The Ballroom on Magnolia Street (27 page)

‘But he doesn’t know about me? That I am his –’

‘No. I never told him. It’s funny how you can never escape the past, isn’t it? You can kid yourself that certain things are over and done with. But then, one day, they come back to haunt you. I was going to tell him lots of times, but I couldn’t. It was too hard. He adores Eddy.’

‘And now, I’ll never get to know him.’

‘It’s too late, Johnny. He has his own life now. A baby of his own on the way.’ A cold breeze came whistling round the corner of the hotel and made them both shiver. Marion looked at her watch.

‘We would have made a great little family,’ Johnny said, as they stood up.

‘Please don’t tell Eddy about this.’

‘Why not?’

‘He thinks you still carry a torch for me.’

‘I do.’

Marion shook her head. ‘Johnny, you don’t. I’m just a reminder of your youth.’

Silence.

‘Will James and Eileen be okay?’ asked Marion. ‘When you leave for America?’ It was a roundabout way of checking that he was still leaving.

‘Yes. They’re going to move to a small bungalow in Portstewart, actually. It was Gran’s idea. She likes the seaside, she’s decided.’

‘They really love each other, don’t they? Eileen and James?’

‘Yes, they do. I hope to God they both don’t drop dead with delayed shock. The doctor says these things don’t always sink in, right away. Months later, they can affect you, he said. The body buries powerful feelings, you see, until it’s ready to deal with them.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘I’d like to meet Declan again sometime. Talk to him, just once. But I won’t tell him I’m his father. I don’t want him to think I abandoned him. Or you.’

Marion’s whole body shook with relief. Thank God, she thought. Now, Eddy never has to know our secret is not a secret any more.

‘Well, I’ll go home now. I’m really sorry, Johnny. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You do understand? And like you said yourself, you didn’t want to settle down to an ordinary kind of life. It was all for the best.’

They hugged each other briefly. Johnny kissed her softly on the cheek. Long-buried feelings stirred within her. He was very attractive, even with the passing years chipping away at him, leaving lines around his eyes. And maybe he was slightly too thin. But still, there was something about him, something magical. Marion broke away first, and walked quickly across the lawn. She didn’t want Johnny to see her breaking down in tears. Her heart was in turmoil. She thought she did still love Johnny, just a little bit. Just for old times’ sake. They
had
been such a glamorous couple, the best dancers in the city. She with her jaunty neck-scarves and false eyelashes, and Johnny with his endless supply of blue suede shoes. And Johnny was right: they could have taken on the world, together. She hadn’t given him the chance to show her what kind of husband he might have been. Why did life have to be so complicated?

And then, she thought of Eddy, and her heart almost broke with shame. She had left him standing in the foyer like a servant, with his tray of drinks. After all he had done for her over the years. Waiting for so long to take her to bed. Getting up in the night to help feed the children when they were babies. Setting her up in her own business so she could feel independent. Telling her he loved her every single day. He looked like a Victorian gamekeeper in those crumpled tweeds, and the tousled curly hair that no comb could tame, and yet he was always there for her and the children. He’d die for her.

She unlocked the car and jumped in. Dear, sweet Eddy. Still so possessive of her, after all this time. Drinking himself into a jealous rage like that. She would go straight home and make it up with him. And then, she remembered her promise to Johnny: he wanted to meet Declan properly. What would Eddy say if he knew about that?

23. A Bundoran Cafe

Eugene Lolly sat in a tiny back-street cafe in Bundoran and considered his options. It didn’t take him very long. His picture was all over the papers. The story of the Bonbon Gang was on every front page. He looked tough and mean in the old mugshots they had managed to get from the police files. That gave him a bit of a buzz, anyway. At least he wasn’t a nobody any more. Of course, now he had to be careful about being seen by the public. He was wearing a disguise of thick reading glasses and a cloth cap, stolen from an unlocked car earlier on in the day. But the owners of the cafe, an elderly couple, didn’t give him a second glance. Likely they thought he was some lonely farmer in from the country on a pay-day bender. He looked down at the story in the local paper and pulled the glasses down to the tip of his nose so that he could read over the top of them.

There was a recent, though particularly unflattering, picture of Eugene at the bottom of the article. It said,
Eugene Lolly, 46, hapless leader of the Bonbon Gang
. Hapless! No one had worked harder, to get on in life, than Eugene Lolly! If his plans rarely worked out, it wasn’t his fault. And now, just when he thought things could not get any worse, they were calling him names in the papers! Eugene was many things, but he wasn’t hapless.

He remembered his rage as the women drove away that fateful day, Eileen Hogan laughing at him from the car; and he had to accept that he had been outwitted by an old woman with one foot in the grave. And her silly friend, who was as jumpy as a firecracker on a trampoline. Yes, it pained him to admit that. He’d been outwitted, good and proper, by a couple of females. Left locked in the pastel-painted bedroom of a seaside bungalow. And no way of knowing how long it would be until he was arrested.

Hogan’s old girlfriend had taken the key of the door away with her, so he couldn’t try the old trick of pushing it out onto a piece of paper, and sliding it in towards himself, under the door. He tried to force the door, wrenching the handle constantly, but he succeeded only in bruising his palms very badly. The language that he went over that afternoon was absolutely sinful. And then, a couple of hours later, he heard the sound that he had been dreading. A police car came revving up the drive and he knew it was all over. There was no hiding place in the sparsely furnished room. He briefly considered popping into the wardrobe, but knew it would buy him only an extra few seconds, at most. He might have tried hiding in the hollow bed-base, but ruled that out for the same reason. The shabby prison walls and the hopeless clang of the metal doors flashed into his mind. He’d spent enough time there, over the years. It was a long time in coming but he had finally learned his lesson.

He just wanted to be free, and he would have given all the money in the world to find a key to the solid pine door that held him prisoner. Timothy Tate had told him it was never too late to pray, that no situation was ever too hopeless. And he was surely without hope of any kind at that point. But he just couldn’t bring himself to pray. And then, a curious thing happened. He spied a little blue glass bottle, in the shape of the Virgin Mary, on a high shelf in the corner. And he knew it was one of those novelty containers for holy water that people bought at the Knock shrine. And the sight of it made him so angry that he climbed up on a chair to get it and break it into small pieces. And that was when he saw the spare key, at the very back of the shelf. He couldn’t believe it. It was like a miracle. It
was
a miracle. He grabbed both objects tightly, in case they disappeared before his eyes. He jumped down again and tried the key in the lock right away, and it worked. So he nipped out through the door and locked it again behind him, just to confuse the police. His mind was in such a state of confusion that he dropped the key twice before he was finished.

At the end of the hall, through the stained glass of the front door, he could see the dark shape of one of the Gardai, fumbling with a bunch of keys. He knew there was no point in trying the other windows and doors in the house for an escape route – he had locked them all himself. He looked up to heaven for further guidance, and saw the hatch to the attic directly above him. In a heartbeat, he was up on a plant stand and through the hatch, pulling the mahogany stand up behind him. The guards came in just as he dropped the hatch back into place. He could hear them searching the house, and even coming up to the attic, but they didn’t find him because by that time he was hiding in the water tank. Stone-cold, that water was. His very soul was shivering. They had a good rummage round; he had to hand it to them. They were very thorough. They found the plant stand and wondered aloud why such a fine piece of furniture was left lying on a pile of insulation felt in the corner of the attic. But they didn’t look in the tank, and Eugene had already removed the overhead light bulb, so they wouldn’t see his mean little face just beneath the water level.

Much later, when they had gone, he crawled out of his watery hiding place, and ripped a hole in the roofing felt, He lifted off a few slates, crawled out, replaced the slates and then slid down the roof into some bushes at the back of the house. He ran across a dozen fields, dripping wet, followed all the way by two curious horses. He found a secluded beach and went for a rest in the long grass near the sand dunes. Although he was very tired and very cold, it was pleasant to listen to the cries of the seagulls as they wheeled overhead. He took off his shoes and felt the sand between his toes, thinking of the little glass bottle and how it had led him to the key and freedom. It was probably the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him.

He felt in his pocket for the statue, and was reassured to know it was still there. He wasn’t converted or anything like that, but he was intrigued. Was all religious faith just an ancient form of positive thinking, he wondered. And were the ancient monks in their beehive huts simply a bunch of peace-loving lads like himself; who made up the whole palaver about God, because they desperately wanted to get away from women and their endless chatter?

They were interesting questions to ponder as he hung around the outskirts of Bundoran, waiting for something to happen. He was barely aware of the hours passing.

He had been sleeping rough since his miraculous escape, slipping into Bundoran when it got dark, to buy fish suppers and bottles of milk. By now, the police in Belfast would be watching the hostel, the unemployment office, and the post office. What on earth was he going to do? He was nearly out of money.

In his old life, he might have decided to bump off Timothy Tate. And Johnny Hogan too, for good measure. (The pair of them had brought him nothing but bad luck.) Go out on a blaze of glory. Back to jail for the rest of his days, his place in the criminal hall of fame assured. But he didn’t feel like that any more. Even Tate and Hogan were not worth a lifetime of prison stew. To his surprise, he decided he wanted a peaceful future. Some little luxuries would be nice, yes. A bottle of good whiskey now and then, sandalwood soap, comfortable shoes. But peace of mind was definitely his number-one priority now. He thought he might hitch a ride to Spain – give his wife a little surprise. Ask her for some cash to tide him over. A little favour, for her old man. No strings attached. Or maybe just make his way to South America and try to find work there. And so, his head full of half-baked plans, he pulled his by-now shabby jacket tightly around his shoulders and ordered a hamburger and chips, and a large pot of tea.

24. Something New, Something Old, Something Blue, Something Gold

April arrived in a series of blustery rain showers. Eileen Hogan was feeling fine, although James caught the flu and blamed it on all the stress he had suffered. Marion Greenwood decided to pull herself together for the sake of her family, and also because Declan and Shirley’s wedding could not be delayed another minute.

Everyone was relieved when the original date was confirmed. There would be no postponement. The tumultuous concept of a double wedding finally began to sink in, and the girls’ mother wondered what she had done with all her free time before the big announcement. Relatives they hadn’t seen for years were calling in to visit, and they would often stay talking and reminiscing until midnight. Martha became something of a celebrity on the street. People would say, ‘There goes your woman with the two daughters getting wed,’ every time she went by their window. And the amount of shopping that had to be done was serious. Even though the Greenwoods were arranging the buffet reception and the wedding cake, Mrs Winters had to choose outfits for herself and her husband, flowers for the wedding party and the church, and dresses for the bridesmaids. The pile of gifts for Kate and Shirley had grown so large that they were afraid to leave the house unattended. Mr Winters was usually left behind to guard them while the women went shopping.

Shirley had developed a craving for the scent of fabric conditioner, and spent a lot of time doing the laundry. She had a selection of bottles on the kitchen window sill, and she sniffed each one delicately before making her choice and pouring a capful into the drawer of the washing machine. She was also eating a lot of fresh fruit, since anything remotely only made her stomach heave in protest. Strawberries were her favourite, although they weren’t as filling as her mother’s pies and stews. She lost weight, and went to see her doctor about it, but she reassured her it would be okay. Declan took to bringing punnets of fruit and boxes of peppermint tea to the house when he came to visit. He was very polite to Shirley’s parents, but he was not allowed to see Shirley alone in her room. They had to sit downstairs in the lounge, while the rest of the family waited in the kitchen. Shirley thought it was very sweet.

‘The horse may have bolted already,’ said her father, ‘but there’s no call to get rid of the gate altogether.’ No one was quite sure what he meant by that but they said nothing because he
was
coping much better than they’d expected. ‘I told you, it’s the quiet ones,’ he said from time to time, tapping the side of his nose.

Then Shirley was summoned to Romance And Ribbons for another attempt at choosing a gown. Marion was feeling much better by then, and was back behind the counter of her boutique, although she had installed a state-of-the-art security system in the building and customers now had to ring a doorbell to get in. Kate went along too, with orders from her father not to take advantage of Mrs Greenwood’s very generous offer of a bargain-price gown. Kate said nothing at the time. She didn’t think Romance And Ribbons would have anything grand enough for her. She was already getting quotes from three bridal-wear designers in England, and five hundred pounds would barely cover the deposit.