‘So we had a glass of Guinness there, and then that lovely bartender, Bernard, was it Lou? Or Brian? Anyway, he showed us down the road and up to this dear little house …’ she clicked the remote again. ‘Oh, shoot, I can never get this to go the right way. Look, we’re back at the bus station again. Help,’ she giggled nervously as she fumbled with the remote.
‘Mary-Anne, would you like to make sure everyone is okay for coffee. I just can’t seem to — oh!’ A large, upside-down fish was now filling the screen against the wall of Patty’s living room. ‘That Laurie!’ she laughed, seething on the inside. How the hell did that get in her holiday slides? She’d only been back a few days — how did he manage it?
The girls were talking among themselves now, she’d lost them, and she was that darn hot inside this woollen sweater she’d bought in the craft shop at Ballymahoe. She looked over at Lou who was still balancing her coffee on her knee and still smiling. She was supposed to be off the anti-depressants but sometimes Patty wasn’t so sure.
‘There’s more banana cream pie in the kitchen,’ she said, her voice too high. ‘Mary-Anne, perhaps you would — or Judy? I just can’t seem to …’ She had one of her fingernails wedged in the slide sprocket, now, trying to get rid of that fish.
Finally she got it out, clicked the remote, and Great-great-aunt Cecilia’s house covered the wall.
She breathed again and the girls stopped talking and gasped.
‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ said Rachel from next door. ‘It’s just so cute.’
‘See how all the little houses are joined together and painted different pastel colours?’ Patty pointed out. ‘That’s real traditional, that is, and Ballymahoe is one of the few towns to keep that up.’
‘Didn’t you have slides of Ballymahoe from your last trip?’ asked Yolanda from her church group. ‘You know, where the Virgin Mary was meant to appear?’
‘Yes I did, as a matter of fact, Yolanda,’ Patty answered, thrilled that she had remembered.
‘So, is she still there? The Holy Blessed Mother?’
Patty’s face fell. In the excitement of finding her great-great-aunt and all, she had quite forgotten to ask. Trust Yolanda to bring that up — she was still bent out of shape because she and Laurie went on that holy apparition trip in the first place and Yolanda and her creepy husband couldn’t afford to.
‘Well, I didn’t have time to visit this time, Yolanda, but of course she is still appearing there,’ Patty said, her face flushing at the little white lie.
‘And were the little houses painted all those different colours last time you were there, Patty? I don’t remember that.’
That’s right, Yolanda, thought Patty, just go and ruin everything, why don’t you?
‘Of course they were, honey. Didn’t I just tell you Ballymahoe is one of the few towns to keep that up? Anyway, enough of this time-wasting, we have a lot of slides to get through here. Look,’ she said, clicking the remote again, ‘here is the front room at Great-great-aunt Cecilia’s place.’
Another room filled Patty’s wall. This one had a small dining table covered in a lacy tablecloth with a bunch of hand-picked flowers in a jam jar in the middle.
On the faded rosy wallpaper behind it was a picture of the sacred bleeding heart of Jesus and underneath it a little shelf carrying two candles, a little statue of the Virgin Mary still wrapped in clear plastic, some holy cards, assorted rosary beads and a crucifix, also wrapped in clear plastic.
‘They all have these little shrines in their houses,’ said Patty. ‘They’re very religious people. Just like us.’ She clicked the remote control again and a darkened stairway filled the wall.
‘How come you didn’t go see your Great-great-aunt Cecilia last time you were in Ballymahoe?’ Yolanda asked, a great blob of cream on her chin.
‘You’ve made a mess on your face, honey,’ Patty said sweetly, picking up a napkin from the coffee table and taking it over to Yolanda, only just resisting the temptation to pinch her great fat arm while she was there.
‘Well, Cecilia isn’t actually from Ballymahoe. She’s from a place called Knocknagarry which is about 20 miles away and do you know she lived all alone in her family house out in the middle of nowhere until just last year when she turned 86 and the place burned to the ground one Sunday while she was at church. Now she lives with her niece, Eileen, who out of the goodness of her heart took her in and tends to her.’
She clicked the remote again.
‘This is Cecilia’s room. See that quilt? My great-great-grandmother made that. Can you believe that? Oh,’ she said, clicking again, ‘there’s Cecilia’s crucifix with her special rosary beads hanging off of it. Soaked in water from Lourdes. Uh-huh, that’s right.’
Judy leaned forward to help herself to another piece of cake. That Patty sure could bake. ‘Do you have any pictures of your great-great-aunt, Patty?’ she asked before taking a healthy bite.
Patty stabbed the remote.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s this one but it’s a bit blurry. She didn’t really like the flash going off so I had to put the camera away but see here she is sitting by the fireplace. That’s her on the right-hand side with her hand up. If you sort of squint your eyes up you can make out her hair and one of her eyes but see that pretty purple jumper she has on? Lou and I bought that for her in Marks and Spencer in Dublin. It’s the most gorgeous colour and it really suited her colouring, didn’t it, Lou, even though we didn’t know what her colouring would be.’
Patty perched on the edge of the sofa and stared dreamily at the screen.
‘She was the sweetest woman,’ she said. ‘She talked to me about all her brothers and sisters leaving Ireland and never coming back again. And she said I looked just like her grandmother, Sheila Corrigan. Isn’t that amazing? I gave her some photos of me and Laurie and our house back here in California and then she got real tired and Eileen put her to bed. But we went back the next day and had a cup of tea before getting the bus to Limerick.’
Lou suddenly snapped out of her dream world.
‘It was the most gorgeous sunny day when we got there,’ she said, still smiling. ‘I just don’t know what old Frank McCourt was on about.’
Chapter 33
Monday, 22 February 1999
It was freezing cold and still dark when Molly woke up with a jerk.
She tried to focus her eyes in the blackness but couldn’t. Her head felt fuggy and something didn’t feel quite right.
She pulled at the blankets and feather quilt to cover her shivering shoulders, but something was pinning them down on the other side of the bed. Something, she realised with a lurch of her stomach, that looked in the darkness like a mound and that was — oh, my God — snoring gently.
Staring at the lump, Molly’s breathing quickened. It couldn’t be, could it? She thought back to the events of the night before: the cousins, the cocktails, somebody fondling her breasts, somebody walking her up the hill. A kiss …
With a shaking hand she pulled the sheet down from the top of the mound and as soon as she saw the smooth brown skin of the slumbering broad shoulder she knew it was him. It was Pohraig.
She had slept with her cousin, the priest.
Gasping for breath, Molly pulled her hand away from the sleeping form of her new relation and jumped out of bed. Scrabbling around the floor she found her dress and cardigan, but her knickers — where were her knickers?
Crawling around the floor on Pohraig’s side of the bed she found them. Wrapped around his wrist, which was dangling over the side of the covers.
What the hell did I do here? She thought, holding back a sob and resting her face for a moment on the cold wooden floorboards. What have I done?
She scrabbled around until she felt the thick woollen skirt of her coat in her hands, then, bumping into her rucksack, she snatched that too and dragged them and herself in the direction of the door. Outside in the darkened hall she sat against the wall and tried to think what she should do.
&
nbsp; She had slept with her cousin, the priest.
Could a girl get any lower than that? And she’d thought having your cheating scumbag of a fiancé diddle every flossy blonde in town was as bad as it got.
Now she had debased herself with a Catholic priest. The son of her mother’s brother. She was going to hell. If she wasn’t already in it, that is. And on top of that, some Bailey’s Irish Cream seemed to have made its way into her plaster cast and was making a big old squishy mess in her palm.
Trying to collect her thoughts, Molly crawled to the top of the stairs where it occurred to her that she could actually stand up and walk down them. But standing up, for some reason, was not as easy as it sounded. She seemed unsteady on her feet and her eyes were still having trouble focusing, although they appeared to have got used to the dark.
Still, she managed to pull on her coat and, grabbing her bag, made her way downstairs, clutching the handrail and going as quietly as she could.
At the foot of the steps she felt her way around the walls past the doorway into the dining room, around to the big front door with its giant key. Turning it as slowly and quietly as she could, Molly opened the giant door and slipped outside.
The moment her feet hit the concrete steps she realised she had forgotten her boots. The cold seeped across the soles of her feet and up towards her ankles almost instantly and she hopped and jumped and sprang across the driveway and onto the road in a desperate effort to keep warm.
It didn’t work and she was running down the hill towards the water before she remembered she had a thick pair of woolly socks in her bag. She stopped, sat down on the wet road, rustled around inside her bag until she found them, then pulled them on, her fingers blue with the cold.
Standing up she felt much better and looked up for the first time at the stars. It was a beautiful night, as still as a painting. The sky a clear blue-black, and not a single light on in the village to detract from it.
As she got to the bottom of the hill she could hear the water in the little harbour gently lapping at the stone walls, and the cold reflected from its chilly surface hit her in the face.
What was she going to do now?
She slopped down towards the pier in her soppy socks and sat on the wall.
A week ago she had been the happy-go-lucky Molly Brown everybody knew and loved. Now, she was sitting in the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold with no knickers on having lost her fiancé and slept with her cousin, a priest. She had a broken arm, a black eye, a spare tyre and a drinking habit.
She had no doubt disgraced herself thoroughly in front of the locals, would be lucky if her aunt ever spoke to her again, and had no idea how to deal with another day of her horrible life.
She thought of Pohraig’s shoulders rising and falling in her bed back at the B and B and felt squishy all over, then guilty as sin. She definitely had feelings for him, as the soap operas would say. But how could it work? The whole Church thing would be a nightmare and besides, how could she ever trust him? He’d withheld his priestliness from her, then, when he turned out to be her cousin, bonked her.
If this was what life after Jack was going to be like, she may as well go back to Jack. The thought of the safe, secure, no-nonsense life she had thought she was going to have brought on a fresh wave of tears. Would it be so bad to go back to him? If he promised not to have sex with girls in matching skirts and jackets, could she live with it?
Actually, she thought she could. At least her life wouldn’t be spinning out of control with her running along behind it trying to straighten it up again.
She shivered and looked back at the pub, then at the telephone box by the general store cum post office on the corner. She must have passed that booth at least four times and had never noticed it.
Sniffing away her tears, she grabbed her rucksack and stumbled over to the phone box. Eventually finding her purse — how did Viv do it so easily? — she fumbled around with the contents until she found Jack’s credit card.
Ballymahoe might look like an untouched seaside hideaway but Telefon Eirann wasn’t stupid. It was places just such as this where tourists were more than likely to stagger out of the local pub and spend a fortune ringing home, weeping about how beautiful it was and weren’t they the friendliest locals a guy/girl had ever come across, wish you were here, send money etc.
It must have been about five in the morning in Ireland, Molly reckoned, so Jack would still be at work. She dialled the White Board number and without identifying herself asked the twitty receptionist, Jodie, if she could speak to Jack.
‘I’m terribly sorry, he’s not here this week,’ Jodie said in her annoying sing-song voice. Had Jack knobbed her as well? Molly wondered. ‘Can anybody else help you?’
‘I really need to speak to him urgently — on a personal matter,’ Molly said, realising that her voice wasn’t coming out quite as quickly or clearly as she expected it to.
‘Is that you, Molly?’ Jodie asked, incredulously.
‘No!’ Molly said, trying to think of who she’d rather be but drawing a blank.
‘Molly, are you all right?’ Jodie insisted, putting her hand over the receiver and mouthing ‘Molly Brown is on the phone!’ to whoever was in the open-plan office. ‘Jack’s Molly!’ she said, pointing into the receiver.
‘Molly, are you okay?’ she asked in her thick New Zealand accent. ‘Uz uverythung urright?’
‘I’m dying,’ someone who turned out to be Molly herself blurted out.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Jodie, looking up at the office and mouthing, ‘She’s dying,’ then drawing her finger across her throat.
‘I’ve got cancer of the—’Molly couldn’t think.
‘She’s got cancer,’ mouthed Jodie. ‘She’s crying.’ Wiping her fingers down her cheek in a tearful motion.
‘I’ve got cancer of the—’ Molly couldn’t believe how much mashed potato was in her brain. She just couldn’t think. ‘Cancer of the feet,’ she finally whispered, wriggling her toes inside her soggy socks.
‘Feet!’ Jodie, a shoe fanatic, said out loud. ‘Feet! That uz terruble, Molly. Oh, my God. Perhaps you should ring Jack. He’s un Taupo, you know, at hus famuly’s place there?’
Wracking her brains, Molly tried to remember the Taupo phone number but apart from the feeling it may have started with a five or a seven, she was clueless. Or was it an eight?
After several minutes of banging her head on the side of the phone box, she suddenly realised that she could call Jack’s cellphone. Punching in the numbers, she felt her heart start to beat too quickly.
‘Come and get me, Jack,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Please come and get me.’
The phone rang and rang and rang, and just before she expected it to click over to his message service it was picked up.
‘Hello, Jack White’s phone,’ a girlie voice giggled.
Molly closed her eyes. Of course, he wasn’t in Taupo grieving for his lost bride, he was on a bonkfest with the local gas station attendant.
‘Is Jack there?’ she said anyway.
‘Who is this?’ the girl said, no longer giggling.
‘Just hand the phone over to Jack,’ Molly said wearily, ‘please.’
‘Huh!’ she heard the giggler sniff. ‘Jay, it’s for you. I think it’s your mother.’
Jay? thought Molly. Jay? What was that all about?
‘Hello?’ she heard her handsome one-time soon-to-be husband say.
‘It’s me,’ Molly said, realising that she was crying. ‘It’s me, Jack. Molly.’
‘Bloody hell, Molly, where are you?’
She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t.
‘Are you okay, Molly? Where is — hang on a moment, will you?’ She heard the muffled sounds of Jack trying to get rid of the giggler. ‘Just give me a minute,’ he was saying. ‘No, we can do that after. Just a minute, Smith.’
Smith? she thought. Who was Smith?
‘Molly, are you still there?’
‘I’m he
re, Jack,’ she said, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘I’m here but I was wondering if you would come and get me. I’m cold and my feet will catch cancer if I don’t get some shoes on them.’
‘But Molly, your mum told me you went to Ireland,’ Jack said, sounding worried and confused. ‘Are you calling from Ireland?’
‘I’m in a phone box,’ Molly said. ‘We’ve been reunited with our cousins. One of them’s a priest, Jack. Can you believe it? A priest. He’s really nice, though. Really, really nice. I really like him. His name’s Pohraig. Father Pohraig. He’s a priest.’
‘Molly, you sound — have you been drinking? What is the time over there?’
‘It’s quite early in the morning and I’ve just been thinking that maybe even though you don’t really love me perhaps I could come home and we could get married and have babies anyway. Or you could come and get me and bring me something warm for my feet.’
‘Molly, you’re freaking me out. I think that — hang on a minute.’ She heard the muffled sounds of Jack telling Smith to fuck off and leave him alone.
‘I do love you,’ he said quietly. ‘I do.’
There was a pause, just long enough for Molly to feel the shadow of a giant ‘but’ hanging over her head, like a hammer about to fall.
‘But,’ Jack said, ‘your mother called the wedding off. I’ve spent the last week explaining to everybody what happened. It’s been a nightmare, Moll. A total nightmare. I’ve had calls all day, every day at work. There was an obituary, for God’s sake, an obituary in AdMedia written by Royce Jardyne. I met him in a bar the day it was published and the guy just about had a heart attack and died himself. Everything’s been turned upside down, Molly.’
‘I know, Jack. That’s why I think I should come home and jump into bed.’ Molly imagined the electric blanket on full bore and felt truly happy.
‘… don’t think you realise how devastating it has been,’ Jack was saying, as Molly hugged the receiver with both hands and imagined being normal again.
‘… the grief, I just wasn’t prepared,’ he continued as she drifted in and out of listening to him.