The Kilternan Legacy (19 page)

Gerry followed me. “Do you know how much you sound like Auntie Irene?”

“Did you hear her, or just the recordings?”

“Once as a small lad I heard her sing. But it’s incredible. Did she know?”

“She knew I’d sung in G and S.”

He gave a funny laugh. “Well, it’s no wonder—the name, the voice, and all.”

“Oh God, not the will again.”

“Now, not to worry, Rene,” and I didn’t hear hypocrisy. “They’ve precious little to do except gossip. I told them they hadn’t a chance in hell of inheriting.” “You knew … about me?”

“Sure, most of Irene’s friends did.” Gerry had a rich laugh. Then he solemnly took my hand in his. “And look you, you don’t know our ways here in Ireland, so ignore the half of what you hear and discount the other fifty percent.” “What on earth do you mean?”

He jerked his head back at the house. “That lot has come up with some pretty silly notions, and they’ve hatched another tonight.” He stroked my hand and grinned down at me. “They’ve decided to try to marry you into the family.”

“What?”

“Not to worry, not to worry.”

“Who?” I was appalled, furious, and somehow it was all hilariously funny.

“Me,” he said in a squeaky voice. “That’s right, you’re the widower.”

All humor left his face. “Irishmen make devilish bad husbands, Rene. Never marry an Irishman. We’re spoiled rotten self-centered, and hard on a woman. Sell up, rent out, do what you like with the queendom, but don’t marry here.”

I felt awful suddenly, and awkward, too full of drink to cope with any more shocks, surprises, or contretemps.

“Oh, Gerry …”

“I’m warning you so’s you’ll know not to worry. I like being single again!” And he grinned in the most engaging fashion.

All I could think of was my mother sending me off to Ireland because men were men here. They certainly were, and I began to wish that I could go off quietly somewhere and sleep, not have to be diplomatic with these incredible relatives.

“Come, pet, I’ll drive you home. Can you come back in, just the minute, so’s my mother won’t take offense at the guest of honor’s leaving so?”

“Oh, my children! I’ve got a pair about here somewhere …” The fresh air was not helping my wits at all, an effect which became even more noticeable when I got back into the close, hot atmosphere of the kitchen. Gerry’s masterful manner—or maybe the fact that the relatives were only too happy to have him escorting me someplace—got me through the leave-taking formalities. Surprisingly, considering their dread at coming to the tea, the twins begged to stay on a bit. I was informed that someone would see them home, and then everyone was kissing me, especially the men, only it wasn’t offensive, and I was saying over and over that I’d had a lovely time, and then Gerry had me out in the fresh air again and in a car and I suddenly realized that I had had a lovely time.

THE NEXT MORNING was not a lovely time. I felt slightly ill, mouth tasted like last winter’s unaired snowboots, my feet felt bloated and too heavy, and I had the general sensation that I’d slept both too long and not enough. To compound the injuries to my person, it was raining.

I groaned.

Snow appeared in the doorway as if conjured, with a glass in one hand and a bottle in the other.

“Alka-Seltzer, Mother,” she said in a neutral-nurse tone, and popped the things into the water, swirling the glass to make them dissolve faster.

“Don’t! They’re noisy.”

“Hmm … that bad, huh?”

She sat on the bed, and I protested.

“They didn’t slip you any poteen, did they?” she asked, suddenly suspicious. “Nevil said they might try it.”

“Who’s Nevil?”

“A cousin, what else?” She made a face and then giggled. “He’s cute. He drove me home pillion. It was tough, Mom.”

“Pillion?” I roused myself, regretted it, sank into the pillow. “Oh, that’s dangerous.”

“Naw! Simon warned Nevil, and they followed us to pick up any pieces.” Again the giggle.

“How did Simon get home?”

“He went pillion with Tommy.”

“Tommy? Another cousin?”

“An
other
cousin.
Zzzhish
, Mom, I thought we had cousins by the dozens in the States, but here it’s by the gross.” She let out a whistle, but I clutched her arm to stop that frightful noise. “Ooops. Sorry! Poor Mommy,” and she disappeared, returning a moment later on elephantine feet. With loving concern, she placed a cool cloth on my forehead.

“Where’s Simon? It’s raining.”

“He’s talking up a storm with Tommy and Jimmy Kerrigan and Mark Howard. Now you go back to sleep!”

The seltzer made me burp, and my stomach was pacified. The rain was soporific, and I lay there, listening to the soft sound and feeling the cool on my head, and went to sleep again.

When I awoke, I felt a lot better. I heard laughter below me in the kitchen, and the sounds of pots and pans being battered about. So naturally I felt guilty about lying in bed and got up.

The kitchen was not very big, and looked much smaller with the thousand-and-five youngsters crowded in it, sitting on the cupboards, the woodbox, the chairs. One was perched on the fridge. They were all watching Snow make hamburgers and chips. They were all on their feet with a
thud-thud
when I entered.

“Coffee, Mother?”

“Yes, of course, darling. Did I meet all of you yesterday, or is my memory really going?”

I was introduced to Jimmy and Mark Howard, and Simon (with a laugh) and Tommy, and the long dark-haired one was a girl cousin named Betty. I’d met all except Mark Howard, who was seeing Betty.

Lunch was good fun, and by the time I’d had a hamburger and french fries I felt considerably “more better than,” as Snow used to say with ungrammatical expressiveness. Snow also tipped me the news that we’d very little left to eat in the house. Betty had to get home, as she was minding her small brothers and sisters; Tommy and Jimmy wanted to take Simon with them, and it appeared the whole group had a date that evening to listen to Tommy’s latest record buys. It was rather breathless, but I was relieved to think that the twins would have friends—relatives, even—with whom to enjoy their vacation.

The kitchen was all tidied before the visitors left with Simon. That’s when Snow remembered the mail which had been forwarded to us from the hotel.

One was a letter from Mother, the other from Hank van Vliet. Both held basically the same tidings: Teddie was having fits about my taking the children away. He’d phoned Mother and then visited her, demanding to be told where his children were and what sort of a low bitch did she have a for a daughter.

“I took a great delight in telling my ex-son-in-law where to go, Rene,” my mother wrote, her sweeping pen strokes embellished by ballpoint smears, emphasizing her annoyance, “something I’ve wanted to do for some time, I assure you. I phoned Hank after Teddie got off my line. I’m having no more of that kind of nonsense, I assure you. Hank is writing you, but my advice is to stay on in Ireland no matter what else you intended—at least for the summer and/or until his rage has subsided. But don’t worry, you’ve done nothing wrong or illegal. If you have a phone number there, send it to me and Hank but give it out to none of your other friends. You know how Teddie can extract info if he wants it.”

Apprehensively now, with hands shaking because the itch had (damn it) been accurate, I opened Hank’s letter, and learned why Mother had enjoined me not to worry. Teddie had had an injunction issued to prevent me from “surreptitiously and without his knowledge” removing his children from the continental U.S.A. I’d left before it could be served on me.

Hank assured me that I was completely within my rights, and he was taking steps to have the injunction canceled, since both he and my mother could vouch for the fact that I had informed Teddie of my intentions. (I wished people would stop telling me not to worry, because it made me worry more.) Hank went on to tell me not to worry about any moves Teddie might make locally to try to coerce me to return to the States with the children. (Oh, good Lord, what on earth could Teddie do locally? Well, if he met up with Auntie Alice or Auntie Imelda … That made me laugh, because Teddie would have met his match and retired from the field with that pair.) Teddie had threatened all kinds of imprudent and impulsive actions—Hank couldn’t leave me ignorant on that score—but my legal position was secure. After all, Hank could easily prove that Teddie had many times chosen not to exert his legal rights of visitation (particularly when there was a golf tournament or a weekend wingding).

I sighed as I finished this worrying don’t-worry letter. “Oh dear!”

“Daddy being a dastard again, Mother?” asked Snow, peering over my shoulder at Hank’s concluding paragraphs. “Hmmm. Thought as much.”

“What do you mean, ‘thought as much’?”

Snow shrugged. “Well, he put on such a heavy father routine that time on the phone …”

“What time on the phone? I didn’t know your father had called you.”

Again that insufferably diffident shrug. “Oh, we knew it would unnerve you, Mommy. Besides, you know how Dad can carry on, and it’s only talk.”

“
What
did he say?”

“Oh, some drivel about your dragging us some place completely unsuitable for his children, and you’d probably make us go to Mass, and oh … you know how Daddy goes on!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She gave me that round-eyed innocent look. “Because you’d’ve worried and worried, and we wouldn’t have come to Ireland. And we wanted to come with you!”

“Is that why you two organized me out of the country so fast?”

“You said it!” Then she hugged me. “We told Hank about the call, and Gammy, and that’s why—”

“Why I was on that plane before I had time to think what Ted might do.”

“You got it, Mommy,” she said in that I-know-best tone of voice which reminds me so much of my own mother that I tend to overlook how impudent it is in my daughter. Besides, she was correct.

“Why all of you think I’m not capable of managing my own life …” This protectiveness only underscored my private opinion that I
was
ineffectual.

She threw her arms about me, her lovely eyes full of remorse and repentance. “Ah, Mommy, don’t look like that. You do just great as long as Daddy isn’t involved. But when he is, you go all to pieces.”

She took me firmly by the arm, handed me my bag and raincoat, and propelled me toward the door. “We’ve more important things to do right now, like get the shopping done and buy paint. Because if we’re going to stay here until Dad cools off, we’re not going to flip our wigs looking at this revolting decor!”

The paint cost a small fortune, what with brushes, rollers, paint cleaners, and sandpaper. But Snow took the bite out of the bill by informing me that we’d save a lot by doing the work ourselves. When I countered that it would take all summer, she pooh-poohed the notion, demanding to know how long I thought it’d take with half a dozen brush wielders.

“Which half dozen?” I asked, but knew the answer, because Snow invariably operated on the Tom Sawyer principle. A born executive, my daughter.

“Never mind, Mommy, the task is well in hand.”

“That’s why the sweet talk and all the hamburgers?”

She gave me a tolerant look and then smiled in her sweetest fashion. “That’s how to manage a queendom. Only, Irene was her own prime minister and I just appointed myself yours. She recruited a labor force when necessary. Why not you?”

“Oh?”

“Yes, oh.” Snow gave an admiring sort of snort. “She might have been philanthropic, but she was smart too. D’ya know that Ann Purdee qualifies as a lady tailor? She whipped up Irene’s clothes. We know that Kieron is a first-rate carpenter. Mary Cuniff is a bookkeeper, she only cashiers because the hours are better while Molly is young, and old Mrs. Slaney was chief cook and bottle washer until she got so crippled with arthritis. Oh, Aunt Irene had her queendom, but her courtiers were carefully selected.”

“What about Sally Hanahoe?”

“Typist, but she has better hours as a supermarket clerk.”

So our next stop was Sally’s supermarket, where I wished she could have got a commission on the tremendous total we ran up. After that large outlay of cash, a visit to the bank was necessary, to cash more travelers’ checks. The bank manager was so charming and helpful (he’d known my great-aunt, of course) that I ended up opening an account—much more sensible than carrying around large amounts of cash.

As we drove back to the house, Snow let out a satisfied sigh. “Now tomorrow we should turn this heap in. It’s costing us a fortune.”

“Not as much as all this paint.”

“Paint’s an investment, Mommy, and the Mercedes runs, so why
waste
money running this?”

A very good point.

“But we have to tax the car and transfer your insurance. I don’t think the American policy is good here.”

“How do you know so much?” I asked my daughter.

“Oh, I asked Nevil and Mark. Your best bet for insurance is—”

“Snow?”

“Yes, Mommy?”

“Are you managing your mother?”

She gave me her most charming smile. “Me? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You!”

The phone was ringing as we entered the house, so I couldn’t continue the argument.

“Mrs. Teasey, Michael Noonan here. Would it be inconvenient for me to stop by with some papers that require your signature?”

“Not more bad news?”

“More?” There was, thank goodness, a ripple of laughter in his voice, so his tidings couldn’t be all that devastating. “I don’t think so. Would half seven be too late … or too early?”

“No, no. You do know where I am?”

Again that ripple of amusement. “I’ll see you then, so.”

Snow was carrying in all the paint gear, muttering under her breath about Simon never being around when you needed him, the rain, and how heavy paint was. The next thing I knew, she was all set to start work immediately in the dining room.

“Not to worry, Mommy.” How quickly my daughter got acclimated in language differences. “All the paint’s latex, and there’s no smell. Says so on the label.”

“We have to strip the wallpaper off first …” I hadn’t the words out of my mouth before Snow had seized a loose edge and zip, a whole panel came flying off in her hand.