Dark Enchantment (8 page)

Chapter Eight

W
hen in Rome….

A few minutes later Arianna was knocking on the royal blue door of a modern, two-story townhouse on a quiet side street. A black lab meandering up the sidewalk lifted his leg on a bush, then took a detour to sniff at her heels. She gave his head a scratch and he ambled off again. There was no sound or activity from inside the house and the windows were dark.

“Another reason people should
call
first,” she grumbled under her breath. As she was turning to leave, however, the door began to creak slowly open. An elderly woman looked out, blinking owl-like in the afternoon sun. Silver hair fashioned in an upswept chignon, she wore a dress in a bright, floral print. On her feet were sensible beige tie-up shoes.

“Dia duit.”
Her smile was inquisitive. Her voice warbled slightly with age. “
Tá brón orm—”
At her visitor’s perplexed expression, the woman switched to lilting English. “Em...Sorry to keep you waiting, pet, but I was having a bit of a lie-in.”

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” Arianna took a step back, shifted from foot to foot. “I didn’t have your number, or I’d have called first. I’ll come back another time.”

Straggly gray brows raised over faded blue eyes. “And you are, child?”

“Oh…um…my name’s Arianna Sullivan. I don’t know if you remember—”

“Your parents. I do, o’course.” Creases in the aged face deepened as her eyes sparked with pleased recognition. “Well, fancy this. Me own little Arianna, and yerself all grown up.” Clucking, she reached for Arianna’s hand and tugged her through the door. “C’mere to me now. Let me have a look at you.” The woman held Arianna’s hands away from her body. “So lovely you are. The very picture of yer Mam.”

Pleasantly taken aback by the warm reception, Arianna found herself being pulled unabashedly into the frail arms of the woman smelling sweetly of lavender, freshly baked cookies.
And home.

One bony hand encircled Arianna’s wrist and, with a vigor that decried the need for the
shillelagh,
the bent wooden cane in her hand, Mrs. O’Clery began to tow Arianna along behind her. “I was about to prepare me tea, so you’ll be joining me now.”

“Thanks, but I’m really not very hungry.”

Pooh-poohing her protests, the woman continued shuffling down a long corridor, passing an elegantly furnished sitting room on the left, a formal dining room with heavy baroque pieces on the right. In the cozy kitchen, the fruited wallpaper and ruffled yellow curtains with lacy tiebacks gave the room a strangely familiar feel.

“To be honest, I’ve no appetite today meself. So what d’ya reckon we just have something sweet.” She motioned Arianna to a whitewashed pine table. “And whilst we do, you’ll tell me how you’ve been keepin’.”

Tying a flowery apron around her thickening waist, she bustled over to a cabinet left of the sink. Stretching to reach the second shelf, she took down two sets of bone china cups and saucers edged in silver and sprinkled with tiny blue flowers. She flipped a switch on an electric kettle, then began loading a matching serving plate with a delectable selection of tarts, cookies and cakes. After the kettle whistled, she filled a ceramic teapot with boiling water, then arranged everything on a dainty silver tray.

Arianna got to her feet. “Here, Mrs. O’Clery. Let me help you with that.”

“Now, don’t you be ‘
Mrs. O’Cleryin’
me,” the old woman scolded good-naturedly as Arianna carried the tray to the table. “It’s Granny to you, pet, just as ‘twas back then. And didn’t I earn the title, too, what with mindin’ you and changin’ yer wee nappies more times than I can remember.”

She settled across from Arianna. “Yer da and yerself have been gone donkey’s years, yet it seems only yesterday.” As she filled their cups with steaming tea, she nodded at the serving plate. “Try the Irish pear cake. Made it meself just this mornin’.”

Arianna obediently helped herself to a slice and took a small bite. “Mmm, this is delicious. I can’t believe you still do all your own baking.”

“And why not?” Blue eyes twinkled with mischief. “’Tis auld I am, luveen, not dead.”

Arianna anticipated a litany of health complaints, but the elderly woman abruptly changed the subject. “Now tell me, how’s things with yer da?”

Just like that, it was back. The marauding grief, which had retreated beneath the warm glow of homecoming, returned now with a vengeance. “He...he passed away. Last week.”

For a moment, Mrs. O’Clery appeared stunned, and then the kindly face crumpled. “Ah, God love ‘im,” she murmured, crossing herself. Her blue-veined hand trembled as it covered Arianna’s, patting gently. “Now, now. Tell Granny all about it so.”

The grandmotherly woman listened as Arianna spoke quietly of her father, of their lives together, and of his untimely passing. Afterwards, she plied her one-time charge with offerings of sugary comfort food, a thing she had no doubt done countless times in the past.

“Mrs....Granny? Can you tell me about my family? About the way we were together, I mean. Da could never bring himself to talk about…my mother. Or our lives here in Ireland.”

The gray brows wrinkled in consternation. “Yer da told you nothin’ then.” A statement, not a question. Leaning back in her chair, the woman rubbed the bridge of her nose introspectively. Several seconds passed before she sighed and leaned forward again. “As I’m the only one left who knows.... Well, it’s best if I be startin’ from the beginning. You see, yer da was after growin’ up in a home for boys in Milltown Malbay, not far from here.”

“Daddy was orphaned?”
Or abandoned?

“That I couldn’t tell you, pet. Though the home might have some record of your grandparents in the archives. Volunteered there on a regular basis back then, so I did. As it happened, I was there the day social welfare brought your da in. And the moment I capped eyes on the wee fella, sure wasn’t I after losing me heart to him.” Her gaze turned inward, a reflection on years gone by. “Tried to adopt him meself, I did, but weren’t the courts after turning me down flat. As I was caring for two children alone already, me with no husband—”

Arianna’s brows shot up.

Granny interpreted the look and cackled. “Ach, ‘twas nothing as illicit as all that, luveen. And in those days an out-of-wedlock child would have been a scandal sure.” Mrs. O’Clery freshened her cup of tea and refilled Arianna’s. “No, meself and Mr. O’Clery—
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam
…God rest the dear man—were married over a year before the Good Lord blessed us with our precious Aoife. After ten years passed without any more bundles from heaven, we adopted our boy Conor, when the lad was just shy of two years old. Only a short while later, wasn’t the consumption after stealing me darlin’ man away.”

“I’m so sorry.” Arianna spoke quietly. “And you never remarried.”

“Now, isn’t there but one true love appointed for each of us in a lifetime, child. And wasn’t I the lucky one to’ve found me own.” After what had to have been close to half a century, the old woman’s eyes brimmed with tears. Blinking rapidly, she leaned closer and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Now, didn’t I find a way around all that adoption craic though. First by havin’ yer da over for visits at the weekend. Then for spendin’ holidays and such, ‘til by the end of it he was here more than there. After coming of age, he lived with me for a while before going off to college.”

Trying for a smile, Arianna could only conjure up with a sad twist of lips. “So you were the only family he ever knew.”

“A few minutes after comin’ through that front door,” she said, giving a nod toward the hallway. “And wouldn’t it be gone, that fierce sadness in his eyes.” She wagged her head, sympathy deepening the lines on her face. “’Tis a sin against the Almighty’s what it is, for a young lad ever to be feelin’ so abandoned. So all alone.”

“Do you know how...where he met my mother?”

“I do, o’course. ‘Twas over across down below at Bailey, after he’d taken himself off to Dublin to study art and design. I’m a Dub originally meself, though I’ve lived here in the west now for nigh on sixty years.” She pushed her plate aside. Untouched.

Arianna felt guilty that the shock of her news had stolen what little appetite the poor woman had. But Granny went on with the story as if nothing were amiss.

“After finishing his schoolin’, didn’t he bring yer mam back home to Clare. Already wedded and bedded, so they were.” Mrs. O’Clery smiled into her tea. “Never again did I see that empty look in his eyes. Leastwise, not until—”

Arianna interrupted. “And then they had me.”

“They did, and weren’t you the joy of their lives so.” The aged eyes glazed over again as she reached back into time. “There was I, attending yer mam. And there’s Himself holding her hand and crooning silly love songs to make her laugh when the pains got bad. Finally ‘twas downstairs I sent the lad to boil water—just to get him out from underfoot.”

With a reminiscent smile, she went on. “Not only did I help bring you into this world, but wasn’t it yer auld granny here, the one mindin’ you when yer parents slipped off to the local of a Saturday night.” The smile melted off her face like butter off hot toast. “And whilst yer da was working...after yer mother was gone. Hard on him ‘twas, ‘specially the wicked rumors. One of the reasons he was after taking you away, I reckon. So you’d not be hearing the gossip.” She stopped, her eyes squinting as if she were trying to make a decision. “Now he’s gone, I’m thinking you’ve a need to know the truth of it.”

There was that word again, the one Da had spoken at her bedside the night he died. “The truth?”

“About yer mam...and what happened on that last day. May Day, ‘twas. There was
ceol agus craic
…em, music and fun. The women cooking and the men collecting fuels for the bonfire all the week before.”

Setting her plate aside, Arianna crossed her arms on the tabletop and focused on Granny’s face.

“’Twas right before sunset your family arrived. Yer da sat singin’ and strummin’ his fiddle, yer mam stretched out on a blanket beside him. But didn’t I see something in her face that day…’twas like the soft flesh had turned to stone. Broodin’ and lookin’ lost, she sat, those gorgeous blue eyes of hers starin’ endlessly out to sea.”

Granny coughed into her napkin, took a sip of tea and continued. “Later on yer da went to chasin’ you, barefoot and laughing, up and down the water’s edge. Figured on gettin’ you all knackered out, I reckon, so’s he could have a bit of alone time with yer mam. Finally, he brought you to my blanket, where you curled up beside me and drifted off to sleep.”

Granny hesitated, strain evident on her face. She drew in a ragged breath, as if forcing herself to go on. “’Twas then I saw yer Mam walking into the water. Having no doubt what she was about, I gave a shout to yer da, he, himself, the only one with hope of stoppin’ her.”

“No,” Arianna whispered, sensing what was coming.

“He went running after her, the poor divil, divin’ into the surf and gulpin’ seawater, beggin’ her not to do it, to come back to him.” Granny’s mouth set in a grim line. “Plain desperate’s what it was, but hadn’t yer mam her mind made up already. Before he could get to her, she was gone. Disappeared beneath the waves.”

Arianna covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh, my God, she drowned herself,” she whispered brokenly. “All these years....”

Her father’s deep dark secret had been his wife’s…Arianna’s own mother’s…suicide.

The truth...
That her mother had abandoned her in the worst possible way, by choosing death over a life with her husband and little girl.

Suddenly, a sucking, strangled sound grated from across the table. Arianna’s startled glance in Granny’s direction found her hunched over, one hand clutching the table’s edge, the other plucking at her bodice. Her skin was mottled gray, as if lightly powdered with coal dust. She stared at Arianna, eyes wide with disbelief, stark with pain and fear.

“Granny? Granny!” Arianna pushed away from the table so violently her chair overturned and clattered to the floor.
God, no! Not when I’ve only just found her again.
“Granny, hang on now,” she said aloud, then whispered, “Please, don’t leave me.”

* * *

“Don’t leave me!” Her father’s words echoed from the past, waking her where she lay curled on a blanket on the sand. It was dusk. The acrid smell of smoke tickled her nostrils. She could hear the crash of waves, feel the cool sea breeze tousling her curls.

Granny gathered the tiny child protectively into her arms. Confused by the sudden tension in the air, she strained to see her da. Her eyes finally found him, slumped to his knees in the shallow water, dripping wet, surrounded by onlookers. His shoulders convulsing, heart-wrenching sobs ripped from his chest. Tears streaming down his face mingled with rivulets of seawater.

Tears that Arianna had never learned to shed….

* * *

As if trapped in a lucid dream, she ordered herself to back out of the vision...a rift in the fabric of time. Granny needed her now. Her distress had been an emotional dam bursting inside of Arianna. Floodgates overflowed, drowning Arianna in memories of the past. And all the love she had once felt for this precious woman.

“It’s gonna be okay, sweetie.” Arianna murmured nonsensical words as she eased the slight, slumped figure down onto the clean, tiled floor. Pulling her jacket off the back of her chair, Arianna bunched it into a lumpy pillow beneath the precious silver head.

Trying to recall the finer points of a Red Cross first aid course she had taken a couple of summers earlier at the Y, she knelt at Granny’s side and unfastened the first few buttons of her smock. She stretched across the semi-conscious woman and caught hold of the cord of the telephone on the wall. Giving it several short, hard tugs, she managed to dislodge the receiver from its cradle.

Hands shaking, she punched “911” into the keypad. And swore silently when the call failed to connect. “Dammit!” she muttered under her breath.
What’s the emergency number for Ireland?
Quickly disconnecting, she dialed Operator.