Aunty Bee. It has to be done in secret, mind. Daddy and Rosie, they would never let me go.’
Declan was shocked. ‘What, you would leave without telling Rosie and your daddy? Is that wise? You can’t do that. Do you even have any money to be running away, because that’s what you’re doing, Mary Kate.’
‘Sshh, Declan, someone will hear you. I do. Daedio gave me twenty pounds for my seventeenth birthday, which is an absolute fortune, and when I get to Liverpool, I can earn more.’
Declan whistled. ‘Where did he get that kind of money from?’
Mary Kate wasn’t interested in that but answered anyway. ‘He had a brother – Joe, I think – who went to America, God, a lifetime ago now. He was all into road- and bridge-building in New York and he set up a company or something. He made lots of money and before he died he sent some to Daedio.’
‘Is that what bought this land and shop?’ asked Declan.
‘I suppose so.’ Mary Kate had only just been born when the shop opened and didn’t know anything of life before Malone’s. Changing the subject quickly, she said, ‘Declan, after the school here breaks up next week, will you please, please give me a seat in your car to Galway and not be telling anyone? Please, I’m begging you.’
‘Are you mad, Mary Kate? I can’t do that. Rosie is my school principal – I’d lose my job. And Father Jerry, I’d have to answer to him an’ all.’
‘Declan, you will answer to no one. If I don’t tell anyone and you don’t tell anyone, how would anyone but you and I know?’
Declan continued to object, in the strongest terms, but by the end of the party Mary Kate had floored him by threatening to make other arrangements. ‘If you don’t, I swear to God I’ll find the gypsies and ask them for a lift.’
Declan froze. He knew that a local gypsy family had been banished from the village at around the time Sarah Malone had died. But he guessed that Mary Kate didn’t know the details. He’d heard the stories about Angela’s murder, Sarah’s death and the curse on the Malones, all told in whispers. The stories sent shivers down the spines of the hardiest men, and the mad murderer, Mary Kate’s maternal grandfather, was still out there somewhere. The gypsies were the last people she should be seeking help from.
He was between a rock and a hard place, and so, reluctantly, he agreed to hang around Tarabeg for a week after the village school closed while she prepared her escape to Liverpool. ‘I know Rosie wants the school to have a fresh coat of paint, so I’ll be offering to spend a week doing that. But, Mary Kate, promise me you’ll think about this. I’ll only take you because I want you to be careful, and at least with me you’ll get there safely. You have such a determination in your eye – I can see you are hell bent on going.’
‘I am, Declan, and that’s a fact. I’ve been thinking about this for a whole year. I am going.’
Declan stared down into Mary Kate’s unyielding eyes. She was not to be dissuaded, but he still had time to come up with another plan.
*
‘Chairs on top of desks, please.’ Rosie’s voice rang out across the classroom as twenty young heads bobbed up from arms folded on desks, some more slowly than others. Rosie was still at work as the school at Tarabeg broke up the week after St Catherine’s. She had taken to telling the children to rest their heads on their desks and close their eyes for the last half hour of the day. She did this because she worked them hard and some of the
children were white in the face by the afternoon and still had to trek three miles across bog and up the mountain to get home. In the summer months they were then put straight to work on the land until the light faded. The past few weeks had been busy with turf ricking and stacking and it had shown, in both their lack of concentration and their grimy hands.
The classroom filled with the clatter of chairs being lifted onto desks by excited but well-behaved children. It was the last day of term, the weather had been glorious and ten weeks of freedom beckoned. The following term would start late, to allow the farm children to help with the harvest.
‘Line up by the door,’ said Rosie as she walked along the bench gathering up the exercise books. She made her way to Declan Feenan’s door.
His boys were ready, standing to attention and barely containing their excitement at the prospect of no more school and a long summer ahead.
‘I’ll ring the bell, shall I, Mr Feenan, or do we make them all wait another hour?’ Rosie asked mischievously. Marriage had softened her naturally reserved nature.
Declan, who was wiping his blackboard clean, turned and grinned in response, and the cry went up from both lines of children, ‘Oh no, Mrs Malone, please, no!’
Rosie relented. She could keep the smile from her face no longer. ‘Go on, off, the lot of you! And behave yourselves. Have a wonderful summer.’
Forty children piled out of the classrooms into the cinder yard and the cacophony was louder than at any other home time of the year.
Mr Feenan came and stood next to Rosie in the porch as Finn kicked a football high into the air.
‘You’ll be playing for Mayo soon, you will that, Finnbar Malone,’ an unexpected voice called out across the yard.
Rosie and Declan turned at the sound of Father Jerry and his housekeeper, Teresa Gallagher, approaching the school gates. Teresa now needed a stick to walk and had taken on extra help at the presbytery. Father Jerry had tried his best to persuade her to retire, but she would have none of it.
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