“What will you do now?” she asked the solicitor.
“Phone Harcourt Square,” he said succinctly. That was where the Garda’s fraud investigation unit was based.
He had not come home that night. She had not slept. She realized that it had been a ridiculous house to have kept for so long. The children all lived in their own apartments. Pale-faced, she drove herself into the city and parked her car. Taking a deep breath, she walked up the steps of her husband’s office to a meeting that would end his life as he knew it.
They had told her that there would be a lot of publicity, most of it unfavorable, the mud would stick to her too. They suggested she find somewhere else to stay. Years ago she had bought a small apartment in case her mother had ever wanted to come and live in Dublin. It was on the ground floor and near the sea. It would be ideal. She could move her things in there in a matter of hours.
“Hours is what it will be,” they told her.
She saw him on his own at her request.
He sat in his office watching as files and software were taken away. “All I wanted was to be somebody,” he said.
“You told me that before.”
“Well, I’m telling you again. Just because you say something twice doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“You were somebody, you were always somebody. That’s not what you wanted, you wanted to have everything.”
“You didn’t have to do it you know, you were all right.”
“I was always all right,” she said.
“No you weren’t, you were a tense frigid jealous bitch and still are.”
“I was never jealous of what Siobhan Casey could give you, never.” She spoke simply.
“So why did you do it?”
“Because it wasn’t fair. You had your warning, you were rescued, wasn’t that enough?”
“You know nothing of men. Nothing.” He almost spat the words. “Not only do you not know how to please them, you actually think that a man could be a real man and accept your money and pats on the head.”
“It would be a help if you were strong for the children’s sake,” she said.
“Get out of here, Connie.”
“They loved you all through the last time, they really did. They have lives of their own but you are their father. You didn’t care much about your father, but they do about theirs.”
“You really hate me, don’t you, you’ll rejoice that I’m in jail.”
“No, and you probably won’t serve much time if any. You’ll get away with things, you always do.” She left the office.
She saw Siobhan Casey’s name on a brass plate on her door. Inside that office, files and software were also being removed. Siobhan apparently had no family or friends to give her support. She was sitting with bankers, inspectors in the fraud squad, and lawyers.
Connie’s steps never faltered as she walked out the door and pressed the remote switch that opened her car. Then she got in and drove to her new apartment on the sea.
LADDY
When Signora was choosing Italian names for people, she tried to make sure that they had the same initial rather than being too purist about the translation. There was a woman there called Gertie. Strictly speaking, that should have been Margaret, then Margeretta. But Gertie would never have recognized her own name in that form so she was called Gloria. In fact, she decided that she liked the name Gloria so much that she might keep it ever after.
The big man with the eager face said he was called Laddy. Signora paused. No future in trying to work out the origins. Give him something that he might like to roll around. “Lorenzo,” she cried.
Laddy liked it. “Is that what all the people called Laddy in Italy call themselves?” he asked.
“That’s it, Lorenzo,” Signora rolled out the name again for him.
“Lorenzo, would you credit it?” Laddy was delighted with the name. He said it over and over. “Mi chiamo Lorenzo.”
WHEN LADDY WAS christened in the 1930s the name they gave him at the font was John Matthew Joseph Byrne, but he was never called anything except Laddy. The only boy after five girls, his arrival meant that the small farm would be safe. There would be a man to run it.
But things don’t always turn out the way people think.
Laddy was coming home from school, the mile and a half through puddles and under dripping trees, when he saw his sisters coming out to meet him and knew that something terrible had happened. He thought first that something had happened to Tripper, the collie dog he loved so much. Maybe it had hurt its paw or been bitten by a rat.
He tried to run past them, the crying girls, but they held him back and told him that Mam and Dad had gone to heaven, and that from now on they would look after him.
“They can’t have both gone at the same time.”
Laddy was eight, he knew things. People went to heaven one by one and everyone wore black and cried.
But it had happened. They had been killed at a rail crossing, pulling a cart that had got stuck in the rails and the train was on top of them before they realized it. Laddy knew that God had wanted them, that it was their time, but all through the years he wondered why God had chosen that way.
It had caused such upset and hurt for everyone. The poor man who had been driving the train was never the same again and went to a mental home. The people who had found Mam and Dad never spoke of it to anyone. Laddy once asked a priest why God couldn’t have given his mam and dad heavy winter colds if he had wanted them to die. And the priest had scratched his head and said that it was a mystery, and that if we understood all the things that happened on earth, we would be as wise as God Himself, which of course couldn’t happen.
Laddy’s eldest sister, Rose, was a nurse in the local hospital. She gave up her job and came back to look after the family. It was lonely for her, and the boy who was courting her didn’t continue the romance when it meant a mile-and-a-half walk to see her and a family of children in the house dependent on her.
But Rose made a good home for them. She supervised the homework every night in the kitchen, she washed and mended their clothes, she cooked and cleaned the house, she grew vegetables, kept hens, and employed Shay Neil as the farm man.
SHAY WORKED WITH the small herd of cattle, and kept the place ticking over. He went to fairs and markets, he did deals. He lived silently in a converted outbuilding separate from the farmhouse. It had to look right when people called. No one would like to think of a man, a working farmhand, living in the same house as all those girls and a child.
But the Byrne girls did not stay on the little farm. Rose made sure they got their exams, and with her encouragement one by one they left. One for nursing, another to be trained as a teacher, one to a job in a shop in Dublin, and one to a post in the civil service.
They had done well for the Byrne girls, the nuns and Rose. Everyone said that. And she was making a great fist of bringing up young Laddy. A big boy now sixteen years of age, Laddy had almost forgotten his parents. He could only remember life with Rose, patient and funny and never thinking he was thick.
She would sit for ages with him at his books, going over and over a thing until he could remember it, and she was never cross if he sometimes forgot it the next morning. From what he heard from other fellows at school, Rose was better than any mother.
There were two weddings the year that Laddy was sixteen, and Rose did all the cooking and entertaining for her younger sisters. They were great occasions and the photographs hung on the wall, pictures taken outside the house that had been newly painted by Shay for the festivities. Shay was there, of course, but in the background. He didn’t really mix, he was the hired man.
And then Laddy’s sister who was working in England said she was having a very quiet wedding, which meant that she was pregnant and it would be in a registry office. Rose wrote and said that she and Laddy would be happy to come over if it would help. But the letter back was full of gratitude and underlined words saying that it wouldn’t be at all helpful.
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And the sister who was nursing went out to Africa. So that was the Byrne family settled, people said, Rose running the farm until poor Laddy grew up and was able to take over, God bless him if that were ever to happen. Everyone assumed that Laddy was slow. That was everyone except Rose and Laddy himself.
Now that he was sixteen, Laddy should have been right in the middle of all the fuss getting ready for his intermediate certificate, but there seemed to be no mention of it at all.
“Lord, but they take things very easily above in the Brothers,” Rose said to him one day. “You’d think there’d be all sorts of revision and plans and studying going on, but not a squeak out of them.”
“I don’t think I’m doing it this year,” Laddy said.
“Well of course you are, Fourth Year. When else would you do it?”
“Brother Gerald didn’t say a word about it.” He looked worried now.
“I’ll sort it out, Laddy.” Rose had always sorted everything out.
She was nearly thirty now, a handsome dark-haired woman, cheerful and good-natured. Over the years there had been a fair share of interest in her. But she never responded. She had to look after the family. When that was all sorted out, she would think of romance…she would say this with a happy laugh, never offending anyone because overtures were turned down at an early stage, before they had become serious and before anyone could be offended.
ROSE WENT TO see Brother Gerald, a small kind man who had always been spoken well of by Laddy.
“Ah Rose, would you not open your eyes, girl,” he said. “Laddy’s the most decent boy that ever wore shoe leather into this school, but the poor divil hasn’t two brains to rattle together.”
Rose felt a flush of annoyance come to her face. “I don’t think you understand, Brother,” she began. “He’s so eager and he wants to learn, maybe the class is too big for him.”
“He can’t read without putting his finger under the words, and only with difficulty then.”
“That’s a habit, we can get him out of it.”
“I’ve been trying to get him out of it for ten years and I haven’t got anywhere.”
“Well, that’s not the end of the world. He hasn’t failed any exams. He hasn’t had any tests that he did very badly in, he’ll get the Inter, won’t he?” Brother Gerald began to speak, and then paused as if changing his mind. “No, go on, Brother, please, we’re not fighting over Laddy. We both want the best for him. Tell me what I should know.”
“He’s never failed a test, Rose, because he’s never done a test. I wouldn’t put a humiliation like that on Laddy. Why let the boy be last all the time?”
“And what do you do with Laddy when the others are doing a test?”
“I ask him to do messages for me, he’s a good-natured reliable lad.”
“What kind of messages, Brother?”
“Ah you know, carrying boxes of books and stoking up the fire in the teachers’ room, and bringing something down to the post office.”
“So I’m paying fees in this school for my brother to be a skivvy to the Brothers, is this what you’re telling me?”
“Rose Byrne.” The man’s eyes were full of tears. “Will you stop getting the wrong end of things. And what fees are you talking about? A few pounds a year. Laddy’s happy with us, you know that. Isn’t that the best we can do for him? There isn’t a notion of putting him in for the Inter or any exam, you must know that. The boy is slow, that’s all I’m saying. I wish that was all I had to say about many a boy that went through the school.”
“What will I do with him, Brother? I thought he might go to an agricultural college, you know, to learn about farming.”
“It would be over his head, Rose, even if he were to get in, which he wouldn’t.”
“But how will he run the farm?”
“He won’t run the farm. You’ll run the farm. You’ve always known that.”
She hadn’t known. Not until that minute.
SHE CAME HOME with a heavy heart.
Shay Neil was forking manure into a heap. He nodded his usual dour jerk of the head. Laddy’s old dog, Tripper, barked a welcome-home. Laddy himself came to the door.
“Did Brother Gerald say anything against me?” he asked fearfully.
“He said you were the most helpful lad that ever came into the school.” Without realizing it she had almost started to talk to him as if he were a toddler, speaking down to him in soothing baby talk. She fought to check it.
But Laddy hadn’t noticed. His big face was one huge smile. “He did?”
“Yes, he said you were great to make up a fire and carry the books and do the messages.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her tone.
“Well, he doesn’t trust a lot of them but he does trust me.” Laddy was proud.
“I’ve a bit of a headache, Laddy. Do you know what would be great, could you make me a cup of tea and bring it up to me with a slice of soda bread, and then maybe make Shay’s tea for him?”
“Will I cut him two bits of ham and a tomato?”
“That’s right, Laddy, that would be great.”
She went upstairs and lay on her bed. How had she not seen how backward he was? Did parents feel this about children, fiercely overprotective?
Well, she’d never know now. She wasn’t going to marry anyone, was she? She was going to live here with her slow brother and the dour hired man. There was no future to look forward to. It would always be just more of the same. The light had gone out of a lot of what she did now.
Every week she wrote a letter to one of her sisters, so they all heard from her once a month. She had been telling the little titbit about the farm and about Laddy. She found the letters hard to write now. Did they realize that their brother was slow? Was all their praise and gratitude because she had given up her life to look after him?
She hadn’t known this is what she was doing; she had thought she had taken time out of her youth, cut short her nursing career because of the accident. She felt bitter about her parents. Why were they pulling a bloody cart across, and why didn’t they leave it and run to save themselves?
She had a birthday card for a niece with a ten-shilling note to send, and as she put it in the envelope she realized that the others must think she was well paid for her trouble. She had a farm of land. If they only knew how much she didn’t want it, that she would have handed it to the first person who passed by if she thought they would give Laddy a happy home for the rest of his life.
THE CARNIVAL CAME to town every summer. Rose took Laddy and they went in the bumpers and the chair-o-planes. They went in the ghost train and he clung on to her with cries of terror, but then wanted another shilling so that they could do it again. She saw various people from the town, all of them saluting her warmly. Rose Byrne was someone who was admired. Now she saw why. They were praising her for having signed on for life.
Her brother was having a great day.
“Can we spend the egg money?” he asked.
“Some of it, not all of it.”
“But what would be better to spend it on than a carnival?” he asked, and she watched him go to the three-ring stall and win her a statue of the Sacred Heart. He carried it back to her bursting with pride.
A voice beside her said, “I’ll take that back to the farm, you won’t want to be carrying it round all day,” and there was Shay Neil. “I can put it in the bicycle bag,” he said.
It was kind of him, because the big statue, hopelessly wrapped in newspaper, would have been a cumbersome weight to carry.
Rose smiled at him gratefully. “Well, Shay, aren’t you the great fellow, always there when you’re wanted?”
“Thank you, Rose,” he said.
There was something about his voice, as if he had been drinking. She looked at him sharply. Well why not? It was his day off, he was allowed to drink if he wanted to. It couldn’t have been a great life for him either, living in that outbuilding, forking dung, milking cows. He didn’t have any friends
, any family that she knew of. Weren’t a few whiskies on a day out only a bit of comfort to him?
She moved away and directed Laddy toward the fortune-teller. “Will we give it a try?” she asked.
He was so pleased that she was staying at the carnival. He had feared she might want to go home. “I’d love my fortune told,” he said. Gypsy Ella looked for a long time at his hand. She saw great successes at games and sport ahead for him, a long life, a job working with people. And travel. There would be travel over the water. Rose sighed. It had been fine so far, why had she mentioned travel? Laddy would never go abroad unless she were to take him. It didn’t look like anything that would happen.
“Now you, Rose,” he said.
Gypsy Ella looked up, pleased.
“Ah, but we know my future, Laddy.”
“Do we?”
“My future is running the farm with you.”
“But I’ll be meeting people and going over the water traveling,” he said.
“True, true,” Rose agreed.
“So have your hand read, go on, Rose.” He waited eagerly.
Gypsy Ella saw that Rose would marry within a year, that she would have one child, and that this would bring her great happiness.
“And will I be going over the water?” she asked, more from politeness than anything else.
No, Gypsy Ella saw no travel for Rose. She saw some poor health, but not for a long time. The two half crowns were paid and they got another ice cream before going home. The walk seemed long tonight, she was glad she didn’t have to carry the statue.
Laddy talked on about the great day and how he wasn’t really frightened by the ghost train. Rose looked into the fire and thought about Gypsy Ella, what a strange way to make a living, moving on from town to town with the same set of people. Maybe she was married to the man in the bumpers.