Comfort Me With Apples

by Comfort Me

  ‘He picked the wrong one with me. I’ll make sure my people know about him and my nephew’s a policeman. He’ll give him a fright that’ll cure him once and for all,’ the gardener said grimly.

  ‘Restores your faith in people, doesn’t it?’ James said when Anna told him of the gardener’s offer to replace the stolen items.

  ‘Yes, and at least I got all the heavy work done before Mr Cleary came back. He still looks far from well,’ said Anna. ‘I’m glad to see the back of Byrne, though. I hate deceit.’

  Mrs Furlong had resented the fact that Anna seemed more prosperous than Dorrie and said she was forgetting herself and giving herself airs above her station in life. To Dorrie she wrote that they knew Anna was only a housekeeper but she was accepted by everyone else as James’s wife. She was delighted at the sudden rise in Dorrie’s fortunes and bragged to all her cronies about Dorrie and Michael’s rich friends, their mansion, the three indoor servants and the gardener-handyman.

  It troubled Anna’s sensitive conscience that, although on the surface she accepted the explanations and excuses for her mother and Dorrie’s behaviour, she found it impossible to forgive them. The sisters corresponded, but infrequently, and on Anna’s part briefly. Dorrie wrote of her busy social life, her fashionable friends and clothes. She always mentioned her house and servants and several times wrote that she and Michael were like newly-weds again.

  If she hoped to make Anna jealous she failed. The only thing Anna envied was the wholehearted love between Dorrie and Michael. She told herself that she and James had married on a basis of respect and liking and she must be satisfied with that.

  She now knew that her love for Eugene had been false, although it seemed so real at the time, but James was still in love with Dorrie and she must accept that, but sometimes she found it very hard.

  It was true that Michael was even more in love with Dorrie now that he could be proud of her instead of worrying about her. All he needed to complete his happiness was a family but there was still no sign of one.

  Only Dorrie knew the reason for this. In spite of her full life she still managed to meet Mrs Rafferty. ‘You seem to be having the life you were born for,’ the woman flattered her. ‘You don’t want to start childbearing now and spoil everything.’

  ‘I do intend to have children,’ Dorrie said, ‘but perhaps we could wait a bit longer. Just until we’ve had time to enjoy this life for a while.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Mrs Rafferty said. ‘He couldn’t begrudge you that.’ Before they parted she passed a parcel of supplies to Dorrie and a small bottle of dark fluid. ‘If you’re careful you won’t need this, but if you get caught use it as soon as you fall late, just don’t take as much as you did last time. I’ve fixed up a few women but they’ve took it as soon as their monthlies were late and there’s been no questions asked.’

  Dorrie passed over a small packet of sovereigns in return and as usual left before Mrs Rafferty.

  Michael, unsuspecting and trusting Dorrie, still hoped that they would soon be blessed with a family. Dorrie had not confided in anyone and her mother wrote commiserating with her, adding, ‘At least you don’t have to worry about your sister being the first.’

  Dorrie handed the letter to Michael and he said, ‘What does she mean – about Anna?’ but she only smiled secretly and slipped her arms around his neck.

  ‘Women’s secrets, Michael,’ she said gaily and kissed him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was a supremely happy time for Michael, free from all the distress and worry about Dorrie’s health. She seemed to blossom in this new environment, helping Michael by entertaining people who could put business his way and charming everyone in their new circle of friends.

  Most of these people were as newly rich as they were and they welcomed the young couple, the pretty wife and handsome husband, both obviously devoted to each other.

  Dorrie was careful not to repeat her mistake of flirting with the husbands and antagonising the wives and was regarded as a model wife.

  There was only one small flaw in Michael’s happiness, the fact that there was still no sign of a family. He was an innocent young man in many ways and like many of his type and class had no sexual experience before marriage, in spite of his years in the army.

  He had gone into the army at eighteen years old, straight from his sheltered home, and his first sergeant had terrified the recruits with graphic details of the diseases which could result from casual sex. A natural fastidiousness, combined with his strict upbringing and the restrictions imposed by his religion, made it easy for him to resist temptation. This meant that on his wedding night he was as inexperienced as Dorrie.

  Although Michael would never have admitted it, at heart he was as much of a romantic as his wife, and was proud that Dorrie was his first, as he was with her.

  There was little time to brood in his busy life but sometimes he wondered if there was something not quite right with Dorrie ‘down below’, as he put it to himself. He was a gentle and considerate lover but sometimes, even at the height of his passion, he had to restrain himself with a great effort of will in case he damaged Dorrie. He knew there was some obstruction but he was too inexperienced and too trusting to suspect the reason.

  He tentatively suggested to Dorrie that she should see a doctor but this provoked such a storm of hysterical weeping that he was afraid to suggest it again. The thought of the miscarriage seemed to have been dismissed from Dorrie’s mind but it was often in his.

  He had been sitting with Dorrie and the doctor and the nurse had gone into the other bedroom. When Dorrie fell asleep Michael followed them and found them bending over a small object on a piece of blotting. ‘About eight weeks,’ the doctor was saying.

  ‘What is it?’ Michael asked.

  ‘The foetus. Your son or daughter – or would have been,’ the doctor said bluntly.

  The blood drained from Michael’s face as he looked at the tiny form and the nurse pushed him gently into a chair and gave him a glass of brandy. The doctor nodded to the nurse, who folded the blotting paper over and picked it up, but Michael said weakly, ‘Please,’ and with a glance at the doctor she replaced it. Dorrie called and they went to her.

  Michael remembered every detail of that day and particularly of his son. He was sure the child was a boy. He had turned back the blotting paper and looked at him.

  The tiny figure, about an inch long, lay curled up in the shape of a new moon. The head was pointed and the shape of an arm and a leg had been formed, and the outline of a face, but it was a spot of bright blue which would become an eye which made the baby real to Michael. He remembered his grief and his determination that this must be hidden from Dorrie. It would break her heart.

  Later, he had lined a matchbox with cotton wool and reverently laid the tiny figure in it, then sprinkled it with holy water and said, ‘I baptise thee Michael John.’ After dark he had slipped out with the matchbox, a torch and a bottle of holy water and gone to the old churchyard. He chose a secluded corner where a small headstone was almost buried and cleared the moss and soil from it.

  ‘Mary Ann Pearson. Laid to rest 10 October 1849,’ he read and he dug a small hole near the stone, laid the matchbox in it and sprinkled it with holy water. As he covered it with soil he said, ‘Into Thy care, O Lord, I commend his spirit.’

  Before he left he scratched MJF on an inconspicuous part of the headstone and said a prayer for Mary Ann Pearson. He was sure she would not mind sharing her grave with his son. He said nothing of any of this to Dorrie, thinking that she would find it too hard to bear.

  As a child in the Ballinane farmhouse kitchen he had overheard a woman say, ‘They said her womb was tilted,’ and he told Dorrie of this, hoping it might induce her to see a doctor, but she only said lightly, ‘What a place for gossip and old wives’ tales it is. No wonder you couldn’t wait to get away.’

  The business was flourishing, with more contracts obtained and more men employed all the time, ‘B
egod, Michael, it’s true that money breeds money,’ his partner, Eddy, told him. ‘We’re making so much it frightens me.’

  ‘It doesn’t frighten me,’ Michael said, laughing. ‘I’m enjoying every minute of it.’

  Letters went back and forth between them and their families in Liverpool and Ireland, but there never seemed to be time for visits. The rapid growth of the business was an excuse readily accepted but it was their full social life which really made it impossible to go home.

  Anna felt it as a reprieve. She dreaded that Dorrie could cause a disruption in their happy, peaceful lives, although even in her absence she still felt her sister like a cloud hovering above her, the one topic which could never be discussed between herself and James.

  Michael’s parents were equally relieved. Dermot was still active in the Irish Republican Brotherhood in different parts of the country and while he was in Kerry he had fallen foul of the authorities. The farmhouse at Ballinane had been searched by English soldiers and Dermot had been furious when he returned.

  ‘Thank God Michael has stopped taking their dirty money,’ he told his mother. ‘He could have been one of the scum upsetting you here.’

  ‘Never!’ his mother exclaimed but John Farrell had stepped in as peacemaker.

  Dr O’Brien went to London for medical conferences during this time and paid brief visits to Dorrie and Michael. He always carried home glowing accounts of their prosperity and popularity, saying that they were entertaining at home or invited out nearly every night.

  In May 1910 the whole nation was saddened by the death from bronchitis of King Edward VII. He had been a popular King. His reign had coincided with a period of increased prosperity and treaties with other countries, and with the introduction of reforms such as the Old Age Pension in 1909, which had made him popular at every level of society. He had also presided at the throwing off of Victorian restrictions, by no one more enthusiastically than himself, and the people loved him for it.

  Dorrie and Michael were at a dinner party where the news of his death was being discussed and one man said, ‘We must admit, though, King Eddy was a bad lad.’

  ‘A bad husband,’ a woman said. ‘Poor Queen Alexandra had a lot to bear.’

  ‘I don’t know. They don’t have marriages like ours,’ Michael said. ‘Take the new King and Queen, George and Mary. She was engaged to his elder brother and when he died she just transferred to George. It was the job that mattered, not the man.’

  ‘You’re a cynic, Michael,’ another man said but Michael replied light-heartedly, ‘Not at all. Sure if I died you wouldn’t have taken on Dermot, would you Dorrie?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have taken on anybody else,’ she said, looking at him adoringly and several people felt a twinge of envy.

  Michael was extra-loving for the rest of the evening and when they went to bed Dorrie slipped into the bathroom before lovemaking began. She always did this, Michael believed to make herself fresh and sweet for him, but it was to use one of Mrs Rafferty’s supplies, a tiny impregnated sponge. Afterwards she paid another visit to remove it and use the rest of her preventative.

  Dorrie always enjoyed the kissing and cuddling which preceded intercourse, although she resisted if his hands wandered too far. Tonight, however, Michael was determined to try to bring Dorrie to the same pitch of arousal as himself and at the same time.

  He kissed and caressed her fiercely, with his hands moving freely about her body, then suddenly he stiffened and drew back. ‘Dorrie!’ he exclaimed incredulously, then seeing the guilty expression on her face he threw back the bedclothes. ‘Dorrie,’ he said again, then shouted angrily, ‘You lying, deceitful cheat. All this time!’

  She tried to move closer to him and put her arms around him but he thrust her away. ‘Don’t touch me. What a fool you’ve made of me.’

  She burst into tears, crying, ‘Oh, Michael,’ but for once her tears failed to move him.

  ‘How long?’ he demanded. ‘And how did you know? Where did you get this?’

  She sobbed without answering and like a blinding flash he realised and gasped, ‘Mrs Rafferty. But it’s been years.’ Then he said accusingly, ‘You’ve been seeing her. Deceiving me.’ He jumped out of bed and dragged her after him. ‘Show me,’ he ordered and she opened her wardrobe and took out the packet. He opened it and saw the sponges and various phials and a small bottle of black fluid.

  As he picked up the bottle he suddenly remembered. He had seen something like this before. In the other house. Only a fleeting glimpse and he had thought nothing of it at the time. Now, seeing it in this package, he remembered it was just before Dorrie’s miscarriage and he stood as though turned to stone, thinking, then he shook Dorrie. ‘What’s this for? Answer me.’

  She had seen Michael angry before, quick rages, soon over, but she had never seen anything like the ferocious, bitter anger she had roused now. ‘In case – in case I was late,’ she whimpered.

  ‘You used it – in the other house,’ he said implacably.

  Too terrified to lie, she nodded. ‘I took too much,’ she faltered and he thrust her away, his face congested and his eyes wild.

  ‘And you murdered my son. God stiffen you,’ he said, with such venom that Dorrie screamed in terror.

  ‘I saw him,’ he said. ‘Tiny he was, with blue eyes. Eight weeks, the doctor said. I’ve thought of him as a baby in my arms, staring at me with those blue eyes, or a little lad beside me, looking up at me with the same blue eyes.’

  He turned and laid his arm against the bedroom wall and pressed his head against it, his body shaking with grief. Dorrie stood, afraid to touch him or speak to him, then she whimpered, ‘Michael, I didn’t know.’

  He lifted his head. ‘No, you didn’t know. I wouldn’t let you see him in case it broke your heart.’ His bitter laughter was a sound that Dorrie would never forget.

  ‘I christened him Michael John and buried him in the churchyard in the grave of Mary Ann Pearson. My son. In a matchbox. I said the prayer for the dead over him and what was his mother doing? Lying in bed, pleased with herself, or writing to her crony to tell her that she had got rid of him and no one suspected, especially not her gullible fool of a husband.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I didn’t,’ Dorrie tried to protest but Michael stormed on, ‘You must have been laughing up your sleeves at me, you and that one. What a fool, a gullible fool I’ve been, but never again. I’m finished with you. Go to her. You’re two of a kind. Do as you like, but never ever come near me or I’ll kill both of you.’

  He snatched up the package. ‘I’ll see she gets what she deserves,’ he said and turned and walked out of the room without a backward glance. Dorrie stumbled to the bed and lay there weeping for the rest of the night.

  Michael was too restless even to sit down. He drank a glass of whisky and, putting the package in his overcoat pocket, he went out and walked about the streets for hours. Eventually, he took a cab to the site office.

  Eddy was always the first there and he greeted Michael, at first with pleasure, and then with dismay. ‘Michael, lad, what’s happened?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I’ve been had for a mug, Eddy,’ Michael said.

  The other man said calmly, ‘Well, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Sure she was always too pretty for her own good and there’s always fellas ready to take advantage.’ He was pouring hot strong tea as he spoke, then ladled sugar into it.

  ‘Get that down you,’ he said. ‘There’s a drop of rum in it as well. It’s just the first shock, lad. Everything will look better in a couple of days.’

  Michael drank the scalding tea, deciding to stay with Eddy’s version of events. He felt too ashamed to tell anyone but one man the real story. During his solitary walking he had decided to go to the chaplain of the regiment and ask his advice about Mrs Rafferty.

  Now he said to Eddy, ‘I’ll need a few days to myself, Eddy. Can you manage?’

  ‘Indeed we will. The manager in your office is a good lad and he�
�ll deal with day-to-day stuff. Anything else can wait until you’re better. I’ll give out you’re sick. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to see the padre, ask his advice,’ Michael said. He stood up. ‘Thanks Eddy. I’ll get away now. I don’t want to see the lads.’

  ‘The army, you mean?’ Eddy said, and when Michael nodded he said, ‘Go to a barber’s, lad, get yourself tidied up like.’

  Michael ran his hand over his face. ‘God, yes. Thanks again, Eddy.’

  His friend escorted him to the door. ‘Don’t do anything rash now, lad, and remember, me and Mary are always there. Come any time. Stay the night or stay the month. You’re always welcome.’

  Michael took Eddy’s advice and went to a barber’s for a shave, realising how necessary it was when he confronted his image in the mirror. I’m not going to let those two destroy me, he thought with a spurt of anger, and when he left the barber’s he bought a new shirt, then went to another establishment where he could have a bath and have his suit pressed. He marched into the barracks to ask to see the chaplain looking as smart as the man who had left there.

  Fortunately he saw no one he knew except the chaplain, who took him to his room. ‘I don’t know where to start, Father,’ Michael said.

  ‘Take your time, my son. Start with your real reason for leaving the regiment,’ said the priest. ‘You know you can say anything to me and it will go no further.’

  Once he started, words poured from Michael’s lips and the priest listened in silence, merely nodding encouragingly from time to time. When Michael spoke of the baby he had buried he was suddenly overcome with grief for what might have been and wept, covering his face with his hands. The priest stood up and placed a glass of brandy beside him and Michael wiped his face and said thickly, ‘Sorry, Father.’