Chapter Six #2
“At least I dodged changing nappies,” Lena points out.
Her reasons for staying childless weren’t the ones she gave Noreen.
She wasn’t going to let any child of hers be ruled and shaped by Ardnakelty, but neither was she going to raise one behind her barricades; those were her choice, not one she had the right to make for anyone else.
And yet, even though Noreen’s wrong, she’s somehow managed to be right.
Here Lena is, exactly where she said she’d never be, battling this townland over a child.
“I’d take a mountain of nappies over this,” Noreen says. “I would. With the nappies, and them not sleeping, and getting sick in your hair, at least you know where you are.”
“I would as well, to be honest,” Lena says. “I’m well used to cleaning up shite, with the animals. I’m not used to this.”
“I always thought you’d do great with kids,” Noreen says. “All of mine adore you, you know that, don’t you? Honest to God, it’s a great comfort to me, knowing if there’s something they don’t wanta tell me, they could go to you.”
“You mightn’t like what I say to them,” Lena warns her. “I’m a bad influence, remember?”
“Ah, stop that. I wouldn’t mind what you say. Just so’s they have someone they can talk to.” Noreen takes the jar back off Lena and stirs it absently. “There’s a few people saying Rachel mighta been playing offside,” she says. “That’s why I wanted to know where you heard it.”
“What people?”
“Ah, eejits, just. Michelle Healy, people like that. Gossipy aul’ bitches, throwing muck at someone who’s not here to defend herself.”
Lena asks, “What does Mrs. Duggan say about it?”
Mrs. Duggan is Noreen’s mother-in-law. Back when Lena and Noreen were kids, she ran the shop, along with its associated information network; now she spends her days immense and motionless in an armchair at Noreen’s sitting-room window, trawling the street with pale, flat, expressionless eyes, but she still finds ways to get hold of what she wants.
Mrs. Duggan is even better at intelligence-gathering than Noreen, her tastes run darker, and unlike Noreen, she never parts with any of her hoard for free.
“She’s said nothing. Sure, Dymphna wouldn’t know much about the young people’s goings-on, only what she hears from me and the kids.
But I’ll tell you this”—Noreen points her spoon at Lena—“when Rachel was alive, I never got one sniff of her doing any such thing. Not a sniff. And I woulda known—sure, the dogs in the street woulda known; Rachel couldn’t hold her water, God rest her, if you asked her for the time she’d give you her life story.
I’d bet any amount of money that poor girl never in her life looked at any fella but Eugene Moynihan. Isn’t that a terrible thing?”
“It is, yeah,” Lena says. She finds herself short of breath; it takes her a second to understand why. Here she is, involved. She’s only put one toe into the river, but she can feel the surging voracity of the current sucking at her.
“If I hear anything about why she done it,” Noreen says, “I’ll let you know. To settle the child’s mind.”
“Thanks,” Lena says. “That’d be a big relief.”
Noreen has gone back to drawing swirls in the Nutella with her spoon, not looking at Lena. “D’you actually wanta feck off to Dublin or somewhere?” she asks. “Or were you only saying that ’cause I annoyed you?”
“Ah, I was just being a narky cow,” Lena says. “Like I told you, I’m settled. I’m grand.”
“That’s what I thought. Just, the kids’d miss you terrible, and I would as well, and you never know, do you?
With people. You can’t ever be sure.” Noreen is welling up again.
“Look at Rachel, just the day before she was in here buying hair spray and giving out ’cause the damp was wrecking her curls, and now…
” She gives a huge, gulping sniff, puts a hand over her mouth, and starts to cry.
After a second, Lena scoots along the counter and wraps an arm around her shoulders.
Noreen drops her head onto Lena’s chest, disregarding her makeup altogether, and sobs like she’s been saving it up for weeks.
Lena sits there, holding her, and is taken aback by how natural it feels.
The last time she hugged a woman was twenty years ago, when their mam was alive.
The bell dings and Mouth McHugh charges in, mud-splattered and halfway into a rant about the weather.
He takes one look at the pair of them, stops in his tracks, horrified, and backs out.
Lena and Noreen explode laughing. They clutch each other, rocking and laughing and gasping for breath till it sounds like sobbing all over again.
Mart, of course, spotted Tommy’s car at Cal’s place, just like Cal told Lena he had.
He shows up around lunchtime, squelching across the field to Cal, who is taking advantage of a break in the rain to cover his vegetable beds with a layer of manure and straw, against the coming winter.
Today Ardnakelty is being beautiful in a way that has an eerie tinge: the air is cold and still, filled with a haze that leaches color away so that the greens fade into grays towards the horizon, like the fields are slowly turning to stone.
“Morning,” Cal says, straightening up on his spade, when Mart gets close enough. He’s alone; Kojak took one look at the muddy field and flopped down in the shelter of the wall, to wait for Mart to finish his business.
“D’you know what that there mansion needs?
” Mart says by way of greeting, pointing his crook at Cal’s house.
“A name. You’re here almost four years now, man, and here’s everyone still calling this the O’Shea place, like you don’t exist. Give it a name, and get a good big plaque for your gatepost. That’ll put manners on them. ”
“Half the house names around here, I got no idea how to even say them,” Cal points out, “let alone what they mean. If I try naming this place, I’m gonna end up calling it Horse’s Ass Hill or something.”
Mart hoots with laughter at that. “Horse’s Arse oughta be Tonecapall, if I’m remembering my Irish right. That’s got a lovely ring to it. Go on, do it. I’ll pay for the plaque.”
“I get enough shit in Seán’s as it is,” Cal says.
“The lads’d enjoy themselves,” Mart concedes, “but they’d come round in the end. You’ve earned naming rights; you have the place in great shape altogether.” He squints over at it. “How’s the aul’ roof getting on?”
“Ready for winter,” Cal says. He goes back to his bucket of manure, courtesy of Skippy Gannon’s cattle. He knows where Mart is heading, but he feels like making Mart do a little more of the work.
“Ah, that’s great,” Mart says, smiling at him. “I thought maybe Tommy Moynihan interrupted you before you had it done.”
“Nope,” Cal says. “His timing was good.”
“Was he looking for a sideboard? I’da thought Clodagh’s taste would lean more towards marble, with a bitta chrome on the side.”
“Tommy was looking for a personal PI,” Cal says. “He wanted me to ask around, try and find some reasons why Rachel Holohan went in the river.”
Mart’s eyebrows shoot up. “Was he now,” he says. “And what didja say to him?”
“Told him he’d got the wrong guy,” Cal says.
That sends Mart off into a fit of giggles. “God almighty, I’da given a lot to see that,” he says, wiping his eyes. “The great Tommy Moynihan, being told to stick it up his hole by some Yank that’s only here a wet weekend. How’d he take it?”
“He wasn’t happy,” Cal says. “But hey, neither was I.”
Mart gives him a long look and a nod. The giggles have fallen away. “Well,” he says. “There you go, Sunny Jim. That’s one crossroads behind you, anyhow. How does it feel?”
Cal has finished spreading the manure. He wipes his spade clean on the grass and moves on to the straw, which is also courtesy of Skippy.
Straw is in short supply this year, after the summer’s rain, but Skippy wouldn’t take money.
Cal is going to make him a display shelf for his father’s old World War II models.
Mart watches him work. “Rachel drank antifreeze,” he says. “Didja know that?”
“I heard,” Cal says. “I’d like to know why Tommy’s so set on finding out her reasons. He said it was ’cause Eugene’s upset, but I don’t see that guy shelling out hard cash just to settle Eugene’s feelings.”
Mart ruminates over that for a while. “D’you know what age Tommy is?” he says suddenly, miffed. “He’s not a kick off sixty. You wouldn’t credit it, wouldja? You don’t see that fucker hobbling around on any aul’ crook, and there’s hardly a wrinkle on him.”
“A soft life’ll do that,” Cal says. “If you’da got yourself an office job, you’d look like George Clooney right now.”
“ ‘A fine figure of a man,’ ” Mart says. “That’s what people say about Tommy. D’you hear anyone saying that about me?”
His eyes, squinting off at the mountains, are absent; he’s talking to let his mind work. “They say it behind your back,” Cal says. “You oughta hear Noreen. I think she likes you.”
Mart grins automatically. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he says.
“We’ve the local elections coming up next spring.
I think Tommy’s setting up young Eugene to go into the aul’ politics, God help us all.
It runs in the family, sure: Tommy’s dad, the Boss Moynihan, he was a county councilor, and he woulda been a TD, only for he had a heart attack and hadta take things easy.
We all thought Tommy was headed the same way, in his young days—every time a pothole got fixed, there was Tommy at the door with a leaflet about how ’twas all his daddy’s doing—but he changed his mind, in the heel of the hunt.
I’d say once he got his hands on Clodagh’s daddy’s money, the entrepreneurial spirit took over. ”