Chapter 38
“I should warn you, the Grogans are, erm, a lot,” Liam said as he pulled the Jeep alongside half a dozen cars parked in a meadow below his brother’s farmhouse.
“I could say the same about my family,” Maeve replied. “Don’t worry. I don’t scare easily.”
Liam reached for her hand as they walked through the pasture. “Watch, now, for cow patties. Luke thinks of himself as a gentleman farmer, and he keeps all manner of livestock around the place.”
“He isn’t a farmer?”
“Of sorts, I suppose. Luke’s the family success story.
Dropped out of university and started a software company with some drunken mates he’d met there.
Angela, his appropriately named wife, supported him in the early years of his madness.
Ten years on, to the shock of everyone except Luke, they sold the company for an obscene amount of money.
So now he plays at farming. They’ve three kids; Eamon and Aidan, the twins, are nine and Claire, the baby, is four. ”
As they got closer, the house came into view. It was white, Georgian Revival, with fluted columns and pilasters and wings stretching out on either side of the two-story entrance. A plume of smoke curled from the back of the house. Liam sniffed. “Good God, Luke’s been barbecuing again.”
Maeve gasped. “It looks like Tara. You know, from Gone With the Wind.”
“Exactly. Poor Angela could not talk him out of buying the place once the estate agent showed it to him. ‘Incredibly vulgar’ and ‘bougie’ are the phrases she uses, but Luke adores it.”
“Tell me about who else will be here,” she urged.
“Cormac, the middle brother, and his wife, Siobhan, and their two kids; Augusta, or Augie, as we call her, is thirteen, and Mallory is nine I believe.”
“Cormac’s the one who helped you build the Jeep?”
“Good memory. And there’s sure to be an assortment of other cousins as well, including Maddie and Jamie and their crew. I did tell Maddie you’re wanting to ask Jamie about his mum, and she thought that would be all right.”
He squeezed her hand as they approached the house. “Here we go.” Suddenly the front door flew open and a barefoot little girl with dark curls dressed in a sparkly pink tulle princess dress hurtled across the porch toward them, arms open wide.
“Uncle Liam! Guess what?”
Liam swept the child into his arms. “What? Tell me quick, will ya. I’m dying of suspense.”
“Maisie had kittens, and I get to keep one for my very own!”
“What?” Liam’s eyes went wide. “You’ve got a kitten? What spectacular luck. What’s its name? Can I see him?”
“It’s a girl, silly. Her name is Pepper. Because she’s white with black spots.”
Claire reached into the bodice of her dress and pulled out a tiny, wriggling creature and thrust it into her uncle’s face.
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
Liam took the kitten in both hands and held it in mock reverence. “I think this is the most beautiful kitten I’ve ever seen.”
Claire’s gaze turned toward the stranger. “Uncle Liam, Mum says you have a new lady friend, all the way from America.”
Maeve felt herself blush from the roots of her hair down to her shoes. A full-body blush. It was a first for her.
Liam threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Your mum is right. Would you like to meet her?”
The little girl bit her lower lip as she considered. “Is she nice? Nicer than Bonnie?”
It was Liam’s turn to blush now. “Much nicer. The nicest, actually, lady friend in the world.” He took a half step away and bowed from the waist.
“Claire, this is my lady friend, Maeve.”
She looked Maeve up and down. “Hello,” she said finally. “Are you going to make my uncle move to America?”
“What? No, of course not,” Maeve told her.
“Okay.” Claire’s face brightened and she tucked the protesting kitten back down into the bodice of her dress. “Do you like children?”
“I love children,” Maeve said.
“Bonnie did not like children. My mum said she was a nar … a nar…”
“A narcissist,” Liam said, chuckling. “And your mum is correct, Bonnie was one of those, but she’s gone off and married some other poor fellow, so no worries in that regard. I assure you, Maeve is nothing like that.”
“Okay.” Satisfied with his answer, Claire turned and skipped away.
“I did warn you,” Liam said.
The family was assembled on a brick patio shaded by a pair of tall oak trees.
“Here.” Liam handed her a bottle of Guinness. “Preemptive strike. You’re going to need this.”
The Grogan clan was, as advertised, rowdy and irreverent, but ultimately friendly and decidedly curious about Liam’s new romance.
Maeve was thankful when Luke’s wife, Angela, immediately took her under her wing, walking her around to the assorted relatives and introducing her as “Liam’s friend.”
They found Cormac, the middle brother, sitting on the grass with his twin nephews. One of the boys was loudly howling while his uncle held a bloody paper towel to his knee.
“Eamon?” Angela turned to her other son. “What did you do to your brother?”
Both boys were stick thin, all bony elbows and knees, with dark hair and freckles. They were dressed in matching shorts and striped soccer jerseys.
“I didn’t do nuthin’, Mum,” Eamon protested.
Cormac looked up and gave his sister-in-law an apologetic shrug. “This one,” he said, jerking his thumb at the wounded Aidan, “ate all his own ice cream and then decided to help himself to that one’s ice cream as well.”
“It wasn’t his,” Eamon said.
“Was too, ya rotten little bastard!”
“Aidan!” Angela looked mortified.
“He saw me take a bite, and it was the last chocolate, and he knows that’s my most favorite.”
“There was an altercation,” Cormac added. “I intervened, no bones were broken, although the chocolate ice cream, unfortunately, got spilt on the grass and immediately eaten up by one of Luke’s hounds.”
“Serves you both right,” Angela told her sons. “Now go on, the two of you, and stay out of trouble, or you’ll spend the rest of the day cleaning the goat pen.”
“No way!” Aidan jumped to his feet, his injury forgotten. “Thanks, Uncle Cormac.” Both the boys raced away.
“Who’s this now?” Cormac asked, standing and brushing off the seat of his jeans. He was at least three inches taller than his younger brother, with the same dark hair and an elaborately waxed handlebar mustache.
“This is Maeve, Liam’s friend, whom he told us about. Be nice, can you, and don’t shock her with any of your stories about the nonsense you and Liam used to get up to.”
“Me?” Cormac feigned offense. “I would never.” He held out his hand, Maeve took it, and he pulled her in for a brief hug.
“I don’t know what calumnies Liam’s told you about me, but whatever it was, I assure you, it’s only ten percent accurate.”
“He did tell me the two of you built his Jeep together,” Maeve said.
“Yes, well, I did all the engineering, and most of the actual work, as well as supplying all the parts,” Cormac boasted. “In return for which I was supplied with some very nice whiskey.”
Maeve felt an arm snake around her waist and turned to see that Liam had joined the conversation.
“I see you’ve met the bad seed,” he said. He turned to his sister-in-law. “Luke says to tell you the hamburgers are done.”
“Which means burnt to a crisp,” Cormac predicted.
“Not this time,” Angela said. “I deputized Maddie to supervise. And you know how precise she is with everything. She’ll have her meat thermometer at the ready.”
A long table covered in a red-and-white-checked tablecloth had been set up on the patio, and now a dozen or so Grogans were seated on folding chairs, passing platters of hamburgers, bratwurst, and side dishes.
Liam steered her to two empty seats at the end of the table, beside his cousin Maddie and her husband. “Mads, you remember Maeve, right? And Jamie, this is my friend Maeve.”
“Hello,” Jamie said shyly. He glanced over at his wife, and then back to Maeve. “So nice to meet you.”
“And you,” Maeve said. Jamie was in his late forties, she guessed. He had a long, narrow face, was balding, and his wire-rimmed glasses and white dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves lent him a vaguely professorial look.
“Mads tells me you’re curious about the IRA raid at Tarrymore. I’m not sure how helpful I can be. Liam says this has something to do with a portrait that was among the paintings that were stolen?”
“Yes, a portrait of Lady Geraldine Fitzhugh is what I’m specifically interested in.”
He nodded. “How much do you know about the robbery?”
“Really, only the basics I learned from newspaper clippings and local gossip.”
“Right,” he said, removing his glasses and wiping them on a napkin. “So I’ll tell you the version I pieced together, over the years.”
Maddie stood. “I’ll go suss out the pudding situation, shall I? While you two talk?”
“Lovely,” Jamie said, launching directly into his story.
“My mother’s given name was Margaret, but she was called Peggy. Her father, my granddad, was a solicitor, in the city.”
“You mean London?”
“Yes. They were well-fixed, and my mum was their only child. She was quite bright, always very interested in science. She was keen to go to university, at Oxford, where she’d applied and won a scholarship to study chemistry, but my granddad was an old-fashioned sort and didn’t see the need for well-bred girls to fill their heads with formulas and numbers and such when they were only supposed to marry well and produce a respectable number of grandchildren for him to dote on.
But my mother was a stubborn sort. Finally, she wore Granddad down, and along she went to Oxford, which is where her life … changed.”
“How so?”
“How do most good women come to a sorry ending?” Jamie said.
“It was the ’70s, and that was a time of tremendous upheaval in Ireland, and England.
She met a man at Oxford named Danny Dwyer, who happened to be a member of the IRA.
He was the one who radicalized her and recruited her to join the gang.