The Ghost of Grania O'Malley (11 page)

Dr Brady was helicoptered over from the mainland to examine them. He said they were remarkably well, considering the ordeal they had been through. There were more questions. They stuck to their story and everybody seemed to believe them. There were cups of tea for the helicopter crew in the kitchen; and then the entire island, it seemed, came visiting. Even Marion Murphy came – and that was the first time she'd ever set foot in Jessie's house – but of course she turned out to be a lot more interested in Jack than she was in Jessie.

There were more tears, more hugs, and still more questions. Through it all, Jessie could think only of how she was going to tell her mother and father about the plan to save the Big Hill without mentioning Grania O'Malley. It wasn't going to be easy.

She waited until everyone had gone and caught Jack's eye across the sitting-room. The time had come. She was still wondering how she was going to make it sound at all convincing when her father helped her. ‘I still can't think how you managed it, Jack,' he was saying. ‘The current against you, tide against you. And how come no one spotted you sooner? I tell you, it's a miracle, a miracle.'

‘We were inside the cave a long time,' said Jessie, seizing her moment. ‘I expect that's why no one saw us. It's deep, like a long tunnel and we just went in to get out of the wind, didn't we, Jack?' Jack nodded, but he didn't say anything. He clearly wasn't going to be much help. ‘And then Jack went off exploring. That's when he found it.' They were looking at her, expecting more. There was no stopping now. ‘We thought we should tell you first, didn't we, Jack? I mean it's ours, because we found it, and we've decided what to do with it, haven't we?'

‘With what?' said Jessie's mother, completely bewildered by now. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Jess?'

And that was when, quite unexpectedly, Jack spoke up. ‘Treasure. Gold. I found a whole chest of it at the back of the cave. Jess says it's Grania O'Malley's treasure, whoever she is.'

Jessie's mother and father looked at each other for a moment. ‘Let's get this straight, Jack,' said her father. ‘You were in the cave and you found a chest full of gold, is that what you're trying to tell us?'

‘Yes, sir,' Jack replied. ‘Right at the back of the cave, like I said. Pretty dark in there too, but you could see just about enough.' Jessie did her best to keep her smile inside herself.

Her father laughed, a nervous laugh. ‘Are you kidding, or what?' he said.

‘I can prove it too,' said Jessie triumphantly, ‘I brought some of it back.'

‘You've got some of the treasure, some of the gold? You've got it here?'

‘Upstairs. In my jeans pocket. I'll fetch it.'

She found all her clothes where she'd left them, in a heap on the bathroom floor. The earring fell out as she picked up the jeans. Barry panicked when her hand came into his bowl and circled manically until Jessie had retrieved the other earring from under the stones. ‘Not yours, you know,' she whispered. They were still silent in the kitchen when she came downstairs again. She beamed at Jack and opened her hand. Her mother took them from her one by one, and held them up to the light.

‘They're beautiful,' she whispered. ‘Just beautiful.'

‘I pinched them,' Jessie said. ‘I pinched them from the treasure chest. There's a whole lot of stuff like this, chains and crosses and plates – all sorts. And it's all gold, isn't it, Jack?'

Jessie's father was on his feet. ‘And it's still there?' he said. ‘Still in Piper's Hole?' Jessie nodded. ‘I'll have to take the boat, and I'll need a torch.'

‘I'm coming too,' said her mother, putting on her coat. ‘You two stay here, stay in the warm.'

When they were quite sure they had gone, the two of them looked at each other, smiled and then burst out laughing. They laughed until it hurt, out of joy, out of relief. Suddenly Jack stopped laughing and grabbed her arm.

‘Jess, I just hope Grania O'Malley hasn't changed her mind and come back and taken it away. Some of those pirate guys weren't at all happy about giving it away, you know, and neither was she.'

‘You can trust her,' said Jessie, and she was quite sure of it; but the longer they waited the less sure of it she became.

It was nearly two hours later, and dark outside, when they heard Panda barking and Clatterbang come rattling up the lane. They ran outside. Jessie's mother and father were struggling to carry the chest between them across the yard. Jack ran to help, while Jessie held the door back for them. They heaved it up on to the kitchen table. Her father leaned on the table, shaking his head.

‘You were right,' said her mother breathlessly.

‘Have you seen inside?' Jessie asked.

‘It's the real thing,' said her father. ‘It's real treasure. I can't believe it. I just cannot believe it.'

‘And it's ours,' said Jessie. ‘All ours!'

8
MISTER BARNEY

BY THE TIME THEY HAD FINISHED EMPTYING the chest, the kitchen was glowing with gold, the dresser festooned with gold chains, the shelves lined with gold goblets and gold beakers. From every knob and every cup hook dangled a jewelled necklace. The table-top was almost invisible, covered as it was with doubloons and crosses, and gold plates piled high with glittering jewels. And in the centre, in pride of place, stood a great golden ewer with a fish's mouth for a spout. They sat down and simply gazed around them. Jessie put her earrings on and looked down at herself in one of the golden plates. For a long time no one spoke a word.

‘Will someone please pinch me?' said Jessie's father at last. ‘This afternoon I thought for certain you were both of you dead and drowned and gone for ever – and here you are sitting in front of me all alive again. And now all this.'

‘The lost treasure of Grania O'Malley,' breathed Jessie's mother. ‘You're right, Jess. It has to be. It's old Mister Barney's story come true.'

‘What do you mean?' Jessie asked, trying not to sound too interested.

Her mother sat back in her chair, quite unable to take her eyes off the treasure. ‘And we all thought the old man was cracked in the head, his mind all to pieces. But he wasn't at all, was he?'

‘For goodness' sake, Cath,' said Jessie's father, ‘Mister Barney's stories are just stories. There's not a word of truth in any of them, everyone knows that. You'll frighten her silly.'

But Jessie's mother went on: ‘I was about your age, Jess, when it happened. Mister Barney was already old, but he'd still cut more peat in a day than any man on the island. Us kids, we'd go up to his place to help him stack it sometimes, and afterwards he'd give us a drink of water and we'd sit down and he'd tell us all sorts of tales. I've forgotten a lot of them, but not this one. He told us how one day he'd been up on the Big Hill and he'd met the ghost of Grania O'Malley. He said how she'd got talking about her pirating days and how she'd fallen in love with some Spanish captain or admiral – I can't remember. Anyway, this Spanish captain was blown round the top of Ireland in his galleon – part of the Spanish Armada and all that – and was wrecked on the rocks. Everyone on Clare wanted to kill the lot of them, him and his crew. But she wouldn't let them do it – it seems she'd taken a bit of a fancy to him. She said there was no need to go killing anyone when they could have all the treasure they liked anyway. More Christian that way, that's what she told Mister Barney. So she saved her Spanish captain and his crew, and kept the gold. Everyone was happy.'

‘Oh, come on,' Jessie's father interrupted. ‘You can't seriously believe all that stuff.'

Jessie's mother gave him a long and withering look. ‘As I was saying,' she said, ‘she looked after the treasure herself and the captain and his crew stayed for a while. He was ill and she nursed him back to life. She told Mister Barney that it was the only time in her whole life she ever met a man she could be truly happy with. But then there was some quarrel, and the captain – I think he was called Don . . . Don Pedro, that's it, Don Pedro – anyway, he was wounded, and on his deathbed he made her promise she would take his crew safely back to Spain. So she did, but she kept his treasure of course. She hid it away because she didn't want the marauding English to find it. And then later, when she was older, she still kept it hidden – keeping it for a rainy day, that's what she told Mister Barney.

‘Of course, we none of us believed him, not really. We wanted to, mind. I remember a few of us went digging for treasure afterwards, but we never found anything, so we soon gave up. Old Mister Barney didn't though. You'd see him out there with his metal detector, and in all weathers too, looking for Grania O'Malley's lost treasure. The older we got, the more we laughed at him. He found bits and pieces, a coin or two, not much. But then his hips gave up on him, poor old fellow, and so now he can hardly get about at all.'

Jessie's father was about to interrupt again. But she wouldn't have it. ‘I'm not saying he isn't strange, Jimmy. I'm not saying it isn't an unlikely story, but will you just look at all this treasure! The story fits. And it's no good just saying he's crazy in the head. You heard him the other night arguing to save the Big Hill. You've seen his place. Packed to the gunwales with history books, isn't it? He's no fool. He's no idiot. The man knows more about this island than anyone else alive. I tell you, he's a walking encyclopaedia.'

Jessie listened, spellbound. She thought that maybe this was the moment to tell the whole story as it had really happened, confess that they had lied about finding the treasure in the cave, that they too had met Grania O'Malley just as old Mister Barney had. But then she thought again. Hadn't Grania O'Malley herself made them promise not to say a word? Hadn't she said that no one would believe them anyway? She was right. They'd just say she was making it up; and besides, Jessie hardly believed it herself. It was all too utterly fantastical.

Her father was snorting. ‘Baloney,' he said. ‘All a lot of baloney. I thought it was baloney before and I still do. He's mad as a hatter – it's a known fact. There's some things that just aren't possible. Ghosts is one of them.'

‘Is that so?' said Jessie's mother acidly. ‘Will you look at the coins on the table. Spanish doubloons, aren't they? I've seen others just like them, and you have too. If they are Spanish, then like as not they're from an Armada ship. It's a known fact that at least one of the Armada galleons was wrecked off Clare Island. For God's sake, don't people come here every summer and go diving on the wreck? Hardly surprising they haven't found much, is it? It's all been hidden away in Piper's Hole, for hundreds of years. You remember there was that cannon dragged up last year in the fishing nets? That was off the Armada galleon, wasn't it? You can't deny it. And everyone knows too, who's got any knowledge of it, that Grania O'Malley ruled in these waters at the time of the Spanish Armada. Now tell me, who else could all this belong to, if not to her?'

They were arguing again, and Jessie wanted to stop it. ‘It doesn't matter whose treasure it was, Mum,' she said. ‘It's ours now, Jack's and mine, and we've already decided what we're going to do with it, haven't we, Jack?' Jack smiled at her, but a little anxiously. That was when Jessie lost her nerve. Panic gripped her and her mind seemed to stall. She just couldn't think straight. ‘You tell them, Jack,' she said, in desperation.

For some moments Jack looked down at his hands and said nothing. ‘Well,' he began, ‘we were in the cave, Jess and me, and we were figuring out what we'd do with all this treasure – you know, how we'd spend it. I said I'd like an old Studebaker or a Bugatti, remember, Jess? And you said you'd rather have a pair of new legs, right?'

Jessie could not believe her ears. He was brilliant.

Jack went on: ‘Just talk, just dreaming, that's all we were doing. See, we didn't reckon we were going to get out of there. The tide was coming up real fast, almost into the cave, and we had nowhere else to go. We thought we were going to drown. So we made ourselves a promise.'

‘What sort of a promise?' asked Jessie's mother.

‘Not a promise, I guess, more like a deal,' Jack said. ‘That's it, more a kind of deal. We said that if we got out of there alive, then we'd give all the treasure away, we wouldn't keep it for ourselves. We'd share it with the islanders. It was Jess's idea. She said that if everyone on the island had a fair share – and it looked like there was more than enough treasure to go round – then they wouldn't need to cut the top off the Big Hill, because they'd have all the gold they ever wanted. It seemed like a great idea to me. So we both promised that's what we'd do if we survived, and we did survive.' He looked straight at Jessie's mother, cool as a cucumber. ‘She thought you'd like that. Isn't that right, Jess?'

Jessie was dumbfounded. Jack was a better liar than she could ever be. Her mother was holding her hands out to her, her eyes full of tears. ‘Come here, Jess,' she said. ‘I want to cuddle you the biggest cuddle you've ever been cuddled.' Sat on her mother's lap, Jessie was happy enough to let herself be cuddled. ‘Well,' said her mother, sniffing back the tears. ‘What do you think of this daughter of ours, Jimmy? Isn't that the most wonderful idea you've ever heard of in all your life? And you can't argue with it, can you? It's true enough. Jess and Jack found it, all of it, so it's theirs by right. And if they found it, then they should decide what happens to it.'

But Jessie's father was not looking at all enthusiastic. Whenever he was worried, he always sat with his hands together as if he was saying his prayers, thumbs under his chin, fingertips touching the tip of his nose. ‘I'm not sure,' he mumbled. ‘I'm not sure at all.'