“No, thank you, I’ve just been to town and had some.”
“No reason not to have another.” She looked at me hopefully.
“I wanted to cancel my room.”
The blacks in her gray eyes dilated and I thought, Oh, Lord, she’s gone and canceled someone else so I could have the room. A woman on her own had to be so careful to get the mortgage paid. Always having to be wary of scandal and breakage and leaking charming thatched roofs. It couldn’t be easy keeping this place all spit and polish. “I’m so sorry, Molly. And after you’ve probably gone to such trouble.”
“Foibles of the trade.” She recovered and shrugged.
“Gee, you must have a good handyman,” I said, looking around admiringly. “Everything is in such good shape!”
“Handyman is it! That’s a good one. I’ve only meself.”
She led me through to the parlor and sat me on a butterscotch velvet chair, the back of my knees cool and smooth on the mahogany rim. We sat at opposite corners of a red Persian carpet with squares of sun in different spots between us. There were polished plants and glass-doored bookcases.
“I’m lying, really,” she confessed as she lit up a cigarette. “I have a bit of help from all sides. Ned comes down for the hard stuff. And Willy Murphy looks in once in a blue moon to see if I’m all right.” She looked thoughtful. “But it’s Liam who’s always right there if someone needs to be fetched from the airport in Cork or there’s packages to be lugged.” She looked at me with one brow cocked. “When he’s not feelin’ under the weather, a course.” We eyed each other knowingly.
“So,” she said. “There you are. You’ve come to tell me you won’t be needing the room, is that it?” She plucked a tobacco shred from her tongue and folded her capable hands on her lap. Her ringless fingers were stained with nicotine. She was quiet. “No need for me now to hurry mending that chair.” She looked up. “But now Dierdre’s come back. There’s more reason than ever for you to come here. Where will she sleep? Her house is gone.”
“How stupid of me,” I cried, delighted.
“I mean Jenny Rose would be perfectly happy in her studio in a sleeping sack. God knows she’ll most likely prefer it, but, no, Dierdre will need to settle in. She won’t want to be living in Peg’s cottage. She’s nothing left, poor thing.”
“Of course she hasn’t.” My eyes must have lit up.
“It’s Jenny Rose who’s been betrayed, here,” she muttered. “Peg was that cruel to her. That’s why she’s such a bitter thing.”
I was already thinking of that bicycle outside with the big basket in front. I could go off on my own just about anywhere … I didn’t much care for the way she dismissed Jenny Rose’s losing her home, though. Even if what she said was true. “Jenny Rose didn’t strike me as bitter,” I said, thinking, though, that perhaps she did.
“Never mind.” Molly shrugged. “I had a stepfather growin’ up. I know just what that word adopted means.”
“Has she got plumbing, there in the studio?”
“Jenny Rose? She’s got running hot and cold. A toilet and a tub big as a bath. All she needs do is hang up a couple of drapes. She probably won’t, though. There’s a fireplace draws ever so well. I suppose Liam could take her down that old freeze box I’ve got in the shed. I’d miss that. It’s not dead cold but it’s a grand store box for the Beamish.” She smiled at me. “Some do love to sample the local brew with a chill on it, see.”
“Do you think I could have a quick look at my room?”
“Sure and why not?” She sprang to her feet and a cat, dark as olive, dashed from the room.
“What was that?” She grabbed my arm.
“It was the cat.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Well, gee. You do now.”
Hard to miss, I thought. “It must have been Dayday’s big cat, come for a visit,” I said.
“He’ll not be back,” she said. “I promise you that.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said. “They go their way and you go yours.”
“Well, I do mind,” she said. “Filthy things. Pissin’ in my herb garden. And worse.”
“I know what you mean. I keep losing my center white azalea in what’s supposed to be a curving row of them because some cat insists on using it as a latrine. I can’t get him away from that spot. I used cayenne pepper, coffee grounds, but he won’t be deterred.”
“You’ll have to use something stronger than that,” she assured me as we went up the stairs to a tidy hallway. There were oval frames enclosing pastoral scenes of livestock and horses along the wall. Old-fashioned. Conventional. Tidy and safe. “There’s a shower stall for guests downstairs off the kitchen. If you’re not inclined to wait for the big tub in your room to fill up,” she said.
The room was cheerful, almost too cheerful, yellow straw flowers papered the sloping walls. “This is great,” I said, for some reason disappointed, standing at the window and looking out, as far as Bally Cashin and the sea beyond. Something darted. I could see Jenny Rose down there. She was running from the middle road to the coast road, cutting through the tangled bushes and I thought, Why doesn’t she just go around by the road? Why had she left the bus so soon?
I turned around to see Molly. She was sitting on the bed, looking down. Her skirt was in folds around her knees. Then she got up and turned around and leaned over the front of the bed, stretching to straighten the oval picture above the pillows. You couldn’t help seeing the back of her knees. She wore stockings with straps. She turned and saw me looking. I must have turned red. She bustled us both from the room, chatting happily, having got what she’d come for.
Chapter Six
Seamus was tending the road when I got back. He now knew who I was and couldn’t wait to tell me all that had happened. “We rode the whole long way in a minivan,” he exploded the moment he saw me. “They let us see the inside of the police station! Oh, it was ever so grand! When you walk in, it looks like a cinema lobby! Bright, fancy colors it was! There were vending machines in the cafeteria and there was chocolate—hot chocolate!—come out in wee cups you could hold in your hand!”
“And did Inspecter Mullaney let you see the jail?” I smiled.
He stopped in the middle of the road. His face turned inward and his arm crossed over his hands, palm to chubby palm. “’Twas a terrible sight,” he said. “They was empty but full of all sorts of sadness and worry.” He shuddered.
I went back and grabbed hold of his hand. “Come on, don’t think of that.” He’s like a lorry in neutral, Jenny Rose had said. Just pull him along. I started up. He trollied easily enough along with me. “Let me tell you where I went,” I said. “Into Skibbereen and saw the cattle market across from O’Donovan’s.”
He brightened right up. “Did you see a pig?”
“As a matter of fact I did.” I remembered the wispy eyelashes and the man in the felt hat beside him. I described them to Seamus. “I even took their picture,” I said. He listened carefully.
“Did they sell it and fetch a grand price, d’you think?”
“I think they must have. Everyone looked very content.”
Seamus’s eyes shone. “That’s fine,” he said. “Did you go over and pet him?”
“Me? No, I just admired from afar.”
“Oh. Did he look glad to be where they’d put him, you think?”
Jenny Rose was coming down the road at us, a grin on her face. I let go of Seamus’s hand.
Urgently, he tugged at my arm. He was so strong he almost tipped me over. “Well, did they?”
“What? Yes. Very glad.”
Jenny Rose turned her face away and said in my ear, “Don’t let him go get started on a pig.”
“Why not?””
“He had one once and it died. You’ll never hear the end of it.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “I’ve got great news. Come on.”
“Did my mother call?” I said.
“Oh, she did. Everyone called. The story�
��s in the Southern Star. Bridey’s having a fit.”
“My mother’s all right?”
“She’s so happy. Your sister called right after she did.”
“Zinnie?”
“No, it was the other one. The poncey one.”
I stopped and stood still. She was talking about her mother. She refused to say her name. How could she refer to her like that? She couldn’t be so unfeeling. She wasn’t. I knew she wasn’t. She was playing at being so removed from it because she dared not show her true feelings. I knew that route. She dared not even feel her true feelings. So she referred to Carmela the way everyone else did. “Jenny Rose.” I gently put my arm about her waist. All these years and her mother never calls and then when she suddenly does it’s for another reason, not for her. It didn’t seem possible.
She looked at me with challenge in her eyes, just daring me to say a word.
“I love you,” I said. I said it because I did. I said it for Carmela. I said it so she would know. Jenny Rose didn’t say a thing but I felt her stiffness loosen. She was still a child, for all her grown-up talk. The meadow moved, and turned a greener green. Then the moment passed. “Now tell me all your news,” I said, aware of Seamus’s growing distress.
“He’s definitely in Baltimore! I called Mrs. Walsh, she’s the lady owns the hotel there. She used to run the Eldon Hotel in town, you know the one, where Bernadette works. Oh, that Bernadette’ll be runnin’ that place before long.”
“I don’t doubt that for a minute.”
“We passed it and I pointed it out. Michael Collins ate his last meal there, remember I told you?”
“Yes, I remember,” I whispered. He’s nearby, I thought.
“Well, Mrs. Walsh and her husband bought the Algiers Hotel there and her daughter Helen and I graduated from the Convent of Mercy and so I called to ask for Helen, knowing of course she’s off to London but wanting all the news and me knowing Mrs. Walsh’d be the one to have it. You won’t believe who’s staying there. Right there in her very hotel. Who do you think?”
“Jenny Rose, I cannot just show up and present myself. I can’t do it. Don’t you see?”
“Why not?” She searched my face, all disappointment.
“Surely you must see that if I arrive there, he’ll take it to mean I’m pursuing him.”
Her hands flew into the air in exasperation. “But you would be! What ever’s wrong with that?”
“Well, I’m shy.”
“But you’re not shy, you’re a grown woman!”
“I know it seems old-fashioned … all right, archaic, but I could never be comfortable with him unless he’d been the one to pursue me.”
“That’s dumb. Of course he’ll want you! Why wouldn’t he?”
“Why, Jenny Rose! That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in a long time.”
She tilted her head, looking at me. “I could paint you, now,” she said, “just like this. Happy. Knowin’ he’s not too far away.”
I took hold of my cheek. “Is that it? Is that why suddenly everything seems worthwhile? Your life goes on and you can’t feel it so it’s like drudgery. And then someone comes along and speeds things up, makes them sparkle.”
Out on the marsh you could see burly Liam and Willy Murphy, gracefully swinging their golf clubs. The sound arrived through the clean air.
We’d reached the door and Uncle Ned let us in. A cantaloupe had been split open and the smell of it filled the kitchen. Aunt Dierdre was hunched over the table. Jenny Rose hugged her with all her might, then flopped into the rocker. Dierdre wore black and it looked as though she’d been weeping. Her turn, now, I thought. But she hadn’t been weeping. Her face was wet with cantaloupe. Pinky up, she licked her fingers, unbecomingly, of pearly juice and came over to me, taking me by both sticky hands. “Ow!” She grimaced. “That bites the teeth right back it’s that sweet. Is this our Claire, then? She’s all Mary!” She bit her lip and rocked her head at Bridey. “Just look at her!”
Personally, I like to think I look a little different than my mother but I guess everyone does. It was an odd feeling, being with Dierdre. I’d already gotten used to her being dead.
“She’s harder than Mary.” Bridey smacked and turned the scone dough on the marble slab.
“Aye,” agreed Dierdre, taking a step back. Here they were discussing me as if I were a bolt of cloth. “Our Mary’s soft as butter.”
Hey, I thought.
“You’ve not met correctly, have you?” Bridey carried off the rest of the cantaloupe in a way that was strangely clandestine. She grappled with her apron, stood back and watched us shake hands. A separate conversation was taking place on the radio atop the fridge. Long-winded political priests.
I sat down and let the aunts have their look at me. Dierdre raised my earring in her hand and held it. That ear felt suddenly light without the weight of it and I got a chill. “What is it?” Dierdre said.
“Tibetan,” I said.
“Oh. I thought it was a jelly jar.”
This might have been a great joke for the amount of time they laughed. I pulled my city shawl of self-righteousness around my shoulders. I thought, This woman’s life-mate has just been found dead. “So you spoke to my mom,” I said.
“We did. We both did.” Dierdre narrowed her cornflower blue eyes. They were small eyes, too small for her face, and they closed up and disappeared when she smiled. She was blowsy and a little cheap, just the way my mother’d described her.
“She’s all right?”
“Pleased, I should say.” Bridey sniffed.
“I just mean because she’d been in the hospital. So much excitement, after all.” I don’t know why the heck I was explaining myself to them.
“Well, she has her other girls about her, doesn’t she?”
“Sure.”
There was a hefty silence. Only the priest’s voice on the radio went on like murmuring poetry. Smudged mascara darkened Dierdre’s eyes. Her roundish nose and cheekbones were still pinked from her holiday. A jaunt to the top of the Eiffel Tower, I thought. She must have been a picture, once. She didn’t look very sad. Or she was putting on a good show. She looked at me and I at her. You could see she hadn’t slept. Poor thing. She thought she’d come home to her life and found nothing the way it’d been. I remembered Jenny Rose’s words. Maybe it was a crass time to bring it up but I, too, wondered how much Peg had left. It’s a terrible stress when someone dies but it’s an even worse one when they leave you all their debts and paperwork.
A box of snapshots was off on the ledge, pushed away safe while they’d eaten the fruit. I thought I realized what the discomfort had been about. They’d thought they’d enjoy the cantaloupe while no one was around, the same way my mother sometimes will. “It’s like this,” she’d told me once. “If you’ve two sisters and nary a bite, when you find something tasty, you go find a safe spot and you go and enjoy it.”
Dierdre went to the refrigerator, opened it, bent over to fish out the milk bottle, then held it up in the air and drank from it, right there, in front of everyone. I didn’t know where to look. She touched her mouth with the tips of her fingers, then put the bottle back, thinking of something. She turned to me. “You’ll be the one with the adopted daughter.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “My daughter is my daughter,” I said.
Bridey leaned forward too. This interested both of them. “We know how you feel about her,” Bridey explained, more kindly. “She just wants to get you straight from your sisters.”
Then I understood. Jenny Rose was hers. How could I be so stupid! “My daughter, Dharma, has only been with me since she was seven. Not like Jenny Rose.”
They glared at me suspiciously.
“I mean Jenny Rose has been with you since the beginning. It’s as if she were yours by birth.”
They relaxed. Dierdre said, “You’ll be the one takes the pictures.”
“That’s right.” The clock ticked. “That’s a nice old clock,
” I said, to change the subject. “Was it your grandmother’s?”
“Loses two minutes a day,” Bridey said, thinking I was laying claim on it, somehow. I could see it in her eyes. I remembered what my father had told me, about their worrying I’d be here to stake my claim.
“Aunt Bridey.” I cleared my throat. “I’ve taken that room at Auntie Molly’s Bed and Breakfast after all. My room should go to you, of course, Aunt Dierdre.”
There was a loud silence.
“What will Mary say?” Dierdre finally said to Bridey. “Her own daughter sent off to a hotel?”
“Never you mind about that.” Aunt Bridey sniffed. “Room and board have been settled up between us years ago. There’s no debt there.”
A painting, or was it a photograph, framed in a nice burnished gold frame, was propped on the sideboard. I got up and walked over to it. An outline of a man and woman looked back at me. It was only their silhouette, but it gave them both away; the woman charming, her permed hair blowing about her face. The man strong and protective. “This is lovely,” I said.
“It’s a snap,” Bridey said.
“It’s great. What is it?”
“It’s their shadow.”
“Really? It’s wonderful. Who is it?”
“Peg and me,” Dierdre said, following my eyes.
“Peg?” I got up and took hold of the dog-eared photo. Dierdre got up herself. It looked like a man and a woman. In fact there was no doubt of it.
Resignedly, Jenny Rose got up and brought back another picture, a photograph. There was Dierdre in the background and Jenny Rose, a little girl, off to the side on a bicycle. It must have been Easter from the flowers and hats.
“And that’s Peg.” She pointed. But Peg wasn’t sexy and wily looking, as I’d imagined. As Jenny Rose had led me to believe earlier at O’Donovan’s. On the other hand, Dierdre was square, truckish and, there was no other word, mannish.
I looked beseechingly at Jenny Rose. “But you said—”
“You were having such a fine time with your psychological sketch.” She grinned. “I didn’t like to spoil your fun.”
“You mean you were kidding.”
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