‘So anyway,’ Dermot says suddenly, pulling his arm from
around my shoulders. ‘We’d better get the rest of these boxes in.’
He leaves me standing alone by the window, and immediately the little room feels cold and unwelcoming again.
Dermot begins systematically loading the boxes back into the room, while one by one I begin unpacking them. I’m not sure why,
it just seems important to put things back in their rightful place. For Eamon.
‘So this explains why Eamon had the internet,’ I say to Dermot as we’re loading things back on to the shelves and many empty
hooks on the wall. ‘He must have used it for buying and researching some of his bits and pieces.’
‘Probably,’ Dermot says, lifting a large iron shield back onto the wall. ‘This stuff must be worth a fair bit if Conor was
trying to steal it, or he wouldn’t have gone to all the bother. Whoever inherits it is going to get a pretty valuable collection.’
I clutch the brass goblet I’m holding protectively to my chest. ‘You don’t think they’d try to sell it, do you? It’s part
of Eamon; it should remain here on Tara as a sort of shrine to his memory.’
Dermot shrugs. ‘Let’s just put it back as it was, for now, hey? That’s the least we can do for him.’
We finish replacing all the antiques, and begin exploring the rest of Eamon’s cottage to see if we can find evidence of any
relatives.
In the room where he keeps his laptop we find more shelves, this time containing files and boxes. Dermot picks up a random
file and begins thumbing through it while I switch on Eamon’s computer.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks. ‘This is no time to be surfing the net.’
‘I’m going to check and see if he has anyone in his email contacts. If Eamon was smart enough to set up the internet on the
island, it’s likely he used email to contact people.’
‘Oh, clever,’ Dermot says, raising an eyebrow.
‘Damn,’ I say, as I realise I need a password to get into the computer. I think for a moment, then type the word
Molly.
Bingo.
‘What’s up?’ Dermot asks, looking up from his file.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. I just needed a password, that’s all. But I’m in now.’
‘And you’ve worked it out already? Remind me not to try and hide anything from you.’
I spend the next few minutes looking though Eamon’s files and contacts to see if I can find anything, while Dermot starts
to make his way through some boxes. But it seems that Eamon only used the internet for browsing, not for contact with the
outside world.
‘Darcy, I think you’d better come and see this,’ Dermot suddenly says, holding up an old black and white photo.
‘What have you got?’ I ask, going over and kneeling down next to him on the floor where he’s sorting his way through a large
brown box containing photos and papers.
He holds out a photo to me. ‘Recognise anyone on there?’ he asks.
I look down at the old faded photo of a young couple from the fifties. ‘It’s my aunt Molly!’ I exclaim in surprise. ‘And that
looks like a young Eamon.’
‘I thought so,’ Dermot says, looking at the photo again. ‘So they knew each other a long time ago?’
‘Yes, and long before I came to the island, by the looks of it.’ I stare at the photo.
‘There’re quite a lot of them in this box.’ Dermot says, digging a bit further down. He lifts out a pile of photos and I begin
to thumb through them.
‘Oh,’ I say as I lift up another photo. This time it’s a colour one. It’s of an older lady and a young girl standing together
on a beach.
‘Is that you?’ Dermot asks, seeing the look on my face.
I nod.
‘With Molly?’
I nod again.
‘Do you remember it being taken?’
‘Yes, and I remember now who was taking the photo, too.’
‘Who?’
‘Eamon.’
‘How
could
I have forgotten him?’ I fret as I pace about the room. ‘All this time I was here on the island with him. How could I have
forgotten I knew him before? Poor Eamon, now I’ll never be able to tell him, to apologise.’
‘But it was a long time ago,’ Dermot sits on the floor watching me. ‘Our memories fade. I’m sure he understood.’
‘But why didn’t he tell me? I mean, he did tell me, the night before he died. He told me he’d been here when I came over to
the island, but he made out he was just the man that ferried us over in the boat, like Conor had that time. I even told him
that when Conor leaped off the boat onto the little jetty it
reminded me of when he’d done it!’ I hit my head with the heel of my hand. ‘But even then I didn’t remember him properly.
Now I do.’ I flop down next to Dermot again and pick up the photos once more. ‘Eamon was my aunt’s special friend – that’s
how she described him when we came here. And he
was
special, Dermot, he was lovely. That’s how I remember him back then, as a really lovely, kind man.’
‘So Molly knew him for a good while?’ Dermot asks. ‘If that photo was taken in the fifties and this one in the, what—’
‘Late eighties, early nineties,’ I add for him. ‘Yes, they did know each other for a very long time.’
‘And were they together all this time?’
‘No, my aunt was married for a short while in the late sixties, but my uncle died.’
‘But Eamon was obviously the love of her life,’ Dermot says, taking the photo from me again and gazing down at it. ‘No wonder
this island meant so much to her. It was the one place she could be with him.’
I look across at Dermot. Was this a soft romantic side breaking through his tough exterior?
‘Either that, or Eamon was just after her money,’ he says quickly, seeing me smiling at him.
‘I don’t really think that, and I don’t believe you do, either.’
‘Why did your aunt move to Dublin, then, before she died, if Eamon meant so much to her?’
‘She needed specialist medical treatment at the time. She mustn’t have been able to get it near here.’
Dermot and I think for a moment what this parting must have been like for Molly and Eamon.
‘And I remembered something else the other day about
Molly. Her ring – the Claddagh one, Eamon confirmed for me not only that she wore one on her right hand, but I remembered
which way around it faced.’
‘Heart inwards, crown out?’ Dermot asks, already knowing the answer.
I nod. ‘Her heart had been captured – by Eamon.’
‘What happened to the ring? Do you have it now?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I inherited a lot of Molly’s jewellery but I don’t know what happened to the ring. I keep meaning to
ask Niall about it.’
Dermot shuffles through the box again ‘What’s this?’ he says, pulling out a brown envelope from under the photos. ‘It doesn’t
look that old. Do you want to open it?’ he asks, offering it to me.
‘No, you go ahead,’ I say, picking up more photos of Molly and Eamon in their youth.
Dermot opens the envelope and begins to read the contents.
‘Oh,’ he says, screwing up his face. ‘Oh dear, this is
not
good.’
‘What?’ I ask looking up. ‘What is it?’
Dermot hesitates; his eyes scan my face protectively.
‘Just tell me, Dermot.’
‘First, it’s a document stating exactly what Eamon wants to happen at his funeral. Who the executor of his will is, and who
we should contact regarding guests and things.’
‘That’s helpful. It’s saved us searching through the whole cottage.’
‘And this piece of paper,’ Dermot continues, holding up a second sheet and looking at me with a worried expression, ‘is the
title deeds to Tara.’
‘How can Eamon have the title deeds to Tara?’ My brow furrows as I try to figure this out. ‘Surely Niall has them until I
complete my year here?’
‘It would seem, Darcy, looking at these, that perhaps your aunt may not have been the legal owner of Tara after all.’
‘Not the legal owner, what are you talking about, Dermot?’ I grab the paper from him. ‘But if my aunt Molly wasn’t the legal
owner, then who was?’
‘According to this document – Eamon.’
I’ve never liked funerals.
It’s a time when we should be celebrating the life that someone’s had, not sitting here feeling despondent and miserable.
But that’s how most of us are feeling today, as we sit in the little church just over the sea from Tara.
Most of our misery comes from the fact we’re about to say goodbye to our dear friend Eamon. But a certain amount of my own
despondency comes from the fact that I may have to say goodbye to Tara soon, as well.
On finding the title deeds, Dermot and I had spent a few silly minutes debating whether we should just pretend we’d never
found them.
‘After all,’ Dermot says, ‘who’s ever going to know about them other than the two of us?’
‘But we can’t just hush it all up. This island doesn’t belong to me now. If it never belonged to Molly in the first place,
she had no right leaving it to me.’
‘But how did that happen?’ Dermot asks, his forehead scrunched up in confusion. ‘She must have known.’
‘I have no idea. I’ll have to speak to Niall about it. But all I know is if it belonged to Eamon, it will be up to his family
what they want to do with Tara when they find out.’
Dermot sighs. ‘You can’t just give up on everything, Darcy. What about all your plans for Tara?’
‘They’ll be someone else’s plans now, Dermot,’ I shrug. ‘It obviously wasn’t meant to be.’
Dermot shakes his head in frustration. ‘But what about everyone that lives on the island? You can’t just give up on them.
What about Niall, for instance, and Paddy, and even Megan? You’ve changed all their lives. And now you’re just going to walk
away from us all like you don’t even care.’
Dermot stares at me defiantly, very much aware of his Freudian slip in using the word
us
and not
them.
‘Of course I don’t want to leave you all,’ I stare back at him, equally defiant. ‘If I could do anything about it, then I
would. But Tara doesn’t belong to me now. So if I have to go, I’ll go quietly without making a fuss.’
‘Make a bloody fuss!’ Roxi demands, stamping her heel on the floor when I tell her, which is unfortunate as we’re outside
and she then has to balance on me while she retrieves her shoe from the damp grass. ‘You can’t go down without a fight! Finn
McCool would have fought for Tara, and so should you.’
‘What has Finn McCool got to do with any of this?’ I ask, looking at her quizzically while she replaces her shoe.
Roxi, looking embarrassed, screws her face up.
‘Roxi?’
‘Well, you know when I used to go and see Eamon and he used to tell me all these tales about Irish myths and legends? I asked
him to tell me about this Finn guy after he mentioned the Tara connection, and then I did some of my own research on the internet
when you weren’t about.’
‘
You
were researching Irish myths and legends on the internet? I thought you were only capable of accessing Will Smith’s fan site!’
I’m laughing but, seriously, Roxi reading about anything other than what’s hot in the shops this season and celebrity gossip
was pretty amazing stuff.
It was Tara working her magic yet again.
Roxi rolls her eyes. ‘Ha, ha, very funny. Actually I quite enjoyed it; I’ve started reading some other historical stuff now,
too. Who’d have thought it, Darce, me interested in all that ancient history malarkey? But
anyway
,’ she says, pointing her finger at me. ‘Back to you, missy. This Finn chap has so much in common with you, you wouldn’t believe,
so I think you should take a leaf out of his book and fight for Tara.’
‘What do you mean,
so much in common
?’
Roxi holds up her hand and begins to count on her pink neon fingernails. ‘One – Finn had two big dogs like Woody and Louis,
only his were likely to have been pure Irish wolfhounds, not crossbreeds like yours. Two – he caught this fish, the Salmon
of Knowledge Eamon said it was called, like you did when you first came here, and then afterwards he could do loads of stuff
that he couldn’t do before.’
I look blankly at Roxi, not following this.
‘Sweetie, look how much more confident you are now than when you first came to Tara!
You
,’ she says poking my shoulder, ‘kick ass now when something isn’t right. You never did that
back in London. Three,’ she continues holding up her counting hand, ‘he saved the people of Tara on Samain from an evil fire-breathing
fairy called Aileen.’ She stares at me, waiting for the penny to drop. ‘Megan’s party … chain-smoking Eileen?’ she prompts.
‘It was more like a con man called Conor that night, actually. This theory of yours is all a bit vague, Rox.’
Roxi, refusing to be beaten, stamps her foot again. ‘Obviously it’s a bit vague, Darce, it’s meant to be, it’s a
legend
.’
I think about this for a moment. ‘I can find one slight issue with your comparisons, Rox.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Finn was supposed to find the love of his life on Tara. I haven’t done that.’
‘You leave that to me,’ Roxi winks, tapping the side of her nose. ‘Me and Finn are working on it.’
I shake my head in defeat. You just can’t argue with Roxi sometimes.
If Roxi had been angry, Niall had seemed remarkably calm when I’d explained everything and handed the deeds and Eamon’s letter
over to him.
‘Don’t worry, Darcy,’ he said, pushing his glasses up his nose as he finished reading through first the letter and then the
deeds. ‘We’ll sort something out. I’m a genius solicitor, remember?’
‘Did you know anything about all this, Niall?’ I ask him, wondering how he can be so calm when it’s such major news. ‘Wouldn’t
Eamon have had to ask you to make you executor of his will? And what about all those documents you had in the pub that night?
What were those?’
Niall nodded. ‘Eamon did ask me to be his executor, not that long ago actually. But please try not to worry too much about
everything else, Darcy. It will all be fine. I promise you.’
Each and every walk Woody, Louis and I took from that moment on felt like our last on Tara. I’d spent so much of my time to
begin with thinking about leaving, that now I’d been given the opportunity to, I realised how much I was going to miss this
island when I was no longer here.