Chapter 15
15
‘That’s her,’ he said, plucking one of the photos Jess had spied on the mantelpiece earlier and holding it out to her. ‘That was taken a few months before she died.’
Jess was settled into the leather armchair, and she placed the cup of tea he’d made her down on the side table before leaning forward to take the frame from him. She didn’t know what she’d expected really, but the young girl smiling out at her made her draw a sharp breath.
Amy was quite beautiful. Her hair was dark like her brother’s, but her skin was much fairer than his. They both shared the same startlingly light-grey eyes, though. She looks just how I always pictured Snow White , Jess thought, wondering at the irony of that as she mentally swapped the seventies orange-and-brown knit dress and the long straight hair, parted down the middle, for a long red dress with puffy sleeves and waves of shiny black curls. This was the girl she’d come to meet.
‘She looked just like me mam,’ Owen said, handing her another picture.
This one was a group shot, showing a much younger Owen. He looked like a typical boy with a shock of sticky-up hair – the kind of lad who would have pinged girls’ bra straps in school. He also looked as if he would rather be anywhere than standing around having his picture taken with his older sister and parents. Mr and Mrs Aherne rested their hands on their children’s shoulders, their pride in their offspring evident as the foursome stood together frozen in time out the front of the cottage.
Jess couldn’t help but think it was a good thing that no one knew what lay in store for them and their families. Mrs Aherne had indeed been a beauty, while her husband had that certain swarthiness about him – Owen had it, too, Jess realised now. His parents made a handsome couple. And Amy, she could see instantly, was the spit of her mother – she would have grown into a stunning young woman given the chance – while Owen was a real mix of both his mum and dad. He’d obviously got his dark colouring from his father. Their noses were identical, too; slightly bent to the right. Coupled with their heavy eyebrows, it gave them both an almost hooded, brooding look. They even had the same tall and rangy builds, but Owen’s grey eyes and full mouth were those of his mother and his sister.
‘I can see the family resemblance, all right. You were a handsome lot,’ she murmured, handing him back the two pictures.
He gazed at them himself for a moment before placing them back on the mantel. ‘Aye, peas in a pod, us Ahernes.’
‘Amy would have grown up to be a real stunner. She looked so much like your mum.’
‘Aye, she did. All me mates had a thing for her. I was the most popular lad at school thanks to her. As for Mam, she was Miss County Down when she met Da.’
Jess caught a glimpse of that rare smile as he crouched down to light the fire. ‘He used to tell me and Amy a tale about how he’d won Mam over with the gift of a pig and a bunch of roses.’
Looking at him over the rim of her mug, Jess was unsure where this story was going because it certainly wasn’t the romantic tale befitting the woman in the photo she’d been expecting.
The fire suddenly roared into life, and Owen took a step away from it, catching her bewildered expression as he did so.
‘Not exactly Cinderella, is it? But Ma had a soft spot for animals and roses – she planted all the bushes out the front of the cottage – and the wee pig Da gave her was a runt, not unlike your Wilbur out there. Mam called her Marigold, and she grew up to be a very fat, spoiled old sow. The way she told the tale was that she took pity on the tiny runt and Michael Aherne, the poor pig farmer who needed the love of a good woman. If the truth be told and you do the maths, Da got her up the duff. That was the end of her reign as Miss County Down because she had to become Mrs Michael Aherne and pronto.’
Jess laughed. ‘They were happy, though? I mean before Amy, well, um, before?—’
Owen interrupted her. ‘I know what you mean, and aye, they were happy enough. Farming was a hard life back then, though, and they had their share of hard times. I sometimes felt Mam wondered about what might have been, you know, if she hadn’t been forced to settled down so young. They both changed after Amy died, though, blaming themselves for a long time. They kept her room like a shrine for years, and Mam used to sit on her bed, holding Amy’s teddy for hours on end. When she came out, all she would go on and on about was how she should have put her foot down and made us all leave the godforsaken North years ago.’ His gaze flickered to the mantel. ‘She’d wanted us to go over to the family she had in Liverpool or even go to the States to start a new life. Da wouldn’t hear of it, though; this place was his home, and I think she blamed him for not wanting to leave the farm. What would he have done? The farm was his life; he didn’t know anything else.’ Owen shrugged. ‘I’ve learned that you can’t rewrite the past, no matter how much you might want to, and this farm is the only bit left of our past now, so I’m glad we never left in that respect.’
‘You said your mum kept Amy’s room like a shrine? Would I be able to have a look? It would give me a real sense of her.’
He shook his head. ‘No, she got rid of everything in the end – took a couple of bin bags into her room and filled them. She was so angry – part of the whole grieving process, I suppose. It wasn’t long after that she got sick. Cancer like.’
‘That must have been so hard for you and your dad.’
‘Aye, it was, but she left us emotionally the day Amy died. For his part, though, Da never stopped adoring her. He always called her Bridgette his Beauty Queen, and it didn’t really matter that she could never bring herself to forgive him for not wanting to leave Glenariff because he could never forgive himself. Amy was the apple of me da’s eye.’ His eyes moved toward the front door. ‘He was a great one for the stories. Do you see that old walking stick over there?’
Jess followed his gaze to where an umbrella stand housed a battered-looking black brolly and an old cane walking stick. She nodded.
‘Well, it belonged to me granddad, and it was Da’s wee joke that he kept it there because it would come in handy one day for beating all the boys off when they came a-calling for our Amy.’
Jess smiled at that, thinking briefly of how her mother would have kept a walking stick by the front door for quite a different purpose – to hook any red-blooded males under the age of forty who came-a-calling around the neck, drag them inside and then marry them off to her firstborn.
‘He stopped telling his tall tales after Amy died.’
They were both silent for a moment, Owen lost in the flickering flames of the fire.
Something was puzzling Jess, though. Owen had told her that that terrible day in Lisburn, Amy had gone up to see a boy who, according to her best friend, wasn’t the least bit interested in her. Having seen her photo, Jess couldn’t understand how any young man in his right mind could have been anything but smitten with the gorgeous teenager. She voiced her bewilderment, and Owen frowned; it lent a harshness to his face, and his voice grew bitter.
‘Evie told us that Amy had chatted up the lad at a dance in Banbridge a few weeks earlier. She wasn’t shy in coming forward, our Amy. She had that awareness about herself that young girls have, you know?’
Jess nodded. Yes, she could remember thinking she was pretty hot to trot at the blue-light discos she’d frequented many moons ago.
‘Anyway, this lad – he didn’t belong in Banbridge, and he should never have been at the dance in the first place because he was asking for trouble like. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before one of the local lads took umbrage with him talking to one of their girls, and the dance ended with a fight. Amy was like you – into her stories. She was a right dreamer; she was always waiting for something exciting to happen, and for her, that was it.’ He picked up the poker and stabbed at the fire. ‘I suppose she saw the situation as a Romeo and Juliet scenario, you know? That whole forbidden love rot, and she was determined to see this fella again despite him telling her in no uncertain terms to leave him alone after the fight. He’d got a battering, and he didn’t want any more trouble. She wouldn’t leave him be, though, even though there was no way in hell that lad would have even looked at her again.’
There was a hole in the story Jess just couldn’t figure. ‘What do you mean “one of their girls”?’
‘We’re Proddies. It was a Protestant dance, and this lad was Catholic. It was more than his life was worth to go near her again, but Amy was motivated by fashion, not politics, and she couldn’t understand why what religion you were mattered so much. “We’re all human beings, so why can’t we all just get along?” she once asked our da, and he told her it wasn’t that straightforward. She said, “Why not? It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”’ Then she just shrugged and walked away from him. That was the last thing she ever said to him.’