“No,” Dierdre said, “if it hadn’t been for the trip, Peg and I would have been off bowling. Everyone knew we bowled on Mondays. No.” She rattled her head. “This was all my fault! I must have left the drum in the wrong spot. I’m always doing foolish things like that. I’ve only half a head!”
“Dierdre, no,” Uncle Ned soothed her. “It must have been God’s will. That’s what it must have been. The police said there was no evidence of foul play.”
“Oh and when the police say so, then we know it’s so,” Bernadette said.
“You know,” Johnny suggested, unoffended, “maybe no one wanted to kill either of them. Peg or Dierdre. Maybe someone wanted to kill someone else. To kill Jenny Rose.”
“Who would want to kill Jenny Rose?” Dierdre said.
Nobody answered this.
“Would Jenny Rose have been in the house on a Monday?” Johnny asked.
“Well, she lived there,” Bridey said.
“But would she have normally been there?”
“No.” Dierdre sounded sure. “She was always in her studio.”
“But she was on her way back,” Bridey ascertained. “’Twas pouring rain and she was close to the house as it was when it happened.”
Dierdre shivered.
“Unless…” Johnny thought out loud and then stopped.
Oh, God, I thought. Johnny thinks Jenny Rose did it. I knew he did, I could see him thinking she was family, had motive, mood and opportunity, little golden rules he liked to go by.
“What sort of pictures were they?” he asked. “The ones you found. I mean, what did they depict?”
“Ooh you’d best ask Jenny Rose herself those questions.”
“Why?” He turned to Dierdre. “Was there something … unacceptable about them?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” She sniffed, suddenly cool.
At that moment, in came Liam, cowed and showered. He moved heavily but he wasn’t sodden anymore. He wasn’t even sick. You had to marvel at his resilience.
“What have you done, now?” Bernadette demanded angrily.
“I’ve brought the mail,” he said meekly.
“Let me see.” Bernadette snatched the lot.
“Here,” she said to me, tearing an envelope as I went out the door, “I’ll let you have an Irish stamp for the children.”
Johnny tried to follow me out.
“Don’t come with me.” I shook him off.
“Let her have some time to herself,” Dierdre suggested.
“You’ll stay with us, Johnny,” Aunt Bridey said firmly.
“He’s been through so much,” Dierdre said.
“Aye,” Uncle Ned said. “Bless him.”
Bless him? I thought, outraged, and I went out and away on Molly’s old-fashioned bicycle. I drove all the bumpy way, the whole three miles to Baltimore and down the terrifying little hill to the spangling harbor. I was on my way to Temple’s hotel but then I saw the film boat docking and rode over to it instead. He was there. He stood with one foot on the boat and the other on the dock. I stayed on my bicycle.
“You spent the night with him?” was the first thing he said to me.
“I did not. Good day to you, too.”
“You know he searched my room?”
“He’s good for that.”
He looked sullenly about. “Well, wait there.” He stepped back onto the boat. “I’ll get my gear and we’ll have a pint.”
“I have to go back.”
He squatted down so his face was close to mine. “And why do you come when you always have to go back?”
I ignored this. “You know what I just found out? Jenny Rose is his child.”
He pulled his breath in.
“Johnny’s child.”
Instead of the shock I’d expected, he looked pleased.
“What?” I said. “Are you happy about it? Because you look happy.”
“If this is what it takes to get you out of bloody Queens and on with your life, then, yes, maybe I am pleased.”
“It’s not Queens that’s so bad. The best people in the world live in Queens.” I heard myself defending the place I’d so long despised and in the words of my ever enemy, my husband. “… hard-working people,” I added.
“People who don’t know any better.”
“People with dreams for their children.”
“Ah,” he said. “But none for themselves…”
My chin rose. “Your children are your dreams…” You wouldn’t know about that, I thought. But I didn’t say it.
He looked over his shoulder. “Look, something’s happened. I don’t want to talk about it here, but”—he lowered his voice—“I’ve got an offer to go back out to LA.”
I licked my lips. “LA? I thought you hated LA.”
“Everybody hates LA when they can’t get a job there.”
“So what kind of a job?”
“Oh, you know. Big studio. Lots of money…”
“… do whatever they tell you…”
“Maybe not.”
“Oh, please.”
He touched my cheek. “You’ll love LA.”
“I hate LA.”
“Why?”
“The ocean’s on the wrong side, for one thing.”
“It’s a lot of fun.”
“I don’t like fun.”
“Sure you do.”
“No, no. I really prefer stress and bad weather.”
“They have bad weather there, too. What else?”
“There’s the slight matter of my children.”
“There are great schools in California. They can take bicycles insead of subways.”
“Oh, then they’d fail for sure. You can’t study on a bicycle. Anyway, I’m sure it’s all cars.”
“We can make films, Claire.” He brushed my hair off my face.
“I like public television. And I like to go to the movies, I don’t want to make them. They never let you make your own stuff, just stuff they think can make money. Car wrecks and chase scenes. I don’t like people telling me how to spend my time.”
“You’re just saying that.”
I admitted something I otherwise wouldn’t have. “I’d imagined us together here in Ireland, a bog fire in the hearth, a black kettle boiling…”
“You’d get tired of that fast enough.”
I rang the bell on my handlebar. “Why don’t you want your little playmates to find out about your good fortune?”
He tipped one ear up. “I sort of promised to hang around and do another film with them. You know, for the ecology.”
“And now you don’t want to?”
One of his workers came over and made an exasperated hurry-up sign to him.
“Look,” he said. “I can’t do this now, Claire.”
“All right.” I wheeled the bike around. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Fair enough.”
I whipped out my camera.
He stood still for me.
I took a quick shot of him there in the waning light, opening my aperture all the way, counting upon him as a professional to know enough to stay very still, handsome and rugged-looking in his sweater on the boat. He held the camera with his magnetism. He knew how to stand still. He knew how to wait.
“You’ll come to Mrs. Wooly’s fish meet, then?” I packed the camera back into my shawl.
His eyes glittered in the seeping dark. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good. ’Til then.”
“Bye.” He waved.
He’s very cool, I thought.
I took off, still seeing the romantic framework I’d shot around him: the thick, coiled ropes, the dozing cat, the nets, and then a wrinkled-up Marks and Spencer shopping bag in the trash bin, just catching my eye from the deck as I pedaled away.
Chapter Twelve
Sad music came on a flute and I lifted my head from the pillow. I recognized it. Fantasia it was, heartbreakingly pretty from Tristan and Isolde. Must be Seamus, I thought.
I was cold and I shuddered. The warm weather had fled. Say a prayer to St. Francis, my little voice told me but I didn’t. I looked instead at the darkness, resentful and waiting. Who would want Jenny Rose dead? Nobody would. This was all silly. Peg’s death had been an accident, nothing more. I felt the grain in the bedclothes, littered with crumbs. I’d demolished the whole box of Bahlsen cookies after I’d brushed my teeth late last night.
There were other noises now, faraway. I went to the window to look. You could see the fishermen’s lanterns already out there, although nothing was set to begin until after mass.
A Jeep pulled up the road and stopped before the bed and breakfast. I knew it was Temple. I put on the little plug-light and waved to him. He saw me at the window, slipped open the Jeep door and half fell out of his seat. He was whistling, wearing boots up to his chest. He had trim cases and leathery containers of equipment. Something came over me. I dropped my nightgown and let him look.
Temple caught the chill air with his hand, like he was catching a ball I’d thrown him. He stopped, put one hand inside his jacket in his vest, and covered his heart.
Then bells from three churches rang. I reached for my robe. There were footsteps on the stairway and voices down below.
Temple climbed back in the Jeep and carried on up the road, my intimacy along with him. I’d come this far. I wasn’t going to miss out now. I knew he’d choose the best spot, the coolest spot.
Johnny would wait ’til after mass, mainly because my family wouldn’t let him start before. I would find Temple. Or he would find me.
The bed and breakfast was full, I guessed, from the sounds of the boots and scuffling up and down the halls.
Someone had lit the fire in the pot-belly stove. It wasn’t a good fire, though, and smoke had made its way up the passageway. I didn’t like the smell. She burns furniture, I realized. Things must be bad. All of a sudden, I couldn’t wait to get to Bally Cashin and the cozy peat fire that always burned there.
I washed in the sink, splashing water on my face, put on some loose, warm clothes and went down. Molly was holding the teapot in midair. She smiled at me over a table of affable Germans. Not hungry, I waved and headed out the door. “Grab an old pole for yourself in the shed,” she called out gaily and I smiled back, but I had the feeling she’d said it for the others to admire her. What a place, they would think, bountiful as rain.
Ten- and eleven-foot fishing poles, baskets, boots and bait boxes littered the pristine entrance, but these would belong to the guests. My nice bicycle, or what I’d come to think of as mine, wasn’t there where I’d left it. I thought, hell, I could just as well join in the fishing.
No one had found the time to stretch a banner over Baltimore, but word had spread just the same. Up and down the Ilen, fishermen were poised, ready. Fishermen love nothing more than the challenge.
I lifted the creaking, rusty-hinged door and heaved it open a crack. The shed had a musty, unused smell. I felt for the switch and clicked it, startling awake a hanging naked lightbulb. For such an orderly person, this place was a mess. Molly was a mix of opulence and austerity. She had these sparse ways. Her own room was deliberately simple. But then the guest rooms were so flouncy and heavy and overdone. Well, that made sense.
I enjoy poking through other people’s things. And she saved things, I noticed. I discovered a drawer filled with rolls of rubber bands. And in one peeling cabinet there was a store of paper in neat piles.
I stood in there, looking around for a few moments, but, I don’t know, there was something choked about it. I had to get out. Then I saw a lacquer parasol in the muddle and imagined how charming I would appear to Temple Fortune beneath it.
All I had to do was balance one foot on a box. I stretched across to reach it and the box tumbled over, opened, and all the papers landed on the filthy floor. I snatched the parasol and was about to leave the mess because, really, no one would ever even notice in this chaos, when I noticed one of the papers was in fact a canvas and on it, upon closer peering, a sketch of Jenny Rose’s. The missing sketches! Bless Molly, she couldn’t bear to see them destroyed. I wasn’t about to give her away, though. I didn’t care why she’d saved them, for art’s sake or Jenny Rose’s. I straightened the boxful, and saw the name “Peg” on a letter. Anything to do with Peg had my attention. I hoisted myself toward it. This was signed by her. It was a letter, or a note, rather, because it wasn’t on letter paper but the back side of a travel brochure. “How could you, Dierdre?” the note screamed in a frantic scrawl. “I love you so, I swear it! How can you do this? How? Haven’t I given you all the best years of my life? If you do this, I’ll destroy you, I swear!” It rambled on for the length of the paper.
I was shocked. Why would Peg write such a thing? Suddenly Dierdre looked much less pathetic and wronged and, I must admit it, not entirely innocent. My mind reeled. I thought of my mother, back in New York. What would she do if her sister had murdered her lover? What would it mean to her? Suddenly I was back in the hospital where my mother had been. The nightmare hallways and the intoxicating gift shop. The cafeteria with rock-hard fruit in wax jackets and tapioca pudding so velvety you could eat two, no problem. Day after harrowing day with familiar strangers wearing infant clothes in baby colors, day in and out, you had to be nice to them or they would be cruel to your mother, you never knew, when what you really felt like doing was giving them the finger. Turn around and look at me you bitch. I mean, Nurse. My mother has to have another blood test and if you look at me I can ask you to give it to her so she can take her pain medication. Please. She has only one vein on that arm, all the others are shot. Just don’t hurt her, you jerk. Miss. “Don’t worry about me, dear.” Mom would wince, trying not to wince. “Just go home now and look after your father. Your father will need you.”
This would kill her. I knew it would kill her.
I pushed the note guiltily back underneath the pile of stuff. If Dierdre had done away with Peg, what good would come of destroying more lives? A crime of passion. And anyway, I reassured myself, it couldn’t have been Dierdre. Dierdre never would have taken that much of a chance with Jenny Rose’s life. Would she? She would have to have been able to imagine Jenny Rose coming home unexpectedly. Unless she thought Jenny Rose would take advantage of her being away to be with Willy Murphy? No, she would never take that chance. Through my reverie, I spotted the bicycle out the smudgy window, leaning on the wrong side of the house. I knew if I didn’t grab hold of it, some German would—they know a good vehicle when they see one—so I left the ugly, smelly shed and determined never-mind, I’d shoot to kill with my camera. Yes, I was better off taking pictures. This decision lightened me and I followed the waning moonlight, pedaling away down the bumpy road in almost happy denial, pushing the idea of Peg’s note to the back of my mind. It almost certainly meant nothing, I told myself. I was just too suspicious. Los Angeles. Hmm.
Ricketa, ricketa, my bicycle sped along while faraway, the light crept purple over the moor.
When I got to Bally Cashin, I saw where Johnny had spent the night. He hadn’t left at all but had remained sitting in front of the door on the bench, used to all-night surveillance, his huge back swayed onto the cold house for a pillow, his foot up against the barrow so he wouldn’t fall over. His mouth was wide open, the lids of his eyes moving rapidly over a dream. Someone had laid a stiff sheepskin across him.
I crept into the house but everyone seemed to be up. Preparations were in full swing for Sunday mass. Lights were on, Bernadette’s powerful hair dryer whirred. Liam buffed several pairs of shoes lined up on the floor all at once. He smiled at me, my cousin did, his teeth still his, his red beard bushy, his blue eyes still blue, for all the liver-riddled yellow they swam in. The brine in those Viking kidneys flushed on, unfazed, and I thought to myself, How many healthy ones will die before he does?
“Have some tea, Claire,” Aunt Bridey instructed. “You’ll walk with us to church.”
I sat down at the table, feeling a litt
le foolish with my Chinese parasol in front of no-nonsense Bridey. I pushed it off as though I didn’t know whose the heck it was.
Johnny came in the door, stretching, yawning, big, leftover. “She didn’t come back?” he said.
“No.”
“She’ll come to mass, you’ll see.” Dierdre wiggled her shoulders. “She might stay away the night, to punish me, like, but she’ll not miss mass.”
“I doubt she’s out to punish you, Dierdre,” Johnny said, scraping a chair over the linoleum and sinking into it.
Uncle Ned, crouching over a box of jewel-colored flies, crept silkily over to Johnny. “Take a look at these, lad,” he said proudly. “My masterpieces.”
Johnny screwed up his face and inspected the lot. Carefully, he held one up. “A lot of work went into these,” he declared.
“That’s the truth of it.” Uncle Ned shook his head with satisfaction. “Many an hour.”
“And to think we used to just climb over Mr. Crapotta’s backyard fence and dig up worms!”
“Watch that, now!” Uncle Ned put a finger to his lips. “A dry-bait fisherman wouldn’t even speak to a wet-bait fisherman, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“He’d be an outcast altogether.”
“They’ve got my vote,” I said. “Just baiting hooks evokes sympathy in me for worms and the poor worm children orphaned back in the dirt.”
“That’s cause you’re a wuss.” Johnny pushed his Yankees cap back on his head. “No, I just mean we had no idea what an art it was.”
“That’s it. That’s the truth. Indeed it is.” His pale eyes gleamed at Johnny. Here was a man who could understand. Still hold his own. “Now this”—he held an extraordinarily brilliant one lightly on his fingertips—“this one is called the Royal Coachman.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“So what’s something like that run you? I mean, where would you buy something like this?”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t buy it. You couldn’t. That would cost a small fortune. No.” Ned patted it lovingly. “I made it myself.”
Jenny Rose Page 25