Chapter 25: Angel

Ned was gone. There was no sign of him in the house, the little garden, or the road outside. He was not to be found in the village. Cornelius Todd drove again out to the deserted farm, but Ned was not there, either.

When he came back with this news, his hands helpless at his sides, Rose stood up. “That’s enough,” she said. “I’m leaving. I have to get Brigid home. I think Mr Todd, having caused the disturbance, is quite capable of finding Mrs Silver’s boy by himself.”

There was silence. Brigid expected to hear Laetitia or her grandfather, or Cornelius himself, say something, but for a long moment no one spoke. They seemed too stunned to deal with anything more.

Then Laetitia who, to Brigid’s surprise, had voiced no complaint, became all quiet efficiency, packing bags, locking windows: “He will have to find him,” she said, with unusual calm. “We have our own troubles to see to. But, Rose, we need to go and get your car first. Mine’s not big enough for everybody. I’ll take you over there now. Pop, you get your coat, and get ready. We’ll not be long.”

Brigid saw Cornelius sit suddenly down on a hard, upright chair, passing his hand over his forehead. No one else looked near him. Her grandfather, ignoring his daughter’s command, stood by the window, quite still, gazing out beyond the sky and the sea, as if he were already somewhere else. Only Rose, suddenly hard-edged, disturbed Brigid. She was not sure she was comfortable with this new Rose, unsmilingly opening the door, getting into Laetitia’s car and disappearing with hardly a word. Yet, as Laetitia had said, they were back very quickly, and it struck Brigid that she must have driven very fast indeed, because it seemed to have taken them much longer in Rose’s little car. She had no chance to ask anyone about it before Rose, still unsmiling, bundled her into the car, shook hands with the Arthurs, made her thanks and her goodbyes and drove away, all without a word to Cornelius.

A second car followed them from the house. Laetitia drove her own, small and neat like Rose’s, but newer, shinier and, yes, faster. This was a different Laetitia again. With her father in the front seat, his hand raised in greeting, she passed swiftly by them at the edge of the town, leaving Rose and Brigid to follow behind at Rose’s steadier pace.

It was not until after they had disappeared that Rose finally spoke. “I’m sorry, Brigid,” she said. “I don’t mean to seem as if I don’t care about Ned Silver. I do. He’s just not my priority at the moment. In any case, C – Mr Todd will find him. He won’t have gone far.”

There was that Mr Todd again: not Cornelius, certainly not Uncle Conor. Brigid slid a sideways glance at Rose. Beneath her collar, no sparkle danced on the hollow bones of her neck, and on her finger there was no ring.

“I don’t know what priority means, Rose,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Brigid. You’re so advanced in many ways, I tend to . . . Well. You’ll have to be quite advanced now, I’m afraid.” She paused.

Brigid felt a beating in her chest, like wings.

“Your father is very unwell. The operation showed that the illness lay beyond his eyes, deep in his brain. Do you understand?”

Brigid said: “He gets headaches when he wakes up. He told me on Saturday. But they always go away.”

Her eyes on the road, Rose nodded. “Yes, but you see, they were a sign that something was very wrong. It’s a great pity he didn’t tell anyone in time – and, no, you couldn’t have prevented anything by telling about the headaches when he told you. It was already too late.”

Too late, Brigid thought. Too late for what?

“But he’ll get better?”

The answer came like the water round the rocks, cold and suffocating in her mouth and her ears.

“I don’t know, Brigid,” she heard Rose say, her eyes still straight ahead. “We have to wait and see.”

They were out of the village, turning slowly away from the shining and treacherous sea. The edge of Brigid’s eye caught pinks and yellows of clouds above, the sunlit flash of seabirds on waves and a shingled shore, but she did not look back. Like Rose, she kept her eyes straight ahead, as the land settled into its comforting mounds, the egg-like drumlins, the people-seeming trees.

“Rose,” she said, “tell me what is in my daddy’s brain.”

Rose answered directly. “It’s called a tumour, and it has grown behind his eyes. It’s like a ball, and it has made him unable to see, and it has given him headaches.”

Brigid began to understand. “It made him different,” she said. “It made him cross, and he forgot things he never forgot. It made him like a dream I had: he was Not-Daddy, and Mama was Not-Mama. They were all the Not-people. Rose, I think I dream straight.”

Rose drew in breath, and let it out, slowly. “I’d be sorry to think so, Brigid,” she said.

Brigid opened her mouth to tell Rose of the dream she had where Tullybroughan was a ruin, then closed it again. She remembered what Michael said: no one wanted to know about dreaming straight.

They drove on to the city, swinging in short, then longer curves into wider roads, the houses more frequent, serried in ranks, the car curving gradually away from the drumlins and the fields, until they were back at the edge of the city, under Brigid’s own mountain, calm and blue behind the house, and the Friday Tree in all its summer fullness, just as if her father did not have a ball growing behind his eyes.

The house folded round them without a sound. Even Dicky was silent in his cage. Brigid’s grandfather sat at the table in the sitting room, his head down, not speaking. Yet, he motioned Brigid to him as she came in, and set her on his knee, just as Laetitia came in. She carried a pot of tea, and a plate of sandwiches.

“You should get a new car,” she said to Rose, without rancour. “I got here long ago.”

Rose said nothing: her eyes rested on the corner by the window, where Francis sat by himself, looking at nothing.

There were so many people in the room, but no Mama, and no Daddy.

“Where is Mama?” Brigid asked her grandfather, in a whisper.

“At the hospital,” he said, his voice low as hers.

The telephone rang, deep and muffled in the dark cloakroom. Surprisingly quickly, Brigid’s grandfather rose from his seat, easing Brigid to the floor, and stepped into the hall. Brigid heard him, even through the closed door, shouting into it as if he were in a high wind: “Hello? Grace? Hello?”

“Brigid, come over here to me,” said Rose, “and you, too, Francis.”

One from the corner, one from the window, they went over, a deepening silence all about them, and they waited.

“Sit here on my knee, Brigid. Francis, come in here beside me.”

They did as Rose said, hearing nothing but their own breathing, and the clink of the cup Laetitia moved to and from her mouth. Yet, she was not drinking the tea. She was simply lifting the cup up and down, up and down, and each time she raised it the teaspoon slid into the well of the saucer.

From the hall came monosyllables: “Yes. I see. I will.”

The door opened. Rose tightened her arm round Brigid, and held Francis so close that Brigid could feel the heat of his body as well as her own. Her grandfather stood in the doorway, his arms hanging as they had when she and Ned were pulled out of the water.

“Gone,” he said. He put his hand over his eyes, and leaned against the wall. “Gone,” he said again.

“Who?” Brigid said, twisting round and taking Rose’s face in her hands. The skin did not move as quickly as the bones, and a red mark spread where she caught Rose’s cheek.

“Who is gone? Is it Mama? Where?”

“No,” said Rose, gently taking Brigid’s hands from her face. “Not your mama. Your daddy.”

She stopped, and Brigid saw Laetitia replace the cup in the saucer, and sit then, like a statue, like long-forgotten Miss Chalk.

Rose said: “God took your daddy home to live with him.”

Brigid felt her head drop, as if her neck could no longer hold it and, as it did, she saw Francis’ head shoot up and back, as if he had been struck in the face. Brigid looked up at Rose.

“But this is his home,” said Brigid. “With us. Here.”

The silence grew larger, filled the whole house. No one broke it, not Laetitia or Rose, not Francis or Granda Arthur. Not even Dicky made a sound, and yet there was a sound like sobbing, but it was so far inside Brigid’s head that she did not know whose it was.

Time then stopped measuring itself in hours and minutes, and went into a rhythm that did not have day or night, but was like water, like the green water that had swirled round Brigid as she fought to breathe at the Churn Rock. Everyone moved like dreamers. One minute they seemed to be at the house, then they were in the hospital, the same hospital where Brigid had been, where Mama had been, and they were standing looking down, and somebody – Michael, in his Sunday suit that he wore for Easter − was holding Brigid up, looking down at a figure that seemed like her father, but was cold, with a sharp nose and closed eyes and a pale, straight mouth. This Not-Daddy was utterly still; he was haughty, removed, his face a little puzzled as though there was a question he was trying to answer. His hands were clasped round black rosary beads, but when she touched his fingers, they were hard and stiff. His face, too, was chill to her lips. Even his greying hair lay still and lifeless. Brigid thought: he is not there. She kissed his coldness anyway, and Michael lifted her down, and placed her beside her mother, pale and remote as Mary the Mother of God. Beside her stood Rose. Laetitia was the only person who cried. Her grandfather stood by in silence, tall and spare and puzzled in his face as Brigid was inside, as her father seemed in his box.

Time stretched out, day into night into day, and Brigid thought it would go on like this for ever, that this was life now, all the people, and her father in the box, and from morning to night tea and sandwiches and muffled voices, and candle wax, and blinds closed, and the clocks all stopped.

She could not bear it when the men came into the pale room and put a lid over the shiny wood of the box. Standing by Francis, remembering the waters over her head, she said: “How will he breathe?”

Francis said: “He doesn’t need to, any more.”

Brigid looked at him in disbelief. In the water, when she could not breathe, it was all she could think about, all she longed to do. How could he not need to breathe? She wanted to ask, but all the people then began to pray, over and over, the words and the pleas and the petitions she had heard at Mass and in school, all to the God who had taken her father away. They spoke now, in one low voice, but Brigid was silent. She slipped from the room, and no one noticed.

She wandered the house, looking at his books on the shelf, and his hat on the hat stand, and his shoes in the cloakroom, waiting for him as she was waiting for him. She saw his handwriting – “From your daddy” – on the book he had bought her last October, and her heart lifted. Then she remembered: he would not write to her anything again. His hands were still now, wrapped round his black rosary.

The people came out from the room, in a line, as if they were at school. Brigid watched them. They extended their hands and they shook their heads. They were sorry for Mrs Arthur’s trouble, and the children, God bless them. It was like a sad party, and everywhere there were people sitting in groups, darkly clad, nodding and sighing, talking about their father and the good man he was, and people placing their hands on Brigid’s head and shaking theirs again, and telling Francis he was the man of the house now. Mr Doughty came and he too was sorry for Mrs Arthur’s trouble, and the children, God bless them, and he said Mr Steele was out now looking for young Silver, and they would find him, the clip, and he spoke to Rose, too, and Brigid heard him say Ned’s name.

Mrs Mulvey came from next door, and Brigid saw her shake her head. “No sign,” she said. “No sign yet, all last night or today,” and to Rose, she heard her say, “No, indeed, it was not your fault. Nobody could watch him, nobody on this earth could watch that child – like mercury, and his father not here, never here, God knows. Only for Mr Todd I don’t know what I’d . . .” and she went away, shaking her head.

Cornelius Todd came, and Brigid saw him run his hand though his hair as he looked down at his friend. She heard him say “A Mhuiris, a chara,” and saw him bend his head. Rose did not come into the room when he was there. Brigid heard her say, to Brigid’s grandfather: “No, he hasn’t found him, and the police haven’t either. God knows where he has gone, and I can’t even think with all of this . . .” Brigid’s heart lifted again: she thought Rose was talking about her father, that he was not really gone. Then she heard her grandfather say, “Young Silver’ll turn up. We’ll get him back,” and he patted Rose’s hand, and Brigid knew in despair it was only Ned Silver they were talking about.

Isobel was not there. Isobel did not come, and Brigid thought: unreliable.

They were at the church, then, its tall spire tolling out long mournful notes, sad as night on the bright July day. Far off, in the hills, there were drums. The Twelfth of July was coming. Bees droned in the bushes outside as they waited for the coffin to be brought in. One buzzed loudly in the church, louder and more urgent than the priest’s sad voice. Brigid heard prayers, and more prayers but, above her, outside the colours of the window and the impassive statues, the summer birds sang as if her father had not died. She saw faces she knew: Mr Doughty but not Mr Steele, Uncle Conor. She thought for a moment that made her stomach turn over that she saw George Bailey. It looked like him, standing in half-shadow, his tall thin form, his kind face, his dark hair; she could remember the deep skies that were his eyes from the day he took her home. She longed to be back there, anywhere but here.

Just when it could not get worse, it got worse, and the box was lifted by men in black coats. Francis stood by his mother, in his school blazer and, at last, long trousers. Next, they were outside. Far away they heard children playing, and the flowers outside the church were bright in their beds, yellow and red and pink. Brigid, in the sea of dark people, stood with her family.

Then all the men at the funeral, including her grandfather, Francis and Michael, walked a little behind the hearse, followed by cars, slow as walking. Brigid sat with her mother, Rose and Laetitia in the first car. They went past the houses, and when they came to theirs, every car stopped. Brigid’s mother opened the car door then, took her by the hand and led her out, followed by Rose and Laetitia.

“Why are we getting out, Mama?” said Brigid, watching the black car sliding away. “Why are we not going, too?”

“Ladies don’t,” her mother said.

They stood outside the gate, and the slow procession moved on, down past the post office and the barracks, down to the big gates of the cemetery. From their gate, Brigid and her mother and Rose and Laetitia saw the snaking line of cars vanish, one by one, into the silent graveyard.

Somewhere far off, just as they turned to go in the gate, Brigid heard a sharp cracking sound, like a firework. Everyone stopped.

“What was that?” said Rose, reaching for her sister’s arm.

Brigid’s mother shook her head.

“It was for all the world like a gunshot,” said Laetitia.

Rose scanned the skies. “But where did it come from?” She turned round, on one heel, her hand outstretched. “From there,” and she pointed to the trees, “or the cemetery? I can’t tell.”

“Oh, God,” said Laetitia, beginning to weep. “I can take no more, and my poor brother just dead.”

Brigid’s mother tightened her hold on Brigid’s hand. “No need for histrionics, Laetitia,” she said. “It was probably nothing. A car backfiring.”

They went into the house. It was very quiet, blinds still drawn, clocks still stopped. Dicky, his head under his wing, stood still on his perch. Brigid climbed the stairs to the bathroom, Blessed Oliver watching her all along the corridor, there and back. She kept her eyes away from the closed door of her parents’ bedroom. She did not want to remember that her father was not there. All through the house, she saw the places he would never be again. His chair in the sitting room sat empty. On the mat, discarded, kicked to one side, the morning paper he would never read. Though she had wanted all the people milling through the house to go away, Brigid felt suddenly afraid of this silence, of the absence like a presence, weighing on her like a stone. She wanted to be out of it.

She slid through the kitchen and out to the brightness of the birds in the garden and the trees in the plot. The blackcurrants were out, and she was even glad to see the wasps about the yellow broom tree. She did not care if they stung her: they could sting away. Anything was better, even the wicked buzzing of a wasp was better than the silence and the candle wax and the darkness of the prayers. She leaned on the fence between the plot and their garden, right into the corner beside the Silvers’ house. High in the sky, the sun sat bright. One cloud, floating past the top of the house, settled over the cemetery where her father was. At the back of the plot the Friday Tree shimmered its leaves, the other trees waving to its lead: and for a second Brigid felt a reminder of happiness.

Then, in the quiet, she thought she heard a sound, a rustling. There it was again. Someone was there. She spun round, but she could see no one: then, “Brigid,” said a voice at her left, low and soft. It was a man’s voice, and she knew it, but she could not think how.

“Brigid,” it said again, “get back to your house.”

She craned her neck to the left, and saw a face she knew, half-hidden by the bushes.

“George,” she said, and something like joy shot through her. She was not surprised. “I knew you’d come back. I thought I saw you today at Mass.”

He nodded, sadly. “I went for your father. He was a good man, Brigid. Will you go inside, now, please?”

Brigid felt her eyes fill, but she shook her head. “Not till you tell me where you went. You disappeared. No one believed you were there. No one at all. Unless, maybe Francis.”

She heard an impatient sigh. She had heard plenty of those: she stood her ground.

“I’d tell you, Brigid, but I haven’t time. And it’s dangerous. You shouldn’t be out here at all.”

“You’re out here,” said Brigid, reasonably. “Just tell me why. Then I’ll go in.”

Another rapid sigh.

“Quickly, then,” he said. “Listen. That day, I just wanted to see you home, but I didn’t want anyone to see me. Do you understand? Same today. But I can’t take you home, today, because I have to wait for a signal that it’s safe to go. Now, please go in. Please!”

Brigid understood signals. “A smoke signal?” she said.

“A smo– ? No. Not that sort.”

“Sometimes I saw smoke at the Friday Tree. Up there.” She pointed to it. “It’s shaped like Friday.”

“Is it?” said George. “That was probably me. I hid out under that tree last autumn, when I had to get away from some people I used to . . . work with.” He looked about him again, anxiously, as if the people were there. “I don’t any more, so they don’t like me, and they’re after me.”

“I saw smoke not long ago,” said Brigid. “Was that you?”

“No,” said George Bailey, and he looked up at the Friday Tree again. “I hid in a house once winter came. But listen, Brigid. Someone fired a shot at me just now, from up there. The Friday Tree. Did you not hear it?”

“I heard something,” said Brigid.

“Then you know why I’ve got to get away.”

“To Bedford Falls?” persisted Brigid.

“To Bedf–? Yes . . . yes, there,” said George, and he looked about him, anxiously. “They’re expecting me.”

Brigid took this in.

“Will you go now, Brigid, please?” said George. “He might shoot again.”

“Does he have a real gun, like Mr Doughty and Mr Steele?”

He nodded, showing her his hand. It was bleeding from a long graze,

“Come in,” said Brigid. “Come into the house. Mama will make that better.”

George shook his head. He smiled, though his face looked sad. “I can’t,” he said. “I . . .” Suddenly he pulled back out of sight. “Brigid!” he said. “Keep in! Hide yourself.”

Brigid flattened herself into the bushes, her blurred sight just able to make out a shaking in the undergrowth below the Friday Tree. She saw a movement, then another, and a small figure and some distance from him, a man’s. A head like a seal shot out from the undergrowth, and she heard a loud report, and then the head like a seal disappeared, and the small figure disappeared, but then it got up and ran towards her, and she saw that it was Ned Silver, bedraggled, matted, but alive and running, stumbling through the carrots and the cabbages.

“That’s Ned Silver!” whispered Brigid. “We thought he was lost, all last night and the night before!”

George Bailey caught him, shivering and small, and Ned, half-crying, began to struggle.

“Don’t, Ned,” said Brigid. “It’s George Bailey. He won’t hurt you.”

“I won’t,” said George. “I won’t hurt you. Didn’t you sometimes come up where I had my hideout?”

Ned, dirty and wide-eyed, but shivering less, nodded. He said, “Yes. Was that yours? I thought it was the other one’s . . .” and he looked over his shoulder. “He has a gun. I saw him creeping . . .”

“He’ll not creep far now,” said George. “Someone has hit him.” He put his hands under Ned’s ribs. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he said.

Ned shook his head.

George nodded, and lifted him into his own garden, the blood from his hand leaving a smear on Ned’s already dirty clothes, her grandfather’s shirt and Laetitia’s trousers. It seemed a long time since Brigid had seen him pull the belt tight, in the house in Lecale.

“Will you keep my secret?” said George. “I haven’t hurt anyone. And I’m going away now.”

“Don’t go, George!” said Brigid. “Everyone goes away.”

“I’ve told you. I have to,” he said, simply. “Look over there.”

Brigid could make out, near the Friday Tree, the greenish black of a policeman’s uniform, with a glinting, smoking darkness in his hand that must be a gun, pointing at something down in the long grass.

“I think it’s Mr Steele . . . but I don’t know . . .” said Brigid, and a terrible thought struck her. “Oh, George, did he shoot that man?”

“He did,” said George, grimly. “It’s a wonder he didn’t hit the child.”

“Oh, George, then go, go!” urged Brigid. “He might shoot you too! Go, before he gets down here!”

“He’s not coming down here,” said George. “Look. He’s gone off in the opposite direction.”

Brigid glanced across. He was right.

Still, George did not move, and stood looking at Ned.

“I won’t say,” said Ned. “I promise,” and, dirty and dishevelled, he swivelled and ran through the garden as only Ned Silver could do – until Brigid heard a scuffling and, to her horror, the voice of a man.

“Whoa, there!” it said.

On different sides of the fence, Brigid and George, flattening themselves into the bushes, looked through the leaves.

Inside the Silvers’ garden, Cornelius Todd was holding the struggling boy. “Ned,” they heard him say. “Stop kicking. Now.” Cornelius looked up to the bushes. Without raising his voice, he said, his tone almost conversational: “You’d better go now. I can’t cover for you any more. It’s as safe as it’s going to get. And, Brigid, you should be inside.”

Brigid and George locked eyes.

“He does that,” whispered Brigid. “He just appears out of nowhere.”

George did not answer.

“I am going, Conor,” she heard him say. “Thank you for coming. You’d better get out of here, too,” but when she turned to see what Uncle Conor would do, she was astonished to find he was already gone, and Ned too. Her mother had been right. Uncle Conor was just like the Cheshire Cat.

“You heard him,” said George, above her head. “That was my signal. Time I wasn’t here. But Brigid? Tell no one,” he said. “Especially not Isobel.”

“I wouldn’t tell Isobel anything,” said Brigid, adding, in spite of herself, “but why especially not her?”

He was already half-turned away. “The man with the gun is her brother,” he said, and, as Brigid stood taking this in, George suddenly stopped, turned back and, reaching into his pocket, handed her a piece of paper, worn and creased. “Take this,” he said. “It’s a prayer. Say it for me when I’m gone. Get your brother to read it if you can’t. You can tell him about me. But no one else. Promise?”

“I promise,” said Brigid. “But, where are you going?”

“I told you,” he said, and he was already moving away through the bushes, his voice growing faint. “Bedford Falls.”