The Copper Beech (12 page)

‘No, but there will be the insurance money … eventually,’ Gloria said. She said they weren’t going to buy emeralds and diamonds again. Maybe put the money into paying off the extension and getting the place rewired and better stocked.

Maura remembered some of the conversations she had heard about the need to pay builders’ bills. She went back over those financial difficulties she thought she had been aware of. Possibly the insurance money was exactly what the Darcys needed at this stage.

Indeed, it could be said to come at exactly the right time.

Maura had been used to keeping her own counsel for as long as she could remember. She had seen what the wild indiscretions of her own family had brought on themselves and everyone else around – her father’s blustering revelations of any bit of gossip he knew, her mother’s trying to play one member of the family off against the other.

Maura said very little.

She had sometimes suspected over the years that the envelope Father Gunn gave her each Christmas, saying that it was from Gerry O’Sullivan from no fixed address in England, actually came from the priest himself. But she never let Father Gunn know of her suspicions. She thanked him for acting as postman.

She sometimes wondered why she had become so secretive and close. When she was a youngster she had been open and would talk to everyone. Maybe it was just the whole business of Gerry and having to be protective of Michael. And because there had never been a real friend to talk to.

The robbery of the jewels had been a nine-day wonder. Soon people stopped talking about it. There were other things to occupy their minds.

There was always something happening in Shancarrig. Maura never knew why people called it sleepy or a backwater. Only people who didn’t know the place would have used words like that. Maura and Michael helped at the Dramatic Society and there was a drama a week there from the time that Biddy who worked at The Glen started to dance and went on like something wound up until no one could drag her from the stage. And there was all the business about Father Barry not being well, and then going off to the missions.

There was Richard, that handsome cousin of Niall Hayes, who had come to The Terrace and broken a few hearts – Nessa’s maybe – and Maura thought there might be a bit of electricity between him and Mrs Darcy, not that she would ever mention a word of it. Yet Nellie Dunne hinted of it too so that rumour might well be going around the place. Eddie Barton had opened all their eyes with his unexpected romance, and the news of Foxy Dunne from London was always worth people pausing to discuss.

There was plenty to distract the minds of Shancarrig from the missing emerald and diamonds.

Maura O’Sullivan and her son Michael went from house to house – the ironing for Miss Ross, who had lines set in her face now, and had begun to look like a waxwork image of her old mother – there was the silver polishing for Mrs Hayes – the two hours on a Saturday for Mrs Barton – but mainly, the Darcys.

There was a lot to be done in a house where there were
two boys and where the parents were hardly ever out of the shop. Maura didn’t wait to be asked to do things. She had her own routine.

She was doing the master bedroom, as Gloria called it, when she found the jewellery. It was on top of the wardrobe in a big round hat box. Maura had been dusting the top of the wardrobe with sheets of newspapers spread below to catch the falling dirt. She saw a neater way to stack the suitcases, but it involved lifting them down. Michael stood willingly to take them from her. And it was only because the hat box rattled that she opened it. It was as if there was a big stone in it. She didn’t want whatever it was to fall out.

It was a red silk scarf with two small black velvet bags wrapped up in it.

Michael saw her stop and hold the wardrobe top for support.

‘Are you going to fall down?’ he asked anxiously.

‘No, love.’ Maura climbed down and sat on the bed. Her heart was racing dangerously.

There was no way that she could have accidentally discovered the lost and much-mourned jewellery. There would be no cries of delight if the gems were recovered and the insurance claim had to be cancelled.

She also knew that they had not got into the hat box by accident. The description had been given over and over. The emerald on its chain had been in a box on the desk downstairs, and the little earrings in their black velvet bag beside them. The room they were in, the sitting room, had a pair of glass doors opening on to the small back garden. A light-fingered, light-footed tinker boy could have been in and out without anyone noticing.

That was how the story went.

In all her time cleaning in this house Maura had never
known the valuables kept in this hat box. It was not a place someone would have put them and forgotten about them.

‘Why aren’t you speaking?’ Michael wanted to know.

‘I’m trying to think about something,’ she said. She put her arm around his shoulder and drew him close.

She seemed to sit there for a long time, yellow duster in hand, her feet squarely on the spread newspaper, her son enclosed in her arm.

That evening Maura put the two little black velvet bags in her cabinet of treasures. She had to think it out very cleverly. She mustn’t do the wrong thing and end up the worse for this great discovery.

Weeks went by before she brought up the subject of the lost jewels. She waited until she had Gloria in the house on her own. She had left Michael playing with the chickens outside.

‘I was thinking, Mam, Mrs Darcy … what would happen if someone found your emerald chain say … thrown in a hedge by the tinkers?’

‘What do you mean?’ Gloria’s voice was sharp.

‘Well, now that you’ve done all the renovations here … and got used to not having it and wearing it round your neck … wouldn’t it be bad for you if it turned up?’

‘It won’t turn up. That lot have it well sold by now, you can be sure.’

‘But where would they sell it? If they brought it into a jeweller’s shop, Mrs Darcy, wouldn’t people know it was the one that was stolen from you? They’d call the guards, not give them the money.’

‘That crowd travel far and wide. They could take it to a shop miles from here.’

There was a silence.

Then Gloria said, ‘Anyway, it hasn’t been found.’

‘My head is full of dreams, Mrs Darcy. I go walking by the hedges. I often find things … what would happen if I were to find it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Well, suppose I did find it, would I take it to Sergeant Keane and say where I came across it, or would I give it to you …?’

Gloria’s eyes were very narrow.

Maura saw her glance towards the stairs as if she were about to run up and check the hat box.

‘This is fancy talk,’ she said eventually. ‘But I suppose the best would be, if you
were
to find it, to give it to me quietly. As you say, the insurance money was really more use to us than the jewellery itself at this stage.’

‘What about a reward?’ Maura looked confused and eager.

‘We’d have to see.’

Maura went out to the chickens to find Michael, but she paused before she closed the door behind her and heard the light sound of Gloria Darcy’s feet running up the stairs, and the sound of the suitcases being thrown from the high wardrobe to the floor.

Nothing was said.

It wasn’t as hard for Maura as it might have been for others, because after a life of keeping her thoughts and opinions to herself it was relatively easy to work on in the house where Gloria and Mike Darcy obviously walked on a knife edge of anxiety around her.

They offered her cups of tea in the middle of her cleaning. They found things for Michael in the shop as gifts, but Maura said he mustn’t be allowed to think of the shop as a wonderland where he could stroll and take whatever bar of chocolate he wanted. It would be very bad for him, and she had spent so much time trying to
make him see what was his and what wasn’t.

When she said this Maura O’Sullivan looked Mike and Gloria straight in the eye. She could see that she had them totally perplexed.

It was Gloria who broke eventually.

‘Remember you were saying that you were a great one for finding things, Maura?’

‘Yes indeed. I prayed to St Anthony for that good Parker pen of Mr Darcy’s to turn up and didn’t it roll out from behind where we keep the trays stacked in the kitchen.’ Maura was proud and pleased with the results of her prayers.

‘I was thinking about what you said … and in our business, well … we get to know a lot of people. Now, suppose you were to find the stuff that the tinkers took somewhere …?’

‘Yes, Mrs Darcy?’

‘Do you know what the very best thing to do with it would be …?’

‘I do not. And I’ve been wondering and wondering.’

‘You see, the insurance money has been paid and spent improving the shop, providing work for people, even for you in the house.’ Maura held her head on one side, waiting. ‘So, if it did turn up and you were able to give it to me I could get it sold for you, and give you some of it …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Ah, but if I knew the right place to sell it myself, then I could get plenty of money. Because, as you say yourself, you got the insurance money out of it already. You wouldn’t want to be getting things twice over … it wouldn’t be fair.’

‘But why would it be fair for
you
to get it all?’

‘If I found it in a hedge, or wherever I found it, it’s finders keepers, isn’t it?’

‘But no use of course if you didn’t know where to sell it.’

This was the deal. They both knew it.

‘I’ll be going to the big town next week, Mrs Darcy.’

‘Yes, for your Christmas shopping. Of course.’

‘I get this envelope from Michael’s father, through Father Gunn. I’ll be spending whatever there is …’

‘I know.’

‘And I was thinking, suppose I found the lost jewels by then, I’d be able to sell the emerald on the chain and I could give you back the diamonds, on account of you taking me straight to the right place, and that way…’ She let the sentence hang there.

‘That way would be better, I suppose, than any other way.’ Gloria’s face was grim.

Niall Hayes was surprised when he heard that a Mrs O’Sullivan wanted to see him particularly. People usually wanted to see his father, Mr Hayes Senior, the real solicitor as he had heard him described.

He was more surprised when he discovered that it was Maura Brennan from the cottages. He welcomed the two of them into his office – hardly anyone in Shancarrig had ever seen them apart.

‘How have you been keeping, Maura?’ he said, always a kind open fellow, despite his sharp snobby mother.

‘I couldn’t be better, Niall,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a bit of good luck. Michael’s father always sends a bit to help out at Christmas time, and this year he was able to send a lot more.’

‘Well, that’s good, very good.’ Niall couldn’t see where the conversation was leading.

‘And I’ll tell you what we’d love, Niall… You know the cottage at the gate of The Glen?’

‘I do, indeed. And they’re putting it up for sale.’

‘I’d like to buy it for Michael and myself. Would you act for us?’

Niall paused. How could Maura have enough to buy and renovate a place like that?

‘I’ll talk to Leo,’ he said.

‘No, talk to me. Tell me what’s fair to offer her. Fair to her, fair to me.’

That was the way Niall Hayes liked to do business. There wasn’t enough of it around. People were changing, attitudes were different. They wanted sharp dealings here and there.

He patted Maura’s hand. It would be done.

Maura told Father Gunn that Michael’s father had given them a great deal of money this year, much more than other times. If the priest was surprised he didn’t show it.

‘I think that’s the last payment, Father.’ She looked into the priest’s eyes behind the thick round glasses. ‘I don’t think you’ll be getting any more envelopes to give out at Christmas.’

He looked after them as they went down the road – Maura and Michael, soon to be householders, soon to go into a place of dreams, and paint it and tidy it and fill it with treasures.

He knew that the longer he lived in this parish the less he would understand.

Eddie Barton only had a birthday once every four years, which was highly unusual. In fact, he thought he was the only person in the world in this situation. It came as a shock to him that other children had been born on this day. He was ten before he accepted it properly. Up to that he had thought he was unique.

Miss Ross, who was so nice at school, had told them all about Leap Year. Mr Kelly had frightened the wits out of him by saying that if a woman proposed to you on February twenty-ninth you had to say yes, even if she was the most terrifyingly awful person in the world. Mr Kelly had laughed as he said it but Eddie wasn’t sure if it was a real laugh or not. Mr Kelly often looked sad.

‘Did Mrs Kelly propose to you on my birthday?’ Eddie asked fearfully. If the answer was yes then this indeed was another bad aspect of growing up.

But Mr Kelly had put his finger on his lips in a jokey sort of way and said, ‘Nonsense and don’t let Mrs Kelly hear a whisper of this or there’d be trouble.’ It was to be a secret between them.

‘I thought you said it was a well-known fact?’ Eddie was confused.

‘I did,’ the teacher sighed. ‘I did but I keep forgetting, even after all my years in a classroom, how dangerous it is to say anything, anything at all, to children.’

When Eddie’s tenth birthday was coming up, his mother said he could be ten on the day before or the day after.

‘I’d better wait until the day after,’ he told Leo Murphy, who walked home after school with him because she lived in the big house, The Glen, up the hill, and Eddie lived in the small pink house halfway up the road. Leo had said that Eddie’s house reminded her of a child’s drawing of a house. It had windows that looked as if they were painted on. Eddie didn’t know whether this was praise or not.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ he had asked ferociously.

‘Nothing. It’s nice. It looks safe and normal, not like a jungle,’ Leo had replied.