Even if Quinny would not allow herself to be mothered, Irene thought there was one area where she could help. The girl’s attempts at fashion were ham-fisted, to say the least – that houndstooth skirt was positively slutty – and though Irene was touched by Quinny’s cheap scents, her false eyelashes, even the beauty spot, they all seemed like a girl playing dress-up. In this, Irene felt, hers was precisely the kind of expertise Quinny needed.
‘Don’t you think something with a slightly longer hemline would be more flattering?’ she suggested one Wednesday afternoon as Quinny headed out in a red pencil skirt halfway up her thigh. Irene had Owen on her hip. Quinny looked at her with an expression between wounded offence and outright hostility.
‘It’s just,’ Irene went on, ‘that for a girl of your build, something a bit longer might be …’
‘It’s my afternoon off, Missus,’ Quinny said mulishly.
‘Of course,’ Irene said, ‘it’s none of my business. It’s just I have an eye for these things. I used to …’ She was going to tell Quinny about being Miss Ireland, thinking she might be impressed with it. ‘And you know it’s my experience that young men prefer a little bit of mystery.’
‘What young men?’ Quinny asked. Irene could hear the bridling tone, as if she had accused Quinny of something.
‘A pretty girl like you,’ Irene said, ‘there must be a young man …’ How many times had Irene herself heard that line. Flirty, wheedling.
‘Is that all, Missus?’ Quinny interrupted; quite rudely, Irene thought. ‘I’ll be off, so.’
‘How do you find her?’ she asked Liam though she already knew the answer. For him, Quinny was a problem solved. He didn’t trouble himself about the maid’s social life.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘She’s perfectly hard-working, does her job, the children love her. What’s the problem?’
‘I don’t know,’ Irene admitted. Then, suddenly fierce, ‘So why did she leave the job in the big house in Meath. Close to home and all.’
‘Close to the home, you mean?’
‘She came from a home? You didn’t tell me that.’
‘What difference does it make?’
Irene couldn’t have said why, but it did make a difference. There was something shameful about those homes where children were left, if only by the deaths of their unfortunate parents. On one of the red-brick avenues near the church there was a place called the Cottage Home, and though she didn’t know much about it because it was Protestant, Irene always hurried past it (particularly when she had the boys in tow) as if the building itself, like a house in a fairy tale, might reach out and devour them. The face of the home was austere. Grey unpainted plaster; long, thin windows set in deep embrasures, which gave them a hooded look; gravel out front where a garden should have been. But the most forbidding thing about the Cottage Home was that there was never any sign of life there. No evidence at all, in fact, of children.
The fact that Quinny was an orphan quelled Irene’s uneasiness for a while. The girl simply wasn’t used to a good family; or any family at all, for that matter. That was it. That must be it. But then she began to worry if Quinny was damaged goods, in some way. Should they have looked for references for her? When they’d hired her, word-of-mouth had seemed recommendation enough, particularly when it was from Enda Dowd, the Assistant Secretary in Liam’s Department.
‘Ask him,’ Irene urged Liam, ‘why it was she left the job in the castle.’
‘Lord God, Irene, would you leave it be? You’re only making a problem where there isn’t one.’
But then there was. It was a stupid thing, really, but afterwards Irene was sorry she hadn’t acted.
That day the children were in the playroom in the extension which had been built on to the back of the house by the previous owners, an elderly couple, who had used it to grow plants. It was no more than a glass lean-to, but some day when the boys were grown, Irene determined, she would deck it out with bamboo blinds and cane furniture and turn it into a sunroom. But for now it was for the kids, a place for them to let off steam when it was raining, as it was that day. The Fortune twins had come over to play. Kitty and Liv were a few years older than Rory, and Irene had always thought them a civilising influence. Also, she wanted her boys to mix with little girls; soon enough they would be packed off to boarding school, as Liam had been, where the female of the species would be reduced to Matron and Nurse.
It was a Wednesday, and Irene was feeding Fergal in the kitchen. Quinny was about to leave for her afternoon off. It had, she’d noticed, gone awfully quiet in the playroom and she asked Quinny if she’d mind checking on the children before she went. The only entrance to the playroom was from the garden, so Quinny went outside. What Irene heard next was Quinny screaming. She thought there’d been some kind of accident, and she rushed out, her heart thumping, with Fergal in her arms still sucking greedily on his bottle. Thank God, she was thinking, Quinny is still here.
But there was no accident. Quinny was standing just inside the open doorway of the playroom, gripping the door handle.
‘It’s a sacrilege, a sacrilege, do you hear. Do you understand?’ she was shouting.
Beyond her, Irene could see Rory and one of the Fortune twins draped comically in a pair of red velveteen curtains she’d recently taken down because they were past their best. Owen was kneeling in front of them, swathed in a bed sheet. Irene found herself stifling a smile – the female influence of the Fortune twins was obviously making itself felt.
‘What is it?’ she asked, stepping into the frozen scene, still expecting to see blood.
‘Your boy,’ Quinny said accusingly, ‘your boy has committed a sacrilege.’ There was a catch of grief in her voice.
‘We were playing Mass,’ Rory rushed to defend himself. ‘I’m Canon Burke, Liv’s Father Dolan, Owen is the altar boy, and Kitty is the audience.’
‘Congregation,’ Irene found herself saying.
‘It’s still a sacrilege, Missus,’ Quinny said, gulping noisily, ‘making a mockery of the Holy Sacrament.’ Her breath was coming high and fast, her cheeks were flushed.
Irene handed the baby over to Kitty, the more capable of the twins, and put her arm around Quinny, who was heaving dry tears. Hyperventilation. She’d seen it a couple of times with nervous flyers in her time.
‘Take a deep breath, there’s a good girl,’ she said as the children looked on, aghast. What a strange reversal this was, she thought, being in the position of comforting Quinny.
‘I’m sure the children meant no harm by it.’
‘It’s a mortal sin,’ Quinny said.
‘They’re only children …’ Irene said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Quinny said, ‘it’s still a mortal sin.’
‘I’m sure the boys didn’t mean any harm by it, did you, boys?’ She couldn’t presume to speak for the Fortunes.
‘Those twins put them up to it,’ Quinny said.
‘Rory will make a good confession about it and that’ll be the end of it,’ Irene said decisively. ‘Isn’t that so?’
Rory nodded gravely.
‘They were using Tom Thumbs as the Sacred Host,’ Quinny persisted.
Irene saw the offending bag of sweets sitting on a kitchen plate on the floor. They were Rory’s, and Irene was rather touched that he had offered his personal hoard up for the sake of verisimilitude.
‘Maybe Kitty and Liv should run along home now,’ Irene said. She was tiring of trying to console Quinny, who seemed so adamant in her refusal. Kitty handed Fergal back.
The twins looked relieved to be out of the line of fire.
‘Now,’ Irene said to Quinny, ‘why don’t we make you a nice cup of tea and we can all calm down.’
Rory, she could see, was quite shocked at this strange behaviour of Quinny’s. Owen was simply confused.
‘You go and put the kettle on, Quinny,’ she said, figuring that, as with an upset child, distraction was the best policy.
But Quinny j
ust stood there. ‘Are you going to sack me, Missus?’
And that’s when Irene should have said yes.
* * *
‘Well, it’s hardly a hanging offence,’ Liam said when she told him about it. ‘And at least it proves she’s pious.’
But, Irene wanted to say, what I saw was not piety but terror. Quinny had been more terrified than the children were, terrified of them and what they had done. As if she expected instant retribution. She was a religious girl – Irene had seen the holy water bottle in her room, the missal. She went to early Mass every Sunday, but there was nothing to account for this kind of zeal. Irene found herself examining her own conscience. She was a believer, of course, but she didn’t go in for craw-thumping. She prayed spasmodically, but more out of desperation than routine. Hurried imprecations to stem panic, bargains offered in return for specific favours. She began to see how childish and lazy her faith was. How lax and deficient she must seem to someone of Quinny’s fanatical heart. She felt herself already judged in Quinny’s eyes for not punishing Rory. She would have to do something, or be seen to do something. Cravenly, she followed Quinny’s lead and blamed the Fortune twins for the whole business.
‘I’ve told Kitty and Liv’s mother that it might be better if they didn’t come over for a while,’ Irene told Quinny, even though she realised she was engaging in appeasement. Appeasing Quinny.
What she said to Betty Fortune was quite different.
‘The maid,’ she said, adopting an air of helpless fatalism, ‘seems to have taken some kind of set against your girls.’
And that seemed to be the end of it.
The episode had its consequences; it made Rory wary of Quinny. He was nervous by disposition, and Irene knew he feared another outburst, particularly since the first one had been aimed at him. But Owen’s devotion remained. If anything, it grew. He wanted only Quinny to bathe him, or to read him his bedtime story. Irene wondered if this was her younger son’s attempt at appeasement. Or was it the other way around? Since the sacrilege incident, Quinny had taken to favouring Owen, as if he were her primary responsibility. ‘How’s my little Oweny?’ she would croon and his little face would light up. He’d clamber up on her, and she would nuzzle him and whisper to him. Irene began to feel gently elbowed out. In the afternoons, Quinny would take Owen into her bed for his nap, and Owen wouldn’t settle anywhere else. Irene found herself knocking tentatively at Quinny’s door when nap time was up.
‘If Owen sleeps too much during the day, he’ll be awake half the night,’ she would entreat.
‘Sure, I’ll mind him, Missus – don’t I always?’ This directed at Owen, who looked up adoringly at Quinny. Like a depiction of the Virgin and Child, Irene thought. Irene felt panicky; could a child be killed with kindness? The balance of power had shifted, and she was afraid. Afraid of the maid.
In the meantime, though, there were the summer holidays. They rented a chalet in Courtown for the month of July. Irene took Quinny, and Liam came at the weekends, work allowing, so Irene’s memories of that summer were all Quinny. At close quarters in the chalet, Irene realised how solitary the girl was. It came as a soft shock. Irene tried to compensate. When they went for treats, Irene would determinedly include her. Sticks of candyfloss, ice-cream cones, a matinée at the cinema even though there were only cartoons showing. When they went to the carnival, she doled out small change to Quinny as if she were an honorary child, though she was nineteen and Irene feared she might be offended. But she didn’t seem to be. At the Spin the Wheel, Quinny won a pink bunny rabbit, which she presented to Owen, although it would have been more suitable for the baby, Irene thought. Owen was delighted. He hung on to that bunny for years. Refused to let Irene take it away, even to wash it, so that it became a grubby talisman of Quinny’s that would not be banished. In the light of what happened, Irene felt she couldn’t deny him.
The weather was glorious. So hot that the tar on the road to the beach melted and the children’s feet stuck to it. She remembered having to stop Owen scraping the black stuff off with his fingers and eating it; he thought it was liquorice. There were long, lazy days of picnics and sandcastles and dips in the sea. Quinny was not equipped for the seaside, Irene noticed. She had no swimwear, and she seemed to have nothing even vaguely summery in her wardrobe. Her only concession to the heat was that she dispensed with stockings. Her legs looked pale and sorrowful stuck in her kitten heels and she didn’t shave her legs, Irene saw, so there was quite a thicket growing there. Irene offered her one of her old bathing suits, though she thought it would be a bit of a squeeze for Quinny to get into it since she was much better endowed on top than Irene was. (Miss Pays-Bas had told her that was why Irene hadn’t got into the top five in London. Vulgar creature.)
‘It’s alright, Missus,’ Quinny said, ‘I’m not much good with water. Can’t swim.’
Irene felt sorry for her. While she and Owen paddled in the shallows and Rory bobbed in the breakers, Quinny sat miserably behind the candy-striped windbreak looking after Fergal. It made Irene feel like a girl again, larking about in the surf with the boys, while Quinny seemed more like the mother, sitting in the shade and watching their fun remotely. And Owen was returned to her. He could not resist the fun of the water, the one place Quinny couldn’t follow him.
But with Quinny there was always the grit in the oyster. One afternoon when Irene had gone to the beach shop, Quinny had let Owen – it would be Owen, of course – bury his sandals. They were newly bought, the ones with the clover pattern and the blond soles. Quinny was always engaging in this kind of play with them, Irene thought crossly, not supervising them but sinking to their level. When she came back with a net of oranges for the children (no crisps and chocolate bars for her boys; she insisted on healthy snacks to protect their teeth), she interrupted their game, so it wasn’t until they were getting ready to pack up and go that the absence of the sandals was discovered. Irene was furious.
‘They can’t have gone too deep,’ Quinny said when they started their search. But an hour later, when Irene and the boys were reduced to dogs, scrabbling at the sand with their paws, her nonchalance had disappeared.
‘Where did you last see them?’ Irene demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ Quinny said forlornly. ‘That was the whole point of the game.’
They excavated until the sand all around their encampment was a field of coarse rubble. Owen used his spade and thought it all part of the silly game Quinny had started. Towards the end, Rory let out a victorious halloo when he unearthed one sandal. But that was nearly worse. What good was one? The light began to fail. The beach was deserted now, and they were steeped in a chilly salmon-coloured dusk. The children were getting shivery, the baby in Quinny’s arms yelling to be fed, but Irene insisted they continue. She’d wanted to punish Quinny, but in the end the children had been made to suffer by the fruitless search. There’d be trouble, Irene knew. Liam couldn’t stand the idea of waste. He wasn’t tight-fisted, exactly, but he was frugal by nature so that she had to account for every penny of her housekeeping allowance. She was thriftier than he knew – she still had that Connolly gown and all her other beauty queen finery. In case, she told herself, in case she might find an occasion – some function to do with Liam’s work, maybe – where she could wear them again. But, she suspected, those taffeta and satin dresses lovingly preserved in their plastic shrouds represented something different to Liam. For him, they spoke of an extravagant nature that might sprout again at any moment. The very things that had attracted him – her style, her poise – had become vices that must be reined in.
‘The price of Owen’s sandals will come out of your wages,’ she said to Quinny as they trooped back home through the darkening dunes.
‘Yes, Missus,’ was all Quinny said.
The days at the beach were memorialised not in holiday snaps – because Irene was useless with the camera; that was Liam’s domain – but by an unseen hand. On one of those long, lazy days a John Hinde postcard photo
grapher had captured the scene. Two years later, when Irene had had the courage to return to Courtown, Owen spotted the card on the swivel rack in the beachside shop.
‘Look, look,’ he screamed, ‘it’s Quinny!’
Irene ignored him as he tugged at her sleeve. It was a scene that had been replayed again and again. The sight of any long-haired girl on the street could prompt him. He would run after her, calling out Quinny’s name, Irene in resentful pursuit. She was weary of trying to explain to long-haired strangers why her son was clinging to them. The sightings on the street were always heartbreaking; he would be inconsolable for days, crushed by the enormity of his own expectation.
‘Now, Owen, you know it can’t be Quinny. Quinny is …’ Irene didn’t like to use the word.
‘But she’s here,’ Owen insisted, waving the card at her. ‘Look, look.’
He was getting so hysterical that she bent down to look at the card, and she saw that Owen was right. The photographer must have stood in the dunes at the curve of the beach – the view was a long one. The sky blared blue. Irene and her boys were reduced to heads bobbing in the frothy water, but Quinny’s face was captured quite clearly in side view, and wearing Irene’s straw sun hat. Some old sense of propriety flared in Irene.
‘You’re absolutely right, Owen,’ she said, feeling her voice tremble. She bought the card to appease him and in the hope that it might provide solace. But part of her wished he had never seen it. While Owen was in the world, she realised, Quinny would have a hold over her.
Quinny took Owen on a morning in September; well not exactly took him, she was technically in charge of him. Irene didn’t know how to explain this – Quinny went missing, and for several hours she had no idea where her son was (though she never told Liam this). Quinny was supposed to be taking Owen to the barber for his first big boy cut. Up to then, Irene had used the scissors on his baby curls, but she’d decided it was time. Time to let go. This was the first step on his journey to boarding school; Irene reckoned she’d better get used to it. In a year’s time, Rory would be sent there.
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