The Friday Tree (38 page)

When she opened her salt-stung eyes, she was propped against a rock. Beside her was Ned Silver, wet, his hair flat against his face, gasping as she was gasping, and beside them both knelt Uncle Conor, soaked, his coat gone, his shirt clinging to his back, coughing and gasping too. Rose, her face white and pinched, wrapped warmth around Brigid. It smelt of tobacco and tweed, like Uncle Conor. She was very cold. Leaning against Rose’s skirt, she could see that Rose had put her arms round her front, and yet she could not feel them. Her grandfather stood with his hands hanging loosely by his sides, his eyes on Cornelius. He was breathing as if he had been running.

Through her body, Brigid felt the vibration of Rose’s voice: “Myra?” she said. “Myra, Cornelius?”

Cornelius, hunkered still on the rock, looked up at her, his mouth slightly open.

“Rose, I . . .”

“My mum,” Brigid heard, the voice not that of Rose or Cornelius, but Ned Silver, small, white and hunched against the rock beside her.

Below them, the sea churned and spat, and the day had turned to mizzling rain.

“Quite,” said Rose, and it was clear the conversation was at an end. She began to ease Brigid to her feet. “Mr Arthur, you have had a shock, and these children are wet and cold. We must get you all into the car.”

“Mine,” said Cornelius, and his voice was strong again. “Go up through the field. Mine’s at the gate.” Rose lifted her hand as if to protest, but Cornelius extended his own and caught it. “Please,” he said. “It’s too far down the way you came, and no one’s fit for it.”

Rose, drawing back her hand as if she had been stung, lifted Brigid to her feet, and helped her pick her way across the grass and stones. They climbed past the silent pigsty, empty of beasts and ghosts, past the closed-up house that they would not now explore, past the haggard, past the trough where the horse had drunk, along the path walked by all the generations of that deserted farm, through the long grass of neglect, until they reached the gate, tied up with rope to a white pillar like the pillars at faraway Tullybroughan. Then, tired and slow and sleepy, and no longer at all sure where she was, Brigid felt herself lifted into a car she did not know, Ned at her side. Rose was between them, her arms round them both, her grandfather was in front, and Cornelius in the driver’s seat, and he was slowly, slowly, turning the car in the narrow lane, and then they were bumping along under green, thorny branches, and there was a beating and a scratching against the roof, and then they were on a smooth road, and the bumping stopped. No one spoke. The children shivered, and the car smelt of damp and salt and seaweed.

As they came to the edge of the little town, Brigid heard Rose, her voice as cold as the seawater she still tasted: “If you would be so kind as to leave me here, I will drop Mr Arthur off and take the children home.”

“Please,” Brigid heard her grandfather say, his hat turning from the front seat, “do, please, come into my house and get the children warmed before you set out. And, we can telephone to the city from outside the door.”

For a moment, Rose was quiet again. The car purred easily on the smooth surface, Cornelius drove steadily, eyes ahead, intent on the road, saying nothing, his face set like stone.

Rose drew in her breath. “Yes, Mr Arthur,” she said then. “Perhaps that would be best. Though, thanks to Mr Todd, I already know something of what is happening.”

Brigid thought: Uncle Conor is Mr Todd again. And what is happening? She said: “What is happening, Rose?”

Rose, beside her, with silent Ned nestled in on
her other side, breathed in again: Brigid felt it suck in and go out, like the tide she had just been in, all through the coldness of her body. “Your daddy has to stay in hospital, Brigid. He isn’t too well.”

It was not possible for Brigid to feel colder, yet she felt a new shiver go through her. “For how long?” she said.

Rose did not reply at once. “I don’t know that, Brigid. I’m sorry.”

Her words fell like snow upon Brigid’s heart, and she said nothing more until they had gone through the village, and drawn up outside her grandfather’s house and everyone, including Cornelius, had got out of the car. On the doorstep stood Laetitia, her hands to her face and Brigid, cold and shocked though she was, could not help but be glad when Laetitia took both children to the kitchen, pulled off the wet things, wrapped them in towels and rubbed their skin until they were dry and warm, and the shivering had almost stopped. She took some clothes out of the ironing basket, a man’s shirt and some trousers of her own, and she made Ned put them on and roll up the sleeves and the legs, and pull the belt of the trousers tight, and she told Brigid she would get her something from the hot press. This was a Laetitia Brigid had never seen yet, dazed as she was, she did not even think to wonder at it. This new Laetitia sat the children close beside the range, warm for cooking, gave them hot, sweet tea, and then, saying she would just go and find something for Brigid to put on, she left the kitchen.

Wrapped in blankets, the children sat at opposite sides of the warm stove and looked at each other. The pile of wet clothes steamed gently on the clotheshorse.

For a time, neither spoke, then: “Myra,” said Ned. “He said ‘Myra’.”

Your mama, thought Brigid.

“It was him,” Ned said. “It must have been him all along.”

Brigid said: “All along what?”

“The note, stupid . . . I thought it was Laurence she was running after, but it must have been Uncle . . . it must have been Conor. It must have been him. I’m sorry, Brigid. I’m sorry about falling in, too.”

Brigid shook her head. “It’s all right,” she said, though she did not really understand what he meant. “But, what happened in the water? Did Uncle Conor save us? Is that what happened?”

It was already like a dream.

“He’s not our uncle, Brigid,” said Ned, shaking his head in his
turn. “But I thought he was my friend. I thought he was like . . .
you know, Davy Crockett, like a hero.” His face was very young, as if he were younger than Brigid, and she felt sorry.

“I might let you wear my Davy Crockett hat when we . . .” began Brigid, and then, from under his blanket, Ned lifted his hand. It was still white, almost blue, but there were traces of pink in the skin as he lifted it.

“
Hsssttt
,” he said.

Outside the window, they heard voices.

“Please,” floated Rose’s voice, low but clear, “I have enough to cope with, and I want to telephone my sister. Please step out of my way.”

“Rose,” said Cornelius, coaxing, penitent, and Brigid pictured him standing in Rose’s way, blocking out the light in that way he had, big and dark with his crooked tooth and his hooded, sleepy eyes, and his coat that smelled of tobacco and spice. “Rose, please.”

“Myra Silver,” said Rose. “You called Myra Silver’s name, when the children were going under the water. Not my niece’s name. Not even Myra Silver’s son’s name.
Her
name.
Her
name. Get out of my way, please.”

Ned had frozen, his hand still in the air. The pink was leaving his fingers.

“Rose!” said Cornelius Todd’s voice, and Brigid could hear its urgent pleading. “You’re wrong. You are wrong. She . . . I knew her when we were young, long before you, long before she was married. I knew her as Myra Moore, just as the Arthurs did. She sang. You know I grew up near here. I . . . took her out once or twice, years ago. That’s all.”

“Oh,” said Rose, and her voice was like ice. “That’s all? That’s why you called out her name when you saw her son and my niece about to drown?”

Brigid heard Cornelius sigh, and the dark shadow outside the window shifted. She imagined Rose trying to walk round him. She imagined him blocking her way.

“All right. All right. She . . . well, she got in touch with me when the marriage to Silver began to go wrong. She – she wrote to me when she was in Scotland, and I went and met her to try to help, but that was all. I tried to help, and I couldn’t, because she . . . wanted more from me than I could give. And then she took the ferry for home, and she never made it. Rose, what can I say? She wanted from me what I can give to no one but you. She was in despair, she turned to me, and I couldn’t help her. You think I don’t have to live with that?”

In the shadowy window, there was silence, but no movement.

“Oh Rose,” he said, and his voice, though soft, was a resonance through the cold air, “you know there’s nothing I would not give up for you. God, I’ve already done it. I’ve turned my back on everything I believed in, my whole commitment to a cause that is . . . I . . . Rose!” The shadows on the window grew, lessened, and grew. “Rose! She didn’t mean anything to me.”

His voice had grown louder, stronger, and Brigid, in spite of herself, stood up and, trailing her blanket, shuffled to the window to try to see what was happening, but the windows had thick bubbled glass, like her father’s glasses. She remembered him then; and for a moment, she could not hear or think, and her mind went blank, and her ears heard nothing, and her eyes could not see for salt and mist. When she came back to herself, rubbing her eyes, pulling the blanket round her, she saw that the shadow was gone from the window.

The door from the hall opened. Brigid turned, as Laetitia came in, her arms full of clothes: “These will have to . . . God almighty . . . where’s that child?”

Brigid looked behind her to where Ned had been, to see an empty chair, and where his wet shoes had been, a damp spot on the tiles. Behind that, the back door stood open, swinging on its hinges as if it, too, had been taken by surprise.

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.