The Friday Tree (41 page)

Brigid looked back towards the houses, theirs and the Silvers’. Both seemed cold, bent down with shut eyes. Brigid shivered. “Imagine him getting here by himself. Where was he, all that night? Two nights! Do you think he was cold?”

Francis shook his head. “I don’t think so: it’s not really cold at night. It would have been different if it had been later on. It’s how he got here I don’t understand.”

Brigid thought of George Bailey, here all through the cold nights of autumn, and felt a stab of remorse for their comfort while he hid here in the plot. She spread her hands, and stretched out her feet. Her legs were really long: she could stretch them out almost as far as Francis’ knees.

“Can I show you something, Francis?”

“What?”

She took out the paper George had given her. “Someone gave me this, the day of the . . . the day Daddy . . .”

“What is it?”

“It’s a prayer but I can’t make out the writing. Can you?”

He took the paper, and scanned it briefly. “It’s a prayer to the Angel Raphael. Who did you say gave it to you? Someone at the funeral?”

George was at the funeral. He had told her so. Brigid said: “Yes, someone at the funeral.”

“Well, it’s quite long. Look, I’ll read out the important bit for you, all right?”

He lifted it up to read and, for a moment, Brigid saw her father, and the paper, and all the mornings that were gone. “‘
Raphael
,’” he read, “‘
lead us to those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us. Raphael, Angel of Happy Meeting, lead us by the hand towards those we are looking for
.’” He put it down, his face puzzled. “Who did you say gave this to you?”

Brigid said, simply: “George Bailey.”

Francis looked up at her. “George Bailey. From Bedford Falls?”

“Going to Bedford Falls. He was leaving for there. He gave me that, and he said I was to get you to read it for me and tell you it was from him, but not to tell anyone else he was there.”

Francis said nothing, but his face softened and cleared. “Ah, the man in the plot. He was the man who brought you home, that nobody saw?”

“He was George Bailey,” said Brigid, firmly.

Francis nodded. “George Bailey, then.”

Brigid remembered the man with the head like a seal, creeping through the undergrowth, the man who had shot George’s hand. “When he came,” she said, thinking back, “Mr Doughty or Mr Steele, I mean – but I don’t know which – do you think he came looking for George? Or did he know someone else was there? Isobel’s brother? Or Ned?”

Francis shook his head. “I don’t think they would have fired shots if they had known there was a child there.”

“But they would at Isobel’s brother? Mr Doughty or Mr Steele?”

“Mr Doughty was at the funeral. I think it was Mr Steele who was here.”

Brigid thought of Mr Doughty, who had always given them rhubarb and cabbage; Mr Steele had not. Steely, Ned called him: that was what he was, and he never stopped. It made sense that he was in the plot, with guns and shooting, and it made sense that Mr Doughty made time to be kind.

“Brigid,” said Francis, breaking her reverie. “There’s something I should tell you. I met the man in the plot, too.”

“You met George Bailey?”

“Yes, I . . .”

There was a sound in the undergrowth.

“Stay still,” said Francis.

The sound came closer: peering out, Brigid saw a dark figure and, suddenly, close to, very close to her, she saw a man. Her heart began to bang against her ribs. The leaves parted: Mr Doughty’s face peered through, and Brigid felt her own relief and that of Francis ripple through their bodies.

“What’s this?” he said, quietly. “Cowboys and Indians again? Don’t you think we’ve had enough goings-on?”

Francis stood up. “Mr Doughty,” he said, “we’re sorry. It’s our budgie. He got out, and we came to get him down . . . but he hasn’t . . . We’re sorry.”

Brigid stood up beside Francis, her hand on his arm. “It’s my fault, Mr Doughty,” she said. “I let Dicky get out.”

Mr Doughty crouched down beside them. He did not look angry. His face was round and red, and he looked too hot. He put out his hands, joined and softly cupped.

“Look here,” he said, and his voice was gentle. “Look what I found when I was coming into the plot.” In his hands lay a still little ball, feathers green and black and white, little hand-like claws curled gently in the big man’s hand, a long black tail lying along his wrist.

Francis was the first to speak, his voice higher than usual, and faster. “Is he dead, Mr Doughty?”

Mr Doughty shook his head. “Stunned, I think. He must have flown into a branch and knocked himself out. Here . . .”

He reached his hands to Francis who, very carefully, took Dicky into his own.

Mr Doughty, watching the children, seemed thoughtful. “How is your mammy?” he said as he got to his feet.

Brigid turned to Francis. He was looking down at Dicky, stroking his feathers, and did not raise his eyes. “She . . . she’s still in bed,” she said. “I think she’s very tired, Mr Doughty. She sleeps a lot.”

Mr Doughty looked the children up and down. “Judging by your rig, you sleep a lot, too,” and he laughed without sound, which made both children, looking down at their pyjamas, laugh a little themselves. “You know,” he said, and he had stopped laughing, “you shouldn’t be in here.”

They hung their heads.

“I think you should be escorted home by a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary,” he said, and now he was more serious. “I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen. We have a fair idea there was another man here for a time, and you shouldn’t be out in this place by yourselves. Look at poor young Silver, the narrow escape he had.”

Brigid and Francis looked at each other in alarm.

“Please, Mr Doughty, don’t tell Mama we came out here,” said Brigid.

“I think,” said Mr Doughty, unexpectedly, “that I could do with a cup of tea, which I am quite prepared to make, if you would be so kind as to bring me through the back door.”

Then he took Brigid’s hand and, motioning Francis before him, walked back with them through the plot. Without ceremony, he lifted them both over the fence, stepped back, pulled some young carrots, and early rhubarb, handed them to Brigid over the fence in his old way, then swung his own long legs easily over the fence and walked down the garden with the children.

It was strange to be in the garden with a policeman, strange to see him bend his head through the back door, stranger still to see him roll up his sleeves, wash his hands at the sink, and fill the kettle. It was strange, and it was comforting. He moved quietly about the kitchen, found bread and toasted it, discovered milk and put it in a jug, got a tray and arranged a cup, saucer, plate and jug, poured tea into the teapot, placed it on the tray and held out the whole thing to Francis. “Are you a big enough man to take that up to your mammy?”

Francis looked down at Dicky, quiet in his hands.

“Give the birdie to your sister,” said Mr Doughty.

Brigid found herself cupping the faintly trembling form of their little bird, as Francis walked carefully into the hall, the tray balanced, his knees slightly bent.

“Tell your mammy I was passing, and came in for a cup of tea,” said Mr Doughty. “Don’t let on I made it.”

Francis smiled, though his eyes did not. He said, “Yes, Mr Doughty,” and carried on through the hall.

Mr Doughty placed more cups and saucers on the table, put toast before Brigid, and fixed her a cup of hot, sweet and sugary tea, like Rose’s tea at Tullybroughan, like Laetitia’s after Brigid fell in the water. Mr Doughty sat down beside her, smelling of the garden and the plot and, for almost the first time since the funeral, Brigid felt safe. She looked at the toast, uneaten, before her, but she felt no hunger.

Mr Doughty took it and cut it up into fingers. “Soldiers,” he said. “Eat some for me, there’s a good girlie,” and at the familiar endearment, Brigid felt a prickling start up behind her eyes, and tears she did not want fell hot on her face and on the table.

Before she knew it, she was lifted up and was sitting on Mr Doughty’s knee, comfortable as her grandfather’s. Slowly, she relaxed against the beating of his heart. “Mr Doughty,” she said, so quietly that she did not know if she spoke at all, “what happened to Ned Silver?”

“Ah, poor little Silver,” said Mr Doughty. “He got a bad shock, out there in the plot. That character.”

Brigid wondered for a moment which character he meant. “Isobel’s brother?” she said, carefully, and felt Mr Doughty nod.

“He’ll trouble no one for a long time,” he said, “because he’s in prison, and there he’ll stay, I hope.”

“I’m glad,” said Brigid. And she was, simply and without complication. He had frightened her and now, like a bad dream, he was gone.

“Aye, well you might be,” said Mr Doughty. “He was one bad article. And it may be a while before you see your Isobel.”

I don’t want to see her, thought Brigid. “Where has she gone, Mr Doughty?”

“We don’t know where she’s got to. There’s no sign of her.”

“But did she do something bad?”

“Well, maybe not . . . you could say she tried to help her brother and, while that may not have been wise, or even right, it’s not hard to understand, is it?”

Brigid thought. “No,” she said.

Francis came back in.

“All well, son?” said Mr Doughty.

“Yes, thank you,” said Francis, and sat down at Mr Doughty’s other side.

“Well,” Mr Doughty continued, “Isobel. She brought him food in the plot. I saw her do that, and I saw you looking from your garden. I suppose many a sister might have brought her brother food. But there was more. We believe she was hiding him in a house all winter. She put about a story that her brother was home from England, and needed looking after, which was at best a half-truth.”

“I . . .” Brigid did not know Isobel had hidden her brother in a house all winter, but she imagined Francis, hunted, camping out of doors without shelter or food, like George Bailey, and Ned Silver. She said: “I would bring Francis food.”

Glancing at him for approval, she was surprised to see Francis flush, and hang his head.

“Aye,” said Mr Doughty, and Brigid noticed he looked rather long at Francis as he spoke, “I’m sure you would. I don’t find that bit hard to understand but, the thing is, her brother was an escaped criminal, and she knew that. All the same, I don’t like it, women in court and in jails and . . . ah, that poor Ellis woman across the water . . .” He frowned, and looked down, drumming his hands on the table, then he stopped, and cleared his throat. “In any case,” he said, “as things stand, I doubt if it will go very far at all.”

Brigid remembered George Bailey’s view of Isobel, but she could not break her promise to George and tell Mr Doughty. “Isobel is unreliable,” she said.

“That’s a big word for a small girl,” said Mr Doughty, raising his cup.

“It’s Mama’s word, Mr Doughty. But, Ned Silver, where is he? What happened to him?”

“Mr Doughty?” said Francis suddenly, and both Brigid, put out, and the policeman, not at all so, turned to him expectantly.

“What is it, son?”

“I . . .”

“Take your time,” said Mr Doughty, and his voice was very calm. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing, Mr Doughty,” said Francis. “I’m sorry if I interrupted. You were going to tell us about Ned?”

Mr Doughty shifted in his seat, and Brigid took this as a sign to go back to hers. She climbed down, and sat at the table beside him, turning towards him, her hands beneath her chin. He thought a long time before he spoke.

“That wee boy, you know, lost his mother a few years ago.”

Brigid nodded. “We know. The
Princess Victoria
.”

“Yes. That’s right. Anyway, the wee fellow was either sent away to school or left alone with a housekeeper and . . . well, it wasn’t fair on him. I used to see him in the garden, looking up at your windows, always by himself. We brought him to the barracks the odd time, John Steele and myself, and we made him tea. So, he wasn’t afraid when we talked to him after that business in the plot. He’s not a bad child.”

Brigid felt a sort of pity for Ned, waiting for them in the garden. Then she thought: did he tell about George? Did he keep his promise? Mr Doughty ran his hand over his head.

“He couldn’t tell us much, though. Didn’t seem to remember who he saw, or what happened.”

Brigid thought: good for Ned.

“He was very shocked. And anyhow, we had caught the fellow with the gun and . . . for other reasons . . . we didn’t press him. You know Mrs Silver knew your father’s family from before she was married?”

Brigid said: “Yes. She was Myra Moore. She knew our granda – and our almost-uncle Laurence.”

“She would have done. I gather she was always looking for friends.”

Brigid said: “But . . . Mr Doughty . . . if she had Mr Silver, and Ned . . . why was she lonely? Why did she need Uncle Conor to be her friend, if she had them?”