Big English Girl

by Paula Clamp

  Ellie looked appropriately astonished, even though she already knew of the pregnancy from the letters.

  "Now that's between you and me, okay?" Rosie added conspiratorially, "That's not for any notebook - that's a lesson for you only. Be careful, Ellie."

  Ellie nodded, before asking tenderly, "Did Bernard offer to help you when you got pregnant?"

  "Of course he didn't. He quickly got bored and went on to his next source of excitement." Rosie threw the chipped plate into the bin and moved on to the next one. She did this with the same grace and formidable radiance that she blasted her weeds with weed-killer, "You see, he was forever complaining that he was bored on the Sullivan estate. There was always pressure on him that one day it would be up to him to repair the damage that the Old Man had done after years of neglect and booze. But responsibility was a coat that never fitted Bernard. The strange thing was that for all his pontificating about a life elsewhere, he knew he couldn't leave. Where else could he act like the Lord of the Manor?" Rosie discarded a second cracked plate, "Where else could he run with the pack?"

  Ellie was fascinated, "What pack?"

  "Men like Bernard like to show-off and sometimes they think they can find chivalry where there isn’t any. He got involved with a crowd that had a particularly enigmatic leader and he’d do anything – I mean anything to impress her."

  Ellie attempted to decipher Rosie's cryptic words, but couldn’t make sense of any of it, "Rosie, I’m so sorry to hear you had such a difficult time.”

  Rosie lifted up the bin, until it was on the same level as the worktop and with one sweep of her arm, discarded a mountain of dirty, damaged crockery.

  Rosie looked uncharacteristically angry, “I was only twelve weeks pregnant when Bernard dropped me for one of many in a long line." She shook her head, "The village is still closely tied to the Catholic Church and even though this was only eighteen years ago and I was well into my thirties, I still felt ashamed. I’d been a struggling artist all my life and didn’t have two pennies to rub together. So, I left to live in Dublin with my aunt. I had plans to keep the baby, of course. But I had no way of supporting us and then when my aunt had a stroke and needed a carer herself…well, I had to make a decision." The anger that had grown in Rosie’s voice, suddenly, changed to a bland, factual tone, devoid of emotion. "An opportunity came up for the baby to have everything I never had…and I took it."

  Only now, finding herself this physically close, could Ellie see just how much stately radiance Rosie had. Her elegant face looked to have been carved from very pure, white marble.

  "That’s so sad, Rosie. I’m sure that wasn't an easy decision." Ellie rested her hand on that of the older woman, who so reminded her of her own mother.

  "No."

  A starling, caught up in the storm, crashed against the windowpane and the two women jumped.

  Chapter 47

  Still staring at the window and the bloody mark left by the bird, Rosie continued to speak in the same monotone fashion, "Even though I have watched from afar, as my baby has grown up fit and well…" A slight tremor appeared in her voice, "I live daily with the guilty secret of ever giving my baby up. Please keep it for me."

  Bursting with excitement, Frankie jumped up from the kitchen table. He had found the final corner of the jigsaw puzzle and it was complete. Rosie threw a final, heavily chipped bowl into the bin and with a gentle nod to Ellie, she then left her and went over to congratulate him.

  Ellie remained transfixed by the spot on the glass, where the unfortunate little bird had met its demise. The heavy rain had already begun to wash it away. Her thoughts were now of the ruthless Bernard Sullivan, who moved on to pastures new and Rosie was forced to move away to Dublin and have their illegitimate child adopted. ‘Poor Rosie’, or as Ellie now truly believed, ‘Poor Roisin’. What an awful decision for a new mother to have to make, especially having lost one child already. This tied up a few loose ends for Ellie, but why then did Rosie come back, a few years later? What did she feel when she heard that her husband had remarried?

  "Before I forget, Ellie…" Rosie was now hunting through the huge piles of magazines besides the completed puzzle, "Father Daly gave me something at the bazaar, just before the rain came teeming down…where the hell is it? He said I was to give it to you."

  Rosie held out a soaking magazine; the yellow spine had turned a mottled green and the photographic image on the front cover now looked like engine oil that had dispersed in a puddle.

  Ellie held the April 2006 edition of the National Geographic, firmly in her hands. She quickly flicked through to find the index, which only now she saw already had its page folded in the corner and was held down with a hairpin. This was the same hairpin that Ellie had, accidentally, lost in the parochial house.

  She rested her finger on, 'Ireland and Liberty Trees - page 71'. Even faster still, Ellie raced to page seventy-one. The rain had made the pages stick and she had to carefully prise them apart, even though her hands were shaking slightly. Unfortunately, when she did eventually manage to separate the pages, the bulk of the article in question had become indecipherable in the wet. At the top of the page was the recognisable image of the Liberty Tree, photographed in black and white.

  On closer inspection, Ellie discovered there was a black silhouette, hanging by rope from a sturdy, twisted branch; the branch she recognised from having rested on it herself. The body was clearly male and appeared to be suspended below a lush, shifting roof of leaves.

  Most of the text was heavily smudged. Ellie was relieved, however, to discover that one single paragraph in the centre of the page was crystal clear. She read it to herself:

  "My study of rural life then brought me to Ireland where one story stood out among all others. The villagers of Lusty in Northern Ireland have never recovered from the shock following an explosion that killed four-day-old baby, Marianne-Mae Campbell, on the 13 April 1994. At the time, the Royal Ulster Constabulary discovered a cache of bomb making equipment in a cottage in the centre of the village. In an interview, a spokesman for the police said, 'It is a wonder that the entire village hadn't been blown away. We discovered evidence of unsecured explosive material destined for Belfast and London. The explosives had been packaged in such a basic way that something as simple as static created by nylon carpet could have caused the explosion that resulted in falling debris killing the baby, as she slept in her pram outside of the cottage.' The perpetrators of this murder remained unknown for eleven years, however, it is believed that recent evidence revealed that Bernard Sullivan, who owned the cottage in question and his associate, Niamh Byrne, who was the area commander for the Irish Republican Army at the time, along with two others, may have been responsible. Before an arrest was possible, however, Bernard Sullivan was found hanging from the local historical landmark, as seen in the photograph - The Liberty Tree. The other three perpetrators and members of the IRA cell are believed to be on the run."

  Ellie could hardly breathe. Her own mother, along with Bernard Sullivan, had been responsible for poor Marianne-Mae’s death. No – it couldn’t be true. The Niamh Byrne in the magazine article just had to be another Niamh Byrne. Her mother hadn’t once spoken of anything political – in fact, she never had any other interest above being a mother and a wife. This article was all wrong. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.

  But the more Ellie denied what she’d just read in her head, in her heart, she knew it was true. No wonder her mother left Northern Ireland, never to return. No wonder she never wanted to talk about her past. Did Niamh Byrne change her name to Marianne-Mae in the hope that the poor baby lived on somehow? Or was it some kind of penance, so that every time someone called her, a knife cut right into her heart?

  Ellie was too devastated to cry. A numbness overtook her entire body. Was her mother always on the run and in hiding – is this how she ended up in Lusty in the first place? Now there were even more horrible secrets to try and uncover, but now Ellie understood why Conor had decided to leave
the past alone. Ellie had come to Lusty to find out who her mother was and now she knew. The guilt and the depression that Niamh Byrne’s past life had generated did, finally, catch up with her and no doubt led to her taking her own life.

  But what about Bernard Sullivan? It was impossible for Ellie to believe him capable of feeling guilty enough to hang himself. After all, this was a man who, years later, entered into an affair with the mother of the baby he had killed. And he had a child with her. Having heard how unpopular Bernard Sullivan was and having seen for herself how protective the people in Lusty were for each other, Ellie could not help but wonder if, rather than suicide, could this have possibly been some kind of public lynching?

  She looked down at the harrowing magazine image, shaking in her hands, and then across at the completed jigsaw puzzle on the table; it was a desert shot, with Elvis Presley straddling a Triumph America motorbike and looking over his shoulder to a clear-blue sky and a wide, vast horizon, which went on for ever.

  Chapter 48

  The rain made it difficult for Ellie to keep her grip on the claw hammer but, eventually, she found a rotten piece of plank, held loosely with rusted nails and it came away easily. A second and third plank came away, until she could see right through the broken window, into what would have been the pantry of the old cottage. Only a few minutes earlier, Rosie had severely questioned the young girl's judgement, but Ellie had begged to see inside the boarded up cottage before she left for home. Ellie had fabricated a ruse that she may find other old magazines there. She had even managed to hide what she’d uncovered in the National Geographic, by saying it had too much water damage. Rosie eventually agreed, but limited her assistance to the provision of a claw hammer and a torch. If Ellie wanted to see inside of the dilapidated cottage, Rosie made it very clear, that she was very much on her own.

  And Ellie had to be on her own right now. She needed to follow in her mother’s footsteps and say goodbye to her memory for ever.

  Ellie shone the torch inside. The only natural light was from the gap that she had torn through the planks. She could hear the wind echoing in the rafters and a din of relentless dripping, as rainwater seeped through the rotting roof. The pantry appeared empty, apart from a few loose shelves. On the floor was psychedelic linoleum in brown and orange swirls, which was curled at the edges. Ellie crept through the window, mindful of a few shards of glass left over from whenever the window had been broken. She dropped to the floor with a splash, as her feet landed in a puddle. A door led into the interior of the house. The door handle had gone and a metal bar was all that remained of the mechanism. She initially thought it would be impossible to turn, but surprisingly it twisted smoothly and Ellie was inside the main body of the cottage far easier than she had anticipated.

  The room besides the pantry appeared to be the main living area. The blackened walls were all that remained as evidence of the explosion. The wall facing the street was the most damaged and heavily boarded up, where no doubt the debris must have fallen onto baby Marianne-Mae. There was an open door leading to the hall, stairs and front door and there were two boarded up windows at the front. To the back of the room was another open door, which led to the kitchen and on to the back door. The cupboards and all the kitchen appliances had been ripped out and all that remained was their greasy outline on the floor. The back door hadn't been bordered up, but was secured with two padlocked bolts on the outside and was the reason why Ellie had been forced to try her luck and enter by the side window instead.

  Back in the main room, Ellie cast her torch on the remains of a burnt out sofa that had been upturned. Next she picked out the scorched tassels of a lampshade, hanging down from a bulbless light fitting.

  The smell of the cottage was a combination of charcoal and must, as Ellie had expected, but she was naively hoping to pick out faint traces of the explosives. But all evidence, even the smells, had been removed over the years. All traces of the bomb-making factory had, understandably, either been removed, or destroyed. Ellie visualised in her mind's eye the detonators, the coils of electrical cord, batteries; maybe, there had been Semtex, or fertiliser and for an instant she imagined the smell of phosphate and sulphur. And the timers, what were they like? Were there alarm clocks, or oven timers or, maybe, children's wind-up toys? How had her mother learnt to make bombs and why?

  A deep 'clunk, clunk' sound came from the back door, from what Ellie could only guess were the two bolts being unlocked. Someone was coming in. In a moment of blind panic, Ellie switched off the torch and retreated to the pantry. She began to yank the door closed behind her, but not wanting to make a noise and alert anyone to her presence, she opted to leave a one-inch gap.

  Whoever entered, hadn't bothered with a torch, but appeared to find their way around the room comfortably. Ellie guessed from the heavy footsteps and the slightly lout-of-tune whistling that it was a man. He headed immediately out of the living room and up the stairs; skipping two treads at a time, to the sound of the wood groaning in protest. Footsteps were now above Ellie, alongside the sound of something heavy being dragged along the floor. A tile blew off the roof and came crashing down, right outside the window that Ellie had just entered. The man’s whistling stopped for a moment, but then continued just as cheerful as before.

  The dragging sound continued for a further minute and then Ellie heard tearing sounds, as if tape was being pulled from a box. After one giant tear, the whistling abruptly stopped and she heard a very clear and frightened, 'God, no!'

  Abruptly, Ellie then heard footsteps race across the room above and head back down the stairs, only this time the man needed only two leaps to clear the entire staircase. He was now back in the main room, pacing the floor.

  Very carefully, Ellie put her eye to the chink in the door. Every sound in her head, from her own breathing, to swallowing, to blinking, all appeared deafening. The man was turned away from her now, as he paced towards the boarded window. She heard him turn and then begin to retrace his steps towards the centre of the room.

  The man stopped right where Ellie's slim view of the world was. He was wearing a deeply cracked and scored, tan leather jacket. As he fidgeted, the jacket creaked like a wooden ship sliding through calm seas. He lifted his face up and Ellie recognised it instantly. It was Paddy.

  Ellie was instantly relieved and gave out a huge sigh. Trust Paddy, the local clown, to put the fear of God into her. He must be using this abandoned building to store stuff from the bar. Only when Ellie was about to push the pantry door open, however, did Ellie see what Paddy was holding; he was trembling and the tip of a rifle shivered in his hand.

  Chapter 49

  The rapidity of Paddy’s pacing increased, reminding Ellie of the big cats in a zoo. But then, she realised that Paddy's demeanour, with his sloping shoulders and his head held low, was more like a hyena. Unsure what she should do next, the back door opened for a second time and a shaft of light lit Paddy's face. Only now, Ellie could see how truly wretched Paddy looked compared to just a few hours earlier. Under his eyes were dark circles and the colour had drained completely from his cheeks.

  "We've had it!"

  "What do you mean we've had it?" A male voice responded to Paddy.

  "Everything's ruined. The roof’s had it and whole rows of tiles have been lifted off in the hurricane. The rain's got in everywhere."

  A door slammed shut and then the second figure ran stealthily up the stairs. Paddy remained rooted to the spot. The sound of stamping reverberated downwards, as more and more boxes were opened. The second figure returned back downstairs, much slower than he had ascended. He was now standing right beside Paddy, but just a few inches beyond Ellie's sightline.

  "We're going to be in so much trouble for this." Paddy lowered his head again.

  "Trouble, Paddy? Try dead."

  In that instance, Ellie recognised both conspiratorial voices from earlier that morning, when she had been returning the letters and was hiding in the old tree. Was the old oak in Lusty still b
eing used as a secretive meeting point? Ellie could only guess now that Paddy had been lying to her earlier and that his appearance at the tree wasn’t a result of drunken rambling at all; he was, actually, waiting intentionally to meet this other man. Ellie's unexpected arrival, so early in the morning, must have momentarily halted his plans.

  Many questions were unanswered, but as to who Paddy was meeting then, and as to who he was meeting now, appeared to be the most urgent.

  "The whole lot is ruined."

  "What are we going to tell them?" Paddy's voice was trembling.

  "These fellas don’t respond to excuses."

  "We'll tell them about the hurricane - a freak of nature - they can't blame us for that."

  "You think?"

  "Maybe, we can fix them - dry them out?"

  "Catch yourself on, Paddy."

  "Look, I only got involved for a bit of extra cash to keep the bar from going under. This is your problem."

  Ellie saw a hand grab hold of Paddy's collar and drag him up from his slouching heels and out from her view.

  "This is our business now, Paddy Doherty." The mystery-figure released Paddy and as the anger appeared to abate, the attacker calmly flattened down Paddy’s ruffled collar, "How much money have you got stashed away in the bar? How much?"

  "A couple of grand."

  "Go and get it."

  "But that's to pay a load of bills. If I don't pay them this month, I lose the bar. You can't make me do that - it's been in my family for generations. You can't make me do that."

  "Okay, keep your money,” The voice was tranquil and controlled, “And when you're dead tomorrow, how many more generations of Doherty's are going to have their name over it? Go and get the bloody money, Paddy! Now!”

  Paddy thrust the rifle into the hand that had just commanded him and hurtled out of the back door. As it opened, a beam of light fell onto the rifle and the hand that was now holding it. Ellie heard the door slam closed and she kicked the door to the pantry open wide.