Aisling Gayle (14 page)

But Charles had found it very hard to wait until then. Some hours later, after his business was finished, he had swung the car around in the widowed seamstress’s direction, and parked for a while further along the road where she lived.

There were about ten houses, all in a row, in a street just up from the Grand Canal. Mrs Lynch was the only widow in the street, the rest being all families or elderly couples. According to what he had heard his brother-in-law say to his mother one evening. And Oliver usually got his facts straight.

Oliver had recommended Mrs Lynch to the Kearneys when Maggie needed someone to alter the dress she had bought for the wedding in America. He had told her that this young, but mature, widow-woman had been doing alterations for customers of the shop for the last two years.

And it just so happened that Charles was sent out to Mrs Lynch’s with the instructions that she had to take exactly an inch and a half off the bottom of the skirt. And an inch and a half was all she took off it. Unlike the lady in Ballygrace who had left a brand-new summer dress unwearable last year. Three inches she had cut off the expensive dress, completely ruining it and leaving Maggie without a new outfit for the Church summer dance. And leaving the Ballygrace seamstress without a name. For none of the customers in the shop would ever go near her again, by the time that Maggie Kearney had finished giving out about her ham-fisted sewing.

Mrs Lynch was now given any work that was needed doing by the Kearney family, and had also gained an admirer in Charles. Although Charles wasn’t exactly sure what the attraction actually was. Up until he had met the widow, he had never had any great interest in women as such. They were an unknown quantity to him. Even his sisters. And especially his mother.

In fact, there were times when Charles found it hard to be interested in people in general. There were very few around who could hold an intelligent conversation. Apart from discussing the necessities of life – such as the business of the shop or what he would like to have for dinner – there was little else he found worth discussing with them. Charles found the facts or the characters in his books far more interesting – and far safer and more predictable than people in the flesh.

But there was something about Mrs Lynch that had struck a chord with him. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something that had added a new dimension to his life. The
possibility that he could perhaps sit on the opposite side of the fire with another person and discuss topics such as whether Atlantis really existed or maybe how the pyramids came to be, without the benefit of modern construction methods. Or maybe even divulge to the widow his dreams of writing his own book some day. Fact or fiction? He hadn’t worked that one out yet. The possibilities were endless.

Charles would have time in the morning to discuss it all with Peenie Walshe. Bring him up to date, as it were, and seek his opinion on how he thought it was all going. He smiled now, thinking of Peenie’s reaction when he told him how Mrs Lynch had accepted the Quality Street.

That had been one of the shop assistant’s inspired ideas. Peenie had told him that women were easily got round where chocolates were concerned. It never failed to work. And in this case, Peenie had been spot-on.

Charles turned the key in the engine and smiled to himself. What with all this coming and going – his life was unusually hectic at the minute. Thank God his mother wasn’t around. She would soon have put a stop to it.

Then – just as he turned his head to check there was nothing behind him – a great bang reverberated on the bonnet of the car! The bonnet of his
father’s
car. The car he shouldn’t be driving at this hour of the night.

Charles jerked his head forward, and found himself staring face to face with the wildest-looking man he had ever seen at close range. The man was leaning across the bonnet, banging and shouting in a deranged manner. He was so angry he could almost have been described as frothing at the mouth! Like the dogs in
The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Instinctively, Charles hauled the gear-stick into reverse, and put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The car started to move backwards away from the madman.

But the madman clung on to either side of the bonnet.

Charles put the boot down further on the accelerator until the man eventually lost his grip on the slippery, shiny car bonnet and came to a half-running, half-staggering halt.

Wide-eyed with shock, Charles did a wide reverse swerve and then, shooting forward, took off up the little street with more speed than he knew the car was capable of.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph
!” he called out loud, having noticed the madman now running behind the car in his rear-view mirror.

This was like something out of an action film. A
James Bond
or something like that. What on earth was happening? And in Tullamore of all places!

Charles swerved around a corner, and in a few moments was heading out of the town. Out towards the blessed safety of the shop and home – and all the double-locks and bolts he could find to protect himself.

Chapter 11

“I’m still waiting for an answer, Charles,” Pauline Kearney said, her hands on her neat hips, clad in the new green slacks that her mother would not approve of – even for working in the shop. The tight slacks were actually a bit too good for the shop, Pauline thought herself, but you never knew who might call in unexpectedly.

Charles continued to scrub at the bonnet of his father’s car, counting the swishes of the cloth as it moved backwards and forwards over the top.

“Where did you go last night?” Pauline repeated, her voice on a higher note. “And why did you take Daddy’s car instead of the van?” Her older brother was infuriating. Trying to get information out of him was like trying to get blood out of a stone. She’d tackled him last night when he came in looking white-faced and drained, but after a few heated words, he’d stomped off to bed. Pauline was determined that come what may she was going to get the answer out of him this morning.

Charles, slightly out of breath now, came to a sudden halt. He stood back, checking if the dull mark on the bonnet had diminished any.
Yes,
he thought
, it all looked the same now. Shiny all over. God knows what that fellow had on the knees of his trousers last night, that would have left such a streak on the bonnet.

“Charles!” Pauline hissed, grabbing him by the shoulder o
f his brown overall. “Where the hell did you go last night?”

Charles pulled out of his sister’s grip and stepped back to a safe distance, jiggling the cloth about between both hands. “I was doing the deliveries,” he snapped, looking down at the ground.

“Why did you take Daddy’s car instead of the van?” she demanded. “And what took you so long? You weren’t doing deliveries for that length of time.”

“I took the car for a bit of a run . . . to keep the engine ticking over.”

“A bit of a run?” Pauline said, her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Since when have you taken to going for runs in the evenings after work?”

Charles moved to the far side of the car – to a safer distance from his sister. “The engine’s making a funny noise,” he explained, “and my father says I have to give it a few good long runs to clear the petrol tank.” Charles knew nothing about the workings of cars, but he was cute enough to know that his sister knew even less and couldn’t argue with him.

“You
promised
that you would mind Bernadette for me,” she said, her voice dropping now that she had noticed an elderly man – a regular customer – pushing a bike up the street towards them. “I was left sitting in all night like a feckin’ eejit because of you.”

“Less of the language,” Charles admonished, folding the cloth into a smooth pad. “You wouldn’t be so smart in coming out with stuff like that if my mother was around. And I know what she’d have to say about that get-up you’re wearing as well.”

“And it’s just as well for you that she’s not around,” Pauline hissed. “Out for hours, and not saying where you’ve been.”

“Grand day!” the old fellow called, leaning his bicycle on the wall of the shop.

They both turned to call a cheery greeting back, and remark on the reasonable day that it was.

He came forward to Charles. “Did you get any of them soft biscuits that the head-woman likes in yet?”

Charles lay the cloth down on the car bonnet, and held his glasses on the bridge of his nose while he thought. His eyes suddenly brightened. “Tell Peenie he’ll find them on the middle shelf on the back wall.”

“Grand, grand,” the old man said, taking his flat cap off. “She has me tormented since she got the teeth out. All she can eat is oul’ mushy stuff at the minute, and they’re the only biscuits that don’t break up in the tea.”

Pauline turned away now, trying not to laugh obviously. She pretended she was looking in the car window for something.

“Peenie will sort you out,” Charles said, lifting the cloth again and re-folding it into a more perfect square.

“He will that,” the man said, folding his cap and putting it in his pocket. “Peenie’s the boy to sort us all out.”

When the customer was safely inside, Pauline followed her brother round the side of the car – all laughter about teeth and soft biscuits forgotten. “Well?” she demanded. “What’s the story? Where did you go?”

Charles moved towards the bonnet, swiping out again with the cloth to where the muddy mark had been. “I told you,” he said testily. “I went for a bit of a run.”

Pauline sighed and folded her arms. “Rose Quinn called for me last night, and we waited and waited and eventually I had to tell her to go on ahead without me. I felt a right eejit, sitting there all dressed up and you nowhere to be seen.” She moved closer to Charles, jostling his elbow. “Rose was in a fierce huff with me and it’s all your fault. Apart from the fact she’d managed to get her father’s car for us, she didn’t know if she’d get anyone else to go out with her at such short notice.”

“Where were you supposed to be going?” Charles asked, backing out of his sister’s reach.

“To a dance in Tullamore,” Pauline said. “I told you yesterday afternoon.”

Charles shrugged. “I don’t remember
you saying you were going to any dance.”

“Well, you wouldn’t – would you?” Pauline retorted. “You had your nose stuck in a book as usual.” She surveyed him now, arms still folded. “You need to waken yourself up, Charles Kearney,” she told him. “You live in another world. Nobody can depend on you for anything. I’ve never met a fella like you in my life.”

Charles rubbed a finger over the mark, checking for any scratches he might have missed. “My mother would go haywire if she heard you were going to a dance with Rose Quinn,” he said. “You know she doesn’t like that family.”

“Mammy’s not here though – is she?” Pauline said, waving an arm around the front of the shop. “Not that you’d notice, for all the attention you pay to anybody. We could drop dead in front of you, and you’d walk straight over us.”

Charles sighed and straightened up. “Listen,” he said. “I’ll look after Bernadette tonight, if it’s any good.” It would mean missing a visit to Mrs Lynch later on to pick up the items she had mended – but that might be no harm after his encounter with that lunatic last night. Give the man a chance to sober up – or sort out whatever was going on in his deranged mind, that made him go round attacking innocent drivers. And anyway, he thought, it would be worth it to get Pauline off his back. There were times she was nearly as bad as his mother. It was a pity that it had to be Aisling who went off to America. She would have been far easier to work with in the shop.

Pauline paused. “There probably won’t be anybody going out tonight,” she said in a disgruntled tone. She knew perfectly well that there was a dance in Mullingar tonight, and if she phoned Rose and went to great rounds apologising, then maybe they would go there instead.

“Please yourself,” Charles said, wondering what Mrs Kelly had on the menu today. He checked his watch. It would be dinner-time in twenty minutes. He’d finish off the car now in a few minutes, and then he’d go in and re-arrange that shelf with packets of Bisto
and Bird’s Custard Powder that Peenie had stacked this morning. That fellow had no eye for keeping things in a straight line, and threw things up on the shelf in any old way at all.

“OK,” Pauline said, heading into the shop. “I’ll ring round and see if anybody is going out – and don’t you dare forget this time!”

Chapter 12

Pauline leaned her elbows on the deep window-ledge in her upstairs bedroom, and looked out at the showery Irish weather, imagining Aisling and her parents basking in the hot American sunshine.

She gave a little sigh, thinking that if things had been different how she might have been out there along with them, enjoying her aunt’s luxurious house and the wonderful weather. The wedding in America was just another of the occasions that she was now no longer considered suitable for.

Then, she turned her gaze towards the cot-bed in the corner of her bedroom, where her little curly-headed daughter lay sleeping – just six foot across from her own single bed. The bed she had slept in as a young schoolgirl, in the room she had shared with Aisling. The bed she thought she had left forever five years ago, when she went to England.