The Disenchanted Widow

by Christina McKenna

  “Ah, he must-a forgot. I’m his handyman: wee jobs here and there, bitt-a this, bitt-a that.” His eyes roved over her. She knew that look. It disgusted her. She wanted to smack him very hard.

  “I doubt if he needed anything done upstairs. He would have told me.”

  “Got a lot on his mind, the Father. Aye, a lot on his mind.” He spun on his heel and pulled open the front door. “Must-a forgot.” The sun threw a wedge of welcome light into the hallway. He turned again to her, his face in shadow now, unreadable. “Well…be seein’ ye, Mrs. Lawless. Hope ye find what ye’re lookin’ for.”

  She tried to speak, but before she knew it he’d slammed the door, taking the sun with him and leaving her stunned in the murky silence of the hall.

  “Who was that, Ma?” Herkie tugging at her sleeve. “What’d he want? Did ye not use the knife on him?”

  She was speechless.

  Mrs. Lawless. He knew her real name. And he knew she was looking for something.

  “Ma!” Herkie was tugging her sleeve. “Ma!”

  “Somebody…somebody who works for the priest.” She suddenly felt faint. “I need to…I need to sit down, son.”

  Herkie pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. She eased herself into it, hardly aware of what she was doing. Her head throbbed. Her hand ached from having gripped the knife so tightly. The words—Be seein’ ye, Mrs. Lawless. Hope ye find what ye’re lookin’ for—rang in her head.

  How in God’s name did he know?

  “Some water, son.”

  Herkie, seeing his mother’s distress, went into action mode. Making as little noise as possible, he lifted a chair over to the sink and climbed up to pour water into a glass. He carried the water carefully to the table.

  “Thanks, son.”

  He settled himself opposite and watched her gulp down the water. Wondered how he might cheer her up. Remembered that a cigarette might help. Wordlessly he rooted in her handbag, found a pack of Park Drives, lit one, puffed it into life in his practiced way, and handed it to her.

  “Thanks, son. I’ll be all right in a wee minute.”

  “Can I play on the stairs, Ma?”

  “Yes, son, but don’t make too much noise. I’m gonna put me head down for a bit.”

  With his mother resting, Herkie slipped into the hallway. He’d been itching to climb the stairs, since glimpsing them from the kitchen doorway.

  He gazed up the wide staircase, suddenly afraid. The line of dour clerics staring down upon him from their golden frames seemed to be sending him a warning. Do not trespass, boy. You have no business here.

  He placed his hand on the banister. He knew they were only a bunch of oul’ boys someone had painted. He stuck out his tongue.

  Planting a trainer on the first tread, he began his ascent. His feet made not a sound as, step by step, they sank into the plush crimson carpet runner, taking him higher and higher into the strange, dark house.

  When he reached the landing, he was delighted to see that there was another flight, and yet another: so much to explore. Maybe his ma would fall asleep at the table and he could simply roam.

  In fact his mother had done just that.

  One minute she was in the parochial kitchen, the next she was drifting toward a pebble-dashed semi and stopping by a green-painted door.

  The face of her sister, Joan, never pleasant at the best of times, appears in the frame. Her look is one of self-righteous displeasure. She is not aging well, thinks Bessie. That job at the launderette isn’t doing much for the complexion. A bit of makeup would not go amiss…

  “What are you doin’ here?” Joan demands, eyes narrowing. Hard voice scything into her.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I s’ppose so. Ye want something, don’t ye? I never see ye unless ye want something.”

  “Look, he left me with nothin’. I was dependin’ on the life insurance, but…” She breaks down as she sits down on the sofa. “Just to tide us over till we get on our feet. I’ll pay ye back, I promise, Joan.”

  “If I had a pound for every time ye told me that, I’d be a millionairess. I told ye: Packie Lawless was useless from the start. From the minute I saw him I knew. But would ye listen? And why is it ye always expect me tae bail ye out? D’ye think—”

  “Oh, go on, make me really feel it. Don’t you think I’ve come through enough? Haven’t ye any charity? Or is it all for show, just like our silly mother? Prayin’ till she wore her knees out. And where did it get her? And where is it gettin’ you?”

  “A bloody lot further than it’s got you. I’ve got a job and a roof over me head.”

  “Call that a job, cleanin’ other people’s shite?”

  “Get outta my house!”

  “Don’t worry, I’m goin’. Charity starts with yer own. Fat lotta good all that bloody prayin’ is doin’ you. Eatin’ the altar rails. Ye’re a bloody fraud, Joan Halstone!”

  Joan slams the door…

  Bessie woke up with a start. She looked about her, confused.

  A cigarette was smoldering in the ashtray. Herkie’s Action Man lay at the far end of the table. She was in the parochial kitchen. He was upstairs, and she was here to find the passport. She had to find it. Find it before Cassidy returned. But what if he’d come home already and was now in his study, totally oblivious to the fact that they were even in the house?

  She tiptoed into the hallway and peered through the paneled glass of the front door. No sign of his car. She turned to shout for Herkie but was relieved to see him already at the top of the stairs, a hand raised. He was holding something he wanted her to see. “Look what I found, Ma!”

  “What’s that, son?”

  Herkie blew up a balloon and released it. It sputtered loudly like a cheeky raspberry, flew down the stairs, and dropped, deflated, at his ma’s feet.

  “Jesus!” She jumped back. It was most definitely not a balloon.

  It was a condom.

  Herkie descended, and she grabbed him roughly by the arm. He was clutching a small, flat packet. The brand name was familiar to her—as it was to every adult north and south of the border. “Give me that this minute! Where in God’s name did ye get that, son?”

  “Ma, you’re hurtin’ me arm!”

  “I’ll be hurtin’ yer backside if ye don’t tell me where ye got that thing.”

  “Up there.”

  “Where up there? Show me.”

  She fetched a handkerchief, scooped up the deflated condom, and stuffed it into a pocket of her skirt. That done, she frog-marched Herkie up the stairs.

  He led her down the passage to Father Cassidy’s room.

  “It was lyin’ there.”

  Herkie was pointing at a spot just outside the bedroom door. Bessie was horrified. She thought of young Sproule, who’d just left the premises. What in God’s name was Cassidy playing at? And right under the noses of his parishioners. The thought of him having a mistress was bad enough, but a boyfriend? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Och, Ma, it’s only an oul’ balloon.” Herkie tried to squirm free.

  Bessie stared at the doorknob. “Wait, son.” She put out her hand and tried it. To her astonishment, the door opened freely.

  “Whose room is this, Ma?”

  Her appalled eyes took in the scene. The room was in disarray. Two wastepaper baskets were overflowing with take-away food cartons and crisp packets. Several empty beer cans and an ashtray chock-full of fag ends littered a nearby desk. There were the distinctive odors of sweat and alcohol. In the adjoining alcove the bed was unmade.

  Temperance Club indeed! Snippets of her job interview came back to her: “I abstain completely…it isn’t referred to as the demon drink for nothing, you know.”

  Her housekeeper instinct getting the better of her, she crossed immediately to open a window—but stopped herself.

  “God, I’m not even supposed to be here! Herkie, you stand there and keep a lookout. If ye see a big black car, let me know.”

  She trie
d the drawers in the desk first, but both were locked. The wardrobe was also locked. There was the safe, but no point in even trying. The bedside lockers? Neither drawer nor the cupboard door of the one on the right would give way. Annoyed, she looked across at its twin and then at Herkie. He was standing with elbows on the windowsill, face pressed against the glass, plain for the outside world to see.

  “For pity’s sake, son, ye’re meant to be on spy duty for me. We’re not s’pposed to be in this bloody room, remember?” She repositioned him behind the curtain.

  “Och, Ma, I’m bored. When am I gettin’ me fish an’ chips?”

  “As soon as I get me passport.”

  She went quickly to the remaining bedside locker. Since everything else in the room was locked she didn’t hold out much hope. But, to her delight, the drawer opened, if a little stiffly.

  She rummaged through prayer leaflets, various blister packs of pills, and—not so surprising, given Herkie’s find—two packs of Durex. If that wasn’t a sacrilege, well…Since the aged drawer couldn’t be extended fully, she put her hand in and groped about. Way at the back her fingers made contact with the hard surface of what could be, just might be—

  Her heart did a somersault.

  She drew out her passport.

  “Ma, I see a car.”

  “What?” The last thing she needed was for the priest to know she’d been snooping in his room. And she was surely holding the evidence of her snooping. Her hand was shaking as she stared at the passport. No, she couldn’t risk it. She dropped it back in the drawer. “Quick. Let’s go.”

  They were in the downstairs hallway, Herkie clutching his Action Man, Bessie with shoulder bag in place, just as Father Cassidy opened the door.

  “Elizabeth!” he said with surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “My purse, Father.” She saw him throw a nervous glance upstairs—as well he might. “I forgot it yesterday, ye see…left it in the kitchen. Only missed it when I went to buy more pills for my headache.”

  Father Cassidy’s face took on a look of pained concern. “And how are you now, Elizabeth?”

  “Getting there, Father—”

  The priest broke out in a sudden fit of coughing.

  “Maybe you’d like a glass of water,” she said, trying to keep fear and disgust out of her voice.

  He recovered himself. Took a deep breath. “No, no, don’t even think of it. You go on, and take this fine boy with you.” He pinched Herkie’s cheek. “I’m sure he’d prefer to be out playing in that lovely sunshine than hanging around a gloomy old priest’s house.”

  “Yes, Father,” said Herkie, looking up at the strange man in black who’d heard his hurried confession.

  The priest gave an indulgent smile, the one he reserved for children, idiots, and people he deemed less intelligent than himself—which covered most of his parishioners. “Oh, the honesty of children!”

  You’d know all about honesty, Bessie thought bitterly, conscious of the condom packet in her pocket.

  “Well, see you tomorrow, Father,” she said, tugging Herkie down the hallway.

  As she pulled the kitchen door behind her, she heard Father Cassidy slowly mount the stairs.

  “Aye,” she said to herself, so softly that not even Herkie could hear. “Oh, aye, Father: ‘An old house like this. It creaks…it groans. I expect we’ll all be doing the same in our old age.’”

  The downright cheek! “He must think I came down with the last shower!”

  Chapter thirty-eight

  Rose proudly led the way into the Kelly Arms hotel in Killoran, trailed by Uncle Ned and Gusty. She’d insisted that both men don their Sunday best. A good impression had to be made for the sake of Greta-Concepta, the jobbing cook she’d picked out as a suitable squeeze for Gusty. It wasn’t every day she was called upon to shunt the tracklines of a body’s destiny so that they veered in what she believed to be a more agreeable direction than the one leading directly to Mrs. Hailstone’s door.

  “Terrible grand place,” old Ned said, his carpenter’s eye taking in the spacious lounge, a mossy-carpeted expanse of shiny wood paneling, teak tables, and leatherette chairs; sash windows swagged in velvet drapes; light fixtures thrusting out of walls like cupped hands.

  He looked quite the gentleman, in a black suit that reeked of mildew and turf smoke, a woolen scarf tucked into place against possible chills. He’d refused Rose’s offer of a supporting arm and leaned instead on his blackthorn stick. His frail hand gripped it with a determination only oldsters can muster when within gasping distance of the wooden overcoat.

  “Oh, it’s terrible grand,” agreed Rose. “Mr. Kelly got blowed up last year, don’t ye know, so this is all new-furbished.”

  “Aye, the IRA’s makin’ many a eejit rich in these parts.”

  “God, Ned, keep yer voice down. Mr. Kelly might hear ye. We’ll take that wee seat over there by the windee, in that nice wee alcove where nobody’ll see us, for a bitta privacy. Come on, Gusty.”

  As usual Rose was stepping out in her own handiwork: a frock of buttery yellow, which she’d accessorized with a necklace of gemstones the size of gull’s eggs. From one arm swung a cream-colored handbag; from the other a shopping bag containing a sticky-toffee tipsy Irish whiskey layer cake with crushed nuts and touch-o’-mint, a gift for Greta-Concepta. It was her own version of a confection she’d had at the wedding of erstwhile friend Biddy Maryanne Mulgrew, in the way back when. An event Rose was still talking about, all of a decade later.

  Gusty followed her like an obedient hound. He was in the outfit he hated most, the one reserved for Mass and funerals. The jacket was a tweed cast-off with suede elbow patches, purchased at tremendous discount from a Pakistani trader on a fair day in Killoran. It was teamed with a pair of ill-fitting Trevira trousers, sitting high on the waist and secured by a cowboy belt with a tin buckle the size of a cake tin.

  Rose helped Ned into one of the chairs. “Maybe a wee drink first, Uncle Ned?”

  “Aye, so,” said Ned, sinking his stick into a copious potted cheese plant with the ease of a man not much bothered about appearances or the fripperies of etiquette. “A half-a…a half-a that black boy and a drop-a that Paddy’ll do me.”

  “Did ye get that, Gusty?” said Rose, confused. “For I don’t know what the Divil any of it means.”

  “He wants a Guinness and a whiskey,” Gusty translated. “What about yerself, Rose?”

  “Oh, just a fizzy orange. None of that old drink for me.”

  Gusty traipsed up to the bar and Rose ensconced herself in one of the club chairs, settling down like a Scots Dumpy on a nest. She placed her bags on the floor beside her and peeled off a pair of lacy gloves.

  There were not many patrons in the lounge: a couple with a toddler, a lone pensioner staring dolefully into a pint of lager, and, seated at the bar counter, a traveling salesman type in a shiny suit, reading a newspaper.

  Old Ned looked about him, awestruck. “Wunder how much all this cost?”

  “A fair bit I’d say, Uncle Ned.”

  “Good strong legs on that boy there, Rose.”

  Rose looked round at the salesman, mortified. Uncle Ned could be unpredictable at the best of times. What in God’s name was he doing admiring another man’s legs? A thumping on the table had her turning back again. The couple with the toddler stared over at the commotion, as did the traveling salesman. The child started to whimper.

  “God-blissus, Ned, what are ye at anyway?”

  “That’s the hunched mortises for yeh.” He gave the table a good shake. “Take a lot tae break the legs of that boy.”

  Rose breathed a sigh of relief. So it was the table legs that had caught his attention, not the salesman’s. Thank heavens for that. She relaxed, sank back into her chair and surveyed the room. The couple were busy now with plates of food: meat, veg, mounds of mashed potato rising up like Macgillycuddy’s Reeks. Absorbed in eating, the parents had let their toddler roam free. The boy staggered
up the lounge. A few feet from Rose, he stopped suddenly—as if hit by a stun gun—and stared.

  “Och, would ye look at the wee one, Ned,” cooed Rose, reaching out a hand. “C’mere, ye wee darlin’.”

  The child, a vein pulsating fatly in a pink brow, swayed, emitted a gurgle, and then, suddenly, extravagantly, discharged his most recent feed into his diaper.

  An unpleasant smell spread quickly. Rose flapped a hand under her nose.

  “Oh, dearie me!”

  She freed a handkerchief from her sleeve while the toddler, mission accomplished, wobbled back to his unmindful parents.

  “God, look at the size of them,” Ned observed. “Great pair-a dropped hips. Take a brave lot tae tumble her.” A waitress, passing with a tray of drinks, halted, turned, and shot him a look that said: Act-yer-age-you-durty-old-brute. But the insult was lost on the old man, who’d merely been admiring the hip joints in Mr. Kelly’s vaulted ceiling.

  Rose pretended she hadn’t heard any of it. “Look, there’s Gusty coming now.”

  Ned sniffed the air. “Christ, what’s that bad smell?”

  “Well, it’s not me,” protested Rose. “That wee baby musta dirtied himself.”

  “Somebody’s gonna bring them over,” Gusty said. He sat down again.

  Minutes later a plump girl with a pink face arrived with the tray, panting with the effort of having made the two-yard journey from bar counter to table. “Will yis—will yis be wantin’ anything tae eat?” she gasped out, straightening up.

  “Eat what?” asked Ned.

  “Maybe in a wee minute,” said Rose, fanning herself with the menu in an effort to repel a hot flash. She hadn’t counted on this expedition being so fraught. “Is Greta-Concepta about, is she?”

  “Who is this nice wee fat girl?” asked Ned. “Is she Gretti-Conceptee, is she, for if she is—”

  “No!” Rose cut in loudly, fearful old Ned was about to give the game away. “This isn’t Greta-Concepta.”

  Gusty shifted uneasily, reached for his pint of Guinness, and eyed Ned accusingly. He resented being inveigled into this trip by Rose. Could have been propping up the bar at the Crowing Cock, chatting to Socrates O’Sullivan about the finer points of overhead camshafts and catalytic converters. Or better still, up in the Turret Room. There was a lot to get through up there. An unopened box labeled Witchy Wilhelmina promised plenty more thrills to come.