He seized her wrists and held them. “Calm down.”
“You bastard. I came all this way for nothing.”
“I said, calm down.”
“LET GO OF ME.”
He thought she would attack him again when he released her wrists and Danny prepared himself, but instead she pushed away and strode into the middle of the room. Danny tasted blood. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Whatever you need me to do for you during your pregnancy, I’ll do.” He licked his swelling lower lip, feeling the loose tag of skin where it had split. “If you need me to come home for a while, I will.”
“Go to hell.”
“Do you need money?”
“To think your father thought it’d be a good idea for me to come over and talk to you. Just shows he doesn’t know you at all. He doesn’t know what a callous bastard he has for a son. But I’ll be sure to tell him. That’s one responsibility I’ll take.”
“Name calling isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need to decide what to do… ”
“There is no baby, you… you brute.”
His brain spun as if in rinse cycle.
“Me have a child by you?” She laughed shrilly. “I’d rather have the devil’s any day.” She went over to the front door and pulled it open so forcefully it banged against the inner wall.
His father called the following afternoon while he was on the platform at Hammersmith waiting to take the tube into town. He knew who was ringing even before he took the mobile out of his pocket.
“I’m very disappointed,” his father said.
Danny moved further along the platform for privacy.
“That was no way to treat a woman. You weren’t brought up that way.”
“There’s two sides to every story, Dad.”
“You’ve disgraced this family. You’ve disgraced me.”
He pressed the phone tight to his ear. “How, Dad?”
“Don’t you bloody-well give me any of your lip.”
“You shouldn’t have got involved.” The train rounded the bend and advanced toward the station. “It’s none of your business.”
“Who do you think you are? Listen, I want you back here as soon as that damned course ends.”
Danny struggled to keep his voice calm. “I’ll decide that.”
“Home. Two weeks.”
On the overhead speaker, a voice announced the train. He sensed his father was no longer there, checked the LED screen and saw the call had been terminated.
Sixth time, a charm
Mrs. Hartley ripped the page from the pad, scrunched it until it formed a tight ball and tossed it into the unlit hearth where it landed beside four others. All evening she’d struggled. Her reply would always begin promisingly. But every time she arrived at the bottom of the page and reread what she’d written, her penmanship looked suddenly childish or the sentences weren’t as articulate as she wished, or worse, the content appeared deficient.
Since the recent arrival of the reply from Her Majesty in which she’d thanked Agnes for her letter and expressed a hope she was well, writing back to thank her had become both a joyful necessity and horrid predicament. Such was the blessed curse of receiving a communication from the Queen Mother, a woman who wasn’t at all well.
She began the sixth attempt:
40 Chumley Street
London, W6
Dear Queen Mother,
I just wanted to write and thank you for your recent letter.
Last Saturday, I went up to Clarence House. The crowds were something terrible but I got a glimpse of you in that gorgeous pale blue dress as you drove by in your little buggy with the balloons floating up from its roof. It made my heart happy to join in with the crowds and sing Happy Birthday to you. One hundred-and-one-years old, Ma’am! What a milestone.
I’ve had my ups and downs since I last wrote, though I’m glad to report my health is steady. It was my late husband’s first anniversary a few weeks ago. I went to his grave and planted his favourite flowers. I know it’s late in the season for planting, but I’m sure they’ll do nicely next year.
Finding herself stuck again, Agnes got frustrated but didn’t toss it into the fire this time. Instead, she went out and did some food shopping for Martha who was feeling ill again so she had kept her company until late that night.
On her return home, just as she was about to exit her car, the Irishman drove up. He parked in a spot one car ahead of hers, got out and checked up and down the street before walking over to his house. He opened the front door but surprised her by returning to his vehicle again. Intrigued and fearing the overhead streetlight would expose her if he looked her way, Agnes slid down in the seat and watched.
He opened his car boot, leaned inside and removed with difficulty a large plastic bag that glinted in the light. Clutching it with both hands, he closed the lid of the boot with his forehead. Once again he checked up and down the street before walking across to the house. The bag’s heft made him bend over slightly as he walked and he stopped after he reached the pavement to readjust his grip.
As soon as he disappeared inside, Agnes climbed out and walked up to his car where she discovered the boot wasn’t properly shut. With eyes riveted on his front door, she eased the deck lid open and peeked inside. More bags were inside, but her angle of vision and the gloomy interior prevented her from seeing what it was. Her eyes instantly smarted when she lowered her head into the boot’s cavity. The uppermost bag had a tear and she knew instantly what its contents were.
“Hey there, what are you doing?”
Agnes straightened up so fast a spasm of pain passed through her lower back. Her head hit the edge of the boot’s lid.
“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Hartley.” Danny said as he approached.
“Your boot was open and… and I was just about to close it for you.”
As she rubbed her head, he regarded her with concern.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“Didn’t half give me a fright, you did.”
“Here, let me help you to your house.”
“No.”
He made no attempt to remove another bag from the boot, just stood waiting for her to leave.
After she got inside her house, Agnes ran to the front window and watched him take out three more bags. An opportunity had just presented itself. A brilliant opportunity to remove Julia Ralston and the Irishman from the house and get her son back home. Brimming with excitement, Agnes sat and began to complete her letter:
I’m almost recovered now from the terrible fright I got when that bomb went off on Hammersmith Bridge. I was there that night Ma’am and reported what I saw to the police.
Now I find out there’s another of these IRA terrorists living next door. I never trusted that Irishman from the minute I set eyes on him. Ever so dodgy, he looks. When I saw him carrying bags of fertiliser into the house he’s sharing with Julia Ralston, you could have struck me down with a feather. I’m so frightened he’s making bombs there, Ma’am. I shouldn’t have to put up with neighbours like her at my age. But what can I do? Nobody cares or listens to old people anymore.
Well, I’ll sign off for now but will write again.
With loyalty and affection, I remain yours,
Agnes Hartley
Family time
Piper started around the park a second time. She watched three old men playing bocce, lingered in the shade of the hangman’s elm and finally stopped to admire the intricate carving on the Washington Memorial that reminded her now of Marble Arch. As she reached the weathered picnic bench again, the one where her friends and she had sat at when she was a student, she pondered again if it was a good sign Todd was now an hour late.
Three days ago, he’d called to say he was returning to New York for a short visit because a Wall Street investment bank wanted to interview him immediately. Although they chatted regularly on the phone, Piper’d been so busy with her research she hadn’t realised until he arrived how much sh
e’d actually missed him. They’d gone to an off-off Broadway show the previous evening, a monologue written and directed by an old NYU friend, and afterwards met up with Vanessa for drinks but stayed only half-an-hour because Todd wanted a good night’s rest.
The angry honks of a car horn drowned out the shrieks of toddlers playing at a nearby jungle gym. Piper glanced over the low hedge toward the street. A pedestrian had stepped off the pavement and almost gotten knocked over. She scanned the onlooker’s faces watching the scene but Todd wasn’t among them. Famished, she took out the sandwiches she’d bought for their lunches and began to eat while typing into her laptop. She spotted him five minutes later walking past the Arts and Science Center across the street. He looked handsome in a black pinstriped suit though she still much preferred him in jeans. She stood and waved until he saw her.
“This place’s a lot shabbier than I thought it’d be,” he said. His gaze travelled diagonally to a homeless man stretched out on a park bench.
“San Francisco has homeless people, doesn’t it?”
“A lot.”
“None in Nob Hill, I’d imagine.”
“True.” He wiped the bench seat before sitting beside her. “My folks want to meet you.”
“I’m too scared of the Big One happening.”
“Oh stop. I want you to meet them, Piper.”
“All in good time.”
“Hey, working together on our relationship’s going to be a two-way street, you know?”
She scratched the surface of the picnic bench with her nails for a moment. “Okay, the suspense is killing me. What happened?”
“Job’s mine if I want it.”
“Oh my God.” She handed him the lunch bag. “You’re officially a suit.”
“If I take the job.” He opened the bag. “I’d be required to spend four months here first before transferring to London for a year.”
“Just for a year?”
“That’s what they said. But things can change.” He looked inside the bag. “What’d you get me?”
“Ham and Swiss on rye. Will you take the job?”
“Well first, I’m going to interview with that bank in San Francisco next week. Better to have two or three places wanting me. That way I can up my starting salary.” He laughed. “You know what they wanted me to do as part of the training when I get here?”
“Learn some kind of in-house research programme.”
“Take etiquette classes.”
“Get outta here.”
“The guy said there’s a lot of kids coming out of the ivy leagues who can’t use a knife and fork.” He regarded his sandwich. “At first I thought he was kidding until their personnel director told me that kids today have the smarts to get into the right colleges and close multi-million dollar mergers, but they don’t have a clue about entertaining clients and stuff.”
As she watched him eat his sandwich, Piper realised he was right. It took two to work on a relationship and he was prepared to do it. He didn’t need to return to London to work, in fact his career path would be far better served if he moved to New York permanently.
“Hey,” she said, and lightly touched his arm. “Next time we’re over I’ll come with you to meet your parents.”
As she walked along the narrow path with its neatly trimmed verges, the sun kept disappearing behind the low scudding clouds. It was like the constant switching on and off of a light bulb. Cloud shadows flitted over the obelisks and headstones on either side of her. The breeze became a moderate wind as she advanced, making the limbs of the elms restless and exposing the paler undersides of their leaves.
All the network meteorologists had predicted thunder and downpours but, as the morning slid into early afternoon and the pale blue sky remained unchanged, Piper figured it was just one of those oddball summer days that fooled everyone and didn’t bring a jacket or umbrella. After the mile walk from the train station, she realised her mistake and hoped her father would travel back directly to the city so she could ride back with him. He’d called and offered to give her a ride to the cemetery that morning, but then called before she left to say something urgent had come up and he had to go to Garden City.
As she rounded the copse of fir trees separating this part of the cemetery from the older section, she saw her father, dressed in a denim jacket, standing with his head bent in prayer. His right hand rested on the horizontal of the cross forming part of Rory’s black granite headstone.
“I thought you said you were coming with your mother. Where is she?”
“She said she’d be here round quarter to four. You know, we could have come here earlier like she suggested.”
“It’s more peaceful near closing time.”
She regarded the oval photograph of her brother’s impish face positioned just above his name, birth and death dates etched in gold lettering. As Piper knelt on the marble coping and blessed herself, her father checked his watch. She leaned over and placed the small bunch of roses she’d brought on the bed of dazzling white marble chippings, right beside a potted geranium with two broken flower heads. When she visited Rory alone, she’d talk to him rather than pray because it felt more natural. But her father’s presence returned her now to the solemnity of the funeral and saying a prayer seemed more appropriate today. She looked at her grandparents’ adjacent plot, their twin hearts headstone made of polished red granite. A weathered Irish tricolour and American flag stood inside a vase.
The sharp edge of the coping began to bite into the soft flesh beneath her knee.
“I miss him,” he said.
“Rory’s always with us.”
“It’s not the same.”
She looked down trying to imagine exactly where her brother lay asleep just a short distance away, the silence between them broken only by the rumble of distant thunder. A couple walked by on their way to the exit. Further along the main pathway was the only other remaining visitor, an old woman with a grizzled Labrador on a lead standing beside a grave blanketed with fresh wreathes.
“Your old man loves you, Philomena. You know that, right?”
She moved closer and put her hand around his thick wrist and squeezed. It was an old signal between them, a sign she needed him to put his arm around her, one she hadn’t used since puberty when she’d stopped wanting him to do it anymore. He remembered. As he turned and began to raise his arm, the front of his jacket opened slightly and she saw the black grip of a handgun.
“What the heck’s keepin’ your mother?”
His arm felt heavy on her shoulders.
“She’ll be here.” She waited a moment before speaking again. “Were you on police work earlier?”
“No.” He squeezed her left shoulder and then took his arm away.
Two large crows rose noisily into the darkening sky. She looked over just as her mother came hastily round the copse of trees. She waved as she approached.
“I forgot just how crazy the L.I.E gets on Friday afternoons.” Her mother blessed herself, touching her forehead and shoulders lightly with her orange painted nails. She placed a bunch of scarlet roses and a chocolate bar on top of the white chip-pings. Tears welled in Piper’s eyes. Her throat constricted.
“I always bring him his favourite chocolate though I’m sure the birds eat it as soon as I leave.”
Piper wiped her eyes.
“But it makes me feel good. Crazy, huh?”
“It’s not crazy, Mom.”
Her mother looked about the cemetery. “Twice this summer, I’ve brought a book and just sat here for hours. I just feel so close to him when I sit here.”
“Sometimes I think we’ll see each other here, Philomena,” her father said.
Her mother didn’t answer, just watched the old woman and her arthritic dog pass by.
“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” her father said.
Piper detected a tremor in his voice, peered over and saw him regarding her mother with a strange look in his eye.
�
��I thought it was a crazy idea when Piper told me,” her mother said. “I nearly didn’t come after I thought about it some more.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Juan said it was a good idea.”
“What matters is we’re all here,” said Piper.
A finger of lightning darted across the distant horizon and was chased twelve seconds later by a peal of thunder.
“Piper tells me you’re living in the city now. You liking it?”
“Manhattan’s for young people.”
“Age is just a state of mind,” her mother said. “Forty-five’s the new twenty-two.”
“That why you’re dressed like one of those young pharmaceutical reps?”
The skirt of her mother’s business suit was very short. “Dad, we’re with Rory.”
“You think he’s looking down on us right now?” her father said.
“You bet he is,” said her mother. “One thing about Rory, he was always a curious kid.” She laughed sharply. The wind swallowed it instantly.
“I’ve got an umbrella in the car, Piper.” Her father held out the keys.
“I’m okay, Dad.”
“I meant for your mother.”
“I’m good.” Her mother looked at the sky. “We should get outta here or we’ll get soaked before we make it back to the parking lot.”
“I’d like to talk to your Mom alone.”
“What do you need to talk to me about, Kevin?”
“It’s between us.”
“We’ve nothing to say to each other that can’t be said in front of her.”
“Philomena, let’s just you and I talk for a minute.”
His voice was high-pitched now.
“I’m not going anywhere, Dad.”
“Leave us.”
“No.”
“I’m outta here.” Her mother turned to leave.
Her father reached quickly inside his jacket and pulled out the gun. “Don’t move, Philomena.”
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