She looked at Helen, her doubts about the wisdom of sharing her secret, all gone now.
“Then, in walked a man. A man more alien and fascinating than everything else. Even his name was like something out of a book. Reginald Aspinall.”
“You fell for him?”
Maggie shook her head as if trying to shake away her past.
“You can say that again, I fell for him, to the point of…well…maybe not madness but it was definitely an obsession. The nurse training, my family back here, my cousin there, my future and my past and everything else receded into the distance. Maybe love is a distorted state, as some of these psychologists would have us believe.”
“Was it returned, how you felt, I mean?”
Helen’s eyes were big, in her face, as lost in Maggie’s story as Maggie was lost in her own past. In a London that seemed old fashioned, now to her in her mind’s eye. It had been winter. Reggie had come home for Christmas and stopping off in London to see friends before his next expedition, had come to Flo’s house for dinner.
“He was an adventurer and an explorer and was between trips. His next was to Papua New Guinea. I asked him so many questions that I could see Flo getting irritated with me, so irritated that she more or less told me to go to bed. That was a bit of a slap in the face.”
“She sounds a bit of a tyrant, Maggie.”
“She could be. Maybe I’m not being entirely fair. What she’d seen of me had been a daft child running about the fields. I don’t think she could accept that I was a young woman.”
“So, what came of it, Maggie? This Reggie. Good gracious, who needs a public library, or the wireless? This is better than any of them.”
It was true. Maggie heard her story from someone else’s viewpoint and supposed it must sound thrilling. The reality had been a long, long way from that, though.
“Good gracious ladies, it’s almost pitch dark in here. And what’s that when it’s at home? Drink, in the middle of the day? What’s the country coming to? The women are as bad as the men.”
Will Brosnan brought a chill into the room with him through the open door and Helen’s telling him to shut the door was more irritable than usual. It wasn’t the open door, but that he’d interrupted them in the middle of Maggie’ story.
* * *
Ben Cronin stopped in his car a half a mile down the road from home. His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard that they ached. He took a couple of deep breaths. It wasn’t fair to take his bad mood home. The superintendent had sounded cagey and exasperated at the same time.
“You need to be moving on this, Ben. You’re not in the Bronx. A one-horse town, the last time I saw it. Shouldn’t be difficult.”
Ben’s blood pressure rose at the man’s words and his clipped tone as if it cost him to speak.
“I didn’t have enough to charge the young priest with, Super. He was seen in the vicinity, fair enough, and it was obvious he was hiding something or someone, but there’s no motive and no evidence. No blood, or anything else.”
“It’s hard to understand a priest doing something like that, but the canon rang me today. The young priest giving him concern for a while now. Unstable, he says.”
“Well, that didn’t strike me.”
“Bring him back in again, I’d say. It’ll be him or a tramp. Any tinkers knocking around, on their way back from some fair?”
That’s it. Blame a passing tinker.
“The house? One of them big houses? Gentry and so forth?”
Ben Cronin swallowed a lump of frustration. “Big, yes. Packed with valuables, no, not really.”
His mind travelled back, through the house. Faded grandeur, they called it, wasn’t it? Full to the rafters, though; mostly with junk. Take some sorting out that would. He said that it wasn’t packed full of antiques. Could he be sure?
He cleared his throat. “I’ve asked his wife, or widow whether there was anything missing…she says not.”
But, was she telling the truth. No point in sharing his doubts with the super, but he wasn’t sure. Her eyes had shifted, and there was a lot of money. He had a visit tomorrow to Hutchinson and O’Rourke’s solicitors. It would be interesting.
“I had Bishop Dwyer on to me too. Be very careful, Ben. Try to not to step on too many toes.”
He gave a bark of a laugh.
“Small towns, eh. Got to live together.”
Ben’s frustration turned to anger. The insinuation and the hints and the nose taps of rural Irish life. The power of the church and of the agents of the state.
That wasn’t it, though-from bad to putrid.
His stomach clenched at the sight of that snide little sergeant from Mallow swanning into the barracks, like the cock of the north.
It didn’t take him long neither. Cup of tea, arse perched on the edge of Cronin’s desk. The cheek of the git.
“Great news about your Agnes.” His pale blue eyes swivelled to focus on Ben’s.
There was no point in trying to bluff this one out.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Peter. We don’t see a lot of Agnes at the moment.”
Not a word more, just what he had to say, his throat constricted. Humiliated.
A raise of the eyebrows and an exaggerated look of pain. His hair plastered back, like an oil slick and his bri-nylon shirt sleeves rolled up in perfect little folds. Mister Perfect husband and father with the nasty streak only partly hidden.
“Shame that, the one and only and all…”
He’d always had that black spot in him, but hadn’t it come to the fore since Ben had been promoted over him.
Well, he could stand there looking smug all day, Ben wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking.
“She’s courting, I hear. A school teacher.”
“Yes, well thanks for passing on the news.”
He let a pause go on for just long enough to make it clear it was time for a change of subject.
“So, what’s bringing you to Ballytierney, anyway?”
“Not garda business, actually. I have an aunt who lives here, Miss Moore. I haven’t seen her in ages and well, you know. None of us are getting any younger, and I thought it was high time I paid the old girl a visit.”
A likely story. So, the infamous Abina was his aunt, that had escaped Ben’s notice, somehow. Barry’s sudden need to visit his aunt would have nothing to do with the passage of time and filial sentiments, but plenty to do with a need to be at the centre of what was going on in Ballytierney.
Now, he turned the key in the ignition. They were heading for a cold night. He’d made a decision. He’d broach the subject of Agnes with his wife. The thought of it made an involuntary shudder pass through that part of the back where the shoulder blades drew together.
Something between them needed to change. He was a man who put a high price on keeping the peace. There had been far too many arguments in his house. But news of Agnes’s relationship would reach her, just as sure as clusters of worshippers gathered outside the church after mass and devotions for a gossip. It was better to come from him even if it was the last thing he felt like doing tonight.
* * *
“I thought it was only right to ask Mrs. Lally in for a cup of tea.”
The thing was, not to get agitated. If she told the canon the time of day, at the moment, he’d use it against her. Force her into the defensive. She was tired of it.
“Yes, well. Try not to treat the place like a tea-room.”
His response was inadequate, ridiculous, and he’d recognise that. Well, however long her new feeling of recklessness would last, Maggie would make the best of it and face the consequences later. You could get sick and tired of bending the knee and being supplicant. At the back of her mind…Well, it didn’t do to follow that line of thought too closely.
Any reckless action on her part would lead to an abyss of joblessness, penury, and homelessness. It wouldn’t come to that. She had sisters and brothers who cared about her and wouldn
’t see her without a roof over her head.
The canon made himself scarce, and she put the tray of scones in the oven. Making them had calmed her down. Father Tom had gone off to the train station to meet his mother, and she told him to make sure to bring her back with him for a cup of tea. Gillespie’s guest house was immaculate and comfortable, just like the little Mrs. Gillespie, herself. But Mrs. Lally had come to see her son. The woman must be worried sick and might find some comfort in spending time with a person who knew her son.
Maggie sat down, waiting for the smell of warm baking to fill the kitchen. The thought came into her head, again, just as it did every time she paused for breath.
Yet another letter had come this morning, a third one. She’d come within a hair’s breadth of confiding in Helen. Maybe it had been fate that she hadn’t, in the end, that Will had come home from work and the conversation stopped. The only sure way of keeping a secret was to tell no-one. She may not have that luxury, though. The past had caught up with her. It wasn’t as though she’d done anything wrong. If you considered that wrong was something which hurt another human being, then no, she hadn’t done wrong.
But, the church was very hard on a woman who erred, in some way. No point in dressing it up, even in her own mind. The church was hard on a woman who had committed some sin against chastity. Did she care? Probably not, anymore. It wasn’t that simple; exposure of her past would expose her as a liar as well as cause her to lose her job.
It must be some strange sort of aberration that was making her behave towards the canon as she was doing at the moment. It was almost as if she was intent on bringing about a confrontation, so nobody else could destroy her life.
Maggie shrugged her shoulders, shaking off the tremor that had gripped her. She took the oven cloth out of the drawer and went across to the stove.
* * *
What had possessed him to start all of this all over again? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough to deal with in the job. He was no nearer finding out what had happened at Inishowen House and he had a meeting at twelve o’clock today, with Superintendent Lynch. He didn’t have much hope of it being a friendly chat.
That bloody Sergeant Peter Barry, that’s what had done it. Him and his smirk and his nasty insinuations. Cronin only had one child, and he obviously had no idea what was going on her life. What did that say about him? How could a person keep the peace, serve justice and command men when his own family life was an embarrassment? The resentment against Harriett, which he tried hard to suppress, rose up into his throat like vomit.
You can keep something in, though you’re longing to say it, and bite your tongue, though you suspect that doing so is giving you an ulcer. Then, on another day the keeping it in doesn’t seem as important as the need to express it.
She sat opposite him, the other side of the fireplace in the sitting room, the fire low, but crackling and wavering, sending shapes up on the walls and he had a memory of his father making rabbits ears with his hands against the white of the wall and the flickering firelight. An unbidden memory conjured up from a secret store he didn’t even know he had.
“You’re quiet?” Maybe if she hadn’t said that? Who was he fooling? He was always going to say something tonight, unable to bat away the demons that supercilious little toad from Mallow had set off.
“Is it the case? Simon Crowe?”
He drew in his breath, his heart setting off like a creature racing into the night.
“In part; I had a visit today from a sergeant from Mallow, Peter Barry. You’ll have heard me talk of him, and Abina probably has, too. I’m surprised we didn’t know he’s her nephew. A nasty piece of work. He derived great pleasure in telling me that he knew more about Agnes’s doings than either of us does. At least I assume you’re as ignorant as me?”
For the first time, since starting to speak, he raised his eyes and looked across at her. She sat rigidly, her eyes fixed ahead. Her fingers played with the fringe of the red tartan blanket on her knees. She didn’t answer him.
“Right. Well, he told me that she has a boyfriend.”
“We’d be the last to know. She left the house saying that she didn’t want to speak to either of us again, so why are you surprised, Ben?”
He considered what to say next. Could Harriett really be so cold blooded about this? Or was it a defence mechanism. It was frightening that you could live with someone for nearly thirty years and not know something so fundamental about her character. A ripple of extreme tiredness swept through him, and he regretted with all his heart that he’d been so foolish as to bring up this subject. There were good reasons why it wasn’t discussed.
What had happened was unresolvable. At this moment, he was certain of that.
“I’m going to make a cup of tea. Can I get you one, or cocoa maybe?”
He went into the kitchen dragging his guilt with him. What was the point of upsetting her? She had enough to contend with. Maybe he’d been just having a dig at her, blaming her for the estrangement with her daughter or had it been some misguided attempt to air this thing? To get it out in the open with a view to some chance of fixing it. Anyway, it had got him nowhere at all apart from the distinct possibility of neither of them getting much sleep in the coming night.
* * *
Mrs. Lally was a small woman, neat and quiet, and self-possessed, a person who had a good grip on life.
“I’m very grateful to you for looking after Tom. God knows, he needs a friend.”
Her head was bowed, and her young face looked old, just for a second or two.
Maggie put down a cup and saucer in front of the woman. She supposed it was all right, just the two of them here in the kitchen though protocol might dictate that the young priest’s mother should be having high tea up in the parlour with at least one nun in attendance. As it was, the canon had made no secret of the fact that he wanted nothing to do with Mrs. Lally’s visit and even Father Tom had disappeared. You could see the relief in him as he left his mother here, with her. Ah well, protocol was a load of old nonsense. This woman was troubled and with good reason. Not that Maggie was going to be able to tell her much or relieve her anxiety, but she could listen.
“I haven’t done, much, Mrs. Lally…”
The woman raised her head, quickly.
“Please call me Deirdre. Whatever it is that’s troubling him, he’s not wanting to talk about it, but I think he needs to. The inspector is a reasonable man, as far as I know, but Tom was seen around Inishowen House. Later on in the evening, when Simon Crowe died. He can’t or won’t say what he was doing there or who he might be protecting.”
Deirdre Lally shook her head and looked a mixture of frustration and fear. “I can’t imagine him hurting anyone. But…” Her teeth caught at her lower lip; she looked young and vulnerable.
Maggie kept her voice low, too in reflection of the other woman. “What is it?”
“I’ve been thinking and thinking…at home, on the train. Thinking until my brain aches from it.”
Her head bent again and for a second Maggie laid her hand on the woman’s sleeve.
“We adopted him, you know.”
Maggie hadn’t known. How could she? At what point would he have told her that. Did he even know it?
She asked Deirdre Lally.
“I know some people don’t tell the child. They don’t want to upset them…”
“No, we told him. When he was about seven years old. I’d heard stories about how children blurted such things out in the playground, and I had a horror of such a thing happening to poor Tom. He was a shy and nervous child.”
“Even before he knew he was adopted?”
“Yes, though more so, afterwards. My husband…don’t get me wrong, Maggie. He was a good man, but rigid, strict. Right was right and children needed to be taught it.”
A knot formed in Maggie’s stomach. A version of what Mrs. Lally was saying shaped much of the education system in this country and no doubt, in many others. It was we
ll and good, but could also be an excuse for brutality.
It was as though the other woman had read her mind.
“He was never harsh with Tom. Never cruel, just…rigid.”
“Did you have him from a baby?”
Deirdre shook her head.
“No, we didn’t. He was two years old and was in the local cottage hospital. A golden-haired boy with pink cheeks and a gap between his two tiny front teeth.”
Maggie frowned.
Where had the child come from?
“I was a nurse in the hospital. My husband and I had been married five years with no sign of a baby. We didn’t talk about it. Well, you didn’t in those days. I suppose I was a lot luckier than many women in that I had my own profession and a husband who didn’t object to me going out to work.”
She had a point. Maggie knew several men, even today who would somehow see it as a poor reflection on themselves. You couldn’t, for instance, imagine Frank O’ Sullivan with a wife who had her own career.
“Who had left him in the hospital? I mean, wouldn’t it be a strange place to leave a young child?”
“Oh, this country, Maggie.”
Out of the blue, the other woman had become energised, angry, even. Maggie looked at her, startled.
Deirdre was running her finger around the ring on the inside of the cup handle, like a blind person reading Braille. Her cheeks had flushed. Then she removed her hand from the cup and smiled.
“I’m sorry, take no notice of me. I’m all at sixes and sevens ever since I got the phone call about Tom being at the Garda barracks. One of the many times I wish my husband was still here. I used to get very frustrated with the way the clergy ran everything. I trained as a nurse in London, you see, and I saw a different way of doing things. I’m not saying that it is always a better way of going on. But, when I came back here, I found it hard at times, especially working for the health board. Decisions being made behind closed doors and all this hush hush all the time. Godliness and intolerance going hand in hand. The right hand not knowing what the left was doing.”
She hadn’t answered the questions about the son’s birth. But the similarity of this woman’s experience and her own startled Maggie. They had gone different roads of course, but much of what Deirdre Lally said could have come from her own mouth.
The Body at Ballytierney Page 9
