Himself(77)

Mahony puts on his boots. Soon he’ll feel the early sun on his chest; until then he’ll shake with the cold. He pulls his jacket around his bare shoulders and gets up to follow Ida home.

This morning Shauna doesn’t care about anything.

She doesn’t care about Mrs Cauley’s bed bath or Daddy’s eggs. She’s not worried about the laundry or the beds. The rugs can go unbeaten and the mice can go untrapped, the roof can go on leaking and the curtains can stay drawn forever and ever.

She just wants Mahony back.

So whilst Daddy and Bridget Doosey might be out searching for the supernaturally unearthed remains of Orla Sweeney, she herself is looking for a real living man.

Her man.

She walks out into the forest with a flask of tea and a blanket. She has a shovel with which to dig Mahony out from under fallen trees and a sling for his arm if it should be broken. She has a dry pair of socks, a ham sandwich and a bottle of brandy for the shock, hers or his.

Mrs Cauley may not fear for him, but she does.

He’s the whole of her world right there.

Annie Farelly crosses the garden and lets herself in at the back door of Rathmore House. Shauna is out; her slippers are waiting for her, pigeon-toed on the doormat.

Annie makes her way through the kitchen. There’s a burnt milk pan in the sink, the floor is unwashed and a breakfast tray is half set. She steps into the hall, past the mahogany coil of the staircase and opens the door to the library.

She follows the path through Mrs Cauley’s labyrinth. It’s been a while since Annie has walked through it and she wonders at the height of the piles that stretch up towards the ceiling. Now and then she hears faint scuttling sounds and detects some movement out of the corner of her eye. She has a feeling that she is being watched, no doubt by the legions of mice that are nesting and gnawing in the heaps of decaying books.

Until, right there in front of her, is Mrs Cauley.

A ray of sunshine in a nightdress of yellow flannel, stranded in a sea of dead words, fast asleep in her bed.

Annie draws nearer with a sense of relief. How small Mrs Cauley is when she’s quiet. How much frailer she is with her mouth shut.

The old bitch could be dead already. She’s hardly breathing; Annie has to look closely to see her chest rise and fall. Her liver-spotted hands are clasped beneath her swollen belly. Under her fingers there’s a map of the town, covered, from the coast to the mountains, with little black crosses and question marks.

Without her wig Mrs Cauley is barely human, she’s more like an ancient turtle with her round speckled head. Her jaw lolls slack and open. She’s in a very deep sleep. She mustn’t have slept at all with the storm last night. Heaven knows, Annie hardly did, but then she hasn’t slept a great deal since Mahony’s visit.

Annie takes a folded square of muslin from her bag, spreads it on the edge of the bed and sits down. What sort of a person would want to live like this? Like a dirty old spider webbed up in her dusty books. She’d burn the lot if she were Shauna. She’d haul all these books and papers out of the door and onto the veranda and build a bonfire. She’d set Mrs Cauley at the top and put a match to it. She’d go up with a big whoosh, with her old papery skin and dry bones.

Annie leans forward and wipes her finger along the headboard, sending a drift of dust into the air. As if in answer, Mrs Cauley’s nostrils twitch very slightly. Annie looks at the bedside table; there’s a ring-marked pad with an empty glass on it. She picks up the glass and sniffs it: some sort of cheap spirit. Then two words, scrawled on the pad in capital letters, catch her eye.

BROPHY. MOTIVE.

Annie picks up the pad. The writing is very bad. She puts on her glasses and holds the paper towards the light from the French doors, turning back through the pages. She closes the pad and looks at the sleeping woman for a long time. Then she reaches into her shopper and pulls out a pillow.

Shauna wants to cry. Mahony’s face is dirty but his smile is warm. Warmer than it’s ever been.

‘You’re a sight,’ he says.

‘And you’re a picture,’ she says.

Mahony, shirtless and covered in filth, with a nasty cut on the side of his forehead and his hair plastered to his neck.

He grins. ‘What are you doing with the shovel, Missus? Burying me?’

Shauna shakes her head and laughs so that he laughs too. Mahony touches her arm. ‘You came looking for me?’

Shauna colours. ‘Bridget is convinced that the storm will have unearthed Orla’s body.’

Mahony takes the shovel off her. ‘That sounds like one of Bridget’s finest. Tell me about it over breakfast?’

Shauna nods. ‘What happened to your head?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Does it hurt?’

He touches it. ‘No, it’s grand.’

Shauna takes a step forward and kisses him.

It’s so easy: one kiss and she’s pressed close to him, her hands passing over his back, his shoulders, learning the shape of him with his hair wet against her face and his mouth hot on hers. He holds her fast in his arms; if her legs give way she knows that he has got her.

By the time they reach the road to Rathmore House Shauna has her hand in his and Mahony has her cardigan on. He’s knotted it high over his stomach and keeps looking through his eyelashes at her in a way that makes her laugh.

Everything is entirely brilliant.