Beyond Absolution

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Well, thank goodness the fog has lifted a little.’ Lucy immediately changed tack. ‘I was thinking of paying you a visit. Are you all right on St Mary’s Isle?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘The fog has lifted here, also.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Lucy. ‘Well, I’ll pop in this afternoon and pay you a visit. I’ve got a few books for your library. Shall we say half past three? Would that suit you?’

  ‘That would be perfect,’ said the Reverend Mother sedately.

  ‘And get someone to light a fire in your study,’ ordered Lucy. ‘I know it’s June, but it’s damp and cold after that fortnight of heavy rain and old ladies like yourself need pampering.’ With a chuckle, Lucy rang off and the Reverend Mother returned to her room and pulled the bell to the kitchen.

  ‘Mrs Murphy is coming this afternoon to have tea with me,’ she said as Sister Bernadette came bustling in.

  ‘We’ll need a fire in here, then,’ said Sister Bernadette instantly. ‘And it wouldn’t do any harm to light it now. This place is terrible damp. Look at the glass on those photographs. You can hardly see the pictures for the haze on them.’

  What would Lucy make of the story of Dominic visiting the antiques shop on Morrison’s Island? This question kept recurring to her mind during the morning as the Reverend Mother tackled correspondence and accounts, and listened in a discouraging silence to the chaplain’s request for some new vestments. She had, she thought, better things to do with her scarce resources.

  ‘You can take off your fur coat,’ she said when her cousin arrived. ‘This place is as warm as toast now. And it is June, you know.’ And then, as Lucy took off her coat and sank gracefully into the chair beside the fire, she said, ‘Can you remember a blue ceramic hawk, Lucy, a Japanese Arita hawk? I have something in the back of my mind about a ceramic hawk.’

  ‘Shanbally House,’ said Lucy instantly. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘It was on the staircase!’ exclaimed the Reverend Mother, memories suddenly flooding back. ‘I remember now.’

  ‘That’s right. I don’t know how you could have forgotten. Old age, I suppose,’ teased Lucy and then fell silent as Sister Bernadette came in with the tea.

  All the time that her cousin was thanking the lay sister, exclaiming on the succulence of the cake, the strength of the tea and the lovely heat of the fire, the Reverend Mother pondered on Shanbally House in north Cork. She and Lucy had frequently stayed there as young girls, had been to several house parties, there. Dominic and Lawrence had often been there also, she remembered. She had a memory of a dance where she had worn that green dress with all the flounces and Dominic had told her that she looked beautiful. He was, she thought, an extremely nice person, even in his adolescence.

  ‘Two hawks,’ she said suddenly when Sister Bernadette had left the room. ‘I remember two hawks. There were two of them, weren’t there? I remember them distinctly as a pair, two tall blue hawks. I can just see them. They were on that triangular shelf on the stairway, just where the steps turned a corner after the first flight. But there were two of them, weren’t there? I remember them distinctly as a pair,’ she repeated. ‘Two tall blue hawks.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Lucy enthusiastically. ‘Yes, you’re right. There were two when we were young. But one of their sons smashed one, threw a tennis ball at his brother’s head and it hit the hawk. I remember feeling glad that I had a little girl, not a boy, so it must have been a long time ago. A few years after you entered the convent. Those Wood boys were quite wild when they were in their teens. But you’re right, Arita hawks are usually in a pair.’

  ‘That’s what Dr Scher told Father Dominic.’ And then, in response to her cousin’s interrogative look, she continued, ‘Dr Scher met Dominic in there. He was looking at this hawk and appeared to be most distressed. He remarked on the fact there was just one and that there was a chip on its beak.’

  ‘That happened when the second one fell against it,’ said Lucy absent-mindedly. And then quite suddenly, she opened her eyes widely. ‘Shanbally House, that’s where those two hawks were, but it doesn’t make sense that the hawk in the antiques shop came from Shanbally House. Don’t you remember? The place was burned to the ground by the Republicans in revenge for the burning down of the home of one of their men. It happened some time ago. Dreadful business, wasn’t it? Not that they were injured in any way, though one of the gardeners was shot, but an elderly couple like the Woods, turned out on the road at that hour of the night. They must have been almost as old as you are now, weren’t they?’

  The Reverend Mother didn’t bother to argue. Lucy was, in fact, less than a year younger than she was. However, faithful attendance at both a hair stylist and a beautician made a difference. The use of high quality hair dye which tinted the grey hair, not to the corn-coloured hue of her youth, but to a delicate shade of ash blonde; her face enhanced with a creamy veneer of flattering foundation and powder, which skimmed over any wrinkles; both of these made her look very much the younger of the two.

  ‘And it was definitely burned to the ground, wasn’t it?’ The Reverend Mother did not bother to wait for an answer. It had only been about six or seven months ago and she had read all about it on the Cork Examiner. ‘So what would a ceramic hawk from Shanbally be doing in an antiques shop on Morrison’s Island? Who owns the place, anyway?’

  ‘It’s owned by a man called Peter Doyle. You know he runs the Merrymen Light Opera group. I don’t know much about him, apart from the fact that he’s one of the Doyles of Fermoy. You remember that lovely old house near Fermoy, the one that was burned down about four or five years ago – this Peter Doyle, apparently, is a grandson of the elderly couple there – strange isn’t it, how all those big houses of our youth have no families left in them – how all the young people have gone to England. Well, he came back from England and he’s made a great success of that place in Morrison’s Island; that antiques shop. I went in there once. Bought a nice old crystal glass vase, a gorgeous one, specially designed to show off those long-stemmed roses, the rim has little v-shaped slots so that each flower head is held separately. A lovely vase. Even I can arrange a bouquet in it without having to call for the housekeeper. Made by the Cork Glass Company. Their stuff is pretty rare these days. I think that the company went out of business in the 1830s.’

  The Reverend Mother pondered on a crystal vase from a company that had gone out of business over ninety years ago. There was something in the back of her mind. A sudden picture from the past. A sunny June morning. A walk through a stretch of woodland, going through the iron gate into the walled garden, picking some long-stemmed roses. And the voice of her hostess. Be careful, Dorothea. I cherish that vase in memory of my grandfather. It’s lovely old Cork Glass. They’ve gone out of business now, of course … ‘The Ronaynes,’ she said aloud. ‘They had a vase like that. I remember the V-shaped slots’

  ‘Their place was burned down last year,’ said Lucy. ‘Nobody hurt, but the house was destroyed. They went off to England. Haven’t heard anything about them for a long time.’

  ‘I’m sure that they had this beautiful crystal glass vase, a Cork Glass vase, specially made to display rose blossoms. I remember it.’

  ‘Old Cork cut glass. Much better than that stuff from the Penroses in Waterford,’ said Lucy complacently.

  ‘So you bought a Cork Glass crystal vase like that at Peter Doyle’s shop, Lucy. That’s interesting!’

  ‘Could be a coincidence, something salvaged, though I thought I heard that place was burned to the ground, too. It’s just a shell now. Odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very,’ said the Reverend Mother. She could see that Lucy was thinking hard.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said, grimacing slightly, ‘it’s strange, but Rupert and I, with his partner and wife, went to see The Mikado the other night, put on by Peter Doyle and his Merrymen, in the Father Matthew Hall, and I kept thinking that some of the Japanese stuff that they had on stage was familiar
. Do you remember the Japanese bedroom at Shanbally House?’

  The Reverend Mother thought about it. She did remember that bedroom. It had been the night after she had danced with Dominic Alleyn. She remembered how she had retired to her room that night, full of romantic notions of marrying him. Aloud, she said, ‘That’s interesting! Could there be a possibility that he had anything to do with those burnings, what do you think, Lucy?’

  ‘Unlikely!’ Lucy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Come on, Dottie. What on earth put that into your head? Peter Doyle? Why suspect him? He’s one of the Doyles of Fermoy. His grandparents were thrown out of their house and the place burned to the ground. Not a thing left. He has the reputation of being a bit wild, drinks quite a bit with that young barrister, Tom Gamble and that crowd. But it’s ridiculous to think that he might be part of the IRA.’

  ‘I suppose that it does seems ridiculous. He’s made a great success of his shop, according to you. But tell me this, Lucy, where does all of his stuff come from?’

  ‘Buys at auctions, country house sales, things like that, I suppose.’

  ‘And the Japanese screen?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucy slowly. ‘Yes, I did think that I had seen that screen, the one that was used on stage for The Mikado. Very pretty blues. It had three panels, two of them were perfect, but one had a slightly faded bit at the bottom.’

  ‘I remember it,’ replied the Reverend Mother, nodding. ‘And I know where it came from. Do you remember that we shared that bedroom once when we visited Shanbally House when we were quite young? Dominic and Lawrence had been in it, but they were moved upstairs to one of the smaller bedrooms when we arrived. Don’t you remember Lawrence was furious about it? You remember what a temper he had when he was young. But you must recollect the Japanese bedroom, Lucy. I can picture it so clearly and I remember the third panel of that screen. Stained with water. A paler bit, shaped like a pointed mountaintop, just as though something had splashed it.’

  ‘You had a theory, do you remember?’ put in Lucy mischievously. ‘We laughed so much that we fell back on the bed with our legs in the air, crinolines billowing up and we didn’t hear the chambermaid when she knocked and she came in and she looked so astonished at the sight of us, with those frilly pantaloons sticking straight up in the air from out of those crinolines. What a sight we must have looked!’ Lucy started to laugh at the memory. ‘We laughed even more then,’ she finished.

  ‘I remember,’ said the Reverend Mother, a smile twitched at her lips. Odd how such memories from the distant past lingered at the back of the mind and then suddenly came forward in full colour.

  ‘Could have been a different one, though,’ argued Lucy. ‘A lot of these grand old houses had Japanese stuff.’ She took a bite from her cake slice and stared meditatively at the mist-streaked window.

  ‘And the water splash on the third panel?’ queried the Reverend Mother and Lucy pursed her lips.

  ‘Still, even if it was the same one, the very same screen, then it could have been nothing to do with these people in the antiques shop,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘It could have been looters. Went in when the place cooled down and snatched what they could and then offered it for sale to an antiques dealer.’

  ‘But Shanbally House was supposed to be destroyed, everything in it gutted,’ argued the Reverend Mother. ‘I remember reading all about it. The lead on the roof went on fire. It dripped into the house and it burned for days. They had the fire brigade standing by, but they could do nothing. No one would have been able to get near it. I do remember reading about it on the Cork Examiner. They said that they were cutting down all the timber near to the house just in case the trees caught fire, too.’

  ‘Peter Doyle!’ said Lucy. ‘I can’t believe that he would be involved with the IRA in such a racket. And his own grandparents burned out of their house.’

  ‘But, Lucy, do we know for certain that this Peter Doyle was the grandson of the Doyles? Whose son was he?’

  ‘One of the twins, I suppose. Do you remember them in their pram when we stayed there that May? Two fat boy babies in one enormous pram on the top of the steps. You said that they looked like a pair of Buddhas.’

  ‘They were both killed at the Battle of Ladysmith,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Neither had married. I wrote to sympathize with their mother and she sent back a very sad letter to say that there were no more of the family left behind to carry on the name.’

  ‘So they were.’ Lucy was silent for a moment. ‘Was there a sister?’

  ‘I don’t think so. And if she had a boy, he wouldn’t have been a Doyle, would he?’

  ‘So you think that this Peter Doyle is a fraud?’

  ‘I think it is a possibility. And I think that Dominic recognized that hawk.’ Not even to Lucy would she mention the confession that Dominic heard, a confession that sent him to his brother, the prior for advice. Lawrence had told her in a moment of anguish, a moment of despair at having failed his brother. It was not for her to talk of this to Lucy. On the other hand, Dominic’s death had to be looked into. A man who would kill a harmless priest might kill again in order to ensure his own secrecy. She would have to make sure that did not happen; that no more lives should be lost.

  ‘But at 17 and 18, one does not notice the furnishings so much,’ she said aloud. ‘Come on, Lucy, rack your brains. Remember that blue room. Any more Japanese stuff? They usually had a theme in those bedrooms, didn’t they? I’m sure that the blue room was Japanese.’

  ‘I remember the curtains,’ said Lucy. ‘We stayed there a few years ago. I remember that I thought they were just plain, just cream-coloured, but when I woke up on the first morning that we were there, the sun was shining and then you could see a Japanese pattern, faintly blue on them. You remember those hand-painted blue bamboo pictures …’

  ‘Anything else you can remember from the house?’ asked the Reverend Mother. The saboteurs were unlikely to want to waste time unhooking threadbare curtains while the building burned.

  ‘There was that carved gilt wood mirror, do you remember that? It was in the hall, behind that table, a very nice table. Regency. Beautifully carved legs. They called it the sofa table, but I never remember it standing by a sofa. It was always in the hall and it used to be piled high with gloves, and whips and hats, and some old copies of The Field and cricket stumps when the boys were young, all that sort of thing. I used to think that it would look lovely if they cleaned the mirror and took the junk from the table, but they were very easy-going people. Sad – that burning of Shanbally House. He died of a heart attack, you know, soon after they settled in England. She is still there, over in Kent, but I heard that she’s not too happy. A bit old to make new friends. And what about Jonathon Power? He’s supposed to come from a place near Tipperary, on the Cork/Tipperary border.’

  ‘So he says.’

  ‘You nuns have such lovely trusting natures.’

  ‘What’s he like, Jonathon Power?’

  ‘Well, they are very unalike, the two of them – in appearance and in character. Jonathon is the worker, very quiet, perhaps a bit shy. I went in there one Saturday with Rupert. Peter Doyle was busy with another customer so we watched Jonathon for a while. He had a bottle of turpentine and he was cleaning a muddy-looking old picture – generations of turf smoke on it, I would imagine – well, he was making a wonderful job of it. And someone told me that she bought a Georgian lap desk there and it had been beautifully restored. Peter, of course, is the showman and he was making a big thing of pointing out the bits of restoration and insisting that he wanted her to be happy with them, but she was delighted with the desk. Beautifully hand-polished, too. Rupert thought that Jonathon must have been trained in some London showrooms. He’s a bit older than Peter, I’d say, though I think I heard that they became friends in France during the war.’

  The Reverend Mother got to her feet. ‘Let’s go and have a look at the place, at that antiques shop.’

  ‘What! Out in the rain! Over to Mo
rrison’s Island!’

  ‘You have a chauffeur, don’t you? By now, he will have had his cup of tea in the kitchen. He’ll enjoy a drive.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s closed.’ Lucy pouted a little, holding her hands out to the fire. Not for the first time, the Reverend Mother thought that her cousin reminded her of a pampered Persian cat.

  ‘Come on,’ she said bracingly. ‘Fresh air will do us good. No, they won’t be closed. It’s only four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. The shop will be full and we’ll be able to browse in peace.’ The Reverend Mother got to her feet and took her cloak from the back of the door. ‘Come on, Lucy, you can buy me a present for my feast day.’

  ‘I thought that was in early March; I’m sure it was. I remember bringing you very expensive hothouse flowers,’ said Lucy. She glanced through the window and shuddered. ‘Although there isn’t much difference in the weather, I have to admit.’

  The Reverend Mother touched the bell. ‘Mrs Murphy and I are going out,’ she said when Sister Bernadette appeared. ‘Could you let her chauffeur know that we are ready now.’

  ‘Let’s hope it isn’t flooded,’ said Lucy bitterly as they drove along the quay towards Morrison’s Island. Nevertheless, her blue eyes were alert and interested and her cousin knew that the sharp brain behind them was working through memories of the big houses of the past.

  An abominable business, this burning down of homes, thought the Reverend Mother. Looking back into her youth, she remembered them as places of great beauty. And then her conscience pricked her. What was it that she had heard from a pupil of hers? Every big house is burned down in retaliation for the destruction by the army of a Republican’s home. A cottage, they reasoned, was of the same importance as the grand houses of the ascendancy class, who were alien to the country by race, upbringing, accent and religion.