‘Where did you find it?’ he asked. There was no emotion in his voice; it was controlled and low, each word spoken with cold precision.
She gulped, opened her mouth to speak, found she could not. No sound came. She blinked, raised her shaking arm and pointed to the chair.
He walked over to the bags. ‘Come here, please. Show me, quickly, then put it back as it was. I assume that was what you were doing? We don’t have much time – her nails must be nearly dry, so she’ll be in here in a moment. Now, Mary Kate.’
She returned to the moment with a jolt, took the few steps to the chair and lifted the bags. ‘There,’ she said.
He laid the letter on the velvet chair and looked up. ‘Was it like this?’
She shook her head and, bending down, turned the note over to face the right way up.
‘She barely tried to conceal it this time.’ He spat the words out, the first sign of his anger, and then, composing himself once more, he turned to Mary Kate. ‘Could you go back downstairs to the boys now, please,’ he said and stood aside to allow her past.
She still didn’t speak; she couldn’t. Everything in that house had now changed and it was all her fault and she’d only been there two days. Without another word, she stumbled past him and fled down the stairs to the kitchen.
It was empty. She’d heard Joan on the first-floor landing with the boys. The TV hissed and crackled as it warmed up and Joan had tried to tune in the aerial to make the picture clearer so that they could watch. It really wouldn’t matter what she put on for them: these were their last moments of normality. A bomb was about to fall into the middle of their world and they had no idea. Only Mary Kate could hear it whistling down the staircase in slow motion from the room above. Any moment now, she would hear – they would all hear – the impact.
She felt physically sick and ran the cold tap at the sink and began to splash her face. She wanted to run out the door and down the street to Mrs O’Keefe, collect her bags and get herself to Dublin and Tarabeg as fast as was possible. ‘Oh, Declan, what have I done?’ For a fleeting moment, a life with Declan appeared a blissful option. Peace and predictability suddenly seemed very attractive. ‘God in heaven, what is wrong with you?’ she asked herself as she cupped her hands under the icy flow and slurped the water down, a habit she’d picked up at home, drinking from the Taramore, and had yet to lose.
She looked to the back door. Should she flee – leave without a word to anyone and save her skin? She couldn’t face it. Would Mrs Marcus come down the stairs and hit her? Would Dr Marcus kill Mrs Marcus?
She heard David talking to Joan. Maybe she should stay. She should warn Joan at the very least; she owed her that. She could tell Joan to run to Mrs O’Keefe’s – she was sure Mrs O’Keefe would let her sleep with Deidra while she sorted herself another position – but then she would have to tell Joan about the note and, worse, what she had done, her part in the destruction of the Marcus household. What if he actually murdered her upstairs, in cold blood, while her nail varnish was still drying? If only she hadn’t picked up the letter, Dr Marcus would be none the wiser. Whatever was about to happen in this house, it was all her fault.
A door upstairs slammed, hard, and she jolted with the force of it as her cupped hands covered her mouth. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with us now and in our—’
‘What in God’s name is up with you?’ asked Joan as she walked into the kitchen and unfastened her apron. ‘Jesus, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost. And saying your Hail Marys… Have you seen a ghost, or what? I wouldn’t be surprised. I sometimes think I see a little girl running around in here, but she’s gone so quick, I can’t be sure, like.’
Mary Kate couldn’t speak; she was trembling and terrified. Any second now, she expected Mrs Marcus to storm down the stairs, fists flying, and grab Mary Kate’s hair, kick her shins. She’d seen two girls do that once in the playground at school and it had half scared her to death. Now it would be herself who was being attacked – for the second time in days. Mrs Marcus would be demanding to know what she had done by reading her mail and Dr Marcus would be hot on her heels to tell her she was an ungrateful busybody because Mrs Marcus would have told him that’s what she was.
‘Mary Kate, what the hell is wrong?’ asked Joan.
But Mary Kate had no time to reply because Dr Marcus was shouting down the stairs. ‘Joan, could you ask Mary Kate to bring some hot chocolate up for the boys. I will put them to bed myself before Mrs Marcus and I leave for the evening.’
Mary Kate looked towards the back kitchen door, astonished. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What did he just say? Hot chocolate? Did he just say that?’
Joan was already taking the milk out of the fridge. ‘Yes, Jesus and all the saints in heaven, have you never heard of hot chocolate? What kind of life did you lead in that boarding school? They have it everywhere over here.’ She turned the dial on the radio and music filled the kitchen.
Mary Kate shook the thoughts from her head. At the very least, she imagined Mrs Marcus lying dead and bleeding on the bedroom floor, and here was Dr Marcus, as cool as a cucumber, asking for hot chocolate, and Joan singing along to Cliff Richard’s ‘Travellin’ Light’ on the radio. Was Dr Marcus really a madman, pretending to act normally while he worked out how to dispose of his wife’s corpse?
‘Yes, of course I’ve heard of it.’
‘Oh right, well that’s good then, because I haven’t eaten my supper yet and I’m starving, so I am, and this is my programme on the radio now. Don’t you just love Cliff Richard? God, I dream of the man. I imagine every day what I would do if I met him outside the Co-op on Aigburth Road.’
Mary Kate had one ear trained on the stairs and the other on Joan, who was measuring spoons of drinking chocolate into a pan of almost boiling milk. She wanted to ask her what she would do if she did meet Cliff Richard outside the Co-op, but she couldn’t concentrate enough on what she was saying.
The milk spat as Joan poured it out of the enamel pan and into an earthenware jug. ‘You can take it up now,’ she said, glancing at the kitchen clock. ‘Anyway, would you look at that – you have ten minutes until you knock off, so you’ve just enough time. Oh, would you listen, it’s Cliff with the Shadows, they play this all the time at the dances in town, and everyone knows all the words and you should see the fellas dancing to it too.’
Mary Kate knew she wouldn’t be able to knock on the boys’ door; she had her hands full, balancing the tray with the jug of hot chocolate, two mugs and a plate of biscuits. But she needn’t have worried. It was as though Dr Marcus had been waiting to hear her footsteps on the stairs. The door was flung open and he stood before her.
‘Are you putting the boys to bed, Nicholas?’ Mrs Marcus shouted down the stairs.
Mary Kate froze. At least Mrs Marcus was alive – and able to speak.
‘Yes, dear,’ he shouted back up the stairwell, and, turning to Mary Kate, ‘Ah, excellent. Would you just wait here while I take it in to them.’
She couldn’t speak, just nodded in response, her mouth half open, her pulse still racing, her instinct to flee attempting to pull her back down the stairs. As well as being angry with herself, she felt desperately sorry for him. You poor man, she thought as she watched him give the boys their hot chocolate and ruffle their hair with such tenderness. Jack was sitting on the floor, moving his soldiers into position, and David had his eyes glued to the screen, watching a donkey that talked. Both boys took their mugs from him. He laid down the plate of biscuits on the low coffee table between them, spoke a few words that Mary Kate couldn’t hear and made his way back to the door, shutting it behind him.
He placed his index finger on his lips, urging her not to speak, and, looking around him, opened the sitting-room door and ushered Mary Kate inside. As he laid his hand on the small of her back to guide her through the door, it was as though an electric shock coursed through her. She wanted to turn around and throw her arms around him, an impulse she fought, for once.
He stood against the door, his hands behind his back, and took a deep breath. She was standing beside the chair she’d sat in on the evening she’d been interviewed, just a few short days ago. ‘Mary Kate, I have to be quick. I know you read the letter – I could tell from your face.’
Mary Kate swallowed hard. She’d been about to deny that she had read it, as much to save his own embarrassment as to keep her job – assuming the house hadn’t fallen apart by the following morning when she turned up for work.
‘My wife doesn’t know that both you and I are aware of the contents of the letter. I have the boys to consider, things to think about, and reacting now would do nothing but cause them great upset and distress. God knows, they have enough to deal with as it is: a half-absent mother and the hours I work on top of that. Mrs Marcus is apparently away for the weekend. I have to spend that time deciding what I’m going to do, how I’m going to deal with this. I’m also working this weekend, and so I wondered if you wouldn’t mind working too. Joan has Sunday off. I know you’ve said you’d like Sundays off too and ordinarily my wife would be here – it’s the one day she does spend with the boys when I’m on call. But apparently not any more. If I’m called out, I can’t leave the boys in the house on their own. It would appear my partner at the practice is away for the weekend too.’
His voice was laced with sarcasm. Mary Kate could tell that there was more to this than even she knew. He paced around the room as he spoke, rubbing his hands through his hair, his eyes blinking, as though he was surveying his own thoughts, preparing to speak them out loud. He stopped and turned to her, his expression anguished.
‘I would understand if you never wanted to come here again. Believe me, I wouldn’t blame you. This is just another thing, another situation I have to deal with. It’s not the first time – there have been others…’ He hesitated, as if trying to fully comprehend what it was he was about to say. ‘Just never quite so close to home.’
She had no idea what he meant, but it was plain he was in a great deal of pain. Again, she resisted the urge to run to him and throw her arms around him. ‘Of course I will be here,’ she said.
Relief flooded his face and his voice caught as he thanked her. ‘I really appreciate that, and I won’t forget it. You have already been so kind with the boys. Jack just asked me as I left him to make sure you come back tomorrow. He’s had the best days in a long while, and that means more than anything to me, given everything the boys have to put up with.’
Neither of them said anything, the silence between them conveying all that needed to be communicated. Mary Kate managed a half smile of reassurance and understanding; she wanted him to know that she was on his side, would help him all she could.
Mrs Marcus’s voice shrieked down the stairs and shattered the moment between them. ‘Nicholas, can you come and zip up my dress, please.’
His eyes rolled heavenwards. ‘I have to go. Can we speak in the morning?’
‘Yes. Please don’t worry, I’ll be here,’ she said, feeling a twinge of jealousy at the thought of him zipping up the dress of the woman who had lain naked in someone else’s bed. She suppressed the emotion, which was not her place, and said, ‘It was my fault, Dr Marcus. I read something I shouldn’t and I am so, so sorry.’
He was on his way to the door, but he turned and took hold of both her hands. ‘Mary Kate, please don’t be. This is possibly the best thing that could have happened – it just doesn’t feel that way right now. This… this situation… it’s not the first time. We had to leave Surrey and move here, to a new practice. My decision…’
His voice trailed off as he turned his head to catch something David was saying to Jack behind their sitting room door. Reassured that the boys were not about to leave the room, he turned to Mary Kate and looked deep into her eyes. ‘Something is about to happen, to change, I feel it, and I think it might be something true and real and for the better. I just have to sort out this godawful mess – my mess.’
Her heart stopped. He was talking to her, about her – she knew it. She watched his back as he sprinted up the next flight of stairs, grabbing the swan-neck bannister and hauling himself up two at a time, his face set and grim.
And then she reprimanded herself. Stop, you eejit. You thought Bee was sending you an invitation to come and live in Liverpool and look where that got you. Get over yourself. She left the room and went back down the stairs to the strains of the Everly Brothers and Joan singing along at the top of her voice, mangling the words, something about someone not wanting her love any more.
21
Mrs Doyle took the call to book the taxi from Shannon Airport herself. Despite the number of years Keeva had worked at the post office, she was expressly forbidden to answer the phone, the existence of which was, to many in the village, still a novelty twenty years after the exchange had been installed. ‘Only in the case of fire, flood or famine, if I’m caught short or if I’m away over the road and can’t get to it meself,’ Mrs Doyle had emphatically told her on more than one occasion.
Today was no exception. Mrs Doyle left Keeva stacking the shelf of tourist knick-knacks and bustled back behind the counter, removing the flowery overalls she wore for the dusty jobs and thrusting them into Keeva’s hand. ‘Oh now, who would this be ringing me on such a lovely afternoon?’ she exclaimed as she banged the counter lid down behind her. Taking a deep breath, she inserted her black Bakelite ear- and mouthpiece and inserted a plug into the flashing light on the board. Being responsible for the local telephone exchange and telex gave Mrs Doyle a status she enjoyed to the full.
‘Tarabeg here,’ she said with an air of affected authority as she made the connection. ‘Hello, yes, it is, it is, this is indeed Tarabeg post office and it is Mrs Doyle herself speaking to you here. How may I help you?’
Keeva returned to her task of replenishing the display of souvenirs aimed at the tourists and the new influx of Germans who bought licences from the land owner, Captain Carter, to fish salmon in the Taramore River. The number of people visiting from America was also on the increase, and so were the profits.
Mrs Doyle was often miffed that Keeva never appeared to want to witness her efficiency on the telephone in action. It was when she was at her finest. If the post office was busy, she could command an audience of very impressed village women when she answered a call. Keeva had need to hide her grin. The high-pitched, important-sounding voice that was so unlike Mrs Doyle’s normal voice and manner got her every time, and it was all she could do to stop herself from laughing out loud.
Teresa Gallagher opened the door and Mrs Doyle placed her finger to her lips. Teresa, fully acquainted with the telephone etiquette, tiptoed across to Keeva as best she could, her stick beating out a gentle tattoo on the floorboards. Mrs Doyle continued, sounding even more self-important, delighted that she now had an audience. The telephone didn’t ring very often.
‘Yes, that is quite right, I do book the taxi service, as well as everything else around here, it would seem. Hospital appointments, a visit to the Vatican, it’s all down to me. That will be Porick ye will be after now, but he doesn’t have a phone, you see, that is why you have to call here. And I would say ’tis an exaggeration altogether to say that he has a car. No, I wouldn’t call it that, ’tis more a place where the chickens live, and I don’t think it even has all the tyres, does it, Keeva?’
She turned from the phone to Keeva, who shook her head solemnly. ‘He borrows a tyre from Paddy,’ said Keeva. ‘He can’t get too far in it, though, because it doesn’t quite fit. I’d say as far as Belmullet and back, but that would be it now.’
‘Ah, did ye hear that?’ said Mrs Doyle into the mouthpiece. ‘That would be Keeva, my assistant, who is married to Tig, Paddy’s son. So you see, she would know. But don’t you be worrying, Miss… what did you say your name was? If you book it with me, something or someone will be there to meet you. You won’t be waiting – well, not for too long anyway, and if ye are, there is a very nice café now at the airp
ort and they tell me they serve a lovely cup of tea. What did you say your name was?’
‘Who is she talking to?’ asked Teresa. ‘The Pope? It can’t be anyone else with that la-di-da voice.’
‘I have no idea at all,’ said Keeva. ‘I thought it might be Michael at first, asking about the shop. He’s in Liverpool.’
‘So I hear,’ said Teresa. ‘Chasing after Mary Kate.’ She tutted and shook her head. ‘What a wayward girl she is, and here was me hoping she’d be wanting to take over the Sunday school from me. I saw Bee at Mass yesterday – the only regret she has was that she wasn’t still in Liverpool when Mary Kate got there. I passed that on to Father Jerry, straight after Mass.’
‘Oh, Teresa, stop. The world is moving on. Tarabeg isn’t for all of us, as well you know. She is the daughter of Michael and Sarah, for heaven’s sake – she was always going to leave. And Michael was an eejit putting his foot down. Drove her away, so he did, and Rosie and Bee both agree. Ah well, would you look at that – speak of an angel and his wife appears.’
The door opened and in stepped Rosie with Bee in tow. It was now Teresa’s turn to place her index finger on her lips; raising her eyebrows, she indicated that Mrs Doyle was on the telephone. Rosie and Bee also did the tiptoe walk across to Keeva, the creaking of the floorboards making far more noise than their shoes normally would.
‘I was just popping in to see was there any news from Michael,’ Rosie said.
‘Or is there any for me?’ asked Bee hopefully. Rosie squeezed her hand.
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