Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [97]
She would go to see how Pat was faring the next morning. It was ludicrous to think of him with Mrs. O’Leary—she was so much older. It was nonsense. Mr. O’Leary couldn’t have left because of Pat.
She would find out tomorrow.
Next morning, she went to the garage. Pat was there on the forecourt, filling cars with petrol or diesel. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her.
“Have you got a car at long last, Moira?” he called.
“I have, but it’s up in Dublin,” she said.
“Well, we can’t fill it up for you from here then.” He laughed amiably. He was totally suited to this work, easygoing and natural with the customers, good-tempered and cheerful in what some might have found a tedious and repetitive job.
“I came to see you, actually, Pat. Do you have a break or anything coming up?”
“Sure, I can go anytime. I’ll just tell Erin.”
Moira followed him towards the pay desk and the new shop that had been built in a once-falling-down garage.
“Erin, my sister, Moira, is here. Okay if I take a break and go and have a coffee with her?”
“Oh, Pat, of course it is. Don’t you work all the hours God sends? Go for as long as you like. How are you, Moira? Long time no see.”
Moira looked at her. Erin O’Leary—about ten years older than Moira—a mother of two girls and wife of Harry, who was a traveler and often traveled rather longer and farther than his job required. He had now traveled out of the country, it was said at the Stella Maris, where Moira had brought up the subject at breakfast.
Erin was wearing a smart yellow shop coat with a navy trim. Her loose, rather floppy hair was tied back neatly with a navy and yellow ribbon. She was slim and fit and looked much younger than the forty-four or-five she must have been. She looked at Pat with undeniable affection.
“I hear you’ve been very good to my brother,” Moira said.
“It’s mutual, I tell you. I couldn’t do half the work I do without him.”
Pat had come back wearing his jacket and heard her say that. He was childishly pleased.
“I’m glad. He was a great brother,” Moira said, trying to put a lot of sincerity into her voice. In fact, he had been a worry and given her huge concern over the years—but no point in sharing that with Mrs. O’Leary.
“I don’t doubt it,” Erin O’Leary said, putting her arm affectionately around Pat’s shoulders.
“And is all this a permanent sort of thing?” Moira asked, trying desperately to smile at the same time so that they would realize it was a good-natured, cheery kind of inquiry.
“I certainly hope so,” Erin said. “I’d be lost without Pat, and so would the girls.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Pat said proudly.
Would she have encouraged this setup herself as a social worker? She might have examined Erin O’Leary’s circumstances more carefully, checked that her husband would not return and evict Pat Tierney from his home and business. She would always have put the best needs of her client forward, but was there a possibility that by challenging the living arrangements at Mrs. O’Leary’s, she might have deprived Pat of the loving home and workplace that he now seemed to have?
They went for coffee to a nearby place where everyone knew Pat. He was his own man, with plenty to say.
People asked him about Erin and he told them how she had made a cake with his name on it for his birthday last week and they had all given him a present. And Erin must have told some of the regular customers too, because there wasn’t room on the mantelpiece for all his cards.
With a heart like stone, Moira remembered that she had not sent him a card.
She had, she said, been to see their father. “He seems happy with Mrs. Kennedy,” she said grudgingly.
“Well, why wouldn’t he be? Isn’t Maureen the best in the world?”
“Maureen?” Moira was at a loss.
“Maureen Kennedy,” he said, as if everyone knew her as that.
“And how did you find out