by Jess Kidd
Clutching her shopper against her chest, Annie makes a dash around the bed only to stop dead in her tracks. Up ahead, a huge darkly bound book appears to be mustering force. Masterpieces of Russian Literature rears up before a flock of flapping periodicals. For a moment it hangs ponderously in the air then it shudders open and begins to ripple its thick yellow pages. Annie screams and hurls herself at the French doors, stumbling out onto the veranda with a game copy of On the Origin of Species launching itself repeatedly at her rear to give her a good, thorough kick up her hole.
Mrs Cauley chuckles through her broken nose before the stage lights go out.
Shauna is setting the kettle on the hob when she hears Mahony roar.
He’s standing at the open doorway of the library.
Before him is a sacked city, a ruin.
Here and there a book still scuttles or flaps. Occasionally there’s a scraping groan as great plates of periodicals meet, jostle and finally settle. Every high-stacked tower has been toppled, so that Mahony can see right across the room.
A sharp wedge of light shines through the dusty air, illuminating an unsettling tableau. Mrs Cauley lies on the bed, wigless and blanket-less, with blood on her face and her closed eyes already bruising.
Two faded angels stand over her.
As Mahony steps into the room the taller of the figures shakes his head. The other brushes away the dim tears that have joined the downpour of his limp moustache.
Floating above the bed is a woven arc of books, a miniature vaulted ceiling. Spired with twists of paperbacks and lined with yellowed music scores.
Mahony slides forward over the litter of books and papers, hardly knowing he’s shouting.
Mahony holds the old woman in his arms. She has stepped off the stage at the Abbey Theatre to find Johnnie waiting in the wings. She trips up to him, shaking back her brown curls, her eyes on his. He smiles, straightens his tie and holds out his hand.
The next voice she hears is Mahony’s, gunfighter raw in her ear.
It tells her to get up. The bullet missed, see? The undertaker is pocketing his measuring tape and putting his hat back on; the bartender is sweeping up the broken glass.
She lets go of Johnnie’s hand and opens her eyes.
Dr Maurice McNulty dresses Mrs Cauley’s nose and wrist, and gives her a shot for the pain. He tells her that her injuries should be taken as a stark warning against the dangers of excessive reading. Mrs Cauley smiles through her butterfly of gauze and tells him that, on the contrary, books save lives. Dr McNulty looks unconvinced. He tells her that if an avalanche of books doesn’t claim her then the dust surely will. Bookcases are the way to go, he informs her, coupled with thorough and regular housekeeping. He looks pointedly at Shauna, and Mrs Cauley laughs like a drain behind her bandages.
Mahony surveys the blackening shadows of the trees as the daylight dies.
‘How long have you suspected him?’
Mrs Cauley shrugs. ‘It was a hunch only. But a phone call to Gavaghan’s confirmed that there was no burglary yesterday.’
‘And he knew I wasn’t here at the house. He’d met me on the way up here. The sly bastard.’
Mrs Cauley raises herself on one elbow. ‘Well, he found nothing. You have the photograph with you in your wallet.’
‘I left my wallet behind, up in the room.’
‘Jack took it?’
‘It’s not there now.’
‘I’m sorry, kiddo. Our one real piece of evidence.’ She looks closely at him. ‘Our enemies are breaking cover. We must be getting warmer.’
Mahony walks over to the bed and sits down by her side. ‘I don’t want you involved in this any more. What if I’d lost you today?’
‘To the Black Widow? Come on, Mahony.’ She smiles and taps his arms. ‘I’ll have a cigarette.’
‘You shouldn’t smoke.’
‘I think I deserve one.’
Mahony lights a cigarette and threads it between her fingers. On impulse he bends down and kisses her forehead.
‘Soft boy.’
Johnnie smiles up at Mahony from the end of the bed; Father Jim is sitting next to him, smoking his pipe with a shaking hand. The dead men look even more ashen than usual.
Mrs Cauley draws herself up in the bed. ‘Don’t even think of cutting me out of this investigation, Mahony. You need me.’
‘I don’t know. This is getting nasty.’
‘Then we’ll call in the guards.’
Mahony snorts.
She purses her lips. ‘Don’t bloody start. We’ll go over Brophy’s head. Inspector Kelly in Westport is credited with having a brain. Only we’ll need something concrete first, given that Jack’s one of them.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Grand. We’ll get Bridget to bring Kelly in as soon as we’ve got evidence. She hasn’t got form.’
Mahony glances up at her.
Mrs Cauley smiles lopsidedly through her bandages. ‘Drunk and disorderly.’
Mahony laughs.
‘In the meantime,’ she says, ‘it’s business as usual. We’ve a play to stage tomorrow, Christy.’
‘You want me to take the part?’
‘Of course.’
‘And have Quinn call time on me? That was no idle threat.’
‘It wasn’t.’ Mrs Cauley drains her glass. ‘And of course you being arrested right now would complicate things, if we didn’t have a plan.’
‘Now what are you up to, you devious old biddy?’
‘It’s not me, it’s Doosey; she has it all under control.’
‘How?’
‘Let’s just say she has been busy cultivating a few undesirable contacts,’ says Mrs Cauley coyly.
‘Oh Jesus, what are you going to do to the priest?’
‘Never you mind, you’ve enough to worry about.’
Mahony gets up off the bed. ‘Then the less I know the better. I’ll go and find a blanket; I’m sleeping here tonight.’
‘Don’t be thick.’
‘I’m not leaving you.’
Johnnie nudges Father Jim, who gets up, clamps his pipe in his mouth and shuffles off towards the door of the library, where he will spend the night leaning against the doorframe, puffing distractedly. Johnnie puts his cane under his arm and fades with a sober salute. Later, Mahony will glimpse him passing and re-passing the French doors as he patrols the veranda.
Mahony clears a space on the floor next to the bed. Mrs Cauley watches him, tapping her cigarette into a teacup. ‘They won’t be back you know. Not straight away. They’ll know we’ll be on the lookout.’
‘You can’t know that. I don’t want you left alone. Get Bridget Doosey up here to stay until this is over.’
‘Shauna’s here.’
‘All the more reason,’ says Mahony. ‘I want you both safe.’
Mrs Cauley smiles. ‘She found you then, Shauna, when you were out wandering through the wilderness? Tempest tossed.’
‘She did.’
‘She said she would. She said that she would haul your arse home with her whatever your condition. I bet you haven’t heard that before from a woman?’
Mahony laughs.
They sit in silence, Mrs Cauley smoking her cigarette and Mahony watching night fall over the forest.
‘She loves you, Mahony.’
Mahony nods. He looks up at her with a half-smile playing on his lips and his eyes full of black fire.
Mrs Cauley’s ancient heart leaps. She grins widely. ‘Bridget Doosey it is then. She’ll guard your chicks in their nest. She’s got a gun, so if Bonnie and Clyde try any more funny business we can just shoot the fuckers.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘This is war, Mahony.’
‘Get some sleep.’
‘You make a handsome couple, very well suited.’
‘Go to sleep.’
Mahony watches the sky until the stars come out. Then he gets up out of his blanket and shuts the windows.
‘I wasn
’t scared you know,’ says a well-loved voice from the bed, rich and ribald, honeyed and vicious, with a new nasal quality from her injury.
‘Were you not?’ he says. ‘I would have been.’
‘I can’t die like that, Mahony.’
Mahony lies down again, so near that he can hold the old paw that comes knocking at the side of the bed, searching for his hand.
‘You can’t die? What are you, invincible?’
‘I mean, I won’t die on my back. I’m going out like Cúchulainn. I want a noble variety of death.’
Mahony looks up at the ceiling with her fragile hand in his.
‘Picture it,’ she speaks softly. ‘There he was, Cúchulainn, mortally wounded, tying himself to a standing stone with his own entrails. Do you know, it was only when a raven landed on his shoulder and wiped its beak on his beard that his enemies realised he was dead?’
Her hand squeezes his. ‘I plan to die like a warrior: fiercely and upright.’
Tears run unannounced onto Mahony’s pillow, for love is just as heartbreaking as pity.
Chapter 44
May 1950
The man laid his fingers on the dog’s snout so that she would understand and stay and be quiet. He took up his sack and his shovel and made to go.
But the dog was wise and she knew that the man had darkness in his mind, more darkness than she’d ever seen before, despite their long years together. So when he walked into the forest she followed him, for she couldn’t leave him, even if he bid her to.
She walked close at heel, waiting for the soft scattered language from above, the clicks and whistles, the half-looks and hand motions.
But the man took hold of her neck and said, ‘Stay. Stay. Stay.’
But she felt the darkness behind the man’s eyes and she could not stay.
She had never defied him and he had never punished her.
She knew nothing but sun and rain, rabbit holes and falling leaves, sea-spray and sheep. And the miles and miles and miles they went together over beaches, bog, field and hill. Her long bright face curving back, always curving back, curving back to him, as he walked behind with his hands in his pockets, throwing his whistle through the air as straight as a stone.
His fingers said stay. Stay. Stay. They lifted her off the ground and pushed her away. Stay.
She knew nothing but coarse rugs and rich bones, warm ranges and gravy-soaked crusts. She slipped under the fence and joined him at heel.
The man put down his rope and his spade and he took off his belt and put it around her neck, looping one end to a fence post.
‘Stay. Damn you.’
But she was canny and fast and she slipped the loop to rejoin him at the edge of the forest. This time she sang out to him. She sang to him with her strong bark; she told him she wouldn’t leave him. She sang out against the darkness.
He broke her hind leg, shearing down her shin with the back of his boot heel to a point halfway. Her bone gave way with an empty sound.
‘Stay. Damn you.’
Now she knew pain – the white pain of the leg she pulled after her – but still she sang out loud against the darkness in his mind.
She tried to sing him back to the world of sky and trees, half-dug holes, warm floorboards and full bowls. She howled with love, not pain.
She made him stop and turn and walk back to her.
‘Be quiet. Damn you.’
She licked the wrist of the strong hand that held her down, as in the work of a moment he splayed her ribs with the backblade of the spade held low hilted.
‘Damn you to hell.’
He dug a blow that tore her face away then he walked on, certain she could neither sing nor follow.
But she tried. Digging forwards with her long front paws, her useless hind legs twisting behind her.
But she tried. Her snout pushing forwards in the dirt and her black and white fur rinsed with the waves of red that smeared a wake on the ground as she moved.
She died at the gatepost, calling soundlessly to him as her eye dimmed in her raw-open head.
Chapter 45
May 1976
The old and the young wives of Mulderrig are rising uneasy this morning, for last night a visitor came uninvited. It blew open their latches and skipped over their thresholds. It patted their cats and climbed their stairs. It whispered in their ears and eased the rings off their fingers. It stretched out on their beds and grinned at their sleeping husbands. The old and the young wives watched behind closed eyes, helpless in their dreams.
They remember now. As they stand waiting for the kettle, or feeding the baby, they look down at their fingers where their wedding bands used to be. They search in soap dishes and along window ledges, in drawers and on dressers. They run outside to ransack the potato peelings. But all the time they know that they never took their rings off – they never would! And their husbands will say, ‘Ah, it’s bound to turn up, along with my shaving mirror and my belt buckle.’
So the village shrugs and goes about its business.
For isn’t it the day of the play?
Who has the time to notice a few missing things?
Who has the time to mark the space left by an old copper kettle or a dusty horse brass? Or a dented christening cup or a tarnished candlestick?
And if anyone does notice, well, they are soon caught up in another drama, which is far more distracting. For the villagers are now discovering that there is not a drop of milk to be had in the whole of Mulderrig. From unopened pints in refrigerators to netted jugs in cool pantries, every drop of milk in Mulderrig is found to be bitter and curdled and clabbered enough to stand a fork upright. What’s more the butter is rancid, the cream has turned and the cheese is entirely rotten.
Mulderrig has gone sour.
Of course, ask Bridget Doosey and she would tell you that milk products are particularly vulnerable to malevolent supernatural forces. Keep the dead away from the dairy, she’d advise. But Bridget Doosey is happily unaware of the plight of the rest of the village, for right now she’s enjoying her fifth cup of tea of the day up at Rathmore House, which has its full complement of shiny objects and the milk pours fine and fresh from the jug on the kitchen table.
Bridget, in her new role as dresser to Mrs Cauley, has curled the wig, pressed the brocade and de-flead the silver fox, Shauna having resigned the position due to hostilities over a scorch mark on Mrs Cauley’s bird of paradise kimono.
Shauna refills the sugar bowl and sets it next to Bridget. ‘How’s she coming on?’
Bridget empties a handful of sugar into her cup. ‘She’s primped and painted. She wanted a moment to herself, so I left her outside swearing at the squirrels.’
‘She’s in that kind of mood?’
Bridget stirs her tea, licks the back of the spoon and puts it back in the sugar bowl. ‘She is.’
‘How does she look?’
‘Terrifying. Like the Virgin Queen herself.’
‘Well, she wanted the Bette Davis style.’
‘She did.’
Shauna, at the sink, looks over her shoulder. ‘I’m glad you could help her.’
‘She wanted you really.’
Shauna rolls her eyes.
‘She’s a twisted old bitch, granted, but she cares about you, Shauna. She’d be lost—’
‘Ah, don’t.’
Bridget lifts the teapot. ‘Isn’t there anything else to pour the tea out of? I could piss straighter than this.’ She fills a cup and pushes it across the table. ‘Cross my palm?’
Shauna sits down, rooting around in the pocket of her apron. ‘I’ve nothing – a sweet wrapper?’
‘I’ll accept that.’
Shauna drinks the tea then hands the cup back. She loves this. It’s a joke, sure, but there’s always something in it that makes her think. She sits in silence and watches as the tea leaves move around the cup under Bridget’s narrowed eyes, swilled anticlockwise. Bridget tips out the excess liquid, sets the cup right and peers inside.
>
Shauna leans forward expectantly. ‘What do you see?’
Bridget sucks air slowly through her teeth. If she holds the cup at an angle and squints a bit she can make out a battleaxe, Italy without its boot heel, and a fly swat. Or it could be a butterfly, a pair of one-legged trousers and a frying pan.
‘There’s travel abroad to a hot climate.’
‘Is there marriage? A future between us?’
‘Well, you’re half-suited.’
‘Is that it?’
‘And if you don’t go over water you’ll pass it.’
‘No babies?’
‘And watch yourself about the kitchen, Shauna. Hot fat doesn’t bode well for you.’
Bridget hands the cup back to Shauna. ‘Let him take you out a bit first. Let him court you. Just think it. Down to Ennismore for a view of that premium John Wayne film.’
Shauna joins in. ‘Dinner afterwards at the Atlantic Hotel, with the prawn cocktail.’
Bridget taps her arm. ‘That’s it! And if you’re meant to be with him you’ll be with him. Although it’ll be like strapping yourself to a bloody rocket.’
Shauna grins.
Bridget laughs. ‘A rocket ride, is that what you want? Well then, the best of luck to you, girl.’
Bridget finishes her tea and turns her cup, upends it, rights it and studies it for a long time.
‘What does it say, Bridget?’
Bridget looks up, her face suddenly tired. ‘It says nothing. Nothing at all.’
Today will surely be the last fair day. After today, everyone says, Irish weather will resume and it will be downhill all the way to Christmas. After today, the rain will be a constant visitor, drawing up its chair and putting on its sitting britches. But the rain seems far away right now as the sun roars down from the cloud-bald sky.
By midday the sun is belting down on the coachloads arriving in the square from out of town. It sends the daddies gasping into Kerrigan’s Bar and the mammies sweating and muttering as they unpack babies and granddads, flasks and sandwiches.
The same sun alights on the astounding figure of Mrs Cauley as she sits smoking a cigarette in her wheelchair. Over her head, slung from one end of the village hall to the other, is a sign, The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge, in big gold letters. There are flowering shrubs on either side of the doorway tied with green and gold ribbons. Inside the door Teasie Lavelle and Mrs Moran are at their stations selling tickets. The people form a queue and wait their turn as Teasie counts out the change and hands them a programme. They begin to take their seats in the hall, the mammies and the daddies dug out of the pub, the old and the young, familiar faces and some less so.