Buried In a Bog

by Sheila Connolly

  For a moment Maura wondered if Ellen knew about Old Mick’s will, then she decided she was going paranoid. “Do you have another booking?”

  “No, nothing like that. I was planning to stop in at the market and wondered how much food I should lay in.”

  “I’ve got a few things to work out”—like the rest of my life—“but I should be able to tell you later today. Say, a couple of days more?”

  “That’s grand. You take your time—I’ve got to get moving. Come on, Gráinne mo chroí, we’re on our way!”

  Maura munched her way through breakfast, glad of the peace. She was ready when Mick rapped on the front door.

  As he led her to his car, he asked, “Have you had any time to think?”

  “None. I slept like a log. Did you order up the sunshine, to make things look better this morning?”

  “Sorry, but I can’t take the credit. Will it help, though?”

  “Can’t hurt.” As Maura watched the now familiar landscape roll by, she had to admit she was in a good mood. Maybe because she knew no one was chasing her. Or maybe because for the first time that she could remember, she had choices. She could stay and make a go of running an Irish pub, or she could go home and figure out something else. Those two paths were probably equally difficult, but definitely different.

  When they neared the top of the Knockskagh hill, Mick pulled into the small lane to let her out.

  “What about your gran?” Maura asked.

  “I’ll go get her now. I’d take you in”—he held up a large, old-fashioned key—“but I thought you might like a bit of time alone with the place before I brought her over.”

  Mick handed her the key, and she hefted it in her hand. “That’s the house?” She pointed.

  “The very one. I’ll leave you to it.”

  She walked past the ruined house on the right. Stone, probably covered with stucco once upon a time—and the new houses were built just the same, from what she’d seen. A tumbledown shed on the left, all but covered with last year’s dead brambles. Then Mick Sullivan’s house, on the right. It was bigger than she had remembered—had she really thought it would be a one-room thatched cottage with roses blooming? Get real, Maura. Instead it was a once-proud stucco-clad stone building with chimneys at both ends, its slate roof now sagging just a bit, like a swaybacked horse. Other than a single empty home beyond it, there was nothing to interrupt the view of endless rolling green fields. There were sheep grazing in the grass behind a wire fence, and Maura watched them scurry away at her approach. So somebody was still using the land. Where did Mick’s—her?—property start and end?

  Working up her courage to try the key in the door, she stood in front of the house and looked up at it. Straight ahead was the central door, painted a cheerful light green fairly recently; there were two flanking windows, and three above. A pair of stucco-clad pillars marked the short walk leading to the door. She had no idea how old the place was, but it looked like it was in solid condition, at least from the outside. She braced herself for whatever she might find inside. Old Mick’s ghost, maybe? And what would she say to him?

  The key turned easily in the lock, and she pushed the door in and stopped on the threshold. From where she stood, the inside was much like Bridget Nolan’s: she could see two rooms downstairs: the big one in front of her, with a huge fireplace at one end, and a smaller but more formal one through a door to her right, its fireplace smaller but fancier. Both had floors made of large slabs of slate. A narrow staircase along the back wall led to the second story, and a door beneath it led to what she hoped was a bathroom. Was it too much to hope for indoor plumbing? There was little furniture: a broad, well-scrubbed pine table took up the middle of the big room, along with four mismatched chairs, and a plain wooden chest under the front window. In the corner next to the fireplace nestled a very small stove with an oven, and an old sink. Maura wondered if the stove worked or if Old Mick had stuck to using the fireplace, where a cast-iron thing she had no name for still held its pot suspended. Shelves over the stove displayed a hodgepodge of pots and china. A row of wooden pegs against the wall next to the front door where she stood was intended for coats—an old tweed cap still hung there. Old Mick’s, most likely?

  She stepped tentatively into the main room, then walked into the second room. There she found a low single bed that sagged in the middle, where she guessed Mick had slept in his later years. It was stripped of its sheets, down to the mattress. In front of the window toward the lane there was a pair of chairs with a small table between. She looked around for a lamp, but all she could see was an oil lamp, half-filled, sitting on the mantel. Was the house even wired for electricity?

  Back in the big room she took the stairs up to the second story, finding them dusty but strong. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, one to either side, and a small room directly over the front door, all their walls clad in tongue-and-groove boards that continued up the slant of the ceiling. The bedrooms each had an old iron and brass bedstead and elderly mattress, and there was the occasional chair or chest placed here and there. Everything was very bare, but at least it was clean. She wondered how often Old Mick had come upstairs in the last decade or two. She looked up and saw no water stains on the boards. That was a good sign: maybe the roof was sound.

  She drifted toward one of the bedroom windows that faced the back. The house sat below the crest of the hill to the front, but the hill continued to slope down behind. More fields, with cows and sheep. A few stands of trees. She could see the road below in the distance, and the bog beyond—the bog where Denis McCarthy had lain for close to a century. From here she could see his burial site.

  Whose house had this been? Had Mick built it for himself? Someone would know. It didn’t really matter anyway. Mick’s ghost might still be hanging around, but the odds were good that there were earlier ones here too. Maura wondered briefly if she should try to spend a night in the house before making any decisions. She shut her eyes, listening, trying to sense any of those lost inhabitants. All she noticed was the silence of the country: the distant sounds of animals in the fields, the wind in the trees. Just as it had likely been a century or two centuries before.

  And she realized slowly that she felt at home in this place. There was no guarantee that people would accept her as the new owner of Sullivan’s, and there were other pubs nearby that customers could choose. Still, she had no doubt there were improvements that she could make at Sullivan’s without changing the character of the place, and ways to bring in new customers. And maybe there was something to be done with the rooms over the pub, for tourists, or offices. It would be a shame to let them go to waste.

  And this house? Could she really see herself living here? She was surprised to find that the answer was yes. It was a lot more space than she needed, but it could be—it was—her own. And suddenly she understood why the Irish felt such a bond with their land: it was a part of their identity, their history. It was their place in the world, however small and precarious. Here she could slip into that place, and it came with its own history—one that was hers too. How could she walk away from that?

  She heard the sound of voices outside and went down to meet Mrs. Nolan and Mick. Mrs. Nolan took one look at Maura’s face and said, “You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question.

  Maura nodded, smiling. “I am. How can I turn down having you as a neighbor?”

  Mrs. Nolan nodded, returning her smile. “A pot of tea might be nice.” She settled herself in one of the chairs at the table.

  Tea? Well, if Old Mick had been dead only a couple of weeks, there were probably still supplies on hand. Maura exchanged a glance with Mick. “I’ll do it,” he volunteered.

  “No, I’ll do it,” Maura said, spotting an aluminum kettle in the kitchen corner. “Mick, is there water?”

  He was leaning against the front wall, watching her with something like amusement. “Of course there is—the tap’s just there. And the bath’s to the rear. All modern conveniences, only half
a century old.”

  “Mick had the well drilled out and the pipes put in not long before my Michael passed away,” Mrs. Nolan volunteered.

  So she’d guessed right. At the sink, Maura turned the handle and, reassured that the water wasn’t brown, filled the kettle and set it on to boil, remembering to light the burner with a match, as she’d seen Ellen do in her own kitchen, conscious all the while of the twin gazes of Mrs. Nolan and Mick. Now, tea…in a canister on the shelf, next to a china teapot; the cups were further along the shelf. Sugar in a jar.

  “We’ll be needing a bit of milk,” Mrs. Nolan said before Maura could open her mouth. “Could you run back to my kitchen and bring some over, Michael?”

  “I’ll do that,” Mick said, and headed out the front door, leaving Maura and Mrs. Nolan alone.

  Maura turned to face her. “Did you send him out on purpose?”

  “I did. I thought you might have questions about the finding of my father in the bog.”

  It took a moment for Maura to realize the full meaning of what Mrs. Nolan had just said. “You knew about that?”

  “I did, though not always—not until lately. Sit you down, Maura—the tea’ll keep.” Mrs. Nolan gazed over Maura’s head, remembering. “Mick Sullivan knew Jeremiah McCarthy, years back. Mick was working in the pub, a young man then, before he came to buy it, and Jeremiah would come in now and then—couldn’t stay away, I’d guess. And sometimes he’d get to talking, especially after too much of the drink.”

  Old Mick had known that Jeremiah McCarthy was a killer? “If Old Mick knew about Denis McCarthy, why didn’t he do anything?” Maura asked.

  “What would you have him do? Jeremiah was settled over in Clogagh, and my mother had made a new life for us, and she didn’t want to hear any of it, or so Mick said, long after. And times were hard then. Mick couldn’t see any good thing coming from telling, so he let it be. But he kept an eye out for me when I came back here, made sure I was comfortably set. Which I was. But he never told me the rest of it until he knew his end was near. For all he knew me da would stay right where he was forever. It was long ago, and I’ve made my peace with it.”

  Maura had to stifle a laugh. Mick was trying to protect his grannie, and it turned out that she didn’t need protecting at all. “Mick—your Michael, that is—he’s been trying to spare you, you know.”

  “And it’s dear of him to try. I’ll sort it out with him. But might I ask one thing of you?”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “Will you help me see to it that my father is buried right? Seeing as it was you that finally put the name to him?”

  “Of course. Thank you, for everything.”

  They fell silent when they heard footsteps outside, and Mick finally appeared with the milk. Mrs. Nolan smiled at him. “Did you have to go milk the cow, then?”

  Mick set the bottle on the table. “I thought you might like some time to talk, the two of you.”

  “Ah, you’re a good lad, Mick. Maura, your kettle’s boiling.”

  Maura stood up quickly. “Oh, right. I’ll take care of it.” And Maura made her first pot of tea in her house, to serve to her first guests—and family.

  Epilogue

  The Church of St. Mary was surprisingly well filled, for the funeral of someone that most of the people seated inside could never have known. And maybe there was a sprinkling of gawkers who had read about the body from the bog and wanted to pay their respects or see what the fuss was about. In any case, Maura was happy that the long-dead Denis McCarthy was going to be laid to rest at last, buried in the family plot in Kilmacabea.

  They’d held a wake the night before, at Sullivan’s. Maura had served at plenty of wakes back in Boston, but this was the first time she’d had a personal connection with the honoree. Mick was a closer relative to Old Denis McCarthy than she was, but he had graciously volunteered to handle the bar, to give her a chance to talk to people. And talk they had! She’d lost count of how many times she’d told the story of tracking down a killer (even if that wasn’t what she’d had in mind), and when she’d finished that, they had asked how she’d come to inherit the pub. But the curiosity did not seem intrusive, and she found herself smiling more than she had expected. She’d never remember the names of all the people who had come up and introduced themselves—and their introductions had often been accompanied by a short genealogy and how they too were related to Denis or Old Mick—but she was sure she’d see them again. How many more complicated family relationships could be found in this crowd? It made Maura’s head hurt to think about it, but she’d bet she was cousin to about half of the people. If she had wanted to expand her family, here she had done it with a vengeance.

  In the church Maura had taken an unobtrusive seat in the third row, and Jimmy and Rose had squeezed in beside her. The current Denis McCarthy sat in the front row with his grandson Jerry beside him—looking uncomfortable in a jacket—but at least he was there, and Jerry was trying to do the right thing. He had met Maura’s eye once in passing and had nodded in recognition, then looked away. Bridget Nolan sat next to him, with Mick at her side.

  Once the service ended, a group of young, husky pallbearers lined up by the plain wooden coffin and began the slow procession out of the church. Denis McCarthy made his slow and cautious way behind the coffin, followed by Jerry and then Mick escorting his grandmother. Outside the church Old Denis would be carried off to the Kilmacabea cemetery. The lane leading to the site was too narrow for cars, so most of the attendees scattered rather than attend the burial, and Mick had explained that the ground was too rough for his grandmother to manage, and he’d volunteered to stay with her. Others lingered, since Mick Nolan had made it known that there would be food and drink available at Sullivan’s after the ceremony. Maura saw Jimmy and Rose head straight down the street, to finish setting up and to open the doors. She drifted toward the cluster of people around Mrs. Nolan and Mick. “You want me to go ahead?” she asked.

  “We should go together,” Mrs. Nolan said firmly.

  “Are we walking?” Mick asked his grandmother.

  “What else would we be doing? I think I can still manage a sidewalk, thank you. I’ve plenty of years left in me,” Mrs. Nolan said, and looking at her now, Maura could believe it.

  “I’ll be along in a few minutes—there’s something I want to do first. You go ahead and I’ll meet you there,” Maura told them. Odds were that it would be another late night, and she wanted to do this one thing before she joined the crowd at Sullivan’s.

  As Mick led his grannie slowly to Sullivan’s, Maura crossed the street and went to her room at the Keohanes’ house. There was one loose end left: she had to tell Denis Flaherty in Australia all that his letter had set into motion. She took up a pad of paper and stepped outside her room, finding a seat at one of the tables on the patio. After a moment of gazing at the view, she began:

  Dear Mr. Flaherty,

  You don’t know me, but I’m a distant cousin of yours, formerly from Boston but now living in County Cork. I want to tell you about the family that we share here and how I came to know about it…