The Giver of Stars(23)

Virginia had got away all right, got as far as Lewisburg, only to marry a man who turned out to be just as handy with his fists as their father had been. Her mother, thank goodness, was not alive to see it, having caught pneumonia six months after the wedding and died within three days; the same strain that took three of Margery’s brothers. Their graves were marked with small stones on a hill overlooking the holler.

When her father died, killed in a drunken gunfight with Bill McCullough – the latest sorry episode in a clan feud that had lasted generations – the residents of Baileyville noted that Margery O’Hare didn’t shed so much as a tear. ‘Why would I?’ she said, when Pastor McIntosh asked her if she was quite all right. ‘I’m glad he’s dead. Can’t do no more harm to no one.’ The fact that Frank O’Hare was reviled in town, and that everyone knew she was right, didn’t stop them deciding that the surviving O’Hare girl was as odd as the rest of them and that, frankly, the fewer of that bloodline still around, the better.

‘Can I ask you about your family?’ Alice had said, as they saddled up the horses, shortly after dawn.

Margery, her thoughts still lost somewhere in Sven’s strong, hard body, had had to be spoken to twice before she realized what Alice was saying. ‘Ask what you want.’ She glanced over. ‘Let me guess. Someone tell you you shouldn’t be around me because of my daddy?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Alice, after a pause. Mr Van Cleve had given her a lecture on that exact subject the previous evening, accompanied by much spluttering and finger-pointing. Alice had wielded the good name of Mrs Brady as a shield but it had been an uncomfortable exchange.

Margery nodded, as if this was no surprise. She swung her saddle onto the rail and ran her fingers over Charley’s back, checking him for bumps and sores. ‘Frank O’Hare supplied moonshine to half the county. Shot up anyone who tried to take over his patch. Shot ’em if he reckoned they’d even thought about it. Killed more people than I know of, and left scars on everyone he was close to.’

‘Everyone?’

Margery hesitated a moment, then took a couple of steps towards Alice. She rolled up her shirt-sleeve, tugging it above the elbow, revealing a waxy, coin-shaped scar on her upper arm. ‘Shot me with his hunting rifle when I was eleven years old because I sassed him. If my brother hadn’t pushed me out of the way he would have killed me.’

Alice took a moment to speak. ‘Didn’t the police do anything?’

‘Police?’ She said it poh-lice. ‘Up here people take care of things their own way. When Memaw found out what he’d done she took a horsewhip to him. Only two people he was ever scared of, his own mom and pop.’

Margery put her head down so that her thick dark hair fell forward. She ran her fingers nimbly over her scalp until she found what she was looking for and pulled her hair to one side, revealing an inch-wide gap of bare skin. ‘That was where he pulled me up two flights of stairs by my hair three days after Memaw died. Pulled a handful of it clean out. They say he still had half my scalp attached to it when he dropped it.’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘Nope. He’d knocked me out before he did it.’

Alice stood in stunned silence. Margery’s voice was as level as always.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she faltered.

‘Don’t be. When he died there were two people in this whole town came to his funeral and one of those only did cos they felt sorry for me. You know how much this town loves to meet up? You imagine how much they hated him not even to show up at a man’s funeral.’

‘You … don’t miss him, then.’

‘Hah! Round here, Alice, you get a lot of what you call sundowners. They’re good old boys in daylight hours, but come nightfall when they get to drinking, they’re basically a pair of fists looking for a target.’

Alice thought of Mr Van Cleve’s bourbon-fuelled rants and shivered, despite the heat.

‘Well, my daddy wasn’t even a sundowner. He didn’t need drink. Cold as ice. Don’t have a single good memory of him.’

‘Not a single one?’

Margery thought for a moment. ‘Oh, no, you’re right. There was one.’

Alice waited.

‘Yup. The day the sheriff stopped by to tell me he was dead.’

Margery turned from the mule and the two women finished up in silence.

Alice felt completely out of her depth. Anyone else, she would have commiserated. Margery seemed to need less sympathy than anyone she’d ever met.

Perhaps Margery detected some of these mental gymnastics, or perhaps she felt she’d been a little harsh, because she turned to Alice and smiled suddenly. Alice was struck by the fact that she was actually quite beautiful. ‘You asked me a while back if I was ever frightened, up there in the mountains, on my own.’

Alice’s hand stilled on the girth buckle.

‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I’ve been afraid of nothing since the day my daddy passed. See that there?’ She pointed towards the mountains that loomed in the distance. ‘That’s what I dreamed of as a child. Me and Charley, up there, that’s my heaven, Alice. I get to live my heaven every day.’

She let out a long breath, and as Alice was still digesting the softening of her face, the strange luminosity of her smile, she turned and slapped the back of her saddle. ‘Right. You all set? Big day for you. Big day for us all.’