by Babs Horton
Donahue had driven on the left-hand side of the road since leaving the ferry, while his passengers huddled down in their seats, eyes covered by trembling hands. In his wake lay a lorry loaded with hay that had swerved too late into a ditch, a cyclist with a limp, and the echo of a stream of French obscenities from pedestrians and motorists from Calais to Paris.
The passengers’ backsides were bruised from the miles of bouncing up and down on the hard leather seats while the French countryside flashed by outside the car windows.
As they had entered a small village, an old man crossing the road waved his stick cheerily at the car. Donahue waved back and put his foot down to the floor.
The side wind took off the old man’s beret.
Chickens scattered, geese flapped their wings and an ancient woman bending down at the side of the road had her skirt blown over her head by the back wind.
Donahue in his mirror looked in amazement at the huge bare French behind.
“Vive la France!” screeched Donahue.
Leary, a man to avoid religion whenever he could, muttered a string of Hail Marys and crossed himself at regular intervals.
The car bumped and bounced over a level crossing.
Through the back windscreen they could see a train hurtle past. Startled French railway passengers gawped and raised their Gallic eyebrows. A gendarme at a crossroads blew his whistle and put out a hand to stop the car.
Donahue stopped for no one.
The gendarme crossed himself and then launched himself into a flurry of geranium pots…
As the car pulled up outside the Hotel du Pont stars were bursting into a huge Parisian sky and a full orange moon glowed above the city’s rooftops. Donahue’s passengers uncovered their eyes and staggered exhausted and traumatized on to the pavement.
After a nighfs rest Donahue and Leary sat opposite each other at a table outside the hotel. Donahue picked up a peculiarly shaped bread roll and stared at it curiously.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
“It’s a croissant, Marty, and it won’t bite. For God’s sake eat the bloody thing and stop examining it,” Michael Leary said, grinning, his eyes twinkling behind his thick spectacles.
Donahue took a bite of the croissant and chewed on it thoughtfully.
“Quite nice for foreign muck. Very tasty actually. Flaky and buttery and very satisfying to the taste buds.”
He took a hearty swig from his bowl of coffee and sighed with pleasure. Sitting there contentedly with Leary at an outside table in Paris not a stone’s throw from the famous River Seine, Donahue decided that he was having the time of his life and wondered why he’d never taken to the road and travelled before.
“I never imagined I’d enjoy being on foreign soil this much. Mind you, the way they drive over here is enough to send you on the bloody drink. Behind the wheel they’re all lunatics!”
Michael Leary rolled his eyes skywards. Being in the passenger seat next to Donahue had been the only time in his life that he had ever rejoiced in his appalling eyesight. Donahue just aimed the car in the direction he wanted to go and God help anyone who got in his way.
The two men were taking breakfast while they waited for Solly Benjamin and Dancey to return from their quest to discover if Madame Mireille still kept the dress shop on the Rue Bernard.
“Do you think they’ll discover anything about this red cardigan that Dancey has in her suitcase?” Donahue asked.
“God only knows. It looked like a bloody dishrag to me, but it had the label in it saying Madame Mireille, so I suppose every avenue, or rue, as they say over here, has to be explored. Still, are you glad you came, Donahue?”
“Indeed I am. Spur of the moment decision and all that. I’d love to have seen their faces in Ballygurry the day after we’d gone.”
“Ah, their tongues will be hanging out waiting for a drink in Donahue’s, eh?”
“Ah, not that long. I posted the keys to Dermot Flynn, asking him to look after it in my absence; he always had designs on running the place anyway.”
“You can’t beat a bit of travel, Marty. There was no future for me in Ballygurry; I’d already received notice to quit with all the kids going off.”
“Ah, I should have shifted my lazy arse out of Ballygurry years ago. Michael, will you order me a couple more of these crotchet thingies, I’m bloody ravenous.”
Leary signalled for the waiter, lit a cigarette and smiled across at Donahue. He’d never seen him looking so happy, he was positively glowing, like an overgrown and overexcited kid.
Solly and Dancey took a taxi to the Rue Bernard and stood looking up and down the street Solly didn’t hold out much hope of finding the shop after all this time. Madame Mireille had seemed ancient when he was a boy; it was a shot in the dark all right.
He held Dancey’s hand as they walked together along the street looking at all the shop fronts. There was no sign of the dress shop, and Solly thought that it had probably closed years ago.
They crossed the road and looked on the other side, but with no success. Solly was about to call it a day and return to the hotel when an old man came shuffling along the street towards them. Solly called out to him and marvelled at how, despite all the years away, his own command of French had come back to him since his arrival in the country.
The old man looked up with rheumy eyes, squinted at Solly and cocked his head on one side. He was very hard of hearing and Solly had to repeat his question several times. The old man pondered for some time and then walked away. Solly looked down at Dancey and shrugged, and then the old man glanced over his shoulder and beckoned Solly and Dancey impatiently to follow him.
They followed him back along the Rue Bernard and turned left down a dark alleyway where the old man stopped in front of a small shop. Looking up, Solly was delighted to see the familiar name, faded now, above the window. Madame Mireille.
Of course! He’d thought that the shop was on the Rue Bernard; he remembered now that it was the patisserie that was on the Rue Bernard, where they used to stop after his mother had finished her interminable clothes shopping.
He thanked the old man profusely, then opened the door, and he and Dancey stepped inside the shop. Solly felt about ten years old again as the familiar smells of face powder and strong lavender perfume assailed his nostrils, and though he couldn’t see anyone out in the shop, he could sense that Madame Mireille was somewhere close at hand.
He coughed loudly and shuffled his feet. A faded green chenille curtain which hung down over a door at the back of the shop suddenly stirred and a withered, bent-backed old woman appeared. Madame Mireille felt her way towards them painfully, slowly, and Solly realized with a shock that she was blind.
He spoke first and watched with delight as her face broke into a fond smile and she held out her cheek for him to kiss.
“Ah, Solomon,” she said, “it’s many years since you’ve been here. Such a bored little boy always when you came here with Maman. And she was a very beautiful woman, was she not?”
“She was, Madame Mireille.”
“But you haven’t come all this way to talk about your mother, eh?”
“No. I’ve come to see if I could find out something, to try and solve a mystery.”
Madame Mireille listened intently, and when he’d finished speaking she nodded slowly. Solly put the red cashmere cardigan into her wrinkled old hands. She felt the material carefully between her twisted fingers, searching out the small buttons on the front of the cardigan. Finding one, she traced a finger carefully round its shape.
“Ballet slippers,” she said, and smiled knowingly.
Solly looked closely at the buttons. He hadn’t taken much notice of them before, buttons were merely buttons, after all.
“Mademoiselle Martinez,” she said brightly.
Then she began to jabber away at incredible speed and Solly had to ask her to speak more slowly.
It transpired that Señora Isabella Martinez used to buy many clothes from Ma
dame Mireille when she came to stay in Paris.
“She brought a man with her sometimes, her brother, she said he was. Brother, my arse! I am not as green as I’m cabbage looking. He was supposed to be some sort of an artist The way they looked at each other there was no way he was her brother. Her lover more like!”
The girl, her daughter, then a teenager, had had a penchant for ballet. Madame Mireille told how she had bought the buttons from a traveller from Chartres, then sewed them on herself by hand. She’d sewn them on to seven or eight cardigans and blouses for the young lady. They were very good customers.
“The girl was a bit of a devil. She gave them the run-around, that’s for sure. A precocious madam, and an eye for the men even at that young age! Not a bit like her elder sister; chalk and cheese they were. She was a lovely girl the elder one. She’d been at school in England; I used to send over clothes several times a year. There was no shortage of money with Señora Martinez, that was for sure.”
Madame Mireille insisted that she make coffee, and the three of them sat for a long time as the elderly dressmaker relived some of her past.
Finally, Solly bid her an affectionate farewell, and when he and Dancey left the shop there was a spring in his step. He was a little closer anyway, at least he had a name, and perhaps if he could trace this Señora Martinez it might just shed some light on where Dancey had come from and who had sent her to him.
Solly and Dancey headed back towards the hotel and found Michael Leary and Donahue still sitting outside in the early morning sunshine.
“Any luck?” Michael Leary asked, and was astonished when Solly nodded and sat down to recount all that Madame Mireille had told him.
“That’s strange,” Donahue said, wiping croissant crumbs from his chest. “Do you remember, Michael, when Dr Hanlon was talking about a girl who was at school with his wife?”
“Sure I do. A Spanish girl who had her clothes sent over from Paris. She and Hetty wrote to each other for years, then suddenly she lost contact.”
“Is that a coincidence or what? I wonder if it’s the same person.”
“Well, there’s a way of finding out,” Donahue said, grinning from ear to ear.
“How?”Solly asked.
“Two ways in fact. Telephone Mrs Hanlon and ask her the name or else contact Siobhan and get her to ask at the school. She’d love that, ferreting about for information.”
Solly was excited by the headway they were making, but he was troubled, too. He’d grown very fond of this silent little child, and he had to face facts, no one had come looking for her, had they? Whoever had sent her to him didn’t seem to want her back.
Siobhan Hanlon was sitting alone in the schoolyard when Sister Mary Michael called her inside to take a telephone call.
She followed the nun along the darkened corridor, past the gimlet-eyed statues, and stepped nervously inside the small wooden telephone cubicle outside Sister Helen’s study.
Siobhan was surprised to be summoned to take a telephone call, because parents were requested not to telephone unless there was an absolute emergency. Sister Mary Michael had told her that this was an exception because it was her old schoolteacher on the telephone asking how she was doing with her schoolwork.
“Hello,” Siobhan said nervously.
“Siobhan, is that you?”
“Yes it is. Is that you, Mr Leary?”
It was great to hear a familiar voice. She’d been so homesick since she’d been at the school.
“Siobhan, listen, I want to see if you can find out something for me. Would you mind helping out?”
“Not at all!” she said with enthusiasm.
“Are there any old school photographs up on the walls at St Martha’s?”
“Yes, sure. They go back about as far as the Black Death I think.”
At the other end of the line Leary smiled.
“Can you find the one your mother was in?”
“Course, but why?”
“Well, your mother had a friend when she was at school, a Spanish girl, and we want to find out anything we can about her. We think that her second name was Martinez.”
“There’s three girls with that name in my year alone. Couldn’t you just ask Mammy?”
“No, I rang your parents at home but the maid said they’ve gone off to Dublin for a few days. Anyway, I thought you’d like to do a bit of detective work.”
“Great. I’ll have a scout round tonight. There’s one nun here who comes from up near Rossmacconnarty way who’s been here for yonks, I might try asking her. She seems as lonely as I am and the only friendly one here,” Siobhan whispered. “Are you in Ballygurry, Mr Leary?”
“No, I’m in Paris. Me, Donahue, Solly Benjamin and the little girl.”
“Wow! What are you doing there?”
“Siobhan, we’ve run away.”
“You never have! Why?”
“Remember the little girl that you saw in Solly’s?”
“Yep.”
“We’ve come to look for her family. Tomorrow we’re driving down towards Spain.”
“Wow and double wow! Mr Leary, will you see Padraig in Spain?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I doubt it.”
“If you do will you tell him something from me?”
“Sure.”
“Tell him to write me else I’ll flatten him.”
“Siobhan, you’ll have to speak up, I can hardly hear you…”
Siobhan’s voice came faintly down the line. Leary couldn’t make head nor tail of what she said.
“Siobhan, you’re a grand girl, do you know that?” he yelled down the phone.
Siobhan had a lump in her throat the size of a plum, and a tear made its way down her hot cheek.
“Siobhan, what did you say? Speak up!”
And then the line went dead.
Señora Hipola, coming into the house from the courtyard, stopped in her tracks and stared in disbelief at the four people standing in her lobby.
There were two men that she had never set eyes on before. One was a slim dark-haired fellow, the other a barrel-chested, florid-faced man with a grin like a slash in a paper bag. The third was Señor Leary, who had stayed here in her house a few years back. And most surprisingly of all, there amongst them, looking absolutely petrified, was the little Amati girl.
The girl looked up at Señora Hipola uneasily, keeping a tight hold on the dark-haired fellow’s hand.
Señora Hipola looked from the girl to Sefior Leary questioningly.
“Señora Hipola, I wonder if it would be possible for you to give us rooms for a few nights.”
Señora Hipola pursed her lips.
“Do you have that one’s mother with you?” she said, narrowing her eyes and pointing at a cowering Dancey.
“No. Why, do you know this girl?” Leary asked excitedly.
“Of course I do! Dancey Amati, she’s called. And you can tell her mother from me that she’ll feel the rough side of my tongue if she turns up here again. She upped and left here in the middle of the night, still owing a month’s rent.”
Leary spoke rapidly to Solly and Donahue, relaying all that he’d just heard.
Solly was astonished.
“Tell her I’ll pay the money that she owed, but ask her does she know the mother’s name?”
Leary duly transalated.
“Sure I do. Pepita Amati.”
“Does she know where she is now?”
But Señora Hipola was as much in the dark as the rest of them.
“One minute Pepita Amati is here, swanning about the place in her high heels and dancing for hours alone up in her room, clomping about enough to bring the ceiling down. Pah! The next thing she is gone. Mind, if you ask me the child is better off without her.”
“Pepita Amati,” mused Leary. “Well, at least we know her name now.”
“This gets curiouser and curiouser,” said Solly.
Sefiora Hipola showed them up to their rooms and Solly settled an exhausted
Dancey down for a nap, kissing her gently on the forehead as he did so. He sat and looked down at the child as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
The closer they were getting to solving this mystery the more uneasy he was beginning to feel. It was clear that the mother wasn’t up to much, and if they did find her, and she took Dancey back, what would happen to the girl then?
He waited until Dancey was asleep, then he got up, closed the door to the room quietly and went downstairs to find Leary and Donahue, who were sitting out in the courtyard drinking wine and talking.
“Have a glass of wine, Solly, damp down your worries for awhile.”
Solly sat down with a sigh, accepted a glass of wine, drank deeply and soon felt his spirits a little restored.
“Let’s have a recap on what we know so far,” Leary said, lighting a foul-smelling cigarette.
“Well I only know that the child was sent to me by someone who knew my name and address but obviously I don’t know them.”
“You’re sure that you don’t know any floozies like her mother?” Donahue said with a giggle. “No skeletons in your closet?”
“None whatsoever. I am positive about that, Donahue.”.
“We have one lead. If we can trace the Martinez family we may get somewhere, except that there are millions of people called Martinez in Spain. And if we do find them they may know nothing about her,” Leary added, blowing smoke rings into the air.
“All we know is that the mother was called Pepita and that she trotted about in high heels, danced alone in her room while the kid worked, and left suddenly owing money.”
“Now why would she do that?” Solly mused.
“Trot about in high heels?” asked Donahue.
“No! Leave suddenly like that?”
“To escape from someone? To meet someone?”
“But why send the child to me?”
“God only knows.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Well, we can wait to see what Siobhan comes up with. But we also know that this girl is called Amati, so links with this Isabella Martinez could be tenuous. This Pepita Amati might have found the cardigan, stolen it even…”
“Does Sefiora Hipola know anything else about them?”