Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [5]
The lunch-time crowd gradually got up and left and Nora, disappointed, gathered her belongings and headed back out to the street. Outside, she paused to consider her next move.
The door behind her opened and shut. The old man who had sat alone in the corner with his pint was standing beside her.
“Years ago, I knew the Molloys from below in Ballyslish.”
Nora scrutinized the rough weather-beaten face with its dark eyes set deeply above a high arching nose. A bony hand reached up and made a slight adjustment to his tweed cap as if to set a thought process in motion. Then he put one foot ahead of the other and looked down the main street and off into the distance.
“The Molloys had a small far’um o’ land maybe five or six mile out the road. Yer father lived there with the mother as a young ladeen. She was a Dolan from these parts. He went to school down below in the town. I was there meself then. He was a smart ladeen, yer father, got the scholarships and all, and went off to the secondary school, in spite of everything.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
The man looked at her askance and set about adjusting his cap again.
“Do you mean the business with the father?” Nora urged.
“The father I didn’t know at all. I think he went off to America and left them high and dry: all alone … the mother and the young fella, Eamon, yer father. That was how I heard it anyways, but I don’t rightly know. We didn’t see much of Eamon after he went off to the secondary school.” He looked Nora over as if seeing her for the first time. The skinny tip of his tongue appeared and slicked his lower lip. “I thought he joined the priests but I suppose that couldn’t be right.”
“No,” she said simply, “that’s not altogether right. He did spend some time in the seminary but he left and later married. I’m his daughter. Nora is my name. I don’t know yours.”
“Packie Brennan.” He shook her offered hand.
“My father died recently,” Nora said, by way of keeping the conversation going.
“The Lord have mercy on him. It’s comin’ time for us all.” He looked off into the distance again.
“Mr. Brennan.” Nora felt strange asking this question: “What became of old Mrs. Molloy, his mother?”
He shifted position, again fingering his cap. “Well now, as far as I know, she lived below in Ballyslish for a whileen. During the Troubles, I remember hearing how the Black and Tans ransacked the house one night and then put a torch to it. The story goes she stood her ground, with the young fella by her side, until the flames was lickin’ her ankles. After that, they had to move back in with the brother, Mickey Dolan. He lived farther up the way. An oul’ bachelor he was and a miserable oul’ crathur, to the day he died.”
Mickey Dolan, she knew that name from the letter. Already she disliked its owner.
“I don’t rightly know what became of the oul’ woman after that.”
“Do you know anyone who might know?”
“Arra, girleen, don’t go worrying your head about things like that. It’s a long time ago and there’s not too many of us left.”
“What about the house?”
“Ah, sure, tis all fallen down. The land belongs to the Farrels now. Twas only a small placeen. Yer father sold it after, I suppose.”
“Can you tell me how to get there, Mr. Brennan?”
The ruins of the cottage lay in a little isolated hollow surrounded by trees and vegetation. At one time it must have been a comfortable location, but high in the treetops heavy growth had closed in, cutting off the sunlight, creating a dark, damp vault below. Thick ropes of ivy clawed their way up and around the tree trunks and into the branches, silently choking life from the trees. The creeper had also attacked the cottage, entering the house by the doors and windows, eating into the mortar and dragging the walls stone by stone to the ground. Nature had taken over from the fire and wiped out the past. There were no memories here, no stone boundaries to contain and define former times, just a tall gable end, standing on its own like a giant headstone,