It Was Only Ever You (25 page)

Jesus, Iggy thought to himself, what am I taking on here...

‘Sixty-forty – and I pay his salary. Best I can do. Take it or leave it.’

She made him wait for five beats, then nodded. ‘You’ve got a deal, Mr Morrow.’

Iggy went straight back to his hotel, told them to keep his room for an extra two days and cancelled his flight to Boston.

R
OSE
PASSED
a very pleasant evening with Donnie and Marisa Jones. Especially when she learned that Donnie had arranged for the local Irish Catholic priest to introduce her to an Irish gentleman the next day who might be able to help her find Patrick. Given a choice, she would have called on him that very evening, but basic good manners required that she stay with this nice family for one night, at least, as she had arranged – leaving money for them that she sensed, more than saw, they probably needed.

‘I feel so lucky,’ she said, when Donnie got back from his shift and told her about the priest.

‘New York’s not so big as all that,’ he said, ‘when you are churchgoing people. Ministers and priests in this city know just about everyone.’

‘Time for bed,’ Marisa said, scooping up the baby from Donnie’s lap.

‘Can the white lady draw me another picture?’ she cried.

Marisa smiled apologetically.

‘The white lady is called Rose – and no, she can’t draw you another picture. Goodness knows you’ve worked our guest hard enough today!’ Marisa felt bad taking money off the girl now that she had grown used to her.

It was immediately clear that this blonde, delicate-looking creature came from money. Those pearls were real. But this chick was also tougher than she looked. Stealing from her parents and chasing all the way across the world looking for her man. Marisa knew tough. Her mom had raised Marisa and her older brother, Christopher, by herself, holding down three jobs. Marisa went out working in a hair salon at fourteen, and between them she and her mother sacrificed everything to put Christopher through art school.

While Donnie put the baby to bed, Marisa went around the room tidying, carefully picking up the dozen or so drawings that her children had been pestering out of Rose. One was of the youngest child. Plump cheeks and sparkling eyes, her features captured perfectly, her nut-brown skin shaded in soft charcoal smudges.

‘You’re good,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ said Rose. She knew she was good. Praise meant very little to her.

‘You been to school?’

‘Art school? No. Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

Rose felt a little irritated.

‘I haven’t had a chance yet. I only just left regular school. My parents were going to... Well, you see I’m over here now...’

Chasing after some damn-fool man, Marisa thought. ‘My brother was in art school.’

‘He’s an artist?’

Rose didn’t care, she was just being polite.

‘Kind of. My mom and I paid for his studies, we never thought we’d see our money back but... now he has a really good job in an advertising agency.’

‘That’s nice.’

Was there any point in even talking to this girl? She was so caught up with finding this guy. However, Marisa hated to see talent go to waste.

‘It’s just he uses a lot of illustrators and you seem really good.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rose. She wasn’t sure what Marisa was driving at. A job? But that hardly seemed likely. She hadn’t even finished school.

‘Once I find Patrick I’m sure everything will be fine.’

Marisa smiled, tightly. Rich white people. They really were different.

‘Well, you know where I am,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Rose. Even though she did not have the first clue where she was at all.

*

The following morning Father Moran came to collect her in his black Ford car. She thanked the Joneses and as she was getting into the car, Marisa handed her a piece of paper with their address on it. Rose stuffed the note carelessly into her coat pocket, trying to keep herself in check as the old priest drove slowly across the bridge out of the city into the suburbs of the Bronx.

The priest was not only old but rather grumpy. As soon as he drove off he began to question Rose about why she was here and what on earth she thought she was doing leaving Foxford and demanded to know where she got the money for an aeroplane ticket.

‘My father gave it to me,’ she lied. ‘He’s a doctor.’

Rose shuddered as she realized she sounded exactly like her mother. ‘Doctor’s daughter’ gave her an elevation in status that could, if not excuse her behaviour, then at least might soften the priest’s attitude.

‘And you came here chasing after a man, I suppose?’

‘My fiancé,’ she pronounced, ‘is working in New York. I came to surprise him, but now it seems he left his previous employment. It’s just a question of finding out where he is gone.’

Father Moran shook his head.

‘And what is this fine fellow’s name?’

‘Patrick,’ she said.

‘An Irishman in New York called Patrick? Goodness me, I never heard of such a thing.’

She really did not like this priest. However, he was the only person she knew right now that would be able to help her.

‘Patrick Murphy.’

‘Well, that narrows it right down. There are hundreds of thousands of Irishmen in New York. It was very irresponsible of you to come looking for one of them without making proper arrangements. And now, do you see, you are putting all of us out.’

A terrible despair crept over Rose. Perhaps the priest was right and she would never find Patrick after all. What would she do? How would she survive?

She went very quiet and when the priest glanced across at her, he saw tears pouring out of her large blue eyes and down her creamy cheeks. He was immediately sorry to have upset her. It was just that sex and all that nonsense led to such trouble between people, and there were so many other things to be concerned about, people suffering genuine hardships, that it was hard not to lose patience sometimes.

The girl could not have been more than seventeen or eighteen, not much more than a child really. Perhaps he was being too hard on her. After all, she was a long way from home, and she obviously came from an educated class of people.

‘There there,’ he said. ‘Tom Brogan is a very good man. He is chairman of the Connaughtman’s Association, so if your... fiancé... is still here in New York, there is a good chance he’ll help you find him.’

Rose wiped away her tears and gave him a glittering smile.

‘Thank you, Father,’ she said in a heart-melting tone that made him wish everyone would address him with such devout reverence.

Rose stared out the window, feeling fearful and worried that she had come all this way for nothing. Worse was the idea that she might go home without seeing Patrick.

This place felt so strange, so foreign. Everything looked so new, so modern. Even new houses in Ireland looked old. Everything in Ireland was touched by history, personal or political. Everyone knew where everyone else was from. If you tried to build a new house, or a new life, the past would always catch up with you. Over here, the past meant nothing. Perhaps she meant nothing to Patrick any more. The thought terrified her more than the idea that she might never see him again.

After what seemed like an age, driving endlessly through neat, swept streets with polished gardens, they came to a wide road and pulled up outside a rather grand house.

Father Moran lifted her bag out of the car and a nice man, about the same age as her father, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a benign expression, greeted them at the door.

‘This is Rose,’ the priest said. ‘She has managed to find herself alone in New York, and I was hoping you’d be able to help her out.’

‘Hello, Rose,’ the man said. ‘We’ll see what we can do for you. Won’t you come in, Father?’

‘No, no, Tom – thank you. I have urgent business to attend to...’ Truthfully, he had had enough of this rather mournful young woman’s company and was anxious to get back to the city and the good cooking and jolly ramblings of his comely Kerry housekeeper.

Tom took Rose straight into the kitchen. It was a Saturday and Nessa was in the city shopping. The house had not been the same without Ava, and while they both missed her dreadfully, Nessa was still disappointed and upset over her marriage. Tom had hoped Ava would have called in to see him at work sometimes, but even if she had, it would have felt disloyal of him to meet her without Nessa.

It was nice to be in the company of a young woman again. Although it was very unusual for a young Irish woman to arrive in New York and not immediately go into the care of employers and/or family. The young men were the ones that came here speculating for work and found themselves getting into trouble.

He made her tea, and within a few moments they were talking about where she was from, although not the full circumstances of what had brought her here. After the priest’s unsympathetic reaction, Rose was nervous about confiding too much in strangers. These people could help her to find Patrick, but she was also entirely dependent on them. She was in a strange place without her parents there to look after her. She needed for this kind man to like her, so she moderated her story. She told him that she had always dreamed of coming to New York. ‘And what do your parents make of it?’ he asked. How could she begin to explain? So she just tightened her lips, and looked across at him with her big, blue eyes and let him draw his own conclusions. Some part of Rose knew that Tom would assume her parents had committed sins against her that were too harsh to be spoken but she
was
still angry with them. Rose justified the assumptions that would be made by her coy silence by telling herself that her parents had acted cruelly and unreasonably. When Tom asked where she got the money to come, she told him the truth and said she had stolen it from her parents. She then said that she knew it was wrong and she hoped that one day they would forgive her. She just wanted to have an independent life. That last part was a lie, but she wanted this kind man to like her. She needed his help.

Tom flinched. Ava had an independent life now. A life independent of them, anyway. Tom did not press Rose as to precisely how her parents had been cruel to her but experience in these matters told him it must have been severe enough for one so young, and clearly so delicate, to have run to the other side of the world to escape. He knew, too, that cruelty was not the preserve of the poor, and that snobbery often let psychopaths from the privileged class go unpunished. Her parents, probably her father, must be truly despicable.

‘I have a friend in New York I would like to find,’ she said. ‘His name is Patrick.’

Tom smiled. She was such a sweet thing. ‘I’m afraid every Irishman in New York is called Patrick, my dear. Even me, occasionally,’ he said.

‘Patrick Murphy,’ she said. ‘We were engaged. Well. Sort of.’

A small cloud wandered into Tom’s mind.

‘Again,’ he said, ‘Patrick Murphy is a very common name.’

It was unusual that his new son-in-law (it still felt unnatural calling him that) was from the same part of the world as this girl and his name was Patrick. However, both were common and if, by some remote chance, they did know each other, the last thing his daughter needed was more complications in her already very fraught situation. So Tom pushed any idea of further investigation to the back of his mind and concentrated on where to place this needy young woman.

He could see that she had never worked behind a bar and would not be fit for cleaning bathrooms or waitressing with her rarefied background. In all honesty, he had not got a clue what to do with her. She needed to be advised and looked after by women. Maybe pointed towards a secretarial course of some kind. For the time being, however, the best place for this innocent young woman was, clearly, with the nuns at St Agnes on the Upper West Side. Tom took Rose out to his car, lifted her unopened bag into the trunk and, as he settled her into the front seat of the Lincoln, apologized at the swiftness with which she was on the road again.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Back to the city again, I’m afraid.’ Honestly, he thought, Father Moran didn’t have the brains he was born with. The priest could have organized all of this himself.

‘I think you’d be best off with the nuns, dear. Don’t worry, they are not all old fuddy-duddies. The sisters at St Agnes are all quite young and very kind. They’ll help you get a job and fix you up with an apartment in due course.’

Rose felt quite sick. She had not travelled all of this way to live with nuns. She could do that at home.

‘So you don’t know anyone called Patrick Murphy?’ she said again.

Tom felt irritated by the question.

‘No,’ he said, quite firmly, ‘I don’t.’

Rose looked out the window at the wide roads, the lattice bridges, thousands of cars and people. Patrick was out there somewhere but she was as close to finding him as she had been at home in Mayo. With a rising sense of panic and dread the magnitude of where she was and what she had done began to hit her.

She was broke and utterly alone in big bad New York City. Worse than that, now she was going to live among nuns.

T
HE
KID
was sitting on the edge of the stage with his legs dangling down in front of him. He was wearing a suit and his hair was slightly frizzy as if it had been freshly washed. He was handsome, but he needed to look a whole lot slicker than this if Sheila was going to do anything with him.

She had been home to change out of her work clothes before coming back to the Emerald. She had put on a fresh uniform of black pants and polo neck sweater, but made herself look smarter by backcombing her hair into a high ponytail, applying some eyeliner and lipstick, then throwing a smart trench coat over the top. Gerry, the lousy manager, had opened the door for her and said that Iggy was in the office and she could call in on him later, when she was done.

Holding out her hand as she walked across the room, Sheila now said, ‘Hello, Patrick, I’m Sheila, your new manager. I am so excited that we’re going to be working together.’