Chapter Eight #2
“That’s what I figured,” Lena says. “Cal’s feeling protective, is all.
When he gets like that, he goes after every answer he can come up with.
Like clay-pigeon shooting: he fires them all out there and sees how many he can take down.
” Sheila smiles. Her smile still has an out-of-practice look to it, like she’s doing something risky.
“I figured that one would get shot down,” Lena says. “What I wondered about was Rachel Holohan. Something was on her mind, to make her do what she did. I wondered if you had an idea what it was, maybe, and Tommy wasn’t happy about that.”
Sheila shrugs. She puts a hand to the side of the teapot, checking the temperature. “I’d say Rachel just had more weight on her than she could hold,” she says. “The Moynihans are awful heavy. Once you got in under them, you’d never get out. You wouldn’t be able to breathe, even.”
“They’d be a lifestyle choice, all right,” Lena agrees. “I wouldn’t fancy it myself.”
“That’s one reason I wanted Johnny,” Sheila says.
“Everyone thought ’twas only ’cause he was a fine thing, but I wasn’t that thick.
I wanted Johnny ’cause there was nothing to him, only the laughs and the rides.
He was light. I felt like, if I wanted to, I could always get out from under him.
” She gives Lena a sudden grin. “Not like that.”
“I wasn’t thinking any such thing,” Lena says, mock-primly. “You’ve a filthy mind.”
Sheila grins again, but her mind’s not on it. “Your Sean was different,” she says. “He’d weight to him.”
“He did, yeah,” Lena says. “I knew if I took up with him, I wouldn’t get out. I wanted him enough that I was all right with that.” This is as close as she’s come, ever, to talking about Sean with anyone. It feels dangerous. Part of her is pulling to get up and leave.
“I oughta have wanted that,” Sheila says. “But I didn’t. So I went with Johnny.” She gets up to turn the kettle back on, taking the teapot with her. “I wasn’t reckoning on the kids. I was on the pill and all, but Emer came anyway. There’s no man in the world that can hold you down like a child.”
She dumps the tea bags in the bin and reaches into a cupboard for fresh ones. “Rachel came here,” she says.
Lena looks up, startled. “When?”
“The night she died. Six, maybe. On my doorstep, mascara all down her face, saying please could she ask me something.”
“Did you talk to her?”
Sheila nods. “The little ones were in watching the telly, so I brought her in here and made her tea. I was curious why she thought of me. I never said two words to the girl in my life.”
When she thinks about it, Lena feels like she shouldn’t have been surprised. If Rachel wanted to ask a woman whether her man was worth losing her friends, Sheila would be the obvious place to go.
“She wanted to know about Johnny,” Sheila says.
“Me and Johnny. She knew plenty already. She knew how, when he done the legger to London, he done it with money he talked outa Fiona Kelly, saying he was in love with her.” The corner of her mouth lifts wryly.
“The poor young one didn’t mean to say that; it slipped out.
She was awful worried then, in case I didn’t know. I knew everything Johnny did.”
Lena nods. Johnny was never any match for Sheila. If he thought he was, it was because Sheila let him.
“She wanted to know what I done about it,” Sheila says. “Did I say anything to him, all the times he was talking people outa their money, or selling them stuff he’d robbed offa someone else. How did I try and stop him. Did I threaten to leave him. Did I ever warn people what he was at.”
This isn’t what Lena was expecting. She finishes off her tea, to make room for the reheat, and starts rearranging her thoughts.
The kettle boils, and Sheila pours a dash of water into the teapot.
“I told her,” she says, “themens around here can look after themselves. I done it for long enough; they can do the same. I done nothing about Johnny till I needed to. I watched him, is all. I kept my eye on him. And when I needed to, I put a stop to his gallop.”
She swirls the water and dumps it out in the sink.
“I don’t reckon she believed me,” she says.
“She was sitting there, big eyes on her, ‘Ah yeah I know, people can be total bastards and they were treating you like shite, prob’ly it served them right, but like, what did you say to him?’ She thought I was just sore at people for cutting me off when I married Johnny, and when it came down to it, I wouldn’t stand by and watch while he fucked them over.
She had it arse-backwards. I’m not sore at anyone, but I wouldn’t lift a finger for any of them. That girl was softer than I am.”
“I thought the same thing,” Lena says. “Were we ever that soft, back in the day, and we just don’t remember?”
“If I’da been soft,” Sheila says, “I’d be dead. And if you’da been soft, you’da lost your mind a long time back. We liked playing at it, is all, while we had the choice. That Rachel one was soft as butter straight through.”
She fills the teapot and brings it back to the table.
“That girl was like a child,” she says. “ ‘But what didja do, what didja do?’ Like a child that thinks it’s all a storybook, and they wanta know what the hero done next to sort it all out and get the happy ending.
A grown woman knows sometimes there’s nothing to be done, so you do nothing. ”
“She called round to me as well,” Lena says. “Just before she came here. Asking was it ’cause of Sean that I’ve no mates around here, and did I mind or was it worth it. I thought Eugene wanted her to ditch her pals and get posh ones instead.”
“Clodagh done that,” Sheila says. “When she started going out with Tommy, remember? She was always a snobby bitch, but she started acting like she’d never seen the rest of us before in her life.”
“Noreen says she’s after joining a bridge club in Boyle,” Lena says. “For golfers’ wives only, don’tchaknow. They take turns making the canapés.”
That makes both of them snort with laughter. “Jesus,” Sheila says. “I’d do myself in as well, if I had Clodagh Moynihan dragging me into that.”
“From what you say, but,” Lena says, “that’s not what was worrying Rachel. I had it wrong. Eugene was up to something that’d fuck people over.”
Sheila nods, pouring the fresh tea. “Eugene and Tommy,” she says. “ ‘He’s always done what his dad says, he doesn’t know how to say no to him…’ That’s what she said. And a loada talk about Eugene being a good person.”
“Did she say what they were at?”
“She wanted to tell me,” Sheila says. “I wouldn’t hear it.
This is the first time in my life, since I left school, that I’ve had a bitta peace.
I wasn’t giving it up for some young one I never even talked to before.
” She picks icing delicately off her éclair with the tip of her fork.
“It wouldn’ta made any difference anyhow.
Like I said, she was soft as butter. I couldn’t change that.
Whatever she wanted off me, I didn’t have it. ”
Lena is hearing Noreen’s voice: Sure, the dogs in the street woulda known; Rachel couldn’t hold her water, God rest her.
And Trey’s, clean and sharp as a blade coming down across the homey check tablecloth.
I reckon she knew something, or she found out something, and she was gonna say it.
And someone around here wanted to shut her up, so they gave her antifreeze and fucked her in the river.
Maybe Cal is right and Eugene wouldn’t have the guts, Lena has no idea. What she knows is that Tommy doesn’t let anything stand in his way, and that Eugene, raised from birth to believe that his right to whatever he wants springs from being a Moynihan, would never have the guts to say no to Tommy.
She says, “D’you reckon she was in bad enough shape that she’d kill herself?”
“I reckon she had enough weight on her that she couldn’t keep going,” Sheila says. “With the Moynihans and their messing.”
Lena says, “She coulda broken up with Eugene.”
Sheila gives a dismissive flick of her chin.
“She couldn’t do without him, she said. Any woman can do without any man, but she didn’t wanta know that.
There’s women that think it mustn’t be real love if they can live without it.
But she said even if she could, Tommy wouldn’t let her walk away, not with whatever it was she knew.
‘He’d do something to me, tell people shite about me or have me thrown outa my course or something, he’d run me outa town… ’ ”
“That’d be his style, all right,” Lena agrees.
“She couldn’t get out from under,” Sheila says, “so she went into the river.” She sucks the icing off her fork and glances across at Lena. “Did you never wanta?”
“Not like that,” Lena says. It’s true. When she wanted to walk into the river, it was never because she felt weighed down. It was the opposite: in the wake of Sean’s death she felt hollowed, scraped fine as gauze, the whole merciless world roaring right through her like she was made of nothing.
“I did,” Sheila says matter-of-factly. “Plenty of times. Only there were the kids. They weighed me down too much for that, even.”
“Did you say it to anyone?” Lena asks. “That Rachel came here?”
Sheila shakes her head. “Like I told you,” she says. “Themens can look after themselves.”
It occurs to Lena that next time Noreen gives her shite for not doing her bit, she can point to Sheila as an example of how it could be worse. She says, “So why does Tommy want you gone?”
Sheila shrugs, uninterested.
“Cal’s worried,” Lena says. “He thinks Tommy’ll come after you some other way. Child Services, maybe.”
Sheila lifts her head and looks Lena full in the face.
Her eyes are ice-blue and beautiful. “You tell Cal,” she says, “if Tommy tries anything like that, I’ll tell the world that Rachel came here crying ’cause Eugene usedta beat the living shite outa her.
Let’s see him get onto the council after that. ”