Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [99]
That’s what she would do now. She would walk on beside the River Liffey until she caught the little train south. She would sit beside the sea, go for a paddle, maybe. It would calm her, soothe her. Oh, yes, there would certainly be crowds of people playing at Happy Families or Being in Love with each other, but maybe Moira would be like the woman in the shop who was aching to have the sunshine on her shoulders and arms and watch the sea lapping gently towards the shore.
That’s what she would do. She would spend some of the long weekend by the sea.
Of course it wasn’t magic.
And it didn’t really work.
Moira did not become calm and mellow. The sun did shine on her arms and shoulders but there was a breeze coming in from the sea at the same time and it felt too chilly. There were too many people who had decided their families must go to the seaside.
Moira studied them.
In her whole childhood she never remembered once being brought to the seaside and yet it seemed that every child in Dublin had a God-given right to go to the seashore as soon as the sun came out. Her sense of resentment was enormous and she frowned with concentration as she sat silently amid all the families who were calling out to one another on the beach.
To her surprise, a big man with a red face and an open-necked red shirt stopped beside her.
“Moira Tierney as I live and breathe!”
She hadn’t an idea who he was. “Um, hello,” she said cautiously.
He sat down beside her.
“God, isn’t this beautiful to be out in the open air? We’re blessed to live in a capital city that’s so near the sea,” he said.
She still looked at him, confused.
“I’m Brian Flynn. We met when Stella was in hospital and then again at the funeral and the christening.”
“Oh, Father Flynn. Yes, of course I remember. I just didn’t recognize you in the … I mean without the …”
“A Roman collar wouldn’t be very suitable for this weather.” Brian Flynn was cheerful and dismissive. He was a man who rarely wore clerical garb at all, except when officiating at a ceremony.
“Did your parents take you to the sea when you were young?” Moira asked him unexpectedly.
“My father died when we were young, but my mother brought us for a week to the seaside every summer. We stayed in a guesthouse called St. Anthony’s and we all had a bucket and spade. Yes, it was nice,” he said.
“You were lucky,” Moira said glumly.
“You didn’t get to the sea when you were young?”
“No. We never got anywhere. We should never have been left in our home. We should have been placed somewhere … anywhere, really.”
Brian Flynn saw where the conversation was leading. This woman seemed to have an obsession about taking children away from parents and into care. Or that’s what Noel said, in any case. Noel was terrified of Moira, and Katie said that Lisa felt just the same way.
“Well, I suppose things have changed a bit … moved on,” Brian Flynn said vaguely. He began to wish that he hadn’t approached Moira but she had looked so lonely and out of place in her jacket and skirt, right in the middle of all the seaside people.
“Do you ever feel your work is hopeless, Father?”
“I wish you’d call me Brian. No, I don’t feel it’s hopeless. I think we get things wrong from time to time. I mean the Church does. It doesn’t adapt properly. And I get things wrong myself, quite apart from the Church. I keep battering away to get people a Catholic wedding and, just when I succeed, it turns out that they got tired of waiting and got the job done in a register office and I’m left like a fool. But, to answer your question, no, I don’t think it’s all hopeless. I think we do something to help and I certainly see a lot that inspires me. I expect you do too?” He ended on a rising note, but if he was expecting some reciprocal statement of job satisfaction he was wrong.
“I don’t think I do, Father Flynn, truly I don’t. I have a caseload of unhappy people, most of them blaming their unhappiness on me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” Brian