“Then you can shoot them, dear,” Evvie said, smoothing back her hair into some semblance of order.
Sarah hid the gun back in her front pocket. “There’s always that, I guess.”
The cart stopped several yards ahead of them. A man in the driver’s seat stood up. “May I help you, missus?” he shouted.
“We need a ride to town, if you’d be so kind,” Evvie answered. “Can you give us a lift?”
“Aye, there’s room if you’d like to come on,” he said, motioning to the back of the cart.
“I don’t like it,” Sarah whispered hoarsely to Evvie.
“Think how much time we’ll save,” Evvie whispered back. She trotted to the cart. Sarah kept her hand on the gun in her pocket. The man was probably in his fifties, she thought, although Sarah knew the year since The Crisis had aged everyone prematurely. While his voice was rough and harsh, she could see when she got closer that his eyes were kind, if tired.
He had seen bad things.
And yet still he stopped to give two strangers a ride. In the back of his cart were two large bushels of root vegetables, mostly potatoes.
“If you don’t mind sitting in back with the spuds,” he said, gesturing to the flatbed of his cart.
“Not at all,” Evvie said. “What town are you going to, may I ask?” She gave Sarah a quick look to ascertain that she felt it was safe and then walked to the end of the cart. With Sarah’s help, she placed her feet in toeholds on the cartwheel spokes and pulled herself into the back. Sarah let go of the gun in her pocket and did the same.
“I’m heading to Carmarthen,” he said. “And yourselves?”
Evvie looked at Sarah, who almost imperceptibly shook her head and gave her a warning look.
“Just a place for the night,” Evvie said, her eyes still on Sarah. “Carmarthen will suit us fine. You’re Welsh, then?
“Aye,” the man said turning around, touching his patched cheese cutter cap. “Davey Smail. I bought yon spuds in Llangadog two days ago. Carmarthen’s been hit hard since the Yank’s Gift.”
Now it was Evvie’s turn to warn Sarah not to speak with a severe look in her eye. “I don’t believe I know that term, Davey. Whatever do you mean by the Yank’s Gift?”
“Oh, it’s just what some around here call the Black Out, ya ken? We don’t know much about why it happened, but it’s certain as the freckles on your face that it’s the goddamn Americans what’s brought it to our shores.”
“Well, I’d say that’s a safe guess,” Evvie said and winced apologetically to Sarah, who shrugged. She closed her eyes and tried to appreciate the break from walking for what it was—a chance to rest up and still make some distance. But Davey’s words reverberated in sinister tones in her head as she rode, leaning against one of the potato baskets.
21
Day 28 after the attack.
The first night in a bed in nearly a month. The first bath that she wasn’t terrorized in the middle of taking. The first time she was alone in a room without a dead body staring at her from the floorboards.
Sarah couldn’t wait to leave…and Evvie wasn’t budging.
“You said yourself the coast is almost five days distance,” Evvie said. “Just thinking about walking for five days makes me want to sit down and never get up again. You do know I’m old, right?”
Sarah sighed. “I can’t leave you here.”
“Too right you can’t!”
“But I need to go, Evvie. My son—”
“We’ve only been here one night!”
“One night is all we have money for—”
“You could work. The woman who runs this boarding house said she would be happy to let you work for our room and board.”
Sarah watched Evvie cross her arms on her chest, her mouth pulled down into a pout.
“I can’t stay, Evvie.”
“And I’m too old to go!”
Sarah moved to where the older woman sat and picked up her hand. “The longer I stay, the more dangerous it is for both of us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. The people following me are desperate. If it was up to me we’d be sleeping in ditches and avoiding the highways altogether.”
“I can’t do that,” Evvie said, her bottom lip trembling. “Just the thought of it…”
“I know.” Sarah patted her hand. “So here’s what we’re going to do.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to work for the woman, Alice, just long enough to buy you a week’s worth of lodging. That’ll give me enough time to get home, get Mike, and come back for you.”
“You’re crazy, Sarah.”
“It’s the best plan I’ve got.”
Evvie looked out the cracked and dirty window in the upstairs bedroom that she and Sarah shared. The town of Carmarthen had obviously once been a thriving tourist’s mecca before The Crisis—or the Yank’s Gift as almost everyone they met called it. But now it was a dingy, ramshackle collection of huts and poorly constructed houses and buildings. There was a large tent city along its perimeter, but from the looks of it, Sarah thought, that was where most of the crime, prostitution and violence were centered.
“One week?” Evvie looked out the window as if expecting to see demons or bandits lining up to break into the boarding house as soon as Sarah left.
“One week. And I’ll be back.”
* * *
That evening at dinner, Sarah made arrangements with Alice, the house’s proprietor. She was a suspicious, tight-faced woman with bad teeth, but Sarah thought she could trust her. She wasn’t sure she had much choice.
“So, you work for me for two days and I let the old one sit tight for a week.”
“Board too, mind.”
“Sure, sure. And when you come back, I get an extra twenty quid.”
“That’s right.”
Alice shrugged as if to say it was all the same to her, but Sarah knew the house was only half filled with boarders who could pay Alice in any way at all.
“Where did you say you were from? I can’t place your accent.”
“Donegal.” Sarah figured mimicking the way Fiona spoke would be an easier way out of the American accent problem than trying to sound English in England.
“Be faster if you turned a few tricks, you know,” Alice said, peering at Sarah as if wondering if there was something physically deformed about her that prevented this.
“No, thanks. I’m a hard worker. Just tell me what you need doing.”
“Oh, you can be sure of that. Starting tonight, unless you’ve got any more coin like last night? I didn’t think so. The kitchen, if you please. Pedro will show you what needs doing. I hope you weren’t planning on sleeping tonight.”
Sarah worked five straight hours that night rinsing dishes after she’d first dragged in buckets of water from the only working well in the town, nearly a quarter of a mile away. The water was brackish and smelled bad. She stripped all the beds in the house and dragged the heavy sheets and blankets to the basement where large vats and washtubs were filled with ice water. She sudsed and scrubbed the bed linens with coarse brushes. The temperatures dropped significantly outside and Sarah found her hard labor her only defense against the cold.
Just before dawn, dripping with sweat, she collapsed onto the wooden back steps of the house, so tired she didn’t even feel the chill, her fingers blue and blistered, her legs aching as if she’d run a marathon. She looked due west—the direction where John was—and closed her eyes in prayer.
“Oy, want a bite?”
She turned her head to find a young girl bundled in a thick wool rug sitting on the top step of the stairs to the boarding house. She looked like a blonde Indian. Her eyes were large and almond-shaped, but her skin was light. She was holding out a meat pasty. Sarah took the pastry. She and Evvie had seen the stands set up on the main drag of Carmarthen, but the meat pies were expensive. It took all of Evvie’s money for one night and board for two. The fragrance of the pies had tortured Sarah long into
the night as she tried to fall asleep. She sank her teeth into the pie and immediately groaned with pleasure.
“Good, eh?” the girl said. “You keep it. I’ve already had two.”
Sarah forced herself to wrap the meat pie in a napkin and put it in her pocket. Evvie will think she’s died and gone to heaven, she thought.
“Thank you so much,” Sarah said, refocusing on the girl. “I’ll save it for me mum.”
The girl’s eyes were bright and seemed to dance as she regarded Sarah. For a town full of so much desperation and pain, she looked remarkably well fed and cheerful.
“No worries. I seen you and the oldie-but-goodie come in yesterday. Where you from, then?”
Sarah recited the lie she and Evvie had concocted. “We’re from Gloucester, heading for Narberth. I’ve a brother there working the fields.”
“Sure you do.”
Sarah blinked at the retort. Did the girl not believe her? In the dim light, it was difficult to see her expression. Come to think of it, what was this girl doing at the boarding house?
“And yourself?” Sarah asked. “Do you live in Carmarthen?”
“I’m from the Kale. Ever heard of ‘em?”
Sarah shook her head.
“They call us Welsh Romanies, but basically we’re gypsies. I’m Papin.”
“Sarah.”
“You’ve got a secret, Sarah.” Papin smiled and Sarah was struck by the young girl’s self-possession.
“I guess we all do,” Sarah said, wondering if she was being missed in the kitchen and should be getting back. She stood up.
“A man asked me tonight about someone who sounded a whole lot like you, except for you not being American.”
Sarah stopped in mid turn, her hand frozen on the wooden railing. She turned and took a step toward the young gypsy girl and squatted down on the step to look into her face. When she did, she realized the girl couldn’t be more than thirteen years old.
“What man?”
“An Englishman with a lying face and hurting hands.”
“He…he hurt you?”
“He took what I was offering, but wouldn’t pay me afterwards.”
The bite of meat pie threatened to come back up Sarah’s throat. That explained how the girl had money. “When?”
“Tonight.” The girl nodded in the direction of the street. “There’s a pub before the tents. Him and his mates are staying there.”
“What did you tell him?” Sarah’s palms were damp and the cold night air lifted her long hair from her collar.
“Told him I didn’t know no Yank. Which I don’t, do I? What with you being from Gloucester and all. Or is it Ireland?”
Sarah’s mind was a jumble of panic and questions. Had the girl revealed there was a strange woman just come to town and staying at the boarding house? How did the little gypsy guess it was Sarah the men were looking for? Were they asking everyone?
She and Evvie would have to go tonight. She couldn’t leave her now. The men would question Alice, and likely Papin again, and end up with Evvie. She rubbed a hand across her face trying to imagine how she was going to do this with an eighty-year-old woman in the middle of the night with no food and no way to travel but on foot.
“What is it you want?”
The girl didn’t answer immediately. She stretched out her legs and when she did, Sarah noticed that her thighs were bruised and her skirt was ripped. Sarah looked in the direction the girl had indicated.
“I want to go with you. Which ain’t Narberth.”
Sarah was astonished. “Go with me? Whatever for?” Was someone chasing the little gypsy girl, too?
Papin shook her head as if shaking off Sarah’s question like an annoying fly. “Doesn’t matter. Besides, I can help you.”
Sarah watched her for a moment before speaking. “How can you help me?”
The girl brought her knees up on the wooden step and leaned forward eagerly. “I can move in with your mum while you get away. If she’s with me, they won’t think she’s got anything to do with you.” The girl’s eyes were bright with excitement and her words gave Sarah a surge of excitement. I can leave, she thought.
But something wasn’t right.
“How can you come with me and also stay here with...with my mum?”
“I’ll stay just long enough so there’s no suspicion on her, like. Then, when I can, I’ll follow you. Tell me where you’re going next.”
“Alice knows I’m with the old woman.”
“Alice doesn’t care who’s with who.”
“But if they question Alice, she’ll tell them.”
“They won’t question her. They don’t even know yet about the old lady.”
Yet.
“Oy,” Papin said, “weren’t you planning on taking a hike anyway?”
How did she know that? “Yes, but I’m coming back for her.”
“Then it all works out. Besides, what option do you have? The bloke who asked me about you was a real wanker. I wouldn’t want him after me.”
Sarah sat down heavily next to the girl. “How long could you stay with her?”
“Until the men leave. Then I’ll join you. Where is it you’re going?”
Sarah paused. “The coast. To catch a ferry to Ireland.”
Papin’s eyes widened. “That’s a long way.”
“Especially on foot.” Sarah glanced at Papin’s ballet-slippered feet. “You still haven’t said why you’re so keen to come with me.”
Papin stood up and brushed off the skirt of her dress. She looked to Sarah like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. “Does it matter?” She looked at Sarah and smiled before turning and walking to the top of the stairs. It occurred to Sarah that the look she gave her was one she might expect to see from a much older, much more jaded woman.
Sarah turned to head back to her room to awaken Evvie and tell her the change of plans. The piece of meat pie still felt warm and moist in her pocket.
22
Mike had been gone just shy of a month—one wasted month—and now it was done. The rescue mission was over. And wherever Sarah was, she was on her own, as in so many ways she’d always been. The weight of abandoning the search, even temporarily, was wedged tight into the base of Mike’s throat, where he knew it would always be.
Was God punishing him for loving her when she belonged to another? He never thought the Almighty operated along those lines, but this failure felt very like a lesson being crammed down his gob.
It helped watching Aideen and Taffy step aboard the ferry, their bags packed, Aideen smiling more broadly than he could ever remember her doing. He watched the sharp and bracing salt air rake the two travelers. Aideen turned her face into it, as if she welcomed the assault, the clean slate, the new life that awaited her.
Donovan’s Sacrifice, he thought bitterly as he sat on Petey at the top of the pasture and looked down onto the harbor, the ferry gone hours earlier. His failure spelled a new life for Aideen, but it was at the cost of being able to help the one woman who mattered most to him.
He turned his horse’s head west toward home and Donovan’s Lot. Whatever waited for him back home would be there still when he arrived. Whatever bollocks Gavin had made of things would be sorted out in time. He likely couldn’t have destroyed a whole community in a month’s time.
No, there was only one piece of wreckage that wouldn’t soon be recovered from or easily survived by his failure.
John.
What the hell was he going to say to John?
* * *
The lad seemed a little better, a little stronger. Whether it was the endless cups of tea, the lack of chores, Fi’s constant attention, or just the resilience of a young body overcoming the mysterious ailment Fiona would never know, but he was slowly coming back to them.
There was a day or two when she wasn’t sure he would.
Fiona hefted the plastic laundry basket full of wet clothing onto her hip and squinted at the sky. There wouldn’t be
loads of sun, but neither did it look like it was about to rain any time soon. She smiled to herself as she stepped off her porch. She was fairly sure that her real job at Donovan’s Lot was as Chief Worrier. She knew her brother felt he held that title, but he wasn’t a woman. He wasn’t even close. Nor until he grew ovaries could he ever be.
She lugged the basket to Mike’s hut and set it down heavily on the first step of his decking. Typical Mike, she thought. He’s worked to make everybody else’s cottage as tight and windproof as they could be and left his own place to grow moss and catch leaks. Not for the first time, she caught herself, thinking, If only Ellen had lived…
A high-pitched squeal of a laugh caught on the breeze shuffled through camp and snagged Fiona’s attention. Speaking of Ellen…She caught a glimpse of the dead woman’s younger sister as Caitlin ran behind the tents that lined the main campfire.
What was the girl up to now?
True, the lass had come to her offering to sit with young John while he was the sickest, but then had been conveniently unavailable when Fiona suggested any real work for her to do. And as for sitting with the lad—Fiona pulled out a pair of cotton pants from the pile of wet laundry and draped it over Mike’s porch railing—that had lasted all of one day after Fi caught Caitlin feeding the boy poteen. Remembering the incident, Fi colored with annoyance all over again.
“Are you trying to kill the lad?” She had grabbed the bottle from Caitlin’s hands. “He’s twelve, you eejit!”
Fi had seen an unpleasant side of Caitlin during that exchange, which ended with Caitlin flouncing out of the cottage and slamming the door behind her.
When Fi saw that John was fine—if a little woozy for the experience—she regretted her harsh words. Still, it’s hard enough to live during these times without having to live through someone else’s foolishness on top of it.
As she flapped out a wet t-shirt and positioned it next to the pants on the railing, she craned her neck to see what Caitlin was up to that involved scampering and squealing. She was supposed to be gathering kindling for the widow McGinty’s cook stove. When no other sounds came from behind the tents, Fi shrugged and went back to her own chores.
Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Page 15