Little Girl Lost (39 page)

She set off in the direction Brendan had taken, then paused by a grassy bank. She might as well stop here and eat some of the food she had just purchased; it would give her time to think. Maeve settled herself on the bank and fished out a portion of soda bread and the bottle of cold tea she had made that morning. She was munching away when she saw two young men approaching. They were clearly farm boys and when they saw her they greeted her cheerfully, though there was something in their manner that worried her a little, especially when they sat down on the grassy bank, one on either side of her, and exchanged sly glances before untying large and rather dirty handkerchiefs to reveal hunks of soda bread and cheese and beginning to eat. But she returned their greeting, finished her soda bread, then re-capped the cold tea and stood up. To her dismay, both young men followed suit, cramming the uneaten food into their pockets. ‘We’ll come wit’ you a bit of your way,’ the one on the left said, thickly, through a mouthful of bread and cheese. ‘Where’s you bound? A pretty colleen like yourself shouldn’t be all alone-io.’

Maeve settled her crutch firmly under her arm and turned to glare at him. ‘I’m not alone,’ she said crisply. ‘Please don’t stand so close or you’ll get in the way of me crutch.’ The young man gave a hoarse laugh, but stepped back when she dug the crutch into the ground, grazing his large booted foot. The other man simply moved closer, remarking as he did so that there could be no harm in his lending her an arm since it looked as though they were all three going in the same direction.

Maeve had been moving forward but now she stopped short. ‘Leave me alone or I’ll yell,’ she said, trying to make her voice sound firm and steady. ‘I’ve – I’ve had a row with me young man but he’s not far ahead. Did you see him? He’s a well set up young feller – he’s a policeman, in fact – and he went through the village, oh, twenty minutes before I did, so if you’ll kindly get out of my way . . .’

The two young men exchanged glances once more. One was fat and red-faced with a squint. The other was shorter and thinner, with a strange ferrety face, and a loose mouth which hung open revealing bad and broken teeth. ‘We aren’t doin’ no harm,’ the fat one said, sounding injured. ‘We only wants to be friends, doesn’t us, Kev?’

‘Aye, that’s right, us only wants to be friends, to be sure,’ ferret-faced Kev agreed.

‘That’s all very well, but my young man has a very jealous nature; that’s why we quarrelled,’ Maeve said, inventing as she went along. ‘He’s a big feller wit’ a short temper and a nasty way wit’ anyone what looks at me twice, so if I were you . . .’

She left the sentence unfinished because there was clearly no need to say more. Both young men moved smartly away from her, though Kev said reproachfully: ‘We don’t mean no harm, missus, it’s just that us farm lads don’t see many girls, ’specially strangers. And my mammy would say that good girls don’t go wanderin’ country lanes wit’out so much as a dog to keep ’em company.’

Maeve felt a flush rise to her cheeks. The young man was probably right, for country and city ways were very different. In the Liberties, a girl would not walk around alone after dark, for that would be dangerous; asking for trouble, as her elders would say. But during the day, with people constantly surrounding them, unaccompanied girls and women were safe enough. In the country, however, it was clearly very different; she would be well advised to catch Brendan up before she had trouble with someone not as easily vanquished as the farm boys, who had taken her story to heart and were shambling off the way they had come, not so much as glancing back.

Maeve heaved a great sigh and felt her heart begin to slow to a more normal rhythm. She knew she could not possibly catch Brendan up if he continued to walk as fast as he had been doing when she saw him in the village, but he would have to stop at some point, even if it were only to beg a bed for the night at some inn or similar hostelry. And he would have to eat. Determinedly swinging her crutch, Maeve hurried along the quiet road, looking hopefully as she rounded every bend for Brendan’s tall – and suddenly reliable – figure.

Ever since he had left the bus, Brendan had been aware of a steadily growing contentment, for the day was fine and he was in the countryside he loved. At first he had walked quickly, but then he slowed to a more comfortable pace, for there was little point in hurrying. The children, he knew, were well ahead of him, but it was Maeve he sought, and because of her limp – and the fact that she had a mere three or four hours’ start on him – he would probably catch her up without having to hurry. He knew the children would sleep rough, of course, but he did not imagine for a moment that Maeve would do so. She would ask for a bed in a cottage, or perhaps even an inn, so when he came to any sort of habitation he would enquire, but until then he would simply enjoy the day and be glad that he was no longer walking a beat or dependent upon the Liverpool Constabulary for his weekly wage. It was not long before his thoughts darted ahead to the little farm he meant to buy and the life he would lead there, and the miles went by unnoticed.

He reached a tumble of small cottages as the sun began to sink and bought soda bread and cheese at a neat little dwelling whose owner proved garrulous. No, she had not seen a girl with a crutch, but a week or two before strangers had passed that way: two young lads with a big grey cat. They had offered to weed her garden in return for bread and cheese and they had done a good job, though she had had to speak sharply to the younger one – a little lad in a blue jersey – who had started to root out some seedlings which had only just begun to poke their green noses above the soil.

Considerably heartened by this information, Brendan continued on his way, deciding that the next time he reached a dwelling he had best arrange a bed for the night. But first he would eat the food he had purchased. He glanced around him for a suitable spot and presently found a great oak tree spreading its branches half across the road. The roots formed a comfortable seat and he sank into it and began to eat. Presently, his mind strayed back to Liverpool and Sylvie, and he realised, with a sense of shock, that he had managed somehow to divide the desires of his heart into two quite separate sections. In one, he imagined himself married to Sylvie, and in another he was the owner of a neat little Irish farm, yet he had never even attempted to reconcile the two, to imagine Sylvie feeding the hens on his small farm, digging potatoes, cutting cabbage. In fact he had no idea how Sylvie felt about country living, but now that he had leisure to think, he realised he could only see her against the background of the Ferryman. If he managed to find Kitty and take her back to Liverpool so that Sylvie could meet her, and if as a result Sylvie agreed to marry him, then he supposed that he would have to help her run the pub and would, perforce, become a citizen of Liverpool once more.

Of course, the pub was a thriving business in which he would make very much more money than was possible on an Irish farm. His time in the army, and in the police force, had taught him organisation and efficiency and he knew, without really having to think about it, that he could build the pub up to be as successful as it had been in old Mr Dugdale’s day. But did he want to? With Sylvie as the prize, he supposed that it would be bearable, yet it was not his dream.

Uneasily, he tried to banish the thought, but once he had let it enter his mind it would not go away. He had longed and longed for Sylvie, longed for her still, but it would be hard to have to give up his dream of living once more in his own country, farming his own land, being truly independent for the first time in his life. However, there was no need to despair; he had never even suggested to Sylvie that she might enjoy life as a farmer’s wife, but he would do so as soon as he had found Kitty, and who knew what she would say?

Brendan ate the last of his food, leaned back against the trunk of the tree, and closed his eyes. It would be another couple of hours before it grew dark. Presently he would set off again, and this time he would walk faster, for he was determined to catch up with Maeve before nightfall. But he had travelled a long way today and was beginning to feel weary. He would just close his eyes for a moment, just have five minutes’ rest . . . Brendan slept.

Maeve came round a bend in the road and was almost dazzled by the dying rays of the sun. For a moment, she stopped short, astonished by the beauty of the scene before her, for the sun was sinking into a bed of tiny pink cloudlets, and painting the countryside in rose and gold. There was a great oak tree, its branches just bursting into coral bud, which seemed to have snared some of the sunset’s glory to itself, for its rough bark reflected the sun’s rays so that it almost looked as though it were on fire. Maeve sighed deeply and began to move forward, but when she came within a few feet of the oak tree she stopped once more. There was a man sitting against the trunk, his legs stretched out before him, his chin on his chest. Maeve saw at once that he was fast asleep, and that it was Brendan O’Hara.

She leaned over him, a hand out ready to shake his shoulder, but then she had second thoughts. If she disturbed him, he might wake angry; better to sit quietly down beside him and let him wake naturally, and then she would explain why she had fled from the house in Handkerchief Alley. She supposed he might be annoyed with her, but hoped that an explanation of her early departure – and an abject apology – would be enough to calm his wrath. Carefully and gently, she sat down beside him. She leaned against the trunk, then turned her head sideways so that she would watch his face. She knew that her gaze might well wake him, for one of Kitty’s favourite ploys when she wanted Maeve to be up and about was to stare fixedly at her sleeping face until she awoke. So she allowed her gaze to travel slowly around Brendan’s face.

It was a nice face, the eyes deep set, the brow broad, the nose straight. She let her eyes linger on his lips, and liked the fact that even in sleep the corners of his mouth tilted up so that he looked almost as if he were smiling. His chin, however, was square and forceful, with a deep cleft: a determined chin, the chin of one who would not be turned aside from his purpose once he had made up his mind.

He had rather thick, black eyebrows; last time she had seen him they had formed a bar across his forehead and had frightened her almost as much as the sparkle of annoyance in his dark blue eyes. But now that the eyes were veiled by lids, she could tell from his smooth brow that he was not a man who frowned often. Indeed, had he not threatened her beloved Kitty, she thought she could have liked him, could have been his friend. As it was, however, she meant to make use of him, albeit without his knowledge. She would need his help and protection to find Kitty and Nick, but once they had met up she meant to get Kitty back to Handkerchief Alley where she and Caitlin must persuade him to leave Kitty with them, secure in the knowledge that she would be best among her own folk, would be miserable across the water. ‘If you take her, she’ll bide her time and run away again, and she’s only a kid after all,’ Maeve imagined herself telling him. ‘She might get into terrible trouble because she won’t have Nick to keep an eye on her. She could get into bad company . . . tell Sylvie we love Kitty and won’t ever ask her for a penny piece, if only she’ll leave our girl with us.’

But all that was for the future; first they must find Kitty. And God knew what trouble the child might already have fallen into. It was all very well having faith in Nick, but he was only a kid. In the last village through which she had passed, they had told her of a band of tinkers making their way to a horse fair many miles off – if Kitty and Nick had fallen in with any of them . . . Maeve shuddered. Some tinkers were undoubtedly grand folk, but there were others who would rob their own mammies and probably slit a throat for sixpence.

‘Well, would you know me again?’

The remark, coming from a man whom she had thought to be fast asleep, made Maeve jump six inches, and give a muffled shriek. She tried to scramble away from him and fell, whereupon he jumped to his feet and reached out and picked her up, giving her a little shake before setting her with her back against the tree once more. ‘It’s all right, alanna; I didn’t recognise you for a moment. In fact, I thought you were one of the fairy folk, come to enchant me,’ he soothingly. ‘But how did you find me? I was searching for you! You’d had several hours’ start of me, but though I walked fast and questioned everyone I met, no one could remember seeing you. I don’t understand it at all, at all.’

Maeve’s heart was still beating uncomfortably fast, but she could not help laughing a little at the puzzlement in Brendan’s voice. ‘That’s easily answered,’ she said. ‘Sure and you were in such a hurry, some miles back, that you passed me by; I were in the baker’s buying soda bread and brack. I – I meant to try to catch you up, but the baker had to go next door for change and by the time I got out of the shop you had disappeared.’

‘Right, but why did you sneak out of the flat this morning when I t’ought we’d agreed to travel together?’ Brendan said, in an injured voice. ‘And what changed your mind? You could have walked quietly past me just now wit’out wakening me. Why, if you’d not stared at me I dare say I’d have slept till dark.’

‘I know, and I’m very sorry I didn’t wait for you,’ Maeve mumbled, hanging her head. ‘But you said you were going to find Kitty and take her across the water and – and I couldn’t bear that and nor could Kitty. You say Sylvie wants her now because she’s lost her own little girl, but she never gave Kitty a thought for years. So – so . . .’

‘I reckon we neither of us gave the other much of a chance to explain,’ Brendan said. ‘I should have said I only wanted to take Kitty across the water for a couple o’ days so that her mammy could see she was safe and well. Then I’d have brought her back to Handkerchief Alley, I swear to God I would.’

‘You’d bring her back if Sylvie would let you,’ Maeve said shrewdly. ‘And why couldn’t she come over to Dublin, if she only wants to make sure that Kitty’s safe and well? She’s a girl who’s used to getting her own way is Sylvie, and if she made up her mind when she clapped eyes on Kitty that she wanted her, you’d mebbe not find it so easy to get the child out of her clutches. I don’t mean to say that Sylvie isn’t a nice kind of person, for to be sure she’s grand, so she is. But as you know her well – and you must do or you wouldn’t have come chasing after Kitty for her – then you’ll know she’s always got her own way, right from the time she was a child. Why, look what you did for her. And she told me you met her quite by chance and had hardly known her for more than a few days when you packed her off to Ireland,’ she ended triumphantly.