Up until — she tried but couldn’t work out how many days ago it had been that the slut’s shoes had interrupted her world. Up until not very long ago her whole existence had revolved around Jack. She had spent her days daydreaming about being Mrs White and bringing up their children, ‘the little Beiges’, as every halfwit they knew had joked. She had spent her nights waiting for him to come home so she could cook for him, buy fantastic wine for him, smell delicious and look lovely for him, make love to him.
She wasn’t to know he was out doing the wild thing with every — every — everyone else.
But the tragedy was that she couldn’t just turn off that tap of desire simply because he had turned out to be living a parallel life as an A-grade arsehole. The truth was, she missed him, pure and simple.
‘It’s not fair,’ Molly whispered wetly into her hands, now covering her miserable face. ‘It’s just not fair.’
She imagined poor Bobs making the endless round of phone calls telling their friends and relatives that the wedding was off. The catering bill would still have to be paid. All those smoked salmon blinis! Jess would be out of pocket and stuck with that dress that did make her butt look like a three-day tractor journey. And maybe her dad would have decided to come after all — hocked off his skis to pay the fare.
A surge in the music snapped her out of her misery and Molly looked up to see the bride and groom walking down the aisle towards the back of the church, towards her. Nervous that they should see her tearful face and come to a wrong conclusion, she slipped onto her knees and closed her eyes, bowing her head in fervent prayer as they approached her.
The way things were going, she could easily be mistaken for the melancholy mistress of the groom and be set upon by the bride’s enormous brothers and their Siberian-trained wolf pack.
Out the corner of her eye, despite her tears, she watched the families emerge from either side of the aisle and follow the couple towards the back doors. The bridesmaid was definitely a sister of the bride but she didn’t think the best man was related. He had broad shoulders and was tall like the groom, but his skin was darker and so was his thick straight brown hair.
The mother of one of the happy couple was crying almost as much as Molly and leaning against a grey-haired man Molly assumed was her husband, who was unsteady on his feet himself but not for reasons of being over-emotional.
There followed the usual collection of aunties and uncles and bored and restless children, and then the couple’s friends, the girls giggling and elbowing one another and the blokes looking scratchy in their best suits but keen on a knees-up all the same.
Molly stayed pretend-praying until she heard the last one file out the door, through which the sounds of photographs being taken filtered back in.
‘The little boy with all that ginger hair — you there! Don’t do that to Grandma. Mother of the groom, a smile please. Lovely. Bit more of a smile, perhaps? Right then. Everybody else, happy faces, happy faces, happy faces.’
Molly sat back up in her pew and investigated the possibilities for nose-blowing. If only her arm had been bandaged, not plastered, she thought, eyeing up the prayer books on the rail in front of her.
Would it be a big sin to use a few tissue-thin prayer-book pages to wipe her snout? she wondered. She would only use bits that nobody bothered much with, you know, like Letter to the Corinthians, whoever the hell they were.
The pathetic-ness of her situation swept over her once more, bringing a fresh brew of tears and nose-running. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her hands over her eyes, and sobbed again, loudly, not holding back.
‘Ahem.’ A voice cleared itself beside her. ‘Are you all right there?’
She tried to hold in the sobs but her body was crying all on its own now, her shoulders shaking with grief.
‘Would a handkerchief do you any good, do you think?’ the voice inquired and a hanky was shaken somewhere near her face, brushing her cheek and so close she could smell that it had been freshly laundered.
Without looking around she reached blindly for the handkerchief, found it, then scrunched it up against her eyes, letting it absorb her tears as she tried to take control of her sobbing.
‘Are you sure you’re in the right church?’ the voice said, very close now. ‘Only this was a wedding, not a funeral. I thought I’d just clear that up for you.’
The voice was male, but soft and gentle and, if she wasn’t mistaken, it had just made a little joke. It was also sitting right next to her.
Molly re-mastered the simple art of breathing in and out, gave her nose a hearty blow, then sat up and looked at the owner of the voice.
It was the best man. The one with the broad shoulders. He too was wearing a morning suit and a beautiful delicate pink rosebud in his suit buttonhole.
His skin was lovely and he had the most captivating green eyes — the colour of a stormy sea. The thought of the ocean made Molly choke back another sob at the thought of being so far away from home.
The best man was looking at her with such tenderness and concern on his face that Molly just wanted to cry all over again, so she buried her face in her hands yet again and did.
The best man moved closer to her and after a moment started rubbing her back, the way a mother might comfort a distraught child.
‘Please don’t be nice to me,’ Molly sobbed in near-hysterics. ‘Please.’
God, I have to pull myself together, she thought. I am really losing the plot here. Gathering whatever she had left, and using the rhythm of the rubbing on her back as a guide, she got her breathing going again and sat up, covering the bottom half of her face and her embarrassment with her good hand.
‘You must think I am completely deranged,’ she eventually said to the best man, unable to meet his gaze as he drew his hand from her back.
He took in her bruised face, her broken arm, her bizarre outfit and the look of deep, deep sadness in her eyes and he smiled at her.
‘Well, I’m assuming you’ve had better days, if you don’t mind me saying so. Would I be right in thinking you were halfway through being crowned Miss Australia when you were kidnapped by wild pygmies, run over by a steamroller, sold into white slavery and shipped across the world to live for ever as the strange woman who cries at the back of other people’s weddings?’
Molly, her chest still heaving, hiccupped and picked a piece of soggy plaster off her cast.
‘Miss New Zealand, actually,’ she said in mock pique, then looked at the man and returned a watery smile.
‘I’m Molly,’ she said, extending the plaster cast.
‘And I’m Pohraig,’ he said, grasping it gently in his, and shaking it.
‘As in “Alas, poor Porick, I knew him well”?’
‘That’s how you say it,’ he smiled, but it’s one of those names with a few extra hs and gs thrown in to put people off the scent of pronouncing it correctly. We do that a bit in Ireland!’ He paused. ‘Now, do you want to tell me what’s the matter?’
‘Well, it’s kind of a long story,’ Molly said, ‘owing to the fact that the black eye, the broken wrist, my reasons for being in Ireland and the wedding dress that you may or may not have noticed I am currently wearing actually have nothing to do with one another.’
‘I’ve all the time in the world if it’s a story you feel like telling me,’ Pohraig said gently.
What a nice way to put it, Molly thought.
‘But what about the wedding party? Won’t you be missed?’
As she looked at him his eyes darkened just for a flicker of a second, as though he’d gone somewhere else for a moment, but then he came back and smiled at her again.
‘Well, you won’t find me bawling my eyes out in the back row of a church or anything,’ he teased, ‘but as it happens I’m not a great fan of weddings myself.’
‘What a great pair we turned out to be then,’ Molly joked half-heartedly before thinking what a presumption it was to call them a pair. What the hell was the matter with her
? Where was her head? Come to think of it, where was her bag?
Suddenly she jumped to her feet, knocking her knee on the back of pew in front, then turned to Pohraig and jiggled and fluttered her hands around, the epitome of panic.
‘Jesus bloody Christ,’ she shrilled. ‘Oh bugger, sorry, sorry, sorry,’ this to the church because Jesus bloody Christ was probably not usually the way He was referred to in there.
‘The bloody bus,’ she moaned. ‘The bloody bollocky bus!’
She pushed urgently at Pohraig, who got the message and stepped out of the aisle to let her past, watching her in amusement.
Hurrying out of the church, she half ran, half limped — the bloody knee! — up the little cemetery pathway until she could see the bun shop. Sure enough, the bus had gone. Left without her. Vivienne and a thousand grandmas all heading towards Cork completely Molly-less.
Collapsing on a nearby grave, Molly again found her head in her hands.
‘I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.’
Pohraig’s legs appeared in her line of vision. He had the most beautifully kept pair of black leather brogues on, the sort with holes punched in them. They weren’t new but they were obviously regularly polished and re-soled, she thought. You really can tell a lot about a person by their shoes.
She looked up at him.
‘I was on the bus with my aunt,’ she gabbled, ‘on my way to Cork, but she’s gone without me. I was meant to be at the bun shop but there was a queue practically out the door so I came here and then the wedding and—’
Pohraig had a pained expression on his face, as though Molly were hurting him.
‘Are you all right?’ she said, suddenly concerned for him and embarrassed to be embroiling him in her shabby existence. ‘Look, I’ll be fine. I’m so sorry to bother you. I’ll just get the next bus. You just go ahead. I am keeping you from the wedding reception, aren’t I? Really. Thanks for the handkerchief.’
She scrunched it up into a ball and handed it back to him, but he just stood there, the same strange look on his face.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t leave you here. Certainly not right here.’ He looked as though he were going to say something else but then changed his mind. ‘I’ll tell you what, why don’t you come to the party with me? It’s just across the road and it’s bound to cheer you up.’
‘But I need to follow my aunt,’ Molly began but Pohraig suddenly reached for her good arm and dragged her to her feet, not roughly, but not gently either.
‘Please, Molly, not here. Just come, will you?’
Surprised, she let herself be pulled to her feet and as she stood up, she noticed for the first time that the grave she had been sitting on had been recently adorned with fresh flowers. Rosebuds, of the prettiest, most delicate pink. Rosebuds matching identically the one Pohraig was wearing.
She craned her neck as he led her down the path. Niamh Something, the headstone read. 1942 (was it?) to 1997, by the looks of things.
Jesus Christ, is there no end to it? thought Molly. Don’t tell me I’ve been sitting on the poor bugger’s dead mother. That would certainly explain his discomfort.
Pohraig loosened his grip on her once they were out on the street and looked at her apologetically.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ve a bit of a thing about graveyards.’
Molly opened her mouth to say ‘better off an aversion than a devotion’ but changed her mind.
‘Listen,’ she said instead, a practical streak re-emerging, ‘I should really go and wait for the next bus. You’ve been so nice to me, really, but my aunt will be so mad at me. I’m already in the dogbox for the black eye and the broken arm and all so this is really not going to help things. But it’s been great to meet you, Pohraig, and I hope you enjoy the party. Thanks for everything. I mean it. Thank you.’ And Molly held out her good hand.
Pohraig took it and shook it most solemnly.
‘Right you are, then,’ he said. ‘But are you sure you don’t want me to pop out every now and then with a piece of cake and a little jug of something to slake your thirst?’ he asked, a mischievous glint in his eye.
‘No, I’m going to catch the next bus,’ Molly explained slowly, wondering had she got him all wrong — was he retarded in some way?
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Pohraig. ‘The next bus to Cork leaves at six o’clock tomorrow morning.’
He watched her mouth fall open in horror. ‘Now, is the prospect of spending an evening with me really so dreadful?’ he teased, but he knew her mind was racing ahead to what would happen at the end of the evening, when it would officially be night time, followed by the wee small hours, followed by the next day. ‘Molly,’ he said, ‘I can take you to the wedding, we can sort out somewhere for you to stay as soon as we get there, and then we can have a bit of a dance and perhaps a few jars. You might even enjoy yourself, you know.’
Molly was still flabbergasted at her own stupidity and ineptness. How could she have missed the bus? How could she have abandoned Vivienne? All she had had to do was get off and buy a couple of sticky buns. How had she cocked it up so badly?
She stood there, on the pavement outside the church, and opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water.
‘No use standing there like a fish out of water,’ said Pohraig. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
In the circumstances Molly didn’t have a lot of choice. The rucksack containing her purse, her address book, clean knickers and cleansing lotion was on the bus hurtling down a succession of nail-bitingly narrow roads to Cork with Vivienne while she was standing here in a town she didn’t even know the name of with the best man of a groom she didn’t even know existed until an hour ago.
Her only option was to wait for the bus and pray that Vivienne was waiting for her at the other end without a hammer ready to bash her face in, because she hadn’t had the presence of mind to find out exactly where it was they were going.
‘What’s his name?’ she suddenly asked Pohraig, snapping out of it and shaking his hand off her arm.
‘What’s whose name?’ he said, confused.
‘The groom — the guy who’s getting married and his wife. What are their names?’ Pohraig smiled as he realised this meant Molly was going to come with him.
‘His name is Andrew Fogarty,’ he said, ‘and he’s just married Ngila Kelly and if you want me to tell you any more you have to start walking with me because I’m freezing my bollocks off out here.’
With that, he again took Molly, gently this time, by the hand and started to lead her down the street back the way the bus had come, to a little schoolyard she hadn’t noticed as they had driven in.
At the back of the school, past the playground, was a hall and as they neared the open doors a clutch of wedding guests spilled out, laughing and lighting cigarettes and chatting, the sound of raucous music and chatter floating out with them.
‘Are you sure this will be all right?’ Molly asked, suddenly unsure again.
‘If you’re with me, it will be all right,’ Pohraig insisted, and led her past the noisy partygoers into the hall.
Chapter 22
1989
Father Kelly’s phone rang halfway through his horoscope, interrupting his cup of camomile tea.
He’d been here a month and still Mrs Murphy hadn’t learned how to make his favourite brew, God bless her, insisting on steeping it for at least 10 minutes, then adding milk and sugar.
He also suspected that the very fact he preferred camomile tea put him in the same pigeon-hole — as far as his parishioners were concerned — as people who drove BMWs, ladies with big hair who dyed their poodles, and vegetarians.
I’ve given up everything else for the love of Jesus Christ, he was tempted to blurt out during every Sunday mass, could you not let me have my herbal infusions in peace?
‘Hello, Chris Kelly,’ he answered the phone politely.
‘Is that Father Kelly?’ a quavery voice asked him.
‘Ye
s, it is indeed, who’s this?’
‘Is that Father Kelly speaking?’ the voice asked again.
‘Yes, this is Father Chris Kelly speaking, now, who is this?’
‘Sure and you don’t sound like a hippie, Father. I don’t know what they’re all on about!’ the voice continued.
Whoever said patience is a virtue was onto something, all right, the young priest thought.
‘Well, I tried out for the hippies before the Pope would let me into the church, as it happens,’ Father Kelly told the voice at the other end of the phone. ‘But I’ve never had the sort of hair you could get into a ponytail so it was decided I would be better off joining a religious order. Does that make you feel any better, now?’
‘Oh, yes, Father,’ the voice said quickly, ‘that’s right, yes, it does. It’s Jenny O’Brien here, Father. I’m home help for Mary Monaghan — you know, the widow Monaghan. Only she’s not looking too good, Father, and the wheezing on the poor old thing! I’m sure it’s all the pills she has rattling around inside of her. The doctor says she’s got pneumonia but I feel I have to tell you that the doctor also told your woman from the co-op that her daughter had appendicitis, which as it happened turned out to be twins called Elvis and Priscilla, born the very next day and not a second before their time. Anyway,’ she finally drew breath, ‘she’s asking for you.’
‘Mrs Monaghan is asking for me?’ the priest asked.
‘Didn’t I just say that, Father? Are you drinking that tea of yours or are you smoking it?’
‘No, Jenny, nothing like that,’ he sighed. ‘I was just checking, is all. I don’t think I’ve met a Mary Monaghan, that’s all.’
‘Well, she didn’t get on too well with Father Cahill,’ Jenny explained. ‘I think perhaps she thought he was a rotten fat pig who cared more about where his next four-course meal was coming from than he did for the well-being of his parishioners, in particular her. That’s the feeling I get, anyway,’ she finished airily. ‘So are you coming out or not, then?’