‘You are like them all. You think that there is no smoke without fire. You think she’s a bad woman,’ I say.
‘You weren’t there, were you, Charlie? You cannot know either.’
‘I know more than most. I need to tell you all of it. I might have saved them both. I am a bad, bad man.’
‘Would you not go to her now, Charlie? Should you not try to talk with her? Go and see her?’
‘I’m a coward. I need to sort things in my own head and heart first. Can you help me do that?’ I plead.
Rhonda nods and stirs again at the saucepan. ‘Still, I think you should contact her. She’s an elderly woman and you’re not well. Between you both there might be some closure, some healing if you could see and talk to one another?’
‘Not until you know more. Then you can tell me how you feel. You can say, as a woman, how Ella might feel about seeing me.’
‘Okay, we cannot waste time as really this needs sorted as soon as possible.’
‘It’s been over sixty years. A few more days here or there isn’t going to make any difference.’ I look out into their garden. ‘Ella won’t want to see me after all this time in convents and asylums. She’s not going to be the same person. She’ll not have the same feelings. Just like I’m changed beyond recognition. I’m not that young boy who left Ireland all those years ago.’
‘You make out that you’re a bad man, Charlie. From what you told me, you weren’t to blame. What could you have done? Jock was right. If you came forward, it would have made things worse. He was a good friend to you.’
‘Was he now?’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘I have cursed him almost every day for the last sixty years. Ella probably spent her life doing the same about me. That’s the real cancer, and the cure won’t come when I see or speak to her. I fear it will kill me altogether.’
‘Ella has promised to end the mystery we’ve all been curious about. She’s finally going to speak about that time. She is going to want to know that you are here to back up her side of things. I’m sure that’s what she’ll hope for.’
‘How do you know that I will do right by her?’
Rhonda stops stirring.
‘I only know what a young boy believed and what an old man can recall. It might not match her version,’ I admit. ‘What then? Will I just open more old wounds? I’ve learned from experience that when I talk it usually makes things worse. I think I’ll wait and see what Ella has to say first. Is that cruel?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. It makes sense to see what she says and what the public think of her revelations. It’s been a long time and she might have kept many secrets from you, too, Charlie. You need to protect yourself. I understand that.’
‘I don’t want to hide,’ I admit loudly and cough. ‘I’m just afraid of making things worse for Ella. There’s no point in coming all of this way, after all of this time, and making things worse.’ Reaching into my pocket I pull out my passport and hand it to Rhonda.
She takes it and opens the document, reading the name and comparing me to the old photograph.
‘Who is this?’ Rhonda asks, squinting at both me and the document in her hand. ‘Why do you have a fake passport, Charlie?’
‘You see. Ella might need a better knight in shining armour. The Charlie Quinn you all know and the one who loved Ella is a wanted man. I may even be a worse criminal than twenty Ella O’Briens.’
13
Rhonda Irwin
There is a criminal sitting in my kitchen. I use Faye’s nappy as an excuse to move from dealing with him. Just when I was starting to overlook his social quietness as an oddity, a likeable quirk and I was becoming used to his wonderful ramblings about love and life in the past – he jerks me into reality.
What the hell is happening to my life? There’s a fugitive of some kind sitting in our house. Sleeping contentedly and snoring loudly in our orbit for days now. I invited him in and have been enabling him!
Since he arrived, our family have talked to and fro about Charlie and there was never any doubt that he was this long-lost relation. Why would anyone reappear after sixty years and pretend to be an ordinary fellow with no living relatives or inheritance to claim?
Now that man in the kitchen could be lying about being our Charlie Quinn. He claims to be someone else entirely. People recognised him immediately though. I lift my mobile to ring Joe. What is the point of that, what do I say?
My mother will have a fit about what he might drag up. I thought it might just be the scandal of Charlie’s mother’s death, I never dreamt that I’d have to announce to relations that he was a criminal with a fake passport.
He’s exaggerating. He must be. We never fully tell the truth in this world. Even I know that.
A dread washes over me as I smell Faye’s behind to assess if more poop has come out. He is Charlie Quinn. He has taken another identity because he wished to be someone else. Why? My stomach knots. I want to know more and I really don’t want to know any more.
Charlie is totally entwined in the Ella O’Brien case. That is also clear. He stalls at times and looks to see if I’m going to accept him moving on. Why can’t I ask him everything that I put on my lists in the evenings? Something always stops me. Like now, I should storm back in there and ask exactly why he’s saying he’s a criminal. Why has he got another name on his passport? Here I sit watching Faye play with the tassels on the bedspread.
I cannot imagine our Charlie being all that awful. I like him. He’s right. I believe him and follow every stage of his story with empathy. I am being manipulated. Mother tells me I’m naive and gullible and perhaps I am.
The new en suite mirror shows me my shocked expression. I’m pale. I take a long hard look at myself. I cannot believe that Charlie would do anything as awful as Ella O’Brien. He would never harm his own child, he wouldn’t…
Faye’s babbling and comes in onto the tiled floor. I worry she will hurt herself all the time. She has no fear and stands there telling me her own little story.
I did wonder about Charlie taking her up the road on that first day here. He had wanted to escape, we could all understand that. I’ve used Faye as a means for that many a time.
There’s an ache though. Was it just that he wanted company that wasn’t judging him? It was just to have a presence that wasn’t encouraging him to talk or asking him incessant questions. Of course, that was all it was.
Faye likes him. Children accept people. They’ve no fear, no knowledge of how evil people can be. I invited Charlie in, I encouraged his interest in Faye.
‘Let him have her for another while,’ I suggested to Joe when they were gone from the house for the walk the other day. ‘It’s good for him to be around children.’
I never dreamt that Charlie would have hurt her. When she came back she’d been crying inconsolably. Joe had found them both distressed and he couldn’t explain why.
I’d been glad of the break. Glad that someone took Faye from under my feet as I tried to get the dinner ready for all those people. Others, like my mother and Joe, always allow Faye to come back to cling to me. I get afraid of Faye injuring herself with the hot water and the tiles in the kitchen. I’d been grateful of the time without her clutching my leg, or crying to be picked up.
‘Go check on them if you like then,’ I snapped at Joe, when he asked where they could be. ‘He went to the left, down towards the sea. Go get them. Dinner is ready.’
‘They can’t have gone far!’ Someone laughed. ‘Neither of them are great on their feet.’
The sweat had poured down my back with anxiousness and the heat of cooking. I was sweltering until Faye returned in Joe’s arms and Charlie tottered in looking as upset as Faye sounded. There was no explanation, of course, and he had cried almost continuously through dinner. Why?
‘Jet lag, sad at being home, worrying about Ella. There’s the dying thing too!’ Joe suggested. ‘There are plenty of reasons for why the old critter was upset. I wanted to join him in a sob or two.’
‘What happened on the road?’ I asked in a whisper.
‘Nothing. I think they could only go that far as he was feeling ill. He got sick over the stile.’
I forgot the whole saga because there was no reason to think badly about it. Now there’s a reason to think differently. A breath catches in my chest. There’s worry in those mirrored eyes that I don’t want to acknowledge.
If I tell Joe my suspicions, he’ll be angry. Worse than angry. I’ll be either making a mountain from a molehill or he will not respect my decisions anymore. It’s taken me a long time to regain my own confidence about writing and if I admit that perhaps I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and have brought danger into our home – it’ll be a disaster.
Standing in the bedroom, I look down at my notes. Charlie is seventy-eight by all of our calculations. He’s terminally ill, can barely walk, and is weak as water – what am I fearful of? Charlie Quinn can do no harm to anyone anymore. My imagination as always is running riot.
‘He’s eccentric and will bring change into our lives,’ I had insisted to Joe. ‘It is a good plan to have him here for a while. Trust me.’
I gulp. Who can any of us trust? I know that I’m not trustworthy. Charlie believed in Ella and she let him down. He’s obsessed with even the memory of her, and something has kept them apart for sixty years. Ella has never spoken of him. By all accounts she’s not said a lot. Surely if she had a reliable witness she’d have brought him forward.
Charlie must’ve done something bad in the past that makes him a fugitive for all this time. I cannot bring myself to think an eighteen-year-old boy could do what is swimming about in my head.
He was a butcher; used to blood and death. A shiver runs through me. Someone like Ella should have clung to the likes of Charlie in her hour of need. Despite her court trial she never mentioned him. None of the newspaper reports mentioned Charlie. What hold has he over her? What makes him come here? My mind reels and thumps blood into my temples.
‘He’s a sweet man,’ my mother said. ‘Unusually quiet with a good heart. It’s a pity he’s missed all those years here with us all.’
She doesn’t know that he has something to do with Ella O’Brien. Her face is before me and there’s a telling-off in those eyes. She will explode.
‘What have I done, Faye?’ I ask. ‘It’s not safe for you to be here, my darlin’. What the hell do I do now? What the hell do I do?’
14
Charlie Quinn
Coming forward to say I was the father of Ella’s baby wasn’t possible. I reached the ship and was on the high seas before things really sank in. I’d no way of knowing what was happening back in Tyrone and as I chatted to a few other boys on board I became more concerned about my own dilemma.
‘Indentured servant,’ a boy younger than me said. ‘We’re white slaves. You’ll have to sign a contract for at least three years to do work for some blaggard out there. How else do you pay for your passage, food and board in the great wilds of Canada?’
I learned too that being younger than I actually was might do no harm at all. Even though I wasn’t one of them, for a time, I got lumped in with the British Barnardo’s children. I soon got tired of that and instead became Charlie Quinn, a big fifteen-year-old Catholic boy from Sligo.
I knew of places and people in the county from extended family letters and could easily pass myself off as a Catholic. Being a Fenian made me like scum to the British boys, and I liked the southern Irish lads. I enjoyed listening to their way of speaking and I found myself mimicking their accents and cheekiness. I missed out on a childhood and while on board I had some fun and freedom.
The British didn’t mix much with the Irish, which also suited my initial deception. The Irish all had a manner that was liked and I wanted to be liked.
People joked that I was big for my age. Being considered a child helped get me more grub and to the top of queues.
The only time that it proved a disadvantage was when I smelt whisky. There was no way they’d allow a child a dram, no matter how much you begged or pleaded. The alcohol took the pain away and I wanted to be lost in that nice haze. When I’d had my birthday with Jock I liked the sensations the drink gave.
It had drawn honesty from my heart and this was to cause the problems that had committed me to the course I was on. The demon drink would hurt me many times. It definitely started the chain of my tragic life.
I was trapped in a large tin cage many miles out on the Atlantic Ocean, with hundreds of other desperate souls. My family at home knew nothing about where I was or why I had disappeared. Anna and Cedric would worry. What was I to do? I hoped Jock might somehow explain my departure. Leaving these worries aside was necessary for I had no means to let them know – even if I wanted to.
In the bustle on board there were many who had no kin to care for them. For me, having no family to care about was a blessing. I needed to maintain the lie and be a child again. The truth was not a good idea and I stayed quiet. The majority made the best of the new adventure even though they were afraid. Looking out to the horizon we dreamt aloud of a country with new people and places to explore. We all had the chance to change our lives and names if we wished during these conversations. It was a liberation and an imprisonment at the same time.
Landing in St John, New Brunswick, I hadn’t the time or the chance to think much of Ella at all. The dread for myself was very real as we leaned out over the ship’s side. We watched The Lady Rose of the Cunard Line dock and a heaviness entered my soul and it stayed there for many a long day. Running away from my crimes has never kept me free – if only I had known this at the time.
All of the fifty or more children travelling alone were handed a cardboard sign with a name and age. I made my own to blend in. Some boys swopped theirs about for fun. This meant in many cases we were not who or what our signs said.
This was not something I did. I was Charlie Quinn and had spent time and effort on my own sign. I wasn’t going to give it away. Whether this was good or bad in terms of what was to come – I don’t know.
We were all murmuring that we didn’t like the look of the men and women sent to take us to what they were calling a ‘receiving home’.
We all stood complicit and vulnerable. While we were waiting a balding, grimy man approached me and quietly said his name was Daly. Immediately, I clung to his sleeve and nodded that I was the young fellow he was after. Jock’s relation had come to the rescue. I wasn’t one of the ‘homeboys’ that the whispering amongst us was describing. Standing in line on the docks, I got the sense that the children with the signs were a class beneath the other people making their way to and fro. If we were glanced at, it was out of pity, fear or loathing.
I wonder many a time, what might have become of me if I didn’t start my life in Canada on the back of lies. Would all of my life still have been the same if I was Charlie the man, rather than ‘Charlie the homeboy’? Would my life have been easier as a free man with holes in his pockets? Possibly not – but we’ll never know now.
Fran Daly with the balding head and greasy comb-over, took me with him without saying much to anyone. Through his rotting teeth he muttered something about signing papers at the gate. He never did. I wandered after him, oblivious to what was ahead.
15
Charlie Quinn
Fran Daly spat a lot. He chewed tobacco and his loose shirt and trousers stank of something I couldn’t place. I was to find out it was bad personal hygiene and the stench of cattle. The large Canadian cattle smell different when alive in the wilderness.
Leaving the docks, I remembered that I’d not said goodbye to the others. In my naivety I thought I’d see them again. Nothing in my simple brain had prepared me for the expanse of Canada. Ireland is small and most people know someone who knows someone else – or that’s how it was. I was certain I’d see my new friends again. I never did.
‘You’re a fair big lad.’ Daly spat out the window of his moving truck. It battered about the roads
and I watched this new shining world I’d been waiting on. ‘I’ve got a stable of workers and I think you’ll make a fine foreman for them. Jock wrote about you and said that you’ve got butchering skills? The telegram said nothing much other than you were in a hurry to leave home.’
‘Aye.’
I thought of asking this boney man for the papers I was to sign but the dead animal in the back was smelling badly in the heat of the day. Something told me not to bother about how long I might get to work on his farm. I was in awe of the beauty of the countryside and he didn’t talk much as he squinted at the road. His bad eyesight became a blessing later on in my time with him. With his bad driving on the dirt tracks I was afraid that I would never get to wherever we were going.
The homestead had big padlocks that held a high wire gate closed. It and the fencing were well-coiled with barbed wire. That should have told me all there was to know. Fran had things he needed to keep safe, or he had things he needed to keep from escaping. It was mostly the latter.
The one-storey homestead was wooden and had a long, new veranda circling it on all sides. The windows were large and covered in mesh and the door swung with a creaking sound as Fran’s woman appeared out of it. When she was coming down the few steps I noticed her limp and lack of cleanliness. She was about forty maybe – or she looked the same age as Fran. She chewed tobacco as well. They might have used the same hair lacquer too as her tied-back hair shone just like his comb-over did.
‘Selma,’ Fran roared. ‘This is the butcher boy from Jock’s letters.’
With her hand to her head, she shielded herself from the sun, and me from the sight of her. I wouldn’t see her often. When I did I shivered. I never forgot those times.
‘I’ll take him to see around,’ Fran shouted and he seemed proud. I perked up, thinking I was a special visitor who he wanted to impress. My clothes were unsuitable for the climate. Daly’s clothes weren’t much better, and I shrugged off any notions of not fitting in.
The Quiet Truth: a haunting domestic drama full of suspense Page 6