The Last Lost Girl

by Maria Hoey

  “‘Seagulls, owls, lizards, crocodiles … something called geckos and anything that goes on its belly and most insects, unless they have ‘legs above their feet’. But you can eat grasshoppers and locusts if you want to, and ‘wild goats and antelopes and frogs and all clean winged things’. I like that bit – ‘all clean winged things.’” But Jacqueline has had enough. “Regina, I think the Bible is a bit silly really.”

  “My ma would go mad if she heard you calling the Bible silly.”

  “Well, it is,” says Jacqueline.

  “And my ma is gonna kill Goretti when she hears about her missing Mass,” says Regina, “and about the fellas.”

  “Are you going to tell on her?”

  “I will unless she gives me stuff,” says Regina.

  Jacqueline opens her eyes and stares at Regina. Sometimes, she thinks, the most stupid people can have the best ideas.

  Regina rolls onto her back too and begins to sing softly. The song is one she has made up about a nettle and a nun in a strawberry dress. It is a very silly song and it doesn’t make any sense but it always makes Jacqueline smile. She listens with her eyes closed while Regina sings it over and over again in her funny high little voice. She thinks what fun Regina can be sometimes. She is glad Regina called today after all, but if only she wouldn’t come again tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, expecting to do it all again. As though one day was the same as the next and people did not wake up feeling differently to the way they went to sleep. Because the truth is, Jacqueline thinks, that some days she is almost happy to see Regina standing in the porch saying “Are you comin’ out to play?” and some days she just wants to slam the door so hard in Regina’s face that it knocks out her two buck teeth.

  Long after Regina has to go home to mind her little brothers, Jacqueline stays in the orchard dreaming, with the Bible under her head as a pillow. She hears her mother calling her name four times before she gets up. She picks up the Bible and walks slowly up the garden to the house.

  She sees her mother standing at the kitchen door.

  “You’d better get a move on!” she calls, “if you want to go to the carnival.”

  Suddenly it is not too hot to run.

  “Who’s taking me to the carnival?” Jacqueline pants.

  “Lilly and Goretti, but you’d better get ready in a hurry or they’ll go without you.”

  “Is Gayle coming too?”

  “No, she’s just back from her running competition and she’s worn out from the heat. Now hurry up and put that Bible back where you got it.”

  A voice is singing in Jacqueline’s head: Lilly is taking me to the carnival – not Gayle, just me. Me and Lilly. And Goretti Quinn – but that doesn’t matter because Lilly is taking me to the carnival.

  Gayle is eating her dinner at the kitchen table.

  “Lilly is taking me to the carnival,” says Jacqueline.

  “Rather you than me,” says Gayle. “You’re only going because Daddy said Lilly couldn’t go without you. And she has to be home by half ten. She’s absolutely RAGING.”

  The Bible feels suddenly heavier and, as she carries it back to the sitting room, Jacqueline mutters under her breath: “Bitter as wormwood.”

  Chapter 12

  Afterwards

  Jacqueline told herself that if she waited long enough, whoever it was would go away – they always had before. Since Gayle and Roy’s departure, she had not opened the door to a single caller. She had no wish for sympathy and no intention of making tea for people she had not invited and did not welcome. Most people did not persist beyond a second push of the bell and, more often than not, she would hear the rattle of the letterbox and something dropping onto the hall floor. There was a fat clutch of them now – sympathy cards and Mass bouquets bound together with elastic bands.

  But this time it seemed that whoever it was had no intention of going away.

  Jacqueline, who had been standing stiffly to one side of the kitchen door, peered around the doorway and saw a face pressing itself against the coloured glass of the front door.

  “Jacklean!” a voice called. “It’s me – Regina!”

  Jacqueline opened the door. A car was parked in the driveway and a stout little woman with large breasts, dressed in black leggings and a speckled brown blouse, was standing in the porch. “Oh God, Jacklean, imagine if your diddies didn’t grow! Some girls’ don’t. I’d just die if my diddies didn’t grow.”

  “Hi, Jacklean.” Regina Quinn smiled the same old smile and began jogging on the spot, her arms folded under heavy breasts.

  “Hi, Regina,” said Jacqueline. How remarkable, she thought, never to have felt the need to have anything done about those teeth.

  “I thought you were in alright,” said Regina, “and Gayle said I was just to keep on knocking until you heard me.”

  Thanks a million, Gayle, thought Jacqueline. “Sorry, I was in the garden. When were you talking to Gayle?”

  “She rang me yesterday – she got my number from Ann-Marie Nugent. God, it’s got very blowy, hasn’t it?” Regina peered over Jacqueline’s shoulder into the hall behind her. “And it was lovely earlier.”

  Jacqueline ignored the hint. “Ann-Marie Nugent?”

  “Yeah, you remember Ann-Marie Nugent – Gayle’s best friend?”

  “Oh, that Ann-Marie – are they still in touch?” Jacqueline wondered why it always surprised her that friendships should endure over the course of a lifetime – other people’s friendships at least.

  “Don’t ask me where Ann-Marie got it though,” said Regina. “I hardly ever see her. From Margaret O’Sullivan probably, or it might have been Pauline Fitzsimons. No, come to think of it, it was probably Eileen Delaney. Then again it could have been Irene Casey.”

  Jacqueline frowned at the tangle of names. “You said Gayle rang you?”

  Regina nodded. “I think she’s a bit worried about you, here on your own and all.”

  “There’s nothing for her to worry about,” said Jacqueline. “So were you able to get in touch with Goretti?”

  “Goretti?” Regina frowned and stopped jigging for a moment.

  Jacqueline sighed. “Gayle was supposed to see if you could find something out for me, from Goretti. She didn’t say anything to you?”

  “No, just that she was worried about you …”

  “On my own and all, I know,” said Jacqueline. “Well, like I said, I’m fine.”

  “I could ring her for you, if you like,” said Regina.

  “Ring who?”

  “Goretti – if you want to ask her something?”

  “What, now?”

  “Sure.” Regina reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone. “Give us a second.”

  Jacqueline watched while she dialled.

  “Here, it’s ringing,” said Regina. “Do you want to talk to her yourself?”

  She held out the phone but Jacqueline shook her head. “Just ask her if she remembers the name of the town that boy Luca came from – Luca, the boy from the carnival.”

  Regina’s eyes widened. “You mean the one that Lilly …?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Hi, Goretti,” Regina said into the phone. “Hold on a second, will you?” She put her hand over the phone and hissed at Jacqueline, “Okay, I’ll ask her. I’ll just …” She began to edge away from the porch.

  Jacqueline stepped back a few steps into the hall until she was out of earshot of Regina’s conversation with her sister and waited.

  “Jacqueline!”

  “Yes, I’m here.” Jacqueline hurried to the door.

  “Goretti says hi.”

  “Hi to her too. Was she able to remember?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not an address – it’s just the name of the town – that’s all she has.”

  “That’s all I want – what is it?”

  “Coldhope-on-Sea. She has no idea whereabouts in England it is.”

  Jacqueline nodded – well, there it was. She scrib
bled it quickly on the pad beside the phone, tore off the sheet and stuffed it into the pocket of the grey cardigan.

  “Thanks, Regina, I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. I hope it helps.” Regina folded her arms under her breasts and began to jog on the spot again.

  “Thanks again, and for taking the trouble to come over and check on me,” said Jacqueline.

  “Right.” Regina looked into the hall again, then down at her shoes, the way Jacqueline remembered her doing as a child. “Well, I suppose I’d better be off.”

  “Okay. Well, bye, Regina.” Jacqueline made to close the door.

  “Is everything alright, Jacklean?”

  “Everything is fine, Regina.”

  “It’s just with you asking about that boy from the carnival …”

  “It’s nothing important, Regina,” Jacqueline patted the pocket that held the piece of paper, “but thanks for this. Like I said, I appreciate it.”

  “Okay. Bye then, Jacklean. Mind yourself.”

  “You too.” Then, watching Regina walking away, an impulse took hold of her and she called after her, “Regina, hang on a second!”

  Regina turned quickly and Jacqueline stepped out into the porch.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “All those years ago, when we were kids, why did you want to be my friend?”

  Regina smiled broadly. “Because I liked you, Jacklean.”

  “But why did you like me?”

  “Oh God, I don’t know.” Regina rolled her eyes. “Because you were nice to me, I suppose.”

  Jacqueline frowned. “Was I? Are you sure about that? I seem to remember …”

  Regina shook her head. “No, you were, really. All those times I used to come around here, annoying you, when all you really wanted to do was to read your books. I kept waiting for you to tell me to go away, but you never did.”

  Jacqueline nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Regina. Sorry, it was a stupid thing to ask. I just wanted to know.”

  “Jacklean – about Lilly – when I asked about her just there, I wasn’t being nosy. It’s just that I always wonder – everyone does.”

  Jacqueline folded her own arms across her heart. “I know they do, Regina, but there’s nothing, nothing at all.”

  Regina looked down at her feet again. “It’s just, with Lilly, well, no-one ever thought she’d have an ordinary life, not like the rest of us. But that, nobody expected that.”

  “No, nobody expected that,” said Jacqueline.

  “Right,” said Regina. “Well, I suppose I’d really better be …”

  “What about you, Regina?” said Jacqueline. “Are you happy?” She had a sudden uncomfortable memory of a wedding invitation she had declined. “You got married, didn’t you?”

  Regina smiled so widely that Jacqueline could see the dark amalgam in her lower molars. “A farmer,” she said. “Can you believe it, Jacklean? Me, a farmer’s wife?”

  Jacqueline found herself smiling too. “And …?” She thought she remembered Gayle gabbing about children.

  “Five boys.” Regina’s impossible smile widened.

  Jacqueline shook her head in wonderment. “And you’re happy, I can see you are. I’m glad.” She realised that she meant it. “You deserve to be happy, Regina.”

  “So do you, Jacklean.”

  Jacqueline had no answer to that.

  “Right, well, I’ll see you so,” said Regina. “You take care of yourself, Jacklean.”

  Jacqueline said she would take care of herself. She stayed watching while Regina climbed into a dark-blue, mud-spattered Toyota Verso. You should have been kinder to that little girl, she told herself. Not for the first time she had the conviction that if, after all, there turned out to be a heaven, it would not be the big sins that kept the likes of her out, but the little failures in charity and kindness: the small daily sins of omission.

  Regina waved as she drove away and Jacqueline waved back.

  She walked slowly back to the house and closed the door behind her. She stood in the hall, pulled the piece of paper from her pocket and read what she had written. Coldhope-on-Sea. As she walked to the kitchen to make herself a pot of tea, she was humming a song under her breath:

  “The nettle and nun in a strawberry dress

  Ran down the hill and started to mess.

  The sun went in and the rain came down,

  ‘Mercy me,’ said the nun with a frown.

  ‘We will certainly drown.’”

  On the silent television screen, a spectacularly ugly man dressed in army surplus was catching fish with a spear he had fashioned from a tree branch. Jacqueline watched him gut the fish on a stone, cook it on a makeshift spit over an open fire, then eat it with his fingers. He was succeeded on the screen by a group of women in a marquee. They were erecting conical structures made out of hundreds of little choux pastries all held together by caramelised sugar. It seemed to Jacqueline a treacherous process in which fingers got burned and tears were shed. What fascinated her were the expressions of all these people, the naked bliss on the man’s craggy face as he devoured the fish, the look of total absorption in the eyes of the women as they sweated and agonised over their towers of cakes. It was almost, she thought, as if it all mattered.

  How, Jacqueline wondered, do I become one of them? How do I stop being the person lying on the sofa watching? How do I get one of those lives?

  She pulled the envelope from the pocket of his cardigan and examined the contents again, letting her thumb move over the smooth surface of the postcard, the little raised sketch of the house. Then she took out the matchbook, put it on her knee, picked up her phone and dialled the number printed under the sketch. She listened to the recorded message: invalid number. That was that then.

  She went into the kitchen and began making tea. In the act of pouring water into the teapot she put the kettle down, picked up her phone again and googled Sea Holly Villa. There were a few results but none of them in the right area. She made the tea and took it into the sitting room but, before she drank it, she googled the number for UK directory enquiries, then dialled it. As she had guessed, the area code on the matchbook had long since changed, but the operator confirmed that the local number was a working one. Jacqueline thanked her and hung up and drank her tea.

  The first time she tried the new number it rang out. She tried it again half an hour later and, just as she was about to hang up, a cool unhurried voice answered. “Yes?”

  Jacqueline jumped to her feet. “Hello, is that Sea Holly Villa?”

  “Yes.”

  Jacqueline realised she did not know what she wanted to say. “Are you – is this a guesthouse?”

  There was a long silence, then a sound that might have been a sigh. “Yes.”

  There was another long silence which the woman on the other end made no attempt to end.

  “Okay then,” said Jacqueline. “Thank you. Goodbye.”

  She hung up and looked at her reflection in the door of the china cabinet. “You’re a fool,” she told herself. Her eyes stared back at her. People always said she had his eyes. An image came to her of him laid out in his coffin, dressed in his new suit, his shorn head slick with Brylcreme. Grief tore at her heart like a claw.

  She drank less than usual that evening and went to bed properly, undressing and brushing her teeth. She fell asleep easily but woke in the night, startled and sure that some particular sound had disturbed her. She sat up and listened, but the house had done its talking and was quiet; if there had been a sound, it had come from outside. She got out of bed and crossed to the window, pulled the heavy green curtain aside and looked out on a clear starry night. There was no wind and the garden was dark and still. All that was left of her father’s moon was a thin, translucent fingernail clipping. She dropped the curtain and went back to her bed.

  She thought about Regina Quinn. She hoped there was an orchard on that farm of hers. How easily the names of those girls had ro
lled off Regina’s tongue and, after all, Jacqueline found that she had not quite forgotten them: Ann-Marie Nugent, Margaret O’Sullivan, Pauline Fitzsimons, Eileen Delaney, Irene Casey. She didn’t remember the individual faces but she could see them, like bit players in a film, brightly coloured tops and wide-legged trousers, giggling and leaning on one another’s arms as they picked their way carefully in their high sandals across the grass toward the big white marquee tent.

  She reached out to turn on the bedside lamp. The brown envelope was on the bedside locker where she had left it, having examined its contents once more before settling down to sleep. She shook it so that the matchbook and the postcard fell onto the duvet. She picked up first the postcard, then the matchbook and tried to picture the owner of the imperturbable voice on the phone. She imagined her moving about in the rooms of the big house in the little sketch. She imagined herself standing before the house, staring up at its windows. Before she fell asleep she had made up her mind what she would do.

  Chapter 13

  1976

  Jacqueline is dressed and ready when the doorbell rings. She peers over the banister and watches them in the hall below.

  “I can’t believe you’re allowed to go and I’m not,” says Lilly. “It’s just not fair.”

  “I know it’s not,” says Goretti Quinn. “Do I look okay, Lilly?”

  “You look alright. You look fine.”

  Jacqueline doesn’t think that Goretti Quinn looks fine. She is wearing the wide navy trousers that Daddy calls road-sweepers and purple platform shoes. Her top is bright orange. It is too tight and there are words written across it in big black letters, LIPS THAT TOUCH LIQUOR WILL NEVER TOUCH MINE. But it is her hair that Jacqueline cannot stop staring at.

  Jacqueline’s mother comes into the hall.

  “Oh, you’ve done something to your hair, Goretti,” she says.

  “I had a perm, Mrs Brennan.” Goretti turns and looks at herself in the hall mirror. “It was supposed to look like Farah Fawcett Majors …”

  “More like Leo Sayer,” says Lilly.

  “Well, I think it looks very nice, Goretti,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “You both look very nice.”