‘I tried to tell her, Father,’ she said, tears welling up in her eyes at the mortification of it all. ‘I can’t get the girl to listen to a word I say.’
Father Cahill took Margaret Mary by her bare shoulder and turned her towards him.
Get your fat paws off me, she thought.
Now there’s a face needs slapping, he thought.
‘You have been chosen out of millions and millions of young girls to receive a gift,’ the priest began, patiently. ‘A gift that every good Catholic prays for night and day — would give up their life for, Margaret Mary,’ he said, marvelling again at the Virgin’s apparent lack of judgement in appearing to one so seemingly half-witted. ‘You simply cannot go out there this afternoon expecting Our Lady to visit you again dressed like, like, like—’
‘Like Marilyn Monroe,’ said Margaret Mary, shaking her shoulders in a seductive fashion. ‘You know, the movie star. Only blue.’
Father Cahill closed his eyes, and when he opened them the girl was pursing her lips and fluttering her eyelids like a demented owl.
‘You’re modelling yourself on a poor depraved girl who took her own life?’ he challenged her. ‘And you think the Our Lady would appreciate that? Mrs O’Reilly,’ he said, turning to the girl’s mother, ‘could you be getting something for Margaret Mary to wear. It’s fearfully cold outside and I’m afraid she will catch a chill and die before the Virgin realises just how holy and deserving she really is.’
Mrs O’Reilly scuttled off and returned with Margaret Mary’s winter coat, a woolly hat and some mittens.
‘Go upstairs and get your shoes and stockings on and do what Father says,’ she whispered as threateningly as the downtrodden mother of a chosen one could as she pulled the girl into the hallway, ‘and I’ll get Bernard to send you a pair of high heels from London.’
Margaret Mary scuttled upstairs where she could be heard thumping around while Mrs O’Reilly plied the priest with more cake.
Eventually she appeared before them, dressed for the cold as ordered, despite its being a fairly warm sunny day by Ballymahoe standards.
When the priest opened the front door to go outside he gasped in horror, but Margaret Mary pushed past him, smiling from ear to ear, then crouched slightly, bending forward on her knees, and blew the waiting crowd a kiss.
A titter went through the villagers.
Margaret Mary could see Betsy Ginty, Patricia O’Meara and even Maeve O’Riordan looking her usual cheerful self. Brendan from the pub was there with Seamus Mahoney and his son Daniel and Mickey O’Meara, who seemed to be spitting something onto the ground. Colm Fogarty was there with his mum and da and his poxy little brother Thomas, and there was her own eldest brother Gerry, grinning and waving from the back with a troupe of what looked like locals from Brendan’s pub in tow.
‘Three cheers for Margaret Mary,’ Gerry called out from the rear and the little gathering gave a few half-hearted ‘hip rays’ before Father Cahill pushed his way past the girl and started down the path, beckoning her to follow.
Imagining all the lights of Hollywood itself were upon her, despite her thick coat and clumpy shoes, Margaret Mary lapped it up. All the way up the road and into the valley she sauntered in her movie-star style, despite being uncommonly warm inside her winter woollies.
The snickers of Thomas Fogarty and Daniel Mahoney, who were swinging their hips from side to side like drunken hula dancers, trying to imitate her, were driving her wild, although she was trying to keep a serene, if slightly sweaty, look on her face.
As soon as I’m finished with the Virgin Mary, she thought, I’m going to find those little bollockses and thrash the living daylights out of them.
By now she was in front of the priest, leading the gathering up the valley towards the site of the visitation, and when she reached the point where Colm had tackled her to the — where she had fallen to the ground in a fit of holiness, she stopped and faced the hillside.
She bowed her head in a deeply religious fashion and joined her hands in prayer, sneaking a look over her shoulder to see what was happening behind her.
The little crowd moved in close around her, with the priest going to her side.
‘Are you sure it was here?’ he whispered into her ear.
‘I’m sure, Father,’ she said. ‘Something inside me just knows.’ That and the fact that you could see the holes in the ground where Colm’s feet had churned up the dirt.
The priest checked his watch. It was a minute before four o’clock.
He waited patiently until the big hand hit the 12 and then he allowed himself to start doubting the fanciful girl. As if Our Lady would bother appearing to this spoilt little strumpet, he thought. He should have known better.
But at three minutes past four a gasp came from the crowd.
There, moving its way across the hill, just the way Margaret Mary had described, came a shimmering apparition, an almost blinding collection of sparkling lights unmistakably in the shape of the Virgin Mary, hands clasped in prayer, halo twinkling about her head.
The apparition shimmied to a stop in front of the little gathering and again, just as the girl had described, the vision slowly bowed its head to touch the tip of its praying hands and momentarily stayed there.
Margaret Mary shrieked and fell to her knees, throwing off her coat and hat to reveal her Marilyn Monroe halterneck dress as she flailed the ground, weeping and wailing.
‘The state of her!’ Betsy Ginty whispered to Patricia O’Meara, only to be shushed by Maeve O’Riordan.
Father Cahill, too, sank to his knees and stared at the vision, transfixed, as the Virgin slowly lifted her head and shimmered back across the hillside from whence she had come.
There was a stunned silence as everybody knelt on the soft grass in the little valley. The only sound was that of Margaret Mary sobbing and attempting what could have been a gnashing of teeth.
‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ whispered the priest, ‘the Lord is with thee.’
‘Blessed art thou among women,’ the crowd joined in. ‘And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.’
Chapter 17
Friday, 19 February 1999
Back at the hotel Molly watched Waking Ned Devine on satellite TV in her room while devouring a huge plate of toasted club sandwiches and fries.
Bloody hell, she thought, wiping mayonnaise off her chin as the movie finished, I hope they’re not all like that.
Vivienne was enjoying a massage from the hotel masseuse and had offered to pay for Molly to have one as well but somehow the idea of having hands that didn’t belong to Jack polishing her skin just didn’t appeal.
There was a knock at the door and Molly reluctantly got off her king-size bed, brushing crumbs off her dress.
Vivienne walked into the room and looked at her in disgust.
‘You’re eating again. Get a grip, Molly. You don’t want to turn this whole business into more of a disaster than it already is, do you? Jesus, the smell of deep fry in here. It’s only five-thirty — what is this, afternoon tea?’
She moved towards the windows and opened one, fanning her nose and appraising her niece disdainfully.
Leave me alone, every fibre of Molly’s being screamed as she stood there, gormless as usual in Viv’s presence.
‘Right,’ her aunt said. ‘I’ve spoken to Mr Ahern and don’t get your hopes up but there may be something for us in Cork. Someone, that is. Sounds promising although the guy is cagey, to say the least. Now, tonight we are going to eat downstairs in the restaurant here with an old colleague of mine, Tim Price, an American. You’ll like him. Then, tomorrow I have arranged for you to pick up a rental car at—’
‘Uh-uh,’ Molly was jerked into action. ‘No. No way.’
Vivienne marched past Molly and straightened up her bed linen. ‘What do you mean, “no way”? You hardly need to do a thing — they will drop the car—’
‘I said: No way!’ Molly said, so fervently that her aunt froze, mid-straigh
tening manoeuvre, before standing to look at her.
‘What are you on about?’ she demanded.
‘I’m on about not renting any bloody rental car, actually,’ Molly replied, her cheeks reddening and her heart thumping with anger.
‘Don’t be silly, it’s just—’
‘I am not being silly,’ she interrupted, her anger rising and coiling in her chest. ‘I am just not getting a rental car. If you want a rental car, you get one yourself but do not expect me to drive it, sit in it, or have anything to do with it.’
Her aunt suddenly realised where the hiccup was coming from.
‘Oh, Molly, it’s not the same company as, well, you know, Jack’s fancy-woman, or anything. No connection! You will be fine and according to Mr Ahern it is really the best way to get there, so—’
‘So drive there yourself and I’ll get the bus and meet you there,’ Molly said stubbornly, knowing that she wasn’t going to change her mind.
‘Well, Molly, I don’t drive, you know that, and even if I did I wouldn’t feel safe driving on the wrong side of the road. Plus the roads here seem so small. No, it’s up to you. I’m relying on you.’
‘Rely away, Vivienne,’ said Molly, sitting on her bed and staring at the muted television, ‘but I’m going on the bus.’
Her aunt stood and stared at her while mentally calculating the chances of getting Molly to change her mind. ‘You have certainly inherited your father’s skill for inconveniencing others,’ she said coldly. ‘Staying at the Merrion at £400 a night and catching the bus to West Cork? Oh, yes, that makes sense. Thank you, Molly. Thank you very much. I’ll just go and book the bus tickets, then, shall I? It would be terrible for you to have to get off your butt and actually do something that didn’t involve a knife and a fork, after all.’
Molly watched her aunt walk angrily towards the door.
‘Oh, Viv. I’m going out tonight so you can have dinner with your friend alone if you like.’
‘If I like?’ her aunt said incredulously. ‘Give me a break, Molly. Where are you going?’
‘On the literary pub crawl and then out with the girls I met at the airport,’ said Molly, flopping down on her bed and reaching for the remote control. It was unlike her to behave this badly but as her feelings were not connected to the rest of her body it didn’t seem to matter.
‘Do what you like,’ Vivienne said coldly. ‘I’ll leave a message for you at reception telling you what time the bus leaves tomorrow.’
She slammed the door behind her.
At quarter to seven Molly patched up her face again, as well as she could with her own slender supply of cosmetics, and set off for the Duke off Grafton Street.
She was put off a bit when she arrived upstairs at the busy pub to find that at least 50 other people had had the same idea. Somehow she had imagined that the literary pub crawl would be her, one drop-dead gorgeous guy from somewhere fabulous, a couple of bookish people from Canada and a Father Ted lookalike who would take them to a dozen different drinking holes, filling them in on the local history and getting them plastered along the way.
She hadn’t counted on 40 exchange students from some American Ivy League college who were more interested in kissing and canoodling than anything James Joyce had ever done, or on their hosts being two obviously otherwise out-of-work actors who felt that performing bits of Waiting for Godot for tourists was well beneath them.
The rest of the crawl party was made up of English tourists who were happily swapping holiday nightmare stories, oblivious to the woman on her own in the brown velvet hat.
Worse than that, there didn’t seem to be nearly enough drinking going on. Molly had finished her gin and tonic before the Waiting for Godot business at the first pub had even begun, not realising the door to the bar would be shut and the crawlers locked in a separate room with the actors until it was time to set off for the next one.
On the way to their second destination the actors took them into Trinity College and the shorter, fatter one pretended to be Oscar Wilde and told a funny story about the writer drinking a bunch of American miners under the table.
Molly was so cold she couldn’t listen, and only laughed when she heard the college students laughing.
When they finally got to the next pub she was gasping for a seat and a drink but the actors, far from shepherding them into a separate room to warm up, merely told them to drink as much as they could and meet outside again in 20 minutes to resume the crawl.
The actors retreated to a dingy corner with a couple of pints and smoked fags, their shoulders hunched against the crawlers.
The college kids were jostling and laughing with one another and the English tourists were still swapping holiday nightmares. Why didn’t these people just stay at home?
Extricating herself with a drink from the crush at the bar, Molly looked around the noisy, smoky bar for a seat.
If she were here with Jack she would be loving every minute. If she were here with Jess it would be different. But on her own? Back at the hotel it had seemed like such a good thing to do but now she just felt lonelier than ever.
‘Excuse me.’ A pimply boy in bad clothes with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head was tapping her on the shoulder.
‘My friends and I were just wondering if we could buy you a drink,’ he said and he looked around, shrugging his shoulders and laughing at the nerdy-looking branch of the college kid group, who were all pissing themselves in the corner.
If I slapped his face would those pustules explode? Molly wondered idly, before draining her drink and, without a word, giving pimple-boy her empty glass and turning her back and heading for the door.
At the out-of-work actors, she stopped.
‘Where is McDavid’s, do you know?’ she asked.
‘McDavid’s? Don’t you mean McDaid’s? Oh, we don’t go there on the pub crawl, it’s too busy,’ the taller, thinner one said, before turning back to his pint.
‘I’d still like to know where it is, if that’s okay,’ Molly smiled.
‘It’s back up off Grafton Street, on the opposite side from the street the Duke’s in, okay?’ the smaller, fatter one said. ‘You’re not staying then?’
‘No, I’m going to meet friends at McDaid’s,’ said Molly. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Bloody Australians,’ she heard the tall one mutter into his pint.
When she walked into McDaid’s five minutes later, the whoop of joy she heard from Sheila banished all thoughts of bitter and twistedness.
‘Will you look at her?’ Sheila said to anyone who would listen, after jumping up from her seat to greet Molly. ‘At least you’ve got a decent coat on your bones now. Did you freeze when you got out of the airport, did you? And you got rid of Cruella for the night, too. That’s gas, isn’t it? Hey, Dervla,’ she shouted across to the other side of the packed bar, ‘look who’s here,’ but Dervla was sitting in the lap of some man in a suit, again attached to her mobile phone.
Sheila pushed Molly through the crowd — she seemed to know everyone in the bar — until they reached the back wall where there was a table full of girls, all smoking and chatting.
‘Everybody, I would like you to meet Molly,’ Sheila said, shushing them. ‘She’s the poor thing I injured at the airport.’ The girls all said hello-how-are-ya? at once and shuffled around to fit Molly and Sheila onto the bench seat at the back.
Molly took off her hat and shook herself out of her coat, and the eyes of the girls in the pub widened slightly.
‘Is that your wedding dress?’ asked the one sitting closest to Molly on the opposite side from Sheila.
The whole table fell silent, all eyes on the newcomer. Molly sat down and looked around, managing a watery smile.
‘Actually, it would have been but it’s kind of a long story,’ she said.
‘We’ve got all night,’ Sheila said, encouragingly. ‘Come on, now. Give us the gory details.’
And so Molly regaled the table of perfect strangers with th
e tale of the unravelling of her life, even though she was getting pretty bored with the sorry tale herself.
Sheila and her friends Rose, Kate, Anne-Marie, Lorna and Louise booed and hissed at every mention of Tiffini and roared and cheered when Molly sheepishly recounted her bucket-of-water-at-the-airport story.
‘So what made you come here?’ Lorna asked, handing Molly another hot port and lemon.
‘Well, my aunt from New York was over for the wedding and we just decided to come over here and look for her brother rather than, you know—’
‘Rather than stay behind and let that dirty bollocks Jack White snivel around after you,’ Sheila finished triumphantly, clinking glasses with Molly before heading to the bar for another round.
‘Poor Sheila,’ Anne-Marie said, then leaned across the table towards Molly. ‘Your woman was jilted at the altar herself, just last August.’
‘Literally at the altar, too,’ Louise added. ‘She’d been going out with the bastard since college — nearly eight years. They’d been living together and everything.’
‘What happened?’ Molly asked, aghast.
‘She wanted to have a baby and so he asked her to marry him, then on the morning of the wedding he rang up and said he had accepted a job in Hong Kong,’ Anne-Marie said.
‘Yes, and he’d flown there the day before, the bollocks,’ Louise piped up.
‘She nearly lost the plot, I tell you. But then you would, wouldn’t you? Watch out, she’s coming.’ Anne-Marie concentrated on lighting another cigarette while Louise sipped her drink with over-enthusiastic dedication.
‘I can tell from a mile off you’ve told her the jilted-at-the-altar story,’ Sheila said, plonking the drinks on the table. ‘It’s gas, isn’t it, Molly? Do you think it was fate brought my suitcase together with your eye at the airport?’
‘How did you get over it?’ Molly asked, as the other girls chatted among themselves.
‘Oh, you know,’ Sheila answered, ‘drink, my friends, drink, my friends and — let me think — oh, yes, drink.’ She happily knocked back the strange orange concoction she was drinking and started on the second one she’d brought over from the bar.
Finding Tom Connor Page 11