“Happy?” she asked, suddenly embarrassed, thinking of how often Mr. Guderson walked the hills at night. Hopefully his rheumatism had kept him indoors tonight.
“Aye,” he said, and there was no mistaking the purely male satisfaction in his tone. “Though it wasn’t so loud—I just didn’t want ye wakin’ anyone else’s sheep.” She could see the flash of his grin in the dark.
“You’re lucky I don’t have the strength to hit you.”
“Ungrateful wench,” he said, then rolled off her, landing neatly on his stomach in the moss. The night around them was thick with quiet, as though even the birds and bugs had been defeated by the heat.
“Was it this hot the day you were born?”
“Aye, enough to melt tar. Though I’ve had plenty of rainy birthdays as well.”
“Were you born in the morning?”
He nodded. “Just as the sun came up, how’d ye know that, Jewel?”
“Makes sense, you’re always up with the birds. I imagine you were just as impatient that day to get started on things as you are every other morning.”
He laughed softly. “My da’ didn’t hold much with superstition nor things such as birth signs, but he said it was fittin’ that I was born under the sign of the lion as I’d come out roarin’ an’ mad, with the sun fit to boil out of the sky.”
She thought of the pictures she’d seen of him as a small boy, always tousle-haired, the camera catching him on the run, as though he’d never had the patience to stand for a snapshot.
“How long did you stay mad?”
“Da’ said I wasn’t happy until I got up on my legs and could run. Had scrapes an’ bruises all over me from tumblin’ over my feet ‘til I was about fifteen. How about yerself? What time of day were ye born?”
“Early evening, Rose used to say that was why I was secretive and quiet, that I had a twilight soul.”
“Twilight soul, I like that. It suits ye. I’ve always loved that time of day—not day, not night—just balanced there between the two worlds. Something so perfect that no matter how many times ye see it ye still can’t take it for granted. Like yerself.”
“Don’t make me cry man, or I’ll not give you your gift.”
“Thought I’d already had it,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“If you consider that a gift, then we’ve celebrated your birthday on an almost daily basis this year.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry yerself woman. I’ll love it, whatever it is, ye know I will.”
She sighed. “Gifts always seem inadequate. I want to give you intangible things, things that have no name but will keep you warm and safe everyday. I want to take all your troubles away from you and give you a quiet calm whenever you need it.”
“Ye do Jewel, yer love gives me all those things. This—us—is the best gift. I grow stronger the minute ye lay hands upon me. An’ yet that’s the time I’m more vulnerable than any other.”
He traced the fine bridge of her collarbone with one hand, eyes dark as the night around them.
“It’s this too,” she shivered as he ran his fingers down the length of her back, still damp with their combined heat. “The way that ye trust me. It makes me feel protective as hell, an’ yet it makes me want to cry at the same time. I feel a fool sayin’ these things but I know ye won’t laugh at me for speakin’ them, clumsy as my tongue might be.” His hand had come to rest over the slight round of her stomach, where the beginnings of their child floated in a primordial sea of blood and salt.
“Happy birthday,” she said softly.
He smiled, a sweet curve with a flash of dimple. “It already is.”
CASEY WAS LATE FOR DINNER. The day had been a long one, the heat close to unbearable, wearing upon everyone’s nerves, until even Paudeen’s half-hearted bleats seemed churlish and designed to annoy.
Pamela’s nausea was heightened by the still heavy air, and she paid for her night time adventures with a thick lethargy that made her feel as though she was moving through syrup for much of the day. Cooking all of Casey’s favorite foods did little to improve the heat in the kitchen, nor did the fact that the dishes were alternatively dried out or partially scorched by the time the man of the hour made his appearance over the doorstep.
He found his family in various stages of mutiny. The dog and the lamb in a tussle over a length of twine outside the doorway, Lawrence indulging in a forbidden cigarette behind the half-constructed shed, Pamela—flushed and miserable looking—taking something out of the oven that looked as though it had spent a season in the desert. He sighed, for better or worse that appeared to be dinner. Being that it was his birthday, he’d have to eat it and smile while doing so.
He kissed Pamela’s shoulder and sniffed at the thing that was dinner. “Smells divine,” he said, stifling a cough. The kitchen was noticeably smoky.
She merely glared at him and thumped the thing that was dinner down upon the counter.
“The lot of ye ought to be down by the water, it’s likely to be a sight cooler.”
“You think?” Pamela retorted sarcastically, dropping into a chair and fanning her face with a church circular.
“We,” Lawrence said, coming in the open door, “were waitin’ for youse to come home.” He popped a Polo mint into his mouth and set to chewing it vigorously.
“Hand over the cigarettes,” Casey said, sticking a hand under the boy’s nose.
“Don’t see why ye can puff away as ye please an’ I’m treated like a criminal for havin’ the one in five days,” Lawrence grumbled, digging two lumpy hand-rolleds out of his pocket.
“I’m grown, an’ if ye don’t quit smokin’ these—” Casey shook one of the cigarettes under his nose, “ye never will be.”
Lawrence opened his mouth to protest, but a shake of Casey’s head was enough to silence him. The boy was a quick learner. He dug in his other pocket and emerged with a small, untidily wrapped box, festooned with a yard of red ribbon.
“Will I give ye yer present then?” he asked, face bright with anticipation though his hands shook slightly.
Casey raised an eyebrow at Pamela in question. She nodded, “Dinner won’t suffer by waiting another minute or two.”
Lawrence handed him the small box.
“Ye didn’t need to do this laddie,” Casey said, voice rough as it always was when he was particularly touched.
Lawrence, eyes glued to the package, didn’t respond.
Casey opened it quickly, noting the boy’s impatience. There was a heavy silence as he gazed down into the box.
“Well what is it?” Pamela asked, impatient to see what Lawrence had been so excited about.
“It’s a watch,” Casey said, voice curiously flat.
It was a pocket watch, the fleur-de-lis design on its lid slightly worn with rubbing. Casey still hadn’t moved, so she took it from him and touched a finger to the tiny button. The lid sprang up, as though freshly oiled, to reveal a face with dark Roman numerals and four tiny diamonds at each cardinal point. A delicate, one-note version of The Faerie’s Lament stepped out upon the still air.
“It’s beautiful, Lawrence.”
Lawrence didn’t respond, his gaze was riveted to Casey, who had placed his hands flat upon the table and was now looking at Lawrence with eyes the color of smoke.
“Did ye not understand me the other week when I talked to ye about stealin’?” Casey still spoke in the flat tone he only used when he was very angry.
The color flooded up Lawrence’s pale face, right to the fringe of ginger hair.
“Are ye sayin’ I stole it?”
“I’m askin’ where ye got it.”
“Casey” Pamela interjected, “don’t—”
“Pamela this is between myself an’ the boy,” he said, eyes still fixed on Lawrence, who stood still as a statue, the anticipatory shine wiped from his face.
“I just had it,” Lawrence said in a sullen tone.
Pamela flinched inwardly, while still fuming at Casey. Lawr
ence’s unwillingness to explain was only going to exacerbate the situation.
“I’ll ask ye again where ye got it, but I’ll not ask a third time.”
“Youse aren’t goin’ to believe a word I say to ye anyway, so why should I tell ye?”
“Give me an explanation that sounds real an’ I’ll believe ye innocent.”
“Ye don’t want me to be innocent of it!” Lawrence yelled, pale skin scarlet with agitation. His eyes were suspiciously bright. He knocked the edge of the table, sending a glass of lemonade to the floor in a spray of sticky liquid and bright shards of glass. He ran out kitchen door, slamming the door behind him with enough force to rattle the remaining dishes on the table.
“Now look what you’ve done,” she said in frustration.
“Look what I’ve done?!” Casey glared at her in righteous indignation. “What I’ve done—I suppose ye’ll find a way to blame me for the crucifixion next!”
“You’re being ridiculous,” she responded.
“Right then,” he said stiffly, “I’ll take my ridiculous self out of here.”
“Fine.”
She felt guilt prick her the minute he left. It was the man’s birthday after all, and she had her own doubts about where the lad had procured such an expensive gift. The look on Lawrence’s face, though, as he’d presented Casey with the small gaily-wrapped box, had brought tears to her eyes. She sighed heavily and got to her feet, the taste of pennies strong in her mouth.
Casey would have gone out to the shed to smoke or down to Owen’s for a couple of pints, in an effort to take the edge off his anger. The door still hummed with the force of Lawrence’s slam. Bloody men.
She surveyed her kitchen with a jaundiced eye. The dinner she’d so lovingly prepared was a heap of charred ashes. The smoke still drifted in lazy tendrils near the heavy beams and small bright bits of glass sparkled in the puddle of spilled lemonade. She gathered up the glass gingerly and threw it in the garbage, then sopped up the sticky liquid with the mop. She wiped a hand across her forehead in irritation. It was hot in the kitchen; the heat of the entire long day had built to a still, close fug.
She turned to clearing the plates and glasses from the table, feeling a prickle of tears, that only increased her irritability, at the back of her throat.
The icing had melted down the side of the cake, puddling like burned butter on the plate. She sighed, picking the wilted pansies off the top and throwing them in the sink.
“Bastard,” she muttered under her breath, knowing the minute she spoke the word that Casey was behind her.
“I imagine yer not talkin’ about the dog,” he said, voice still tight with tension. “If yer goin’ to call me filthy names, ye could at least look me in the eye to do so.”
She turned to look him straight in the eye, “Bastard.”
“Christ yer an unreasonable bloody woman at times.”
“Me?” she said in disbelief, “I’m not the one who started making wild accusations.”
“They weren’t wild accusations, have ye forgotten the wallet full of money he stole last week?”
She turned back to the ruined dinner, scraping the food into the sink, too angry to do it properly. She heard a long sigh behind her, as though it was his patience that had been taxed to the limit.
“Will ye at least turn around so I can look at ye while I grovel?”
“It’s not me who needs groveling to,” she said shortly, making more noise than was strictly necessary as she dropped the assorted knives, spoons and forks into a mug.
“Will ye please look at me?” he asked, and despite the words his tone was considerably less conciliatory than it had been a moment before.
She turned, having to pry her foot off the patch of stickiness where some lemonade had splashed. “Yes?” she said as though he were a brush salesman interrupting her cleaning.
“I’m sorry, ye planned a nice dinner for me an’ I ruined it.”
“You did,” she returned, finding it difficult to keep her dignity with a foot that felt as though it had been dipped in melted taffy.
Casey tapped his nose. “Ye’ve a bit of icin’ on yer nose,” he reached over to remove it and just as swiftly retracted his hand at the look in her eyes.
“You might have thanked him before you assumed he’d stolen it.”
“Look at the bloody thing, woman, it’s got four diamonds in it, there’s no way the lad could have paid for it.”
“Maybe,” she admitted reluctantly, “but he did it with the best of intentions.”
“Woman,” both Casey’s tone and aspect were blackly thunderous, “I’ll not tolerate thievery under my own roof, I don’t care what the motive behind it is.”
“Casey,” she said firmly, “his world is not black and white, that child has known nothing but shades of gray from the day he was born. You’re going to have to expect mistakes on a fairly regular basis.”
“Ye call this a mistake? Stealin’ is stealin’ woman an’ there’s none of yer gray shades in there!” He added unnecessary emphasis to his words by hitting the blunt of his fist on the corner of the table, causing the cake to fall to the floor. Pamela glared daggers and Casey had the grace, albeit too little and far too late, too look abashed.
“You are the most thick-skulled, mule-headed ass I’ve ever met!”
“Well thank you,” he said shortly.
“It wasn’t,” she replied tartly, “intended as a compliment.”
“I’ll take it as I like,” he replied. At that juncture Finbar trotted in the still open door and gave a long, deep growl in Casey’s direction before hopefully sniffing the spilled cake. This he gingerly picked up before turning a stiff back on them both and trotting back out the door and down the path Lawrence had run.
Casey threw up his hands. “Jaysus, I give up altogether, even the damn dog has taken against me.”
She sighed in exasperation. “No one’s taken against you. You’re the one who went off like a firecracker. He’s frightened, Casey, and he’s trying to find his spot in this household of ours. The two of you are going to have to learn to accommodate each other. Maybe,” she added hopefully, “you could go talk to him now?”
Casey shook his head. “I can’t talk to the lad yet, I’d say something I’d regret. Yer goin’ to have to deal out a bit of patience my way too, Pamela.”
“Fair enough, but I am going out to talk to him, he needs to know we’re not going to desert him every time he screws up.”
Outside she took a deep breath of the silky warm summer night. The day of blue and gold had gone down in a blaze of crimson sunset that left a clear twilight in its wake.
As frustrated as she was with Casey she understood his anger. The world he came from was bounded by a moral code that few outsiders could ever really understand. Including, at times, her. In his world, if you were caught stealing, you often lost the use of your kneecaps. You were expected from a very young age to know what to turn a blind eye to and what not. The IRA did not suffer fools gladly. And it was they who ruled the Catholic neighborhoods with an iron fist. Understanding the unspoken rules was a matter of life and death in the world in which he’d grown up. In Casey’s view Lawrence had only added insult to injury by presenting stolen goods to him as a present.
She listened for a moment to the night sounds—small birds twittering down to sleep, the brook chuckling softly to itself, the dark settling in soft gray-tinged clouds into dips and hollows. Like her the boy seemed to need water for comfort, so she moved off towards the sound of it, some of her weariness lifting with the cool night air.
She found him facedown amongst the mosses that glowed acid green in the twilight. Finbar lay quietly beside him, long nose tucked neatly between his big feet.
She sat beside both boy and dog, knowing better than to touch Lawrence or give any comfort. The child only ever saw it as pity and nothing more. The bit of pride his life had left him could bear many things, but not pity.
“Lawrence, sit up, we n
eed to talk.”
It was several minutes before he reluctantly sat up, hands and face stained with dirt and tears. Finbar’s head came up, his melancholy gaze searching Lawrence’s face. He wiggled slightly closer to lay his head on the boy’s thin sunburned leg. Lawrence put a reassuring hand on his head and the dog sighed, relieved for the moment.
“I s’pose ye’ll want me to pack up an’ go then.” Lawrence said, defiance written on the narrow brow as he rubbed tears away with the grubby heels of his hands.
“No,” she said softly, “but I do think if you’ve decided to stay here with us, we’re going to have to learn to talk.”
A tear-bright eye peeked over a narrow shoulder at her. “Stay?” he said, tone three parts suspicion and one part hope.
“Yes,” she replied, “did you think we were going to put you out on the streets or send you back to that hellhole you were living in?”
“I—I—” he stuttered, “I never thought ye’d want me to stay. I figured on bein’ back on the streets. It’s home after all. No one’s ever cared if I’d a place to lay my head or food in my belly, why should you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
The question silenced the boy for a moment, his ginger eyebrows rising up to meet the tuft of hair that always hung over his forehead. He looked away before answering. “Because of what I am.”
“And what would that be? A young boy? A smart-mouthed kid?”
There was an angry flash of light from his eyes. “Ye know what I’m sayin’.”
Yes, she knew what he was saying and knew there weren’t words to fix it or heal it. Time would, or would not, perform its miracles. Beneath the press of her palm, the moss exhaled a breath of evening air, throated by generations of dead leaves. The thick, earthy smell seemed to catch on her tongue, leaving a faintly bitter taste.
“Yes,” she said softly, “I do know.”
“But ye can’t understand,” he retorted bitterly. “Ye can’t know what it was like. You’ve likely always been wanted, he—” he gestured toward the house, unwilling yet to say Casey’s name, “adores you.”
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 38