Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [147]
Noel hoped they hadn’t seen a vision or anything, that St. Jarlath hadn’t appeared in the kitchen asking them to build a cathedral. They had seemed so normal recently, it would be a pity if they had had a setback.
“It’s about your future, Noel. You know that Mrs. Monty, may God be good to her, has left us a sum of money. We want to share this with you.”
“Ah, no, Dad, thank you but that’s for you and Mam. You did the dog minding—I wouldn’t want to take any of it.”
“But you don’t know how much she left,” Charles said.
“Is there enough to take you to Rome? Or even Jerusalem? That’s wonderful news!”
“There’s much more than that—you wouldn’t believe it.”
“But it’s yours, Dad.”
“We’ve made arrangements for an educational policy for Frankie, so that she’ll never lack for a good school. And there’ll be a lump sum for yourself, maybe the deposit on a house so you’d have your own place and not have to rent.”
“But this is ridiculous, Dad. It would cost a fortune.”
“She left us a fortune. And after a lot of thought we are spending it on a children’s garden with a small statue, and on our own flesh and blood.”
Noel looked at them wordlessly. They had sorted out everything that was worrying him. He would be able to have a proper home for Frankie and maybe, if she’d have him, for Faith. Frankie would get a top-class education. Noel would have his rainy-day security.
All because his father had been kind to Caesar, a little King Charles spaniel with soppy brown eyes.
Wasn’t life totally extraordinary?
On the morning of the wedding, before they set out for the church, Charles made a little speech to Emily.
“By rights it should have been my brother doing this but I hope I’ll do you credit.”
“Charles, if it were up to my father, he wouldn’t have turned up, or if he had, he would have been drunk. I much prefer having you.”
Father Flynn married them. Emily could have filled the church five times over, but they wanted only a small gathering, so twenty of them stood in the sunlight as they made their vows. Then they went to Holly’s Hotel in County Wicklow and back home to St. Jarlath’s Crescent. Then the honeymoon continued for the two couples; Dingo Duggan got new tires to make sure that they got to the west and back.
They stayed in farmhouses and walked along shell-covered shores with purple-blue mountains as a backdrop. And if you were to ask anyone who they were and what they were doing, a hundred guesses would never have said that they were two middle-aged couples on honeymoon. They all seemed too settled and happy for that.
Two days after Emily’s wedding, Father Flynn heard from the nursing home in Rossmore that his mother was dying. He got down there quickly and held her hand. His mother’s mind was far from clear but he felt that by being there he might be of some comfort. When his mother spoke it was of people long dead, and of incidents in her childhood. Suddenly, however, she came back to the present day.
“Whatever happened to Brian?” she asked him.
“I’m right here.”
“I had a son called Brian,” she continued, as though she hadn’t heard him. “I don’t know what happened to him. I think he joined a circus. He left town and no one ever heard of him again.…”
When Mrs. Flynn died almost the whole of Rossmore turned out for the funeral. At the nursing home, the staff had gathered together the old lady’s belongings and gave them to the priest. They included some old diaries and a few pieces of jewelry no one had ever seen her wear.
Brian looked through them as he came back in the train. The jewelry had been given to her by her husband, the diary told, but they had not been given in love but out of guilt. Brian read with pain and embarrassment that his father had not been a faithful man and he had thought he could buy his wife’s forgiveness with a necklace and various brooches. Brian decided to give the jewelry to his sister Judy with no mention of its history.
He looked up the date of his own ordination to the priesthood in the battered diary. His mother had written:
This is simply the best