by Laura Elliot
‘No, I don’t mind,’ Adele replied. ‘I was reared by my grandmother. My mother died giving birth to me.’
‘Well, that’s a tragedy sure enough, and a tough start in life. But I hope you’ve had a happy one.’
Adele blinked tears away. Surely she was all cried out by now. ‘My grandmother did her best.’
‘That’s all any of us can do.’
In its day, the House of Atonement had been a local attraction, she told Adele. Carloads of curious onlookers used to come to buy religious paraphernalia and catch a glimpse of the visionary. Lilian had been one of the sceptics. She rolled her eyes at the possibility of trances and ecstatic revelations. The house had originally belonged to an Anglo-Irish family whose seed and breed died out when their last surviving member, an only child, a daughter, unmarried, became involved with the Thorns in her old age.
‘Putty in their hands, she was,’ said Lilian. ‘Signed over everything to ensure that she would be among the chosen when she popped her clogs, which she managed to conveniently do six months later.’ She stood back and looked upwards towards the blackened ruin. ‘Rumours were always swirling around this place. That’s what happens when people put up walls.’ Gently but firmly, Lilian took her arm and turned her away. ‘Small steps, that’s the best way to approach the past. You’ve stood in this godforsaken place for long enough. Come back to my house and we can chat about this over a cup of tea.’
She was in her late seventies, she told Adele, but her step was still sprightly. They walked through a wooded area and entered a farmyard where a woman was lifting groceries from the back of her car. She called out to Lilian and waved a greeting at them before entering the farmhouse.
‘That’s Tricia O’Donnell,’ said Lilian. ‘She allows me right of way onto their land. My own house is just up the road.’
Adele became aware of birdsong, a riotous medley. Was she just noticing it now or had it been absent from that blighted landscape? Lilian’s ‘up the road’ turned out to be a quarter of a mile away and her house, an old, two-storey building with yellow exterior walls, was the nearest one to the farm. Inside, the smell of turf and dog mingled pleasantly with the scent from an aromatic oil burner.
‘A documentary maker. Now, that’s an interesting occupation.’ Lilian sounded impressed as she set mugs on the table and cut thick slices of home-made soda bread. ‘Are you planning on making a documentary about the Thorns?’
‘That’s my intention.’
‘There was a writer chap down here a few years back looking for information. Devil a bit of harm, I thought, telling him what I knew. But Gloria Thornton’s son got to hear about it and threatened to bring me to court for slandering his mother’s character. He’s a nasty piece of work and he certainly put the wind up me. I’m too old for that kind of pressure. Is what I’m telling you off the record?’
‘Of course it is. I am anxious to make a documentary but, for now, I’m just interested in finding out what I can about that house and the young women who stayed there. Did you know any of them?’
‘Most of them were still only girls and I wasn’t allowed next or near them. My only contact was with the Thorns who ran the place, and Gloria, of course, when she visited. She asked me once to bring a baby to the States. She’d heard I was planning to visit my sister in Boston. The adoptive parents would meet me at the airport. All perfectly legit, she assured me. Even showed me the paperwork. When I refused, she threatened to boycott my shop. I didn’t give a fig for her threats. I never had kids myself, or a husband for that matter. Never wanted a man, nor a woman either. Just a loner, that’s always been me.’ She leaned down and stroked the dog’s ears. ‘A dog, my camera, a strong pair of shoes and a long road, that’s all I needed to keep me happy. But if I’d had a baby and someone took her or him from me… there’d be blood spilled.’
‘Are you telling me she was trafficking those babies?’
‘It wasn’t called that in those days, of course. No, then it was considered an act of charity to give a baby a good home. Now, it’s all out in the open and we can put the right name on it. Gloria Thornton took those babies from their mothers and sold them.’
‘You know that for definite?’
‘No, sadly I don’t. But Charlotte, she was the owner of that house, said something to me before she died. She was in a fever so it would have been easy to ignore it. I chose not to. She said Gloria Thornton had turned her home into an auction block for babies. She was dead by the time it burned down but she would have struck the match had she been around to do so. It was a miracle that only one person died that night. I’ve never been able to figure out what brought Gloria back into that inferno after she escaped from it.’
‘She was rescuing the girls. I read about it.’
‘I read those reports myself. All spin, isn’t that what they call it nowadays? Gloria went back into the blaze all right but she never came out alive. Overcome by smoke, apparently. There were some inflammable liquids stored in her office and that’s what caused the inferno. That road you drove down was as smooth as a ribbon then but it was still a miracle the firemen were able to get everyone to safety. It was sheer pandemonium. The girls were ferried to hospital to be checked out. Poor wee things, shivering and wailing. Thank God their babies survived. I can see you’re upset. You wouldn’t have been one of those babies, would you?’
‘No, I’d been taken from there by then. It’s just appalling to think about it.’
‘It was appalling, especially the behaviour of the Thorns. They wanted to move the girls to their communes. They had one somewhere in West Kerry, if I remember rightly, and another one up in Donegal. But the emergency teams weren’t having any of it. They were ferried to hospital to be checked out and discharged into the care of the state, as far as I recall. I took photos. You probably think that was voyeuristic of me and you’d be right, I guess. I was a keen photographer then, still am, to be honest, and I happened to be close to the scene when the fire first broke out.’
‘Do you still have the photographs?’
‘I’m sure I do. They’re somewhere among the clutter. Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can find.’
Adele could hear her rummaging about upstairs. Four generations of clutter stored in crates and boxes, Lilian had said. She was empty-handed when she came downstairs.
‘I know they’re there somewhere,’ she fretted. ‘If I could just lay my hands on them. Give me your address and I’ll send them to you when I find them.’
What address should she give? Colorado was in the future and an address in Reedstown had yet to be found. They exchanged phone numbers and promised to keep in touch.
Shadows were lengthening when Adele clambered over the fallen tree and returned to her car. She did not look behind as she drove away. Nothing to see except the stark remains of a delusion. An auction block where babies were bartered to the highest bidder.
10
The Marianne Diary
Barbara can always make me laugh, no matter how down I am. She’s only a year older than me but she knows so much. She says I was gang-raped. I should have been brought to a hospital. Then I wouldn’t be expecting a baby because they could have done something to stop me becoming pregnant. That’s exactly what Fr Breen told Mam but she wouldn’t listen to him. She says he’s not a proper priest with his hippy, dippy sermons. A mother knows best, she said after he left our house. That was the day after IT happened. I didn’t need to go to a hospital and have doctors poking and prodding me and asking questions that no good girl should have to answer. She said the Thorns would fill my bedroom with the Holy Spirit and heal me. If I sought divine forgiveness then clean thoughts would enter my mind again and wash away the bad.
Miss Bethany heard me and Barbara talking one night when we were supposed to be sleeping. The next day Barbara was put into the tank for two days. It’s down in the cellar and she says it’s a shit hole. She’s been moved to a different dormitory and Miss Bethany says I must make restitution
for offending God. That means never complaining or telling lies again. Good girls don’t get raped. They wear decent clothes and keep their legs crossed. Sorry, Miss Bethany, you’re so fucked-up wrong. Sergeant Bale must belong to the Thorns because that’s exactly the kind of thing he said to me when he was getting to the nub of the matter. He made me feel tainted, ugly, filthy, different! Stop! Barbara says we have to fight, fight, fight to stay sane and defeat them.
It’s hard to do that. I saw Mr Lewis today. He was getting into his car and Mother Gloria was at the bottom of the steps talking to him. She said I needed to have my eyes tested when I asked her if it was him. I was going to argue with her but when she gets that look in her eyes it’s time to shut up. So what’s real? Me and the others, that’s what. Siobhan’s cries over the twins. Jenny’s bird that she feeds. Lisa’s songs that she sings to her baby so he’ll remember her voice when he’s taken. And Barbara with her crazy plan to escape from here.
We measured tummies today. Her baby is due a week after mine. Charlie, he’s her boyfriend, is going to rescue her long before then. At least she can name her baby’s father. Not like me. Who are they? Which one is my baby’s father? Is he the one with the beer breath? Or the one whose teeth made my lips bleed? Or the one with the smell of smoke on his clothes? Three blind mice… see how they run… see how they run… see how they run…
11
Reedstown was a village on a cusp of change, its fields and meadows torn apart by bulldozers and cranes. The Loyvale Hotel was part of this new expansion and Adele would stay there until she found somewhere suitable to rent. This morning she was searching for the cottage where Marianne and Shane had believed they would be safe. Clues to its location were sparse, scribbled entries that described a lane where deadwood snapped underfoot and dangling branches patterned a cracked window. In one of her vague references to Reedstown, Noreen had mentioned that her house had a view of a river. As the Loy ran behind the village, this suggested that the house had stood on a height but would have been close enough to their hiding place for Marianne to meet Shane and return again before the Thorns finished their weekly gathering.
The land on the outskirts of Reedstown had given way to apartment complexes, their balconies overlooking rows of newly occupied houses. The narrowness of the main street running through the centre of the village suggested it had once serviced a sleepy backwater and was now struggling to contain the stream of cars accessing it from the M50 motorway. The village her mother had known was now a busy satellite town and Adele, searching for a tumbledown refuge with a monstrous history, soon realised the futility of her search.
A week had passed since her arrival and this morning she had discovered a derelict cottage, almost invisible behind a screen of ash and elderberry trees. Yesterday, she had checked an abandoned shack in a field of dandelions. Another cottage sagged by the edge of the main road leading into Reedstown, its roof collapsed. She had photographed each location, clicking, clicking, searching for something, a clue from the grave that would scream This is where I fell into hell.
She stumbled on a tuft of grass and regained her balance before stepping through the doorway. Standing in the rubble of pizza cartons and rusting beer cans, she opened her arms in an effort to invoke her dead mother’s presence. She longed for a ghostly shudder of recognition; anything that would suggest a link between the past and the present, the living and the dead. But there was nothing to alert her, just stinging nettles at her feet and the earthy smell of rot. And thorns, everywhere she looked. Blackberry briars clawing the legs of her jeans. Hawthorn and blackthorn tangling in the hedgerows, and those banks of gorse, its spindly blossom splashing gold against the distant hillside.
Returning to the village centre, she explored the side streets and narrow lanes for evidence that the Thorns would once have worshipped there. Again, she drew a blank. No wooden signage with faded lettering. No dusty, empty pews or arched ceiling that would have echoed with empty promises. No house of prayer where her mother had hidden under a duvet as she listened to the Thorns chanting and singing to a God who would choose them above all others for entry through the gates of heaven.
A man with cropped brown hair and a trim goatee beard emerged from a small convenience store, a takeaway coffee in hand, and caused her to slow her step. He glanced at her as he passed, startled, perhaps, or flattered by her penetrating stare. She continued along Main Street and stopped before a poster of Christy Lewis in the window of his constituency clinic. His penetrating blue gaze suggested that he had years of experience behind him and the knowledge to use the votes of his constituents wisely. His son had followed him into politics. His poster was also on display, a younger version of his father, better looking than the older man, his white teeth gleaming with sincerity.
Later, Adele’s hand shook as she filled her rental car with petrol and noticed a stocky man, his black hair thinning at the temples, watching her from another pump, his three children bobbing with impatience in the backseat. Could he be the one, she thought as he drove away? Or the man in a navy business suit, a briefcase slung from his shoulder, who had followed her into the hotel last night. No, she had decided, as she listened to him checking in at reception; like her, he was a stranger in town. She had no reason to assume her father would still be living in Reedstown. He could have moved to Australia, the States, England, anywhere. He could be buried in a graveyard or resting – ashes to ashes, dust to dust – in a cremation urn. She needed objectivity if she was to discover the truth about her birth; reacting emotionally to every male she encountered in the forty-plus age group would destroy her. Yet they continued to stand out like stencils from the passing crowd.
The people she stopped to ask about the Thorns stared blankly at her. Some lived in the newer houses and found it hard to believe that a cult had once existed in Reedstown. The locals shrugged. The Thorns had kept to themselves before moving on to set up their communes elsewhere, said one woman. Why was she raking all that old stuff up again, a querulous old man on a Zimmer asked when she stopped him on Main Street? Gloria Thornton had been a saint and a martyr. God rest her soul, he said as he shuffled on, muttering about outsiders coming into the village to stir old dust.
A brash shopping centre had been built to service the new housing estates but the shops on Main Street still had their old-fashioned exteriors and signs that suggested business had been done under the same family name for generations. The bold modernism of the office of the local newspaper, the Reedstown Review, was the exception. Set apart from the older buildings, its frontage and high-domed roof, both made from glass, reminded Adele of a gigantic goldfish bowl. Did the staff feel the same way, exposed, as they were, to the gaze of the public as they bent over their phones and computers, or rode between the floors on a pod-like elevator? Tomorrow morning, she had an appointment with the owner and editor, Robert Molloy.
12
The Marianne Diary
My baby keeps growing. Strange how such a tiny heart can keep beating when I wish with all my might for it to stop. I tried so hard to do it. Gin was supposed to work. I stole a bottle from William’s off-licence. I didn’t care if I was caught. That’s probably how I got away with it. Murderer, that’s what Mam would have called me if she’d known what I was doing. But she’d gone to the Thorn repentance session after the pregnancy test confirmed her worst fear. I drank loads of the gin and ran a hot bath. I was sick as a dog for two days afterwards. Mam thought it was morning sickness. I hoped it was the baby coming away but it clung on. In the gym I did skipping and press-ups and wall climbing and stomach stretching exercises. Nothing worked.
I begged Mum to bring me to England for an abortion. A girl in fifth year did that. We weren’t supposed to know but her best friend told another friend and soon it was all over school. She never came back afterwards. Last we heard she was going to grind school to study for her Leaving.
Mam wouldn’t listen to me. She said abortion was a crime against the state but, even worse, it was a
sin against God. What God? The one with his hands stretched out, all that streaming light coming from his palms? Or the one the Thorns worship? A big bully who says it’s wrong to love and be happy and want to dance on clouds. That’s what I felt like with Shane. Like everyone was circling around us but no one could break through our love. If this was our lovechild, I’d cradle it. But it’s a rape child. A tumour in my belly and I can’t tear it out.
I can’t wait for it to be born and on its way to America. That’s the best place for babies like ours, Mother Gloria says. There are Thorns over there, loads and loads of them, only that’s not what they’re called. But they all believe that they are the chosen ones and they want our babies to become chosen too. Barbara says that’ll happen over her dead body. She loves her baby and Malachi is going to help her to escape. He’s different to the other Thorns. He hugged Siobhan Miley when her twins died and brings us sweets and bars of chocolate back from Inisada.
When Barbara puts her hands on her tummy and gets that look in her eyes, like she’s far away from us all, just her and her baby in a bubble, I envy her so much. She has love inside her and that helps her to escape, even if it’s only for a little while in her mind. But me, there’s no escaping that kick… kick… kick… kick… like my baby knows that’s all I’ll remember when it’s gone.
13 Adele
In the reception area of the Reedstown Review office, two large photographs hung side by side. One featured the original newspaper office. Modest in comparison to this glass edifice, it had been a two-storey, red-brick building with the Reedstown Review sign above the main entrance. The details, inscribed on a brass plaque underneath, stated that the photograph was taken in 1912. The second photograph showed a group of men and women posing outside the new building on the day it was officially opened. According to the inscription, Christy Lewis, Reedstown’s local politician, had cut the ribbon.