by Paul Charles
Gibson couldn’t help it but her first thought at that point was, “how could anyone be attracted to you?” She felt bad at having such an uncharitable thought and she apologised under her breath, and admitted the same to Starrett at this point in her recalling the interview.
Starrett remained non-judgemental.
‘You know,’ he offered, ‘we’re all the same really and the difficulty I find is that we can all, and I do mean all of us, be very disparaging about other people’s looks. We’re certainly by nature more fussy than we have a right to be. But at the same time we should know from even just the briefest of glimpses in the mirror that we have absolutely no say whatsoever in how we look. I mean, yes, of course we can present ourselves in the best possible light, with clothes, grooming and cleanliness, but beneath it all, we are, each of us, what we are and we can do nothing about it.’
‘Yes!’ Gibson agreed, ‘and even those most elusive, truly beautiful members of the species will still give themselves a hard time over what they consider to be troubling anatomical features.’
They both pondered on Gibson’s reply for quite some moments and several hypnotic swishes of the windscreen wipers, which were having to work overtime on the return journey.
Starrett liked working with Ban Garda Nuala Gibson. She was bright. She understood things quickly. She was respectful while at the same time always prepared to be honest about her opinions and theories with Starrett. The Ban Garda was great company and – mostly likely due to their different relationships with Maggie Keane - there were never any undercurrents in their dealings with each other. Gibson had known Maggie for nearly as long as Starrett had, but due to his ‘lost years’ had got to know her better. Starrett frequently wondered if Ban Garda Gibson had ever counselled Maggie Keane when Starrett was trying desperately to re-kindle his relationship with his first love. Starrett had never asked either Maggie or Gibson if they’d ever discussed him during this troubled phase in all their lives. Gibson was confident enough and professional enough not to discuss this topic with Starrett. Equally it has to be said that Maggie, for her part, never discussed any confidential issues about Gibson with Starrett, proving not that they were her equal best friends, but more that she was an equal friend to both of them. Starrett felt the only slight disadvantage to working with Ban Garda Nuala Gibson was that he would never trust her with his private stash of cigarettes the way he did with say Garda Sgt Packie Garvey, for fear that the news of his ‘dreadful habit’ would get back to Maggie Keane.
‘So, getting back to Father Pat,’ Starrett asked, ‘did he tell you any more about his inappropriate behaviour and if in fact he was talking about mental, spiritual, or physically inappropriate behaviour?’
‘Oh Starrett, I do wish you hadn’t shared that one with me quite so vividly,’ Gibson groaned, before continuing further details of her interview with the priest. ‘Well, I asked him whether the husband found out.’
‘If only,’ Father Pat had replied.
‘Sorry?!’ Gibson said.
‘Well, if it had been the husband, it would have been fine.’
‘Sorry?’ she’d asked again, still unsure of what he meant.
‘Well, don’t you see, if it had been the husband it would have been fine because apparently he was reportedly happy to be out of the picture,’ the priest admitted, now starting to sound like he was enjoying himself. ‘No, it was someone worse than a husband.’
‘Who, for heaven’s sake?’ Gibson asked, fearing the worst.
‘It was another parishioner who, I’m led to believe had set her sights on me. When I made it clear that I wasn’t interested, by ignoring her, she went straight to my Bishop and made an official complaint about my behaviour.’
‘Did she claim you’d slept with the married woman?’ Gibson asked, still not seeing what this was all about.
‘No, she couldn’t – we hadn’t…we had achieved only what I believe the youth of today class as getting to first base.’
‘I think you’ll find the youth of today now class that as “sucking face”,’ Gibson advised the priest, ‘I believe it was my generation who referred to it as “getting to first base”.’
‘Right, okay, thanks for clearing that up for me,’ the priest said, looking like he’d wished she hadn’t.
‘So you’re telling me you were disciplined and sent here for kissing a married, but separated, woman?’
‘Well, as I say, if you’re going to be candid, be candid,’ Father Pat started and seemed somewhat reluctant to continue, ‘in fairness to the bishop, it wasn’t the first complaint against me.’
‘Oh,’ Gibson said, ‘you’d done it before?’
‘Ehm yes, actually.’
‘How many times?’
‘How many times?’ the priest replied, only this time he did deliver it as a question.
‘Yes,’ Gibson confirmed, ‘how many times?’
‘Quite a few,’ the priest admitted.
‘Define “quite a few” for me please?’
‘With that particular Bishop, twenty-eight complaints.’
‘And all the complaints were just about kissing?’
‘No, in fact several of them were about more, quite a bit more in fact…’
‘Okay, okay,’ Gibson said, feeling a very strong necessity to cut him off at the pass, ‘I think I get the picture.’
The room was silent apart from Garvey’s squeaky pen.
‘And with other bishops,’ Gibson asked, because she felt she must, although she was dreading the answer.
‘Oh,’ Father Pat said, preparing to save her the gory details, ‘let’s just say they’d enough on me to have me expelled to St Ernan’s for the remainder of my natural.’
‘Do each of the residents know why the others are in here?’ she asked, drawing a line under that particular topic.
‘I believe we all hide behind the “health issues” flag while at the same time we all know we are here due to our own…our own…’
‘Transgressions,’ Packie Garvey offered helpfully.
‘Yes indeed, transgressions covers it,’ Father Pat acknowledged, but at the same time he refused to take his eyes away from Gibson. ‘So there is a very good chance our fellow residents also have some skeletons in their own cupboards.’
‘Or genuine health issues,’ the public-spirited hurling champion added.
‘Or, as you say, health issues.’
‘Final question, Father O’Connell,’ Gibson said confidently, ‘what were you doing between the hours of 5:30 and 7:30 earlier today?’
‘What was I doing between 5:30 and 7:30 today,’ the priest said, looking like he wanted to look like he hadn’t been expecting that particular question. ‘Ah, let me see now…if it was last week or even last month it would be easier,’ Father Pat O’Connell said and then paused.
Gibson wondered if the priest really thought that was an acceptable answer, or was he perhaps trawling through his memory banks to recall what he’d been doing less than a day before?
She nodded her head towards him once in an ‘And?’ kind of moment.
‘Today. Yes, well now, let me see, but yes of course, I had lunch with a dear friend of mine, Edwina Uppleby. Yes, that’s it, how could I have forgotten lunch with Edwina? She’s such great craic and she doesn’t even know it.’
‘So what time did you meet up?’ Gibson asked, as Packie completed writing Edwina Uppleby’s name in his notebook.
‘She picked me up by the Craft Village Shop, back out on the main road. It’s very inconvenient for me but she just absolutely refuses to come in here, said she’d a bad experience here years ago, something about a bad choice of man. Edwina has always made bad choices with her men,’ he tutted and then nearly tripped over himself to add, ‘present company excluded, of course.’
‘And the time she picked you up?’ Gibson asked, all but sighing.
‘Just after twelve o’clock. We were meant to meet at noon but I don’t think she actually arrived until ten pa
st.’
‘What does Mrs Uppleby do?’ Packie asked, because he knew that would be the first question Starrett would ask.
‘Miss Uppleby.’
‘Sorry,’ Packie said, ‘what does Miss Uppleby do?’
‘What does she do?’ Father Pat tried attempting a smile, which was a difficult manoeuvre to pull off with his over-blown features. ‘I find women who “do lunch”,’ and Father Pat paused to give the words ‘do’ and ‘lunch’ quotation marks with two fingers of each hand, ‘and we’re talking at the very, very least two-hour lunches, rarely ever are in the employ of anyone. No, I believe Edwina benefited from parents – GRTS – who knew the pleasure and advantage of what is now distastefully referred to as “old money”.’
‘GRTS?’ Gibson asked, in a bemused, head-shaking manner.
‘God Rest Their Souls.’
‘Oh yes, of course. So what time did you finish your lunch?’
‘What time did we conclude our lunch…I’m afraid that would have been much closer to tea time.’
‘Am…how close to tea time?’ Gibson persisted.
‘I believe we left the restaurant at 5:15,’ the priest admitted as he crunched up his face in a “weren’t we naughty” pose. On a teenage girl, such a pose is quite endearing but on a member of the clergy it proved to be an extremely hideous sham.
‘Okay,’ Gibson said, realising it was important to pay attention to even the most boring answers for Starrett’s claim of ‘statements hidden within’. ‘What time did you get back to St Ernan’s?’
‘She dropped me off in Donegal Town, just outside Abbey Hotel,’ the priest replied, ‘I nipped in there, had a collision with an old chum from Queens, had another wee pint of Guinness with him and ordered a taxi.’
‘And?’
‘And I got back here at about 7:40, when your brigade were in full flow.’
‘And?’
‘Oh please, surely not another final question!’ he said with great theatre, but at least he had the good grace to visually apologise.
‘You still didn’t tell me where you’d your lunch?’ Gibson pleaded.
‘Oh yes, of course, how remiss of me. We dined in the elegance and five-star luxury that is known as Lough Eske Castle.’
Chapter Eleven
By this point in her recalling the interview, coincidentally, Starrett and Gibson had reached Maggie Keane’s house, which also happened to be Starrett’s current residence.
Starrett felt nervous as he walked up the gravel pathway to her amazing home, a fair size but still – thanks to Maggie Keane – a cosy Georgian house on the Shore Road, in Ramelton.
Since Starrett had moved in, Maggie had gone out of her way to make him feel comfortable, even to the extent of giving him a room. The room in question was, in real estate terms, a prime location; it was the ground floor right-hand room, which enjoyed a spectacular view of the Leannon River where it fed Lough Swilly, which, in turn, flowed into the North Atlantic Ocean with the magnificent Inch Island on the other side. Maggie offered this room for his exclusive use as a study, thinking space, snooker room, or for whatever he wanted to use it. Starrett claimed he was very happy, as in very happy with their current arrangements, that is to say, he sharing Maggie’s bedroom, but she did insist that he also needed some private space. Starrett figured Maggie was partly trying to get over the clichéd hurdle of one partner moving into a space that had been inhabited for quite some time by the other. Perhaps, he thought, she wanted him to have a space he could take visitors, who were calling on Gardaí business. Her endgame might even have been to try to contain this sometimes unsavoury business and perhaps maybe spare the rest of the house from it. As such, she encouraged him to decorate and furnish the room himself. Starrett felt she genuinely meant it, but equally he knew that she couldn’t have possibly been happier than when he’d enlisted the help of her daughters Moya and Katie in his endeavours. For all of this, the room had still turned out to be rather masculine, with red painted walls, dim lights, lots of reading lamps, lots of small tables, but no desk, several reading chairs arced around the fireplace and bookshelves lined with most of Starrett’s collection and all of Moya and Katie’s dead father’s books.
Whenever the detective was in residence, Moya had taken to knocking on the study door, even though it was always open, and asking if she could join him. Always encouraged by Starrett, she would come in and sit down, quiet as a mouse, either to finish off homework or read one of her books.
On this particular evening, Maggie sensed there was something wrong with the detective the moment he walked into the house. He didn’t deny it; he just casually said he didn’t want to talk about it. She told him that was fine; he could do so when he wanted to.
‘Okay,’ she said, a little wavering in her voice, ‘I’m not having much luck with my massage tonight. I’ve one other thing I can try if you want?’
‘Anything as long as I can avoid the cigarettes,’ Starrett replied, having long since come to the conclusion that smoking for all the badness it did to your body long term, also had a few – well, at least one – relieving by-product.
She took him by the hand, led him to their bedroom, took him to bed and shifted him.
‘A kiss always says what talking can’t,’ Maggie said, as they both sank into their respective lush pillows after the event.
Starrett was miles away when she said it. Their making love wasn’t a regular occurrence so it was all the more special an experience whenever it did happen, which he figured was the object of her exercise. That is to say, making what they had something special, random, tribal even. Starrett stopped himself there for a second; did he really mean tribal? He didn’t think so; he wasn’t going to share Maggie Keane with anyone now that he’d won her back. He knew her desire to avoid making sex into a routine activity was based on her need for both of them to retain some of their mystery for each other, physically, mentally, and sexually speaking. She had once told him in passing that the mystery of a romance can be ruined by the familiarity of a relationship.
He remembered being obsessed with her from the first time he’d seen her, when they were both teenagers.
He wanted to remember, to recall exactly what he had felt the very first moment he had set eyes on her. If he’d recorded it on video he’d surely have worn the tape out by this stage. This stage being the stage where all he dreamt of happening and wished to happen had happened. But more than anything, he needed to remember the feeling of complete and utter desperation he had experienced when there’d been a chance his relationship with Maggie Keane might not have developed as it subsequently had. Remembering that feeling was all it took to ensure that he would never, ever take her for granted.
In his youth, Starrett would often go for a walk up the town just on the off chance of seeing her by accident, or perhaps coming across her without her actually knowing he was there, just so that he could look at her; just looking at her was bliss and more than enough for the young Starrett. He knew, of course, that he wasn’t just looking at her, rather he was staring at her, drinking in the vision of her, trying to embrace the pleasure of her beauty. He figured you looked at someone differently when you knew, they knew, you were looking at them, or even when you were looking at each other. When they were oblivious to the looking, or they didn’t even know you, you could get away with staring. Yes, just staring at the object of your affections, drinking in this thing of magnificent beauty. He had never in his life – not on the telly, or in the movies, or in a magazine or even first hand – witnessed anyone with the beauty of Maggie. He knew if he ever admitted that to her he’d be out on his ear.
Starrett found himself wondering a lot about the idea of beauty; he accepted it was directly, or indirectly, behind quite a few of the serious crimes he and his team were called upon to investigate.
But what is beauty? How does it change?
A cut?
A scar?
A missing eye?
A missing breast?
A missing limb?
Through the ageing process?
He looked at Maggie, lying beside him; she wasn’t exactly sleeping but she was in some sort of slumber land, enjoying her own space. She hadn’t been affected by any of the above misfortunes and, in fact, if anything the ageing process had made her even more beautiful.
He stared at her face now, like he used to do as a teenager; she was oblivious to his looking, so he could really look, and what he saw at that moment made his heart skip a beat and brought a tear to his eye.
He wondered how men and women come to pick each other. Do they have any say in the matter?
For them, they had first become ‘friends’, through a mutual friend. How they’d hang out together, way, way before he’d the nerve to chance his arm (for that’s what his first overture was, an arm around her neck). They both enjoyed each other’s company and she’d admitted to him recently that she’d never, ever considered having anyone else as a boyfriend. She just knew they would be together. She also admitted that she’d waited patiently for it to happen because she accepted that, at first, she was most certainly too young, even though some of her friends of a similar age were already boasting about allowing their boyfriends to get to second base. But Maggie didn’t want an immature and doomed relationship with him; no, she didn’t want that to happen with her best friend, Starrett. Equally she knew how hurt he would have been if she’d tried to get experience elsewhere. So she’d snuggled closer to him when he’d first been brave enough to put his arm around her shoulders. A few months later they were holding hands. Six months after they’d shared their first intimate moment, they enjoyed their first real kiss.
Starrett knew, and admitted as much to Maggie, that it had been her looks that had first caught his attention. That impossible-to-ignore both girlish and womanly look of hers, the lopsided grin with her kooky, chipped front tooth, that made her self-conscious about breaking into a full blown smile. Her black, unruly hair that started each day styled and sophisticated yet always ended each and every day with various breakaway curls being realigned and redesigned and tucked here and there, behind an ear or re-clipped just about anywhere. The same mane of hair that helped transform the Maggie he’d become reacquainted with in the bedroom, to a wanton, sensual and, not to mention, hungry lover.
