False Mermaid (30 page)

“Let me speak to him,” Nora said.

A voice with a broad Dublin accent came on the phone. “Sean Meehan here. Who am I speakin’ to?”

“Nora Gavin. If the child with you is my niece, then her name is
Elizabeth Hallett. You can ask her if you want to be sure.” She could hear him put the question: “I have your auntie here, child. She asks if you’ll tell us your name now?”

A young voice answered: “Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hallett.” Nora’s heart leapt.

“And your auntie’s name, the one you’re looking for?”

“Nora Gavin.”

Meehan was still skeptical. “How do I know you’re who you say you are? These people could have phoned anyone, told you what to say.”

The question was valid, Nora thought. How could she prove who she was, from thousands of miles away, without benefit of photographs, fingerprints, DNA? She frowned, trying to scare up some tidbit of information that only she and Elizabeth might know. A password to a shared past. Then it came to her. “Ask Elizabeth if she remembers the song her mother used to sing to her when she was little—”

There were muffled sounds of the question being asked, and Meehan’s voice came on again. “She says she’s not sure.”

“Could I just try something? Would you just hold up the phone so she can hear me?” Closing her eyes and placing the receiver close to her lips, Nora began to sing the mysterious words that echoed the language of the seals, hoping they would awaken something in Elizabeth, stir a memory that would reconnect them. When she finished, there was only silence at the other end. “Elizabeth, do you remember?”

Meehan spoke into the phone again, his voice husky with emotion. “Jaysus Christ, the poor little yoke. What happened to her mammy?”

“My sister was murdered, Mr. Meehan,” Nora said. She could hear him curse softly. “Elizabeth was very young; she never really understood what happened, never knew her father was a suspect. There’s never been enough evidence to charge him. That’s why it’s vital that you not take her to the Guards. Her father has probably gone to them already. And the way things stand, they’d be obliged to return her to him—do you understand why I can’t let that happen?”

Meehan was still uneasy. “Christ—I pulled over at one point, tried to get her to go back to the airport. She said there was no way she was going back. Made me wonder if there wasn’t something funny going on.”

“I can catch the next flight over and be there tomorrow—if you’ll leave her in care of the Donovans. Please. I can vouch for them, and they’ll take good care of her until I can get there—”

“
One question. Does the child’s daddy have this address?”

Nora thought for a moment. “No—I mean, I’m not sure. Why?”

“Well, I was just thinking—if he does know where to look, you might want to consider keeping the little one somewhere else—far away from here, like.”

“The Donovans were on their way up to their summer place in Skerries. Elizabeth would be safe there for the moment. Her father would have no idea where to look.”

Harry Shaughnessy made his way down the stairs cut into the steep hill, wondering how he was going to get across Shepard Road. Cars streamed in both directions. He shouldn’t have come this way, but it was the quickest way to get down to the camp. Everyone had used these stairs in the old days. It was a long time since then, the streetcar days. Nobody seemed to walk now; everybody drove. And all the places people used to walk were neglected and overgrown with weeds.

He was glad that he’d so far managed to avoid that young lady he’d met outside the library a couple of days ago. Saw her again yesterday. What did she want? Better if he didn’t get close enough to find out. She’d start asking questions. That’s what she really wanted, he could see it in her eyes. The thought of having to answer questions always triggered a panicky feeling inside him. A need to get away. Next she’d be wanting to have a look in his pack, and he wasn’t about to give up any of that. Not without a fair trade—not on your life.

He sat down at the bottom of the steps to rest for just a minute, pressing at the stitch in his side, and looking down at the battered high-tops on his feet, water stains up the sides, a crack in the left sole, and it suddenly occurred to him—why not both soles? Didn’t he take just as many steps with the right as the left? Whatever the answer to that puzzle, these shoes wouldn’t be good much longer. Only a few more days’ wear in them, really. In his situation, a man needed decent footwear.

Reaching into his pack, he brought out a crumpled paper bag, and unrolled it, taking out a pair of new-looking black sneakers. Had anyone ever seen such a pair of shoes? He held them up, admiring the electric blue stripes along the sides. Still like new—only a little blood on them. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, as his mother used to say.

He still remembered the day they’d been given to him. That was how he thought of it, like a divine bestowal. Down on the riverbank one summer morning, washing his feet—he always felt more human when he had clean feet—so there he was, sitting on a rock, pants rolled up to
his knees, rubbing cold water and sand between his toes, when a heavy bundle came hurtling down from above, and landed with a splash in the gravelly riverbed not three feet from where he sat. The water began to push against the bundle, and he had to move quickly to keep it from tumbling away. Once he had it, he looked up, trying to spot whoever had dropped the thing. Maybe they’d want it back—you never knew. No one visible above on the bridge. So he’d kept it, not even opening the bag until later that evening. That’s when he’d found the shoes, the sweatshirt he was wearing, and a pair of pants, too. As if someone up there knew exactly what he needed. It got cold, sleeping on the ground, even in summer. The clothes fit him all right; the hell of it was that the shoes had not. Never would. He’d hung onto them anyway, thinking maybe he could trade them for a different pair. But these shoes were extra special, worth a lot in trade. Nobody had ever offered what they were worth. Years of wear left in them. He’d swap them for something that would last a long time, with all the walking he did. When he’d finished admiring the shoes, he carefully rewrapped them in the brown paper bag, and stowed them again in his pack. He reached into the front pouch pocket of his shirt and pulled out the handwritten note he’d found there when he’d first put the sweatshirt on.
I know what you did,
it said.
Hidden Falls 11 pm tonite.
How could anyone know what he did? He only did what was necessary, what he had to do. What they all had done.

Harry hefted the pack on his shoulder, and looked across the empty railroad tracks, and beyond them, at Shepard Road. He crossed the rail bed, watching where he put a foot in case he’d stumble and fall. There wasn’t much danger. Trains came through only a couple of times a day now, and walking the tracks wasn’t as perilous as it had once been. But beyond the tracks, the cars on Shepard Road flew along at ungodly speeds.

He waited patiently until the road was clear in both directions before picking his moment to cross. And when it came, he moved with the grace and agility of a much younger man, hardly conscious of the muscles in his legs and back, of all the bones and sinews that worked together so miraculously to propel him forward.

But the SUV that hit him was traveling nearly sixty miles an hour, and Harry Shaughnessy was suddenly and unceremoniously removed from the mortal world.

In all three versions the bridegroom is forbidden to strike “three causeless blows.” Of course he disobeys … Once the husband and wife were invited to a christening in the neighbourhood. The lady, however, seemed reluctant to go, making the feminine excuse that the distance was too far to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses from the field. “I will,” said she, “if you will bring me my gloves, which I left in the house.” He went, and, returning with the gloves, found that she had not gone for the horse, so he jocularly slapped her shoulder with one of the gloves, saying: “Go, go!” Whereupon she reminded him of the condition that he was not to strike her without a cause, and warned him to be more careful in future.

Another time, when they were together at a wedding, she burst out sobbing amid the joy and mirth of all around her. Her husband touched her on the shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping. She replied: “Now people are entering into trouble; and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me without a cause.”

Finding how very wide an interpretation she put upon the “causeless blows,” the unfortunate husband did his best to avoid anything which could give occasion for the third and last blow. But one day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the grief, she appeared in the highest spirits and indulged in immoderate fits of laughter. Her husband was so shocked that he touched her, saying: “Hush, hush! Don’t laugh!” She retorted that she laughed
“because people, when they die, go out of trouble”; and, rising up, she left the house, exclaiming: “The last blow has been struck; our marriage contract is broken, and at an end! Farewell!”

—The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology,
by Edwin Sidney Hartland, 1916

When Nora came through the sliding doors to the arrivals lounge at Dublin Airport, Sean Meehan was holding a hand-lettered sign:
GAVIN.
He’d promised to collect her, and was as good as his word. He was almost exactly what she expected: an ordinary working-class Dub, clean-shaven with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, gray hoodie under a black leather bomber jacket, black jeans. He was clearly sizing her up as well.

“Car’s outside,” he said. She had evidently passed muster.

“Look, Mr. Meehan, you really don’t have to do this. You’ve already done more than enough. Jack Donovan said he’d be glad to collect me from the bus—”

“Ah no—we’re going to Skerries, you and I, and you’re off the clock. No arguments. And call me Sean.”

He took her bag and they walked out to the car park. After paying at one of the automated kiosks, he turned to her. “I didn’t want to do this inside—anybody could have been watching—but I figured you might like some proof that I am who I say. Before getting into a car with me, like. So here you go”—he handed each one over as he spoke—“driver’s licence, passport, taxi licence, the wife’s mobile number—you can ring her if you like.”

Nora glanced at the cards, and pushed them back. “There’s no need for all that—I believe you.”

“Just want you to know—” He took the cards and the passport and stuffed them back into his pockets. “I’ve got to go up to Skerries. Wouldn’t feel right, leaving the little one without seeing how she’s getting on. I just keep thinking—what if she was me own kid?”

As Nora got into the car, she spied a snapshot tucked into the driver’s side visor. Three boys and a girl, all between the ages of six and twelve, and all dark-haired and blue-eyed, like the man beside her. “Your kids?”

“Ah, yeah, but that’s an old picture. The eldest, Damien, he’s nearly sixteen. Jaysus, where does the time get to?”

From the airport, they drove on in silence out the M1, through the village of Swords. Sean Meehan pulled a pack of Majors from his pocket and lit one up. Then he spoke, as though he’d been thinking about it for a while: “It’s not as if you can just make a child disappear. They’re sure to be on the lookout for her. What’ll you do?”

“I don’t know. Try to find somewhere to lie low, I suppose. We’re digging for new evidence on my brother-in-law at home, but whether it’ll turn into anything—”

“Want some advice?”

Nora considered Sean Meehan’s sensible idea from the day before, about getting Elizabeth out of Dublin. “What do you suggest?”

“Go as far away from Dublin as you can get. Somewhere in Cork or Kerry maybe, or Mayo—up the West, where there’s not too many people. Someplace remote. Up the side of some boggy mountain, where no one would ever think to look. A safe house. That’s where you want to be. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. And make sure you have transport that can’t be traced to you. I suppose stealing a car is totally out of the question?” Before she could respond, he cast a sidelong glance at her and grinned. “Only joking. Maybe the Donovans would give you the loan of theirs. Whatever you do—cash only, no credit cards.” He handed her an envelope with banknotes in it. “There’s about three hundred euro in there. I can get more if you need it. You’ll need a mobile as well, one of them pay-as-you-go jobs. I can pick one up in the next village—that way it’s traced only to me. And if you should need other transport—say, a boat, just for instance—give us a shout.”