Chapter Twelve

Sad music came on a flute and I lifted my head from the pillow. I recognized it. Fantasia it was, heartbreakingly pretty from Tristan and Isolde. Must be Seamus, I thought. I was cold and I shuddered. The warm weather had fled. Say a prayer to St. Francis, my little voice told me but I didn’t. I looked instead at the darkness, resentful and waiting. Who would want Jenny Rose dead? Nobody would. This was all silly. Peg’s death had been an accident, nothing more. I felt the grain in the bedclothes, littered with crumbs. I’d demolished the whole box of Bahlsen cookies after I’d brushed my teeth late last night.

There were other noises now, faraway. I went to the window to look. You could see the fishermen’s lanterns already out there, although nothing was set to begin until after mass.

A Jeep pulled up the road and stopped before the bed and breakfast. I knew it was Temple. I put on the little plug-light and waved to him. He saw me at the window, slipped open the Jeep door and half fell out of his seat. He was whistling, wearing boots up to his chest. He had trim cases and leathery containers of equipment. Something came over me. I dropped my nightgown and let him look.

Temple caught the chill air with his hand, like he was catching a ball I’d thrown him. He stopped, put one hand inside his jacket in his vest, and covered his heart.

Then bells from three churches rang. I reached for my robe. There were footsteps on the stairway and voices down below.

Temple climbed back in the Jeep and carried on up the road, my intimacy along with him. I’d come this far. I wasn’t going to miss out now. I knew he’d choose the best spot, the coolest spot.

Johnny would wait ’til after mass, mainly because my family wouldn’t let him start before. I would find Temple. Or he would find me.

The bed and breakfast was full, I guessed, from the sounds of the boots and scuffling up and down the halls.

Someone had lit the fire in the pot-belly stove. It wasn’t a good fire, though, and smoke had made its way up the passageway. I didn’t like the smell. She burns furniture, I realized. Things must be bad. All of a sudden, I couldn’t wait to get to Bally Cashin and the cozy peat fire that always burned there.

I washed in the sink, splashing water on my face, put on some loose, warm clothes and went down. Molly was holding the teapot in midair. She smiled at me over a table of affable Germans. Not hungry, I waved and headed out the door. “Grab an old pole for yourself in the shed,” she called out gaily and I smiled back, but I had the feeling she’d said it for the others to admire her. What a place, they would think, bountiful as rain.

Ten- and eleven-foot fishing poles, baskets, boots and bait boxes littered the pristine entrance, but these would belong to the guests. My nice bicycle, or what I’d come to think of as mine, wasn’t there where I’d left it. I thought, hell, I could just as well join in the fishing.

No one had found the time to stretch a banner over Baltimore, but word had spread just the same. Up and down the Ilen, fishermen were poised, ready. Fishermen love nothing more than the challenge.

I lifted the creaking, rusty-hinged door and heaved it open a crack. The shed had a musty, unused smell. I felt for the switch and clicked it, startling awake a hanging naked lightbulb. For such an orderly person, this place was a mess. Molly was a mix of opulence and austerity. She had these sparse ways. Her own room was deliberately simple. But then the guest rooms were so flouncy and heavy and overdone. Well, that made sense.

I enjoy poking through other people’s things. And she saved things, I noticed. I discovered a drawer filled with rolls of rubber bands. And in one peeling cabinet there was a store of paper in neat piles.

I stood in there, looking around for a few moments, but, I don’t know, there was something choked about it. I had to get out. Then I saw a lacquer parasol in the muddle and imagined how charming I would appear to Temple Fortune beneath it.

All I had to do was balance one foot on a box. I stretched across to reach it and the box tumbled over, opened, and all the papers landed on the filthy floor. I snatched the parasol and was about to leave the mess because, really, no one would ever even notice in this chaos, when I noticed one of the papers was in fact a canvas and on it, upon closer peering, a sketch of Jenny Rose’s. The missing sketches! Bless Molly, she couldn’t bear to see them destroyed. I wasn’t about to give her away, though. I didn’t care why she’d saved them, for art’s sake or Jenny Rose’s. I straightened the boxful, and saw the name “Peg” on a letter. Anything to do with Peg had my attention. I hoisted myself toward it. This was signed by her. It was a letter, or a note, rather, because it wasn’t on letter paper but the back side of a travel brochure. “How could you, Dierdre?” the note screamed in a frantic scrawl. “I love you so, I swear it! How can you do this? How? Haven’t I given you all the best years of my life? If you do this, I’ll destroy you, I swear!” It rambled on for the length of the paper.

I was shocked. Why would Peg write such a thing? Suddenly Dierdre looked much less pathetic and wronged and, I must admit it, not entirely innocent. My mind reeled. I thought of my mother, back in New York. What would she do if her sister had murdered her lover? What would it mean to her? Suddenly I was back in the hospital where my mother had been. The nightmare hallways and the intoxicating gift shop. The cafeteria with rock-hard fruit in wax jackets and tapioca pudding so velvety you could eat two, no problem. Day after harrowing day with familiar strangers wearing infant clothes in baby colors, day in and out, you had to be nice to them or they would be cruel to your mother, you never knew, when what you really felt like doing was giving them the finger. Turn around and look at me you bitch. I mean, Nurse. My mother has to have another blood test and if you look at me I can ask you to give it to her so she can take her pain medication. Please. She has only one vein on that arm, all the others are shot. Just don’t hurt her, you jerk. Miss. “Don’t worry about me, dear.” Mom would wince, trying not to wince. “Just go home now and look after your father. Your father will need you.”

This would kill her. I knew it would kill her.

I pushed the note guiltily back underneath the pile of stuff. If Dierdre had done away with Peg, what good would come of destroying more lives? A crime of passion. And anyway, I reassured myself, it couldn’t have been Dierdre. Dierdre never would have taken that much of a chance with Jenny Rose’s life. Would she? She would have to have been able to imagine Jenny Rose coming home unexpectedly. Unless she thought Jenny Rose would take advantage of her being away to be with Willy Murphy? No, she would never take that chance. Through my reverie, I spotted the bicycle out the smudgy window, leaning on the wrong side of the house. I knew if I didn’t grab hold of it, some German would—they know a good vehicle when they see one—so I left the ugly, smelly shed and determined never-mind, I’d shoot to kill with my camera. Yes, I was better off taking pictures. This decision lightened me and I followed the waning moonlight, pedaling away down the bumpy road in almost happy denial, pushing the idea of Peg’s note to the back of my mind. It almost certainly meant nothing, I told myself. I was just too suspicious. Los Angeles. Hmm.

Ricketa, ricketa, my bicycle sped along while faraway, the light crept purple over the moor.

When I got to Bally Cashin, I saw where Johnny had spent the night. He hadn’t left at all but had remained sitting in front of the door on the bench, used to all-night surveillance, his huge back swayed onto the cold house for a pillow, his foot up against the barrow so he wouldn’t fall over. His mouth was wide open, the lids of his eyes moving rapidly over a dream. Someone had laid a stiff sheepskin across him.

I crept into the house but everyone seemed to be up. Preparations were in full swing for Sunday mass. Lights were on, Bernadette’s powerful hair dryer whirred. Liam buffed several pairs of shoes lined up on the floor all at once. He smiled at me, my cousin did, his teeth still his, his red beard bushy, his blue eyes still blue, for all the liver-riddled yellow they swam in. The brine in those Viking kidneys flushed on, unfazed, and I thought to myself, How many healthy ones will die before he does?

“Have some tea, Claire,” Aunt Bridey instructed. “You’ll walk with us to church.”

I sat down at the table, feeling a little foolish with my Chinese parasol in front of no-nonsense Bridey. I pushed it off as though I didn’t know whose the heck it was.

Johnny came in the door, stretching, yawning, big, leftover. “She didn’t come back?” he said.

“No.”

“She’ll come to mass, you’ll see.” Dierdre wiggled her shoulders. “She might stay away the night, to punish me, like, but she’ll not miss mass.”

“I doubt she’s out to punish you, Dierdre,” Johnny said, scraping a chair over the linoleum and sinking into it.

Uncle Ned, crouching over a box of jewel-colored flies, crept silkily over to Johnny. “Take a look at these, lad,” he said proudly. “My masterpieces.”

Johnny screwed up his face and inspected the lot. Carefully, he held one up. “A lot of work went into these,” he declared.

“That’s the truth of it.” Uncle Ned shook his head with satisfaction. “Many an hour.”

“And to think we used to just climb over Mr. Crapotta’s backyard fence and dig up worms!”

“Watch that, now!” Uncle Ned put a finger to his lips. “A dry-bait fisherman wouldn’t even speak to a wet-bait fisherman, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“He’d be an outcast altogether.”

“They’ve got my vote,” I said. “Just baiting hooks evokes sympathy in me for worms and the poor worm children orphaned back in the dirt.”

“That’s cause you’re a wuss.” Johnny pushed his Yankees cap back on his head. “No, I just mean we had no idea what an art it was.”

“That’s it. That’s the truth. Indeed it is.” His pale eyes gleamed at Johnny. Here was a man who could understand. Still hold his own. “Now this”—he held an extraordinarily brilliant one lightly on his fingertips—“this one is called the Royal Coachman.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“So what’s something like that run you? I mean, where would you buy something like this?”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t buy it. You couldn’t. That would cost a small fortune. No.” Ned patted it lovingly. “I made it myself.”

“Hmm.” Johnny held it up close.

Aunt Bridey, from the stove, cast approving looks at the two of them.

Well. It was Johnny this and Johnny that. They all tripped over themselves getting tea for him, sugar for him, how about a nice washcloth for him. I sat there with my black and sugarless tea. Certainly, I didn’t mind. I’m just mentioning this, the way people are.

“You’ll have to drink that tea swiftly now,” Aunt Dierdre admonished Johnny. “You wouldn’t want to miss mass, yourself.”

I snorted but nobody even looked at me. They trickled off in their different directions and I was left there with him.

“You’re going to mass?” I said.

“Sure.” He yawned. “When in Rome…”

“You.” I pulled my chin in to create a tortoiselike ring effect on my neck. “Who never goes to church.”

“What? I go.”

“Really? When?”

“Sometimes I go. St. Patrick’s. Funerals. Like that.”

“The whole place will crumble.”

“I thought that was the point.”

He infuriated me as a rule, but now I wanted to sputter. Now I was supposed to stand beside him in God’s house where he thought he could rope me into forgiveness?

“You’re not going like that,” I hissed, pointing out his wrinkled T-shirt. It didn’t look as though he’d slept in it. It looked as though someone had taken it in their hands and crumpled it into a ball and squeezed it and squeezed it.

“Come on.” He made an irritated face. “Of course I am. Nobody cares what you look like.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I snarled. “You just want to make me look bad!” I went to the cupboard and lugged out the ironing board. “Give it,” I demanded.

He looked at me under heavy lids.

I remained.

He stripped it off, watching me, and handed it over.

Narrowing my eyes at him I held it up to my nose. It smelled, however, not bad at all. It was an eye-opening smell but not a bad smell.

I had no intention of standing there doing my wifely duty in front of the rest of them. I know how to move quickly. I had the iron plugged in and hot before Bernadette turned her hair dryer back on so by the time the fuse blew there was enough heat in the iron for me to just finish my job with a tzack, tzack, tzack. I’d handed it back to him and was putting the board in the cupboard when Bridey came trotting in with a candle.

“Aunt Bridey,” I said to distract her from seeing the iron cooling on the stove, “Molly rescued some of those sketches of Jenny Rose’s.”

“What?” She turned, her tiny hat with the nylon veil shivering in place.

“Yeah. I was so pleased.”

“Don’t mention that just yet, dear,” she shushed me. “We wouldn’t want to upset Dierdre.”

“Why?” I said.

“It’s the first Sunday mass she’ll have gone to without Peg to come home to, afterwards. They used to go walking all the way to Abbeystrewery cemetery. Every Sunday, like.” She shook her head. “So don’t upset her now.”

“Oh, okay.”

Just then Uncle Ned came back in. He was holding a cardboard box. “What have you got there, Ned?” Johnny said, expecting yet another fishing lure.

“It’s Peg,” he said.

“Peg!” We all stood up.

“She came last night. Danny Sullivan brought her on his way to Sharkin Ferry.”

Nobody said anything.

“Maybe,” Uncle Ned proposed, “we could drop her off at Abbeystrewery.”

“Drop her off?” Bridey held her cheeks. “You’ve got your share of gall! We’ll bring her down to the church and register her for a decent burial tomorrow is what we’ll do.”

“Rubbish,” Uncle Ned said. “Why should we wait for tomorrow? Those blaggards only want our money and for no good reason. We can dig a hole as well as they can. Before church.”

We looked at him. “Well, there’s no sense to payin’ good money to strangers when I’ve got seven shovels meself. And it’s not as though we have to dig deep.”

“It was her favorite spot,” Dierdre thought out loud, combing her perm nervously with her fingers. “She used to make sure she had a new battery and she’d sit there and play on her calculator while I dumped out my purse and straightened it out. I did it to please her. It drove her mad, my cluttered purse. She loved life best there, I think, amongst the dead.” She looked around at us. “Well, I mean, because things were so neat and orderly there. You know the way she was.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Bridey said, eying me and then the box suspiciously, not sure if this was even legal. But no one could come up with a good enough reason against it.

“I wouldn’t like to spread her to the wind, though,” Dierdre specified. “She wouldn’t go for that. If Jenny Rose wouldn’t mind, I could use the box she made me for my underthings.” She went and got it and put it on the table for us all to see. It was a big tin tea box painted with dark and Persian jewel-like stripes. It seemed almost comically appropriate. We stood admiring it. That Jenny Rose had some talent. I couldn’t help being glad for Johnny’s fatherly pride. I just couldn’t help it.

Dierdre put her black hat on. There were glass lilacs on the ribbon. “I’m ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

In the swing of things I went to get my hat as well. It’s one of those scarves from Dharamsala. You wind it around your noggin’ a few times and you’re all set.

The fuse box was visited, then we made a tight parade in front of the house—I walked the bike—and we marched up the hill toward the church. People tipped their caps.

Abbeystrewery is a sort of unusual place. It would have to be, with all those thousands of people under the dirt, all of them hungry. Still hungry, for all I knew. It’s an appropriately lumpy meadow of grass, strewn with dandelions, Celtic crosses and Virgin Marys. There’s a little sign memorializing the coffinless bodies buried there. But for the rest, you’re on your own.

“Where will it be, Dierdre?” Uncle Ned stood ready with his small shovel. He’d hidden it under his coat.

Dierdre went right to the spot. “That’s where she’d eat her biscuits,” she told us, holding on to a crumbling stone wall. Wild roses grew in and out of the holes. She patted the spot. Uncle Ned broke the grass. Johnny grabbed the shovel from him and proceeded to dig.

“You can’t do that,” Uncle Ned said out of politeness.

“Your sister’s ass,” Johnny said back.

“Get a move on, please.” Bridey looked around uncomfortably.

“I just wish Jenny Rose was here,” Dierdre said.

“She wouldn’t have come,” Liam said, lighting a cigarette. He was wearing a little black coat.

Dierdre put her downy cheek alongside mine. “Did you notice how Brownie won’t come?” she said. I thought she was trying to tell me there were ghosts and I shivered obligingly. Then she said, “That’s because we never let her. People don’t like dogs doing their business where their loved ones are. See?”

Brownie paced the periphery.

“There you have it,” Uncle Ned said about the fine hole.

Dierdre knelt down. She wiped the ground around the hole of weeds and loose grass. “Say a prayer, one of ya,” she whispered.

“Which one?” Bridey said.

“Say the Memorarie, Bridey,” Dierdre said. “She liked that.” So she did.

Dierdre placed the crownlike box in the hole, then drizzled in a handful of dirt.

Liam and Uncle Ned sang “Holy God We Praise Thy Name.”

“Take a picture, Claire,” Dierdre said.

“Really? Now? I have no light.”

“Have you no flash?”

“No.” But I took one just the same. Each of them stood behind a lit match.

Dierdre leaned all the way over and pressed her lips to the dirt. “Lie here,” she said.

“We’ll come back on her name day,” Bridey suggested.

Liam shoveled the rest over and we all patted it down.

I saw Bridey put two slices of bread underground while she thought no one watched.

A red car came up the road so we went guiltily toward the gate.

Dierdre took my hand. “Do you think she can see us?” she asked sincerely, pebbles stuck to her cheek.

“If she can,” I told her, “she’ll be glad it was this way.” That seemed to cheer her up and she walked to the front, going arm-in-arm with Liam.

A holiday atmosphere had taken hold of the dark countryside. Intent men in rubber waders and tremulous, steadfast women with umbrellas were setting up camp, lowering checkered blankets onto the tarpaulined ground, picnic baskets already unfolded, for the air was fresh and appetites, unused to the ferocity of life before dawn, hearty. All the fishermen along the Ilen looked away. They knew they weren’t supposed to start until after mass. Even the Protestants knew that. I looked for Temple but he must have found a private spot. In hopes of a rendezvous, I like to think.

The church drew near. Oh, no, I thought. Not that I don’t enjoy mass, I do. But now I intended to savor my sins and didn’t want any golden rays of conscience encroaching upon my fun. No, my plans were to sit, disgruntled, in church and think of other things, like LA and annulment and a new, big-studio life. I didn’t want to turn tenderhearted on the inside, the way prayer can and will make happen if you let it, it never fails. Temple Fortune was what I’d been dreaming of. I had to be capable of realizing dreams. Without dreams you were lost, right?

Willy Murphy came up the path, lugging his suitcase. “Mo-Mo-Morocco’s run off.” He wiped his brow with his sleeve. He was wearing some sort of safari get-up.

“Well, where’s Jenny Rose?” Uncle Ned demanded.

“She’s b-b-back at the s-s-s-studio,” he said, out of breath.

“And where are you off to?”

“London.” He blushed.

“I knew where they were,” Johnny admitted, standing beside me. “I walked up there about midnight with old Brownie, here.” Brownie walked behind him now, tail down in deference to Johnny, top dog, her new leader.

“Why didn’t you tell us when you found Jenny Rose?” Dierdre said sharply.

Johnny looked helplessly at Willy.

“You should have told us she was with you,” Bridey said.

“Be-be-because, sh-sh-she wo-wo-wo-wouldn’t let us.” Willy struggled to cut in, the skin beneath his freckles red with embarrassment. “She wanted t-t-t-time to speak with her f-f-f-f-f-father.”

This was such a stunning concept to each of them that no one could reply.

I stayed in the background. Dierdre knew all along where they’d been. You could tell on her face. She’d let them be together. That was something I couldn’t imagine happening if Peg were still alive. Was she hoping it would stop Willy going off to London? So Johnny and Jenny Rose had bonded. I supposed it was good, important, even. Still, it was a new feeling for me, too. I had to get used to all this. “We were worried,” I explained. “If you hadn’t come along—”

“Oh, someone wo-wo-would have found us,” Willy said angrily. “This isn’t like the States, you know. When someone’s missin’ overnight, they’ve most likely fallen asleep somewhere soft, not b-b-been strangulated by a raving, mother-smothered E-mail marauder, or-or-or shot to d-d-death by an over opinionated postal worker.”

“That’s disgruntled postal worker, Willy,” Johnny cut in.

“Yeah,” said Willy, trying to be like him.

“Why isn’t Jenny Rose coming to mass?” Dierdre stubbed her cigarette on the worn-out sole of her shoe.

“Jenny Rose?” Willy looked guilty for the first time. “First she had to rig Mrs. Wooly up. She gussied her up like a fairy queen.”

“Jenny Rose doesn’t want to fish?” I said.

“Oh, she doesn’t want old Tantalos to be caught, really. She can’t stand the idea. Poor old sadu, she c-c-c-calls him.”

“Is she all right?”

“Ya. Fine. Molly is with her.”

“Molly won’t come to mass?”

“Molly? She hates God, Molly does.”

“Why?”

Willy shrugged. “I d-d-don’t know. S-s-s-something about her husband leaving her, I sup-p-p-p-pose.”

“She was delighted her husband left her,” Dierdre said.

“Not everyone believes in God.” I sighed.

“Sure, she b-b-believes in him.” He laughed. “She j-j-just says God plays with us like we were toys. He’s worse than if he didn’t exist, she likes to say.”

Johnny took the lead with Aunts Bridey and Dierdre.

Uncle Ned walked beside me. He lugged a wheeled plastic suitcase full of waterproof boots.

The way things worked out, mass was so quick, I never had a chance to regret much. It was still dim in the church when we got in there. Then the sun edged up wearily and the stained glass windows came to life. There we stood in the middle of light and magical colors. Intricate heads of saints and angels cornered the windows. The word complicity was on my hands as I put my head down into them to contemplate the Eucharist. Complicity. Not the sin I’d imagined I’d encounter. I raised my head and beheld Aunt Dierdre. I wondered about this woman, this aunt of mine, I really did. Was she capable of murder? Always fluid, somehow boneless, she swam now in emotion, her face awash with loosened rouge. She wept quietly, but soundly, the handkerchief cotton of her blouse bosom puddled with tears. Dierdre looked different to me now, somehow splendid I thought, and not unhappy in her radiant grief. She could kill, I decided. But could she plot and plan?

The next thing you knew we were out. Father Early was in a furious rush. He had to bless the entire proceedings and the sun climbed rapidly in June. You couldn’t hold those German anglers back forever. Lutherans, remember.

After mass we changed shoes out in the open, which I found very charming and took what I thought might be an excellent picture.

Mrs. Wooly was set up in a lawn chair on the banks of the Ilen at the prize-winner’s desk, where a tent had been pitched. She’d been encapsuled in lavender.

“Dayday made her dress,” I overheard Bridey telling Dierdre.

“Not exactly haute couture.” Bernadette sniffed.

“But Dayday’s heart was in the right place,” Dierdre defended her, applying a fresh coat of soot to her lashes. “There’s yards and yards of it. Look, shirred tulle on the bodice. She had that dress made for Jenny Rose’s wedding.” She sighed and looked petulantly off to the side. “Now there’s little hope she’ll live to see our girl married.” She filled her lungs up with air. “Still, best to make do.”

“Good she had a dress at all,” practical Bridey added. “And Jenny Rose is young.”

Beneath a lacy curtain of willow, Mrs. Wooly held court. Her lips and cheeks had been painted an appropriate, if occult, purple and her hair, usually yellowy white and in a long tail, had undergone a lavender rinse and then been braided and turned around the top of her head into a crown. Beaming, she smoked her pipe.

Father Early was in charge of the money. The jar on the card table was long since full, and grave, intent volunteers were dispatched to the rectory to safekeep the overflow of tuitions.

Most of the men wore waders. Liam had an extra pair he’d lent Johnny but Johnny was a lot bigger, I’m afraid, and the waders fit him like a size-too-small pantyhose, so I tried not to look at him.

Uncle Ned came over to Johnny where he was figuring out his rod. “Here, lad,” he said. “Take this.”

“No, that’s your Royal Coachman.” Johnny declined the frizzled burst of color. “Your favorite.”

“Aye. Well. You’ll do us proud.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

“You do it for me. I’m not up to it.”

“I won’t take it.”

“Sure, you must.”

“No. I’ve never even done it.”

“I’ll talk you through it, if ya catch a beauty. You’d be doing me a favor, like. You’re strong and I’m not as strong as I was.”

Johnny smacked him on his bicep. “Whaddaya mean? You’re my man!”

“Nevertheless.”

Dayday herself arrived in a cape.

Johnny strode over and greeted her with fond effusiveness.

“I’m so sorry about old Bob, Mrs. Driver,” I went up to her shyly and said. “I was there when he died.”

She looked at me. “He’s not dead.” She slipped from her cape and dropped it onto the tarpaulin.

“He’s not?” I sank in the muck of the shore and took a quick step back.

“No. But he’ll never use that back foot again. It’s broken in half, Dr. Carpenter from the surgery in town said so.” She peered at me over her glasses. “He’s a kraut and he’s only here half the year, but he’s not bad as a veterinarian.”

“I can’t believe that cat’s not dead!” I marveled.

There was the compulsory tribute to the descendants of the potato famine sufferers. Father Early blessed the river.

“Aye.” Mrs. Driver blessed herself, too. “Me poor old mouser. He’s the best mouser I ever had.”

I wouldn’t comment on that. I don’t much care for cats that torture for fun.

“You know he’s from Malta,” she informed me.

“Is that right?” I said, my mind drifting. Then I got it. Molly could be blackmailing Dierdre. Or else she had plans to. She suspected Dierdre. Why else would she save Peg’s furious letter?

Fiona Ferry began to sing. Right there along the banks of the Ilen. First, she sang a holy song, “On Eagle’s Wings.” There were some shining faces, but a lot of the men fidgeted.

Liam nervously patroled back and forth in front of Miss Ferry. Then, she sang a song about the number 7 bus and everyone had to wait. I thought everyone would walk away, but it was a wonderful song, about this bus being at last allowed to go back and forth through both sides of Belfast. It’s supposed to be some old fellow singing when they come to a red light, he watches a young worker get off and trot in front of the bus. On the corner, in front of the Pakie’s, waits the young wife with her hair just shampooed and their baby in the stroller. Both light up and smile when they get to each other and then, “they walked away home but the child turned ’round. I don’t know why, I just started to cry. Then the light turned green and we rolled away home. But the child turned ’round, the way a child will, the child turned all the way ’round.”

It was such a simple song. Even the men stood and listened. Everyone clapped, their hearts now set in the right place. Some of them started to cry. I might have cried, too, if I hadn’t hardened my heart, but I had.

Just then, Audrey Whitetree-Murphy arrived looking gaunt but very glamorous. She wore a Kentucky Derby straw hat. Uncle Ned went right up and asked her if she’d have a cup of lemonade and then he brought one to her.

I was furious for Aunt Bridey. “How do you bear it?” I asked her. I couldn’t stop myself.

“What?” She looked me dead in the eye, denying everything.

Right, I thought. Pride first.

“Liam wrote that,” Bridey said.

“He did? The one about the bus?”

“Aye.”

Liam and Willy cavorted near the water. Everyone looked. Of course Johnny had to join them. The fishing had begun.

Aunt Bridey sipped her own lemonade, leaned over toward me and said, “A clear conscience has the strength of ten men, Claire.”

I didn’t look back, just kept looking at the men. “Nowadays,” I murmured, “it’s a little hard to know what’s right or wrong.”

“Everyone knows what’s right and wrong.” She sniffed. “Just nowadays people like to pretend they don’t. Rather pretend the easy way is the right way.” She winked at me and the weather changed, the way it always seems to there, suddenly. Foreboding wind and rain came up. The fishermen remained, stout fellows. I put my Oriental parasol amast and it didn’t last long. The wind blew and when that happened, the light was always changing. It went from gray to sparkling and back. You could see rain and the sun in the sky at the same time. Darned if a rainbow didn’t appear.

Temple’s cameraman came along in the film Jeep. Everyone knew it was Temple’s Jeep. In front of them all, he said, “Claire, they’ve caught a big one upstream, you’ll want to get a picture of it. This looks like the winner.”

“All right.” I hopped in the Jeep, sensing the disapproval of everyone around me. It was too soon for a winner. The fun had just begun.

“You’ll not forget your parasol, lass.” Miss Ferry handed it up.

“Who is it?” Uncle Ned called, worried.

“Temple Fortune,” the cameraman sneered. “Mr. Lucky. Who else?”

So I went upstream and photographed Temple’s giant salmon. He stood astride it on the land. It flipped and struggled in the sparkling rain. “Pick it up,” someone said.

“I dunna like to hold him while he dies,” Temple said.

“Oi, the struggle,” Willy sighed, for Willy stood behind me while I shot.

“No”—Temple wiped his hands on a chamois—“the slime.”

Then I remembered my dream. Someone had come and told me what to do. Before me were four alligator-like amoeba things. I was to eat them and they, in turn, would eat the trouble inside me. There was one enormous one, big as a frog. I had some liquid I could drink them with, milk, or ale, and I took the big one first. I could feel it swimming down my throat and I remember the breadth of it passing my gullet.

I never remember my dreams. But this one was so strong it had awakened me. I stared at the grass. Suddenly I remembered where else I’d seen that digging claw before. Seamus had worn it on his tool belt. I remembered now. When I’d first arrived in Skibbereen.

*   *   *

I walked across to Mrs. Driver’s small gathering. Her regulars around her. Someone had put up a barrel and hacked a spigot into its side. The frothy amber liquid spilled out into the glass like cream.

“I was wondering,” I murmured to her, “what might have happened to Seamus?”

“He’ll be up the ridge with Jenny Rose.”

“Oh,” I said. “No. I mean, what might have happened to him to make him do such a thing? In general, what makes a person turn into a monster.”

She turned and looked me up and down. “What thing?”

“You know. To hurt an animal like that. Bob.”

“Bob?”

“To keep it alive so he could hurt it again. That frightens me.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I sighed. I’d better tell her and I’d better tell her now. “Remember, when he brought your cat, Bob, home? He’d tortured it first.”

“Seamus?”

“Yes, Seamus.”

Dayday rolled her sleeves back like a nun at the blackboard. “Well, miss, you can say what you want, but that lad never tortured nowt.”

I regarded her sadly. She didn’t want to know. I pressed the back of her hand. “I know it’s hard to accept. But I saw him.”

She sat down on the nubby bank and so did I. “If anything”—she screwed her wrinkled face up—“the opposite’s true. Like the time I gave him a job. We, all of us, give him a job now and again. For Mrs. Wooly, mostly, so she might have her extras. Tea and cakes and the like. Things she fancies.” She leaned over and whispered, “And tobacco. Just don’t tell Molly. Molly don’t like her smokin’.”

I laughed politely. “But go on about Seamus.”

“Seamus, now, it’s hard to pay him because he winds up usually doing the opposite of what you want him to do. And you’d like to paddle him more than pay him.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, like I was saying. I had all these snails in my garden in back of the house. They eat the leaves off everything. They eat the blossoms from the nasturtium. They can’t get enough a those forget-me-nots. And it takes two years to grow forget-me-nots. I planted my whole front path with them. Not one come up the second year. Why? I’ll tell you why! You can’t believe how much those snails can eat!”

I looked out over the heads of the drinkers. Temple was looking for me. “So, go on,” I urged her.

“Well. Last summer I thought, I’m going to gather them all up and get rid of them. I’m not one for poison, not with the cats and my two goats.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ve got to get up way early in the morning while they’re still about, because before the sun is burnin’ bright, they’ll all be back home sleepin’ and you’ll never catch them. So I gave Seamus the job of being there early and getting them for me and he did that part. He was there bright and early and he’d pick them up off the leaves, big ones, small ones, then he was to go put them in the pail, the big one, a rusty metal rubbish pail by the house and he did that, too. I’d lined the can with a plastic and when he was done he tied up the bag like I showed him. He did that part fine.”

She took a draught of her lemon and beer. “The next day, he come back for his money, like I told him, y’see. I’m not one to rise up early. The guests stay late and if there’s a good game of darts, they’ll stay later still. So I told him come late on the next day and he did. But when I came to the back door, there’s Seamus there crying his eyes out. I said what’s the matter, Seamus? and he couldn’t talk, for all the blubberin’ he was doin’, but he pointed his fat finger at the rubbish pail and there’s this snail on a rose branch sticking from the bag, made his way to the top, and Seamus says, ‘All night long he musta been climbing! All night long!’ I look at him. ‘He’ll want to go home to his mam!’ he cried.”

Dayday looked at me. “What was I to do? All right, I said to him, I said, ‘Seamus, what do you want me to do?’ and he snuffled and cried out to me, ‘Let them go home!’ Like his poor heart would break. ‘All right,’ I said, then, just to get him to stop, ‘you can let them go home.’”

“So what happened?” A sun shower started and I put the parasol over us.

“Seamus,” she continued, “spent the next hour picking every last snail from the garbage and transporting them back to the yard. He put every last one on its own leaf, he did. There you have it. And you wonder why my garden looks the way it does!” She put her hand on my bent knee and hoisted herself up. “So it’s not Seamus who’d torture a creature. You’re all wrong, there.” She put her cape back on. “You see it couldn’t be him.”

Something was going on at the spot I’d just come from, where Mrs. Wooly sat. A couple of people drifted over there. “But then you’ll be wrong about so much, I’ll wager,” Dayday muttered.

I looked at her, puzzled.

“Daft. I mean that fine fellow.”

“Temple?”

“Tch. Not him. The broken-hearted one.”

I stood up myself. Temple, surrounded by admirers, waved when he saw me.

“Mrs. Driver”—I pushed my way through the assortment of revellers—“but what about that story of Seamus when he tortured the pig?”

“I never heard that.” She turned her back on me.

Puzzled, I just stood there, following her back with my eyes.

Then, she turned around, her little mouth very defined beneath a trace of mustache. “I remember a story about a pig. I remember that one. But that were not Seamus. A man from Clonmel told me that story. Used to live here. What was his name?” She shuddered. “Oi. He were ripping drunk when he told me that one. I thought he made that up.” She shook her head. “You hear all art of things in my line.”

“Who was that, Mrs. Driver?” I think she was a little tipsy herself.

She smacked her lips. “Och. Your memory goes. He used to live right here in Skibbereen, he did.” She looked down. “I often wondered why he never come back. Nowt to visit.”

Temple grabbed me by the hand and spun me around. He was so happy. I couldn’t help smile for him.

“What’s gotten into you?” I chuckled.

“Off to the colonies, Claire,” he whispered and let his breath and a scrape of his tongue stay inside my ear.

I pulled back and smiled.

“Now,” he said.

“I’ve just got to—”

His face fell. “What now?”

“—go see Jenny Rose.”

“Come on, Claire. You can do that later.”

I pulled away.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It just feels wrong. I mean, so mean. To do it while I should be off looking for her.”

“But, she’s nothing to you. A week ago you didn’t know she existed, right?”

Right.” I looked up the Ilen and over the moor where Bally Cashin lay. “I just want to check she’s all right.”

“What’s this?” Bernadette remarked, taking us in. Me and Temple. “Some’s got their bread buttered on both sides, I see,” she said.

“I want to know if you’re coming now,” he said.

“Can’t you see Jenny Rose could be in danger?”

“What sort of danger could she be in? Jesus! And can’t you see that you can’t tease me like this forever? Some of us don’t have that luxury of staying where we want to, some of us have to work.”

“I work!” I whirled about in anger.

“Well some of us have to move on when we must.” He pulled in his chin. “You’re being coy, is what you’re doing. Little late for that, love.”

I tried not to be annoyed. “Temple. Just let me go. I’ll be right back.” I smiled. “Really.”

You could tell he was furious. Poor Temple. When he got mad, his skin got all rashy. He turned himself in profile. He was smiling at the people from the weighing tent. The Evening Star had sent their photographer as well. He waved to them but he talked to me. “You trot your husband out to make me jealous so I’ll marry you—”

“Marry you?” I flew at him. “I’d never get married again! I wanted sex, that was all.”

One eyebrow went up in two pieces.

I pulled away and climbed on the bicycle. I could feel his eyes on me while I rode away but I didn’t care, I didn’t care what I’d said, either. I really was worried about Jenny Rose because there were so many things to sketch over here and why wouldn’t she come? This all was her idea. And if Seamus hadn’t been the one to torture that poor cat, who had? Who else could have been to the bed and breakfast that morning?

Willy Murphy stood with his mother. A group of young people hung about. The local radio station from Cork had got wind of all this and they were interviewing Mrs. Whitetree-Murphy, as if she were the spokesperson. She was holding Willy’s suitcase close to her legs.

“Willy?” I tapped him from my saddle. “I’m going to go up and look for Jenny Rose.”

I hesitated for a few moments, hoping he’d volunteer to come with me. He didn’t, though. His mother said something and everyone laughed.

I went on my way. I turned and saw him in his safari outfit, deliberating, but still standing there on his skinny white legs.

I remember that journey so well. The bicycle and tires were strong but so were the ruts in the road and it was like a contest between them. I was sorry I’d put the Oriental parasol in the basket for all the bouncing around it did.

For a while I would ride on the green to avoid the great rattling. Then there were bushes and you had to go back to the road. It was cold with the wind. I remember leaning down hard against it, across the handlebars, climbing the hills. I was oddly frantic. Then going down them you had to pull yourself back on the footbrakes. I felt a great urgency to see Jenny Rose. Just to see her well. Then I felt almost silly when I got to the Trinity Lanes because suddenly the sun broke through. It was a lovely June day and I thought, Look at me, I’ve gone completely paranoid.

So I took the coast road, pedaling easily now. I don’t know what had gotten into me. It was such a glorious day. I’d get Jenny Rose and we’d go back and join the others. Leave it to Temple Fortune to win first prize. I smiled to myself. He was jealous, wasn’t he? I’d straighten it out. There was still time.

I got to the hill by the studio and disembarked. I called out. No one came. I hopped back on the bike and turned but just then the door creaked open and I turned to look. No one was there. Oh well, no one there. I had half a mind to just go but I thought of Jenny Rose and how upset she must be with Willy leaving. I wheeled the bike up to the door and called her name. No one came. The door banged in the wind. Childishly, I wished the dog were with me.

“Jenny Rose?” I went in just a little. There was no one. It wasn’t dark in there so there was no reason to be frightened but, I don’t know why, something made me hesitate. The open door fluttered the sketches and blew them off the tables. My neck ached. I sighed. I’d have to fix that. I couldn’t just leave them to blow away. I leaned the bicycle against the house and went in. Something passed before me. I stood very still. It was Bob, the cat, black, limping stealthily from right to left, his yellow eyes on me. I let out a frightened shriek before I realized what it was. Nerves, I guess. Then I gave a laugh, to put myself in charge, like, feeling silly, and went over to batten down the drawings. Jenny Rose must have left in a hurry, I thought, not to latch that door right. Probably changing her mind and then racing to see Willy Murphy before he got away.

When I reached the table, the hairs on my neck stood up. There was someone behind me. I could feel it. I turned slowly. Against the door, Seamus stood, flattened and big-eyed. We both screamed.

I was terrified. It didn’t matter now what Dayday Driver had said about Seamus. He was huge and he loomed here and now, blocking the door. And back at it again with that cat, Bob. For a moment I thought I could jump through the glass window but I realized I might well slice myself and bleed to death before anyone would come. They were all at the River Ilen. The family. Even Johnny. Willy probably gone by now to London. Seamus held the door shut tight with both hands. My best bet was to play dumb.

“Why hello!” My voice trembled.

“Why hello!” He gave me my own voice back.

I couldn’t do this. I took a step back. “Seamus,” I said, “your mother is down at the River Ilen. They’re all there.”

“I’ll not watch them catch our Tantalos.” He shook his head—all Willy—then pounced on Bob the cat.

I put my face in my hands. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes and looked between my fingers. He stood there in his big corduroy jacket and rumpled farmer grays, Bob in his arms. Bob’s foot was bandaged and a part of the ear was off. He pet the cat absently. “Jenny Rose was here with Willy Murphy all night long,” he said in a singsong. “They made a wicked fire! The whole of the room turned to cozy.” He shook his head. “Ah, it was grand.”

I looked to the latch on the door behind him. It wasn’t on tightly. If he moved to the side I could make it …

“Then Johnny the detective Benedetto come up,” he continued. “And what do you think, we put more wood on that fire! Och, it was fine!” He cocked his head dreamily. “They talked and talked the whole night long, they did. And they let me stay.”

“Who?” I said, just to keep it all going.

“Jenny Rose and Willy Murphy and that Johnny did!” He banged his fist on the door and made me jump. But he’d loosened the latch even more. It would drop if I waited. “They were talking and talking,” he said. “All about the Queen.”

“The Queen,” I said.

“Yeh,” he said, troubled. “Johnny says Jenny Rose can go live with the Queen.” He put his head down.

I stayed where I was. Outside, you could hear the wind. “Oh! You mean Queens!” I cried, my mind working despite everything. “Johnny told her he wants her to come live in Queens.”

His face lit up. “That’s it.”

“Seamus,” I tried. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

“Nay,” he said, standing back before the door.

We were at an impasse. There was nothing to be done.

We stayed like that for what felt like a long time. Then he said, “Jenny Rose said she’ll not leave Skibbereen!”

I thought, if I die, it’s not going to be from sitting here waiting for it. I stood up, walked over to him. He didn’t move a muscle. Matter of fact he seemed to be waiting for my lead. I took a chance and pulled him to the side by a pinch of his shirtsleeve, and opened the door. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He stood there, waiting patiently. I walked through the door. He followed me out. I picked up the bicycle.

“Can I come with you to the gate?” he asked me.

“Okay,” I said, sweat pouring from me, turning the bike and keeping it between us. “Sure. We’ll go find Jenny Rose.”

“She told me stay right here.” He sat down on the ground. “I’m not to leave the promises,” he said, confused.

“The premises?”

“Oh.”

I hopped on the bike. I was safe. I could get away, now. I turned to make sure he wasn’t about to grab hold of the back of my head and pull me off. He put his pudgy hand up and waved bye-bye.

“Oh, Seamus!” I melted. “It wasn’t you who hurt Bob the cat, was it?”

Something had changed, even in the air between us. He sensed it, too. He shook his head to the left and right. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt old Bob, here. No, indeed.”

“But, who did then, Seamus?” I stayed where I was, but the fear had left me.

He put his face up and gave me a sly look. “You’ll be knowing that. Sure, you were there!”

“Molly and I were both there, Seamus. We both believed it was you who hurt poor Bob. But Molly was just trying to put him out of his misery. Who was it who hurt the cat?” I went over to him and took his heavy chin in my fingertips and turned his rubbery face toward me. “Who else was there that day? Tell me, Seamus.”

Then, with a chill I can feel until now, his wobbly face turned hard and shrewd, he sucked a tooth and he gleamed at me with someone else’s silver eyes and he said, in a voice not his, “Just cry out loud when it hurts too much.”

Fear went down me like butter seeping over something hot. It was the voice of Molly herself.

Seamus was wild with fear. “If I left now, maybe the same thing would happen what did then, when Brenden Murphy died.”

“Seamus, what do you mean? Who is Brenden Murphy?”

“Willy’s dad.”

“The one who died? Drove over the cliff in his father-in-law’s Bentley?”

“Aye. But it wasn’t what they said. It weren’t Willy’s fault. It was Molly stood before him on the road and made him swerve away. And over the cliff he went. In the car. And she laughin’.”

Molly? But that couldn’t be. I forced myself to reach back in time … I’d been leaving Molly’s, she’d already said goodbye to me, I remembered. She’d thought I was gone and had been surprised to see me. How fast she’d thought, to come up with that, that Seamus had done it … had hurt old Bob the cat. I realized I’d protected Molly by not telling when I’d thought Seamus was guilty … and again when I thought she’d rescued Jenny Rose’s paintings. It was just like Zinnie’d said. Look out for the one you’re protecting.

And Jenny Rose was with Molly.

Seamus pressed me up against the bicycle. He was opening his shirt. “But I didn’t like to play those games with the birdy head,” he was saying. “It was foul.” He pulled his shirt up over his face. I edged away. Then I saw what he was trying to show me. Up and down his side were little nips of scars, some closed, some just scabbing up.

“Where did they go, Seamus?” I looked around me jerkily. “Are they still here?”

“And then she made the animals play.” He was hyperventilating, working himself into a state. “But the animals wouldn’t know what to cry. They’re innocent! They wouldn’t know what to do!”

“Seamus—”

“She did it to the pig.” He clutched his throat. “My pig! A pig’s the smartest animal in the world. And a pig can too swim. Well, he can, but just for a short distance he can. Then he’ll bleed to death. He can swim just a couple hundred yards and then his wee little hooves in the front will keep swimmin’ and swimmin’ and they cut the pig’s throat, they’re so sharp.” Seamus gasped, remembering. “And the water turn red with the blood.” He held the frightened cat out in his arms. “And Molly will be standin’ there, happy with the sight of it, throwin’ salt at him so he wouldn’t climb up! Salt in his eyes! Salt in his hooves! Oh, it was horrible, horrible—” He buried his face in the cat.

I recalled the first day I’d gone up to Molly’s. My photographer’s eye put off by the carton of salt on the back step. The oozy green corpse of the slug. She’d blamed it on Seamus, even then. How easily she’d tricked me. “Seamus”—I kept my voice even—“come now, we’ve got to find Jenny Rose!”

“Jenny Rose said I should stay here put.” He smacked the earth, letting go, and Bob streaked off.

“Oh, no!” he cried out. “Now he’s gotten away.”

“Which road did they take?”

“Now she’ll find him again! She want his other foot, next time! She has the birdy head!” A big tear rolled from his pale blue eye. “She loves that wicked thing, she does.”

I pulled up beside him. “And were you not supposed to tell?”

“I took that birdy head and hid it on me belt hook here, but she’s a sly one, she is, she found it and made me give it back.”

“Did she force you not to tell?”

“Molly said she’d hurt me mam, if I ever told a living soul.” He put a finger over his lips. Horror filled his face. “If I tell, she’ll find me mam, no matter where I carry her away and hide her, and she’ll take the birdy head to her. She will.” Then, despairing, he threw his hands up in the air. “But now it doesn’t matter none, does it? Jenny Rose knows everything now! Jenny Rose said it doesn’t matter none and I’m not to worry.” He sniffled. “Jenny Rose says whatever happens, I’m to know I’m a good boy. It was none of it my fault. It wasn’t me who told that was Molly poured the gasoline. I swear I didn’t tell. ’Twas Jenny Rose. She figured it out herself, she did.”

“Come on.” I urged him along by his wrist. “Jenny Rose is in trouble.”

He shook his head and stayed where he was. “It’s Morocco is in trouble. Molly took all the salt.”

“Where have they gone?”

He wouldn’t answer me. Then he said, “Sometimes where Molly’s mother lives. She keeps her messy things at her mother’s house.”

“Her mother?” It had never occurred to me Molly had a mother nearby. I’d never really absorbed her as anything more than my innkeeper. There for me. I looked down. Seamus was playing with his shoelaces.

“You wouldn’t want to go to the stepfather’s house, all spic and span. You’d never want to go there.”

“Where does Molly’s mother live?”

“He did all sorts of things to Molly, things what married people do, and her mother watchin’ all the while. They thought I was too young to know, but I remember. I was on the mud porch once and her mother says to Molly, ‘Cry out loud if it hurts too much, Molly.’”

“Where does she live, the mother?”

“In Bantry,” he answered.

Bantry? Who was it who’d mentioned Bantry? “Why, that’s where Miss Ferry goes to confession.”

“That’s Fiona. That be Molly’s older sister, Fiona.”

“Fiona Ferry is Molly’s older sister?”

“That’s it. The bird she sings the sweetest least survives the storm. That’s what Liam always says about her.”

“Seamus, what’s Molly’s mother’s name?”

He sucked his finger for a bit. “Mrs. Ferry,” he said. “She comes from Bantry, miss. All the Ferrys do. Far as I know.”

All I could see was the twisted broken foot of poor Fiona Ferry, and hear her lovely voice on the bus that day, “’twas my sister pushed me down the cellar stairs…”

I got on that bike and I pedaled hard, going east. It occurred to me the only reason Audrey’d thought Jenny Rose had neglected her donkey was because Molly’d told her she had. What a fool I’d been! Molly herself had called the vet, she’d probably told Jenny Rose she would watch out for the donkey … No wonder Audrey thought Jenny Rose no good, Molly had prepared her to believe it. I was pedaling along so madly, if I hadn’t looked up, I would have missed it. But I always looked at the fairy ring. Always. And the ground was strangely tufted and flattened.

I got off the bike and wheeled it over to the cliff. Something made me go quietly. Maybe because I knew it was a place for lovers, and I didn’t want to surprise anyone, you know how it is. I could hear a baby crying. Well, I thought, then, it’s a family and I turned to go. I pedaled off. But there was something in the plaintive cry of that baby. Not normal … I turned the bike around. They’d better be careful, I thought. What if they were tourists and they didn’t know the tide would forge in suddenly? It could sweep the baby away!… So I started to look again, wanting to see and not wanting to, in case they were naked, your head thinks all these things, when I realized who I was watching. I drew my head back with a lurch.

Jenny Rose and Molly were there. Molly was doing something. I fell to the ground. Jenny Rose was lying down in the water in a big dark coat. Her lips and cheeks were very red against her white skin, even from this height. I don’t know why I hid myself. I was mystified. I lay down on the ground and pulled myself up to the edge. Molly stood up and held both hands in front of her with the tips up and her palms toward Jenny Rose, as though she’d stepped back from a roast she’d just put in the oven, as if she were delighted. A wave came through the seaweedy rocks and Jenny Rose didn’t jump up, away from that cold water and I knew, now, for certain that something was very wrong. Jenny Rose wasn’t wearing a coat. She was tied to Morocco. She was buckled to the donkey. Molly had tied her with movers’ pulleys and a rope was trailing from Morocco’s head. Oh. Oh my God, what were they doing?

I wanted to stand up and call out to them but something knowing, something innately clandestine in me kept me low to the earth and still silent.

The donkey cried out from the cold of the water, from between the pulley ropes wound tight around his muzzle. That was no baby crying then. I don’t know how long I stayed there, watching. It couldn’t have been more than moments, but it was as if time stood still. My thoughts darted. Should I go back and fetch someone? But it would take so long. I didn’t know what they were saying. I was so high up and the cliff so steep. They were so far down there. The tide would stop after each wave would crash and the water would pull away. Then, the direction of the wind must have changed and I could hear them. It was Molly, talking. She stood there in a blowing skirt and her hand-knit Irish sweater. “If it’s too painful, dear,” she told Jenny Rose, “just cry out loud.”

Jenny Rose said nothing. She didn’t cry out. She was in shock. Her arms were bound to her sides. And she knew she was going to die.

Inside me, a silent scream rang out.

The donkey floundered underneath her. Jenny Rose had maneuvered herself by nudging her way above the donkey so it was underwater first.

The water pulled away and sucked to sea. The donkey screamed and gurgled and I put my hand across my mouth. Molly cried out in some kind of righteous bliss.

There was a moment where madness reigned. Everything became upside down. The water stormed the rocks and Jenny Rose’s dazed white face went under.

That was when I must have stood. But before I knew what was happening, someone was behind me, raised up the bicycle, over my head, and threw it.

Morocco screamed one last time. It was such a piercing scream, like an infant, insistent. It was horrible. Horrible.

I opened my eyes. The bicycle had struck Molly. She was down.

For a moment I thought, It’s a trick, and she’ll get up. But it had twisted her. She lay still.

I clattered down the side of the cliff, half tumbling, half plunging, and reached Jenny Rose as she craned her neck upwards, just out of the water away from Morocco. I pulled the donkey’s head up. I tried to drag the two of them but they were so heavy with water they wouldn’t budge. But then Seamus was there with us and he pulled us all in one burst when the tide moved in our favor. We all rolled together. Morocco was sodden, drowned. My hands were shaking so, I could hardly manage. I had to free Jenny Rose or she’d drown with the weight of the donkey. The bicycle, shattered, had a sharp end on one of the bumpers. It wouldn’t come loose. It was wedged into Molly. I pushed her leg away from me and it snapped free. The rusty side cut the rotting pulley but it wasn’t sharp enough to cut entirely through. For a moment I thought I’d lose her. At last her shoulder slipped out. She struggled with me, believing now she would live. She would live.

With no hope but a ridiculous inkling of faith, I blew into the still shackled animal’s foamy mouth with a mad burst of air. I didn’t care. I just did it.

Nothing happened. I did it again. In a frenzied spasm, three legs began to churn. “Eeyyyyyyorrrr.” You could hear the cry echo like out from purgatory into the whirling lagoon.

Molly’s tawny parasol, freed, moved serenely out the emerald sea.

It seemed to take us forever to get up the cliff. It must have been cold but I don’t remember that. I suppose we were in shock. We had to walk and it was slow going because Morocco’s poor hide was all ripped from the jetty. Jenny Rose hung on his neck and he wheezed, like he was crying, a flopping shackle still attached to the one hind leg. He put one hoof in front of the other and kept on going.

When we got to the top we all stood there and looked down. Molly’s twisted body was still in the cove, half floating, half stuck on the lavalike reach. They looked at me. I think they thought I would say we must go back down there and see if she lived. My face contorted and I reached my head out over the cliff and I spit down the shaft of wind raging in our ears.

*   *   *

We’d hobbled along for some time when a dot on the horizon turned into Willy Murphy. “Sure what in God’s name are you up to?” he called out to us.

“Willy!” I sobbed.

He put his salt and pepper sweater over Jenny Rose. Jenny Rose, shivering, clung to him.

“Thank God you came along,” I said. “She’s frozen. She almost died.”

“She killed our Peg!” Jenny Rose sobbed. “Molly wanted to kill me! She wanted to watch! She said her mother watched while her stepfather— Oh, God. I went down the cove to save Morocco and she hit me on the head with a stone, Willy! She tied me to him!”

“It’s all right now.” Willy clapped her head to his chest. “I’ll never leave you again.”

“What about your t-t-train?” Jenny Rose’s teeth chattered.

“I decided not to take it,” he said. He shrugged and didn’t stutter. “I told my mother. Everything I could want I have here.”

*   *   *

Long lines twirled in the air and landed in the fast oozy green of the river. No one at the river’s edge turned to look when we got there.

“Ah, it’s all over, now,” Liam called from the edge of the lingering crowd, never dreaming what we’d been through. “It’s eleven-thirty now,” he said, “and it’s last weigh in at noon. You know who’s won. Himself.” He nudged the top of his head to Temple. “Who else?”

We stood, exhausted, and I thought the donkey would fall down. But he never did. That donkey, he stood there and took it.

Then, Mrs. Whitetree-Murphy saw the blood and she came, tippy-toe, across the grass. Then she started to run. Here and there the wives were packing up. Dayday saw us and came over, too.

“Call Dr. Carpenter,” Mrs. Driver instructed one of the boys. “He’s down just past the crick in the river. Go on, scuttle!”

“You better call the ambulance as well,” I said.

“I’m all right, now.” Jenny Rose wept.

“Call just the same,” Dayday said.

Over in the river, some men were shouting on the sidelines. It was Johnny in his rubber glove suit. His rod turned alive. He’d got hold of something. Everyone was leaning up against the bank of the river.

Uncle Ned was talking him in. “Keep the floater away from them rocks,” Uncle Ned called to Johnny. Everyone stood still and watched. It had become like a living thing and the reel screamed as the salmon raced down the stream. Then Uncle Ned called again in a panic, “Keep him well off of those rocks!”

“Hold up,” you could hear the men rally. “Someone’s snagged a humdinger!”

The salmon took off in a different direction. Back and forth he went until Johnny must have thought he’d never stop. I sank to the ground. We all did. Only Morocco stood.

“Now don’t expect any results the first time,” Liam was preparing Johnny. “If ye lose him, ye lose him. There’s no shame in it. Yer first time out. Sometimes it takes years.”

Johnny glanced over his shoulder to where we were huddled. “I’m not gonna lose him,” he called.

“You just do what I tell you,” Uncle Ned said.

“It’s all over, anyway, you fool,” another fellow shouted at them. “You’ll never get him out in time.”

“No, not that way,” Uncle Ned would say, and then, “Oh, he’s lost him, now. That’s it, there’s no hope, now.”

“Och, let him have just the fun of it,” Liam called, sort of hysterical.

“What’s the matter”—one of the boys on the other side of the river cupped his mouth at him—“couldn’t fit your Yankee arse into yer waders?” and everyone laughed.

Indeed, Johnny winced with every move.

It did appear the fish was tiring, but no such luck. Almost twenty minutes passed. Willy kept his arms around the trembling Jenny Rose. Dayday got her sweet hot tea and Willy made her sip it. She plucked the grass. Christ, I thought, she’s lost it. Then I saw it, right there on the ground in front of me. A four-leaf clover.

The weather changed, the skies blew foreboding wind, and rain came. No one moved. The rain left. I sat there still.

Dr. Carpenter pulled up in his Range Rover and strode across the mucky grass. Brownie was the only one who went to greet him. All eyes were on the river now and Johnny.

Johnny looked exhausted. “Draw him close,” Uncle Ned told him. Now he could tell the fish was really tiring and Uncle Ned moved in with the net and reel. Johnny raised it out of the water and Ned scooped it up, staggering under it. A gasp gave out from both shores. Part of the tail was all mottled and blue. It was Tantalos, all right.

The more conservative estimations were about fifteen pounds.

Just then Liam swaggered into the water, clothes and all, and shouted to the world: “‘In a cool pond he stood, lapped round by water…’” For a moment he paused and his face trembled as though he couldn’t go on and I thought, What? Will he break down in tears? He went on,

“Clear to the chin and being athirst he burned

to slake his dry weasand with drink,

though drink

he would not ever again.”

Well. Johnny pushed his cap back on his head. He looked at that fish for a while, almost done, and he looked at his hands.

He unhooked the fish with one swift movement, turned the netting inside out and let that old fish loose. Tantalos left like a bat out of hell.

“At’s the easy way out, all right,” Temple called from the other side.

“What did you say?” Johnny strode in slow-motion across the deep water. They faced each other. Johnny put up his dukes.

Temple gave him a pitying look and kicked him dead in the face.

I screamed, they all told me later, and threw myself on top of Johnny. I was throwing myself on top of his teeth was what I thought. All those months of driving into the city in traffic to Dr. Zwick’s.

Just then the ambulance arrived so they took Jenny Rose and Johnny together and I stayed there with Seamus. Someone had to stay with him. He was so upset. He thought, first things first, Bridey ought to sew up Morocco with her crewelwork needles. They brought Mrs. Wooly over and everyone thought she would have a stroke from all the excitement but instead she was enjoying it all, you could tell. She was looking for a stiff nip, was what she said. “And the dance to begin.”

Willy followed the ambulance with Dierdre in Bernadette’s car. I felt sorry for her, for Dierdre. She looked all done in.

Bernadette, her arms crossed in front of her, came over to me. “Well,” she said, “a dream come true. Two blokes fighting over you at last.”

“You can have my dream,” I sobbed. “I’ve got a real life.”

She looked at me blankly.

“A real man.” I sniffed and sat back down on the ground. Everything hurt.

“I don’t want Temple,” she sneered. “It’s Tobias I’m in love with.”

“Tobias?” I asked blankly, some vague bell ringing far-off somewhere. “Who’s Tobias?”

“The cameraman.”

“The cameraman?”

Mrs. Driver came hurrying over. “Claire! There’s an urgent telephone call for you,” she said, “from the States.”

I hurried with her back to her place. All I could think was my mother was dead. The receiver was off its hook on the mahogany bar. “Hello?” I shouted. “Hello?”

“Ma?”

“Anthony?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?” I shrieked.

“Ma, where are my wrist guards?”

“What?”

“My wrist guards. Where are they?”

“But what about Grandma?!”

“She’s shopping at Key Food.”

I sat on the bar stool. “They’re in your closet, where they always are.”

“No they ain’t.”

“No they aren’t. Yes, they are.”

“Ma. Take a chill pill. Don’t you think I looked? I wouldn’t call you all the way across the Atlantic if they were where they were supposed to be.”

I mulled for a moment. I wanted him to be well without me, while a part still yearned for his dependence. “Try downstairs in the cellar in the cardboard box under the stairs.”

I could hear him skimming across the floor on his Roller-blades. I thought, How could I have imagined I could move them to the West Coast when I couldn’t even get them to tidy their things? There was a stunningly expensive wait.

Someone had come in. I looked across the dark pub. Temple was leaning against the beer barrel delivery. He was dressed to move on. His face was determined and beautiful from the light coming in the little stained glass window. Then I heard Anthony again on the other end. “Mom,” he said, “you’re the best.”

“Is everyone all right?” I said.

Temple nodded.

Anthony said, “Yeah, how ’bout you? Dad still there?” There was a moment where we both hesitated, hearing each other’s silences. He, listening for any changes, betrayals. It was only a moment but it was long.

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s great,” he said, in a hurry now. “Thanks, Mom. Oh, yeah, Aunt Carmela came to dinner last night and boy did she tie one on! Listen, the guys are all standing here waiting.”

“In their skates? On my kitchen floor?”

“Gotta go.” He blew me a kiss.

I hung up the phone.

“You’re not coming with me,” Temple said.

“No,” I said.

“What made up your mind?” He walked toward me. “All this with Molly?” He took hold of my big hand. “Or the fish thing?”

“I suppose my mind was made up years ago, I just refused to admit to myself I’d grown up. I loved thinking I still had a choice.” We stood there. “I loved thinking you were my choice.” I looked in his beautiful eyes. “You still have the moon through the trees,” I said softly.

“Go ahead then.” He dropped my hand. “Serve your false gods. You’ve dug your own grave.” Then, for effect, he added, “buried in Queens.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” I said, and right then I was glad he had said it because if he hadn’t I would always have missed him.

He turned and he started to go.

What the hell. “Temple,” I said, “will you be in New York?”

“Just for three days.”

“Would you look up my sister? Carmela?”

“Ah,” he remembered, “the beauty.”

Thank you, I thought, but let it pass. “Would you?”

“All right.” He sighed.

He picked up his duffel bag. His velvety calfskin appointment book looked for all the world just like hers. One cooler than the other. Those two would be made for each other.

I wrote in her number. Right under someone named Concita, with an asterisk.

I handed him the book and he packed it away. We looked at each other.

“Well then,” he said. “Cheerio.”

I walked him to the door. That Concita would have given me trouble sooner or later anyway. Cheerio? Sometimes you had to laugh.