Julia was ill at ease, wishing she hadn’t come, that she hadn’t let Bel persuade her. She had managed to escape Teresa and was planning to slip out to the car park. Earlier that day she’d had another text from Leo:
The world is full of fuckers. I miss you.
Once, her instinct would have been to console him, but those times were over. She didn’t know what game he was playing and she’d been debating whether to reply. A few minutes in the cool evening air, away from Bel’s likely interference, might enable her to compose a message more grown-up than piss off and leave me alone. But before she could reach the door she was waylaid by a tall, striking woman draped in folds and pleats of cream silk like a Greek statue and wavering on high-heeled sandals.
‘Anna Malone,’ said the woman, holding out her hand.
‘I’m Julia—’
In the middle of their handshake a small boy ricocheted into Anna’s legs. She swept the child into her arms, fished a paper tissue from her clutch bag and wiped his nose.
Julia waited; Anna apologised. ‘Sorry about this. He has the catarrh permanently.’
‘Does he drink a lot of milk?’
Anna blinked in surprise. ‘Well to be sure he does. We can’t be giving him Coca-Cola to rot his baby teeth.’
‘It can be mucous-forming, that’s all,’ Julia said. ‘He may be having problems with his adenoids. Children usually grow out of it as the adenoids shrink.’
Why was she doing this? She’d made it a rule never to give advice unless asked and even then it would be limited to suggesting the person visit their own doctor. In effect she was stalling, stalling because she now realised who this Anna Malone was. She’d seen her emerge from the private room where the Farrelly family had been dining.
Anna set down her son and adjusted the pleated fabric that had slipped from her shoulder; her complexion gleamed under the dancing lights.
‘You are the Englishwoman,’ she said.
It was a neutral, irrefutable statement. Julia was relieved not to have to broach the connection herself. ‘Oh goodness. Do I stick out so badly?’
‘Tis only that we’re not at the height of the tourist season yet. Sometimes you can hardly get by on the pavements. We have so many visitors wandering about they merge all together. And Teresa Hogan is proud to be a source of information.’
Julia wondered what was going through the woman’s head, whether she felt guilt or remorse. The sisters had been in charge of their little brother that day on the beach. Was she the one who had come to the inquest?
‘So you are here with your daughter,’ Anna was saying. ‘And would you believe it, she had already met my brother?’
Over Anna’s shoulder, Julia could see Bel leaning against the wall beside a window, deep in conversation with the young man who had called around to see her yesterday. Cheap, Julia had thought at first sight of the tulips, but then amended her reaction to: simple, unshowy. There was something to be said, after all, for gestures that were understated. There were far too many people these days leaping about, yelling: Look at me! She recalled taking the flowers off him, the brush of their fingers and Bel telling her afterwards this was Tom Farrelly.
‘On the ferry,’ said Julia. ‘Extraordinary.’
‘He doesn’t visit us often. Neither of them. Kieran’s been in England for years too. He married a girl from Yorkshire and was settled there for a while. But the marriage fell apart as these things do. No wee ones thank goodness. But maybe your daughter has also told you about Clemmie?’
Julia could see the little girl dancing with her cousins – the children had taken over the dance floor and no adults had joined them yet.
‘Yes, she said it was a difficult meeting. I can imagine.’
Bel had been quite specific on the awkwardness of the encounter. She’d also insisted it wasn’t Tom’s fault he only found out about his daughter after his father’s cancer was diagnosed and had thus delayed the news. It wasn’t a good beginning, but you had to be realistic. Julia was glad to be able to observe him from a distance, to note the thoughtful way his brow wrinkled, the gentle stroke as he stretched to touch Bel’s arm, the way he made her smile.
The band could keep a tune going even while quaffing their pints (frequently replenished) and the bouncing rhythms were beginning to drive her a little mad. She tried to block out this background noise by focusing on Bel and the Farrelly boy. He was not really a boy, of course, but an adult like Matt – though there were occasions when this fact bemused her, when she’d confuse Danny with Matt at the same age. The years would contract and she’d slip though this crevice of time to find herself engaging with a solemn brown-eyed child whose desire to please was quite heart-rending.
‘They seem to be getting on well.’ She didn’t want to say anything that might be misconstrued. She needed to meet him and shake hands formally so they could put their acquaintance on a suitable footing. Until then it was like ploughing through shifting sands. You could never quite tell where you stood.
Anna turned and followed her gaze. ‘He’s always been the shy one,’ she said. ‘I mean, within our family. We none of us lack the ability to come forward and put our point across, but Kieran, well, we used to call him the listener.’
‘Kieran?’ There had been a dying away of the music, a semibreve’s intermission and now they were striking up again. There was no doubt she’d heard the name correctly. Besides, it was how he had introduced himself. It was only Bel, in her scattiness, who’d insisted it must have been Tom. Was it possible, Julia wondered, that she’d got the brothers confused somehow, that she didn’t know which was which?
‘So tell me, Anna,’ she said, squeezing the stem of her wineglass. ‘Where is your brother, Tom?’
‘Ah well now…’ Anna raked the room, then settled on a figure at the bar. She gave a light dry laugh. ‘He’s where you’d expect to find him, is he not.’ She tried to attract his attention with a wave but the man she’d indicated didn’t see her. With a glass held high in each hand he began to zigzag through the throng, aiming for the couple by the window. She called out but he didn’t hear.
‘Don’t put yourself to any bother,’ said Julia. ‘I can go and join them.’
She’d half expected the automatic response: No bother at all, but another guest, an older man in a waistcoat with shiny buttons that gave him the look of a leprechaun, curled his arm around Anna’s waist; she squealed and returned the embrace. Julia manoeuvred herself away. She wasn’t quite ready to interrupt Bel. She wanted first to get a feel for the young man who had grown up with this charmed life – the life snatched back and restored.
She watched Tom reach his target and set the drinks with careful deliberation on the windowsill. Stepping away, he staggered and overbalanced. She assumed he’d slipped on some spillage on the floor. At any rate, Bel’s arms shot out to save him from falling because the other brother, Kieran, had turned aside. What Julia had not expected was to see Tom, in response, crush Bel against the wall and glue his mouth to hers.
She was both shocked and astonished. Bel had sometimes, in the past, told her more than she wanted to know about her sexual adventures. Sitting cross-legged on a floor cushion, describing her night of bliss in grand passionate gestures – or storming through the hallway, banging doors, red-eyed with weeping – little was left to the imagination. Latterly she had matured. Julia recalled her assurances that she’d be taking a suitcase full of condoms to Africa (ironic in the circumstances), that there was nothing for her mother to worry about.
But not this, not him. The pair had only met a few days ago; surely, now that Bel realised his identity and the significance of it, even she, with her tendency to rush unsuspecting into trouble, would halt at this point. Then, still gazing in bewilderment, it became apparent to Julia that Tom’s advances were unwelcome; Bel was trying to push him away.
She felt the tension knot along her spine. She’d wondered, fleetingly, through the years, what had happened to the boy William rescued. If diagnosing a child with a heart murmur or a potential tumour, the thought would skim across her consciousness that saving his life might only have been a temporary reprieve, that he might not even have reached adulthood. But she didn’t dwell on his prospects; speculate. Yet here he was, in person, a few yards away: tousled and boorish, thrusting himself at her dismayed daughter. This was not a moment she had ever expected to reach.
Perhaps it was the contrast with the fantasy in her head – the polite greeting, the grave exchange of pleasantries – that coiled the anger so tight inside her chest she thought she would explode. She should leave; she should turn on her heel and get out of this noisy overheated place. A fine rain had been misting the air when they arrived, so soft it didn’t so much fall as hang in suspension, webbing their faces like gossamer. In the mild Irish night she could breathe deeply, take stock, calm down. Her expectations had been too high: don’t interfere.
Then she recalled the bruising on Bel’s arm, the story about trapping it in a door. This man was the worst type of all, an irresponsible father, a bully and a drunk: sending his brother round with flowers to buy Bel’s silence, and now assaulting her in public, not caring who he offended. Assault was possibly too strong a term, but Julia was not in a rational mood. She was convinced Bel was struggling to fend him off and felt an over-riding compulsion to protect her.
An image surfaced of Leo with his paramour: the girl who had delighted in being indiscreet. She could hear buttons popping and jeans unzipped, the clink of the tell-tale earrings. Her outrage swelled. She barged through a nearby knot of drinkers, squaring her shoulders for confrontation. Her voice was higher pitched than she intended.
‘Whatever do you think you are doing?’
Tom was nuzzling Bel’s neck and ignored the interruption. Bel said, ‘For God’s sake!’
Kieran moved to allow Julia access. He didn’t speak. She waited.
Tom raised his head and a wide sheepish grin sliced across his face. He swayed a little.
‘You looked as if you were in difficulty,’ Julia told Bel. ‘I was worried.’
‘Not at all! You must be seeing things.’
‘I think we ought to go.’
Bel rattled her bracelets. ‘But we’ve hardly been here five minutes and you haven’t even been introduced.’
Tom’s linen shirt, much creased, was hanging half in and half out of his trousers. Stealing his hand from Bel’s torso, he held it out. ‘Tom Farrelly,’ he said, in a throaty lilting voice. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Is that so?’ Julia would not be mollified. She’d spent too much of her life succumbing to hollow charms; besides, she enjoyed a fight. And, even allowing for the fact that Bel might like rough sex, the whole scene was distasteful. ‘And do you think your behaviour is appropriate?’
‘Excuse me?’ His hand fell back to his side.
‘Mum,’ hissed Bel. ‘Please!’
At the corner of her vision she was aware of Kieran shuffling his feet, as if about to intervene, but then deciding to back away. They were left in a triangle – Bel, Tom and Julia – while the accordion spun out its rhythms, the children skated on the parquet, and the guests balanced glasses and sandwiches and regrouped, oblivious to the three figures at the edge of the room.
‘I know it’s old-fashioned,’ said Julia, ‘the idea of decorum in a public place but I thought this man was threatening you, Bel, and somebody had to stop him.’
Tom’s pupils were dark and dilated. Whether from fear or defiance, she couldn’t tell.
‘This wasn’t what I had in mind,’ she went on, ‘when I heard we’d been invited here. I guess that shows how many mistakes have been made along the line.’ She almost choked on her tongue and had to clutch herself tightly to stay upright.
Bel moved swiftly to her side. ‘Tom’s just as anxious as you are,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a big deal for him too. That’s why he’s been drinking. Probably.’
‘Probably?’ echoed Julia.
‘I don’t know what you think you saw.’ Bel’s cheeks were stained pink. ‘But there’s nothing between us.’
‘You were struggling.’
‘No I wasn’t.’
‘Are we upsetting you, Bel’s mother?’ said Tom. ‘I have terrible trouble maintaining my reputation you know, but we’re getting on grand, isn’t that so, Bel?’
‘You should call my mother by her name: Julia.’
‘Julia, will you forgive me?’ He tried to clasp her hand again and this time she let him, though his fingers felt clammy and slippery as fish.
From the corner of her eye, she could see a woman in a red dress advancing. Tom rocked on his heels and Julia snatched her hand back. Could he not even stand up straight?
The woman in red, an older larger version of her daughter Anna, joined them.
Julia said to Bel, ‘I think we should get our coats.’
‘Surely you’re not leaving!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘Before we’ve had the chance to get acquainted. I’ve heard so much from Teresa and I want to say how pleased we are you could join us tonight. I’m Ronnie Farrelly and – oh my goodness!’ She spotted Julia’s empty glass. ‘Do you not have a drink now?’
‘I’ve had enough, thank you.’
So had Ronnie, as far as she could see. She had heightened colour and a sparkle about her, courtesy of the gin and tonic fizzing in her grasp. ‘Tom will get you a fresh one,’ she insisted. ‘White wine, was it?’
‘I don’t want Tom to get me anything,’ said Julia.
‘Ah, go on now. A mineral water at the least?’
‘No, truly. I shouldn’t have come in the first place.’
Unexpectedly her shoulders heaved. Ronnie put down her gin. Bel was extending her neck, flapping her hands, making clucking noises like someone trying to calm a chicken. Ronnie’s perfume, floral, intense, was too close and Julia had to fight to breathe.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, as the other woman’s arm encircled her.
Ronnie took an ungainly step back as if she were unaccustomed to wearing heels. Her brows knotted in a puzzled frown. ‘I only wanted to welcome you.’
‘Thank you, but I’m not sure your family is one I want to be welcomed by.’
Julia’s mind was fixed on the beach at Doonshean, the negligent teenage girls and the mother who’d left them in charge of the miscreant. She saw Matt as a small boy, starting school, having to tell strangers he had no father. ‘My dad was a hero,’ he would say proudly. The other parents, in ignorance, assumed he was fantasising.
‘I had hoped,’ she admitted, since Ronnie was staring at her with her jaw slack, ‘that things would have turned out better than this.’
‘How do you mean, better than this?’
‘I’d rather spare you the details.’
‘Oh really,’ said Ronnie, puffing her chest forward, her eyes blazing in a mixture of indignation and self-pity. ‘How is it that you are so magnanimous towards us? Have you heard perhaps that my husband was critically ill?’
‘Yes I did. And I’m sorry.’ There’s no dignity in pain, Julia allowed; sometimes the sufferer just needs to scream. ‘But your son has been violent to my daughter and—’
‘Violent? Tom?’
‘Show her your arm, Bel,’ said Julia.
Bel hid it behind her back. ‘Look, this has nothing to do with him.’
‘You told me he shut it in a door.’
‘That’s not exactly what happened.’
Tom’s lips twitched but he didn’t manage any explanation. It was the drink. Julia knew precisely how alcohol dulled the senses and the reactions. She guessed he’d been drinking when he battered Bel’s arm. ‘Show her,’ she said again.
‘I already know about it,’ said Ronnie. ‘He brought her to me for an ice pack.’
‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t assault her. It’s not uncommon for attackers to bring their victims to A&E and say they fell downstairs.’
‘She tripped over a ladder in the barn.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ exclaimed Bel. ‘Stop talking about me as if I’m not here. I’m sorry I misled you, Mum. It was an accident. It did involve a ladder. I fell off one, as it happens. But it wasn’t Tom’s fault.’
‘I don’t suppose anything is ever Tom’s fault,’ said Julia. Ronnie’s discomfort was palpable, but she was beyond empathy. Crushing disappointment wasn’t the half of it.
It was Tom who broke the stalemate. His hand curled into a fist, which confirmed Julia’s suspicions. But he didn’t swing it. He made a curious strangulated sound and charged bull-like out of the room. Ronnie started after him, but her daughter Anna waylaid her.
‘Leave him,’ Julia heard her say. ‘Let the fresh air sober him up. He’ll be back when he’s ready.’
‘Oh, Mum, what have you done?’ said Bel in anguish.
‘I can’t think why I ever agreed to this. Come on, we should cut our losses. Leave.’
‘But that’s so rude, when everyone’s been so generous…’
‘Sometimes things don’t work out,’ said Julia. ‘This was one of those ideas that was misconceived from the start.’
Even so, she hesitated. If they left now they might find Tom Farrelly among the smokers in the doorway and she would do anything to avoid a second confrontation. The room was aglow with coloured disco lights and it was hard to make out another exit. As she searched for one she saw Tom return, plunge into the festive crowd and scoop Clemmie up from the dance floor. The girl was too stunned to protest but Anna called out. When he ignored her, she tried to chase after him but those high strappy sandals were treacherous and one flew off, impeding her. Tom didn’t break step; with Clemmie riding high on his shoulder he swaggered into the night.