This Irish House (10 page)

Neil listened attentively, watching the play of light around her mouth, the line of her throat. He was conscious of her femininity, a woman utterly serious, warm and poised, but businesslike, without a hint of coyness.

Her home, the home she'd created without her husband, reflected her, warmth, light, classically beautiful, highly functional. This was a woman with hidden reserves.

“You're very quiet,” she said, after a lengthy pause. “I've talked the entire time.”

He smiled. “The meal was delicious, Mrs. Nolan.”

“Kate.”

“Very well, Kate. I don't often have anything like this.”

“How long have you been divorced?”

“Ten years.”

Her face was expressive. She was counting backward. He would make it easier for her.

“I left when my little girl was three years old.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's over. The mistake has been remedied and I have a lovely daughter.”

“Do you see her often?”

“As often as I can. At least once a month and every other holiday. She has school and friends in London.

Sometimes it's difficult for her to break away. I'm grateful for what I can get.”

“Of course,” Kate murmured. She couldn't imagine a life without her children, watching them grow, waking them in the morning, sitting across the table listening to their good-natured grousing about the food, teasing them, hugging them, advising them. What would she be without them?

Neil's voice broke into her thoughts. “I've taken up your time. It's nearly six o'clock.”

“It's all right. I'll leave the dishes to soak and finish up when I come back.”

Kevin stood in the doorway. “Grandda's coming by with the car. He said he would give us a lift.”

“Does he know we're going back to Donegal?”

“I told him.”

Kate sighed and spoke to Neil. “My father is a love but he can be relentless. Perhaps...” Her voice trailed off.

Neil grinned. “You don't want him interrogating me.”

“Yes.”

He stood. “I'll be leaving now. Thanks again for the meal. I'll repay you whenever you're back in Belfast.”

“That isn't necessary,” she assured him. “You drove me home.”

He smiled and stood there for a moment looking down at her.

She pushed her chair away from the table and stood. “I'll walk you to the door. Be careful going back. The roads aren't good this time of year.”

Mindful of who she was and the space she kept between them, he left her on the porch with a friendly wave. “Goodbye, Kate,” he said and walked to his car.

She hugged herself against the cold, a slight, straight figure standing on the porch rubbing her arms. “Goodbye. Thanks again for the ride,” she called out.

He nodded, waved again and drove away.

T
hey walked apart in stony silence, Kevin first and then Kate, keeping their distance, until they reached the car.

Kevin climbed inside, slammed the door and glared angrily at his mother. “What was that all about? Why did you bring me here?”

Kate's brow creased. Worry had become second nature to her. “I'm concerned. You've been different lately.”

“No, I haven't.”

“Kevin, the Belfast incident terrified me. Surely you understand that.”

“I told you. It was nothing. It won't happen again.” “

If I understood why it happened in the first place, I might have more confidence that you're telling me the truth.”

“Are you saying you don't believe me?”

“No. I'm saying you can't possibly give me a guarantee unless you know what led you down that path in the first place.”

Kevin groaned in frustration. “There is no path. It was just something that happened.”

Kate snapped. “What happened isn't going to happen again. Not as long as I'm here. I'm having trouble trusting you and I don't like the feeling. I love you. Deirdre and Grandda love you. Our family has gone through enough. We owe it to each other to make the best of what we've been given. Do you honestly feel you're doing that, Kevin? Does skipping school, earning failing marks and being arrested for narcotics possession make sense in light of all that? Do you think that's what your father would have wanted?”

“I don't want to spill my soul to a bloody counselor,” Kevin muttered. “Why do I have to do that?”

“Because there's nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. Something has to be done and if you think you've fooled anyone by insisting that you don't have any worries, think again.”

“I never said that.”

“Well, what are they?”

She saw the red rise in his cheeks. Irish skin. Patrick's skin. Her hands tightened on the wheel. “You don't have to tell me, Kevin, but you must tell someone. That's why I made the appointment. I wanted you to feel as if you could confide in someone completely impartial. Can you see that?”

He turned toward her. “Give me one more chance, Mum,” Kevin pleaded. “Please. I won't botch it again. I promise. Please, don't make me do this again.”

She was no match for the pleading look on her son's face but Kate was well into her second decade of motherhood and she'd learned a bit from the last one. One did not make decisions without thinking them through with a cool head. This was one of those times. “I'll consider it, love” was all she would give him.

Kevin changed the subject. “When can I apply for my driving license?”

“I think you need to give it more time.”

“I'm a decent driver.”

“I know you are.” Kate smiled reassuringly. “But there's more to driving an automobile than good reflexes. Others on the road may not be good drivers like the man who almost killed me today.”

Kevin, in typical teenage fashion, ignored the reference. “How much longer do I have to wait?”

“A bit of practice every day for the rest of the month would satisfy me.”

Kevin's face brightened. “Will you be home for me to do that?”

“I'll make a point of it,” she promised, forcing a cheerful expression.
Kevin
behind
the
wheel
of
a
car.
The very thought of it sucked the air from her lungs. Her insides felt as if they were caving in. She didn't know if she could negotiate the short drive back to the small beachfront village that was home.

“Thanks, Grandda,” Kevin shouted over his shoulder. “I'll have the car back to you by half past six.”

John O'Donnell lifted his hand in farewell. “Be safe, lad.”

Kevin was elated. It was a stroke of good fortune that he'd passed his driving test the first time. Few did, but then few parents were as exacting as his mother. The extra practice had paid off and now he was to be trusted alone in a car for the first time.

He adjusted the seat and then the rearview mirror. His grandfather was shorter by nearly five inches. After fastening his seat belt, he signaled and pulled out on to the nearly empty street. It was exhilarating at first, to control thousands of pounds, to merely touch the wheel and feel an immediate response. Kevin turned the corner past the chemist's shop leading to the road out of town. After passing the last residential street, he pressed harder on the gas. Signposts flashed by. The road leveled out. He grinned and pressed harder. The speed energized him. Peat fields and herds of sheep flew by. He ignored the No Overtaking sign and passed a tractor and two cyclists.

A stop sign on the Clifdon Road loomed ahead. Kevin pressed down on the brake hard. The car slowed to a complete stop. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes had elapsed since he'd left his grandfather's house. The warm glow of his first solo drive had left him. Now what? He drummed his fingers on the wheel and considered his dilemma. What good were a license and a car if he couldn't show anyone? He thought of visiting Johnny Gallagher and immediately discarded the idea. He'd rejected his friend's birthday invitation. More than likely he wouldn't be welcome at the Gallaghers' anymore. Where could he go?

Slowly he pulled into the intersection, negotiated a three-corner turn and drove back the way he came. Tim Murphy wasn't really a friend and neither was Sean Payne, but they would admire his car. They might even want him to drive them somewhere. He could always count on the two of them to be close to home. They were older, out of school and on the dole. Kevin knew exactly where to find them.

Cleary's Pub was a fixture on the outskirts of Ardara. It was old, not so old as Nancy's or White's but old enough so that everyone within a fifty-mile radius knew of it. It wasn't quaint or charming enough to attract tourists, but for the native inhabitants it was a local landmark. Most stories had their roots strongly entrenched in the pitted wood and smoke-stained windows of Cleary's.

Just as he expected, Kevin found the boys bent over a billiard table, each nursing a pint of foaming Guinness. They barely looked up when he hailed them.

“How have you been?” he ventured.

“What's it to you?” Sean, beefy and broad-shouldered to Tim's lean, emaciated height, chugged down half his pint. “You haven't been beating the doors down.”

Kevin flushed. “You left me in Belfast and I got into some trouble.”

“You weren't supposed to get jacked. You know that. Anyone who gets jacked is on his own.”

“It was a setup.”

“We heard,” said Tim. “Are you all right then?”

Kevin nodded. “I think so. Nothing really happened.”

“Of course not.” Sean sneered.

Tim straightened and frowned at his companion. “Shut up, Sean. Did you have something to tell us, Kevin?”

“I've a driving license and a car.”

The two older boys glanced quickly at each other. Tim spoke first. “That's grand, lad.”

“Aye,” said Sean. “We're on the lookout for just such an opportunity, aren't we, Tim?”

“We are.”

Kevin felt the nervous tick on the edge of his eyelid begin to jump. “What did you have in mind?”

“We need a lift to Belfast.”

“I can't do that.”

Tim pulled a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and offered it to Kevin. “It won't take long,” he said casually. “No one has to know.”

Kevin shook his head. “I have to be back soon. I've my grandda's car.”

Sean laughed. “We don't mean today. Wednesday is a good day. We could go on Wednesday.”

“I've school on Wednesday.”

“You could take a break,” Tim suggested. “One day off wouldn't hurt you, a bright lad like you.”

“I haven't done so well lately.”

“One more day won't make a difference,” Sean wheedled. “Plan on Wednesday. We need to get to Belfast on Wednesday. We'll be back in no time. The bus takes twice as long.”

“I'm not sure I can get my grandda's car on Wednesday. He'll be suspicious.”

“Ask him if you can drive it to school,” said Sean. “No one will know. Our Tim will write you a letter and sign it. He has a clever hand.”

Kevin frowned. “I won't say for sure. I'll have to let you know later.”

Tim rested his hand on Kevin's shoulder. “You're not yellow, are you lad? Because if you are we'll have to let the lads know. It would be the end for you.”

Kevin swallowed. “That's not it.”

“What is it then?”

“There's a screw in Belfast. He's an investigator or something at the RUC station. He didn't want to let me go. I saw him in Ardara. I think he may be following me, waiting for me to do something wrong.”

“What's his name?”

“Anderson.”

Once again the two boys glanced at each other and then looked away quickly.

“Anderson, did you say?” asked Tim.

“Aye.”

“Did he arrest you?”

“At first.”

“On what charge?”

“Possession of narcotics.”

“Is that all he wanted off you?”

Kevin hesitated. The need to tell someone of his near miss was strong but instinct told him to mind his tongue. “Aye,” he said instead.

“Were you kept overnight?”

Kevin shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Something wasn't right with the evidence.”

Tim whistled. “You're a lucky bloke.”

Sean spoke up. “Luck has nothing to do with it. He's that posh lawyer's son. No one would dare arrest him.”

“His da wasn't a favorite of the RUC,” Tim said quietly. “He defended Catholics in Diplock courts.”

Kevin stared at the lean, serious boy standing beside him. “That was a long time ago. How do you know so much about my da?”

“Everyone knows about Patrick Nolan, lad. He's a bloody legend.” Tim bent over the billiard table and positioned his cue. “Now let us finish our game and don't forget to ask your grandda for his car on Wednesday.”

From across the dinner table Kate watched her son mix his carrots and potatoes together into an unappetizing eddy and wished, not for the first time, that her Catholicism was less intellectual and more spiritual. It would be so reassuring to believe that God was sympathetic to the pleas of desperate mortals, that He actually listened to and answered the prayers of the helpless and muddled who couldn't manage their own lives without divine intercession. But she wasn't that kind of believer.

Kate had never been what the nuns called strong on faith. She believed in God, of course, and in the divinity of Christ and she would never be anything but a Catholic. Tradition and the sacrifices of her ancestors were too strongly entrenched in her history. But that was as far as it went. Even as a small child of seven, dressed in her first communion veil, she had known that something wasn't quite right. It had to do with her instinctive dislike of fairy tales. How could God listen to so many people who wanted different things and, more to the point, why would He want to?

She would have preferred the kind of faith her schoolmates had, unconditional, unquestioning, the kind that welcomed conflict, bolstered the faithful and took upon itself life's heaviest burdens. But somehow, that deep immersing of the spirit had eluded her from the very beginning and still did.

Watching her son struggle with his personal demons, she was once again consumed with frustration. Where had she gone wrong and why was Kevin paying such a dreadful price?

She forced herself to ask what she thought was a benign question. “Grandda said you drove his car today. Where did you go?”

Kevin flung his head back. His eyes burned brightly. “Where do you think I went?”

Kate's hand tightened around her fork. “For pity's sake, Kevin, I was only making conversation,” she stammered. “It isn't important.”

Her answer incensed him even more. “Why are we always talking about me?” he shouted. “I must be your favorite topic of conversation. Is there anyone in the entire town who doesn't know everything about me?”

Struggling for patience, Kate lifted her glass of water and forced herself to sip it slowly. Mentally she counted to ten, set down the glass and wiped the corners of her mouth with her napkin. When she spoke, her voice was measured, controlled. “If you are the topic of anyone's conversation, it is your doing, not mine. You, of all people, should know me well enough to believe me when I tell you that I have never discussed your personal problems with anyone other than Grandda and Deirdre. If that bothers you, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to promise you it won't happen again. Sometimes I'm not the most impartial observer. I need the advice of people to whom you matter.” She pushed away her plate. “Can you understand that, Kevin?”

“Aye,” he said sullenly. “I understand well enough that it will take years before you trust me again.”

Kate was silent for a full minute while digesting the accuracy of Kevin's statement. “I don't think it will take years, Kevin,” she said at last. “But it may take more than a few weeks. I'm sorry.”

He shook his head. “One mistake,” he said bitterly. “One mistake and I'm cooked. Didn't you ever make a mistake, Mum? Don't you believe in second chances?”

“Yes, I've made mistakes and of course I believe in second chances. You're not exactly a prisoner, Kevin. You have quite a bit of freedom. All I asked was a simple question.”

Kevin stirred the food on his plate. “I drove the Coast Road and then came back to Cleary's Pub to watch Sean and Tim play billiards.”

Kate was familiar with Tim Murphy and Sean Payne. She disliked them both but decided to let her antipathy pass without comment. Kevin was touchy enough. Any criticism of his friends might alienate him completely. Instead she smiled. “I hope they were suitably impressed with your new status.”