The Kilternan Legacy (27 page)

I might not have noticed the couple had I not been beside them, but I could only be forcibly struck by his courtesy and her deference. He did the actual bidding; she anxiously followed the rise of price and, with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, indicated when the cost had gone too high on the chest she had wanted. His moue of regret for her disappointment was humorous and good-natured. I couldn’t help but contrast them with Teddie and myself in a similar situation. He’d have bid until he got the item, no matter how outrageous the final sum, and would have been furious with me had I suggested an overbid.

I did fancy a little velvet-covered Victorian dining chair. But it reached £11 before I could even raise my hand. And sold for £15.

“That’s overpriced,” said the man beside me to his wife.

“Dreadfully. Why, we got our four for twenty pounds, didn’t we?”

He nodded and caught my eye as he did so, giving me such a pleasant smile that I had the nerve to ask them why a chair would bring such a price.

“Sometimes the owner’s here pushing the bid up,” he said in a low voice. “Sometimes it’s dealers who see a chance to finish a set, or maybe it simply strikes some party’s fancy. Is this your first auction?”

I nodded, and was suddenly conscious that the man just beyond the couple was leaning in as if to catch the conversation. I’d remarked to myself on his utter boredom with the auction proceedings, his silence through all the bidding, which now made his sudden attention to our conversation the more obvious. The moment he saw me looking at him, he straightened up and looked away. I had the feeling that I’d seen the fellow before, although I couldn’t place the circumstance.

Then the auctioneer called loudly for silence and a bid of £5 on the next item. Once again I became intent on the proceedings. The nosy character had eased away, so I thought no more about him.

Suddenly the auctionables had all had their chance, and people began to file out the front door.

“Better luck next week,” the friendly woman said to me as she and her husband moved off.

I half wished that I could have become acquainted, but I didn’t want to be considered pushy. Maybe they’d be here next week, too. Still, they had worked their magic on me and given me some perspective. I really had tumbled into an exceptional scene with Ann, Sally, and Mary. Then there was the fact that my great-aunt had been a confirmed-by-choice spinster. She would hardly have attracted the happily-marrieds as company. Certainly she’d performed a much-needed service in succoring girls in real distress, who’d been done by rascals. And, I reminded myself as I unlocked the Mercedes, I wasn’t exactly the most unprejudiced observer on that count.

Besides which, there was George, dying to marry Mary; Kieron, gone on Ann, despite her not admitting it; and give Sally a chance and she’d probably fall in love with someone a good bit more reliable than the wayward Shamus Kerrigan—
her
Shamus, not mine. (
Mine
!)

I nearly braked at the subconscious use of the pronoun. Shay Kerrigan was not mine, nor was I his, nor did I… or did I? His kissing … had been
so
satisfactory, his presence so reassuring. His—great heavens above, Irene Teasey! You only met him two weeks ago, he’s under a cloud, he’s after something, and you’re …

I turned off the main road up my lane and glanced into my rear-view mirror as I slowed. The car behind me was driven by Nosy! Well! That was a coincidence. Or was it? Was he following me? Ridiculous notion! Supported by the evidence that, as I turned up Swann’s Lane, his car continued on.

“That for your fancies, my girl,” I told myself sternly.

Mr. Corrig, the postman, was pushing his bike up the hill toward my house, so I pulled over. I could save him a few steps.

“And a good evening to you, missus,” he said, all affability, touching his cap brim: a salute which made me feel so very lady of the manor … and awkward. “Did your man ever find you?”

“My man?” I had a second’s horrible terror that Teddie had arrived in Ireland.

“Yiss, missus. He was after asking me who owned the field there, so I told him ‘twas yourself, and he wanted to know where you lived, and your name, so I gave him your direction. He seemed desperate anxious to see you.”

“No one came, but then, you see, it was Mrs. Slaney’s funeral today, and then I was out this afternoon.”

“Poor old body,” said the postman, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. “Many there? Not that I suppose she’d many friends left living, asides from yourselves.”

“Why, yes …” and then I stopped. Nosy had been one of the men sitting way back at the service! “Yes, the Ladies Brandel came, Mr. Kerrigan drove them over. And, of course, all of us here. Mr. Corrig, the man who wanted to buy my land—what did he look like? I mean, I think he’s been by before … when I wasn’t at home. My son mentioned something …” Not the best of prevarications, but Mr. Corrig didn’t seem to notice.

He wasn’t very reassuring, either, because it was Nosy he described. And if Nosy had wanted to buy my property and had seen me turning into the lane, why didn’t he “find me”?

“So maybe he’ll call on you later. Here’s your mail, missus.” He passed over rather a staggering bundle. “The most I’ve delivered up Swann’s Lane in many a year.”

“I’m very sorry, but we’ve had so much to write home about.”

“Not to worry, not to worry. Used to enjoy the odd chat with herself, I did, when she was still about.”

I murmured something appropriate, and Mr. Corrig beamed at me.

“Good evening, missus, and God bless.” He turned his bike around and whizzed off down the slope.

I riffled through the letters—more from my mother, and, oh no, another from Hank, some forwarded from my apartment, several for Simon, and two for Snow. Quite a clutch. Suddenly, I didn’t want to open Hank’s letter or Mother’s all on my own. What bad news they might have to tell me was fortunately three thousand miles away. I could ignore it—for a while. I couldn’t ignore Nosy, who was right on my doorstep, so to speak, and I didn’t want him any farther in. Whoever he was! So I wanted very much to have a few words with Kieron … and I could give Simon his mail at the same time.

Simon wasn’t with Kieron: He and Jimmy had gone off to Blackrock, Kieron told me. He invited me into his house to explain.

“I’d an old bike in the shed, just needed some adjusting and two new tires, so the lads went off to get them.”

“Good Lord, did Simon have enough money?”

“Sure and they did, between them and me. You take milk and sugar, don’t you?” he asked, for his kettle was just boiling.

“As Snow would say, constantly.”

“Well,” said Kieron, sitting himself down opposite me in the rocking chair, “what’s troubling you?”

I groaned, distressed that I was so transparent.

You forget how much like Irene you really are.”

“Forget? I only wish I knew …”

Kieron frowned blackly at me. “Now don’t you start greeting over what you couldn’t help,” he said, then sighed. “I’ve had enough of that from Ann.”

“Did the funeral upset her?”

“No, but the
going
did.” He was much annoyed.

“She can’t honestly be that afraid of her husband finding her?”

“Oh, I fault your aunt on that score, Rene. She drummed it into Ann’s head that she was safe here, that she should never leave, but by God, I know Irene didn’t mean never set foot out of the place. How the hell would Paddy Purdee know Ann was here in Kilternan? When he married her, he’d two rooms in Finglas. They lived there”-he gave a short bark of mirthless laughter—“until he deserted her the first time.”

“The first time?”

“Forgot you haven’t had all the whole sorry story of it.”

“True,” I replied, a bit stiffly, “it’s not something even the brashest American just blurts out and asks … particularly not of someone like Ann.” I sighed with real regret. “She’s such a wonderful person, coping … Oh, I know …” I had noticed his apprehension. “The Anns of the world prefer to do it their way and the hell with the helping hand.”

Kieron nodded, the sorrow in his eyes adding to my sense of impotence.

“You do love her, don’t you?” I asked.

Kieron glanced sharply at me for a long, almost uncomfortable minute before his face relaxed and his very charming smile parted the moustache around his lips.

“Yes, I do love her—not that it does me any good,” he said with resignation, and stirred his coffee into sloppy turbulence.

“You mean, because of Ann or because she’s married and Ireland doesn’t have divorce?”

His head came up in surprise. “Sure now, you can get a divorce in Ireland … of a kind,” he amended, pleased by my astonishment. “No, my problem is Ann. Because one man’s been a bastard to her, she’ll have nothing to do with any other. She won’t believe that men come in different sizes, shapes, and temperaments.” Kieron was very bitter. “And it’s such a flaming waste!” He propelled himself so forcibly out of the rocker that it nearly overtilted. “And that’s no thanks to Irene, sure it’s not. Much as I loved the woman, she did me no favors with Ann. And she could have done.”

“But I thought Aunt Irene liked you! You’re
here!”

“Oh, she liked me well enough, she did. I had my uses,” and his gesture took in the furniture, the kitchen cabinets. “And I’d come back to take care of the old mother when I found my sisters had turfed her out. She was too old to help with the housekeeping,” he explained, noting my horror. His laugh was bitter. “The mother, you see, favored the boys in the family, now hadn’t she, said the sisters. So let the boys care for her when she couldn’t work for her keep. The men aren’t the only bastards in Ireland, Rene. Not that I really blame the girls: tiny houses, bad husbands, no money. They really couldn’t keep her, even with the old-age money to help out. Mrs. Slaney found her tottering along Kilternan Road late one November evening, and cold it was. Irene took over, of course. There was a letter in Mam’s handbag from me. Irene cabled. I was doing a tour of cabarets in the States. I decided that I’d better come back myself to see all was well. Although Mary and Ann
were
very kind to her.”

“Doesn’t that prove to Ann what sort of person you are? You gave up everything …”

Kieron’s laugh was amused now. “I gave up nothing, Rene, but it was good publicity. It’s best to leave when you’re on top. I do as well here, all things equaled.”

“But Ann isn’t convinced?”

“Not at all. It only serves to show her how unreliable I am, without a regular job, working as it pleases me. Sure and I make more in one night’s work than Paddy Purdee did in a week when the trawling was good.”

“Surely Ann—”

“Ann doesn’t, Ann won’t, Ann can’t. She’s as hidebound as her mother before her, and that bugger hurt her, like her dad did her mother, and he’s beat her and bred her and bollixed her so badly that she doesn’t know what she wants … except never another man in her house or in her life. Not that she ever had a man anyhow …” He glared defiantly at me for what he implied in that phrase. “No pleasure. She was never married to that bastard!”

I held my reaction to a sympathetic nod, but I could see why he felt Ann was wasted. She was so lovely, and there was so much more to loving than bedding. Ann didn’t even know what she’d missed. I did, and …

“You said the first time he left her?” I asked Kieron, grasping for a subject to distract my own line of thought.

He glared at me ferociously, equally distracted by my abrupt backtracking. “Yes. A fortnight after the wedding he left her to go fishing. He got a chance at a berth on an English codder and took off for three months. He’d got her pregnant, and she was poorly when he got back, so he took off again for another three months. When he got back from that trip, she was in hospital with a threatened miscarriage, so he disappeared. He returned a week after Fiona was born … he must have had her in the hospital, because Tom was born nine months later. That’s when she moved, but he tracked her down, beat her up every night he was home, and by the time he’d signed on another boat she was pregnant with Michael!”

My appalled expression seemed to mollify Kieron, for his fierceness lessened as he shoved his hair back from his forehead with impatient fingers.

“I can’t imagine Paddy Purdee roughed her up before she married him,” I said, “so Ann must think the change in the man is related to marriage. Why
should
she want it? But, Kieron, you said he deserted her, and yet you said he was …”

“Deserted her, yes, in the true sense of the word. He gave her no money to live on, she didn’t know what ship he’d sailed with, how long he’d be gone or anything.”

“No money? Even when they were first married?”

“The first time he went off, she thought he’d be back on the weekend, and she waited. She’d some money of her own, left over from wedding presents. She managed. Then one of his mates told her he’d signed on the codder, and she got her old job back. Once Fiona was born, of course, she couldn’t work. As far as I ever heard, Paddy never gave her any money the whole time he was married to her.”

This was much worse than anything I’d imagined for Ann. “But that’s a psychological nonconsummation, isn’t it? Or a lie, entering marriage under false pretenses? I mean, you’re supposed to endow your wife with your worldly goods, cherish, honor, and support, and if he did none of those things … why, he never married her! But, Kieron, why can’t she get an annulment or a divorce or something, so that at least she doesn’t have to live in dread of his forcing himself on her again?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, and I more or less answered my own question.

“No money!”

Kieron nodded. “Nor wish. So long’s Paddy can’t find her here, she’s content enough.”

He was obviously not. “Oh, really, Kieron, surely there’s a Legal Aid Society which helps the … no? Good Lord. We are in the Dark Ages. I mean, when she’s too scared to attend …” A sudden thought struck me. “You know, if he lived with her so little, would he even remember what she looked like?”

Kieron did a double take and then chuckled. “
You
tell Ann.”