Barefoot Over Stones (23 page)

‘Oh, I see Paddy’s been.’ She laughed. ‘Give it here to me and I will see what can be salvaged.’

‘Thanks, Betty, you are a star.’

‘Show me you mean it with a big mug of tea.’

‘No problem.’ Colm smiled and retreated down the gloomy hallway to his office to drop his coat and onward to the kitchen to fuel Betty. As the kettle began to sing he could hear Betty launching into a show tune that would be the soundtrack to their day if Colm could not block it out with the radio. It was a good thing that she was an excellent worker because her singing was next door to unbearable. In it, as in everything else, Betty Linehan was wildly enthusiastic but it took a certain skill to miss
all
the notes. The rising note of the electric kettle did not have a chance against her vocal onslaught. Standing at a miniscule five feet nothing with her cropped head of blond highlights Betty actually looked like Caharoe’s answer to Elaine Paige – only bereft of the voice. Colm sugared his tea but left Betty’s plain. The woman was high enough.

‘You are up at the courthouse all morning and then back here at midday for your appointment with Dan Abernethy,’ she breezed, interrupting the singing for one blissful moment.

Colm had moved to Caharoe because it was a growing commuter town and had plenty of new houses and new people who needed legal advice and representation. It offered business potential but crucially it had seemed like a place that was better than any other he knew to raise Tom. His mother had spent summers here as a child and when Colm took it into his head to move from Dublin she had suggested that he consider Caharoe. She came with him and when she saw that
the house on the banks of the Bracken River that her family had rented some fifty years before was for sale she thought it a sign from God.

Colm was far less likely to believe that God had taken an active interest in his decision to move to the country. Lantern Lodge won him over without any divine intervention at all. It was a beautifully renovated farmhouse that nestled with its back to a gentle hill above the river that wound its way with lazy inefficiency through Caharoe. It came with an orchard to the back of the house and two fields that ran along the path of the river. With proper fencing Colm imagined that Tom might like to have a pony there or have friends over to play football. He was looking for a future for them both and Lantern Lodge seemed as if it would suit their needs down to the ground. What was more, his mother was happy with his decision and Iris Lifford’s approval was only an intermittent blessing.

Dan Abernethy was part of the in-crowd in Caharoe and was already on the books of Lalor and Son – as were most of the businesspeople of the town. Robert Lalor was rarely out of Lovett’s Hotel in the square. There he slapped backs and bought rounds of drinks for people who could well afford their own, acting the big man courting and keeping the business that his father had built in the previous decades. Meanwhile his father Hugh preferred the salubrious and pastoral surroundings of the Mountainacre Golf Club. He was Captain, Life Captain, and God for all Colm knew or cared less about golf.

Colm had been intrigued when he saw Dan’s name in the appointment book. Perhaps there was a fracture in the polite society of Caharoe? Well, the meeting would reveal all.

Dan arrived early for his noon appointment. He had arranged a locum for his surgery at Michaelmas House and was anxious to get his business done as soon as possible. Betty had been a little subdued in the moments before he arrived but Colm realized that she was merely taking a deep breath before she smothered Dr Dan with flirtatiousness. Her deference to the GP was mildly amusing at first but soon Colm began to fear she was going to faint with the excitement. She was all of a flap, taking his coat, making him tea. She would surely offer to polish his shoes next or nip up to the house and do a spot of ironing. How was Alison? How was young Lucy?

‘All fine, Betty. Thanks for asking.’ Dan stood back from the onslaught of her rampant goodwill with an indulgent smile on his handsome face.

‘Relax now, Betty. I am here to see this man, about whom I have heard some very complimentary things. Do you think I am in good hands?’

‘Oh yes, Dr Dan, you really are. He is so knowledgeable, so polite. Such a lovely little son too, about the same age as Lucy. Sure they are probably in school together.’

Colm could have done without Betty praising him as if he were her favourite nephew, and the mention of his son to a stranger made him feel uneasy. He brought the conversation to a halt by directing Dan to his office. Hanging back, he popped his head inside Betty’s door.

‘A few moments of deep breathing now, Betty, and take your tongue off the desk. You are drooling all over important contracts and title papers.’

‘Oh God, Colm, I just can’t help it. Do you not think he is the spit of John F. Kennedy?’

‘He looks a bit more vibrant to me, I have to say, a tad more colour in his cheeks, and his suits are a lot sharper. Kennedy was an awful man for the too-short trouser leg, don’t you think?’

As he closed the door he could hear Betty warbling into an incredibly dodgy version of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’. Dear God, it was going to be a long day.

Colm found Dan’s behaviour at the beginning of the meeting strangely reticent. Colm felt as if he was being sounded out to see if he was fit to handle whatever business Dan had in mind. Certainly Dan was not a man to get straight down to matters when there was opportunity for the soft-soap approach. In fact it turned out to be a lot like an interview and Colm found himself answering questions – about where he had studied law, who had lectured him and under whom he had first practised as a solicitor – that would normally make his protective barriers slam shut in
the face of the would-be intruder. Yet the enquiries were delivered in such a friendly fashion that Colm found himself talking about his past quite readily. There was no doubt that Dan Abernethy possessed an easy way in company and conversation; a charismatic touch, Colm remembered Betty saying dreamily. Whatever Betty’s fantasies might be, Colm was disarmed by the charm of his new client. Talk moved to the changes in the town since Dan had moved there in the nineties, how it had once lost its young people to Cork City and Dublin but now they were falling over each other to move back to Caharoe and the hundreds of other small towns like it all over the country. Places that once had been seen as remote backwaters to be fled from, inhabited only by the parents of those who had gone and those too young to go, were now thriving. An unimaginable turnaround it seemed to anyone that had experienced the drab eighties, so utterly devoid of promise or prosperity.

‘And what made you come here, Dr Abernethy, when you could have picked a practice in Dublin or somewhere with a bit more going on?’ Colm realized he had posed the first question of their half-hour conversation. For a solicitor that was quite a long time to be on the receiving end of an interrogation, amiable though it was.

‘Dan. Call me Dan, please. A woman of course. What takes any man anywhere, or drives him away, only matters of the heart? Anything else is just incidental detail.’

Colm was struck by how unusually romantic a statement that was for a man to make when career, wealth and competition were the usual pillars of polite conversation. He had, he realized, put Dr Abernethy in the same box as the Lalors and the Lovetts and all the other old families of Caharoe who drank together, dined out in all the best restaurants in the city and trundled a well-worn path to the clubhouse at the golf course. He had discounted that group because he felt that they tried to keep the ordinary townspeople as well as newcomers like himself at arm’s length, holding themselves up as some class of aristocracy that he found laughable. He felt he had been prejudiced, a trait that he detested in anyone. Dan continued unaware that Colm was chiding himself for his misjudgement.

‘I met a girl from Caharoe in a coffee shop on Camden Street that I always haunted in between lectures. Sometimes when I was ducking college it was a good place to go to consider not being a doctor at all. It was a million miles away from medicine, though come to think of it I could easily have done all my microbiology experiments in the toilets. Sweet Jesus, they were disgusting.’

Colm smiled and Dan was encouraged to continue.

‘It’s not there now, of course, not since the street got smartened up and the old traders who kept the place alive could no longer afford the new rents. The Daisy May went the way of the rest of them. Well, anyway, I met Alison Shepherd there. My head was turned and the rest has followed on. Caharoe is my home now more than anywhere else I have ever been. It’s not a bad spot and I am fond of it for making me feel like I could stay. It’s an incredible gift when a place allows you in and doesn’t ask too many questions in the process, don’t you think?’

Colm shifted a little uncomfortably. He too had enjoyed the quiet hospitality of this new town, although he didn’t doubt that enquiries were made when his back was turned.

Dan moved forward a little in his chair and Colm took the signal from his client that the personal bit, however beguilingly intended, was over and it was on to business. He was wrong. Dan had merely completed the overture; he was just about to disclose the real intention at its heart.

‘What about Leda, Colm? Tell me what happened to Leda.’

Outside, Betty’s singing subsided and a peaceful hum settled over the offices as she went about her work: answering phones, organizing the diary and seeing to the reams of title-transfer work that had become the backbone of Colm’s practice. She momentarily forgot that the object of her infatuation was a mere two doors down the corridor sipping tea from her mug with the red roses.
She could not have imagined that Tom’s absent mother was the topic of conversation.

Leda. Colm had never even disclosed her name.

The ensuing shocked silence from Colm gave Dan ample opportunity to outline why he needed to know Leda’s address, telephone number and any other details that her estranged partner and father of her child might know about her. His father was in danger of public humiliation and he wanted to avert that at all costs. The story rolled from him fluently and he forgot for a moment that none of it interested Colm that much other than what way, if any, it might affect his son or himself.

‘How did you know she was Tom’s mother? I have told no one here Leda’s name. My mother knew of her, and some of the people I worked with in Dublin, but no one else. I need to know who told you.’

‘Birth records are not that hard to track down, and your name and profession listed there seemed to be too much of a coincidence. You can rest assured it is of no real interest to me who the mother of your child is and no one will hear the details from me, but I do need to find Leda and let her know that my father is not alone in this. The public shame of this coming out now would destroy him, so I need to contact Leda myself and talk some sense into her. I will make a deal with her because I honestly think she is not without a certain grievance. My father did not treat her well and she was young and deserved better. Although I have to say the experience seems not to have cowed her.’

‘So your father is the nameless politician that she had her affair with? I was never that interested in politics, but Betty, your number-one fan out there in the lobby, has filled me in on your illustrious parentage. I just never put two and two together. Didn’t want to, I suppose. Nothing that Leda did then or now interests me.’ Colm’s attempt at nonchalance was lacking conviction. Dan felt sure that the break-up of their relationship was still troubling him in ways he was unprepared to disclose, but Dan was happy to agree that it was none of his business.

‘Leda was in an on-off relationship with my father from the time she was about seventeen. I am not sure when it finished, to be honest, but I think a lot of people suspected it around Leachlara, where we come from. They would never say it to me, of course, and that suited me. I found the whole thing revolting and I told my father as much. Politics is full of little scandals threatening to reveal themselves. It seems to be what the whole thing thrives on. Leda has got in on the act and has decided to sink my father’s reputation if he doesn’t pay her a substantial sum of money.’

‘Leda never told me much about herself and I learned that the truth was an entirely optional extra in her account of things. Anything I know about her that I believe to be true I found out from her sister, Ciara. She mentioned a politician but I never pressed her for details.’

It had all been going Dan’s way up until now, but the mention of Ciara threatened to throw him off balance. His brief loss of composure did not go unnoticed by Colm but he remained preoccupied by what all this might mean for him and Tom and the life they were slowly but surely building in Caharoe.

‘Ciara Clancy was a friend of my wife’s in college. They have lost touch somewhat. I had no idea that you would know Ciara too. Leda and Ciara generally didn’t keep the same company. As far as I remember they never really got on.’

‘I have no direct dealings with Leda any more. Ciara is the only connection between us. You are right, they don’t get on, but Ciara makes it her business to keep tabs on Leda’s whereabouts. She has been very good to Tom and so I hold her in far higher regard than I do his mother. I will talk to Ciara and see what I can find out.’

‘Thanks, Colm. A phone number or an address would be perfect. I hope you don’t think that I speak out of turn when I say that you and your boy are a good deal better off without Leda, but that’s just my opinion.’

Dan picked up his bag where he had placed it by the side of his chair. An awkward atmosphere hung between them. They were strangers who had exchanged their secrets with none of the comfort of anonymity that make such confessions fluent. Colm had one more question he had to ask.

‘If your wife and yourself know Ciara you could have just asked her to put you in touch with Leda. Besides, Ciara would probably have tried to talk some sense into Leda. Why involve me? Why go trawling through where you don’t belong? The direct route would surely have been easier for all of us.’