Heartstones (10 page)

Rory seemed to visibly bristle. ‘And if you were asking me I’d tell you that I try to give her extra time, I read with her as often as I can, we go over and over the alphabet and one day she’ll be grand and I’ll think we’re getting there and the next she’s all over the place, unable even to keep her eye on the line we’re reading.’

‘It sounds like classic dyslexia.’

‘I don’t want to put a label on the poor kid after everything she’s been through.’

‘But you can’t just ignore the situation. I did a two-day course that stressed that dyslexic children need a lot of support and understanding in the classroom; they need a teacher who doesn’t make them feel as though they’re failing and who understands their difficulties.’

‘Your difficulties seem to be understanding the difference between a half and a whole pint.’ Molly’s husband waved his glass in Phoebe’s face.

Beside him Rory stiffened. ‘Thanks for the advice; you’re certainly doing a grand job of making me feel like I’m failing.’ He raised his own glass to his lips and sank the rest of his pint quickly. ‘I’d best be heading home before I decide to jack my job in completely.’

‘I didn’t mean to criticise your teaching methods,’ said Phoebe. ‘I just think that Honey might need more help.’

‘Yes, I’ve got the message, but I’ve known Honey since she was five and, with all respect to you and your two-day course, you’ve only been here since last night.’ He picked up his jacket and shrugged it on. ‘I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.’

‘I give up,’ said Molly’s husband as Fibber called out time. ‘Half a pint will do me fine.’

Phoebe picked up Rory’s empty glass. ‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow.’

‘Great,’ said Rory. He started to walk away but then turned around. ‘Are you really Anna Brennan’s granddaughter?’

‘Yes I am.’

Rory stared at her for a few seconds. ‘You’re not much like her, are you?’ He turned again and headed for the door.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, Rory,’ Phoebe called, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t want to respond. ‘And by the way, it’s not a perm.’ The door slammed shut.

‘Have you been upsetting the locals?’ Fibber approached her with a tray of empty glasses. ‘He’s a fine man, a good teacher.’

Phoebe sighed. ‘I’m sure he is.’ She picked up a tray herself and started working her way down the bar, picking up the empty glasses and gathering the sodden bar towels.

‘You were grand tonight. Your pint-pulling was a joy to behold.’

‘Thanks,’ Phoebe said flatly. The conversation with Rory had left her feeling strangely disconcerted; she had only been trying to help. She seemed to be doing a great job of aggravating the men in Honey’s life.

‘You’ve too many glasses on that tray, girl.’ Fingers glittering with gold and diamond rings deftly gathered up a clutch of glasses and deposited them onto another tray.

Phoebe looked up to find Mrs Flannigan standing beside her in a padded housecoat. ‘And those bar towels go straight in the bucket, you’re dripping slops everywhere.’

‘Phoebe’s done a great job here tonight, Ma,’ Fibber said, producing the bucket from under the bar and dumping the towelling mats into it himself. ‘We’d have been lost without her.’

‘I’m sure you would have managed,’ said Mrs Flannigan tersely. Phoebe tried not to gape at the old lady’s ingratitude. In an effort to placate her Phoebe asked if her migraine was better.

‘It’s on the wane,’ replied Mrs Flannigan without looking at Phoebe.

‘My poor mother’s a martyr to her head,’ Fibber said cheerfully. ‘Hey, Ma, you’ll never guess what Katrina told me. Young Phoebe here is Anna Brennan’s granddaughter.’

‘You don’t need to tell me, son, I knew who she was as soon as she walked in the bar.’ Mrs Flannigan looked at Phoebe, steely eyes staring straight at her face. ‘You have a look of him.’

‘Who?’ asked Phoebe.

‘Your grandfather.’

‘Was he your doctor?’ Phoebe asked. ‘Did you know him?’

‘Dr Brennan was my doctor,’ Mrs Flannigan’s tone was brusque.

‘I never knew him,’ Phoebe persevered. ‘I wish I had. I think I must get my love of travelling from him.’ Mrs Flannigan was silent. ‘And you must have known my grandmother when she came back from Africa.’ Mrs Flannigan leant against the counter, crossed her arms across her considerable chest and stared out across the bar as if in deep thought.

‘I knew your grandmother better than you’ll ever know,’ she said eventually, though her words were so quiet that Phoebe wondered if she’d meant to speak them out loud.

‘She was a fine friend to you, wasn’t she, Ma?’ Fibber smiled benignly at his mother. ‘She was very good to you when my Da ran off with his woman from Roscommon.’

Mrs Flannigan gave a snort and muttered, ‘“Woman” is too good a word for that home-wrecking little floozy.’ She picked up a cloth and started vigorously to wipe the dark wood counter.

‘It was a tragedy your grandmother died the way she did,’ continued Fibber. ‘And your poor parents too. It shook us all. Everyone was so sad to think of two little girls left alone like that.’ Fibber poured a dish of peanuts back into a large glass jar. ‘Cars can be the very instruments of the devil himself.’

Phoebe thought about David; Fibber was right about cars, they had destroyed everyone she had ever loved. They were all silent for a while; the clink of empty glasses and the clatter of Katrina unloading the dishwasher again in the kitchen were the only sounds. Fibber crossed the room to dismantle the Karaoke microphones. Mrs Flannigan seemed to have become fixated on the counter-wiping.

‘What did you mean?’ asked Phoebe suddenly, Mrs Flannigan stopped wiping and looked at her with a puzzled expression.

‘You said you knew my grandmother better than I’d ever know.’

‘I don’t think I said that,’ the older woman replied curtly.

‘Yes, I’m sure you –ʼ

‘Fibber,’ interrupted Mrs Flannigan, shouting across the room. ‘Have you counted tonight’s takings yet?’

‘No, Ma, not yet.’

‘Well do it now and come up and tell me what we made. I’m off to my room; I can feel my head coming on again.’ She turned to Phoebe. ‘I sleep in on a Saturday. You’ll be gone when I get up?’

As Mrs Flannigan disappeared through the door Phoebe couldn’t help but feel her parting words had been an instruction rather than a question.

Chapter Nine

At last Phoebe fell into bed, her feet were throbbing from standing all night, her arms aching from pulling pints. In the darkness she lay back on the floral-patterned pillow and expected to fall asleep immediately. Though her body felt exhausted, her mind whirred with images of the residents of Carraigmore: the affable Fibber and Katrina, the inexplicably hostile Mrs Flannigan, the mousey woman in the gallery, Rory O’Brian and Honey and Honey’s angry father. Two days ago she hadn’t known them at all and now they had all made enough of an impression on her, good and bad, to keep her from sleep. She forced herself to think of David but her new acquaintances seemed to be pushing him to the back of her mind.

Beneath the scratchy nylon sheets she repeatedly turned over then back, until after what seemed like hours she reached out for the bedside lamp (a white china flower girl surmounted with an apricot pleated shade) and turned it on. Downstairs she heard a clock strike three, outside a gale was getting up, battering at her window and whining through the cracks in the panes. It was no good; she’d never get to sleep now. Throwing back her covers Phoebe slid out of bed. She needed a distraction.

Crouching, cold, and on the floor, she rummaged through her rucksack searching for
Jane Eyre
, but as her hand felt the book’s soft pages amongst the jumble of clothes she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on Charlotte Brontë’s story; there was another story she wanted to read now. She stood up and saw her coat where she had left it, casually thrown over an upholstered stool. Searching in the pocket she found the diary and climbed back into bed, leafing through it until she came to the last page she had read. She re-read it and started on the next, immediately plunged into the awfulness of her grandmother’s situation: fatherless, penniless, abandoned by her mother to live with an unfamiliar older man.

October 4th

Dr Brennan has given me tablets which I think make me sleep. I have trouble knowing day from night and dreams from reality except that sometimes I am back in the Castle, sitting in my bedroom or gazing at the sea from the battlements – then I am back in this room and I know I must have been asleep. Once I stood at the window and saw Father walking across the garden towards the ice house. I could see the shotgun at his side and I banged on the glass to make him stop, but when he turned around there was nothing, just a gaping hole where his face should have been. Then Dr Brennan shook me awake and told me I’d been screaming; he was wearing a green plaid dressing gown and I knew it must be night.

October 7th

I woke up and found Mrs Smythe’s daughter Della in my room this afternoon. She was playing with Razzle, tickling his stomach and making him stand up and beg for bits of bacon. She’s a pretty girl, small and fair, with a figure much more developed than my own – though I would only put her age at around fifteen. When she saw that I was awake she offered me an iced caramel from a paper bag, and for the first time in days I felt hungry. I ate one and it stuck to my teeth but its sweetness was a comfort. Della showed me a tiny pearly shell that she had found on the beach and then she asked if she could brush my hair. I let her, and it felt so nice that I began to cry and she put her arms around me and soothed me as if I were much younger than her. Mrs Smythe came in and scolded her for letting a sponge cake in the oven burn.

October 8th

I cannot think what I should do; I cannot think at all, my mind is full of fog.

October 9th

Shall I try to leave? I could walk out any time, I don’t think Dr Brennan would try to stop me, he hasn’t mentioned marriage and now I wonder if I’ve been mistaken. Maybe Mother left me with him because he is a doctor and I am as unbalanced as Father and need professional looking after. Am I going mad? I’m certainly confused and I can’t make plans that make any sense. I thought of going to London; an English woman once came up to me at the Dublin Horse Show, she said I had the looks to be a fashion mannequin. She said she knew Norman Hartnell and would get me an interview – Mother pulled me away before she could give me her name: ‘Only common girls are mannequins’. I have a vague idea to go to Dublin and get a job in a department store but I have no money for the train.

October 10th

Dr Brennan had a letter from Mother today; he read it out to me at breakfast. The weather in Cheltenham has been beautiful, the trees much prettier colours than they ever turn in Carraigmore. Mother and Aunt Margaret have been to London to see the new Dior collection. They had tea in Fortnum’s and Aunt Margaret had a fitting for a winter coat. Mother said she saw a lot of bombsites from the train and hopes that I am well. She also sent a cutting from the London Evening Standard of Cousin Elizabeth at the Queen Charlotte Ball; underneath she had written ‘She looked like a princess’. I thought she looked like a horse.

October 14th

I am becoming used to the routine now. Every evening Dr Brennan and I eat dinner in the dining room where a stuffed fox in a glass case stares at me and puts me off my food. When Mrs Smyth clears the plates she always asks if my food is to be wasted, and I nod and feel like a small child reprimanded in the nursery for not eating tea.

October 15th

Tonight, after Mrs Smythe had cleared the plates, Dr. Brennan cleared his throat, in that odd way he has, and said he had something very serious to discuss. I tried not to –

Phoebe turned the page only to find another of Honey’s drawings filling both sides, thick oil pastel obliterating the writing underneath. At first Phoebe thought it was an abstract pattern but as she studied it she realised it was some kind of beast, a dragon, dark green, with wings and claws and a long forked tail. It was an extraordinary creature, big, much too big; it crouched, head low, back hunched up, as though the page was its cramped cage, confining it, imprisoning it, preventing it from spreading out its wings. It gazed sad-eyed at Phoebe and she wondered what inner demons could have driven an eight-year-old girl to create such a poignant image.

Squinting in the dim light thrown by the bedside lamp, Phoebe found she could just make out the last sentence at the bottom of the page – as though Anna was struggling to keep telling her story from the past, trying to emerge through the thick layer of crayon.

I asked him why he wanted to marry me. ‘I find myself in need of a wife,’ he replied.
Phoebe turned the page,
‘and you have always seemed an agreeable girl and now you are in need of a home.’ As a proposal of marriage it hardly had the ardour of the love stories I used to read under the blankets at school and I wondered if I was supposed to be flattered by being described as ‘agreeable’.

Suddenly I found myself standing up and shouting that if he was that desperate why didn’t he just marry Mrs Smythe. He asked me to sit down and for some reason I obeyed him. Then he said, pronouncing each word slowly as though to a small child, ‘I can assure you, I have no designs on Mrs Smythe.’ He took a deep breath and explained that he was going to send a monthly allowance to my mother to help her in England, and that she has already sent a suit for me to wear at the wedding – a present from Aunt Margaret. I had to hold on to the edge of the table to stop myself from throwing plates and smashing glasses. I feel as though my mother has sold me to this man.

I tried to keep calm. I told him I would need to consider his proposal and he asked if I could think of any alternative arrangements for my future. When I didn’t answer he got up and walked around the table to come and briefly stroke the top of my head as though I was one of his spaniels.

Later in my room I felt so sleepy I lay down on the bed in all my clothes. Mrs Smythe came in and undressed me as though I were a child; she pulled my cotton nightdress over my head and tucked the bedclothes around me. She said, ‘You could do much worse than Dr Brennan,’ and I wondered whether he had talked to her about marrying me or if she had been listening at the door. Then I slept for a long time.

I am writing this early in the morning. I know it should be a Saturday but the bell is ringing for Sunday Mass and I have a feeling that I have slept through a whole day.

I sit with Razzle curled up on my lap and look out of the window. I watch a line of people walking towards the sound of the bells and I realise that I have no choice. Dr Brennan is not a bad man, he was kind when I had measles, but he is not the sort of man I ever would have wanted as my husband. I am trapped, as trapped as the dead fox in the dining room.

October 25th

It is done.

We went to St. Michael’s today and the Reverend Watkins married us.

The suit was hideous, cream crepe and shapeless. The skirt slipped down on my hips but Mrs Smythe put a safety pin at the waist to keep it up. The suit came with a little pill-box hat with a spray of flowers and a netted veil, obviously Mother’s choice. It does not suit me at all, but I don’t care one bit. As we left for the church Della came running down the path with a bunch of chrysanthemums for me to carry, and then Dr Brennan took my arm and we set off down the High Street as though we were simply going for a stroll in the autumn sunshine.

As we passed, people stopped and took off their hats and wished us well, and I wished the street would swallow me up and I could disappear. I tried not to meet their eyes but I could see the pity in them for the girl who used to be from the Castle, the girl whose father stole money and then shot himself, and whose family abandoned her, as well as respect for the good doctor who is so kind as to take her on.

I realised that though I have lived here all my life I don’t know most of the people in the village. I recognise some faces but we did not mix with them, we had our own set – our own friends – we did not need to mix with the locals – though none of those ‘old friends’ were at Father’s funeral and none of them would want anything to do with me now.

When we reached St Michael’s Reverend Watkins was waiting with his wife. The last time I saw Mrs Watkins it was at the parish tea party held in the Castle garden in July when Mother had drifted about in a new dress from Paris and the good ladies of the Church of Ireland complimented her on the roses and Mrs Reilly’s Victoria Sponge.

Mr Watkins and his wife both looked awkward as they ushered us inside the empty church. I hardly remember the ceremony; Mrs Watkins was one witness and Mr Nuttall the solicitor the other. At the end Dr Brennan’s lips brushed mine and they felt dry. I tried very hard not to cry.

When we got back to the house Mrs Smythe had laid out tea. We sat in the drawing room while Della served us meat paste sandwiches and rock cakes on lace doilies. We drank sweet sherry (which I hate) and talked about the weather.

Later Mrs Watkins took me to one side and asked me if my mother had explained things to me about being a wife, and when I said she had Mrs Watkins said, ‘Very good,’ and went to find her husband to tell him it was time to go. I knew what she had meant, and of course Mother has never explained anything to me at all, but there were always girls at school who knew, and I have a sort of an idea about what will happen though I shudder at the thought.

After dinner Dr Brennan told me that I must learn to call him Gordon.

I keep touching the thin gold band he pushed onto my finger; it feels uncomfortable.

I assume that he will visit me here, in this room, tonight. I am sitting, writing in bed, waiting with Razzle curled up by my feet. I don’t know if I’m shivering with cold or fear.

Phoebe closed the book, that entry had been on the very last page, written on the inside of the hardback cover. Anna had kept writing as far as she possibly could until there was nowhere else to go. Now Phoebe would never know what happened on her grandmother’s wedding night – maybe she didn’t want to know.

She thought about Anna, the beautiful, confident, middle-aged woman who had always talked of her husband with such affection. Nothing seemed to fit.

All Phoebe knew about her grandfather was that he had done wonderful work in Nigeria, establishing hospitals and clinics in remote rural areas, helping thousands of people before he died from a severe attack of Yellow Fever. Phoebe remembered that her father’s heroic stories about their grandfather had made Nola want to become a doctor herself.

She wondered if this Gordon Brennan in the diary and the man her grandmother had been married to for over twenty years could be the same. She wished she could talk to Nola about it; ask her if she remembered anything else about their grandfather. Phoebe wriggled down under the covers for warmth, the floral patterns on the walls danced around her in the pale orange gloom.

Maybe she would go home tomorrow, try to sort things out with Nola, tell her what she’d found out about Anna and Gordon. Surely Nola would forgive her if she realised how much Phoebe had really loved David. After all she and Nola were sisters; Nola would always put that first wouldn’t she? Phoebe’s eyes felt heavy and started to close. Placing the diary on the bedside table she switched off the light and finally slept.