Heartstones (31 page)

‘For money?’

Mrs Flannigan gave a short laugh. ‘It might as well have been. If he had denounced him from the pulpit like he threatened, Dr Brennan would have lost his patients and his income.’ She raised her head a little and searched out Phoebe’s eyes. ‘You have to remember those were very narrow-minded times, not like now.’ Her gaze returned to the ceiling again. ‘You young people, I don’t suppose you can even imagine it. Father Ryan had us all living in fear as though he were the Lord himself, passing judgement on every little misdemeanour.’

Mrs Flannigan fell silent again, the television screen still flashed in front of them.

‘She was very beautiful, you know.’

‘Who?’ asked Phoebe.

Mrs Flannigan stopped plucking at the blanket and leaned forward just a little. ‘Anna Brennan. I used to think she had a look of Olivia de Havilland; she had that kind of serenity about her. I think Dr Brennan loved her in his way, hoped she might be able to save him and hoped that he could give her some sort of home after what had happened with her father. Dr Brennan was a kind man.’

‘But Anna was so young.’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Flannigan coughed and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Of course she couldn’t save him any more than he could keep her shut up in that dismal house. She was forever walking up and down the beach. I used to watch her; you could see that scarlet coat for miles.’

‘Did you watch her when she went walking with Michael Flynn?’

Mrs Flannigan said nothing, still staring upwards as though lost deep in recollections of the past. Phoebe glanced out of the window, torn between her anxiety for Honey and her desire to find out the truth about what had happened all those years before.

She leant forward and touched the old woman’s arm. ‘Mrs Flannigan, I know that Dr Brennan wasn’t my grandfather.’ She saw the old woman’s eyes flicker towards her and then close. ‘I know that Anna became pregnant. I know that my real grandfather was Michael Flynn. Anna and Michael’s baby was my father.’

Mrs Flannigan’s eyes remained closed. ‘You think you know all that, do you?’

Phoebe hesitated. ‘Yes, but what I can’t work out is why they didn’t go away together. Why didn’t Michael come to meet Anna like they’d planned?’

Mrs Flannigan sighed, opened her eyes and looked at Phoebe. She struggled to sit up straighter and her voice grew stronger, even loud. ‘God knows I’ve worried for every waking minute since you first walked into my pub. I knew that you’d start digging up the past, raking over things that shouldn’t matter any more. I prayed to the Holy Mother herself that you would go away and leave me in peace. When you said that you’d found her diaries, I thought that Anna Brennan had risen to torment me from her grave, to punish me for what I did to her.’

‘Why would she want to punish you?’ Phoebe asked, but Mrs Flannigan interrupted.

‘Lying in that hospital bed gave me time to work out things out. I decided that I couldn’t agonize any longer about what you did or didn’t know. I decided that the time had come to tell you what really happened, who you really are. But then I came back and you had gone and everyone’s been acting all peculiar and I haven’t seen Honey at all. Something’s not right. What’s going on?’ Mrs Flannigan stopped and took a series of deep breaths.

Phoebe put the pillow back behind her head and smoothed the blanket. ‘Nothing, Mrs Flannigan, nothing’s going on.’ She sat back down beside her, hoping that talking about the past would at least help to distract her from the present. ‘What happened between you and Anna, did you do something to upset her?’

Mrs Flannigan tried to turn around in her chair. Phoebe quickly realised that she was trying to reach a knitting bag that sat beside the sofa – a half-finished cardigan spilling from the top. Phoebe handed her the bag and Mrs Flannigan put her hand deep inside and drew out an ancient Oxo tin. She held it out to Phoebe and slumped back on the pillow. Phoebe prised the lid off and held up a key. Mrs Flannigan waved one hand towards a writing desk on the other side of the room. ‘In there; there’s a drawer inside the desk.’

Phoebe walked over to the writing desk and opened it. She pushed aside the clutter and revealed a row of four small drawers along the bottom. Three of them pulled out when Phoebe tried them, but one was locked. Phoebe turned the key and tried again; the drawer slid smoothly open to reveal a single envelope, yellowed with age, the ink on the address faded to grey.

Mrs Flannigan’s face was turned away as though she couldn’t bear to look at what Phoebe had in her hand.

‘Read it,’ she croaked.

Phoebe drew out the brittle piece of writing paper. ‘
My
Darling Anna,’
she began.

‘Not out loud,’ Mrs Flannigan cried. ‘Read it to yourself, girl. I don’t want to know what it says.’

Phoebe continued to read in silence.

Please don’t be too troubled if I tell you there has been a terrible accident; it is only so terrible because it means I will be unable to meet you at the crossroads as we had planned. I will be mended as soon as I have had a small operation, and then I am determined that it will not be too long before we leave for France.

I know I only came home to wish my parents and brothers goodbye but I found that my father’s arthritis is very bad this winter and I tried to help as best I could around the farm. Unfortunately, (and this is the part I don’t want you to worry about) I turned the tractor over in the higher field and my leg was crushed beneath the wheel – three breaks to my right fibula. I have been in hospital these last two days and the doctors think I need my leg to be set properly with an operation tomorrow morning and then I will be in here for a few days more. They promise me no ill-effects – not even a limp.

But I am afraid that France will now have to wait, maybe until the New Year.

Can you bear it? I know I am knotted up with frustration at the thought of delaying our getaway. I lie here fretting while my mother fusses and brings me fruitcake and knits me bed socks. All I want is to look into your lovely eyes and have you in my arms again. I am so angry that I misjudged the slope in the field; I have been driving that old Massey Ferguson since I was a child. My brothers have been relentless in their teasing, they say that it’s such a shame that I am too soft to be a farmer and shower me with pity and commiseration. If only they could see you; then they would be the envious ones.

I miss you terribly; you are constantly on my mind. I will be back for you as soon as I can and then we’ll be together always.

All my love,

Michael. X

PS: Will you write to me at the address I will put on the envelope? Please write as soon as you can.

Phoebe looked on the back of the envelope and saw an address for a farm in Galway. She carefully folded up the letter and sat back down beside Mrs Flannigan who still had her head turned so that Phoebe could not see her face.

‘Mrs Flannigan?’ Phoebe touched her arm again. ‘Did Anna ever see this letter?’

Mrs Flannigan’s head shifted slightly and very quietly she said, ‘No.’

Phoebe rubbed her eyes and thought of Anna waiting at the crossroads all that time, wondering where he was and why he didn’t come for her.

‘I loved him,’ Mrs Flannigan’s voice was almost inaudible. Phoebe had to lean closer to her so that she could hear. ‘I loved him just as much as Anna Brennan ever did. From the moment he first came to Carraigmore I knew I’d always love him. He looked like Errol Flynn. So handsome, nothing like the other men in Carraigmore. But then I saw him talking to Anna Brennan on the beach and I knew that I had lost him.’

‘But you took their notes, delivered them back and forth, became their willing conduit, their go-between.’

Mrs Flannigan turned to Phoebe with watery eyes. ‘They knew I couldn’t read, they could say whatever they liked, I would never know.’

‘They used you,’ said Phoebe.

‘I wanted to do it – it was all I
could
do. If I couldn’t have Michael’s love I could make myself indispensable to him, to them.’ She smiled. ‘It was like a film, better than a film, feeling I was playing some part. I knew it was wrong but I often followed them, watched their love grow and tried not to hate her for everything she had.’

‘Did you know they were going to go away together?’

‘By the late summer I knew that they were making plans.’ Mrs Flannigan was silent for a while. ‘It broke my heart, I became ill, a terrible migraine that lasted for weeks. I still tried to take their letters back and forth but there were fewer. They didn’t seem to need me any more. By the autumn I had realised two things: one, that they would soon be leaving and, two, that Anna was carrying his child.’

‘I was right then,’ Phoebe said. ‘About the baby.’

Mrs Flannigan ignored her, continuing on as though she were almost in a trance-like state of recollection. ‘He went away one day and Anna told me that he’d gone back to Galway to say goodbye to his family and then they would be leaving. She was almost glowing with excitement; she could hardly sit still long enough to finish a meal. I couldn’t bear it. When his letter came to the shop I steamed it open.’ She stopped, and pressed her hand against her chest, gulping down a series of deep breaths, her complexion turning grey, then blue. ‘I tried so hard to work out what it said,’ she gasped.

‘Are you all right?’ Phoebe asked anxiously. ‘Can I get you anything? Do you have tablets that you need to take?’

Mrs Flannigan shook her head and seemed to recover. After a few more seconds she carried on. ‘I couldn’t work out the words of course and I meant to give the letter to Anna, I really did. I put it in my cardigan pocket and would have given it to her after dinner. I went up to her room; I heard her singing, she sounded so happy. I could see through the crack in the door that she was packing. I hated her then. Why should she take him away from me, why should she be so happy when all I had to look forward to were long and empty days in Carraigmore? Even then I meant to give her the letter the next day; I’d say it had come in the afternoon post.’

‘But you didn’t give it to her?’

‘No. I watched her that evening, leaving the house with her suitcase. Then Dr Brennan brought her back and I realised the letter must have been to tell her he couldn’t meet her.’

‘You could have given her the letter at that point.’

Mrs Flannigan became silent, when she spoke again her voice trembled. ‘In the end the days passed and I never gave it to her. Other letters came from Galway and I burned them. I didn’t even open them. I just destroyed them in the wood-burner at the back of the shop. More and more kept coming; in the end there was a letter for her every day.’

‘Michael must have been desperate, wondering why Anna never got in touch. Did you not feel guilty?’

The old woman shook her head. ‘Not then, not till much, much later. When I realised Anna and Dr Brennan were going to Africa I was overjoyed, it was then that I knew I’d never give her the letter or tell her about the others that had come. Anna would be gone and when Michael came back I’d be there to comfort him. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined I would get such a chance.’

‘And did he come?’

Mrs Flannigan’s lips twitched into a brief smile, her voice grew stronger again. ‘Oh yes, he came. It was nearly spring by that time, there had been complications with his leg but he came back. And there I was waiting for him, a foolish girl of sixteen; I thought he’d realise how much I had grown up, he’d see me in a new light, realise that I was the one he’d wanted all along.

‘He came to the house, right to the house and asked for her. The new doctor had let my mother stay on to work for him, but by that time she’d already started her decline. I heard her open the door to Michael and watched from the window as she shooed him down the path. She was yelling at him that Anna and Dr Brennan had gone away and that it was none of his business where they were. By the time I got outside Michael had disappeared. I knew immediately where he would go – I remember putting on a new white blouse and lipstick, slipping out the back door and running down the lane. He was there, sitting in the boathouse, too consumed with misery even to realise that I’d come up the stairs. I sat down beside him on the bed and put my arms around him, but he shouted at me to leave him alone. He might as well have slapped me in the face. I ran back home in tears but then an idea came to me, I would go back to him with whiskey and that would help him mend his broken heart. I took a bottle of the new doctor’s Tullamore Dew, and hiding it beneath my coat returned to the boathouse and offered him a drink. By that time he was grateful for the comfort of alcohol and he let me stay and asked me questions, and God help me I sat there and told him a pack of lies. I told him that Anna and Gordon had always seemed very happy together, that I thought she’d realised that she didn’t want to leave her husband after all and when the opportunity of a job in Africa had come up Anna had been the one to encourage Gordon to apply for it. I said she had told me that she needed to get away, that she’d told me herself that Michael had become too attached to her, too clingy. He asked me if Anna had received his letters.
Oh yes
, I said,
I gave her all the ones that came
.’

Phoebe felt like a priest on the other side of the confessional, the story was pouring out now and she wondered how she could ever absolve Mrs Flannigan for the sins she had committed against her grandparents.

‘I poured myself a glass of whiskey,’ Mrs Flannigan went on. ‘I’d never drunk alcohol before, it burned my throat and made me cough but it gave me the courage to do what I did next.’

Phoebe wanted Mrs Flannigan to stop talking; she’d heard enough, she didn’t want to hear any more.

Mrs Flannigan was staring straight ahead. ‘I kissed him,’ she said. ‘I kissed him and after a while he kissed me back and I let myself believe that I really meant something to him, even though I knew that he’d had half the bottle of whiskey by then. We lay down on the bed together and I knew that what I was encouraging him to do was wrong, and at the end it was Anna’s name he called out with all the passion that I had hoped he felt for me. But afterwards, while he was sleeping, I held him and told him that I loved him and tried to believe that when he woke up he would want take me away to France instead.’