Whitethorn Woods Page 16

  I know that everyone always said about me that I was over good-natured, and always thought the best of everyone.

  But truly I felt sorry for the guy.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Road, the Woods and the Well – 2

  Father Brian Flynn went to the station to meet his sister Judy. She hadn’t been home for ten years and the time showed very definitely on her face. He was shocked at how pale and drawn she looked. Judy must only be thirty-nine or forty. She could have been in her late fifties.

  She saw him and waved. ‘Aren’t you very good to come and meet me!’ She gave him a hug.

  ‘I’m only sorry that I can’t offer you somewhere to stay. It seems terrible for you to have to pay for a hotel when you have a mother and two brothers in Rossmore.’

  ‘Will Mam recognise me at all, Brian?’

  ‘Ah, she will in her own way,’ he said.

  ‘What does that mean exactly?’

  He had forgotten how direct Judy could be. ‘I don’t know what it means, Judy, it’s just something I say to avoid saying anything really, I suppose.’

  She squeezed his arm affectionately. ‘You were always a pet,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I stayed away for so long. There was always one foolish thing or another keeping me over there.’

  ‘But didn’t you always write, and you were very good to our mother,’ he said.

  Judy cheered up. ‘Now, take me on a tour of Rossmore showing me all the changes and point me to the best hairdresser.’

  ‘There’s a very smart place called Fabian’s, though that’s not his name at all – I was at school with him, and he was called something else altogether, but apparently they go to him from far and near.’

  ‘Good. I’ll remember that. You see, as well as relying on St Ann, I think I should bring up the second line of attack, get some new clothes and a hairstyle as well. A bit of grooming as one might say.’

  ‘You’re looking for a husband here?’ Brian Flynn was astounded.

  ‘Well, yes. Why not? I didn’t do too well in over ten years in London.’

  ‘You got a career for yourself.’ Judy was an illustrator of children’s books.

  ‘Yes, but I am not asking St Ann for a career.’ Judy was brisk. ‘Lord, would you look at the traffic – it’s like Hyde Park Corner.’

  ‘It might not be for much longer. There’s great talk of a new road, to take all the trucks and lorries out of the town for one thing. And let the through traffic pass without clogging up our little streets.’

  ‘And will it happen or is it only talk?’

  ‘I think it will happen. That’s if you can believe half what you read in the newspapers. There’s a lot of debate about it – people coming down heavily on one side or the other.’

  ‘And is it a good thing or a bad thing in your opinion?’

  ‘I don’t know, Judy, I really don’t. It’s meant to be going through the Whitethorn Woods and possibly through St Ann’s Well.’

  ‘So I got here just in time,’ said Judy Flynn, with a sense of grim resolution that made her brother Brian feel very uneasy.

  Judy was astounded at the way every second person seemed to greet Brian as they parked the car and walked along a crowded Castle Street towards the Rossmore Hotel.

  A woman came down the steps of the local newspaper office and her face lit up in a smile.

  ‘There you are, Lilly,’ Father Flynn said.

  ‘This must be your sister, Father,’ she said, pleased.

  ‘It’s just as well he hasn’t a fancy woman,’ Judy said. ‘They’d have her identified in ten seconds.’

  ‘No fear of that, isn’t Father Flynn a walking saint?’ said Lilly Ryan, shocked.

  And then Judy recognised her. The woman whose child had disappeared all those years ago. Judy remembered how hundreds of people had gone into the Whitethorn Woods to hunt for a body or to pray at the well. There had been no result from either quest. She felt awkward and she supposed it must have shown on her face. But Lilly Ryan would be used to this after twenty years. Two decades of people shuffling and being unable to mention the great loss for fear of saying the wrong thing.

  ‘I’m trying to get up the courage to visit my mother,’ Judy confided. ‘I’m afraid our family leaves all the hard work to Brian here.’

  ‘Do it before you do anything else,’ Lilly advised. ‘If you face the hard thing first it makes it easier.’

  ‘You might well be right,’ Judy agreed. ‘Brian, can you leave my case in the hotel? I’ll go and see her now.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’ll do this on my own. Good luck to you, Lilly.’

  And they watched as Judy turned into the small side street where her mother lived alone.

  ‘I’d better go after her,’ he began.

  But Lilly reminded him that Judy wanted to do this alone. So he shrugged and carried his sister’s suitcase into the hotel. He would wait in one of their big armchairs until she came back and then he would buy her the stiff drink she would undoubtedly need.

  Mrs Flynn had indeed no idea who Judy was, and no amount of reminding seemed to bring any recognition. She thought that Judy was a health visitor and was anxious for her to leave.

  Judy looked around in desperation but there were no photographs on the walls or in frames on the old desk. Poor Brian had done his best to keep the place in some kind of order and would take his mother’s washing to the Fresh as a Daisy once a week, but Judy noticed that the place still smelled bad and her mam was very uncared for. Every month for years now Judy had sent a cheque to her brother Brian, and she knew he had spent it on items for their mam. But the iron sat there unused, the easy chair was half hidden under a pile of newspapers. Mrs Flynn didn’t believe in making herself comfortable.

  ‘You must remember me, Mam, I’m Judy. I’m the middle one. Younger than Eddie, older than Brian.’

  ‘Brian?’ Her mother’s look was blank.

  ‘You remember Brian, surely, he comes in every morning to give you your breakfast.’

  ‘No he does not, that’s from the Meals on Wheels.’ Her mother was definite.

  ‘No, Mam, they come at lunchtime. Brian comes and gives you an egg every morning.’

  ‘That’s what he says.’ Her mother wasn’t convinced.

  ‘Do you remember Eddie?’

  ‘Of course I do, do you think I’m cracked or something? He wouldn’t be told, married that Kitty, no good she was, nor any of her family. No wonder what happened happened.’

  ‘What happened was that Eddie left her for a young one.’

  ‘May God forgive you, whoever you are! Saying such things about my family! It was Kitty who threw my son out and kept his house, you’ll note.’ Her mother’s mouth was set in a hard line.

  ‘And what does Brian say about that?’

  ‘I don’t know any Brian.’

  ‘Don’t you have a daughter?’

  ‘I do, a young one over in England doing drawings of some sort, she never gets in touch.’ So that was the thanks for the weekly letter or postcard, the monthly contribution to Brian. She never gets in touch!

  ‘I’m your daughter, Mam, I’m Judy, you must know me.’

  ‘Would you get away out of that, my daughter’s a young girl – you’re a middle-aged woman like myself.’

  As Judy walked back to the hotel she decided that a visit to this smart hairdresser called Fabian’s might be well overdue. She even paused outside a new beauty shop called Pompadours. A course of facials and manicures might not go amiss either. She had put aside a fair sum of money for this visit and St Ann might need a little help to place her satisfactorily on the marriage market.

  Brian was a splendid guide. As well as going with her while she made appointments in Fabian’s and Pompadours, he showed her a very smart boutique.

  ‘Didn’t Becca King work there?’ Judy asked.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t mention Becca King,’ Father Flynn said, looking left and right
.

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘She’s in jail. She got one of the van men in the shop to murder her boyfriend’s new lover.’

  ‘God, and they say you take risks living in London!’ Judy said in amazement.

  He brought his sister back to meet the canon. Josef and Anna had made little sandwiches in honour of the guest. They kept everything in the priests’ house gleaming and the old man himself looked pink and clean. Unlike Judy’s mother, he remembered her well. He had been there for her first communion, had looked on when the bishop came to confirm the girls of St Ita’s, and although he had long forgotten her infant sins, he had heard her confession.

  ‘I haven’t had the pleasure of assisting at your marriage yet,’ Canon Cassidy said as he drank his tea and ate his dainty sandwiches.

  ‘No, but it won’t be long now,’ Judy said. ‘I’m going to do a novena to St Ann. I’m going to pray at her shrine for nine days so that she will find me a good husband.’

  ‘And no better woman for doing that than St Ann,’ the canon said, his simple faith and certainties all intact.

  Father Flynn envied him with all his soul.

  ‘I’d better go and see the sister-in-law,’ Judy said with a sigh.

  ‘Don’t raise your hopes too high,’ Brian Flynn warned her.

  ‘What would annoy her least, do you think, as a gift?’ Judy wondered.

  ‘Let me see, flowers would be a woeful waste of money, sweets would rot the children’s teeth. Magazines are full of rubbish, a book could have been got in the library. Get her a loaf of bread and a half-pound of ham, she might make you a sandwich.’

  ‘As bad as that, is it?’ Judy asked.

  ‘Worse,’ said Father Brian Flynn.

  He was not in a good humour. He had discovered that there was going to be a public meeting in ten days’ time, a big protest meeting, and he was going to be invited to address it. Many of the townspeople had told him that they were eagerly waiting for his words. And he literally didn’t have any.

  He simply couldn’t find it in his heart to stand up and condemn a possible scheme that would improve traffic and the quality of life for a great many people just because it would mean taking down a perfectly awful statue that was beginning to produce dangerously idolatrous feelings amongst the parishioners.

  Had life been easier for Canon Cassidy when he was a curate? Or was this the way things always were? If you were a priest maybe it all went with the territory.

  But with his usual optimism, he comforted himself that it was still only a rumour about the road. There had been no statement as yet. And also he still had ten days before the meeting. There was plenty of time to work out what to say. In the meantime there were a lot of problems to be faced nearer home.

  Like how to deal with Judy if St Ann didn’t come up with a husband. Like how they should face up to their mother’s failing health. Like how much longer Canon Cassidy could reasonably be expected to stay in the priests’ house with the title of parish priest. Or how he could go to see Aidan Ryan yet again in the jail tomorrow and try to tell him that his wife Lilly was not a villainous person who had sold their baby.

  And, most immediately, what was going to happen at the meeting this afternoon between the anger-filled Kitty and the tense, strained Judy.

  He sighed a heavy sigh and ran his hands through his red spiky hair until it stood up around his head like a mad punk halo.

  As it happened Kitty and Judy got on perfectly fine. Eventually.

  Judy decided to offer her as a gift a hairdo at Fabian’s. At first Kitty laughed a sneering laugh and said Fabian’s wasn’t for the likes of them. Then Judy said she was asking her to come for solidarity.

  ‘Just to patronise me, you mean,’ Kitty had scoffed.

  ‘Not at all. Just because Eddie treated you disgracefully it doesn’t mean that Brian and I would. I haven’t been back here in years and I wanted to give you a big box of chocolates, then I thought you might just think that they would be bad for the children’s teeth, so I decided to get you something you wouldn’t go out and buy for yourself.’

  ‘You must be made of money.’ Kitty was still grudging.

  ‘No I’m not, but I do work very hard and I saved hard for this trip home.’

  ‘And what brought you home eventually?’ Kitty was not yet won over.

  ‘I want to get married, Kitty. It’s as simple as that. I can’t find anyone in London except married men, and I don’t have to tell you what a foolish road that is to go down. You’ve experienced it from the other side. So I was hoping that maybe if I went for nine days to St Ann’s Well …’ She let her voice trail away.

  ‘You’re making fun of me – you’re just having a jeer at us, you and your London ways.’

  ‘I’m not as it happens, but honestly, life is too short. If that’s the way you want to see it, then there’s nothing I can do.’

  For some reason it worked. Kitty said in a tone that she hadn’t used for a long time, ‘If the offer’s still open I’d love a hairdo. That young slut Naomi that your brother has gone off with has hair like rats’ tails. It would give me a great boost altogether …’

  Father Flynn had another deputation waiting for him when he got back to the priests’ house. A request for support from the other side of the increasingly great divide. A group of concerned citizens were going to have a candlelit procession through the town, campaigning for the rumoured new road that would bring an end to the dangerous traffic that roared through Rossmore. This traffic had already caused numerous accidents and the death of a five-year-old. They wanted Father Flynn to march at their head.

  Great, he said to himself, absolutely great, and I haven’t even answered the other lot yet.

  Then his brow cleared. Maybe this was the answer. He would say that the Church must not be seen to enter local politics. Was this the wisdom of Solomon or was it in fact the refuge of a weak man? He might never know.

  In a way he wished the whole thing were out in the open. These shadowlands of rumour and counter-rumour were very disturbing. Each day new fuel was being added to the flames of speculation. People said that big builders had been seen dining in the Rossmore Hotel. That meant that the road had been agreed – it was simply a matter of who would build it.

  Farmers with land adjoining the woods were giving themselves airs. The land from which they had once scraped a living might now be worth something in the end. The trick would be to sell now to some speculator. Especially if you had a few acres that might not come under the compulsory purchase order when it happened but would be highly valuable for access. It seemed that everywhere you went, you heard voices. Voices with something to say.

  The man that ran a garage was very doleful. If the road came it would kill his business stone dead. It was hard enough for people to park in his premises as things were, and getting back on the road was like Russian roulette.

  A woman who had a small guest house on the edge of the town was reported to be putting in new bathrooms and extending her breakfast room, once the new road was given the go-ahead. She would have an unending line of engineers, advisers and consultants looking for accommodation near the site.

  There were debates on television about the parlous state of Irish roads; the newly rich country would not remain rich for much longer if European exporters found only Third World crowded lanes and endless delays in delivering their goods to the right destination. Tourism would suffer if visitors couldn’t get from one place to another without crawling in their rented cars behind a tractor or some huge lumbering bit of farm machinery.

  Places like the Fresh as a Daisy Launderette just couldn’t wait for the road to arrive. They had never got any business from visitors anyway. And Fabian’s the hairdressers thought they would do better if their clients had room to park their cars.

  But the garden centre on the edge of town didn’t want the new road. They had a nice little business where travellers from east to west would stop, stretch their legs, visit the
café and maybe fill the car with bedding plants or gift-wrapped azaleas for whoever they were visiting. If the new road came no one would need to pass this way any more.

  And there were those like the Rossmore Hotel, Skunk Slattery and Miss Gwen in Pompadours who just didn’t know.

  It was swings and roundabouts of course.

  They would lose the passing trade because nobody would pass through any more. But it might mean that there would be more incentive for local people to come out and shop, get beautified, or have a lunch in the hotel, once they knew there would be room to breathe and they wouldn’t be mown down by impatient truck drivers on the roads.

  And there were the hundreds who had been helped by St Ann. They couldn’t believe that their fellow countrymen and women were prepared to turn their backs on the saint, allow her shrine to be dismantled. There was talk of people lying down in front of the bulldozers if they came to the woods, and obstructing all the earth-moving machinery.

  It was the least they could do to thank their saint for all the miracles that had been worked through her well. It didn’t actually matter that these miracles had not been acknowledged and recognised by Rome like Fatima and Lourdes. People round here knew. And people from far, far away knew.

  Didn’t they come in droves from miles across the sea?

  And still, greedy, money-loving people were prepared to ignore this great blessing, which had given so much to so many, just to get traffic moving faster and earn even more money than they already had.

  The canon was completely unaware of the issues and said only that we must pray for guidance in these as in all matters. Josef and Anna confided in Father Flynn and said they thought that the old man needed full-time care.

  ‘It’s not that I am looking for more hours, Father,’ Josef said. ‘It’s just that you should know. And of course I am always afraid that one day you will tell me he is going to a nursing home and there will be no job for me any more. I hope I am not being selfish but I want to be prepared.’

  Father Flynn said he understood very well and it was indeed a grey area. The canon seemed very happy where he was and it would be a pity to move him. His life had no purpose if he wasn’t in the priests’ house. Yet of course if he really needed more care, then he would have to have it.