‘Don’t talk to me about normal, Mum. It is not normal to find out that your husband-to-be is dipping his wick in half the population, either. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a tiny little bit confused about what is normal and what is not just now.’
Bobs sat down beside her daughter and looked at her.
‘Darling, you are going to have to decide how you are going to deal with this whole Jack thing. I know it’s hard and it’s painful but having a plan will help you cope. Now, I’ve been talking to your aunt, who obviously has a wealth of experience in this sort of thing, and the way we see it, our best option would be to announce that the wedding is off and not explain it at all. Personal reasons, perhaps. Just make it seem as though the two of you got cold feet. Viv and I can make the phone calls — we’ll give the difficult ones to her because of that brusqueness thing she has going — and then perhaps I can meet with Jack’s mother to sort out the presents. Luckily I can absorb the food and wine into the restaurant, so—’
‘Stop it, Mum,’ Molly interrupted. ‘Just stop it, okay? You cannot rely on me to do the right thing here. When Dad ran off with Helga or Olga or whatever her name was you didn’t sit down with your in-tray and calmly start making lists, did you?’
Her mother looked down at her own hands.
‘Well, did you? No, you stayed in bed for four months with a case of gin while I kept things ticking over and pretended everything was normal. God, I didn’t have time to feel abandoned I was so busy keeping up your cover. It’s not going to happen again, Mum. Do you understand that? I just feel tired, Mama, so bloody tired. I don’t want to be the nice, no-problem Molly Brown any more. It just hasn’t worked.’
She was too tired to cry herself, but Bobs had crumpled and even Vivienne, still standing and surveying the scene in her usual awkward way, looked moved.
‘I’m sorry, darls,’ whispered Bobs.
‘Yep, me too,’ said Molly softly.
‘Well, I suppose she has paid for the dress,’ Viv broke the sad little silence, ‘so it’s up to her whether she wears it until it falls off her or not.’
Molly suddenly sat bolt upright in her seat. ‘Oh, my God!’ she cried, her hands flying up to her cheeks.
‘Trust me,’ said Viv, ‘discovering religion at this stage will get you nothing but a lot of friends wearing socks and sandals.’
‘Oh, my God,’ repeated Molly, standing up and pulling her mother to her feet. ‘Oh, my God.’
‘What is it, Molly? What’s wrong? Viv, is it a seizure?’ Bobs asked, trying to shake her daughter off.
‘Ireland,’ said Molly. ‘Ireland. We are all going to Ireland.’
‘Sweetie, are you having a vision?’ Bobs asked, concerned.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Viv, looking accusingly at her sister. ‘You see, Bobs, this is what drinking your own bodyweight in gin does to the unexperienced.’
‘No, Viv, you don’t understand,’ implored Molly, shaking both women by the arm. ‘I have us booked on a flight to Dublin to go and find Uncle Tom. I did it in the night. With Jack’s credit card. It’s paid for. Non-refundable. Business class. The flight leaves at one. We have to be at the airport at 11.’
Viv looked incredulously at her niece.
‘Like they’ll let you back in there,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me you are serious, Molly,’ her mother said. ‘We can’t just up and off to Ireland. We just can’t. Why would you do something like that, Molly? It’s not like you. Why?’
Molly let go of the two of them and took a step back.
‘I’ll tell you why,’ she said, quickly trying to remember why. ‘I’ll tell you why. It’s because — you know what? — it’s because everybody deserves to know that they are loved and the three of us standing here in this room have not had a whole lot of luck in that department but at least we have one another. What about Uncle Tom, though? What about Tom Connor? Abandoned by his parents, forgotten by his sisters, 50-something and no-one’s ever come looking for him. What must that feel like?’
Her mother and her aunt both stared at her. For quite a while.
Bobs looked as though she was going to faint but Molly couldn’t read the look on Viv’s face — not that that was unusual.
‘You know what?’ Viv finally said. ‘You are right. You are absolutely right. And getting out of town is not a bad idea for you, either, Molly. In the circumstances. I can do a little business in London maybe on the way back and I have another week of vacation up my sleeve. It’ll be good for us, Bobs. One o’clock? Jesus, we’d better move. Bobs, pack your bags. We’re going.’
Viv made her way to the door and Molly jumped up and down with excitement. Then she saw her mother’s face.
‘You are both out of your minds,’ Bobs said, uncharacteristically coldly. ‘You two might be able to up sticks and leave at a moment’s notice but not all of us have that luxury, you know. Not all of us indeed. Some of us have responsibilities, you know. Some of us have important things to do. Places to go.’
‘People to see?’ Viv asked acidly.
‘Some of us,’ said Bobs, her voice faltering, ‘do not have a passport.’
Molly and Viv both turned and stared at her.
‘No passport?’ they both said at once.
‘But Mum, you went to New York — what? Four years ago? You had a passport then. Where is it?’
Bobs looked nervously at her hands and started fiddling with her rings.
‘I lost it,’ she said quietly. ‘It can’t be found.’
Molly rolled her eyes.
‘Look, we’ve got time. We can turn the house upside down and still get to the airport by 11.30. It’ll be fine, I’ll—’
Bobs cleared her throat. ‘I lost it in the fireplace, Molly. While the fire was going.’
The room was still.
‘While I was seeing Timothy. You know, from the wine company. Young Timothy.’
Oh, great, Molly said to herself.
‘Yes, well, don’t be too quick to judge,’ Viv said, picking up on Molly’s frustration. ‘We’ve all “lost” our passports at some stage, Molly. You may “lose” yours yourself one day when you are no longer 27. Now, unaccustomed as I am to delegating and organising, I say Bobs stays here and is in charge of telling people that the wedding has been called off because of a family crisis overseas. Molly, you go upstairs and have a shower and pack. I shall do my usual impeccable job of preparing myself for international travel and will probably also find time to call a taxi and do the crossword. And if Tom Connor turns out to be a bum there’ll be trouble.’
With that Viv marched out the door and could be heard gliding up the stairs.
‘Mum!’ grimaced Molly in a loud whisper. ‘I can’t go with her. She’ll eat me. And when we find Uncle Tom, she’ll eat him too. I need you, Mum. Can’t we get an emergency passport or something?’
But even as she said it, Molly knew that was asking the impossible. Why was she afraid of her aunt, anyway? Hadn’t the poor woman flown all the way over for the wedding that wasn’t? From Sydney, anyway. She did love Viv, but she was also scared of her and she knew Bobs was too. Something about her perfect presentation, her high-flying career, her edgy sarcasm and her high standards made Molly feel uncomfortable.
Now she was going to be stuck in an aeroplane with her for 27 hours and then they would be alone in a strange country for God knows how long.
Whose dumb idea had it been to go on this wild goose chase anyway?
Chapter 12
1969
If Margaret Mary O’Reilly had to stare at the bulbous nose of Father Cahill and talk him through her vision one more time she was going to scream.
‘I’ve told him everything already, Mam,’ she pleaded with her mother when she saw his wide frocked self waddling up the path again.
‘If you make me talk to him again I swear I’ll tell him I made it all up. I’m sick of the whole thing,’ she whinged. ‘Being this holy is draining for a girl my ag
e, you know.’
No-one in the O’Reilly family had ever had an apparition before — unless you counted the green donkeys that Aunt Bridie saw every time she accidentally drained the sherry bottle — so Mrs O’Reilly was quite unsure of how to handle the situation.
‘Please don’t embarrass me in front of the father, Margaret Mary,’ she said, standing sweatily in her flowery apron. ‘Aren’t we all only just getting over your brother losing his breakfast in the communion queue?’
Margaret Mary employed all her blue-eyed blondeness to stare coldly at her mother.
‘All right,’ Mrs O’Reilly folded. ‘I’ll make you the dress. For a religious girl you’ve a heart of stone, do you know that?’
But Margaret Mary had already twirled around to open the door for Father Cahill.
‘Good morning, Father. And how are you this morning?’ she asked prettily, showing him into the front room, which was seeing a fair bit of traffic these days.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Father?’ Mrs O’Reilly, a woman still deeply impressed by a man of the cloth, spoke up in little more than a whisper.
‘And some of that delicious fruitcake of yours I hear so much about?’ the priest suggested, licking his lips.
‘Oh, right so, Father,’ Mrs O’Reilly said, delighted, and scurried to the kitchen blushing, leaving her daughter alone with the holy man.
‘Now, Margaret Mary, before I write to the bishop, I want you to go over once more what you saw out there and I don’t want you to leave out one single detail.’
Margaret Mary nodded sweetly, as she was pretty sure Marilyn Monroe would have done, and attempted to lower her head and eyes and look up through her lashes, which took quite some doing.
‘Is everything all right, girl?’ the priest panicked. ‘Are you hearing voices?’
‘No, Father, I’m fine,’ she sighed. ‘Now, where shall I start?’
‘At the beginning, girl. At the beginning.’
Margaret Mary straightened her skirt.
‘As I’ve told you before, I was walking through the valley with Mr Fogarty wh—’
‘That would be young Colm, then?’
Margaret Mary blew out a lungful of air. That she should have to deal with such dolts! ‘Yes, Father, as I’ve told you before, Colm Fogarty and I were walking through the valley wh—’
‘Had he offered you any refreshment prior to this walk, Margaret Mary?’
‘I’m sorry, Father, I don’t understand.’
The priest looked embarrassed. But he knew the bishop would ask the same question. ‘Were there fluids of an intoxicating nature associated with this stroll?’
The girl stared at him with her best Marilyn Monroe confusion.
‘Had the two of you imbibed anything of a liquid nature?’ said the priest, losing his patience.
Margaret Mary O’Reilly shook her pretty curls.
‘I don’t think we’re up to imbibed in the dictionary, Father. Which bit of a girl is it imbibes something then?’
‘DID COLM FOGARTY PUT ANYTHING INTO ANY PART OF YOU?’ roared Father Cahill.
‘Well, really,’ said Margaret Mary, pretending to be shocked. ‘Do you think the Virgin would bother appearing to a girl who had parts of Colm Fogarty on board? You may as well ask me were we both drunk on whiskey!’
Father Cahill sank back into his armchair and closed his eyes.
‘Were you both drunk on whiskey, Margaret Mary?’ he whispered.
‘Certainly not!’ the girl replied primly. ‘I’ve never touched the stuff but I can smell it a mile off and it’s not a smell I picked up off Colm Fogarty either, although he’s a complete stranger to a cake of soap of course.’
‘Cake — did somebody mention cake?’ Mrs O’Reilly came fawning through the door with the tea tray. ‘Are you all right there, Father?’ She was concerned for the priest, who was shaking slightly and looking most agitated.
‘Are you behaving yourself, Margaret Mary?’
The girl looked at her mother and smiled angelically.
‘Father Cahill’s confused on a couple of points, Mam, but I think we’re finally getting somewhere.’
Mrs O’Reilly put the tray with her best teapot, two cups and saucers and a small plate of fruitcake on the coffee table and excused herself as though in the presence of royalty.
The priest couldn’t be sure for whose benefit this was, his own or that of the Princess of the Holy Apparition.
Taking a refreshing sip of his tea and a healthy bite out of the deliciously moist fruitcake, the priest nodded at Margaret Mary to continue her story.
‘Colm Fogarty and myself were walking through the valley when something made me trip and fall.’
‘What sort of a something?’ the priest asked, spitting currants as he did.
‘It was as if I was supposed to fall,’ Margaret Mary said dramatically. ‘As if a loving and holy hand was giving me a bit of a shove, even.’
The priest bit his tongue.
‘When I hit the ground — and I have to tell you, Father, the more I think about it, the more I think that perhaps that loving and holy hand may have cushioned my fall a bit — I was drawn to something happening on the hillside.’ She paused for effect.
‘When I looked up, I saw her.’ She dropped her voice.
‘It was a shimmering light, Father. A shimmering light of sheer holiness, and talk about beautiful! Did you see the pictures of Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot? Standing over the grate in the street? More beautiful than that, even.’
‘Yes, yes, go on,’ the priest urged.
‘Then before my very eyes the shimmering light changed into a vision of Our Lady — not the one from the front where she is holding the baby Jesus but the one from the side where her head is bowed and her hands are pressed together in prayer. See Mam’s statue here?’ Margaret Mary rose and grabbed the statue of the Virgin Mary from the centre of her mother’s front-room shrine.
Our Lady was the centrepiece but the real pride and joy of the collection was a set of rosary beads that Margaret Mary’s brother Bernard had sent from London. According to the bloke he bought them off outside Kilburn tube station, they’d been soaked in water from Lourdes itself.
‘If you turn this statue to the side, Father, that is what I saw,’ Margaret Mary continued, holding the statue out towards the priest but staring into space with shining eyes as though seeing the glorious vision all over again, ‘only shimmering in brilliant light and much holier of course owing to not being made of plastic. Then, just when I thought I would be blinded from the beauty of it all and perhaps have to wear an eye patch or something, I saw the Virgin Mary nod her head, Father. Bow her head down almost to meet the top of her praying hands, then raise it, then bow it again and so on and so on and so on until the Holy Blessed Virgin disappeared.’
She flopped back down into her armchair and looked at the priest.
‘That’s when Colm said he felt a boil break out on his neck but I’m pretty sure it’s just a pimple and I think it was there already.’
Father Cahill, to his own irritation, had to admit that the two teenagers’ stories were remarkably similar and while he had no doubt that Margaret Mary O’Reilly could concoct such a scenario out of thin air, Colm Fogarty had barely two clues to rub together and was incapable of such.
‘I’ve something to ask you, Margaret Mary,’ he said after a while. ‘Would you take me and perhaps one or two others back to the valley and show me where this all took place?’
Finally, thought Margaret Mary, we’re getting somewhere.
‘Yes, Father, I believe I will but I have to tell you a loving and holy hand is urging me not to revisit the scene until four o’clock not tomorrow but the next day.’
Her mother had better get sewing because damned if she was turning up in front of a crowd wearing just any old rag.
‘Right so, Margaret Mary,’ the priest agreed, a trifle wearily. ‘Right so.’
Surely, he couldn’t help thinking, any
self-respecting loving and holy hand would be dishing out a right old spanking right now rather than ordering around one of God’s holy servants.
Still, it was an excellent fruitcake.
Chapter 13
Thursday, 18 February 1999
The best thing about flying business class, thought Molly, as she sipped champagne in the airport lounge, was that you could be as nutty as a fruitcake and were still treated like the Queen of Sheba.
A girl could get used to that.
Molly knew that she must look more than slightly eccentric in her wedding dress and knee-high boots but nobody had so much as batted an eyelid.
She picked absently at a little fleck of dried snot near her hem-line which Bobs had obviously overlooked when she flogged the dress while Molly was in the shower to spruce it up as much as she could for the journey.
Molly herself couldn’t explain why the dress had taken on such a second-skin appeal. It showed much more of her bosom than anything she would normally wear and she knew from experience that her boobs could pop out and start roving the countryside at any given moment.
But in the aftermath of the end of her life as she knew it, Molly was relishing nuttiness. She’d earned the right to be unhinged and she was going to make the most of it. At the same time she wished she had had the good sense to at least bring the gold-printed chiffon shawl that went with the dress because what with the air-conditioning and all, she had goosebumps on her cleavage.
‘Here, glamour puss, I bought you something,’ Viv swished up from behind and dropped a bag into Molly’s lap.
‘No need to let standards slip just because you’ve taken leave of your senses,’ she almost smiled, sitting down opposite her niece.
Molly looked in the bag. Wrapped in tissue was a fine gold woollen cardigan with a lurex thread running through it.
It was perfect with the dress. Molly stuffed the tissue paper back in the bag, tossed it to one side and shrugged on the cardigan, rubbing her arms with pleasure and warmth.
‘What can I say?’ drawled Viv, admiring her niece. ‘When it comes to duty free, I’m a natural.’