Therapy

Communions, Confirmations and Marriages.”
    I asked if I could see the marriage register, and he led me round to the back of the church, into a small room behind the altar that smelled of incense and furniture-polish, and took a large oblong leather-bound book out of a cupboard. I started with the year in which I last saw Maureen and worked forward. It didn’t take me very long to find her name. On 16th May 1959 Maureen Teresa Kavanagh of 94 Treglowan Road married Bede Ignatius Harrington of 103 Hatchford Rise. “Bugger me!” I exclaimed thoughtlessly, and apologized for my unseemly language. Father Dominic didn’t seem bothered. I asked him if the Harrington family still lived in the parish. “It doesn’t ring a bell,” he said. “I’d have to check my database.” We returned to the presbytery and he searched for the name on his computer without success. There weren’t any Kavanaghs in the parish either. “Annie Mahoney might know something,” he said. “She used to be the housekeeper in the presbytery in those days. I look after myself — can’t afford a housekeeper. She lives in the next house but one. You’ll have to shout, she’s pretty deaf.” I thanked him and asked if I could make a contribution to the parish software fund, which he received gratefully.
    Annie Mahoney was a bent, withered little old lady in a bright green tracksuit and Reebok trainers with Velcro fastenings. She explained to me that because of the arthritis in her fingers she couldn’t manage buttons and laces any more. She lived alone and obviously welcomed company and the chance of a chat. At first she thought I was the man from the Town Hall come to review her entitlement to a Home Help, but when that misunderstanding was cleared up she brought her mind to bear on my enquiry about the Kavanagh family. It was a tantalizing interview. She remembered the family. “Such a giant of a man, Mr Kavanagh, you could never forget him if you saw him only once, and his wife was a nice woman and they had five beautiful children, especially the oldest, I forget her name now.” “Maureen,” I prompted. “That’s it, Maureen,” she said. She remembered Maureen’s wedding, which had been a posh one by the standards of the parish, with the groom and best man in tail-coats, and two Rolls-Royces to ferry the guests to the reception. “I think Dr Harrington paid for the cars, he was always a man to do things properly,” Annie reminisced. “He died about ten years ago, God rest his soul. Heart, they said.” She didn’t know anything about Bede’s and Maureen’s married life however, where they lived or what Bede did for a living. “Maureen became a teacher, I think,” she hazarded. I said I thought she wanted to be a nurse. “Oh yes, a nurse, that was it,” said Annie. “She would have made a lovely nurse. Such a sweet-natured girl. I remember her as Our Lady in a Nativity play the youth club put on one Christmas, with her hair spread out over her shoulders, beautiful she looked.” I couldn’t resist asking Annie if she remembered the Herod in the same production, but she didn’t.
    I checked out the Harringtons’ former house, a large villa set back from the main road with, as I recalled, a rather impressive entrance — two gateposts with stone globes the size of footballs on top. It belongs to a dental practice now. The gateposts have been removed and the front garden tarmacked over to make a parking lot for the partners and their patients. I went inside and asked the receptionist if she had any information about the previous owners, but she was unable or unwilling to help. I was tired and hungry and not a little melancholy by this time, so I caught the next train back to Charing Cross.
     
    So Bede Harrington is my Schlegel. Well, well. I always thought he had his eye on Maureen, but I’m a bit surprised that she chose to marry him. Could you love Bede Harrington? (Without being Bede Harrington, I mean.) I can’t flatter myself that it was on the rebound from me, though. Judging by the date of the wedding, it took him several years to persuade her, or to pluck up the courage to pop the question — so he must have had some attraction for her. I can’t deny that I feel absurdly, pointlessly jealous. And keener than ever to trace her. But where do I go from here?
     
    7. 06 p. m. After devising various ingenious plans (e.g., find out which local estate agent handled the sale of 103 Hatchford Rise to the dentists,