The Ghost of Grania O'Malley (13 page)

‘Both of us, sir,' said Jack.

‘It is real, Mister Barney, isn't it?' Jessie asked. ‘Real gold? Real Spanish treasure?' Mister Barney leaned forward, picked out a doubloon from the chest and examined it through a magnifying glass. ‘I'll tell you all you need to know soon enough, Jessie, soon enough. Won't be long. Patience now.' He rubbed his hands and blew in them. ‘What's next, Jimmy?'

Jessie's father dipped into the chest and brought out a gold cross encrusted with dark green stones. He laid it carefully on the table in front of Mister Barney who picked it up with loving care and peered at it long and hard. He grunted and set it aside. ‘Next,' he said.

So it went on all through tea, all of them sitting in expectant silence and watching old Mister Barney for any sign of excitement or disappointment. There was none. When the chest was empty at last, he sat back and wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. ‘I could do with a little glass of water, Cath,' he whispered. Jessie's mother hurried to the kitchen and fetched him one. Old Mister Barney sipped it slowly. ‘That's lovely,' he said. ‘Well, you'll be wanting to know what I think, I suppose.' He sipped again, agonisingly slowly. ‘What I think is what I know for a fact. Now, do you want to hear the glad news first, or the sad news?'

‘Glad,' said Jessie at once.

Mister Barney smiled at her. ‘The same sweet thing your mother was at your age.' He turned to Jessie's mother. ‘Do you remember, Cath, all those stories I used to tell you when you were little? Do you remember I told you once about Grania O'Malley's treasure? Well, there's not a doubt about it. You're looking at it. All my life I've been looking for this. This is off the Santa Felicia, the great Armada galleon wrecked in a gale off Clare in 1588. She told me she'd hidden it, but she never said where and I never dared ask her. I told you I'd met up with her ghost, didn't I?'

He smiled gently at Jessie's mother. ‘I bet you thought I was cuckoo, didn't you? Drunk maybe. Well, I don't blame you. But it wasn't the drink. I've never drunk a drop of anything that wasn't water. I'm telling you now that I met her ghost – that's a plain and simple fact. She was a friend to me when I needed one, a real friend. And d'you know what a real friend is? A listener. And she was quite a talker too. I'm telling you now that this is the treasure of Grania O'Malley herself.'

‘But is it worth a lot of money?' Jessie asked. ‘We need to know how much.' Mister Barney seemed reluctant to reply. Either that or he hadn't heard properly.

‘Mister Barney,' said Jessie's father, annunciating each word carefully, ‘you remember I told you. Jessie and Jack, they found it. It's theirs. They want to share this treasure amongst everyone on this island so that then no one will need to cut the top off the Big Hill for the gold. To do that we've got to sell it.'

‘I hear you,' said Mister Barney, and he reached out and patted Jessie's hand. ‘I understand. That's a fine and noble thought, Jessie; and I could tell you the date of every piece, weigh it, tell you the worth of it too. But it wouldn't do you any good, I'm afraid, not you, not me, nor the Big Hill up there. And believe me, there's nothing I want more than to save that hill. It's come too late, Jessie. Now, if you'd found all this a few months back, then we'd have a chance. But your mother tells me the bulldozers will be over any time now to start their digging.'

‘What are you saying, Mister Barney?' Jessie's mother asked.

‘What I'm saying, Cath,' Mister Barney went on, ‘is the sad news. You can't share it out, like Jessie wanted. And you can't use it to buy the Big Hill off Mr Murphy either, like you wanted, even if he'd sell it. You see, it's the law of the land that's in your way. If you find treasure like this, any treasure, you have to tell the Garda. You have to tell the authorities. I've looked into this for myself and I know it's right. You have to tell them and then they tell Dublin, and someone from the government comes and takes it away. They don't let you keep stuff like this. It's too important. It doesn't matter who finds it, it belongs to the nation, to the people. As soon as they hear about all this, and they would – you couldn't hardly keep it a secret, could you now? – they'll be coming for it, to take it away. They might pay you some compensation later, but it would be too late for the Big Hill. So you see, it isn't yours to share out. You want to save the Big Hill, then I'm afraid you'll have to find another way to do it. You'll have to find yourself another miracle.'

9
THE DIGGERS ARE COMING

Mister Barney stayed late into the evening, the treasure spread out all round him. In all that time he scarcely stopped talking. It was as if he was trying to make up for all the years of silent solitude in his shack on the Big Hill. He pored over the treasure like a man obsessed, obsessed not with greed but with sheer joy at the discovery of it all. Every piece was a marvel to him. Again and again he revelled in the fact that he had at last been proved right about the lost treasure of Grania O'Malley.

‘I tell you,' he said, ‘it's terrible hard to believe in yourself when no one else does. That's why I like to hide myself away up on the Big Hill, out of sight of their mocking eyes. I don't care to be laughed at. And do you know another thing? I remember meeting Grania O'Malley up on the Big Hill. Clear as day I remember it, but in these last years, I've become more muddled in my head, and I'd begun to wonder myself if it was just my own imaginings I was remembering, and that maybe she was nothing more than that.'

He ran his hands lovingly around the gold plate on his lap. ‘Now I know for sure that I really did meet her, and that what she told me was the truth. I have the proof of it, don't I?' He waggled a crooked finger at the children. ‘I spend my whole life, searching the island end to end for this treasure, and I find nothing but a few miserable bits and pieces. You two go fishing, and find it without even looking for it!'

He laughed as he shook his head. ‘Life's a pig sometimes, but then I suppose you'll not be needing me to tell you that, will you? Take the Big Hill. It's not fair what they're going to do and it's not right. They'll be moving me out of my place just because I'm in the way of their infernal diggers. They're going to cut the top off the Big Hill. It'll happen for sure now, and there's nothing more can be done about it. Still, now I've seen this, now I've touched it, I suppose I can't complain.'

He looked up at them, his eyes full of sadness. ‘I've tried to tell them that it's not right, but no one listens. They're all too young. The whole world is too young. Maybe you have to be old before you understand that what happens tomorrow isn't what counts, it's what happens in a hundred years' time – there's an awful lot of tomorrows in a hundred years. But the trouble is you don't know that till you've lived them. I've lived them.'

Jessie tried to listen, but she was tired by now and she had other things to be thinking about. She sat on the carpet, her chin resting on her mother's knee. Every now and again she would catch Jack's eye, and she'd know he was wondering exactly what she was wondering. Is Grania O'Malley in the room with us? Has she heard what we've heard, that her plan to save the Big Hill isn't going to work? What will she do now? What will we do now?

‘What'll you do now?' Mister Barney asked, echoing her thoughts.

‘I'm not sure,' said Jessie's father. ‘I think maybe we'd all better sleep on it. And I think we'd best not say anything to anyone for the moment, Mister Barney – about the treasure, I mean.'

‘And who would I talk to now, all alone up there in my house?' Mister Barney replied. ‘I can tell my chickens, can't I? I'll have to tell someone at home, I'll be bursting with it.'

‘Chickens are fine,' said Jessie's mother.

As he left, Mister Barney put his arms round Jessie's mother and hugged her. ‘I'm sorry, Cath, so sorry,' he said. ‘Maybe there's still a way to stop them. There has to be.'

‘I hope so,' Jessie's mother replied. But Jessie could hear in her voice that she no longer had any hope left inside her. Jessie felt just the same.

While her father took Mister Barney back home, the three of them loaded the treasure back into the chest. Jessie thought of rescuing her earrings, but there just wasn't the opportunity, not with her mother there. They used a wheelbarrow to carry the treasure chest across the yard, and then they lowered it again into its hole behind the chicken shed. It was as they were burying it that her mother suddenly burst into tears and ran indoors. Jessie thought about going after her, but decided she would want to be alone. It was a still night, the sky full of stars, and the moon was riding through the clouds on the Big Hill.

Without warning, Jack called out into the night: ‘Grania O'Malley, you're up there somewhere, aren't you? We've got a problem down here. The treasure's no good. The diggers will be here by the weekend, and we can't share the treasure like you thought. Unless you come up with something, and something really good, we're going to lose the Big Hill. I guess you've been watching, so you know how bad things are. Are you going to help us, or what?' The sea breathed softly in the distance and the abbey owl screeched once. The chickens shifted on their perches in the shed. But there was no answer from Grania O'Malley.

‘Please,' Jessie begged, looking up into the sky. ‘Please help us.'

‘Think she's really listening?' Jack asked.

‘She'd better be,' said Jessie. ‘She'd just better be.'

Later, they were all round the kitchen table in their night things, sipping hot chocolate, except Jack who had his Coke as usual. ‘You know what we forgot?' said Jessie's father. ‘I just remembered. You were going to be on the telly, weren't you? I wonder if it's too late.'

He reached over and switched on the television. An advertisement was showing. Dozens of huge yellow diggers were working in a dusty quarry. A siren sounded and they all backed away from the quarry face, except for one. The driver was biting into a chocolate bar. He didn't seem to have heard the siren – either that, or he didn't care about it. There was a huge explosion above him. He wasn't bothered, he just went on with his chewing. The avalanche of rocks tumbled down towards him, and then suddenly froze in mid-air. He looked up, smiled, backed away in his own time, chewing and smiling smugly. Once he was out of the way, the avalanche thundered down, only just missing him. No one dared look at Jessie's mother. Then it was the local news. A smiling, simpering face came on.

‘Good evening. Drama yesterday on Clare Island. Helicopters were called in, and the Westport lifeboat was launched when two children went missing. Ten-year-old Jessie Parsons, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was fishing off the rocks with her cousin . . .' And the report rambled on over aerial longshots of Clare Island. ‘. . . both are fit and well after their ordeal. So, everyone's smiling on Clare Island tonight.'

And there they were on television, the two of them, outside the school, Jessie lurching along beside Jack. Jessie got up and switched it off herself. ‘Well, I'm not happy,' she stormed. ‘And do they have to tell everyone about my lousy palsy? Do they?'

Upstairs she threw herself on the bed and hit the pillows again and again until the tears finally stopped. She felt the bed sag beside her, and then a warm tongue was licking her ear. Panda was panting in her face, tongue lolling and dripping.

It wasn't too long before her mother came up, as Jessie had hoped she would. ‘You and me,' she said, ‘we're a couple of old misery guts, aren't we?' And Jessie couldn't disagree. ‘Still,' her mother went on, ‘tomorrow can only be better, eh?'

But tomorrow wasn't any better. After morning prayers. Mrs Burke played the video tape of the television news bulletin in front of the whole school. Jessie didn't look. She tried to bear it as best she could, as everyone pointed at the screen, shrieking with delight when they recognised anyone or anything. Jessie spent most of that day looking out of the classroom window. She hoped, and she believed, that Grania O'Malley would appear from nowhere, that same smile on her face, the smile that would tell Jessie everything would turn out fine after all, that somehow another way had been found to save the Big Hill. But hope and belief often gave way to doubt, and doubt to despair.

At afternoon playtime she wandered away from the others, away from Jack who was still surrounded by infants clamouring for their hero's autograph. She found herself a hidden corner round the back by the kitchens, where she sat and waited on a dustbin for Grania O'Malley to come to her, or speak to her, anything. When she didn't come and she didn't come, Jessie began calling for her, softly, so that her voice wouldn't carry to the playground. She was still sitting on the dustbin and still calling for her, when she turned round and saw Marion Murphy staring at her.

‘Who are you talking to?' Marion demanded.

‘No one.'

‘You were.'

‘I was not.' Now there were more of them, half a dozen more.

‘Well, anyway,' Marion's lip was curling ominously, and Jessie knew there was worse to come. ‘You know where we're going? We're all going down to the quay after school. You coming?'

‘What for?'

‘The diggers are coming in, that's what for. You were going to lie down in front of them, remember?' They were closing in all around her. There was no way out. There was nowhere to run to. ‘Well?' Marion said, thrusting her face into hers. ‘Well?'

Jessie stared back at her and hoped they wouldn't notice the tears welling into her eyes. Suddenly Marion staggered backwards and fell, taking all the others with her, all together, like ninepins.

‘You pushed me!' Marion screamed at her. ‘She pushed me. The little cow pushed me!' Jessie sat on her dustbin and laughed out loud. She could not help herself. It was the sight of them all sprawled on the ground, their mouths gaping in astonishment. It was quite wonderful. Of course she knew at once who had done the pushing, and that meant she was there. Grania O'Malley was there, her or one of her pirates, it didn't matter. Either way, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that they had heard her. They knew what had happened about the treasure. And if they knew that, then they knew the diggers were coming. Somehow they would stop them, somehow they could still save the Big Hill. Jack was there now, Liam beside him. Marion was clutching her elbow and crying, still accusing. She was appealing to Jack. ‘She pushed me! She pushed me! I'm telling Mrs Burke.'