Sergeant Crossley’s notebook was put away now, and the cheeks of his face were the colour of an overripe strawberry, and he was eyeing the doorway of the cottage where Moll had joined Kit, and both women were standing looking anxiously across at the three men huddled by the gate. And Father Coyne was talking, saying, You know, Paddy, there’s no need at all for you to be sorry for anything, or to be protecting anyone, because you can’t be held responsible for the actions of others, and I know full well the rearing your daughter was given, and the good and clean and graceful way that you and Kit have always lived, and I know better than anyone that you are faithful people, and that your consciences are clean, but sometimes Nature has an aberrant way about it, and we are all to greater or lesser extents slaves to our animal natures, and we’re all burdened with the need and the duty to deny and to subjugate and to conquer these animal natures. Now, I’ve spoken myself to the man in question, and he was quite forthcoming, and he claims to be very seriously involved with your daughter, though he wouldn’t elaborate any further on the nature of their involvement, and he claims that she’s been missing from their shared accommodation in a house in Notting Hill, west London, for over a week now, and I have no reason to believe or to disbelieve anything the man says, and I’m only relaying to you now what was said to me, and the man speaks in a very mannered way, softly and gently, and does not appear in any way threatening or uncouth.
Paddy couldn’t properly follow the priest’s words or gauge the precise meaning or import of them, and he felt the cooling of the evening air as the sun dropped below the Arra Mountains, and the shapes of the trees and the fence posts and the hedgerow and the flowers blunted and blurred as the clear light of day softened to gloaming, and Paddy Gladney stood at his full height, and addressed his visitors, and he formed his words carefully, and he held the tremble from his voice. Thank you, Sergeant. Thank you, Father. I’ll drive in to Grenham’s this minute and I’ll attend to this. I don’t know who this man is or why he’s telling such stories but I can assure you that my daughter Moll is not involved with any black man, nor was she ever, and there is no connection, high up or low down, between this man and my family. And Paddy Gladney turned to look at his small family in the doorway of the house he’d been born in, where his father had lived all of his life and his mother had lived the greater part of hers, and he wondered what would happen if he sat into his car and drove down the lane, and onto the main road, and out past Borrisokane, and on to Portumna and Loughrea and Galway, and into and through that bright city he had heard about but never seen, and kept driving and driving until the road ran out against the ocean, and he plunged himself into the waves and struck out for a distant shore.
But he caught himself and he pushed that fantasy aside, because he knew that that was the wild and fevered thinking of a man who was tired to death of the trials he’d been sent, and he wasn’t that tired yet, by a long chalk. He felt a great reserve of strength still in his arms and his legs, and a steadiness in the centre of himself, even while his heart pounded hard in his chest at the thought of the task he was about to undertake. He’d been stretched out taut, racked to breaking in the years just gone, picturing his daughter dead, her resting place unmarked, her eyes plucked, her flesh sloughed, her bones scattered across a seafloor, shifting with the tides from place to place. And yet she was back, and she was whole and, yes, she was holding her secrets fast to herself, but that didn’t matter, and now, it seemed, a story had arrived under its own steam from England, in the shape of a gently spoken black man from the land of the old enemy, and there was a strange feeling of rightness about this queer situation, of inevitability, of Fate’s ineluctable will being done.
Paddy saw Father Coyne and Sergeant Crossley to the middle gate and he declined an invitation from Father Coyne to bring Moll to the parochial house to see him because he knew Moll wouldn’t want that, and he promised to let Sergeant Crossley know if the black Englishman caused any trouble, and Sergeant Crossley offered to arrange for someone from the Nenagh barracks to call to Grenham’s with him and Paddy said, No, he was sure he’d be fine, Grenham’s was a small house and well-staffed and, anyway, he might take the man into the Swagman’s Inn or down to O’Meara’s Hotel, the way they could have their conversation in the open, privately but in the presence of others, and that surely would obviate the risk of aggravation or unpleasantness, and Sergeant Crossley agreed that that was the best plan, and just as Father Coyne opened the passenger door of Sergeant Crossley’s Renault van he turned to Paddy and said, Paddy, if there is any truth to what he’s saying, will you be sure and find out is he a Catholic at least? And Paddy promised that he would, though he couldn’t help feeling that this request from Father Coyne was rather adding insult to injury, and he thanked both men again for their time and for their ministrations.
Paddy breathed deep of the cool clean air as he stepped back up the lane to the yard where Kit and Moll were standing wide-eyed still at the half-door. Go in, Paddy said, and his eyes were flat, expressionless, and his voice was low. They turned wordlessly for the kitchen ahead of him. Kit held fire and waited. Do you know, Paddy began, addressing his daughter, why those men, the priest of this parish and the sergeant from the barracks, were here? Do you have any idea? No, Daddy, she replied, and she took her seat at the hearth and turned her face to the flames, and there was a glint from her eyes where the light of the fire was reflected in her threatening tears. Do you not? No, Daddy. Well, I’ll tell you, so I will. I’ll tell you now. And Kit broke her silence at last and she shouted at her husband for the second time in their long marriage, ARRA WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT SO IN THE NAME OF GOD, and Paddy nodded, as though in concurrence with his wife’s crossness, as though to emphasize the appropriateness of it, given the circumstances, and he went on, all the time looking at his daughter’s face, and she looking not back at him but into the dying fire.
There’s a man inside in Nenagh, a stranger known to none, going around telling anyone who’ll listen that he has a connection of some sort with Mary Gladney, known as Moll, from Knockagowny. And Moll looked up at him now and her face was full of fear and she said, in a whisper, Oh, no, no. Oh, yes, Paddy said, as though in contradiction, as though Moll’s anguish was a simple denial of the reality of the situation and no more. Yes, Moll. He has it all off. He even spelt it right for Benjy Crossley’s notebook. Because you can be certain sure Benjy Crossley can’t spell it. Moll Gladney from K-N-O-C-K-A-G-O-W-N-Y, he’s looking for, or so he has half the town told directly, and the other half has been informed second hand, as has most of this parish and every other hinterland of Nenagh. Kit was sighing now, and she was holding a tea-towel to her face so that only her eyes were visible, and she was steadying herself against the edge of the kitchen table, and her eyes shone with a desolate light. And Paddy still was talking. That man inside in Nenagh is an Englishman. And here Paddy paused, and he lifted his chin, and he cleared his throat before delivering the final blow. And that man inside in Nenagh is a black man. And his wife and his daughter moaned in unison.
Alexander is his name, Moll told them in a whisper. A man of twenty-one or twenty-two. He worked in the same hotel as Moll, as a waiter. He took a terrible shine to her. He walked her home night after night, right up to the railing outside the door of her digs. To make sure she got home safe, he always said. But then he’d always linger, and when she’d make to go inside he’d always grab hold of her arm and force her to stay outside talking, and it was a very quiet street and dark, and he’d stand close to her, holding her arm, and saying things to her in an urgent voice and she didn’t understand half of what he said and one night her landlady saw what was happening from the window of the front room and she sent her husband out to run him off, and he called Alexander a horrible name and threatened to beat him up, and Moll had felt sorry for him when he’d been called that name, and she’d said as much the next day in the dining room of the hotel before the service started. And that had only made things worse. He declared then that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her, that she could live with him and his family in their house in Notting Hill for which they’d been given a lifelong leasehold by a housing association and that he’d always look after her and he had all sorts of plans and promises, every time he came near her, and he continued to walk home with her, though she gave him no encouragement, but he’d stop short of the doorway out of fear of being spotted again by the landlady’s husband and she’d hurry inside and that was all there was to it until she’d gathered up her few bits and taken her last week’s wages and left London on a day packet for home.