by Cathy Kelly
Tears streamed down Danae’s face and Mara’s too. Mara was crying not for the man in the coffin but for her aunt and the pain she’d put herself through for so many years. Living a life of penitence for killing a man who’d tried to kill her.
They drove slowly behind the funeral car to the church and walked behind the coffin. There weren’t many people in the church.
“Brothers, sisters-in-law, an uncle,” whispered Elsie to Mara as they made their way slowly up the church’s center aisle behind Danae and Morris.
“They didn’t visit him when he was in the nursing home,” whispered Mara. “Just let them say one word to Danae and I swear I will kill them.” She meant it, too. If they’d heard the story of how Antonio had tried to murder her beloved aunt, they’d think differently. And she would tell them the whole ugly story, sparing no details, if any of them dared to upset Danae. She’d been through enough.
“Mara, you’re in a church, you can’t speak like that,” hissed her mother.
“Don’t worry, Mara,” said Stephen, who was behind them. “I’ll help you kill them.”
“Count me in on that too,” muttered Rafe darkly.
They sank into a pew at the front and listened as the priest talked about a man he’d never known.
In funerals, all men were equal: the good and the bad. When it was time for the small service to end, Antonio’s family filed out without once looking in Danae’s direction.
Danae spent the night in Furlong Hill. Despite everyone making a fuss over her and trying to bring her out of herself, it was as if a light had been turned off inside her. She had reverted to the silent, old Danae again. She sat like a ghost, her face drained of color, her eyes hollow.
“Do you think if I got her a Valium or something from Mrs. MacLiammoir across the road, it’d help her?” whispered Elsie to Mara.
“To be honest, Mum,” said Mara, “I don’t think anything’s going to help her.”
“But if she took a drink or something to calm herself?”
“Most of the time when he hit her he was drunk,” Mara explained. “Danae doesn’t drink. Not anymore.”
The following morning, the funeral Mass was at ten. Mara steeled herself for another encounter with Antonio’s family. She knew that Danae could feel the waves of hatred coming off them, and she wished they had brought Lady with them. Her aunt always drew such strength and comfort from Lady’s presence, from running her hands through that beautiful, silvery gray fur.
There were more words about Antonio, prayers from his brothers, and a harpist playing. Then finally, it was over. At the cemetery, the priest said some prayers and it was time for the chief mourner to throw some earth on to the coffin. Danae hesitated; she wasn’t the chief mourner. She turned and looked toward Antonio’s older brother, Tomas. But it wasn’t him who returned her gaze, it was his wife, Adriana.
“You do it, Danae,” she said loudly, and she smiled encouragingly, a flash of warmth amid all the cold.
The entire Danae faction beamed at Adriana. Taking a handful of dirt, Danae threw it. In the silence, the earth was loud upon the hard wood. Nobody spoke. When everyone began to move away, Adriana grabbed Tomas by the hand and led him over to Danae.
Danae’s people stood around her like sentinels.
“We don’t know each other very well,” Adriana said, while Tomas stared at his shoes, “but I’ve come to say something they should have said to you many years ago. The whole family knew what Antonio was.”
Danae began to shake and Adriana put her arms around her.
“I am so sorry, Danae, for all you’ve suffered. We all knew what he was like. Rosa was the only one who wouldn’t admit it. She wouldn’t let them admit it when she was alive.”
“But she’s dead now,” said Danae. “Dead a long time. They could have come to me . . .” She was too overcome with emotion to finish the sentence. All these years of living in pain, thinking everyone believed it had all been her fault.
“They’re too proud,” Adriana said. “But they are sorry. I don’t think the others will ever be able to say it, but they are truly sorry for what he did to you. You did the right thing, as far as I’m concerned. But Tomas—”
Adriana prodded her husband and finally he looked up at Danae. His eyes, so dark like Antonio’s, were wet with tears.
“I know what he did to you, Danae,” said Tomas. “We heard about the babies you lost. I am so sorry. Mama wouldn’t let any of us speak to you. And after she died—well, what was the point?”
“But I knew there was a point,” Adriana said angrily, glaring at her husband. “The nursing home told me how you came every month, how you paid, how you tried to care for the man who killed your bambinos.”
Danae broke down. Her bambinos. She’d tried not to think of the babies she’d lost. Thinking of what she’d done to Antonio had kept her mind away from the most painful place of all. Her little babies, two of them.
In the psychiatric hospital, she’d blocked it out. She would not think about him, her mind couldn’t deal with it. So she’d closed it all up, as if the pain could be locked behind a series of doors in her mind so that it would never reemerge. Until now.
“I am so sorry, cara,” whispered Adriana, holding her close. “I would have killed him myself if he had done to me what he did to you. I told Rosa that too, if it’s any comfort to you. She was a stupid woman, so sure her boys were angels. She refused to see the anger in Antonio. You are the one who suffered. For that, all I can say is that we are sorry, me and Tomas. And the others too, although they have not the guts to come and say it themselves.”
They stood there together while the rest of the mourners left, until there was only Danae’s party and Adriana and her husband at the graveside.
The gravediggers began to fill in the grave. This was merely another job for them, another coffin to be hidden beneath the earth, part of their everyday life.
Then the rain began to fall, softly at first, and then a deluge. Held by Adriana, Danae didn’t care about the rain. As she stood there, Danae felt her whole being relax. It was like Benediction and absolution for a terrible sin she’d been carrying around in her heart for so long.
“Thank you,” she said, “you don’t know what this means to me.”
“I am sorry it has taken so long,” Adriana said gently. “I must go now, sorry.”
She pulled away, leaving her gloved hand in Danae’s for as long as possible.
“I am sorry too,” said Tomas awkwardly.
“Come on, love, you’ll catch your death,” said Morris.
He and Mara helped support Danae on her crutches as they made it back to the funeral car.
“She said they knew, they always knew,” Danae kept saying, “and only Rosa wouldn’t believe it because she was his mother and what mother could think that of her son and she said she was sorry for my bambinos . . .”
“Now you know,” said Morris. “You did the only thing you could. The right thing. He stole your babies, he deserved more than he got. You’re the one who’s been serving a life sentence, Danae. But that has to stop.”
Danae leaned against him.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said.
Mara, watching her aunt anxiously, saw a softening in her face the likes of which she’d never seen in Danae before. Perhaps it would be all right.
25
Cashel got two surprising phone calls early in January. The first left him entirely astonished but after it, he phoned his lawyers and had a long, serious talk with them.
“Report back to me tomorrow,” he said.
The second call was from Sherry.
“Hello, stranger,” she said.
“Hello, Sherry,” he said, feeling guilty. Damn it, despite his occasional flirty texts to and fro, he hadn’t called her and he’d said he would.
“I’m breaking a lot of rules for you,” said Sherry coolly down the phone.
“Yes,” said Cashel, unable to think of anything else to say. It w
as so unlike him to be gobsmacked, but he was. He’d meant to phone after the holiday in Courchevel, had planned to and yet somehow, every time he got to Avalon he forgot to do it. He kept driving past Tess’s antique shop, Something Old, wondering if he should go in and talk to her again. It had been such a brief encounter at Avalon House on New Year’s Day. And it had made him think that there was unfinished business and he needed to know what had happened, he needed to find out. For the first time in nineteen years, he needed to know what the other side of the story was.
“I told you I didn’t ring men,” Sherry went on, “I wait for them to ring me, and you said we’d do none of that ‘will I ring you/won’t I ring you’ stuff. And now, you haven’t rung me.”
“Sherry, I’m sorry,” Cashel said recollecting himself. “I meant to phone and I didn’t. I’ve been so busy since I got back here.”
“Oh, and I’m not busy,” Sherry said. “You know, I wish you’d been honest with me from the start.”
“I was being honest at the time,” Cashel said, “and I’m sorry for not phoning you, because I did mean to. I apologize. Let’s have dinner next time I’m in London—” he broke off. There was a silence. “Look, I really like you, but there’s someone in Avalon, the town I’m in at the moment where I’m restoring that old house, there’s somebody here from the past and . . .”
He couldn’t believe he was being so honest; this didn’t sound like him at all. Normally he’d have taken her out a few times, seen what unfolded, said: Sorry, wrong time, wrong place, see you sometime. But he felt he needed to explain, partly to her, partly to himself.
“There was a woman I was involved with twenty years ago and now that I’m back here, I need to see her again, and it would be unfair of me to be seeing you at the same time.”
“Right,” said Sherry. “I see. Rhona told me all about that. Well, good luck.” And he could tell from the tone of her voice that she didn’t see at all.
Cashel pressed end on his phone. That had hurt. He felt like a heel, and he didn’t treat people like that.
He was heading for his car, having decided to drive down to Avalon and get a cappuccino from Lorena’s, anything to get his head out of the space it was currently in, when he heard a commotion from the house.
“Cashel, Cashel,” roared a voice, and he turned to see Freddie rushing toward him as fast as a man could rush when he was encumbered with a large beer belly and a pair of hobnailed boots. “Cashel, you’re not going to believe what we’ve found, you’ve got to come.”
“What now?” demanded Cashel.
“In the basement, it’s a hidden room, we’re trying to break through.”
The basement was a danger zone, full of special beams, steel girders supporting the old ceiling for fear it would collapse on top of them. It was a major job, Freddie had said, and for once, Cashel hadn’t contradicted him. Now Freddie and Cashel hurried through, wearing their hard hats. A group of men stood clustered around one end of the wine cellar. There had been no valuable bottles of wine left, nothing but cobwebs, dark corners, a smell of damp and spiders the size of your hand—or so the men had told Cashel.
“We’re nearly through, boss,” said one of the men, working with a crowbar.
“It was hidden behind this brick wall,” Freddie explained. “We were demolishing the wall to knock through to the wine cellar when we found it.”
Cashel peered past him to a cobweb-strewn door, double locked, and in front of that, a rusty iron gate like the one to the wine cellar, also locked. There seemed to be no way to get in except to rip the iron gate off the wall and then somehow gouge out the wooden door.
“Whatever’s in there must be worth something,” Freddie remarked. “They were sure keen on keeping it hidden. I’ve heard about old houses with these treasure rooms, but this is the first one I’ve actually seen. You’d have thought they’d have opened it up before the house was sold. Unless they didn’t know it existed. Did you ever hear of a locked room when you were here, Cashel?” He’d stopped calling Cashel “Mr. Reilly” a long time ago, and Cashel didn’t mind. It was clear that Freddie was now entirely up to date on the gossip about Cashel’s mother having worked for the Powers, and his relationship with Tess Power. In a place like Avalon, few things remained secret for long. There were always old folk around with long memories, who were eager to talk once the correct amount of Guinness was put up on the counter in front of them.
“No, I never heard anything about a locked room,” said Cashel. “What would you keep in somewhere like that?”
“Lord, I don’t know,” said Freddie. “With rich people, it’s anybody’s guess. Some of these families hid away the mad relatives they didn’t want anyone to see—like your sister,” he roared, turning to one of the other men, and suddenly the crew were all laughing.
“Your sister?” said Cashel, looking at the one man in the crowd who wasn’t joining in the laughter. “I’m sorry to hear that. Does she have a . . .” he tried to find the correct word, “. . . problem?”
“Oh Lord, my sister is a problem,” said the other man, his face splitting in a wide grin. “I’ve never met a more temperamental woman in my life. She has her husband’s heart scalded.”
Again, roars of laughter.
“I have the use of my ears, you know,” said another man, obviously the temperamental woman’s husband. “It’s the decorating benders that are the worst. Now, the whole house has to be repapered. I only finished putting the bloody stuff up just before Christmas, and already she doesn’t like it. She’s gone off mushroom stripes, apparently . . .”
Cashel grinned and turned his attention to the men with crowbars, who’d now succeeded in wrenching the big steel gate off. Two more men moved in to start on the wooden door.
“It could be mummies,” said one man. “King Tut’s treasure.”
“They found that, you gobshite,” said someone else.
The old, decaying door was no match for the modern tools and finally, with a giant clang, it hit the floor. Torches were produced and Freddie handed one to Cashel.
“Do you want to go in first, seeing as it’s your house? Or will I lead the way in case there’s some mad dinosaur in there that’s been locked up for hundreds of years and is very hungry?”
Cashel laughed: “No, Freddie, I think I’ll go in first, but you can follow close behind in case the dinosaur needs dessert.”
Cashel walked in carefully. First, there was a low hallway and he had to bend down. He winced at the sensation of cobwebs and all sorts of things going through his hair—he wasn’t that keen on spiders—but now was not the time for fear. Then the hallway opened up into a bigger room that was at least thirty feet square. Cashel shone the torch around. There was nothing there.
“Hate to tell you, lads,” he roared out, “but someone else has cleaned out the treasure room.”
“Ah, for feck’s sake,” said a voice. “I thought we’d get some of the salvage money. Isn’t that how it works?”
“That’s at sea,” said another voice.
“Ten percent of nothing is nothing,” said Freddie, shining his torch around in case Cashel had missed anything.
Cashel was turning to leave when Freddie’s torch beam caught a little indentation in the wall on one side. He shone his own torch at it. There was a small space, made by removing an old brick, and when he looked inside properly, he found an old leather box jammed in there. It took a minute or two to unwedge it, but it came free in the end.
“What have you got?” said Freddie.
“Don’t know,” said Cashel. He put his torch in his pocket. “Shine yours here, Freddie.”
The box was so old that the locking device fell apart when Cashel tried to open it. Inside was a necklace, covered in dust and mold, but it had clearly once been some sort of shiny choker.
“Diamonds?” said Freddie hopefully.
“Hard to tell,” said Cashel doubtfully. “It might be glass. I think everything that wasn’t nailed down was sold
years ago.”
Well, it’s your glass now,” said Freddie. “Back out, lads—we’ve work to be getting on with.”
“It’s not mine,” said Cashel. “It’s the property of the Powers, whatever it is.”
“Are you sure?” said Freddie.
“Oh, I’m sure,” said Cashel. “This has obviously been in their family for hundreds of years, so well hidden they didn’t even know anything about it. No, this belongs to them.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll be to Tess Power if it’s not worth tuppence,” said Freddie. “Work, lads, come on.”
“Mara’ll know how to check it,” Cashel said. “Let’s get her here. Then I think it’s time I went to see Tess Power.”
Suki felt Avalon wrap itself around her like a fur-lined cloak from the moment she stepped off the bus. The people behind her were pushing to get off, so she had no time to experimentally feel what it was like to be home. She was just there. Home. Properly home, after so many years away.
Once, she might have minded people seeing her getting off the bus instead of arriving in a chauffeur-driven car—which was the way she had done it once, years ago. Gone were the Jethro years, when a bus trip or even a taxi were deemed too ordinary for the likes of her. She was a bus person now, no doubt about it. Funds demanded it.
The driver got off and wrenched open the luggage compartment in the side of the bus and everyone surged forward to grab their luggage. Suki had two bags, giant ones which had been classified as overweight baggage.
There was no such thing as overweight when you traveled on a private jet with TradeWind. Nor was it a problem when the publishers were picking up the tab. But there was nobody but Suki to pick up the tab now, and she’d had to pay the airline money she could ill afford for her speedy, uncoordinated packing.
January in Avalon could be freezing or mild, so she’d packed for all eventualities.
The driver offered to heft her bags on to the pavement. He was young, Eastern European from his accent, with pale skin and dark hair, very polite to everyone. He’d called her ma’am when she got on the bus. Probably thought she was as old as his granny—a thought which no longer horrified her.