by Jess Kidd
For Bridget holds no truck with the relentless drudgery of housework or the moral authority of Catholic priests. She sees both as unnecessary evils but stalwartly continues in her employment in order to support her roving pride of felines. And believing in honesty, Bridget will tell anyone who listens that she is daily destroyed with the effort of being polite to Father Quinn, who, after all, is nothing but a gobdaw in a black suit.
‘As my esteemed friend and a woman of quality, I’d like to offer you an important role. Bridget Doosey, will you be my stage manager?’
Bridget snaps her handbag shut. ‘You can whistle right up my arse, Merle Cauley. What would I want with that?’
‘You’ll do a fine job, take the headache out of it for me. Now. Where were you on the day Orla Sweeney left town?’
Bridget stares at her. ‘Orla Sweeney? Ah Jesus, I knew you were up to something, you old bitch. What is it now you’re involved in?’
‘I would appreciate your honesty, Bridget,’ says Mrs Cauley in a voice as unctuous as medicinal syrup. ‘For Mahony’s sake; he wants to find out about his mother.’
Bridget looks at Mahony intently, as if she is making some sort of uneasy calculation. Then she smiles. ‘Could he be anyone else’s?’
Mrs Cauley nods brightly. ‘Exactly. So what happened to Orla Sweeney?’
Shauna’s head appears round the door. ‘They’ve asked Tadhg for a barrel. Will he bring it over?’
‘He will,’ says Mrs Cauley, with a dismissive wave. ‘Carry on, Doosey.’
‘I wish to God I knew.’ She takes off her fedora and puts it on the table.
Mahony leans forward and offers her a cigarette. ‘Just tell us what you do know.’
Bridget takes three, puts one behind each ear and leans forward to let Mahony light the third, puffing it alight.
‘Tuesday, 2 May 1950.’ She exhales. ‘That was the last time I saw your mother.’
‘Are you sure about the date?’
‘Certain. She was coming out of the priest’s house.’
‘What time was it?’
‘Early, around eight.’
‘And she was coming out of Quinn’s house?’
Bridget nods. ‘I thought it odd at the time and I quizzed him about it after but I got nothing out of him. He said Orla had come for a blessing. Blessing, my arse.’
Mahony leans forward. ‘Did you talk to her?’
‘Hardly at all. She was agitated, in a rush. She said she would come up to the house later. But she never did.’
‘Did she tell you what she was planning to do?’ Mahony asks. ‘Did she tell you that she was going to leave town?’
‘As far as I knew, Orla wasn’t planning on leaving. Things had been getting tougher for her, the town had long wanted her out, but she had resolved to dig her heels in.’ She lowers her voice. ‘She told me that morning that she’d decided to go to the Father for help.’
Mrs Cauley frowns. ‘What, to Quinn?’
‘That’s what I thought she meant at the time. But why go to him when she must have known that he wouldn’t lift a finger for her? He’d just arrived in town, you see, and was courting popularity. Still is, the weasel.’
Mahony blows smoke up to the ceiling. ‘Orla wasn’t talking about Father Quinn.’
Bridget points her fag at him and nods. ‘You’re the sharp one. It took me half a day to work that out.’
Mrs Cauley looks at her. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Tell her, Mahony.’
Mahony taps his ash into an empty teacup. ‘She was going to the father, my father, for help.’
‘Just so,’ says Bridget.
Mrs Cauley whistles through her teeth. ‘And did Orla tell you who Mahony’s father was?’
Bridget purses her lips. ‘She didn’t. She wouldn’t. And I don’t have a clue. She always told me that she hadn’t even told the man himself. But I believe on that day she took a chance and enlightened him. Then she asked for help.’
Mrs Cauley scowls. ‘You never told me that, Doosey.’
‘You never asked.’ Bridget takes a long drag on her cigarette and exhales slowly, evenly.
Mahony nods. ‘Did you tell anyone else who she was planning to meet that day?’
‘I didn’t. The next day I went up to her house and her mother told me that Orla had gone out the afternoon before with baby tucked under her arm and the clothes she was standing up in and she hadn’t seen her since. I checked the house and not a stitch was missing. If Orla had left town she’d taken nothing with her, no coat, no nappies, no money, nothing.’ Bridget purses her lips. ‘I went straight down to the station to report you both missing to Jack Brophy.’
‘And did the guards investigate?’
‘If they did, Mahony, it was half-arsed. By then a few people had started saying that Orla had been seen leaving town, getting on the 3:15 to Ennismore with her baby and a suitcase.’
Mahony speaks softly. ‘And do you think she got the bus out of town?’
‘She couldn’t have. The bus to Ennismore didn’t run that Tuesday. The driver was having an abscess drained.’
Mrs Cauley raises her eyebrows. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I was the one doing the draining.’ Bridget screws her fag out roughly. ‘When I asked around, no one could recall precisely who had seen Orla leave.’ Bridget looks at Mahony with a pained expression. ‘In the days that followed I ran all over town searching for you and your mother. Some people agreed that it was strange for a young girl and a baby to disappear into thin air. But then, they said, look how wild she was, she probably upped and left with the tinkers.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me all this at the time?’ murmurs Mrs Cauley. ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’
Bridget smiles at her. ‘I hardly knew you. Besides, you were already unpopular enough; you’d only been in town for five minutes before you had them hopping with your bloody plays.’
‘Even so.’
‘What could you have told me, old woman? You who had hardly even met the girl.’
Mrs Cauley shrugs and glances at Mahony. ‘So you were the only one asking questions at the time?’
‘Everyone was so relieved that Orla was gone that they didn’t want to bother themselves with the how or the why of it. With Father Jim out of the picture it was as if the town no longer had a care or a conscience.’ Bridget turns to Mahony. ‘Father Jim Hennessy had been a friend to your mother. Now he would have raised hell to find out what happened to her.’
Mrs Cauley frowns. ‘Father Jim died only weeks before Orla disappeared.’
‘He did. God rest him.’ Bridget nods. ‘So the gloves were off. And then Father Quinn came slithering into town. He’d hardly unpacked his cassocks before Orla was God only knows where.’
‘Now there’s a set of coincidences,’ murmurs Mrs Cauley.
Bridget stands up, hooking her monumental handbag over her arm. ‘I’ve nothing more to say here. Come up to the house, lad, when you can. I’ll be waiting for you.’
Mrs Cauley gestures to the card on the table. ‘Will you copy down that sentence? We need a handwriting sample to help us with a piece of evidence.’
‘Am I a suspect then?’
Mrs Cauley laughs. ‘I was hoping you’d be on our side, give us a hand with the investigation.’
Bridget nods. ‘If I can help I will of course. But I’ll scribe for you some other time, Merle.’
At the door she turns to Mahony with a smile. ‘Welcome back, son. You’ve been a long time coming home.’
Mahony pushes back in his chair and lights a fag. ‘Is she a good sort?’
‘She’s a sort,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘She’s clever, but she’s mad stubborn too. Doosey will help us all she can, but she’ll do it in her own time and in her own way. I believe she was one of your mother’s few friends.’
‘There’s something she’s not telling us.’
‘There’s always something Bridget Doosey’s not telling you. That one’s deep enough to make
a well look shallow.’
‘Do you think it was her that brought me back? Could it be her handwriting on the photograph, I mean?’
Mrs Cauley shrugs. ‘I don’t know. It could be.’
Mahony looks at the blank card in front of him. ‘Do you think she really tried to find us?’
‘Doosey doesn’t lie unless she’s playing poker.’
‘She didn’t tell anyone that Orla had gone to meet my father. Why?’
‘Maybe she feared for her own safety? Maybe she expected some kind of retribution?’
Mahony puts his head in his hands and Mrs Cauley watches him. If she had a heart it would break for him, just like a Communion wafer.
When he speaks his voice is low, clotted with fury. ‘My own father.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘He did it to keep her quiet, to put an end to it. There it is. He was a man with something to lose. A job, married even.’
‘It might not have been him, Mahony. You know yourself Orla wasn’t short of enemies. Now, are you ready for the next one?’
‘Bring them in,’ says Mahony grimly.
In the main hall the villagers pull out chairs and sit and talk and eat while they wait their turn. Shauna gives out copies of the play. Some read them, most put them on their knees under their plates of sandwiches. The young ones touch up their lipstick and jealously eye each others’ dresses, and the kids rage up and down the stage in magnificent unwatched productions of their own with a full cast of pirates, unicorns and ghosts in nightdresses.
Mrs Lavelle, in mourning black, sits in the corner with her eyes fixed on another realm and her tea growing cold in her hand.
Mahony nods encouragingly at the large woman in front of him. ‘Thank you for the song, Mrs Moran.’
Mrs Moran folds her fleshy hands on her lap as delicately as a child at her First Holy Communion.
Mrs Cauley returns her hip flask to her opera purse. If she had nerves they would be as shattered as her eardrums. ‘Despite that remarkable performance I’m afraid there are no singing parts this year, Mary.’
‘That’s all right, Mrs Cauley. I just wanted to do a turn for you and the young man. Will I be making the costumes again this year?’
Mrs Cauley grimaces. ‘Under Róisín Munnelly’s supervision.’
‘Grand so, and there’ll be a great call for wings?’
‘There won’t.’
‘Are there not any quantities of fairies, Mrs Cauley? As there were in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?’
Mrs Cauley’s tone is final. ‘There’ll be no fairies this year, Mary.’
Mrs Moran looks disappointed. ‘Is that so? Ah, I loved all the wire and the netting and such. What about birds? Will we have a few birds then?’
Mrs Cauley purses her lips. ‘No birds.’
‘What about a big terrifying robin red breast with a few spangles to catch the light? Or a macaw? That would be exotic, swooping down over the stage? I’ve a few bits of yellow felt that would do for the beak.’
Mrs Cauley throws her a stony glare and Mrs Moran obediently settles down and sits nicely.
‘Is there anything else I can help you with, Mrs Cauley?’ she finally asks.
‘There is. Where were you on the day that Orla Sweeney disappeared?’
Mrs Moran looks at Mahony and smiles a round little smile, for like a Communion child she’s been well prepared.
For by now the entire village knows Mahony’s identity. From the babies threading their first sunny sentences together to the grandfathers propped up in the corner with more tea in their saucer than in their cup. Every worm and sparrow, crow and badger, tree leaf and grass blade has heard Mahony’s story, such as it is. That he was abandoned on the steps of a Dublin orphanage and has come back to find his mother.
And the surprising thing is, no one is in the least surprised.
They were only surprised that they hadn’t realised before. But then, as Tadhg pointed out, they were ignoring this slice of bad news as you would a fart in a confessional box.
And as for Orla?
Well, she’s little more than a bad dream, a bad dream easily shaken off in the bustle of the village hall. The people look around themselves, at the familiar faces of their neighbours and friends. They can see that Orla isn’t here and never will be again.
And as for Mahony?
Jesus, he’s nothing like her at all! Save the eyes, and a certain wild spring in his step and that wicked curve of his smile.
Perhaps he’s like his father?
All the women of a certain age breathe a sigh of relief. Mahony hasn’t got Pat’s titanic ears, or Eamon’s walleye, or Declan’s buckteeth, with which you could scrape the carrots. Mahony is entirely gorgeous; he’s not a bit like their husbands.
The villagers look around themselves and see that everything is exactly as it was before. Nothing has really changed. Everything is just as it should be.
Then Mrs Lavelle rears up.
Mrs Lavelle’s voice is distinctive. It’s threadbare and nasal, with hysterical undertones, and is quite capable of carrying over the practising of lines, the ribbing and the rivalry, the cooing and the gossiping.
The first thing that everyone learns is that Mrs Lavelle won’t be pacified by a cup of tea and a sponge finger. Teasie tries to move her mother away from the buffet table and into the cloakroom with a few gentle clucks and a supporting hand under her elbow.
The ensuing scene is terrible.
Teasie is knocked sideways by Mrs Lavelle’s handbag and sent spinning into the ham sandwiches. Mrs Lavelle takes a few steps then is suddenly struck with the full weight of a premonition. She leans heavily against the corner of the trestle table with her sleeve in the coleslaw and her eyes wide.
Her mouth starts to move independently, recalibrating itself in a number of violent twitches. Then, in a low tone of prophesied doom, Mrs Lavelle addresses a space just left of the ladies’ powder room. Her words spew out over the teacups and potato salad, the cardigans and handbags, the polite nods and the time of day.
‘She’s woken,’ announces Mrs Lavelle in a sabulous voice from beyond the grave. ‘She’s coming.’
The hairs stand up on the back of every arm. The babies begin to cry and the children wrap themselves up in the stage curtains or watch open-mouthed from under the table. Those of a nervous disposition bless themselves. A group of stalwart mammies crowd in and start to convey Mrs Lavelle out of the hall with the tenacity of a swarm of worker ants seeing off a trespassing wasp. Mrs Lavelle goes quietly until she reaches the threshold, where she clings to the doorframe moaning. There’s an unladylike tussle as they unhook her arthritic fingers and lift her through the double doors. Teasie follows with her glasses fogged and a pocketful of stolen biscuits that she knows will be like dust to her now.
Afterwards, the tea is poured too brightly and received too gratefully. The villagers, as jittery as cats on elastic, remind themselves that Orla left town of her own accord. They tell themselves that she is most likely alive and well and causing havoc in another town, God help them.
And so they start to breathe again and even laugh a little.
For after all, who believes in ghosts?
Poor Mary Lavelle does.
The woman is away in the head. Entirely tapped. Utterly unravelled. Some think about her floor-bound gaze and the tremble in her hands. Some think about the drifting silences in her conversations. Some just think about the light on Teasie’s glasses and the downward slope of her thin shoulders.
And the afternoon rolls on.
‘So let’s go back to the day that Orla disappeared, Mrs Moran,’ says Mrs Cauley, purposefully.
‘On that particular day, Mrs Cauley, I was suffering very badly with my legs.’
‘So you remember it?’
‘You couldn’t forget pain like that.’
Mrs Cauley looks at Mahony with pointed despair.
Mahony speaks slowly and clearly. ‘Mrs Moran, do you remember se
eing Orla on the day she disappeared?’
‘Disappeared, is it?’ Mrs Moran opens her eyes wide. ‘Well, I know nothing at all about that.’ She looks coyly from one to the other of them. ‘But I did see her slinking around the back of Kerrigan’s Bar. There she was, sitting on a pile of crates, swinging the legs and smoking and talking to Tadhg. So I called out, “Now then, Tadhg, haven’t you got a bit of gainful employment to be getting on with and not to be led astray from?” And Tadhg shouted out, “I’ll be away back to the cellar in a minute, Mrs Moran. How’re the legs?”’
Mrs Moran leans forward and lowers her voice conspiratorially. ‘Tadhg was just back from England to take over the pub from his uncle, who was making a big point of dying at that time. Tadhg was one of the few young men in the town with money in his pocket and that lent a certain sheen to him.’
‘What had Tadhg been doing in England?’ asks Mahony.
Mrs Moran straightens up. ‘He’d been boxing, and making a name for himself by all accounts. Then his uncle got involved with the whole dying thing and called him back.’ She smiles at Mahony. ‘It’s hard to believe it now, looking at the shape of him, but Tadhg was well put together in those days, a fine big strapping lad. And a temper on him like all the Kerrigans, great violent Irishmen the lot of them.’
Mrs Cauley looks at her with interest. ‘You think so?’
‘Tadhg was quick to hop in those days, Mrs Cauley. And when he hopped, like most brave young fellas with a temper, well, you heard all about it.’
Mrs Cauley nods. ‘Go on.’
‘As I said, there was I hobbling home the best I could down the lane and Tadhg asking after my legs and I said, “Oh, Tadhg, I’m in a terrible way.” And he said he’d run me up home for he had the use of his uncle’s car and in those days there wasn’t many who could lay claim to that. Well, Orla didn’t like this at all. She threw me this sour variety of look and said something under her breath to Tadhg. Maybe she thought I was an interfering old biddy. But then I didn’t care about that.’