The Grace Girls

by Geraldine O'Neill

  Sophie threw an eye across at Heather who was the only one not laughing. She didn’t even seem to be listening. She was just starting into the fire, lost in her own thoughts.

  ‘You might be glad of your duffel coat tonight,’ Fintan said, nodding towards the dark window. ‘It would freeze the lugs off you out there. The weathermen on the radio were right, the mild spell is gone and the temperatures have dropped.’ He tapped Sophie on the shoulder. ‘I’d be careful what shoes you put on tonight, for it’s going to be frosty later and you could have a fall like last year. You were all black and blue with bruises after it.’

  Sophie looked startled. ‘It was my pride that was more hurt than my legs,’ she said, remembering. ‘Imagine falling outside the church after Sunday Mass – I was pure mortified.’ She suddenly decided, ‘I’ll wear my black leather boots, the ones with the good rubber soles.’

  ‘If you dig them out, I’ll give them a quick polish for you,’ Fintan said, going back into the kitchen.

  Sophie got to her feet, a small frown on her face. ‘Have you decided what you’re doing about tonight yet, Heather? Are you coming to the rosary with me and your daddy or are you going to the hospital with Kirsty?’

  There was a silence. ‘Neither,’ Heather finally said, ‘I’m just going to go to bed.’

  ‘And what about work in the morning?’

  Heather took a deep shuddering breath. ‘I’ll go in,’ she decided. ‘If I get a good night’s sleep I’ll feel a lot better.’

  Kirsty felt she knew every stone on the road into the hospital, she’d been there that often over the last month. At least things were a lot brighter and cheerier now than they’d been when they first started travelling. Michael and Sean Grace were two nice lads, and she enjoyed the journey over with them, chatting about music and work. Sometimes they were shy and quiet with her and Heather – especially if there was a crowd around – but she could tell it was because they weren’t that confident and quite easily embarrassed.

  Kirsty sat in the back seat, all dressed up in a pair of fitted navy trousers that showed off her slim waist and hips and a pale blue twin-set that she only wore on special occasions. She’d put rollers in her hair and given them a good spray with lacquer while she was getting dressed, and it had given it the more glamorous wavy look that she knew Lily would approve of.

  She’d finished putting on a final coat of mascara, combed out her long blonde hair and was just stepping back to admire herself in the wardrobe mirror when her cousin tooted the car horn.

  Heather had been downstairs in the kitchen filling a hot-water bottle to take up to bed.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ Kirsty had asked in a concerned voice as she pulled on her short blue swing coat. ‘I’m still not convinced you should go into work.’ She stopped. ‘What about that bitchy Sarah? Are you up to facing her the way you’re feeling?’

  Heather had looked up at her with dark-ringed eyes. ‘I couldn’t care less about Sarah,’ she’d said. ‘I was just thinking about it earlier and I realised that after what’s happened, stupid childish things like that don’t matter.’ She’d given a little shrug. ‘If she doesn’t want to talk to me then that’s her hard luck. There’s plenty of other people in the office I can be friendly with.’

  ‘Good for you!’ Kirsty had said, her voice full of admiration. She had been delighted to hear her sister sticking up for herself. Heather was always too worried about keeping on the right side of people so this was a definite improvement.

  The car horn had tooted again.

  ‘Well, get yourself a good night’s sleep.’ Kirsty had said, making for the hall. Then, just as she went to open the front door, she’d turned on her heel and walked quickly back into the kitchen. She’d walked over to her sister and put both arms around her neck.

  ‘You’ll be fine, Heather,’ she had said, hugging her. ‘You’ll feel much better in the morning.’ She’d given a little laugh. ‘And if that Sarah so much as looks as you the wrong way, tell her your wee sister will come in and batter her!’

  The lads chatted about a new engine they were going to put in the car that would make it even faster. Kirsty chipped in now and again, but her conversation was token and gradually she slipped back into her own thoughts about the events of the last few days. Gerry Stewart was her main thought. It was hard to think of anything else, because apart from the fact that his death had been the most terrible shock, she still found it impossible to imagine that someone her own age could actually be dead and gone for ever.

  Someone she had laughed and had a joke with was now going to be put in a coffin and buried under the ground, never ever to be seen or heard from again.

  When she pushed the dark, disturbing thoughts out of her mind, pictures of Larry Delaney took their place. And Kirsty didn’t quite know what to do with those thoughts except push them away. They were pointless and stupid.

  Larry Delaney had once told her that she knew absolutely nothing about him. And he was right. And the little bits she had come to know about him didn’t make any sense to her. All they did was tell her that he lived in a very different world from hers. A world filled with people like Fiona and Helen McCluskey.

  Kirsty had so many questions that she wanted to ask him. But the more she knew of him, the more she was afraid of the answers. The things she had already found out made her think that the clever Larry Delaney she knew and liked – and had even fancied – was really a total stranger. A stranger who had a lot of secrets.

  She knew now that he had a young son by Helen McCluskey, but she knew nothing about the relationship or what they had meant to each other. It was quite possible, Kirsty thought, that they had been married. For all she knew they might still be married. She looked out of the car window as the bright lights of Motherwell approached, feeling young and foolish and very naïve.

  There were so many things that she didn’t know and didn’t really understand. Like this terrible nightmare with Gerry. Like the situation with Larry and Helen McCluskey – how they could still speak and be polite and civil to each other even though something terrible had happened between them.

  Kirsty wondered how people like those dark-haired McClus­key women could go about talking and acting in such an uppity way when Helen obviously had either an illegitimate child or a broken marriage behind her. She and her older sister showed no signs of embarrassment or shame at the situation she was obviously in. The girls and women she knew from Rowanhill who had made mistakes like that tended to keep a very low profile. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves and their mistakes by parading themselves around the place.

  Take Liz Mullen for example. Now she was pregnant, Liz wouldn’t be out and about so much, she would go to work and come home and concentrate all her spare time on the plans for her small wedding and her future home. She wouldn’t mention her plans unless directly asked, and she certainly wouldn’t be bringing up the subject to anyone she happened to meet.

  If it had been the big white wedding that was saved and planned for, the whole Mullen family would have been talking loudly and proudly about it from the day the engagement was announced. When it was quiet and hushed and the bride-to-be and her family wouldn’t meet their eyes when they were congratulated on the forthcoming nuptials, people would quickly realise that there was something more than romance and love hastening the event. And then they would say no more.

  Everyone had someone in their family who had let the side down one way or another. Kirsty thought now of her beautiful Auntie Claire who had caused all the gossip in Rowanhill by going her own way. She hadn’t been pregnant but she had done something that was probably deemed worse as far as the more pious parishioners were concerned. She hadn’t made a mistake of the flesh that any silly girl or woman could make – she had made a cold, calculating decision to turn her back on her religion and her class. And that wouldn’t be forgotten, not in Rowanhill. The rejection was a black mark on Claire and the family that would never be forgiven.


  But Kirsty instinctively knew that the mistake Claire had made would not be held against her where she lived in Glasgow. The people there would only see her lovely clothes and nice big house and car and her unbowed, proud ways. The kind of people Claire mixed with would probably be like that Fiona and Helen who would still feel so superior and above everyone else that nothing anyone could say would bother them.

  As the car turned into the hospital grounds, Kirsty suddenly came to a startling conclusion. It was only people in small, parochial villages like Rowanhill who kept those rigid, judge­mental views where everyone had to behave the same as everyone else, and where it was demanded that everyone toe the Church and community line.

  Kirsty had thought it was the same everywhere. But now she suddenly understood that it was only Rowanhill’s way, and the way of other small claustrophobic villages. There was a bigger, wider world outside where people were far too busy getting on with their own lives to waste time scrutinising the shortcomings of their neighbours.

  The more she thought about it, the more Kirsty realised that the big world outside Rowanhill was the one she wanted to belong to, where people could do what they liked and it was nobody else’s business.

  When the time was right, Kirsty Grace wanted the freedom of the bigger world.

  Lily’s eyes lit up with delight when she saw Kirsty coming through the ward doors, all dressed to kill like a model out of a fashion magazine, and she was gratified to notice all the nosy-parker visitors at the other beds were having a good look at her too.

  When they were having their evening meal earlier on, Lily had told the other children in the ward that she was expecting her big cousin to visit her tonight, the big cousin who was a famous singer and who wore only the most fashionable and expensive clothes.

  And Kirsty hadn’t let her down. She had followed the instructions – passed on through Mona – that she must look her best.

  ‘Well, you came,’ Lily said, folding her arms and giving a satisfied little sigh. She was sitting there resplendent in a pair of fancy pink pyjamas that someone had got her for Christmas, and a bright pink hair ribbon that one of the young nurses had tied in her curly blonde hair just before visiting time. She had loads of nightdresses and pyjamas to choose from now, and Mona had brought her in hair ribbons in a variety of colours.

  ‘Aye, I did, cheeky-chops,’ Kirsty said, coming over to give the little girl a peck on the forehead. She lowered her voice. ‘And I didn’t wear my scabby oul’ working duffel coat, I put on my best clothes just like you said.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you did,’ Lily said, glancing around the ward to see who was still watching. Disappointingly, most of them had gone back to their own conversations. She looked up at her two brothers, her brow furrowed. ‘Is it only youse two that are comin’ tonight?’ she quizzed.

  Michael nodded, handing her a brown paper bag. ‘My mam and dad have gone to the rosary for that Stewart lad that got run over by a taxi – did you hear about it?’

  Lily nodded, her eyes flitting between her brothers and the unopened bag in her lap. ‘Aye, it was Heather’s old boyfriend. I knew him really well. We used to have a laugh when he was in her house, and when his dog died in the summer he gave me the dog’s fancy collar for Whiskey. The red one with the studs. Did you not know that?’

  ‘I think I remember something about it now,’ Michael said, smiling over at Kirsty.

  ‘Talkin’ about Whiskey,’ Lily said in a serious tone now, her eyes narrowed and looking from Michael to Sean, ‘I hope youse are all keeping him well fed. He looked a bit skinny to me when I was home for New Year.’

  ‘That’s because he’s missing you,’ Sean told her. ‘He wouldn’t eat a bite for days when you went into the hospital at first, and every time you come home and go away again, he does the same thing.’

  A big smile broke out on her face now. ‘Aw . . . poor Whiskey. He must be really missin’ me.’

  The boys looked over at Kirsty and then they all rolled their eyes and tried not to laugh at their bossy, temperamental young sister.

  Lily opened the brown paper bag now and took out the latest copy of The Beano and an Enid Blyton book called Welcome Mary Mouse. She had asked her mother to look in her bedroom for the book, as she wanted to give it to a little girl in the ward who got hardly any presents at Christmas.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she murmured to herself as she scanned the cover of the book, then she shook out a Bounty Bar and a packet of Rowntree’s Fruit Gums from the bottom of the bag.

  Welcome Mary Mouse was a book she had grown out of, and one she would be able to read aloud when they were in the day-room together, and practise what it would be like when she was grown up and a teacher.

  She had decided that the other day. She would be a dancing teacher with her own dancing school if her legs got back to normal, and if they didn’t then she would just be an ordinary primary school teacher. Either way, there was no harm in practising her teacher’s voice for when she was older.

  ‘So what’s all the news?’ Kirsty asked her now. ‘Have they told you when you’re getting’ out yet? And what’s happened to what’s her name – your wee specky pal? I noticed she’s not in her usual bed any more.’

  Lily put the book down in her lap and tried hard to look disapprovingly at Kirsty’s description of her ward-mate. ‘For your information,’ she said primly, a little smile sneaking around the sides of her mouth, ‘Margaret got home last week. She said she’s going to write to me every week, and that we can be pen-pals.’

  ‘Where’s she from?’ Sean asked.

  ‘Holytown,’ Lily said.

  ‘That’ll be excitin’ for you,’ Michael laughed. ‘A pen-pal that lives only a few miles away. You’re supposed to get pen-pals from America and Australia and places like that. You don’t get pen-pals wi’ people that only live up the road from you.’

  ‘Shut up, you,’ Lily said, tutting at him. ‘It’s only because we’re not well and can’t walk or get on the bus to see each other. We’ve said when we’re older that we’ll visit each other’s houses and we’ll stay with each other during the summer holidays.’ She sniffed. ‘You can’t do that if you live in America or Australia, can you?’

  ‘So what’s this about me havin’ to get all dressed up to visit you?’ Kirsty asked in a high, indignant voice. ‘My oul’ duffel coat wasn’t good enough, I hear.’

  ‘Well,’ Lily said, ‘it’s just that some people in here didn’t believe me when I said my cousin was a singer, so I wanted to make sure you looked like a real singer when you came in. There’s nothing actually wrong with the duffel coat, it’s just that it makes you look like somebody that only works in a chemist’s shop.’

  Kirsty’s heart lifted as she suddenly noticed that Lily was using her hands now the way she always used to. She was pointing and moving them when she wanted to make a point. Not as flamboyantly as she used to, perhaps, but she was definitely using her hands again. She decided not to make any issue of it, as she didn’t want Lily to become all self-conscious as she sometimes did.

  ‘Oooooh . . . that would be absolutely terrible, wouldn’t it,’ Kirsty teased, ‘havin’ a cousin that looks like she works in a chemist?’

  Lily ignored her now, having spied one of the nurses coming up the ward. ‘Veronica!’ she called to the heavy-set elderly woman. ‘Is Frankie on tonight?’

  ‘Yes, Lily,’ Veronica smiled. ‘Did you want him for some­thing?’

  ‘Aye,’ Lily said, trying hard to conceal her excitement, ‘I just wanted a wee word with him.’

  ‘I think he’s in the office. I’ll tell him when I go back down.’

  ‘Who’s Frankie?’ Kirsty asked for something different to say.

  ‘Oh, he’s the porter for this ward.’

  ‘And what do you want him for?’ Sean asked.

  Lily sighed as though she was weary of answering daft questions, as though she was the adult and the other three were the irritating nosy child
ren. ‘I just want to check wi’ him what time I’ve got physio in the morning.’ She raised her eyebrows disapprovingly at her elder brother. ‘Is that OK with you?’

  Sean shook his head and laughed. Mona would soon knock all the uppity-ness and cheek out of Lily as soon as she was well enough. The four of them sat chatting for a while, Michael and Sean giving Lily a run-down of what had been happening in her favourite television shows, and then they all took turns telling jokes. Then the two lads said they were going to visit a local man they knew who was in another ward with a broken leg, and they’d be back in ten minutes.

  Lily went on to ask Kirsty all about Gerry Stewart being killed and what had actually happened to him. She listened carefully as Kirsty told her a diluted version of events, then she looked up at her big cousin. ‘He was a bit funny at times, wasn’t he? I don’t mean funny as in a good laugh – I mean he was a bit peculiar at times.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kirsty asked curiously.

  ‘Well, you know when they finished up?’

  Kirsty nodded.

  ‘Well, he used to meet me up the road at the chip shop and that, and ask me all about Heather. He would ask me what train she got in the morning, and what time she got in from work. Then he would ask me to find out what she was doin’ at the weekends, and he would sometimes come into the library in the evenings to see if I was there and find out what she had planned.’

  ‘Did he?’ Kirsty gasped. ‘And did you tell him all about Heather?’

  Lily nodded her head. ‘Nothing dead private, like. I only told him boring things like what trains she caught home from Glasgow.’

  Kirsty cast her mind back to Heather’s first day at work. ‘Did you tell him when Heather was starting her new job and what time she’d be home the very first day?’