The Butterfly State

by Carol Coffey

  Seán sighed loudly and dug his hands into his pockets. He looked down and studied the worn, dark red carpet.

  Brigid stood up.

  “I’m sorry that I can’t help you, love. What exactly was it you wanted to know?” She needed to know what Seán suspected.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think my mother wasn’t – you know – happy. I just thought you might be able to tell me a bit about her life, stuff I wouldn’t know,” he said, the resignation and defeat clearly audible in his voice.

  Brigid felt her heart was going to break for this vulnerable, lost man. Her eyes watered slightly.

  “I just remember her for her laugh, her love of life . . . she was always cheerful. That’s all really, love.”

  Seán stood looking at the short Dublin woman. He wanted to say that she went a long way to the funeral of someone she hardly remembered but he didn’t want to be rude. He knew by Brigid’s expression that she knew what he was thinking. He thanked her for her time and left.

  For the entire journey back, Seán mulled over how secretive Brigid Daly had been with him and he knew she wasn’t telling him everything she knew. She had said that his mother hated Dublin and he knew for a fact that this was not true. He felt exhausted and wondered why he was bothering anyway. If his real father had had any interest in him he would have made contact over the years or at least after Michael Byrne had died. He knew there was no point in talking to Kate about any of this; she didn’t seem to care and he couldn’t understand this. One thing he was sure of was that there had to be at least one person in Árd Glen who knew who his father was.

  Seán had barely driven two miles from Brigid Daly’s house when she was already standing at her front door in her hallway with her coat and scarf on, her black handbag hanging loosely from her right hand. Her first reaction was to walk to her brother’s office and tell him his son had been at her house, had somehow found her even though he didn’t know that she was his aunt, the sister of his real father. She didn’t want to tell him by phone, she needed to do it in person. She stood frozen on the red-patterned lino that covered her small square hall and ran all the way up her stairs. Suddenly, telling her brother about Seán’s visit seemed like a very bad idea because Brigid had gone to Maura’s funeral despite Éamonn’s insistence that she stay away. She had wanted him to go with her but he refused, saying it would bring back too many memories. Brigid felt that it wasn’t that, that the thought of seeing the son and daughter he abandoned was too much for him. She knew her brother had a guilty conscience for they had both known something of the life Michael Byrne had given the beautiful Maura. It could have been avoided but her brother had put his future before Maura and Seán and had never laid eyes on his daughter. Brigid had watched Kate at the funeral, her only chance perhaps to see her niece and nephew. She was the image of Maura and Brigid cried as she looked at the raven-haired girl, left now with so much responsibility – she had heard Maura’s two younger children were born with some strange condition she had never heard of. Brigid couldn’t bring herself to shake hands with Michael Byrne at the funeral, the cruelty he inflicted on her friend still sharp in her memory. She acknowledged that her brother had his own hand in Maura’s death. If Éamonn had faced up to his responsibilities when Maura fell pregnant, she would still be alive.

  Brigid thought of the man her brother had turned into and wondered if Maura, like herself, would have been disappointed. Éamonn had been so full of hope for a united Ireland. He planned on entering politics which is why he had studied law. He was a member of Sinn Féin and hoped eventually to be part of Ireland’s reunification through peaceful, political means. Brigid had even helped him in the early years, supporting marches and handing out leaflets, but had distanced herself when Éamonn started mixing with staunch Republicans who believed that Northern Ireland would never be free of British rule unless they forced it and this they believed couldn’t be done through talking. Even now, Brigid couldn’t understand why Éamonn gave up so easily on his ideals. A few years later when Éamonn graduated from university and began his career as a solicitor, Brigid was dismayed to hear him proudly recall how he got various “members” off on technicalities. Over the next few years she saw less and less of him although they managed never to fall out. Sometimes he would turn up on her doorstep in the darkness looking for a bed for the night. He said she was the only person he trusted in the world. She never asked why he couldn’t go to his own home. She knew she wouldn’t get an honest answer. When she married Joe Daly her brother visited less and less often. He insisted she never tell Joe about his political activities and she never did. Joe worked mostly in England as there was little work in Ireland at the time and it was always when he was away that her brother would call. Brigid often thought he must be watching her but again did not ask. When Joe died in a traffic accident in Lancashire, Éamonn spent more time at his sister’s house. Once she had asked him if he wanted to move in – there was plenty of room and they would be company for each other. But he said it was too dangerous for her and this frightened her badly. She had promised Éamonn that she wouldn’t go to Maura’s funeral, which she had read about in the newspaper, but she couldn’t keep her promise. She’d not had any contact with her old friend since the last time Maura had stayed in her house with Seán and so much had happened since then. Brigid’s uncle was still living in Árd Glen at the time of Kate’s birth and on a visit to Dublin told Brigid all the gossip, knowing she had been friendly with Maura Byrne and oblivious to the fact that his nephew was actually the new baby’s father. Her uncle moved to London a few years after that and information about Maura dried up. In truth, while Brigid was heartbroken about Maura’s death, she saw the sense in not attending. People had not figured out at the time that Maura had been seeing Éamonn and she didn’t want to set any tongues wagging. She knew the gossip that had surrounded the family, especially since Maura’s husband had died so tragically not even a year after her. It was an awful business altogether. She had followed the story closely in the newspapers and was amazed that the sweet-looking girl she had seen at Maura’s funeral could have done something like that. The real reason she wanted to go was to see her niece and nephew and Maura’s funeral was the perfect opportunity to mingle in a crowd without being seen. She would be able to see Seán and Kate whom she had often thought of. She had written to Maura a couple of times when the children were small but had received no reply and assumed Maura didn’t want anything to do with her because of Éamonn’s behaviour. She even thought she might approach Kate or Seán at the funeral. She longed to hug them but on the day of the funeral she stood in the background and went unnoticed, or so she thought. But Seán had noticed her and had gone to a lot of trouble to find her.

  No, she couldn’t tell Éamonn that Seán had been at her house because she never told him she had gone to the funeral.

  Brigid took her coat off and sat down in her small living room that rarely saw visitors and looked at the photograph that Seán had been interested in, of Éamonn and herself in Árd Glen as children. Brigid sighed and thought what a mess it all was and how life almost never turns out as people hoped or planned. She leaned back in her chair and stared at the photo. Her house seemed deathly quiet with only the ticking of the clock and the distant hum of passing traffic to be heard, the sound of loneliness that had become her life, the sound of life passing her by.

  Chapter 24

  1972

  Five months had passed at the institution and Tess had become as used to her new home as she could. It was play-time and she sat in the exercise yard with Leroy, the other children buzzing around them as they soaked up the rare winter sunshine.

  “Leroy, what did you do?”

  “What?”

  “To come here. What did you do?”

  Leroy reddened slightly, unsure whether to tell his friend what a nasty person he was. He thought about making something up but couldn’t bring himself to lie to her. He had told so many lies already.

  “Wel
l . . . I used to be in an orphanage. Anyway, one brother . . . well, he used to . . .” Leroy looked at Tess. She was three years younger than him and he was sure that she didn’t understand anything about sex. He found himself acutely embarrassed. “He used to do things to me . . . bad things. I hit him one day with his belt, over and over until I thought he was dead. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away, to make him stop.” Leroy lowered his head. He hadn’t spoken much about this to anyone except Dr Cosgrove.

  “Did you get away?” Tess asked, concerned.

  Leroy laughed. This girl was so innocent. “I got away all right. I was sent here where I could be cured of Satan. Ha!”

  “Was he dead?” Tess asked, her head turned to one side.

  “No, pity he wasn’t. That way he couldn’t hurt any other kids.”

  Tess thought for a few moments, absorbing this news. “What does orphanage mean?”

  “It’s a home for orphans. You know, kids that have no family.”

  “Do you not have a family?” Tess asked wide-eyed, unsure how this was possible.

  “I have a mother. She’s coming back for me some day. As soon as she gets a nice flat for us both to live in.”

  Tess nodded. “Is she American too?”

  Leroy turned his face away from his friend and wondered when he would tell Tess that he wasn’t really American, that he made the whole thing up years ago to stop people noticing the colour of his skin. It hadn’t worked but he got used to people showing interest in his accent so he had kept it up.

  “No, she’s not American,” he said simply, hoping to change the subject quickly. “What about you, Tess, what did you do?”

  Tess looked over his right shoulder, trying to think about her answer, trying to remember exactly what the police said.

  “I hit my father with a rock and he died.”

  Leroy’s eyes opened wide, amazed that his new friend had done something like this.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked, stunned, wondering if he had misjudged her.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember it.”

  “Then why did you say you did it?”

  “Because they told me that I did.”

  Leroy stared at his friend, unsure what to say, his eyes searching her calm face. He didn’t want to think she did something like that.

  “Maybe you didn’t do it. Maybe someone blamed you for it?”

  Tess stared hard at the ground, unable to comprehend this information, memorising it so she could replay it later and try to make sense of it. The bell rang and the kids lined up in straight lines. Tess and Leroy were both deep in thought and were last to join the line as they went back inside for their lessons.

  Chapter 25

  1981

  Sam Moran found himself at the Probate Office in the Four Courts in Dublin to view the last will and testament of Michael Byrne. Anyone had access to wills of the deceased; you just needed the person’s date of death and their address to view the relevant records. He had done this sort of thing before but mostly in his junior years in a small newspaper in London where he wrote a short column on deceased estates. It was boring work but he knew that people liked reading what assets their neighbour had left behind and wrote the column for almost two years before getting a column covering current court cases which was much more to his liking.

  He wasn’t feeling particularly enthusiastic this morning. This story was beginning to drag out and he had more dead ends than he had ever encountered so he didn’t feel confident that he would find anything unusual in Byrne’s will.

  When he eventually came upon the record he was looking for, Sam gasped at the information in front of him. So the gossip was true. Byrne wasn’t the father of Seán Byrne. He was even more surprised to learn that he wasn’t the father of the older girl either and had left the farm to Tess. He knew that Teresa Byrne wouldn’t have understood this and, even if she did, he had left everything to her so why would she kill him? If she did do it, there must have been some other reason. He figured out that if Seán Byrne knew that he had been disinherited, he would have had a motive for the murder as he was mentioned as caretaker only of the farm until his sister came of age. He wondered if the police had looked into this back then. He doubted Kate Byrne had anything to do with it as the farm was never going to be hers anyway. Perhaps it wasn’t about the farm? Perhaps someone had a grudge against Michael Byrne? But he didn’t have anything to go on. He quickly jotted down the name of the solicitor’s firm that handled the will and decided a visit to their offices on Aaran Quay might yield some more information.

  Tess had sat at the same desk since starting her course in Knockbeg two weeks previously. By now, the other women in her class knew not to take this seat or the seat she preferred in the canteen. Tess’s classmates, who were mostly older women, were protective of her and mothered her despite Nurse O’Connell’s advice to the contrary. Overall, she had adjusted well to her new environment and was learning basic secretarial work including typing and shorthand.

  Tess took her studies very seriously and soon her classmates were asking for her help and learning to ignore her comments about how they should pay more attention in class. In truth, Tess enjoyed feeling needed by her classmates. She could not remember much about her mother. She only remembered how she looked and, although she could not remember her voice, she recalled her insisting to anyone who would listen that her younger daughter was a bright girl. Tess had often heard Kate say this too but she had never believed it.

  The journey by bus to Knockbeg each morning remained a tense, anxious time for her as she worried that the driver might take a different road that didn’t end up in Knockbeg and she would be lost. She started memorising houses along the way or oddly shaped fields so that she would know that the driver was definitely going the right way and risked people’s stares when she would hum to herself to avoid picking at her lips or hands. She made lists of the number of houses on the right of the bus between her stop and Knockbeg and often counted them aloud for the entire journey. It annoyed Tess when others told her not to worry as this did not help her; she knew things were always going to worry her. Nurse O’Connell was trying to teach her ways to solve problems when they occurred but it didn’t stop her being troubled by what might happen. Dermot had told her that there are some things you cannot change and she knew this was one of them. Tess begged Kate to get Dermot to drive her instead but her sister had refused, saying she had to become more independent and that Dermot was needed on the farm. For some reason she didn’t understand, the journey home didn’t worry her so much as the bus made its way down the narrow country roads, dropping her off to a waiting Dermot who always pretended to have something to do near the edge of the farm at that time. He would walk her up to the house and ask her about her day. After talking to Dermot, Kate would give her tea and toast in the kitchen after which Tess helped her with housework and cooking the dinner. When Kate no longer needed her, Tess retreated to her room to work on her studies. She drew, much to Kate’s annoyance, typewriter keys on the bedroom dresser to practise her speed, wiping them off only when Kate promised to price a second-hand typewriter the next time they went to Dublin. For once Tess felt like she was just like everybody else. She had a place to go to each day, a place where people asked her for help. Something she never expected in life was happening to her: she was happy.

  Kate stared at the doctor as he explained Seán’s test results. She had tried to waken Seán for his appointment but found him too hung-over to rouse. Despite the doctor’s advice, he had continued to drink but had abandoned going to town at night. Instead he bought his drink in town and now confined his drinking to his room. Kate had tried to hide the keys so he couldn’t drive but Seán always managed to threaten her enough to obtain them.

  Dermot had driven her here and was waiting in the truck outside.

  Liver failure, the doctor said it was and far worse than he had originally anticipated. Seán, he said, could live for years with this disease
if he stopped drinking altogether. There was medication that could help with the maddening itch that he complained of but he could not be cured. Kate would have to keep a close eye on him to prevent him from drinking, which he acknowledged would not be easy.

  When Kate walked back to where the truck was parked, her face pale and drawn, she didn’t have to tell Dermot it was bad news. As she climbed into the truck, she felt hot stinging tears burn her eyes. She knew that although she felt sorry for her brother, she also felt sorry for herself now that she had him to care for as well. When Dermot placed his hand over hers and gently squeezed it, she did not draw it away but sat motionless staring down at her lap, the warmth and strength of Dermot’s hand helping to ease her worries. She was pleased that he did not speak as she knew she would cry if he sympathised with her or tried to comfort her. When Kate squeezed Dermot’s hand in return, he let her go, started the engine and headed towards home. He understood that Kate Byrne’s pride could only take a little kindness and concern.

  Sam Moran phoned to make an appointment at Roberts & Holford, solicitors in Aaran Quay, managing to deflect the queries of the efficient secretary as to the purpose of his meeting. He was not above pretending he wanted legal advice on a personal matter but hoped he wouldn’t have to lie as this would definitely result in him being thrown out without the information he came for.

  He had tried to talk to Seán Byrne one afternoon in Slattery’s but found him too drunk to answer questions. A few days before he had tried to talk to Liam Kelly on the street but, as soon as he told him what he was writing about, the young Kelly went white as a sheet and ran in the opposite direction. Without thinking, Moran went after him and felt a little foolish about it later. Several people he knew saw him chase Kelly past the mart and behind Colliers Row but when he got there Kelly was nowhere to be seen. Moran wondered why Kelly would run and also wondered if the young Kelly had been questioned at the time of the murder although Moran reckoned he would have only been a teenager at the time.