Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (34 page)

“You loved it, didn’t you?”

“Oh aye, singin’, fightin’, an’ beddin’ willin’ women, wasn’t much like work at all, at all.”

“Sounds like a young man’s idea of heaven.”

“Seemed like it at the time, though I think if either of us could have seen where it was headin’ we’d have been a bit more restrained. Oh aye,” he acknowledged her skeptical look, “I know restraint is not one of my larger virtues an’ it was less so when I was young.”

“Sounds like you had great fun together, what happened?”

“We fell out over a woman if ye can believe it.”

“I thought,” she said with a smile, “that I was the only woman you’d ever loved.”

“Ye are,” he said gruffly, arms tightening around her, “only a boy’ll not know the difference sometimes between lust an’ love, an’ when yer hormones are rampagin’ one will look a great deal like the other.

“She was an American, I seem,” he wiggled an eyebrow at her, “to have a weakness in that area. An’ she seemed dreadful glamorous to the two of us, city boys though we thought we were. Couple of provincials an’ most definitely not in her league, but lookin’ back I think we were a novelty to her. Rough lads from the wrong side of the tracks, who’d the blarney to glib their way through a lot of situations. We thought we were pretty hot stuff. Truth bein’ that we were more than ready to be picked off like the jackasses we were. Neither of us had ever met anyone like Melissa.”

“Melissa?”

They had been singing in a wee pub on the coast of Clare. The day had been a wet one and the place was steaming and stinking with wet clothes. When the girl walked in she struck the room silent, and even Robin, normally unflappable, missed a beat or two in the verse he was singing. For she was a beauty, with skin on her like a ripe peach and platinum hair that swung like a cape about her shoulders. She sat down, cool as you please, ordered a drink paying little mind to the musicians tucked in the corner. Robin had launched into a particularly slow sad song about a lad who died of a broken heart. He had the talent of making his audience believe he had lived every song he sang, and it generally melted women straight into the floor at his feet.

Robin had sung his heart out, bent on seducing the girl. He was on the top of his game that night, looking like the stereotypical romantic version of an Irishman with his dark hair and blue eyes set off by a cream-colored fisherman’s sweater. The man possessed a voice to make angels weep with envy. All of it was apparently wasted on the girl though, for at the end of his set she clapped politely and turned back to her drink. Robin was so stunned, he might have been knocked down with a feather. Such things didn’t happen to bonny, sweet Robin. It only made him that much more determined to have her, or to die trying.

“On the break between sets he went an’ ordered a pint for the both of us, stood right beside her tryin’ to make small talk, he’d a tongue glib as the devil when he wanted to an’ he laid it out thick an’ sweet for her. She gave him polite, one-word answers an’ no more. Had him puzzled, he came back with our pints, the face on him like curdled cream an’ says, ‘maybe she’s the sort prefers girls.’”

“No dents in his ego,” Pamela said.

“Well no, but then ye’d have to understand his charm had never failed him before an’ he was a bit bewildered by rejection. He was a little glum then an’ told me to take my turn singin’ for he’d lost the taste for it that evenin’. Someone asked me to sing
Captain Wedderburn-
do ye know the song? No? Well it’s a bit on the suggestive side an’ is really meant to be sung by a male an’ female together in the two parts. But I, lackin’ female accompaniment, always sang both parts myself. I’d got to the end of the male’s part an’ Robin was pickin’ his way through the musical interlude on the guitar. I was just takin’ a sip of my ale when this voice starts in on the female part, high an’ sweet an’ just a bit saucy, the way the song was designed to be sung.”

‘’Twas her of course, an’ ye could have knocked me over with a feather an’ Bobbie looked as though he needed even less inducement to lay him out.

It was the girl. The song was an old English one where the male proposed a tumble in the hay and the female responded by asking six virtually unanswerable questions, with her virtue as reward, should the man be able to answer. Both Robin and Casey had been stunned, Robin forgetting to play in his shock. After the song was over the girl had come over and said, politely to Casey, that as he had answered all her questions he was now entitled to her own virtue, questionable as that commodity might be.

“Wanted to kiss more than your bruises did she?”

“In a manner of speakin’, I was in a bit of shock, for all my supposed ‘experience’ I was still a bit innocent.”

“It’s hard to imagine,” she said dryly.

“The girls we knew were mostly girls we’d grown up about, hard mouths to be sure, but good Catholic girls for all that without much experience. My first encounter of that sort happened behind the local high school, an’ I got my face slapped smartly for bein’ a bit too bold.”

“I suppose Melissa liked her men bold though,” Pamela said, voice a trifle cynical.

“She was a bold lassie herself; the summer was an education to say the least. Now Jewel,” he pulled her tighter to him as her body stiffened, “ye did say as ye wanted to hear this, have ye changed yer mind? An’ besides I wasn’t just talkin’ about the bedding, she exposed me to all sorts of things I’d not known before. Like what sort of power money wielded. How simply wearin’ different clothes an’ havin’ yer hair cut right made people treat ye differently. She was generous with her money, an’ she knew how to spend it. Bought me an Italian-made suit, pale gray it was, an’ fit to me like a glove. Thought I was quite the spiff, sleepin’ on silk sheets—”

“Silk sheets?”

“Aye she only slept on silk imported from China, said it was better for the complexion.”

“I can’t imagine your father was impressed by this situation.”

“Well no he wasn’t entirely but he tried to keep out of my affairs unless he thought I was headed for disaster. Earlier that summer he’d had Desmond lock me up in the pottin’ shed to teach me a lesson.”

“What on earth had you done?”

“Nothin’, though I was plannin’ on it. Donegal is Republican territory. My Da’ said ye couldn’t throw a stone up there without hittin’ a dozen rebels. The place has always been a hotbed for the IRA. Bobbie an’ I thought the whole idea of revolution was terribly glamorous an’ we were tired of watchin’ from the sidelines.”

There was to be a meeting that May up the coast, out in the countryside near Killybegs. The men who’d been in the IRA in the Fifties were convening to see if they could reorganize and build a new structure on the foundation of the old. Casey had been angry with his father because he refused to have anything to do with it. It was a sore point between he and Desmond that they never did reconcile on. Desmond had thought it high time for Casey to understand his family history and what such a thing meant in the life of a man. Casey’s own father thought the past a dangerous thing in the Riordan family and disagreed. Desmond hadn’t liked but had to respect Brian’s decision. Casey had his own opinion on the matter and was very annoyed to find out no one gave a tinker’s damn for what he thought.

“Their insistence on treatin’ me like a child made me all the more determined to go to this meetin’. Lookin’ back I think either Bobbie an’ I had the balls of brass monkeys or were entirely stupid. Oh aye, keep the wicked eye to yerself woman, I know yer thinkin’ the two things are not so far apart.

“I never did know how, but Daddy got wind of our plan an’ decided to give it a firm nip in the bud. I suppose we ought to have been suspicious when Dez asked us to come into the pottin’ shed an’ help him separate the spring bulbs. Well he got us in there, miserable dark little hole ‘twas too, an’ then slipped out an’ padlocked the door. We pounded on the door ‘til we both had splinters an’ were bleedin’, then we checked every corner of the buildin’. Problem was Desmond wasn’t a great builder but when he did go to the bother of makin’ somethin’ it was made solid, ‘so ugly it scared the crows,’ Siobhan would say, but made to stand for a good long time.”

They had sat in the shed for a full hour, before Casey had the inspired notion to knock the hinges out. They had loosened them up and then bided their time. Desmond had come back a while later to inquire after their well-being and to say he had left them a bit of food in a bag in a corner of the shed. They had thanked him meekly, and assured him they had no notion of even attempting the meeting now, if he would just let them out.

“Well now lads,’ he says,  ‘ye know I can’t do that for all that I’m sorry to lock yez up. Yer Daddy made me promise to keep ye away from this meetin’, Casey, an’ ye know I can’t go against yer da’s wishes, boy.’ We said we understood, even while I seethed in the dark that my Da’ was tryin’ to interfere in my life in such a way. ‘Twas maybe an hour later we heard Dez’s car start up. We gave it another five minutes an’ then Robin popped the hinges out with his Swiss Army knife, an’ we were on our way.”

It had been pitch black by the time they got up near Killybegs. They realized they couldn’t bold-face their way into the meeting, not with Desmond in attendance, but had thought they could maybe listen in without being seen.

“What’s the matter, darlin’, are ye cold?” he asked, for Pamela had shuddered visibly.

“No, I’m just cringing in sympathy, I’ve a feeling this bit of the story doesn’t end well.”

“Well if we’d paid attention to our feelins’ half as much that night we’d have saved ourselves a heap of grief.”

“I knew it. What happened?”

“At first things went smooth, we found the place without a great deal of difficulty. We’d caught up with Dez on the outskirts of town for he’d stopped to put petrol in the car. We kept back just far enough so he wouldn’t get suspicious but we could still see his tail-lights. That alone should have tipped us off that somethin’ wasn’t right, but the one brain cell the two of us seemed to be sharin’ that night wasn’t workin’ real well.”

Desmond had turned down a narrow strip of country road. The two boys had hidden Robin’s car in the hedges and proceeded forward on foot. They had crept through the scrub pine feeling a bit like James Bond without the good clothes. The house itself presented them with a bit of a problem. The perimeter had been carefully cleared and they didn’t dare creep close enough to hear through the windows. They had sat in the brush for a few minutes, mulling over their limited options and getting chewed to death by the bugs. Then Robin had noticed that the windows were upside down with the opening at the top rather than the bottom. He had then come up with the inspired notion that if they were to scale onto the roof and lay themselves flat, they should be able to hear everything that went on inside. As the voices inside were already raised, there had seemed little chance of anyone hearing them, as long as they exercised due caution in their climb. Casey had boosted Robin on his shoulders, and Robin had gained the rooftop with little effort. Then it had been Casey’s turn. Robin pulled from above, but as he had little leverage Casey had to resort to footholds and swinging his leg up and over, hoping the momentum would land him firmly on the roof.

“Did you make it?”

Casey rubbed the bridge of his nose ruefully. “Well in a manner of speakin’ yes, the place was old though an’ the roof, had we known it, rotted almost through. Bobbie could move like a cat, an’ I suppose that’s the only reason ‘twasn’t him that fell arse over teakettle right through.”

“Oh Lord, you didn’t?” she put her hand over her mouth, face red with suppressed laughter.

“Oh aye, ye may as well laugh, ye won’t be the first nor the last I’ll warrant.”

Casey had landed right on the table, knocking everyone’s tea over and sending piles of papers flying. He had been lucky in that the roof was low and the only physical damage he suffered was popping his shoulder out.

“If I hadn’t been in such pain I might have been able to see the humor in the situation. All these hard men starin’ at me like I’d dropped from the sky into the midst of a garden party, an’ Robin’s face dead white, eyes big as saucers starin’ over the rim of the hole in the roof. But as it was I was tryin’ too hard not to scream an’ sayin’ the Hail Mary over an’ over, religion havin’ returned to me rather swiftly. Dez was standin’ at the end of the table, lookin’ like the ten furies of Hell, his mouth all tight against his teeth. Then this man comes over an’ looks down at me—a countryman with one of those big raw-boned faces that tells ye a man has spent most of his life outdoors in unkind weather. Well he hits my shoulder with the flat of his palm an’ it felt like lightnin’ had ripped straight through my chest.

“There now,’ he says, ‘I’ve popped yer shoulder in fer ye, ye can quit mewlin’ like a drownin’ kitten, an’ you,’ he looked up, straight into Robin’s face, ‘ye can come down nice an’ easy or we’ll bring ye down an’ there’ll be nothin’ nice nor easy about it.’ Needless to say Robin came down off the roof, landin’ somewhat more gracefully than myself, but bringin’ down a good portion of what was left of the roof anyway.”

“Well Desmond, I believe ye know these two gentlemen,’ says this man with the hard face, ‘will ye want to have the decision of what’s to be done with them?’ Dez just shook his head an’ said, ‘It’ll not be for me to decide, Jim, we can’t let personal feelins’ interfere with the settlin’ of this matter.

“I tell ye Jewel, my innards turned to water there on the spot an’ I knew we were had; what had started out as a lark of sorts had turned deadly serious on us. ‘Twas then I noticed the rifles sittin’ near the door. A stack of them, some ancient, an’ some with the dirt still clingin’ to them in spots from the holes they’d been buried in. The men started to file out, stoppin’ to pick up their guns on the way. Four stayed back, one to a side for both Robin an’ I. Mind ye, even had our minds been workin’ clearly it would have been foolhardy to make a break for it; such men have little compunction about shootin’ a man in the back if he’s tryin’ to make a run for it.

The men had loaded the two boys into the back of an ancient farm lorry, which had a good thick crush of manure on its bed. They were made to lay facedown in the muck, with four guards sitting on the rails. Casey had no idea where they might take them, for that area of Donegal was wild and he knew a man could disappear easily enough in any number of spots. He had spent the journey worrying for what his father and Pat would go through as a result of his vanishing in such a manner. And then had become rather maudlin about the woman, theoretical at that point, who had been meant for his wife and the children he would not have and had generally worked himself into a very unhappy state by the time the lorry stopped.