Himself(15)

Mahony nods. ‘I can.’

‘The official story is that one fine day Orla upped and left Mulderrig, taking her fatherless bastard with her and leaving no forwarding address.’

Mahony shrugs. ‘Everyone gets the hell out of these small towns sooner or later. She must have talked about it, planned it?’

Mrs Cauley thought about the question Orla had asked her that day. When the big-smoke actress had walked over to the little-village trollop with all the eyes of the town watching. It was a simple enough question. Spoken low, with a sense of wonder, disbelief even.

How could you leave?

Leave what – the city, the stage, the man? Mrs Cauley couldn’t give Orla an answer.

Perhaps the question was enough? Perhaps Orla had glimpsed something, a world where a woman could leave anything and everything behind and strike out, alone. Afterwards, if she ever thought about the girl it was to picture her arriving at some new place, some new city. Stepping off a bus, a boat, a train, with her scowl and her smile and her brutal eyes. With her brand-new baby and her second-hand coat.

‘She thought about leaving,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘I’m sure of that.’

Mahony nods. ‘So she left town, landed in the city, took a look around, got shot of her bastard.’

Mrs Cauley picks over her words carefully, soberly. ‘I do not believe that Orla gave you up. Why would she, when she had fought so hard to keep you?’

‘People change their minds; she was only a young one herself. Maybe it was tougher than she thought, alone with a kid. So she left me at the orphanage with a note to show she cared.’

‘Except Orla didn’t write that note, Mahony, that’s a mature and educated hand. Your mother was on the mitch for years. She hardly saw the inside of a school.’

‘Then she got someone else to write it.’

Mrs Cauley frowns. ‘It’s possible.’

‘You’re not convinced.’ He studies her face. ‘You don’t think she made it.’

Their eyes meet; she holds his gaze. ‘I’m sorry, kiddo. But then it’s not what I think, is it?’

‘I think the same.’ His voice is quiet, steady.

Mrs Cauley looks relieved.

They sit in silence for a while.

‘So you can stop asking yourself those same damn questions,’ she says.

‘What questions?’

Her voice is gentle. ‘If she’s living why did she leave me and if she’s dead why can’t I see her?’

Mahony regards the toe of his boot, his face impassive. On the lawn the dead man throws down his cane and sinks to his knees.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

Mahony pats down his pockets for his cigarettes, slips a fag from the pack and sets to light it.

‘I’ll tell you something that I know.’ Mrs Cauley leans forward and touches his arm. ‘Those we have lost return to us in their own time.’ She smiles. ‘You’ve been searching for her all your life, I know. But she’ll come to you when she’s good and ready.’

Mahony exhales sharply. ‘You know a lot, old lady.’

Mrs Cauley looks away, out over the forest, into another cloudless day of bleached skies and pounding swelter. For a moment she yearns for the storm that she knows is coming. For when it does she’ll be right here, watching the bright cords rip open the sky, with her old bones thrilling to the sound of hot air.

‘Who’s the dead eejit with the moustache?’

Mrs Cauley laughs. ‘I believe that would be Johnnie.’

Johnnie takes a bow as he skips faintly along the veranda.

‘And who’s Johnnie?’

‘Never you mind.’

Mahony forces a smile. ‘So Mammy caused some trouble?’

‘She defied the town and everyone in it.’

‘I expect they didn’t know what had hit them.’

Mrs Cauley nods. ‘At the time people believed, maybe still believe, that your mother was unnatural, evil even. A few years earlier and they would have burnt her as a witch outside the Post Office.’

‘Who’s to say they didn’t? According to that note there they dealt with her some way or other.’

They sit in silence. Johnnie settles on the lawn and muses too, cross-legged, stroking his moustache dolefully.

‘You have to ask yourself why St Anthony’s? Why take a baby so far?’

‘It’s a fair way to go to get rid of a baby,’ says Mahony.

Mrs Cauley stares at him. ‘They didn’t take you there to get rid of you, Mahony; they took you to there to save you.’

Johnnie jumps up clapping his hands.

‘Has it crossed your mind that if something happened to Orla you could have been in danger too?’ Mrs Cauley continues, oblivious to Johnnie’s applause. ‘They needed to keep you safe, Mahony. Whoever left you there was giving you the chance to return, to put things right. That’s why they left the note with you.’

Mahony nods. ‘It’s possible.’

Her face is grave. ‘And it’s also possible that they knew exactly what happened to Orla.’





Chapter 5


April 1976


Mahony hears the car before he sees it, and it sounds terminal. It pulls up alongside him, ploughing up the dust. Tadhg leans out, unshaven and wearing a woollen hat, despite the heat of the day.