by Jess Kidd
Teasie smiles across at Mrs Moran, feeling her nerves uncoil. She has wrapped Mammy up well and left her at home with a flask and a plate of sandwiches. She has locked all the doors and checked them twice. She is looking forward to a full day with no one roaring any predictions at her, or gabbering in tongues, or staring around them glassy-eyed and moaning.
Mahony, costumed to the hilt, steps outside to a chorus of wolf whistles.
‘Here he is now.’
‘Here’s himself.’
‘You’re a fine figure of a man, Mahony.’
They roar.
Mahony salutes them and walks over to Mrs Cauley. In his white shirt and tight britches he looks younger; he’s shaved and maybe even washed his hair. Mrs Cauley could kiss him.
He lights a fag and scowls up at the sun. ‘Am I Christy enough for you?’
‘You are,’ she says. ‘Don’t we make a fine-looking pair? Jesus, we’re blessed.’
Mrs Cauley is majestic in fur, gold brocade and a foot-high ginger pompadour. Her make-up has been applied with an unsparing hand, even over the bandage across her nose. Her blackened eyes beneath lend a kind of damaged drama. The rest of the bruises she hides with a mandarin collar and a man’s silk cravat.
Mahony watches as Johnnie runs out through the wall, stripped to the waist. He stands out in the road dancing suggestively and waving his shirt.
‘It’s a great day for Johnnie. He’s on top form,’ says Mahony.
Mrs Cauley smiles. ‘He’s with me now, isn’t he? I can feel him.’
Mahony looks up. Above them Miss Mulhearne is attempting to hide behind the old rusted school bell. She’s sobbing or laughing, Mahony can’t tell which, only that her dim shoulders are shaking. Johnnie points up at her, throws down his shirt and starts to unbuckle his trousers. Miss Mulhearne covers her eyes.
Mahony smiles at Mrs Cauley. ‘So you can. He never leaves your side.’
Mrs Lavelle opens her eyes wide. Awake and lucid she throws the blanket off her knees, stretches her legs and stands up. She walks around the room, trailing her hand over furniture, picking up ornaments. She licks her finger and draws in the dust on the mantelpiece. Four letters. She reads the name back to herself and finds that she’s hardly surprised at all. She finds a hairpin and without knowing how she picks the lock on the parlour door and slips out into the hallway.
She stands in front of the mirror and takes a good look.
Mrs Lavelle is not herself any more.
She takes a scarf and ties it around her head.
She breathes kisses on the glass and gives herself come-hithers.
She tries the front door: it’s locked, as is the back door. With remarkable dexterity for an elderly woman with rheumatoid arthritis, she levers the kitchen window open with a bread knife, hitches up her skirt and climbs out of it.
Outside, Mary Lavelle kicks off her carpet slippers and dances barefoot through the garden.
Inside, it’s quieter than it has been for weeks. Now the only dead thing in Mary Lavelle’s house is the moth in her sugar bowl.
Chapter 46
May 1976
Jack’s squad car is parked on his drive when Annie Farelly arrives at his house. When she rings the doorbell he comes round the side of the house in his uniform, wiping his hands on a cloth.
‘Annie, I’m just in the garage, getting a few tools together before I go down to keep an eye on the set.’ He smiles. ‘Tadhg trips over the threshold every time he crosses it.’
Annie tries to smile. ‘He’s throwing himself into the role.’
Jack laughs. Then he stops, noticing the bruises on her temple, on her jaw, under a dredging of face powder.
‘What happened to you?’ He reaches over, as if to touch her.
Annie colours. ‘I fell in the bath.’
He puts his hand down and looks at her closely. ‘Come to the play with me, Annie. I can bring you down to the village in the car.’
‘Ah no, it’s not for me. But thank you all the same, Jack.’
Jack, like a gentleman, won’t press her. ‘So what do I owe this pleasure to?’ he smiles, his eyes kind.
‘It doesn’t appear that you have time to talk. I’ll come back another time.’
‘Of course I’ve time, there’s always time. Will we go inside the house?’
‘Ah no, I won’t keep you.’
‘Well then, come round to the garage. You can talk to me while I pack a bag.’
She nods.
He opens a deckchair and sets it by the workbench and spreads a clean rag on the seat for her. She sits down and, bolstered by the expression of patient concern on his face, she begins.
She tells him everything she’s left unsaid these long years. Sitting there before him in her mauve cardigan and cream blouse, in her low-heeled shoes and old-fashioned gloves.
He looks down at the tin of tacks in his hand and she tells him of the high esteem she holds him in. For doing what he did for the sake of the village, although not one of them knows to thank him for it. And now Mahony won’t rest until he gets to the bottom of his mother’s disappearance, and Mrs Cauley is snooping, and Bridget Doosey is in on the act too. Annie recounts Mahony’s refusal of her bribe: a sum she had reserved to build and furnish a new conservatory, and she stops, just for a moment, to recall in her own mind the rattan furniture she has been willing to forgo.
When she has finished, Jack puts down the tin of tacks.
He stands with his back to her, taking off his uniform jacket. ‘How did you know, Annie?’
‘I saw you walking into the forest that day and I saw the look on your face. As soon as Bridget Doosey started putting it out that Orla had disappeared, I just knew.’
He hangs up his jacket. ‘And you’ve never told anyone?’
‘Not a soul.’
He takes off his tie and drapes it over his jacket and turns to face her. ‘And what’s the town’s opinion of this great crime?’
‘A few think it never happened, that Orla left town. A few think that Tadhg or Jimmy Nylon might know something about it, or Tom even, up in the forest. That one of them might be involved.’
Jack shakes his head.
Annie nods sagely. ‘Well, I don’t think anyone really believes that.’
‘And what about me?’ Jack rolls up his sleeves. ‘Is Jack Brophy a suspect?’
‘You’d be the last person—’
He sends her spinning then picks her up again and again. He pushes her up against the workbench, holding her face pinched in his fingers. ‘Look at me,’ he says.
Annie tries, really she tries. Whenever her eyes close or she looks away he bangs her head against the wall.
‘Didn’t I tell you to look at me?’
He tells her, over and over, that he didn’t do it for the fucking village.
He did it for himself.
‘Have you got that, Annie?’
She asks him if she can go home, please. Her lips don’t seem belong to her any more, so she speaks slowly. ‘Can I please go home?’
‘You can’t,’ says Jack. ‘You talk too much.’
This time she hardly sees his fist move.
She looks up at him. He is rifling through a drawer, whistling. She is curled in on herself, lying awkwardly on her shoulder. Pain rinses her mind of thought and keeps her breathing shallow.
He shuts the drawer and comes over to her with a sheet of plastic. He kneels next to her, looking down in dismay at his uniform trousers as the blood blotches and flowers on each dark-blue knee.
He wraps the plastic around her face, tucking it closely in at her throat and up under her chin, ignoring her body moving under him. He tightens the sheeting until her eyelids are splayed, then he secures it at the back of her head with nylon cord. Her breath starts to fog the plastic.
He leans over her, stroking her back with his face close to her. He’s telling her something she can’t hear.
Chapter 47
May 1976
In Mu
lderrig Village Hall the audience sits silent and blinking, their attention fixed on the stage curtains lit by a single solitary spotlight. The curtains undulate gently, although there’s no breeze to speak of, for the windows are covered with black card and the doors are closed against the afternoon sun.
A figure steals into the hall, ticketless and uninvited. It pads into a far corner of the room and curls up in the deep shadows there.
Backstage the cast are waiting. They grin and point and stifle laughs to see themselves all together, ready in their costumes.
Soon the cast too quieten down.
And everyone begins to feel it.
Even the sharpest of them would struggle to describe what they are feeling.
It isn’t love, or nostalgia, or peace, or even excitement – not really. It isn’t the sense that something remarkable is about to happen, although that is there, in the feeling.
In the shadows at the back of the hall a figure unties her scarf, shakes out her hair and leans back against the wall.
Eddie Callaghan’s nephew trains a light on the band at the front of the stage. A slow ripple thrills through the audience as Pat Nolan takes up the uilleann pipes.
The first notes come sweet and harsh and a lament of riveting beauty spreads over the room. It’s felt in the spine and in the soul, in the mind and in the gut. The pipes sing about a land lost, about forgotten honour and wasted bravery. They sing of sedge-edged water and wide skies, of the mountains and the sea, of those who are gone and those who never even were.
As the last strains of Pat Nolan’s pipes echo, the curtains open.
The actors are amazed to find that the words fall naturally from their mouths, as if they have just thought them up themselves for the first time. So that Mrs Moran forgets to turn over the pages of her prompt book.
The audience watch bright-eyed and open-lipped, and everyone knows for sure that real lives are being lived on the stage today.
But it is Mahony that they are waiting for and when he walks onto the stage the room sighs.
At the back of the hall the figure in the shadows lifts up her head and smiles.
During the interval the lights go on and the doors are propped open. The daddies go out into the late afternoon sun for a smoke. The babies, who have stored up their crying, start wailing in chorus for rusks and dry nappies. Finding it impossible to settle, Teasie Lavelle rubs the hairs on her arms back down and looks over her shoulder.
Bridget Doosey is handing around lemonade and biscuits. ‘Will you have a drink, Teasie?’
Teasie pushes her glasses up her nose and takes a paper cup.
‘How’s Mammy?’
‘I’ve locked her in the house. I think I’ll go back and check on her.’
‘She’ll be fine for a bit. Have a break for yourself, now.’
Teasie shakes her head, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you managing, Teasie?’
Teasie shrugs, her eyes filling.
‘Would it help if I came over to see her?’
Teasie nods. ‘It might.’
‘Then I’ll be over later. Take a few biscuits for yourself there, Teasie.’
Teasie finishes the lemonade too quickly, so that it catches in her throat, but Bridget has turned away before she can give her the paper cup back.
Backstage the cast hug each other and mock-scream. They’re holding up. They’re loving it. Mrs Cauley’s told them to stay out the back for the interval and Shauna brings them a tray of drinks, beer and lemonade if they want it. Mahony kisses Shauna through his stage make-up and she laughs to see him with more lipstick on than she has. As Mahony walks on to take his place she puts her hand on his arm and undoes another button on his shirt.
‘For the mammies,’ she grins.
The curtains open and the audience watch Mahony, as Christy, delight in the luck he has to be a hero remade, and when he throws out a wink the room hops. The audience watch with a shared smile, riveted by every glance from Christy and foot-stamp from Pegeen and waft of the Widow Quin’s shawl.
A man comes quietly into the hall and takes a drink from the tray on the table. He picks his way along the aisle to a vacant seat.
A voice calls out loud from the back of the hall.
‘He is washed in the blood of the lamb.’
A few members of the audience laugh, believing it to be part of the play.
The voice rings out again: the high, clear voice of a young girl.
‘He is washed in the blood of the lamb.’
Eddie Callaghan’s nephew gives a cry of alarm, as above him the stage lights flare and turn around all by themselves in their sockets, leaving the stage in darkness.
The actors too stop and turn.
The audience hold on to their seats as, inexplicably, the chairs pivot round on their back legs, scraping the floor in unison. The front doors slip down their latches and drive home their bolts. In the kitchen, the tea urn reaches a rolling boil and the crockery starts to shake. The spoons begin to bend and the sandwiches curl up and die.
At the back of the hall Mrs Lavelle stands barefoot in the spotlight with an expression of finely wrought hatred on her face.
She raises her arm and points.
And everyone looks.
It is Jack Brophy, taking his seat with a paper cup in his hand.
Jack puts his drink down and cautiously walks over to Mrs Lavelle, as if he’s a shy man asking a timid woman to dance. The village holds its breath as he lays a hand gently on her arm.
She screams. It’s threadbare and piercing, like a hurt child.
Pat Nolan strikes up the band.
After the play, the buffet table is set for the aftershow party and within minutes it is gnawed so clean it’s a wonder it still has legs. Many move quickly past the tea and on to the hard stuff as they stand around dusting down crumbs and joining in with one of several acceptable topics of debate: the high calibre of the acting, not just of Mahony himself, of course, but of the supporting cast, particularly Tadhg Kerrigan as Old Mahon, the murdered father, tripping in and out over the doorframe.
No one mentions Mrs Lavelle.
Father Quinn skulks amongst them, as welcome as a wet shoe.
Across the room Mrs Cauley catches his eye and toasts him. He moves across to her.
‘Mrs Cauley.’
‘Father Quinn, did you enjoy the play?’
‘It was a remarkable production, but I hope it was worth it.’
Mrs Cauley smiles sweetly. ‘Oh it was, Father.’
The priest bends forwards. ‘We had a deal, Mrs Cauley. Mahony should have left town this morning.’
‘When it came down to it he just couldn’t, Father.’
Father Quinn’s smile is pestilential. ‘No matter. I’ll be going home to make that call directly. Your protégé will be swiftly taken into custody.’
Shauna brings over a tray with two glasses of whiskey on it. ‘Will you have a little tipple for yourself, Father?’
Father Quinn smirks. ‘Why not? It seems that I have reason to celebrate.’
‘Grand, so, that’s your one there, Father. Not that one, the one on the left, Father, the left one. Yes. That one.’
Father Quinn raises his glass. ‘Ladies, I wish you a good evening.’ He bows slightly and weaves off through the crowd, grinning malignantly.
‘And I wish you a lifetime of hard shits,’ says Mrs Cauley, downing her whiskey with a widening smile.
At the parochial house Bridget Doosey cuts the telephone cord, locks the back door and dangles the key into the cup of her brassiere. She goes up to the guest room, takes off her overalls and opens her crocodile handbag. She pulls on grey tights and a leotard and flexes gamely in front of the wardrobe mirror before settling down to wait.
At the village hall the crowd shows no sign of leaving, not while the cast move amongst them like higher beings. The actors grin at the requests to run another night, or two, or ten. All of them radiant with stage make-up and success. In the
kitchen the helpers are wiping up the plates and cups with the radio on. Mrs Moran flicks her tea towel in time to the Brotherhood of Man and even Michael Hopper joins in, although quite who he’s saving his kisses for is a mystery to everyone.
By the side of the stage Mrs Cauley watches and smiles. There is Mahony, riding high with Shauna by his side blushing scarlet at being near the centre of attention. God love her.
Mrs Cauley’s smile fades as she spots Jack Brophy making his way through the crowd, stopping to lean down to talk here and there. Nodding with a serious expression on his face, listening intently. Tadhg presses a glass into his hand, they speak for a moment and then Tadhg pats him on the back. Jack downs his drink.
Mrs Cauley studies Jack closely and for long enough for him to look up at her. He smiles and makes his way over.
‘Now then, Jack.’
‘Are you behaving yourself, Merle?’
‘I am of course.’
‘And how did you get those two shiners?’
‘I ran into a pillow.’
Jack pulls up a chair and sits down beside her. ‘Congratulations on a fine play.’
‘You missed the first act.’
Jack shrugs and smiles. ‘Garda business.’
‘Then you’re excused. And how is Mary Lavelle?’
Jack nods. ‘She’s quiet now. Maurice has given her a sedative.’
There’s a great commotion as a group of lads pick Mahony up and parade him around the hall; a few young ones follow laughing. The band re-forms again in the corner of the room and pockets of dancing start to break out.
Jack smiles. ‘The town has taken to him.’
‘Unlike his mother.’
Jack doesn’t answer.
‘What happened to Orla Sweeney?’
