‘She’s so pretty,’ the nuns reassured him.
‘If you say so, Sister,’ he quipped back. ‘I can’t say I have ever seen it myself!’
‘We’ll get married soon,’ he said to her one night, after he had made love to her. That’s what he called it. Making love. Occasionally it was rough but as time went on, and Hanna became more compliant to his needs, the punishments stopped. When they were in bed together, Dorian tried to be tender. She could see by the longing in his face that he was trying to love her in the way he touched and kissed her. But no matter how tender he was, it always felt wrong. It certainly never felt like love.
Nonetheless, within the four walls of his large house, they lived like most married couples. The house was big and Hanna enjoyed making it beautiful. She polished the decorative tiles in the hallway to a glossy shine and kept the large basement kitchen, with its flagstones and large old-fashioned range, spotlessly clean. Dorian bought her French cookbooks and she taught herself a few cordon bleu dishes. He praised Hanna when she made an effort for him in the kitchen and she found that she liked to please him. Sometimes, when Dorian was sitting back with a contented smile after a meal she could believe that they were, after all, a family of sorts. Stepfather and stepdaughter enjoying each other’s company. Reading side by side with an open fire, him teaching her how to play chess… if only it weren’t for the other thing. For the love.
Dorian loved her. That was the problem.
‘I love you.’ He kept saying it. He said it every time he did ‘it’ to her.
She knew he expected her to say it back. So she would mumble, ‘I love you.’
‘Look me in the eyes and say my name,’ he would beg, whining like a child. At those times, Hanna could almost believe she was in charge, but that was, as she learned from experience, a dangerous assumption to make.
So instead she looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘I love you, Dorian.’ Most of the time he smiled – a pathetic half-hearted hopeful look – and seemed satisfied that she was being sincere.
But when he didn’t believe her, he got angry and punished her. Afterwards he would be sorry and insist it was only because he loved her so much. It was her astonishing beauty and the power that she exuded over him with her womanly guile that sent him into these terrible fits of rage. He just wanted to be loved. So Hanna would persuade him that she loved him back. Even though it turned her stomach, she kissed him over and over again and called him her ‘only love’ and touched him and told him that she wanted him. They were the worst times, when she had to pretend to love him. To love ‘it’. She could not just lie back and fall into the trance of emotional dispossession that made his lovemaking tolerable. But, Dorian would be ecstatic with delight. The show of love would appease him, and he would give her mind, if not her body, some peace for a while.
After one of these month-long lulls, fell the third anniversary of Margaret’s death.
Hanna had been polishing the silverware in the kitchen and the domestic act reminded her of her mother. She began to cry, thinking about how Margaret used to polish the cutlery to a shine in the week leading up to Christmas every year. She would cover the drawing room table with newspaper and made a great show of bringing Hanna in to help her with this refined task, while their housekeeper washed floors and did the high dusting that her mother so disliked. Dorian had acted the great benefactor to her and her mother, but before him, when it was their father instead, he too had hired housekeepers. Even if it was only for that one special day each year. Yet, now, Hanna was living the life of a common skivvy. Quite suddenly, she found the wave of grief for her mother give way to an annoyance that Dorian expected her to wash floors and peel potatoes when he could easily afford a housekeeper.
Hanna never dwelt on the personal situation between her and Dorian. What happened between them was torture enough without thinking about it too. She shut it out of her mind. Of course, she had dreamt of escape once, but had long since realised it was hopeless. Dorian was always there in the surgery, watching. She was trapped and normally she accepted that she just had to make the best of it. However, on this particular morning, in the name of her mother, as she thought about all the work she did in this man’s house, Hanna’s irritation grew into a petulant anger. So when Dorian came into the kitchen, instead of finding the hot lunch he was expecting, he found her surly and pouting.
Dorian was in such a good mood he believed nothing could upset him that morning. He had decided to take Hanna away for her eighteenth birthday. In time, he planned to move them both to Dublin, where they could marry and nobody would know about their unfortunate past. But, for now he had booked them two nights at the Shelbourne hotel. He would take her shopping on Grafton Street, book her a hair appointment and take her into Brown Thomas to buy her underwear and other pretty things. Anything she wanted. What a pleasure it would be, for them both, to swan around openly. For him to show off his beautiful young ‘wife’ to the world without fear of being judged or misunderstood by nosy old biddies. In the evening, he would take her to the opera. It was all very well making love to a beautiful young woman, but sometimes, lovemaking just wasn’t enough. Dorian needed Hanna to converse in a more interesting way. She was beautiful, he thought, but limited intellectually. After all, she had not performed as well in school as she might have done.
‘I have a surprise for you,’ he said, sneaking up behind her, putting his hands around her waist and gathering her into him.
She pulled away. ‘I’m not in the mood, Dorian.’
Then, unable to stop herself, she turned to him. ‘It’s my mother’s anniversary today – have you no shame?’
His elevated mood shockingly struck down by Hanna’s insubordinate attitude and insensitive cruelty was too much for him.
Dorian struck her and sent her staggering backwards towards the range.
He looked down to unbuckle himself and, while he did, Hanna was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming, unstoppable rage. Without thinking, she picked up a cast iron pan from the stove and ran, swinging the pan at him, screaming. It hit the side of his shoulder. Dorian cried out in pain as a bone cracked, fell to his knees and wailed.
‘You’ve broken my arm.’
Hanna didn’t hear him. She couldn’t stop now. She knew that. There was no going back. She lifted the pan and slammed it into the right side of his face. Another crack sounded as his nose collapsed into his cheek. Dorian fell to the ground, grabbing a handful of her mother’s silverware as he went.
Hanna felt sick at the sight of his collapsed body on the floor.
‘Hanna?’ he moaned.
So weak, so pathetic. Pleading. An urgent regret overcame her. What had she done? She should reach down and pick him up. Call an ambulance. Make him better. Make this go away. Make it not have happened.
She stood there and watched him try to lift his arms up to her. His face covered in blood, his broken nose bent to one side. Had she done that to him? What sort of a person was she?
But as sure as Hanna knew he was in terrible pain, she also knew that when he recovered, he would be furious. He would kill her. When he recovered.
If he recovered.
Hanna lifted the pan one more time. She shut her eyes and, with tears streaming out of their corners, made herself remember the night her mother died. The first time he had come into her room. Her lungs filled slowly, breathing in every time he had touched her in vile wretchedness. Finally she breathed out with a roar, swinging the heavy pan like a low tennis racket as hard as she could over the left side of his head. There was a mighty crack, then silence.
It was over.
3
Dorian was dead. His eyes were closed. His body was still. Tentatively, Hanna reached down and touched the arm he had held up to his face. She jumped as it fell to his side, arranging itself in a soft claw on his thigh. She had to be certain, so, terrified that at any moment he might wake up and grab her, Hanna knelt down and levered her fingers under the palm of his large h
and and lifted. It flopped back down onto the brown gabardine fabric of his trousers. All at once she was both sickened and relieved. Then she saw the blood pouring down from the top of his head, down over his shirt, pouring, pouring from the gaping wound on his face into a gathering stream on the floor, spreading into a river, oozing over her hand. She jumped back, scraping the blood onto her apron, quickly moving her feet away from the puddle.
She had to run but felt paralysed. She had to get away but where could she go? Who could she turn to? There was nowhere – nobody. As much as she hated him, Dorian was her life. He was dead. She had killed him. When Dorian did not turn up for afternoon surgery in an hour, his nurse would telephone. Everyone at the surgery was strictly forbidden from calling to the house unannounced but if there was no reply from the phone after an hour, and with patients waiting, surely they would come here. If she didn’t move fast, move now, they would find her. Even if she could lift the body she could not get rid of it in that time. Get rid of the body. It made her stomach turn. They were the sort of words you found in Agatha Christie thrillers – not words you ever uttered in real life. She looked at Dorian, as if searching for an answer and was shocked, again, to see that his nose was broken, smashed. Had she really done that?
She had to get out of here but she couldn’t move. She had killed a man. A voice – of her mother, her father perhaps – suddenly spoke in her mind. Think, Hanna, think. You can’t get caught. You mustn’t get caught. Remember why you did this. Dorian ruined half your life. Don’t let him take the rest of it. Nobody will believe it was self-defence. You’ll spend the rest of your life rotting in jail for killing a monster. If only she could move. Hanna looked at the dead face and reminded herself of what he had done to her. Any jail would be better than the jail he had her imprisoned in. Move, Hanna, move. Move your legs – just MOVE. Now! Run before it’s too late. RUN! She forced herself to recall some of the terrible things he had done. The beatings, his filthy touch, the repugnant things he made her do. Her eyes closed and she thought about that terrible night, the night her mother died… The first time. Righteous anger rose inside her and took hold. She was not trapped here. She would get herself free. Make it look like a robbery.
She ran through rooms upending furniture and opening drawers, concocting her story. When was the last time she had been seen in public? Mass the previous Sunday. Two weeks. The grocer had called to the house with a delivery on the Monday, but, as usual, simply left the grocery box on the steps. She had not waved at him through the window. Good. That was good. She could have been away from the house for fifteen days and nobody would be any the wiser. The beginnings of her story began to develop. She had been away. Where? Dublin? Yes. Getting papers ready to go to America. Or just abroad. No forwarding address. Disappear. She would disappear but she had to close off the trail otherwise they would come looking for her. She jacked open the desk drawer in Dorian’s office with the fire tongs, stuffing all the money she could find into her apron pocket, then went upstairs and emptied the contents of every bedroom drawer onto the floor until she found Dorian’s mother’s jewellery. Into a small suitcase she threw enough clothes to legitimise her story that she was away, plus the jewellery, the money and her diary. She grabbed a jacket and realised she was still wearing the bloodied apron. In that moment, the truth hit her in a sudden wave of nausea, and she barely made it to the bathroom to throw up into the toilet. She had a flashback to a moment when Dorian had smashed her head against the ornate porcelain sink. She grabbed at the memory and ignited enough of a snap to haul the apron over her head, roll it up then run back into the bedroom and stuff it into the case. She could burn it later. Hanna ran out the back door, smashing the glass panel with the coal shovel as she went and upending the bin. Angry burglars. Nobody would ever be as angry as she was now. Anger and fear: that was all that was inside her. That was all she was now. That was what he had reduced her to: an animal. Adrenalin pumped through her as she ran across the fields like a hunting dog. Except she was not chasing – just running. Her small case banged against her leg, bruising it, but it didn’t weigh her down. Her desire to run was too ferocious.
Hanna didn’t know how far or for how long she ran. Out across the open fields, stumbling into invisible bog holes, tripping on large stones, slipping on patches of damp, flat heather-coated rocks. She ran hard and long, until, breathless, she stopped at a bleak stretch of bog-lined road, throwing her case down beside her. She closed her eyes and rested for a moment. The heat of her body prickled against the salty sea air. She could not see the water but she knew it was beyond the horizon, where the land dipped at a cliff edge down to the wild Atlantic. Even though they lived near the sea, she had not seen it since she was a child, when she was with her mother. Dorian had no taste for nature and less still for walking, and he never let her out of the house without him. When they first moved here, Hanna and her mother stood at the cliff edge that bordered this stretch of road, looking down on the rolling waves, wondering at the magnificence of God’s work. Both of them were wishing that her father was there to share it with, but they also knew that they would never have come to this wild corner of the world if he had not died. Hanna felt something jolt inside her at the memory. As suddenly as the urge to escape had come, it was snatched away by the realisation that as surely as her own father was dead, she had killed her stepfather. Dorian was a terrible man. But did he deserve to die? Hanna began to shake from the inside out. She pressed her arms around herself in a hug, to try to stop the shivering. Her body was pleading to curl itself into a ball. I am not a murderer, she told herself. I am…
What else did she even have to define her? Who was she, after all? All she had ever been was Dorian’s wife. Not even his real wife. Not even by choice. Hanna had no schooling, no accomplishments – no family, aside from him. Apart from cooking, cleaning and giving her body to Dorian, there was nothing else. Now, even that was gone.
I am nobody.
Hanna said the words out loud but even as she did they were swallowed up into the vast silence of the black bog. I am not even words, she thought to herself. I truly am nothing. In that moment, Hanna wanted to die. She longed to lie down on the springy ground and gather a blanket of moss about her. Eventually the soft, ancient bog would swallow her up. She could stay here, alone, out in the empty bog, and sleep forever. Then all of this would be over. Her legs were bending to sit down when, over the horizon, Hanna saw something trundling along the road towards her. A bus. She should lie down now, disappear into the land so they would drive past and never see her. But in that moment the same voice that had called to her earlier spoke again.
NO, Hanna. Stay standing. This is your chance. Make your escape.
As the vehicle drew closer Hanna saw it was the Galway bus.
Keep running, keep going.
She flagged it down and climbed on. Her heart was banging against her chest and she kept her head down as she paid the driver. Taking her seat, she counted just three people on it. Nobody she knew. For the rest of the journey, Hanna covered her head with her coat and slept. She dreamt of her parents. They whispered encouragement to her.
Keep running. Freedom is only around the corner. Don’t be afraid.
Hanna woke when they reached Galway and, despite the words of encouragement, she found that she was still afraid. The bus was filled with the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat. She wished she could stay on it. If only she had stayed and slept herself to soft death in the bog. Instead, she got off the bus and walked quickly into the train station where she bought a ticket to Dublin. As her luck would have it, the next train was leaving in only five minutes’ time. She took care to find a quiet carriage. A man sat down opposite her and offered her a cigarette. When she refused, he asked her name. Trying to keep her voice from shaking she paused before answering.
‘Annie.’
The man nodded and she looked out the window, closing her eyes to pretend she was asleep. Annie. That was her name now.
The man
opposite her got off at Athlone. Hanna pulled her notepad and pen out of her bag and put her plan into action.
Dear Dorian…
It felt wrong writing a letter to a dead man. Hanna started to feel afraid but then reminded herself, she wasn’t Hanna any more. She was Annie. Annie Austen. Like Jane Austen. Annie Austen could be whoever Hanna wanted her to be. Annie would go to London and start a new life.
… just a short note to let you know that I arrived safely in Dublin, as planned, and have been taking the necessary steps for my ongoing journey to America…
Throw them off the scent, but don’t give too much information. Her pen hovered reluctantly over the page before she put down her last sentence.
Thank you for all that you did for me and my mother.
With gratitude,
Hanna
It was a lie. All of it. Hanna felt the anger rise as she read it back. Part of her wanted to write out all the terrible things he had done. The rape. The manipulation of her mother. She wanted the world to know what a nasty, vicious man he was. But, even more so, she had a desperate urge to expunge it, to get it out of her system. To get him out of her head and start life as Annie with a fresh, unsullied soul.
But that would be asking too much of God. So she left the letter as it was. Dorian would be buried as a kind, gentleman doctor who had rescued a poor orphan girl, instead of the monster he was. With gratitude. The letter would have sounded more convincing if she had said with love, but she could not write the words. Even if it might save her from ever being caught she could not use the word love in relation to him.
When Hanna arrived in Dublin she walked from Heuston station to the city centre. She knew the city from weekends spent there with Dorian and her mother. The sharp tang of the Liffey and the hops from the Guinness factory on the Quays made her heart hurt, reminding her of walking these streets with her mother, in her best coat, full of hope and happiness. She stopped first at the GPO on Connell Street to post the letter, and then took a bus along the Quays to Dublin Port. Here, she bought a foot passenger ticket to Holyhead.
That Girl Page 2