Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (60 page)

“Oh God, Terry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” She reached across the surface of the worn table between them and patted his hand awkwardly, in all the years she had known him it was only the second time she’d touched him in comfort and the last time had been for her own, not his.

He looked her bluntly in the eyes. “Aye well why would ye have known? He was only Marie’s son to ye an’ nothin’ more.”

“Aye, well perhaps I should leave ye to yer grief,” she said quietly, gathering up her strength to stand and head for the door.”

“Dear God Peg, I’m sorry, I’d no right to say such things to ye, please don’t go off, I don’t think I can be alone just yet.”

“It’s alright ye old fool, I’ve said worse things to ye durin’ the passin’ of the day. I’ll fix us a bite then, a man yer age can’t be runnin’ on tears an’ the drink alone, don’t look at me that way Terence McGinty, I’m not such a teetotaler that I don’t know the smell of whiskey anymore. Sit, ‘twon’t be much but it’ll fill the hole,” she said getting to her feet and hopping rather nimbly over to the sink. Fifteen minutes later, her dress covered in a white apron, she was up to her elbows in potato and carrot peelings, water boiling merrily on the Aga, bread sliced and piled on an old Wedgewood saucer and cold roast from Terry’s Sunday dinner cut to papery thin slices.

When everything was on the table, butter running clear down the mashed potatoes, baby carrots from his greenhouse steaming, and tea steeping on the sideboard she said, “Perhaps I deserved what ye said Terry but I am sorry, no I did not know Brian but I didn’t have a right to then, did I? The fact remains that he was Brendan’s only surviving son an’ if ye think that doesn’t hit me in the chest like a knife, ye are more a fool than I’ve always believed ye to be. Ye’ve not said so much but I can occasionally read between the lines an’ I know that he was more son to ye than if ye’d had yer own blood. Now man ye’ve got to eat somethin’.”

He did manage a bit in the end and two cups of tea to wash it all down.

“Who’s in the cottage then?” Peg managed to ask mildly enough, but he saw that the hand she stirred lemon into her tea with shook like it was palsied.

“Brian’s oldest son Casey an’ a girl.”

“A girl,” she said almost managing to fake a noncommittal interest.

“Aye, a girl, one that makes a man mourn his lost youth, but then the Riordans always did have a taste in women that’d make the angels writhe with jealousy.”

She could not suppress some small smile of pleasure at that. So her vanity had not completely deserted her as yet.

“Aye well beauty is fleeting an’ so is love, as we’ve both cause to know Terence McGinty,” she got to her feet slowly and cleared the table all too aware that she was confirming the truth of her statement with every step.

“They want me to marry them,” he said and she could feel his eyes on her back, watching for a reaction.

“Do they, then? Well are ye goin’ to do it?” she asked clanking dishes in a rough fashion.

“Well I thought perhaps it was time. I’ve buried a lot of Riordans but I’ve never married one. I’d like to be present at a happy ceremony for a change. So I’ve said yes. I thought perhaps ye’d come along as a witness.”

“Did ye? Kind of ye to presume,” Peg said sharply, banging a pot with unnecessary force onto the counter. She stopped and fought for a deep breath, hands stilled in hot, soapy water. “Is he so very much like him then, Terry?”

“Aye, he is, as near as one man can get to another, in ways big an’ small.”

“I don’t know if I can bear it,” she whispered, but Terry with ears like a bat heard her.

“Well that will be your burden Peg.”

‘Aye, it will be mine,’ she replied, but only to herself.

They cleaned up the remnants of dinner in silence, Terry retreating to his sitting room after she’d refused his offer to walk her home. Undoubtedly, the old fool would sit and watch the stars all night to keep communion with the son he’d never had.

Peg left for home, lifting her face to the wind and inhaling the salt, sea and smell of winter that the air was lashed about with.

If wishes were fishes
And tears swam like rain
Dropping into rivers
Of memory
Then I would bid my grief
Goodbye
And watch him walk
Over white waterfall
Without a backward glance.

She’d read that in a little book of poems recently and liked it. She would have dearly loved to leave her grief behind as well. Even, sometimes she had thought, if it meant having Brendan erased entirely from her memory. Now though as old age sat upon her shoulders squarely and unforgivingly she thought perhaps the memories were worth the price of grief and that whoever had written that poem was still very young indeed. Grief, she thought to use a term that was being bandied about all too frequently these days, was about as real as the human experience ever got. Unlike joy, grief was pure. Joy came with the taint of a small demon whispering in your ear of the black clouds coming to mar the blue sky. Joy was a state of superstition, grief was absolute. If she didn’t know much else in this world, she knew that absolutely and purely.

It took two days to make all the arrangements, which consisted only of a license and finding two witnesses. Father Terry had given his congratulations without reservation and yet Pamela had sensed a certain sadness about him, a resignation almost since the announcement of their intent to marry. She knew why and was determined to pointedly ignore the doubts about the wisdom of this venture. If love could fix the ills of the world then surely it could stop Casey from walking the road to destruction that he was currently on. That love had not indeed cured many ills, and that her own corner of the world had been bent on self-immolation for the last eight hundred years was not something she cared to look at too closely, if at all.

On the evening before the wedding, a strange figure came thumping up their path. Casey had nipped into the village to fill a last minute list and, Pamela suspected, to see if he couldn’t procure a good bottle of whiskey. Pamela therefore, eyeing the scarlet coat, the purple skirt, the green shoes, the fiery red hair and the formidable black oak cane that the woman was adorned with, opened the door with some trepidation.

“I would be Peg,” the apparition announced very matter of factly, “will ye be standin’ there with yer mouth hangin’ open or could I hope for the hospitality of a cup o’ tay?”

“Of—of course,” Pamela stammered and stood aside as Peg came in bearing her cane as though it were a royal scepter and the tatty green of her skirts the finest silks in a sultan’s harem.

“P’raps the Father will have told ye I’m to witness yer nuptials tomorrow, and I thought I’d like to acquaint meself with the bride an’ groom first.”

“Of course,” Pamela replied wishing she could stop staring at her odd guest and yet finding herself unable to.

“Have a look then, I don’t mind, Jaysus but I ought to be used to it. When I was but a slip of a girl, like yerself, I was the prettiest girl in all of Connemara, the min stared plenty then I tell ye. And now I’m the village oddity, old one leg Peg they calls me, fergitting and in the main not knowing that in me day I was Margaret MacBride, fairest in the land. Lost me leg in a train accident, too damned drunk to git off the tracks if the truth be known but I let them’s that wants to, think I’m a figure of tragedy, gives me a certain stature that alcoholism wouldn’t.”

“Indeed, “ Pamela said feeling precisely as if Peg had whacked her upside the head with the beautiful black oak cane.

“Not much in the way of a talker are ye, girl? Well I suppose with a face like that the min don’t much care if ye can talk or not. No matter, I can talk plenty an’ then some for the both of us, jist ask Father Terry and he’ll tell ye so. Many’s the hour I’ve near taken the ear right off the man, though to be sure it’s his own fault for listenin’ so well, a rare talent, that is listenin’, not so many people do it nowadays. But that’s enough about me. I’ve come to give ye marital advice and seeing as tomorrow is fast on its feet I’d best get on with it. Ah,” she sighed and actually stopped to sip the steaming cup of tea Pamela placed before her “yer tongue may not be energetic but ye’ve a rare hand with a cup o’ tay, that’s something to be certain. Now where was I?” She drummed one scarlet nailed hand on her forehead as if she would beat forth the thoughts that eluded her.

“Advice,” Pamela said meekly.

“Advice?” Peg asked and looked at her as if she’d no idea what on earth Pamela was getting at. “Well I’m not sure why ye’d ask the likes of me fer advice but here’s a piece I’ve always held with, redheads should never wear pink. But thin ye’ve hair as black as coal so it hardly seems a matter for ye to worry about.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Pamela replied, deciding that she’d never met anyone so instantly delightful as Miss Margaret MacBride.

“Ye’ll be wearin’ white I hope, it seems not so much the fashion these days, what with all the free love an’ blue jeans, though I do be thinkin’ I’ve missed out on something this decade here. Me body may be too old fer the wild sex unfortunately me mind hasn’t quite come to the same conclusion.” She sighed and Pamela found she was holding her breath waiting for the next thing to come out of One Leg Peg’s mouth. But Peg had ceased speaking and looked out the window, apparently without the slightest bit of discomfort.

“Would you like to see my dress?” she asked, feeling the need suddenly in the absence of a mother to share this last night before her marriage with an older woman.

Peg nodded and Pamela retrieved the pale cotton dress from the closet, it was blue and scattered with tiny cornflowers and daisies. It was the best she had and the only thing that came near to being appropriate.

“Well,” said Peg digging out an ancient monocle from the bosom of her red coat and clapping it firmly over one bright blue eye, “I’ll not deny it ‘s pretty but it simply will not do, blue girl, blue on a wedding day, well yer just askin’ fer trouble child.”

“I am?” Pamela asked, never having heard of blue carrying any particularly ill omens.

“Blue, my child, is the color of sorrow, of tears and loss, no it simply will not do, ye must be married in white.” Peg said it firmly and with a small thump of her cane as if indeed there were no other way round this matter.

“But I don’t have a white dress,” Pamela said feeling that, indeed, to be married in blue would be the worst possible start a marriage could have.

“An’ did I say that ye did?” Peg asked impatiently. “Ye’ll wear mine, I niver had the daughters I saved it for, an’ sure it’s so fine it deserves to be worn more than the once.”

“I—” Pamela began, feeling she should protest before she found herself standing in the back garden in ostrich feathers and sequins.

“Ah” Peg waved one scarlet-tipped hand airily, “ye need not be thankin’ me, it’ll be a treat to see someone as lovely as yerself wear it. An’ don’t worry” she grinned impishly “it’s a respectable bit of a dress; ye won’t be gussied up like a Vegas showgirl. Now I suppose we’d best be getting on to my place and see how it fits, not a great deal of time to be makin’ alterations. Ye’ve not much meat on yer bones an’ I was four months pregnant on my weddin’ day so we may need to nip it in a bit.”

“Four months pregnant,” Pamela echoed before she could think, then she blushed and stammered “heavens, I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“Nay matter girl, I’d not have told ye if it wasn’t yer business. Hard to imagine that crazy old Peg was someone’s mother once, but indeed I was. And someone’s wife and someone’s daughter, near every woman can’t get through life without bein’ those three things, though it’d be a sight better for some of us if we could manage it.” She sighed again and seemed to slip off into some place that had existed many years ago.

The door opened and Casey stepped in, filling and taking up the room as he always seemed to do no matter the size or grandeur of the setting.

“I got all your bits and pieces though why ye’ll be needin’ one extra large, round carpet needle at this point is beyond me, I’m only hopin’ it’s nothin’ to do with tomorrow night—ah beggin’ yer pardon, I’d no idea we had company.”

“An’ you I expect would be the groom?” Peg asked in a quiet voice that for all her strangeness seemed especially strained. Pamela turned to look and saw that Peg’s demeanor had indeed changed and she was staring fixedly at Casey, shadows filtering slowly across her face as if she had glimpsed something irretrievably lost and then lost it again only to bring the pain afresh.

“I see ye’ll have met our Mrs. MacBride,” said Father Terry slipping in the door, in the strangely silent way he had, behind Casey. “I’ve asked her to witness the marriage tomorrow, with Bertie Small from down the road that makes the requisite two witnesses. That is if yer still certain about not wantin’ any family there?” He looked from Pamela to Casey and sighed, “I see ye’ve the Riordan stubbornness firmly in place. Well then,” he stepped into the breach between Peg and Casey. “Mrs. MacBride, this would be Casey Riordan and I see ye’ve already made yerself known to Pamela, she’d be an O’Flaherty.”

“Call me Peg,” a soft reflective look came into her eyes and she crossed the room slowly to where Casey stood, “ a Riordan are ye? I’d not need the name to know ye for who ye are. Ah those eyes, burnin’ black and the hair,” Peg lifted her hand and gently stroked the back of it across Casey’s cheek, “Ye’d be Brendan’s grandson, an’ Brian’s son, no?”

“I would be both of those things,” Casey replied with unaccustomed gentleness taking Peg’s hand within his own and kissing the back of it.

“I’m sorry,” Peg said “that yer grandfather died before ye could know him, he was a fine man. I cried fer three weeks when he died, didn’t even cry that long for Arthur, who was me own husband and father to my son. It’s a rare man to deserve that many of a woman’s tears.”

“May I be deservin’ of half as many when my own end comes,” Casey replied, as Pamela stifled a groan.

“May ye not follow in the footsteps of yer Daddy an’ his and she will have no need of tears,” Peg said with a nod toward Pamela.