Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(73)
Carmel said, “He wasn’t the same, after. He turned hard.”
“He wasn’t exactly a big fluffy marshmallow before.”
“I know yous never got on, but I swear to God, Shay was all right. Himself and myself used to have great chats sometimes, and he used to do grand in school . . . After that was when he started keeping to himself.”
Sallie hit her big finish—“In the meantime we’ll live with me ma!”—and there was a burst of cheers and applause. Carmel and I clapped automatically. Shay lifted his head and glanced around the room. For a second he looked like something out of a cancer ward: grayish and exhausted, with deep hollows under his eyes. Then he went back to smiling at whatever story Linda Dwyer was telling him.
I said, “What’s this got to do with Kevin?”
Carmel sighed deeply and took another dainty sip of fake peaches. The droop to her shoulders said she was heading for the melancholy stage. “Because,” she said, “that’s why I was jealous of him. Kevin and Jackie . . . they had a bad time, I know they did. But nothing like that ever happened to them; nothing where they weren’t the same after. Me and Shay made sure of that.”
“And me.”
She considered that. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “And you. But we tried to look after you, as well—ah, we did, Francis. I always thought you were all right too. You’d the guts to leave, anyway. And then Jackie always told us you were in great form . . . I thought that meant you got out before your head was wrecked altogether.”
I said, “I got pretty close. No cigar, though.”
“I didn’t know that till the other night, in the pub, when you said. We did our best for you, Francis.”
I smiled down at her. Her forehead was a maze of little anxious grooves, from a lifetime of worrying about whether everyone within range was OK. “I know you did, sweetheart. No one could’ve done better.”
“And can you see why I was jealous of Kevin, can you? Him and Jackie, they’re still great at being happy. The way I was when I was a little young one. It wasn’t that I wished anything worse would happen to him—God forbid. I just looked at him and I wanted to be like that too.”
I said gently, “I don’t think that makes you a bad person, Melly. It’s not like you took it out on Kevin. You never in your life did anything to hurt him; you always did your best to make sure he was OK. You were a good sister to him.”
“It’s still a sin,” Carmel said. She was gazing mournfully out at the room and swaying, just a tiny bit, on her good heels. “Envy. You’ve only to think it for it to be a sin; sure, you know that. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do . . .’ How’ll I ever say it in confession, now that he’s dead? I’d be ashamed of my life.”
I put an arm around her and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. She felt squashy and comforting. “Listen here, babe. I absolutely guarantee you that you’re not going to hell for a bit of sibling jealousy. If anything, it’ll be the other way round: you’ll get extra God points for working so hard to get over it. Yeah?”
Carmel said, “I’m sure you’re right,” automatically—years of humoring Trevor—but she didn’t sound convinced. For a second I got the sense that, in some undefined way, I had let her down. Then she snapped upright and forgot all about me: “Merciful Jaysus, is that a can Louise has? Louise! Come here to me!”
Louise’s eyes popped and she vanished into the crowd at lightning speed. Carmel charged after her.
I leaned back into my corner and stayed put. The room was shifting again. Holy Tommy Murphy was striking up “The Rare Old Times,” in a voice that used to be flavored like peat smoke and honey. Old age had roughed up the smooth edges, but he could still stop a conversation mid-sentence. Women lifted their glasses and swayed shoulder to shoulder, kids leaned against their parents’ legs and tucked their thumbs in their mouths to listen; even Kevin’s mates brought the story-swapping down to a murmur. Holy Tommy had his eyes closed and his head tipped back to the ceiling. “Raised on songs and stories, heroes of renown, the passing tales and glories that once was Dublin town . . .” Nora, leaning in the window frame listening, almost stopped my heart: she looked so much like a shadow Rosie, dark and sad-eyed and still, just too far away to reach.
I got my eyes off her fast, and that was when I spotted Mrs. Cullen, Mandy’s ma, over by the Jesus-and-Kevin shrine having an in-depth conversation with Veronica Crotty, who still looked like she had a year-round cough. Mrs. Cullen and I got on, back when I was a teenager; she liked laughing, and I could always make her laugh. This time, though, when I caught her eye and smiled, she jumped like something had bitten her, grabbed Veronica’s elbow and started whispering double-time in her ear, throwing furtive glances my way. The Cullens never did subtle very well. Somewhere right around there, I started wondering why Jackie hadn’t brought me over to say hello to them when I first arrived.
I went looking for Des Nolan, Julie’s brother, who had also been a buddy of mine and whom we had also somehow managed to miss on the Jackie whistle-stop tour. The look on Des’s face when he saw me would have been priceless, if I had been in a laughing mood. He muttered something incoherent, pointed at a can that didn’t look empty to me, and made a dive for the kitchen.