Circle of Friends (54 page)

“I’m psychic. What happened?”

“I’m not sure. An operation. It didn’t work.”

“I’m very sorry,” Eve said.

“She said it was very unexpected the operation, that he had no idea that there was anything wrong with him. That if ever he were to die she was to ring me and say he had no idea there was anything wrong.”

“Who said all this?”

“Some landlady. He had given her fifty pounds in an envelope and said it was for her.”

Eve was silent. It was all curious and complicated and messy, like everything Joseph Hegarty seemed to have touched in his life.

“What’s worrying you Kit?”

“He must have known he was dying. That’s why he came back. He must have wanted to spend the last few weeks here. And I didn’t let him.”

“No, didn’t he make a big point about that. He didn’t know.”

“He
said
that because of the insurance.”

“The what?”

“Insurance policy. He’s done what he never did in his life, he’s made sure I’m provided for.”

Eve felt a big lump in her throat.

“They’re going to bury him in England next weekend. They’re extraordinary over there. Funerals aren’t the next day. It’s at a weekend so people could get there. Will you come with me, Eve? We could go on the boat.”

“Of course I will.”

Heather read the letter silently at breakfast. Miss Thompson, who was the only nice teacher in Heather’s opinion, looked at her.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes.”

Miss Thompson shrugged and left her alone. You couldn’t push adolescent girls for confidences they didn’t want to give.

She’s never coming again, Heather said to herself over and over. She said it during morning prayers, during mathematics and during geography. Soon it became like the refrain of a song you can’t get out of your mind. “She’s never coming again.”

Miss Thompson didn’t remember about the letter, but she did say that she had noticed Heather was extremely quiet and withdrawn during the week. And she went back over it all, as they all had to on Friday night when Heather Westward didn’t turn up for supper, and couldn’t be found anywhere on the school premises. And she had not turned up at home. It had to be admitted by all those who didn’t want to believe it, that Heather had run away from school.

A
s soon as Simon had heard that Eve Malone had gone to England he said that was where they would find Heather.

Eve had not acknowledged his note of apology and explanation that his grandfather’s hardening of the arteries made him unstable and unreliable and therefore someone whose opinions and views were best ignored.

Simon wondered had the note been too formal. He had told Nan about it, and to his surprise she had been critical of him. Normally she had been so cool, unruffled and giving so little of herself and her views.

“Why was it such an awful letter?” he had asked anxiously.

“Because it sounds icy, like your grandfather.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to be low-key, to try and bring down the temperature.”

“It did that all right,” Nan agreed.

On Friday when the school had been in touch he rang Nan.

“You know what you were saying about the letter … do you think that’s why she took Heather?”

“Of course she didn’t take Heather.” Nan was dismissive.

“So where is Heather then?”

“She ran away because you were all so awful.”

“Why don’t you run away then?” He sounded petulant. “I like awful people. Didn’t you know?”

The schoolgirls were frightened. Nothing like this had ever happened before. They were all being asked extraordinary questions. Had they seen anyone come into the school, had they seen Heather leave with anyone else?

Her school coat was gone, her hated school beret left on the bed. Her pajamas and sponge bag had disappeared, her book of pressed flowers, her snaps of the pony and Clara and her puppies. They were normally on display beside her bed where other girls had pictures of their families.

Heather’s classmates were asked had she been upset. They hadn’t noticed.

“She’s very quiet really,” said one of them.

“She doesn’t like it here,” said another.

“She’s not much fun. We don’t take much notice of her,” said the class bully.

Miss Thompson’s heart was heavy.

There had been no sign of Heather on the bus. Mikey said he knew her well. A big thick lump of a child as square as a half door. Of course he’d have noticed her.

She would have had eleven shillings at the most, and possibly a lot less. Heather was known to spend a few pennies on sweets.

By the time Simon arrived at the school they had called the Guards.

“Is it really necessary to have the police?” he said.

The headmistress was surprised. “Since she hadn’t gone home and you could throw no light on anywhere she might be …”

Miss Thompson looked at Simon with some dislike.

“And we have assumed that there was nothing for her to run home to apart from her pony and her dog, and she didn’t go there anyway, we thought you would have wanted us to call in the Guards. It would be the normal thing for anyone to do, the normal thing to do.”

Simon looked at her miserably. Until now he hadn’t realized how far from normal poor Heather’s life had been.

He would make it up to her, when they got her back from England, which was undoubtedly where Eve had taken her.

At the guesthouse in Dun Laoghaire, the Guards and Simon found three students holding the fort. Mrs. Hegarty had gone to England to a funeral. Eve Malone had gone with her. Yes, of course they had left an emergency number where they could be contacted.

Mrs. Hegarty had said she would ring anyway next morning to see if they had managed their breakfasts.

It was now eleven o’clock on a Friday night. The mail boat would not yet have arrived at Holyhead. Mrs. Hegarty would not be in London until seven in the morning. She and Eve would take the mail train to Euston.

There was a discussion about telephoning the Guards in Wales to look for Heather.

There was some doubt on the part of the two Guards who were busy taking down details.

“You’re absolutely sure this is where your sister is, sir?” they asked again.

“There’s nowhere else she could be.” He was sure of that.

“Did anyone see Mrs. Hegarty and Miss Malone off at the boat?” one Guard asked.

“I did.” The boy who said he was Kevin Hickey, veterinary student, was spokesman.

“And were they accompanied by a twelve-year-old girl?”

“You mean Heather?”

Simon and the Guards had not explained the purpose of their inquiries.

“Was she with them?” Simon asked.

“Of course not. That’s the problem. Eve was worried because she was going to this funeral. She was afraid Heather wouldn’t understand that she simply
had
to go away.”

Eve had left a box of chocolates which she had instructed Kevin to deliver to the school on Sunday, with a note from Eve.

“Could you give them to her, if you’re connected?” he asked Simon.

They asked to see the note.

It was simple and to the point.

“Just to show I haven’t forgotten you. Next week,
you
choose where we go. Love Eve.”

Simon read it and for the first time since his sister’s disappearance had been discovered tears came to his eyes.

On Saturday morning there could hardly have been anyone in Knockglen who didn’t know about it. Bee Moore had done her fair share of telling, and Mr. Flood, who had been one of the early recipients of the news, had been out consulting with the nuns in the tree, but finding to his disappointment that there was no heavenly message about Heather.

“I had hoped she might have been in heaven. Well, her kind of heaven,” he said, remembering that he mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the Westwards were Protestants.

Dessie Burns said there’d be a fine reward for anyone who found her, and mark his words she was kidnapped, and what’s more kidnapped by someone in the know.

Paccy Moore said that the chances of being kidnapped
by anyone in the know were slim. If you knew anything about the Westwards you’d know they could hardly pay their bills. If the poor child had been kidnapped it was by some gombeen Dubliner who thought that she was wealthy because she had a posh accent and came from a big house.

Mrs. Healy said to Sean Walsh that they’d be singing a different song up at Westlands now. They had always been so distant and different, and things that happened to ordinary people never happened to them.

Sean wondered why she had turned against them. And Mrs. Healy said it wasn’t a matter of that so much as being slightly peeved. Mr. Simon Westward had implied that he would be having the most important of people to stay at the hotel in the near future, if they had evening dinners. Mrs. Healy had put on those dinners, but Mr. Westward had never partaken.

“But other people have,” Sean Walsh said. “You’ve made your profit on them, that’s all that matters.”

Mrs. Healy agreed, but you didn’t like to be hopping and jumping like people in a gate cottage just for the whims of the aristocracy.

She said as much to Mrs. Kennedy from the chemist’s, who looked at her thoughtfully, and said that it was a sad thing to have a hard heart when there was a child’s life at stake, and Mrs. Healy changed her tune drastically.

Clodagh told the news to Peggy Pine. Clodagh thought that a man in a raincoat had offered poor Heather a whole box of chocolates in Dun Laoghaire harbor.

Mario said that all the men of Knockglen should go out and beat the hedges with sticks looking for her.

“You see too many bad films,” Fonsie complained.

“Well, where do you think she is, Mister Smartie Pants?” Mario inquired.

“I see too many bad films too. I think she went for that bloody horse of hers, and rode off into the sunset.”

But it was one of the many theories that didn’t hold up because the horse was still up in Westlands.

Peggy Pine went up to the convent to talk to Mother Francis.

“Eve was on the phone from London,” Mother Francis said. “I could hear her grinding her teeth from there. Apparently they thought she had taken Heather with her. I dread to think what she’ll do when she gets back.”

“But Eve would never have done that.”

“I know, but there was some kind of row up in Westlands last week, needless to say Miss Malone didn’t tell
me
anything about it.… Lord, Peggy, where would that child be?”

“When you think about running away you think about running to somewhere you were happy.” Peggy Pine was thoughtful. It didn’t get them much further.

Heather had never seemed to be all that happy anywhere.

Sister Imelda had started the thirty days prayer. She said it had never been known to fail.

“The poor child. I never met a girl who was as appreciative. You should have heard her telling me how much she enjoyed toasting my tea cakes up in Eve’s cottage.”

Suddenly Mother Francis knew where Heather was.

She reached into the gap in the wall and as she suspected, the key wasn’t there.

Mother Francis moved softly to the front door of Eve’s cottage. It was closed. She peeped in the window and saw a large box on the table. There was something moving inside it, a cat she thought first, a black cat. Then she saw it was a bird.

A wing of black feathers came at an awkward angle out of the box.

Heather had found a wounded bird and had decided to
cure it. Not very successfully by all appearances. There were feathers and bits of torn-up newspaper everywhere.

Heather, flushed and frightened-looking, was trying to get a fire going. She seemed to be using only sticks and bits of cardboard. It would flare for a moment, and then die down.

Mother Francis knocked on the window.

“I’m not letting you in.”

“All right,” Mother Francis said unexpectedly.

“So there’s no point in staying. Seriously.”

“I brought your lunch.”

“No, you didn’t. It’s a plot. You’re going to rush me as soon as I open the door. You have people out behind the wall.”

“What kind of people? Nuns?”

“The Guards. Well, maybe nuns as well, my brother. People from school.”

Mother Francis sighed.

“No, they all think you’re in London. That’s where they’re looking for you as it happens.”

Heather stood on a stool and looked out of the window. There did not seem to be anyone else.

“You could leave the lunch on the step.”

“I could. But it would get cold, and I’ll need the dish for Sister Imelda, and it means I don’t get any.”

“I’m not coming home or anything.”

Mother Francis came in. She left a covered dish and the big buttered slices of bread on the sideboard.