Chapter 19
“What the f…?” Therese sat up slowly, and in her half-awake fog, tried to center herself in the darkened room.
As a vagabond actress and road warrior, she’d woken up in many strange budget motel rooms over the years, so many that they all tended to blend into one sad, blurry, Holiday Inn/Days Inn collage.
But this room was different. There were two suitcases on two folding luggage racks. The closet door was ajar, and she recognized familiar clothes and shoes neatly organized there.
Now she remembered. Ireland. She was at a place called Tarrymore, with Maeve, and they were going to find out—definitively—the truth about Mary Helen’s, now theirs, portrait of Lady Geraldine.
But where was Maeve? She picked up her phone. Dead. She’d forgotten to charge it, and of course, despite the detailed packing list her sister had so “helpfully” provided, she hadn’t brought a 240-volt charger adapter, and Maeve’s wasn’t in sight.
She tossed the useless phone onto the bed and walked to the window. Parting the drapes, she looked out over the parking lot and saw that it was probably late afternoon. No idea the time, but she was starving.
The man at the reception desk did not look impressed by her outfit, red Chuck T’s, Seven for Mankind jeans, and her favorite black Smashing Pumpkins rock concert tee, when she’d stopped to ask about dining options.
Screw that guy, Therese thought. She’d picked a similar shirt years ago from a dollar table at a Daytona Beach swap meet.
Condition wasn’t perfect, but this same Mission to Mars shirt, from the Pumpkins’ 1991 tour, could easily sell for six hundred dollars on her Poshmark storefront.
The shirt represented her first foray into the world of online reselling.
On a whim, she’d looked up the price on eBay and was stunned to find someone, lots of someones it turned out, would pay big bucks to relive their rock ’n’ roll years.
She’d flipped that shirt, on the spot, for seventy-five bucks.
Criminally underpriced. It had taken two more years of digging through yard sales and thrift stores before she’d found the same shirt again.
This one she would never sell. She was sentimental like that.
“The pub doesn’t reopen for dinner until six, but you could possibly find tea and a sandwich at the Willow Tree,” he allowed.
She wrinkled her nose. “Okay, not really a fan of tea, but if there’s food, I’m in. Where’s that? Can I walk there?”
“Out the door, turn right, past the distillery, less than a kilometer.” He glanced down at her unlaced Chucks. “I should think an easy walk in those trainers.”
“Listen.” She leaned in toward the desk. “I’m American, as I’m sure you already guessed, and I flunked metrics. So, are we talking a mile, two miles, or what?”
“Less than a half a mile,” he said, and he turned to pick up the phone, effectively dismissing her.
The Willow Tree, she was grateful to discover, was not a tearoom at all, just a pub with a fancy-sounding name. Therese found a seat at a small table near the back of the room.
The walls and sloping ceiling of the dining room were covered in yellowing framed photos of local soccer and cricket teams, soccer pennants, and dog-eared posters advertising horse races and rock concerts.
When the server arrived, she ordered fish and chips and a Guinness, then sat back to take in her surroundings. Unlike the pub attached to the Tarrymore Inn, this place seemed to be a watering hole for the working-class locals.
The television mounted on the wall behind the bar was playing a soccer match.
Three middle-aged men dressed in jeans and sweaters were watching the game and offering a spirited play-by-play.
Therese’s only knowledge of soccer was what she’d gleaned from watching three seasons of Ted Lasso, and she quickly got bored with trying to keep up.
A group of younger men dressed in some kind of delivery uniforms were playing darts and trading insults with one another.
There was a pool table toward the back of the room, and an older woman with wildly unkempt white hair was shooting against a man with graying porkchop sideburns who looked twenty years her junior.
She was the only other woman in the pub.
Both the pool players were smoking, and for a passing moment, Therese experienced a brief desire to join them.
But a second look at the woman, whose skin was wrinkled and weather-beaten, reminded her why she’d (mostly) quit in her early twenties.
Unless she was experiencing moments of extreme duress. Like Mary Helen’s funeral.
When her food arrived she devoured the hot, perfectly crispy fingers of cod and the salty chips, washing the food down with sips of beer.
Unlike the darts players, with their loud trash-talking, the pool players were intently focused on their match.
The woman was dressed in ill-fitting jeans that sagged in the ass, and a long-sleeved navy sweater with the sleeves pushed up to reveal ropey, age-spotted forearms. Her partner was similarly dressed, with a flat newsboy’s cap pushed to the back of his head and a graying ponytail trailing halfway down his back.
He rested his chin on the end of his pool cue as he watched his partner lean over the table and coolly call her shot.
“Four ball in the corner pocket.” She lined up her cue, drew back, and sent the balls spinning across the felt and into the pockets. “How d’ya like that, Reggie boy?” she said, with a loud cackle.
“Feck off, Esme,” her opponent said, slapping money on the pool table.
Esme? Therese wondered if she’d heard right. Could the grand dame of Tarrymore actually be hanging out in a place like this, shooting pool with a guy who looked like he could be her chauffeur?
She wished again for her phone, so that she could do a quick Google image search.
Instead, she sipped her Guinness and picked at the chips, which were already growing cold, as she contemplated her next move.
The pool game concluded, the woman plonked down onto a chair at the next table and lit up another cigarette. Seconds later, a server appeared with what looked like a gin and tonic.
It was only then that Therese noticed the dog who’d been sitting quietly on the second chair at the table. She guessed he was a spaniel of some sort. Mostly brown, with three white socks and a small patch of white under his chin that resembled a goatee.
Now the dog sat up, wagged his tail, and gave a short, happy bark of greeting. The woman ruffled his long, feathered ears, then reached into her pocket and brought out a treat. She tossed it at the dog, who caught it neatly in midair.
“What a beautiful pup,” Therese said, beaming at the spaniel. “What kind is he?”
“She,” the woman said, “is an English cocker. And her name is Sinead.” Her accent sounded posh, even to Therese’s unschooled ears.
“As in, O’Connor?”
“Close. O’Cocker.”
“Forgive me, I don’t know a lot about this breed. Is Sinead a hunter?”
“Allegedly. But Sinead here’s hunting is mostly confined to hunting for treats and the occasional slow-witted mouse.”
The woman regarded Therese over the rim of her glass. “You’re an American, I take it? Do you own a dog?”
“I wish. I travel a lot for my work, so sadly, no pets for me.”
“A shame,” the woman said. “Sinead here is better company than most humans.”
“Lucky you.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Therese, by the way. From Savannah, Georgia.”
The woman stared at Therese’s outstretched hand, then took it gingerly, squeezing once before releasing. “Esme. Quite a large Irish-American population in Savannah, correct?”
“That’s right,” Therese said. “My mother’s people are actually from this area.”
“And have you been able to dig up any of your family roots?” Esme gave her a slightly patronizing smile.
Therese hesitated. Should she tell Esme that she and Maeve had traveled to this corner of Ireland, and specifically to Tarrymore, to discover the truth about their portrait?
She decided to proceed with caution, which was totally unlike her. But the stakes were too high to bungle this first encounter.
“We only just arrived this morning, but we did take the tour of Tarrymore House,” she said.
“As one does,” Esme said. She’d pulled her dog onto her lap and was absent-mindedly stroking his ears as she gazed past Therese, at the television over the bar.
“It was fabulous,” Therese said. “The house itself, and the grounds, and the antiques, and of course, the art collection.”
“You should have seen it back in the day,” Esme said with a sigh.
“You grew up around here?” Therese asked, deliberately playing dumb.
“You could say that. My family owned Tarrymore for many generations. I grew up in that house, got married in the ballroom. Both my father and his parents and great-greats and beyond are buried in the family cemetery. Now, of course, the great house is owned and managed by the Trust. And Sinead and I live in the gardener’s cottage ’round back. ”
“Oh. That’s so sad,” Therese said. “All of it, I mean.”
Esme’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Had it been up to me, I would never have given the estate up to the Trust. But my darling little brother had other ideas, and he was able to talk my ninety-two-year-old father into believing nobody in the family could ever make a go of operating it as a profit-making concern.”
“Family drama,” Therese said, shaking her head.
“It’s the way of our people,” Esme said. “Technically, I suppose I’m Anglo-Irish, although my father became an Irish citizen when he turned eighty. And do you know how we know Jesus was Irish?”
Therese actually did know, but she wanted her new friend to share her little joke.
“Because he lived alone with Mary ’til he was thirty, had twelve close drinking chums, and his mother was convinced he was God.”
“Hah!” Therese said with an appreciative chuckle. “Good one!”
“Do you have siblings?” Esme asked.
“Just my little sister Maeve. She’s actually traveling with me.”
“Get along?”