Whitethorn Woods (23 page)

   Myles sat and looked at the gentle man on the other side of the desk. A man who had worked very hard for what he had. It would be great to see someone like that being dealt a winning hand.

   Myles Barry was only too aware that the rumors were going to become a reality and the heat was about to be turned on. Cathal Chambers in the bank had told him about two local councillors, they were fellows who hadn't a bone to throw to a dog, and yet they were coming into the bank these days with large wads of cash that they wanted lodged in savings accounts. It was so obviously vote buying that Cathal was amazed.

   Yet what could he do except invoke the law about banks needing to know where any lodged money came from. They looked him in the eye and told him that it was from poker games. The vote about the road, when it came, would be first at local council level, and then nationally. And it looked like a foregone conclusion.

   Myles Barry looked at Neddy. He needed someone to look after his interests. These were dangerous waters that he was entering. But Neddy Nolan didn't want the big boys in Dublin, the firms that would frighten off anyone trying to cheat him. No, he wanted the man who had been at school with his brother Kit—now serving time in an English prison at Her Majesty's pleasure.

   "Sure, Neddy," Myles Barry sighed. "I'd be honored to be your solicitor."

Judy Flynn walked up to the Whitethorn Woods on her own. She wore her best outfit, a navy silk dress with a navy and white scarf. Her newly streaked hair was elegant and shiny. She wanted to show St. Ann the raw material for her quest.

   In the cave were half a dozen people muttering and praying near the statue. Judy kneeled down and got straight to business.

   "I'm going to be completely honest with you, St. Ann. I don't really know whether you exist or not, and if you do exist whether you deal with cases like this or not. But it's worth a try. I am going to come here and pray for peace on earth, or whatever you yourself think may be needed, for nine mornings in a row. That's a fair bank of prayers we're building up. And in return you are going to guide my steps towards meeting a man I can marry and have children with. You see, I do drawings all the time for children's books and yet I have no children of my own. And because of doing these drawings I sort of believe in magic, well, a magical world, where marvelous things happen. So why shouldn't I find a husband in this place?

   "Oh, and you'll want to know why I didn't find one already. That's easy. I looked in the wrong place. I looked in publishing and advertising and the media, that kind of world. Not the right base. What I would like is someone maybe from this town so that I wouldn't feel so alienated and guilty about not being here. And then I could help my brother Brian to look after our mam, I could help Kitty—I'm sure she's been up here asking you to get my brother Eddie to go back to her. Don't do it, it wouldn't work.

   "I don't think that marriage is all about appearances and dressing well, but it's only fair to tell you that this is the best I can look. I am inclined to be a bit impatient and short-tempered but I think that I am keeping it under control. And that's it now. I'll say a rosary for your intentions and I'll come again tomorrow. I can't say fairer than that."

Eddie Flynn came out of the bar in the Rossmore Hotel. Times were very worrying. He had a good business deal possibly going ahead with a gang of people who knew what they were doing. It should bring him in some very badly needed money. And did he need money just now!

   Young Naomi had been telling her parents a pack of lies, saying she was a second-year student in Dublin. Now she was telling them more lies, saying that Eddie's marriage was going to be annulled and that he was going to marry her. It would never happen, not in a million years. The girl was soft in the head.

   In many ways it would be easier to have stayed with Kitty. At least there was always a meal on the table when he got home in the evening, there were the children to entertain him. It was all a bit awkward and artificial nowadays, they seemed to think he was some kind of rat who had deserted them. Then Kitty would let him take them to the pictures in the middle of the week, and young Naomi wanted to go out on weekends. And everyone was on his case about not going to see his mam enough.

   He was weary of it all. If he went home now, Naomi would be there with pictures of wedding dresses and lists of the people they would invite. Apparently she had had a highly unsatisfactory conversation with Brian about it all and now thought they should go straight through the canon, who would surely have a more helpful attitude. And anyway wasn't he technically Brian's boss?

   On the other side of the road he saw Kitty. Or was it Kitty? She wore Kitty's anorak, certainly, but her hair was totally different and she was wearing makeup. He pulled back into the shadows and watched. It was Kitty. But she had done something to herself. Dyed her hair, maybe?

   She looked years younger.

   He saw her talking animatedly to that poor Lilly Ryan, the one whose baby had been stolen all those years ago and then her husband had turned violent. Eddie watched as Kitty moved along the street. He wouldn't even admit it to himself but life would have been a great deal easier if he were going home to Kitty for his tea.

The march against the new road was held right through the town and up to the Whitethorn Woods. Some people carried posters with save our saint on them, others had no to the new road. Television teams and journalists from national newspapers came to cover it.

Father Brian Flynn knew he would have to make some kind of

statement to someone. He couldn't sit like a dummy looking on. But he hated the thought of himself on national television.

   "I have such desperate hair, I look like a lavatory brush," he confided to his sister.

   "Go to that man Fabian, he's brilliant," Judy advised.

   "Are you mad—you'd feed a family for a week on what he charges."

   "You don't have a family to feed, go on, Brian, it's my treat," she said and that was that.

   He went into the salon feeling more foolish than he had ever felt in his whole life. He couldn't see what the guy who called himself Fabian actually did to him but he did look a lot more normal afterward.

   So he was interviewed and said that the Well of St. Ann was a place of local piety and it was always sad to see parishioners upset and their sensibilities offended.

   Then a week later he was interviewed again at the candlelit meeting calling for the introduction of something that would take the heavy traffic away from Rossmore. This time Father Flynn told the interviewer that the death of a child was to be deplored and that the authorities had a duty to do all in their power to make sure that a young life was never lost again in this way.

   "I'm sure that anyone who saw both of those interviews will think I am a complete clown," he said to Judy.

   "No, they'll think that when you're in a hole you're right to stop digging," Judy said.

   She was proving to be a much more restful companion than he had feared. She said she knew it was barking mad but she was getting a lot of comfort from that crazy old well. She had also painted her mother's kitchen and got her a kitten, which had cheered the old woman up—but not yet to the extent of admitting that she recognized Judy.

   The brother and sister had a drink together each evening in the Rossmore Hotel. Once they saw Eddie there and waved him to join them. Nobody mentioned Naomi, Kitty or Mother.

   It was a perfectly pleasant chat.

   "I think we're all getting seriously grown up round here," Judy Flynn said afterward.

   "Oh, if only, if only," said Father Flynn. He saw really immense problems ahead once the council's vote was known, which would be any day now.

   The voices for and against the road, the voices from the woods, were only gathering their strength—they had seen nothing yet.

Ah, there you are, Mercedes. I was having a little sleep there. I dreamed I was back in Rossmore, walking down the crowded main street. I often dream that. But you wouldn't know where it is, it's over in Ireland across the sea from here. Ireland is only fifty minutes on a plane from London. You should go there sometime. You'd like it there, you're religious and it's very Catholic.

   Well, it was anyway.

   I've always liked you, Mercedes, much better than the day nurses—you have more time for people, you'll make a cup of tea. You listen. They don't listen, it's sit up and wake up and get up and cheer up. You never say that.

   You have a nice cool hand, you smell of lavender, not of some disinfectant. You are interested.

   You say your name is Mercedes and that you would like to marry a doctor. You would like to send your mother more money. But it took me weeks to find even that out about you, Mercedes, because you only want to talk about me and how I feel.

   I wish you would call me Helen rather than Madam. Please don't call me Mrs. Harris. You are so friendly, so interested in my family who come to visit. My tall, handsome husband, James, my gracious mother-in-law, Natasha, my wonderful, beautiful daughter, Grace.

   You ask me all kinds of questions about them and I tell you, it's a pleasure to tell you things. You smile so much. And you aren't curious and act like the police, always asking questions. That's what David seems like to me. You know David, he is Grace's boyfriend. I think you sense that about him, you often move him gently on when he is here. You know that he distresses me.

   But you I could talk to forever.

   You love the story about the night I met handsome James Harris twenty-seven years ago when I borrowed my flatmate's dress to go to a party. He said that it was the same color as my eyes and that I must be very artistic. In fact it was the only dress between the three of us that was smart enough for me to wear.

   I told you the truth about that, and about how fearful I was about meeting his mother, Natasha, for the first time. Their home was so big and impressive, her questions so probing. I had never eaten oysters before—it was such a shock to me. And I told you the truth about a lot of things, about how kind they always were to me in the orphanage where I grew up and how they insisted on making my wedding cake. Natasha had objected at first because she thought it would be amateurish but even she was pleasantly surprised.

   I went back to see them often at the orphanage. They told me I was the only child in the home who didn't ask about my parents. The others were all very anxious to know details and if it would ever mean their mothers would be coming back to collect them.

   But I wanted to know nothing. This was my home. Someone had given me, Helen, away, no doubt for good reasons at the time. What more was there to ask? To know?

   I haven't told the Sisters that I am so ill, Mercedes. They couldn't bear it. Instead I told them that I'm going abroad with James and will be in touch later. I have left them something in my will and a letter of thanks. It's important that people be thanked for what they do. Really it is. Otherwise they might never know how much they are appreciated. Like you, for example. I thank you a lot because I am truly grateful to meet someone who will listen to me so well and be so interested in my story.

   You, who have worked so hard and saved so much, would understand how hard I too worked when I did my secretarial course here in London. The others in the class spent ages having coffee and going window shopping, but I studied and practiced very hard.

   I lived in a flat with two other girls who loved cooking so they taught me how to enjoy it too.

   On Saturdays I worked at a cosmetic counter in a big store and I got makeovers and free samples as well as my wages; on Sundays I worked in a garden center, which taught me a lot and so I did flower arranging and window boxes for people who lived nearby. By the time I had landed a good job in the City with a really proper salary I was much more accomplished than many girls who had left the orphanage with me. They always told me when I went back there that I looked like a real lady, they were proud of me and I could marry a duke if I put my mind to it.

   But I put my mind to marrying James Harris.

   I used to read novels about people like James, but I didn't believe they really existed.

   He was such a gentleman in every sense. He never raised his voice, he was always courteous, he had a way of smiling that lit up his whole face. I was determined to marry him and I worked hard at that like I had worked at everything else. I hid nothing about my past. I did not want his mother, Natasha, investigating and discovering things about little Helen from the orphanage, so I was totally up front about everything. And it paid off. She finally agreed to the wedding and I think that in a way she sort of respected me.

   I was a beautiful bride. Did I show you the pictures? Of course I did. I just wanted to look at them once more.

   All we were waiting for was a child.

   Someone to inherit Natasha's large estate. You don't call it money if you're very rich, Mercedes, you call it an "estate." So we were married for three years and no sign of my becoming pregnant. I was anxious, James was concerned and Natasha was incensed.

   I went to a doctor in a completely different part of London and had an examination.

   I wasn't ovulating, it turned out, so I would need fertility treatment.

   I knew only too well how much James would object to this. If it were proven that he was well capable of fathering a child but that his wife could not conceive, things would change between us. If Natasha knew, then the world as we knew it would end. So I realized there was no way James and I could go together like normal couples who had problems conceiving and could have in-vitro treatment.