Habit of Fear (21 page)

As they approached Sligo, Irwin told her about Roger Casey, the Easter Rising survivor whose funeral he was going to report on the next day. Casey had survived rather more than Lady Graham-Kearney accounted him: he had spent a third of his life in prison. Which seemed quite a lot for a drummer boy.

They arrived in Sligo town at teatime to discover that not a hotel room or bed-and-breakfast accommodation was to be had within miles. Half the country, it seemed, had converged on the town for Roger Casey’s funeral. The press headquartered at the Lupins Hotel. In the sprawl of ground-floor rooms and bars, men who had not seen one another for years were coming together, men of all walks whose speech was sprinkled with Gaelic and was much of the time whispered—not in conspiracy, but to make their points more telling. Irwin wasn’t troubled by the lack of accommodations. “I’ve a sleeping bag in the boot if I need it.” Then, in the first suggestion of humor—Julie hoped it was humor—he added, “In a dire crisis there’s room in it for two. What was it called in the States—bundling? Isn’t it an old American custom?”

Julie would like to have distanced herself from the celebrants of Roger Casey’s funeral, but she felt a degree of reassurance in their numbers. She and Irwin arranged to meet in the lobby at six-thirty. She stored her suitcase with the porter and gave her name at the desk in the event a cancellation occurred. Then she found a phone booth in one of the public rooms. She was third in line. When she got through to the Garvy number, she was informed that Gran Garvy never came to the phone. The person who had come seemed pretty quavery herself. “What did you say your name was?”

Julie shouted. Everybody in the hotel would know her name.

“Ah, yes. You’re Richard’s friend. Hold on.”

While she waited, she detected beneath the rumble of voices the pulsation of rock music. You heard it everywhere in Dublin and now here. It ought to have been anachronistic, but it wasn’t.

The woman returned to the phone. “You’re to come right along, Norah says, and will I send someone to guide you?”

“I’ll find you.”

When she stepped away from the phone, the man next in line said, “You’ll turn right when you go out from here and then left and carry on till you come upon John Street …” He gave her the exact location of the house. She didn’t know whether to feel safer or less assured. She had wanted very much to love Sligo, the home of her beloved poet, Yeats. And she would! To hell with Quinlan and all the crawling anxieties his name had loosed in her. There are no snakes in Ireland: how about that? She hitched her shoulder bag into place and strode across the room. The Gray Man was at a table near the door drinking tea.

J
ULIE STOPPED
in front of him and demanded, “Who
are
you?”

The face was pale and pinched as if with pain, even as Irwin had observed in the Dublin disco. He half-rose and then dropped back into the chair. “My name is Edward Donavan—if it concerns you.”

“I’d like to know why you’ve been following me,” Julie said.

His colorless eyes stared up at her, blinking steadily. “Madam, to the best of my knowledge I have never laid eyes on you before in my life.”

She could have been mistaken, but she was sure she wasn’t. She did not apologize. She shook her head and walked on. Irwin had gone off on his own by then. She stopped at the desk and inquired if there was an Edward Donavan registered. There was. So, he would have checked in before her arrival. Which proved nothing except that in this instance at least he was not literally following her.

The town was gray with the sky going overcast. The wind was prickly and smelled of the sea. She passed yet another monument to the men of 1798. It had been erected in 1898; and so, likely, she now realized, had the other monuments in Wicklow, Ballina and wherever else the centennial of that disaster had been celebrated. Achieving a perspective on those manifestations restored a faltering self-confidence. The Old Town, of which John Street seemed the bustling center, caught her imagination. She composed of it a background for whatever she would write about Richard Garvy’s grandmother. The whole street was eighteenth-century. Even the shops had the sound of another time—a chandler, a turf accountant, the greengrocer, the chemist, a drapery shop … a Chinese takeaway. Norah Garvy’s was one of a series of red brick houses built wall to wall. The ribs of the fan transom above the door were freshly painted white. So were the window frames. As she approached, there was a flutter at the heavy lace curtains within.

A dumpy, red-faced little woman with her white hair stacked to a peak opened the door to her. “I’m Peg,” she said, “Gran Garvy’s niece. We spoke on the telephone.”

She had wonderful bright blue eyes and a smile that seemed perpetual. She led the way through a narrow, high-ceilinged hall, past an open door where Julie glimpsed a tile fireplace and above it, brightly illuminated with a picture light, the portrait of the Christ Child at the age of bar mitzvah. When they reached the door at the end of the hall, Peg paused. “Will I put your coat over a chair here, or do you want to keep it? Americans find it chilly this time of year.”

Julie kept her coat.

“You’ll have to speak up to Gran,” Peg said, her hand on the doorknob. “She’s going on ninety-three, you know. And you mustn’t stay too long. Just tell her you’ll come back and see her tomorrow.”

“But if I can’t?”

“It won’t matter.”

The very old woman sat in a platform rocker at the curtained windows where the late-afternoon sun filtered through. Her feet were on a stool, her knees covered with a shawl and another shawl was around her shoulders. She had once been tall, Julie thought. It was at the draft of air from the opening door that she turned, not at the sound. She reached for her cane at the side of the chair. Julie went forward and introduced herself, leaning toward the ear the old woman turned her way.

“It’s a pity Richard couldn’t come himself. He’ll come to my funeral. Tell him I said that.” She had dark eyes, which Julie hadn’t expected, Garvy having famous blues. “He’s made his mark over there, hasn’t he?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did you know I put him through Trinity?” The voice was wavery but high and clear.

Julie nodded and sat in a kitchen chair Peg brought her. Gran Garvy hooked her cane around one leg of the chair and tugged. Julie drew the chair closer to her.

“A waste of money on an actor. What do you do? He told us, but I’ve forgotten.”

“I work for a New York newspaper.”

“It’d be the funeral that brought you, then. Whose is it, Peg? Roger Casey.” She answered herself as soon as she’d asked the question. “Little Roger Casey. Do you know how it happened he was in Dublin at the time of the Easter Rising? His mother wanted him to go to the Christian Brothers school there and sent him to her sister.” The old woman paused and drew several long breaths. Julie could hear the wheeze. Gran Garvy put an arthritic hand on hers to hold her in place until she could go on with the story. Her cheeks were sunken, but she had most of her front teeth still. “The sister, unbeknownst to the boy’s mother, was a Sinn Feiner. She set him to studying the flute thinking he’d learn to play all the old airs that would catch the hearts of the people. But he was slow, and she let him take to the drums: they’d wake him up at least. Are you musical?”

“I like music,” Julie shouted.

“James Galway is the best thing Ireland has exported since John McCormack—long, long before your time. I can hear music, you know, with the headphones. Is it true that Richard is going back into the theater?”

“Yes—a play by Seamus McNally.”

“Not
that
one!” Peg said in alarm, and to neither Julie nor the old woman.

But Gran Garvy said, “Speak up, Peg. What did you say?”

“Richard wouldn’t do that to us, would he? The one about oil wells in Ireland?”

“And why not?”

“Are you forgetting what happened when they put it on here?” To Julie then, and through it all the little smile persisted: “There were demonstrations and alarms. It puts us in a bad light. He’d not take that kind of a part, I’m sure.”

Julie said nothing, but she caught the old woman squinting at her, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Speak up!”

“The Far, Far Hills of Home,”
Julie said.

“That’s the one,” Peg crooned. “It’ll be us they’ll take it out on. I’m too old myself to be listening in the night for trouble.”

“Oh, God help us,” Gran Garvy said. “You’re enjoying yourself. If it’s a good scare you want, give me your hand and I’ll read you what’s left in it.”

The little round woman made a ball of her fist and hid it in her bosom. Gran Garvy turned her Gypsy eyes—and that’s what they were, Julie thought—toward Julie. She smiled, showing every yellowing tooth in her head. “Would you like me to read your hand for you?”

“All right.”

“Make us a cup of tea, Peg.”

Peg frowned and darted a glance at Julie. It seemed that already she was staying too long.

“Shall I come back tomorrow, Mrs. Garvy? Wouldn’t that be better?”

“It would not. It might be too late.”

So Julie drew her chair up closer while the old woman put down the cane. She opened the drawer of a sewing table beside her chair and took out a magnifying glass as wide as a hand’s palm. She ordered Julie to get a cushion from another chair. She positioned the cushion on her lap and Julie’s hand on top of it, palm up. This, obviously, was the pleasure of her life. She took up the cane again and with it pushed aside the curtains to let in more light. The sun had gone from sight. The very old woman explained, “I rely only on natural light to show me the truth. It is the truth you’re seeking?”

“Yes.” Years before Julie had gone to a reader and advisor, more out of mischief than belief. She also had played at the game herself. But when the old lady crossed herself and said a silent prayer before focusing the magnifying glass on Julie’s hand, Julie decided she had better pretend more serious attention than she felt. The truth was she did not want to pay serious attention. Too many things were troubling her that a seer might pick up on.

Gran Garvy was slow to speak. Her mouth grew taut, and then she drew in her cheeks, suggesting alarm. Was it an act? Julie couldn’t tell. At times Gran closed her eyes to rest them and then opened them and looked again. And still she did not speak.

“Will I bring the tea when it’s ready?” Peg spoke to Julie from across the room. “You ask her. She can’t hear me.”

Julie asked loudly and clearly, “Do you want tea now, Mrs. Garvy?”

She looked up at last and put the magnifying glass back into the drawer. She folded Julie’s fingers over the palm and gave the hand a brief shake with both her own. “Yes, tea. I cannot read your palm, dear. It is beyond me.”

“What does that mean?” Julie was distressed in spite of herself.

“It means I am an old woman, too old to discuss any death save my own.”

“And death is here?” Julie said, thrusting out her open hand toward the woman.

“It is you that said it. I want my tea and a scone.”

“There are no scones,” Peg said.

But Julie did not bother to convey the message. “I had better go now.” She got up. “I will tell Richard Garvy I was here when I see him.”

Quick as a piston, the old woman’s cane caught Julie in the midriff and propelled her down into the chair again. “Where are you going from here?”

“To meet my friend, a newspaperman.”

She had to repeat it and gave the old woman Roy Irwin’s name. She said she had never heard of him.

“Are you going looking for Seamus?”

“I don’t know yet, Mrs. Garvy. I haven’t decided.”

“I shouldn’t if I were you.”

“I’ll remember the advice,” Julie said, unable to keep the chill out of her voice. “Good-bye.”

Peg brought the tea, two cups of a dark brew. “You’d better have this before you go,” she said. “Richard would never forgive us. Would you have a drop of whisky? You mustn’t take her too serious, but for all of that, she has the gift. I wouldn’t give her my hand for anything in the world.”

“I heard every word, Peg,” the old woman said. “Where’s the scones?”

“It’s too near your supper.”

“Mrs. Garvy,” Julie said, “have you ever heard of a painter named Edna O’Shea?”

The old woman repeated the name. “Is it the wild shores of Donegal she paints and pilgrim sites the likes of Lough Derg?”

“Do you know where she lives?” Julie asked.

“How would I be knowing that? But you might try Greely’s Bookstore on Stephen Street. Is Maisie Craig still there, do you know, Peg?”

“Oh my, yes,” Peg said; a tightness at her smiling lips suggested a low opinion of Maisie Craig. And at the door when she let Julie out: “You don’t need to tell Maisie we sent you, mind.”

I
T WAS DARK
and after six when Julie reached the bookstore. A sign on the door indicated that the bookstore would be closed the next day in honor of Roger Casey. There were window posters announcing cultural events, musical, poetic, and historical. Julie could not remember having seen a bookstore as crowded. And the shelves were well stocked, books in Gaelic and French as well as in English, paperback and hardcover. She followed a sign, Art Gallery, that took her upstairs. Watercolors and prints and a few garish oils, but nothing attributed to Edna O’Shea. “Not in my time,” the young clerk said when she inquired.

She went downstairs again and browsed among the books before going to the cashier’s cage to ask for Maisie Craig. She had not enjoyed her visit to the Garvy house. Nor had she done a decent job for the column: she had not even asked what Richard Garvy was like in his Trinity days, and there would have been tales aplenty. She had let her anxieties intrude, the feeling of strangeness, the Gray Man. Use your fear, Jeff would have said. Sharpen your wits on it. She found the plays of Seamus McNally, but
The Far, Far Hills of Home
was not among them. She chose
To Spite the Devil
and counted out her two pounds fifty pence before going to one of the two cashier’s windows. “Are you Mrs. Craig?” she asked, paying her money.

“Bless you, dear, I’m not. Are you with the funeral party?”