The Disenchanted Widow

by Christina McKenna

  How many confessionals have I sat in? he mused, as he stared at the box. What truths and lies have been told to me?

  He was contemplating those questions when the rear door of the church creaked open. Who should appear, like an overweight bird of paradise in a blue frock, yellow cardigan, and pink tam-o’-shanter, but Mrs. McFadden herself?

  The pest tiptoed inside, daubed her breast with a healthy splash of holy water, and squeaked up the aisle in her wide-fit Hush Puppies to claim her usual place in the pew. Father Cassidy’s heart wobbled slightly as he acknowledged her with what he hoped was one of his most solemn don’t-disturb-me-I’m-praying nods. He could tell by the way she eyed him that she was anxious to learn his housekeeper situation. He quickly transferred his attention back to the breviary, determining that nothing, or no one, would interrupt him.

  It was almost time for his supper anyway, and Miss Beard was preparing his favorite: rib-eye steak with apple dumplings to follow.

  He decided to cut his prayers short. One final turn up to the altar and a quick left into the sacristy, exiting by the rear, would be enough to foil the McFadden woman. At his approach, however, she got off her knees, joints popping, and with a heavy sigh sat back in the seat. Not a good sign. Father Cassidy could sense her looking up at him as he passed by, but he was determined to stick to his plan.

  In the sacristy, he stowed his prayer book quickly in the bookcase and made haste through the outer door.

  “Father, would ye have a wee minute?”

  He couldn’t believe it. There she was, blocking his path as he came down the steps. How she could move with such speed, impeded as she was by two heavy shopping bags and chronic sciatica—an affliction that he and the entire parish never ceased hearing about—was a mystery.

  Cassidy steeled himself. He knew what she wanted and was prepared to lie if he had to. There were times when the eighth commandment simply had to be circumvented.

  “Yes, Mrs. McFadden, what seems to be the problem?”

  “Well, I was wunderin’, Father, if ye’d got any answers to your advert’mint for the housekeeper, like? For ye know, I’m good at the fries and the apple tarts and the sponges and what-have-ye. My Paddy said to me the other day, he sez: ‘Isn’t it terrible that Father Cassidy isn’t gonna have nobody to do for him when Betty Beard goes away?’ ‘Do ye know, Paddy, you’re right,’ sez I. ‘We can’t have Father Cassidy sittin’ there by himself in the parochial house, starvin’ with the hunger and nobody tae ax him if he has a mouth on him or not—’”

  “Yes, indeed, but—”

  “Now, I do a couple-a days with me Uncle Ned, but I could work round that, Father. For I ast my Paddy would he mind if I helped ye out for a bit, ’cos it would mean that my Paddy would maybe have to make a drop o’ tea for himself for a bit. And my Paddy said he wouldn’t mind makin’ the odd drop o’ tea for himself because you, Father, are far more important than him, or any other man round here for that matter, so ye are.” Rose halted to draw breath.

  “Yes, quite, that was good of Paddy,” the priest said, swooping on the precious pause like a hawk upon a field mouse. “And it’s very good of you to offer, Mrs. McFadden. I’ll certainly keep you in mind. But I’ll be running the ad for another week.” He checked his watch pointedly and made to move down the steps. But Rose stood her ground. “Now, I really must be going,” he told her. Miss Beard would have to reheat his supper if he delayed further, and the rib eye steak would be fit only for shoe leather.

  “Oh, Father, there was just another wee thing…”

  He could hear her panting behind him like a dray horse.

  “Yes?” He stopped and turned calmly to meet her.

  She put down her cargo and rested a hand on her lower flank. “God, Father, the sicatical is killin’ me, so it is.” She gazed up at him.

  “You’re on your feet far too much, Mrs. McFadden. You should be at home resting.” And not out here bothering me. He checked his watch again. “Now, what was the other thing?”

  “The other thing was The Comforter of the Affected in the chapel, Father.”

  What on earth is she talking about? Oh, yes, the statue. “The Comforter of the Afflicted? Yes, what about it?”

  “Well, I noticed she was a wee bit pale looking, Father. She’d need a bit of a touch-up, and I mentioned it to my Paddy, and he agreed with me, so he did. But then I got tae thinkin’ who’d be able to do an important art job like that. My Paddy and meself wrecked our brains for tae see who we could come up with, and then it hit us, Father.”

  Rose paused for dramatic effect, and to heighten what she felt was the earth-shattering impact of what she was about to say. Father Cassidy, untutored in the ways of the country folk, waited also, wondering what he was supposed to say.

  “Well, don’t ye want to know who we came up with, Father?”

  “Yes…yes indeed. How interesting! Whom did you come up with?”

  “Lorcan Strong. That’s who, Father. Now ye wouldn’t know him yet, but he’s Etta’s boy from the Cock.”

  “You mean The Crowing Cock pub, I take it?”

  “Aye, the Cock pub. Well, he’s the greatest artist…could paint anything, so he could. If ye put him in a dark room with a bag over his head, and give him a brush and bitta paper, he’d still be able tae paint pitchers like a photo.”

  “My goodness. He sounds very talented indeed. I—”

  “Now, I ast Etta tae ax him, ’cos he’s due home for a wee break soon. He’s got a grand job in Belfast, paintin’ at a big place where they keep pitchers and the like. She said he’d do it and no bother since it’s for the church—”

  “Excellent!” Father Cassidy put a hand up. “Now I really must be going. Duty calls.”

  He strode off quickly.

  “If ye can’t get nobody for the housekeepin’, Father, I’ll be round next week tae help ye out!”

  “Very good, Mrs. McFadden,” he called over his shoulder, hoping it would never come to that. As he rushed away, he felt as helpless and distraught as a man trapped at the top of a burning staircase, with no option but to plunge through the deadly flames.

  Chapter six

  Mr. Grant’s truck was filthy and smelly and looked like something that not only took him from A to B but provided board and lodgings as well. The floor was strewn with leaflets, shop flyers, and copies of St. Timothy’s Parish Bulletin stamped with muddy boot prints. There were stray socks and skeins of baler twine. Flattened takeaway cartons and dead beer cans spoke of an unpartnered man who led a life of harmful habits. The stuffing stuck out of the seats. The dashboard had what appeared to be a bite taken out of it. Incongruously, a string vest was doing duty as a seat cover.

  Herkie, with great reluctance and a sharp prod from his ma, clambered in first. There was nowhere to sit but on a piece of grubby foam rubber wedged between the two front seats. Bessie eased herself in beside him, disgusted that her good green skirt was making contact with the vile seat cover.

  “That’s the day, now!” Grant said breezily as the truck rattled off in second gear. “A bitta good weather makes all the differs tae a body, so it does.”

  He was bent over the steering wheel, nose almost touching the windshield, Mr. Magoo–style. Herkie, squeezed up against him with little room to maneuver, had a side-on view of his head. A great tuft of hair sprouting out of Grant’s left ear merited close inspection.

  “Yes, fine weather indeed,” said Bessie, wrinkling her nose while she fanned herself with a parish bulletin she’d found on the dashboard.

  They’d hardly traveled two hundred yards when she felt a coolness wafting up her legs. On looking down, she saw a hole the size of a saucer in the floor. Alarmed, she dropped the bulletin over it as the road flew past beneath them.

  Before too long they entered a thirty-mile zone and a sign was bidding them WELCOME TO TAILORSTOWN.

  “Here she is now,” Mr. Grant announced grandly. With a grinding of gears—which set off a frenetic hammering under the
bonnet—he slowed the truck to a crawl and proceeded down the main street. For a car mechanic, he wasn’t showing much promise as a driver.

  The town, little more than a glorified T-junction, was lined with the sort of shops and businesses one might see in any rural town: a grocery store, several pubs, a haberdasher’s, a gent’s outfitters, a newsagent’s, Dan’s Decorators, the Curl Up ’n’ Dye hair salon, and the Cozy Corner Café. There were few signs of life. The widow imagined that most of the inhabitants probably hadn’t bothered to rise from their beds. What would be the point?

  Outside the Cozy Corner she saw a dog nosing at a carton of fries. It seemed to change its mind and moved on as they passed.

  “Josie does a good fry-up, if ye’s want tae ate later on,” said Grant.

  Bessie nodded, thinking, Well, if a flea-ridden oul’ mongrel turns its nose up at Josie’s cuisine, I think I’ll pass. Moments later she saw the dog relieve itself on the takeout, confirming her suspicions.

  Farther along, on the step of the Crowing Cock bar, a drunk was staggering about like a toddler. The ungracious sight brought Packie to mind, and the memory of an overworked Indian doctor with bad English and curry on his breath summing it up for her.

  “Well, if it be any comfort at all, madam, your husband he save himself much pain.”

  “How’s that, doctor?”

  “His liver, how you say, be size of the suitcase. So, only matter of time.”

  “So if the Belgian nun hadn’t of—”

  The doctor had shaken his head, and sighed. “Oh, yes, madam, the cirrhosis it lie in wait very soon for him.”

  She hadn’t questioned the doctor’s evaluation, not for one minute.

  “I do a bitta work in the Cock there from time to time,” Mr. Grant was saying, face still pressed to the windshield, big glasses slipping down his nose.

  “Really!” she said, pretending to be interested.

  “Aye, so if ye want a wee drink later on, I’ll be there, and it’ll be on me.”

  She did not like the way Grant’s mind was working but sensed he was a harmless enough old critter. More bluster than action.

  Meanwhile, Herkie, having lost interest in Mr. Grant’s hairy earhole, was contemplating the mechanic’s wallet. It was peeping tantalizingly from a back pocket, and Herkie was seeing the realization of a new Action Man within easy reach.

  “What a lovely part of the world!” Bessie said. “How long have you lived here, Mr. Grant?”

  “All me life…aye, all me life. Born here, an’ I’ll die here, too, I s’ppose. Ye’re not from the cawntry yerself?”

  “No, no, just passing through.”

  “Takin’ a wee haul’day over the border, are ye?”

  “Yes, something like that. Would you mind if I opened the window, Mr. Grant?” She was seizing on any ruse she could think of to deflect his nosiness.

  “Well, ye know,” he said, “I’m sorry tae say, but that windee beside ye doesn’t open, on account of it bein’ stuck. But we’re nearly there, so we—”

  He had to swerve sharply to avoid a horse-drawn cart coming at them on the wrong side of the road. Sitting atop the junk-laden vehicle was a disheveled man, clearly from the itinerant classes.

  Grant braked suddenly. “That’s Barkin’ Bob for ye.” He put the truck in reverse and drew level with the carter, who was singing merrily, oblivious to the head-on collision he’d nearly caused.

  “Hi, Bob, did ye not see me there?”

  “Jesus’ blood never failed me yet!” sang Bob lustily. “Oh, Jesus’ blood never—”

  Grant sounded the horn.

  Bob stopped singing and stared at Grant, plainly perplexed.

  “Ye’re on the wrong side of the road, so ye are.”

  The carter gazed up at the heavens. “Oh, Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never—”

  “Aye, he’d need-a be on bloody full-time duty with the like of you about. Get over tae yer own side or you’ll get somebody kilt.”

  Grant wound up the window and put the truck in gear. “Sorry about that, Mrs. Hailstone,” he said, taking off again. “He’s not right in the head. That’s why they call him Barkin’ Bob. Collects bits o’ scrap and sells it.”

  “Why’s the horse so wee, Ma?” asked Herkie, fascinated by the spectacle.

  “It’s not a horse. It’s a mule. He calls it Brenda.”

  “There ye are, son,” Bessie said. “You’d never see the like of that in Belfast, now would you?”

  About a half mile out of town, the mechanic made a left turn down a narrow road and over a bridge. Soon, on the rise of a hill on the right, a small house hove into view.

  “There she is now: Rosehip Cottage, me aunt’s place. She called it that on account a them hip bushes at the side there.”

  Bessie had been half expecting a hovel and was pleasantly surprised by what she saw. It was a quaint whitewashed cottage, complete with dormers, window boxes, leaded panes, and a brick-tiled roof. There was even a garden out front, trimmed by thick box hedging, and a white wrought-iron gate.

  The truck ground to a halt.

  “How lovely!” Bessie exclaimed as they alighted. She brushed some hayseeds from her skirt. On consideration, it might be profitable to be nice to Mr. Grant after all. “Your aunt must have been very house-proud.”

  “Aye, she was right ’n’ proud of her house right enough.”

  He opened the gate and led her up the garden path. A chorus of fragrances filled the air—freesias and slipper orchids. Bessie could identify them easily. Her mother had kept a little garden, not as healthy or well-tended as this one, but a garden nonetheless. And she knew her blooms. Was proud of them.

  Meanwhile Herkie, glad to be out of the truck and excited by his new surroundings, dawdled behind. Out of sight of his mother and Mr. Grant he seized on the opportunity to twist the heads off some prize dahlias.

  On the step, the mechanic produced a large key from the depths of his overalls and turned it in the lock.

  Bessie stepped inside.

  After the sun-filled yard, she was taken aback to find herself in murky darkness. She blinked, heard the swish of drapes, then suddenly, blessedly, daylight was flushing the gloom.

  The doll-size living room, all blossoming pinks and chintzy coverings, was crammed. Aunt Dora had either been a house-proud hoarder or a miser who didn’t believe in throwing anything out. Bessie’s bemused eyes took in plump armchairs and embroidered cushions, trinkets and religious statues made of delft and molded glass. A glossy sideboard with porcelain knobs held a plaster replica of the grotto at Lourdes. In a corner: a spiky plant the height of a six-year-old. On the mantel: oil lamps of tulip-shaped crystal. Framed icons all but obscured the hunting-scene wallpaper.

  It did not exactly chime with what the plucky widow aspired to, for, despite her humble background, she had a hankering after style and the finer things in life. In her book, life was too short to frill a cushion, crochet a doily, or stitch felt ducks on a satin pond and pass it off as a fire screen—activities which Aunt Dora had obviously engaged in. Terrible, she thought, what those old spinsters would do to compensate for the lack of a social life.

  “I can see your aunt was very good with her hands,” was all she could say.

  “Aye, that’s why I’d want all her stuff tae be kept just the way she left it, Mrs. Hailstone, if ye don’t mind. She left it tae me in her will…the house. And she ast specially that nuthin’ be touched.”

  As he spoke, he was eyeing young Herkie, who’d lifted an ornament from the windowsill and was earnestly attempting to liberate a purple gnome from its yellow toadstool. So much was there to see in the cramped room that the boy was growing excited, uncertain of what to vandalize first.

  “I quite understand, Mr. Grant. Everything will be absolutely safe with me.”

  Bessie followed him upstairs, hauling Herkie after her.

  Grant showed them the aunt’s bedroom, their sleeping quarters for the night.

  The s
mall room was dwarfed by its outsize furniture. A brass bed with a candlewick coverlet took center stage. One wall was given over to a hulking great wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Before the window: a dressing table embellished with curlicues, its oval mirror marred by a creeping efflorescence round the border.

  “As I say, I wouldn’t want any of me aunt’s—”

  “Of course not, Mr. Grant! I understand. Completely.” She wished he’d just go and leave them to it.

  “There’s a couch bed in the corner there for the wee boy.”

  “Did ye kill your aunt in here?” Herkie asked, images of Grant the “cannonball” still very fresh in his mind’s eye.

  Grant stared at him.

  Bessie gave Herkie a poke in the ribs. “Now, don’t be saying silly things to Mr. Grant, son. I do apologize, Mr. Grant. It’s his age. He reads far too many comics.”

  The mechanic adjusted his big glasses and stared sadly at the floor.

  “I’m so sorry about your aunt,” Bessie said. “You must have been very close to her.”

  “Aye, I was. But she didn’t die up here. No. She tripped on the stairs and fell on her head.”

  Herkie was suddenly attentive. “Them stairs out there?”

  Bessie coughed loudly. She gave Herkie a look that would curdle cream and pushed him out of the room.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that. Must have been a shock for you.”

  She was beginning to warm to Mr. Grant and his kindness. If she played her cards right, goodness knew what might ensue from the little mishap with her car. The dark clouds were lifting, their silver linings agleam with fresh promise.

  “Now, she was a big age, Mrs. Hailstone. Eighty-nine. So if the stairs hadn’t of tooken her, something else would of. Now I’ll show ye out the back.”

  The back door opened onto a sizable gravel yard flanked by rolling fields. An open shed at the side housed a stack of firewood. A stout nylon clothesline was secured to its eaves.

  “What’s that?” asked Herkie, pointing at a large stone atop a sheet of corrugated zinc.