by Maria Hoey
Chapter 42
Afterwards
While she was dressing, a series of shrill cries drew Jacqueline to the window. In the garden below, Jimmy was running in circles, the dinosaur balloon following where he led. At least, thought Jacqueline, the sunburn had not affected his voice. And Magpie had been wrong about the weather: the sky was clear and blue and the sun was shining. She finished dressing and went downstairs to the kitchen, the cats on her mind.
The door was open to the sunshine and made a bright frame for Marilyn who was on the terrace, stretched out on one of the sun loungers. She was lying on her back, wearing just the bottom half of a skimpy and brilliant yellow bikini. Jacqueline, thinking wryly of her own modest swimsuit, turned away and went to the fridge. The egg tray was full and the shelves were stuffed with vacuum-packed kippers.
“Unbelievable, isn’t it? A whole fridge-load of food just for a pack of cats.”
Jacqueline spun around. Marilyn was leaning against the doorjamb, one hand on her hip. Jacqueline averted her gaze from the small, pert breasts and bubblegum-pink nipples.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “The cats come so she feeds them.”
Marilyn rolled her eyes and Jacqueline thought: I’m defending the batty cat lady now. “How is Jimmy by the way? I hope his sunburn isn’t too bad. And I’m sorry about the glasses …” There were so many things to be sorry about that she left it at that.
“Don’t worry about it.” Marilyn pattered across the kitchen floor barefoot. “I’m off for a shower.”
“I’ll watch Jimmy then, will I?” Jacqueline called after her.
No answer.
Muttering under her breath, she grabbed two packets of kippers and got to work. It wasn’t until she was scrambling the eggs that the ridiculousness of the situation struck her – here she was making breakfast for a stranger’s cats. She thought about the decision she had made on waking this morning: she would stick to her guns and get out of this madhouse for today at least.
As soon as she stepped out onto the terrace, Jimmy came careering up the steps toward her.
She tightened her two-handed grip on the pan. “Don’t come too close, Jimmy, this is very hot.”
He was wearing a new pair of glasses today and they were even more hideous than the usual ones, their bright red rims clashing with the deep pink of his nose. His arms had been coated in something white and chalky – calamine lotion, thought Jacqueline. The air felt muggy and close as she made her way to the pigsty and she was surprised to see a massing of purple-black cloud in the distance. There were no cats in sight and, as she knelt to divide the food, she had a mental image of them arriving yesterday to find the dishes empty; perhaps they would never come again.
She got to her feet and turned to find Jimmy standing watching her.
“Can we go again?” he said.
“Go where?”
“On the train to the place with the dinosaur balloons and ice cream and a picnic with chips?”
“You enjoyed yourself then?” said Jacqueline.
Jimmy nodded. “It was quite good fun.”
Quite good fun – who could have known?
“But you live right next to the beach – surely your mother takes you all the time, doesn’t she?”
“But I want to go on the train with Magpie,” said Jimmy. “Why is he called Magpie? A magpie is the name of a bird not a person.”
“So it is, but Magpie is probably just a nickname, on account of his hair because it’s black and white, sort of like a magpie’s wing. I’m sure he has another name, a Christian name.” Jacqueline wondered what it was – something prosaic like John or Michael most likely.
“So can we go?”
“I don’t think so,” said Jacqueline.
As she walked away, Jimmy came hurrying alongside her. “Why not?”
“Well, I don’t think that Magpie could. I mean he’s probably busy and can’t just go off anytime he likes.” Busy drinking, thought Jacqueline, or busy sleeping it off. She wondered where he had spent the night.
“But we could still go,” said Jimmy.
It took Jacqueline a moment to understand his meaning. “You mean me and you, without Magpie? Well, I don’t know.” The idea that the child would want to spend time in her company startled her but, that aside, would she ever want to spend another sticky-fingered day like yesterday?
She climbed the steps to the terrace and Jimmy stayed on the grass staring up at her. The sun glinted off the glass of his even-more-terrible spectacles.
“So can we go and can we have a picnic?”
Jacqueline opened her mouth and closed it again. She had been about to say “We’ll see,” but even she knew that children hated we’ll-see’s. “I don’t know, your mum might not like it and anyway, I might not be here for much longer.”
“Why not?”
“Because I might be going away.”
“Going away where?”
“Just somewhere.”
“But when you come back?”
“Oh alright,” said Jacqueline. “If I come back and if your mum says it’s okay and if I can …” Surely that many ifs would put him off?
“Then do you promise?” said Jimmy.
Jacqueline bowed her head. “If all of those things happen, then I promise.”
Jimmy gave a loud whoop and galloped away across the grass with the balloon still bobbing above him.
In the kitchen Dot was making coffee.
“You’re back,” said Jacqueline.
“Yes, I just got in. All went according to plan.” She held out her hand and took the pan from Jacqueline. “I’ll take that – thanks for looking after them for me.”
“I’d hold off on the thanks if I were you,” said Jacqueline. “I forgot to feed them yesterday and I made a mortal enemy of Marilyn and almost let Jimmy get burnt to a crisp by the sun.”
“You’ve been busy,” said Dot. “Tell me all about it.”
They sat at the table and Jacqueline gave her a potted version of the previous day’s events.
“So you and Magpie – sounds like you got along like a house on fire,” said Dot.
Jacqueline looked down at her cup. “I wouldn’t go that far. But he told me about his accident with the boat and all that. It explains a lot.”
“In my experience, knowing the full story tends to do that,” said Dot. “So what now?”
“Well, for a start I won’t need breakfast tomorrow morning,” said Jacqueline.
“You’ve decided to go home?”
“Not home,” said Jacqueline, “not just yet.” She put her cup down. “I’m not even sure if I have a home.” She had not meant to say it and she looked at Dot, surprised.
“Then why don’t you stay? You know if it’s a question of money, there’s no problem.”
“Oh no, it’s not that,” said Jacqueline and hid her face in her coffee cup.
Stay here in this house and become of one of Dot’s waifs and strays for real? Stay in this seaside town – was it even a real place? She felt that it would not surprise her to learn that it evaporated at the end of every summer and did not reappear until the winter was over. She thought of the deserted beaches and arcades, the seasonal shops and kiosks with their shutters down, the striped deck chairs and awnings all packed away and the sky mirroring the winter sea.
She looked up and Dot was watching her. “Thank you, Dot,” she said. “I mean it, thank you. Listen, there’s somewhere I need to go, but if it’s alright with you I won’t give my room up just yet?”
“No problem.”
“And there’s something else, something I’ve been meaning to ask you. My father coming to stay here, in this house I mean, was that just pure chance?”
“Chance and the fact that every hotel and guesthouse in the town was full,” said Dot. “He came at the height of the season, the town was choc-a-block with tourists. He told me I was his last chance, that someone had sent him up the hill to me. Why, what did you think?�
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“I thought there might have been something behind it,” said Jacqueline. “Something definite. That envelope I showed you, the one with the postcard and the matches? I thought it might have been Lilly who sent it.”
Dot shook her head. “Oh, Jacqueline, I wish I’d known that, I do indeed. I’d have told you it was me who sent that envelope. After your father had gone home, I found a fountain pen in his room and I decided to send it back to him. He’d also left a postcard behind. I wasn’t sure if he had intended to post it or if he just bought it as a souvenir. In any event, I stuck it in with the pen. His address was in the guestbook. The matchbook must have been one he took away from here himself.” Dot eyed Jacqueline sorrowfully. “I’m sorry. I had no idea you had linked it to your sister.”
“No, it’s my fault for making mysteries out of nothing when in reality there’s usually a simple explanation for everything. But it doesn’t matter.” Just another road to nowhere, she told herself. “But I have one more question – and I hope you won’t be offended by my asking it, Dot. Was there, was there ever anything between you and my dad?”
“What made you think that?”
Jacqueline thought that if Dot was offended she did a good job of hiding it.
“All those people who must have stayed here,” she said, “and yet you remembered him so easily. It made me wonder.”
Dot folded both hands around her cup. “I’ll tell you what there was between us,” she said. “The afternoon your father arrived here I had a line of sleeping tablets laid out all ready to take.” As Jacqueline looked up, Dot smiled weakly. “It wasn’t very long after Martin had died, you see, and it still hurt to breathe. All I wanted to do was go to sleep and not wake up, and that night I’d decided to do just that.”
“And then Dad came knocking?” said Jacqueline.
“And then your dad came knocking,” said Dot, “and he just kept on knocking. He would not go away. Afterwards he told me it was because he knew there was nowhere else for him to go. But in any event, in the end, I opened my bedroom window and yelled at him to go away. I told him I was too sick to take in guests. He just yelled back that he wouldn’t want me to do anything, not even cook breakfast – all he wanted was a place to lay his head for a day or two.”
“So you let him stay,” said Jacqueline.
“There was something about him,” said Dot, “standing there looking up at me. He seemed so tired and sad, I hadn’t the heart to turn him away. I didn’t even go down to let him in. I just threw the key down and told him to let himself in and pick whatever room he wanted. Then I went back to bed. The tablets were still there, laid out on the bedside table waiting for me, but I could hear him moving about downstairs and somehow I found I couldn’t take them after all. I put them back in the bottle. Later on I heard him outside again, calling up to me. ‘Missus!’ he called me. ‘Are you there, Missus?’ I got out of bed and went to the window. I asked him what he thought he was doing standing outside yelling at me. He said he didn’t know which room I was in and he was just wondering if I would mind if he made himself a bit of dinner. He said he’d clear up after himself, only he couldn’t bear eating in a restaurant in front of strangers.”
“That sounds like my dad alright,” said Jacqueline.
“What could I do? I told him to feel free and that the next time he needed me, my room was the second door on the second landing. But if it was all the same to him, would he just leave me in peace? A couple of hours later he came knocking at my door. He said he’d made a coddle but there was too much food for one person and would I have some? I told him to go away, that I wasn’t hungry, but he said he’d leave it outside my door on a tray, in case I changed my mind. He said not to mind the way it looked – that it tasted great.”
Jacqueline was smiling – she couldn’t help herself.
“After he’d gone, I started imagining I could smell it.” Dot smiled wanly. “I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in so long I was probably suffering from malnutrition. Anyway, in the end I opened the door and took the tray inside and I ate it. I was surprised to find that coddle was a stew of sausages and rashers and potatoes – I’d never eaten it before and I’ve never eaten it since, but it was wonderful. In the morning I got up and cooked him a breakfast. He stayed almost two weeks and after he was gone I thought about the sleeping tablets and what I had planned to do, but somehow the moment had passed.” Dot got up and walked to the open doorway. Over her shoulder, she said, “You asked me if there was anything between your father and me. I suppose you could say in a way that he saved my life. And that was all. Oh, once or twice we sat here at this table late at night and drank whisky or brandy and got maudlin together. And once, I admit it, I kissed him or he kissed me, I can’t remember who did what to be honest, but that was all it was, a kiss. He slept in his own bed every night and I slept in mine.” Dot turned back to Jacqueline. “Don’t ever think otherwise, Jacqueline – he was a good man, your father.”
“I know he was,” said Jacqueline, “and I’m glad he came here when he did. I mean I’m glad for you, Dot.” She got to her feet. “Thank you for telling me all of this, but I need to be going. Would you like me to settle my bill first?”
“No need for that – you’re coming back, aren’t you? Your room will be ready and waiting in any case.”
“Thank you, Dot. I appreciate it.”
Dot waved her thanks away. “Listen to that,” she said. “Thunder, and by the look of that sky rain is on the way.”
Jacqueline stared through the window at the darkening sky. Magpie saw it coming after all, she thought. He saw it coming a long way away.
Chapter 43
1976
A dog found Lilly’s sandal. He picked it up in his mouth and brought it back, and laid it down at the feet of the woman who owned him. The woman’s name was Nancy O’Dwyer. She picked up the sandal and took it home and then took it to the police station because, she said, she had “a feeling it might mean something”.
Jacqueline knows all of this because Detective Gerry rang Daddy and told him and Daddy told Jacqueline’s mother so she would know what to expect when Detective Gerry came.
Now they’re all in the sitting room waiting, Gayle and Jacqueline’s mother side by side on the sofa holding hands, Daddy in his chair and Jacqueline sitting next to him on the floor, her head against the armrest. Nobody says anything. They are all listening for the sound of Detective Gerry’s car on the gravel outside. Jacqueline counts the row of brass elephants marching along the mantelpiece. She knows there are seven, but she counts them anyway.
The three clocks tick and it seems to Jacqueline that they have never been louder. Daddy must be thinking the same thing because all of a sudden he says, “There are too many clocks in this room.” He gets up, goes and stands at the window and stays there until the car comes.
Daddy goes out and comes back in with Detective Gerry and the Other One. Detective Gerry has a clear plastic bag in his hand and he does not wink at Jacqueline.
Daddy asks if they would like to sit down but Detective Gerry says, “We’re fine where we are, Mr Brennan.”
He puts the bag down on the coffee table, almost exactly, Jacqueline remembers, where Lilly’s golden girl had stood. The golden girl is at the back of the press under the stairs now – Jacqueline saw it when she was searching for her skates.
Detective Gerry says, “Right, now I am going to ask you all to look carefully at the item in this bag.”
This time it is the Other One who puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out his notebook.
Jacqueline’s mother reaches out her hand to touch the plastic bag but Detective Gerry says, “I’ll have to ask you, Mrs Brennan, not to remove the article from the plastic bag. But look at it carefully if you would, and tell me if you can identify it.”
Jacqueline’s mother picks up the plastic bag and holds it up to the light. Jacqueline leans in closer but all she can see is a dirty, light-coloured thing and her heart gives a littl
e jump. That’s not Lilly’s sandal, she thinks. Lilly’s sandal was lovely and clean and new and the colour of butter.
“It’s hers,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “It’s Lilly’s sandal.”
Espadrille, thinks Jacqueline – it’s not a sandal, it’s an espadrille.
Gayle makes a funny little sound in her throat and Daddy says, “Are you sure, Stella?”
Jacqueline waits for her mother to start shouting and screaming because Lilly’s sandal is an article and it means something.
Her mother does not shout and she does not scream. She holds the bag with the sandal and looks at it and she says, “Where was it found?”
Detective Gerry tells them it was found at the bottom of the hill, half a mile from the turn into Blackberry Lane. “Which fits in with the possible sighting,” he says.
“But you searched that whole road,” says Daddy. “I’ve walked it myself again and again.”
Detective Gerry bows his head. “As I said, the dog appears to have dragged it from a ditch. I can assure you, Mr Brennan, the entire area will be scoured again for clues by a team of Garda searchers.”
Daddy asks the question that Jacqueline has been thinking inside her head. “But what does it mean – Lilly’s sandal?”
Detective Gerry says, “There’s the possibility she dropped it and didn’t notice. If she was carrying it and took a lift …”
“Or was dragged into a ditch,” says Jacqueline’s mother.
“Jesus Christ, Stella!” says Daddy.
“It’s what you’re thinking,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “It’s what everyone is thinking but no-one will say it.”
Gayle starts to cry and Detective Gerry says he will leave them in peace.
“And I’m sorry, Mrs Brennan, but I’ll need to take that for now.”
“I’ll want it back,” says Jacqueline’s mother.
She hands the plastic bag with Lilly’s sandal to Detective Gerry.
He bows his head and says, “I’ll make sure it gets returned to you, however long it takes.”
Later that week Lilly’s sandal and the ditch where it was found are on Garda Patrol. Jacqueline thinks, I wonder if Lilly knows she’s on the telly again.