Himself(58)

She has to go and warn him. Róisín looks down at the potato. But if she runs out now the priest might guess that she’s been eavesdropping. She drops the potato into the bowl in the sink. She’ll find Mahony later and tell him exactly what she’s heard.

She’ll tell him to watch out for himself.

As Róisín rinses the cut potatoes and sets them on the hob she thinks about Mahony. As Róisín rolls the priest’s liver in flour she thinks about Mahony. As she cuts onions into the pan, ready for the meat, she thinks about Mahony.

She blots her eyes with the hem of her apron, realising that they are watering more than they ought to be. As she slides the liver from the pan into a warming dish Róisín finally admits to herself that she’s in love with him. She’s in love with him wildly, against each and every sensible thought. Róisín sobs into her apron and the frogs watch her sympathetically from just outside the kitchen door, like a row of polite cinemagoers.

By coincidence, it just so happens that right now Mahony is thinking on Róisín Munnelly as he sits in an empty kitchen at Rathmore House with no more company than a dead tomcat and a dozen dusty jam jars. The dead cat stares back at him with an expression of complicated disdain. For Mahony has just informed the cat that he has a powerful liking for the lovely Mrs Munnelly.

The dead cat looks pointedly around the room. At Shauna’s slippers by the backdoor, her cardigan over the back of the chair, and the pot she’s not long set to boil.

Then the cat turns the dim lamps of its dead eyes back to Mahony and fixes him with a provoking glare, as if waiting for an answer.

Mahony shakes his head. Shauna doesn’t come into this. She’s already spoken for by her future. She has the whole thing planned out.

The cat looks doubtful.

Mahony lights a cigarette and pictures Shauna’s Future drawing nearer.

Mahony can see him now, Shauna’s Future, driving into town. Red-faced, palms wet, with his hair brushed flat and a ring in his back pocket.

First off, he’ll be a wholesome, hard-working lad, a fine upstanding young fella. You couldn’t wish for better. With a good job, a good name, a pure heart and his mammy and daddy’s blessing.

Even so, he’s hardly worthy of her, he knows that – Jesus, who would be? But he’s solemnly vowed to God and every last saint in heaven that he’ll make Shauna happy, or he’ll die at her feet trying.

He’ll be walking up the path soon, Shauna’s Future, wiping his hands on the backside of his trousers, ready to say his bit. Maybe he’ll surprise her when she’s pegging out the washing, go down on the knee, do it properly. Blushing to the tops of his ears. Maybe he’ll even cry a little bit when she accepts him.

He’ll shake hands with her father and Desmond will give him a pen, or a cravat even. Mrs Cauley will pretend not to like him at first, but who could take against a young fella so obviously in love?

Mahony glances out the door, expecting to see him hovering on the doorstep, hand raised, eyes shy.

The dead cat softens its glare and lowers itself on its haunches, wrapping its tail around itself. It blinks. And so?

Róisín is a grown woman; she has ten years on him, Jesus, she knows what she wants and it isn’t a husband. She has one; she doesn’t need another.

The dead cat looks unconvinced.

There’d be no risk. They wouldn’t get caught; he’d make sure of it. For how could she hold her head up around town if anyone found out?

He imagines a thousand opportunities. In the forest, tangled together in the tree roots. Or rolling on a down-coast beach as the gulls scud overhead and the sea rings the shingle. There will be a million looks darting between them: in the street, in the town, at the Post Office and General Store. There’ll be the sudden sparks of a hundred accidental touches as Mahony helps her on with her coat, or carries her bag for her, or hands her up onto the bus. And when he looks at this trim housewife in her respectable dress, with her hair neat and gleaming, he’ll know that he’s loved every last inch of her and that his kisses burn her skin still.

The dead cat yawns and stretches and jumps down through the table.

Mahony lights another fag. He’ll wait for the rain to calm down a bit then he’ll take a walk into town and find her.

Mahony flicks his cigarette into the ashtray on the table.

It’s a great ashtray, A Souvenir from Mulderrig, with all the local sights picked out in bright paint: the quay, the pub and the River Shand.

He stares at it.

Mahony twists out his fag and gets up to find his boots.

Mahony looks out at the river. Shaded by the overhead branches it looks wide and dark. A tide of scum laps at the edges but otherwise it’s still. Too still.

He takes off his underpants and drapes them over a bush next to his jacket and his trousers. Now he’s only wearing his socks; when he takes them off he’ll have to go in.

The questions he’s been asking himself all the way from Rathmore House are still clattering around his brain.

If the sack wasn’t full of kittens, what then?

Something the killer had kept?

Something he needed to lose?

And why here, all those years later?

And Ida, surely that was no accident?

Mahony takes off one sock, then the other, and balls them together. He slaps his arse and his legs a couple of times to get the blood up.