‘I took a lamp inside after I switched it off,’ said Dermot. ‘If that had been a pig, like, instead of a nun, I’d have said that she was fierce overdone.’
Riona said, ‘The Romans were supposed to have roasted people in the brazen bull for days, until they were nothing but bones, and when they took the bones out they said they shone like diamonds. They used to make necklaces out of them.’
‘Cracked, them fecking Romans, if you ask me.’
Dermot unlatched the hog roaster and with two loud clangs the stainless-steel covers dropped down on either side. Sister Aibrean was curled up on the metal tray with her knees bent and her hands up under her chin. Her skin was shiny and dark brown, so that she looked more like a giant insect than an elderly woman. Riona approached the hog roaster and looked down at her. In places her bones had broken through her flesh, so that Riona could see her elbows and her ribs and her pelvis.
So this is all she ever amounted to, she thought, God’s devoted servant, who bullied me and demeaned me and took away my precious boy. Underneath that frigid white skin she was nothing but a jigsaw puzzle of old bones, with a nasty, pious, self-righteous brain nestling inside her skull. Well, now that skin has been roasted and that brain has had all of that nastiness and piety and self-righteousness cooked right out of it. She leaned over Sister Aibrean’s brown, blind face and spat in it.
‘Jesus, you really hate them fecking nuns, don’t you?’ said Dermot, shaking his head. ‘What do you want to do with her? We could grind her up, like, and mix her with the horse cubes and then nobody would ever know what had happened to her, would they? I can’t see the shades analysing nobs of horse shit, can you, to see if they can find a nun in one of them?’
‘I want people to know what happened to her, Dermot!’ snapped Riona. ‘I want them to know how she suffered before she died! How many times I have told you that is the whole reason we’re doing this? Why do you think we sent up Sister Mona with those balloons? For the fun of it? Why do you think I told you to throw Sister Barbara in the fountain? If they simply vanished, what would be the point of it? They’d be gone and after a week or so nobody would care that they’d vanished, or wonder where they’d gone to, or why.’
‘If you say so,’ said Dermot. ‘I think we’re taking a fierce risk myself. But then, you’re the one who’s paying.’
‘Yes, Dermot, I’m the one who’s paying. So can you go and wake up Conor, since he’ll probably be asleep by now, and we can take Sister Aibrean down to Cork. I’ll tell you where I want you to put her on show.’
Dermot frowned at the body in the hog roaster. ‘I hope she’s not going to fall to bits when we try to take her out of there.’
‘No, she’ll stay in one piece all right. Besides, I’m going to dress her again. That’ll help keep her together.’
‘You’re going to dress her again? Lamb of the Lord Jesus, rather you than me!’
‘You’re going to help, Dermot. I can’t manage it on my own.’
Dermot said nothing more. They both knew that he could walk out any time he wanted to, but then he would have nowhere to stay and no money, and where would a man with a record of criminal detention in a psychiatric hospital find work and a bed to sleep in?
Between them, Riona and Dermot lifted the metal tray out of the hog roaster and laid it on the floor. Dermot took out a clasp knife and cut the cords that were binding Sister Aibrean’s wrists and ankles. Then he straightened out her arms and legs, with a crackle that sounded like pistol shots, kneeling on her knees with all of his weight and bending her arms back until he dislocated her elbows.
When he had done that he held her body up clear of the tray while Riona pulled on her habit, knotting it loosely around her waist, and then her scapular. She didn’t bother with her drawers or underskirts. Finally, she fitted Sister Aibrean’s cowl over her brown, grinning face, and pinned on her scarf.
‘Would you look at the state of that?’ said Dermot when Riona had finished dressing her. ‘That’s like something out of the nightmares I used to have about nuns when I was a kid. My mate Pauly told me that all nuns looked like fecking great spiders underneath their habits and that’s why they only showed you their faces and their hands. Scared the living shite out of me, that did.’
‘Go and wake up Conor,’ said Riona. ‘I’ll go and get my coat and fetch the Range Rover around. Oh, and bring that cord, too. We’re going to be needing it to tie her into position.’
43
Katie dreamed that she was standing in front of the grotto in Ballinspittle where, in 1985, the small statue of the Blessed Virgin had been seen to move and breathe, and which ever after had become a place of pilgrimage.
In her dream it was night-time and very dark, but the Virgin had a halo of stars which were lit up and illuminated her stone-white face and the huge red roses that had been placed all around her.
Katie had visited the grotto the week after little Seamus had died. She didn’t really believe in miracles, and even the bishop of Cork and Ross had been very cautious about acknowledging that the statue might really have moved. But since the doctors hadn’t been able fully to explain why Seamus had died, and in spite of all of her prayers God had remained silent, she had gone to Ballinspittle to see if she could find some kind of an answer.
She hadn’t seen the Virgin move and she hadn’t heard Her speak, but all the same she had found some measure of comfort standing in that country road, in the drizzle, with nobody else around. And here she was again, in her dream, although she wasn’t aware that it was a dream.
She looked up at the Virgin and said, ‘You know where Seamus is, don’t you?’
The Virgin opened her eyes and turned her head to give Katie a tender smile. ‘Yes,’ she said, softly. ‘Seamus is coming back to you.’
‘You mean – this is Seamus? This baby I’m carrying now? I’m going to give birth to Seamus all over again?’
The Virgin nodded and closed her eyes, but Katie was so shocked that she woke up with a jolt, feeling that the ground had suddenly given way from under her feet.
She opened her eyes. It took her a few seconds to realize that she was in bed in her house in Carrig View. The bedroom was totally dark except for the red numerals on the digital clock – 3.27 a.m. She turned over to face John and she must have woken him up, too, because he shifted himself closer and said, ‘Katie? Are you okay?’
‘Ah, sure, I’m grand, thanks. I was dreaming, that’s all.’
‘Nothing too sexy, I hope,’ he said, and kissed her forehead, and then the tip of her nose, and then her lips. ‘Not having an orgy, were you, with a crowd of other fellows?’
She kissed him back and said, ‘You don’t ever have to be jealous of me, darling.’
He lifted the hem of her short nightgown and ran his hand right up her back, stroking her between her shoulder blades.
‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘That feels good. You should have been a professional masseur.’
‘What? Rubbing the arses of wobbly old women all day? No thanks. You’re the only woman I want to massage.’
He slid his hand around and started to fondle her breast, gently rolling her nipple between finger and thumb until it stiffened. Even though her breast was so tender, she began to feel aroused. She could feel his breath against her face, and he was breathing harder and she could see his eyes glistening in the darkness.
She kissed him and said, ‘Hold on,’ and sat up in bed so that she could pull her nightgown over her head. Then, naked, she turned back to him and held him close to her. Somehow it made it more exciting that she could hardly see him in the darkness, but she could feel his muscular shoulders and the crucifix of hairs on his chest.
He caressed her hip, which made her jump, and then his fingertips trailed across her stomach and between her legs. She was already very wet and slippery, and he slid one finger up inside her while he slowly rotated the ball of his thumb over her clitoris.
‘You’re like a god, you know that,’ she whisp
ered. She opened her thighs wider and John knelt up between them. She reached down and cupped his balls in the palm of her hand and then she took hold of his stiffened penis and guided it into herself. When he entered her, she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a long oohhhh! of pleasure and release. With John holding her and kissing her, and his hardened penis so far up inside her that it gave her little shivers, all of her anxieties seemed to dwindle into nothing but a single spark, and then even that spark winked out. All she could think of was him and how wonderful he was making her feel. His smell, and the tautness of his muscles, and the brushing of his hair against her bare skin.
‘Oh, Katie,’ he gasped, and he began to push himself into her faster and harder. ‘God almighty, what you do to me.’
After a while, though, he drew himself out of her. ‘Turn over,’ he panted and laid his hand on her hip to help her get up. She knew what he wanted because they often used to do it like that, with Katie on her hands and knees. In that position, he could enter her even deeper, and even harder, until she could almost believe that his penis was going to come out of her mouth.
‘No, John, not like that,’ she told him. ‘Not tonight.’ She reached down and took hold of his penis again, pulling him back towards her. ‘Let’s just carry on like this.’
‘Oh, come on, baby, you know how much you love it.’
‘No, John, please.’
He must have caught something in her tone of voice, because he stayed perfectly still for a moment and she could hear that he was suppressing his heavy breathing. Then he dropped sideways, back on to the bed.
‘What’s wrong, Katie?’ he asked her.
‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s grand.’
‘But you didn’t want me to make love to you like that. You didn’t think I was going to try to put it up the wrong hole, did you?’
‘No, and you know I like that sometimes. It’s too – it’s too violent, that’s all.’
‘Violent?’ said John, propping himself up on one elbow. ‘What do you mean by “violent”? When have I ever been violent?’
‘Sorry, “violent” isn’t the word I was looking for, not at all.’ She lifted her hand in the darkness and touched his unshaven cheek. ‘What I meant was, when we do it like that, you go too far into me.’
‘You never complained about that before. I thought that was the whole point of doing it like that.’
‘Yes, but—’ and now she couldn’t stop the words coming out because they tumbled out all on their own, like children rushing out of school, and once she had spoken them she couldn’t unspeak them. ‘When we did it like that before, I wasn’t pregnant.’
The silence that followed seemed to Katie to last for hours. John’s breathing gradually returned to normal, but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t move. She almost wondered if he had fallen asleep again. Perhaps he had fallen asleep before she had admitted that she was pregnant, in which case the Blessed Virgin had granted her a few more days’ grace.
‘John?’ she said.
He sat up, reached over and switched on his bedside lamp. His curly black hair looked wild and his eyes were puffy.
‘Pregnant?’ he said. ‘How far gone?’
‘Eleven weeks the end of this week.’
‘I came back only seven weeks ago.’
‘Yes.’
‘So it’s not mine, then? I mean, it’s not ours – yours and mine? That’s insane. How could it be?’
‘No. No, it isn’t.’
Katie had thought that when it came to this moment she might burst into tears and beg for his understanding, but now that she had actually told him she felt very calm, and also deeply protective of the child inside her. No matter what the circumstances, it had been conceived and she was going to be its mother.
John had walked out on her to go to America and she had believed that he would never come back, so why should she have stayed celibate? He might have refrained from having any affairs himself because he had missed her so much, but it was totally unreasonable for him to expect her to have done the same.
He stood up and walked naked across to the wardrobe. He still had crimson scratches from Katie’s fingernails across one shoulder.
‘Don’t you want to know who the father is?’ Katie asked him.
‘What difference would it make?’ he said, keeping his back turned to her. He took out a thick maroon roll-neck sweater and a pair of dark grey corduroy trousers.
‘I think that if you knew the circumstances, you might find it easier to come to terms with it.’
‘What do you mean, “circumstances”? The circumstances were that you fucked some other fellow. I don’t need to know if he bought you dinner beforehand.’
Katie watched him as he dressed. Physically, she thought he was so beautiful. She didn’t want to lose him, but already she was beginning to feel that dull emotional pain that she had experienced when he had left for San Francisco. As he pulled on his trousers she could see that his penis was still reddened and half swollen from their lovemaking, but his erection was dying fast.
‘What are you getting dressed for?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come back to bed and we can talk about this in the morning. You’re as tired as I am.’
‘I’m going to take a walk, that’s all.’
‘John, don’t be mental. It’s not even four o’clock in the morning and it’s teeming outside by the sound of it. Not only that, there’s a very good reason why there’s two armed protection officers sitting outside keeping a watch out.’
He turned around. She couldn’t read the expression on his face at all. His eyes were always dark ocean blue, but now they looked even darker. ‘Okay, then, I’ll go for a drive.’
‘Please, John, stay,’ Katie begged him. ‘I’ll go and sleep on the couch if you don’t want to sleep with me.’
‘What kind of a scummer do you think I am? You think I’d throw a woman out of her own bed when she’s eleven weeks’ pregnant?’
‘John – we need to talk about this. We really do.’
‘Talk?’ He tugged his fingers through his curls but only succeeded in making them even more tangled. ‘Sure we do. You’re right. We do need to talk. But give me a little time to think it over, would you?’
He left the bedroom, closing the door very quietly behind him, like a parent who doesn’t want to wake a sleeping child. Katie thought about going after him, but she knew that John was never easily persuaded. He wasn’t inflexible, but if he ever changed his mind about anything he had to believe that he had changed it himself.
She heard him going into the living room, and then a clatter and a noise like fabric tearing. She stayed where she was. If he was angry and he had broken some of her ornaments, she didn’t want a physical confrontation. Apart from anything else, she could probably beat him in a fight, because she was a second-dan black belt at kick-boxing and still attended the Miko academy as often as she could, and she didn’t want to humiliate him any more than she had already.
She heard the beeping sound of him switching off the burglar alarm and then the front door slamming. Soon after that, she heard his car start up and reverse out of the driveway. Then there was nothing but the pattering of the rain against the bedroom window.
She continued to lie in bed, but she kept the light on because she knew perfectly well that she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
She said a prayer, asking God to protect John while he was feeling so angry and jealous and resentful, but also to help him understand how much she loved him, and that she hadn’t slept with David Kane as a deliberate act of betrayal.
* * *
After about an hour the rain stopped. Katie climbed out of bed and took her thick pink bathrobe down from its hook on the back of the door. She went into the kitchen first and filled the kettle. Barney looked up from his bed, confused that she was walking around the house at this time of the morning, and wuffled at her.
‘It’s okay, Barns. It’s only human beings behaving like human b
eings. Stone mad, in other words.’
While the kettle boiled, she went through to the living room. As soon as she switched on the light she saw that John’s half-squashed tubes of acrylic paint were scattered all across the carpet, as well as his brushes and his wooden palette. Lying on the coffee table was the nude painting of her. He had torn it in half, diagonally.
Katie went over and picked up the two halves. It looked as if he had folded the board backwards and forwards several times before tearing it, so that it was damaged beyond repair.
Again, she didn’t cry, although it grieved her so much that she had to sit down on the couch, still holding the two pieces, one in each hand. She understood the message. You’ve torn me in half, so now I’ve torn you in half, too. Barney came and stood in the living-room doorway, with his head on one side, and made that mewling sound in the back of his throat as if he were asking her what was wrong.
She had been sitting there only a few minutes when her phone rang, which made her jump.
‘Detective Superintendent Maguire? It’s Garda Sergeant Mulliken. Sorry to be calling you at this ungodly hour, ma’am, but there’s something you need to be coming into the city to see for yourself first-hand. Detective Inspector O’Rourke and Detective O’Donovan are here already.’
‘What is it ? Where?’ asked Katie.
‘Patrick’s Bridge, ma’am. It’s one of your nuns.’
44
She tried ringing John before she left the house, but he didn’t answer. She walked across to the two protection officers sitting in their dark unmarked car in the rain and tapped on their window.
‘I’ve been called into city and I doubt I’ll be back until much later today. My partner’s gone out for a drive but he didn’t tell me how long he was going to be.’
‘He had a word with us himself, ma’am,’ said the garda in the passenger seat. ‘He told us he’d be coming back in a couple of hours but he wouldn’t be staying for long, like.’
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