Janice Macdonald - The Man On The Cliff

By the same time the next year, she’d claimed not to remember that day with the gentians. Niall looked at the blue envelope again, and without bothering to open it, threw it into the wastepaper basket at his feet.

STILL GROGGY, Kate stood in the doorway of Annie’s sitting room. Instead of the quick nap she’d meant to take, she’d slept through dinner. When Annie tapped at the door to say she’d made sandwiches and tea, it was nearly eleven.

Kate’s glance shifted from the bartender, dozing now by a blazing fire, to Annie, who sat at a little desk talking on the phone. A girl with cropped orange hair and thickly mascaraed eyes sat on the couch next to a dark-haired boy who was whispering in her ear. Arms folded across her chest, the girl dangled a shoe from her toe, studying her foot as she listened.

Apparently sensing Kate in the doorway, the boy looked up and his eyes widened slightly. It took Kate a moment to recognize him as the Garda she’d seen earlier, changed now into jeans and a red sweater. He half stood and smiled at her.

“Didn’t I meet you on the cliffs earlier this evening?” she asked.

His face went blank.

“About six-thirty?” She waited for him to recognize her. “I told you about seeing a fight, or something.”

He shook his head. “Must have been someone who looked like me.”

“Rory was out on the Galway Road investigating an accident.” The girl draped her arm around his neck, eyeing Kate as though she might constitute competition. “Weren’t you, love?”

“I was.” He winked at Kate. “But sure, all the Gardai look alike, don’t they? Tall, dark, handsome and irresistible to women.” He nudged his thigh against the girl’s. “Right, Caitlin?”

Kate shrugged. Maybe she was wrong. She’d been tired, her brain still on California time and the light hadn’t been good. She started to speak, but Rory had turned his attention back to the girl, his mouth at her ear. Awkward and more than a little confused, Kate was about to go back upstairs, when Annie got off the phone.

“Did you have a little snooze then?” Annie put her arm around Kate’s shoulder, drawing her into the sitting room. “This is my daughter, Caitlin.” She laughed. “Kate and Caitlin, funny that. And this is Rory McBride, soon to be my son-in-law.”

“June fourteenth.” Caitlin gazed adoringly at Rory, who had one arm around her shoulder, the other draped along the back of the couch. “And we’re going on honeymoon. Majorca,” she added with a little giggle.

“And this Sleeping Beauty over here—” Annie tweaked the bartender’s cheek “—is my husband, Patrick, who you’ve already met.”

“Whaa?” The bartender stirred and opened his eyes.

“Nothing, Pat. Go back to sleep. Kate, you make yourself comfortable, now.” Annie flapped her hand at Rory. “Move over and give Katie some room on the couch.”

“No, stay where you are.” Kate dropped down on a hassock by the fire and looked over at Annie. “Did your houseguest come home yet?”

“She did not.” Annie poured tea into flowered cups and handed one to Kate. “But that was my brother Michael on the phone. He’s the sergeant in charge at the station. ‘Don’t worry about Elizabeth,’ he tells me. ‘Teenagers are like that.’”

“He’s right, Annie,” Rory said. “Elizabeth’s been on and on about wanting to go to Galway. It’s natural enough. The whole reason she’s here with us is to see a bit of the country. She’s not seeing much of it stuck in Cragg’s Head.”

“It’s true, Mam,” Caitlin said. “All I hear from her is how boring it is in Cragg’s Head.” She eyed Kate for a moment. “It’s very quiet, especially in the winter. If you’re looking for excitement, you’ll not find it here.”

“Kate’s not here for excitement,” Annie said. “She’s writing about Moruadh Maguire. Big American magazine, right, Katie?” She laughed. “Just think of it, a celebrity right in my sitting room.”

Kate grinned, thinking about her maxed-out credit cards and depleted checking account. “Hardly.”

As Annie went on to tell Caitlin about a mutual friend she’d seen that day, Kate looked around the cozy room. Overstuffed armchairs, flowered curtains drawn across the dark night outside. A feeling of well-tended comfort. The kind of room in which you’d curl up with a good book. Her eyes moved from Annie, presiding over a small table set with a china teapot and plates of sliced cake and sandwiches, to Caitlin pouring milk and tea into teacups, and then to Rory who was staring into the fire. Kate watched him for a moment. At first glance, he appeared at ease, but his fingers rapped a continuous tattoo on the back of the couch. He reminded her of an engine idling—motion barely contained, ready to bolt in an instant. When Caitlin offered him a teacup, he jumped as though he’d just realized she was there. His head, Kate was almost certain, was not in this room.

“Come on, Kate.” Annie broke into her reverie. “Tea? A bit of treacle bread. It’s nice. I made it just this afternoon.” She held out the plate. “A bit overdone, I suppose. Took my eye off the stove for a minute and the next thing I knew I was smelling smoke.”

“How did you hear about Moruadh then?” Caitlin sipped her tea and looked at Kate. “Was she popular in America?”

“She wasn’t really well-known, but I wrote about her three years ago and we talked on the phone a few times.” Kate glanced down at the slice of cake Annie had just put on her plate. “Even though I’d never met her, I felt as though I knew her somehow.”

“Moruadh could make you feel that way,” Annie said.

“She could.” Patrick spooned jam onto a piece of bread. “And she had a way of making you think there was no one in the world she’d rather be talking to than you yourself.” He laughed. “Even a tubby old baldy like me.”

Caitlin smiled at her father. “Da had a little crush on her.”

“Tell me a man under ninety who didn’t,” Annie said. “She was a pretty girl. I don’t think Hughie Fitzpatrick ever got over her marrying Maguire.”

Kate thought of the reporter she’d met in Dooley’s, the bitterness in his voice as he’d spoken about Maguire. Time had obviously done little to lessen his hatred for the man.

“Hughie and Moruadh were sweethearts, until she started making a name for herself,” Annie said. “The next thing I hear, she’s married to Maguire, and they’re living in Paris.”

“A cool one, that Maguire,” Patrick said. “I suppose his money won her over in the end.” He looked over at the couple on the couch. “How would you describe Niall Maguire, Rory?”

“Ah, he’s just…” Rory’s forehead creased in a frown. “Sure, I don’t know how to put it. He can look right at you and it’s as though you’re not even there. And you’ll never see him having a laugh down at the pub or out kicking a football. He’s just never been one of the lads.”

“But he’s lovely looking, though,” Caitlin said with a little smile. “Those eyelashes of his. No matter how much mascara I used, I couldn’t get mine to look that long. You’ve not met him yet, Kate?”

“No. I’m going to try and see him tomorrow.” She’d left her notebook upstairs, but made a mental note to jot down the comments she’d heard as soon as she got back to her room. At this rate, and given her own suspicions about Maguire’s guilt, it was going to be hard to maintain even a semblance of objectivity.

“He’s very polite.” Caitlin examined her nails. “Makes you feel as though what you’re saying is really important to him.”

“Very polite.” Rory traced circles in the air near his temple. “Go and varnish your nails or something, Caitlin.”