The Friday Tree (15 page)

“How’s the young man? Been in the wars, I hear?” he said.

“Oh, he’ll live,” said her father.

“A bad business, all the same,” said the priest.

“Yes,” said her father, “but, still, it could have been worse.”

“Times are dangerous still, no matter what anybody says,” said the priest, just like Mr Doughty, just like Mr Steele.

Why did everybody have to keep saying that?

They shook their heads, then shook hands.

“We can only pray,” said the priest. “Prayer moves
mountains.”

That was a new and interesting thought but, before she had time to consider it, to Brigid’s surprise, the priest put out his hand, a wide hand bigger than her father’s, and placed it hard on the top of her head. It hurt in her head and her neck, but she did not say. She would not remember the time when her head hurt.

“We’ll not make a Redemptorist out of this one. Still, I’m sure she’s a good girl, and a big help to her mammy.”

Her father pulled her close to him: “She’s the best girl,” he said, and Brigid knew she was forgiven.

Smiling her goodbyes to the priest, suddenly her friend, she caught out of the side of her eye a glimpse of a shape she knew. It was just a shape, and too far away for her to be sure, but it was so like Isobel that, in spite of herself, Brigid felt a pang. Then the figure turned round, and she was sure. Under that pink hat was Isobel’s face. She was standing beside a young man, and their heads were together.

“Daddy!” she said. “Look! There’s Isobel. She must be back from her holidays. Can we drive her home?”

To her surprise, he did not look round. “You must be mistaken, Brigid,” he said. “How could that be Isobel? And, in any case, I had an idea we might go somewhere – and it’s not in the direction of home.”

“Oh, where, Daddy?” asked Brigid, all thought of Isobel falling from her head. Perhaps it was unkind of her not to want to go home, but it was sad and lonely there at the moment, and Brigid did not want to be sad, or lonely. She much preferred to go somewhere and be happy.

“Well, for a start, after that long morning, I thought you might like an ice cream.”

Brigid closed her eyes. “Oh, Daddy,” she said and, already tasting in her mind the bliss of that cold delicious shock, she jumped up and down at the side of the car until he opened the door. She climbed in, pulling off the hat with grim pleasure, and tossed it into the back seat.

And, to her joy, her father kept his word. They did not turn for home, but swung towards town, past all the little shops, quiet for Sunday, and her father parked in the bombed-out car park. Brigid was too happy to think of the sad child’s bedroom. If she did not look at it, it was not there. He walked her into the Continental Café, the only place in all the town that was open, and he bought her a large cone, the answer to her prayers. They sat in a red booth, and he drank coffee, its dark burnt smell carrying over the ice cream. She ran her tongue round the creamy loveliness, watching him. She saw him happy, drinking a very little cup of coffee and, for a small contented time, they sat quietly together.

Then, Brigid said: “Daddy, where is Dover
Street?”

He inclined his head a little to the side: “Just up there, a little way up the road. We passed it on the way down. Why do you ask?” He looked at her, but his face held no expression she could read.

“Just the name,” she said, carefully. “I just like the name.”

“I doubt your brother does,” he replied.

“Oh, no,” Brigid heard herself say, too late to stop it, “he does.”

“How do you know that?” said her father, in surprise.

She could smell his coffee-breath, and her ice cream was melting.

“He told me,” she said.

“Did he?”

“Yes,” said Brigid. “And he said we are all children of other lands, but I don’t know what he meant.”

Her father looked away, then down at his hands. “I think I know what he meant.”

Brigid’s hopes rose. “Well, Daddy, will you tell . . .”

Then she stopped. The door had opened, the mist of the warmth inside dispersing to show two figures. One was the housekeeper from next door and, at her side, reluctant, truculent, dark hair tumbling, breathing hard as if he had been running, stood Ned Silver. If her father was surprised, he did not show it. He rose to his feet, and invited them to join them.

Ned slid in beside her, and, to her surprise, Brigid heard her father say: “This is a coincidence! Mrs Mulvey, with your permission, I’d like to take your young charge with us on a little outing I’m planning for my daughter. It would be nice for her to have company, when her brother’s not well. Would you allow him to go with us?”

Mrs Mulvey lifted a hand to her brow. “Mr Arthur,” she said, “at this moment, I’d give him away with a packet of cornflakes. He has come home from school a little . . . shall we say, a little early. His father, I’m sure you know, is not at home, and I am finding this young man . . .”

Here, Ned turned and looked straight at her, and Brigid could not help noticing how blue his eyes were, deep like the sea, and cold as ice.

Mrs Mulvey checked herself. “He needs interesting things to do until he goes back to . . . back to school.”

Ned snorted. It was a new noise to Brigid, and she resolved to try it as soon as she could.

“Perfect,” said her father. “Then we can have a proper trip to the country, and Mrs Mulvey can have a rest. How will that do for a surprise, Brídín?”

Before she could respond, he rose and went to the counter, holding up his hand to get the attention of the waitress.

Mrs Mulvey took her handbag, said, “No, Mr Arthur, please, let me,” and propelled herself towards the counter to stand beside him.

Brigid, suddenly unprotected, was almost too taken aback to speak. She swallowed, and tried to think what was not right about this, but she could not. Her mind was a muddle. She rather wanted to go home, now that she had had her ice cream, but she also wanted the surprise of . . . a surprise.

Then, Ned dug his sharp elbow in her ribs. “Mulvey took me to the monastery,” he said, and he snorted again. It really was an impressive noise.

“Me, too,” said Brigid. “Don’t poke me.”

“Yes, but you’re a Catholic. I’m not. There’ll be hell to pay when my father finds out. I wasn’t poking you. ”

“Ned, you’re not allowed to say –”

“Oh, shut up, Brigid. I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

“In the car.”

“What about? Tell me?”

“For a start, about your Isobel.”

“I thought I saw her at the monastery!”

“I know,” said Ned. “You did. Me too. But that’s not all.”

“What, Ned, what?”

“In the car,” said Ned and, smiling in such a way that for a moment his eyes looked warm, and soft, he took the ice cream Brigid’s father handed him.

Chapter 10: Isle Lecale

Still uneasy, Brigid found herself in the back of the car with Ned Silver, heading out of town past the gasworks, through the markets, all shut down for Sunday. The town might be asleep, but she was not, and Ned Silver was to tell her something she wanted to hear. Yet, to her annoyance, as soon as Ned felt the motion of the car, he lay back and closed his eyes.

“Ned,” she said, elbowing him as he folded, catlike, into the seat, “what were you going to tell me?”

Ned shifted, languidly. He opened his eyes. They were navy blue now, telling her nothing. He said: “Did I say I was going to tell you something?” He closed his eyes again, and a slow smile curved upwards from his mouth. “I wonder what it was.”

Exasperated, Brigid snorted. It was a good snort, for a first effort – but it was a mistake.

“Brigid!” said her father. “Behave yourself, or I’ll turn the car and there’ll be no visit to Granda.”

“Are we going to see Granda?” said Brigid, surprised.

“Haven’t I just said so?” replied her father, and drove on in silence.

Brigid sat back beside Ned, conscious in spite of her annoyance of his sleepy warmth. Dark buildings streamed past her, shuttered windows and empty streets. She watched the town turn into scattered houses, barren roads. Above her waved a few forlorn leaves on cold trees, and she remembered with longing the delicate dancing green of summer mornings. Then the close, tight-packed houses cleared away and there, spread out before her, rising and falling in little hills, was the countryside.

“I’ve never been in an aeroplane,” her father said suddenly, “and I don’t intend to be, but I have heard the county of Down, if you see it from the air, looks like a basket of eggs. I can’t say.”

“Yes, it does,” said Ned, unexpectedly. “I have.”

“And me,” added Brigid, not to be left out.

“Liar,” said Ned, and turned his shoulder away from her.

“What did your mama tell you about drumlins, Brigid? Do you remember?” said her father, as if Ned had not spoken.

“Ice,” said Brigid. “It left . . . a basket of eggs.”

“Fool,” muttered Ned, from the far side of the seat. “I did this in school. The ice age left them behind – sheets of ice across the land.” He yawned and, turning a little towards Brigid, opened his eyes. “Thousands of years ago. When it melted, there were drumlin hills. In France too. Even in America.”

“Well done, Ned,” said Brigid’s father. “That’s a powerful school they sent you to, isn’t it?”

Ned, eyes closed again, folded his arms and lay back in silence. Brigid looked at her father’s eyes in the mirror and saw his admiration for Ned’s knowledge. She felt, as Ned had said, a fool, yet still she was entranced by the light through the autumn branches, bright moments like happy thoughts in the time before school. She loved to see the trees marching up the hill on the road outside the town of Tonaghneave. Her father said it meant “the field of saints”, though why the saints were in a field she could not fathom, unless the saints were the people she saw in the trees, old and gnarled, young and dancing, many legs and arms in joyous movement. Sometimes one or two stood whispering together, and others waved branchy arms at them, or changed shape, playing with them, just as they came close enough to see their faces, suddenly shifting or else just standing like a tree, just standing as if that was all they did. The warm car purring, the leather seat soft and giving as a pillow, Ned’s breathing slowing beside her, Brigid let time and place subside.

It was with surprise that she found herself suddenly in the town of Downpatrick, unable at first to know why she was in the back of her father’s car, or why Ned Silver lolled sleeping beside her. His hands lay loosely clasped in his lap, and one skinned kneecap swung towards her. His legs were longer since the summer. He had long fingers, too, slender and delicate and, somehow, that was perplexing. Then Ned’s knee jerked as the car swung past the old gaol, and hit Brigid’s own knee. It was hard, and it hurt. She wished she had a pin, or a sharp pencil.

“Nearly there,” said her father, and his voice came as a shock in the humming silence. “If anyone’s awake, we’re in Isle Lecale.”

Ned opened his eyes, and shot upright as if he had never been asleep.

“But it’s not an island, is it, Mr Arthur?”

“Hello, again, Ned. I thought you two were out for the count.”

Ned’s face, eager and alive, closed up again. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, as though he were at school.

“There’s no need to be,” said Brigid’s father. “It’s a good point you make. Once it was an island, surrounded by water, and it was called Isle Lecale. It’s an old place and our family is part of it. My father courted my mother here.”

At this, Ned’s face shut down again, and he was once more dark and watchful. He sank back on the seat and stared out of the window.

Brigid’s father looked backward in the driving mirror. “You’ll see the place we lived in, Ned. It stands at the edge of the world.”

Ned said nothing, but Brigid saw him look up, and meet the eyes of her father in the mirror. In a burning, jealous moment, she felt she had no part in the outing and she hated Ned Silver. She also hated her father for bringing him. She longed for Francis, but he was far away. She was on her own here.

They made their way through Downpatrick’s hills and steep slopes, out into country again and, in the reflection of the glass she so sullenly watched, the car itself was curved and rounded like a drumlin. In spite of herself, she felt first quiet, then almost content as they turned away from Downpatrick, down into the hedges and stubble fields, past the shining stillness of the lough. They drove through a large port, smelling of fish, little boats in the harbour touching then separating, birds wheeling and crying their secret messages above in the mackerel sky. The car cruised through little coastal towns, empty now of the sounds of summer people and, as they passed beneath the trees of Port St Anne, Brigid and Ned, forgetting their quarrels, turned to each other and held their noses, united in disgust at the odour of seaweed. Brigid’s father laughed, and she forgot the seaweed. She could not remember the last time she had heard him laugh.

They pulled up in front of a dark, stone-clad house. The engine stopped, and Brigid’s mind filled with the silence of the sea. Gradually, she began to hear the off-key clinking of two masts hob-bobbing below in the waters. Beyond, she saw little islands, the drowned drumlins, and above them lonely seabirds, calling back as they flew towards a far-off windmill on a hill.