“No. We’ll get him looked after.”
“You promise?”
Sean got a wave of impatience. Why did he have to do deals with people over something as basic as this? “Did he tell you where he came from, Sister?” he said slowly and deliberately.
“He said he’d come back when he got settled. Come back for his things.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Only three days.”
“Well, he didn’t get far, up to the main street of the town, it seems. Into the kitchen of the McMahons to beat them all with a chair.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Where did you think he was going?”
“I didn’t know, he said he wanted to be free.” She looked very upset.
Sean O’Connor forced himself to lower his tone and be gentle. “And how long was he here altogether, would you say?”
“I suppose about six weeks…who can tell? Time has no meaning.”
“Immediately after the garage, and Kathleen being taken to hospital, would it be?”
“I expect it must have been.” Her voice was very flat.
“And you never thought of telling us he was here?”
“Never.”
“You have a strange sense of responsibility to the community, if I may say so, Sister Madeleine.”
“I felt he couldn’t do any harm while he was here.” Her eyes were clear in their sincerity.
“True, but he sure did the very moment he left you.”
“I didn’t know.” There was another long silence. “I’ll get you his things,” Sister Madeleine said. She produced a blue carrier bag with money, checks, motor registration books, and the few cheap ornaments he had taken from the office in Sullivan Motors.
Sean O’Connor looked through them in disbelief. “We’ve had half the country searching for all this.” She said nothing. “How did you hide him? People come in and out. I’ve been in and out myself, for God’s sake!”
“He lived in the tree house during the day,” she said simply, as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do.
The sergeant stood up. “It wasn’t the right thing to do, Sister. He’s not a fox or a rabbit, or a poor little duck with a broken wing. He’s a man, a disturbed man who injured people badly, who could have killed them. You did him no service by giving him this Alice in Wonderland place to live.”
“He was happy here,” she said. Sean O’Connor didn’t trust himself to speak. He was afraid he would lose his temper and say something he would regret. “Sean?”
“Yes, Sister?”
“Can I come and see him? Up in the station?” There was a long pause. “It couldn’t do any harm, it might possibly do some good.”
Stevie Sullivan had left Kit at the door of the hospital.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“No, I’d be in the way, he’s all right I tell you. I wouldn’t leave you to face things if he weren’t.”
“Thank you very, very much, Stevie. You’ve been wonderful to me.”
“Glad I was there,” he said. She didn’t want him to leave. And she felt he didn’t want her to go. “I’ll see you later in the day,” he said.
“When you’ve talked the Mass goers into buying tractors,” she said with an attempt at a watery smile.
“That’s the girl,” he said, and drove the E-type out of the hospital grounds in a flourish.
“Your mother and brother are with him, he’s talking now,” the nurse said.
Kit got a shock for a moment. The wild idea that Lena had flown over from London to be at his side crossed her mind. Then she realized. “He’s going to be all right?” she said, searching the nurse’s face.
“Oh definitely,” the nurse said. “Come on and I’ll bring you up there.”
Maura and Emmet jumped up with shock and delight to see her. She went straight to her father. He was on an IV, there was a lot of bruising and bandaging around his head. “I look worse than I am, Kit,” he said.
“You look grand to me,” she said, and put her head on his bed and burst into tears.
They knew that he was in no danger but they wanted to stay nearby. The hospital provided beds for them all. Kit lay under her rug and tried to sleep. Her mind was too full of images. There was the dance. The shock of Father’s face with the bruises and cuts. There was Emmet crying that it was his fault, if only he had closed the door. There was Maura holding Father’s hand with such love in her eyes that Kit almost had to look away.
And there was Stevie Sullivan’s handsome face as he leaned out of the car, still in his dinner jacket but his white shirt open at the neck. “I’ll see you later in the day,” he had said. Later in the day.
Finally she fell into a sort of sleep.
When they got back to Lough Glass, they all hesitated before going up the stairs to the scene of all the violence the night before.
Sergeant O’Connor had said that the place would be tidied up a bit for them. And so it was. The broken chair had been removed. Someone had washed the blood from the sisal floor covering. There was a dark damp stain but at least it didn’t look like blood. The place seemed gray and empty.
Maura opened a note that had been left through the door. “That’s very kind,” she exclaimed. Philip O’Brien from the hotel had invited them to come and have breakfast when they returned. They wouldn’t be in the mood to cook anything for themselves. “Will we do that?” she asked Emmet and Kit. “It would give us energy to face the day.” They knew she wanted to, so they agreed.
Philip hadn’t expected Kit to be home. He was delighted to see her. “You missed the dance, then?” he said with barely hidden delight.
“No, I heard afterward,” Kit said.
“And how did you get down?”
“You’re very good to ask us to breakfast, Philip,” Kit said quickly.
Maura was agreeing, and soon the smell of bacon and sausages came from the kitchen. They sat by the window. Morning had come up and the lake looked very beautiful.
“Don’t you have a wonderful view?” Kit said to keep the conversation going, and away from both her father’s injuries and how she had got back from Dublin.
“Yes…I suppose like everyone here we get used to it. It’s only because you and I have been in Dublin we appreciate it.” Philip was trying to find a common bond with her, something which marked the two of them out as sharing something special. Even if it was something as ordinary as both living in Dublin.
“That’s right, Philip,” she said kindly. “In fact, if you were to cut down some of those bushes over there it would be really terrific, like a kind of panorama.”
He had been suggesting that to his parents for more than six months, but as always they resisted change. He smiled at Kit, a warm smile of recognition. They were indeed kindred spirits. And perhaps he had been right to believe Sister Madeleine that she was not taken up with anyone else. After all, the party or dance or whatever it was couldn’t have been that special if she had been able to leave it so quickly.
“I’ll leave you to get on with your breakfast without having to make conversation all the time,” he said to them all, and Kit flashed him a grateful look.
As he left he heard Kit say to Maura, “Philip is the kindest man at any crisis. I always remember that.”
If Maura realized what previous crisis Kit might be thinking of, she said nothing. “I promised your father that we’d go on as normal, but this isn’t exactly normal, is it? A real hotel breakfast with lashings of everything.”
They heard the sound of relief and happiness in her voice, the delight that their father would soon be coming home to them.
Sister Madeleine walked quietly along the lakeshore. She did not come up by Paddles’ bar, nor by O’Brien’s hotel. She waited until she had passed the Garda station. This way she would meet fewer people.
The small gray figure stood humbly by the desk. She had a packet. “He likes a bit of soda bread, Sean,” she said diffidently.
r />
“I’ll make a note of it,” he said flatly.
“Maybe we could both have a cup of tea and I could serve it to him. It would be like old times.”
“You’re not going into the cell with him.” Sean O’Connor was appalled. “Whatever way he was when he was with you, he’s like a caged animal now, he hits out at everyone.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said.
He handed her two mugs of tea and put the buttered bread on a tray. He had never called the man by his name. “Listen, you,” he called into the cell. “I’ve brought a friend of yours. She wants to come in and sit with you, the Lord knows why. If you touch her, you’ll get such a pasting you’ll have to be scraped off the walls.”
The man seemed not to understand, then he saw Sister Madeleine. His eyes filled with tears. “You came to take me home,” he said.
“I came to bring you breakfast,” she said.
They sat in the cell, the nun and the wild man, sipping tea and eating thick slices of buttered bread. Sean O’Connor watched them from a distance. They talked about the trees by the lake, and the way a bit of the tree house had fallen down in the wind. Sister Madeleine spoke about the birds going away for the winter, they would be back next year. They always came back too.
She called him by his name, she said the word “Francis” so gently and with such respect that Sean felt ashamed of having called him you.
Francis replied, coherently now; you could understand his words. He asked about the old dog, he asked did she have trouble getting wood for the fire. He said he had got very wet and had wanted to sit by a fire.
“And did you go far when you left me?” Her voice was low and interested. There wasn’t a trace of hectoring him or doing an investigation, but she knew that the sergeant was listening.
“I slept in the fields, Sister. It was cold and wet. I couldn’t find anywhere. I got a pain in my head.”
“And why didn’t you come back to me? There was always a home for you with me.”
“I’ll go back now,” he said eagerly. Like a child.
“And at night did you have to sleep in the rain?”
“I found a barn one night, but there were animals in it and I was afraid. And another night I was under a tree. I didn’t go far. I was tired walking.”
“But you found a kitchen and a range to sit at in the town, didn’t you? In a house?”
“Yes.” He hung his head.
“And why did you hit the good people…they wouldn’t have hurt you.”
“They were going to get me locked up again,” he said.
“You hurt Mr. McMahon, he’s a very good man. He’s the one who got you the bandage and the throat sweets and you hurt him.”
“I was frightened,” he said.
“Poor Francis, don’t be frightened.” She held his hand. “Fright is only in our heads.”
“Is it, Sister?”
“Yes, it is. I know that, I feel it in my own head.”
“Am I not coming home with you?”
“No, you’ll be taken where people can look after your head and take a lot of the fright out of it. I wasn’t good at doing that.” She stood up.
“Don’t go,” he pleaded.
“I must. I have a lot of things to do.”
“My bag of things, it’s in your house.”
“Sergeant O’Connor has it. He found it when he came to tell me you were here.”
It was a slight bending of the truth, Sean O’Connor observed. He hadn’t found it, the hermit had gone to find it for him, but he understood. She had to leave Francis with the belief that she had been faithful to him.
“Will you come to see me?” he asked.
“I’ll be thinking about you, and praying for you. I’ll think about you every single day, Francis Xavier Byrne, so I will. Wherever I am.”
“You’ll be in your cottage, won’t you? For when I get better.”
“I’ll be thinking of you wherever I am,” she said.
After Mass everyone crowded around the McMahons; the whole place had heard the story of the night before. The good wishes to Martin were overpowering.
Through the crowd Kit caught sight of Stevie Sullivan. Dressed now in his brown belted coat and wearing a tweed cap, he looked a different person. He was talking to a group of men. It was a few minutes to opening time. They would walk together down Church Road and turn into the main street, then they would move to Foley’s bar or O’Shea’s, or even Paddles’, to do the kinds of deals that he had told her about.
He wouldn’t appreciate her coming over to join him now. Their eyes met. She smiled and waved but made no move to join him. He excused himself for a minute from his group and moved over to her.
“He was fine?”
“Exactly as you said. Go on back to business, no rest for the self-employed! And thanks again, Stevie. I’ll never forget.”
She could feel his eyes still on her as she moved back to Maura. There was a hooting of a car horn. Peter and Lilian Kelly had come to take them to lunch.
“I wanted to go back in to see Martin,” Maura protested.
“I’ve been on to the hospital. He’s having a doze, better let him rest. You can go in during the afternoon. Come on, all of you pile in.”
“Seven of us in one car?” Maura laughed at the idea.
“Why do you think doctors have station wagons?”
Emmet and Anna looked at each other in a guarded way. “Did you like the pictures, Emmet?” Anna asked finally.
“Yes, but it’s rather gone out of my mind now with everything that happened since,” Emmet said.
Anna was instantly sympathetic. “Yes, that was stupid of me. It must have been an awful shock. Were you frightened?” There was a lot of warmth in her voice.
Kit could see Emmet responding. Stevie Sullivan had been right about one thing. Anna Kelly was a bright little thing, not just a pretty face under a mop of blond curls.
After lunch at the Kellys’, Kit went up to Clio’s room. “What’s wrong, Clio?” she asked.
“What do you mean? Don’t come this nanny bit with me. What should be wrong?”
“You look very fed up.”
“Well, I am fed up. My best friend doesn’t invite me to her party. Then Michael gave me a lift home last night and bloody Anna was down there behaving like some kind of dervish spitting fire at us, and he had to go back to Dublin without…well, you know, without coming up here.”
“Jesus, Clio. You were never going to go to bed with him in your own house.”
“There would have been time before the others came home from the Golf Club.”
“You must have been off your head. Thank God Anna was here. You must be losing your marbles.”
“I’ve probably lost my boyfriend.”
“Well, he can’t be much of a loss if he’s only staying round because of the pouncing.”
“It’s not just pouncing. He could pounce on anyone in Ireland. It’s me he likes, and also pouncing on me.” Clio seemed very aggrieved.
“Well then, he’ll wait until you’re free to pounce, which would appear to be most of the time.”
“God, you sound like Mother Bernard.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just hoping you don’t get caught. Honestly, I’m out for your good,” Kit said spiritedly.
Clio was a little reassured. “Yes well, maybe you are. I don’t know, Kit. I don’t. It’s so bloody confusing. Do I ring him and say sorry about this little hiccup, or does that look pleading and pathetic? Would it be better to say nothing and hope he’ll come back?”
“Lord, isn’t that the question!” Kit had been pondering exactly the same problem about Stevie Sullivan. She must leave the next move to him, but suppose he didn’t make one? What then?
“Remember in the old days we used always to go down to Sister Madeleine and ask her about things like this.”
“Not exactly like this,” Kit said.
“No, but she always had some sort of answer,” Clio said.
It was an idea. Kit decided that when Maura went to see Father this afternoon she would go down on her own and talk to the hermit.
There was something different about the place. A lot of the old boxes that had held various animals in their different degrees of convalescence were gathered in front of the door. Inside, the house had changed too. Almost all the few possessions that Sister Madeleine had were laid out on her kitchen table. An old kettle, the three cups, the tin that held biscuits or cake.
The little can that she kept the milk in was there, a few plates, one or two little boxes. Sister Madeleine was in the bedroom looking around.
“Are you all right, Sister?” Kit called.
“Who is that?” The voice sounded flat and dead, not like the usual enthusiasm that greeted any caller.
“Kit McMahon.”
“I’m so sorry, Kit.” Sister Madeleine stretched out both her hands. “To the end of my life I’ll pray for you and your family that you’ll get over this, and understand.”
“But he’s going to be fine, Sister Madeleine. I saw him last night and this morning. He’ll be out of hospital in two days.”
“That’s good surely. That’s good.” The whole place had changed. Sister Madeleine looked unbelievably as if she were packing, as if she were closing up her cottage and going to move somewhere else. “He was a poor man out of his mind, you know. He should have been in a mental hospital. They’ll put him back in one.”
“I know, I know. Clio’s father told us.”
“He didn’t know what he was doing. It doesn’t make it better on your poor father, or poor Kathleen Sullivan…but that’s the only way we can look at it. His mind wasn’t right.”
“Was it the same man who hit Mrs. Sullivan and stole the things from the garage?”
“Yes, didn’t Sergeant O’Connor tell you?”
“No, no. He told us nothing…”
“He will, everyone will know.”
“But where was he between? That was ages ago, months ago.”
“He was here, Kit. Here in your tree house.”
“What?” Kit couldn’t believe it.
“I minded him because he was sick, you know. Just like the poor Gerald there with his broken wing.” She indicated a bird that normally lived in a box but was struggling to walk outside.