2004 - Dandelion Soup (11 page)

Years ago he had made the journey to New York on an ocean-going liner. He’d thought that he might settle in America and make a new life for himself over there. He’d stayed for a while in New York, Boston and San Francisco but in the end he’d decided to come back.

When he’d returned from the States he’d stayed in London with old Uncle Sammy, spent one sweltering summer in Barcelona and a hideously cold winter in Madrid. Then, on a whim, he’d taken the ferry to Ireland and, somehow, he’d landed himself here in Ballygurry, a rain-lashed small town on the west coast of Ireland, and he’d stayed, God knew why, ever since.

He realized that quite unconsciously he had been feeling for the ring on his finger. How odd that he should do that. He hadn’t had the ring for years, not since…

As he stood there on the beach with the wind buffeting him he was suddenly transported back in time to a day many years ago when he’d stepped off the train in Rossmacconnarty. He had been going to pick up the keys for Nirvana House. It had been a terrible day, the wind was gale force and sheets of rain had whipped across the platform blinding him. He remembered now quite clearly that in the distance he’d heard the tolling of wedding bells. What a day that had been for a wedding! He wondered if the storm had been a good omen for the happy couple. He’d dragged his heavy suitcase the few yards to the station waiting room and in those few seconds he was soaked to the skin. He’d pushed open the door in his rush to find shelter, flung down his suitcase, stood for a few moments stamping his feet and tipping rain from the brim of his hat. Then suddenly he’d become aware that he wasn’t alone. A man was sitting huddled on the floor on the far side of the waiting room, his head in his hands, sobbing noisily. Solly had coughed with embarrassment to alert the man to his presence. The fellow had looked up slowly and for the next few seconds Solly had been unable to take his eyes off him.

He was dressed in good quality clothes, smart trousers and an expensive mackintosh with a tartan collar and leather buttons. Yet they were absolutely filthy, spattered with mud as if he’d been chased across rough countryside by a pack of hounds. His eyes were wild, a desperate man by the look of him, and yet Solly had not been afraid.

“Terrible day,” Solly had said quite inadequately.

“Yes, yes, it has been…”

He was a well-spoken man, a man fallen on hard times. There had been a lot of fellows like that after the war, men who couldn’t settle down in civvy street after war service.

Solly had rambled on, “Those winds are gale force, there’ll be trees down all over the place…”

“Trees down, yes, you have to understand…I’ve done the most terrible thing, I’ve left a child fatherless. Oh God forgive me but it wasn’t my fault, my poor mother. Oh Christ, I have to get out of here.”

Then the man had got up unsteadily, drunk with emotion, fear, self-disgust…

Solly had given the man all the money he had on him, and as an afterthought he’d slipped the ring from his finger and handed that to him as well. Whatever the man had done he needed the ring more than Solly did. Afterwards he’d worried that the man had committed a terrible crime.

He’d scoured the national and local papers for weeks for news of a murder, an escaped lunatic on the run, but to no avail. He must have just been a demented tramp, a petty thief and a drunk. The ring would have fetched a pretty penny in a jeweller’s. Solly only hoped that it had brought the fellow better luck than it had brought him.

He sighed. After the strange events of the previous nights he needed some time to think. He had been a man of careful routine for many years now, a man grown old before his time. Yet suddenly by a quirk of fate he’d been shaken out of his dullness by the arrival of a small mystery girl. Who, though, could possibly have decided to send him a child? And why? And what was he supposed to do with her?

He scoured his mind for a clue. Who did he know who had a child? Apart from Uncle Sammy all his family were dead. Most of his old friends he had long since lost touch with. There was Max in Venice, but he’d never been interested in women and the last Solly had heard he was living with a professor of linguistics called Pietro.

It was quite ridiculous, but somebody somewhere had made a conscious decision to send Dancey to him. They knew his name, where he lived…And in the pocket of her dress there had been a piece of paper with directions to his house written in three languages, English, French and Spanish. There was nothing written, though, about where she came from, who she was or what he was meant to do with her. He knew that some time soon he’d have to contact the authorities but he didn’t want to hand her over to the nuns at St Joseph’s. He felt strangely responsible for her; someone had thought him a fit enough man to put a child into his care and he wasn’t willing to hand her over to the ill treatment of the nuns. Not yet, anyway. Maybe he’d phone Uncle Sammy in London. He was a shrewd old bugger. He had contacts in nearly every European city from his work in wartime. Maybe he’d find a key to unlock the mystery, for Solly sure as hell couldn’t.

If he’d been a younger man he’d have questioned whether the child was actually his, he’d had a few romantic dalliances in his youth. He knew that was impossible, though, it was well over fifteen years now, he thought sadly, since he’d been involved with a woman.

It was all a total mystery. The only thing that he knew for certain was that he was a different man since she’d arrived. Change had been suddenly thrust upon him, if only temporarily, and it had brought out new emotions in him.

He stood and watched the waves roll on to the beach and thought that he was happier than he had been in many years. He wondered had he ever been truly happy? He smiled ruefully. Yes, for a very short time as a young man he had been blissfully happy. Or at least in the ignorance of his youth and his lack of experience he had convinced himself that he was happy.

He sighed. He didn’t like to dwell on the past and what might have been. What was the point? He had his memories, but what were they worth, eh? A head full of useless recollections; snapshots of loved ones now dead, home movies of the mind that he reran and others that he had long since banished.

He wondered how anyone looking at him now would describe him. A lonely slightly hunched middle-aged man taking a bracing walk on a windswept beach. He’d been lonely, of course, over the years but he had learned to live with loneliness the way he supposed one would learn to live with a limp. He’d even got to like it in a perverse kind of way. Until now.

He was comfortably off financially; his investments kept on growing despite his indifference to them. He had his few pleasures, music, books, a glass or three of fine wine or whiskey. He made occasional visits to old Uncle Sammy back in London for old time’s sake.

Stooping to pick up a scallop shell from the beach he turned it over in his hands and was about to hurl it into the sea when he was startled by a voice behind him.

“Hello there. Is it cold enough for you this morning?”

Solly, awoken from his reverie, swung round and stared in surprise at the new village priest. The priest was red in the face, his dark hair whipping across his cheeks, his eyes watering.

“Hello.”

“Well, this wind is certainly picking up a bit again. That was a hell of a storm last night. There’s another on the way 111 bet, if I was a betting kind of man of course.” The priest said, blushing. “Sorry, am I interrupting your thoughts?”

“No, no,” said Solly.

“Father John Daley,” the young man said, holding out his hand to Solly. “I was wondering when I’d bump into you, Mr Benjamin, you’re a hard man to track down. I have an apology to make.”

“An apology?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I took a short cut without permission through the grounds of your house the other day.”

“No need to apologize.”

“The funny thing is, I thought I heard a child scream, a terrible ear-piercing scream.”

Solly stiffened. If this man got to know about Dancey he’d no doubt report it to the authorities and she’d be taken away to the nuns.

“They say the Dark Wood is haunted, but in my estimation that’s a load of old twaddle. Most likely one of the orphanage kids escaped and was playing in the woods.”

“I expect you’re right. Ah, a scallop shell, the emblem of the pilgrim,” Father Daley said, nodding towards the shell that Solly was still holding.

“Sorry, I’m not with you?”

The priest smiled.

“The scallop shell is the emblem of the pilgrims who walk to Santiago.”

“In America?”

“No. Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. They used the shells as makeshift spoons and cups. Anyway, enough of all that, I’m a mine of useless information. I was wondering, if it’s not an impertinence, if sometime you would care to come up to the presbytery for a drink and a chat. I think you’re the only member of the community I haven’t yet got acquainted with.”

Solly smiled.

“I don’t think you’d be doing yourself any favours with the folk of Ballygurry by inviting me into your home.”

“But I don’t care what the folk of Ballygurry think of me,” the young man said hesitantly.

“Then you’re a very brave man,” laughed Solly.

The priest smiled again and blushed sheepishly.

“I only wish that were true. I am, in point of fact the world’s greatest coward.”

“Come now, don’t denigrate yourself. How are you settling in to Ballygurry?”

“It’s an unusual place,” the priest said with a slow enigmatic smile.

“It is that. I take it you’re not used to small Irish towns? More of a city man?”

“I’m not used to Ireland, full stop, Mr Benjamin.”

Solly looked at him in surprise.

“Ah,” said the priest. “My accent?”

Solly nodded.

“My parents moved to England from Cork when I was five or six, I never lost the brogue. But me, I’m more used to the dance halls of Cricklewood on a Saturday night than a jig in the village hall. And yourself? I take it you’re not a native of Ballygurry.”

“Ah, ifs a long, long story. My father was third-generation English; my mother was French. I spent my childhood between Paris and England and other parts of Europe. Then, somehow, I got washed up here.”

“Right.”

“But you’re wondering why a wealthy Jew with no visible occupation came to be living in a run-down house on the west coast of Ireland?”

The priest blushed again, more deeply this time.

“Incurable curiosity, I’m afraid. My mother always said that it would be the ruination of me.”

“Mothers can be wrong, you know. Curiosity will no doubt be the making of you!”

“I hope so.”

Solly looked with interest at the priest, an eager young man probably not much older than thirty. An easy man to talk to, thought Solly, a good listener. He’d have plenty of listening to do in Ballygurry. He’d have his handsome ear bent this way and that by every woman under eighty.

“Well,” said Solly, surprising himself, “I’ll decline a drink at the presbytery if that’s all right with you, I don’t like to be away from home for too long in the evenings, but if you’d care to step up to my house one of these nights you would be more than welcome.”

The priest grinned.

“Thanks, I will. I have a free evening tomorrow, would that be all right?”

“Tomorrow night will be grand. But come under cover of darkness if you know what’s good for you.”

The priest laughed an easy good-natured laugh. Then he checked his watch.

“Hell. I’m late. I must fly.”

“See you tomorrow night then.”

And Father Daley was off, sprinting athletically across the beach, clambering over the dunes and on up the main street of Ballygurry.

Solly lingered on the beach for a while longer letting the iciness of the wind seep through his black overcoat, chilling his shoulders and creeping down his arms until the discomfort drove him towards home.

He smiled as he realized that he was actually looking forward to returning to a house that was no longer empty. And he was looking forward to meeting again with the young priest. He hadn’t had a decent conversation in years with anyone in Ballygurry, or anywhere else come to that. Of course he made civilized small talk with his accountant in Cork, his Dublin solicitor and the rambling talks about the old days with Uncle Sammy when he visited London, but nothing that ever aroused much interest in him. There was something so eager about the priest, an enormous unbridled energy and innocence about him that was intoxicating. He thought, though, that he had recognized a degree of worry and disquiet in the young man too, and that puzzled him.

Miss Nancy Carmichael woke up with a pounding headache. She’d spent a restless and uncomfortable night sleeping on the floor beneath the kitchen table in case the house was hit by lightning. Now she was so stiff and cold she could hardly move. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove and swallowed two aspirins.

She felt irritable and jittery, and not just because of the storm. There was something decidedly fishy going on in Ballygurry at the moment Father Daley, for a start was looking most out of sorts, and whenever she spoke to him he tried to avoid her. He looked pale and distracted and had stumbled over his words three times in mass on Sunday. Every time she and Miss Drew tried to collar him and talk about the forthcoming pilgrimage he backed away and made some feeble excuse. There were less than two weeks to go before their departure for Lourdes and yet the travel arrangements had still not gone up on the church notice-board.

And then there was the theft of her clothes. Someone had climbed over her back wall in the dead of night and taken her brown paisley dress and two pairs of darned pants off the washing line. And if that wasn’t enough they’d taken her old gardening shoes as well. Whatever was the world coming to? And she could hardly report it to Sergeant Kearney in Rossmacconnarty and give a description of her underwear, could she? It would be mortifying.

On top of all that there was the gossip about the Black Jew. After years of keeping himself to himself he’d been into Donahue’s for a drink. And bought a tin of ham! God forgive him. There was talk too that he had a loose woman staying with him, though no one had actually seen her. It had been noted, though, that he’d been into Miss Drew’s shop and bought half a pound of toffee, a slab of chocolate and four ounces of pear drops. Poor Miss Drew had been half terrified out of her life when the bell above the door had rung and the horrible old thing had walked in as brazen as you like.