The money Michael had offered her had looked as if it would cover a year’s rent. Turning to stare out the window, she saw a woman pushing a pram with a child sitting on the front, eating an ice cream. She wished she were that woman and that she could buy her children ice cream. Ice cream and new shoes for school. Her next hurdle. School starting in two weeks and not a clue how she would afford to buy them. She would have to put the kids before her pride and contact the social and scour the jumble sales. Despair curled like a cat and settled in the pit of her stomach.
The bus conductor walked towards her, gripping the corded brown rope that ran the length of the bus, his grey peaked cap ducking to peer out of the window as he weaved his way down, his ticket machine banging against the metal rails on the backs of the seats. ‘Tickets, please,’ he shouted, even though she was the only passenger on the lower deck.
She shuffled in her seat and slipped her hand into her coat pocket to remove her purse.
‘God in heaven,’ she gasped as a flurry of twenty-pound notes fluttered to the floor.
*
Joan had returned from the film delirious and with the songs buzzing around in her head. ‘When did you get back?’ she said to Mary Kate as she unfastened her coat and hung it on the back of the kitchen door. ‘Did your daddy get a boat in good time? Fancy him coming all this way and going back without you. Most of the girls just go home to save the trouble of the fight. The number of fathers I’ve seen marching down this avenue with a couple of brothers in tow, all of ’em ready to give someone a good kicking and with nothing more than flapping shoe leather on their feet and a letter in their hands. Sent by the priests to save their daughters’ souls. God love them, I don’t think some of them eat from the moment they leave until they get back. You should see the state of the girls when their menfolk turn up at the door – ashamed, they are, and cry all the way back to the Pier Head. Some of them have been to a dance. One night in heaven it is and then dragged back to the bogs. I think that’s worse than never having been to Liverpool at all. Not me though. My old man never gave one feck where I was, as long as the money kept arriving. Now, I need to make some pastry. We can have a pie tonight.’
‘I’ve done it,’ said Mary Kate. ‘And I’ve made a syrup pudding. Don’t tell Dr Marcus, but that steak you put over my eye – I chopped it up to put in the pie.’
Joan gasped. ‘You did not!’
‘Well, it couldn’t go to waste, could it. I gave it a good wash first and browned it off in the pan.’
They both heard the front door open and looked at each other, standing stock still. Fear crept across Joan’s face, anticipation across Mary Kate’s.
‘What do we do?’ whispered Joan. ‘Do you think he knows?’
Mary Kate rose from the chair. ‘That she’s left and has taken the children? I think he knows she’s left, but I’m not sure about the rest.’
‘Oh God, who’s going to tell him? I need the toilet, so I do. I can’t tell him.’
‘I’ll go up,’ said Mary Kate. ‘You stay here and carry on. Don’t come up until I say, Joan.’ Acting and appearing much older than her years, Mary Kate walked up the stairs with her head held high and her back straight, to the man she knew was hoping it would be her and not Joan coming to greet him.
His face lit up as he placed his hat and keys on the table. ‘Well, there’s a sight for sore eyes. Has she really gone? I’ve heard nothing all day.’ He glanced up the stairs to the boys’ sitting room, half hopeful, half terrified to hear the answer.
Mary Kate had decided there was no point in holding back; she had to tell him. ‘She has, Dr Marcus.’
He held up his hand. ‘Mary Kate, it’s Nicholas.’
She hesitated, frowned. A look of deep pity crept into her eyes and her stomach churned. There’d been no one to guide her to this moment, no one to advise her how to cross the bridge between being a girl fresh out of school and a woman about to deliver the hardest message to the kindest man. She’d planned to have Bee as her guide, her mother’s aunt, because somewhere deep within she yearned to be closer to her mother, the mother she struggled to remember except in her dreams, which were vivid and detailed. Mary Kate had felt compelled to leave Tarabeg, but for what she didn’t know. Was this it? This moment? Was she meant to be here for this?
‘What is it, Mary Kate? What’s wrong? Please don’t think that I’m upset that she’s left. You have no idea how awful the past few years have been, and for the boys too. She stopped caring about any of us a long time ago. The harder we tried, the more distant she became. I’ve spent all day thinking about how different life will be when I can stop worrying about pleasing Lavinia and can concentrate on my sons instead. At last I’ll have the chance to make their lives more fun and less anxious.’
He placed both his hands on the table and leant forward, his head down. Mary Kate’s heart folded with pity. He probably hadn’t slept the night before. She walked over to where he was standing and wanted to put her arm around his shoulders, to hold him steady for when she delivered the news.
‘I am so sorry, Nicholas, but she’s taken the boys with her.’
Her words hit him with the force of a bullet. His head jerked up violently and turned to the stairs. ‘Jack, too? But he really needs his daddy! He’s such a sensitive soul and no one else really understands him.’
He was moving towards the stairs, his hand out ready to grip the bannister. ‘David is more robust, he’s always been the sporty one, but Jack… I’m the only one he talks to.’ His words finished on a croak. Mary Kate could see he was at breaking point.
‘Our battle…’ he said, and began to run up the stairs to the boys’ sitting room.
There on the board were the tin soldiers and tanks and the papier-mâché trees, just as they’d left it the night before. A note in large, childish scrawl lay in the middle of it:
Sorry, Daddy, I think I’ve been bad.
Jack xx
Nicholas bent and retrieved it. He folded it carefully before tucking it into his shirt pocket. His eyes filled with tears and, turning to Mary Kate, he asked, ‘Will I ever see them again, do you think?’
In her heart, Mary Kate knew the answer and it was no. ‘Of course you will – by this time next week, I would imagine.’
She didn’t know who moved first, whether or not it was she who took the few steps towards him, but within moments he was in her arms, not she in his. She stroked his hair and led him to the boys’ sofa, and as they sat there, he laid his head on her shoulder and she kissed the top of it as he sobbed.
29
Mrs Doyle was at the bus stop in Tarabeg to meet Keeva, Rosie and Captain Bob as they alighted from the Ballycroy bus. ‘Oh, there you are at last. I had a call from the pot man in Carey’s,’ she said. ‘He saw you getting on the bus, so he did, and I thought, well now, where do I start? And then I thought, with the most important message of all, of course. Michael is on his way home. He rang me from the Pier Head in Liverpool, and mysterious tinker that he is, he would not tell me if Mary Kate was with him.’
‘Ah well, I’m guessing now that’s because he thinks that the first people to know should be the likes of Nola, Seamus and meself,’ said Rosie.
The insult flew straight over Mrs Doyle’s head, who appeared quite giddy. And then she saw Captain Bob getting off the bus behind Keeva. ‘Well, well, we haven’t seen you around these parts for a long time, Captain,’ she said. ‘I’m going to start having to write everything down at this rate – there’s so much happening. I have Ellen making me a new frock for the harvest dance – imagine! Oh God, isn’t it just going to be the best night we ever saw in Tarabeg, Rosie.’ And with that, she headed straight back to Ellen’s to carry the news that Rosie was home and that Captain Bob was in tow.
‘A new frock? Ellen hasn’t made her a new frock since the Pope died and she went to Rome. The place has gone mad while we’ve been in Ballycroy,’ said Keeva as she and Rosie parted at the crossroads. Keeva was heading for home an
d the Devlins’ bar, and Rosie was going to the shop.
A pack of boys, Finn among them, came running out to greet Keeva. Whooping and laughing, they almost pulled her handbag from her arm to see had she returned from her adventure in Ballycroy with treats.
‘Back down, the lot of you. You’re like a pack of wolves,’ she shouted. ‘I have licorice laces, but the only person to get one will be Finn as he’s the only one not acting like a half-starved animal.’
Captain Bob laughed at the sight of them. Turning to the Taramore behind them, he said to Rosie, ‘Would you look at the river – it makes your heart sing. I’d forgotten what it looked and smelt like. This must be the finest air in all of Ireland.’
Rosie followed his gaze. ‘It is a special river, but then this is a special place. I saw it in Ballycroy today. ’Tis funny how you have to step outside of what you’re used to before you realise how lucky you are.’
‘I’ve missed this place, Rosie. Ten years in Liverpool has been too long away, but we had no choice in the matter.’
Rosie began to untie the knot of her green, fern-patterned headscarf from under her chin. ‘Well, that’s all different now, Bob. You’re free to make the choices you want. There’s nothing and no one to hold you back now. There’s only Nell and it seems to me we can do for her what Tarabeg does best – we can all rally round.’ She folded the headscarf into a neat square and slipped it into her coat pocket. ‘As I say, ’tis all down to you now.’
Captain Bob’s gaze had not left the river. ‘You go inside, Rosie. I’ll be back with you in five minutes. There’s something I need to think about before I see Bee. I’m just a man, Rosie, I need a bit of time to meself, to empty my head.’ And with that, he strode out across the land at the back of the Malones’ and down to the pebbled shore of the Taramore.
Rosie’s heart sank.
She entered the shop via the back door, having seen that there were no customers in the front. ‘Peggy!’ she shouted as she hung up her coat.
There was no reply.
‘Peggy!’ she shouted again.
There was the sound of running footsteps on the floorboards above her head. Rosie stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited. Moments later, Peggy appeared on the top step, in full make-up and wearing a dress that Rosie knew to be one of Sarah’s. It was from a wardrobe she had never touched. She was waiting for the day when Michael decided himself that it was time to clear out the memories once and for all. Peggy looked shamefaced. The emerald locket glinted on her throat.
‘Peggy, what in God’s name are you doing?’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I thought if Michael didn’t come from Liverpool until after the harvest party, you might let me wear this. He would never know, would he?’
It was the emerald-green dress Sarah had worn for the opening party for the shop, the year Mary Kate was born, the night everyone thought Shona Maughan had cast a curse on the Malones.
Rosie stood dumbfounded as memories of a night long forgotten washed over her, and there was something else too, something she couldn’t attribute, a sense of foreboding, a warning, a bad feeling. She shook her head. It was just seeing the dress again that had done it, and the memory of herself, a younger Rosie, trembling, walking through the crowd with Keeva, to stand next to Sarah with Mary Kate in her arms. She could almost have been there now. She could smell the night air, could see the moon and the dust on the road as Shona and Jay Maughan’s caravan pulled into their midst. She could feel the force of Bridge repelling Shona’s curse with one of her own.
She shook herself out of her reverie. ‘Peggy,’ she hissed, ‘I have Captain Bob with me, who has not been home for nearly ten years. He’s down at the Taramore. Get that dress off and get down here now or so help me God, I will tell Mr Malone, because he, Peggy, will be giving out to you like never before if he even hears about you running around in that dress. It was Sarah’s, you stupid girl.’
She almost spat out the last words. She never lost her temper and felt instantly guilty.
Peggy was left in no doubt as to the anger simmering inside Rosie. Her face dropped and she gave a little squeal. ‘Oh Jesus, Holy Mother, I’m sorry,’ as she ran along the landing to change back into her own clothes.
Rosie suddenly felt drained. ‘I need a drink,’ she said to herself. ‘The place has gone mad.’
Much to Rosie’s surprise, Captain Bob arrived at the back door dripping wet and shivering.
‘What in God’s name were you doing?’ she asked as she fetched him a towel from the shelf above the range. ‘No one goes in the river unless it’s by accident.’
‘I couldn’t stop myself,’ he said as he dried his hair. ‘I needed to, and it worked.’
The kitchen was filled with baskets and boxes of end-of-summer fruit that had been gathered that day by Josie and the boys from the fields and hedgerows and was now waiting to be stewed or pickled. Peggy had come down and was now standing at the range, frying potatoes and making tea. Finn was still across the road in the Devlins’, refusing to leave his friends and return home.
‘Does that feel better now?’ Rosie asked Captain Bob after he’d eaten his fill of the stew that Peggy had simmered in the pot and watched like a hawk since early that morning.
‘It does, and I’m thanking you for everything, Rosie. And yourself now, Peggy – that was a fine-tasting stew. I have not the words to tell you how grateful I am. But now, do I look presentable enough not to scare the life out of Bee?’
‘Of course you do. The soaking in the Taramore has worked wonders, and who would have thought that Michael’s clothes would fit you so well, eh?’ She placed the flat of her hands on the table and the chair legs scratched on the flags as she rose. ‘You and Bee can decide what to do about Nell, when you’ve both sorted yourselves out.’
‘I truly had no idea Nell was on her own,’ said Captain Bob as he replaced the captain’s hat he refused to part with, despite it needing a wash. ‘It would never fit me again,’ he said as he gently teased it back out of Rosie’s hands.
‘The scold of a woman told me they were all still at home and she needed money to feed them. Nell told me, she never wrote to one of them and they never wrote to her. Nell was born afflicted, but she’s really harmless and was the only one with a heart. She would have untied me eventually, when she wasn’t so upset. She was scared that she would be taken away by the nuns and bless her, she’s right. They would have come for her and that’s a fact. Nell always got upset when she was little. She tied her big sister up in the filleting shed once. She was only doing what I would have loved to have done to the little madam, given half the chance. Maybe if I had scolded her at the time, I might have been saved.’
Rosie had her drink in her hand and had taken a sip while he was talking. Despite the trauma and exhaustion of the day, she found this amusing and unable to contain her laughter, it sprayed him. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ he exclaimed. ‘All over my clean shirt.’
Rosie laughed again. ‘Get out of here, would you,’ she said as they walked to the door. ‘I have my husband coming back tomorrow and there’s a deal of stuff I need to get ready for him when he arrives. I cannot believe the amount of news I have to tell him. He has an American cousin here turning the village on its head and he’s barely left.’
‘It all happens in Tarabeg.’ Captain Bob laughed as he kissed Rosie on the cheek. ‘Meself, I’m desperate to meet the American. He must be a good-looking fella, all right, if he’s got Mrs Doyle in a spin.’
‘Take the bike,’ said Rosie. ‘No one is needing it tonight.’
With a raise of his hat, Captain Bob pulled the bike away from the wall and pedalled down the road towards the coast.
*
Captain Bob sang to himself as he cycled along the road. The red evening sun cast long shadows of Crewhorn across the sprawling deep-amber peat bogs to his left and his own shadow cycled through the fields beside him. He could hear nothing but the repetitive squeak of its wheels as he rode. In the few f
ields where the soil was fertile enough, the crops stood high and swayed in the breeze. The harvest would be happening in the coming days and the land was at its most bountiful; this time of year was always alive with anticipation and urgency. It was something he’d forgotten during his years in Liverpool.
His heart lifted as he came closer and for the first time heard the sound of the ocean hitting the shore.
Bee saw him before he saw her. She was walking down the road towards the village for the Angelus Mass. She went for the conversation, the company and the sense of community and belonging; she had little else to sustain her during the long days she spent in her cottage, just the memories of her years with Captain Bob, and thoughts of her late sister and niece. At least when she left Mass she felt lifted, renewed, ready to take on the loneliness and battle through the following day.
She thought at first it was an illusion, her mind playing tricks, and then he did something that every Irishman on a bike did when he saw someone walking along the road: he lifted his cap and wobbled as he gripped one handlebar. As she waved back, the sob caught in her throat and her walk became a run.
Moments later, the bike crashed to the ground, the wheels still spinning, as they collided, he laughing while she cried out loud and held him tight.
As he swung her around, her feet lifting from the ground, the sky flaming red above them and the ocean crashing against the rocks behind them, he popped the question she thought he could never ask, ‘Oh, my little Bee, will you be my wife?’
*
Seamus and Nola rode up the boreen to the farm with Finn in the back of the cart. ‘Would you look at the state of him,’ said Nola, trying to suppress her laughter.
Seamus glanced over his shoulder. Finn was lying on his back, his hands behind his head, his head resting on a small pile of folded sacks, staring up at the twilight sky.
‘He hasn’t a care in the world, that fella,’ said Seamus. ‘He has everything before him and nothing to worry about behind him.’ He lifted the reins, gave a light crack and made a noise in the side of his mouth that the horse knew meant trot on faster.
Mary Kate Page 32
