Himself

by Jess Kidd

  ‘It’s not always that easy.’

  ‘You underestimate these dead you know. They hang around the place, don’t they, watching, haunting? That makes them prime witnesses in my book. You just need to know the right way to talk to them.’ Mrs Cauley pushes herself up in the bed and fixes the commode with an exacting glare. She speaks very slowly and very loudly. ‘Now then, Hennessy, tell us what you know about the disappearance of Orla Sweeney.’

  ‘I’m dead, I’m not fecking stupid,’ mutters Father Jim. He sits down at the end of her bed, chewing the stem of his pipe. Even in death he has a fine high colour to his cheeks.

  ‘Come in, Hennessy. I’m not receiving you.’ Mrs Cauley taps the tea tray pettishly. ‘Now, Father, will you stir yourself and move this doorstopper? Isn’t it light enough even for a dead old badger like yourself?’

  Father Jim shakes his head. ‘How do you put up with this, lad?’

  Mrs Cauley listens carefully for a moment then she glances across at Mahony. ‘He must have heard something in confession. They’re all in there day and night bleating about their sins and holding out their gruel bowls for holy redemption.’

  Father Jim grimaces. ‘Oh, they came to confession all right. It was all “Forgive me, Father, for amn’t I after getting a baby from using the wash flannel off me husband?” Or, “Forgive me, Father, for I looked at me cow the wrong way.”’

  ‘Ask him, Mahony.’

  ‘Tell her she’s an eejit.’

  Mahony puts down his book. ‘He said he heard nothing useful.’

  Mrs Cauley grunts. ‘Does he know that the seal of confession doesn’t apply if you are a priest who is mortally dead?’

  ‘Sweet Lord Jesus Christ, give me strength,’ moans Father Jim.

  ‘He’s aware of that.’

  ‘Let’s try this then.’ Mrs Cauley’s hands scuttle across the tea tray. ‘Listen carefully, Hennessy. What happened on the day Orla Sweeney disappeared? Did this happen?’

  Mrs Cauley slides the doorstopper towards the words ‘fowl play’, the nearest she could find to ‘murder’ in Bridget Doosey’s back copies of Ireland’s Own.

  Father Jim passes a hand across his forehead. ‘Make her stop.’

  ‘Father Jim’s off for a bit of a lie-down.’

  Mrs Cauley frowns. ‘He’s been dead for twenty-six years, hasn’t he had enough of a lie-down?’

  Father Jim wanders back to the commode and sits down. He lights his pipe with the faint flame of the afterlife, which always burns cold. Occasionally he glowers over at the figure on the bed.

  ‘You can’t expect too much from them,’ says Mahony.

  Mrs Cauley puts her head on one side, her eyes narrowed under her poker visor. ‘I think you’re reluctant to get properly involved. You’re holding back, Mahony.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if you were to listen to them . . .’

  Mahony looks up at her. ‘Then no doubt they’d have me running all over the town. Pouring libations onto Biddy Gavaghan’s grave, delivering a kick up Frank Kiernan’s hole, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Exactly. You don’t want to be put out.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s just that they don’t always have great memories. They’re a little lost.’

  Mrs Cauley purses her lips. ‘So Father Jim, sitting scratching his holy bollocks on the commode there, is of no use to us?’

  Mahony shrugs. How can he explain? How can he explain to Mrs Cauley that Father Jim is just a vague copy of his former living self? That just like any other dead person, his mind, if you can call it a mind, has ceased to exist. For the dead don’t change or grow. They’re just echoes of the stories of their own lives sung back in the wrong order: arsewards. They’re the pattern on closed eyelids after you turn away from a bright object. They’re twice-exposed film. They’re not really here, so cause and effect means nothing to them.

  Mahony knows that only very rarely, and through no fault of their own, will the dead tell you something useful, like the whereabouts of an unread will, or a box of furled banknotes, or the name of a killer.

  Mrs Cauley shakes her head. ‘Well, it’s a shocking waste of a good weapon. You should be wielding your shining sword of clairvoyancy against your adversaries; I know I would be.’

  Father Jim raises his eyebrows. Mahony picks up his book of poetry.

  ‘Squandering. That’s what it is.’ Mrs Cauley pushes away her Ouija board with disgust and takes up her map to plot likely sites for an illicit burial in and around Mulderrig.

  Peace settles nicely on the room; now and then there is the quick sharp scuttle of a mouse along the skirting boards, now and then the shifting sound of a book settling into a deeper sleep.

  Mahony is just closing his eyes when the dead priest jumps up from the commode with a terrifying roar.

  ‘He started to drive her home,’ he screams, and lurches towards Mahony. ‘That was when all the trouble started. It was him, don’t you see? It must have been him: he had a car.’

  ‘Jesus. What?’ Mahony is up off the floor, moving out of his way.

  Father Jim frowns. ‘The daddy – for the life of me I can’t remember his name.’ Father Jim grins triumphantly. ‘But I know this, you little gobshite: she stopped letting me walk her home because he would give her a lift.’

  He turns and walks off through a bookcase, punching the air without as much as displacing a dust mote.

  Mahony stares at the space where the dead Father Hennessy used to be. ‘Who owned a car around the time that Orla fell pregnant?’

  Mrs Cauley looks up from a promising patch of alluvial wasteland. ‘Ask Bridget Doosey, she’ll know.’

  ‘Ask Daddy, he’ll know,’ says Shauna, coming in the door with the tea and the biscuits. She looks at Mahony. ‘You could take him down his cup of tea and ask him.’

  ‘I could.’

  ‘And maybe you could get him to change his socks and go out for a walk?’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t like going out; leave the man alone,’ says Mrs Cauley, pushing biscuits off her plate.

  Shauna looks at the old woman in despair. ‘If you don’t want the biscuits just leave them on the side.’

  Mrs Cauley claws up a plain one. ‘I told you, not the creamy ones.’ She scowls. ‘You know I’m trimming to get into that lamé number for the play and you’re trying to sabotage me. Thundering little witch.’

  Shauna rolls her eyes. ‘If you do head into town you might want to go and see Father Quinn. He’s left another message for you.’

  ‘He’s been trailing you for days,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘You should go and see what he wants, the shitehawk.’

  Mahony pulls on his jacket. ‘All right, I’ll take your old fella down for a stretch of the legs to town.’

  ‘You won’t get Daddy further than Roadside Mary but you can leave him there for a bit. He says he won’t mix with the village philistines.’

  Shauna wraps the biscuits in a napkin. ‘Take these down for Tom Bogey; if she won’t eat them he will.’

  ‘And watch your back with that priest one,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘An interview with Quinn is like fighting a yellow snake in a sandpit.’

  Desmond Burke won’t change his socks but he’ll come for a walk down to the shrine and back again. He’s got an article on woodturning that might interest Tom. He thinks he might like to look at the pictures.

  ‘Have you never met the man?’ asks Mahony as they cut across the field to join the village road.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even a glimpse?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Seriously, and no one else has?’

  ‘No, Jack Brophy only; he helped him move there.’

  ‘So Jack could be making him up to keep the kids from running mad in the forest.’

  ‘Tom is real. We leave food, a few necessities and he leaves woodcarvings.’

  ‘And no one’s tried to find him? To get a look at him?’

  ‘We respect his solitude.’

&
nbsp; ‘Or there’s Jack Brophy to answer to?’

  Desmond glances up at Mahony with the trace of a smile. ‘There’s that too I suppose.’

  ‘Why do you think Jack protects him?’ Mahony asks.

  ‘He’s a guard; he has a sense of duty.’

  Mahony tries not to snort.

  Desmond refuses go any further than Roadside Mary, not even for a pint.

  ‘When was the last time you had a pint?’ asks Mahony.

  ‘Do you know, I can’t even remember,’ smiles Desmond.

  They sit down by the side of the road under the ruddy gaze of the Holy Mother.

  ‘Tom left something,’ says Desmond. He passes it to Mahony. ‘It’s hawthorn, I think. He uses this kind of wood often.’

  Mahony takes it and turns it over in his hands. It’s a small round bee, its wings folded along its back and stripes scored over its abdomen. It is cleverly made and no bigger than a conker. Mahony goes to hand it back.

  ‘Take it.’

  ‘Ah no, I’ve nothing to give him.’

  ‘Take it anyway. It doesn’t matter.’

  From here Mahony can see the rooftops of the village houses as Mulderrig unravels below them. He can make out the road curving round towards the quay.

  ‘This is a place of remarkable beauty, Mahony.’

  ‘It’s that all right.’

  ‘Will you stay?’ asks Desmond, quickly, awkwardly.

  ‘I hadn’t thought—’

  ‘No. Right so.’

  They look out over the village. Birds alight on television aerials and chimney pots. Dogs bark at washing lines or at nothing. Someone somewhere is singing along to a radio. Above the bay the seagulls turn in the air.

  Mahony hauls himself up. ‘Now you’re sure you won’t come down for a pint with me?’

  ‘No, son, I’m best off left quiet.’

  Mahony nods and leaves Desmond Burke sitting by the side of the road, gazing down upon the town.

  Michael Hopper opens the door to the parochial house and lets Mahony into the hallway, which smells like an open peat bog. Mahony watches as a gaggle of frogs flop down the stairs and wriggle under the library door one by one. Michael Hopper seems not to notice; he is more intent on trying to get Mahony’s jacket off his back. Mahony wonders if the old man is trying to frisk him.

  ‘Go into the kitchen there and I’ll go an’ tell the Father you’re here. Róisín is cleaning out the oven on account of it being as black as the devil’s eyebrows.’

  ‘Where’s Bridget?’

  ‘Father Quinn had to let her go.’ Michael Hopper leans forward so that his nose is an inch away from Mahony’s face. ‘He caught her selling water from the holy spring in the library by the bucket.’

  ‘The holy spring?’

  ‘Didn’t the priest insult Mrs Lavelle’s horse trough by disbelieving in it? Well, now its big brother is here.’ The corners of Michael’s mouth twitch into a contemptuous smile. ‘He’s had a rake of plumbers in, from as far as Westport even. They’ve searched high and low for leaking pipes and left scratching their heads and their arses.’

  Róisín has her sleeves rolled up to her armpits and her hair is wet with effort. Mahony feels like pulling her out of the oven by her ankles and planting kisses on every last bit of her. He tugs at the back of her apron until she laughs.

  ‘Behave yourself, Mahony. Father Quinn has asked me to get this place up to scratch before the new housekeeper starts.’

  ‘Who is the new housekeeper?’

  Róisín puts down the scourer and pushes her hair out of her eyes. ‘Well, that’s the problem. With the holy spring and everything he’s having difficulty filling the position. I said I’d stand in till he finds one.’

  ‘The place is taking on a cursed aspect,’ mutters Michael Hopper, heading to the door. ‘It was never so in Father Hennessy’s day, God rest him. I’ll go and see if himself is ready.’

  Mahony lets go of Róisín’s apron and helps her to her feet, grinning to see her blush as he pulls her towards him.

  ‘Mahony—’

  Michael Hopper comes back into the room wiping his hands delicately on the seat of his trousers. ‘He’ll see you now. Only don’t let on you notice the spring or he’ll get as mad as a wet hen.’

  Michael glances at Róisín, who is scrubbing the hob with serious dedication. ‘Father said would you be so kind as to do out the scullery before making his meal. He’ll have the fish and the lightly steamed vegetables.’

  Róisín nods and continues her work with her smile bright and her eyes brilliant.

  Father Eugene Quinn has positioned himself behind the desk in front of the bay window. Hearing the knock on the library door he takes up his fountain pen to lend himself an air of authority.

  ‘Enter.’

  Mahony keeps to the edge of the room as he heads to the desk but, even so, the water goes halfway up his boots. The room is pleasantly warm, with the feeling of a tropical glasshouse about it. Water gushes happily up from the root of the spring just near the fireplace and a thick layer of frogs seethe in heathen ecstasy where the hearthrug used to be. Father Quinn looks rigidly unperturbed; he is wearing rubber boots and his chair is covered in waterproof sheeting.

  ‘I like what you’ve done with the place, Father. It’s like the outdoors indoors.’

  ‘Sit down, Mahony.’

  ‘I’d rather stand.’ Mahony leans against a bookcase where sodden books sink in their spines.

  The priest looks at him with a profound dislike. ‘I won’t beat about the bush. I’ve called you here because I have a proposal for you.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Mahony lights a fag and holds out the packet to the priest, who shakes his head.

  ‘An anonymous member of the community wishes to become your benefactor.’

  ‘Those frogs are having a great time of it on your rug there, Father.’

  Father Quinn peels apart some papers on his desk. ‘This generous individual, who wishes to remain nameless, is offering you a truly wonderful opportunity. The sort of opportunity that a man like you ought to be extremely grateful for.’

  ‘If those are all St Brigid’s tears she had an awful lot of crying to do, God bless her.’

  As if in answer a wave laps gently at the toe of Mahony’s boot.

  Father Quinn’s colour begins to rise, starting at the peripheries of his temples and the strip of his neck just above his collar. ‘The benefactor in question would like to fund your passage to America.’

  ‘The land of opportunities, Father?’

  ‘Indeed. They are also prepared to furnish you with a modest sum to help you start a new life. Perhaps you will even find some use there for your – various talents.’

  Mahony turns and wades towards the spring with his cigarette in his mouth. He holds out his hand and the water twists and gushes affectionately towards him, like a cat rubbing its chin over his fingers.

  ‘Once you have accepted I’m to furnish you with a ticket and personally escort you to the airport.’

  Father Quinn unlocks his desk drawer and extracts a banded pile of banknotes. ‘And just before I see you onto a plane and wave you goodbye I’m to give you this.’ He lays them on the desktop. ‘It is all here for the taking, Mahony. Everything you need to begin your new life without delay.’

  Mahony smiles and sculls to the edge of the desk and sits down on it, smoking thoughtfully.

  ‘That’s a big pile of money there, Father.’

  Father Quinn nods. ‘It is.’

  ‘And this generous benefactor wants me to go to America?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘To make my fortune and then come home a rich man?’

  The priest’s smile is unwavering. ‘There would be no coming home, if by home you mean Mulderrig. That’s the only stipulation your benefactor makes.’

  Mahony laughs. ‘And why the hell would I come back to Mulderrig if I was living the high life in the U-S-of-A?’

  ‘Precisely,’ says Father Qu
inn.

  Mahony stubs out his cigarette in Father Quinn’s antique inkpot, leans forward and picks up the money. It’s a lot of money. Closely bound, with perfect edges, neat, clean, new. Someone made a special visit to the bank for this. Mahony smiles at Father Quinn and the priest shows him every single one of his long teeth in return.

  ‘Father Quinn, I would like to thank this kind benefactor from the bottom of my heart for their generosity. But I can’t leave Mulderrig. Call it unfinished business.’

  Father Quinn’s smile drops right off his face. ‘If you’re holding out for more, Mahony—’

  ‘Not at all.’ Mahony puts the money down on the desk and smiles at the priest. ‘You should know, money isn’t everything, Father.’

  Father Quinn’s eyes bulge out of his head. ‘You won’t get another offer, Mahony. I’d advise you to take the money.’

  ‘And no doubt that would be sound advice. But if it’s all the same I’ll leave it.’ He holds up his empty hands. ‘Well, it’s been grand gassin’ with you, Father. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.’

  Mahony walks towards the door and Father Quinn sees, with an unholy variety of rage, that at each step the water ripples back to leave only dry carpet beneath Mahony’s feet.

  Chapter 24

  May 1976

  ‘Now I’d say that this was deliberate, wouldn’t you?’ says Bridget, holding up the severed end of the metal flex. The stage is littered with fallen scaffold.

  ‘Who’s in charge of the lighting, Mahony?’

  ‘Eddie Callaghan’s nephew.’

  ‘And has he got it in for you?’

  Mahony kicks the shattered casing of a spotlight. ‘Not that I know of.’

  Bridget stands up. ‘If you hadn’t jumped out of the way in time—’

  ‘I did though.’

  Bridget looks closely at him. ‘You had your back to it, Mahony. How in God’s name did you see that coming?’

  Mahony smiles. Over by the curtain, Johnnie takes a bow.

  Chapter 25

  May 1944

  She told Father Jim she had nothing inside the house to give him and pulled the door to behind her so that he wouldn’t catch sight of the state of Mammy in the chair. Father Jim said not to worry, that it was her he’d come to see. He asked if she’d like to walk with him.