The Body at Ballytierney

by Noreen Wainwright

  * * *

  Maggie felt washed out. Dazed with tiredness. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised by it. Last night had been restless, the strange bed, and most of all the worry and the dilemmas chasing around her head, driving her demented. Not constructive or sensible thinking. Staying in the parochial house after what the canon said had been impossible. Some might think she was behaving in a reckless fashion, but if it was false pride, well, she was guilty of the sin.

  She had told Helen the rest of her sad tale. That’s how it felt now, sad, rather than tragic. Time gave perspective. Who knew if she and Reggie would have survived? Beyond the romance and the feet flying off the ground nature of the thing, did they have anything in common? She might have got tired of spending time in a grim flat on her own with a baby while he was away having fascinating adventures. He might have tired of her naivety—it might have embarrassed him, in time. She’d never know.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for me, Helen,” she told her friend.

  She’d had some very good times along the way. The years in Conwy, in North Wales, working for the best example of the priesthood you could ever meet. Father Davies. She had made friends, joined a walking club, been to the summit of Snowdon several times, developed a love of the sea and swimming. Not a bad life -so far.

  That was then. This was now. If her life had taken a downward turn when Canon Murphy came to Ballytierney, from a neighbouring parish, it was positively plummeting now.

  Out of force of habit, she let herself into the church. Maybe, she should have reconsidered that, though. Stanislaus may well be lurking, huge white apron wrapped around her middle, protecting the black habit from the Brasso. Maybe, the canon would be there. No, she couldn’t see it—he’d no need to sit here in contemplation.

  The church was empty, and she lit a candle and sat, well near the back. She remembered a recurrent dream she had for years; still did occasionally. She was going up the aisle of a full church, and the floor would be like an ice rink. She’d lose her footing and slip, and as soon as she’d try to get her legs under her, she’d slip again, until she’d wake up and have a few seconds’ anxiety until her brain realised it had only been a dream.

  She sat now; the words of the letter playing in front of her shut eyes.

  “Mrs. Aspinall…your husband’s body never found. Are you a widow or not? Does anyone know about your marriage? You must want answers about what happened on the PNG expedition. Anybody would.” The first letter had given a Box office address. The second letter had suggested the meeting in Dublin. She had responded to neither.

  The canon, though. How had he got hold of the story, or at least the bare bones of it? Stanislaus. God knows how she knew, but she did. It was likely to be someone local, and she was definitely spiteful enough. For all it had happened in London and years ago, and she had kept her mouth shut, Maggie’s story wasn’t bullet-proof. Her cousin knew, and though she promised to keep the story to herself, how could you be sure? How long had the canon known, and when you came it think about it, wasn’t it odd that he would choose this time to sack her when the whole parochial house and the whole of Ballytierney was in upheaval? It must be that he wanted to get rid of her and he used saved—up information to serve his purpose. Why was he so desperate to get her out of the house? In the edge of her mind was something, but for the life of her, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Oh, Miss Cahill, Maggie. I thought it was you. I shouldn’t disturb you…I’m sorry.”

  Maggie’s heart had jolted at the loud whisper.

  Mary Crowe was wrapped up against the cold in clothes that were a couple of decades out of fashion: a brown coat with one of those huge fur collars and a mustard-coloured hat inspired by the cloche style of the twenties. She’d be the talk of Ballytierney if she was seen around the town in that get-up.

  “Would you like to…” Maggie stopped dead. She had been about to ask Mrs. Crowe back to the parochial house for a cup of tea.

  The shock of her position hit her properly as if for the first time. Good God. How had she ended here? What was she going to do?

  “We could go round to Kelly’s for a cup of tea?”

  Mary Crowe must know then, how she was fixed—her situation. Everyone must know. Hannah must have said something. She wasn’t a gossip, but sometimes it was inevitable, wasn’t it? She couldn’t exactly pretend that she was still working for the priest’s housekeeper when the housekeeper was no longer there.

  * * *

  Kelly’s had the air of clutter while being perfectly clean. It was the nearest Ballytierney had to a restaurant because the women of the town would no more dream of going out and paying good money for tea and coffee that they could make at home than they would of going to the church without a headscarf or hat on their heads.

  Mrs. Kelly was quiet, a widow eking out a living preparing chops and boiled potatoes for widowers and commercial travellers.

  She put the tea and a plate of fruitcake in front of them and withdrew, probably back to the kitchen and peeling vegetables.

  “How are you managing, Mrs. Crowe?”

  “Mary, Call me Mary. I’m still shocked, still waiting for the bell or his stick banging on the floor. Like, I’m here with you now, and one eye is on that clock on that wall over there, feeling that I shouldn’t be out, that I should be back at home with Simon…” She paused and hesitated as if on the verge of saying something.

  “They’re no nearer to finding out…”

  Mary shrugged a look of impatience in her face. “They’re taken up now with that young man they found in Ford’s shepherd’s hut. They thought he was…” You could see her gaze shifting, deciding not to complete the sentence.

  She looked at Maggie and stirred another spoon of sugar into her tea. She looked around. “Bit of a mausoleum here.”

  “Mmm.” You could imagine the amount of dusting and tidying needed in the place. No wonder Mrs. Kelly looked frazzled.

  “I heard you had left your job.”

  Lord, the gossip in this place was unbelievable. Mrs. Crowe had more than enough to worry her at the moment—so you’d think, anyway. She wasn’t known to have many friends in Ballytierney.

  “It was more a parting of the ways.”

  Maggie’s top lip prickled with heat and embarrassment. So, she’d been the latest topic of gossip in the town.

  “The canon is an awkward customer. He and Simon used to have a lot to do with each other in the old days, but they had a falling out…”

  She looked at Maggie again, maybe assessing whether to say any more.

  She was so different from the woman who had telephoned the parochial house. Not surprising, she had just found her dead husband that evening. A cold sensation passed over the back of Maggie’s neck.

  “He seemed very affected by what happened to your husband.”

  “Like I said, they were close once upon a time, when we first came Ballytierney. He helped us with getting our son into the school and settled.”

  A son? This was news to Maggie. Where was he now? “He lives abroad, England.” Mary Crowe’s words were flat, her face, expressionless. Maggie’s mind was trying to process this, not easy when she was short of sleep and her own problems and joblessness were weighing her down.

  She sipped at her tea, but the room pressed in on her, and she had such a longing to be out in the fresh air that she almost missed Mary Crowe’s next words.

  “Things happened here in the town where girls had babies, and they were spirited away, and Canon Murphy was there at the heart of it.”

  Maggie’s heart thudded away slowly and images of her own dead baby and being bundled away into that home, before that. Babies and the church and the canon’s panic when she told him, all of them panicked about Mary Crowe’s phone call and what had happened up at Inishowen House.

  “Maggie, Miss Cahill, are you all right? You look awfully pale.”

  Her voice sounded as though it was under water and Maggie had a sudden repulsion for
the tea and cake that she’d just consumed.

  “I’m feeling a bit faint. I think it’s coming in here in the warm out of the cold and it’s been an upsetting few days.”

  “My conversation won’t be helping either. I’m sorry. Do you want to go?”

  “No, I’m all right.”

  It was true. The moment had passed, thank God.

  Mary Crowe was still looking at her with concern on her face.

  “I shouldn’t be talking like this, and I won’t anymore. I’m sorry. There’s just one thing more. The canon has been out to our house three times in the past month. I said they fell out, and you’ll know that neither of us are regulars at Ballytierney church. That has caused a degree of talk down through the years, I suppose.”

  Maggie shook her head. She hadn’t heard any talk about it and assumed that people put their absence from Sunday mass down to the state of Simon Crowe’s health.

  “Well, about six months ago, young Father Tom came out to the house, out of the blue. My husband turned his face away and said something about God-bothering when I told him. But, the young man stuck with it, called several more times. Funny, it was one time I was out, so not nagging at Simon to be polite and at least give the young man the time of day…I’d gone out with Fred Wills and his sister, chiefly because Simon had a good spell. His colour and his breathing were better, and he said he would go out in the garden and have a chat with Denis about the spring planting.”

  Maggie poured out another drop of tea. The nausea had disappeared, and she now craved the solace of the hot tea.

  “When I came back, Simon was in a good mood and talking about how maybe the church in Ireland was changing for the better, with a breed of young priests who weren’t afraid to get into a good debate with you, instead of being the authority on everything. After that, it was a fairly regular occurrence—the young priest coming to the house. I looked forward to it too because it seemed to do Simon a power of good a fresh face and a young person to talk to…”

  Eventually, standing outside the small windows of Kelly’s restaurant, they agreed to meet again on Friday for another cup of tea. Maggie wasn’t sure how it had come about. The widow obviously wanted company. She had a big adjustment to make and was stuck out in that house on her own.

  As she walked back to Helen’s, her mind was full of Father Tom. What had that been all about? That friendship with the older man? His own father was dead, and God knows he didn’t get much paternal care from the canon. He got on all right with Father Stephen though.

  It was as though the thought conjured up the man himself. Outside the Brosnan’s cottage was the Ford Anglia that Father Stephen drove. She had a fair idea what had brought him round here. She wasn’t going back, that’s for sure. It was typical of canon—get someone else to do his dirty work. He wouldn’t climb down. Well, neither would she.

  * * *

  “Frank, I made you a bite of breakfast, just some scrambled egg and toast. Come on.”

  It felt so odd to be talking to him like this, as though he was one of the children.

  In the space of a day, his physical appearance had changed. His face was mask-like, expressionless. When you thought about Frank O’Sullivan, it was all expression, bonhomie, rage…a more animated face it would be hard to find. Whatever else he might be, he wasn’t a “fade-into-the-wallpaper man”. She wouldn’t have married a man like that. His clothes, too. It was difficult to pinpoint what had changed, but he had that look of half-neglect that you sometimes saw in men who lived on their own.

  A large part of his job was to look right as he frequently told her, unpinning a new shirt from Brown Thomas or going into Bill Keeling, in town to get measured up for another tailored suit.

  This morning, he had put on a grey, crew-necked jumper which sapped his complexion and a pair of weekend brown corduroy trousers.

  “No egg.”

  “All right so, just have the toast.”

  She put it in front of him.

  “Thank you.”

  She stopped herself from reacting. He never thanked her for anything. Before she could quell it, the thought…every cloud…had sprung into her mind and she could feel the heat travel up her neck and face. What kind of a woman was she?

  She sat opposite him, looking into her teacup. What on earth, was she going to do with him now? It was like sharing her house with an unknown man in Frank’s body. Doctor Cash said he’d call in sometime in the late morning or lunch time. She would just cling on to that thought.

  The noise sounded between a groan and a sob. She looked at him. Tears poured down his face, dripped from his nose, his chin. Out of nowhere, all those tears. What was it all about?

  “Wipe your eyes, Frank.” She dredged inside herself for some pity and compassion. It was slow in coming, so she’d have to fake it, for now.

  “Can you tell me what it is that’s bothering you, Frank?”

  He shook his head. “You’re too good to me, Gerry. I don’t deserve any of it.”

  This threw her as much as the tears and the collapse of the man who had dominated her life for almost thirty years.

  The doorbell pulled her away out of the world that only the two of them inhabited this morning.

  Canon Murphy, possibly the last person she wanted to see, stood there, face pinched and disapproving.

  “Good morning, Geraldine. How are you?”

  He was already making a move to enter the hall, not doubting his welcome for one second, and she stood to one side.

  “I’m all right, Canon but Frank isn’t too well. In fact, I don’t know if it’s a good idea for him to have any company at the moment. We have Doctor Cash coming a bit later…” She looked at him, searching for a glimmer of understanding. He frowned at her.

  “Mrs. O’Sullivan . I am not just anybody. I’ve driven myself out here, this morning to see Frank and now you are standing in my way.”

  “I’m sorry, Canon but he isn’t well. Not fit, really, to see anyone apart from me and the doctor. I even kept Elizabeth away, this morning…”

  She was prattling on, and was this even worth the fight? She had bigger things to worry about. If the canon didn’t have the sense…the sensitivity…to see that she didn’t welcome his visit, then maybe it was best to let it go ahead. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Frank would be able to tell the canon what was making him so unlike himself, so …depressed must be the word for what he must be.

  Her knowledge of depression was sketchy. She’d had something when Elizabeth was born. Baby blues, the nurse had called it, saying that she should be thanking God for a lovely healthy baby, which added the guilt to the mix—it had lasted a while too, months. But, that was different. Women were prone to that sort of thing, weren’t they? Not bank managers; definitely not Frank O’Sullivan.

  “He’s in the kitchen, Canon. Go through then if you think it will help. Can I make you a cup of tea?”

  If he was surprised at her capitulation, he didn’t show it.

  “Maybe later, Geraldine. I’ll have a bit of time with Frank first, in privacy. It might help whatever this is I’ve heard about.”

  She’d go out into the garden. Fresh air, for all that it was a cold day, usually helped to put things into perspective.

  She was uneasy there, though. After a few deep breaths of the cold air, she’d pulled a few weeds and despaired too of the number of jobs that made her feel guilty. She never could get around to everything. Frank told her often enough, God knows, pointed out how lucky she was, having help in the house and enough money to make life easier. Guilt—wasn’t that odd, the way that he seemed to be the one feeling guilty now?

  It was no use. She needed to go back into the house. She wouldn’t put it past the canon to leave without saying goodbye, but she’d listened out for the sound of his car and was sure he was still in there with Frank. Maybe she should welcome that. Weren’t priests—a bit like doctors—trained and experienced in dealing with people in distress. She was still uneasy, though.
>
  It was as though she held her breath as she approached the kitchen. Why was she creeping about her own house?

  She only heard one voice, not shouting at all, but a monotone; a stern monotone and it wasn’t Frank’s voice.

  Enough. Something was going on in the kitchen and then she did hear a shout.

  “Stop it. Stop it, man!”

  It was Frank’s voice, distressed, even panicked.

  She pushed the door open.

  The canon stood over Frank who still sat by the table. His head was bent. He got up.

  “I want to go back to bed, Gerry. I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  Sheer, almost pure anger rose in her chest.

  “You heard him, Canon. I can’t believe you would upset a sick man…can’t you see that…”

  She looked hard for signs of guilt in the canon, but all she saw in the thin face was an irritation.

  “It isn’t upset, he is Gerry. It’s weakness. Isn’t that right, Frank? Always weak behind the bluster. If you could put a brave face on it and trust in the good Lord, there would be none of this nonsense. Giving into it like this…Frank O’Sullivan.”

  “Canon, you must go now, out of the house. I’m not having this.”

  Her heart pounded so that she felt faint but the anger was stronger and a calmness that came from sticking up for herself, and strength that, despite everything was exhilarating. Good God, she wished she had known this years ago -that you could make things better by just expressing honestly what you felt. She looked around, almost possessed with some amazing insight. Then her eyes went to her husband, and the euphoria vanished.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Nothing on him, you say. No form of identification…?”

  How many more times. He was wasting time on the telephone to the superintendent; time which would be better spent directing the couple of young Gardai drafted in for the duration. Since Ballytierney has become an apparent hotbed of murder and mystery, more attention was focused on the town, and on Ben Cronin, in particular.