Obit (15 page)

“How did you come to be hit?”

“We lived on a farm in County Meath, not far from Dublin. My mother had died giving birth to me and my twin. One day Cathal — Charlie — and my father were in the barn helping me with our pony, Finnegan. We had a new saddle and I was going out for a ride. I could ride at the age of five! We heard men coming. Da told us to hide, and he lay down on top of us. The men didn’t know we were there until Charlie let out a little whimper of fear. The men started shouting, my father up and ran to lead them away from us, I panicked and followed him. When they shot him, I was in the way. My father died, and I
lost my leg. All because of Charlie!”

“Your twin, a child of five,” Brennan said.

“I managed to keep my wits about me! Charlie didn’t. Here’s the result.” She raised her leg and let it thud to the floor. “After that, we were sent to live with Aunt Norah in Dublin. She was kind to us, kept us fed and got us through school. Where Charlie excelled and Nessie did not. Hard to concentrate on your sums when you’re worried about who’s laughing at you behind your back. Anyway, the poor woman did what she could, bless her. A staunch Republican she was. Like so many families, ours was divided by the Civil War. Norah had played a part in the Easter Rising. She and Charlie talked about it for hours on end; she had a convert in him. But she was getting on, and it was clear we couldn’t stay there for all eternity. Charlie went out and got a high-paying job at Guinness, and we found a place of our own. I couldn’t work of course.”

Brennan opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “And then?”

“And then Charlie saw Miss Teresa Clare Montoya Brennan making her elegant way down Grafton Street. The bollocks came home and told me all about it.”

Dublin, 1936

“Wait till I tell you who I saw today, Nessie!”

“Who?”

“A girl in Grafton Street.”

“Well, smack me in the gob! Imagine that.”

“Not just any girl. She’s brilliant. She has black shining hair and dark, dark eyes. She’s tall and slight and carries herself like a queen!”

“Isn’t that a fine thing for a Republican to be saying!”

“Oh, you know what I mean. And she looked right at me. Donal O’Leary was with me and she spoke to him! Donal says she comes into his father’s bakery in Dawson Street, nearly every day. She has the grandest name: Teresa Clare Montoya Brennan. Her da is Spanish. He teaches at Trinity College, but he used to be a diplomat; they call him ‘the Ambassador.’ Her mother’s one of the Brennans from Ranelagh. Donal told me all this, and he says his da needs another young fella to help in the shop. So, since I don’t work at Guinness on Saturdays, I’m going to work in the bakery.”

Oh, here he comes from O’Leary’s, with flour spilt all over his jumper and him not even knowing it’s there. And the grin on his face — doesn’t he look like he’s been touched by the angels? Bad scran to him!

“I spoke to Teresa today, Ness! In the bakery. We talked a bit. Well, her and me and Donal. She’s going to the opera tonight with her parents. Dublin’s a grand spot for the opera, as you know.”

“No, I don’t know. If I had the money for the opera, I’d find a better use for it, so I would.”

“We talked of other things as well. You’ll love her, Nessie – she rides!”

“Oh we’d hit it off just fine then, Charlie. Half the fun of riding is hearing all about somebody else doing it when you can’t do it yourself.”

“Ah, well, now . . . Tell me this, Nessie. Should I ask to call on her at home? She lives in Merrion Square, you know.”

“Ha! You with the arse out of your trousers going to Merrion Square. They’ll have the Guards on you; you’ll be thrown in the nick. Stay clear of there.”

Isn’t this a day to be treasured! Charlie is taking me out for a hobble round Stephen’s Green. Knowing full well that one Teresa Montoya Brennan is known to promenade through this very spot. And sure enough, isn’t she coming towards us now, with a younger girl. A plain little thing. Her sister? Bad cess to the pair of them. Now they’re on the footbridge. In the shade of the trees, except of course where the sun breaks through in a blaze of glorious light around herself. And I see she hasn’t spared any expense in her appearance. A royal blue dress, belted at her tiny waist, with a pleated skirt falling just below her knees. Soft leather shoes. She hasn’t bobbed her hair like so many of the girls; she has it pinned up in an old-fashioned style. Janey Mac, will you look at Charlie beaming at her like an eejit. He’s so dazed with joy he hasn’t even remembered to speak to her. Well, I’ll speak up for him. Oh, there goes one of my crutches . . . I’m slipping to the ground.

“Pardon me, Miss Brennan, could you help me up?”

“Certainly. Are you all right there?” Such a refined voice. “Good day to you, Charlie.”

Listen to him stuttering. I’ll do the talking here: “Did you happen to see my horse anywhere, Miss? He seems to have escaped me, the brute.” Me, with the crutches!

Poor Teresa. As polished as she is, she can’t quite hide the look of disbelief on her face. “I’ve seen no horse,” she says to me, “but if I do I’ll give him a crack on the arse and send him galloping back to you.”

Oh, isn’t that a sight, Charlie blushing from his collar to the top of his head to hear her say “arse.”

That might have made him bold for their next encounter but alas! there’s another suitor at her side now. Yes, somebody else has come along and ground little Charlie’s dreams into dust. Charlie didn’t witness their first meeting of course, though it’s a wonder, the way he kept watch for her. But he saw the rogue today. In Grafton Street. Of course Charlie takes her part in the quarrel.

“He came right up to her in the street, Nessie. Full of himself, he is. Handsome in that swaggering way some of them have. They were having a row. I was nearby and heard it.” Cowering in the shadows, no doubt.

“This fellow was trying to talk to her and she was putting him off. ‘You have something of a reputation, Mr. Burke. And I don’t mean for accosting young ladies in the street, though that doesn’t commend you either.’

“‘I didn’t accost you in the street, surely, Miss Montoya Brennan. As I recall our meeting, I simply made a courteous greeting to you in response to a little smile I thought I saw on your lips.’

“‘I don’t smile at strange men, Mr. Burke. You are mistaken.’

“‘I’ll have you smiling at me before the day’s out, Miss Montoya Brennan. I’ll have you laughing so hard you’ll be in fear for your linen.’

“‘Good day, Mr. Burke.’ And she turned on her heel and stalked away.

“But he persisted and walked after her! ‘I apologize for that remark. It must be the company I keep. My mother’s always telling me I should ingratiate myself with a better class of people. What do you think?’

“She didn’t turn to look at him but said something like: ‘I think running around with rifles and taking part in not-so-secret revolutionary organizations tends to coarsen a man.’

“And then he said to her, as serious as could be: ‘I promise you that you’ll never be touched by that part of my life. Hold me to it.’”

“Well, you know the rest. She married him. But still, Charlie had eyes only for Mrs. Burke, whether she was done up in fine style for the opera, or lumbering around with a big belly after Declan got her up the pole. All the same to Charlie.

“Until disaster struck. Declan committed a mortal sin and got himself excommunicated from the Holy Republican Church. And
that part of his life
bore down on the two of them like an armoured personnel carrier on the streets of Belfast, to the point where they fled Ireland in the middle of the night and left everything and everyone they knew behind them. Charlie didn’t last a year without her.”

The old woman began to croon: “Come back to Erin, Mavourneen, Mavourneen. Come back again to the land of thy birth! But she wasn’t coming back. So my brother packed up and emigrated with a new name and an important commission from the ’
RA
to raise funds over here to send guns over there.

“My brother made a point of learning everything he could about your mother and that led him to all kinds of information about her husband. Including what oul Dec got up to in his first few years as a model US citizen. And give the devil his due, when Charlie set himself to learning something, he mastered it! Fool that he was in many ways, he was a very able fellow indeed when it came to his tireless work on behalf of Mother Ireland. I guess he had to do something with the passion that burned within him; must have compressed it all into the intense flame of Irish Republicanism.” She looked at us as if
newly reminded of our presence. “Did you say something?”

“How do you know what you claim to know about my father?” Brennan could not keep the anger out of his voice.

“Oh, a great man for the pen, was Charlie.
Cathal.
He saw, he heard, he memorized, he wrote. In his own peculiar shorthand.”

“Who was Stephen? What was that queer drink, Lameki?”

“Oh, now, you’d have to ask Cathal all that. But, sadly, he’s no longer with us. God rest his soul.”

Brennan leaned towards her and demanded: “Who shot my father?”

A crafty look passed over her face. “I guess it was someone who can read better than you can, Burke.”

Brennan launched himself out of his seat and loomed over her, grasping the arms of her chair with his hands. His face was only inches from hers. “Someone fired a gun into a room full of men, women and children at my niece’s wedding! My father nearly lost his life. Because of you and your malicious little jest with the obituary. Your own father was shot. You were shot. How could you sit here plotting and scheming for the same thing to happen to someone else, someone you don’t even know? I suggest you examine your conscience, and I also suggest you won’t like what you find there. And after you’ve done that, you can let us know who is behind the attempted murder of my father. And make no mistake. You are every bit as guilty as the man who pulled the trigger!”

Gone was the insinuating smile, the smug amusement. Nessie Murphy shrank back in her seat, looking small and old and frightened.

“Brennan,” I began, “let’s all sit down and —”

“Get out of here!” Nessie cried. “Get out, the two of you, or I will scream the house down! The neighbours will call the police, and you’ll be taken out of here in handcuffs. Frightening and tormenting an old woman in her home. Get out!”

I got him out of there but not before he turned and pinned her once more with his damning black eyes.

“Brennan, for Christ’s sake!” I said when we got into the car. “The woman is seventy-three years old. You could have given her a heart attack.”

“The poisonous creature! I’ll get the answers out of her yet.”

“How? By terrorizing her? We’ll never get near her again. She’ll call the police if she catches sight of us.”

“She won’t want the police around, the nasty old reprobate. Imagine being Cathal Murphy and being saddled with the likes of her.”

“I wouldn’t have envied him, I admit. No wonder he died!” Then my mind veered off in a direction it had not taken before. “Or did he?”

“Did he what?”

“Did he die? We know the obituary is in some kind of code. Maybe the whole thing is a fake. Maybe there wasn’t even a death.”

“Jesus Christ that died on the cross! What next?”

“We have to consider it. I think we can safely assume he really existed.”

“Are you getting metaphysical on me now, Collins?”

“No, just lawyerly. I want confirmation that the man is six feet under. If not, did he finally act out his revenge on the man who took away the love of his life?”

“Why wait forty years?”

“Well, somebody did.”

“I’ll call Patrick, get him to look into the death records, however one does that. Then we’ll know. There’s no point speculating any further.” We didn’t say another word on the drive to Sunnyside. We went in the house and down to the family room, and sat at the card table. Declan Burke looked unconcerned as he dealt a hand of cards to the two men who were trying, without any help from him whatsoever, to unravel the mystery of his life and his near-death experience. Would I soon become so accustomed to this situation that I would find it normal?

“Who shot you, Dec?” Brennan asked. “Did you tell us and I wasn’t after hearing you?”

“I believe I made it clear that I don’t know who shot me, Brennan. Let’s leave that to the experts, shall we? In the meantime, let’s play cards.”

“That obituary now, Dec, would you be so considerate as to offer us anything by way of an explanation —”

“Your oul da is alive; he intends to remain alive for a while yet.
Ergo,
no obituary.”

“Would the name Charlie Fagan mean anything to you, Da?”

If it did, he gave no sign. “Would you ever fuck off with yourself and get serious about your cards? I’ll be dead of natural causes before we get through this hand.”

We heard someone on the stairs and turned to see Terry flying down two steps at a time, dressed in a suit and tie, his hair newly cut.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. O’Madden Burke!” his father exclaimed.

“Why O’Madden Burke?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m Mr. O’Madden Burke today,” Terry explained. “Whoever shows up looking particularly well-tailored and respectable gets slagged. You know, from Joyce.”