Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [56]
“Gerry!” Her eyebrows arched.
In an instant, the grin was gone and a new persona emerged. He looked at her with mock earnestness. He seemed to be enjoying himself, feeding shamelessly on Nora’s anxiety as he continued his rant. “‘There’s no call now to be talkin’ like that about the poor woman. It’s her business. There’d be no yap the like of that out of you fellas, if the skipper was still above. Buddy’d be out the door on his arse.’” Gerry thumped the table with his fist and paused, feigning mock consideration of the situation. “‘Still an’ all now, I wish I had his head. I never seen the like of him. I’ve had occasion to be down to the priest’s place doin’ a bit of work and I’ve heard the two of them talkin’ about stuff and I can tell ye, b’ys, the words’d be comin’ out of him like farts from a goat. Never heared the like in me life.’”
Nora burst out laughing, loving how he straddled the very core of the gossiping men. Covering her mouth, she said, “Gerry, I think we’d better go.”
“It’s you they’re interested in, not me. Pay no heed.” He sat back in his chair and stretched out his long legs. “That’s how they’d go on, Nora, they’d have a few laughs and usually end up speculating as to what it was had a hold on him. The general consensus was that it had to be either God, the law, or another woman. The latter was the most popular belief. They were a hard crowd when they got goin’. But now, I have to say, the gossip didn’t seem to bother Peg. She just went her own way.”
The crowd had begun to drift into the tent in search of refreshment. The tension that had gripped Nora since leaving the priest’s house had begun to dissipate. She was surprised also to find that she felt quite at ease with Gerry. Perhaps it had to do with Peg’s liking for him and his obvious respect for Peg, or maybe it was just his easy, humorous way, but, whatever the reason, when he asked her if she’d care to have a beer with him, she accepted.
“I didn’t get your last name, Gerry,” she said as though assigning him a final stamp of approval.
“Quinlan. My family came to Newfoundland from Ireland in 1838. I’m glad to meet you, Nora Molloy. It’s like meeting a long lost cousin.”
15
He drove a big, swanky black car with sleek tail fins and an abundance of chrome. With one arm resting on the edge of the open window and the other gripping the smooth rim of the steering wheel, Gerry Quinlan looked suave and confident.
“There’s only one place around here to have a beer. It’s a few miles up the shore in Angels Cove.” He looked at her sideways, his right eyebrow cocked, waiting for her reaction.
“That’s fine, I’m in no hurry.”
“It’s a bit rough now. Not too many women go there. It’s a tavern really.” He glanced her way again.
She caught that now familiar look of amusement in his eyes. “I’ve been in a tavern or two.”
But she had never quite seen the like of this place. It was a small dark room with a low ceiling, not much more than a shed, attached by an adjoining door to an equally small and rundown house. The room served also as a kind of shop with a few shelves behind the bar that were strewn with an assortment of boxes, aspirin, matches, nails. There were a few loaves of bread, odd bottles with various liquids, and a number of cheap plastic toys in dusty wrappers. The air was sluggish with the smell of stale beer, tobacco and smoke. Behind the door and set back in a corner was a small wood-burning stove, which, despite the warm weather, was alight and throwing a fair amount of heat into the tiny room. A solitary figure sat slumped over the fire, his head heavy in his hands.
“Paddy.” Gerry nodded in the direction of the figure by the stove. There was no reply. He turned and closed the door, shutting out most of the light to the little room. In the gloom, Gerry put his hand under Nora’s elbow and guided her to one of the small tables set along the back wall.
“I’ll get us a beer.”
Nora looked around her. The lights of a shiny juke box appeared