The Bells of Scotland Road

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘But why? Weren’t they safer back in Astleigh Fold?’

  ‘Of course. But Anthony came to find the girls. It seems that Maureen went to mass with Cathy. In the church, Maureen finally realized the identity of the attacker. In spite of Cathy’s pleading, Maureen insisted on coming home to see the police.’

  Shauna appeared in the doorway. ‘Your clothes, Mammy.’ She placed a bundle on the counter. ‘Hello, Father.’ She turned to Bridie. ‘Tildy’s getting dressed. We can’t stay here, not after what’s happened.’

  Bridie took the clothing and dressed herself in relative privacy at the foot of the stairs. Waking Muth would be a waste of time, she decided. Muth would not leave the house, no matter what the Germans threw at her. All fingers and thumbs, Bridie struggled with buttons and stockings.

  Tildy joined her. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  Bridie could not bring herself to tell her. ‘Go through to the shop. Someone has broken in. Father Brennan and Shauna are there.’

  Tildy, Shauna, Bridie and Father Brennan stood round the inert body in the shop. ‘Who is it?’ asked Tildy.

  ‘Father Bell,’ replied the priest.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  Bridie looked into Michael Brennan’s eyes. ‘We’re not sure,’ she replied carefully.

  Shauna took charge, unlocked and opened the front door. ‘Mammy, get hold of one of his feet – Tildy, take the other one.’ With Michael Brennan and Shauna O’Brien at the heavy end, the four of them dragged Liam outside.

  Father Brennan took a whistle and sent a long blast along Scotland Road. After several seconds, a warden and a policeman put in an appearance. ‘Take him, lock him up,’ said the priest. He glanced skyward, saw a lone bomber making its weary way home. As it faltered its way over Liverpool, the guns fired and finished it off. In a blaze of flame, the plane dived into the Mersey.

  The priest took aside the warden and the policeman, told them to guard Liam well. ‘I shall be along to the station in the morning,’ he said. ‘Just keep him safe.’ He tugged at Bridie’s arm. ‘Come along now. We’ll go to the school. Anthony is there taking care of Cathy and Maureen.’

  ‘Our Maureen?’ asked Tildy, her voice shrill. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ replied Bridie.

  They left Liam with his guards, then began the walk towards St Aloysius Gonzaga.

  For a reason she would never be able to explain in a million years, Bridie suddenly stopped, turned and retraced her steps. Shauna made to follow her mother, but Michael held her back. ‘The bombing seems to be over,’ he said. ‘Let her go. She’ll be back in a few minutes.’

  Bridie gave Liam and his companions a wide berth, ran through the shop and into the living room. From the mantelpiece, she took a small green tin, opened it, sniffed at its contents. The scent of tobacco still lingered, though the box contained little more than dried dust. ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘thanks for looking after us. Wherever you are, I know you are keeping an eye on me and mine.’ She slipped the tin into her pocket and returned to the shop.

  She heard a vehicle stopping outside, knew that Sam’s son was being taken away. Oh, Sam. Always, always, she would keep the tobacco tin.

  Bridie looked at the counter on which she had almost been raped, took in the broken window and the scattered ironmongery. The feeling that she would never come back here was strong. She gazed on the piles of books, the mangles and dolly tubs, the sewing machine in a corner, a violin on a shelf.

  Prodded by an invisible hand, she left Bell’s Pledges and ran towards the church. When the small group had reached Newsham Street, the temporary silence was broken once more by the sound of engines overhead. A crippled Heinkel stumbled across the sky. It seemed so low that anyone might have reached up and touched it.

  ‘He’s going home,’ said Tildy wearily.

  The plane seemed to be dropping by the second. To ease its journey, it released the rest of its load onto Scotland Road. Bridie stood open-mouthed while Sam’s shop disappeared in the space of two seconds. She held the tobacco tin tightly in her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ she said inwardly. ‘All your hard work gone.’ Dirty air rushed at them, caused everyone but Shauna to turn away.

  Shauna ran screaming down the road. ‘Muth!’ she cried. ‘Muth, I’m coming.’

  Bridie spat out the dust and chased her daughter. ‘Shauna! You can’t do anything, you can’t, you can’t!’

  The two of them stood at the edge of smouldering ruins. Through clouds of smoke and dirt, they looked into a hole that was once their home.

  ‘There’s still the staircase, Mammy,’ sobbed Shauna. ‘Look at that. Stairs that go nowhere. And Muth is dead, Mammy. Poor Muth.’

  Bridie clung to her child. Three brass balls, still attached to their moulded moorings, lay at her feet. The mangle nearest the door remained intact, as did the sewing machine. She shuddered, passed a handkerchief to Shauna, who was weeping softly. Death had been inches and seconds away when she had returned for Sam’s tin. Between her shoulder blades, she still felt the strange touch that had propelled her to safety. ‘It could be my imagination,’ she said. ‘But it was as if Sam had pushed me out of there.’

  ‘No, Mammy,’ sobbed Shauna. ‘It wasn’t your imagination. It was Sam. He saved us. He loved us, just as Anthony does.’

  Bridie, who had worried herself to the verge of illness about how her children would accept Anthony, knew that she was forgiven. God was the architect, no doubt. But Sam had surely contributed something towards the plan.

  Twenty-three

  Bridie looked through the small window, saw a bed with a motionless figure lying beneath a white coverlet. Liam had been sedated and the stab wound was stitched and healing. After recovering from the blow to his head, he had become agitated, had screamed at someone called Martin, who, in turn, had given Liam a few tellings-off. His skull was not fractured, though a sizeable bump had appeared on the side of his head. Even now, days after the event, a large, purple bruise sat over one eye.

  ‘He’s still asleep,’ said Bridie. She looked at the rest of the company, each one of them sitting in a chair against the wall of a green-painted corridor. The floor was brown linoleum, and a nasty mêlée of scents fought in the air – disinfectant challenging polish, overcooked cabbage warring with the sad odour of sick flesh.

  Brother Nicholas had been summoned to the prison hospital. Bridie had remembered, eventually, most of what Liam had said, had passed on as much information as possible. Brother Martin Waring really was a Frère de la Croix de St Pierre. ‘An odd sort of chap,’ Brother Nicholas had said earlier. ‘Yet so very diligent.’ The good brother sat now with a rosary in his hands. He prayed for the man who had been arrested, prayed for Liam Bell’s victims and for world peace. The monk he had known for many years was twice ordained and was two people. Father Liam Bell had been arrested, but Brother Martin Waring would also be paying the price.

  Anthony Bell drew the woman he loved into a chair next to his. ‘Stop punishing yourself, Bridie,’ he told her. ‘None of us knew where he was; Brother Nicholas did not know Liam’s true identity. There is no blame.’

  The monk stopped praying for a few moments. ‘Martin Waring is the predominant persona,’ he told the group. ‘I do not know Father Liam Bell. None of the brothers knew him.’ He fiddled with the rosary, frowned with the effort of remembering. ‘On a few occasions, he has been heard talking to himself, but that sort of behaviour is not rare in a community such as ours. Many of us pray aloud while working, as it concentrates the mind. But we are a friendly lot, and Martin was close to nobody. He is a very unusual man. After talking to the doctors here, I think Liam and Martin were communicating with one another for much of the time at Tithebarn. Such a pity.’

  Diddy Costigan blew her nose loudly on a snow-white handkerchief. She had come here to kill a man who no longer existed. Billy kept scratching his head as if confused, and Diddy understood his feelings perfectly. Liam Bell,
that bloody awful priest, had raped Maureen. There was still no real proof, yet Diddy knew in her bones that the man behind the nearby door was the guilty party. But he wasn’t guilty, because he wasn’t Liam; he wasn’t Father Liam because he was crackers. ‘Did he know who he was when he did it?’ she asked of anyone who might be listening.

  Anthony answered as best he could. ‘He probably did, though he had no control. He invented Martin Waring as a means of hiding from his past. But Martin became real. If my brother has a better side, then he has invested it in Martin.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ asked Father Michael Brennan.

  Richard Spencer rose from his chair and walked to the door of Liam’s room. ‘He’s unfit for trial,’ he said. ‘No court on earth will manage to get sensible answers out of him.’ He dropped his chin, stared at the floor for a few seconds. ‘He’ll be locked away,’ he concluded.

  Bridie clung to Anthony. ‘He was asking about the storeroom,’ she said. ‘He wanted to get in there.’ There was no storeroom now. Everything had been destroyed in the Blitz. Muth was dead. She must try not to think about Sam’s mother, not yet. Muth had been a difficult, wily, mischievous and totally lovable woman and Bridie would miss her terribly. But there was Liam to deal with first, so Bridie would grieve later and in private. ‘The firemen are looking through the debris today. I doubt they’ll find much.’

  Michael Brennan joined Dr Richard Spencer at the door to Liam’s room. ‘Will he never get right?’ asked the priest.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So he’ll not be coming out of here?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘He’ll be moved from the prison infirmary to an asylum, I suppose. But he’ll be restricted for the rest of his life.’

  Michael Brennan sighed, turned round and faced the rest of the gathering. ‘Bridie,’ he began, ‘the firemen managed to save a few pieces from your house and shop. One of them was a box containing a green stole. It was Liam’s. It was given to me at the presbytery this morning. I recognized it right away as a part of the set made for Liam’s ordination. It’s been used as a weapon, so the proof we have lacked is with the police.’ Sam had left a note in the tin. Surely the police would sit up and take notice now, because Liam’s father had, on the day of his own death, taken the trouble to condemn one of his children.

  Diddy began to cry. The proof existed. ‘My poor Maureen,’ she sobbed. ‘My poor little girl. She had a big future, you know. She was going to be a singer, or a dancer, or both. And a priest did this to her. You’re supposed to be able to trust priests, aren’t you?’ She carried on, but the rest of her words were drowned.

  Brother Nicholas walked down the line and placed a hand on Diddy’s head. ‘Mrs Costigan, Father Bell’s, or Brother Martin’s illness is beyond all understanding. You see, he carried on quite nicely for much of the time. In fact, we have not had a better solo vocalist or a more talented carver of wood in many years. Sadly, genius and madness are separated by a hair so fine that only the Almighty can see it.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t the so-called Almighty do something about it?’ snapped Diddy. ‘If He can see it, He can stop it. Can’t He?’

  Nicholas inclined his head. ‘God saw the plague and He sees the war. Mankind makes its own way towards the hereafter. God is not there to make our path easy.’

  ‘Maureen’s lesson was on the sharp side,’ said Billy. ‘What good will come of rape? Did you know he left her pregnant, Brother Nicholas? She tried to kill herself. She went out of her mind and had to be put away. Is that what God planned for her?’

  ‘She’ll get her reward,’ replied the monk.

  Diddy jumped to her feet. ‘Her reward would be his head on a plate with an apple stuck in the gob. Her reward would be him swinging at the end of a rope. He finished my Maureen off as if he’d taken a gun to her. She’s never been right since. An eye for an eye. Isn’t that in the Bible somewhere?’

  ‘It is,’ replied the brother.

  ‘Then I want to see him. I want to talk to him.’ Diddy wiped her face and stood with her feet wide apart, as if steadying herself. ‘I’m not leaving this hospital till I’ve seen him,’ she declared.

  Michael Brennan glanced through the glass panel. ‘He’s still asleep. And if we carry on making all this noise, we’ll be thrown out.’

  Dr Spencer drew Father Brennan aside and began a whispered conference. Diddy, whose hackles were truly up, tackled the two men. ‘What are you hiding and whispering about?’

  Richard said nothing. He turned on his heel and walked off down the corridor.

  Diddy chose Anthony as her next target. ‘You must have known,’ she accused. ‘You can’t have gone through life not realizing that your brother was mad.’

  Anthony nodded, made no reply.

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell us?’

  Michael Brennan stepped into the arena. ‘Don’t blame Anthony, Diddy. Don’t you dare get on your high horse to him. He screamed blue murder at the police fifteen years ago, just after Val was murdered. Anthony was treated like a fool, and the law, which really is a total fool, hanged another man for the crime.’

  Diddy dropped back into the chair, fixed her gimlet eye on Anthony. ‘Val? He killed Val?’

  ‘Yes.’ Anthony chose not to elaborate.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ asked Big Diddy Costigan.

  ‘Lots,’ said Anthony wearily.

  ‘What do you mean by lots?’ Diddy persisted. ‘Lots of what?’

  ‘Lots of stuff the police should have looked into years ago,’ answered Father Brennan. ‘Now, we can’t stay here all day. We’ve all been interviewed by police and doctors, so we’ve done what we came to do.’

  Diddy was not prepared to budge. ‘I’ll go when I’ve seen him,’ she said. ‘And not before.’ She folded her arms as a gesture of defiance.

  Richard Spencer returned with a man in a white coat. ‘Diddy, this is Dr Moss. He’ll take us into Liam’s room for a couple of minutes. Any nonsense and you’ll be out of there quick smart.’

  Diddy took Billy’s arm and dragged him across the corridor.

  Dr Moss, a small man with bad skin and spectacles, looked uncertainly at Richard.

  ‘It will be all right,’ said Richard Spencer.

  Dr Moss led the party into Liam Bell’s room. Anthony and Bridie hovered in the doorway, while Richard, Dr Moss, Diddy and Billy approached the bed. Diddy stopped in her tracks. ‘He’s strapped in,’ she said.

  Lengths of leather with buckle fastenings kept the patient from leaving his bed. The upper half of his face was almost as white as the pillow, while the chin remained hidden behind a beard whose glossy black was streaked with grey. ‘He’s tied up,’ she said.

  Dr Moss nodded, then pushed the glasses along the bridge of his short nose. ‘He came in raving, Mrs . . . er . . .’

  ‘Costigan,’ whispered Diddy. She had not expected this, had not believed that she would find Liam so silent and vulnerable. His forehead, which had always been brown, was pale, waxy, almost unreal, the only colour provided by the bruising. She searched inside herself for a spark of the anger she had nursed since the attack on Maureen, found nothing at all. There was no temper, no hysteria, no forgiveness. Like Maureen, Diddy felt nothing.

  Anthony left Bridie, walked into the room and stared down at his brother. When Liam’s eyes opened, Anthony forced himself to remain where he was.

  ‘Liam’s brother,’ said the man in the bed.

  Anthony was riveted to the spot. Had he tried to move, he would have failed. The man was looking at him, was even trying to smile, though that coldness was still in his face. ‘Hello, Liam,’ Anthony managed with great difficulty.

  ‘I am . . .’ The drugs slowed Martin’s words. ‘I am Brother Martin,’ he finally managed. ‘Of Frères . . . de la . . . Croix de St Pierre.’

  In the doorway, Bridie turned and grabbed Father Brennan’s hand. Father Brennan was weeping softly, his lips moving in prayer. ‘Pray for him, Father,’ begged Bridie. ‘
And for Anthony, too.’ With the priest’s warm hand in hers, she felt stronger.

  Anthony continued to stand by the bed. ‘Martin?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes?’ The eyes rolled in an effort to remain open.

  ‘Where is Liam?’

  There was a short pause. ‘Scotland Road. The stole. Punishing the Irishwoman. Stop him.’

  Anthony took a deep breath. ‘Will he come back to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Can . . . can never tell what . . . Liam might do.’

  Diddy stumbled to the door, grabbed Bridie and Father Brennan, her large fingers digging into their arms. ‘I want to go home,’ she said. ‘You were right, he is crackers. It would be like belting a sick dog.’

  ‘A pound of flesh is not always the answer, Diddy,’ said Michael Brennan. ‘Revenge is often less than sweet.’

  ‘There is no revenge,’ answered Diddy. ‘It would be like putting a bullet through a ghost.’

  Bridie walked along Scotland Road for what she thought might be the last time for some months, at least. She was to be married for a second time in the Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga, would be joined to Anthony in just a few short days. Deliberately alone for now, she gazed upon the place she had come to love over the years, a place that seemed to be diminishing by the day.

  Striding over a fireman’s hose, Bridie studied what was left of the Rotunda, the famous theatre known locally as Old Roundy. Here, she had sat with her daughters to watch pantomimes and variety shows, had joined in with the singing, had seen Shauna and Cathy bright-eyed with pleasure at the exploits of some deliberately inept magician. It was dead now.

  Hitler knew where to kick, all right. The Port of Liverpool had taken a hammering for almost six months, though May had been the worst. With Liverpool and London disabled, the Germans thought they would be walking through England within weeks. ‘But they won’t,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Never in a million years.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Bell,’ called Flash Flanagan. ‘I see you’ve come to wave the old place goodbye.’ He parked his cart and pointed to the ruins. ‘We’ve had some fun in there.’