Habit of Fear by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Read Free Book Online

… oh, I suppose Miss Tumulty. She knows when to talk and when not to. And they don’t know downstairs yet that ‘Orchard Terrace’ has folded for good.”
    “Why? Everybody wants to know.”
    “Oh, now, admit: everybody’s a slight exaggeration.”
    “Very slight.” She took the chair he wanted her to have. It gave her a fine view of the anemones. She got out her notebook.
    Garvy drew up a side chair. “I want to see if I’m still an actor. I felt as though a block of ice was building up around me in the series—Mike Bowen being preserved for exhibit as the typical American clown of the late twentieth century. The bottom line, however, is I’ve got a play I’m in love with. I want to direct it as well as play the lead. You couldn’t recommend a producer who’d put up with the likes of that, now, could you?”
    “Go for broke,” Julie said. “Produce it yourself.”
    “I may have to at that.”
    “Is it Irish?”
    He cocked his head and looked at her. “How did you arrive at that deduction?”
    “The lilt in your voice when you spoke of it.”
    “Ah, now, I come by the lilt naturally. My people on my mother’s side come from Ireland. I’ve a grandmother still alive in Sligo. She was responsible for my having a couple of years at Trinity College, Dublin. She’s ninety-two and full of charms and incantations. Look, for the space you have in your column, you don’t want my life story, do you?”
    “I’d like more about the play,” she said.
    “And that I can’t give you till I’ve got a better hold on it than a handshake with a playwright.”
    One last try: “Is he Irish?”
    Garvy scowled reproachfully and said nothing.
    “My own father was Irish,” Julie said, as though that was relevant. “But I never knew him.” She was backing off from having pressed the question.
    “He died young, did he?”
    “He skipped out,” Julie said. “Actually, I don’t know what happened. He was gone before I was born.”
    “Have you ever tried to find him?”
    “No, but I’ve been thinking about it lately.”
    “It would make a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?”
    “Shouldn’t we get back to the main subject, Mr. Garvy?” She had never been as easy with a “star” before.
    His eyes were almost mischievous. “Was he a handsome devil?”
    Julie nodded. “I do have a picture.”
    Garvy leaned back and folded his arms. His white shirt was gleaming, and with him in that position the buttons were at a great strain. “When you get to Ireland, you must go to see my grandmother. She’s a witch and she might just conjure for you. Now, what else do you need in your notebook there?”
    “Something about Trinity. You started acting then, didn’t you?”
    “With the Dublin Players. For which I was paid by being allowed to attend all rehearsals.” He talked for a few minutes about his two years in Ireland in the 1950s. As a student abroad he had escaped the Korean War. “Better not put that in. The Mike Bowen fans would lower the flag.” Then, without a change of beat: “What was his name?”
    “My father’s? Thomas Francis Mooney.”
    “He’d be about my age, would he?”
    Julie nodded.
    “Is it possible he and I might have been at Trinity together?”
    “I suppose it’s possible.”
    “Your face seems familiar to me, and you don’t have a familiar kind of face at all.”
    Julie met his eyes, which still had a mischievous gleam. “You’re putting me on, aren’t you, Mr. Garvy?”
    “I wouldn’t say that, the way the world’s shrinking. Bring his picture around sometime and let me have a look at it.” He tapped her notebook. “Do you want a mug shot of me for the column?”
    “Please,” Julie said.

EIGHT
    “O H, NOW, AREN’T YOU the lucky one?” Mary Ryan said, holding Garvy’s picture at a distance that best accommodated her eyesight. “Isn’t it remarkable how that man put his finger on the pulse of the nation?” She set the picture facing her up against the crystal ball