by Shane Dunphy
There were three men standing behind Max, Ricki, Elaine, Glen and Dominic. It seems that one, a tall, well-built guy with a Dublin accent, had turned and said, ‘Keep it down there, bud. You’re puttin’ me off me drinks, here.’
Max had apologized and continued with his story.
‘I said turn the volume down,’ the man said again, pushing his way between Ricki and Glen, and poking Max in the chest. ‘Either you shut up, or I’m goin’ to have you sent back to the fuckin’ nuthouse, right?’
The man turned on his heel, and went back to his friends.
‘Fuckin’ spas,’ he had said. ‘Shouldn’t be let out.’
It is hard to determine whether it was this final comment or his general tone of aggression that caused Dominic to see red, but see red he did. In two steps he was beside the loudmouth.
‘You not nice,’ he said, then drew his fist back and hit him. I didn’t see the punch, but I’m told he threw it like a professional with all his weight behind it. The man was lifted off his feet, and landed with a thud flat on his back. By the time he hit the ground, Dominic had returned to Max and the others as if nothing had happened.
Needless to say, we did not see the second half of the show.
No charges were pressed, but we were asked not to bring Dominic back to the arts centre. Jimmy told me afterwards that he thought Dominic was absolutely right to ‘punch that arsehole’. I decided it was probably not appropriate to pass that information along, although I secretly agreed with it.
35
Annie was crying.
She wasn’t sobbing, or wailing – wasn’t, in fact, making any noise at all to signify that she was upset. But tears were streaming down her face as if some internal valve system had sprung a leak.
She had arrived in that morning later than usual, dropped off, she told me, by her cousin Charlie. When I got out to the front door, hoping to meet this famous relative, he was, alas, gone. All I could see was the rear of a battered-looking Fiat 127 as it disappeared into the blue yonder.
It was when I got back inside that I realized how upset the girl was.
‘What’s wrong, Annie?’ I said. ‘Tell me what’s bothering you.’
She just turned away so she was facing the other direction: if I couldn’t see her tears, then maybe I would forget they were there. I wasn’t so easily dissuaded.
‘Come on, Annie. You and I are too good friends for me to fall for that one.’
I gently turned her back round, and held her there. Sometimes, because I saw her every day, and worked alongside her, I forgot just how beautiful she was. Even with tear-streaked cheeks and a runny nose, she was lovely.
‘Did you have a row with your dad, sweetheart? Is that it?’
She shook her head.
‘Not Daddy.’
‘What is it then?’
In a single motion, Annie collapsed against me, sobbing uncontrollably. It was as if her spine had suddenly been removed and she could no longer support herself.
If this had all been happening in a movie, I would have swept her up in my arms and carried her to a chair, but in real life, things are never as simple as that. Even though she was a slender creature, she still presented a fairly severe dead weight, and I kind of dragged her, still leaning against me, to the library corner and deposited her unceremoniously onto a beanbag.
Beth always ensured that there were plenty of tissues and baby wipes all over the room, as our group was rather prone to accidents involving the entire array of bodily fluids, and I grabbed a handful of tissues and brought them over to the girl, who was now making quite a racket. No one came near us. Getting upset was part and parcel of the Drumlin experience. Everyone did it from time to time, and the need for personal space was always respected – most of the group knew that you needed room to have a really good cry.
When Annie had settled a bit, I tried again.
‘Annie, do you want to tell me what’s up, or would you like me to get Beth or Millie? Sukie, maybe?’
Annie shook her head. ‘Shane friend. Good friend,’ she said.
‘Yes, I am your friend,’ I said. ‘You’re my oldest friend in Drumlin, aren’t you? If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have come here at all.’
‘L’il Liza Jane,’ Annie sang through her tears.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s what we sang, isn’t it?’
She covered her face with her hands, and cried again for a time. I just sat there. Sometimes, saying nothing – just being there – is the best thing you can do. I felt Annie would tell me what was wrong when she was ready. I would just have to wait until she had gotten enough of the pain out of her system to be able to find the words.
Suddenly she looked at me and said, ‘Charlie fuck.’
I blinked. I am well used to expletives. I work with people who often experience extremes of emotion, and swear words tend to be part and parcel of how they communicate their experiences. It is not unheard of for me to use the odd four-letter word myself. But I had never heard Annie swear, and I found the word ugly coming out of her mouth.
‘Did you have a fight with Charlie?’
Annie shook her head. ‘No. Charlie fuck.’
I felt a pit opening up inside me, and a terrible coldness beginning to creep up from my toes. ‘Did Charlie hurt you, Annie?’
She nodded. ‘Hurt inside of me,’ she said, placing her hand low on her abdomen. ‘He say it “fuck”. He say it good. Be like love.’
‘But you didn’t want him to,’ I said quietly. ‘Did you?’
‘No want,’ she said. ‘Charlie my friend. Walking and laughing and singing. Not like that. He was in me.’
And then she was crying again.
Tristan looked grim.
Two officers from the local garda station – a male and a female – sat opposite us in the small office at Drumlin. Beth had made up a kind of makeshift bed in the kitchen, and Annie was asleep. I wanted to kill someone, but I was trying to keep it together. Me losing the run of myself would not help anything.
‘We go through the correct channels,’ Tristan said. ‘There is nothing to be gained by going off half-cocked.’
‘Ms Kelleher is twenty-seven years old,’ the male guard was saying. ‘But you say she is intellectually subnormal.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet on the file you have just shown me, it says that she has an IQ in the low–average range.’
‘Those tests are not always a useful measurement,’ Tristan said. ‘Annie has what you might call a non-specific form of mental handicap – her functioning is very high in some areas, while it is like that of a small child in others.’
‘And she maintains that this cousin of hers raped her?’ the female guard asked.
‘She did not use those precise words,’ I said. ‘But she was quite clear that what happened did not occur with her consent. I am not sure she is even capable of giving consent.’
‘Yet she has a normal IQ,’ the male garda said again.
‘Are you going to investigate this matter or not?’ Tristan said sharply. ‘I have a very upset young lady on my hands, and there is no doubt in my mind that she has been sexually assaulted.’
The two gardaí looked at one another.
‘We’ll see what we can do,’ the woman said.
There was no way to contact William Kelleher.
‘They don’t have a telephone,’ Beth said. ‘Any time we need to get information to him, it’s by post, or we send letters home with Annie.’
‘He probably knew damn well what was going on with that perve,’ Valerie said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He loves Annie. There is no way he would allow this, I can promise you that.’
‘What are we going to do then?’ Beth said. ‘She can’t go home.’
‘She can stay with me until we hear back from the police,’ Tristan said. ‘The spare room can be made up.’
‘I’ll come too,’ Beth said. ‘She needs to have people around that she knows, just now.’
Tristan nodded. He looked tired and pinched. ‘That would be good, Beth.’
My phone rang at around eight that night.
‘The police called,’ Tristan said, when I picked up.
‘And?’
‘They said that there is no sign of William out at the old house. They did encounter our man Charlie, who swears that he never touched Annie, although he says she tried to have her way with him.’
‘That is so fucked up.’
‘I know.’
‘So what’s going to happen?’
‘Probably very little. I wish we could reach William.’
‘Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I said and hung up.
The door to the underground room was open and I went down it and through to the body of the house proper. The first room I came to was a kitchen, which was full of foul dishes. A smell of rancid milk pervaded.
‘William? William, it’s Shane.’
No answer. I flicked a light switch, which looked like it might have been fitted in the nineteen thirties, but it didn’t work. I moved on to the next room, which was where William and I had talked and drank. Charlie was there.
He was sprawled on the couch with bottles of William’s home-brewed liquor scattered about. He was dozing when I came in, but woke when he heard my footsteps. Long and skinny, he had dirty-brown hair, and ears that should have been clipped back when he was a child. He wore filthy jeans and a checked shirt which was open to the waist, showing a scrawny, hairless chest.
‘You’re Charlie,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘I’m Shane Dunphy. From the Drumlin Unit. I work with Annie.’
‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘She’s told me all about you.’
I laughed bitterly. ‘She’s told me all about you, too.’
He pulled himself upright and, reaching over, poured himself another drink. ‘The cops have already been here, man. I told them all I’ve got to say.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yeah. She was all over me, man. “Oh, Charlie, you’re my friend, you’re my heart,” whatever the fuck that means. It got so she was driven’ me mad, followin’ me about everywhere I went.’
‘I thought she was your friend,’ I said. ‘William told me you understood her better than anyone.’
‘Ah, she’s okay,’ he said, taking a great swallow of poteen. ‘I mean, she’s fuckin’ easy on the eye, man, you can’t deny that. You’ll forgive a lot when a woman’s got a shape like that, y’know what I mean?’
I think he expected me to agree with him. I just stood there, feeling sick, rage building in me with such ferocity, I thought I might actually go mad.
‘She’d be always huggin’ and kissin’ me, and sure it was no bother to cop a sneaky feel. She never noticed. Had me hands all over her, I did.’
He was drunk, and getting drunker by the minute, taking in the poteen like it was water.
‘And I bet you got tired of that, didn’t you, Charlie?’ I asked. ‘It’s all well and good putting your hands on a girl, but it’s like looking at a beautiful place through a dirty window – you’re only getting a small part of the experience.’
‘Now you’re talkin’,’ he said. ‘Here I was, I’ve got this fuckin’ babe right in front of me – and she’s a shaggin’ retard, man. She’s rubbin’ her tits in me face, more or less, and she doesn’t even know what it’s doin’ to me. Now, I tried to tell her, tried to explain, but I might as well have been talkin’ to meself.’
‘So you thought you’d show her.’
‘Learnin’ by doin’. Exactamondo, my good man.’
‘Charlie fuck,’ I said.
‘That’s it. And she fuckin’ loved it.’
I walked over and poured myself a drink.
‘Help yourself, man.’
‘She loved it so much,’ I said, downing the burning fluid in two gulps, and pouring another, ‘that when you were done, she came to me in tears, so upset she could barely speak. She enjoyed it to such a degree, all she could tell me about was the pain of having you in her. Oh, you did her a real service, you sick bastard.’
Charlie laughed at that.
‘Wanted to have a pop at her yourself, did you, compadre? Oh, she was always talkin’ about you. You could have been in there, buddy.’
I grabbed him, then.
‘You need to get your filthy hide away from here, and never come back,’ I said. ‘Right now. Are we clear?’
‘Fuck you,’ he spat back at me, not even struggling. ‘I know a good thing when I see it. I’m not goin’ anywhere.’
‘I’m telling William,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where he is, but I’ll find him. When he knows, he’ll tear you limb from limb.’
‘I’m family. He’ll believe me.’
‘Annie is more family to him than you are, you fucking scumbag.’
‘She’s retarded, arsehole,’ Charlie cackled. ‘No one will take a word she says seriously.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘I take her seriously.’
He roared with laughter at that.
‘What are you going to do? You’re a fuckin’ nurse or somethin’ on the centre’s payroll. If you so much as toss my hair, I’ll have you sacked.’
I hit him square in the forehead, and caught him again on the cheekbone before he hit the floor. They were two good punches, and he lay, amid the spilt booze and broken glass, wondering what happened.
I stood over him, feeling better than I had all day.
‘You can’t get me fired,’ I said jubilantly, ‘I’m a volunteer.’
PART 9
This Land Belongs to You and Me
The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wandering light,
Began to cry, but God, ever nigh,
Appeared like his father, in white.
He kissed the child, and by the hand led,
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, through the lonely dale,
The little boy weeping sought.
‘The Little Boy Found’ by William Blake
36
The day after I confronted Charlie, Dominic almost killed a man.
I was in the unit, setting up the chairs for news, and running through the songs I was going to do for our music session later that day, when I heard screaming coming from outside. At first, I thought it was someone playing and paid no heed, but the urgency and pitch of it seemed so consistent that after a minute or so, I went out to see what was going on. What I saw was almost too horrific to countenance.
Dominic, who was roaring at the top of his voice, had a man by the scruff of the neck with one hand, and was beating him repeatedly with the other about the head and face. Sukie was screaming (despite the fact that Dominic’s bellows were louder, hers were at a higher register, and seemed to carry further), and trying to stop him beating the by now unconscious figure, but she was making no progress.
It took me a few seconds to take it all in, and realize that, if something was not done quickly it would be too late for the object of Dominic’s wrath. I did the only thing I could think of: I ran across the yard, jumped up on the low wall, and threw myself bodily at Dominic. Luckily, I caught him off guard, and he, I and the poor bloke he’d been pummelling crashed to the ground.
‘That’s enough, Dominic,’ I shouted as I pulled myself to my feet. ‘No more!’
‘Sukie my girlfriend,’ he said, his voice hoarse and thick with tears. ‘She mine, okay?’
Tristan had been roused from his office by the commotion, and was pulling the bloodied man aside. Beth had the first-aid box under her arm, and I could hear sirens in the distance.
‘What happened?’ I asked Sukie, my eyes still on the giant who was sitting on the ground, crying and rocking.
‘He was only kissing me goodbye,’ the girl said. I could tell she was on the verge of hysteria.
‘Boyfriend?’ I asked.
‘No, not really,’ she said. ‘I met him at a n
ightclub last night. He stayed over at my place. Dropped me to work.’
‘Sukie. Is. My. Girlfriend,’ Dominic said again. ‘He not her boyfriend, okay?’
‘Shut up!’ Sukie shouted at him. ‘You shut up, you fucking freak! I am not your girlfriend! I never was and I never will be.’
Dominic began to cry harder. I went over and put my arms round him, and tried to comfort him, but he was inconsolable. Tristan went with him in the police car when they took him away.
‘My daddy picking me up at four o’clock, Tristan?’ he asked as the door was closed.
‘Maybe not today, Dominic,’ Tristan said.
‘I ’fraid, Tristan,’ Dominic said urgently: ‘I wants my daddy, ’kay?’
I turned away, my eyes blind with tears, the story Annie had told on my first day at Drumlin coming jarringly back to me. If Dominic was ever lost, he was then. And it didn’t look like this lost little boy would find his happily ever after.
37
It was a sedate and solemn group at news the following day.
‘Where Dominic?’ Max wanted to know.
‘He is in a hospital, at the moment,’ Tristan said. ‘He is a little bit upset, and when he was in the police station he had quite a severe seizure. His mum and dad both thought it might be better for him to stay there until he was feeling better.’
Beth said nothing. Her eyes were red, and she kept sniffing and wiping at her nose.
‘Where’s Sukie?’ Ricki asked the next question that was on everyone’s mind.
‘Sukie won’t be coming back to Drumlin,’ Tristan admitted. ‘She feels that she doesn’t really fit in, and she’s resigned from her job here.’
‘Miss Sukie,’ Max said, sighing.
‘I miss Dominic,’ Ricki said.
‘I miss Annie,’ Glen said.
‘Where is Annie?’ I asked Tristan, when news was over and I had a moment with him by myself.
‘William called for her early this morning.’
‘How did he know she was with you?’