Chapter Ten #4
Lena’s eyebrows lift. “It happens,” Tommy tells her.
“When a woman’s got no children or friends or hobbies to keep her occupied, sometimes her mind’d get itself all caught up in some aul’ thing, and she’d end up going that wee bit off-piste.
D’you remember my auntie Marie? A lovely woman, she was, but she’d nothing to keep her mind occupied.
She got it in her head that herself and Father Gerard had been having a mad love affair.
” He laughs a little, ruefully, at the absurdity of it.
“No one could convince her ’twas all her imagination.
In the heel of the hunt, the poor woman ended up in the mental hospital. ”
“Were they?” Lena inquires. “Having an affair?”
Tommy turns his hat between his hands. Behind his head, clouds shift subtly. “You’re going that wee bit off-piste, Lena,” he says. “If you’d only take a step back and get a little perspective, you’d see that yourself. You’re a smart woman.”
“Thanks,” Lena says. The cold has burrowed through her jacket, and the wetness of the car has soaked into her jeans. She keeps her muscles tight so she won’t shiver. Here and there among the hedges, leftover raindrops tick sharply.
“But if a smart woman doesn’t mind a bitta advice from a man that’s older and wiser,” Tommy says, giving her an avuncular smile, “that’s what I’d advise you to do: take a step back.
Give me and my family some peace. Find yourself a hobby, to get your mind back on track.
All this great energy you’ve got, put it into something useful.
” He points a finger at her as an idea strikes him.
“You were a grand little camogie player back in the day, isn’t that right?
Brush up the aul’ skills and give Philomena a hand with the coaching.
It’ll do you the world of good. Before you know it, you’ll be looking back on this and wondering what you were thinking, at all. ”
I don’t give a shite about you, Tommy Moynihan, or your family, or this place. I wouldn’t waste another second on any of them if I was paid for it. You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone, how’s that for a deal? Lena has spent thirty years constructing the right to say that, and to be believed.
“And we’ll say no more about it,” Tommy assures her magnanimously. “No hard feelings.”
If Lena bows to Tommy, she’ll have nothing but that to offer Trey. “When I want your advice,” she says, “I’ll come and ask for it. Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?”
Tommy nods for a while. He examines the hat he’s still turning meditatively between his hands, and flicks a raindrop off the brim.
“I haven’t talked this over with anyone else, yet,” he says. “But if I haveta do that, I’d say they’ll think the same way I do: this isn’t healthy for you. You’re not in a good place.”
“Probably they will,” Lena agrees. “Some of them, anyhow.”
Tommy shakes his head regretfully. “Well,” he says, straightening up from the wall, “you’re a free woman; if you don’t wanta do what’s in your own interest, I can’t force you. But I’ll keep on doing my best for you, Lena. I promise you that.”
He brushes rain off his hat and adjusts it carefully over his hair.
“All I’m asking in exchange,” he says, “is that you don’t go upsetting my family any more.
If you have any more questions, you’ve no need to go wandering all round the townland.
You just come to me. I’m right here.” He looks at her, wearied but keeping his patience. “Isn’t that fair enough?”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Lena says.
Tommy sighs. Lena watches while, at his leisure, he gets back into his car. She doesn’t move hers, and Tommy doesn’t ask; he maneuvers the Range Rover neatly past the Skoda with an inch to spare and heads for home at a decorous speed, lifting a hand to Lena as he goes.
Lena stays where she is till he’s rounded the bend. Then she goes for the house.
Halfway up her drive, she hears the dogs burst into a joyful welcome.
The blast of relief turns her weak. She makes it in the door and slides down to sit on her hall floor.
The dogs, delighted with this great idea, swarm over her, licking her face and jamming their paws into her ribs.
Lena rubs their warm wriggling bodies and waits for her breathing to slow down.
She set this up for Tommy, all by herself.
Each and every thing she’s done was a perfect tool for him to turn against her.
Lena Dunne’s gone obsessed with Rachel Holohan, she’s wandering around the townland calling in to people she hasn’t seen in years to fire weird questions at them, sure she’s at that time of life, she was always odd but now she’s finally snapped.
She wonders how many of the women she was laughing with yesterday were watching, behind the laughter, for useful scraps they could bring to Tommy.
She tells herself it’s not the nineties; Tommy can’t have her tidied away into a mental hospital, the way his daddy and Father Gerard did with Marie Moynihan when she stopped being a good girl and keeping her mouth shut.
All he can do is put it about that Lena Dunne is losing her mind, which probably half this place has already believed for years.
The townland will talk, Noreen will stick up for her, she’ll ride it out.
That part doesn’t matter, or won’t in time.
The part that matters is that Tommy’s spiked her guns.
To plenty of people, anything Lena comes out with now will just be more evidence that she’s gone off the rails.
A few people will believe her because they hate Tommy’s guts, but few enough that he can mock or bribe or bulldoze them out of his way.
All Tommy needs to do is ease off the pedal for a little while, till people have time to file this firmly away as just Lena Dunne being mental, and then he can get back to work.
Cal would believe her, no question, but going to Cal would only make things worse.
If she tells him this story, he’ll bring it straight to Mart Lavin.
Mart will use the information in whatever murky, labyrinthine way best furthers his agendas, he’ll prove to Trey all over again that this place’s will is all that counts, and he won’t give a damn if he brings down Tommy’s worst on Lena along the way.
Cal would fight him on that, of course, if he got the chance, but it wouldn’t do any good.
Cal has himself convinced that, just because he’s formed an allegiance to this place, its allegiance to him is equally strong.
He thinks he has weight here; he doesn’t understand how Ardnakelty turns people weightless against its own needs.
Trey would believe her, too. This isn’t a good thing.
Lena isn’t sure what Trey would do with this information, if she knew no one else was going to do anything at all.
There’s a chance she’d go up against Tommy all on her own, which would do nothing but land her in deep shite.
More likely, which is worse, she’d do nothing.
Lena hears the flat, final note in her voice: No point, anyhow.
Even if I found out, nothing I could do about it.
Lena feels like the world’s biggest fool for ever imagining that might not be true, when it’s been true all her life.
Daisy has had enough society for the moment; she gets up, shakes out her ears, and heads for her bed. Nellie takes advantage of the extra space to splay herself, belly up, across the whole of Lena’s lap.
Lena needs to get up and bring her car inside the yard, before someone sees it left half-blocking the road, more proof of her craziness.
Instead she sits there on the worn tiles of the hall floor, steadily rubbing Nellie’s upturned underside, back and forth.
A draft flows under the door, lapping cold as river water around her ankles, but she doesn’t have the wherewithal to move.