One Hundred Names

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Ambrose and Eugene were on a high, and despite the failed adjudicator kidnap, spirits were buoyant on the bus as they listened to Eugene’s proud retelling of how Ambrose had entranced them all with her discoveries, and Steve was able to show his photographs on the camera, which Ambrose swiftly put an end to. When Eugene had told the story enough times, they turned to Birdie’s impending win.

Birdie hadn’t been exaggerating when she said she was from a small town. Nadd was in the foothills of the Boggeragh Mountains and had a population of just over one hundred and seventy people. It consisted of two pubs, one which doubled as a guesthouse, the other which tripled as a shop and betting office, and also a church and a school. On the outskirts of the village a housing scheme to encourage and attract young families into the area had begun and stopped halfway, leaving pastel-coloured summer houses standing unfinished with smashed windows.

‘Ooh, there it is, Birdie,’ Mary-Rose sang as they passed the bookies and added more hairspray to Birdie’s perfect hair-do, much to Edward’s disgust as another coughing fit took him over.

Molly took delight in seeing this.

It was decided that everybody would wait in the guesthouse garden to give Birdie privacy while she went inside the bookies, but Kitty was honoured to be asked to go inside with her. Birdie linked arms with Edward, while Kitty and Steve waited in the background, Steve subtly taking photos.

The bookies, attached to the pub, was a small room that resembled a living room. On the right-hand side of the O’Hara pub was a newsagent shop, on the left was the bookies. Inside, two men were sitting on stools and watching a small television in the corner of the room. They were wearing tweed caps and suit jackets, and smelled like they hadn’t washed for a few weeks. Behind the protected glass was a man in his thirties. He looked up and when Birdie laid eyes on him she took an audible intake of breath. Kitty assumed she knew him and waited for a flicker of recognition to pass his face but it never came and Birdie composed herself.

‘My name is Bridget Murphy,’ she said, a slight shake in her voice, which definitely had more of a hint of her Cork accent than before.

The two old men looked away from the television screen to stare at her. Edward put his hand supportively around his grandmother’s body.

‘Sixty-seven years ago I placed a bet with Josie O’Hara and I’m here to collect my winnings,’ she said.

Kitty almost felt emotional hearing Birdie say those words. How often had Birdie said them to herself, as a teenager desperate to leave the town but equally desperate to prove she could come back, as a young mother, as she hit middle age, and then in her old age? How often had she thought of this moment, and now it was here?

The young man stood from his stool behind the counter. ‘Have you got the slip?’

She retrieved a plastic sleeve from her handbag and with shaking fingers slid it under the counter. Kitty wasn’t sure if the shake was from nerves or old age, but she hadn’t noticed it before. The young man studied the slip, looked back up at her, at Molly and Edward by her side, then back down at the slip again. He smiled, then he laughed.

‘I can’t believe this,’ he said. ‘Sixty-seven years ago!’

Molly and Kitty grinned but Edward’s voice showed concern.

‘You’ll give her the money?’ he asked.

Birdie’s not receiving the money had never entered Kitty’s mind. It had always been a question of how much they would give her with the changes in currency in all of those years. Her original bet surely no longer followed the ordinary rules.

‘A bet’s a bet,’ the man said, his smile large on his face. ‘You know, Josie was my great-grandfather,’ he sounded excited. ‘He died when I was young but I’ll never forget his… hold on.’ His smile quickly faded and he brought the old slip closer to his face. ‘One hundred to one?’ he read the odds, shocked.

Birdie nodded. ‘That’s what Josie gave me.’

‘I’ll have to… I’m not sure I can… I don’t have the authority to… hold on just a minute, please.’

He took the slip and disappeared out the door, leaving them standing there. One of the old men was staring at them.

‘Are you Thomas’s girl?’ he asked.

Birdie turned and examined him. ‘I am.’

‘Jaysus, Sean, would you look at that, Thomas’s girl.’

‘Ha?’ the old man shouted.

‘She’s Thomas’s girl,’ the man shouted.

The old man fixed his eye on Molly. He immediately distrusted her with her blue hair. ‘Is she now?’

‘Not her, the other one.’ He waved his crooked finger. ‘You’re the sick girl,’ he said.

Birdie’s cheeks flushed and Kitty could see that still the stigma lived on.

‘And who are you?’ Molly asked, protectively.

‘Paddy Healy. Una and Paddy’s son.’

Birdie’s eyes narrowed as she thought about it, her mind casting back all those years to a time lost or forgotten, deliberately and some naturally. Suddenly her eyes stopped moving from left to right and lit up. ‘From down the road?’

‘Aye.’

‘Rachel’s baby brother.’

‘That’s me.’

Kitty took in his appearance and found it hard to imagine this old man as a baby brother to anyone.

‘Rachel and I were in school together, the times that I was in school.’

He softened. ‘She passed away some ten years ago.’

Birdie’s smile quickly faded. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

The door behind them opened and they heard a loud voice coming from their side of the glass.

‘We’re not giving you the money,’ the voice announced. The source was an old lady in her eighties but time had not been as kind to her as it had been to Birdie. She was badly hunched over a cane, and her hair was almost woollen-looking it was so thick and dry. Dog hairs covered her smock and her swollen legs and ankles had been stuffed into a new pair of Ecco shoes.

‘Excuse me?’ Molly replied, her tone harsh as she stood up to the old woman half her height.

Birdie looked the old woman up and down. ‘Mary O’Hara.’

The woman sniffed. ‘Fitzgerald. So you’re still alive then.’ She looked Birdie up and down in turn.

‘Alive and well,’ Birdie said, straightening up. ‘I assume it is your decision not to give me the money.’

Josie’s great-grandson looked at them apologetically.

‘I’m the authority around here and I say so.’

‘It was a valid bet,’ Birdie said firmly. ‘Your father, at least, was a man of his word.’

‘And you, it turned out, were not.’ She sniffed again and it was clear there was a lot more going on here than a bet made over sixty years ago.

‘I hope this isn’t personal, Mary. That was a long time ago.’

‘You broke my brother’s heart. Once broken, always broken. I don’t care how much time has passed.’

Birdie seemed to pale at this. ‘Is he… how is…?’

‘He’s dead,’ Mary snapped, and even the man behind her bristled at how harshly it had been delivered.

Kitty noticed how Edward held on to Birdie tighter as if she had suddenly lost her power to stand alone.

‘Why, did you expect him to be here?’ Mary asked, then laughed, a wheezy thing that turned into a cough. ‘Did you expect him to still be waiting for you? Well, he didn’t, he left, moved on, married, had children, grandchildren.’

Birdie gave a small but sad smile at that. ‘When did he… pass away?’

When Mary responded her tone was less harsh but still carried the loathing she felt for Birdie. ‘Last year.’

Birdie’s face was etched with pain and sadness. Without another word, she turned and left the bookies.

‘Well?’ Mary-Rose pounced on her immediately as they stepped outside.

Kitty shook her head at everyone so they knew not to ask any more questions.

Birdie seemed disoriented. Both Edward and Kitty looked to Molly for guidance.

‘Why don’t we get some fresh air?’ Molly said, taking Birdie’s arm and leading her gently away from the bookies.

The others decided to go back across the road to the guesthouse and order dinner. It was a cool evening but they chose to sit outside in the beer garden while Edward and Steve filled them in on what had happened and they debated legally what was the right thing. Edward, with his knowledge of the law, and Steve, with his know-ledge of bookies, between them agreed that it was merely a gentleman’s agreement, and while it could be honoured, there was no legal standing for it to be. The mood dropped even more in the group. Feeling frustrated, upset for Birdie and embarrassed that she had taken everyone on this wild-goose chase, Kitty tried to figure out a way to excuse herself from the table. The O’Hara great-grandson from the bookies gave her the perfect excuse as she saw him enter the beer garden and look around the area.

She left the table to meet him.

It wasn’t difficult to find Birdie. She was sitting on a bench on the main street staring across at the small school where her father had been the headmaster and only teacher, and the nearby house, which she must have grown up in. Kitty could imagine all the days Birdie spent looking out the window and watching the children playing in the yard, unable to join them as she was sick, or at least thought of as being too delicate to play.

Kitty joined her on the bench. ‘I’m sorry, Birdie, I didn’t think.’

‘Why are you sorry?’ Birdie snapped out of her trance.

‘For bringing everyone here, on your trip. I should have known it was a bad idea. This was personal for you. I shouldn’t have intruded.’

‘Nonsense. Kitty, I’ve had the most wonderful day. When else can I say I spent the day with four hundred people dressed as eggs?’ she laughed. ‘It’s rare I get invited to go on as many exciting adventures all in one go. The same for all of us. You’ve done something very special for us all, Kitty, don’t forget that. You brought us all together. Nobody is blaming you for when things don’t go our way.’

Kitty appreciated the kind words but they had no real effect. She felt as though she had let everyone down: no adjudicator for Achar and Jedrek, no winnings for Birdie, though at least the day had been a success for Ambrose.

‘Remember, it wasn’t about the money,’ Birdie said, a small smile on her lips, though the argument didn’t sound as credible as the first time Kitty had heard it. Kitty believed it wasn’t about the money, it had been to come and face old ghosts, but those old ghosts had won yet again on a day when Birdie had imagined victory.

‘What have you got there?’ Birdie asked, looking at the bunch of wild flowers Kitty had gathered before coming over to meet her.

‘Ah. Yes. The young O’Hara came to see me,’ she said. ‘He wanted me to tell you something.’

In the foothills of the Boggeragh Mountains, a light mist falling all around them, Birdie finally stopped searching the gravestones and settled next to one, her search over. Next to the church, the small school and schoolhouse she had grown up in, she laid flowers on the grave of her first true love, Jamie O’Hara, who she’d loved but hadn’t been allowed to love as she wished, who she’d had to leave behind to move to Dublin to escape her father’s clutches and a small town’s prejudices. She’d made a promise and she’d made a bet, and she had finally come home. For both, unfortunately, it was too late.

Kitty joined the group outside and picked at her battered fish and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce, and wondered how on earth she could recover the mood of the group. How on earth she could recover her own? Conversations were light and quiet but lacked the jovial joyfulness from the bus.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Steve said quietly, breaking her silence.

She looked at him uncertainly. ‘I feel embarrassed.’

‘What for?’

‘For bringing everyone here, for-’

‘It’s not your fault, Kitty,’ he simply repeated, and gave her a glass of wine. ‘Now get this into you so you can be more fun. ‘You’d better not snore tonight or I’ll suffocate you with a pillow.’

‘I don’t snore.’

‘Yes, you do. When you’ve had a drink, you snore as loudly as my dad.’

‘I do not. You don’t know that.’

He fixed her with that look again, that froze her outsides but turned her insides to mush. ‘I know that at least on one occasion you did.’

She swallowed. ‘No one’s ever told me that before,’ she said quietly.

‘Maybe they were never awake when you were asleep.’

It was a simple comment but it went straight to her heart again, and all she could think of was lying in that student accommodation beside him, sleeping on his chest while Steve, with those long black eyelashes and messy mop of hair, watched her. Suddenly there was a tinkling sound as Sam stood and tapped his spoon against the glass.

‘Oh, no, Sam,’ Mary-Rose said, her face meaning business without an ounce of a smile this time.

‘Esmerelda,’ he said in a warning tone.

‘Esmerelda?’ Jedrek said, confused. ‘I have been calling you Mary-Rose,’ he leaned over the table and shouted down to her.

‘Just ignore him,’ Mary-Rose said, covering her face with her hands. ‘Sam, I mean it, stop it.’

But Sam wasn’t picking up on her cooler-than-usual mood, or he was misreading it as something he could fix with a proposal, when it was clear at least to Kitty that he couldn’t. She had witnessed two proposals already; she considered herself an expert.

‘Okay, fine,’ Sam appeased the confused diners. ‘Esmerelda is like a term of endearment,’ he explained. ‘Isn’t it, darling?’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘It is not.’

‘Okay. Mary-Rose Godfrey,’ he said dramatically, smiling. ‘My best friend in the whole world.’

‘Stop, Sam.’

‘No, I can’t, I can’t stop how I feel for you. I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t pretend that we are only friends. Every day when we are together, I feel it inside and I can’t tell you.’

Kitty suddenly stiffened beside Steve, feeling uncomfortable with his words. If this was how she was feeling, she couldn’t imagine how Mary-Rose was feeling.

‘We have known each other since we were six years old. When you walked into our class on the first day of school with your shoes on your wrong feet I knew that you were someone I had to talk to.’

Suddenly Mary-Rose started laughing. ‘That’s true,’ she said in surprise.

So Sam wasn’t reading from his script that evening, but did he mean it?

‘And then we started talking, and when we had a fight over whose turn it was to play with the yellow Lego, and you pinched me and got in trouble with the teacher and had to stand in the corner, I thought to myself, that girl has balls. I want to be friends with that girl. Not that I’m into girls with balls or anything,’ Sam said, fluffing his lines, and they all laughed. All but Mary-Rose, anyway. She wasn’t smiling, not because she was embarrassed but because she was sad, that much was evident. Sam’s words were touching, so close to the bone, in fact, that Kitty questioned their authenticity. For a moment, she could tell Mary-Rose did too as she lifted her chin to study his face carefully.

‘We were friends all through school, through secondary school even though your mum sent you to that convent school where you had to wear that unflattering knee-length brown skirt and knee-high socks for six years of your life. And I could put up with you being my friend, but it’s only the last few months when I’ve…’ he looked at her.

‘Is this real?’ Steve whispered to Kitty, sending a shiver through her body again.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ she whispered back so close that her lip touched his ear lobe. She felt volts of electricity rush through her.

Though distracted by her own feelings, she tried to focus on the drama opposite her.

Sam made his way to Mary-Rose’s side; some people had stood to watch, their breaths held. They all believed it was real.

‘Mary-Rose Godfrey, you have been my best friend since we were kids but I can’t hide it any more. I am desperately in love with you. I know this may seem over the top and terribly dramatic but I know that we’re right for each other. Will you… will you marry me?’

Mary-Rose’s eyes lit up, they were twinkling with tears, she looked absolutely besotted and delighted and happier than Kitty had ever seen her, and even Kitty believed it was completely true, that this was all for real.

Everyone in the beer garden cheered, but while they cheered and looked at one another they missed Sam’s wink, and it had the same effect on Kitty as it had on Mary-Rose. It shattered the illusion, brought it home that it all wasn’t real. And then came the obligatory hush for silence.

Mary-Rose’s smile faded fast.

‘No,’ she said in the silence.

There was a gasp.

‘No?’ he asked uncertainly, trying to read her face for signs.

‘No,’ she repeated firmly, and as she said so, a tear fell down her cheek.

‘Is this real?’ Steve asked again. Kitty and Steve’s heads were so close together that the warmth from his body was keeping her warm in the cool night.

Ambrose’s face was one of shock. She instinctively grabbed Eugene’s hand, to his utter surprise, but he followed her lead and placed his hand around her shoulders as if to protect her from what she was seeing.

‘Please stop doing this, Sam,’ Mary-Rose said, choking on her words as more tears fell.

‘What?’ he asked, genuine now.

Mary-Rose stood and left the table.

There was a stunned silence.

‘Hard luck, pal,’ Archie said, placing his hand on Sam’s back and patting it roughly, though he intended it to be supportive.

Sam looked at Kitty wide-eyed. ‘What the…?’

‘I’ll go speak to her,’ Kitty said, reluctant to leave the closeness with Steve but knowing it was the right thing to do.

She found her in the snug, with her face in her hands.

‘Oh God, what have I done?’ she sobbed. ‘I just couldn’t do it any more, Kitty. I can’t listen to that stuff, hoping it’s real and knowing it’s not.’

Kitty held her close and said nothing but made comforting sounds.

‘Now I’ve made it so obvious,’ she sobbed into Kitty’s blouse. ‘Now he knows and how can I face him?’

‘Hey, Mary-Rose, that was the best ever!’ they heard Sam’s voice as he swung himself into the snug and plonked himself beside them. ‘Hey, what’s going on? You can stop pretending now; you totally convinced everyone in the place. I’ve already got two free pints waiting for me on the table. Sympathy pints, I never thought of that one before. Nice twist, by the way. You almost had me fooled. When did you come up with it?’ he laughed.

Mary-Rose slowly lifted her head from Kitty’s shoulder and looked at him, confused.

‘I think I’ll leave you two alone,’ Kitty said, standing up.

‘No, you don’t have to do that,’ Mary-Rose said nervously.

‘Yes I do,’ she said, giving her the eyes that said, tell him.

As Kitty made her way back outside to the table, her phone rang.

‘Sorry to call you so late but I know you guys are still up because I was just talking to Eva,’ Gaby shouted down the phone to Kitty. Kitty turned the volume down on her phone.

‘Hi, Gaby, no problem, don’t worry, everything is going fine.’

‘Good, good, but that’s not what I’m calling you about. It’s the book you gave me. My boss read it today.’

‘That was quick,’ Kitty smiled, sitting down and waiting for her payback. ‘I hope I didn’t waste his time too much by sending it in. It was just a favour for a friend, you know?’

‘Well, your friend will be delighted because it’s good news. My boss loves it. Crime is huge right now and he wants to get in touch with your friend.’