Himself(27)

Teasie is knocked sideways by Mrs Lavelle’s handbag and sent spinning into the ham sandwiches. Mrs Lavelle takes a few steps then is suddenly struck with the full weight of a premonition. She leans heavily against the corner of the trestle table with her sleeve in the coleslaw and her eyes wide.

Her mouth starts to move independently, recalibrating itself in a number of violent twitches. Then, in a low tone of prophesied doom, Mrs Lavelle addresses a space just left of the ladies’ powder room. Her words spew out over the teacups and potato salad, the cardigans and handbags, the polite nods and the time of day.

‘She’s woken,’ announces Mrs Lavelle in a sabulous voice from beyond the grave. ‘She’s coming.’

The hairs stand up on the back of every arm. The babies begin to cry and the children wrap themselves up in the stage curtains or watch open-mouthed from under the table. Those of a nervous disposition bless themselves. A group of stalwart mammies crowd in and start to convey Mrs Lavelle out of the hall with the tenacity of a swarm of worker ants seeing off a trespassing wasp. Mrs Lavelle goes quietly until she reaches the threshold, where she clings to the doorframe moaning. There’s an unladylike tussle as they unhook her arthritic fingers and lift her through the double doors. Teasie follows with her glasses fogged and a pocketful of stolen biscuits that she knows will be like dust to her now.

Afterwards, the tea is poured too brightly and received too gratefully. The villagers, as jittery as cats on elastic, remind themselves that Orla left town of her own accord. They tell themselves that she is most likely alive and well and causing havoc in another town, God help them.

And so they start to breathe again and even laugh a little.

For after all, who believes in ghosts?

Poor Mary Lavelle does.

The woman is away in the head. Entirely tapped. Utterly unravelled. Some think about her floor-bound gaze and the tremble in her hands. Some think about the drifting silences in her conversations. Some just think about the light on Teasie’s glasses and the downward slope of her thin shoulders.

And the afternoon rolls on.

‘So let’s go back to the day that Orla disappeared, Mrs Moran,’ says Mrs Cauley, purposefully.

‘On that particular day, Mrs Cauley, I was suffering very badly with my legs.’

‘So you remember it?’

‘You couldn’t forget pain like that.’

Mrs Cauley looks at Mahony with pointed despair.

Mahony speaks slowly and clearly. ‘Mrs Moran, do you remember seeing Orla on the day she disappeared?’

‘Disappeared, is it?’ Mrs Moran opens her eyes wide. ‘Well, I know nothing at all about that.’ She looks coyly from one to the other of them. ‘But I did see her slinking around the back of Kerrigan’s Bar. There she was, sitting on a pile of crates, swinging the legs and smoking and talking to Tadhg. So I called out, “Now then, Tadhg, haven’t you got a bit of gainful employment to be getting on with and not to be led astray from?” And Tadhg shouted out, “I’ll be away back to the cellar in a minute, Mrs Moran. How’re the legs?”’

Mrs Moran leans forward and lowers her voice conspiratorially. ‘Tadhg was just back from England to take over the pub from his uncle, who was making a big point of dying at that time. Tadhg was one of the few young men in the town with money in his pocket and that lent a certain sheen to him.’

‘What had Tadhg been doing in England?’ asks Mahony.

Mrs Moran straightens up. ‘He’d been boxing, and making a name for himself by all accounts. Then his uncle got involved with the whole dying thing and called him back.’ She smiles at Mahony. ‘It’s hard to believe it now, looking at the shape of him, but Tadhg was well put together in those days, a fine big strapping lad. And a temper on him like all the Kerrigans, great violent Irishmen the lot of them.’

Mrs Cauley looks at her with interest. ‘You think so?’

‘Tadhg was quick to hop in those days, Mrs Cauley. And when he hopped, like most brave young fellas with a temper, well, you heard all about it.’

Mrs Cauley nods. ‘Go on.’

‘As I said, there was I hobbling home the best I could down the lane and Tadhg asking after my legs and I said, “Oh, Tadhg, I’m in a terrible way.” And he said he’d run me up home for he had the use of his uncle’s car and in those days there wasn’t many who could lay claim to that. Well, Orla didn’t like this at all. She threw me this sour variety of look and said something under her breath to Tadhg. Maybe she thought I was an interfering old biddy. But then I didn’t care about that.’

Mrs Moran shakes her head. ‘I saw it all you see. There he was, a decent young man trying to make a go of it, and the last thing he needed was to be hooked by your one and her dirty ways.’

‘You’re talking about my mother there, Mrs Moran. You’d do well to remember it.’ Mahony speaks low and soft, but it’s his expression that startles. Cold-eyed and with a smile that says he could climb over the table and finish Mrs Moran off with his bare hands.

Her jowls wobble with indignant alarm. ‘I meant no offence.’

‘None taken.’ Mrs Cauley nudges Mahony. ‘Is there?’

Mahony nods imperceptibly but drops his terrible smile.

‘There now,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘Please continue in your own words, Mrs Moran.’