Mary Kate

by Nadine Dorries

  Joe shook his head. ‘Not yet, but Miss Carroll is going to keep an eye out for me.’

  His mother stood and walked out of the room, returning seconds later with the dog-biscuit tin.

  ‘Ma, eat the chicken instead – it tastes better.’ Joe grinned and was relieved to see his mother manage a smile back.

  Arthritic Rocket dragged himself to his feet and as she stood before her, his tail thumped repetitively against the table leg.

  ‘Well, I think you are wasting your time. You’ve inherited enough here, with the firm, and you don’t need to lift a finger, so why would you want to be going all the way over there? Enough is enough. What’s the point? Do you really think the money will still be there? You must be mad. It will be long gone. Who would keep that amount of money for all of those years? No, whoever got their hands on that little lot bought the first ticket to America and carried those dollars back here.’

  Rocket licked his chops. He could no longer jump for his treats and as Mrs Malone bent and placed a Milk-Bone biscuit in his mouth, Joe decided to drop the conversation. He heaped mashed potatoes and corn onto his plate. He would tell Enzo to call round for his supper each night, as he’d promised.

  *

  It took Mrs Doyle only seconds to rip the telex out of the machine and place it into her apron pocket.

  ‘Who is that for?’ asked Keeva.

  ‘No one. No one at all,’ said Mrs Doyle. ‘You be minding your own business now, Keeva, as well as the shop. I’m off over the road to Ellen’s.’

  Keeva had been brushing the post-office floorboards. She had worked there since she was a young girl as Mrs Doyle’s assistant, though she knew the time was approaching when she and Tig would need to assume responsibility for the Devlin family business. In the meantime, however, Josie and Paddy continued to run the butcher’s shop and the bar and to keep an eye on her brood of carrot-topped scallywags during the school holidays.

  She watched with mild curiosity as Mrs Doyle hurried across the street. ‘“No one”, my backside,’ she muttered to herself but was distracted from her thoughts as the bell rang once again and Philomena O’Donnell bustled in.

  ‘Keeva, have you an airmail letter?’ she said as she closed the door behind her.

  ‘Philomena, it’s a post office. I haven’t. Would a pound of rashers do instead?’

  Philomena stood and stared. Keeva waited for the laugh, but it never came. ‘Why in God’s name would I be coming here for the rashers? ’Tis an airmail letter I’m after, Keeva.’

  Keeva sighed, denied her amusement for the afternoon. She lifted the wooden countertop and made her way round to the other side, squinting through the afternoon sunshine and the dust from the mud road to see Mrs Doyle heading through the door of Ellen Carey’s tailor’s shop.

  Ellen was sitting at her sewing machine in the window when Mrs Doyle burst in; she’d just waved to Philomena as she went past. ‘What’s up with you? Your knicker elastic gone again?’ Ellen lifted the foot of the sewing machine and removed the dress she’d been sewing.

  ‘Jesus, no, it’s much more serious than that.’

  Mrs Doyle slipped the bolt across the top of the door, peeped out through the lace curtain to check who had seen her entering, and removed the telex from her pocket. She handed it to Ellen, who rose slowly from her chair. Threads of fabric, cotton and a cascade of metal sewing pins slid from her lap and bounced off the wooden floor as she read, but she appeared not to notice.

  Handing the telex back to Mrs Doyle, she pushed her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose, folded her arms and said, ‘Annie said this day might come, in the hour before she died. She knew, so she did. God in heaven, it has come to pass. She never said that a murdering criminal would be coming, though, did she?’

  ‘Aye, she said it to all of us,’ said Mrs Doyle, not wanting Ellen to claim the upper hand. ‘And I remember what she said we should do if we were here when it happened. And it’s only gone and happened, hasn’t it. Bloody Joe Malone. Do you remember what Annie said we had to do?’

  Ellen was affronted. She’d been the closest to Annie Malone and she remembered her instructions as though she’d been told them only yesterday. She could recall Annie’s words almost to the letter.

  ‘“If anyone claiming to be from Joe Malone’s family comes from America to Tarabeg, make sure they never set foot on Tarabeg Hill.” Of course I remember. I was there, just like you, was I not. She said that if someone from America came knocking on the door, Daedio would hand over the flamin’ lot because he would be scared witless, and that we would have to stop him. She said Joe Malone had loose lips and would have told someone in prison that he’d sent the box with the money to Tarabeg, and that no one on this earth would keep that a secret. Nola, Seamus and Michael have no idea that we know where the money came from for the shop, and it has to stay that way. We can’t be letting Annie down.’

  Ellen pulled her shawl across her front and held it with both hands. Her small, almost black eyes shone with purpose. Her good friend Annie had been gone many years, but not in spirit. She still visited Ellen in her kitchen at night, keeping her company as she drank her last glass of whiskey before she headed to bed. ‘Will you take one yourself, Annie,’ she often said. But Annie never replied. Just sat in the chair on the other side of the fire and told her all the future secrets of Tarabeg.

  ‘I knew something was happening. Annie was here last night and she was telling me to be ready. Who needs Philomena O’Donnell for the news when I have Annie?’

  Mrs Doyle gasped and put her hand across her mouth, her eyes wide. ‘Jesus, she knew already? Before the telex arrived?’

  ‘Aye, so she did. Didn’t she always know everything before anyone else? She is the only woman who ever lived in Mayo that the tinker Shona was afraid of. Annie knew she would need us one day to help her and that’s why she never went and has been here all this time, keeping me company, waiting for the day. And now, Mrs Doyle, as God is my judge, that day has arrived. And you know what we have to do, don’t you? She gave us our instructions, sure enough. She truly had the sight, that one, and there is only one other person who has it now.’

  Mrs Doyle blessed herself at the mention of the sight and, slipping her hands into the pocket of her skirt, felt the reassuring beads of her rosary. Guilt was never too far from the surface for Mrs Doyle.

  ‘Shall I be running to fetch Bridget with Teresa on me own, or will you be coming with me?’ asked Ellen.

  Mrs Doyle bristled. She had never been as close to Annie as the others, but she was not going to be left out. ‘Jesus, you think I’m going back to the post office to miss out on this? If it hadn’t been for my telex machine, sure, Annie or not, you would be none the wiser, would you? Keeva can manage. I’ll be coming with you.’

  Moments later, they were both heading to the presbytery to persuade Teresa Gallagher to get out her car and run them to Bridget’s farm. Trouble was on its way to Tarabeg and it would be down to them, the only people who knew what was happening, guided by the spirit world, to do something about it.

  17

  ‘How many more weeks till this lot go back to school?’ asked Cat as she filled up old pop bottles with water from the tap. In preparation for the outing, she’d taken out her curlers and had fastened her hair into pin curls around her ears, using silver clips. Under her usual faded flowery apron, she wore her best summer frock; its once yellow skirt billowed out at the sides.

  Linda was sitting at the table on one of Bee’s old kitchen chairs, thinly spreading Shippam’s beef paste on slices of white bread. She piled them up, one sandwich on top of the other, then cut each one in half and wrapped them in greaseproof paper. ‘Three more weeks to go, and you’re gonna love every minute,’ she said.

  The cigarette perched on her bottom lip wobbled as she spoke. As she looked up, silver flakes of ash cascaded onto the beef paste. ‘Oh buggerin’ ’ell,’ she said and used her fingernail to scoop out the bigger flakes. Losing patience, she sl
apped a slice of bread on top.

  Betty was standing beside her, watching and helping. ‘Sshh,’ Linda said, placing her finger on her lips, ‘don’t tell anyone. Our Tommy can have that one.’

  Betty smiled up at her as Linda placed the packets of sandwiches in a knitted string bag.

  ‘Anyway, Cat, stop your moaning. I’m looking forward to this. A nice day out in the park for all of us and the kids. Barb down the bottom got a bag of flour off the back of a ship the night before last and the bloody sultanas to go with it as well. Her old man was on the night shift down on the Clarence. Split the sack with the night watchman, he did. She took the half sack round to his wife’s house in the pram yesterday after the klaxon went. Anyway, who cares how she got it – it’s scones for the bloody lot of us. It’s gonna be a great day, Cat. The best day of the summer.’

  Cat turned the tap off and smiled. Linda had been talking about the scones ever since the flour had arrived in Barb’s outhouse. Not one to be selfish, Barb had filled up a few flour bins just in time for the annual day out. There was no charabanc – they couldn’t afford it. Nor could they afford the train from Lime Street to New Brighton for a day on the beach. Instead, the whole of Waterloo Street was heading off to make camp among the rhododendron bushes in the park, as near to the lake as possible. They would transport their picnic in boxes and bags balanced across the handlebars of prams, with old tablecloths laid on the bottoms for spreading out on the grass to sit on. Suntan lotion was made by mixing olive oil and lemon juice. All they needed was the bus fare for the advance party of the younger children; the women with good shoes and prams walked there with the food.

  Despite the simplicity of the day out, the kids had been scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. Pumps had been blancoed and dried overnight, and Sun-San sandals washed; shirts and dresses were clean and cardigans had been darned, their threads knitted back in.

  ‘I’m not going to be put to shame by dirty kids,’ said Cat as she passed a worn grey flannel across the mucky faces of a row of wincing children. ‘Right, Linda, that’s the last. Let’s get the prams loaded up. It’ll be time to come home if we don’t get going soon.’

  She walked over to the mantelpiece, picked up her lipstick and had just begun to apply it in the mirror when there was a bang on the door.

  ‘Flamin’ hell, who’s that at the front door?’ asked Linda.

  Cat looked at the door as though it had spoken Mandarin. No one ever knocked on the front door. ‘Can’t have been the door. The only person to have done that since I’ve lived here was Mary Kate, God love her. They must use their front doors a lot in Ireland.’

  The banging sounded again.

  ‘Who is it, Mam?’ shouted Arthur, breaking ranks with the rest of the scrubbed kids and racing to the door.

  ‘Have you paid your rent, Cat?’

  Cat looked confused. ‘Of course I bleedin’ have,’ she said, clicking the top back onto her lipstick and returning it to the mantelpiece. ‘I had that money from the doctor, so I was bang on time this week.’

  ‘Well, who is it then?’ Linda was apprehensive, as she always was at the sound of sudden loud bangs, having lived through the May Blitz.

  ‘I can’t reach,’ Arthur yelled as he jumped up and down in an attempt to grab the door handle.

  ‘Come here, you.’ Cat walked to the door, pushed away the cluster of protesting children who had gathered round, and opened it wide.

  ‘Hello, love, who are you?’ she asked the man standing in front of her.

  He removed his cap. ‘Good morning. A soft day it is,’ he said. ‘I’m Michael Malone, a relative of Bee’s. I’ve come for my daughter, Mary Kate.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ shouted Linda from the kitchen, ‘we’ll ’ave the whole flaming family here by this time next week.’

  Cat invited him in, and he was greeted by the sight of a gang of well-behaved children standing in a row. She explained the situation. ‘I can’t take you to see Mary Kate until tonight, Michael,’ she said. ‘It’s the kids’ summer holiday.’

  ‘And nothing is bloody stopping us ’avin’ our day out,’ said Linda, by way of a warning, should Cat decide to change their plans. She was packing the bottom tray of the Silver Cross pram in the kitchen doorway leading to the back yard.

  Cat shot her a look. She’d been instantly taken by Michael Malone. His almost black wavy hair, his dark eyes, the earthy smell of him, the height and width of him – it was all having a strange and long-forgotten effect.

  ‘You can wait here if you like, until we get back. Make yourself a cuppa. I haven’t got much in, but there’s a shop at the end of the road on the corner…’ Her voice trailed off. There wasn’t much in because every penny of her meagre pension and family allowance had been spent on the day out. She felt ashamed that a visitor had arrived at her door and all she had in was the picnic and the few potatoes and eggs she would use to make egg and chips for them all when they returned.

  Michael glanced around the small kitchen and down at the children, who were looking up at him expectantly. His eyes lingered on the red of Cat’s lips. No one in Tarabeg wore lipstick unless they were going to a dance. It was ten o’clock in the morning and Cat’s lips were as red as an apple and looked twice as delicious. Tearing his eyes away, he said, ‘I really need to find my daughter. She ran away, did she tell you that? I’ve been out of my mind with the worry.’

  As Cat watched him anxiously rotating his cap in his hands, she felt a stab of pity. Men in Waterloo Street were largely absent, and when they were at home, it was to sleep off a skinful. The public house at the end of the road was their refuge, somewhere children weren’t allowed, and Cat’s husband had been no different. He’d not been a bad man, but he was a docker and he did pass the pub on his way home from the top of the Dockers’ Steps.

  ‘I can give you the address of Mrs O’Keefe’s if you like,’ she said. ‘It’s two buses away, though, and you might get lost.’ She was disappointed but had no idea why. This man had stepped into her kitchen only moments ago and the only thing she knew, transferred to her in a code by the thumping of her heart, was that she didn’t want him to step back out again. ‘You really don’t have to worry about Mary Kate – as right as rain, she is, isn’t she, Linda?’

  Linda looked up from her kneeling position on the floor, where she was fastening the buckles on a row of Sunny-San sandals. The children were already bored with the arrival of Michael and keen to return to the preparations for their departure. Stanley could barely contain his excitement; the thought of the lake and so much green grass taunted him. ‘Mam, stop, we’ve got to go now,’ he pleaded, looking up at Michael, who was causing the delay, with resentment in his eyes.

  Cat dropped her hand down by her side and waved it discreetly, wafting away his complaint, silently instructing him to shush.

  ‘Come here, Stanley,’ said Linda. ‘Give us your foot. We’re leaving now, aren’t we, Cat?’ She threw Michael a look that left no doubt as to what she was thinking. He had arrived at a bad moment and their children’s special day out would not be delayed as a result. She grabbed the back of the chair and with much fuss pulled herself up onto her feet. ‘Right, that’s you lot ready,’ she announced to the line of anxious faces.

  Michael turned to Cat, who felt her dress being tugged by a pair of very small hands.

  ‘Mrs O’Keefe had Mary Kate a job sorted and she was as right as rain, wasn’t she, Linda? The house isn’t easy to find and I can’t make the kids late – they don’t get to go to the park very often,’ she lied, grasping the little hand and holding it tight. ‘And anyway, if you just wait here for us, you can have a kip on the sofa. You must be tired after all that travelling – I know Mary Kate was, wasn’t she, Lin? And as soon as I get back, Linda will have my kids and I’ll take you on the bus. Won’t you, Linda?’ She gave Linda a look that said, ‘Don’t you dare argue with me?’

  ‘Oh, aye, I will,’ said Linda, looking confused.

  ‘But your l
etter said she’d been attacked. Was she hurt?’

  ‘Just her pride, love.’ Linda fastened her headscarf under her chin. ‘That’s all. But she’ll be a wiser person after it and a bit more careful where she flashes her cash next time.’

  Michael wiped his brow with the back of his hand and sighed. ‘She has a wilful nature, does Mary Kate, when she gets something into her mind. I imagined all sorts, I did. She lost her mammy, Bee’s niece—’

  ‘Ah, don’t be worrying, love,’ said Cat, touched by the rawness of his emotions and wanting to reassure him even more. ‘She came to our house and she’s as right as rain.’

  ‘I think I’ll…’ Michael hesitated. He’d been about to say he would find the bus and make his way to Mrs O’Keefe’s, when Debbie walked up to him and slipped her hand into his.

  ‘Would you like to come with us on the picnic?’ she asked.

  Michael looked down into her face. She reminded him of Mary Kate as a child.

  ‘Sorry,’ whispered Cat. ‘She doesn’t have a dad. She misses him.’

  ‘You too?’ said Michael, glancing up at her. ‘Are you a widow too?’

  Cat shrugged. Being a widow was the defining fact of her life, for her and her children. They were the fatherless family, the family who’d been left on their own.

  Half an hour later, Michael found himself wandering down the Dock Road in a caravan of women and children, pushing a pram, singing songs he’d never heard of until minutes before, and he wondered just how that had happened.

  *

  Nola was up an hour earlier than usual, almost before the cock crowed. She’d been baking sweet pastry for a pie as well as extra bread. The kitchen door stood wide open to the lush green of Tarabeg Hill, which had all but crossed the threshold and taken root in the compressed earth of the cottage floor. She still had the curlers she’d slept in fastened tight, kept in place by the paisley silk headscarf one of her children had sent from America at Christmas. She wished they would save their money and buy a ticket home instead of sending presents.