by Jess Kidd
A dead old lady meanders into the room and settles on the settee next to Mahony. She draws out her knitting with a friendly nod.
Mahony speaks slowly, like a courtroom hero with the odds stacked against him but who’ll be winning anyway. ‘Now, Annie. Just tell me what happened to my mother and I’ll leave right now and never bother you again.’
‘Or what?’
Mahony shrugs, his eyes cold.
Annie looks straight at him. ‘She got what she deserved.’
The dead old lady shakes her head and tuts.
Mahony smiles. ‘What did she deserve? Don’t be shy now.’
Annie holds out her hands. ‘How could I possibly say?’
‘Did you kill my mother, Annie?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Because you’re no murderer, are you, Nurse Farelly?’
Annie stares at him. ‘Get out or I’ll call the guards.’
‘And tell them what?’ Mahony takes a drag on his cigarette. ‘Maybe we could entertain them with some of the highlights of your nursing career.’
The dead old lady nods and points at Annie, then she draws her knitting needle over her faint throat. Mahony admires the gesture; it shows spirit.
Annie sits down in an armchair opposite, smoothing her skirt around her knees with careful deliberation. Mahony watches her closely; she doesn’t look in the least bit rattled. After all, he has nothing on her, just a hunch. So a few old people died at the nursing home? Well, that’s hardly news. He sees that she’ll bluff without flinching and give nothing away, unless she wants to. If they were playing poker he’d be leaving without his wallet.
‘So you want to know the truth about your mother? I’ll tell you about your mother,’ she says, her face impassive.
‘I’ve an ear for the truth now, Annie.’
‘She lived with her drunken mother on the edge of town. She had grown up fatherless, running wild. One day she marched into town with her head held high and her stomach grown big and said that she was going to have a bastard and that she wanted to be treated like everyone else. Of course all of the decent people would cross the road rather than talk to her and she had already been banned from every one of the shops.’ Annie pauses, a smile plays on her lips. ‘She said if she didn’t get the respect she deserved she’d tell the town who had fathered her bastard.’
‘And did she?’
‘She didn’t. She had the baby and she wound her neck in and waited, like a snake about to strike. So the good people of the town decided to act first.’
‘What did they do?’
‘They petitioned the priest but he would not help them. Instead he urged forgiveness and acceptance, charity and understanding, and if that wasn’t possible, he said he’d come after anyone who so much as looked sideways at her.’
‘And what did the town say to that?’
‘They said that she’d bewitched the old fool.’ Annie absently touches the gold cross at her neck. ‘So the town decided to take matters into their own hands. They would round up the bastard and give it to a decent Catholic family. And they would bring the girl to a place where she could do no more harm.’
‘What place?’
‘An asylum.’
Mahony looks out. In the garden a starling is dragging a worm out of a trim lawn. It tugs and then hops away, jerking its wings ready to attack again.
‘They went up to the cottage late one night, planning to come upon her in surprise.’ Annie leans over and bangs on the window. The bird flies away.
‘Who went?’
‘I wouldn’t know. As they entered she rushed at them like fury and escaped into the forest leaving her bastard behind, filthy dirty, underfed and too weak to cry.’
Annie’s eyes are milled metal, hard-set. But Mahony can take her stare; it glances right off him.
‘They found an old woman rocking herself in the corner of the room, drunk out of her mind. It took them a while to recognise her for the respectable woman she once was. “Has she done this to you?” they asked her. “Yes,” she said and pointed to the door. “But that one is not my daughter; my own baby has gone. The devil climbed in at the window and took her and left his own behind in the crib.”’
Annie stands up and walks over to the sideboard and smiles down at the ornaments arranged there, a row of dancing ladies in crinoline dresses. Along with the potted palm, they are the only decoration in an otherwise drab room, for the walls are without pictures and the colours are uniform and cheerless.
Annie pushes one of the dancing ladies back into line. ‘The girl was a changeling, the old woman said. The moment she appeared, accidents and illness befell the family, animals died and visitors sickened as soon as they crossed the threshold.’
She picks up the last dancing lady, frozen mid-waltz with her furled parasol aligned with her leading right foot. She tips her backwards, cradling her in the cup of her hand. ‘Soon the birds stopped flying over the cottage and the white roses bloomed red. Even the mice ran away.’
Annie puts the dancing lady back down. ‘And all the time the girl watched the woman with eyes that went right through her. So that the woman began to shut the child away in a windowless room where they kept the turf. The woman had her husband fit a strong lock on the door but the child just kept on staring at her; she could feel her eyes right through the door.’ Annie fixes him with a look of terrible triumph. ‘It was in this room that the child led her own father to commit a terrible sin.’
Mahony stays very still.
‘Now, the woman went often to church, morning and evening, and since she was unable to take the girl with her (for the child would fall into a fit within sight of it, screaming herself insensible) she would leave her behind, locked in the room.
‘One evening, finding herself suddenly unwell on the coast road, the woman turned back. As she entered the cottage she saw that the door was no longer locked. The woman went forward and pushed open the door.’
Mahony notices the dead old lady on the settee beside him put down her knitting and cover her ears.
‘As the light fell across the threshold the woman saw them together.’
Mahony doesn’t move. He’s underwater by a mile.
‘Her husband ran from the house and she never laid eyes on him again. That night she took a lamp and went to look. The child was peaceful and flushed with sleep. But the woman saw that the girl was monstrous. As full as a tick on an animal’s hide. Full and bloated with the soul of a once good man.’
‘And what did the people of the village make of the woman’s story?’ asks Mahony, keeping his voice even, his face composed. ‘After all, were they not the judge and the jury?’
Annie folds her hands primly on her lap. ‘Several of the men didn’t wait to hear more. They ran straight out to find the girl, but of course she was long gone. So they took the baby down into the village and waited. And of course that lured her out of the forest.’
‘Orla came down to claim her baby.’
‘She came down to fight.’ Annie sneers. ‘The villagers would have shipped the both of them off and heard no more of it. But somehow the priest got to hear about their plans. He demanded that the bastard was returned to her and they were let alone to live in their hovel.’
‘And then the priest died?’
‘And then the priest died.’
Mahony sits forward with his elbows on his knees. ‘A coincidence?’
Annie smiles. ‘Coincidences happen. Of course, the new priest gave hope to the people of the town. He was on their side.’
‘You mean he turned a blind eye?’
‘I mean that Orla was strongly encouraged to leave and never return, and finding herself without a friend in the world, she left.’
‘Now that’s where you’re lying, Annie. Didn’t I tell you I’ve a great ear for the truth?’
‘That’s all you’ll get from me.’
Mahony shakes his head. ‘But you still haven’t given me the name of my mother’s killer.
She was killed, wasn’t she, Annie?’
Annie says nothing; she gets up off her chair and walks to the door and opens it. ‘Get out.’
Mahony stands. ‘You won’t give me a name? Then I’ll give you one, shall I? Mary Waldron.’
The dead old lady looks up from her knitting. Annie stares at him.
‘I’ll give you another?’ Mahony says. ‘Cathal Doyle.’
Annie grabs hold of the doorframe.
‘Maggie Hoban.’
Annie cries out; she can’t help herself.
Mahony walks towards her. ‘Kathleen Irwin, Michael Joyce.’
‘Please.’
‘Bridget Lawless.’ He grabs her by the wrist. ‘Look at me.’ He pulls her close to him. She can feel his spit on her cheek. She closes her eyes.
His voice is flat, oddly metallic. ‘Maura Cusack, Theresa Walsh.’
Annie slumps down with her hands over her head.
Mahony clenches his fist.
Then he sees them: a shield of dead pensioners, their arms linked, their faces patient and apologetic. They shake their heads in dismay. They stand between him and the woman until he stops shouting, until he unclenches his fist, until he sees with the surprise of a sleepwalker waking the woman sobbing on the floor, until he leaves.
Chapter 38
March 1950
They told Orla to be quiet, that her baby was safe. They told her that they would find a good home for him. That he would go to live with a good Catholic family who would raise him to be decent. Orla spat and howled and tried to get out of the bed until Dr McNulty came.
When she woke again they put Francis into her arms. She took him unseeing, blinded by tears.
They told her she was lucky. That she had a friend. They told her to get out of the town and never come back. Last chance, they said.
Chapter 39
May 1976
The portents came just before dawn, starting with a steady trickle of soot falling down every chimney into every unlit hearth at Rathmore House.
This was not the only sign of the coming storm.
At first light the swallows began to dip lower and lower over the field beyond the house.
For the bees it was old news. They’d told each other about the storm days ago with a dance of their plush behinds. And of course the trees knew too, but they just plumbed their taproots deeper and held their own counsel.
By now even the dead are jittery. Most of them have taken refuge in the basement, with the exception of Father Jim, who is smoking a pipe in the roll-top bath on the third floor, and Johnnie, who is sitting cross-legged on top of the cistern watching him.
Of course Mahony knows none of this as he stands barefoot in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. He’s given up trying to sleep. So too has Desmond Burke, who appears soundlessly in the doorway.
‘Mahony, there’s something you should know. Something I should have told you.’
Mahony glances up at him. ‘Jesus, Desmond, you look like shit.’
Desmond takes a notebook from his pocket and throws it onto the kitchen table.
‘Look at it, Mahony. That’s my writing.’
They sit together in the garden, on chairs wet with dew, with the forest silhouetted by the brightening sky. Mahony watches as Father Jim, searching his pocket for his pipe, wanders out onto the veranda; the priest nods in his direction and drifts up onto the roof of the henhouse. Johnnie follows him, in a hat, a waistcoat and a pair of sagging drawers, his arms outstretched to welcome the new day.
Mahony doesn’t need to look at Desmond to know that the man is crying.
‘It was late, Mahony, really late. I was up reading. I answered the door and it was him.’
‘Who?’
Desmond puts his head in his hands and cries hard.
Father Jim lights his pipe, a spectral flame flickers for a moment then goes out. Johnnie drops his underwear and hopscotches down the garden path, his bare arse winking in the early morning light. The priest averts his eyes.
Desmond wipes his face with his sleeve and sits up in his chair. ‘He wouldn’t come in, he stood outside in the dark, he sounded terrified. He said that Orla was dead.’
‘Who was it?’
Desmond looks at him. ‘Tom. From the forest.’
‘Tom? Tom killed her?’
‘No.’ Desmond pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘She was already dead when he found her.’ He squints up at the sky. ‘He had you with him, up under his coat.’
‘Who killed her?’
Desmond shook his head. ‘He didn’t know.’
‘You asked him?’
‘He said he didn’t know, Mahony.’ Desmond frowns. ‘She was in a lot of trouble, with the town. All Tom wanted to do was get you out of here.’
‘And he came to you?’
‘He knew I had a car.’ Desmond glances at Mahony. ‘And he wanted to leave something with you. A note to tell you who you were and what had happened. I would write it in my best hand.’ Desmond pauses. ‘He would tell me how it would read.’
Johnnie lies down on the grass with his legs open and looks up at the sky. A bird flies low and he quickly puts his hat over his mickey.
Mahony takes the photograph out of his wallet and hands it to him.
Desmond takes it. ‘I took this, of you and her.’
‘So you did know her.’
‘She asked me to take it. When she heard I had a camera.’ He studies the picture. ‘Leaving it with you seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’
‘And now it doesn’t?’ Mahony watches Desmond’s face. ‘You didn’t think I’d come back, did you?’
Desmond gives him a broken smile. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t.’
Mahony shakes his head. ‘You took your fucking time telling me all this.’
‘I was worried about how you’d take it.’
Mahony looks at Desmond. The man is lucky he still has a head on him. Desmond must know it; he’s shaking like a shitting dog.
Mahony thinks for a while. Something isn’t adding up. ‘How did Tom know he could trust you? How did he know that you would help him?’
Desmond shrugs. ‘I don’t—’
‘You already knew him, didn’t you?’
Desmond looks down at his shoes. ‘Not when I opened the door, not straight away.’
‘Who was it, standing at the door, Desmond?’
‘Orla’s father, Thomas Sweeney.’
They sit in silence, Desmond with his head in his hands, Mahony smoking a cigarette. A mist is rising off the fields now and the birds are staking their claim on the morning. Mahony listens to their song echo in the early empty landscape.
‘Who else knew that it was Thomas Sweeney living up there in the forest?’
‘No one.’
‘What about Jack Brophy? He must have known Tom’s real identity?’
Desmond nods, hesitantly. ‘He would have, yes.’
Johnnie gets to his feet and saunters to the nearby flowerbed scratching his flute. He begins to dress, lifting one thin limb, then another, into spectral linen and tweed.
Mahony forces himself to say it. ‘And her body?’
Desmond shakes his head. ‘When we came back there was no sign of it. Thomas looked.’
One question leads to another. ‘Where did it happen?’
‘In the forest.’
Mahony’s heart pitches. He wants to cover his ears. Or shout. Or punch the stricken man sitting next to him into the ground. He does none of these things.
‘Whereabouts in the forest?’ Mahony says, his voice cold, calm.
‘I don’t know.’
Mahony speaks slowly, trying to make sense of it. ‘And you never told anyone what had happened that night? What Thomas saw?’
Desmond starts to cry again. ‘I couldn’t. I’d made a promise to him.’
Then Mahony remembers: the child found in the arms of her father, the husband running out of the door, never to be seen again.
‘What if Thomas had killed her? Did you ever think about that?’
‘He couldn’t have.’ Desmond’s face is bewildered. ‘She was already gone when he found her.’
‘And you believed that?’
‘Thomas was a good man. He took me fishing as a boy.’
‘Jesus, Desmond, he took you fucking fishing?’
Desmond looks at Mahony. How can he describe Thomas as he’d known him, with his slow smile and his hat pulled down? The hand-tied flies Thomas would make for him and the patient catechism that took place on peaceful banks, on the wild brown trout and the salmon, on the weather and the water.
‘Thomas would never have hurt his own daughter,’ Desmond says.
Mahony can’t trust himself to talk.
They sit in silence. Mahony lights another fag and smokes it through to the end, bitterly. Desmond sits next to him, demolished.
‘But not to tell a soul?’ says Mahony. ‘A young girl murdered and you tell fucking no one. You’re going to have to help me out with this one, pal.’
‘I wanted to, but Thomas said that they mightn’t believe us, that they might say we did it.’
‘Why would they say that, Desmond? Give me a fucking reason.’
Desmond can’t look him in the eye. ‘I’d been involved with her.’
Mahony stares at the man in horror, as the thought of Shauna in the forest with her dress up to her elbows rolls through his mind. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, you’re my father.’
‘No.’ Desmond shakes his head. ‘I’m not. I was with her before that.’
Mahony breathes out. He searches in his pocket for another fag with his heart jumping. This man will kill him.
‘Orla had been asking me for money. I’d just got married, Mahony. She threatened to tell my wife. What I’d done with her was illegal.’
Mahony regards him with amazement. ‘For fuck’s sake, Desmond.’
Desmond starts crying again.
Johnnie yawns and takes out his pocket watch.
‘Get your boots on,’ says Mahony. ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘Where to?’
‘To find Thomas Sweeney.’
Johnnie starts to roll up his sleeves.
In the library Mrs Cauley is woken by a loud rumbling sound. She opens her eyes in time to see a billowing avalanche of soot spew from the fireplace and roll towards her.
