“Quite right,” said Temple.
“Pity about the weather,” one of the men said. The one with the camera safe between his knees. (“You’d think the likes of us were about to make off with it,” Liam would say about him later.) He was talking to Bernadette. “I would have liked to shoot you outside with your roses.”
“They’re not my roses.” She blushed. “They’re Dad’s.”
“Mrs. Audrey Whitetree-Murphy’s, I’m afraid.” Aunt Bridey’s voice rose from the sideboard. “Protestants, every one of them.”
“I’m sorry,” the cameraman said. “Who is?”
“The roses, Tobias.” Temple smiled.
“Oh, you know,” Aunt Bridey said as she distributed the rinsed glasses around the table to everyone, “there’s no sense worryin’ about spilt milk.” Here she eyed Bernadette in a way that reminded me of my own mother’s warnings.
The cameraman, Tobias, drummed the oilcloth with his fingers. His lips were wet and cherry red against his ivory face.
I was glad there was no one there from the police, like Inspector Mullaney. He would have surely surmised Jenny Rose had had something to do with Peg’s death. Of course she hadn’t. That was one thing of which I was sure. At least I thought I was sure.
Liam took Seamus gently into his side of the house to get him cleaned up.
I felt Temple watching me. I cleared my throat. “Where are you staying?”
“Not far. The Algiers.”
“You’re here about Peg dying instead of Dierdre, then?” Jenny Rose inspected him over unimpressed, pursed lips.
“This lot are,” Temple Fortune said. “I must confess I had an ulterior motive.”
“And what might that be?” No reason not to be blunt in her own kitchen. Bridey broke the seal on the whiskey next in line and lowered herself tenderly onto her chair. She must have piles, I thought to myself. I tried not to look any way at all.
“Just a couple of hours ago, my landlady over in Baltimore mentioned a giant salmon in the River Ilen, here. Three years straight, now, she said. A great whale of a thing, just looking to be snagged. So I thought I’d tag along.”
“And now with the full moon…” Jenny Rose put in, her face very pale.
“Yes. It’s true they’re out and running with the full moon.” Temple warmed to the thought. “All set to bite.” He looked at me. “Can’t help themselves.”
Liam smacked the air. “Aah, that old tale! There’s plenty a bait gone into the makin’ a that fish.”
“So tell those who’ve never had a look at him,” Jenny Rose hurried to say.
“How big is the fellow, do you think?” Temple asked her.
“You hear all sorts of yarns,” Liam interrupted. “They even have a name for him, if you can believe it. Tantalos, they call him.”
“You made up that name, you poncey sod,” Jenny Rose flared at him.
“But you have heard of him being around of late?” Temple said.
“Didn’t Willy Murphy have a bout with that fellow just before all this happened?” Bridey sat down.
“Is that so? What, last week?”
“That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Jenny Rose? You and Seamus were out with him on the Schubeen. Day after Pentecost.”
“Now that was an awful cold day,” Jenny Rose said. “But it wasn’t Tantalos. That was a big one but it wasn’t Tantalos himself. He’s got a blue tail.”
“A blue tail?” Tobias said.
“On one side. Don’t ask me why. Something must have squashed it once, or smashed it.”
“And you saw him, you say?”
“It was like this. Willy Murphy had hold of one fish. Along comes the great king himself, Tantalos, glidin’ along. He put the other fish off! Oh, he’s a terrible sport! Sure, he got away and the other one, too. You just ask Willy Murphy.”
“Who might your landlady be?” Dierdre said.
“Mrs. Walsh,” Temple said.
“Mrs. Walsh. We know the Walsh family … used to live in town, they did.”
“That’s right,” Bridey said. She picked up her needle and resumed her crewelwork.
“They’ve the daughter does the artwork, sculptures like, along the riverbank. Helen. Jenny Rose went to school with her, didn’t you?”
Jenny Rose squashed her face up, as though she was trying to remember.
“Well, anyway,” Temple said, his eyes shining, “it’s just my cup of tea.”
I looked at Jenny Rose. She looked right back, cat, canary and what of it?
Ned poked his head in the door. “Someone better help us get that wood from the bridge before it all blows away,” he said. “There’ll be no getting out of here this night if we don’t.”
All the men stood up reluctantly and tromped away. That was the last we saw of them for the time being.
Chapter Seven
The next day, I was out in the meadow, hanging my wet wash on the line. It was such a fine day. I stood back admiring my work. Where I come from, you put your wash outside you might never see it again. And if you do it will be sootier than before you started. So this was a pleasure for me. There’s nothing so nice as clean nightgowns and white things in the wind. Especially after a storm. I went back toward the house. Just as I passed the stone shed a hand came out and covered my mouth. I would have screamed but I knew the hand. I knew it and I wanted it on me.
He pulled me up against the wall and held me, tightly, by the small of my back. We stood like that, breathing hard, the wind and our mouths taking in the breath of the other. He raised his hands and held the outline of my breasts. His eyelids closed halfway. That emerald slipped from his eyes. I felt that hardness against my hip.
“Claire,” he whispered. “Claire.”
Leather slapped. The clatter of rust and metal. We broke apart. It was Uncle Ned, leading Morocco from the stall to take back to Mrs. Audrey Whitetree-Murphy. I burst away from Temple and ran in the low window at the back of the house.
“Mornin’!”
I turned and saw Temple hail Uncle Ned.
Uncle Ned raised the empty pipe from his mouth with delight. “Out early!” he cried.
“Come to ask for your expert advice.” Temple, cool as you please, fell into step. He never did see Liam coming, thoughtful, from the shed we’d just been in.
I stood very still and pulled myself together. I was just about to go up the stairs when I glanced to the parlor and saw Aunt Bridey sitting in there on her ancient chair. Her head was bent. She was doing crewelwork on a wooden stand.
As usual, she greeted me with chilly disapproval. Then, “I’m just waitin’ here for Mr. Truelove,” she excused herself.
As if sitting-down work was a pastime reserved for idlers. Like my mother, I thought.
“The solicitor,” she added.
“Yes. I met Mr. Truelove. At the wake.” I was just about to turn and go on when I noticed what she was doing. It was a page of lilies on a green background.
“Aunt Bridey!” I gasped. “That’s beautiful!” Now I could see why she thought she could afford to scoff at others. I don’t believe I’d ever seen needlework so fine or capable and well done. Maybe she’d dreamed of some sort of greatness and recognition and was disappointed.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” she said. She didn’t look up.
I never really got what that expression meant and I still don’t but I had the feeling she was pleased. I thought I’d take advantage. “You know, if you have a minute,” I said, “I was hoping to talk to you about Jenny Rose.”
“If it’s about her moving into that cold studio, I won’t hear of it. We’ll get along just fine here, the way things are, for now. She can sleep in the loft.”
“No, I didn’t mean that.” I stood behind her. “I was thinking about school.”
“School! She won’t go.” She looked up, a needle in her mouth, a thread of bright yarn down her chin. “And Peg went to so much trouble to get her in up in Cork!”
I leaned o
ver. “Goodness, Aunt Bridey! I’ve never seen such exquisite handiwork. You’re an artist.”
She didn’t answer, just kept on going, but you could tell the room was that much lighter.
“I guess you did the kneeler that was before the coffin? I noticed how beautiful that was.”
She threaded her silver needle with one apt movement. “May God leave you your eyes, my mother used to say. And look, he has.”
“You know,” I said, “the funny thing is, it’s you who Jenny Rose gets all her talent from. I see that now.”
She stopped what she was doing. “You should have seen the pictures on the walls of her house,” she said. “The house that went up in smoke. The slate house. She had all scenes painted on the walls, gardens, other rooms you’d think you could walk right into … with people in them. You’d think you were never alone. ‘Tromp l’oeil’ you call them. Trick of the eye. She had a cupboard done in the pantry, you’d swear you could reach for the flour, it was that real. And wee mice on the shelf. They’d give you a start! They’re all gone, now. Gone for good.” Her face became sad. “A course, Jenny Rose spent most of her time alone. Peg saw to that. Keeping people away just by her very nature.”
It was like I’d opened the gate with the magical word and now here came the gush. “Was she very private?” I said.
“Peg? Manipulative.” She made a face.
As if she herself wasn’t. “Oh,” I said, but she knew what I was thinking.
“There was always bad blood between me and Peg.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’m not going to pretend different now, because she’s gone.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean—”
“You young people think everything’s okay. It’s as if because you’ve talked about it, that makes it all right. Well, it isn’t all right. None of it is. It’s a sin!”
I was afraid to say a word.
Then she said, “Peg ruined my sister Dierdre’s life. And I told her so, the day she left.” She covered her mouth with her hand.
“You quarreled with Peg the day she died?”
“I did.”
“Good no one knows about that,” I joked.
“I don’t care.” Her eyes glazed over. It was as if I weren’t there. “She could have had a husband of her own. And children of her own.”
“She has Jenny Rose,” I pointed out.
“It’s not the same.”
“It is the same.” I stood firm. How dare she?
“Well,” she wavered, winding thread around a spool, “that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, Dierdre was young. She was easily led. I hate to say it, my own sister, but she was weak.” She pursed her lips. “Along comes this big ungainly woman. Older. A mannish type. She took Dierdre into her confidence. Dierdre felt important for the first time. We all were impressed with Peg, back then. We were just country schoolgirls. We didn’t know the ways of the world. So there you are. She succumbed to her advances. Dierdre loved to be the pretty young thing.” Bridey sighed. “She always would be young and pretty next to Peg. I think that’s what she thought. It was almost revolting.” She shook her head. “There were days”—she leaned toward me and lowered her voice, confidentially—“she’d wear pigtails. St. Patrick! How we put up with it! You wouldn’t know it now, but Dierdre was a looker.”
“My mother told me she was fair.”
“I always thought that was why your mother didn’t take the veil.”
“What?” This was news. “I thought my mother gave up her dreams of the convent when she met my father.”
Bridey busied herself with her needle, as if she’d said too much. “I’m sure it keeps things nice to tell your father that.” She pursed her lips. “But she’d never have seen your father if she hadn’t already given up the idea. I tell you, it was a great shock for your mother, what happened. It touched her very deeply. I thought we’d never see her again when she left with your father and I was right. We didn’t have a car back then, you know. Things were very different. They left in a donkey cart, goin’ up the road with her hope chest pokin’ out in the air. Your mother was wavin’ her good green scarf, like she was off to a festival.” For a while she didn’t say anything. She was looking down that road of long ago. “If it weren’t for Jenny Rose, we’d never have seen her again.” There was a yearning in that voice I recognized.
“She would have come.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You could have taken a vacation to the States. They have all sorts of package deals.”
“For your mother it always had to be nicey-nice. She always had to picture things as if it would all work out well in the end. Well, some things don’t work out well. You can see that.” Bridey’s mouth dropped. “She didn’t care at all what people would say, once she was set to leave. ‘Have faith,’ she would say. I can hear her still.”
“I can hear her too. She’s still telling us all to have faith.” And now here I was telling Jenny Rose.
“But then Mary didn’t have to stay, did she?” Aunt Bridey went on bitterly. “She didn’t have to hear the whispers and the sniggers.”
“It must have been so hard for you,” I said.
Aunt Bridey looked at me suddenly and I saw there were tears in her eyes. “It was,” she said. She grappled for her hanky, found it in her pocket and gave her nose a good honk. She didn’t much care for this position, though: me sitting before her feeling sorry for her. “That’s yarn from us, you know,” she said, changing the subject. “From Skibbereen. All hand done. Seamus’s mother tools the yarn. Good sheep and goat yarn from our own animals.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and it’s Jenny Rose who colors them. All natural. Dyed with vegetables and things from the sea. She dyes with tea, even. Anything handy that lasts. You see that phosphorescent cast inside the lilies? Jenny Rose grinds abalone shells and things like that, then she makes a paste and dyes them. She finds all sorts of colors and blends them for me. There’s a rich marine fauna in Lough Hyne. It’s sixty fathoms deep in some parts, so you can imagine what you can find.” She was breathless with the whole thing.
“I still can’t believe how lovely! I’m so impressed.” I dropped onto the couch.
“Yes, everyone likes them.”
“Well, where do you sell them?” We were on safer ground again.
“Oh, we don’t sell them. This one will go to the church. They’ll use this next Easter for the altar cloth, if I finish in time. I never have much time.”
“What, you never sell them?”
She laughed. I don’t think I’d ever heard Bridey laugh. It was a good sound. There was the family resemblance in the cadence and the tone. She shook her head and I knew just what she was thinking: These Americans! They’ll be wanting to make money from everything!
“Well, do you show them?” I said. “Like in a museum?”
“Sure, too many people want them, to be leaving them off in some museum.”
“So, what, you give them away as gifts, like at Christmas and birthdays?”
“And feast days, yes.”
“That’s great. Gee. I don’t suppose you’d let me photograph you like this, would you? With the morning sun coming in?”
She raised her chin. “I don’t see why not.”
“Great. Let me just run and get my camera. It’s with my purse in the kitchen. Don’t move, now.” I passed my reflection in the hallway mirror and saw Temple’s hands upon my breasts. I held them myself, my head thrown back just for a moment. He was here. In Skibbereen. I would have him. This time I would have him! I slowed my breathing down and went back in. I found her just as I’d left her. “Oh!” I aimed and shot before she might turn. “Gorgeous.” Then I fine-tuned my focus and light.
“Just keep working away, is it?” Her voice tentative and soft. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Here she was, mean old Aunt Bridey, being good for me. And all because she had the dreams she’d dreamed for herself in front of her now. All set, at last, for the world. H
ow many miles of thread had Bridey gone through like this? How many years at it in sunshine and rain in this very same window? The best of her on a cloth before her. We all had our dreams, once, hadn’t we? I pushed away the broken Taj Mahal dreams. My fingers still trembled. Oh, Temple’s nearness had excited me. I swallowed hard and aimed anew. I’d make these like March light on cherry bark. I’d make them slicing and neat as the world of her dreams and I’d show her as she would be proud to be seen. “Yes, that’s great.” I kept my voice even-keeled so as not to lose her. “They really should be in a museum though, so the world could get a look at them.”
“They do. At mass.”
“Yes, of course.” You could hear the robins battling in the gutter. “How’s Dierdre?” I said. Right away you could see her face tighten. It didn’t matter, now. I’d got her good.
“Sad.” She shrugged.
“She’ll be sad for a while, I guess.”
“Yes.”
“Aunt Bridey, tell me please about Seamus.”
“What you see is what you get there, missy.”
“Yes but his imitations are so sinister for one so … innocent.”
“You mean yesterday? Ah, he’s not like that. The way you think. He’s like a myna bird. He just mimics what he figures will get a rise out of everyone. That’s just the one side of him. The other is the lonely, slow fellow. He can’t even get through singing the alphabet when he has to think about it, see?”
“Would he, I mean did he … ever hurt someone?”
“Seamus? Never! Well.” She seemed to remember something, then dismissed it. “No,” she said. “Seamus is the gentlest creature in the world. I’d bet my life on it.”
I only pray, I thought, you’ll never have to.
“He plays the flute, did you know?”
“He does?” I moved the curtain to clear its lacey shadows from her cheek.
“Oh, he has a lovely touch. He doesn’t know what he’s playing, but you put that Mozart on and he’ll play that as well. The trouble is, he’ll only play what he wants and when he wants, so you can’t put him on show or anything, you see.”
“Where ever did he learn the flute?”
Jenny Rose Page 14
