Whitethorn Woods (21 page)

   "Will Mam recognize me at all, Brian?"

   "Ah, she will in her own way," he said.

   "What does that mean exactly?"

   He had forgotten how direct Judy could be. "I don't know what it means, Judy, it's just something I say to avoid saying anything really, I suppose."

   She squeezed his arm affectionately. "You were always a pet," she said. "I'm sorry I stayed away for so long. There was always one foolish thing or another keeping me over there."

   "But didn't you always write, and you were very good to our mother," he said.

   Judy cheered up. "Now, take me on a tour of Rossmore, showing me all the changes and point me to the best hairdresser."

   "There's a very smart place called Fabian's, though that's not his name at all—I was at school with him, and he was called something else altogether, but apparently they go to him from far and near."

   "Good. I'll remember that. You see, as well as relying on St. Ann, I think I should bring up the second line of attack, get some new clothes and a hairstyle as well. A bit of grooming, as one might say."

   "You're looking for a husband
here
?" Brian Flynn was astounded.

   "Well, yes. Why not? I didn't do too well in over ten years in London."

   "You got a career for yourself." Judy was an illustrator of children's books.

   "Yes, but I am not asking St. Ann for a career." Judy was brisk. "Lord, would you look at the traffic—it's like Hyde Park Corner."

   "It might not be for much longer. There's great talk of a new road, to take all the trucks and lorries out of the town for one thing. And let the through traffic pass without clogging up our little streets."

   "And will it happen or is it only talk?"

   "I think it will happen. That's if you can believe half what you read in the newspapers. There's a lot of debate about it—people coming heavily down on one side or the other."

   "And is it a good thing or a bad thing, in your opinion?"

   "I don't know, Judy, I really don't. It's meant to be going through the Whitethorn Woods and possibly through St. Ann's Well."

   "So I got here just in time," said Judy Flynn, with a sense of grim resolution that made her brother Brian feel very uneasy.

   Judy was astounded at the way every second person seemed to greet Brian as they parked the car and walked along a crowded Castle Street toward the Rossmore Hotel.

   A woman came down the steps of the local newspaper office and her face lit up in a smile.

"There you are, Lilly," Father Flynn said.

"This must be your sister, Father," she said, pleased.

   "It's just as well he hasn't a fancy woman," Judy said. "They'd have her identified in ten seconds."

   "No fear of that—isn't Father Flynn a walking saint?" said Lilly Ryan, shocked.

   And then Judy recognized her. The woman whose child had disappeared all those years ago. Judy remembered how hundreds of people had gone into the Whitethorn Woods to hunt for a body or to pray at the well. There had been no result from either quest. She felt awkward and she supposed it must have shown on her face. But Lilly Ryan would be used to this after twenty years. Two decades of people shuffling and being unable to mention the great loss for fear of saying the wrong thing.

   "I'm trying to get up the courage to visit my mother," Judy confided. "I'm afraid our family leaves all the hard work to Brian here."

   "Do it before you do anything else," Lilly advised. "If you face the hard thing first it makes it easier."

   "You might well be right," Judy agreed. "Brian, can you leave my case in the hotel? I'll go and see her now."

   "I'll come with you," he said.

   "No, I'll do this on my own. Good luck to you, Lilly."

   And they watched as Judy turned onto the small side street where her mother lived alone.

   "I'd better go after her," he began.

   But Lilly reminded him that Judy wanted to do this alone. So he shrugged and carried his sister's suitcase into the hotel. He would wait in one of their big armchairs until she came back and then he would buy her the stiff drink she would undoubtedly need.

   Judy looked around in desperation but there were no photographs on the walls or in frames on the old desk. Poor Brian had done his best to keep the place in some kind of order and took his mother's washing to the Fresh as a Daisy once a week, but Judy noticed that the place still smelled bad and her mam was very uncared for. Every month for years now Judy had sent a check to her brother Brian, and she knew he had spent it on items for their mam. But the iron sat there unused, the easy chair was half hidden under a pile of newspapers. Mrs. Flynn didn't believe in making herself comfortable.

   "You must remember me, Mam, I'm Judy. I'm the middle one. Younger than Eddie, older than Brian."

   "Brian?" Her mother's look was blank.

   "You remember Brian, surely, he comes in every morning to give you your breakfast."

   "No he does not, that's from the Meals on Wheels." Her mother was definite.

   "No, Mam, they come at lunchtime. Brian comes and gives you an egg every morning."

   "That's what he says." Her mother wasn't convinced.

   "Do you remember Eddie?"

   "Of course I do, do you think I'm cracked or something? He wouldn't be told, married that Kitty, no good she was, nor any of her family. No wonder what happened happened."

   "What happened was that Eddie left her for a young one."

   "May God forgive you, whoever you are! Saying such things about my family! It was Kitty who threw my son out and kept his house, you'll note." Her mother's mouth was set in a hard line.

   "And what does Brian say about that?"

   "I don't know any Brian."

   "Don't you have a daughter?"

   "I do, a young one over in England doing drawings of some sort, she never gets in touch." So that was the thanks for the weekly letter or postcard, the monthly contribution to Brian. She never gets in touch!

   "I'm your daughter, Mam, I'm Judy, you must know me."

   "Would you get away out of that, my daughter's a young girl— you're a middle-aged woman like myself."

   As Judy walked back to the hotel she decided that a visit to this smart hairdresser called Fabian's might be well overdue. She even paused outside a new beauty shop called Pompadours. A course of facials and manicures might not go amiss either. She had put aside a fair sum of money for this visit and St. Ann might need a little help to place her satisfactorily on the marriage market.

   Brian was a splendid guide. As well as going with her while she made appointments in Fabian's and Pompadours, he showed her a very smart boutique.

   "Didn't Becca King work there?" Judy asked.

   "For God's sake, don't mention Becca King," Father Flynn said, looking left and right.

   "Why on earth not?"

   "She's in jail. She got one of the van men in the shop to murder her boyfriend's new lover."

   "God, and they say you take risks living in London!" Judy said in amazement.

   He brought his sister back to meet the canon. Josef and Anna had made little sandwiches in honor of the guest. They kept everything in the priests' house gleaming and the old man himself looked pink and clean. Unlike Judy's mother, he remembered her well. He had been there for her first Communion, had looked on when the bishop came to confirm the girls of St. Ita's, and although he had long forgotten her infant sins, he had heard her confession.

   "I haven't had the pleasure of assisting at your marriage yet," Canon Cassidy said as he drank his tea and ate his dainty sandwiches.

   "No, but it won't be long now," Judy said. "I'm going to do a novena to St. Ann. I'm going to pray at her shrine for nine days so that she will find me a good husband."

   "And no better woman for doing that than St. Ann," the canon said, his simple faith and certainties all intact.

   Father Flynn envied him with all his soul.

   "I'd better go and see the sister-in-law," Judy said with a sigh.

   "Don't raise your hopes too high," Brian Flynn warned her.

   "What would annoy her least, do you think, as a gift?" Judy wondered.

   "Let me see, flowers would be a woeful waste of money, sweets would rot the children's teeth. Magazines are full of rubbish, a book could have been got in the library. Get her a loaf of bread and a half-pound of ham, she might make you a sandwich."

   "As bad as that, is it?" Judy asked.

   "Worse," said Father Brian Flynn.

   He was not in a good humor. He had discovered that there was going to be a public meeting in ten days' time, a big protest meeting, and he was going to be invited to address it. Many of the townspeople had told him that they were eagerly waiting for his words. And he literally didn't have any.

   He simply couldn't find it in his heart to stand up and condemn a possible scheme that would improve traffic and the quality of life for a great many people just because it would mean taking down a perfectly awful statue that was beginning to produce dangerously idolatrous feelings among the parishioners.

   Had life been easier for Canon Cassidy when he was a curate? Or was this the way things always were? If you were a priest maybe it all went with the territory.

   But with his usual optimism, he comforted himself that it was still only a rumor about the road. There had been no statement as yet. And also he still had ten days before the meeting. There was plenty of time to work out what to say. In the meantime there were a lot of problems to be faced nearer home.

   Like how to deal with Judy if St. Ann didn't come up with a husband. Like how they should face up to their mother's failing health. Like how much longer Canon Cassidy could reasonably be expected to stay in the priests' house with the title of parish priest. Or how he could go to see Aidan Ryan yet again in the jail tomorrow and try to tell him that his wife, Lilly, was not a villainous person who had sold their baby.

   And, most immediately, what was going to happen at the meeting this afternoon between the anger-filled Kitty and the tense, strained Judy.

   He sighed a heavy sigh and ran his hands through his red spiky hair until it stood up around his head like a mad punk halo.

As it happened Kitty and Judy got on perfectly fine. Eventually.

   Judy decided to offer her as a gift a hairdo at Fabian's. At first Kitty laughed a sneering laugh and said Fabian's wasn't for the likes of them. Then Judy said she was asking her to come for solidarity.

   "Just to patronize me, you mean," Kitty had scoffed.

   "Not at all. Just because Eddie treated you disgracefully it doesn't mean that Brian and I would. I haven't been back here in years and I wanted to give you a big box of chocolates, then I thought you might just think that they would be bad for the children's teeth, so I decided to get you something you wouldn't go out and buy for yourself."

   "You must be made of money." Kitty was still grudging.

   "No I'm not, but I do work very hard and I saved hard for this trip home."

   "And what brought you home eventually?" Kitty was not yet won over.

   "I want to get married, Kitty. It's as simple as that. I can't find anyone in London except married men, and I don't have to tell you what a foolish road that is to go down. You've experienced it from the other side. So I was hoping that maybe if I went for nine days to St. Ann's Well . . ." She let her voice trail away.

   "You're making fun of me—you're just having a jeer at us, you and your London ways."

   "I'm not, as it happens, but honestly, life is too short. If that's the way you want to see it, then there's nothing I can do."

   For some reason it worked. Kitty said in a tone that she hadn't used for a long time, "If the offer's still open I'd love a hairdo. That young slut Naomi that your brother has gone off with has hair like rats' tails. It would give me a great boost altogether . . ."

Father Flynn had another deputation waiting for him when he got back to the priests' house. A request for support from the other side of the increasingly great divide. A group of concerned citizens were going to have a candlelit procession through the town, campaigning for the rumored new road that would bring an end to the dangerous traffic that roared through Rossmore. This traffic had already caused numerous accidents and the death of a five-year-old. They wanted Father Flynn to march at their head.

   
Great,
he said to himself,
absolutely great, and I haven't even
answered the other lot yet.

   Then his brow cleared. Maybe this was the answer. He would say that the Church must not be seen to enter local politics. Was this the wisdom of Solomon or was it in fact the refuge of a weak man? He might never know.

   In a way he wished the whole thing were out in the open. These shadowlands of rumor and counter-rumor were very disturbing. Each day new fuel was being added to the flames of speculation. People said that big builders had been seen dining in the Rossmore Hotel. That meant that the road had been agreed upon—it was simply a matter of who would build it.

   Farmers with land adjoining the woods were giving themselves airs. The land from which they had once scraped a living might now be worth something in the end. The trick would be to sell now to some speculator. Especially if you had a few acres that might not come under the compulsory purchase order when it happened but would be highly valuable for access. It seemed that everywhere you went, you heard voices. Voices with something to say.