Chapter 42 #2
Esme exhaled and released a stream of smoke through her nostrils. “Thank you,” she said pointedly. She gestured to the cocker spaniel. “Come to Mummy, my angel.” The dog promptly hopped onto her lap.
“You’re welcome. Sinead is a sweet little girl. How long have you had her?”
“Let me think.” Esme closed her eyes. “Ah yes, she was born the year after the queen died, so that would make her nearly three years old.” She stroked the dog’s long, silky ears. “She’s quite indispensable to me.”
“When we were talking at the Willow Tree, you mentioned in passing that your infant son is buried at Tarrymore,” Therese said.
“They’re all there, and one day soon, I shall join them,” Esme said without a hint of regret in her voice.
“You said your husband, Sheff, was gay.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
The question hung in the air for a moment. Esme sipped her drink, held her cigarette over a porcelain plate, and flicked the ash.
“I’m guessing he wasn’t your child’s father.”
“As far as the family was concerned, he was the father,” Esme said. “No need to muddy the waters with inconvenient truths.”
“Was your baby’s father one of your new revolutionary soldier friends?”
The old woman let out a long sigh. “His given name was Michael, but everyone called him Mick. Handsome devil, coal-black hair and the most beautiful face. The face of a cherub, but the soul of a sinner. I was smitten the moment we met. Such a little fool.”
“Was he a member of the gang that robbed Tarrymore?”
“The lookout,” Esme said.
“Will you tell me how it all went down?” Therese asked.
Esme lit another cigarette while she considered the question.
“Dwyer wanted to bomb a Bank of England branch, there in Dublin, to make a bold statement. Starr knew explosives. She’d studied chemistry at uni.
I was horrified when they announced the plan.
There’d been other bombings, and the Gardai was mobilized.
Armed guards everywhere, not to mention all the bank tellers and customers.
So many potential victims. Too many witnesses.
I suggested something more … manageable. ”
“Tarrymore.”
“Precisely. The men objected, but Starr liked the plan. As she said, low risk, high rewards, and by then she’d become the de facto leader.”
“And you were only too pleased to have the opportunity to exact revenge against your father,” Therese suggested. “For favoring your brother over you.”
“I knew his financials weren’t rosy. After the war, people didn’t want to work on the farm, the tax burden was enormous, and he’d made rubbish investments, all of them on my brother’s advice.
I went to Papa with several plans that would have put the estate back in the black, but Geoffrey had his ear, and he refused to consider any of my suggestions. ”
“So, payback.”
“Starr assured me that no one would actually be harmed. A simple operation. They would demand a ransom for the paintings, it would be paid, and the men in prison in Limerick would be released once the art was returned.”
“What was your role in the robbery?”
“I advised on which paintings were most valuable, drew a diagram of the house. I rented the cottage up in the Wicklow Mountains where the gang was to hide out while they waited on the ransom money to be delivered.”
“But you weren’t physically there that day, correct?”
“I was to have met them at the rented cottage with another car, which Mick had stolen for that purpose, but on the actual day of the robbery, I fell ill.”
Esme’s mouth twisted with the remembered pain. “When I woke up that morning, I was bleeding. Profusely. I had the most fearful cramping. Up until then, I hadn’t told Mick that I suspected I was pregnant.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “He’d made it clear from the beginning that he had no use for children.
Also, I suspected he’d already lost interest in me.
That morning, doubled over in pain, I told him he’d have to make other plans to have the car delivered, because I thought I had food poisoning.
He was furious, we had a row, and he left. ”
“Dear God,” Therese said. “Did you see a doctor?”
“Not at first. I … let nature take its course.”
“You miscarried, alone.”
“Women have endured worse over history,” she said.
“The baby was a boy. So very tiny. Eventually, later in the day, I called Sheff and told him what was happening. He was quite decent about it. Picked me up, took me to the accident and emergency. By then I’d lost a terrifying amount of blood.
The upshot was that I was told I would now never have children. ”
Therese found herself at a loss for words. Esme Rossington was so prickly, so standoffish, yet she’d just shared a moment of vulnerability that had probably been fifty years in the making.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, reaching out to touch the older woman’s hand. “That must have been devastating.”
Esme stared down at her hand, her expression blank, then slowly withdrew it to her lap. “I’d never been sure I wanted children. My own mother was the least maternal creature you’d ever meet, and I suspected that I’d turned out to be the same. Later, I felt relieved.”
She turned her gaze to Therese, sitting in her kitchen, dressed in faded denim and her prized black Pussy Riot concert tee and her red high-top Chuck Taylors. “What about you, then? Do you have children?”