Pat decided not to bother making herself any dinner. Mary had arrived for lunch with a quiche, which they’d eaten with salad, and around four o’clock they’d had tea and buns. So, when Mary left to catch her lift home from Hanna, and Cassie looked in to say she’d be out for the evening, Pat took a bowl of soup to her room on a tray. She assumed Cassie would be eating with Brad as, apparently, they’d just been into the library to look at the psalter.
She carried the soup upstairs carefully and enjoyed it sitting up against her pillows with the tray balanced on her knees. Then she put it aside and turned her attention to Thomas Hardy. The book opened at a poem she’d never liked much. It was supposed to be about ‘keen lessons’ Hardy had learned about love, but he must have wanted to keep it unemotional, because he’d called it ‘Neutral Tones’. That reminded Pat of Ger, always playing the strong, silent man but actually churned up inside. Adjusting her glasses, she read a verse aloud.
‘Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.’
Well, there was nothing neutral about that. He was saying that neither party had gained anything by loving each other. It was only a matter of who had lost the most. Strongly reminded of why she hadn’t liked the poem in the first place, Pat wondered if she might go back to The Case of the Late Pig. But she wasn’t inclined to. Despite what Seán had told her about detective stories, she couldn’t see that this one explored love or hate very deeply, never mind guilt, fear, greed, and lost opportunities. Anyway, it was obvious that the murderer was going to turn out to be mad, which felt like a cop-out. Most people who did terrible things to each other weren’t mad. The book in its lilac jacket lay on her bedside table, its two menacing birds flapping on the cover. There was a line in Hardy’s poem about a smile sweeping across someone’s face ‘like an ominous bird a-wing’. You had to hand it to poets, they had a great way with words. Still, thought Pat, she could do without riddles and lost love this evening and, although it was early, the soup had made her sleepy. Sliding farther down under the duvet, she gave up on books and thought again about Ger.
When she was young there’d been no question of boys and girls going to school together. The Christian Brothers’ place up by the Sheep Market and the convent down in Broad Street had even been built at different ends of the town. The Brothers had had no garden and their brickwork was less ornate but, essentially, the ethos in the two schools had been the same. But while the nuns’ bullying of the girls was largely subtle, the Brothers’ emotional abuse of the boys was often compounded by fierce physical violence. At the time, it wasn’t much talked about, and when it was, people often argued that farmers were frequently just as rough with their sons. Which was true enough, but didn’t change the damage it had wrought.
Pat had no idea how badly Ger had been beaten at school, but she knew how much he’d feared violence, and how little he’d ever expected justice. The system that placed so high a value on Tom’s strength on the playing field had convinced Ger that weakness of any kind would be viewed as guilt. And in his view everyone in authority hung together, from the Brothers to the guards to the politicians and all the ranks of petty officials that strutted in between. So his instinct was to get through life by staying out of trouble, and never to show his emotions lest they’d somehow give him away. Admittedly, Frankie’s birth had released a passionate protectiveness, but that had been covert and inarticulate, like her own protectiveness of Ger, and Ger’s deep dependence on Tom.
Unchanging and pathetic, Ger had clung to Tom, like a dog who isn’t wanted on a walk but won’t give up and go home. Pat had always known the reason why. Like Mary, Tom exuded confidence. That was why everyone said that Tom and Mary were made for each other. In fact, as Pat knew more than most, Mary’s air of certainty concealed a vulnerability almost as deep as Ger’s. But back when they were teenagers, Mary had been the sexiest girl in town. Once the gloss of her youth had worn off, not every man would have coped well with her bossiness. Ger, for example, wouldn’t have coped at all. But Tom had loved Mary for who she was as much as for who she pretended to be, just as Pat had always been able to read Ger’s feelings like a book.
Wriggling her toes against the cooling hot-water bottle, her sleepy mind sought to define the past. Eventually, as she slipped off to sleep, she encompassed one part of it in a sentence. Tom’s protectiveness of Ger had come from an inherent gentleness, while her own had come from a painful sense of how badly Ger had been hurt.
Hours later, she woke to the sound of a car door slamming and, going to her window, saw Cassie emerge from the shed in the yard below. Pat watched as the foreshortened figure crossed the moonlit cobbles. A little later she heard the sound of feet passing on the landing, and the creak of the attic stairs as Cassie made her way up to her room. It was late for her to be coming in, and tomorrow, Pat knew, she’d have to be up to drive the mobile library. But that was the thing about youth. You were never tired.
Sure enough, when she got up the following morning Cassie had gone to work. As Pat was finishing a leisurely breakfast there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, Fran was standing on the threshold in a jacket that had featured in the previous weekend’s Gloss magazine. Her large, cowlike eyes were rimmed with eyeliner and her dark hair was carefully arranged in a pile on the top of her head. She ought to have looked a picture of sophisticated assurance, but instead she seemed uncomfortable, as if she feared she’d come to the wrong place.
Pat stood back and smiled at her. ‘Well, this is unexpected! You’re very welcome. Come and sit down.’
Fran stood where she was, looking at a loss. Then she came into the kitchen. She was wearing orange leather gloves and carried a tiny handbag with a miniature gilt padlock on the zip. Pat helped her out of her coat and offered her an easy chair by the range. ‘It’s mild enough this morning, but it’s still nice to sit in the warm.’
Fran sank into the chair and looked around the kitchen. ‘It’s a lovely room.’
‘It’s grand and cosy anyway.’ Pat sat down opposite her, wondering why Fran was here. Having settled herself against the cushions, Fran said nothing more, so Pat filled the silence. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, I won’t, thanks. I had one before I came out.’ There was a long pause and then Fran shook herself suddenly, like a cow someone had poked with a sharp stick. She blinked at Pat and said she hoped she was well.
‘I’m grand, thanks, love. It’s kind of you to enquire.’
‘Because Frankie thought, well, we thought, I wondered how you were doing. If you were feeling okay.’
Pat hadn’t seen or heard from Frankie since last Wednesday, when she’d shown him the door after he’d turned on Cassie. Evidently he’d realised how badly he’d behaved and now, afraid to face her himself, he’d sent his wife around to clear the air. That was the height of him. He wouldn’t come in till the ground was tested, for fear of what he’d probably call unpleasantness. Frankie had always avoided anything hard.
She was about to begin to smooth things over, when she saw a look of resolution flit across Fran’s face. The wide brown eyes seemed almost to glaze over, and when Fran spoke, it was clear that what she said had been rehearsed. ‘It’s a real worry for me and Frankie. Knowing you’re here on your own. Things might happen. You could fall. At your age people start forgetting things. You might be in here wanting help and nobody would know.’ Pat looked at her thoughtfully and said nothing. Frowning in concentration, Fran went on: ‘Cassie’s very sweet, of course, but she’ll be gone soon, won’t she? So, the thing is that Frank’s really worried. About not having access. In case something was wrong.’
It was as if the door had swung open and a chill wind had swept through the room. Although they were sitting by the range, Pat’s hands felt cold. Obviously relieved to have finished her speech without forgetting her lines, Fran relaxed. Then she bent forward and opened her mouth again. This time Pat forestalled her. ‘He’s sent you here for the key to the Chubb lock.’
The words seemed to drop from her lips like icicles but, oblivious to the tone of her voice, Fran nodded. ‘That’s it. That’s what he wants. Because he’s worried.’
Grasping the arms of her chair, Pat stood up. ‘Could you do something for me, dear? Would you take a message to him?’
Fran stood up, too, looking confused. ‘Well, but what I have to do is bring him the key.’
‘I know. Will you tell him I’m not going to give him one? Say you asked me, just as he told you to, and that I said no.’
‘I think he’ll be cross.’
‘I suppose he will. But don’t let him bully you. Tell him that I won’t like it if he does.’
Meekly, Fran put her orange gloves on. As she did so, her eye was caught by the vase that stood on Pat’s mantelpiece, which now held a bunch of golden forsythia. Her vacant face lit up. ‘That’s a lovely vase.’
‘Do you like it? It belonged to Frankie’s grandmother.’
‘My granny had one in the hall that was just the same.’ She hovered for a moment, evidently feeling that she mustn’t leave without what she’d been sent for.
Pat let her out and watched her make her way down to the shop. Briefly she stood in the door to her flat, looking down the steep, twisted staircase. Then she closed the door and turned the key in the new Chubb lock.
For a long time she sat by the range, thinking things through carefully. She’d been too much of a coward to face the truth. Frankie wasn’t just lazy. Or awkward. Or thoughtless. Or any of the other words she’d used to excuse his bad behaviour since he was small. Ger’s will had been plainly worded: everything he had he’d left to her, as his wife. And Frankie was trying to push her aside and take control. He hadn’t come round that first day to help her sort out Ger’s bits and pieces. He’d had no interest in anything but the files and papers in the desk. He didn’t care how his mother felt, alone in the flat and worried about security. He’d just been afraid she might have been getting advice from Fury O’Shea. And he wasn’t glad that Cassie had chosen to stay and keep her company. He’d assumed that generous, loving Cassie was sneaky and acquisitive, like himself. Dropping her head into her hands, Pat began to shiver.
Then, taking her hands away from her face, she looked at the door and realised why she’d wanted her new Chubb lock. It wasn’t about making her feel safer. It was about keeping Frankie from walking in when she wasn’t at home. Yet why should he want the key to the door, now that he’d taken Ger’s papers? Why bother to come round again if they were all he cared about? The shivering stopped, though she still felt cold all over. She knew what Frankie wanted now, and it wasn’t just access to the flat. It was the ring on which Ger had kept his keys.
With tears in her eyes, she lifted the box from the shelf above the range. A reassuring clunk told her the keys were still inside. She opened it and took out the keyring. It was a plain split ring and the keys were of different sizes. With a sob, Pat recognised a couple of small ones belonging to the suitcase she’d bought for their painful holiday in Toronto. There was another small key, which she didn’t recognise, several large ones, and the Yale key to the flat. Presumably the larger ones were for the shop doors, and the sheds below in the yard and at the old farmhouse. Her sobs got louder and, sitting down, she fumbled for a tissue, telling herself she mustn’t get hysterical. It was too late for that class of thing now.
At the bottom of the box were the pencil stub and the few discarded business cards. Blowing her nose briskly, Pat took them out and leaned forward to throw them into the range. Then she noticed that, while the others were old and grubby, one of the cards appeared to be brand new. The address was a solicitor’s and the name was one she’d never heard Ger mention. Finding her glasses, she put them on to examine the card more closely. The solicitor Ger had dealt with had an office round in Sheep Street. But this firm’s address was in Carrick, not Lissbeg. Frowning, Pat turned the card over and found herself looking at a single word on the back of it, written in pencil. It was her own name and the handwriting was Ger’s.