Himself(24)

‘Is Bridget Doosey an eejit-looking one?’

‘Not at all, Mahony. Bridget Doosey is the second sharpest old biddy in town. Show her in, Shauna.’

Bridget Doosey is a small woman with a shrewd look about her. She is wearing a pair of overalls and a fedora. Her one concession to femininity is her handbag, a relic of bygone glamour in tan crocodile with an ornate silver clasp. Like its owner it is full of sandwiches liberated from the buffet table.

‘Will you help build the set again this year, Doosey?’

Bridget shakes her head. ‘I won’t. I’m after the part of leading lady.’ She gives Mahony a comprehensive wink.

Mrs Cauley hides a smile. ‘Aren’t you a bit long in the tooth for the role of Pegeen Mike?’

Bridget ignores her and snaps open her handbag. There is a powerful smell of stale cologne and ham. She delicately extracts a pair of glasses and winds them over her ears.

‘Have you the book for me to read?’

‘I need an actor who can take direction,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘I haven’t forgotten your improvised rant, Doosey, halfway through act two of The Man Who Came to Dinner.’

‘It fitted. It was politically pertinent.’

‘It was in my hole. You’re not going off-script again this year with all that communist nonsense. It bored the shite out of my audience; I could see it in their glazed fecking faces. They didn’t pay their good money for that.’

Bridget narrows her eyes. She has the dishevelled appearance that comes from sharing her bed with cats and eating her meals out of a tin.

Father Quinn was cursed to inherit her as his housekeeper, as if he wasn’t already significantly burdened. But Bridget came with the parochial house, just as her mother had before her. Bridget is the first to admit that she isn’t a patch on her late mammy in the housekeeping department. Although she can rewire a house, drink Tadhg Kerrigan under the table and castrate a bull calf singlehandedly, none of these are prerequisites for a (successful) priest’s housekeeper. In fact, stringent, swabbing old Mother Doosey would turn in her grave at her daughter’s slatternly ways. Unlike her daughter, Mother Doosey took exemplary care of her priests. It was common knowledge that you could eat a meal from Mother Doosey’s front doorstep without the slightest unease; nowadays Father Quinn rarely finishes his dinner without coughing up a hairball.

For Bridget holds no truck with the relentless drudgery of housework or the moral authority of Catholic priests. She sees both as unnecessary evils but stalwartly continues in her employment in order to support her roving pride of felines. And believing in honesty, Bridget will tell anyone who listens that she is daily destroyed with the effort of being polite to Father Quinn, who, after all, is nothing but a gobdaw in a black suit.

‘As my esteemed friend and a woman of quality, I’d like to offer you an important role. Bridget Doosey, will you be my stage manager?’

Bridget snaps her handbag shut. ‘You can whistle right up my arse, Merle Cauley. What would I want with that?’

‘You’ll do a fine job, take the headache out of it for me. Now. Where were you on the day Orla Sweeney left town?’

Bridget stares at her. ‘Orla Sweeney? Ah Jesus, I knew you were up to something, you old bitch. What is it now you’re involved in?’

‘I would appreciate your honesty, Bridget,’ says Mrs Cauley in a voice as unctuous as medicinal syrup. ‘For Mahony’s sake; he wants to find out about his mother.’

Bridget looks at Mahony intently, as if she is making some sort of uneasy calculation. Then she smiles. ‘Could he be anyone else’s?’

Mrs Cauley nods brightly. ‘Exactly. So what happened to Orla Sweeney?’

Shauna’s head appears round the door. ‘They’ve asked Tadhg for a barrel. Will he bring it over?’

‘He will,’ says Mrs Cauley, with a dismissive wave. ‘Carry on, Doosey.’

‘I wish to God I knew.’ She takes off her fedora and puts it on the table.

Mahony leans forward and offers her a cigarette. ‘Just tell us what you do know.’

Bridget takes three, puts one behind each ear and leans forward to let Mahony light the third, puffing it alight.

‘Tuesday, 2 May 1950.’ She exhales. ‘That was the last time I saw your mother.’

‘Are you sure about the date?’

‘Certain. She was coming out of the priest’s house.’

‘What time was it?’

‘Early, around eight.’

‘And she was coming out of Quinn’s house?’

Bridget nods. ‘I thought it odd at the time and I quizzed him about it after but I got nothing out of him. He said Orla had come for a blessing. Blessing, my arse.’

Mahony leans forward. ‘Did you talk to her?’

‘Hardly at all. She was agitated, in a rush. She said she would come up to the house later. But she never did.’

‘Did she tell you what she was planning to do?’ Mahony asks. ‘Did she tell you that she was going to leave town?’

‘As far as I knew, Orla wasn’t planning on leaving. Things had been getting tougher for her, the town had long wanted her out, but she had resolved to dig her heels in.’ She lowers her voice. ‘She told me that morning that she’d decided to go to the Father for help.’