No Cure for Love

by Jean Fullerton

  That was bad enough, but she might still be able to stall him. If Josie arrived home, as she should have done by now, Ellen still might be able to get them safely away from Danny.

  Danny raised his hand slowly and Ellen only just stopped from flinching. He lifted a coil of hair sitting on her shoulder and turned it over between his fingers. He studied it in the dim light from the lamp then turned his attention back to her.

  She forced herself to give a little laugh. ‘Well, Danny. It’s a bit late and’ - she sent him a shy smile - ‘you know, I’m not... not prepar—’

  He twisted the length of hair around his finger and his eyebrows rose up. ‘Now, don’t be bashful there, Ellen, me love. You were willing enough a while ago.’

  A sorrowful expression formed itself on his face. ‘You’re not expecting anyone else, are you?’

  ‘No. It’s just that—’

  ‘Like our esteemed Doctor Munroe,’ he asked, cocking his head to one side.

  Fear like ice, cut through Ellen, but she managed to summon up a confused expression. ‘Why would he come here? I told you he’s finished with me.’

  With a lightning move, Danny grasped the back of her head and yanked her to him. ‘So you can give him my ledger,’ he snarled.

  Her head throbbed where he tore at her hair but she held on to her perplexed look. ‘Ledger? I don’t—’

  Danny twisted her hair and Ellen screamed.

  ‘Where is it?’

  Leaving Danny with a fistful of her hair, Ellen wrenched herself free of his grasp and jumped behind the table. ‘I do ... don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Don’t fecking give me that,’ he said, taking hold of the edge of the table. ‘My ledger. Where is it?’

  Ellen backed away. ‘Honestly, Danny, I don’t kn—’

  Danny’s balled fist smashed across her face. She felt her lip split as she staggered back, frantically clutching onto anything to stop herself falling. Her head landed against the small table at the side of the fire, knocking the cups and saucers on it to the stone floor with a crash.

  He wagged his finger at her, a playful smile hovering on his lips. ‘Now, don’t you be playing games with me, Ellen. You fooled me for a moment there,’ he said, ‘I thought you had seen which field your harvest was in at last.’ The ingenuous expression fell away and the sadistic one returned. ‘Wriggling on my lap and letting me feel you up.’ His hand shot out and took hold of her hair again. Twisting it around his fist he pulled her face up to him. ‘I know you filched it for him. That bastard doctor of yours. Now where is it?’

  He threw her away from him and Ellen staggered back.

  ‘If you’ve lost your book, it’s probably because you’re too drunk to remember where you put it,’ she said, keeping her voice as level as she could despite her swollen lip.

  Danny dashed to the middle of the small room. Although he was a large man he could move swiftly enough if he needed to. He took hold of the table and tossed it aside as if it had been a milking stool. Then he went to the dresser where the crockery sat clean and neatly stacked.

  With a great sweep of his arm Danny cleared the top, then crunched over the broken china towards the mantelshelf.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I told you I haven’t got it,’ Ellen repeated.

  He grabbed her small collection of books and started to tear them apart, throwing the torn pages behind him.

  Ellen tried to slip behind him to the door but Danny caught her. His eyes roamed down to her breasts and his hateful expression changed to one of lust.

  ‘He must have fecked you good, Ellen, if you’re ready to cross me like this,’ he said, as his free hand took hold of her breast. He fondled it for a few moments, then his hand closed painfully around it. ‘Now give me that ledger or I’ll be sending you to meet your old mother.’

  ‘I told you I—’

  Her words were cut short as he slapped her across her face again. Ellen’s knees buckled and at the edges of her vision small stars appeared, then burst. Blackness crept over her mind, but she forced it away as Danny held her upright by the scruff of her neck and hair.

  ‘Where is it, Ellen?’ he said, as more blows rained down onto her. ‘I’ll find it anyhow.’ Danny’s foul breath assailed Ellen and nausea rose in her throat. ‘But before that I’ll teach you a lesson that you will never forget,’ he said, putting his powerful hand around her neck and squeezing.

  Ellen gasped for air as the vice-like grip of his fingers tightened.

  I’m going to die, she thought, as jumbled images of Robert and Josie swam around in her mind.

  With a guttural growl and a bone-shaking thump Danny let go of her and Ellen sank to the hard floor. She felt the roughness of the knotted rag rug against her cheek, felt air, struggling back into her lungs. Lifting her head she saw the faded colours stained with bright red blood. Putting her fingers to her mouth Ellen felt sticky dampness.

  ‘Bitch,’ he said as spit flecked the side of his mouth. ‘Where is it?’

  Ellen’s head pounded and her focus began to blur as the foot of the fire grate came level with her line of vision.

  ‘Answer me, woman.’

  As Danny’s toe knocked the wind out of her she crumpled back onto the floor. Struggling for breath, she tried to roll into a ball to protect her vital organs. With a swift movement Danny’s hand snatched up the poker and raised it over his head.

  ‘For the last time, give me the ledger!’ he screamed.

  Ellen looked up at the man above her through her half-closed eyes. The iron taste of blood was in her mouth. She swallowed. Danny was now swaying above her with a murderous expression on his face. Ellen would never need to wonder what the devil looked like because in her small front room he was manifest in the person of Danny Donovan.

  Stop the pain, her body shouted.

  Her lips twisted painfully as she summoned the ghost of a smile. She was dead anyway, whether she gave him the ledger or not.

  She didn’t want to die, but more than that she didn’t want those she loved, Robert and Josie, to live in the evil shadow of Danny Donovan.

  With steely determination, Ellen looked into Danny’s cold, blue eyes.

  ‘No,’ she said in a surprisingly firm voice. ‘And may the Virgin curse your black soul to hell.’

  For one second she thought she was saved because Danny’s face went purple and he started to tremble. His raised arm shook and the poker wavered.

  God strike, Ellen prayed, as Danny’s rasping breath tore around the small room.

  Then with an animal bellow, Danny swung the poker in a wide arc and down on her.

  Ellen’s arm came up to shield her head and the narrow metal poker smashed into her forearm sending reverberations down her arm. She sank backwards under the blow and felt the poker break her collarbone.

  A vision of Robert came to her mind. He was sitting on a riverbank and beckoning to her.

  Robert.

  Danny and the pain were receding and Robert was drawing ever closer. Then from somewhere a scream ripped through the scene and the river bank and Robert vanished and the pain returned.

  Ellen braced herself for another blow, but now with neither pain nor Robert to focus on, the swirling blackness in her head engulfed her.

  ‘Me mam’ll be wild,’ Josie said, as she saw the light flicker through the window of her front parlour. She had only been out an hour and had meant to be back before her mother returned.

  ‘She might not be in yet,’ Patrick Nolan said, as he gazed down at her.

  ‘She’s in. Look, the street door’s ajar,’ Josie replied, pointing at the crack in the door.

  ‘I’ll come in and explain,’ Patrick said drawing himself up to his full five feet ten inches.

  Josie gave him an uncertain smile. ‘She’ll be mad enough at me for going out. Let alone returning with you.’

  Patrick gave her a severe, very manly look as he gazed down at her, noticing the light of the windows above
them. ‘I would think that your mam would be grateful that I did the right thing and escorted you home.’ He ran his hands back through his thick black hair.

  ‘Any other day, perhaps, But she’s been like a cat on hot cobbles all day,’ Josie said, remembering Ellen’s tension over their supper.

  ‘Even so.’ Patrick went to walk across the street, but Josie caught hold of his arm.

  ‘I’m safe now,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘You go on home.’

  ‘I’m sailing soon,’ he said, with just a hint of a youthful warble in his voice. ‘You’ll come and see me off, won’t you, Josie?’

  ‘Try and stop me,’ Josie said, forcing a smile. She heard a tremble in her voice. Proud though she was, her heart was near to breaking at the thought of his leaving.

  He pulled his shoulders back. ‘I’ll be a captain one day, just you wait and see if I won’t, and then I’ll speak to your mammy,’ he told her.

  ‘I have to go, Pat—’

  The sound of an almighty crash from inside her house. Josie glanced across and saw a large shadow against the curtains. Leaving Patrick, she dashed over and threw open the front door. It crashed against the wall.

  To Josie’s horror Danny Donovan stood in the middle of the room with a poker raised above his head.

  Dumbly, Josie stared down at the inert body of her mother at his feet. The images before her tumbled around in her mind as she tried make sense of what she was seeing.

  This was her home, her cosy parlour where she and Ma lived. The kettle still swung on the chain over the fire from tea and the sewing box was still where Ellen had left it three hours before, on the window sill. Even Waisy still sat propped up in the corner of Gran’s old chair, but surrounding the familiar items lay their few sticks of furniture in splinters on the floor, with the pages of Ma’s books scattered around. Their shattered crockery spread across the rug and into the fire grate, just one solitary cup still hung on its peg untouched by the devastation in the room.

  It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Danny wasn’t real and her mother couldn’t be lying like a bundle of bloody rags on the floor.

  Josie blinked and her gaze rested back on Ellen.

  She lay curled on her side with dark blood oozing from her nose. There was a dull red weal across her forehead and her shoulder rested at an odd angle. Despite her wounds, Ellen’s averted face was calm, almost peaceful, like Gran’s had been when she passed over.

  Suddenly, everything in her vision burst over her. Eyes fixed to her mother.

  ‘Ma!’ she whispered, as fear and emptiness engulfed her. Her ma, dead!

  Please, please, please God, let Ma be all right, Josie prayed. I promise I’ll be good, I won’t give her a lot of lip like I have, just, please God, let Ma live.

  Nausea surged up within her. She swallowed it down, hatred and anger surging up in her as she pointed at Danny. ‘Murderer!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Danny swung around and glared at her.

  Josie sucked in a breath then let out another ear-splitting scream that hurt her throat, then dashed back into the street. People had already come out of their houses to see what the yelling was about.

  ‘Murder!’ she screamed again, as she heard Danny lumbering after her. ‘Murder. Me ma’s been murdered. Call the police.’

  Others took up the cry. A rough hand took hold of Josie’s hair.

  ‘Come here, you little who—’

  Danny’s gruff voice stopped abruptly, as did the painful tension on her hair. The sound of the poker hitting the cobbled street rang out.

  Turning around, Josie gazed down at the unconscious body of Danny Donovan lying on the wet street. Behind him stood Patrick, a broken wheel spoke in his hand.

  Nineteen

  Robert dashed down the polished oak floor corridors, scattering all before him. Taking the stairs two at a time he found his heart beating wildly - and not from exertion. It thundered at double speed because it was being ripped in two with every passing second.

  Shoving open the half-glazed door to the women’s ward, he strode in. He spotted Sister Adams at the far end behind the nurse’s desk. She squeezed herself from behind it and glided towards him.

  ‘I believe Mrs O’Casey has just been admitted to your care, Sister,’ Robert said in a low voice, his eyes darting around the dimly lit ward.

  Sister Adams nodded sharply. ‘Mrs O’Casey’s daughter said you would want to know.’

  ‘Where is Josie?’

  ‘She is having some tea in the ward kitchen with May, the night orderly. If you’ll follow me, Doctor Munroe.’

  She led Robert down the middle of the quiet ward. ‘Nurse Watson is with Mrs O’Casey. She stopped outside the door of a side room. ‘I am afraid Mrs O’Casey is very badly injured,’ she told him, her hand hovering on the brass plate of the door.

  ‘How badly?’

  ‘It’s a miracle she’s still alive,’ Sister Adams told him flatly.

  Nurse Watson stood up when they entered the room. Robert didn’t glance her way as his eyes fixed on the small form lying motionless in the centre of the bed.

  The whole room receded from Robert’s consciousness as he focused only on Ellen. Bile caught at the back of his throat and an iron hand gripped his chest leaving him gasping for breath. He tried to draw breath but it was as if he had suddenly stopped living, frozen between two beats of the wall clock as he stared down at her bloody and battered body.

  Ellen was almost unrecognisable. Her face was black and swollen and one eye was completely closed. Blood all around her left ear had seeped into her hair, giving it an unnaturally red tinge. There was blood on her mouth and a gash through her bottom lip where her teeth had punctured it.

  Rage, guilt and fear rose up in Robert. Rage because he knew that if they stood before him now, he would kill whoever had done this to Ellen with his own hands. Guilt because he had promised to keep her safe and he had not, and fear because there was a real possibility that at any moment Ellen would sigh out her last breath and he would lose her forever.

  Utter desolation swept over him. A life without Ellen was no life at all and he wouldn’t live it.

  From what seemed like a great distance away he heard Nurse Watson speak.

  ‘The poor woman looks as if she has been attacked by a wild animal, not a human being,’ she said, her voice echoing around Robert’s head.

  He knew he should respond in some way but one word crowded out all others.

  Danny.

  Animal was right. Danny Donovan was nothing more than a dangerous, savage animal that should be put down. As Robert, distraught, gazed dawn at Ellen, his own voice in his head tormented him. It’s all my fault. I’ve known for week the sort of lengths Donovan would go to in order to stop me from exposing his criminal activities, so how could I have left Ellen so unprotected?

  The iron hand started to close around his chest again but this time Robert forced his mind to take charge. If Ellen was to survive this murderous attack she needed him to care for her, and that was what he was determined to do.

  Taking a firm hold of his emotions, he glanced at Ellen’s arms, resting above the blankets. Along with the criss-cross of cuts and scratches there was one huge bruise on her forearm where, he guessed, she had raised it to stop a blow to her head.

  Robert summoned up all his professionalism to save him losing all control. ‘I’ll have to examine her to find out the full extent of her injuries,’ he said, noting the cracked tone in his voice.

  ‘Of course, Doctor.’ Sister Adams beckoned to Nurse Watson, who jumped forward.

  Sitting down on the narrow bed next to his beloved, Robert looked at her more closely. She was breathing evenly and with no obvious noise or effort. Both legs were the same length and lying as they should, so they had not been broken in the attack. But what about Ellen’s insides? A broken leg would mend, but certain internal injuries could prove to be fatal.

  ‘Give me the lamp, nurse,’ Robert said, holding hi
s hand out.

  He raised it to one side of Ellen and opened one of her eyes, looking closely at the pupil. It reduced sharply as the beam from the lamp fell on it. Robert did the same with the other eye, noting the same reaction. He let out a breath. Thank God. He glanced up at the two nurses behind him.

  ‘Both are brisk to light,’ he said, giving a brief smile.

  Handing the lamp back to Nurse Watson, Robert moved Ellen’s hair out of the way and let his fingers gently feel around her skull. Images of Ellen in his arms washed through his mind as his fingers traced their path across the curvature of her head. He sighed. All seemed intact, with no soft or broken areas.

  With equal gentleness Robert made his way around the back of her neck. The same soft, slender neck he had kissed up and down until she had shuddered in his arms with passion. He moved the joints slightly and felt no resistance. Thankfully, he noted that the blood on her ears came from external injury and not from within.

  He traced professional fingers down her neck and over her shoulders and felt a movement under his right hand.

  ‘The left clavicle is broken,’ he said to the nurse. ‘That will have to be strapped.’

  His eyes fell on Ellen’s chest, rising and falling steadily as she breathed. There was a rapidly blackening bruise across her left breast where the heavy instrument that had broken her collarbone had been halted in its path.

  Horror swept over Robert. Where else was Ellen’s beautiful body damaged?

  ‘I am pretty sure that Mrs O’Casey has several broken ribs, but I will have to have her bodice and shift removed so I can be sure.’

  ‘Of course, Doctor,’ Sister Adams said.

  As the nurse fussed, making her patient ready for his further examinations, Ellen moaned and shifted in the bed. She was responding to being touched. That was a good sign.

  Taking the edge of the sheet Robert lifted it up and looked down at Ellen. As his eyes ran over her body, he slowly took in the full magnitude of what she had suffered at Donovan’s hands.