Himself(64)

‘It’s a quality I always look for in my priests,’ murmurs Mrs Cauley and drains her glass. She’s finished with the Dubonnet and started on the gin and grapefruit. It suits her sour mood. ‘Maybe I’ve underestimated Quinn.’

‘Well, he has all the dirt on me now.’ He smiles grimly. ‘I was arrested for fighting over this one at a wedding.’

‘Angry boyfriend?’

‘Angry bridegroom, best man and two uncles on the bride’s side. It was self-defence, but the guards made sure it didn’t come out that way.’

‘I’m sorry, kiddo.’

‘How much time will Quinn give us?’

‘Three days, then he’ll call in the guards.’

Mahony exhales. ‘Then we don’t stand a chance of finding her, do we?’

Mrs Cauley speaks softly. ‘You don’t know that. We could be on the verge of a breakthrough. Have you spoken to Mary Lavelle? Teasie’s been coming up to the house every day asking for you. There may be something in that.’

‘And what about the play?’

Mrs Cauley shrugs. ‘We’ll survive. Half the village know your lines.’

‘And I’m not to return?’

‘And you’re not to return.’

Mahony nods. ‘Well, we’d better get on with it then.’





Chapter 32


May 1976


Róisín waits in the forest. She looks tired, her hair unpinned, her beauty a little blurred. He’s over an hour late but he just grins and bends down to kiss her.

He throws his jacket on the ground and has her lie down on it. He kneels in front of her and unbuttons his shirt. His body is very white and his hair is very dark. It runs in a line from his stomach to his chest. Here he smells of sweat, there he smells of smoke, or peat, or the sea. She looks at the light through the leaves as he moves above her.

He lights a cigarette for her and she smokes it. He says she is quite the professional now and she thinks about blowing a smoke ring as he pulls on his trousers.

She will tell him now.

That she’ll come away with him. That she’ll give up everything for him: husband, house, even her children. She’ll leave the dishes in the sink and the school shirts soaking and the burnt pan on the hob. She’ll abandon the rugs that need beating and the beds that need making.

She will follow him anywhere. Dublin. London.

They’ll rent a room and stay inside it for weeks. Wearing the skin off each other. Kissing each other raw.

After a while she’ll get a job in a café and smoke drugs and throw away her bras and go out dancing. They’ll fight and make up again and she’ll sleep in his arms every night and wake to him every morning.

He stands up and lights a fag for himself and with it in his mouth he walks over to a tree and starts to piss.

‘I’m going to leave Noel for you,’ she says.

Mahony almost dies. She can see it on his face. He even stops pissing.

Before he can speak she’s pushing things into her bag, finding her shoes.

‘Róisín . . .’

He’s on the ground next to her. He knows better than to try to hold her. He lays a hand on her arm, cautiously, as if petting a stranger’s dog, as if she might bare her teeth. He speaks low, calm; he tells her that it wouldn’t be right, that it wouldn’t be fair.

She waves her hand at his jacket on the ground. ‘And this is right, this is fair?’

‘It’s not that I don’t want you . . .’

She needs the whole sentence, so she finishes it for him.

‘But there’s someone else.’

Three, four heartbeats and the words she has put before him, unpicked, hang heavy. His face is stricken, his eyes bitterly kind, he takes his hand away from her arm.

Five, six heartbeats and she’s on her feet, she’s running through the forest knowing he won’t follow her.





Chapter 33


May 1976


Teasie has had the tray set ready for a long time. There’s dust on the teaspoons and an ossified moth in the sugar bowl. She shows her guest into the parlour and turns to the complicated task of handing round the tea with her nerves entirely shredded. She hopes to God he doesn’t want sugar, for her hands are shaking too much to work the little tongs.

Mrs Lavelle sits silent in the corner. The room is as dirty and joyless as Mrs Lavelle herself, wearing her customary black, speckled with alluvial drifts of dandruff.

Teasie holds out a heap of soft biscuits to Mahony. Mahony smiles up at her and she almost drops the plate.

He has eyes like black sloe berries and eyelashes like a girl. His jacket smells of leather and smoke, sweat and hair oil; she knows this because she held it to her face when she hung it up in the hallway. Mahony balances his cup on his knee and asks Mrs Lavelle how she’s keeping. He keeps his voice loud and bright.

Mrs Lavelle doesn’t quite catch the question. A muscle twitches in her face and her hands grip the armrests. She is watching the sideboard. Her tea is getting cold on the table next to her.

Mahony turns to Teasie. ‘Have you any honey to sweeten the tea?’

‘I have of course, in the pantry,’ she says. She leaves the door ajar behind her.

Mahony leans forward and pats Mrs Lavelle’s hand. ‘You have something to tell me, don’t you?’