Heartstones (9 page)

After dinner I heard gunshots; George and Richard were shooting Father’s dogs so that they will not starve when we’ve gone. I have Razzle with me here in my room; he’ll come with me no matter what.

When we get to Holyhead we have to say goodbye to George and Richard. They go to Liverpool to board a ship for Canada while we make our way down to Cheltenham. I don’t know what I’ll do without them. It all just feels too awful.

Richard says if Father hadn’t killed himself he would have gone to prison. Despite everything he did I miss him terribly.

September 25th, 1948

I cannot quite take in what’s happened. I am sitting in a spare bedroom in Dr Brennan’s house; I feel like I’ve been here for years but I know it is only just past one o’clock. An hour ago the housekeeper, Mrs Smythe, brought me up a bowl of soup but I could not eat it. She kept telling me that I should be grateful that the doctor wants me after everything that’s happened. I started to cry and she left me alone again. At least I still have Razzle, he is curled up in the corner on my coat but everyone else is gone.

Mr Flannigan came before dawn as planned. He was loading up the cart with our luggage when Dr Brennan arrived in his car, I thought he’d come to give Mother more pills but then I heard Mother tell Mr Flannigan to put my trunk in the back of Dr Brennan’s car, and when I asked her why she told me Dr Brennan had offered to look after me, and that it would all be for the best. Dr Brennan kept telling me to calm myself, and opened the passenger door, and he and Mother had me inside the car before I could comprehend what was happening.

I can’t remember what I said but I know that I was crying, begging Mother to let me go with her, and Mother started shouting at me as if she didn’t care that Mr Flannigan was there. George passed Razzle to me through the window, the poor little thing was whining dreadfully. I heard Mr Flannigan tell Richard he thought it was a very bad affair to leave me with the doctor. Richard said it was none of Mr Flannigan’s business and I was sure that he and George had known about this plan for days, and that Mother has always planned to leave me here with Dr Brennan. Aunt Margaret has never liked me, though apart from being Father’s daughter I’ve never understood why. Now I’m sure she only agreed to take Mother in if she came without me. I have a terrible feeling that the words ‘look after’ mean marriage, and though Dr Brennan is a pleasant man the very thought of it makes me shudder. I once heard Mrs Reilly say he was the handsomest bachelor in the village but he is so old, at least forty, and no one seems to have wanted to marry him before.

There will be much talk in Flannigan’s pub tonight.

Phoebe let the notebook fall into her lap. She’d always imagined a great love affair between the village GP and her grandmother, the impoverished young girl from the Big House. But this sounded more like a hideous arrangement forced on to Anna by her unhinged mother. She rubbed her eyes and wondered why the local doctor would have wanted to marry a girl whose family were destitute and immersed in scandal?

Looking around her, Phoebe realised that the light was fading fast. Outside the beach looked gloomy, the tide right up, the rock half-sunk into the sea. She needed to find another place to stay; making the long drive to Cork to find a cheap hotel was all she could think of doing tonight.

She looked down at the diary still in her hand and wondered if she could take it with her, she longed to know what happened to Anna next but Honey obviously used it for a sketchbook. After a few moments she slipped it into her coat pocket; she would post it back to Honey when she’d finished reading.

Phoebe made her way down the dark stairs and left the boathouse. As she started the climb up the lane she realised that hours had passed and she hadn’t thought of David at all. 

Chapter Eight

‘She’s back!’ Phoebe heard Fibber’s shout as she walked in through the door, but when she looked around there was no one in the bar.

Katrina emerged from the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron and calling out in her rich European accent, ‘Phoebe, you have come back to us at last. We begin to wonder if you have left for good just when we are needing you so much.’

‘Sorry if you’ve been worried,’ said Phoebe. ‘I lost track of time. I’ll just go and get my bag, and then I’d better get going.’

‘No, no,’ Katrina came out from behind the counter and took Phoebe’s arm. ‘We need you to help us here tonight.’

‘I can’t, I’ve got to go.’

Katrina steered her towards the kitchen door. ‘Please stay; it will be all hell here by seven o’clock.’

‘Why?’ asked Phoebe, looking behind her at the empty pub. ‘What’s going to happen?’

‘It will be the boys. They are coming.’

Phoebe looked nonplussed. ‘The boys?’

Katrina threw her hands up in exasperation, ‘You tell her Fibber; the curry it will never cook itself.’ Katrina vanished into the steaming kitchen leaving Phoebe seemingly alone.

‘I’m at your feet,’ a voice said. Phoebe looked down and saw Fibber, crouched down, sorting through boxes of crisps under the counter, the big man straightened up and grinned. ‘I’m getting rid of the out-of-date ones once and for all.’

‘Who are “the boys”?’ asked Phoebe.

‘It’s the football team, they’re all coming in this evening and the whole town will be in to celebrate.’

‘I thought that’s what the town did last night.’

Fibber grinned and opened up a bag of onion rings. ‘Now we have to toast the team themselves – didn’t they do us proud?’ He pushed a selection of bags towards Phoebe. ‘Bacon bits, cheese balls, or good old ready-salted. Can I tempt you?’ she shook her head.

‘I’d better leave before everyone arrives, I don’t want to be in your way.’

‘We have something we want to ask you,’ Fibber said through a mouthful of crisps. ‘Would you stay another night and help us out behind the bar? My mother has taken to her bed with one of her “heads”, and we were out looking for Honey when Katrina should have been preparing the fancy curry that she’s doing as a special tonight. I just don’t know how we’re going to manage when the hordes arrive. Please, Phoebe.’ He fluttered his pale eyelashes; Phoebe laughed. ‘We’re desperate. I’ll even crack open a brand new box of fancy crisps for you, I have sweet chilli down in the cellar.’

‘Hand-cooked?’ joked Phoebe.

‘By specially trained leprechauns.’

Phoebe considered Fibber’s offer for a few moments; could she face the residents of Carraigmore again? What did she really care, after tonight she’d never have to see them again and the thought of driving for miles in the dark suddenly seemed daunting.

‘My bar skills are a bit rusty,’ she said. ‘I haven’t worked in a pub since I was back-packing around Australia years ago.’

‘They say it’s like riding a bike,’ Fibber scrunched up his empty crisp packet and flicked it neatly into an open bin. ‘You never forget how to pull a good pint.’

‘I warn you, my pint-pulling was always on the wobbly side.’

‘As long as you can keep the drinks coming we’ll be happy; no one will be looking for fancy pictures on top of the Guinness tonight.’

Phoebe smiled and took her coat off. ‘OK. In exchange for another night in your spare room I’ll help you out.’

Four hours later Phoebe staggered into the kitchen and slumped down at the table.

‘They have you worn out, I think,’ Katrina was scrubbing out a huge steel cooking pot in the sink.

‘It’s been non-stop,’ said Phoebe, her chin resting in her hands. ‘This is the first lull we’ve had all night.’

‘Carraigmore likes to party, yes?’

‘You can say that again,’ said Phoebe. ‘Those footballers are insatiable, they just keep downing pint after pint.’

‘Fibber told me it is you that keeps them round the bar. Like bees around the heather he says.’ Katrina smiled at Phoebe and Phoebe felt herself blush. ‘Don’t worry, he has told them you are grieving for your husband, you will not be interested in their big muscles and hairy chests.’

Phoebe had forgotten she’d told Katrina David was her husband, it felt somehow comforting to hear him described as that. ‘I don’t think they’ve listened to Fibber,’ she said. ‘I’ve already had three offers of a date, a proposition of marriage, and one just came straight out and asked me to go home with him tonight – he said not to worry, he had put clean sheets on his bed on Saturday!’

Katrina laughed. ‘That sounds like Brian Nolan, always not shy to come forward if you know what I mean. Did he have curly hair and ears like this?’ She pushed at her own ears so that they stuck out; Phoebe nodded. Katrina made a face. ‘I wouldn’t trust him about his sheets. You ask him which Saturday – I bet it was one before Christmas.’

‘I don’t care when he changed his sheets,’ Phoebe said. ‘I have no intention of ever going home with Brian Nolan.’

‘Did you find out about your grandmother today?’ Katrina asked as she started to unload the dishwasher.

Phoebe paused; it had been so hectic all evening that she had almost forgotten what had happened earlier that day.

‘I found the little studio where my grandmother used to live. It’s by the beach, the boathouse, do you know it?’

‘You mean Theo’s studio?’

‘No!’ Phoebe straightened up, indignant. ‘It’s mine. My grandmother left it to me and my sister when she died.’

Katrina made a sucking noise through her perfectly white teeth, ‘Oh dear. I think that Theo hopes that no one will ever come back to claim that place.’

‘Well, it actually belongs to me.’

‘But you are leaving here tomorrow?’

Phoebe shifted in her seat as she remembered she was meant to be thinking of somewhere else to go. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll go in the morning.’ Katrina said nothing for a while as she stacked towers of white crockery into a big pine cupboard.

Then she said, ‘It is a shame you can’t talk to Mrs Flannigan about your grandmother. She must have known her because she always tidies the little path and plants the flowers around the boathouse and makes Fibber paint the walls and doors every year. She say she likes to keep it nice for Mrs Brennan’s memory.’

‘Was she a good friend of hers?’

Katrina shrugged, ‘I don’t know; you ask her.’

‘How long has Theo lived here?’ asked Phoebe, changing the subject; she didn’t want to have to get into a conversation with the ill-tempered Mrs Flannigan – she already felt relief that she hadn’t had to face her all that day.

‘Theo, he come back two years ago, but he grew up here as a boy.’

‘In Carraigmore?’

‘Yes, where he lives with Honey now, in the big house on the cliff. It look like a castle. You can see it from the beach.’

‘He grew up in the Castle?’ The image of the white-haired children on the beach flashed into Phoebe’s mind: two wild boys trying their best to impress an impassive Nola with daring diving displays from the black rock. ‘His father was the film director?’

‘Film director, yes,’ Katrina said. ‘Very famous. He won an Oscar, I think.’ Phoebe could remember the middle-aged man in a panama hat strolling along the sand with a beautiful young wife. He had never noticed the little girl who watched his golden sons and coveted his home. ‘He left the big house to Theo in his will,’ Katrina continued. ‘Maeve she had dream to set up fancy hotel at the Castle. Theo had dream to come back to make pots and let Honey grow up like him – happy on the beach and running around in the green Irish fields. But as soon as they come back Maeve become very ill, and before any dreams were made true she died.’ Katrina sighed. ‘It was sad. It has made us all sad, but Theo most of all. He is unhappy man.’

‘He is also very rude,’ said Phoebe. ‘I’ve been miserable since David died but I wouldn’t speak to someone the way that he spoke to me on the beach today.’

‘You meet with him?’

Phoebe started to tell Katrina what had happened on the beach when Fibber’s head appeared round the door.

‘Phoebe, your fans are asking if you’ll do a turn on the karaoke again. Molly Mackey from the Hair Hut wants to know if you’ll sing “Did you Ever Know That You’re my Hero” and dedicate it to her husband? He’s just fixed a leaky shower head on her basin after eleven years of promising to sort it out.’

Phoebe buried her face in her hands. ‘But Fibber, I was so drunk last night. I don’t usually sing – in fact, I think, the last time I’d sung in public I was six years old and in a school production of
The Wizard of Oz
.’

‘Grand, can you sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for us?’

‘I was a munchkin, not Dorothy.’

‘Ah go on; say you’ll give us a song and I’ll make you one of my cocktails – extra strong; it’ll loosen you up in no time.’

‘NO!’ exclaimed Phoebe. ‘Definitely no more cocktails for me, thank you.’

‘Come on, Phoebe,’ Katrina was taking off her apron. ‘I will sing with you. Do you know ‘Islands in the Stream’?’ Phoebe grimaced. Katrina grinned, ‘I think you do. That is my favourite song. We do that first.’

‘You have a lovely singing voice.’ The man said as Phoebe pulled the final pints at ‘last orders’.

‘That’s kind of you to say,’ she said concentrating hard on the golden stream of lager she was pouring. All night she’d fended off a variety of propositions usually starting with just such a compliment followed by an offer of a trip to the nearest night club or something rather more bawdy and immediate.

‘What year group do you teach?’

Surprised, Phoebe looked up and found herself facing a clean-shaven face with a pleasant smile and dark eyes fringed with eyelashes she would have paid good money to have herself. The gel-styled quiff and neat checked shirt implied an interest in grooming and personal hygiene far greater than most of the men who had tried to chat her up that night.

‘Year One,’ she said. ‘Five- and six-year-olds.’

‘That’s a nice age, isn’t it? Before they get too cocky. I taught that age group in my training but I’m very happy now with my Class Fours. They’re just beginning to take a real interest in the world around them.’

‘You’re a teacher?’

‘Yes, I teach here, in Carraigmore, which is great because my parents have a farm up on the moor and I can live with them while I save up for my next big trip – I’ve seven peaks left that I want to conquer – the big E being one of them of course but that costs a fair bit.’

‘Big E?’

‘Everest – I’m looking for sponsorship but with the dodgy economic climate and everything it’s hard to find, so in the meantime I’m trying to fund it myself, which is why I still live at home and I train on the cliffs below the farm. I also love to surf and Carraigmore beach can have waves as big as houses. You know, you have the most fantastic hair, is it a perm? And the colour is wild as well.’

‘I like your hair too. Very rock and roll.’

The man grinned, little dimples forming on each side of his cheeks. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

Phoebe hadn’t had a drink all night, but suddenly a gin and tonic seemed appealing. She poured it out and raised her glass to the man to thank him.

He raised his own glass back, ‘Sláinte!’ He smiled at her. ‘That’s Irish for
To your health
.’

‘I know,’ said Phoebe. ‘My father was Irish, he always said that when he had a drink, even if it was only a weak Ribena.’

The man laughed. ‘Good for him. My name’s Rory by the way. Rory O’Brian.’

‘Mr O’Brian!’

‘Well, you can call me that if you like.’

‘I mean are you Mr O’Brian? Mr O’Brian from Carraigmore school?’

‘Yes.’

‘Honey’s teacher?’

‘Honey Casson?’ Phoebe nodded. ‘She’s in my class.’

Phoebe had to try to re-evaluate the picture she had formed in her mind of Mr O’Brian – a wizened craggy face, mean eyes looking over half-rimmed glasses, and a stern expression. This Mr O’Brian didn’t look like that at all.

Phoebe served a waiting customer and turned back to Mr O’Brian. ‘I met Honey today.’

‘She’s a nice girl,’ said Rory.

Phoebe leant against the bar and lowered her voice. ‘She seems lovely, but rather sad.’

Rory sighed and ran his fingers over the top of his quiff. ‘She ran away from school today.’

Phoebe nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘She vanished at lunch time,’ continued Rory, ‘I was demented with worry, I had everybody out looking, I had already called the Guards when her father called to say he’d found her on the beach with some weird woman.’

‘That was me,’ said Phoebe indignantly – who had called her weird?

Rory laughed. ‘I know it was you, I’m only teasing. Apart from your crazy perm you’re obviously not really weird at all.’

‘I bumped into Honey by chance but her father practically accused me of stealing her from school!’

‘The man has a reputation for letting his temper run away with him lately. He’s already torn a strip off me for letting Honey run away again. Honestly, who’d be a teacher! You get very little thanks and an awful lot of stress from the parents – thank goodness for the children; sometimes I think they’re more grown-up than the adults!’

Phoebe smiled and started to pour a pint for Molly from the Hair Hut’s husband, ‘I know what you mean, but it’s a rewarding job.ʼ

Rory grinned and took a sip of his drink. ʻIt certainly is, especially when youʼre faced with a challenge.ʼ

ʻYou mean like Honey and her learning difficulties.ʼ

ʻHoney doesnʼt have learning difficulties.ʼ

Phoebe stopped pulling the pint mid-flow. ‘Donʼt you think she has literacy problems?ʼ

ʻNo, I donʼt think so. Why do you say that?ʼ

ʻShe implied that she feels like a failure at school.ʼ

Rory looked incredulous. ʻYou think I would make one of my pupils feel bad about herself?ʼ

‘No, Iʼm just saying that maybe she needs more help.’

‘What about the pint I need?’ said Molly’s husband, indicating the glass in Phoebe’s hand.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Rory.

‘If you ask me Honey has dyslexia.’ Phoebe passed the glass to Molly’s husband, forgetting that it was only half full. ‘She needs some special attention.’