‘We’ve a lovely fish pie on today. Salmon from the Moy and as it’s still fine to eat winkles at this time of the year, chef scattered a few in. They were picked early this morning. Hard work picking them off the rocks, though: they’re tiny things and they sell them by the kilo. You want to see the women doing it. Out there in all weathers in their wellington boots, frozen with the cold.’
Lou could see interest flaring in her sister’s eyes at the thought of someone filling a giant bag of tiny molluscs. Toni loved stories. She couldn’t help herself. Even in this time of stress, Lou knew Toni would want to find out more about the winkle-picking ladies.
‘Fish pie sounds wonderful,’ Toni said finally. ‘And,’ she added casually, as if an afterthought, ‘Angelo ...? Aunt G would love to know we’d tracked him down. She doesn’t travel anymore herself. Elderly.’
Lou bit her lip. Despite her age, elderly was not the first word people would use to describe Gloria, although she’d certainly seemed old that morning. Lillian’s screeching revelations had shattered her too.
‘Angelo Mulraney?’ Margo’s eyes with their lacquer-like coating of bronze eyeshadow, narrowed a bit as if considering whether to divulge anything or not.
Some decision was clearly reached. ‘My mother will know,’ she said.
‘Very exotic the Mulraneys were,’ said Margo’s mother, a neat little woman with her daughter’s shrewd eyes and skin like ivory crepe paper. Once she was installed beside Toni and Lou with a pot of tea beside her, she was keen to help. ‘There was talk that one of the Mulraney women fell for a soldier from General Humbert’s French army.’
‘French army?’ said Lou, startled.
‘They came to help the 1798 Rebellion,’ went on Margo’s mother, as if only a complete idiot would not know this.
‘There’s a monument down the town,’ added Margo proudly.
Lou could feel Toni longing for her notebook and pen.
‘Great. But back to the Mulraneys,’ Lou said.
In spite of herself, she was interested. She still wasn’t sure that she really wanted to find her putative father or not, but the story Margo’s mother was telling was interesting. Yet these Mulraney people could hardly be related toher– Margo’s mother was speaking of people who’d lived over two hundred years ago because of the General Humbert reference.
‘And then there was Spanish blood in them as well from the Armada—’ Margo’s mother went on.
‘In the sixteenth century?’ posited Lou, searching her brain for Spanish Armada information. Perhaps the pub was a stop-off for people on genealogical tours. Name a family name and, even if they were all long dead, the history would come out.
‘Yes, and they were all very good looking as a result,’ said Margo’s mother. ‘All that foreign blood, very exotic. The Mulraney boys were always lookers.’
This sounded more recent, Lou thought.
‘When I was young, they had their pick of the local women, I can tell you.’ Margo’s mother smiled mistily. ‘Obviously not myself,’ she added, with a hasty glance at her daughter. ‘I knew better than to let one of the Mulraney lads near me. I was a good girl,’ she added, as if her virtue was being questioned.
‘So there was an Angelo?’ asked Toni.
‘Oh yes, there was,’ said Margo’s mother softly. ‘Gorgeous lad. Eyes that would melt the clothes off you.’
‘Mam!’ exclaimed Margo.
‘I’m only saying what’s true. He was clever but was full of notions. Fancied himself as an artist. There’s not a lot of money in that, I can tell you. His poor mother’s head was worn with worry because he wouldn’t settle down to some trade. Then he left the West, went off down south and there was talk he was getting married down there, to some lady in Cork.’
My mother, thought Lou, feeling herself come down to earth. The link was there. Cork. Her mother. It was beginning to connect.
‘Then it was all off, he came back here and he wasn’t the same. Couldn’t settle. Couldn’t paint, he said. Went off again and hasn’t been back since his mother’s funeral. They all left. Nobody in the homestead now except his niece by marriage, and she goes off to the heat for her arthritis. I can tell you where the family home is, but I doubt there’s anyone there now. Last I heard, Angelo was in Sicily.’
‘Sicily?’ said Lou, surprised at this turn of events.
‘I suppose you won’t get to see him, then,’ said Margo’s mother, looking mistily into the distance as she remembered Angelo. ‘Some island near Syracuse. Can’t remember the name. Oh, what a fine man he was ...’
Outside the pub an hour later, stuffed with both fish pie and local knowledge, Lou wandered off to look at the view. From the high road, she could see the sea in the far distance and the faintest scent upon the air of somebody burning turf. People still did, even though the ancient Irish turf fires were mostly gone. The boglands were protected, Lou knew. But that smell ... it was evocative of another Ireland. She’d smelled it on a visit to Achill Island years ago with Ned and baby Emily. Achill was southwest of them now and Lou realised she’d been unwittingly close to her real father’s home all those years ago.
Real father– did she believe that yet? No, not yet, she decided. She would believe it if and when she saw him. Then, she’d know.
With Lou a safe distance away, Toni took a deep breath and finally turned on her phone. It exploded into a litany of missed calls, unseen text messages, WhatsApps and twenty-seven emails all shrieking ‘urgent’.
Toni, you were looking for me with regard to your finances. We need to talk, urgently, said a brusque email from her pension adviser.
