* * *
Dolores lay on the sofa, her rosary wound tightly round her fist. With each whispered prayer she eased a bead between thumb and knuckle. The repetition of these words, the trance they placed her in, was the only release she could find. She was capable of sleeping and eating when the child inside her demanded it. She was able to take care of her children, to smile when required and tell them everything was going to be OK. But the moment she was alone a panic flooded through her, so pervasive, the only thing she could do was lie down before it.
‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art though amongst women . . .’
The sweep of tyres on the drive, the noise of a car door slamming shut. The rustle of keys followed by her husband’s footsteps moving softly, carefully through the house.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘when you pull up outside every curtain in the place is closed. How do you think that looks? It’s not us who’s having the funeral.’ He marched to the window and dashed the curtains apart.
‘Don’t,’ she shouted.
He turned, fixed her with a look. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘We need to talk.’
‘Where are the kids?’
‘I left them down with Mammy.’
His eyes rested on the rosary beads in her hand. ‘Ah Jesus, Dolores.’ He came and sat beside her, leaving space between their bodies. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. ‘It would’ve suited you better to be at the funeral than sitting around here saying the rosary.’
‘What was it like?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The graveyard – how was it?’
‘Oh, it was packed, the whole—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, no. Stop. Please. I don’t want to know.’
His head turned slowly. She could feel his eyes examining her. ‘You need to start pulling yourself together.’ His voice was soft, controlled. ‘We need to look like we have nothing to hide, and you lying here with the curtains pulled in the middle of the day will make people think—’
‘I know what people are thinking, Donal.’
‘And you know what can happen when rumours get out of hand, all it will take is for us to be questioned again and you may forget it – that’s it. I’ve lost one job already this week and there won’t be much more work coming in until this all blows over. We can’t afford this with another child on the way.’
‘Donal?’
‘But people have short memories when it suits them – all we have to do is ride this out.’
‘Donal?’ She watched him grow very still. ‘Did you set that fire?’
After fourteen years of marriage it was still extraordinary to her how he continued to find new ways of being silent.
‘Donal? I need to hear you say it.’
‘The less you know, the better.’
‘Donal, I’ve already lied to the Guards for you. It’s too late to protect me now.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘This looks bad for both of us. But it doesn’t matter as long as we stick to the same story – I was in the pub, a few will have seen me there – and when I came home, we watched a bit of telly and went to bed. If they start asking more questions, we can tell them half the men in the town were going up there for a good time. It wouldn’t be far from the truth. But for now we’ll just keep saying how much she was drinking, that she was smoking up in the cottage, that she was behaving erratically.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said, ‘you’ve really thought this through.’
‘This all needs to look like some kind of accident if we’re going to get the insurance money, but there’s a chance it’s covered for criminal damage as well, I’d need to look at the policy.’
‘The insurance!’ she shouted. ‘The insurance!’ She landed two blows with her closed fists square on his head before he had time to put his arms up. She felt the beads crunch against his skull. ‘The fucking insurance.’ She continued to pummel him as he cowered and shouted. ‘We could lose everything, Donal, and you’re worried about the insurance?’
When she stopped, he looked up at her, his arms still shielding his head. ‘She wouldn’t have suffered,’ he said. ‘She was fast asleep in her bed, drunk . . . The smoke. A fire like that. You’d take in a few lungfuls and you’d be knocked out before the flames would even touch you.’
‘Well, that’s another lie, Donal, because you know where they found her body. They peeled her off the kitchen floor because
she crawled on her hands and knees to try and escape that fire.’ And she proceeded to hit him again but the energy required
was consumed by the racking sobs passing through her. She collapsed against him, her face pressed into his side, and she could
feel him adjust his body to get a better handle on her, to corral the great heaving mess of her. She felt the warmth in his
hands as they moved across her, down her thigh, the touch of his palm against hers as he slipped the rosary from her fingers.
Chapter 25
The house came into view around the curve of a short drive. It lay in the shadow of the church. When Izzy had called the night before, he’d said, ‘Just aim for the steeple and you can’t miss me.’ And there he was now cutting at the ivy on the front of the house with a pair of shears. He was in civvies – black slacks, a red jumper over a white shirt, a pair of black rubber-soled shoes. How like any other middle-aged man he looked, his grey hair licked up in waves on the crown of his balding head. He paid no attention to the noise of the car, just carried on cutting.
She had surprised him by phoning, certainly, and surprised him further by telling him she would be down to see him the following afternoon. She’d been expecting some level of hostility, but in fact his tone was so affectless as to offer no indication of his feelings.
She pulled the handbrake and stopped the engine, watched him take a moment to appraise his work. He appeared to be out of breath, his shoulders rising and falling. He bent down to lean the shears against the wall and then rose without quite meeting her eye, his mouth hanging open in a way that at least resembled a smile.
‘Isn’t it a grand place they gave you?’ she said, getting out of the car.
It was a much more handsome property than the parochial house in Ardglas. There was a cut-stone exterior and it was elegantly proportioned, and the grounds were mature, the branches of the tall trees like a vaulted ceiling over the drive. Neat little hedgerows squatted under the ground-floor windows.
‘Oh, I’m well looked after,’ he said, approaching her.
She cast an eye back down the drive. ‘But you must have your work cut out for you with these grounds.’
