The Old House on the Corner (36 page)

‘They’ll turn green eventually,’ Marie assured him.

‘Well, if that’s not a miracle, then what is?’ Mickey marvelled.

Marie considered it a miracle that he’d fallen in love with her when he could have had the gorgeous Marguerite or any number of equally beautiful girls – girls who continued to make eyes at him, even though they knew he was a married man. But Mickey was the most faithful of husbands and Marie the happiest of wives.

Three years later, Marie gave birth to a second son, Daniel Gabriel, after ten hours of agonizing labour followed by a forceps delivery.

‘That’s it,’ Mickey announced, mopping his brow when the whole painful business was over and Daniel lay screaming in his cot, his red hair on fire, his face screwed up into one big freckle. ‘I can’t go through that again. It hurt too much.’

Marie surprised herself by laughing – it was only hours since she’d thought she’d never laugh again. ‘It hurt me far more than it did you,’ she protested.

‘I know, luv.’ He tenderly stroked her brow. ‘Seriously though, do we want a dozen kids like your mam, you spending half your life with your belly blown up like a balloon? Won’t two be enough? It’s a nice, neat number. They can both have their own room and we won’t be stretched for cash.’

‘Two will do us fine, Mickey.’ She didn’t say she wouldn’t have minded another ten like Mam, but only if they could appear by magic. No way was she prepared to spend ninety months of the rest of her life in a state of pregnancy.

Mickey had always avoided anything political like the plague. Of course, if someone came round to the house collecting for a cause, he contributed, sometimes more than he could afford. Same at work. It was dangerous not to. It wasn’t that you were expected to be
for
the cause, but it didn’t do to be against it. It was easy to make deadly enemies on your own side.

Marie hated it when the boys started school and came home full of prejudices. She said nothing, not wanting them to stand out from their classmates by voicing contrary opinions they’d learned at home. Mickey said she was being over-cautious, but, since coming to Belfast, Marie had only felt safe inside their own four walls or with friends who were as indifferent to politics as she was herself. Only then could she talk freely.

The final decade of the twentieth century was only a few months old when her darling daddy died and the whole family went to Donegal for the funeral. It was the saddest occasion she’d ever known. Colette and Gerry were the only Brennans still at home and Gerry was courting and Colette was going steady, even though she was hardly fifteen. Pretty soon, Mam would be left in the cottage on her own.

‘It was a day I thought about sometimes,’ she said to Marie, ‘but I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what it would be like. Still, I’ll know soon. But then, won’t I still have eleven of me kids living no more than a few
miles away from their mammy and dropping in to see her every other day?’

‘I wish
I
could, Mam,’ Marie sobbed. ‘I really wish I could. I miss you desperately. I miss everyone.’

‘It can’t be helped, me darlin’. You’ve got a fine feller in Mickey Harrison. A woman has to follow her husband wherever he goes. You’re happy with him, aren’t you?’

‘More than happy, Mam.’

‘Well then, that’s all that matters.’

A ceasefire was called but, although the fighting lessened, it didn’t go away altogether. The peace was accompanied by an influx of hard drugs: heroin and crack cocaine and the men of violence found something else to fight over. By then Patrick and Danny were in their teens and Marie breathed half a sigh of relief. All she’d ever wanted was to live with her husband and raise her family in an atmosphere free from danger, a very limited ambition to have, but one that had proved hard to achieve. She was working in a shop again, a jewellers, only part-time. The extra money paid for holidays and things for the boys that normally they couldn’t have afforded, like a computer between them and a guitar for Patrick, who had decided he wanted to become a pop star.

A new priest had arrived at St Joseph’s, the parish church. His name was Father O’Mara and he was even better looking than Father Murphy, who Marie had swooned over back in Donegal eighteen years ago. She was glad Mickey wasn’t home when the father called at the house: she felt as tongue-tied as a teenager when the slightly built, brown-eyed priest, who had the aura of a film star with his thatch of thick dark hair and the faintest
suggestion of a moustache, came to ask if Danny would play in the under-sixteen football team.

‘Do you feel all right, Mam?’ Danny asked after the priest had gone.

‘I’m fine, son,’ Marie replied. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You looked awful sick while Father O’Mara was here and you hardly opened your mouth.’

‘I’m fine,’ Marie repeated, although her knees felt like jelly and she could hardly breathe, as if she’d just had Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise in her front room, shaking her hand and sitting on the Dralon velvet settee. She could understand why all the women, from the very young to the very old, were madly in love with the new priest.

It wasn’t long after this that Mickey flew to London for his sister’s fiftieth birthday. Patsy had never married and he thought it would be a nice surprise if her brother made an unexpected appearance on the day. Marie had met Patsy a few times over the years and grown to like her. She would have loved a trip to London where she’d never been, but wasn’t prepared to leave the boys – that weekend, Patrick was playing the guitar with the group he belonged to and Danny had a football match.

‘Give Patsy my love and insist she come and stay with us for a wee while,’ she said to Mickey. ‘And behave yourself,’ she admonished. ‘If any girls chase after you, tell them you’re a happily married man.’

‘And you tell Father O’Mara you’re a happily married women if he comes calling while I’m away.’ Mickey roared with laughter. All the men considered the way the women had a crush on the priest a huge joke.

Mickey was only gone two nights, but it felt like for ever. The bed seemed desperately strange without him: cold, although the weather was warm, and as big as a desert. He rang from London on the first night and she
rang him on the second: there was a party going on and someone was singing ‘Danny Boy’ in a beautiful tenor voice. Mickey was flying home the next afternoon. In the morning, Patsy was going to show him round the hotel in Mayfair where she worked.

‘I can’t wait to see you, darlin’,’ Marie breathed.

‘I’ve missed you, Marie, me luv. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

In the hours before he was due home, she made as much effort with her appearance as she’d done on the day of Brigid Kelly’s wedding, washing her hair and winding it on to giant rollers, taking extra care making up her face, and putting on the green top and tiered skirt she’d bought in Marks & Spencer only the day before. Mickey liked her best in green. It went with her eyes.

It was a lovely June evening, a Sunday, when Patrick and Danny stood by the window to watch for their father. Patrick, being the tallest, spied him first. ‘He’s just turned the corner,’ he shouted, so they spilled outside, Marie with them, to welcome home their daddy and the dearest husband a woman could ever have.

Micky grinned as he came nearer. ‘Where’s your mammy?’ he shouted. ‘Is that a new girlfriend you’ve got there, Patrick? She looks much too young to be the wife I left behind.’

He came inside. The boys fussed over him as if he’d been gone a year. Marie made tea. They sat in the front room while he told them about London. Patsy had pointed out a cheap hotel, very clean, where they could stay for a few days and she’d show them around the sights.

‘Perhaps we could go in the summer holidays,’ he suggested.

Marie, sitting on the arm of his chair, squeezed his
shoulder. She could never remember feeling quite so happy as she did at that moment: that peerless, sublime moment when the world seemed perfectly balanced and she couldn’t imagine anything going wrong.

‘How did the concert go, Patrick?’ Mickey asked.

‘Great, Dad. Someone took a photo, I’ve got a copy upstairs. It’s going in the paper on Monday. Would you like to see it?’

‘Of course, son. Is there another cup of tea, luv?’ he said to Marie. ‘I’m parched.’

‘You’ve hardly been home a minute, Mickey Harrison,’ she smiled, ‘and you’ve already got me running round after you like a slave. Here, give us your cup. There’s still half a pot out there.’

Patrick went to fetch the photo and Marie was in the kitchen, pouring the tea and, at first, couldn’t quite make out the source of the terrific banging. It must be coming from next door. It sounded as if someone was trying to kick in the door. Then there was a crash in the hall and she realized it was her own door that was being attacked. When she looked, the door was swinging on its hinges and there were noises in the front room, a series of subdued bangs, and two men, dressed from head to toe in black, came rushing out and Marie went rushing in to find Danny staring, horrified and unbelieving, at the chair where his daddy had been sitting, now drenched in blood. There was a pool on the floor and splashes on the walls, and her darling Mickey’s face was a mess of blood and brains because half of his face had been blown away.

People came: neighbours, friends, two members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Who did she think had done it, they wanted to know? What organizations had
Mickey belonged to? Why had he been to London? Who had he gone to see there?

Marie couldn’t take the questions in. She was too traumatized, frozen in a state of shock, nursing Danny, who was crying like a baby in her arms, so Patrick took over, not quite seventeen, but already as fine a man as his father.

‘Me dad didn’t belong to any organizations,’ he said bluntly while fighting back his own tears. ‘He’d been to London for me Auntie Patsy’s birthday. There’s no reason on earth why anyone’d want to kill him.’

The police sergeant looked dubious. ‘There’s always a reason for this sort of thing, son. Was your daddy dealing drugs, do you know?’

‘Indeed he was not. Whoever did this had the wrong name or the wrong address. It must be a mistake – they’ve been made before.’

A mistake! Mickey had been murdered by mistake! To lose him was tragedy enough, but for him to go so brutally, so incomprehensibly, was a tragedy with which Marie didn’t think she would ever come to terms, never understand, and never forgive.

An old priest, Father McNarmara, presided over Mickey’s Requiem Mass. The funeral was a day of quiet footsteps and subdued sobs as the hearse drove to the church followed by hundreds of mourners, Marie at the head holding Danny’s hand and Patrick’s arm around her shoulders, her family behind.

Mickey had lain in his coffin in the front room for five days, his face miraculously mended, a rosary threaded through the long fingers that had touched his wife so tenderly and passionately over the years. The front door had been repaired and put back on its hinges, the stains
on the walls painted over, the carpet cleaned, and Mickey’s chair was in Marie’s bedroom, the red blood dried to black.

Enda Kelly came to the house late the same night. Enda had started at Harland & Wolff at the same time as Mickey and they’d been best mates ever since. He was shattered by his death and looked as if he’d aged twenty years since he’d come round to watch a football video the night before Mickey had gone away. Now he’d come to talk about old times, reminding Marie of the night he’d brought his friend up to their Rita’s bedroom and he and Marie had clicked straight away.

‘No we didn’t, Enda. He clicked with Marguerite Kelly first, he didn’t even notice me for a good half hour.’

‘He liked you, though. He told me afterwards how much he liked you.’ Enda sighed. ‘Now I suppose you’ll be going back to Donegal to live with your mam?’

‘We will indeed. As soon as the lads finish school this summer.’ She thought how much she’d always wanted to go back, but never under such heart-breaking circumstances.

‘There’re no Kellys left in Donegal any more. Most of them have moved to Birmingham.’

‘I know, Enda. I still write to your Rita sometimes and she told me.’

‘Of course you do. I’d forgotten for the moment. Me and Peggy and the kids might go there ourselves when all this is over.’

‘When all what’s over?’ There was something about his face, usually so open, now threatening and dark, that worried her.

‘Never you mind, Marie.’ He looked at the carpet, refusing to meet her eyes.

‘
When all what’s over, Enda?
’

He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, Marie. You go back to Donegal with your lads. You’ll be nice and safe there. Forget about Belfast.’

Marie’s heart began to thump and the pounding spread rapidly through her entire body. She hardly recognized her own voice when she said, ‘You know who killed my Mickey, don’t you?’

‘Mickey rang from the airport on the way home from London and gave me the name of the boyo who must have given the orders, even if he didn’t do the deed himself.’

She was losing her mind. Nothing was making sense any more. ‘Tell me who it is,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me who it was, then give me a gun, and I’ll put a bullet through his evil heart meself, so I will.’

‘There’s half a dozen fellers who can’t wait to do that themselves, Marie, and I’m the first in the queue.’ The pale eyes burned with hatred. ‘Patrick and Danny have seen enough of murder to last a lifetime. Leave the bastard to me and Mickey’s mates. As soon as you and the lads have gone, we’ll see to him.’

Father O’Mara came even later, long after Enda had gone. He’d been twice before to say prayers over Mickey’s body, but this was the first time Marie had spoken to him on her own.

‘Where are the boys?’ he asked.

‘Asleep in their beds.’

‘And your family?’

‘All home by now. They came from Donegal in a hired coach.’

The priest nodded. His handsome face was set in an expression of the utmost gravity. ‘Did Mickey say
anything when he got back from London that might give a clue to who killed him?’ he asked gently.

‘No, Father. We only talked about holidays and things.’ Patsy had told him about a cheap hotel in London where they could all stay for a few days.