Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (30 page)

She wandered idly around the room, eyes following the titles on the shelves waiting for something to catch her fancy. She passed by first editions of Ruskin and Dickens, Carroll and Trollope, until her eye lit upon a battered red bound book with a tattered golden ribbon hanging out. It was a nature journal Jamie’s grandfather had kept and that Jamie’s father and Jamie himself had added to over the years. She carefully turned to the flyleaf, the smell of dust and green things long dead catching in her throat. There was an inscription in faded ink—
For my darling James—endless summer skies, Yours—Abigail.

She took the book with her to the smaller of the two sofas and sank down into the garnet and paisley depths with a weary sigh. She turned the pages of the fragile book slowly, careful not to disturb the bit of thistle enclosed beside the delicate sketches of catkins and shrews, the faded violets cheek-by-jowl with watercolor periwinkles and blue-speckled thrush eggs. She read in random snatches, the words soothing her like a warm bath.

Glorious day. Went for a stroll along the hedgerows this morning and was rewarded with a find of sweet violets... Went to Murlough Bay where the woods run clear down to the shore and gathered an armful of wild hyacinth, pale butter yellow primroses, red campion, and ferns. ...Visited the oakwood this evening, where the rhododendrons are in full misty purple bloom...I gathered some ...

As she read, the sun moved slowly across the glass walls, dancing through the ivy and newly leafed roses. The sun soon made her drowsy, the heat penetrating down to her bones. She drifted off to sleep reading about some
wonderfully fine specimens with hairy blue-green leaves...,
the crumbling petals of a rose held gently in her hand.

JAMES STUART KIRKPATRICK, Lord of Ballywick and Tragheda, had been home for three days and in that time had been to five meetings, made roughly fifty decisions, had fourteen children over for dinner the previous evening, had played an impromptu game of rugby on the back lawn with said children and had the bruises to prove it. The children were part of the outreach program in his constituency and the dinner at his house had become a monthly event. It was also an informal venue for their parents to voice concerns and opinions over education, housing, and safety issues in their community. At first he had wondered what he’d let himself in for with anywhere from eight to twenty ragamuffins running amuck in his house, but had soon come to look forward to the visits.

He’d also had his hair trimmed, mulched the roses around the study—a job he always tended to himself—and been properly seduced by his neighbor. Who just happened to be his girlfriend.

Tonight he was having the Bishop of Armagh to dinner, which should complete his list of immediate commitments. Tomorrow Pat Riordan was due to come by to finalize decisions around the planned youth center. No doubt the man was going to ask if he could install his brother as the chief, cook, and bottle washer of that establishment. Which Jamie had no qualms about. There weren’t many men who had a better grasp of the lay of the land in that neighborhood, nor many as capable of keeping a stern hand on the tiller. Whether Casey would be able to swallow his pay coming from Jamie’s pocket was another matter altogether.

While making tea he found a note from Maggie pinned to the corkboard and spared an inward wince for the hapless butcher’s boy. He furrowed his brow at the last line of her note, ‘...
someone waiting in the study for you.
’ He sighed. In his experience surprises were often nasty little occurrences that made one long for unbroken mundanity. Maggie herself was nowhere to be found, but she had been in the kitchen recently, for the kettle was still warm. She had taken, of late, to naps in the afternoon, an act to which she would not admit and he pretended to ignore.

He pondered a variety of possibilities as he put tea things on a tray. Had Monty sired pups upon some innocent female of the canine variety? Perhaps Belinda lay in wait? He grinned. Last night she’d shown up wearing a raincoat with nothing but bare skin beneath it. He was sure she had a charity committee meeting this afternoon however. Such was the fate of rich widows on spring afternoons.

It couldn’t be the Bishop, as there was no way on God’s green earth Maggie would have left him alone. Jamie glanced at his wristwatch. No, he’d three hours grace still before the Bishop was due.

He picked up his tray and headed for the study.

At first he could see nothing out of the ordinary. The sun had moved behind the oaks leaving the study dim and he could only make out the softened outlines of objects. Peering through the gloom he saw, hanging off the edge of his sofa, one narrow, delicately arched foot.

He caught his breath and just managed to miss dropping the tea tray. He crossed the floor and set the tray on his desk then turned and found his surprise—the lost girl come home.

She was fast asleep, skeins of hair tangled in her lashes, cheeks flushed like late summer peonies. A blanket was draped over her, bunched in rich folds around her shoulders. Jamie took a deep breath and allowed himself a moment, only that, to quench a thirst that had plagued him for two years now.

The skin around her eyes was bruised with exhaustion, her hands fisted beneath her chin as if even in sleep she felt the need for defense.

“Oh dear girl,” he said softly, “what have you come running from this time?”

She stirred slightly at his words, quietly spoken as they were and he drew back, not quite ready to relinquish his minute. She looked terribly young in the half-light, still a girl, though he knew full well she’d passed her twenty-second birthday only days ago and that the circumstances of her life had forced her to leave girlhood behind many years ago.

With a light hand he smoothed the hair back from her face and watched as a small smile creased the corner of her mouth at his touch. Her eyes fluttered once, twice and then opened slowly, confusion blinkering her initial moment.

“Jamie?” she asked, as if his name came naturally, even in semi-consciousness.

“Here and accounted for,” he replied, his hand now relaxed at his side.

Green eyes looked up and met their like and his moment was gone like a bubble burst upon a thorn. There had always been too much truth in her eyes for either comfort or illusion.

“I’m sorry.” She sat up slowly. “I was waiting for you and I fell asleep reading.” She gauged the light and alarm crossed her face.

“What time is it?”

“Three o’clock. Time for afternoon tea.”

“Oh,” she rubbed her face with her hands, “good.”

Jamie turned on a lamp and she looked at him fully then.

“Still annoyingly beautiful I see,” she said with a touch of her old impertinence.

“Likewise,” Jamie said and they smiled at each other, the moment’s awkwardness dissipating as though she had left this room only yesterday. Which Jamie supposed, if one counted the ghosts of memory, she had.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Jamie asked, now leaning against his desk, hand moving lightly amongst the objects on it.

She shook her head. “We’ve moved back, though it’s likely you know that already. I understand Pat sees a lot of you.”

“Yes, he did mention it.”

“I thought it was time to come and say hello.” She curled her toes into the plush rug beneath her feet.

“Hello then,” he replied softly. There was a vast no man’s land of unspoken thought between them, even in the simplest of words. Things that neither could say for numerous reasons, feelings both suppressed and denied.

“Hello,” she said, the tension once again thick in the air. She’d left this house without a proper goodbye. “I’m sorry for barging in this way, but I—I—”

“Don’t be a fool, Pamela, my home is always open to you. You ought to know that by now.”

“Are you angry with me?” she asked.

“When you left I could have sworn I’d never see you in this city again,” Jamie said quietly, “and now I must admit to wondering why you’ve come back?”

Her voice, when she answered, was little more than a whisper, her shoulders bowed as if the question alone were a terrible weight upon her. “I really didn’t have a choice Jamie. Living away from this godforsaken country was killing Casey. It was like he hadn’t drawn a proper breath since we’d left. I only hope I’m not killing him by bringing him back.”

“And what if you are?” Jamie asked, shocked by the honesty that seemed to present itself to her when it wouldn’t for anyone else.

“Tell me Jamie, is a short life with meaning better than a long life with none?”

“Has it come to that so soon?” he asked.

“It’s like an illness for him. When he’s here he’s whole, when he’s not...” she shrugged, “he isn’t.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m not whole without him. I go where he goes, it’s that simple, Jamie. Not very progressive of me I know, but it makes my decisions easy. I just pray he can avoid any trouble.”

Easy was, he knew, the last thing her decisions had been. He also knew for now it was best to let it lie. Casey’s desire may have been the largest part of what brought them back to Belfast, but he still had a sense that she’d run as much as relinquished in order to find herself here.

“It’ll be hard for him to avoid it altogether. His presence rarely goes unnoticed,” Jamie said dryly.

“But surely if he minds his own business—” She broke off under Jamie’s raised eyebrows. “Oh I know I’m being willfully naïve thinking he can come back here and not stir things up, but I’d hoped we could stay under the IRA’s radar for a bit.”

Jamie shook his head. “Pamela, a hamster can’t sneeze in that neighborhood without it being reported to Joe Doherty.”

She looked down at her hands. “Do you know so much about him then?”

Jamie folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “More than I’d like, actually. He’s from the old school—you know, shoot first, talk later. There’s been a complete cessation of any kind of talks since he took over the Belfast command.”

“Will he see Casey as a threat?”

Jamie cocked a golden eyebrow at her. “Of course he will. Your husband, despite his lengthy absence, is still thought of quite highly by some in that circle. Mostly the men who were under his command before he left. There’s been a lot of in-fighting, though Joe Doherty tends to silence any opposition with a well-placed bullet. Seamus, for instance, disappeared about six months ago and has been neither heard from nor seen by anyone questioned in the matter. Everyone suspects. Few know what actually happened. But the silence in those circles is deafening at present.”

Pamela swallowed, peony flush faded to a stark white.

“Less honesty perhaps?” Jamie said, turning to pour tea into the shamrock Belleek that was the everyday china of the Kirkpatrick household.

“A little less,” she agreed, trying to summon up a wan smile. He handed her the cup and she wrapped her chilled hands around it gratefully. He sat down on the sofa beside her, watching as she inhaled the steam from her cup.

“Drink up,” he said sternly. He noted how thin she was and how exhausted. This close to her he could smell her scent, still like a fresh bitten strawberry and yet something more and something less. Despair, disillusion, loss? He didn’t know the details of the last two years, but he knew enough to be certain it hadn’t been an easy road for either Casey or herself. What had happened in Boston to make Belfast desirable?

He switched to neutral topics as she drank her tea. Where did she and Casey plan to live, Casey’s construction work, the plans he and Pat had for the drop-in center. He caught her up on the doings of mutual acquaintances. She in turn told him about her photography and the few pictures that had been bought by magazines. It was the stories she didn’t tell, though, that spoke most loudly. She never once mentioned Casey’s foray into fishing or her own work for Love Hagerty. Yet she had to know he was aware of these things.

Just before five she looked ruefully at the clock. “I swear you have some sort of enchantment on this house, Jamie. I never can account for time here. I’d best get home.”

Jamie walked down to the gate with her. She turned to face him as he opened it for her.

“Thank you for the tea and the talk. It helped me put things in perspective.”

He nodded. “Don’t be a stranger then.”

For a long moment their eyes met and he saw a dark fear move deep in hers like a frightened creature huddled at the bottom of a lake.

“I’ve missed you.” The words were said with such simple honesty that a small raw pain flashed across his chest.

He’d an odd sense of time stopping just for a second, of being poised on the cusp of something that would vault them both forward or back in time and place. Where they would be able to speak of past and present without constraint. He opened his mouth to respond to her admission. Then his heart resumed its normal pace and so did time. And he did not speak.

A sea breeze, faintly salted, slipped past them leaving an echo of brine in its wake. She closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath. “I’d forgotten how much I love it here,” she said softly.

Jamie stood at the gate for a long time after the car had disappeared down the road. He needed to get back to the house and change his clothes before the Bishop arrived, but still he stood watching the April dusk fill up the hollows, smudging the outlines of the trees and hedgerows lining the long road down the hill.