Molly was quiet while she took it all in. ‘It wasn’t easy for Mum, either, you know,’ she started but Vivienne took over.
‘That’s what I am saying,’ her aunt said. ‘On the other side of the world her drunken father was filling her with all sorts of slander and it’s hard to shake that history loose, Molly. I grew up thinking my father was a drunken whoremonger and Bobs grew up thinking her mother was a demented harlot but we can’t help but be loyal to the one who brought us up — dragged us up, whatever you want to call it. It’s there and we have to try hard to get over it and get on with it. Now, I might not have chosen your mom to be my sister but that’s the way it is and I’m sure as hell —’
‘Oh, don’t do us any favours, Vivienne. If you’d rather have different relations, please feel free to go and find some.’ She stopped when she realised what she had said. So that was why Vivienne was coming on this trip. It all fell into place. Disappointed with her poxy New Zealand rellos she was off to find some exciting new ones. Bitch. ‘Excuse me.’ Molly stood up and moved back to the seat where she had chatted with Felix. ‘I think I will stay over here if you don’t mind.’
Her aunt looked at her in astonishment, then decided to give up.
‘Whatever, Molly,’ she said, slipping her eye mask on again. ‘Whatever.’
‘Gee,’ said Felix, coming in with a fresh round of drinks. ‘Is it just me or is it chilly in here?’
Chapter 14
1969
Gerry O’Reilly was beside himself.
‘The possibilities!’ he crowed to Brendan across the bar, ordering another pint. ‘The possibilities.’
‘And is there any possibility you might see your way to paying me for a pint one of these days, Gerry?’ chided the barman, who was mean on credit most of the time but who had a soft spot for Gerry O’Reilly.
‘Well, if ever there was a time for a man to be close to having a few pounds in his pocket, it’s now,’ said Gerry. ‘Or at least, very soon.’
Brendan couldn’t count the times Gerry had been close to a few pounds in his pocket. Somehow the pounds remained sadly far away from his pocket, but you had to admire the man for his unfailing faith in himself and his money-making inventions.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve finally got a patent on the one-touch brassiere clasp, Gerry,’ Brendan said, wiping pint glasses dry as he spoke.
‘Now, that one’s proving pretty hard to get off the ground, I have to say,’ said Gerry. ‘A bit like the men’s elasticised ankle pants. No-one’s got vision, Brendan, that’s the problem. No-one wants to believe that life can be made easier with just a little tinkering here and there. They all want everything to stay the same, no matter what.’
Brendan had to admit that Gerry was onto something there. Hadn’t they all been sitting around and watching the village slowly disappear without so much as lifting a finger to halt its demise? Or at least slow it down?
He looked fondly around his pub. It was bustling, he supposed, thanks to the Virgin, but still not bustling anywhere near as much as it had bustled 10 years before, when the auld ones could still afford to come and the young ones hadn’t all moved off to Cork or Dublin or New bloody York.
Two hundred years the pub had stood here, and while Brendan knew he wasn’t the smartest man in the world he knew that a dimmer man than him could count well enough to know that he needed to sell twice as many pints in a week as he did now to keep himself here and happy.
Also, his sister Rachael had just written from Dublin to ask if she and her daughter Maureen could come and live with him. Their flat had just been burgled for the fourth time and the poor woman was desperate to escape.
‘What’s your next scheme then, Gerry?’ he asked, all ears.
‘It’s staring us all in the face, sure it is,’ Gerry replied. ‘The Virgin Feckin’ Mary!’
Brendan chided himself for not knowing better. For a moment there he’d allowed himself to think that perhaps Gerry O’Reilly was actually onto something. Gerry O’Reilly! As if.
‘Now, I know she’s your baby sister and all, Gerry, but young Margaret Mary has a bit of a reputation for putting on the act, now doesn’t she? Off to Hollywood to be a famous actress, I heard. And you have to be honest, if you were going to choose someone to witness a visitation from the Holy Virgin, would you choose Colm Fogarty? I’ll ring the scrawny, thieving little gob-shite’s neck if ever I can catch him.’
Gerry put his pint down on the bar and looked at Brendan with a slow shake of his head.
‘She’s not making it up, Brendan. She saw it, all right. And Father Cahill has been making a nuisance of himself coming round the house screwing every last detail out of the girl. Mam says he’s collecting evidence for the bishop. Mam says that when Margaret Mary gave him a blow-by-blow account yesterday afternoon the poor man was shaking like a leaf, sure he was. Shaking like a leaf. Could barely choke down his third slice of cake, poor devil. He’s taking Margaret Mary back to the hillside tomorrow to see if the Virgin will reappear. Tomorrow at four, Brendan.’
Brendan sighed and picked up Gerry’s empty glass, plunging it in the sink of warm soapy water and wondering why he ever listened to the man.
‘And where exactly do you fit in with this holy apparition, Gerry?’ he asked.
‘It’s not where do I fit in,’ said Gerry, starting to roll a cigarette, ‘it’s where do we all fit in. Had you not thought, Brendan, that if the Virgin is going to reappear on a regular basis, there’s going to be an awful lot of divine worshippers stopping by to catch a piece of her?’
Brendan thoughtfully picked up a clean dry pint glass and started pouring.
‘An awful lot of divine worshippers who will need a drop for their thirst and somewhere to lay their weary heads, Brendan,’ Gerry continued. ‘Something to eat, something to sit on, a coach to get them here, perhaps a small booklet detailing the Virgin of Ballymahoe’s first appearance and an audience with young Margaret Mary herself. That cousin of yours from Tipperary with the hare-lip might just get a bit of business sent her way as well, Brendan. A vision of the Holy Virgin can get a man thinking, after all.’
Brendan suddenly felt a glimmer of hope and plonked the full pint down in front of Gerry.
‘Well now,’ he said to his friend, ‘I can see how a repeat performance by Her Holiness would certainly help a fellow like myself, Gerry, but how exactly is it going to help you? A thousand old grannies with extra-strong support hose are hardly going to be needing a brassiere that flies off with the touch of a button or trousers that won’t catch in the chain of your bike. Where do you come in?’
‘Souvenirs, Brendan. Souvenirs!’ beamed Gerry. ‘No-one’s going to want to go home from Ballymahoe without the cushion they sat on when the Virgin did or didn’t appear. They’ll be clamouring for rosary beads, prayer books, sunshades when it’s hot, umbrellas when it rains. You name it and I’ll be there selling it to them.’
The bar was filling up and Seamus Mahoney from the grocery shop approached, clapping Gerry heartily on the back by way of a greeting.
‘Good day to you all and what in God’s name has you looking so misty eyed and pleased with yourself, Gerry O’Reilly?’
Brendan reached for another pint glass.
‘Only the thought of selling umbrellas to the thousands flocking to see the Ballymahoe Virgin,’ the barman said, half facetiously in case Seamus thought it was all a load of bollocks.
‘Is that right, so?’ Seamus said, sitting down next to Gerry and giving him his full attention. ‘Tell me more, Gerry, tell me more. Only wasn’t I just having the very same idea myself?’
Well, you’ll have to do some pretty fancy footwork to talk Margaret Mary into being your sister, thought Gerry, but after all, if the Virgin was going to do anything for the people of Ballymahoe, they had to stick together.
‘Four o’clock tomorrow afternoon at the valley, Seamus,’ said Gerry. ‘Margaret Mary has a feeling in her water that Our Lady’s dropping by again.’
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Chapter 15
Friday, 19 February 1999
The buzz at Dublin airport made Molly feel like an alien freshly arrived from a planet where everyone was always in a cranky mood. Did everybody here have to be having quite such a good time? Did they all have to know one another? Couldn’t at least one of them be having a bad life?
She looked gloomily at the clusters of people chatting and laughing around the baggage carousels until she found someone else who looked miserable. She felt pleased, even though it was a nun and she was crying.
Refusing to stop and examine her nasty streak, she gormlessly followed Viv to the right carousel. The two had barely spoken since the first leg of the journey, spending a silent few hours in the business class lounge at LA, and changing planes at Gatwick with barely a murmur.
Molly knew it was petty but she couldn’t help herself, and while her glamorous aunt checked the priority labels she looked around and wondered if anybody else was arriving to look for their long-lost uncle in the absence of getting married the way they thought they would.
Obviously the nun’s problem was not being jilted, thought Molly, although who could tell? If there was one thing she had learned over the past 48 hours it was that she didn’t know anything about anything.
‘Owwwwww!’ A terrible pain in her ankle pulled Molly back down to earth. A sweaty fat man in a shiny business suit had careened towards her, his trolley nicking her ankle so painfully that she staggered backwards and tripped over someone else’s rucksack, ending up sprawled on the floor, legs akimbo.
The fat man pushed his way through the crowds away from her without batting one of his puffed-up eyelids and Molly struggled to push herself to a sitting position, disentangling herself from the offending rucksack.
Slowly attempting to pick herself up off the floor, she looked up just in time to see the rounded corner of a Samsonite suitcase attached to a pretty blonde woman of about her own age come flying towards her.
‘Owwwww!’ cried Molly as her head made glancing contact with the bag. ‘Owwwwww!’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ the suitcase-swinger gasped. ‘Oh, God, I am so sorry. Are you all right?’ She dumped the suitcase on the ground and knelt beside Molly, who was cupping the side of her face in one hand, stunned.
‘Do you need a hand? Are you all right?’ the woman asked again, putting one arm around Molly’s shoulder and trying to pluck her hand away from her eye with the other.
Molly, just then, felt the only option was to cry.
The suitcase-swinger looked around panic stricken at the legs and feet of the milling crowd and rubbed Molly uselessly on the back. ‘Jesus Christ, what have I done?’ she said to no-one. ‘Is it your eye? Can you see? What shall I do? Shall I call someone? Are you here with someone?’
In a desperate attempt to follow the woman’s line of questioning, Molly stopped crying and looked at her apologetic attacker, who helped pull her to her feet.
‘Oh, God, I’ve given you a shiner, I’m sure I have,’ moaned the culprit. ‘The state of your eye! It’s all red and lumpy, I’m sure it will turn black. Oh, I feel awful. I truly do. Just awful.’
She started picking at imaginary fluff on Molly’s arm and made a boisterous attempt at wiping away any floor scum off the back of Molly’s butt. ‘On a brighter note, what a gorgeous dress you have there,’ she said. ‘Are you on your honeymoon? Don’t tell me you’re on your honeymoon.’
Molly gulped and finished dusting herself off.
‘Well, it’s not so much a honeymoon as a pre-wedding holiday,’ she finally said, shakily. ‘I hope your bag is all right. I tripped over it.’
The attacker ignored the rucksack on the floor and grinned from ear to ear. ‘Hey, what are you — Australian or New Zealander?’ she cried. ‘Will you listen to the accent! My cousin John has been living in Sydney for, oh, it must be five years now and he was just home with his girlfriend, Tracy. She’s from — well, actually I’m not sure where she’s from but she sounds just like you. Oh, look, here comes Dervla. Over here, Dervla! Actually, it’s her rucksack so you can only blame me for the eye. Derv, I’ve just about blinded this poor girl but it was your bag she tripped over, so—’
Molly was feeling completely shell-shocked by the chatter — never mind the sharp blow to the head — when Viv appeared out of nowhere with her matching bags.
‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked, eyeing up the excitable blonde clutching at her niece with barely concealed disdain and completely missing the swell of Molly’s eye and surrounding face. ‘I’ll see you on the other side. I’ll be the one getting us a cab.’ And she marched off in the direction of the customs queue with her collection of matching LV.
Molly’s chatty friend was elbowing the woman Molly assumed was Dervla, a busty bottle blonde with a deep tan who was in the middle of an intense conversation on her mobile phone.
‘Who’s your friend?’ the suitcase-swinger laughed, nodding at Vivienne’s retreating rear end.
‘Oh, that’s my Aunt Vivienne,’ Molly said, embarrassed for some reason. ‘We’re here on, um, business. Family business.’
The woman looked at her and in a second seemed to get the measure of the situation.
‘Look, we’re meeting up, a bunch of us, tonight at McDaid’s just off Grafton Street. Do you know it? Would you like to come along? Bring your husband. Your aunt probably wouldn’t have too much fun but you would. Go on. I’m Sheila, by the way.’
‘I’m Molly,’ said Molly, with a hall rug sort of feeling. ‘I’ll see. Um, thank you.’
‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ said Sheila. ‘Really, it’s the only way I’ll feel better about your face. Will you promise?’
Molly nodded, still dazed, then turned around and followed in the footsteps of the perfectly formed figure of her aunt. Sheila was trying to get Dervla off the phone, but shook her finger in a you-be-there fashion when Molly turned to look at her before disappearing through the exit.
Sheila wasn’t the only one in the busy airport to pay attention to Molly: dazed and jet-lagged, she was completely oblivious to how many people turned to look at her, the beautiful almost-bride with the sad brown eyes, one of them slowly closing.
‘Right so,’ the taxi driver chirped as Molly and Viv climbed into the first available cab. ‘Where can I take you girls on this beautiful Dublin day? Jesus!’ he said looking at Molly. ‘What the fook were you trying to bring into the country?’
Vivienne looked sharply at her niece and for the first time noticed the black eye slowly developing.
‘Molly! I left you for what — two minutes? You got in a fight? What the hell is going on? So that’s what those two hard little hussies were doing there. Did they rob you?’
‘Not in the country five fooking minutes and she’s fooking robbed,’ the cab driver tsk-tsked, pulling out into the traffic. ‘Now, that’s Dublin for you, all right.’
‘Of course I didn’t get in a fight, Viv,’ said Molly, giving the cab driver what she hoped was the evil eye — her good one — in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Jeez. You see what I mean? You think I am so low rent. I fell over and somebody’s suitcase caught me in the eye. It’s the sort of thing that happens to me at the moment. Don’t sweat it.’
‘Don’t fooking sweat it,’ the driver mimicked under his breath. ‘So is it the hospital you want or what?’
Viv shook her head as if to clear her mind of all ridiculousness and leaned forward towards the driver, despite the unmistakable BO.
‘I think she’ll live. What hotel could you recommend?’ she asked politely.
‘Well now, that depends,’ the driver said. ‘Do you want the north side or the south side? There’s plenty of hotels on the north side all right but your luggage won’t last long — they’ll take one fooking look at you and, “Right, lads, off we go,” so I’d say the Shelbourne or even better the Merrion on the south side.’
He eyed Viv in the mirror. ‘It won’t come cheap now. All the pop stars stay there. Your man
Puff Daddy was only just there for the MTV awards. Fooking fairy.’
Viv met his gaze in the mirror.
‘Well, the Merrion it is,’ she said ‘If it’s good enough for Mr Daddy …’
Molly looked out at the rain and tried to decide whether or not she liked the look of Dublin. As in most big cities she had been to, the drive from the airport to the centre of town was hardly a scenic route and the traffic was appalling, as was attested by the heaves and sighs of the foul-mouthed, foul-smelling yet strangely likeable taxi driver.
‘Now, is it true,’ he asked at one stage as they sat in gridlock at a heaving intersection, ‘that you could fit the whole of Ireland in one tiny corner of New Zealand? Is that right?’
‘That’s Australia,’ Molly said, staring out at the people on the streets, their faces clenched against the rain. ‘People get Australia and New Zealand mixed up all the time but we are two completely different countries and we don’t even like each other that much.’
‘Well, we certainly know what that feels like, the fookers!’ the driver raged enthusiastically. ‘Who’s oppressing who down your way, then?’
Out of the corner of her eye Molly could have sworn she caught her aunt smirking.
‘Australia’s much bigger and richer,’ she told the driver. ‘They definitely cheat at cricket and we suspect they cheat at rugby so I guess they’re oppressing us.’
Pulling up outside the Merrion, Molly was glad they weren’t slumming it on the north side, whatever that was. The red brick building looked far from flashy or fancy but the cars pulled up outside and the doormen helping men in expensive coats out of them told her to expect luxury.
‘Now, this might not be the north side but you ladies watch out for cheats and liars in this place,’ the driver warned as Viv counted out his fare. ‘That’s the Dail,’ he said, tapping his window to indicate the impressive-looking building across the road. ‘Our Parliament buildings. Fookers.’