by Maureen Lee
She looked at her watch again: quarter to three. A car door slammed in the main road and she was surprised when two men walked into the square. They could be seen quite clearly in the light of the moon and the lamps that cast a soft glow over the silent houses. They stopped in front of the first house where Sarah Rees-James and her children slept. Although the men had their backs to her, Victoria could tell they were giving Sarah’s house a good look over. Their voices were audible through the open window, though she couldn’t make out the words. One of the men approached the front door and she held her breath, wondering if she should shout and order them to go away, but the man merely examined the lock and returned to join his companion.
‘Gareth.’ She shook his shoulder.
‘Wha?’ muttered a sleepy voice, followed by a wide-awake one saying, ‘Victoria, what a cracking surprise! I’d forgotten where I was for the minute.’ He tried to drag her back into bed, but she said urgently, ‘There’s these men outside Sarah’s house, casing the joint.’
‘Casing the joint!’ He laughed out loud.
‘Shush! The window’s open and they might hear. Come and look.’
When Gareth looked, the men were walking away. Soon afterwards, a car door slammed and she said quickly, ‘Look through the other window, quickly, see if they came in a silver Rolls-Royce.’
Gareth leaped out of bed, as naked as the day he was born, and ran to the end room. ‘It’s a Rolls,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t tell what colour in the streetlights, but I’d guess silver.’
‘That’s Sarah’s husband’s car. I told you what happened yesterday, didn’t I? He tried to take the children, but Ernie stopped him. I missed everything,’ she said regretfully. ‘I was covered in cobwebs at the time. He must be intending to come back again. I’d better tell Sarah tomorrow. Oh!’ She put her hand to her mouth.
‘Oh, what?’
‘Say if they come back tonight?’
‘We’ll just have to stay awake in case they do, then sound the alarm.’
‘Stay awake all night!’
‘That’s easily done.’ Gareth got into bed and took her in his arms. ‘Very easily done,’ he said, kissing her.
Tonight was the second time that Liam had tried to open her bedroom door, but had found it bolted on the inside. He knocked softly and whispered, ‘Marie,’ but Marie merely buried her head in the pillow, the rosary in her hand.
‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ she whispered. ‘Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus …’
Liam whispered her name and knocked again, but must have decided to give up when there was no response. The floorboards creaked as he crept back to his room, the bed creaked when he got into it, and Marie prayed faster and faster until the words ran into each other and no longer made any sense.
They hadn’t been able to have a private word with each other all day – in a way it had been a relief as she had no idea what she would say. Patrick had been in when Liam had gone to work and was there when he came home. He had followed Liam into the kitchen when Marie was making the tea, and trailed after him into the garden where she’d gone to fetch the washing off the line. Quite clearly, Patrick had no intention of leaving her alone with Liam again. She wondered if her son had been awake when Liam had knocked and didn’t like to think what would have happened if she’d let him in.
Things couldn’t be allowed to go on in this way, living in such a horrible atmosphere – Danny had noticed and been unusually quiet all night. He probably thought it was all to do with the row the night before. He didn’t know what Patrick knew, that his mammy had nearly had carnal knowledge of a priest.
‘What am I to do?’ Marie asked piteously. Her hand gripped the rosary so tightly that the crucifix pressed painfully into her palm. She gripped it harder, wanting to draw blood in order to pay for her sins, but the thought of blood brought back the memory of the house in Belfast with its blood-soaked room and the man with half his face blown away.
Who had done it?
And why?
Marie
Chapter 10
‘Marie Clare Brennan, have you been wearing my black frock again?’ Theresa screamed. ‘I saw you sneak out last night, your coat buttoned to your neck, when you went to that dance at the Holy Spirit.’
‘I did not sneak out,’ Marie screamed back. ‘My coat was buttoned because it happened to be snowing outside and I wore me very own blue dress underneath, the one you wore last week when you went out with Calum O’Reilly.’
‘Then why is my black frock full of stains?’
‘Don’t ask me, Theresa. They’re someone else’s stains, not mine.’
‘Mam!’ Theresa continued to scream. ‘D’you know who’s been borrowing my best black frock?’ The ‘borrowing’ was said in a tone of extreme sarcasm.
‘Haven’t I got more to do than keep me eye on whatever youse girls are wearing?’ Mam shouted from the kitchen.
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God.’ Dad came to the bottom of the stairs and said wearily, ‘Is it not possible for the women in this house to speak to each other like ordinary civilized human beings? You’re like flamin’ foghorns, the lot of you. You’d think we lived in different parts of the village, not under the same flamin’ roof. Gerry, will you turn that flamin’ music down,’ he went on. ‘I can’t hear the telly and me nose is only six inches away from the flamin’ thing.’
‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ Theresa and Marie said together, but the noise in the next room – a marching band in full throttle – continued at the same level. Gerry hadn’t heard. The two girls glared at each other over the crumpled bed that Mam refused to make unless the room was tidied first. As none of the four girls whose room it was were prepared to do it, the beds stayed unmade.
‘I didn’t touch your black frock, Theresa, honest,’ Marie said sincerely, though she had – she crossed her fingers behind her back to excuse the lie. The stains had come from Tommy Costello’s coke tin – he’d been hurling it into the air and when it was opened the liquid had spurted out, like a firework spraying sparks, all over Theresa’s frock. At least the stains weren’t quite as noticeable on black as they’d have been on blue – she’d have worn the blue if the armpits hadn’t stunk to high heaven from when Theresa had ‘borrowed’ it the week before. It meant she’d have to wash it herself: no one trusted Mam with anything even faintly delicate as she just bundled everything into the machine, regardless of colour, never thinking to alter the temperature from the very hottest, so the whole wash was boiled and the clothes that emerged were unrecognizable: colours faded or a different colour altogether and only half the size they’d been when they went in.
‘Where are you going tonight?’ Theresa asked.
‘Round Rita Kelly’s house,’ Marie replied. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m going to Donegal with Calum to see Raging Bull with Robert de Niro.’
‘Is it getting serious with Calum, Tess?’ The girls were the best of friends again. The rows they had meant nothing.
Theresa went slightly pink. ‘Pretty serious.’ She sat at the dressing table and began to make up her face. The top was a jumble of bottles and jars, lipsticks, blushers, eye shadows and holy statues – three rosaries were draped over the mirror. More fights were fought over the contents of the dressing table than over clothes.
‘Can I be your bridesmaid when you and Calum get married?’
‘Aw, I dunno, Marie. If I say yes, I’d have to say it to everyone and Calum has three sisters. I’d feel daft having eleven bridesmaids. I mean we’re not exactly royalty, are we? Anyroad, no way could we afford to pay for the frocks, you’d all have to buy your own, except our Sheila only earns a pittance at the art centre, and Orla and Kitty are still at school and Colette hasn’t even started, so it seems bit much to expect Mam and Dad to shell out for them – it’s less than a year since our Caitlin got wed—’
‘And six months since she had their Darren,’ Marie interrupted with a knowing laugh.
> ‘Well, the less said about that the better,’ Theresa said with a grin. ‘There’s a Brennan got married every year for the last four and Mam and Dad must be sick to the teeth of buying bridesmaid’s frocks. First Clodagh, and then Siobhan, followed by Jimmy, and of course, Caitlin with the bulging belly that she tried to hide under a great bow. Did you ever know a bride before who had such a bow on the front of her dress and not the back?’
‘Never!’ Marie giggled. She lay on the bed in the chaotic room, as she had done thousands of times in the past, watching her elder sisters get made up and chatter about their boyfriends, and longing for the time to come when she’d have make-up and boyfriends of her own, one of whom she would eventually fall in love with and marry. Now the house was gradually emptying and, once Theresa married Calum, Marie, eighteen, would be the oldest Brennan girl left and have the double bed to herself. There were bunk beds at the far end of the room where Sheila and Orla slept, and Kitty and Colette were in the poky room that Dad had built in the loft. She hoped neither of them would want to sleep with her. She was looking forward to sleeping in the big bed alone.
‘Anyroad, Tess,’ she said, ‘as regards the bridesmaid’s frock, I’m willing to pay for me own as long it’s something I can go dancing in afterwards and not some shiny taffeta creation I’ll never wear again. By the way, that’s my lippy you’re about to put on. It’s only Rimmel, but I’d prefer you didn’t use it.’
Theresa scowled at the lipstick. ‘Are you sure? I thought it was mine.’
‘Since when have you worn russet brown?’
‘You’re right, mine’s coral.’ Theresa searched through the debris for the coral lipstick. ‘Ah, here it is without the top. It’s got hairs stuck to it. They’re red.’ She looked at her sister accusingly.
‘I’m not the only one in this house with red hair, and I’d look a desperate freak in coral. It must have been our Orla using it, or it might have been Colette.’
‘Colette’s not even five yet.’
‘Yes, but she’s a forward little madam.’
Theresa sighed as she picked the hairs off the lipstick, a look of distaste on her face. ‘I need to keep all me personal possessions under lock and key.’
‘You’re not the only one,’ said Marie, thinking of her blue frock. She said casually, ‘You’ll never guess who was at the dance last night.’ She paused for effect, ‘Father Murphy!’
‘He never was!’ Theresa gasped.
‘He was an’ all. And he wasn’t in priest’s gear, either. He wore a polo-necked jumper and jeans.’
Theresa took in a long, ecstatic breath. ‘What colour was the jumper?’
‘White.’
‘I bet he looked dead gorgeous.’
‘He looked like Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor. Remember we went to Donegal to see it last year?’
‘I remember. Did he ask anyone up to dance?’
‘Only Mrs Shaugnessy who does the flowers in church. She’s about a hundred and two. They did an old-fashioned waltz. All the girls’ tongues were hanging out a foot and a half, praying he’d ask them.’
‘Fancy dancing with a priest! It makes me go all funny, just thinking about it.’ Theresa stood and smoothed down her grey tweed skirt, adjusted the collar of her blouse, and patted her brown hair. ‘Do I look all right?’
‘You look fantastic, sis.’
‘Honest?’
‘Honest. Calum will be wanting to rip your clothes off the minute he sets eyes on you.’ Half the Brennans had their dad’s red hair, the other half their mother’s rich brown. Looks had been doled out in similar proportions: the brown-haired Brennans were pretty – or handsome in the case of Francis who was fifteen – and the freckle-faced, ginger-headed half wouldn’t exactly set the world alight with their looks: only their flaming hair and dark green eyes made them stand out in a crowd.
Theresa left and Marie lay staring at the poster of Mick Jagger that Clodagh had pasted on the ceiling when she was fourteen. Mam had done her nut, but when she’d tried to pull the poster down, the ceiling had started to come with it and she’d had to paste it back again. She was wondering if Mam would notice if she covered Mick Jagger with Sting, when her sister, Orla, came barging in.
‘Jaysus! It stinks in here,’ she gasped.
‘That’s our Theresa’s perfume. It cost a packet.’
‘Well, she wasted her money. What is it, Canal Number Five?’
‘I bet you’ve been waiting years for the opportunity to use that joke.’
‘It was in an old film I saw on telly last Sunday afternoon. Will you be off out shortly, Marie? I was intending to do me homework on that bed. Our Francis has bagged the table in the kitchen and Dad’s watching telly in the front room.’
‘I’ll go now.’ Marie rolled off the bed. She was only going round Rita Kelly’s, so didn’t bother to put on more lippy or comb her hair or change out of the clothes she’d worn for work at Monaghan’s bakers in the High Street, something she would deeply regret before the evening was over.
Rita Kelly, Ursula Adams and Marguerite Kelly – no relation to Rita – had all been in the same class at school as Marie. When she arrived, they were sitting on the floor in Rita’s bedroom listening to a Police record.
‘Hi, Marie,’ Rita hollered. ‘Fancy a coke?’
‘Sure thing.’ Rita threw her the tin and Marie opened it cautiously, just in case it squirted out like the night before. ‘Ta, Rita.’
Ursula produced a bottle from behind her back. ‘Fancy some rum in it?’ she asked. ‘I pinched it from our Clifford’s room. I’m going to fill it with cold tea afterwards, see if he notices.’
‘I reckon he will,’ said Marguerite, tossing her long hair. She was the prettiest, most glamorous there – and knew it. Marie was already wishing she’d changed into something more respectable when she saw Marguerite was wearing a black T-shirt with lace inserts, jeans, and long, dangly diamante´ earrings. Her father was a solicitor and she was never short of a few bob.
‘It depends on how pissed he is when he goes to drink it,’ Ursula said. ‘He’s got a drink problem, our Clifford.’
‘It shouldn’t be a problem for long if all he drinks is cold tea.’
At this, the girls shrieked with laughter. Their laughter gauge was set at its very highest whenever they visited each other’s houses although they never went to Marie’s as there wasn’t an empty room.
‘Did’ya see Father Murphy at the dance last night?’ Marguerite breathed.
‘He reminded me of Harrison Ford in them clothes.’
‘No, Robert Redford,’ Marie argued.
‘He looked more like Richard Gere in Yanks,’ said Rita. She was a big-boned, healthy-looking girl with white-blonde, dead straight hair that positively refused to curl, no matter what was done to it. One of the nuns at school, Sister St Mary, used to insist she was Swedish. ‘Robert Redford’s too old, at least forty.’
‘Richard Gere didn’t wear jeans in Yanks,’ Ursula informed them. ‘It was set during the war and he wore a uniform the whole way through. I don’t know why you’re all slobbering yourselves to death over a priest, anyroad. He’s only a priest. He still goes to the lavvy and wipes his bottom like everyone else.’
The other three gasped. Marie shook her head, as if she was trying to get rid of the picture of Father Murphy wiping his bottom that had come into her mind. ‘That’s a sacrilegious thing to say, Urse. You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she said primly.
‘It’s not sacrilegious because I’m not a religious person any more. I’m an atheist, I only decided the other day. I don’t believe in anything, not even God.’ Ursula folded her arms and looked at them challengingly, but nobody could be bothered arguing. Wasn’t she always saying things like that and hoping to create a stir? And hadn’t they stopped taking the bait whenever the delicate, waiflike Ursula, who only looked about fourteen, claimed to have thought something or done something that was completely at odds with what they thought and d
id themselves?
‘Rita, your brother’s home,’ a voice called. It was Brigid, Rita’s sister, who was going on for forty and had become a substitute mother since Mrs Kelly had died giving birth to Rita, her tenth child. Brigid had been courting Edward O’Connor for twenty-one whole years and the wedding was taking place in a fortnight’s time, a week after Rita’s eighteenth birthday, when Brigid felt her duty to her family had been done.
‘Which brother?’ Rita shouted.
‘It’s our Enda.’
‘Send him up. Tell him the girls are here.’
Footsteps thundered up the stairs, the door was flung open, and Enda Kelly hurtled into the room. He was twenty-one and, like his sister, was tall and big-boned, his blond hair as flat as a pancake – quite literally, as it looked as if a pancake had been slapped on to his head and moulded to shape.
‘Hiya, kids.’ He beamed at them. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you. This is Mickey Harrison, me best mate at Harland & Wolff.’ Enda worked at the shipyards in Belfast and often came home for weekends.
A man came into the room, about the same age as Enda. He was tall and slim, with jet-black wavy hair, jet-black eyes, and a wide mouth curled in the wickedest, most enticing of smiles that Marie had ever seen. He looked the girls over critically and his eyes settled on Marguerite, who, noticing the look, stretched voluptuously, finishing with her hands folded behind her head so that her small breasts, encased in a sexy black bra, were pointing at the newcomer through the lace inserts of her T-shirt, as if to say, ‘I dare you to touch them.’
Mickey Harrison appeared quite ready to take the dare. His wicked smile grew wider as he stared at Marguerite. When Rita said, ‘Come in and join us, youse two. We’ve got coke and rum,’ he bounded across the room and plonked himself beside the breasts, completely ignoring Marie on his other side. She felt like the most unattractive person in the entire world. Either that or she’d disappeared, become invisible, and Mickey Harrison couldn’t see her with his black, mischievous eyes.