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Paddy took her hand and Trisha melted towards her. “You’re kidding yourself. She’s seen more than you or me or both of us. She works in a soup kitchen and she’s been beaten up more than once. She might not know anything about our world but she knows a lot of stuff we don’t.”
Trisha looked deep into her bitter tea. “He’s a man of the Church. A priest. How could he?”
“And you think she’s passive in this? Because she’s a woman?”
Trisha yanked her hand away and showed Paddy her palm. “Don’t you bring your women’s lib into this.”
“For fucksake, Mum, Mary A
Trisha looked despairingly at her cup. Her white roots were showing and her back was bowed. She looked old and spent.
“Mum, she’s nearly thirty. She’s a woman.”
Trisha turned on her. “I suppose you’re pleased. You never wanted her to take her final vows, did you? You never take communion, never go to confession.”
But Paddy wasn’t going to act sorry. She had been hiding her lack of faith since she was seven. For a long time she genuinely believed that everyone in the family would get marked down on the Final Day because of her, that she herself was damned to hell by a God she didn’t like or respect. It was a terrible load and she’d been carrying it alone. “I don’t get religion,” she said defiantly. “But I love Mary A
The possibility that there would be a time beyond this moment, that Mary A
Paddy could see it all unraveling: Trisha would send the boys to see Father Andrew. They were so protective of Mary A
“Being happy isn’t all there is to life,” Trisha said eventually. “There’s doing the right thing and duties and honor.”
“Is it honorable to lie and pretend she has a vocation if she doesn’t? Because she’ll do that to please you. Mum…” Paddy started crying before she even spoke his name. “Dad wouldn’t want this.”
Trisha’s head dropped forward. Con’s name had been unspoken since they emptied his clothes from the cupboard.
They sat together, clasping hands until their fingers turned white, crying silently while the ghost of Con flitted cheerfully around the kitchen, making tea, emptying bins, arranging chairs for visitors, showing off lucky finds from his aimless walks.
Finally, Paddy licked the wet from her lip, forced a breath into her chest, and spoke. “My gentle wee daddy wouldn’t want this.”
II
Sitting on her old bed, looking across at Marty perched on Mary A
Marty was wary when she caught his eye in the gloomy living room and nodded him out to the hall, led him up the steep carpet-padded stairs, to sit under the bare lightbulb on the two narrow single beds with balding chenille bedspreads. His knees stayed together, steadying hands on either side of his thighs, looking around at the unfamiliar walls and the half-pulled curtains.
They hadn’t liked each other much when they shared a house and it felt strange that she should be about to ask so much of him.
“What is it?” he said, forcing himself to look at her. “Is Mum ill?”
“No.” She took a deep breath, wanted a cigarette but couldn’t smoke because Pete would be sleeping here tonight. “I have to ask you and Gerry a massive favor.”
That caught Marty’s attention. “Money?” He gave a half smile.
“No. Look, I’m involved in something heavy. Two of my friends have died-”
“Have you got AIDS?”
She felt a familiar heat on the back of her neck. “Marty, shut up and listen, will ye?”
Marty stood up. The beds were low and he seemed very tall; his black hair fell over one eye as he leaned towards her. “You always fucking do this.”
She was supposed to ask him what, what did she always do, and then they’d slide into the deep track marks of their well-worn argument: she was a bossy, self-important cow, he was a bully, she was fat, he was stupid, yeah, well, fuck you then, and fuck you too.
“Someone tried to kill Pete last night. A man, an Irish Republican I’ve been writing about, broke into Burns’s house and tried to stab Pete because he couldn’t find me. It was a warning. It’s me he wants.”
Marty dropped back down to sit on the bed, staring at her. It was the traces of fear in his eyes that made her see it: he looked so much like Con it was all she could do to stop herself from crying again. “I need you to watch over Pete.”
He took her hands in his, easing her thumbs out and baring his wee sister’s palms.
“Why? Where are you going?”
She took another deep breath. “I have to go and meet him.”
The words hung heavily in the air between them as Paddy looked out of the window at the tree nodding in the summer breeze at the end of the garden.
“Can’t I come with you?”
“I need you to watch over Pete.”
When they first moved in, her father thought the tree was a bush and left it. She’d found out recently that it was a sycamore. Every summer it grew taller and more lush until now it dominated the whole garden, the only feature that rose above a rusting washing machine peeking like a commando over the tips of the tall grass. No one had ever liked that tree but Paddy. She loved it for daring to be beautiful in an ugly place.
Marty pressed her palms together, warming them in the circle of his own hands.
“Can’t you call the police?”
“The police are protecting him. He’s killed two people already and they warned me off investigating him.”
“Call the papers?”
“The two guys he killed were the papers.”
Marty looked terrified. “Me and Gerry could hide in the van and-”
“No.”
“We could get a gun-”
“No. We’re not that kind of people. He’s after me and whoever is with me, Marty. He’s been doing this for twenty years… Please trust me. I could spend an hour explaining and I’ll still have to go by myself.”
He was holding her hands tight now, his head almost in her lap. He whispered, “Will you leave Pete here?”
She nodded at the window.
“Will he come for Pete tonight?”
“Not if I go to meet him.”
She looked back at her brother. He was stroking her hands and crying, face red, chin quivering, and now he really looked like her daddy. Con cried a lot at the end. Spontaneous outbursts of limitless sadness.
“We, um…” Marty broke off to sniff. “We’ll take turns staying up. We’ve got baseball bats in the van and we’ll keep knives by the settee. If you do meet him-” He shut his eyes and curled over his knees, tensing his back into a tight curve. “We’ll move home and mind Pete.”
She pulled her thumbs free and cupped Marty’s hands in hers, lifted them, holding them to her cheek.
Slowly, he rocked forward until their heads were pressed tight together.
He pressed so hard he numbed her scalp.