A Woman Unknown

by Frances Brody

  The word urgency struck a chord. He said, ‘Deirdre has been here. She’s taken her rosary and her lucky pixie.’

  ‘Are you sure she didn’t have them with her?’

  ‘No. They were on her dressing table yesterday.’

  ‘Well that’s a relief. She’s safe and well. Did she take anything else? Any clothing?’

  ‘Her grey coat has gone, a black skirt and two blouses.’

  ‘When do you think she was here?’

  ‘I waited in yesterday, and then went off for the night shift. I have to keep working.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘I left home at five yesterday evening. It was about three o’clock this morning when I dropped the case of type on my foot.’ He stared down at his foot as if it were far away, and belonged to someone else.

  ‘Is it very painful?’

  ‘I don’t mind if it is. It’s nothing. What’s a pain?’

  We contemplated this immense question for a moment. ‘And what time did you get home?’

  ‘I was in the infirmary until after five. They know how to keep you waiting, so I would have been home by six or half past. I didn’t know she’d been. I was that done in, I crawled up to bed, and slept for a few hours. And then I saw that the rosary was gone …’

  ‘And the pixie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked suddenly forlorn, and quite weak. ‘Can I get you anything, Mr Fitzpatrick? Cup of tea? Slice of bread and butter?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘How are you coping?’

  ‘I’m framing well enough. I know I’ve to keep my strength up.’

  ‘Mr Fitzpatrick, might any of your neighbours have seen your wife? Is there anyone she is close to?’

  ‘She keeps to herself. We don’t like getting over-familiar. You never know where it might lead. All I know is that she hadn’t been home when I left for work yesterday evening, and she had been back when I woke up.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘The question is, did she come in the middle of the night, or while I was sleeping? Surely she’d have stopped if she looked in on me and saw I had a poorly foot.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Tell me, when you went to the post office to send me the telegram, did you inform the police that she has been home?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I want you to find her. The police are useless. First they showed barely an interest. Said they were doing what they could, but short of manpower. Then overnight it was as if they were hunting a criminal. They were here taking fingerprints. How will fingerprints help to find her?’

  ‘You said some of her clothing is gone. May I look in her room?’

  He nodded glumly.

  ‘At least now we have something to go on. If you are right about her coming back last night, or early this morning, we know that she is safe, and has some plan.’

  I escaped to the stairs and into the front bedroom. Two summer dresses hung in the wardrobe, alongside a wool skirt and a winter coat. I opened the dresser drawers releasing the smell of mothballs. There was a paisley print home-made blouse, a hand-knitted jumper and cardigan. Was the neat folding Fitzpatrick’s doing, I wondered. The washstand held towels, a face cloth, along with liniment, aspirins, a curved tortoiseshell comb, an expensive tablet of soap and various odds and ends.

  When did you take your underwear and stockings, Deirdre, and your nightdress?

  Slowly, I went down the stairs.

  His look was hopeful, as though I may have divined some crucial information from the whitewashed walls.

  ‘Is there an overnight bag missing? You’ll have noticed that there is no nightdress, underwear or stockings in her room.’

  His mouth opened. ‘No. I did not open that drawer, where she keeps her …’ He eased himself up, grabbing the crutches, hobbling towards the cellar head.

  ‘Don’t risk that, Mr Fitzpatrick. What is it you have thought of?’

  ‘Her shopping basket and bag. They should be on the slab in the cellar. That’s where she keeps them, so as not to untidy this room, you see. They were there on Sunday, when I took the ham back into the cellar.’

  ‘Do you have a light in the cellar?’

  ‘No. Take the candle from the mantelshelf.’

  I lit the candle with a taper from the jar.

  The chill came instantly as I opened the door to the cellar. I felt a ripple of horror as I descended. What if Fitzpatrick had killed her, and all this concern was an elaborate charade? Yet the cellar had no smell of blood or fear, only coal, and damp. Everything was in order – the cold press, the dolly tub, brooms and mops. There was an overnight bag, an unlocked trunk that contained a valise, but no shopping basket.

  When I came back upstairs, I said, ‘No shopping basket. So it looks as if she took her few things and carried them in a basket. She probably wore the coat.’

  ‘Where has she gone?’ he wailed.

  ‘That’s what we shall find out. Think carefully. Tell me everywhere she has been where she may go again: friends, family, anywhere at all.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘That’s just it. I know only what she tells me. Mostly, she goes back to where she came from, to those streets around the Bank, Cotton Street, where her mother lived, Flax Street, where she has a school friend who worked with her at the shoe factory before we married, Holdforth Square where she visits Eddie’s mother, so she says.’

  ‘Who else lives in the house on Cotton Street, Deirdre’s mother’s house?’

  ‘The aunts, Mary and Brenda. They don’t like me any more than her mother did.’

  I began to suspect plots. Perhaps Deirdre’s brother would take her back to America. His having come to me with Fitzpatrick and Deirdre’s lovesick childhood sweetheart Eddie was nothing but a smokescreen. ‘Anywhere else you can think of? Somewhere she may have been happy and wanted to return to.’

  ‘We had our honeymoon in Scarborough. She loved the sea.’

  ‘Where did you stay?’

  ‘In a boarding house on the front, with a Mrs Redhead. Very smart woman.’

  I would pass on that information, but the fact that Deirdre was still in this area three days after she had been last seen, made me think she was closer to home. ‘I’ll make enquiries,’ I said lamely, ‘but I wonder if she is somewhere nearby, with some friend in Kirkstall she hasn’t mentioned, or an old school friend or a former workmate, someone who would keep her confidence.’

  ‘If she was on the Bank people would know. You can’t keep secrets there.’ He suddenly became animated. ‘You’ve hit it. She must go to Cotton Street tonight.’

  ‘Why tonight?’

  ‘It’s her mother’s wake. Deirdre can’t not be there. My brother-in-law made the funeral arrangements. Her mother has been brought home, and later she’ll be taken into church. The Requiem Mass will be tomorrow.’

  ‘Then we should go. You’re right.’

  His animation fled as quickly as it had come. ‘Her people don’t like me. They won’t want me there.’

  ‘But you’re the son-in-law. You were getting on famously with Deirdre. You went with her to the nursing home.’

  ‘How can I get there, like this?’

  ‘Get your coat, Mr Fitzpatrick. We’re going to the wake.’

  He looked at me in alarm, as though I had made a lewd suggestion. ‘How will I explain you? My wife gone, and me turning up with a strange woman?’

  ‘Tell the truth. Introduce me. Say I am helping you to look for Deirdre.’

  ‘You’re right. I want her to know … if she is there … or even if she isn’t and somebody knows where she is, they can tittle-tattle back to her that I came.’ Fitzpatrick struggled to his feet. He nodded at the jacket on the hook behind the door. ‘Do you mind?’

  I helped him on with his jacket.

  He balanced on one crutch, switching it from left to right. ‘You’re right. What do appearances matter where Deirdre is concerned? I can’t miss the wake. And I mustn’t go empty-handed, being the son-in
-law.’

  ‘I have never been to a wake, Mr Fitzpatrick. You must tell me what to expect.’

  ‘I must buy a bottle of whisky. You’ll stop at the outsales?’

  ‘Yes of course.’

  ‘Pass me that tin will you?’ He nodded at a toffee tin on the mantelpiece.

  When I placed it on the table, he took off the lid and tipped out coins, including a guinea. He began to shake. His grey face crumpled.

  ‘She hasn’t taken a penny. She’s been back but she’s left pay for the milk, coal, insurance, housekeeping. How will she manage?’

  ‘Never mind that now. Is there enough for what you need?’

  Given I was the one with two good feet who must buy the whisky, I stopped at the Lloyds Arms where I am known, and would not be stared at.

  I gave Fitzpatrick the bottle to nurse.

  As we came closer to the Bank, he veered between optimism, convincing himself that Deirdre would be at her mother’s to receive condolences, and pessimism, that she wandered lost on some moor or in a wood, with only a rosary and a lucky pixie in her pocket.

  As I drove, I asked Fitzpatrick, ‘Tell me a little more about who shares the house and who might be able to help us.’

  ‘The two spinster aunts, Mary and Brenda, as I mentioned, and there’s the old uncle, Jimmy, who chooses to confine himself to the cellar when he’s not out and about on his rounds or attending funerals. You’ll recognise him from his similarity to a picture-book gnome.’

  ‘Who is most likely to have useful information?’

  ‘They are. The aunts. And Deirdre has a friend she was at school with, and worked with at the shoe factory on East Street.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Rita O’Neil. She was our bridesmaid, married to one of the fellows from the factory. You won’t miss her if she’s there. She’s takes over any room she enters. You’ll know her by her waving ginger hair.’

  On Marsh Lane, a train rattled overhead, belching steam and smoke. Everything about these streets looked dull, grey and black.

  As the motor bumped across the cobbles, half a dozen thin, dirty children looked up from their listless games of dipping fingers into summer-warmed gas tar and chalking on the pavement with a stone. Two of them were barefoot, all of them poorly dressed. As one, they jumped to their feet and ran after the motor.

  When the children saw at which house we drew up, they kept a respectful distance. I parked behind Anthony Hartigan’s hired Rolls-Royce. Perhaps never in its history had Cotton Street been host to two motor cars at once.

  Fitzpatrick exited awkwardly from the vehicle, holding onto the bonnet while I passed his crutches and the bottle of whisky.

  A group of men stood about outside the house, by the window, smoking. Behind them, the curtains were drawn.

  Fitzpatrick swung towards the door. He acknowledged someone, with a nod and a murmur of his name, Jimmy. Here then was the ancient gnome, his moth-eaten cap worn at a jaunty angle. He leaned against the window sill, his gaunt cheeks sucked in as he drew on a clay pipe.

  I followed Fitzpatrick into the downstairs room, which hushed as we entered. Chairs and buffets must have been brought in by neighbours. There was barely an inch of unoccupied floor space. As we entered, two women stood to leave. I turned sideways to let them pass, and they acknowledged me with nods as they left.

  Fitzpatrick set the whisky down on the table. Anthony had been standing with his back to the fire. He leaned across to shake Fitzpatrick’s hand, and at the same time gave me a friendly nod. ‘Mrs Shackleton, thank you for coming.’

  ‘My condolences,’ I said to him and to anyone else who wanted to accept them.

  Fitzpatrick turned to the woman nearest the fire. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Aunt Mary. Mona did her best in life, and that’s a fact.’

  I glanced about the room, wearing my amiable yet slightly sorrowful visitor look. The mirror above the fireplace was turned to the wall. The shelf held a crucifix, statues and little black-edged cards with pictures of saints.

  The hum of conversation resumed.

  Fitzpatrick was explaining to Aunt Mary how he injured his foot.

  A woman seated by the table said, ‘You’ll have a cup of tea.’

  ‘She will of course,’ Hartigan said. ‘And Cyril, you’ll take a drink. What was it you said you did to your foot?’

  While Fitzpatrick explained his accident again, I watched the woman with tight ginger ringlets pour tea. She was about Deirdre’s age, and I took a guess. ‘You’re Rita, a friend of Deirdre’s?’

  ‘I am. Or that is to say we were good friends but some people don’t like a woman to keep up with old friends.’ She stared accusingly at Fitzpatrick.

  Fitzpatrick ignored her. To the room in general, he said, ‘This is Mrs Shackleton, a family friend.’

  He had lost the nerve to introduce me as the person helping him to find his wife.

  Rita said, ‘Well I’ve never heard of you.’

  There seemed to be no opportunity to ask had anyone seen Deirdre. She simply was not mentioned.

  Fitzpatrick turned to me. ‘Will you come upstairs, Mrs Shackleton?’

  Rita gave the slightest of titters.

  Fitzpatrick let me go first and I was glad of that as I did not relish the thought of his toppling backwards down the narrow stone staircase and crushing me to a pulp. But after the first step, he gave up. ‘Will you carry up these blessed crutches? I’ll manage best under my own steam. I’m used to being on my knees.’

  I carried the crutches up the stairs, and then turned to see Fitzpatrick making rapid progress on hands and knees.

  Once upright again, Fitzpatrick dipped his fingers in a small font of holy water that was nailed to the wall where in a different house there may have been a light switch. The font was attached to the base of a metal crucifix, about six inches long, the tiny thorn-crowned figure looking sadly down at the water below his feet.

  The bedroom window was open a little but gave no breeze. A sheet had been rigged to stretch from the posts at the bed head to its foot, providing a canopy. Candles flickered on the mantelpiece and washstand. I hung back as Fitzpatrick adjusted his crutches and approached the bed, stepping round three women who knelt at the bedside, telling their beads with a low murmur, as if chanting spells.

  Fitzpatrick touched the dead woman’s forehead. I brought myself to look at Deirdre’s mother for the first and last time. Mrs Hartigan’s skin had a parchment-like quality, with many small lines, like cracks in old paper. There was a sharpness to her features and the severely parted grey hair and closed, deep set eyes made her look already like an effigy on a tomb.

  Fitzpatrick stepped back. ‘Say goodbye,’ he ordered.

  I hesitated. It felt strange to be paying respects to a woman I had not known, and too intrusive to touch her, as Fitzpatrick had. But having come into the room, I could do no other than approach, ignoring the kneeling women on my right.

  I almost touched her forehead, sufficiently close to feel a cold tingle in my fingers. This would get me nowhere. Where is your daughter? I asked silently

  You’ll be the last to know, came the dead woman’s wordless reply.

  Fitzpatrick disconcerted the praying women by awkwardly using his crutches as an aid to lowering himself to his knees. He pulled beads from his pocket to join in.

  I glanced around the room. There was a flowered dress on the back of the door, carefully placed on a hanger. It did not belong to the dead woman, or the aunts. It was a short-sleeved summer frock. How much time did Deirdre spend here? I wondered. And was she here now? Perhaps she had dashed to hide in the cellar when someone said, Your husband is coming.

  It was then that I noticed Eddie in the corner of the room, looking every inch the boxer, dazed from life’s punches but waiting to spring into the ring. One look at his unhappy face told me that Deirdre was not here.

  When the rosary came to an end, two of the women stood up nimbly enough and after kissing the dead woma
n’s forehead, and touching her cheek and hands, they left. The remaining woman then pushed herself to her feet, using the edge of the bed. Fitzpatrick, forgetting his own infirmity, moved to help her, saying, ‘Sorry for your loss, Aunt Brenda. She looks at peace. Her troubles are over.’ He then spoke to the dead woman. ‘Mona, your life was hard but you saw your son at the last. You died a contented woman.’

  Brenda was not unlike her sister Mary, but her hair was still black, and her bright eyes looked altogether more intelligent, and more wary. ‘Is that so? Is that so indeed, or did himself downstairs, turning up in the image of his father, push you over the edge altogether, Mona? That and the rattling of the cart they call an ambulance, bumping her over the cobbles all the way to Roundhay until the poor soul’s insides must have been shook about and her very bones worked loose.’

  Fitzpatrick adjusted his crutches. ‘That nursing home was a good clean place,’ he protested mildly. ‘And sure isn’t the matron’s family from Kilkenny? Deirdre did what she thought best.’

  ‘I don’t hold Deirdre to blame. But where is she?’

  Fitzpatrick looked uncomfortable. ‘Here’s the point. I’m at a loss to know where she could be and I have this lady here helping me to find her.’

  ‘Aye well you’re looking in the wrong place. No one has seen her here.’

  A heavy silence filled the room. Through the open window came the voices of the men, talking quietly in the street below.

  ‘Do you hear that, Mona?’ the aunt addressed the dead woman. ‘Your precious son-in-law does not know where your daughter is.’ She turned to him. ‘What have you done to the lass?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing. For mercy’s sake, Brenda, I’m doing my best to find her. You talk as if it’s my fault.’

  She stared at him, and then spoke to Mona again. ‘Will you listen to the man’s excuses? It’s not his fault that he can’t find his wife.’

  I caught Fitzpatrick’s eye, to let him know that he must not stand here arguing.

  He took the hint and turned to go.

  In the doorway, he put down his crutches and lowered himself onto his bottom to descend the stairs.