Another Kind of Life

by Catherine Dunne

  ‘Aye. You heard what Father MacVeigh said. And Dr Torrens. Why should them girls get away with it?’

  Mary didn’t answer. Instead she said: ‘All right, pet. Just so long as ye’re sure.’

  Mary didn’t tell her what Myles and the others had said, how they’d been pressing her all week not to let Cecilia make her deposition. She had listened to them, growing more and more fearful for her sister, for herself. They had insisted that in this city there were great big yawning gaps between what was lawful and what was right. That too many times, the law hurried to meet you, and justice was left trailing somewhere behind, so confused by complexity and contradiction that it lost its way, disappearing like smoke. The law is not for people like us, Myles had said, and in her heart Mary believed him. But Cecilia wanted to do this. Something in her determination had made Mary realize that in some strange way, this was part of Cecilia’s groping towards being well again. She couldn’t stop her, not now.

  ‘You’ll be with me, won’t ye?’ Cecilia’s voice was childlike again, all the certainty of a moment earlier suddenly evaporated.

  ‘Aye, I will, o’ course. Don’t you worry yerself, now.’ Mary hugged her, resting her chin on Cecilia’s shoulder, seeing both their faces reflected in the cracked mirror which Mary had propped up on the kitchen table. Something inside her lurched with pity as the paleness of Cecilia’s skin was made even more apparent by the silvery shadows of mildew ghosting everywhere behind the old glass.

  They made their way to Clifton Street for three o’clock. The policeman who had visited them at home the day before yesterday had been kind enough; a big, imposing man with a dark uniform and a deep voice. Mary had let him in, her face tight in the effort to conceal her hostility. She didn’t trust him; didn’t trust any of them. The deposition was nothing to be frightened of, he had told them. All Cecilia had to do was to tell the ‘whole truth’. He stressed this several times during the interview, until Mary wanted to ask him sharply what did he think Cecilia was doing now. She was glad she hadn’t. Cecilia simply turned her blank eyes to him then and said with quiet conviction: ‘I haven’t ever told anythin’ else, sir.’

  Now they sat, Mary holding her sister’s hand tightly, waiting for the Justice, Mr Dobbin, to arrive. A small, thin man emerged from somewhere among the shadows of the huge room and glided over to where they sat. His hair was a yellowing white, like old parchment, his bushy eyebrows startling in their blackness. Mary thought his face was as colourless as his hair, as though he spent too much time indoors, hiding from sunlight.

  He whispered that Mr Dobbin’s clerk, Mr Fleming, would be the one writing down everything Cecilia said, and that she must direct her answers to him. Mary nodded, and watched as this slight, somehow dusty man of indeterminable age effaced himself from the room. The door closed behind him with a sigh.

  Cecilia tugged at her sleeve. ‘Is he thick? Does he think I’m hard o’ hearin’ as well?’

  Her tone was half irritated, half amused.

  Mary felt instantly guilty. She had developed the habit of responding for Cecilia on so many occasions in the weeks since the attack. Sometimes it was to stave off situations which Cecilia couldn’t see coming; other times she was as bad as everyone else: treating her sister as incapable of speaking for herself. Mostly, though, she felt on guard in her sister’s presence, like a soldier charged with protecting the innocent. She couldn’t help it; old habits die hard. Now she felt her nervousness increase on Cecilia’s behalf.

  She was afraid of what might happen to her sister’s words, once they became indelible marks on paper. What if someone twisted them? What if someone ridiculed her, or made her change her story, or reduced her to tears? They couldn’t just get up and leave – the policeman at the door would surely stop them, make them stay no matter what. Even the room seemed disapproving of them – its high, elegant ceiling, the rich, nutty wood-panelling everywhere, the vast desk: all were like a reproach to her and Cecilia, casting light on their shabbiness, their unimportance, their sad, ordinary lives.

  Suddenly, a door in the panelled wall opened, and two men emerged, dressed in black, their expressions grave. One of them, the taller one, sat in the high-backed chair behind the desk. Mary was so terrified that her mind went blank, her ears filled with a frantic whistling. She was hardly aware of Cecilia’s being led away from her to another table, much too far away for her to comfort. It was as though she became suddenly paralysed, rooted to the floor, unable to stop Cecilia before it was too late.

  And then everything went still as Cecilia’s voice, clear and steady, began to describe the events which now became eerily unfamiliar to Mary’s ears. It was as though her sister were telling someone else’s story, the tale of someone not related to her, someone she had never even met. Hearing Cecilia speak made everything become detached, separated from the reality they had both known and felt together. Drained of the emotion that had accompanied them in real life, the events lost their potency, their urgency. Mary wanted to interrupt, to cry out ‘But it was much worse than that!’

  ‘. . . A girl named Ward saw what happened. A mob gathered of about a hundred. They were all workers in the same factory as myself. A girl named Agnes Neill caught me by the hair and dragged me to the ground, and hit me on the back of the neck with her fist.’

  At this point, Cecilia’s voice began to waver. But she didn’t stop. Mary wanted her to; she wanted them both to go home. She had the strongest feeling that every word Cecilia uttered was like the cutting edge of a spade slicing remorselessly into soil. It was digging deeper and deeper into a pit of trouble for herself, for both of them. A shaft of sunlight pierced the high window and Mary felt her face grow suddenly warm. At the same time, as though realization had come with the yellowy, dust-trembling brightness, she knew that she could never go back to Watson, Valentine and Company. She knew it as clearly as she knew her own name. She would never be safe in the mill, not after today. What before had always been a threat, breathed in as naturally as air, was now a certainty, a palpable reality. She would be singled out, marked even more than before. Taig; fenian; traitor. Her life there – their life there – was over.

  As she listened to her sister, Mary was suddenly filled with an intense joy. This might not be how Ma would have wanted it: it might not be how any of them would have planned for it to come about, but the end result was the same. They were free, free of the mill’s sickness and corruption. She would find something else for Cecilia and herself to do, she would make sure they didn’t starve. The only important thing now was to look after her sister.

  She felt filled with pride as she watched these men in their important clothes listen to Cecilia’s story. They didn’t bully her, didn’t interrupt, didn’t mock or threaten her. Maybe all of this would make no difference to anybody, ever. Maybe these pages would be filed away into obscurity somewhere, forgotten quietly, their dark ink left to fade into oblivion. It hardly mattered; whatever was done with them would make no difference to their lives. But the fact of the attack had miraculously brought something good in its wake: she and Cecilia had been given – no, had earned a second chance. Mary was determined that the rest of their lives would be lived out somewhere, anywhere, far away from the fears and cruelties they had learned to believe were an inevitable part of daily existence.

  Something had been transformed in the telling of Cecilia’s tale: its horrors had somehow been lessened; their grip around Mary’s throat began to loosen. She felt suddenly light and giddy, and full of heady compassion for her sister. She had stood up to those girls with the hard faces and tough, brutal bodies; they no longer diminished her. Mary swore that she would never again have to be their victim.

  Eleanor’s Journal

  LATE IN JUNE, some three years after we had returned to Dublin, Mama told us she had a surprise for us. Her voice was light, intimate – but I sensed effort beneath its brightness. We girls were all going on a little holiday, she said, to our cousins in County Cork. I remember Hannah
looking at her sharply, as though she didn’t believe her, as though her words contained more than their surface meaning.

  I had noticed that about Hannah since our return from Belfast: she treated Mama almost as an equal, and was frequently bold and outspoken in situations where May and I kept our heads down. Whatever we might have thought privately, or indeed discussed later between the two of us in our bedroom, in Mama’s presence, May and I were the very souls of meekness and discretion.

  ‘Why?’ Hannah asked now.

  Mama had some letters in her hand, as Lily had just brought the morning post. We were sitting having breakfast together, with the French windows wide open into the garden. For once, there was warmth in the bright morning light.

  Now Mama’s smile faded and she placed the letters and the silver letter-opener back down on the table again. She looked at Hannah coolly, and something in her tone warned Hannah to take her questioning no further.

  ‘Because that is what I have arranged for you, Hannah.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming, Mama?’ I asked, more to break the dangerous silence I could sense building across the table between the two of them than for any other reason.

  ‘No. I have things I must do. I may have to go away.’

  Her tone was flat, precluding all further discussion. It was the tone she always used when anybody mentioned Belfast – although nobody had dared to mention it here. That name was always left simply hanging: nothing was done with it once it had been spoken. It seemed to float in the air, trailing long threads of silence in its wake. May and I had learned long ago to let it hang, reluctant to get snared in the knotty complexities it brought with it. Once Mama said ‘away’, the three of us understood at once. May and I kept quiet, but in those days, Hannah was different.

  ‘I’d prefer to come with you, Mama.’

  Her tone was firm, adult, as though she were the mother, and Mama the child.

  ‘That’s not possible, Hannah, and I really don’t wish to discuss it with you here. The subject is closed.’

  Even Hannah wouldn’t dare reopen it after that. I ate my egg and soldiers and watched my plate intently.

  Somehow, I knew. Papa was coming home. By now, he had spent over three years in prison. We weren’t supposed to know that, of course, at least May and I weren’t. But Hannah had let it slip once, late at night, about a year after our return to Dublin. We were all in her bedroom, putting curling papers in each other’s hair. She had clapped her hand to her mouth as soon as the words were out, and looked, stricken, first at May, and then at me. We two were actually standing behind her, with curling papers and a hairbrush in our hands. We stared at her reflection in the mirror, which stared back at us.

  ‘I didn’t mean to say that,’ she whispered, the tears threatening. ‘Please don’t tell Mama.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said May softly. ‘I heard you and Mama on the train that night we came back to Dublin. But you said I was wrong: you told me I hadn’t understood what I’d heard.’

  ‘Mama made me promise,’ said Hannah, openly sobbing now. Her hands were clasped tight together, the knuckles showing white. ‘Please don’t say I told you.’

  She turned to me.

  ‘Mouse, you must promise, too.’

  She only ever called me Mouse on very special occasions. I nodded, wordlessly, feeling suddenly important, like one of the heroines in Mrs Gaskell’s novels. I wondered if I was going to faint. But nothing that dramatic ever happened to me. Papa was ‘away’, we had always been told, working in New York, learning new and important things about banking. Mama had a brother there, too, and she told us a lot about that young and thriving city; she had made it sound vibrant and exciting. She even read Papa’s letters to us which arrived from America on a monthly basis. May always asked for the stamps, which were much more exotic than our own.

  New York was so far away, Mama told us, and the sea journey too long and too arduous, and Papa had far too much to do. That was why he could not come home, not even at Christmas. One day soon, she had promised us, Papa would come home, and it would be for good.

  I, for one, had pretended to accept her explanations; I voiced no word of doubt. I had grown over the years to believe her a little – because, as a child, I desperately wanted to. I knew that nothing could take away the shadow of the two tall men at my father’s side; nothing could change the fear on Katie and Lily’s faces; nothing could truly convince me that Mama’s distress that April afternoon in Belfast had been anything other than despair laced with humiliation. Once I had recovered from the initial surprise of Hannah’s slip of the tongue, it all made perfect sense to me. I was relieved by her revelation: now I could admit openly to myself that I knew, that I had always known.

  That night, locked into Hannah’s bedroom, the three of us solemnly swore to each other a sisterly pact: that we would pretend this had never happened, that we would allow the fiction of Papa’s travels to take root and to grow with all of us as the truth.

  When I think about it now, I am amazed at how expertly we all kept these things, each from the other. If Mama suspected, she never said. And so we lived, each concealing what we knew, child protecting parent just as parent protected child. And now it seemed the day had arrived for Papa to come home. I didn’t know how I felt about seeing him again. Would he still call me ‘Mouse’? Would he still be the same, or would everything about him have changed dramatically in three years? I couldn’t ask these questions, of course. I had to believe what I had just been told: that Mama was sending us all away on a nice holiday to County Cork, where we could get to know our cousins.

  I heard her and Hannah’s voices, late that night, rising and falling in the empty air of the drawing room. I made myself stay awake, listening for Hannah’s footsteps on the landing. I waited until I heard them, and the sound of Mama’s door closing.

  As silently as I could, I crept out of my room and made my way across to Hannah’s bedroom door. I tried the handle noiselessly. It wouldn’t give. I was afraid to call her name, afraid that Mama would discover me and that all our secrets would be out. I tried the handle again. Still nothing. Then I remembered the unaccustomed noise I’d heard soon after Mama and Hannah had parted on the landing.

  For the first time ever, my sister had locked her door against me.

  Hannah: Summer 1896

  HANNAH REFUSED TO allow herself be drawn into the company of her girl cousins. At sixteen, she was a year older than Theresa, a full six years older than Frances. She had decided not to be impressed with Bantry; with her aunt and uncle; with their home way out in the countryside, miles away from anything civilized. She maintained an aloof silence, impenetrable in its iciness. Several times, she caught May and Eleanor about to melt, to respond warmly to the shy smiles and tentative invitations of their cousins. She would call them away at once then, ostensibly to braid their hair properly, to write a letter to Mama, to spend time together in their room. Her indignation followed her around like a cloud for four full days, until Uncle Paul brought home the bicycles.

  The three girls were in their room after breakfast. The last button had been fastened on May’s boot, the last bow tied on Eleanor’s unruly braids when they heard a commotion just underneath their window. May and Eleanor fled from their seats by the mirror, not caring about Hannah’s disapproval. They had had enough of her, she had already begun to sense their impatience – it was high time for diversion. Hannah had been no fun this week. She had even avoided all occasions for playing the piano. Aunt Elizabeth had not asked her directly, but Hannah could feel the invitation hovering in the air at night after dinner. Theresa’s playing was stiff, her fingers wooden; Frances didn’t play at all. Hannah felt the chill of her aunt’s disapproval on the three occasions when she had kept her head in her book, rather than follow her cousin to the piano. The unspoken rebuke had hung in the air like a question mark.

  Now Hannah stood behind her two younger sisters at the big, open sash window that looked out on to the driveway. There, on th
e gravel sweep in front of the house, were two brand-new, shiny bicycles. Theresa and Frances were jumping up and down in delight, Frances clapping her little plump hands together, her one fat plait leaping up and down her back in contrapuntal rhythm.

  ‘Oh, Papa, are they really for us?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Uncle Paul. ‘They’re for you and your cousins. You already know how to cycle, Theresa, so you’re to help the others.’

  Hannah had the impression that his words were meant to be overheard. He was standing directly beneath their open window. She wasn’t quick enough. Just as she had decided to stand back, to move out of his line of sight, he looked up. His broad face was smiling at them, knowingly.

  ‘Come on down, Eleanor, May. Get a turn in before your big sister!’

  There was no time to reply. May and Eleanor simply ran from the bedroom, pushing each other to get through the door first, no longer heeding Hannah’s call. Reluctantly, she followed them down the wide staircase and out the front door to the driveway.

  ‘It’s too difficult here,’ Theresa was saying. ‘All the little stones make it too hard to pedal. Help me push them down to the gates – the laneway outside is much easier for bicycling.’

  There was nothing else for it. Hannah followed the four younger ones as they hurried towards the gates, the high, childish voices of Frances and Eleanor bright in the summer air. Hannah kept her shoulders stiff, her back erect. She couldn’t help the feeling that someone was watching them, smiling, from the drawing-room window.

  May got the first turn.

  Theresa sat on the saddle of one bicycle and instructed May to do exactly as she did.

  ‘Mind you keep your skirts out of the way, otherwise they’ll get caught up in the spokes, and you’ll fall off. Look.’