Chapter 40
The courtyard at the back of the Harbour Bar was full…
and the clientele were mainly on the elderly end of the spectrum, enjoying themselves, pints of Guinness, small glasses of sherry, large goblets of wine, clinking tumblers of gin and tonics filling the tables in front of them.
Many of them were people I’d never seen before, men and women who all seemed to know Granny Annie and had joined the fray.
Once the text messages had been sent out, they had beelined for the pub, and the retired, but not retiring, citizens of Sandycove were now having a whale of a time, talking and laughing at the tops of their voices.
Granny Annie was in the centre of it all, telling stories from the old days, and laughing uproariously at others’ remembrances.
Lucy and I were on drinks duty, ferrying back and forth from the bar, with more pints for newcomers, extra nuts and chips, and top-ups for everyone. The landlord had even placed two fresh bottles of Irish whiskey in the middle and a bucket of ice, with the instruction to, ‘Lash into that, lads.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Johnny, seemingly rapt in the story.
‘It’s only the thing that will make or break a man…’
‘Or woman,’ said Matty.
‘Indeed,’ said Eddie. ‘But it’d break you in two, and so hard, it takes years to recover.
You have to score a goal, from nowhere and nothing, with every eyeball boring into your skull, and their team lined up to catch it and the goalkeeper on highest alert.
Impossible. So young David O’Leary placed the ball… ’
‘A nation held its breath,’ said Matty.
So did Johnny, who had seemingly been suddenly seized by a love of soccer.
I slipped onto the edge of the bench beside Granny Annie. She tucked her arm through mine and I rested my head on her shoulder for a moment and we listened to what everyone was saying.
‘The revitalised knitting circle was a chance to be together,’ Betty was saying. ‘It felt empowering. If that doesn’t sound silly.’
Mary shook her head. ‘You are never too old to be empowered. That’s the problem. As you age, people expect you to give everything up, bit by bit, including your own power. Well, that’s not going to happen.’
‘But even Mrs DeCourcey was destroyed by them.’
There was much murmuring and mumbling and agreement.
‘Who’s them?’ I asked. ‘You mean…?’
Mary nodded. ‘The bigwigs.’
‘The men with money,’ said Betty.
‘The Richmonds,’ said Diana. ‘They know people, know the right people to bribe, the right palms to cross with silver, that kind of thing. They don’t like us because we all remember the past.’
‘The past?’
‘Oliver Richmond and how he treated our poor Lolly,’ said Mary. ‘He has a son. And they are like peas in a pod. Even the grandson Charlie is heading down the same path.’
‘Like Teflon was Oliver,’ said Granny Annie. ‘Gliding through life, greasing the right palms, never getting caught out.’
‘Oliver murdered Lolly,’ said Diana. ‘Well, not literally, but he was the reason why she didn’t have a Christian burial, why her own mother wasn’t allowed to hold a funeral because she had taken her own life, why she was sent from this world to the next without so much as a gathering of us, her friends. ’
There was nodding of heads all around.
‘Poor Mrs DeCourcey.’ Mary looked ashen. ‘I went to see her and she said she wanted nothing to do with any of us. She wouldn’t even look any of us in the eye…’
‘Do you remember when she arrived into Mass?’ said Diana. ‘This was when we all used to go, of course, not now when we’ve all grown so tired of the lies. Anyway, she pushed open the doors and there was such a clatter… and Father Joseph—’
‘Oh, he was no man of God,’ said Betty. ‘In cahoots with every shleeveen this side of the Shannon. Loved a brown envelope and a backhander…’
‘And the Richmonds,’ muttered Ethel, who had been sitting there nursing a rum and black.
Mary was on the other side of Granny Annie. ‘This all happened the Sunday after you’d gone and the village was in uproar.’
‘The knitting circle was being threatened with closure by the Richmonds,’ said Betty.
‘Just like now,’ said Mary.
‘They were sending solicitor’s letters to Mrs DeCourcey,’ explained Diana. ‘A big black car would draw up outside her house and some lackey in a suit would deliver them.’
‘I wish I stayed,’ said Granny Annie, ‘but I was just so upset. I couldn’t think or see straight.
Or even breathe. I think I was about to lose my mind.
I remember thinking the world was closing in on me.
The morning after she died, the day after the regatta, and I was shaking so much, my whole body in shock, I think.
And down at the Forty Foot that morning, there was no one there apart from the seagulls and I was gasping for air.
I felt like I was being buried alive… and I left two weeks’ later.
Took me months and months of filthy Boston air before I felt I was breathing properly again.
The grief took longer. Losing a friend like that… ’
‘Your best friend,’ said Mary, feelingly.
‘My soulmate,’ said Granny Annie. ‘It was us against the world.’ She reached for my hand and patted it.
‘It was a terrible loss. In those days, you could get a passport down at the docks, there were so many people leaving and emigrating, that it could be done in a matter of hours. My heart was broken, but my own mother understood. She wanted me to have a better life. I wasn’t going to college, not like Lolly was.
We didn’t have the money. I was going to have to work, anyway. ’
‘Eddie was cut up about you leaving,’ said Betty.
The women looked over to Eddie, who was now standing on his chair miming a soccer player heading a ball, his eyes were shining, his face animated. He punched the air then. ‘We cheered like we’d never cheered before,’ he said.
‘The party went on for a fortnight,’ Matty was saying, to a still-rapt Johnny.
Time heals, I thought. Life goes on. You don’t want it to, selfishly you want it to stay exactly still while you deal with your grief, but babies are born, birthdays are celebrated, people laugh and are happy and all the good things continue while you are under your cloud.
Eddie realised he was being watched. ‘Just teaching this young fella’ – Johnny grinned at me at being described as a ‘young fella’ – ‘the finer details of the beautiful game. He’s for Ireland, of course. Matty and I will bring him to an international sometime.’
Mary resumed her story. ‘So we’re all in Mass.
Shell-shocked, really. Hoping against hope that Father Jospeh will remember our Lolly.
And he starts his rant about sin and all that and no one should take their life when only God can do that and she has committed the most terrible and evil sin, and then there is a great wail… ’
‘Like a banshee,’ said Diana.
‘And there she is, Mrs DeCourcey, standing there, her hair loose and down her back, like a woman possessed, and she screams at him, walks up to the pulpit and grabs his face and pushes him back… and then she turns to us and says she curses the Richmonds, curses the priest and hopes evil will come to anyone who speaks ill of her Lolly.’
We were all silent thinking of this scene.
‘And what happened?’ I ventured.
‘Well, Father Joseph was changed to a different parish,’ said Diana. ‘We don’t know if it was because he asked to, to get away from her. But his housekeeper said he was terrified to sleep, kept hearing voices and noises, believed himself to be haunted.’
‘And the Richmonds?’ I asked.
‘Well, Oliver married a couple or so years later. She was not a happy woman…’
‘Who would be? Married to him,’ said Betty.
‘She would join us for swims, the poor thing. Elizabeth was her name. Didn’t say much, did she? Never confided in any of us.’
‘She did with me,’ said Mary. ‘From time to time. But sparely. She was economical with words, so she was. Things were very difficult, she said. She only died ten years hence, left the three men alone.’
‘It’s Charlie I feel for,’ said Diana.
But he’d be fine, I thought, if he was able to shake off his inherited arrogance. But didn’t we all inherit things, the good, the bad, and wasn’t it up to us to decide what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to find for ourselves?
Betty smiled and shook her head. ‘Ah, he’ll be all right. If he stops trying to impress his father and grandfather. We shall see how he turns out.’
‘But Mrs DeCourcey,’ said Granny Annie, ‘what happened at Mass?’
‘So, she left, banging the door behind her, leaving us all electrified, and then, one by one, we all stood up.’
‘Eddie was first, do you remember?’ said Betty. ‘And then you, Mary.’
‘That’s right, and we all went, all of us, Lolly’s friends, and I don’t know who was left in that church, but we walked Mrs DeCourcey home.
She didn’t say a word to us, I recall, her face upright, her nose in the air, her body tensed like a bodhrán.
The pain was there, in her eyes, and I will never forget it.
At her gate, one by one, we went and shook her hand.
And we watched her walk inside and close the door behind her.
Mrs DeCourcey was done with us all, the village.
She had been destroyed. Lolly wasn’t even allowed in consecrated land, she’s buried on the edge of the graveyard. ’
‘Mrs DeCourcey has never stopped grieving,’ said Diana. ‘And why would she? When I see her now in her wheelchair…’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘She’s alive?’ And then I remembered that house that Henry and I had passed when I had first arrived, the one with the tangle of roses and the shabby door, and I felt certain that was hers. ‘Does she live in the house on the corner? The one with the gnarled trees and porch?’
‘That’s the very one.’
‘Well, she’s just about still going,’ said Mary. ‘Hanging on to this world, although the life drained out of her long ago. Two nurses in with her, twenty-four-hour care. She must be getting on for one hundred now.’
It was as though someone from a storybook had come to life. Antoinette DeCourcey was alive.
‘She’s very frail now,’ said Mary. ‘Rarely leaves the house…’
‘Just every morning to the grave,’ said Diana. ‘It’s unmarked. Obviously. No headstone or anything. You know its hers because there are always fresh flowers. She’s a recluse really. Hates everyone in the village, I think.’
‘Does Mrs DeCourcey know about the cup?’ I asked.
‘What cup?’ asked Granny Annie.
‘The Lolly DeCourcey Memorial Cup which is presented to the winner of the regatta,’ said Betty. ‘It was started that summer she died. And it’s been going ever since.’
‘Until this year,’ said Mary. ‘The committee are voting to change it to the Oliver Richmond Cup. Only Matty is holding firm, but we heard earlier that they have decided that majority holds sway.’
‘Oh dear Lord,’ said Granny Annie, looking pained. ‘And this is a done deal?’
‘Yes, we think so,’ said Betty. ‘Matty was up late into the night yesterday at the committee meeting. A decision has to be made and he keeps being outvoted.’
‘And the regatta is starting tomorrow,’ said Mary. ‘Pressure’s on. The marquees are up, they are out there now putting the buoys in the water to mark the sailing course.’
‘And no one has tried to talk to Mrs DeCourcey about the renaming?’ asked Granny Annie.
‘We wouldn’t want to upset her,’ said Mary, ‘being so old and all that. The poor woman has been through enough. But no doubt she’s kept abreast of everything from her two nurses. Lovely women they are.’
‘But why are the Richmonds wanting to change it now?’
‘Legacy,’ said Mary. ‘A legacy award for Oliver. The final cover-up of Lolly’s death. The stain of what happened to Lolly DeCourcey still hangs over them. We don’t forget. But the next generation will. And it will be like nothing ever happened.’
‘So the Richmonds want to completely obliterate all memory of Lolly, but why the knitting circle as well?’ I asked.
‘I suppose they know we haven’t forgotten and it’s in memory of her, and William Richmond knows it,’ said Mary. ‘It’s nothing to him to call one of the eejits in the county council office and get them to send a letter and drum up all sorts of rules, regulations and prohibitions.’
There was fervent head nodding all around.
Granny Annie closed her eyes for a moment, as though she couldn’t bear it. ‘I’m glad she put a curse on the Richmonds,’ she said. ‘I really am.’