Last Train from Liguria (2010)

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  ‘You were only a child,’ is what he finally says.

  ‘Not really. Not so much.’

  ‘You were fifteen.’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Fourteen. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Of course not, Bella, think about it for Christ’s sake. He was the adult. He was the one who was responsible.’

  ‘Yes, but if I hadn’t gone to him. If I hadn’t always been at him. You know, I was always, always. At him.’

  ‘You were a bloody child. That’s all there is to it.’ He closes the night-long conversation.

  She has told much more than she meant to tell. He has told a lot less than he seems to have done. Things may have levelled out had Alec not opened his mouth to speak, his voice dry and confused: ‘Why am I in this room, and why is this room so dark?’ His little voice.

  It seems like only a few seconds later when the doctor arrives, the nurse soon after him; a fairground bustle breaking around the bed for what seems like an age. Edward withdrawing to the rear wall. She goes back to the window seat, the curtains now open, the shutters pinned back to let in the light that no longer hurts Alec’s eyes.

  Bella remains there, returning Elida’s occasional smile, nodding intelligently when the doctor looks over his shoulder to make a comment on Alec’s condition. Each time she catches a glimpse of Alec his eyes are on her. In the course of the examination he is turned from side to side, but his eyes come straight back to her face as if they’ve never left it. She begins to worry that maybe he’s heard something. Yet she can’t remember exactly what he could have heard, the words she used, or if they were words that a child would understand. There are certain things she could not have brought herself to say to Edward, or anybody else. There are certain words she has never spoken, not even inside her own head.

  *

  The man in the secret. The professor from Edinburgh.

  He had been invited to spend a month as a visiting professor and consultant at the hospital where her father worked. He would also be their guest during this time. Her father looked forward to the visit with boyish enthusiasm. Her mother, however, retreated into one of those gloomy moods that demoted her from barely adequate to completely incompetent hostess. In other words, got herself off the hook again.

  ‘We shall just have to call on your Aunt Margie to step into the social breach,’ her father sighed. ‘Your poor mother, I’m afraid, lacks the confidence required in these matters - Professor Fallon is a man of considerable reputation and position, you know.’

  Even to Bella’s young mind it seemed unlikely that her mother would be daunted by the professor, her own late father having been a Master of the hospital in question, who had only narrowly missed a place on the honours list because he was regarded as occasionally seeing matters from a ‘Fenian point of view’.

  Her mother simply disliked having strangers in the house. She was resentful of their endless expectations and continual little intrusions. She particularly hated what her father termed as ‘making the effort’, and what she termed as ‘chit-chat and company’.

  Aunt Margaret was the woman for chit-chat and company. She was her father’s youngest and only unmarried sister. Also his favourite - even if he did believe her tendency to be ‘a little too well informed for her own good’ was keeping her on the shelf.

  Bella took one look at the distinguished professor and at fourteen years old had fallen madly in love. Years later, she still couldn’t say why it should be Professor Fallon - other than he happened to arrive in the middle of what she would recall as a time of constant yearning.

  For months she had been fretful and over-aware of her body, which had been pushing and shoving itself out of all proportion. Her aunts had referred to this process as ‘developing’ and there had been frequent remarks such as: ‘I see she’s beginning to develop…’, ‘She’s still developing, then?’ and, ‘My goodness, she’ll burst if she doesn’t stop developing soon!’

  Bella, by turns, had been excited and repulsed by this transformation. If she stood naked in front of the mirror and squeezed her arms together she could make a cleavage - just like one that might feature in a grown-up woman’s ball gown. And if she looked down there was a growth of hair that reminded her of the chin on the pimply boy who delivered the papers. Behind this new chin, a warm sturdy butterfly was forever beating or getting ready to beat its wings. A further flock of butterflies, smaller but much hotter, seemed to be twittering away inside every nook and cranny of her body.

  Her mother had given her a little talk - Bella guessed this had come about on her father’s orders. A shamefaced mumbling about monthly carry-on and tender breasts - both of which Bella had already been experiencing first hand, for over a year now. There was advice about modesty, and unspecified warnings about men. There had been nothing about love and hot butterflies.

  Professor Fallon was not in the least attractive. He was not even a personable man. Middle-aged, chubby-cheeked, a bald head with a clown-like tuft on each side. He wore a moustache - but no beard, which Vera, the maid, said was a sign of vanity and probably to show off that stupidlooking dimple on his chin. He had girl’s eyelashes and bland eyes. For the most part his expression was surly. When Vera said there was a bit of a smell off him, Bella could not, in all honesty, disagree. Nevertheless, she thought she would die of love whenever she set eyes on him or even so much as heard his footstep in the hall.

  At table he did most of the talking, usually on matters scientific or political. Sometimes he showed his artistic side by reciting long poems. When he did this her mother stared at her plate in horror. Aunt Margaret put her head to one side and gently nodded. Her father, who had long since lost enthusiasm for his guest, boyish or otherwise, looked away to the distance or continued to eat. Bella thought he had a beautiful purring voice. She said it one day to her father. ‘Hasn’t the professor a beautiful voice?’

  ‘Mm,’ her father replied. ‘And by God does he know how to use it!’

  Bella knew then her professor was considered a bore. For some reason this made her love him all the more. She became a compulsive daydreamer; exquisite little episodes running around inside her head, which never seemed to reach a conclusion. They were all about the lead-up to something indefinite, but wonderful. There would always be a passionate declaration, a surrender of sorts, of course an embrace, the very thought of which set the butterflies flapping like mad. After that, things became a little hazy and the daydream would have to go back and find another beginning.

  In the end Bella imagined her way into almost believing a romance existed. She took to writing love letters. At first she had the sense to burn them as soon as they were placed in envelopes, stinking of perfume and decorated with sweethearts. When this stopped being satisfactory, she took matters a bit further. This time she cut the little love words and phrases out from the letter, and slipped them into his overcoat pocket whenever she passed it hanging on the coat stand in the hall.

  She put herself in the professor’s path whenever she could. On the stairs when he came out in the mornings - there she happened to be. In the garden where he took his sherry before dinner and read his newspaper, she would be waiting, often climbing out the scullery window to get to the bench before he did. Once when she knew he was giving a lecture in the College of Surgeons, she went all the way to Stephen’s Green on her own and hid behind the cab shelter until he appeared. She followed him down Baggot Street and when he went into a shop and came out again, she was there, tying a coincidental shoe lace. They walked the rest of the way home together, she playing up to him all the way, precocious and coy. He saying little, but slipping her long looks from the side of his eye. It might have been funny, just a mildly embarrassing memory, were it not for how it ended.

  One Sunday morning when the house was empty and Vera had slipped out to late mass, Bella went to his room. She meant no harm - just a vague desire to familiarize herself with the sort of things she might see when
they were married. (The framed picture of her second cousin, his present wife, and her third cousins, his two sons, she managed to ignore.) On the locker there was a medical book, a prayer book, and a glass of cloudy water, which gave off a peculiar whiff when she lifted it to her nose. A travelling case at the side of the wardrobe showed a label with his Edinburgh address - a discovery that caused her to silently shriek with pleasure. She could send him a birthday card, and a card next Christmas! No, she could do better than that - she could follow him to Scotland! Be waiting on the corner of his street when he returned from his work at the hospital - Oh, his face when he saw her! She would try to apologize, to say, ‘I know I shouldn’t have but…’ And he would silence her with kisses. ‘Oh my darling, my darling - I thought we would never see each other again.’ That’s what he would say then.

  The bed was still unmade, and through the window, little meadows of sunlight fell across a haphazard eiderdown. She lay down, pulling his bolster pillow into her arms and pressing it to her chest. The crumpled sheets caressed her bare legs and arms. She closed her eyes, just as the door sprang open.

  As soon as she saw him standing with his hand on the doorknob staring at her, she realized the measure of her mistake. What had got into her? He was awful. An absolute horror. Everything about him was disgusting. The pyjamas had been like something under a rock, grubby and stained, when she had lifted the pillow away. The water in the glass, cloudy because his smelly false teeth had been steeping there all night. There was a stink from the pillow. She had been blind as well as stupid. And now she was in serious trouble. Her parents would be angry, and worse, much worse, ashamed. Everyone would know and talk about it. Her aunts, her other cousins - one of whom went to her school and would be sure to spread the word. It would fill up the corridors and classrooms in September; the biggest news out of everyone’s news out of all the summer holidays. A snoop. A sneak. A pursuer of married men. Her teachers would get to hear about it. She might even be expelled. But first the professor would march her downstairs to wait in the study for her father’s return. He would lay the notes across her father’s desk, demand an explanation. He would say in his stupid Scottish voice, ‘This is the work of your beloved daughter.’ She could see the love words like jigsaw pieces across the walnut desk - ‘kiss’, ‘embrace’, ‘tender’, ‘desire’.

  She jumped up from the professor’s bed and began a frantic show of making it. ‘I’m just, I’m just,’ she kept saying as she plumped the pillow and straightened the sheet. ‘Making the bed. To help Vera,’ she managed to add, as she moved towards the door. But he wouldn’t get out of her way. ‘Please,’ she began, hardly able to speak with embarrassment. ‘Please, professor, excuse me, please.’

  ‘I got your notes,’ he said. ‘Thank you most kindly.’

  ‘Notes? What notes? I don’t know what—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, girl. I wouldn’t like you to do that, after all those nice things you said.’ He caught her by the arm. She could taste and feel his dragon breath, burning on her face.

  ‘I’m only fourteen,’ she whined without knowing quite why she mentioned that.

  ‘You should have thought of that before now, shouldn’t you?’

  By now her breathing was shallow and sharp, causing her breasts to heave up and down. She saw him looking at them, and knew somehow they were going to make things worse. She wished she could just cut them off and throw them away.

  ‘Fourteen,’ he said, putting his hand on one breast, so that now his hand too was lurching up and down. ‘Aren’t you a great big girl for your age, even so?’

  He pulled her to him. Then pressed her up against the wall. The vileness of him, the spit from his mouth, the sound of his breath in her ear, his mouth snuffling at her hair.

  ‘Would this be what you’re after?’ he said. ‘Is this what you’ve been looking for? Is it? Is it?’

  She was pinned to the wall by his forearm and one of his legs. A long strand of her hair was caught in the cuff button of his jacket. It tore at her head anytime she tried to move. His hand went down and slipped into the narrow space between them. She could feel his knuckles move against her stomach and after a few seconds realized he was unbuttoning his flies. He started to pull her hand down, to try to make it touch him there. She resisted. Her hand, like something on a spring, shot back and forward between them. She tried to make it smaller, less able, by clenching her fist. But as it curled her knuckles tripped off his thing. A cool-skinned thing compared to his body, which was sweaty and feverish. It was as if it had nothing to do with the rest of him; a small animal he had managed to trap.

  He began rummaging at the cloth of her dress, and she wriggled as best she could under his weight. Instinctively Bella knew that no matter what, she must prevent that dress from going up. Then suddenly he stopped trying. Instead, he began pushing and shoving into her. His hand now across her mouth, he kept saying shhh, shhh, although she wasn’t saying anything at all.

  Bella thought he was going to suffocate her, she was gagging against his palm, these were her last seconds, she was going to die, there was no way she could survive another moment of it. Then he seemed to go weak in himself and his hand fell away and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. He looked like the devil. She could feel a surge of something wet on her dress. For a moment she thought he had peed on her. But it was heavier than pee and seemed to rest in an upright pool, right in the centre of her skirt. Warm, then cold.

  Her mouth and hands now free, she found her breath and began to scream. She ripped her hair with her two hands to free it from the button cuff of his jacket, then pushed past him, surprised at how easily he yielded when he had been so strong a moment ago. Now it seemed as if he had no bones, only fat and skin.

  She screamed her way out to the landing and to the top of the stairs. Stayed there screaming down at her mother and Aunt Margaret, who were in the hall, looking up at her, both frozen in the act of doing something - her mother pulling off gloves, Aunt Margaret removing a straw hat.

  Her aunt moved first and as she came hurrying up the stairs, her eye lowered to Bella’s dress. Bella looked down. It was stained and the cotton glued together in crumples and peaks. She continued to scream.

  *

  Her father had examined her before. The time she had fallen down the stairs and hurt her back so badly he had to bring her to hospital. When she had measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever. When she had twisted her ankle, and was stung by a wasp in the same sorry accident. When she had gastroenteritis and had vomited all over him. Whenever she was ill he had always taken care of her. He had always spoken kindly and constantly to her. His hand had always been steady.

  Now, his hand was shaking and he wouldn’t even look at her face. Nor would he speak to her. Any questions he had were put through Aunt Margaret (her mother had already been sedated and put to bed).

  Bella couldn’t really understand these second-hand questions with their heavily pronounced words that seemed to labour around in slow circles until eventually Aunt Margaret began to ignore her father and composed her own. ‘Bella - now this is important. And please, darling, I promise - you are not in any trouble. But has anything like this happened before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was the first time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re absolutely certain, he never touched you - in any way touched you?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Now, dear, I just need to ask you this. Did he touch you? Did he touch you, under your dress?’

  ‘No. He tried to, but I stopped him from pulling it up.’

  ‘Good girl. Good girl. And he definitely didn’t pull it up or get anywhere near your underwear?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘That’s fine, dear. That’s all we need to know.’

  But then her father instructed Aunt Margaret to remove Bella’s underwear. Bella got a fright and folded herself up. He came at her. He told Margaret to pull her legs down and hold them
open. Bella began bucking against him, sobbing.

  ‘Please, Harry,’ Aunt Margaret said. ‘Is it necessary? I mean to say, the poor child.’

  ‘Margaret, would you kindly do as I ask? I am speaking as a doctor now. Hold her down. I don’t want to have to sedate her just yet, until I’ve had a chance to establish all the facts.’

  ‘Look at her, Harry, please.’

  ‘Margaret, for Christ’s sake - I need to see if she’s intact. Now will you understand and kindly do as I say?’

  ‘But Harry. We have already established that it never happened before. You believe her, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I believe her, but—’

  ‘Well, look at her dress, for God’s sake, Harry. Can’t you see what’s happened? He lost control before he had a chance. You only have to look at the dress to know she’s still intact.’

  There was silence for a moment, then her father pulled her dress back down over her legs. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Yes. She may go now. Put her to bed, and give her this to help her sleep. Just. Just take her out of here.’

  Aunt Margaret put her arm around Bella and brought her across the room. When they got to the door her father spoke.

  ‘I won’t ask, Margaret, how you, as a single woman, should know such things,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Harry,’ Aunt Margaret said through her teeth.

  *

  Doctor Eaton is speaking to Bella although it takes her a moment to hear him. ‘I said - you may come over to him now, Miss Stuart.’

  ‘Oh yes, thank you, doctor. Sorry, I was—’ Bella sits on the side of the bed, puts her hand on Alec’s cool forehead.

  ‘Is it my birthday yet?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, Alec. You were ten yesterday,’ she says.

  ‘Did I miss it?’

  ‘You’ll catch it up. Don’t worry.’

  Around her she hears the day starting up. There is a sound of carts and trucks passing outside on the way to the flower markets. A factory horn from Ventimiglia stabs into and rips across the belly of the sky. The back door shudders and slams as Rosa arrives. A few seconds later the furnace gives its first gurgle. The door of the bedroom gently clicks and when she looks to the wall Edward has gone.