Devil's Mountain (9 page)

Bobby smiled as I served him his plate. “What did I do to deserve this?”

I kissed the top of his head before I took my seat. “You work hard, sweetheart, and deserve this more often.”

He took my hand. “Caro, I know you’re busy with Aidan. I don’t mind Indian takeout.”

“Tonight I’m treating you to your Irish soul food. I even used Mary’s secret recipe for the gravy.”

He cut a large piece and ate it. “Mmm, heaven.”

His wonderful black silky hair shone in the candlelight, its few silver strands reflecting the light. His eyes glowed with contentment. I’d been caught up caring for Aidan, lost in the rhythms of new motherhood. While I hadn’t exactly ignored my husband, I hadn’t given him my full attention in some time. We had occasional quickies on a Saturday morning before Aidan woke, or sometimes midweek before we collapsed in exhaustion. I think it was lack of sex, hot and heavy sex like we’d had on the Mountain, that led to my dreams during the acupuncture session.

I poured us both more red wine and soon we finished the meal and the bottle. Bobby updated me on his latest office coup, his expected promotion and the stress of moving from the midtown office to the firm’s new space at the Trade Center. I smiled, not exactly following everything, but enjoying the sound of my husband’s voice.

I took his hand and led him to our bedroom. Since I’d had Aidan, I hadn’t allowed Bobby to see me fully naked without the lights off. Tonight I wanted him to see every inch of me. I stripped for him and stood naked before him. I closed my eyes and tried to recapture that feeling I had in the dream, of being lush and ripe. Of being beautiful. I opened my eyes, and Bobby with his dark hair and green eyes was enough like my dream man, I was able to lose myself again in my forest fantasy. I placed his hands on my full breasts. He caressed them, gently. Carefully. But I didn’t want him to be careful. I wanted him to take me. To hurt me.

I pushed him onto our king size bed, and like the dream man, I began to explore his body with my tongue, from his toes, to his thighs and above. Bobby moaned when I sank my teeth into the sensitive flesh of his inner thigh.

I climbed his body, forcing my nipple into his mouth. He kissed and then sucked my swollen nipples. “Harder,” I commanded him. “Bite me. Hurt me.”

Bobby opened his eyes and looked at me uncertainly.

“Do it,” I said in a voice not quite my own.

His teeth grazed my nipple, and while he didn’t hurt me the way my dream man had and I wanted, it was enough to rekindle the fire that burned through me this afternoon. I lowered myself onto him and rocked back and forth, willing my orgasm to break forth. Bobby, unused to me being the aggressor and taking my own pleasure, soon came, well before I had found my own crest. Well before I was fully satisfied.

Later, as he snored beside me and I was on the edge of sleep, I found myself back in the forest, in the arms of my dream man.

Chapter 10

Mary

My shirt was damp with sweat as I weeded the flower beds. With the heavy rains last week and this week’s fine weather the beds were overrun. Busy. Nurse Byrnes at the home said to keep busy. Not let my mind wander. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop and all that.

In the six months since I’d returned to the Mountain, I’d pruned the old garden within an inch of its life. I’d organized the presses, cleared every storage space, scoured the linoleum until it shone. I baked bread with Bridget Griffin, attended Mass twice a week, went for long brisk walks and took my tablets three times a day. I’d done everything Nursey told me. And she was right, my busy hands seemed to have warded Him off. But for how long?

The district doctor who’d met me once a fortnight at the home said if I took my pills then the voices, the visions, the hallucinations would all stop.
Slanaitheoir
would disappear and be no more than a bad dream. Maybe he was right. Maybe. Then again, he wasn’t from around here.

Nurse Byrnes’s mother was a Murphy. Her great-grandmother a Griffin. She didn’t tell me I was hallucinating
Slanaitheoir
, that I was crazy. She was gentle with me, as those who share the blood often are, and comforted me the best she could. I think she knew gardening and Mass and taking pills would only ward off
Slanaitheoir
for so long. The best it would do was buy me some time. And that it had.

Ever since my mother told me my fate, I hadn’t gone more than a few days without hearing from
Slanaitheoir
, either as a voice within my head or as a physical visitation. But not once did He come to the home. I’d neither seen nor felt Him since I’d returned.

Was it the pills that kept Him away, or had He decided to focus His energies on another?

I knew He hadn’t bothered Orla, and there were no other women left from our line, my younger brothers having only produced sons. Perhaps, as I often prayed, He’d decided to remain in the bowels of the earth and stay with His own people, leaving me and the other five families to our fate. Without the curse of His “love.”

The pills. Perhaps they kept
Slanaitheoir
from me. But they also dulled my other gifts.

I’d lost my gift of visions, of fortunetelling, at a time when I needed it most. I needed to know how to protect my son.

Five days before, I’d stopped taking my pills.

My senses no longer blunted, the world came alive for me again. The colors were brighter, the song of the birds sweeter. No longer did I stumble around the world like a blind man. I knew, at least, when small things would happen. In time, when I was stronger, I could return to Bobby and attempt to see his future. To protect him. Save him.

For now I had at least enough sense to expect a visitor in the next hour and knew I should prepare for them. I returned my gardening tools to the shed and went inside where I bathed and changed into a flowery summer dress from Brown Thomas, a birthday gift from Orla. I cut thick slices of bread, made tea and arranged on a tray everything but the second cup for my visitor. I didn’t want to tip my hand. I carried the tray into the garden along with a paperback. I wanted my visitor, whoever he was, to see me as relaxed and serene. As sane.

Ten minutes later I heard the crunch of the gravel, the slam of a car door. I looked to the gate, expecting to see Orla or maybe one of my brothers. But it was Paul. My love.

He’d gained a few pounds since Bobby’s wedding and his hair, which had been steel gray since before he was forty, had turned white at the front. But his shoulders were still broad, eyes still kind. Despite everything, he was still my husband.

My heart ached, seeing him again, but I couldn’t let him know how much he affected me.

I carefully arranged my expression into a detached smile. “Paul, what a surprise.”

He smiled, and in a few steps his long legs covered the length of the garden. His strong arms enveloped me in an embrace. “You’re happy to see me? I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome.”

Blood pounded in my ears. It was all I could do not to run my hand through his thick steel curls, but I chastely kissed his cheek and disentangled myself from his sweet, sweet embrace. I could not encourage him, couldn’t let him guess what was in my heart, what had always been in there.

“Of course, Paul. It is nice to see you. Is Fiona in the car?”

A shadow fell over his face and stole his smile. “Ah, no, she’s not. She’s at a training course in Belfast for the week.”

“And she knows you’re here?”

“She knows I’m in Kerry. I have client meetings in Killarney. I, uh, I hadn’t planned on coming, to tell you the truth, but my car seemed to drive itself here.”

Despite myself, I touched his cheek. “You’re very welcome. Why don’t you go inside and clean up. I’ll make us more tea.”

His shoulders relaxed and his smile was warm. Grateful. He linked my arm as we walked into the house together. As we’d done a hundred times before.

As I filled the kettle, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a cat jump up onto the garden gate. I flinched. Not now, please God, not now. But it wasn’t Him. It was only Seamus’s cat.

Without warning, I was flooded with memories of that day, that horrible day when
Slanaitheoir
, in the form of a common house cat, accosted me in my front garden in Rathfarnham.

“My love,” He’d purred, “why are you still here?”

I’d looked around, making sure none of the neighbors could see me, and whispered,

“Because this is my home. I’m not leaving it.”

“Will you leave it when it’s empty?” The cat wrapped His body around my ankles.

“When there’s no one left but you?”

I’d kicked Him away from me, not knowing then as I do now the respect due
Slanaitheoir
in any form He chooses or the consequences of not showing Him such deference.

“He’s not leaving me. That girl--that
girl
from his office is your doing. His love for me is strong. Stronger than anything you can break.”

“Perhaps.”

I’d heard the roar of a car, unusual in our quiet estate. The thump, the thump of Paul’s body as the car made contact, as it hit him down the road from our house, shook me to the core.

That horrible sound still haunted me in my dreams.

The cat disappeared and I ran to Paul. My heart stopped when I saw him, crumpled and bloody on the side of the road. But he was fine, aside from a slight concussion and a few cuts and scrapes. After we returned from the hospital I disregarded my conversation with the cat and chalked it up to nerves. Too much coffee. The menopause.

But when later that week Orla slipped and broke her arm and days afterward my Bobby, my beautiful Bobby, was jumped and beaten within an inch of his life, watch and wallet stolen, then I knew. These weren’t coincidences.

Wearing my best dress and new makeup, I’d marched into the pub where
Slanaitheoir
had said they would be. I’d acted shocked, and to tell the truth, although I had known all along what was going on, I was shocked to see my beloved’s arms around fat plain Fiona, his sweet soft lips on her filthy mouth. It wasn’t hard to let the tears flow from my eyes when I told them I was leaving, that scut Fiona, she was welcome to him. To the love of my life.

But he’d come back to me now and, for a little while at least, he was mine. All mine.

Please God, let
Slanaitheoir
stay away from my cottage for at least a few hours more.

Paul joined me in the kitchen and carried the teapot out to the garden. I carried the cups and saucers. The sun was bright and all my hard work on the garden had paid off. Green lush palms shaded the small clearing where I had set up the table and chairs. The lilacs and primroses burst with fragrance. And of course, the sweet foxglove and angelica flowers which ringed the garden protected it, and me, from Him.

“Did you do all this?” Paul said as he settled into his chair.

I poured him tea, and without thinking added just the right amount of milk the way he liked it. “Seamus and his son helped me with the heavy work, and of course took care of things while I was, uh, away. But the rest is my doing.”

His warm hand covered mine. “I can tell. You’re in every corner of it.”

I took my hand away and poured him more tea. “And your garden?” I asked, my voice nearly breaking with forced cheer. “Did the old oak tree ever recover?”

“No. It’s dead. We lost all but the most hearty plants after you left. I tried replacing them, but you know me,” he said, raising his hands to me, “I’ve two black thumbs. I think the garden misses you.”

I flashed to a summer day when the children were young and Paul was full of good-natured complaints as I forced him to pull weeds. I remembered kissing him on his sweaty neck and promising him a reward, later, for all his exertions. But I couldn’t let him see now how much I missed our old house and garden, our life. With a bright, fake smile, I offered him a slice of brown bread and asked him about work, the types of things he would talk about to an acquaintance, a near-stranger.

Despite my efforts, the conversation always came round to the personal, the familiar. He helped me bring the tea things into the kitchen. When his hand brushed mine at the sink and then found its way to the back of my neck, I couldn’t say I was surprised. And when his lips, sweet, familiar, sought out mine, God forgive me, I responded.

The old bed where I’d spent so many lonely nights creaked beneath us. His strong sure hands covered my body and touched me in all the right places. And mine too, as if by their own accord, stroked him at his favorite pace. My body quivered at his touch, because only pleasure and love would result, not pain. Not physical pain, anyway.

After hours spent in each others’ arms, we were ravenous with hunger. We attacked a plate of cold chicken in the fridge, and were so starved, we ate it standing up.

Paul wrapped his arms around me. “I was a fool, Mary. A fool to hurt you, to leave you.”

I pushed him away. “Hush now, let’s not talk about all that and ruin the time we have.

You’ll be off to Dublin in the morning and I’ll stay here on the Mountain where I belong.”

“How can I go back without you? After this?”

My heart breaking, I gave him a carefree smile. “Nothing’s changed, pet. Not really. And sure, we’ll always have our children and our four grandchildren.”

“Five.”

“Five? Surely Orla isn’t pregnant again? She just had the last one.”

“Not Orla. Caroline. Orla told me last night. We’re not supposed to know yet, they want to keep it quiet until she’s further along, but you know Bobby. He can’t keep anything from Orla.

Isn’t that wonderful?”

I sank into the kitchen chair. “No. No, it can’t be.”

He rubbed my shoulders. “I know the two of them had trouble before, but sure, didn’t they have a bonny little lad? The next one will be fine too, love, don’t worry.”

I couldn’t stop the tears. And the sobs. And the moans. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be.

Paul was alarmed and his face wore
the look
. “Where are your tablets, Mary?”

“I don’t need my tablets,” I choked out. “I’m fine.”