The Bells of Scotland Road (48 page)

It was something Bridie could not quite put her finger on, an elusive quality that defied description. But she could hardly bear to be in a room with Anthony Bell, yet she
wanted him to stay. The feelings of guilt that had been stirred up by her husband’s death seemed to be at war with other emotions, and Anthony was part and parcel of this terrible, silent
conflict.

‘Bridie,’ he began. ‘Michael – Father Brennan – and I have been to the police again. Richard Spencer has written to the Chief Constable. Richard is fairly sure that
Liam is schizophrenic. The force is keeping an eye open for Liam. Try not to be afraid, but, at the same time, keep watch.’

Bridie sat down in Sam’s chair. She could smell him, could almost taste the tobacco he had used to make his cigarettes. ‘I miss your father,’ she said softly. ‘More than
I expected to. Anyway, put your mind at ease, because no-one will get in here again. The locksmith did a very good job. We’ve more keys than doors. Stop worrying. Your worrying will only make
me worry, too.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied. ‘I just wanted to make sure of your safety before I go back to Astleigh Fold.’ He could not stay here, not yet. Astleigh Fold was a safe
distance away, yet near enough for regular visits.

Bridie’s internal war broke out again. Her heart leapt about and the palms of her hands were suddenly clammy and cold. He must go. He must get as far as possible away from Scotland Road,
from her, from . . . from the love she had for him. Love? How could she think of love when Sam had only just died? Anthony must go now. No, no, she would be truly soothed only if he were here with
her.

‘Bridie?’

He had lost his father. She reminded herself yet again of this man’s grief. In the space of a single day, Anthony had rediscovered Sam, only to be deprived of him almost immediately.
‘I’ll be fine, so I will,’ she told him. ‘You just get along to your work and leave us to sort out this end of things.’

‘My brother won’t come back, not for a while. He may have more than one personality, but he will always guard himself, no matter who or how he happens to be at the time. I’ve
known him for long enough to realize that he’ll remain hidden. And Richard has almost convinced the police that Liam could be dangerous.’

Bridie swallowed. ‘What about the Costigans? Do they know that Liam is being looked for in connection with Maureen?’

Anthony cleared his throat and his mind. Bridie looked so beautiful today. Her hair was all over the place, had broken free from its anchorage to settle in frail wisps around her face. Better
not to look. He stared at the fireplace. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Richard advised them that Maureen is too injured for any further probings. There is no point stirring up the neighbourhood
without proof. If the people round here had a hint of Liam’s suspected involvement, all hell would break loose. But once Liam reappears, he will be detained for questioning.’

Bridie didn’t know how she was going to be able to look Diddy in the face. She needed Diddy, needed the strength of that big-hearted lady. For Bridie, Diddy was Scotland Road. She embodied
the strength of it, the colour and the sheer, dogged determination of an area that refused to be pushed under.

‘I love you, Bridie,’ Anthony said. There was no taking back the words, no erasing the sentiment behind them.

‘I know that,’ she replied. ‘And it’s as well that you’re going away again.’

‘Michael Brennan says there are bigger sins.’

She searched his face as if trying to make a picture of it, something to which she might refer during his absence. ‘You told him, then.’

‘He didn’t need telling.’

‘It must be very obvious if he can see it.’

Anthony took a step towards her, thought better of the move and fixed his eyes on a point above her head. ‘Michael’s a romantic soul,’ he said. ‘Had he not been a priest,
he would have enjoyed an interesting love-life.’

Bridie giggled, then wondered immediately how on earth she was able to be here laughing when her husband was dead and her little girl was ill and in a different place. ‘Bigger sins,’
she repeated.

‘He would want me to take care of you.’

‘You mean Sam, of course.’

‘Yes.’

She pushed a thread of hair from her face. ‘Your dad changed my life altogether and for ever. Until the day I die, I shall be grateful to him. Things started off so badly, what with the
horses and my father being involved.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Everything Da touches is soiled, including poor Dolly Hanson. In her eyes I see an expression that was often in my
mammy’s eyes, too. Confusion and self-distrust. But in spite of my father, Sam and I came through. We would have been fine, you know.’

Although he kept his eyes on the window-sill behind Bridie’s head, Anthony could still see her. He ached to comfort her, longed to draw his own solace from touching her, holding her and
saying those silly things which can only be spoken in whispers. With the length of a hearthrug between them, he could not open up his heart. ‘Come here,’ he said.

Bridie paused, placed her hands on the arms of her chair, raised herself slowly into a standing position. ‘No good will come of this,’ she murmured as he stepped towards her. She was
dreaming, was drugged. Like a piece of base metal, she was drawn to him, because he was her own particular magnet. Shauna was asleep upstairs. Muth, too, had gone up early. Would either of them
come down and witness Bridie’s terrible sin?

‘I need you,’ he told her. ‘Wherever he is, Dad knows that. And I think you need me.’

No words would come from Bridie’s lips. She tried to speak, even framed a syllable with her lips, but her senses were filled by his nearness and by the fear that always accompanied his
presence in her life. If he touched her, she would die. If he didn’t touch her, she would die. It was all the same, all the one thing. Need and dismay made an uncomfortable cocktail, caused
her heart to beat erratically. She stood at the edge of the rug and at the rim of hell, yet paradise was so very close.

Anthony buried his face in her hair and let his grief go. He cried soundlessly for the father he had scarcely known, wept because the woman he held so closely was precious, special and
forbidden. Michael Brennan had talked about bigger sins. The biggest sin of all had run away, was in hiding. ‘Can God make mistakes?’ he whispered at last.

‘I don’t think so,’ she replied with difficulty. ‘If He could make mistakes, then He wouldn’t be God.’ Breathing was difficult. She needed him to hold her for
ever. She needed more than holding, and the desire made her cheeks hot.

‘Then did He make Liam deliberately?’

Bridie kicked her brain into gear. ‘We made him, Anthony,’ she told him. ‘The world makes mistakes. Liam is an example of what we all might become.’ She breathed in and
out slowly, tried to take charge of her own mechanism. Even talking about Anthony’s twin did not take the edge from her terrible longing. ‘There’s a bit of the Lucifer in all of
us,’ she murmured. ‘But there’s too much of the devil in your brother.’

Anthony kissed her forehead and her cheeks. ‘Not here,’ he said, pulling away from her. They could not become lovers on a hearthrug while a child and a grandmother slept above their
heads.

She wiped his face with her handkerchief, shivered, was cold without his closeness. ‘Dear God, this is wicked,’ she managed. ‘Sam’s hardly buried, and I lost another good
man last year, yet here we are—’

‘Being human, Bridie. And we’re hurting no-one.’

‘Isn’t this our bit of Lucifer, Anthony?’ She might never have met him. Had she not come to England, this encounter would never have taken place. How strange fate was. Thomas
Murphy had brought love into Bridie’s life. He had intended to send his daughter into misery, had wanted to punish her for marrying a Protestant, yet the same man, her da, had been
instrumental in bringing true love into Bridie’s life. ‘How many never meet the other one?’ she asked.

He understood immediately. ‘Someone worked out that there are about six people for each of us. The chances of walking into a certain room on a certain day are very remote. So we usually
settle for the seventh or the seventieth. Yet one of those six could be living right next door or across the street—’

‘Or he could be your husband’s son.’

‘Or your father’s widow.’

She took his hand and held it tightly. ‘Whether this is right or wrong, it’s here,’ she whispered. ‘What would God have us do?’

Anthony smiled ruefully. ‘If God’s a Catholic, He’d be a bit put out. But if He’s an ordinary all-round sort of chap with a sense of humour, He’d not damn
us.’

Bridie found herself smiling again. ‘I never had such feelings for anyone before,’ she confessed. ‘I loved Eugene, but that was quieter altogether. And Sam – well –
I came to appreciate him. As I said before, we would have been fine, your dad and me. But this is . . . like an illness that won’t go away.’

He stepped back and sat down in an armchair. ‘The first time I saw you, on the day you arrived, I felt uncomfortable. I couldn’t understand why you were marrying a man so much older
than yourself. You know, I think I was jealous of poor old Dad.’

‘Bigger sins,’ she muttered.

‘That’s right, Bridie. There are bigger sins than the one we are about to commit.’

The routine was rigorous and boring, yet the sameness of each day was exactly what Martin Waring wanted.

He rose at six in the morning, as did all lay members of the community. The
frères
themselves were up at five o’clock praying, lighting fires, making porridge and baking
bread, tending the cows, pigs and hens. Martin wanted to be up and about alongside the monks, but he had to keep his head down on the iron-hard pillow. In accordance with the sketchy history of
Martin Waring, he was forced to act like a recently released thief. Of course, he had been driven by his parents’ poverty into a life of crime. His parents had died, rather conveniently,
during Martin’s brief spell in jail, and Martin had seen the light.

The
frères
asked few questions. Often, the men who stayed with them reverted to type after leaving the house, but the brothers carried on regardlessly in pursuit of their
founder’s dream. In the copperplate and gilded rules of the order, it was written that the aim was to save just one soul. The parable of the shepherd leaving his flock to search for a single
stray lamb was quoted as part of the order’s holy constitution. Martin Waring, né Liam Bell, had done sufficient research to learn that the
frères
took each lay resident
at face value. They had even been known to grant asylum to runaways, though every offender, Catholic or otherwise, was guided subtly towards that healing sacrament called confession. A resident
suspected of major crime was always handed over to the police.

Frère
Nicholas listened to the news on the radio each morning. If he recognized a suspected murderer or rapist within his community, he would send for the law. But the architects
of major crimes rarely sought refuge within these thick stone walls. The brothers simply strove to guide their mistaken flock towards a healthier and crime-free way of life.

Martin lay on his bed and waited for the rising bell. There were just five laymen here. The other four were creatures of no importance, petty thieves whose inadequacies were immediately
apparent. Martin’s ‘job’, the area in which he was expected to specialize after his farm chores were completed, was to teach two of his fellow refugees to read.

He sniffed. He ought to have been serving mass, conducting benediction, administering the holy oils, handing out the body and blood of Jesus Christ. And he was teaching idiots a for apple and b
for box. Nevertheless, he was smiling inwardly. Brother Martin.
Frère
Martin. He rather liked the sound of that, rather liked the idea of a fresh start. His beard was growing very
nicely, though it was still at the prickly stage.
Frère
Nicholas, who was wary of beards, had asked Martin to give a reason for wishing to alter his appearance.

‘I’ll shave it off gladly if you wish,
Frère
Nicholas,’ Martin had replied. ‘But I am hiding from myself, you see. I look in the glass and see a thief. I am
trying to become a new man, a different person altogether. My parents must have been so ashamed of me. Even through the worst years, they endured their poverty without turning to crime.’

Brother Nicholas had agreed to allow the beard. Martin Waring fitted the description of none of the major criminals who were currently being pursued by the authorities. It did not do to ask too
many questions. Many of these sinners had been frightened off by too close scrutiny, and Brother Nicholas realized that his latest lodger was of a liturgical turn. Already, Martin could respond at
mass, was begging for baptism and confirmation, seemed sad when the brothers took Communion while he remained in his pew. At the next council meeting, Brother Nicholas intended to raise the subject
of Martin Waring’s intention to become a Catholic.

The intended ‘convert’ took up his missal and allowed it to fall open. The displayed page announced the third Sunday after Easter, and the epistle seemed appropriate. He read aloud,
‘“
Carissimi: Obsecro vos tanquam advenas . . .
”’ Martin smiled to himself as he translated, ‘“I call upon you to be like strangers and exiles, to resist
those natural appetites which besiege the soul.”’ Hadn’t he preached this all along? ‘“. . . let them see from your honourable behaviour what you are . .
.”’

He laid the book down. God was speaking to him again, so he must listen. The passage to which God had directed him had decreed that Martin Waring must remain in exile and wait for a sign. The
epistle had even referred to the punishment of criminals and the encouragement of decent men. God had sent him here. Soon, the voice would return, would guide him along the path towards . . .
towards the chastisement of sinners.

He stared through his cell window and watched the dawn glimmering its slow way towards morning. Dad’s widow was a sinner. She had come from Ireland to take Dad’s affection from his
one true son. Maureen . . . what was her name? Costigan. He should write that down in order to remind himself. She had been punished. Anthony. As always, he was vague about Anthony, but the light
would guide Martin and Anthony along a righteous path.