Buried In a Bog

by Sheila Connolly

  “She loved you very much,” Mrs. Nolan said softly. “She wrote far more about you than about herself. She was so proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” Maura said, then took a swallow of the dark tea to cover the lump in her throat. She’d done as much as she could for her grandmother, but it hadn’t been enough. And she hadn’t done enough for herself either, which left her with a blank future. Sure, she was young, and smart, if not book smart, and she’d proven she was tough. But what did she want to do?

  Chapter 8

  Maura straightened up in her chair. She was pleased that she could make Bridget Nolan happy, merely by agreeing to listen to her spin tales of the old days. But her problems were not for Mrs. Nolan to worry about, and it would be a shame to waste the opportunity to learn more about her grandmother’s and father’s early lives here in Ireland.

  Just then, however, Mrs. Nolan looked up and said brightly, “Shouldn’t you be off now, to see to the pub? You can find your way back all right?”

  Was she being dismissed now? Maybe an hour or two was all that Mrs. Nolan could manage at one time. “I think so.” Maura stood up. “Thank you for the tea. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Before leaving, Maura carried the tea fixings back to the kitchen, and when she returned to the big room, she once again saw that Mrs. Nolan had dozed off. She slid out the front door and pulled it shut quietly behind her. Outside the rain had slackened, but it was still misting. The cow had finally stopped protesting, and the mist dulled sounds. Puddles punctuated the graveled courtyard in front of Bridget Nolan’s house, and Maura wondered if she should try to borrow a pair of rubber boots if she did any local exploring. Perhaps more important, she had better familiarize herself with the location of the bogs so she didn’t accidentally fall into one.

  This time she had less trouble maneuvering the car from where she had parked it, and managed to get it pointed in the right direction without running into a hedgerow on one side or falling into the ditch on the other. Before heading down the hill, she stopped for a moment to look at the view. Mrs. Nolan’s house stood a few hundred feet below the crest of the hill, sheltered from the wind and surrounded by mature pines on one side, but below the house Maura could see the road junction where the police car had stood and, beyond that, what she now knew was a bog, at least in part. The horses clustered in a corner of a pasture set off by wire fencing. To the left loomed tall pines. Everything she could see could have been there for a hundred years.

  There seemed to be few people living nearby—the houses were widely scattered. Had it been any more populated a hundred years ago? Or a thousand? Could the Bog Man be that ancient, or like Mrs. Nolan said, was he just someone who had gotten lost and fallen to his death after a bit too much to drink one night? Silly to try to guess, though Maura’s mouth twitched in a smile: Southie’s notorious gangster Whitey Bulger and his gang back home would have found this an ideal place to get rid of a body, but it was a bit far to go from Boston, and it might be hard to explain carrying a body on a plane. It was too late anyway, now that he’d been captured, although hadn’t there been rumors that he’d been seen in County Cork before that?

  She released the brake and made her way carefully down the hill and back to the village, without seeing a single car on the road. Where was everybody? If they were at work, she couldn’t see where. Back in Leap she parked the car behind the bed and breakfast and considered her options. Mrs. Nolan had hinted that she had more to share, and there might be others still around who also could tell her about her grandmother’s early years. It was hard now to imagine Gran as a happy woman her own age, with a husband and a child, living on a farm somewhere nearby. Maura would like to see the house, if it was still standing—she’d have to ask Mrs. Nolan which one it was—as well as the cemetery she’d mentioned, where her grandfather and presumably other relatives were buried. She felt she owed them at least an acknowledgment. Ellen had said, kind of indirectly, that she’d give Maura a good rate if she stayed longer. But could she see herself working at the pub? Maybe. It was no worse than other bars she had worked in.

  Maura walked up the steep grade of the driveway to the main road, grateful that the rain had finally stopped. She followed the sidewalk along the harbor side of the road, studying the town. When she’d arrived, she hadn’t been paying attention to details—not that there was much to see. She dimly remembered passing churches, and a school on the left. As far as she could tell, the entire town consisted of the one main street, its single row of buildings backed by low hills behind and, to her left, the harbor. She could make out signs for a furniture store and a hardware store, but not much more. The only place to buy food was apparently the quick mart attached to the gas station, across from the Catholic church. Opposite where she stood, the clutch of pubs huddled: Sullivan’s, then the road to the north, then two others, that she hadn’t explored yet. And that was the entire town. Even in the persistent drizzle, Maura could tell that the buildings were well tended, painted in bright, cheery colors, with no trash to be seen. There were few cars parked along the road. How did anyone stay in business?

  Maura turned her attention to Sullivan’s. The pub was located in a low two-story stuccoed structure with a chimney at the nearer end, which Maura recognized as connected to the fireplace in the pub. The building resembled most of the others on the street, but this one was painted white, and sported dark painted frames around the windows and doors, and the doors were all painted red. The pub itself occupied one end, with its door flanked by two wide, plate-glass windows. There were two more doors and a couple of windows on the ground floor, but Maura had no clue what lay behind them. She looked carefully both ways, then crossed the road.

  Inside the pub she paused for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dim interior; when they did, the only person she saw was the old man seated in the well-worn stuffed chair to the right of the fireplace, warming his bones in front of the glowing peat fire. No sign of Mick, Jimmy, or Rose—did any of these people keep a regular schedule?

  She realized the old man was looking at her, a small smile on his face. He could have been anywhere from sixty to a hundred; he hadn’t shaved anytime recently, and his thinning white hair straggled over his collar. He was wearing an old wool jacket that had been carefully patched more than once, a tweed cap with a brim, and stout if scuffed shoes. His eyes were bright with curiosity.

  “You’d be Nora Donovan’s girl, Nora Sullivan that was—you’ve the look of her,” he said.

  “Granddaughter, actually. I’m Maura Donovan. And you are?”

  “William Sheahan, pleased to be of service to you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Maura said absently. What was this man doing here, when there was no one else around? “Have you seen Jimmy or Mick?” she asked.

  “Jimmy’ll be here in a bit, but Mick doesn’t come in until the evening, most days. I’m keeping an eye on the place for ’em. Will you sit a keep an old man company for a bit?”

  “Sure,” Maura said. After all, there was nowhere else she had to be, and she couldn’t be rude to a nice old man who seemed to be the pub’s most consistent customer.

  “Could I trouble you for a cup of tea, before you settle yourself?”

  The only place in the room that tea-making equipment could be located would be behind the bar, so that’s where she headed. “I’ll see what I can do. How do you like your tea, uh, Mr. Sheahan?” she called out. She’d guessed right, as she quickly found the electric kettle and tea bags.

  “White, with sugar, love. You can call me Billy—Mr. Sheahan was me da, and he’s long gone.”

  “White” presumably meant with milk? Maura opened the little fridge and was pleased to find a small carton of milk. She smelled it and decided it would do. She found tea bags in a jar on an adjacent shelf, and there were clean mugs lined up on another shelf. As she filled the kettle, she surveyed the bar area: the taps worked, as she knew, but she had no idea where the kegs were kept. In a cellar? A limited selection o
f liquors, with a big bottle of Paddy’s Irish Whiskey set up in the dispenser. A standing display of assorted chips, although Maura had no idea how long they’d been there. And that was it. Not much to work with.

  Today she had time to take a good hard look at the place. The first day she hadn’t been in any shape to take in details, and yesterday the pub had been buried under customers. There were the two armchairs flanking the fireplace, six stools in front of the bar, a couple of tables with chairs tucked in corners around the room, and a row of chairs lined up along the big windows in the front, where the wide sills served as a countertop. The place could hold maybe twenty-five people, seated. If customers were willing to stand, as they had the night before, that could easily rise to fifty or beyond.

  The kettle boiled, and she poured water over tea bags in two mugs. She waited a minute or two, then fished out the tea bags, added sugar and milk to both, and carried them over to the fireplace.

  “Ah, that’s grand. Will you be joinin’ me?” Billy said.

  “Sure.” Maura settled herself in the chair opposite him, noting that the springs under the seat had seen better days—in some other century. “Were you a friend of the old owner?”

  “Indeed I was, from when we were lads together at the school down the road—the old school, not the one they put up thirty years ago. We gave the nuns a time, let me tell you.” He sipped his tea. “Yer from America?”

  As if it wasn’t obvious as soon as she opened her mouth. “Yes, Boston. Did you know my grandmother?”

  “That I did, and her husband Jimmy. Sad thing about him.”

  Maura did a quick calculation: her grandfather James had died over forty years earlier. “Why do you say that?”

  “He shouldn’t have gone so young. He was a hard worker, a good man. He cut himself one day and didn’t take care of it—said he was too busy. And we didn’t have the clinic in the village then. So it went septic on him, and by the time he saw a doctor, there was nothing to be done. Your grandmother, she was heartbroken, her left with a young son, and no way to support herself. Jimmy’d been farming the land, raising some cattle, but he didn’t own it, and she couldn’t handle it herself.”

  “That was when she went to America?” Maura prompted.

  “It was. She had friends in Boston, people from hereabouts who said there were jobs to be had there, and they’d help her get settled. So she left with Tommy. Sweet boy, he was. Your da, wasn’t he?”

  Maura shook her head. “Barely. He died not long after I was born. It was a construction accident.” How different her life might have been if her father had lived. Or if her mother hadn’t decided to dump her baby on her mother-in-law and disappear.

  “Your gran, now—we always hoped she’d come back, at least for a visit.”

  “I think she wanted to, but she never had the chance.” Was it rude to talk about the fact that they’d been lucky to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table? “But she told me that she wanted me to visit, to get to know something about where she—we came from. So here I am.”

  “Are yeh going ta stay long?”

  “I…haven’t decided. I was only planning on a week—I hadn’t realized how much there was to see.”

  Billy waved a hand gnarled with arthritis. “Ah, a week’s no good at all. What’s your hurry?”

  What was her hurry? Maura wondered. She’d been here all of three days, and already she’d been supplied with a place to stay, a car, an array of people who had known her grandmother—and a possible job that would support her for a time. “None at all, I guess. So tell me, what else should I see around here?”

  That was enough to get Billy started, and Maura settled back in her chair with her tea and listened.

  Chapter 9

  The next time Maura looked at her watch, more than two hours had passed. She’d refilled their mugs with more tea, but even that interruption hadn’t stemmed the flow of Billy’s words. Maybe it was because he was thrilled to have an audience, Maura thought; most of his stories referred to people and places from a half century ago, and no doubt all of the pub’s patrons had heard them all before. Or maybe Old Mick had let him hang around to entertain the tourists with a bit of local color—or maybe simply because they were old friends. It would have kept them buying pints, and Billy had probably garnered his share.

  Stop being so cynical, Maura! Billy was a lonely old man who’d outlived most of his generation and was happy for someone to talk to. And she could learn a lot by listening to him.

  They were interrupted by the sound of someone moving around the back of the building; then Jimmy came in through the door next to the bar. “Ah, Maura. How are ya?”

  “Just fine, Jimmy. Is it opening time?”

  “No hurry. You haven’t been turning them away at the door, have you?” He grinned.

  “Not exactly. Billy here’s been entertaining me with his stories.”

  “Good man, Billy! Maura, could I have a word with you?”

  “Sure. Billy, you need anything else?” When he didn’t answer, Maura looked at him and realized that he’d fallen asleep. She stood up and joined Jimmy at the bar. “What’s up?”

  “Have you given any thought to what we talked about?” he asked.

  “You mean, working here for a bit?”

  Jimmy nodded. “Mick says his grandma is over the moon to have someone to share her stories with—she was always close to yours. You’d be making an old lady happy.”

  So Jimmy had talked to Mick about her. Mick apparently hadn’t changed his mind about the job offer. “She’s a lovely lady, but are you trying to push me into doing what you want?”

  Jimmy contrived to appear hurt. “Now, why would I be doing that?”

  Maura looked him in the eye. “You’re playing the ‘poor old lady’ card to get cheap help, is why. Not that I mind—I just want to be clear from the start about why I’m doing this.”

  Jimmy cocked his head at her. “Would you rather I pulled the ‘poor lonely daughter’ card instead? Do it for Rose, then—she’d be glad of a woman’s company here.”

  Did the guy have no shame? “Rose is a smart kid, and she shouldn’t be stuck here. So be warned: if I stay around, I may fill her head with plans to escape this place.”

  “Ah, she’d never leave her da here all by his lonesome. She’s a good girl.”

  And Jimmy should be looking out for his daughter, not himself. Rose deserved better—the kid deserved a chance to see what the rest of the world was like, if only within Ireland—but didn’t a lot of Irish kids get jobs in other parts of Europe? Maybe she herself hadn’t had many options, but she could try to see that Rose knew she had some. “So what’s the deal?”

  Jimmy sighed dramatically. “You Americans—always in such a hurry. You aren’t giving me half a chance to work my charms on you.”

  Maura ignored his attempt to divert her. “How long are we talking about?”

  “Until we know what’s happening to the pub, I’d say.”

  “When will that be?”

  “It’s for the courts to sort out,” Jimmy said. “Old Mick never married nor had children, but there’s still lots of his family around. Too complicated for me.”

  “How long do Irish courts usually take to sort things out?”

  “It depends,” Jimmy said.

  That was no help. Her temporary job might last a week or six months, for all she could tell. “Any chance you’ll end up with the place, or Mick?” Maura asked.

  “We’ll see. But that doesn’t concern you. All I can say is, the travel season will be upon us by June, say, and it’ll get busier, and we can use your help. You need more than a week’s time to pay your calls on folk, and there’s nothing that’s drawing you back to Boston. We all win, right?”

  So he was figuring months rather than weeks. Surely the Irish legal system wouldn’t take that long? More to the point, would that work for her? Maura had to admit that what he said made sense, though she was beginning to resent being
constantly reminded that she had no life of her own. Of course, staying here didn’t move her life forward much, but it was marginally more tempting that going back to Boston and trying to pick up the pieces and start something new. Why not? Maura squared her chin and again looked him in the eye. “All right, here’s the deal. First, I need to figure out if I can swap my airplane ticket, and how much that’ll cost me. Second, I need to be paid enough to cover my room, feed myself, and put gas in the car, like Mick said, with maybe a little extra thrown in,. Tell me straight—can this place afford to pay me that much?”

  “We can make it work, if that’s what you want. I’m hoping it won’t be long. Much like yourself, I’d like to know which way the wind is blowing so I can make me own plans.”

  “All right. You make the numbers work, and I’ll stay. But I’ve got one condition: we clean up this place. It looks like some of the dirt is older than I am, and don’t get me started on the bathrooms.”

  Jimmy grinned. “Yeah, Old Mick slowed down in his later years, and I don’t think he could see so well anymore—or smell. But the customers don’t come here for the shiny bar top, yeh know. They’re here to see friends and talk and relax.”

  “They can’t do that in a clean place?”

  “I suppose. Just no tarty bits like flowers in the window or new curtains and the like.”

  “Deal. Should I start now?”

  Jimmy looked startled for a moment. “Grand. No doubt people will be coming in to see if there’s any news about the body.”

  “Is there?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, not yet anyways. But who knows? They’ll be coming in either way.”