Rival Eyes

Harry has just moved to the peaceful village of Upper Ridley and Rocky is lodging with him. They help Sylvia Clayborough, a young widow, who has taken over her husband’s fishmongering business but is plagued by vandalism: the fish-van’s tyres are let down and graffiti is sprayed over it. When Sylvia and another widow, Vivienne Blake, start to compete with each other to welcome Harry to the village, Harry begins to realise that he has uncovered a hotbed of rivalry, jealousy and frustrated passion. Harry and Rocky eventually track down the vandal: Vivienne’s wayward nephew who is staying with her.

Thomas O’Rourke, an Irish builder, asks Ken to investigate a break-in and theft of cash at his office. He suspects Brian Jonson, another builder. He thinks it is a dispute between Catholic (himself) and Protestant (Jonson). O’Rourke tries to settle his score with Brian by demolishing his office with a JCB. However O’Rourke’s daughter, Caitlin, thinks the real culprit is her elder sister, Bernadette, who has “gone a bit wild” and now sings in a band at an Irish pub.

At the pub where she is singing, Ken sees Bernadette flourishing large amounts of cash. He follows her to a derelict house where she is squatting with her boyfriend, Shane, and looking after a young baby. She tells Ken that O’Rourke kicked her out of the house when he found out she was pregnant and that Brian was the father. She hates her father for what he has done. She admits that she stole the money because he won’t contribute to the upkeep of his grandchild. As usual, Ken has a conflict between his duty to his client and his conscience – he cares too much to shop Bernadette to her father.

Brian goes to the pub and is involved in a fight with Shane. Bernadette loves them both, but Shane’s fiery temper gets the better of him and he doesn’t want to have anything further to do with her when he discovers that she is still carrying a torch for Brian. Brian and Bernadette have a long heart-to-heart talk, during which they realise that each thought they had been dumped by the other. They are on the point of getting back together when Bernadette learns that her father had told Brian she no longer wanted to see him and had had an abortion.

This is the final straw. Incensed by her father’s treachery, she sets fire to his office, not realising that he is asleep inside. Ken and Harry rescue him. Ken goes back to Bernadette’s house and waits with her for the police to arrive and arrest her for arson. “Take it easy on her, please,” he pleads as they take her away. “She didn’t mean to hurt her father.”

In this episode, Emer McCourt (Bernadette O’Rouke) sings the haunting Irish ballad “She Moved Through The Fair”.

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1998

Page last modified: 17 December 2008, 23:48