And so the days of the week filed on with something akin to their regular beat, and there was no further mention made of the incident, and the whole thing began to seem like something that might have happened only in their imaginations, like something you’d see happening on the television above the counter below in the pub, something that was acted out by people far away in time and space, not really real at all. And Paddy was left to do his duties unimpeded and wasn’t questioned or reproached, and neighbours began arriving in the evenings, one by one at first, and then in groups of two and three, just to lay their eyes upon the returnee, to see the flesh-and-blood proof of her, and to welcome her back to the land of the living, and to ask her how had she got on, and what had she made of London, because it was known now by all and sundry where Moll Gladney had been, but still nobody knew what all the secrecy had been for, how she’d been able to put her poor parents through all that pain, though all sorts of theories swirled about, fables and yarns and tall tales and fairy stories and lascivious conjecture in some cases, darkly delicious things that could be delivered only in a whisper, from behind a shielding hand and at the point of an elbow, and met with racking guilty laughter, that filled the void where the truth would be, if they could ever get to it.
As that first full week of Moll being back came to an end, and the sun sat low in the orange sky, and Paddy Gladney finished his rounds of the fences and fields, his collie pup pricked her ears and barked beside him and spurted suddenly downhill, and he heard the middle gate clanging open as he passed from the glade below the long acre to the stand of white-flowered apple trees, and he heard the tramp on the lane of two sets of heavy feet, and as he cleared the trees and rounded the back of his own cottage, he saw Father Coyne, and Sergeant Crossley alongside him, and their faces were grave and their aspects were grim, and they were nearing the yard, and Paddy Gladney forced himself forward towards them, and he could feel a tightening in the centre of his chest, like a noose being fastened on a condemned man’s neck.
He could see through the side window that Kit was at the stove and Moll was on the hearth seat sewing. Neither had stirred to see who was coming up the lane, and Paddy supposed that they were listening to the radio and hadn’t heard the clanging gate latch or the tramping feet, or if they had that they supposed it was neighbours passing on their way uphill. This was, after all, the time of day when people came home from town and from their various jobs, and it would be unusual to have callers to the house so early in the evening, even in this momentous week, and everyone who might call to see the returned Moll had nearly called by now. Paddy felt himself envying his wife and daughter their obliviousness, their lack of fear in that moment, and he felt himself hoping that the priest and the sergeant would continue past the gate of his yard, that whatever cup they carried was meant for someone else’s lips and not his.
But what was there to be afraid of now, in the name of God? His wife and his only child were safe, bodily at least, in the warm kitchen of their own home, and that left very few possibilities for trouble. There was the matter of Moll’s slander of Ellen Jackman, but Ellen Jackman did not appear to be nursing a grudge and, anyway, she was a woman who fought her own battles and would not in a million years, Paddy knew, have seen fit to carry stories to the barracks or the presbytery. But still, any man faced in his own yard with a red-faced priest, solemn and black-suited, and a stocky high-chinned sergeant would surely feel his heart pound in his chest as his blood raced and rushed around his body. This was a scene he had envisaged daily, hourly, by the minute some days, during the missing years just ended; these officious harbingers in his yard, with the worst of news, telephoned to them by their counterparts elsewhere, and all of them along the line only wanting to be sure they had every t crossed and every i dotted in case at all they’d be landed in hot water for failing to properly follow established procedure in this kind of a situation, and not one of them knowing or caring about the living people involved, and the new suffering ahead of them, the final extinction of their hope.
A white bloom of dog roses was quietly exploding from the thorny hedgerow by the gatepost, and a narrow rank of cowslip and pepperwort stretched yellow and green and white among the hawthorn along the lane’s edge as far as the stile by the middle gate, and all the flowers were trembling in the breeze. The priest and the sergeant turned from the lane towards the gate to the Gladneys’ yard, and Paddy Gladney had a sense of something monumental and precipitous, some great shifting of the axis of his little world, so that every angle and aspect would change. But the feeling he’d had of doom and dread had lifted by some strange force of prescience: he knew, though he had no idea how he knew, that, whatever news this pair was about to break, there was no death involved; it wasn’t a message about Kit’s brother in America or her sister in town or about any of his scattered siblings or their progeny. Father Coyne was clearing his throat to speak, and Sergeant Crossley was lifting a tattered notebook from the pocket of his greatcoat, and there was a harp on the front of it, and there were words written in it in blue ink, slanted gracefully backwards, and they were each of them exchanging between them the greetings of the day now: Good evening to you, Paddy, Good evening to you, Father, Good evening to you, Paddy, Good evening to you, Sergeant. Are you on your own, Paddy? I’m not, no, Sergeant, Kit and Moll are inside in the kitchen. Can we have a word with you in private? You can, but would you not sooner come in to the heat of the fire? No, Paddy, this is for your ears, for now, and you can tell the women yourself in your time and in your own way.
Sergeant Crossley stood at ease and stretched his notebook-bearing arm out in front of him and read, slowly, in a clear voice, and in a more refined accent than he would use for his normal discourse, when processing through the village, say, on his leisurely beat, or conducting checks below at the crossroads for tax on cars or lights on bikes. There is a man in Nenagh, Sergeant Crossley read now, as he stood straight-backed and slant-hatted by the gatepost. And he coughed wetly and repeated his opening. There is a man in Nenagh. And Father Coyne looked at Paddy and there was a light of mirth in his kind eyes. And Sergeant Crossley was continuing, squinting slightly at his notebook as though he was having trouble reading his own handwriting, and Paddy Gladney was tipping his head forward in order to angle his ear more favourably to the portly sergeant’s mouth. This man is residing currently in Grenham’s guesthouse in Summerhill, and he is a stranger to this area and to all the areas hereabout adjacent and adjunct. This man aforementioned has claimed to several witnesses that he is somehow related to the Gladneys of Knockagowny, which is the townland on which we are now standing. This man aforementioned does not appear to have any business in the town of Nenagh beyond the asking of the whereabouts of Knockagowny and the house of the Gladneys of that aforementioned townland. And Father Coyne had his head bowed now, and his eyes closed, and Paddy Gladney’s head was tilted still, and his ear was angled still towards Sergeant Crossley’s mouth, and Sergeant Crossley’s voice was pitched lower now, and Kit Gladney had appeared at the half-door of the cottage, but she’d made no move towards them, and Sergeant Gladney pressed bravely on. And this man aforementioned claims particular connection to Mary Gladney, also known as Moll, a child of this house, recently returned from being a missing person, and this man aforementioned is an object of some suspicion to my colleagues in the Nenagh barracks, because this man is a stranger to the area and to all areas hereabout adjacent and adjunct, and this man speaks with an English accent, and this man is black. A black man, Sergeant Crossley confirmed, and he coughed again and closed his notebook, and said, Now, and then said nothing else.