The Ghost of Grania O'Malley (14 page)

‘She pushed all of you?' Jack asked. Jessie was smiling at him from her dustbin, and he understood from her smile just what had happened.

Marion was scrambling to her feet now. ‘That's it. You've asked for it, Jessie Parsons. You've done it now. If the diggers don't flatten you, then I will. You've asked for it!' And when she ran off, the others followed, promising as they went all manner of dire and terrible retribution. But Jessie didn't mind any more. Jessie knew now that Grania O'Malley was there, that no matter what, she would protect her. There was nothing to be afraid of. Liam and his friends were still gawping at her in disbelief when the school bell rang. She smiled at them.

‘Bell's going,' she said nonchalantly, and she slipped down off her dustbin and tottered past them. ‘Better not be late.' She felt so good, so triumphant.

When they got home after school, Jessie's mother wasn't there. There was no sign of anyone. Even Panda was missing. They were looking for the peanut butter to make up their sandwiches when they heard Clatterbang coming up the track, Panda chasing alongside, yapping at the tyres. Jessie went to the door. ‘Where's the peanut butter?' she called out. Her mother and father had been talking to each other earnestly over the top of the car. Now they stopped, both of them looking at her. There was bad news. Jessie could see that much – and she could also see neither of them wanted to break it to her.

‘We've just been up to see Mister Barney,' said Jessie's father.

‘What's the matter with him?' Jessie asked. Jack was there too now.

‘Nothing. He's fine.' Her father slammed the door and came walking round the front of Clatterbang towards them. ‘He's fine, but he was the only one who could have known about the treasure – besides the four of us, that is. And even then, he couldn't have known where we'd hidden it.' The children looked from one to the other.

‘It's gone,' said Jessie's mother. ‘The treasure's gone.'

Jack ran across the yard towards the chicken shed, and Jessie followed as fast as she could. She found him staring down into an empty hole. ‘I just can't understand it,' her mother was saying. ‘I thought maybe one of us might possibly have mentioned to Mister Barney where we were hiding it, but we didn't. He didn't know anything about it. But we had to ask, just to be sure.'

‘I told you, Cath,' said Jessie's father. ‘Someone must have seen you burying it last night.'

‘But it was dark, you know it was.' Jessie's mother was near to tears. ‘Why do you keep trying to blame it on me?' The two children said nothing. They knew very well who had taken it.

‘I didn't mean it like that,' Jessie's father said. ‘But it has gone, hasn't it? That means someone's stolen it, someone on this island. It wasn't us, was it? And it certainly wasn't old Mister Barney. I told you there was no point in going up there. How could he possibly have moved a thing like that all by himself? There's only one answer. Someone must have seen us fetching it back in the boat from Piper's Hole. They must have spied on us, and then later on, watched us bury it. But who? Who?'

Jessie tried not to look across at Jack, but she could not stop herself. It was the barest flicker of a smile, but her father noticed it. ‘You don't seem very upset, Jess,' her father said.

Jessie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of course I am, but what can we do? If it's gone, it's gone. And besides it's no use to us any more, is it? Jack and me, we only wanted it so's we could share it out and save the Big Hill.' She turned to her mother. ‘The diggers have come, Mum. Marion Murphy said.'

‘I know,' said her mother quietly. ‘I know.'

‘There's four of them,' said Jessie's father. ‘Down by the quay. They start work Monday.'

Jessie's mother walked away towards the house, talking as she went. ‘You know, I'm beginning to wonder about all this. I'm really beginning to wonder. When we were kids, and Mister Barney told us he'd seen Grania O'Malley's ghost, we never believed him. When he said she'd hidden her treasure on the island, we never believed him. He spent his life looking for it, and we laughed at him. Then Grania O'Malley's treasure turns up, out of the blue.'

‘So?' Jessie's father said, following her into the kitchen.

‘You still don't see it, do you? If he was telling the truth about the treasure, and it seems he was, then it follows he was telling the truth about the ghost. And today, when we find the treasure's been dug up and taken away, what did he tell us? Grania O'Malley's come back for it, he says, because she knows it's no use to us any more. Well, if that's true, and let's just pretend it might be true, then it fits, don't you see. The whole thing fits. The children were meant somehow to find the treasure, and the treasure was meant to save the Big Hill. It was all her idea. Do you understand what I'm telling you, Jimmy? And now she knows it can't be done, because she's heard all about how it's not ours to share, how you can't just give treasure away when you find it. So she came to take it back.'

They were in the kitchen now, and she turned to face Jessie's father. ‘I know it sounds mad, I know it does. But that's the gist of what Mister Barney said, isn't it? Well, I don't laugh at old Mister Barney, not any more. And there's something else you haven't thought of. No one has thieved anything on this island in my lifetime – maybe the odd sheep does go missing from time to time, but that's all. We leave the doors unlocked, don't we? The keys in the car, don't we? Does anything ever get taken? Think about it. I didn't dig that treasure up. You didn't, the children didn't, Panda didn't. If Mister Barney says it was the ghost of Grania O'Malley that dug it up, then you know what? I believe him. And if that makes me cracked in the head, then maybe I am.' And with that, she opened the drawer and took out the bread knife. ‘I'll make you your sandwiches, Jack. And, Jess, why don't you help your father fill in that hole before a chicken breaks a leg?'

It was a weekend when time itself seemed to stand still. There was a calm and a quiet over the island, only a breath of wind off the sea. Even the owl in the abbey stopped calling at night. They dipped the sheep on Saturday morning, and through it all, Jessie's mother never said a word. She scarcely looked up. After it was over, Jack said he was off down to the quay. He wanted to see the diggers for himself, he said, and besides, the quay was on the way to the field and he was expected for a game of baseball with Liam and Marion and the others. It would be too far for Jessie to walk, if they had to hurry. ‘Then you can push me in the wheelbarrow,' said Jessie. She did not like the idea of being left behind one little bit. Jack didn't argue. He laid some straw in the bottom of the squeaky wheelbarrow, and off they went, Mole and Panda tagging along behind.

When they reached the quay, there was a great crowd standing round the diggers. Everyone seemed to be there: Father Gerald, Mrs Burke, Miss Jefferson, Michael Murphy, and dozens of others that Jessie had never seen before. The pub was overflowing into the street with people. Jack and Jessie left the wheelbarrow, made their way through the crowd and gazed up in awe at the gigantic bulk of the machines. Just the tyres were as high as Jack could reach. Painted on each of their yellow sides was one word, in huge black letters: ‘Earthbuster'. Jessie saw them suddenly as living creatures, as monsters sleeping in the sun, but only for the moment. Once woken, they would rampage across her island and swallow up the Big Hill.

Marion Murphy was being lifted up on to a digger by a man in orange overalls. There were a dozen others dressed the same. Jessie soon worked out these must be the digger drivers, or maybe they were mechanics. They were swigging pints and rolling cigarettes as they folled up against their diggers. Swaggerers, Jessie thought, swaggerers every one of them. But the islanders were swarming around them and around their machines in open admiration. Marion had clambered on to the top of the digger by now, and stood there posing triumphantly, arms upraised, while her father took photo after photo of her. Jessie stared stonily up at her until she caught her eye. I'd give a lot, an awful lot, Jessie thought, for Grania O'Malley to push her off that digger. ‘I hate you, Marion Murphy.' Jessie tried to say it with her eyes, and must have succeeded because Marion looked away at once and posed again, more nervously now, an uneasy smile on her face.

‘Let's go, Jack,' said Jessie. ‘I've had enough.' But Jack wasn't there. She went looking for him, and found him at last round the front of a digger with one of the orange-overalled drivers who appeared to be showing Jack over the engine. She tugged at his coat, but he didn't seem to grasp how impatient she was to leave, nor how annoyed she was becoming.

‘You see this, Jess? This guy says it's got to be about the biggest earthmover in the world. This is some powerful machine. Makes my Volkswagen at home look like a tricycle. How many horsepower, d'you say, sir?'

‘Over five hundred,' said the driver, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He had ginger hair, Jessie noticed, a ginger that almost matched the colour of his overalls. ‘Four-wheel drive, fuel injection. Thirty tons of power. Do anything you want, this will. Move mountains if you want it to.' He heaved with laughter at that, and then Jack was laughing with him and asking more questions about the engine. Jessie had had enough. She glared at them both and walked off.

Later, with Jack pushing her in the wheelbarrow along the road towards the field, Jessie was still bridling at what she saw as Jack's betrayal. He had been fraternising with the enemy, and she was furious with him. It was a long and silent walk. ‘Something on your mind?' Jack said at last.

Jessie let fly. ‘Don't you ever think of anything but engines?'

‘Hey, I was just talking to the guy. What are you so mad at me for?'

‘If you don't know, then I'm not saying.' And they relapsed into a simmering silence that lasted until they reached the field.

Liam and the others were already practising. As usual, Liam and Jack were the captains and they picked the teams; and as usual Marion managed to get herself picked for Jack's team. Jessie went off on her own and sat down under the tree. It was the first real argument she'd had with Jack, but it was entirely his fault and she wasn't going to make it up, not ever. She could see too, that he was really angry. He was winding himself up and pitching with real venom. No one stood a chance. They ducked and dodged and protested, but Jack just kept pitching. They hardly managed to hit a ball at all. And when it came to his turn with the bat, he belted the ball right over the fence and into the potato field beyond. He ran six home runs before they found the ball; and when they told him that wasn't fair, he said that he knew the rules better than they did.

Even after the game was over, she could see he was still furious. ‘You coming or what?' he snapped at her. All the way home in the wheelbarrow she sat with her back to him, arms folded, lips pursed.

The evening was worse still. After supper, her mother sat staring into space. Jessie went and sat on her lap to console her and to be consoled. Jack phoned home, and then just took himself off to bed without even saying goodnight to anyone.

‘Is something the matter with Jack?' her father asked.

‘He's just sulking,' Jessie said.

‘He's sulking!' Her father smiled wryly.

‘Only one more day before they start.' Her mother spoke as if she were speaking to herself. ‘One more day for the Big Hill.' And she looked up at Jessie's father. ‘You know, somehow I always thought something would happen to stop it. First, I thought I could do it by talking to people, explaining, persuading. I couldn't. Then I thought that the people in Dublin must have more sense. They didn't. But even then, I still had faith. I don't know why, but I still believed it could be stopped. Then when the children brought us the treasure, I thought for sure that we'd win, that the Big Hill was reprieved. Just another false hope. And now I cling to anything, even Mister Barney's ghost. I know it's silly, Jimmy, I know it's nonsense. But there's nothing else left, except prayer maybe. Am I going to pray in Mass tomorrow! I'm going to pray like I've never prayed before.'

‘I'll pray with you,' said Jessie's father.

‘You don't come to Mass,' she replied tartly.

‘I can still pray, can't I?' he said. ‘And I've a lot more faith in prayers than I have in ghosts, that's for sure.' He went on, ‘Everywhere I went today, I kept looking at people, and thinking: was it you? Was it you that stole the treasure? Even Father Gerald, honestly. I'm telling you, one of them must have stolen it.'

Jessie lay in her bed that night and listened to Jack snoring in the next room. Every snore she heard made her angrier still. She made up her mind that she wouldn't speak to him the whole of the rest of his time on the island. Hadn't he laughed with that digger driver, and about the digger being able to move mountains too? He'd laughed! She felt so angry, and so lonely at the same time.

She longed to climb into her parents' bed and snuggle up to them and tell them the whole story of Grania O'Malley. She would tell her mother there and then not to worry, that Grania O'Malley would never stand by and watch the diggers move in on the Big Hill. But she just couldn't bring herself to do it. Even if her mother believed her – and maybe she would now – her father most certainly would not. And what if she did tell her story, and then Grania O'Malley didn't come back and save the Big Hill. What then? Where would that leave her? No, better to wait and see how things turned out.

The snoring stopped next door. She heard Jack's bed creaking, his door opening, and then footsteps coming along the passage outside her door. ‘Jess?' He was whispering through the door. Pride would not let her answer. She pretended she hadn't heard. ‘Jess?' The tiptoeing steps moved along the passage and then there was silence.