by Dorothy Eden
“You needn’t have any worries, Miss O’Riordan.”
“Ho, I’m not worried. My boys have never had any admiration for English girls. They were too aware of the mistake their father made.”
(The English girl Cecilia who had written, “I would do anything in the world for you…”)
“All right, I can see you think that remark was in bad taste, with poor Cecilia lying helpless upstairs. But it was true enough, and I see no reason for pretending anything else.”
“Miss O’Riordan!” Cathleen could no longer help asking the question. “Do you think there could be any truth in this rumour about a baby?”
“A baby!” the old lady spoke the word as if it were foreign to her, as if she had never heard of such an object before. “Oh, I suppose you mean that impossible nonsense about Shamus’s wife. Rory came home with it yesterday. He was furious. Understandably so. What will they say about us next?” She stared at Cathleen as if she, too, were the kind of object she had never seen before. “Indeed I don’t believe it. You must know that if I did I would go to any lengths to prove it. No one would be more delighted than I if Shamus had an heir. It would do my nephew Rory a great deal of good.” Her eyes glinted. “Indeed, I’d enjoy to see the day. But it isn’t true. So I’ll ask you to be good enough never to mention the subject again. Ignore such malicious nonsense.”
She was a remarkable person. With this fine display of indignation she had cleverly covered her disturbed feelings. But if she would really enjoy seeing a son of Shamus’s—and this seemed true—what were these mysterious threats being made to her?
Cathleen thoughtfully felt the letter in her pocket and said no more.
Oddly enough Kitty was being much more friendly. Perhaps it was because Cathleen hadn’t laughed at her over the rat last night.
After lunch she said, “Aunt Tilly never works in the afternoon, and I know she doesn’t expect you to. Would you like me to take you anywhere? We could go for a drive, if you like.”
“That’s very kind of you.” There was only one thought in Cathleen’s mind. The anonymous letter and the existence of the child.
She didn’t tell Kitty about the letter. Kitty’s frail shoulders were not built for the weight of alarming secrets. Besides—had that rat last night really existed?
But someone some time would have to know about the letter. She thought rapidly.
“I’d love to go for a drive and you can tell me about the people in these parts.”
If the child wasn’t far away it must have been brought here recently. Was it hidden, or boldly in the open?
“I suppose there isn’t much coming and going, like there is in cities. People are born and die here?”
“Some of them go abroad, to England or America. Otherwise they stay here.” Kitty was watching Cathleen curiously.
“It was just this rumour about a baby,” Cathleen said frankly. “Your aunt says it’s a myth and how could it be otherwise, but I can’t get it out of my mind. You would know if there were a new child in these parts, wouldn’t you?”
Kitty was always pale. It was probably imagination that she had gone paler, but now she didn’t look at Cathleen. She said unhappily, “I hate gossip. We’ve always had to put up with it, especially since Shamus died. It isn’t fair that it’s started again.”
“But it hasn’t any foundation, has it?”
“How could it have?”
“Then there isn’t any new child in these parts?”
“Only the one belonging to the hairdresser,” Kitty said unwillingly. “That’s the woman who’s taken the cottage at the back of the hotel and started a business.”
“How long has she been here?”
“A few weeks. Her husband’s supposed to be abroad.”
“I need a hair-do,” said Cathleen. “Let’s go and see her.”
“You mean so that you can ask her questions?”
“Not exactly. Just to take a look at her. And I really do need a hair-do.”
Kitty looked at the neat upward swirl of Cathleen’s blonde hair and was suspicious and sulky again.
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”
“I know it isn’t. But Kitty, try to understand this. Ever since I lost Debby, I get this awful compulsive thing, even about a child crying in the street. I see Debby in every one of them, crying for me, perhaps, crying for some lostness.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t help it. I know it’s crazy.”
“Even if Shamus had had a child,” Kitty said, more kindly, “why should you think it’s being ill-treated?”
“I don’t know.” (I don’t know why I must, I must, find out whether Rory is involved!) “I just don’t know, Kitty.” She wiped her eyes. “I guess I just have an obsession. But let’s go and see this hairdresser.” She tried to speak more lightly. “You might like to get a new hair style, too.”
“Why?” That was the old prickly Kitty, a more comfortable one than the one who couldn’t look at Cathleen for fear of what she would show in her eyes.
“Because you have beautiful hair,” Cathleen said simply.
Today the sun was shining, and the bleak little town looked washed with light and pleasingly austere. The old men lurking in doorways stared as usual, but touched their caps. Cathleen knew that the courtesy was for Kitty, and the curiosity for her.
Was it one of these lounging men who had sent her that note, the one who had been at the end of the brief sinister telephone call last evening?
They left the car outside the Brian Boru and walked down to the cottage. There was a notice EILEEN BURKE, Beauty Specialist, Hairdressing, hanging on the knob. A young woman dressed in a red cardigan and tweed skirt came to the door. She wore a quantity of heavy beads and dangling ear-rings. She had black hair and light hazel eyes. She was attractive in a sharp alive way, her thin lips smiling, her eyes observant.
It was obvious that Kitty meant to say nothing. Cathleen said easily, “We’d like to make appointments.”
“Of course. Come in.”
She took them into a small room equipped with one washbasin, a hair drier, a shelf of bottles of lotion and shampoo, and a pile of tattered magazines on a table.
“Excuse the makeshift look of the place,” she said. “I haven’t had time to get it fixed up yet. I’ve only been here a month. But I have all sorts of plans.”
“What made you come here?” Cathleen asked. “It’s a very small town.”
“I don’t mind it being small. I have connections around here.”
“Who?” That was Kitty, lured into speaking.
“Oh, you wouldn’t be knowing them. In Galway city, and Connemara. It’s nice to be near them while my husband’s abroad. He’s an engineer on a construction job in India. He’ll be away maybe a year. It was lonely for Tammy and me without him in Dublin so I decided to move here and do a job. I’ve not got many customers yet, but they’ll come, I hope. I’ll be glad to make appointments for you. Tomorrow?”
“Some time next week,” said Cathleen, with the odd feeling that by next week she would know exactly who Mrs. Burke who lived here without her husband was. She was wondering how she could ask to see the baby when miraculously there was a bump in the next room and the child began to scream.
“Oh, excuse me! That’s Tammy.”
Beads and bracelets clinking, Eileen Burke rushed into the next room. Presently she returned with a boy of about two years, or perhaps more, in her arms. He was a healthy, handsome child with luxuriant black hair and bold black eyes. The tears were still drying on his rosy cheeks. He stared at Kitty and Cathleen.
“There he is,” said his mother fondly. “He’s a bit of a handful when I’m working. Aren’t you, pet? But we manage. He needs his father, of course. We both do.” She sighed. “Oh, well, we’ll get him back one day, won’t we, Tammy?”
Her hair was very black. It shone like a crow’s wing. Hair dyes were almost infallible nowadays, Cathleen found herself thinking. That was, if a girl prefer
red not to be noticed for her blazing red hair. Hazel eyes went with red hair, she thought…
As Kitty got into the car she said, almost triumphantly,
“Well, we didn’t get far there, did we? I suppose now you think that woman’s husband isn’t in India at all.”
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t be,” Cathleen said evenly. “I’d always heard that a great many of the Irish go abroad to work.”
“Perhaps they do.” Kitty was being deliberately noncommittal. “But we’re wasting our time here.”
Cathleen regretted bringing Kitty on this expedition. She had thought the girl might be as anxious as she was to discover the truth, but the opposite had happened. Kitty would cover up anything she found. She was on her family’s side, not the child’s. If there was a child… I can have clever ideas, too, someone, last night, had been told. Was the child just a brilliant invention, a threat?
“I suppose you’re thinking,” said Kitty, “that that baby of Mrs. Burke’s could have been Rory’s.”
“Why Rory’s?” Cathleen demanded. “Why not Shamus’s? The boy could have been older than he looked. If it comes to that, why not Liam’s?”
“I think you ought to keep out of this,” Kitty said in a troubled voice. “I don’t like it. And Aunt Tilly would be furious if she knew what we’ve been doing.”
“Then why did you come with me?”
She didn’t need Kitty’s evasive answer. She suddenly knew that Kitty’s friendliness was because it would be a good thing to keep an eye on Cathleen’s activities after last night and the overheard telephone conversation. She had simply been strung along. Eileen Burke was a perfectly innocent new arrival, and Kitty knew it. Kitty was an O’Riordan and the family had to be protected. But if there was no child, there was some other reason for this pattern of uneasiness and suspicion.
“Shall we go home?” she said wearily, giving in.
She started the car and began to drive slowly down the narrow street. Half-way down opposite the hotel, she heard the tune of an old song whistled in clear pure notes.
And if not mine, dear girl,
My snowy-breasted pearl…
Abruptly she pulled in to the side of the road and stopped the car.
“Why are you stopping?” Kitty demanded.
Cathleen looked up and down the street. There was no sign of any whistler, no sign of the tinker with his donkey cart. Some children skittered across the street, kicking a piece of wood. A very old bent man in a doorway sucked at his pipe and stared.
“I thought I heard something.”
A window curtain moved furtively. A Cadillac slid suddenly into sight, pulled up outside the hotel and spilled out several noisy young people. For a moment the whistling sounded again, farther away.
How could she wonder at anyone knowing her name and where she lived when she was always watched?
CHAPTER EIGHT
CATHLEEN WENT UP TO see Mrs. O’Riordan that evening. “How is she?” she asked Peggy Moloney.
“Fine,” said Peggy cheerfully. “Aren’t you, love?”
The face on the pillow was a travesty of Kitty’s, the empty eyes huge in the wasted cheeks.
“Kitty and I have been into Loughneath,” Cathleen said. “Kitty had some shopping to do.”
“See anybody?” Peggy asked chattily.
“Yes. The new hairdresser. She’s pretty, isn’t she?”
“And looked on with great suspicion,” said Peggy.
“Suspicion?”
“There’s rumours she has callers at night. So is there really a husband in India, they say. Sure, and they’ll always talk. But why would she want to come from Dublin to a place like this, with two donkeys and six bicycles!”
“She said she had connections about here.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Peggy. “I haven’t heard of any Burkes, though if it’s in Galway she’s meaning that’s a city.”
“I suppose they talk about me, too,” said Cathleen casually.
“Oh, sure. Anyone new here is talked about, upwards, downward, sideways and all. Why would Miss O’Riordan be wanting a secretary after all this time? And the O’Riordans owing money here and there. Wouldn’t it be a more honest thing to pay the butcher?”
Peggy clapped her hand over her mouth, looking sideways at the unmoving head on the pillow.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I think she listens. But I expect she knows all about butcher’s bills.”
“What else do they say about me?” Cathleen persisted.
“Why, that you have a good Irish name and all. I think she wants you to talk to her,” said Peggy. “She enjoys seeing a fresh face.”
This was probably a too hopeful interpretation on Peggy’s part. All the same, when Cathleen sat by the bed, it did seem that a flicker of intelligence came into the little lost face.
“I come from Wiltshire, Mrs. O’Riordan,” she said. “I believe you came from Sussex. I came across the postcard you sent your little boys from Brighton. Do you remember that? You must have been ill, because you said you couldn’t come back until the doctor let you.”
Now she was certain a flicker had passed over the quiet face. The eyes were still and yet seemed to have moved. She was listening, Cathleen was convinced. She began to wonder if she could invent some kind of question and answer language. Then one could ask her if Shamus had ever talked to her of his wife, ever told her she was a grandmother.
“Do you think,” said Cathleen, speaking slowly and earnestly, “you could move your eyes slightly to the right like this,” she moved her own, “if you mean yes, and to the left if you mean no?”
“What are you doing?” whispered Peggy. “The doctor said she wasn’t to be excited by trying to respond.”
“Did he?” said Cathleen, looking at her.
“Well, that’s what Miss O’Riordan said. I was specially told not to try to stimulate her. If she caught you doing this—though I must say it seems reasonable to me to try to do something to bring her back a little.”
Cathleen bent over the patient once more.
“Did you hear me, Mrs. O’Riordan? I think there are things you’d like to tell us. Move your eyes to the right if you understand me.”
It might have been chance, but it seemed that the enlarged and startled eyes moved ever so slightly.
“Mrs. Lamb!” It was Miss O’Riordan in the doorway. In her black dress she looked at least eight feet tall. Her eyes were sparking. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Cathleen straightened herself and faced the old woman coolly. Let her scare Kitty and Peggy and all the rest with her bluster. She refused to be intimidated. What was Miss O’Riordan, anyway, an old maid with a sour temper and a secret liking for cruelty.
“I think Mrs. O’Riordan can hear what we say,” she said quietly.
“Then all the more reason not to chatter in front of her, and disturb her. Absolute quiet, the doctor said. Nurse, I’m surprised at you allowing this.”
Peggy bravely stuck to her conviction and said that she agreed with Cathleen that the patient could understand what was said to her.
“It’s only kindness to bring her back into the world a small bit, Miss O’Riordan. It must be awful lonely where she is.”
The woman in the bed gave her faint whimpering cry. Now Cathleen was certain it was a signal of some kind.
“H’mm,” said Aunt Tilly loudly. “So you call that intelligence. You know, don’t you, that you might as well try to talk to a new-born baby. But if you stick to this theory, nurse, then all the more reason for consulting me as to what visitors she may have. From now on no one but Kitty will come in here without my permission. Do you understand?”
“Not Mr. Rory or Mr. Liam?” Peggy asked.
“Do they ever come?”
“Mr. Rory does. I think she watches for him.”
Aunt Tilly frowned. She probably knew the girls realized that any orders she gave would have little effect on Rory. She didn’t int
end to look foolish in front of them.
“I can’t forbid her own son to visit her. But I expect either you or Kitty to be here at the same time to see that she isn’t excited and upset. Mrs. Lamb, if you’ve finished gossiping perhaps I may have a little of your time.”
All day Rory had been elusive and he didn’t come in to dinner that night. Had he been keeping the appointment made by telephone last night? Cathleen was determined to see him before she went to bed. Mary Kate said he had come in late and she had given him a meal on a tray in the billiard room. Cathleen went there to find him. At her knock he called,
“Come in. You don’t have to knock in this house,” he said when he saw her. “What do you want?”
He was sitting at the desk which was covered with papers. He looked annoyed at her interruption, and was honest enough not to hide his annoyance.
“Did you know,” she said, “that your mother can hear?”
He stared at her keenly.
“I’ve suspected that for a long time. Why are you telling me?”
“I think it might be possible to communicate with her.”
“I doubt it. I’ve tried often enough.”
Cathleen thought of that dark impatient face bending over the frail helpless one upstairs.
“Perhaps you make her nervous,” she said. “Perhaps you remind her too much of your brother.”
“Shamus?” He was frowning. “What exactly do you mean?”
“If she saw him die, it would be very distressing for her, perhaps more than she can work out in her present state.” Cathleen spoke earnestly. “But she might be able to respond to someone outside the family whom she trusted.”
“Would I be wrong in thinking, Mrs. Lamb,” he drawled, “that you are referring to that someone being yourself?”
“I wasn’t, actually, but if I can help—”
She had touched him on a raw spot.
“You mean, if you can ferret out more information! You’ve been here, for two days and you’ve never stopped behaving like Miss Scotland Yard. What, for heaven’s sake, are we and our murky—undeniably murky—affairs to you?”
