Ninemile House Page 20

  Resigned, James stepped back on the pavement. “Don’t stay away too long, Derry. Please.” It may simply have been the reflection of the sun bouncing off the wing mirror, but she could have sworn there was the slick shine of tears in his eyes.

  She couldn’t think about that. Not just then. Couldn’t handle his pain, as well as her own, especially when it was self-inflicted. With a slight movement of her head that might have meant anything, she checked for on-coming traffic, pulled out and drove away. Behind her, her house and family receded, telescoped as if into a tunnel, getting smaller and smaller, till suddenly there was nothing in her rearview mirror but a long ribbon of empty road and the neon red streak of a car speeding past in the opposite direction. Only then did Derry allow herself to cry.

  Some three hours later, Derry pulled in by the side of the River Lee at Sunday’s Well, got out and stretched her hands high above her head. Stiff both from the journey and the strain of keeping herself together, it felt good to be out in the open air. Breathing in deep lungfuls of the clear air, she felt herself begin to relax for the first time in what seemed like days. Smooth as a pane of glass, nothing disturbed the river, except for the frantic pedalling of a moor hen over to one side of the bank. Unbidden the voice of one of her old school teachers came back.

  “The River Lee rises in Gogonbarra and wends its way through the beautiful Cork countryside. Five miles west of Cork City a dam restricts its flow creating a lake that’s eleven miles long and half a mile wide. And then, children, it flows on down to Cork Harbour, one of the world’s biggest natural harbours, before emptying out into the Atlantic Ocean.”

  Funny how she could remember that little snippet as clear as if it were yesterday and yet, looking around, she could recall nothing of Sunday’s Well whatsoever. True, she’d been very young when the family had moved, only five or six, but she felt like she should remember something. Anything at all. In truth, she could have been standing in any of a hundred similarly pretty places in Ireland. It meant nothing to her.

  A rumble in her tummy reminded her that she had eaten nothing since the previous day and confident that she would find a pub nearby – this was Ireland, after all – she set off down the main street. A pub was also likely to be a good source of information and somebody was bound to know or, by default, know of somebody who knew Mick Roberts and if, as she was beginning to suspect, Michael Kinnane and Mick Roberts were one and the same person, why was he hiding behind a false identity. More importantly, why had he abandoned her sister to a life of misery, instead of facing up to his responsibilities both as a man and as a father? And why, oh why, was she having such difficulty reconciling the feckless boy of yesteryear with the eminently, apparently decent man of today, who she had liked on instinct. One thing for sure, she intended to find out. Grim faced, Derry pushed open the door of McCarthy’s Saloon Bar and stood for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimly lit interior.

  ***

  One ploughman’s lunch and a glass of white wine later left her feeling a lot more human and ready to embark on her investigations. Knowing most people’s instinctive aversion to journalists, she had decided on a looking-for-her-roots cover story. The Kinnane's, she would imply, were distant relatives of he mother’s and spurred on by all those genealogy programmes on the television, she had decided to embark on compiling her family tree.

  In journalist mode, her eyes swept assessingly round the bar room. Although still only early in the day, there were already a fair few people engaged upon the serious business of getting drunk, or watching the hurling match on the giant TV screen over to one corner. The landlady seemed the most obvious place to start. With a bit of luck she might even be local born and bred. She wasn’t, as Derry discovered when she came over to remove the empty dishes, but her husband was and she hurried off to summon him from the other side of the bar.

  Sure, he remembered the Kinnane’s, though only vaguely, being still only a lad when the stud farm was sold. A great furrowing of the brow brought on a further recollection, something to do with a scandal. The son of the house, still only in his teens, had run off to God knows where and from that day to this, no one had ever seen hide nor hair of him again.

  “Does anyone know what happened exactly?” Derry found herself leaning forward, intently examining the rough-hewn features of the landlord, as if to find the whole story of Michael Kinnane emblazoned on his forehead.

  “Ah, there were the usual rumours. Some people swore it was all over a girl.” He laughed heartily. “Sure aren’t women the root of all evil?”

  A girl! Gabby? Derry felt herself stiffen at this point.

  The landlord helped himself to a drop of the pint, Derry had bought him for his trouble. “Another school of thought has it that it was, something to do with the father, who was a bit of a lady’s man, himself, by all accounts. There was speculation that more than one child in the neighbourhood had a perfect right to call him Da, if you know what I mean. Again, all just speculation and rumour and there’s nobody left in Sunday’s Well now that could give either the truth or the lie to it! Those that aren’t dead, have fled, as they say. The bright lights of the big cities are too much of a lure.” He took another sup, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Anyway, a year or two after the boy left, Kinnane sold up the stud farm and the seasons hadn’t turned five times before he drank himself to death, hastened by the fact that his wife left him and took her own life a short time after. Seems, she blamed him for the boy taking off. Michael was her only child, her pride and joy, and she never got over his going.” The landlord gazed reflectively into the thick white froth of his drink, then with a bit of a start, seemed suddenly to recollect the purpose of Derry’s visit. “Oh, Lord, I’m sorry to be the bearer of such bad tidings, Miss.”

  Hastily, Derry held her hand up. “No, no, that’s okay. It’s all very sad, no doubt about it, but I suppose as I’ve never met them . . . ” she let her voice trail off.

  Reassured, the landlord nodded. “Anyhow, they’re buried up the graveyard at the top of the hill, if you want to go and pay your respects.” He made a vague gesture in the direction of the window.

  “Thanks.” Derry dipped her head in what she hoped was a suitably solemn way and went on to swiftly change tack. “Lovely place this, Sunday’s Well. I’m sure I read something about that big property developer, Mick Roberts, hailing from this part of the world?”

  “Mick Roberts. Mick Roberts.” The landlord scrunched his eyes up in the effort of thinking who she might mean. “A big property developer, you say. Yes, I think I know the fella all right, seen him in the papers a few times, but he’s not from these parts, I can tell you that for nothing. You’ve maybe confused him with somebody else.”

  “Oh, perhaps so,” Derry agreed easily, but her head was teeming with questions. Regardless of what the landlord might say, there was definitely some connection with Mick Roberts and Sunday’s Well. Why else had he asked her about it? But, if his connection was not with the Kinnane’s, then what was it?

  She found her answer in the graveyard, on his mother’s tombstone to be precise. “Patricia Mary Kinnane (nee Roberts), beloved wife of . . . Here it looked like somebody had deliberately drawn something sharp like a chisel through the words in an effort to erase the rest of the sentence. So, she’d been right after all. Mick Roberts and Michael Kinnane were, indeed, one and the same person. For whatever reason, he had adopted his mother’s surname and shortened his own first name to the diminutive.

  Sitting on a flat-topped tombstone opposite, Derry stared at the lichen-free, well-cared for headstone opposite, a bunch of white roses, brown now around the edges, resting at its base. In stark contrast, her husband’s headstone directly to the left was already leaning drunkenly to one side, suffocating beneath the strangling tentacles of poison ivy, unloved and uncared for, crumbling away, dust to dust. The message couldn’t have been clearer. Someone had loved her and hated him. But who? Michael or Mick Roberts as he termed himself no
w, seemed like the most likely candidate. Why was more difficult to fathom and how did he manage to escape the detection of the locals? The obvious conclusion was that he paid someone to tend the grave.

  Digging in her handbag, Derry extracted a packet of chewing gum, opened a strip and popped it into her mouth. It was a habit that had replaced smoking and helped her to concentrate.

  So, what had caused the rift with his father? Given that the landlord of McCarthy’s had intimated that Michaels father had been something of a Lothario, it seemed unlikely that his son’s conduct would have shocked him to the extent that it would cause him to disown his only son. His only child! She couldn’t imagine that it was something as simple as him getting a girl pregnant out of wedlock. Oh, no doubt about it, in the Catholic, hypocritical Ireland of that time, it might, indeed, have caused a bit of a furore, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. As a young single man of means, Michael could have married her and the Kinnane’s had enough power and influence to ensure that any gossip would be kept to a bare minimum. Grimly, Derry chewed harder. And there were other solutions. The girl could have been removed from decent society and incarcerated in a Magdalene Home for the rest of her life - just like Gabby! It was all rather puzzling.

  Rummaging in her handbag again, she pulled out a small instamatic camera, something she always kept to hand in her line of work, walked back over and photographed both headstones, scraping away at the lichen on Mr Kinnane’s headstone to make sure the name was fully visible. When she confronted Mick Roberts, which she fully intended to do, she wanted the evidence to hand to make sure there was no way he could wriggle out of it. If it transpired that he was indeed the father of Gabby’s child then, although he could never even come close to repaying her for the loss of her childhood and the awful years of deprivation and humiliation at the hands of the nuns, by Christ he could, no, would, pay her the courtesy of an explanation, as well as dig deep in his pockets and compensate her financially for the fact that she, herself, had been deprived of the opportunity of earning her own livelihood.

  The sun was several rungs further down the ladder and long shadows had begun to slant across the graveyard, as Derry packed her camera away and headed back towards the car. From all around came the clack-clack of grasshoppers rubbing the dry kindling of their back legs together, and in a nearby lilac bush a thrush warbled intermittently, too lazy to give vent to a full blown melody. Between the graves, someone had planted rows of French Lavender and Rosemary, for remembrance, she supposed, and Derry trod carefully for fear of crushing the delicate blooms.

  She was tired as she pushed open the metallic gates that led back onto the street. Bone tired! Her arms and legs felt like dead weights and even her head felt far too heavy, like a blowsy poppy staggering under the burden of its own seed pod.

  Not anticipating her mission to have been quite so successful so quickly, she had booked herself into a hotel in Cork City for the night. Now a part of her toyed with the idea of going straight back to Dublin, but there was something so appealing about the anonymity of a strange room, crisp white linen sheets and a long, long sleep before she had to face James and her troubled marriage, that she shelved that idea almost immediately. There were so many problems crowding her mind, all jostling for top billing, that she had a vision of her brain sitting in her head, desiccated and dried out, a shrivelled walnut, no longer able to process even the most simple thoughts.

  Back at the hotel, she took a long shower, eschewing the complimentary shower gel and shampoo in favour of her own Jo Malone mint and ginger combo. The zing felt good against her tired skin, reviving, renewing and if she didn’t feel exactly reborn when she emerged and toweled herself dry, she certainly felt less strung out. After a quick glance at the menu, she phoned room service and ordered salad and half a bottle of white wine. Then, swathed in the hotel’s thick white dressing gown, she sat propped back on her pillows and turned on the TV, noting that it was time for the news. There had been a military coup in a little known country somewhere in Africa – hundreds butchered. Madonna was staging yet another comeback tour. Who cared! A minor royal had been outed as gay. Again, who cared! Locally a farmer had reversed his tractor over his five-year-old daughter. A house fire in Galway had killed five people, three under the age of ten.

  Dispirited, Derry channel hopped for a while, paused and watched a couple of minute of Friends, but not even the antics of Joey et al could divert her for long and soon her mind was wandering again.

  Had Gabby actually recognized Mick Roberts as Michael Kinnane? After thirty years, would he really have changed so little? Was it merely resemblance that had caused her to react as she did on the night of the political broadcast when he had appeared briefly with James?

  And what about him? Derry recalled his urgency when he asked where she’d been born, the look almost of devastation on his face when she’d told him Sunday’s Well. Could it be that he too had seen a resemblance, her sister in her? And what was with the change of name? What had happened to make him shun his father not only in life, but in death?

  Round and round went the thoughts, an out of control carousel, a thousand piece jigsaw made up of pieces from a thousand different jigsaws. And always on the periphery lurked James, displaying himself in a cameo of roles. There was the young James, the political ingénue, his blond hair falling slightly forward onto his forehead, his blue eyes tying for gravitas, yet unable to avoid twinkling at her, the young reporter despatched to interview him. He’d phoned her afterwards, taken her to dine at the Shelbourne Hotel and later they’d strolled hand-in-hand through late night Dublin, lingering in St Stephen’s Green beside the duck pond, where he kissed her for the very first time.

  In James’ next appearance, he was wearing full morning dress, absurdly youthful in the sunlight slanting in through the stained glass window above the altar that turned his golden hair to a punk palette of blues, greens and reds. Nervous, he’d muddled up his vows and fumbled the ring onto the wrong finger. And suddenly they were married, emerging from Mount Argus as man and wife, a golden couple with a predictably golden future.

  Act three, enter James, the father, a twin in each arm, tired and disheveled from sitting up all night in the labour ward, his face soft with love as he held his daughters for the first time. “I love you,” he’d mouthed to her over the midwife’s head as she cleaned her up. “I love you forever and ever.”

  Finally, she saw him with Sinead, her white arm thrown possessively across his naked chest, her hair arcing out in a fan of beaten copper across the pillow. She saw James raise himself above her, his arms taking the strain, cords standing out in his neck as he plunged deep, deep into her welcoming body. “I love you,” he said to Sinead. “I love you forever and ever.”

  By the time room service arrived with her meal, Derry’s appetite had dwindled away to practically nothing. Disinterested, she picked at a piece of chicken, then pushed it aside. It may have been the most perfectly cooked, most succulent piece of chicken in the world but, to her, it tasted like ashes. Picking up the wine, she took a long thirsty swallow, sorry now she hadn’t ordered a whole bottle. It looked as if it was going to be a very long night.

  CHAPTER 21

  When Derry arrived home early the following morning it was to find nothing short of bedlam in her normally quiet street. A veritable frenzy of activity, television vans, radars spinning on top, thronged the street, flanked by police cars, their lights flashing and crowds of people scurrying hither and yon, many of them speaking into mobile telephones nineteen to the dozen.

  Oh, God! Derry found herself feeling suddenly giddy, her palms begin to sweat, her heart start pounding so loudly she was sure it would drown out the cacophony coming from outside. Something had happened to the twins. They were dead. James was dead. Gabby was dead. There had been a house fire. A robbery. Armed raiders had broken in and shot them all. They’d been poisoned by carbon monoxide – she’d read about that – the silent killer. Maybe the boiler had been f
aulty.

  Caught behind a long line of vehicles, Derry abandoned her car and took off running like a mad woman down the street, shoving and pushing people out of her path in a desperate quest to reach her house.

  “Hey, hold up there!” Grabbing her by the arm a policeman pulled her to a stop, just as she saw that the main concentration of people, a number of them reporters she recognised from her own newspaper, were crowding the driveway to her house.

  “B-but that’s my house.” Frantically, Gabby tried to break free, fear giving her almost super human strength. “Oh, what’s happened? My children? My husband? Are they all right?”

  The policeman held on tight, but looked uncomfortable. “That’s your house, you say? So, you must be Mrs-”