The Disenchanted Widow (21 page)

“Well, yes…just a moment.” She’d rattled him. A rare thing, indeed. A first. Then: “Let me finish this call, Mrs. Halstone, if I may. I need a private word with you.”

He indicated a chair, and spoke into the phone again. “I’ll have to call you back. Sorry about that. Bye now.” He hung up.

A bit abrupt with that caller, Bessie thought. The tension she’d created needed smoothing. “Was the lunch all right, Father?”

“Lunch was excellent…yes, excellent, as always.”

“Thank you. Glad to hear it. Do you need me at six?”

“Yes indeed…Well, no…no, as a matter of fact. You don’t need to come back.” He was studying the carpet, distracted. “I have to go out. Yes, out…parish business. We priests are rarely off duty, alas.”

She saw that he could not meet her eye.
Still thinking about the secret woman. Men!

She wondered again about that “parish business.” He could be away for hours at a time and could never say exactly when he’d be back for supper. He tended of late to disappear in the afternoon. Hence she found herself making meals in advance, for him to reheat on his return.

“Right,” she said. “Well, if you’re sure. It’s no—”

“Yes, absolutely. You enjoy the rest of your Sunday.” He turned his gaze to the window. Bessie studied the back of his neatly groomed head. “Lovely weather,” he continued. “You should take a trip to the seaside. Portaluce. It’s not far. I’m sure your boy would love it.”

“Maybe I will.”
He probably spends longer at the mirror on his hair than I do on mine. What’s the point of that if he can’t marry? But an affair on the sly?
“And the private word, Father?”

He turned to her, puzzled. “Private word?”

“Yes, you said you wanted a private word a minute ago, when you were on the phone.”

“Oh, of course!” His voice took on a confidential tone. “It’s a delicate matter, Mrs. Halstone, but one I feel a little uneasy about.”

“Oh.” Had he smelled the alcohol on her breath? Impossible. Not from that distance.
Not unless he’s got the snout of a bloody Labrador. And even so, the parsley would have foiled him.
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Halstone?”

“Well…no, Father, if you don’t mind. My son, y’see. What was it about?”

“Yes indeed, how remiss of me. I’ll come straight to the point then. It’s just that, well…it’s just that I haven’t seen you, or indeed your son, receiving.”

Bessie was flummoxed.
What in heaven’s name is he on about? Receiving what? Stolen goods? Gentlemen callers?
“Sorry…receiving what, Father?”

“Oh, you don’t understand the term. I see. Well, what I mean is that I haven’t seen you receiving Holy Communion. It’s an important part of the Mass. In fact, attending Mass and not receiving the sacrament is akin to—” Father Cassidy gazed heavenward and stirred the air in an effort to conjure up an appropriate comparison. “Akin to, shall we say…attending a banquet, suffering hunger pangs, and not partaking of the sumptuous feast laid on especially for you.”

For a moment Bessie was lost for words, but she rallied, biting back impatience and affecting interest. “If…if you say so, Father.”

“Yes, why go hungry when spiritual sustenance can be had right there at the altar?”

And why don’t you give my head peace and let me get on? I cook and clean for you. Isn’t that enough?

“You’ll see us at the altar next Sunday, Father, that’s for sure.”

“Excellent. I hear confessions every Saturday morning and evening, as you know. Confession is an important prerequisite of repentance. Preparing the ground, as it were. Tilling the soil.
Rooting out the weeds.” He checked himself. “But you must get on, Mrs. Halstone. I’ve delayed you quite long enough.”

Too right ye have.
“Oh, that’s all right, Father.”
Confession, indeed!
“If that’s all?”

“Yes, yes…of course.”

She made to leave, then wavered. “Oh, Father…”

“Yes?”

“We’re alone here, aren’t we?”

He arched a Gregory Peck eyebrow. “We? I don’t follow you, Mrs. Halstone.”

“Well, Father, what I mean to say is…you’re…you’re the only one that lives here?”

He stared. She felt her cheeks heating up; his coldness had her flustered.

“Well, it’s…it’s just that, the other day I thought I heard someone upstairs. But…but you were out.”

“Oh.” His face relaxed. “An old house like this.” He scanned the ceiling. “It creaks, it groans. I expect we’ll all be doing the same in our old age.”

“R-right, but—”

“Now, Miss Beard would blame
him
.” He indicated the portrait over the mantelshelf. “Judge Cosgrove Carson, God rest him. He built this house in eighteen hundred and ten. Lived to the ripe old age of ninety-eight. A good man. Yes, a very good man. He bequeathed this house and its lands to the Church.”

“Are you saying it’s his ghost, Father?”

He smiled. “No, no. I said Miss Beard tends to believe in such things. The dead don’t come back, Mrs. Halstone.” He left off his inspection of Judge Cosgrove. “No, the dead do not return. So you either imagined the noises or simply heard creaking timbers.” He plucked at imaginary lint on his sleeve, looked back at her, and smiled. “I’ll hear your confession this Saturday. And the boy’s, too, of course.”

She was being dismissed. She wouldn’t be getting a straight answer.

“Yes…well, I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said.

As Bessie exited the room she felt uneasy. Father Cassidy was being less than truthful; she was certain of it. There was something not quite right about St. Timothy’s parochial house and its handsome incumbent.

Disquiet tugged at her. She wondered what it was she’d let herself in for.

Chapter twenty-four

W
e’re getting there, my dear Countess, and not before time. In fact—” Lorcan stayed his hand and shifted his gaze to the watch on his wrist. “In fact, another ten days at most should finish you. Yes, finish you and liberate me.”

It was early morning in his studio. He sat in front of the easel, concentrating on the Countess’s chin and jawline. Every morning since coming to Tailorstown he’d risen at six to spend three hours on the portrait. He needed the luminous clarity of the light in those precious hours. Flesh tones demanded a delicate touch, the keenest eye, the sharpest focus. Besides which, painting in oils was a painstaking process that could not be rushed, due to the various drying times required when layering pigments. The earlier the start, the better.

The silence of sunup aided his concentration, too.

With the aid of his loupe, he compared the photograph of Reynolds’s original portrait with his own efforts. He nodded in satisfaction, set the instrument aside, and took up his brush again. As he blended paint, he was appreciating the harmonious chatter of birds in the trees beyond the square. Very soon, the churr of car engines would overwhelm such agreeable music, as man and his works intruded upon another day.

With this thought came the idea of escape, of finally casting off the Dentist’s yoke and being free of the tyrant. Four long weeks of sustained effort were enough for any man. He was tired. He yearned to have his life back. But how, short of killing him, could he rid himself of the monster?

He stopped the brushwork. No, no, he could never kill a man. Even swatting a fly was difficult enough. Perhaps someone else would take him out. There were sure to be whole battalions of enemies simply waiting their chance, biding their time.

He dipped the brush into some linseed oil and brought it back to the canvas, moving now to shade in the hollow in the Countess’s throat. But apart from the unlikely scenario of the Dentist’s demise, what would ensure his freedom? Perhaps he could flee, go abroad. America? Yes, it was always a possibility. Aunt Bronagh, his mother’s colorful sister, was forever inviting him.

In a sideboard drawer downstairs lay an accumulation of international money orders, sent by his aunt on successive birthdays. He recalled that the first little gift dated from the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. Year upon year the money orders would arrive, each one no great fortune in itself—$20 here, $50 there—but over time they amounted to quite a tidy sum, more than enough to cover his return airfare to Florida, with generous spending money. That, of course, was his aunt’s intention.

But somehow he couldn’t picture himself living under the same roof as Bronagh. She was so unlike his mother; she was a woman who believed in enjoying life to the full, having survived three husbands, four stepsons, a couple of heart attacks, and a botched face-lift. Retirement had not blunted her joie de vivre. Latterly the septuagenarian had found herself paid work as a fitness instructor in a Miami care home, where she’d recently put her back out while demonstrating the spine-stretcher resistance movement on a wonky Wunda Chair.

Yes, Aunt Bronagh was always a possibility, but only for the most extreme circumstance.

He smiled at the thought of her. Knew everything there was to know about her life through a frenetic correspondence of lavender-scented letters she kept up with his mother. Missives he was tasked to read aloud every time he returned home. With the passing of the years, Aunt Bronagh’s handwriting had come to resemble a series of phonetic glyphs from an ancient scribe. Writing that was, of late, challenging even for his mother’s lollipop magnifying glass.

How would he ever keep up with Bronagh’s energetic lifestyle if he did decide to relocate stateside? He imagined there were no speed limits on the pace of life in Miami. The very thought exhausted him.

No, life was infinitely less complicated in Northern Ireland—for all its troubles. And nowhere less complicated or slower than in dear old Tailorstown.

He was amazed at how easily he’d fallen into a routine since coming home. He didn’t really miss the museum, being under the yoke of the meddling curator or at the mercy of the chivvying Stanley. There was relief also in being free of his digs; no longer having to thwart Mrs. Hipple’s fry-ups was doing his digestion a world of good.

Yes, banishment to Tailorstown had given him pause. Had forced upon him the need to stand back, take stock, evaluate his life and the direction it was heading in. Prior to this enforced break, he’d been seeing just as far into the future as a narrow beam might allow. Getting up. Going to work. Coming home to dine, read, reflect, before finally falling asleep under the eiderdown quilt of his rented bed. Now things had switched to full beam. There were matters that needed attending to. Decisions to be made. He could see all too clearly that only
he
could sort it all out: his mother, the business, his career.

Change was in the air. Life was demanding a different kind of action.

A couple of hours later, with the light altering and the demands of the day upon him, Lorcan stopped work, cleaned his brushes, and went to look in on his mother.

He found her in the living room as usual, cup of tea in hand, feet resting on the pouf, and the ever-present radio tuned to Radio Ulster.

“Morning, son,” she said, her eyes going immediately to the headless statue on the dresser.

“Morning, Mother. Yes, I know. She’ll be conjoined this very day.”

“It’s just that Rose said that Father Cassidy said…well, there’s an ugly gap, you see, to the right of the altar, and it looks—”

“As though she’s been assumed into heaven.”

“Away with you! I was going to say it looks bad.”

“Indeed! We can’t have that.”

He went through to the kitchen, helped himself to coffee, and carried it back into the living room.

“Father Cassidy is going to be raking in so much money from his new bingo initiative,” he said, sitting down opposite her, “he could buy himself a new statue. I thought gambling was a sin, anyway.”

“Yes, well…he’s very thrifty, you know,” said Etta, blinking rapidly—a surefire indication to Lorcan that she didn’t approve of his criticism. “Raising money for church funds couldn’t be classed as gambling. It’s all in a good cause, you see.”

“If you say so.”

“Now, Rose said she’d call by this afternoon. She’ll take the statue round to Father Cassidy if it’s finished. She’s very good like that, Rose.”

Lorcan felt a small panic rising at the mention of Rose’s name. In his experience the woman rarely gave her mouth a break. At their last encounter, she’d swamped him with a tsunami of information concerning the assorted ailments various people in the parish had suffered in his absence.

No, his time was precious. Rose was best avoided.

“Oh, no need for that! I’ll deliver the statue myself. I would like to meet the good Father in person…get the measure of him.”

“Just a minute, son,” said Etta, raising the volume on the radio.

“
The security alert follows a coded message to the Samaritans in the early morning. The green Renault was left outside Milligan’s fashion shop in Canal Street. The area has now been made safe. Key holders have been asked to check their premises. This is the second bomb alert in Carngorm
—”

“God, Lorcan, isn’t it dreadful? That’s just up the road from us.”

“I know.” Lorcan’s grip on the coffee mug tightened. This rural outpost was a safe place, surely. Bombs and bullets were the language of the city he had left behind. The image of the decrepit house on Nansen Street rose in his mind like a dark cloud. It was as if the nastiness had followed him.

“What do those boys think they’re about at all?”

“Don’t worry, Mother. Nothing’s going to happen
here
.” Lorcan was at a loss. “Milligan’s must’ve been targeted because it’s in a mixed community.” Though he knew the real reason lay with the passing of Bobby Sands and the imminent death of hunger striker number two: local man, Francis Hughes.

Etta put a hand to her heart and sighed. “Now that you say it, son, you know I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, Ivan Milligan married a Catholic, but he didn’t turn himself. Although I believe that the children are being brought up in the faith.”

He finished his coffee and got up. “Now don’t waste your time worrying about those idiots. Nobody was hurt, and that’s the
main thing.” He went to the dresser and picked up the statue. “The Blessed Mother needs to get her head in order. I’ll fix her this very minute.”