The Ballymara Road (17 page)

Daisy’s brother had not blamed Alison in any way for his sister’s disappearance and had been grateful for the care she had given to the sister of whom he had known nothing until the death of his parents.

The family were still in shock at the news that, after a difficult birth leading to fears that she would be brain damaged, Daisy had been placed in what was in effect a Dublin orphanage, under the care of nuns. As if that were not enough, they had been dismayed to hear that, whilst still a child, she had then been shipped to Liverpool, where she had been pressed into service as a housekeeper to the murdered priest.

Via his own contacts, Howard had arranged for Alison to speak to the police in Dublin. They had then met with Daisy’s brother, who was the state solicitor and much respected by the Dublin Gardai.

‘’Tis is a mystery, so it is,’ said the Dublin detective. ‘She was seen standing by the boat rails one minute but then, when it came time to disembark, she was nowhere to be seen.’

Alison asked the question that had been preying on everyone’s minds since the moment they heard that Daisy had not met up with her family at the agreed rendezvous.

‘Could she have drowned?’

‘Not impossible,’ replied the detective. ‘But, if she had, her body would have washed up somewhere by now. The boat had almost docked the last time she was seen on deck. I would say that her drowning was highly unlikely.’

Reassured that there was a strong likelihood that Daisy was alive and with the knowledge that she would most likely be found at some stage, Alison agree to name the day and to put Howard out of his misery.

Howard and Simon now stood at the back of the church in the graveyard, out of sight, but with a good view of the road so as not to miss Alison’s approach. Simon held out his silver cigarette lighter to Howard as they lit up.

The top clicked back into place with a cushioned slickness.

Not for the first time, Howard wondered where Simon got the money from for all his fancy bits. The lighter, the cigarette case packed with Pall Mall cigarettes (which, Howard noticed, Simon bought only on days when he thought he might have to offer a woman a ciggie from his expensive case), his smart suits and the new Ford Capri in which Howard had been grateful to be driven to the church.

‘You should be careful smoking those Pall Mall,’ said Howard. ‘That’s the only link to Molly’s murder. Just because one was found at the murder scene doesn’t make it glamorous to smoke them, you know. What happened to your Woodies? Not good enough now, eh?

Although Simon had the same rank as Howard, his manner was bumptious. He always assumed authority over his colleague, yet both were on the same pay scale. Howard had commented on it to Alison only the previous week following the wedding rehearsal when Simon, much to their surprise, had presented them both with a solid silver rose bowl.

‘Even accounting for the fact that he has no wedding to pay for and obviously no intention to start a family and buy a home, he seems to spend his money lavishly,’ said Howard.

‘I’m not complaining at his foolishness.’ Alison had smiled. ‘’Tis a beauty of a rose bowl all right.’

Howard knew better than to pry or ask Simon for an explanation. No other officer in the force was as close to Simon as he was. Howard never asked personal questions, which Simon obviously appreciated. To Howard’s knowledge, Simon had no girlfriend and had never had one, in all the time they had been in the force together. He lived alone in his Aigburth house and visited his mum every other weekend. At lunchtime he enjoyed a roast beef sandwich and a slice of the home-made fruitcake which he brought back from his visits home. That was about as much as Howard knew, or was ever likely to know.

Howard, who was less secretive and more down to earth altogether, was more of a sausage-roll-and-a-custard-slice-from-Sayers man. Simon was a member of a rather posh golf club on the Wirrall where, at the weekend, he sometimes teamed up with the chief super and his friends. One of the officers from over the water had told Howard that a politician often played a round with them. Simon never spoke of it and Howard dared not ask.

Howard knew the closest he would get to the golf club would be if he were ever asked to caddy and the chances of that were very slim indeed. Now he smoked his cigarette down to the tip in less than a minute.

‘Let’s have another,’ he said to Simon, ‘and then we will move back inside.’

As Simon offered his cigarette case to Howard, they both peered over the church wall to watch the bridesmaids arrive.

Nellie Deane alighted from the car first, followed by the younger Doherty girls and then the page-boys, Little Paddy and Harry. They had been prepared and made ready for the day at Alison’s house by her sister. Everything had to be perfect and Alison had taken no chances.

‘Strange that not long ago we had both those girls’ fathers in the cells, questioning them over the priest’s murder, and now their kids are Alison’s bridesmaids,’ said Howard.

Simon did not reply. He squinted into the sunlight as the girls fussed about their lilac chiffon dresses and white satin shoes. He could hear the voice of the now oldest Doherty girl wafting up to them on the warm breeze.

‘Will you get off my shoes, Niamh. You have put a stain on the white satin. Oh God, would you look at that, now.’ Angela bent down and rubbed at the shoe like crazy.

‘Stop it,’ hissed Nellie. ‘You are making your white gloves dirty.’

Neither girl had ever been so dressed up in her life. It was making them nervous to the point of nausea.

Alison Devlin had chosen Nellie Deane and the Dohertys for a reason. Not only were they her favourite pupils at the school, but both families had suffered more than most in their lifetimes. Alison had the softest heart.

That could be the only explanation why Little Paddy had been chosen as page-boy.

‘Alison, we would have to disinfect the lad before we could put him in a page-boy outfit,’ Howard had remonstrated.

‘Aye, we will that and won’t that give us just a huge sense of satisfaction now,’ Alison replied.

Howard was starting to realize that he had as much influence over what happened at his own wedding as he had over the weather. He would have to accept that this was also the beginning of the rest of his life.

‘God, I feel so ashamed,’ said Little Paddy, as he tried to pull the ruff down from his throat.

‘Don’t complain, Paddy,’ said Harry. ‘Ye have a new pair of shoes for wearing a fancy outfit for the day. Ye won’t have to borrow anyone else’s for ages now.’

Harry patted his friend on the back. Little Paddy smiled. Sometimes he felt as if Harry was more like what a da should be than his best friend.

Wedding nerves had reached the Priory. This was Father Anthony’s first wedding since taking over St Mary’s church and he knew the turnout would be huge for the most popular teacher for miles around.

‘Harriet! Harriet!’

Father Anthony shouted from the top of the stairs down to his sister, who was carefully decorating the two last trifles with silver sugar balls, fanning out from tinned pears which had been placed in a pattern of flower petals, laid on a bed of Fussell’s tinned cream. It was all ready to deliver to the Irish centre for the reception. This would take place straight after the nuptial mass. Harriet had stomped round the kitchen, shaking the cream in the tins to thicken it, and was now running late. The whole process had taken far longer than she had anticipated due to the unexpectedly warm weather.

‘Shake them above yer head,’ Annie O’Prey had told her the previous day. ‘It makes them thicken quicker.’

Harriet couldn’t see how this could be true, but she had done it anyway.

Harriet and Alison Devlin had become good friends since Harriet had moved into the Priory. Jointly, they had helped to heal broken families and nursed a community back onto its feet. They had become almost inseparable as a result and it seemed only natural that Harriet would play a main role in the organization of the wedding.

Harriet was a helper and a healer, but, despite the fact that she was the priest’s sister, she wasn’t terribly holy. Something she took care to keep secret.

The fact that her brother was conducting the nuptial mass of her new best friend made the whole thing very tidy, which was just how Harriet liked things to be.

‘You would think no one else had ever been married on this street,’ Annie O’Prey had grumpily complained a number of times when Harriet had asked for the sitting room to be given an extra polish and a run over with the Ewbank, ready for yet another wedding-planning tea.

‘Wedding planning? I’ve never heard the like. All she needs to do is make a white frock and turn up at the church. I’ve never known such a palaver.’

In the Priory there had been talk of nothing but the wedding.

The reception, the dress, the food and the endless fittings for the bridesmaids’ dresses and the page-boys’ outfits. Decisions over colours and flowers and what food to put on the buffet. It had been a huge and never-ending frenzy of activity.

Harriet held onto another secret throughout. Never once did anyone see the pain that sometimes squeezed her heart or the odd tear that sprang to her eye at the sad thought that she, so truly now the spinster of the parish, would possibly always remain so.

Most women were married by the age of twenty-one. Any older was seen as being highly unusual. Alison, who was now thirty, had thought she had been well and truly left on the shelf. But no one, not even Alison Devlin, entertained the thought that, at the grand old age of thirty-five, Harriet Lamb would ever be married herself.

‘Anthony, stop shouting.’ Harriet ran up the wooden stairs from the basement kitchen, closely followed by Scamp, who had quietly inserted himself into the daily running of Priory life and, subsequently, Harriet’s affections.

One advantage of the wedding planning taking place at the Priory was the legitimate reason it gave Little Paddy and Scamp to be useful. There were always errands Harriet needed to be run. Little Paddy also got to eat up the leftovers from Annie O’Prey’s baking, despite Anthony’s constant complaints about the boy and his dog hanging around the kitchen. Anthony might have been the priest but there was no way he was the boss, not even in his own Priory. Alison and Harriet had a lot in common.

‘I cannot find the list of family names I have to read out in the service. Have you put it somewhere when you were tidying? Why do you have to polish my office so often?’

‘Because I am your housekeeper, Anthony, that is my job. I look after my holy brother. I have told Annie O’Prey to polish in here on Mondays and Fridays. A twice-weekly damp dust and a polish in a big old priory like this is not too often.’

Harriet removed an envelope from his desk drawer on which Alison Devlin had written a long list of names to be mentioned during prayers. At the top of it was Sister Evangelista’s, while the bishop’s was nowhere to be found. Father Anthony had discovered the bishop had seriously upset Sister Evangelista before his tenure and no matter how many ways he had tried to extract the reason for this, her lips remained sealed.

‘Don’t ever mention the bishop if you want the cream to stay fresh,’ Harriet had told him a few days after their arrival. ‘But don’t ask me why. I will find out in good time, but it is a tricky one all right. I have never known a bishop to be so disliked. All I know is that after Father James Cameron’s death, the bishop was no help whatsoever. In fact, from what I can gather, he was nowhere to be seen. He ignored Sister Evangelista’s phone calls, he was unreasonable with her when she did get through to him, he made poor decisions and he was bad-tempered altogether.’

‘Blimey!’ said Father Anthony. ‘Well, here’s hoping I’m never on the wrong side of Sister Evangelista.’

‘You?’ said Harriet. ‘Anthony, you have everyone you ever meet eating out of your hand. You are goodness itself, so how could that ever happen?’

‘Now,’ said Harriet, ‘we had better hurry or we will be late and that will not do for the priest. Let me just place a damp tea towel over the last trifles. It seems to me as if half of Liverpool is attending this wedding and that trifle is their favourite dish.’

They both stopped short in the hallway, hearing the sound of organ music as if carried on the rays of sunshine that fell in shimmering pillars, through the open Priory door.

‘Look at them all,’ said Harriet, smiling up at her brother. ‘I have never seen so many people stand outside a church to watch the bride arrive.’

‘Aye, well, it’s no different from home. We may be in Liverpool, but everyone here is Irish and the ways have just travelled across the sea.’

Father Anthony waited while Harriet pulled on her lemon gloves. She picked up a lemon-and-white hat from the hall table and said, with a flourish and a spin, ‘There, holy brother, will I do?’

‘You are a vision of primroses, sister. Mammy and Daddy would have been very proud.’

‘Come along then, Father Anthony,’ she said briskly, gently pushing her brother in the small of his back as they stepped outdoors.

They walked down the path together but could barely make their way through the throng of people assembled outside the Priory walls, lining all the way down to the church gates.

The crowd parted to allow the priest and Harriet through. The words, ‘Morning, Father,’ rang out from everyone they passed.

For everyone in return, Father Anthony had a smile and a greeting. ‘Morning to you, ’tis a wonderful day,’ he called to the happy well-wishers.

No one saw Alison Devlin’s car, as it passed the top of Nelson Street and then swung away again.

‘Go round once more,’ Alison urged the driver with an uncharacteristic impatience. ‘I don’t think they are ready for me. I can see Father Anthony and Harriet walking to the church. I want to make a big entrance. Turn round quickly.’

‘Why not, queen,’ laughed her father, as he sat in the back of the car and lit up a cigarette. ‘You only get married once. Let’s make the most of it.’

‘Da, watch my veil with the match,’ shouted Alison as a profusion of gauze, trimmed with appliquéd white cherry blossom, almost went up in flames.