Himself

by Jess Kidd

  ‘But you spoke to her that day?’

  ‘I did, because it looked as if she’d been crying. She had this pinched-up look about her.’

  ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘She didn’t. I told her a few jokes to bring a smile to her face then I said, “Mind how you go now, Orla” and she nodded. I never saw her again but I often thought of her and hoped she was all right.’

  ‘So you didn’t take a walk up to the forest with her?’

  ‘Jesus, no, why would I? I was working; I had the post to deliver.’

  Jimmy grabs a beer mat off the table and spins it. ‘I told you, I saw her outside the General Store, spoke to her for half a minute, tops, then I went on my merry way.’ Jimmy holds out his arms and turns in his chair. ‘I’ve a rake of witnesses to that.’

  ‘There were several sightings of you walking with Orla up towards the forest on the day she disappeared.’

  Jimmy sneers and leans in close. ‘Speaking as a man of the world to another man of the world, I have my enemies.’ He whispers. ‘Envy is a terrible thing; there’s some that don’t like to see people get on in life.’ Jimmy gently pats his hairpiece, crosses his arms and levels an unconvincing smile at Mahony. The interview is as good as over.

  ‘He’s keeping something under his hairpiece, Mahony. Now you wouldn’t trust Jimmy Nylon as far as you could throw him, would you?’ Mrs Cauley takes a sip of her stout.

  ‘He’s a little shifty.’

  ‘He’s a little bastard, and a dirty one at that. Bridget Doosey once accused him of stealing knickers off her line. She would catch him eyeing her nether garments when he was up there on his rounds.’

  ‘Was there any evidence?’

  ‘Only that by the time he left the Post Office Bridget was down one brassiere and two drawers. She often had to go regimental.’

  ‘Jesus. I didn’t need that.’

  Mrs Cauley grins into her pint. ‘You’re a great man for the moral decency, Mahony. I can’t imagine you stripping washing lines.’

  He laughs.

  Mrs Cauley looks him dead in the eye. ‘You’re a bang-straight gentleman, Mahony, under that profligate exterior. I know that, I know your heart is made of pure-gold honest-to-goodness bullion.’

  Mahony catches her look. ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Shauna. I take it upon myself to look out for the girl. Since her mother ran away with a paying guest and her father ran away with the fairies. I consider her family.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I give a shite, about the girl and about you. I don’t want either of you maimed by what some people call love and I call disaster.’

  ‘You’re telling me this because . . .’

  ‘Something happened up in the forest.’

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘She didn’t need to.’ Mrs Cauley looks at him. ‘You may have turned her head but it’s still screwed on.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Shauna wants a steady life, Mahony, she always has. You know, the husband and the children. She has these dreams of restoring the house; she has it all planned out.’

  ‘Fair balls to her, for knowing what she wants.’

  ‘You’re a good man, Mahony, but you have to ask yourself are you the right man for Shauna?’

  ‘Are we getting married? After all of five minutes?’

  Mrs Cauley smiles. ‘Shauna’s the type to fall very deeply. She’s been stung before and badly. Young fellas, you see, will make all manner of promises for a quick rattle.’

  ‘What are you saying to me now?’

  She pats his arm. ‘Just help the girl do what’s best for her, lad. That’s all.’

  Mahony frowns.

  She nods. ‘Grand so, will we have another pint?’

  It’s still hammering down when they leave Kerrigan’s but once they get the wheelchair loaded in the back of the squad car it’s straightforward sliding Mrs Cauley into the back seat. She’s out like a light, breathing heavily through her open mouth. Mahony puts his jacket over her and checks that she’s still holding on to her damp wig.

  ‘She was on fine form tonight, God love her,’ says Jack Brophy, getting into the driving seat.

  ‘Thanks for the lift, Jack.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  They drive in silence for a while.

  Jack turns the wheel to avoid a bundle of sheep at the edge of the road. Mahony sees them, greasy clouds picked out by the headlamps. Then nothing but a darkening sky above the darker outline of the stone wall below.

  ‘Jack, how well do you know Jimmy Nylon?’

  ‘What’s he trying to sell you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then he’s a grand fella.’

  They drive in silence, bumping through potholes. Jack turns the windscreen wipers up faster.

  ‘You know Tom, don’t you? Who lives up in the forest?’

  It takes a while for Jack to answer. ‘I do.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s had his troubles but he’s a peaceful soul.’

  ‘So he’s harmless?’ Mahony thinks about Ida’s toy, tucked away on a shelf in Tom’s filthy caravan.

  Jack curses a pothole to hell. ‘You’re still playing detective, Mahony?’

  ‘Did the guards get involved? Did they look for Orla?’

  ‘I can’t discuss that with you, Mahony.’

  Mahony finds his fags and offers one to Jack. He takes it. Mahony leans forward to light it and in the brief flame sees Jack’s face, frowning.

  He drives on in silence for a while. ‘They followed up on some of the concerns expressed by one of the villagers.’

  In the back seat Mrs Cauley gives a deep snore.

  ‘What did they find?’

  ‘Nothing. There was nothing to find.’ Jack’s voice is kind but there’s a hardness to it that says he’ll stand no shit. ‘Your mother left this town in one piece, Mahony. She got a bus or a lift to Ennismore and then took a train. There was not a shred of evidence to suggest otherwise.’

  ‘A note was left with me. It says that Orla was the curse of the town so they took her from me.’

  Jack takes a drag on his cigarette; the lit end of it burns and flares. ‘What’s to say she didn’t write it herself?’

  ‘The handwriting: it wasn’t that of an unschooled kid.’

  ‘Then she got someone else to write it for her.’

  Mahony says nothing.

  ‘Look, no one took her from you, son; she left you, and that’s the truth of the matter, isn’t it?’

  ‘The truth of the matter is that she fought this town to keep me, only to give me away in Dublin? It doesn’t add up, Jack.’

  ‘The girl could hardly look after herself, let alone a baby.’ His voice softens. ‘Maybe she wanted a better life for you.’

  Mrs Cauley mutters to herself in the back seat.

  ‘You have to ask yourself, Mahony, does this seem like the kind of place where someone could murder a young girl and then kick over all traces? A village where no one as much as farts without someone rushing to tell you about it?’

  Mahony looks out of the window; he can’t see a thing. Up ahead, in the headlamps, there is only rain.

  Chapter 15

  May 1976

  They meet in the hallway; she’s carrying Mrs Cauley’s breakfast tray, he’s coming down the stairs with wet hair and bare feet. She hasn’t time to scuttle into the library before he sees her. She curses, softly.

  ‘There you are then,’ he says.

  There she is, standing gawking with a tray in her hands.

  It’s desperate and she knows it is. She fights the urge to edge back into the kitchen or put her head down and run the length of the corridor.

  Her nerves are flittered from avoiding him.

  She has to say her piece. She’ll make herself say it. Here in the hallway, with Mrs Cauley’s porridge getting cold and the poached eggs slithering under her nose, there’s no better time.

&n
bsp; ‘I want to speak to you.’ She reddens. ‘About the other day, in the forest.’

  He nods. His eyes are kind. There are none kinder. He smiles at her.

  She can feel the heat coming off her as she roasts with mortification. She imagines herself as he sees her, with a big red face on her and her eyes blinking with confusion.

  She tightens her grip on the tray. ‘Will we forget about it?’

  She feels sick inside.

  ‘If that’s what you want.’ He’s still smiling at her, God love him.

  ‘No hard feelings?’ She’s nearly crying with the effort of saying it.

  ‘Go on with you. Give me that.’ He crosses the hall and takes hold of the breakfast tray. ‘I’ll bring this in to her Highness.’

  ‘Thank you, Mahony.’

  ‘Sure, it’s nothing at all, Shauna.’

  Shauna stands over the sink for the longest time. Eventually she’ll notice that the tap needs a new washer, when she hears the drip that’s been keeping time with her. Then she’ll wipe her face, fill the kettle and put it on the hob.

  Chapter 16

  May 1976

  It’s standing room only at St Patrick’s this morning. For throughout Mulderrig the beaks have been busy and the birds have shared a fine seed of news: that Father Quinn and Mrs Cauley are going head to head over Mahony and that Mrs Cauley will be worshipping this morning.

  Mrs Cauley is as rare a sight at the church as the devil himself.

  Wearing dark glasses and an emerald silk turban she takes the front pew with such an awful sort of majesty about her that more than a few members of the congregation start to regret their decision not to show up for rehearsals. Mahony sits beside her in his leather jacket with his dark hair brushed back.

  The young ones nudge each other. Don’t the pair of them look glamorous? As if they have just stepped off a film set? But if Mahony notices the village girls making eyes at him he doesn’t let on, he just keeps talking low to Shauna, who sits the other side of him blushing a shade to rival her fuchsia cardigan.

  ‘It looks like the whole flock have turned out today then. Have you seen the sour face on Annie Farelly?’ says Mrs Cauley in a voice designed to carry.

  The Widow is almost level with them across the aisle. She stares stiffly ahead with a rigid halo of curled hair and her gloved hands folded on her broad lap.

  Mrs Cauley frowns. ‘Sanctimonious old bitch, there’s always been something fishy about that one. She’s in cahoots with Quinn. I’m certain they both know something.’

  Shauna throws the old woman a stern look.

  Mrs Cauley leans in close to Mahony and whispers loudly. ‘Of course, getting anything out of them would be like getting shit from a stone.’

  Mahony watches as a line of dead priests in faint vestments take up their positions behind the altar.

  Mrs Cauley grins and nudges Mahony. ‘And there’s Tadhg next to her, trying not to scratch the crack of his arse. And Jack Brophy, bless him, sitting with Bridget Doosey. God love her, she’s wearing that old collar made of dead cats.’

  Mahony looks over at Bridget, who is fanning herself with a hymnbook.

  ‘She’ll start to smell gamey soon – just wait until the church starts heating up with all the action.’

  Mahony laughs, Shauna glares, and the dead priests begin to shuffle and look off in different directions as Father Quinn steals in from the wings to bring the church to a hush.

  And all the mammies start writing shopping lists in their heads and all the daddies start thinking about the comfort of the bar stools at Kerrigan’s. The old ones concentrate on staying awake and the young ones on trying to kick the arses of those in the pews in front without getting caught.

  Father Quinn unfolds an oily smile. ‘This morning I invite you to reflect upon the subject of superstition. I am talking about the bad old country ways.’ He glances around the church with an incredulous look on his face. ‘I’ve started seeing things.’ He drops his voice. ‘Incredible things: owls nailed to barn doors, salt scattered in patterns, stones ranged about doorways.’

  Father Quinn spreads his hands, opening his fingers. ‘We are not pagans, are we? We do not need charms and magic in this day and age. This is the year of Our Lord nineteen seventy-six. Should we fear vampires, ghouls and spectral attack?’ He looks around himself with an excited kind of expression, like he’s just won a big prize but he has to keep it secret.

  Something flickers in the cave of Mrs Lavelle’s mind. A thought is sewn together in the shadows there. She moistens her lips. Teasie holds on tighter, her knuckles white on her mother’s arm.

  ‘Or should we rather fear the corrupting wind that blows in from our cities?’ Father Quinn looks at Mahony. ‘The wind of progress, of modernity, they say. I say it is the wind of vice, of wanton fornication and absent morality.’

  In the front row Mrs Cauley farts audibly.

  ‘It’s all this talk of wind,’ she says under her breath.

  A few children snigger.

  Colour rises under Father Quinn’s collar. ‘I ask you all to join me in prayer.’

  He bows his head and the congregation avert their eyes from his bald spot, which has a private nakedness about it as it nestles in his thatch of coarse greying hair.

  ‘Almighty and merciful Father, unite us against the trouble that has stalked uninvited into the heart of our village and bind us together in our fight against sin and darkness. Let us not invite heathen evils, old or new, into our community, our hearths and our hearts.’

  The priest looks up, his gaze sweeping over the congregation to alight on Mrs Cauley. ‘Heavenly Father, forgive those who seek to resurrect old stories and promote bad histories, thereby corrupting the feeble-minded, the gullible and the ignorant.’

  Mrs Cauley winks at him, sending the muscles in the priest’s jaw hopping.

  ‘We ask you to forgive the weak among us who have erroneously turned to dark traditions. Banish from us all spells, witchcraft, maledictions, evil eyes, diabolic infestations, possessions and ghostly curses.’

  Father Quinn takes a step back and the row of dead priests open their eyes in alarm. One tries to flap him away with the sleeve of his alb.

  Mrs Cauley nudges Mahony. ‘He’s getting to the point now; he looks like he’s about to pass a difficult shit.’

  Father Quinn adopts the spiritually authoritative face he has perfected in the bathroom mirror. ‘Bring clarity and wisdom, Lord, to those who question the priest’s homily and who fail to take his direction, which is only ever given for their own good.’

  In the front row Mrs Cauley snorts loudly.

  Above Mahony’s head are the Stations of the Cross. He counts fourteen painted wooden plaques, each the size of a platter of Tadhg’s sandwiches. The pictures are numbered, so that you can follow Christ’s journey as he hauls his cross through town.

  In the picture just above Mahony, Jesus is centre stage, his legs are buckling under the weight of his cross, his eyes are narrowed and his muscles are roped. There are women in long robes stretching out their hands towards him in a way that would really piss you off if you had something heavy to carry. Jesus scowls back at them with the lean countenance of a bare-knuckle fighter.

  Mahony knows how it will end.

  On a wide stone pillar just right of the altar is a six-foot cross with a marble Jesus nailed to it. Jesus’s eyes look up to heaven and his beard curls down.

  Mahony lets the familiar tide of sound and counter-sound lap at the edges of his mind. And lulled, Mahony gets down on his knees or up onto his feet with the best of them as he is rocked in the cradle of old words and swaddled by the murmured refrains.

  The bright chalice is raised and the bell rings, clear and pure through the calm air. The altar boys move lightly and the people make the sign of the cross with intimate and simple grace.

  They offer each other the sign of peace, taking each other’s hands without reservation.

  ‘Peace be with you.’
r />   ‘The Mass is ended, go in peace.’

  Mahony is the first out of the door, disappearing round the side of the church and out into the graveyard for a smoke. The graves are dotted with bell jars full of Virgin Marys and wreaths of plastic roses. To the right the graveyard wall slopes down towards the bay and to the left there’s a clear view of the mountains.

  In the far corner of the graveyard is a quiet spot, where the graves are natural and unvisited and the Celtic crosses are softened by the weather of years. Here the uncut grass is scattered with pink-tipped daisies and the dark darts of crow feathers.

  Mahony throws himself down between Patrick James Carty 1901–1925 and Joseph Raftery 1880–1913. Paddy and Joe have vacated their eternal resting places and are sitting up on the church roof nudging each other and whistling at the young ones walking home. They melt laughing into the lead.

  Mahony lights a cigarette and lies back, turning his face up to feel the sun before it hits another bank of clouds. With his eyes closed he hears the gulls wheeling overhead and the voices below him as they swim up through the soil.

  Tell Maggie her hair still shines as red as cherries and I kiss it when she’s sleeping.

  Tell Johnny Gavaghan he’s a terrible bastard and when he dies of the drink next spring, by God, I’ll be waiting for him.

  Tell Paddy I did it.

  Tell Agnes I never did.

  Never, ever, ever.

  Mahony opens his eyes to see pale faces sprouting, like pockets of mushrooms, from every crevice. The dead blossom amongst the gravestones and monuments and push up between the stone flags. They shake themselves off and weave towards him with a famished look about them, as if, given half a chance, they’d lick the salt wind off the headstones.

  Bridget Doosey, who has come wandering into the graveyard to visit her mammy, jumps a full foot off the ground when Mahony sits up and smiles at her.

  ‘Mother of God and all the Blessed Saints, are you actually trying to kill me?’