PLEASE; FATHER

The sergeant was at their house that evening. He was talking to Rita in the kitchen. The conversation ended when Kit came in. She looked from one to the other. "Is there any news?"

"Nothing. Nothing new." Rita spoke. "I was just asking Rita if she was sure that you had all looked everywhere .. "

"I assure you that if the mistress had left any account of her plan, whatever they might have been.. it would have been a great relief to this family, and there is no way anyone would have kept it to themselves." The child looked pale to the point of fainting.

His voice softened. "I'm sure that's right, Rita. We've all got our job to do. You have to swill out the pots, I have to ask hard questions in places where there's grief." His tread was heavy as he went down the stairs to the street. "Swilling pots, huh." Rita said.

Her indignation made Kit smile. "He has a great way of putting things." she said. "As if we didn't hunt the house high and low for a letter from the poor mistress."

"And suppose we had found one .. ?"

"Wouldn't it have stopped them all asking bosthoons at the bus office and the railway station did they see the mistress all dolled up in a head scarf … ? If there had been a letter, wouldn't the poor master be at rest instead of wandering like a lost soul?"

Kit sat very still. Rita didn't know everything. Rita was wrong. If the letter had been shown, Mother would be buried outside the walls of the cemetery. Like Bridie Daly. Now when they found Mother's body it could be buried with honour. When they found it.

Brother Healy told the boys that young Emmet was coming back to class. "If there's one mention or murmur out of any one of you about Mem Mem Memmet, or the lad's stutter I'll knock your heads sideways off of your necks in a way that no one will ever fix them straight again." He had a ferocious look about him.

"Would you think it's definite, Brother, that she's drowned?" asked Philip O'Brien, the young lad from the hotel. "I think we can assume that, O'Brien, and we'll go on saying the three Hail Marys that her body will be found."

"It's nine days now, Brother." Philip said. "Yes, but bodies have been found after a longer time than that … it's a deep lake, our lake. That's why you're all being warned about it night and day."

"Brother, what would happen if …?" said Michael Sullivan. The boy was about to ask what condition the body would be in. Would it have begun to deteriorate? The kind of thing boys of that age would love to discuss. "Kindly open your Carty's Irish History, page fourteen," he roared.

Not for the first time he wished he taught the gentle girls up at Mother Bernards's school. The nun had told him they were organising a daily rosary in the school chapel for Kit McMahon's mother. Girls were a pleasure to teach. He had said it over and over. There was no comparison with what he had in front of him day in and day out.

Martin McMahon ate hardly anything. He said he got a scalding feeling once the food was swallowed. It was like a lump in his chest all day. But he was adamant that the children had their proper meals. "I don't feel like a whole dinner." Emmet had said. "You need to keep your strength up, boy. Eat it up. Rita's made a grand spread for us."

"And don't you need your strength, Daddy?" Emmet asked. There was no anwer. Kit brought a cup of Bovril into the sitting room later on, and two fingers of soft buttered toast. She and Rita had decided that he might be able to manage this.

"Please, Father." she urged. "Please. What'll I do if you get sick? Then we'll have no one at all to be able to tell us what to do." Her father obediently tried to swalloe the spoonfuls. "Would it be better .. " she began.

His eyes lifted slowly to know what she was going to say. Her father was moving like a man with a heavy weight attached to him. "Would it have been better if Mother had left a note do you think .. ?"

"Oh, a million times better .. " he said. "Then we'd know why … and what … she did."

"It could have been an accident, something she didn't know was going to happen?"

"Yes, yes it could … "

"But even if it wasn't … it would be better to know .. ?"