The Death of an Irish Lass (4 page)

McGarr waited until she had quieted. “What man in New York?”

“Sugrue, his name is.” She stood and started out of the parlor toward the hall. “Wrote her just last week, he did. A little runt of a man. And without an occupation, either. She told me he was a fund raiser. Now then,” she paused in the doorway, “wouldn’t you call that tripe? A fund raiser! Isn’t that what we all are in one way or another?”

When she returned from the bedroom she had a letter in one hand, a photograph in the other. “Look at him. A half-pint. Doesn’t hardly come up to her shoulder.”

McGarr didn’t stand to take the photo from her. He didn’t think he’d come up to the old woman’s shoulder either. She was at least six feet tall.

And May Quirk was too. She and a man were pictured standing outside a bar named Mickey Finn’s in what McGarr assumed was New York, since all the cars parked at the curb looked like ugly limousines. It seemed to be summer and she was wearing a tight lilac-colored pullover and short black skirt. Most tall women had legs that were in some way flawed, McGarr had noticed in the past, but in this picture May Quirk’s seemed perfectly shaped. They were wrapped in dark hose, and she wore pumps with low heels. And she was in every other way a handsome woman.

The man, on the other hand, looked remarkably like
McGarr but younger. He still had a full head of curly copper hair, and his smile seemed contagious and friendly, like that of somebody you’d enjoy knowing. He was small and thick and had placed his hand around May Quirk’s waist in the casual way that people who have been intimate with each other adopt. He was wearing what McGarr speculated was an expensive light gray suit cut in the fashion of the moment, and shiny black shoes. He wore a green carnation in his buttonhole. A black silk tie on a gray shirt made him look like a successful entertainer or businessman.

“And just read the letter.”

“Aggie,” said Quirk. “You didn’t.”

She turned on him. “Of course I did, you poor old fool. I only wish I had earlier and showed it to Dan here, too. He might’ve placed her in his protection and she’d be alive this minute.” The patent absurdity of her statement seemed to make her all the more aware of the situation. Her arm jerked toward the picture, which she grasped off the mantel and hugged. She then shuffled from the room, saying, “Ah, May. May.”

McGarr read:

It was the thirteenth of August.

“‘A certain matter’ indeed!” said the old woman, from the doorway. She still had the picture in her hands.

“Aren’t you assuming an awful lot, Mrs. Quirk?” said McGarr.

“What? With that money and the gun? And him a ‘fund raiser’ as well as being a mouse and a gobshite? I know what ‘a certain matter’ means, if you don’t, Mr. Policeman. Just like I know what he’d been up to with May. He was her lover. No two ways about it.”

“But his intentions—” McGarr began to say.

“I couldn’t give a tinker’s damn for his intentions. It’s the facts what matter. What sort of a constable are you, anyhow?” Her eyes cleared and she gave McGarr a close look. “You’re nothing but half a man yourself.”

Quirk got out of his chair and put his arm around his wife. He then led her back into the bedroom.

Superintendent O’Malley went into the kitchen, where McGarr heard him phone a doctor.

McGarr examined the postmark of the letter. It had been mailed in Boston five days earlier.

When Quirk returned, McGarr asked him, “Can you tell me something about what your daughter did while she was here? When did she return? What were her habits? Did she visit friends? Do you remember anything remarkable about something she might have said or done?”

Quirk reached over for the nearly full glass of whiskey. He wet his lips and winced. He was not a drinking man.

McGarr said, “Let’s start with her friends.”

“Male or female?”

McGarr cocked his head. “Female first.” He wanted to get to know who May Quirk had been.

“Ach—the whole house was cluttered with them what are left hereabouts now. And who would have thought there were so many of them her age. I had thought they had all flown, like May herself, but they came from all over the county they did. Kids and hus
bands and all. May had always been popular, you see. She had a way about her. Had—”

It was plain the old man would give in to his grief if McGarr let him dote on her death. “And boys—I mean, men. Was she popular with the men?”

“You’ve got the snapshot in your hand, sir. You can tell by the look of her she’d be a favorite with any man, but there was more, too. It was, like I said, the way of her that mattered. It was partly because of how winning she was that made her emigrate, I believe. That and her not wanting to be a farmer’s wife, like she told us then.”

McGarr kept staring at the old man, awaiting further explanation.

Again Quirk tried the whiskey but couldn’t take more than a sip. “There wasn’t a young man in the county who wouldn’t have willingly made a marriage with her. First, there’s the farm. Whoever married May got all of it, for we have no other children. Had—” He closed his eyes and continued speaking. “And then there was May, too. Nothing ever seemed to get her down. She was always May.

“The fellow next door approached me around the time she left.”

“Jim Cleary?” McGarr asked.

“None other. His father had just died and left him over a hundred and fifty acres on both sides of the road. Some of his land was good then, and he had a tractor, a herd of milk cows, and even a truck, as well as an automobile. On the face of it, it seemed a proper match.”

O’Malley said, “Why, he was nearly forty when May left for America. Right now he’s just another old man in the local.”

“Well, what eligible farmer isn’t? Wasn’t I thirty-eight myself before my father yielded me this place?”

O’Malley only took a sip from his glass.

“Anyhow, I asked May her opinion of Cleary. She said she didn’t rightly have one. He was an old man. When I told her why I was asking she blushed and then laughed. I explained to her how it was a wise match, how in these parts Cleary was considered a rich farmer. He was a hard worker and, it seems, he fancied her. She said she liked Jim Cleary very much as a neighbor and, you know, as an older friend. But Jim Cleary was not the sort of man she intended to marry.

“‘Well then, who is?,’ I asked her. She said somebody strong and young and wild. Somebody with a dream. And courage, she added. I don’t know—maybe she saw too many picture shows in Ennis, read too many books, or dreamed too many of her own dreams. One thing was for certain, she was never going to be a farmer’s wife.

“‘And what’s so wrong with being a farmer’s wife?,’ I asked her. ‘Isn’t your mother one?’ And so she told me and it was the only thing she ever told me without so much as a smile or some playfulness about her. She said if she married Jim Cleary she wouldn’t even own the dishes on the table or the farm that was her inheritance from me. Everything would go to Cleary and she’d be at his mercy. Then she’d have one child after another until she was spent, and she’d know nothing from nine months after marriage until the grave but steady hard work and service.

“I said it was the fate of a countrywoman in the West of Ireland.

“She said, ‘That’s just it, da. I don’t plan to be a countrywoman in the West of Ireland.’ And not long after that she left.”

“Didn’t she have any beaus among the young men?”

O’Malley answered that one. “As many young men as there were hereabouts.”

“But anybody in particular?”

O’Malley and Quirk exchanged glances. “Rory O’Connor,” said O’Malley, as though McGarr should know whom he meant. When after a few seconds of silence he realized that McGarr was waiting for an explanation, he added, “A big fellow. Wild as the west wind. Folks live out at the very tip of Nag’s Head. That’s not very far from the Cliffs—” O’Malley broke off. “You don’t suppose—”

Quirk began to stand.

O’Malley waved his hand at him so that he eased himself back into the cushion. “Couldn’t be. He left right before May did. Whole years ago.”

“And she probably followed him, too, I bet,” said her father.

“Do you have any proof of that?”

“Not a bit of it, but May wouldn’t have mentioned a word of him to me.”

O’Malley explained. “May had no favorites among the boys hereabouts but one—Rory O’Connor. And whereas he was big and handsome and likable in spite of all his foolishness, he was a wrecker if I ever met one. Raw as the place he hailed from—all emotion and strength and good looks and, some say, brains too, but not an ounce of discretion or concern for anybody but himself and—”

“May,” said her father. “May too.” He again touched his lips to the whiskey.

“But he wasn’t anxious to marry her.”

“Nor she him!” said Quirk in a rush. “They just wanted to rush off together, away from here to a place where they could live the way they wanted. When I
asked them which way that was and where the place might be, they didn’t have a clue. Just off they wanted to go together. And not married, mind you! Not so much as an engagement promise between them. May said that was the way she wanted it. That he wasn’t the sort of man a girl actually married. ‘Then what do you actually do with him,’ I asked. When she didn’t answer that, she didn’t get what she wanted. I went out to Nag’s Head and told O’Connor’s father how it was—that this was my only daughter and I wouldn’t suffer his son to ruin her, that if they would get married first I’d give them my blessing and eventually my farm too, but otherwise, his son Rory could go wherever it was he was heading alone.

“Well, Jack O’Connor was a fair man, I don’t care what else has ever been said about him.”

McGarr looked at O’Malley, who mouthed, “I.R.A.”

“And he went into the barn, where Rory was stacking bales of hay. He was in there an hour. I heard them shouting and fighting and I didn’t dare go in to see what was what, because there’s no coming between a father and son, and as big as I was then, I was no match for either one of them alone.

“When Jack staggered out of the barn, he was a mess. He said, ‘Rory’s leaving tomorrow, alone. You have my promise.’ And so he did. May never forgave me for that when she learned what had happened. And she too left the day after I admitted I had gone to see Rory’s father.”

McGarr asked, “Has O’Connor ever returned?”

“I don’t think so. His father died a few years back. The oldest son was lost at sea, and the old woman is living there alone. Whenever I’m out that way, I stop in to see her.” O’Malley got himself another drink.

“Has she ever talked about her son Rory?”

“Not a word. The way Jack dealt with him drove a wedge between husband and wife. Rory had been her favorite, you know. Her last son. She had spoiled him rotten, too. That’s why he was the way he was. He didn’t think there was anything he couldn’t or shouldn’t do. I wonder what happened to him and where he is now.”

The phone began to ring.

All three men began to stand.

O’Malley said, “I’ll get it,” and went out to the kitchen.

McGarr asked Quirk, “What was May’s occupation in New York?”

Quirk began rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm. McGarr could tell the old man was getting tired. His windburned skin was beginning to look waxy, and his eyes were bloodshot. “Ah—she tried one thing and another for a couple of years. Then she became a journalist, first for the
United Irishmen
, a paper in the States for narrowbacks, don’t you know. She became one of their editors in no time. May always had a way with words. And there was no denying her anything she wanted. If she insisted, she could get it out of you. She then joined the New York
Daily News
. Here.” He stood and went to the sideboard. “May sent us a copy of every paper that carried one of her major pieces.” He opened the doors of the sideboard, which was crammed full of newspapers. “I don’t pretend to have read them all. It made me sick being reminded of how she’d probably never return.” He took one of the top papers and handed it to McGarr. He was crying now. He walked out of the room, into the hall.

The newspaper had a tabloid format. The front page
pictured a black young man sprawled on a sidewalk with a large white policeman standing over him. The officer carried a riot shotgun and was wearing a helmet with a clear face shield that made him look like a robot. The block capital letters read, “COPS IN BED. STUY. CAUSE RIOTS,” and the caption under the full-page picture read, “So Say Black Caucus Leaders. Story by May Quirk, page 2.”