Joe returns home, kicks the door closed, tosses his things on the newly-washed hall tiles and sits with the whisky I’ve poured for him. He’ll swirl it annoyingly and wait on his dinner. There’s no kiss, no lingering embrace.
‘How did today go?’ he asks. He has joined me by the sink while I peel the potatoes. He didn’t check on Faye, didn’t notice her and those dollies she thumps all over the house.
‘Fine. Today was fine.’ I don’t look at him.
‘Do you still like the old boy? Or is he in the doghouse too?’
I stop peeling and think for a second.
‘I’ll take that as a no then. You think we’re both bastards.’
‘You’re only home. Can you at least try and be glad to see me and your daughter? You’re more interested in that old codger.’
Joe has a knack of making me feel as if I’m being annoyed about nothing as usual. Like I’m being a bitch.
Joe reaches out to touch my shoulder. He doesn’t reach it and retreats back to the table. He picks at the side of the bread I’ve baked. ‘Is Charlie sleeping? I’m almost afraid to speak.’ Eating, he says, ‘Yum. This bread looks good. You’re getting good at the baking.’
I slap the lid on the saucepan for the potatoes and check on Faye out of the corner of my eye. For two, she’s exceptionally good. I’m grateful that she can self-soothe. She’s learning all the time to play by herself and she’s mostly quiet and placid. I’m blessed and I don’t always feel it.
‘He’s back in Ireland because of that Ella O’Brien. It’s nothing to do with wanting to connect with his own family. It’s all to do with the scandal,’ I announce.
Joe is mid-sip and his eyes widen.
‘I know. He just admitted he was a lover of hers. I’m not sure what to make of it.’
‘Shit!’
‘And he knew her from before all this madness started. He’s been in love with her all this time.’
‘You were right. You can smell a story coming! Holy God!’
I don’t want to be smug and say I told you so. Instead, I bite my lip and add, ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable with all of it. That Ella is one evil cow – we all know that. And he’s making out that she’s some sort of beautiful saint. Who will want to hear about him and the likes of her?’
‘Everyone will. You know yourself that since that news down the country, Ella’s back in the papers. There’s a fascination about her. This is going to be big. Charlie knows it too. Isn’t he a dark horse? Her lover, eh? Clever Charlie!’
‘Mum will explode about this. You know how she hates it when people go on about Ella O’Brien. If she gets a notion that Charlie is going to connect this family with that filth, you can imagine her reaction.’
‘Filth is a bit strong, Ronnie.’
‘Is it?’
Faye toddles over, uncertain of our mood and of her feet. She holds a doll out to Joe and he takes it. ‘I know it’s hard to imagine what that woman did. Charlie must have somethin’ to say. He’s in pain. You can tell and he’s come all this way, after all this time. He must want to finally be at peace with whatever he knows.’
Watching Joe lift Faye into his arms, I wonder what way he sees me. Would he speak of our love in the way Charlie does about Ella? I often wonder does Joe regret leaving that woman he was with. He was almost engaged when we met. He might regret his choice.
‘We’ll have to keep all of this to ourselves for now,’ I say softly as I can hear Charlie in the hallway.
‘I know to tell your mother sweet feck all,’ Joe says and chuckles. He kisses Faye’s cheek and whispers, ‘At least he’s given us something to talk about.’ Joe looks expectantly at me. He wants to kiss. I don’t want to. Automatically it happens. The smack of mouths is functional and Faye clashes the dolly upwards and catches me on the nose.
I squeal and move backwards, knocking over the saucepan of potatoes. Water pours down the cooker, worktops and drips down the cupboard doors. Faye howls, knowing she’s hurt someone and Joe tries to silence us both. The sting eases. I don’t want to give in that it wasn’t quite as bad as it seems. Holding my nose, I leave Joe to a screaming toddler and streaming water. Charlie meets me in the hallway and in true Charlie style, ignores the drama and toddles on up the hall.
I sink into our bed, fully clothed. Turning in to the pillow, I gurgle out a silent cry. Joe will tell Charlie about what happened and make me out to be another hysterical woman. Charlie will roll his eyes and agree with him.
Looking at the ceiling, I think about my own hidden secrets. Who am I to judge Charlie Quinn?
7
Charlie Quinn
Rhonda has made tea and switched on the lamps on the side tables littering the corners of their fine, modern sitting room. She’s turned on the tape recorder and the child has had a nappy change and we’ve not spoken for maybe thirty minutes.
Rhonda’s husband is making us all supper in the kitchen and Faye’s sucking on another plastic contraption. She’s nestled into her mother’s arms. It pains me to think of what might have been for Ella and I. We would have lived like this. It would have been possible.
‘Are you disgusted with my chatter?’ I ask Rhonda. ‘I just want to show you that our time was precious. It was beautiful.’
‘Of course I don’t mind you talking like this, Charlie. It’s your life, your feelings, your story,’ Rhonda answers. ‘We all know what it is like to be in love. You describe it beautifully. It must exhaust you though?’ I don’t answer, and she adds, ‘You’ve a wonderful voice and I feel you need to tell this now.’
‘Can I go back? Can I go on?’
‘Yes, of course.’
The weather was bad for weeks. Rain and wind heaped down like it was angry with us. I wanted to enjoy a walk with Ella on the road I first saw her on. I thought maybe we could cavort in the fields in the sun – it wasn’t to be. December brought frosty evenings and there was little chance of Ella visiting and spending a few minutes naked with me. I was very sad.
Jock’s talk was always about travelling then. He made it sound like a big adventure. He rambled on about the ships going across the oceans to new worlds. ‘If I was a young fella like you, Charlie, I’d be away. You’ve a trade behind you and I can get you sorted. Canada is a big country. Why not think of it? You’d be far gone to the lands of plenty. Living a life the rest of us can only dream of. Mind you, I don’t want you to go. Ach, it would be the best thing. You have to spread those wings and be gone from here, my boy. There’s nothing to keep you. Get you gone.’
Did he know and sense the disaster and try to warn me off? There was nowhere I could go without Ella and for a long time I couldn’t even get to tell her that I might try to take her across the waves.
It’s hard to describe the stifled life we led then. The way people lived in each other’s pockets. The newspapers and the picture houses brought the outside world to us. It all was just out of reach. Even when we saw Shirley Temple and the likes, there was little point in dreaming of riches, wide-open spaces and adventure, when all the butchering needed done and the rain poured down the same old street.
America started to descend into the Great Depression. The Irish didn’t really notice and I turned eighteen. It was Jock who caused a fuss and got his wife to ask me to dinner. She made a cake the following weekend. Childless Jock might’ve thought of me as his own then, but his wife was not fond of Charlie Quinn. I was full of cheek and probably known to be a womaniser of unobtainable women. She was kind that evening and wished me a good birthday and future.
I was grateful for that.
Jock and I went to the pub on the way back to my lodgings. I got drunk, of course, and on the way home, I cried into his shoulder about my Ella.
I don’t know what exactly I confessed to that night, there wasn’t any more said about it. The next day went on as before and as my head thumped I forgot about it. He treated me no differently and all was fine until the Tuesday morning.
‘Put an end to it,
boy,’ Jock hissed, grabbing my arm hard before Ella’s usual time in the butcher’s. ‘She’s messing your head and heart. Trust me. I’m telling you there is to be no more of it. End this – Now!’
Ella sauntered in, bringing the sun and she knocked the rain off her scarf. Jock grunted his greeting and somehow she knew instantly that I had let her down. She took to her heels without the sausages and kidneys. Racing after her, I could hear Jock’s voice calling, ‘Have sense now, young fella. Have sense.’
Everyone was watching as I caught up with her. The few people on the street were all delighted to witness something of note in the village.
‘Leave me be,’ Ella stammered, peering around us at the watchful eyes. ‘You’re making a spectacle.’
‘Come back into the shop and get your sausages,’ I said confidently.
‘I know that beast, Jock, knows something he shouldn’t?’ Her beauty was on fire with fear.
‘I got drunk. It was my birthday. I was upset. He knows nothing much. Just that… I love you.’
Ella’s lips parted to spit out a lashing of annoyance. It would have been a different lashing than what I was used to. She stopped and took my arm and pulled me in close. I could smell her scent, the perfume she wore or the face cream that smelt good enough to eat. ‘Don’t be a silly boy.’
When a man professes his love and gets called a silly boy in the middle of a busy village street, it does nothing for the confidence or the mood.
I got angry. ‘I can see now why he thumps you. My hand is itching. You need a good slap.’
It was a terrible thing to say. Even to this day after all the worst things I’ve done in life, that sentence sticks in the craw. It tore down between us like a knife through a carcase.
8
Charlie Quinn
Our fall out didn’t stop Ella coming into the butcher’s for meat. It couldn’t or the whole place would be sure that we were at something. It was early 1930 and women, like now, were always the ones to blame for a man’s sexual desires. I was a mere child or a lovesick boy and she was a woman of the world. She planned and executed her seduction, and I was a more than willing accomplice in the immoral crimes.
Jock was happy. ‘Good lad, I’m glad that you had the sense to end it.’
‘I was silly to think she was mine. She’s a fine woman. A nice woman and I’m a silly boy. She never… we never. I dreamt it all up. She’s a good woman and I have a good imagination.’
Those words grated and that lie was almost tougher than any other. Jock let on that he believed it. I went on to try and make it all look like nothing more than an infatuation. At times I even convinced myself that she’d never been in the bed I could still smell her in.
For weeks it was all terrible until there was a tiny knock on the back window of my lodgings. The evening was fair for January and in the moonlight she was like a ghost, an illicit presence from another time and place. Saying nothing, we were one before I had time to even grasp that she was back.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured as I took her over and over on the squeaking mattress and the flopping frame. ‘I was afraid.’
‘Don’t be sorry. It was me,’ the silly boy said and wiped her tears away from those rosy cheeks. ‘Come away with me. Let’s leave here. Let’s go to Canada. America, anywhere. Say you’ll come.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed and we plotted out plans amid the orgasms. We were insatiable, lost in rampant fantasies of the future.
‘I can’t go. Not really. I’m married, Charlie. You forget that.’ She said that more than once and I didn’t care about it.
Now, that seems ridiculous. I was a slip of a lad and Ella was a curvy woman with breasts like mountains and legs that were heavenly. She was unsullied by lines or wrinkles and the smoothness of her thighs and buttocks is something I can still feel. It was more than love. As you can hear, I was horny for Ella, an animal in my desires. I wasn’t alone, she liked sex as much as I did.
‘You’ll change. You’ll want me demure and plain,’ she said. ‘You’ll want your dinner on the table and want me pregnant and waiting on you at home. I’ll be supposed to be meek and mild.’
The images she described were nice. A woman stayed at home then. Once married there was no chance she’d be allowed to work. That’s the way things were and in my youth I failed to understand why she felt trapped by such things.
‘Being away from here will change your life and it won’t change mine,’ Ella said. ‘You see life as a big man’s adventure. A woman’s lot will always be the same no matter where she goes. I’ll always be stuck.’
I couldn’t get to grips with all of her preaching in those days. I tried to.
‘I’ll have to be a butcher wherever we go. I know what you mean. I’ll have to use it to make us money. I don’t like it much. You’ve no trade but I’ll make enough for us both. You’re not to worry. We’ll be fine.’
She leaned back against the pillows then and rounded her belly with that slender hand and stopped the world with the words, ‘And can you care for a child that neither of us want?’
It took me many minutes to hear it clearly and process the meaning. I’m not sure I ever fully understood that sentence.
‘Baby?’ I think I asked.
‘It might be yours. It might not.’
It had occurred to me that she humped with her husband and the uncertainty in those words were terribly sore. I’m sure I lit a cigarette then.
‘That shut up your plans!’ She had a cruel tone at times and there it was again.
‘It’s a shock, that’s all.’
I know that many men would have left her then. She expected that. Of course, I doubted if Ella ever truly loved me. I’ve imagined that she was a bad woman. Perhaps these things are true. Maybe I was just a bit of rough for her? I’ve found that I was that for a few women over the years. No, I don’t like to think that I was that. I wanted to be Ella’s one true love, like she was mine. I was sure that she never lied to me, and I felt she was good for me. Those thoughts always return.
She sat up tall and said, ‘My husband knows about the baby and thinks it’s his. Life will be better that way.’
Of course, a married woman should and would want her husband’s baby. In a normal world that would be the right thing, it was like a furnace burning away all decency.
‘It’s mine!’ I shouted as she tried to silence the anger. Like a child myself, our baby was a possession, a toy. ‘Mine! It’s mine.’
‘Look around you, Charlie. You can’t care for a wife and child.’
She was right. I had nothing. Came from nothing. Knew nothing. She would never be totally mine. I could barely breathe. I didn’t want to cry or beg – I did both.
‘Why?’ I sobbed. ‘Why have you done this?’
I failed to realise that I had done something wrong too.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into my sodden cheek and as the door clicked closed I listened for those footsteps that took her silently away. I heard nothing more and she was gone.
9
Charlie Quinn
The turmoil was fierce. Every possible scenario raced in and out, tossing me into despair. It was possibly only a week until Ella returned in the dead of night.
Frozen from the wintery air she slunk under the covers and we got lost for a while. Lying in those slender arms felt like the most natural place to be and nothing was wrong with the movie screen playing for us alone.
Stopping now, I take a long look at Rhonda. She is listening intently and I don’t want to lie – yet it might be just my own version of things. To this very day there’s a struggle with the truth.
‘You’re doing well,’ Rhonda says as encouragement. ‘I know this is hard. You were telling me about having no one to listen to you. I’m here now, Charlie. Tell me all of it.’
I take a deep breath and return to our bed.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ Ella promised. ‘We might make it to a boat. Can we afford two tickets? Do you have sav
ings?’
Faced with the reality of it shocked me into silence. She sensed the wariness and decided to dress herself. She was leaving again and that was not good and physically I was weak with it all.
‘Are we really going to run away together?’ she asked, or I may have suggested it as I thought about little else.
‘I don’t want this child and I might lose it anyhow. I tend not to keep them. If it’s yours it might be stronger though and we need to be prepared for that.’
I wasn’t sure I even knew where babies grew in a woman. I knew they got bigger. I wasn’t altogether sure if women had wombs like the animals I butchered. Also, I worried about the poking I did into Ella but she still seemed to like it. That was the limit of my understanding and other than she was married to a doctor, that was possibly all she knew too.
‘What if the doctor finds out?’ I know I asked. ‘What will he do?’
‘He won’t. If he does, he could kill me. At the very least he’d batter me senseless and then kick me out. I couldn’t go to my family. They’d be disgraced. I’m risking everything to be with you, Charlie. You do know that?’
I knew the gossips and the tight-knit community would shun us both for the sinning. I hadn’t enough stashed in the mattress to take us anywhere. Anyhow, I’d never travelled farther than the capital and even that had been when I was a small child. Mammy had been running away then too. We’d gone to stay with a rich relative of hers. It hadn’t lasted long as Father had come and dragged us all home. Life has that way of forcing you back down to the place you belong.
‘I know that it’s dangerous. Of course I do. I just know that I love you and we must make plans to get far away from here,’ I told her.
‘I look old enough to be your mother. Can you at least grow some facial hair?’
The Quiet Truth: a haunting domestic drama full of suspense Page 4