Kit.
“Who do you know in London?” Frankie asked as Kit posted the letter.
“Oh, just a woman I got to know. She’s been very good about writing. This seemed an interesting place to send her a card from.”
“Sure, and you don’t have to say too much on a card,” Frankie agreed.
After Clio, Frankie was a very restful friend.
He lived very peaceably in the tree house. It was a quiet place, but he liked the sound of the lake lapping below, and the call of the birds. The nun was a very reasonable woman. She said she was an outcast herself in her way and she understood. He had tried to tell her that first night, but she wouldn’t listen. Then the next day he knew she had heard because her face was different.
“Where is the other man?” she had asked him. “The people of the village had said there were at least two, maybe even a gang.”
He became very agitated when he heard this. Now they would be definitely after him and maybe with tracker dogs. He told her he had done it on his own. He had needed money and he had waited in the lane until that woman had left. How was he to know that the old one was going to creep in as soon as she was out of the place? And the screaming and roaring and…well, he had to hit her just to shut her up. He hadn’t intended it to be so hard.
“What’s your name?” Sister Madeleine had asked him.
This conversation was carried on the whole length of a tree. The man sat in the tree house, wrapped in the rug she had given him, Sister Madeleine sat on a tree trunk.
“You’re asking me to give my name?” he said in disbelief.
“I have to call you something. I’m Madeleine,” she said.
“I’m Francis,” he said. “Francis Xavier Byrne.” There was a silence. She thought of the day he had been baptised and someone had considered this was a fine, fitting name.
“And where do you live…usually, that is, Francis?”
“I live…I live…” He stopped. She was still. “I used to live in a home, Sister Madeleine, but I got out of it. The trouble was I needed money. I hated the home…they should never call it that. This place is more of a home than that was.”
“Then stay here,” she said simply.
“You mean that? After what I did!”
“I’m not a judge and a jury, I’m just another person living on the same earth,” she said.
He spent most of the day sleeping in his tree house.
Sergeant O’Connor came later that day. He said they were searching the area. “You’d tell us if you saw or heard anything, wouldn’t you?” He looked at the woman’s unsettling eyes.
“Well, sure I never go up to the town at all, Sergeant. And who do I see but friends dropping in?”
“Well, if you saw something unusual you’d tell…your friends, wouldn’t you?” He was in some doubt as she looked back at him directly.
“You see all there is to be seen here, Sean. Just a two-room cottage.” The door of her simple bedroom was open, with its white coverlet and its crucifix on the wall. Was it his imagination or had she always kept that door closed before. It was almost as if she was showing him that nobody was harbored here.
Sean knew he was becoming tired and fanciful about this. “I’ll leave you on your own, Sister. God, I nearly stepped on that little cat of yours. Is it sick?”
“It’s blind, poor little thing.” Sister Madeleine picked it up and stroked it.
“Not much of a life for a cat if it can’t see where it’s going. I’m surprised you wouldn’t do the right thing and let it be put to sleep,” he said.
“We don’t always know what the right thing is,” Sister Madeleine said.
“No? Well, the right thing if any group of men turn up here is to let us know where to find them and not to be making them tea and sandwiches.”
“Is it a gang, it’s not one person, then?” Her face was bland.
“It’s a gang. I’ll be seeing you, Sister.” He was thoughtful as he walked away. He looked around him, but there was no sign of a boat in or out, no blood around the place, and the one thing they did know was that one of them, or maybe indeed the only one, was bleeding like a stuck pig.
Sister Madeleine smiled and stroked the kitten. She was glad that she had thought of burning all the torn bits of shirt and sheet that she had used to mop up the blood.
She sat for a long time looking at the lake, wondering was she doing the right thing. Usually she was fairly clear about what to do, you did what hurt nobody. But this man had beaten poor Kathleen Sullivan and might have killed her. Was he a dangerous person who should be handed over? She didn’t think so, but for the first time in a long time a shadow of indecision came across Sister Madeleine’s mind.
“All the yellow look has gone off you now,” Anna said proudly to Emmet, as if it had been entirely her own doing.
“I know, I don’t look so like a rat.”
“You never looked like a rat.” Anna ruffled his hair. “You’re very good-looking actually.” There was a pause. “As it happens,” Anna added so that he would be sure.
“Yeah, of course.”
“I wouldn’t say it otherwise.”
“It’s just that I’d like to look…well, okay, if I were to be a bit around with you.”
“What do you mean, ‘a bit around’?”
“Well, you know, the pictures, or a walk or something.”
“Are you asking me to go out with you?” Her eyes were dancing, she seemed eager.
“You know my stutter is inclined to come back at moments of high emotion and drama like this,” he said.
“Oh, is that what we’re in the middle of?” Anna cocked her head and look at him quizzically.
“Very much so,” Emmet said. He was making fun of himself in case she might ridicule him. Everything depended on what she said now.
“Well, it would be very inconvenient,” Anna said after a time.
“How’s that?”
“If your stutter came back, say, when you were trying to say I was beautiful or something…too many stammers over the b-b-b-b-b would have me very uneasy.”
“Why might I say you were beautiful?” He still didn’t want to believe that she might be taking him seriously enough.
“Because I said you were very good-looking, it might have been a nice way to return the compliment.” Again her smile was arch. But he thought he read enthusiasm in it.
“You’re very beautiful, Anna,” he said.
“There now, not a stutter or a hesitation…perhaps it’s not a moment of high drama or emotion at all.”
She blew him a kiss and he heard her feet running down the stairs and out onto the street.
Emmet McMahon hugged himself. He had never felt so happy in his life.
Emmet was almost ready to go back to school but he still looked a little shaken. Maura decided to suggest a family holiday…a week in one of the big seaside resorts, which would be quiet now that the summer was over.
She looked up prices and presented Martin with the idea. “Maybe we could even get Kit to come for a long weekend. She has the Monday off anyway…suppose she was to take the Friday as well…?”
Maura was so enthusiastic about her new family and this was hard to resist. “I’d say she’d love it,” Martin said. “But aren’t you going to have great difficulty in prising young Romeo away from the scenes of his conquests…?” They had been observing discreetly the romance of Emmet and Anna from a distance and without comment.
“Aha, but suppose the object of desire is coming with us?” Maura laughed. “Peter and Lilian say it’s just the sort of thing they could do with too…and there are these two little houses side by side. It will be like magic,” Maura said.
Emmet was very sorry but he didn’t really want to leave Lough Glass. With an earnest face he spoke of having to do his revision and get back to school. He had no idea how transparent he was being. Anyone could have seen that he didn’t want to leave the place where Anna Kelly lived.
Martin teased him for a
bit. “It would be a great rest you know, probably the last time anyone will ever pay for a holiday for you and order you not to work,” he said.
“I know, Dad, and it’s very kind…but just at the moment…” He looked embarrassed refusing the generosity.
“Oh go on, Emmet, if you don’t want to go she won’t take me.” Martin often pretended that he had no standing at all in the family.
“Oh, I have to take you, I promised Peter and Lilian when we all arranged the trip that I would make you take a rest and I’ve got the time off myself from Stevie, and you can have that nice fellow who did relief before for you…”
“Oh, are the Kellys going?” Emmet said eagerly.
“Yes indeed they are, and I’m sure Anna’ll be very disappointed you’re not going to be there.”
“Maybe it would be disappointment for you, then, if I didn’t come,” he said to Maura.
“Yes, it would have been a bit of a disappointment all right,” Maura admitted.
His face was radiant at this stage. “Maybe I’ll just stroll up to Kellys’ and discuss it a bit,” he said.
“Put on your jacket,” his father said. “You’re not totally cured yet.”
“Oh but I am. I’m absolutely better.”
“I was very surprised when Clio said she’d come with us,” Lilian Kelly said to her husband.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Peter Kelly was glad that his elder daughter had shown an interest in going to a quiet holiday resort off-season.
“It won’t be glittering,” he had said, in case there should be any misunderstanding.
“You can get a bellyful of glitter,” Clio said mysteriously.
Philip heard about the trip. “I might be there, as it happens, at that time.”
“No you won’t,” Kit said. “It never crossed your mind to be there at that time. If you turn up I shall take it as definite proof that you followed me.”
“I only do it for your own good.” He was defensive.
“What?”
“Follow you.”
“You dared to follow me. Where did you follow me?”
“To the station when you were going to Cork.”
“To Cork? You followed me to Cork!” Her face was white with rage.
“No, only to the station. To make sure you weren’t going off with that great ape…”
“What great ape? Not that I’m not entitled to go off with any great ape, but which one do you mean?”
“I mean Kevin O’Connor. He told us all he slept with you and that you were mad to do it again…I knew it wasn’t true but I didn’t think he’d talk like that unless he had some hopes.” Philip was very upset.
“Why are you telling me all this filth and madness?” Kit shouted at him.
“You asked.”
“I did not ask, I just asked you not to follow us to the seaside. I had no idea about all this rake of lies…I was thinking about getting a solicitor’s letter written to that Kevin O’Connor…there’s a crime saying you did when you didn’t. By God he’ll suffer from this…I thought it was just Clio exaggerating.”
“Well, don’t tell him…”
“Yes I will tell him, you weak, yellow coward…That ape is going to be sorry he ever met me.”
Clio and Kit walked along the beach. It was a lovely time of the year to come. Just too cool for anyone to expect them to be Spartan enough to try out the cold Atlantic waters; warm enough to walk easily on the damp, firm sand without any sense of discomfort.
“Before you tell me all about it in glorious Technicolor I have to tell you something about that family,” Kit said.
“What makes you think I’m going to tell you anything at all? You were so unhelpful about the weekend,” Clio grumbled.
“And I’m going to be even more unhelpful now,” Kit said with some pleasure.
“Tell me.”
“I’m going to sue his brother.” She stood away to observe fully the reaction on Clio’s face.
“Sue him? What in the name of God for?”
“For impugning unchastity to a woman, that what it’s called.”
“What?”
“I told you, he tells people like his own brother that he has had sexual relations with me. That is not true. I am an unmarried woman; to imply I had sexual relations is implying I am unchaste. It is diminishing my marriage prospects. He’ll have to pay for that.”
“Jesus…” Clio began.
“And it’s not only you. Stop panicking, you’re not the only one who heard. He told Philip O’Brien too, which is like putting it on the six-thirty news on Radio Eireann.” Kit’s eyes blazed at the injustice of it all.
“And will it go to court?”
“Oh, I hope so.”
“Oh God. When?”
“Well, if he doesn’t apologize and pay full costs and give me a sum of money to compensate for my reputation being taken away…”
“Your reputation hasn’t been taken away.”
“Yes it has. If his awful brother tells you…if he tells Philip…what’s that but taking away a reputation?”
“No, Kit, don’t do it. I beg you.”
“It’s too late. It’s done.”
“You’ve sued him? You’ve sued Michael O’Connor’s brother?”
“I’ve sent him a solicitor’s letter.”
“You can’t. You’re not old enough. You have to be twenty-one.”
“No I don’t.”
“It’s posted?”
“Yeah, nothing to it. He says they’re three a penny.”
“That can’t be true. I never heard of it. You never heard it until this time.”
“No, solicitor’s letters about anything, I mean. They told me I had to be prepared to go through with it if he said that I was a tramp and all. So I said I’m a virgin, I can prove that, so he’s a liar.”
Clio was sitting on a rock looking greener than the seaweed around her.
“You’ve ruined everything for me and Michael, ruined it.”
“Not at all, quite the contrary. You can warn Michael that if Kevin challenges this I’m going the whole distance to fight him. I’m very, very interested in having sex with someone when the time comes, and I will not have that great, drunken, ignorant ape who I wouldn’t sleep with if he were the last man on earth and I was about to die wondering…going around saying he did it with me. You can tell him that. I’d actually enjoy it.”
“Kit, your father, Aunt Maura…what would everyone say?”
“They’d say that I was terrific and I set a high store by myself. Now, tell me about your weekend with Michael.”
The Kellys and the McMahons had rented two adjoining lodges. There were three bedrooms in each. There were little verandas on the front that looked out on the beach. They saw Emmet and Anna walking very close together but not hand in hand, that took place when they were around the corner and out of the veranda’s view.
They saw Clio and Kit talking intensely.
“They seem to have remained friends in spite of all the ups and downs,” Lilian Kelly said.
“They seem to, all right,” said Maura, who watched the way the two girls spoke. It wasn’t the easy laughter of girls finding everything funny, it was much more intense than that.
The rains came and the tree house was very damp. It needed a firmer roof. Tommy Bennet the postman was a helpful man.
“Do you know what would be a great ease to me, Tommy, is a couple of sheets of lino or tarpaulin, something that would keep that rain out of a caravan.”
“Now, Sister, I’ve told you a thousand times they could buy and sell us, those tinkers.”
“I’m not talking about the traveling people across the lake who are good friends to this community but about another friend who has a caravan. You often ask if there’s anything you could do for me. This is something I couldn’t thank you enough for.”
“Say no more.” Tommy Bennet hated these people taking advantage of the kind nun. “I’ll have it for y
ou in a day or two.” As he left the house he put on his cape. The rain was lashing against the door. “Ah, would you look at that,” he said. “The poor little kitten is half drowned in a big dish of water.”
“What? Where?” Sister Madeleine ran out in the rain, mindless of getting wet.
There it was, panting and struggling for life but obviously nearly gone. “Let me finish her off in the barrel, poor little thing. She’s not going to make it.” Tommy had a kind heart.
“No,” Sister Madeleine cried.
“Ah, look at it, Sister. It’s gasping for breath, it’s dying. Be kind to it. We can’t will it back to life. Be fair to it, Sister. It was blind anyway, always hitting into things. Maybe we should have let it go at the start.”
Tears were mixed with rain on Sister Madeleine’s face. “Drown it then, Tommy,” she said, and turned away.
It took only a few seconds for the small, wet limbs to stop moving.
“There, Sister. All at peace now,” he said.
He wondered at the nun. She took the body and put it into a box that had once held cornflakes. “I’ll bury her later,” she said. Other animals had died—she had the place surrounded with little crosses, she knew what foxes and tame hares and elderly dogs lay under each simple marker. Why was there such a fuss about a poor blind kitten that everyone had said she was mad to have kept in the first place? He wasn’t to know that she saw the kitten as an omen, some kind of sign that she hadn’t always done the right thing.
“I’ve stopped saying my prayers but you’re the kind of woman that would bring me back to them,” said Francis Xavier Byrne as he chewed the lamp chops down to the bone.
The young Hickey boy had been so grateful for a reference that Sister Madeleine had written him, he had agreed to do anything for her. “Just the odd bit of meat, whenever you think there’s some your parents don’t need. I don’t want you to take from their earnings,” she had said. He understood that he wasn’t to tell them about it either. “Is it for the gypsies?” he asked. “It’s for someone who needs meat to make them strong,” she said.
“We could always say a prayer together, Francis,” she said.