Where Old Ghosts Meet (28 page)

“A few nice junks now and she'll be best kind.” Mary Anne looked towards Peg and inclined her head towards the kitchen. Without a word, Peg hurried out of the bedroom and returned with an armful of logs and set them by the fire.

Mary Anne piled on the wood and, satisfied that the fire was going well, gave Peg the okay to close the window and then went to the bed. “There's a change needed again.” She was gone to the kitchen before Peg could object.

Nobody cleaned and washed him but her. But like it or not, the job was underway and somehow Peg didn't have the will to stop it. Something had gone from her in those last few minutes, like her energy had suddenly drained away, running backwards through her veins and out into the floor beneath her feet. But it was more than that. It was a kind of resignation, a feeling deep down that it was over, that she could no longer protect him.

They worked together then, washing, cleaning, intent on his comfort. The fire blazed, the smell of fresh linen sweet in the room. His eyes were closed and he looked peaceful. When they had banked up the pillows and settled him comfortably, Mary Anne turned to Peg. “You need a cup of tea, girl. Now build up the fire and come in the kitchen.”

Peg watched Mary Anne leave the room, the soiled sheets in her arms. It was all right, she decided, settling a junk on the blazing fire. It was just business that needed doing.

“I believe he has a like to die and it won't be too long,” Mary Anne said gently over tea, with the assurance of someone who has witnessed the beginning and end of life on many occasions. “I'll stay and be with you while he's drawing a breath.”

Peg's heart had ceased its pounding. The hot sweet tea had settled her as it always did. “Thank you, Mary Anne, I believe you are right, but I'd rather be alone tonight, if you don't mind. I think I can manage now. Maybe you'd come by in the morning.”

Mary Anne looked at her friend. “Peg,” she began, but seemed to lose the words that were on the tip of her tongue. She tried again. “I knows how you are, you has your own ideas and you knows what you wants. I've learned that over the past few years so I'm not going to argue with you.” She tapped her mug with her fingernails, making a little tinkling sound like pennies dropping in a jar. “Time was, I thought you was a bit up on yourself, but I knows better now. You are a good, kind woman, no doubt about it, and strong too. I've wanted to tell you that, Peg, but didn't know how. So there it is. Anyway, if that's what you wants, girl, then it's fine with me.” She stood to go. “There's a nice bit of rabbit stew on the stove for your supper. Mind you eat now. You're goin' needin' your strength for what's to come. I'll see you in the mornin'.”

“That night I kept the fire going in the room and the lamp burning. Nice it was, not at all like someone was dyin'. I felt content. Can you believe that?” She cast a sideways glance at Nora. “It's true, yes, I was content. I had done the best I could by Matt and now it was time. I piled the wood high on the fire and made it blaze and roar up the chimney and I did the same in the kitchen. I'd have no more need of the junks piled up outside, no need to spare the lamp oil. I sat by his bed the whole night and I'd only stir to tend the fire or make a cup of tea. Around three o'clock I began to nod off, so to keep myself awake I had the idea that maybe I could read to him, you know like we used do together nights.”

“What a lovely idea, Peg.” Nora, to her surprise, was feeling quite emotional. “What did you read?”

“He had given me a little book of poems one time. He got it to Dicks and Company in St. John's. It was a collection of sonnets by different poets, all decorated inside with delicate, pale coloured vines and wildflowers. It was there by my bed when I got back from the hospital. That's where I still keep it. That was what I decided to read to him.” She began to fidget. “I thought it was a lovely idea too at the time, but once I started, it seemed to kind of … put me over the edge and suddenly made me realize what was happening: this was the end. I was struggling, the beautiful words touching a sore spot inside of me when the next thing, my God in heaven, didn't he rise up from in the bed and call out clear as a bell, ‘Peg' and then fell back on the pillows and was gone.”

Peg looked across at Nora. “He called my name,” she said simply.

24

The
doorbell jangled. Nora stood on the doorstep of the presbytery, uncertain, wishing now that she had declined the priest's invitation to come by again. She wanted to be off on the water with Pat.

The door opened. “Back again?” the housekeeper's voice sang out, cutting off Nora's planned opener. “Father is in the parlour waiting for you.” She jerked her head in the direction of the door on the left.

“Thank you.” Nora strode past into the hall, stood by the parlour door and waited for the housekeeper to show her in. She nodded her head in thanks and walked purposefully into the room. In her mind, the old priest had taken on the role of an adversary, but now as she entered the hot stuffy room, she saw an old man struggling to get to his feet to greet her.

“Please,” she murmured, indicating that he should stay seated, and quickly took the chair across from him as she had done the day before. The housekeeper disappeared and the door closed quietly. Nora listened for the retreat of footsteps but heard nothing. There would be no tea today and Nora was glad.

“Lovely day today. You've had a fine spell of weather. Mary tells me you even managed to get to the garden party.”

“Yes, I did but I didn't see her there. It's been a great visit.”

“You have come all this way,Miss Molloy, to find out about your grandfather, and I've been thinking that maybe I could have been more helpful yesterday. However, you know how it is. One has to be so careful, especially if one is a priest.”

Over the rim of his heavy glasses, the pale watery eyes looked earnest.

“What is it you would like to know? I may be able to fill in some of the gaps for you.”The glasses slipped forward as he dipped his head still more to observe his visitor.

It was a game, Nora decided, a continuous game of cat and mouse, of dodging in and out of hiding places, showing yourself briefly, then taking off again to yet another hiding spot. She turned away. Was he just a lonely old man with neither chit nor child to warm his old age, someone who wanted to keep his visitor here as long as possible for the chat? Or was he a cunning old fox, looking to find out what she had learned, smart enough to know what he wanted and cute enough to get it? Why can't he just say what he has to say and let her be gone? It was her turn and he was waiting.

“I have spoken with a lot of people who knew him, including yourself, and I think have learned most of what there is to be learned about his life here, unless of course you have something more to add. I know there are circumstances but–”

“Do you know that he betrayed his father, not intentionally of course, but, let us say, inadvertently caused his death?”

Nora straightened, became alert like an animal sensing danger. “What do you mean?”

“When he was a small boy, only five or six years old, I believe, his father Joseph Molloy got himself in a bit of trouble. He was a fine man by all accounts, literate, a leader, active within the Fenian Movement in the fight for independence.” His eyes searched her startled eyes for a look that might indicate that he should continue.

“Yes. I mean, no.” She was confused, couldn't think what to say.

“It was the time of The Land League in Ireland, late 1800s. It seems Matt's father was right in there, with the great leader at the time, Charles Stuart Parnell, and his followers. There was an important rent agreement in place, between tenants and landlords. As I recall, it was called The Land Act. Rents were controlled, the amount being worked out in accordance with the value of the crops produced. This agreement was to put an end to the terrible repression and cruelty associated with evictions.”

He leaned back in his chair and tapped his lips with his steepled fingers. “That was fine while the crops were good but when things turned bad the old problem sprung up again. The people couldn't pay their rents and the threat of evictions loomed again. Well, it seems that at that time Joseph Molloy led the fight in his area to restore justice. It turned out to be a bitter and violent time. The upshot of it was that a landlord in the area was murdered and his house torched one night. They came looking for Joseph Molloy the next day.”

“They're here,” he said to his wife as he walked into the kitchen. “You'll leave me to do the talking.” Then he went straight to the fireplace, reached into the thatch in the corner and withdrew a gun. In one quick movement he lifted the lid off the kettle, where it hung above the fire, dropped it into the steaming water and replaced the lid. Then he turned to the boy. “Shsh … You hear me, Matt, not a word.” He raised his finger to his lips. “Now go to your mother, there's a good ladeen.” He brought his finger to his lips again, making a soft shshing sound, and winked reassuringly at the boy. He was stoking the fire when they kicked open the door.

They watched, petrified, as their kitchen was torn apart. Frustrated and angry, the intruders turned on Joseph Molloy. The first kick behind his knee brought him down. The next was to the side of his head and everything began to swim.

“The back room, turn it out.”

The child ran to his mother, grabbing her around the leg, peeping terrified from behind her skirts. The kettle began to boil, steam driving the lid to an urgent rat tat tat. The lid bounced and hopped madly, demanding attention. In a flash the boy broke away from his mother and ran to stand with his back to the rattling kettle in his childish attempt to help.

“So, what is our little man hiding?” Coarse cloth brushed his face as he was shoved aside.

The old priest moved uncomfortably in his chair. “They took the father away that day and that was the last they saw of him alive. Later that night, his body was taken from the side of a ditch, a bullet through his head.”

Nora stared at the priest. How could he know all this? If Matt had told anyone of his ordeal it would have been Peg. She was certain. Could Peg have known and not told her?

The sunlight struggled to penetrate the heavy lace on the windows. She thought how nice it would be to walk over into the spacious bay of the window and draw back the curtains, watch the excitement as the light danced and played with the dust motes, and then open the window wide to the fresh air and the living noise of the town. She fell back against the hard upright chair, seeing in her mind the tiny kitchen, the big open hearth with its smoky black fire irons and the fat-bellied kettle, flames to its bottom, holding within the fate of a family.

Betrayed! She sat up alarmed. Was that the word the priest had used? Betrayed. He was talking about a child. “Who told you this?” Her voice was razor thin.

The priest didn't move and for a moment she thought he hadn't heard. Then, he shifted slightly, pulled himself upwards and gradually settled back into the same position. “My dear child.” He adjusted the glasses on his nose. “As a priest of God, I have an obligation to my parishioners. When we place someone in a position of trust, they have to be of exceptional moral character. We have to run a check and it was no different with Mr. Molloy.” He cleared his throat. “I have connections in Ireland, from my days over there in the seminary, so I was in a position to put out a few discreet feelers. It's no trouble to find what you are looking for when you know where to look.” He peered at her. How neatly he had tied up the package to suit his own plans.

“Father O'Reilly.” She held his gaze. “Did he know that you had delved into his past, that you had checked him out?”

He dismissed her query, quite obviously sure of the righteousness of his action. “No, no point to that,” he said. “It was not necessary to disclose that.”

There was no embarrassment in that matter-of-fact look, no discomfort. His two big inward-pointing feet lay motionless on the worn rug. They seemed ridiculously large today, cumbersome and awkward, incapable of dancing. It occurred to her that he almost certainly knew something of her grandmother.

“Do you, by any chance, know what became of my grandmother, his wife?”

“Yes.” He stretched the word out as if reluctant to continue and then took a deep breath. “During the Troubles in the twenties when the Black and Tans were about the country terrorizing innocent people, they set upon the poor woman one night and burnt the roof from over her head for no reason, it seems, other than that she was a bit of a recluse and they decided she had something to hide. She lost everything that night. The boy, your father, was with her.”

Nora's head nodded in agreement.

“I'm told she was never the same after that. There was nowhere for her to go but back to her brother's place or the County Home. She went to her brother. It seems from then on the poor soul cried day and night. One day she took a shovel to the house and smashed every window and then started on the inside; anything that was breakable, she destroyed. She was taken off to the mental hospital and never came back. She died there, I'm afraid.”

“And my father, her son?” Nora could barely get the words out.

“He was away at school when she was taken away. He never came back to the uncle's house. He stayed on at the school during the holidays. There were always the few youngsters who had nowhere to go. Then he joined the seminary, but of course, like his father, he left before ordination. But, my dear, I want to tell you this and I know it to be a fact: your father visited his mother once a month at the hospital until the day she died.”

Nora pushed her fist into her stomach to suppress a feeling of nausea. The space felt hollowed out, sour and barren. She needed to get back to her car. “I must go.” She pushed herself to her feet. The sudden movement made her feel light-headed.