The New Policeman by Kate Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

O’Hare had already retrieved his hand and was starting off a lovely old reel on the whistle. One by one, the other musicians joined in.

     
    J.J. Byrne had not enjoyed a very long existence. J.J. was all Liddy again, after what his mother had told him, and he was bursting to play tunes and fill the old house with music again.
    “You’re not to move, now, you hear me?” he said. “I don’t care what needs doing. This is the first installment of your birthday present.”
    She followed his instructions and stayed where she was while he made more tea and brought in the instruments. He brought in his flute as well, even though he rarely played it these days. It made him feel closer to his maligned namesake.
    J.J. learned his great-grandfather’s jig on it, and the other tune that Helen wanted to teach him, then he changed to the fiddle while they ran through some of the tunes they wanted to play the following evening. There was no more question in J.J.’s mind of going clubbing. One day, perhaps, but not tomorrow.
    Time flew by as usual, but they carried on playing, just for the pleasure of being together and giving some of their favorite tunes an airing. When they finally wound down, too tired to play anymore, J.J. picked up the photo again.
    “Who are the children?”

    Helen looked over his shoulder. “That’s my mother, with the concertina, and her two brothers. They both died young, which is how she came to inherit the farm. She was the only one who survived. They were hard times.”
    There were more photographs lying facedown on top of their shabby envelope. Helen reached out to stop him, but J.J.’s hand got there first. He checked with her eyes, saw acceptance in them, understood that he had not yet learned the last of the Liddy secrets. He turned the photos over, not at all sure that he was ready for any more surprises. But the first one was innocent enough. A woman, standing at the head of a gray donkey. In the cart behind it was a barefooted child, a girl.
    “My mother and my grandmother,” said Helen.
    The next photo was more formal: a studio shot of a young couple, he standing with his cap in his hands, she sitting in a straight-backed chair. Both of them stared stiffly into the camera lens.
    “My grandparents again,” said Helen. “J.J. and Helen.”
    J.J. grinned at the correspondence and turned over the final photograph. It had been taken in a hay meadow in midsummer. On the left was a neat, newhaycock. Others were spread across the field behind it. To the right of the frame were two musicians: a young woman with a concertina, sitting on the tail of an empty hay wagon, and, standing behind her, a young man holding a fiddle. The woman’s hair was dark and wild; most of it had escaped from its ponytail. Her face was either flushed or sunburned, and wore a bright smile. But the fiddler’s face was turned away from the camera, revealing nothing other than the graceful curve of his brow and cheekbone beneath a mop of sandy hair.
    “My mother,” said Helen. “She was a great player.”
    “And who’s the man?”
    Helen hesitated. In the silence the reddened briquettes collapsed in on themselves and began to blaze again.
    “My father,” Helen said at last, and J.J. realized he had already guessed it. He leaned back in the chair, the photo in one hand, his fiddle in the other.
    “That was the only photograph that was ever taken of him,” Helen went on. “My mother never spoke about him. At least, not until she was dying and then…well…she used to ramble. Her mind, you know…” She tore herself away from memories that were clearlydisturbing. “Anyway, I was pregnant with you before she gave me that photo. She was still madly in love with him, even then.”
    “Who was he?” said J.J.
    His mother smiled and shrugged. “Bit of a wild man from what I can make out. A wandering musician. For a year or two he used to come and go. Lad, they called him. If he had another name my mother never