At this time of the morning, as she baked to the tune of Daedio’s rising snores, she indulged herself with thoughts of all the children she had borne. All but one of them had gone off to live and work in America and she had long since accepted that she would never set her eyes upon them again. She blessed herself and thanked God for leaving her Michael in Tarabeg. Early on there had been promises – ‘We will be home soon, Mammy’ – but those had faded as the pursuit of the American dream had eaten up their time and resources. She knew she would never hear her children’s voices again, or meet her grandchildren. All she had were the memories of their births and childhoods; the letters announcing new grandchildren; and the annual photographs, smiling out at her from black-and-white serrated-edged postcards with ‘Moyle’s Photographic Studio, Brooklyn’ etched across the corner.
The antics and tears of her children, all born in that cottage, and the laughter that once filled it, lived on in Nola as she went about her morning chores. As she rolled out her pastry, she often saw the eyes of her four-year-old daughter peeping over the wood of the table, hands gripping and lifting her onto her tiptoes, smiling, hoping that Nola would hold out the bowl for her to dip her finger into. And Nola, with a smile on her lips, would whisper, ‘Sshh now, don’t you be telling the others, do you hear me?’
This hour of baking was Nola’s hour of secret tears, the only time of the day she allowed the pain in her heart to rest unchecked. ‘Please God, don’t let Mary Kate be another,’ she whispered. She blessed herself as she swayed back and forth over the table, rolling out the pastry with a rolling pin carved from a branch many years ago by Daedio for his new wife, Annie, her mother-in-law.
She went about her business with the minimum of fuss while Daedio slept on his bed in front of the fire, and Seamus, in no hurry to alter the farming hours he’d kept to his whole life, took his full hour in bed. Outside, in the old house, Pete Shevlin had opened the door and unchained the dogs, who had cantered as far as the cottage door and were now looking in, heads high, ears pert, tails wagging, hopeful.
Wiping her hands on her apron, Nola reached for the dish of leftover scraps from the evening before and, walking to the door, threw them straight onto the dew-soaked grass. She leant against the doorframe and crossed her arms, nursing the empty dish against her as the dogs devoured the scraps within seconds. She loved to watch her food being eaten, even the leftovers of charred potato peel and cabbage with a smattering of cold gravy. The dogs looked up gratefully before they sloped off down the hill to engage in their favourite pastime of terrorising any car, cart or cyclist that dared to pass their boreen on their way between the coast and the heart of Tarabeg.
‘Is that baking for Bee?’ Daedio’s morning voice called out from behind her and she automatically walked to the range to place the bowl in the sink and pour him his tea from the large black cast-iron pot.
‘It is, aye. ’Tis the right thing to do – the poor woman is having a desperate time, doing up that cottage all alone. She hasn’t only the years of the weather and the damage it has done, and God knows, that’s bad enough, but she has all those memories to be dealing with too. She must be heavy with the sadness, being where her own sister was murdered by that evil feck of a husband. Rosie and I decided, after the Angelus last night, this was the least I could do, and Rosie, she will be going straight up there tonight.’
‘Tell her not to worry, Nola.’ Daedio reached out to take his old stained and chipped earthenware mug from her. ‘Is there a drop of whiskey in this, to get the blood flowing? I won’t be able to get me legs going without it.’ He placed the mug to his lips, sniffed at the rising steam and winked through the haze.
Nola placed her hands in her pockets, sighed and then grinned. ‘Aye, well, if you are after a drop, so am I, but don’t be telling that son of yours. He chooses the strangest things to be pious about, as if a drop did anyone any harm.’ She cast a cautionary glance towards the bedroom door as she made her way to the press and extracted a bottle of Powers.
Five minutes later, she was sitting on the end of Daedio’s bed, nursing her own mug. ‘Ah, that’s better,’ she said, sharing a rare smile with him. They coexisted in an atmosphere of faux animosity; everyone knew they’d both be lost without the other to fire up each day with provocative humour and complaints.
Daedio rested his mug on his lap, lifted his cap off the bedpost, pushed back the stray strands of silver hair and placed it on his head. As he did, he noted the faraway look in Nola’s eyes. She thought he slept in the mornings as she went about her routine. In fact he was usually awake well before either she or Seamus entered the kitchen, but he knew that the time alone, in the peace of the morning, was precious to her. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the tears, heard the sniffs; like her, he could feel the memories, and they haunted him too, but he could never tell her. The guilt weighed heavy on his bed. There was money, lots of it, packed behind the chimney stones and if he’d used it, his grandchildren would never have had to leave. As it was, he’d given each of them a wallet full of dollars and bought their tickets to sail away and find their fortunes. He’d given Michael and Sarah enough to make their way in Tarabeg too, and Nola knew that. Annie, long gone, had known it too.
‘Don’t you be worrying about Bee. Captain Bob will be back. A man needs time to know which way the wind blows. He’ll be thinking it all through and as long as he hasn’t taken to drink or lost his mind, he’ll be back. Praise God, Bee has returned – that doesn’t often happen.’
Nola tipped her own mug and drained the last of the whiskey and sugar. ‘Pass me that,’ she said, choosing not to comment on Daedio’s words of wisdom. ‘Let me rinse them before Seamus gets up. You know what his nose is like, he’ll smell it a mile off.’
Daedio grinned and handed over his mug. ‘I won’t breathe a word,’ he whispered.
‘’Tis not your words I’m bothered about,’ said Nola. ‘’Tis your fumes. As rancid as your breath.’
When Seamus emerged from his bed, Nola was almost done. She loaded the basket for Bee and issued instructions as he packed away his usual breakfast of rashers, eggs and a double doorstep of freshly fried bread, soaking up the last of the mixture of black-speckled dripping and bacon fat. ‘Take it to Bee as soon as you can, Seamus,’ she said. ‘Rosie says she’s been working on the cottage all on her own, hasn’t asked for help from anyone. Rosie said as much to Keeva, and Tig went down on his bike to see her yesterday and fixed the thatch while he was there. He said there was a pile of old wood in the cowshed from when Rory had first thatched it and he took the heather with him on the back of the cart, which was handy. Rory’s parents are well enough, but too old to even reach the bottom of the boreen from their own cottage, let alone be trudging up to Bee’s.’
Seamus was enjoying his breakfast and was only half listening.
‘Seamus, are you hearing me? Or is it only your rashers and yer big fat belly you are interested in?’
Daedio lay back on his pillows, slurping his third mug of strong sweet tea, minus the whiskey. He’d been deep in thought, as he had been most days since the arrival of the letter from America. Mary Kate had run away from home and Michael straight after her. He’d been staring into the fire; all he saw these days was the face of Shona the tinker dancing among the flames. Her hair floated and flickered and the black coals of her eyes burnt back out at him.
He turned and blinked the smoke away. ‘I wish I could come with you, Seamus, or go down and help Bee,’ he said. ‘No matter what she says, she can’t be feeling right. Bridget says she left Tarabeg too soon after Sarah died. Said she should have got used to Sarah’s death before she ran off. She’s come back home having never lived here without her. There will be only ghosts waiting for her in that cottage – Rory, Angela and Sarah. Ghosts and heartbreak, that’s all.’
‘Aye, and she had Tig visit too,’ said Seamus as his tongue protruded and licked away the egg yolk running down his chin. A wet cloth slapped him in the face, thrown by
Nola for the same purpose.
Daedio shook his head. ‘She is a woman who has lived through too much death too soon, and none of it natural, all of it sudden. That kind of death is the hardest for anyone to deal with, and Bridget says you can’t run away, as tempting as it may be.’
Nola stood with her hands on her hips, staring at Daedio with incredulity as he regaled them with his monologue. She had also been out of sorts since the day Mary Kate ran away. ‘Said all that, did Bridget? Well I never, and here was me sending Seamus off down there with the basket and baking her a pie because I thought she would be as bright as a new penny.’
Seamus had wiped his mouth. Getting to his feet now, he picked up the basket. As soon as the tension began to rise between Daedio and Nola and he sensed a fight was brewing, his own inclination was to flee. ‘Right, I’ll have a quick word with Pete in the old house first. The bull is gone. Broke through the fence of whin I spent yesterday dragging all the way down on the back of the horse, and he’s roaming feck knows where. I’ll be off to Bee straight after and do what I can. I’ll call into the Devlins’ first and pick her up some rashers. ’Tis a strange state of affairs altogether, what with the death over in Ballycroy and no one having seen yer man.’
Nola slipped a cover over the basket. Her pillowy cheeks, crisscrossed with tiny red veins from the heat of the fire and the range, were more flushed than usual following the extra baking and the stealthy whiskey in the tea. ‘She’s at first Mass every morning, Father tells me. Something is up, Seamus, but I can’t go myself – I have Teresa, Bridget and Ellen coming up here today, visiting Daedio. We are picking and then bottling the wild redcurrants and I can’t leave it or the birds will have robbed the flaming lot by sundown. I hope the bull isn’t roaming in the fields around Crewhorn – we’ll be up there in the afternoon.’ She set the basket on the floor by the door.
‘I hope he fecking is.’ Daedio winked at Seamus, who was slipping on his jacket and cap. And for the first time in days, since the news of Mary Kate’s departure, father and son laughed together.
*
Seamus was more than happy to take the gifts down to Bee. The fruit harvest was one for the women and he was never involved. With two more weeks of fine weather, it would soon be time for the main harvest, at which point the press in the kitchen and the store out in the old house would be full of every kind of picked and preserved fruit, including the jars of deep purple elderberry syrup that they drizzled over warm, sweet pastry in the dark winter months when the fields and hedgerows were frozen hard.
‘Did Nola send you?’ asked Bee.
Seamus stood at Bee’s kitchen table, rested the wicker basket on it and removed an elderberry and apple pie wrapped in a gingham cloth. The pie was still warm and a strong aroma of freshly baked buttery pastry and sweet elderberry juice filled the room. As he looked down at Bee, who had not risen from the table as he entered the cottage, he extracted a dish of butter, six eggs protected in a parcel of straw, and several handfuls of potatoes and other vegetables.
He pulled out a stool from under the table opposite where Bee was sitting and, without waiting to be asked, lowered himself onto it. ‘I came to see if there is anything I can do to be helping you,’ he said. ‘We had no idea you were here – you’ve been as quiet as a mouse and we thought that was because Captain Bob was with you and you were, well, keeping your head down, what with Mary Kate running to Liverpool as she has and the death out at Ballycroy… But Rosie, Keeva and Tig, they tell us you are all alone.’
Bee stood up, her face closed. Her hair was tied up in a knot at the top and strands hung down the sides of her face. Her eyes were wide and haunted; she’d always been a good-looking woman, but today she looked every day of her forty-plus years.
It took Seamus a moment to realise that Bridget was right. This was not the Bee who’d left Tarabeg ten years ago. That Bee, despite the loss she’d suffered and the load she’d had to bear, had fight left in her. Before Sarah’s death, Bee had always been so full of life; if a smile or laughter was missing in a room, a joke from Bee was always quick to make them reappear.
She looked up sharply, her eyes flickering with anger as the words flew from her tongue. She had assumed Rosie would keep her own counsel. ‘Does the whole village know now then? That I, a harlot of a woman, has had her comeuppance. Laughing, are they all? I expect the scold of Tarabeg, Philomena O’Donnell, has it in the Mayo News, does she? Father Jerry will be using me as proof that sinners never win, citing me in sermons from his pulpit soon enough.’
Her anger spent, she sighed and looked embarrassed.
Seamus, the most gentle of all men, had only ever shown her kindness, and Tig, he had pedalled down on his bike the moment he knew she was alone, which was no easy feat for a man with one leg markedly shorter than the other.
She placed the flat of both hands on the scrubbed table. Before she’d left Tarabeg, she’d oiled it and wrapped it in thickly soaked oilcloth, and she was glad she had. Once she’d removed the cloth and given the table the most basic clean, it had gleamed back at her, unharmed. It had been her sister’s, and after Angela’s murderer of a husband had scarpered, Bee had rescued it, strapping it to the turf cart, hitching up the donkey and taking it to her own house. It was made from wood that had surfaced in the bay, supposedly from a sunken Spanish galleon. She and Angela had changed Sarah’s nappies on that table, and Ciaran’s too. She and Angela and Sarah had laughed and cried at the table, and it was where Angela had been laid out for her wake. It had been Angela’s pride and joy, and it would be Bee’s too, until the day Mary Kate married.
‘Here, let me make you some tea – you won’t be leaving without it,’ she said. ‘I may be the talk of the village and on my way to hell, but I still have my manners.’
‘Bee, Bee, this is nonsense.’ Seamus’s tone was soothing. He removed his cap and laid it with care on the table in front of him, playing for time, choosing his words carefully as he clasped his hands together and fixed Bee with a steady gaze.
‘I was at the house when Michael left for Dublin. I wasn’t my best. I suppose you’ve heard all about it. Do you know about the letter I had from my neighbour Cat too?’ She looked alarmed and spoke rapidly, as though she was waiting for Seamus to condemn her.
He smiled. ‘I do, and it seems to me it was a very good letter altogether – once you got past the part about Mary Kate being attacked, losing all her money, having to be seen to by a doctor, finding herself penniless and lost in a sinful city like Liverpool, and you having already left when she got there. When you put all that to one side, she has what she went for: a job and her independence. It being our Mary Kate, she has just gone about things in a very headstrong and unusual way.’
Bee snorted and turned back from the old range. She would have to get used to that again, after her years with a gas cooker. It was probably the only thing from Liverpool she would miss; that and Cat’s chatter, and, it had dawned on her, her friendship.
‘You can say that again,’ she said. ‘She has Sarah’s spirit – her happy ways, her absolute belief that no one and nothing will fail her, that all will be well – and her father’s streak for striding out and seeking a new opportunity. The trouble is, the only person who can’t see that is Michael himself, and, would you believe it, Mary Kate. Why did we never guess that the child of Michael and Sarah would be one to go her own way?’
She walked over to the table and placed the steaming pot onto the metal trivet, along with two mugs. ‘Do ye have any milk in that basket of tricks?’ she asked with a smile, relieved that the Seamus sat in her kitchen held no condemnation in his voice, no Bible in his hands.
‘I do that.’ He lifted the metal jug out and placed it on the table. ‘I have something else, but it has to be our secret.’ He winked and from the inside pocket of his jacket extracted a small bottle of whiskey. Pulling out the straw stopper, he slopped two generous helpings into the tea. ‘Don’t be telling our Nola – she doesn’t approve of whiskey in t
he tea before four.’
Five minutes later, Bee was topping up the pot, pouring them both a second mug and looking very much better. The whiskey had had a medicinal effect. Her blood flowed, her cheeks were flushed and her humour had returned. She let out a deep sigh as she poured the milk into her mug.
Seamus was glad to see her shoulders relax and her natural colour restored. ‘That’s better. Now at least you look more like the Bee we knew.’
She smiled. She couldn’t argue with him. She hadn’t eaten since the previous day and the whiskey was warming her through.
‘Listen here while I tell ye, Bee.’ Seamus tipped the remainder of the bottle into their mugs. ‘I’ve come for another reason altogether.’
He was more nervous about revealing his next message, and Bee, sensing this, despite the whiskey, stopped dead, her mug halfway to her lips, and looked deep into his eyes.
It struck him that they were Sarah’s eyes, filled with apprehension, even fear. For the first time, he realised she was scared. He took a deep breath. ‘Keeva’s been telling me she’d be happy to go with you to Ballycroy, help you find out what’s going on. Why don’t you do that?’ He exhaled, unaware that he had been holding his breath.
Bee leant forward and splayed her hands out before her as though using the table for support. Her legs felt weak and her head spun. She opened her mouth and closed it again before swallowing hard. As she looked at him, he saw that this time her eyes were filled with tears.
‘Seamus, I don’t know what to do. I haven’t heard a thing. He left me at Castlebar, at the bus, and there’s not been a single word since. Every day I call into Mrs Doyle’s and think there will be something, a message, a call booked, a telex on that fecking machine of hers, something, anything – but there’s nothing. There has not been a day since the night Angela was murdered that I have been without him or we haven’t spoken.’ She blushed and averted her eyes. ‘He has slept next to me every single night. Seamus, I fall asleep in his arms and I wake in them.’
Mary Kate Page 21
