Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(104)

I said, “And he did what he was told.” I liked that, a lot. It felt reassuring. Matt Daly and his buddies could have beaten me to within an inch of my life, and the second I got out of the hospital I would have headed for Rosie as fast as I could limp.

Ma said, prim and satisfied, “He hadn’t got much choice. Tessie’s da had always let her away with murder, so he had—and look where that got him—but after that he’d hardly let her go out the door, only to go to work and he walked her there himself. I wouldn’t blame him; everyone was talking about it. The little gurriers were calling things after her on the street, all the aul’ ones were waiting for her to turn up in trouble, half her friends weren’t allowed speak to her in case she turned them into hoors as well; Father Hanratty gave a homily about loose women weakening the country, and that wasn’t what the men died for in 1916. No names, mind you, but everyone knew who he meant. That put a stop to Tessie’s gallop.”

Straight across almost half a century, I could feel the feeding frenzy: the whirling hysteria of it, the double-speed pump of adrenaline as the Place smelled blood and went into attack mode. Those weeks had quite probably sown the crazy seeds in Tessie Daly’s mind. “It’d do that, all right,” I said.

“And serve her right! Taught her what was what. She liked messing about with the fellas, but she didn’t want the name for it, did she?” Ma was sitting up straight, with her virtuous face on her. “She started going with Matt Daly straight after—he’d been making goo-goo eyes at her for years, but she’d never paid him any notice. Not till he came in useful. He was a decent fella, Matt was; Tessie’s da didn’t mind her going with him. It was the only way she was allowed out the door.”

I said, “And that’s what Da has against Matt Daly? He nicked his girl?”

“That was most of it. Sure, they never liked each other to start with.” She lined up the silver gizmo with three more like it, flicked a minute speck of something off the side, picked out a twee little Christmas-tree ornament from the to-do pile. “Matt was always jealous of your da. Your da was a million miles better-looking than Matt, so he was, and he was popular—not just with the girls, the fellas thought he was great as well, a great laugh . . . Matt was a boring little bollix. No go in him.”

Her voice was layered with old things, triumph and bitterness and spite twisted together. I said, “So when Matt was the one who got the girl, he rubbed it in?”

“That wasn’t enough for him. Your da was after applying to Guinness’s, as a driver. He’d been told the job was as good as his, as soon as the next driver retired. But Matt Daly’d been working there a few years, and his da before him; he knew people. After all that with Tessie, Matt went to his foreman and told him Jimmy Mackey wasn’t the kind of fella they wanted at Guinness’s. There were twenty lads applying for every job. They didn’t need anyone that might bring trouble.”

“So Da ended up doing the plastering.” No humor intended.

“That was my uncle Joe got him the apprenticeship. We got engaged not long after that whole carry-on with Tessie. Your da needed a trade, if we were going to be having a family.”

I said, “You were a fast worker.”

“I saw my chance and I took it. I was seventeen by then; old enough to make the boys look. Your da was . . .” Ma’s lips vanished, and she twisted her cloth tighter into the crannies of the ornament. “I knew he was still mad into Tessie,” she said after a moment, and there was a defiant spark in her voice that gave me a hair’s-breadth glimpse of a girl with her chin out, watching wild Jimmy Mackey from this kitchen window and thinking Mine. “But I didn’t mind that. I thought I’d change that, once I got my hands on him. I never wanted a lot; I wasn’t one of those ones that think they’ll be film stars in Hollywood. I never had notions. All I wanted was a little house of my own and a few childer, and Jimmy Mackey.”

“Well,” I said. “You got the kids, and you got the man.”

“I got him in the end, all right. What Tessie and Matt left of him. He’d started on the drink by then.”

“But you wanted him anyway.” I kept my voice nice and non-judgmental.

“I’d my heart set on him. My mammy, God rest her soul, she warned me: never go with a drinking man. But I hadn’t a clue. My own da—you won’t remember him, Francis, but he was a lovely man—he never touched a drop; I hadn’t a notion what a drinker was like. I knew Jimmy’d have a few, but sure, all the fellas would. I thought it was no more than that—and it wasn’t, not when I first spotted him. Not till Tessie O’Byrne wrecked his head for him.”

I believed her. I know what the right woman, at the right moment, can do to a man—not that Tessie seemed to have got away scot-free herself. Some people should never meet. The fallout spreads too wide and gets into the ground for much too long.

Ma said, “Everyone had always said Jimmy Mackey’d be good for nothing. His ma and da were a pair of aul’ alcos, never worked a day in their lives; ever since he was only a little chiseler he’d be going round to the neighbors asking could he stay for the dinner because there was nothing at home, he’d be out running the streets in the middle of the night . . . By the time I knew him, everyone said for definite he’d wind up a waster like his ma and da.” Her eyes had strayed off the polishing, away towards the window and the falling rain. “I knew they were wrong, but. He wasn’t bad, Jimmy wasn’t; just wild. And he wasn’t thick. He could’ve been something. He didn’t need Guinness’s, he could’ve had his own little business—there was no need for him to be answering to bosses every day, he hated that. He always loved the driving; he could’ve done deliveries, had his own van . . . If your woman hadn’t got to him first.”