by Anne Bennett
Barney shook her off as if she was a troublesome fly, and continued pulling her clothes off. ‘Shut up you little bitch,’ he snarled. ‘You’re a prick teaser. D’you know that? I’ve waited long enough for you and you might even enjoy it if you let yourself.’ With that, he threw himself on top of her.
Oh God! Deirdre knew now what they were doing. Her and Sally had discovered a couple doing the same thing in Pype Hayes Park just the previous summer when they were looking for a good place to hide in a game of hide and seek. They’d been so scared then and had run home without stopping, never giving a thought to the children who might be seeking them. They had told no one what they had seen. So she knew Barney was…oh, God, it was disgusting.
She heard Patsy give a sudden shriek and then begin to cry. Deirdre felt sick and knew that she shouldn’t be watching this, but she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from the man powering into Patsy with pig-like grunting noises, while Patsy herself sobbed in anguish, despair and shame.
And then it was over. Barney gave an exultant cry and was still, but continued to lie on top of Patsy as he said, ‘That was bleeding marvellous. I didn’t know you were a fucking virgin. Jesus, it’s a long time since I’ve had one of those.’
Patsy felt sick to the core of her. Everywhere hurt and she knew she’d be a mass of bruises, but the greatest pain by far was the throbbing one between her legs where she could feel stickiness. Her innards felt as if they were on fire.
Deirdre couldn’t take any more. She got to her feet, too disturbed to be cautious, and stumbled over a pile of bricks she hadn’t noticed were there. Barney jumped to his feet and peered into the darkness. At first, he saw nothing, but he heard vague scrabbling noises. And then Deirdre reached the road and Barney caught a glimpse of her running up Holly Lane, illuminated for a second by a streetlamp. He smiled. He would definitely deal with her later.
Patsy took the opportunity to sit up and begin replacing her discarded clothes, hard enough in the dark. She felt dirty, degraded and mortified by shame for what she had allowed this brute of a man to do to her, and would hate for anyone to think she had gone with him willingly. So, struggling to her feet, she asked in a scared and shaky voice, ‘What was it? Did you hear something?’
‘Thought I did,’ Barney said. ‘But it was just a couple of cats.’ He heard Patsy sigh in relief. ‘Right then, I’m off,’ he said. ‘You all right?’
‘Course I’m not all right,’ Patsy snapped. ‘I’ll never be all right again, you bloody moronic pervert.’
Barney laughed. ‘Don’t be so sodding dramatic,’ he told her scornfully. ‘You’ll get over it, and I don’t have to say that, if you know what’s good for you, it had better remain our secret?’
No he didn’t. Patsy knew she would keep quiet, not because of what Barney would do to her if she told, but because of the consequences to others if she let on. Sean would seek him out and kill him. Last time he said Andrew had saved him from the gallows; this time there would be no man living who could stop him. He would kill Barney and hang for it. This time Andrew might not want to stop him—in fact he might want to help him if he had heard what Barney had done.
How could she risk losing the two men she loved most in all the world because of Barney McPhearson? She couldn’t, and so she would say nothing. But she still felt immense sorrow and regret for Andrew who’d had his right to be her first lover snatched from him, and she didn’t know yet if she could look him in the face, let alone marry him. She felt soiled, defiled.
She sank to her knees, put her hands over her eyes and began to sob as the enormity of what had happened that bleak December evening hit her.
The next thing she was aware of was Deirdre’s arms around her shoulders. Deirdre hadn’t run far up Holly Lane because she hadn’t known if that was all Barney was going to do to Patsy. She had secreted herself behind a hedge in a garden opposite the brickworks and waited. A few minutes later, she saw Barney stride down past her towards his house. She had crept back and found Patsy on her knees, crying as if her heart was broken.
‘Don’t, Patsy. Please don’t,’ Deirdre begged. ‘Let’s go home. When Daddy comes home from the match, we’ll tell him and—’
‘No,’ Patsy said, jerked into awareness. ‘Dad must never know about this, Deirdre. Promise me now.’
‘But why?’ All Deirdre’s young life she had been convinced nothing bad would ever happen to her because her father would see that it wouldn’t, and would be there to fix anything always.
Oh God, how Patsy hated to tell all to Deirdre. She was so young. But if she was to let something slip…Patsy couldn’t risk it. There was too much at stake.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You don’t know all this and normally you wouldn’t have to know either, but this is so important. Maria isn’t in hospital just because of the baby, as we told all of you. The truth is that Barney beat her up so severely that she was extremely ill and really could have died. Dad went looking for Barney that night and it was only Andrew that stopped him killing the man. If Barney had pressed charges, then Dad would have got into trouble, but Barney didn’t, probably because of what he had done to Maria. But if I was to tell Dad about this, well, I wouldn’t like to think what he would do, or what Andrew might do to Barney because of it. We might want Barney out of the way permanently—I know I do—but if Dad or Andrew had any hand in putting him in that position then they could hang.’
It was too dark to see Deirdre’s face, but Patsy heard the sharp intake of breath and could feel the shock waves running through her. She regretted the fact that she had had to tell a child such sordid things, but she needed her to realise how important it was that she said nothing.
‘And now,’ said Patsy, getting to her feet, ‘if we are to keep this secret, as we must, we have to get home quickly, before everyone is back and sees the state of me.’
She took hold of her sister’s hand and they began to pick their way over the rubble.
Fortunately, no one had returned home before them, though when Patsy glanced at the clock she knew that Sean and the boys could be in any time. She ran a bath and it wasn’t until she’d reached the bathroom that she had the chance to look at herself properly. The face that looked back at her, with eyes that were panicriddled, was pasty white and furrowed with strain lines, one cheek and the side of her nose already sporting a nice bruise she would have to hide with make up. As for her clothes, her winter coat was ripped and filthy and she doubted it would ever recover. Her jumper and skirt too were ruined, and her stockings were in tatters.
As she pulled off the soiled and torn clothes to give them to Deirdre to hide at the bottom of her wardrobe, the young girl caught sight of Patsy’s bruised back. Scratches and gashes ran from between her shoulder blades to her buttocks, and there was dried blood at the top of her scratched and discoloured legs.
She felt so sorry for Patsy, but she knew nothing she could say would make any difference. She took the offending clothes away and hid them well before sorting out clean things for her.
Patsy didn’t think she would ever get the stink of Barney out of her nostrils, and she scrubbed at her body ruthlessly as the tears flowed once more. She wondered if she would ever feel really clean again. In the end, Deirdre took hold of her hands. ‘Enough now, Patsy,’ she said. ‘Let me bathe your back with the flannel.’
Patsy nodded. Gentle as Deirdre was, she couldn’t help wincing. When Patsy eventually heaved herself from the water, Deirdre dried her back, patting it delicately with a soft towel before rubbing salve on. ‘Does it feel any easier at all?’ she asked.
Patsy sighed and wiped her eyes. There were to be no more tears, she decided, for they were no earthly use. ‘If I’m honest, not a lot,’ she said, struggling to dress. ‘Everything aches and throbs and stings, and my back feels as if it is stiffening up.’
‘It’s not fair that Barney should get away scot-free with what he did to you,’ Deirdre said. Then, as Patsy went to speak, she said. ‘I know we c
an’t say anything and I shan’t, but it isn’t fair, is it?’
Patsy shook her head. ‘No, Deirdre, it’s anything but fair.’ And she put her arms around her young sister.
‘Where do you think he is now?’ Deirdre asked with a shudder.
‘I asked Sean where he would go when he came out of the hospital and he said into some hostel place near the centre of town, because he isn’t allowed to go home.’
‘So what was he doing out here?’
‘Well, there are buses, and I don’t suppose they are kept prisoner.’
‘Pity they aren’t.’
‘I agree,’ Patsy said. ‘And while it is good to talk sometimes, rehashing it all now is just stirring up bad memories, so I am going to try to put it out of my mind and I think you should do the same.’
‘I’ll try,’ Deirdre promised.
However, another worry was pressing on Patsy’s mind and not one that she thought she could share with Deirdre—or anyone else, for that matter. What if that disgusting pervert had made her pregnant? She wouldn’t be able to keep that secret for long, and how would Andrew react to know that she was pregnant with another man’s child?
Patsy knew she wouldn’t rest easy until she’d had her period.
Both Patsy and Deirdre would have been even more worried if they had known that Barney was just down the road from them, at the house in Westmead Crescent.
He didn’t walk boldly up to the door. He knew about the injunction thing that Maria was supposed to have, and he didn’t want any of the neighbours sending for the police before he had a chance to make Maria see that the whole thing was crazy. She had trapped him into a marriage, but he had stood by her in all good faith. Before the priest and more than half the village she had married him for better or worse, richer or poorer, and had also promised to obey him, so what the hell was she playing at? He’d soon make her see how ludicrous the whole thing was. He’d rip that bloody injunction into a million pieces, just see if he didn’t.
But first he had to get into the house undetected and he knew full well how to do that. Behind the houses in Westmead Crescent there was a social club and a sports field. The entrance was just round the corner in Woodacre Road. There was a fence surrounding it, but many of the posts had been bent, over the years, to provide access when the gates were closed. That evening, however, the gates stood open and Barney went through them, skirting the clubhouse where he could hear the sound of merriment and loud voices.
Thanks to the lighting surrounding the clubhouse, he was easily able to see where he was. All the gardens ran straight up to the chain-link fence and then, as a sort of screen, the sports field had privet hedges set at intervals along the boundary. Barney slipped through one of the gaps in the privet. And then he was standing at the top of his garden, wondering why the whole place seemed to be in darkness.
He pulled at the link fence, surprised that it wasn’t cemented in anywhere, or even sunken into the ground very far. It was easy to pull it up and make a sizeable hole he could scrabble through. He would need to keep a weather eye open for was the groundsman, though, if he tried this route in daylight.
Once he had cleared the fence, he would be at the top of his garden and protected from view by the mature gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes. The only place anyone could catch sight of him was as he skirted the lawn, though there was little danger at that time of night.
Barney couldn’t believe that his key didn’t fit the back door. Maria had changed the locks, he thought. The crafty sod. Just wait till he got his hands on her. Not that it mattered. The kitchen window had never fitted properly and he had asked Maria more than once to see about it, for the wind whistled through it shocking at times. However, Maria had never done so, and now he was glad. By inserting the blade of his penknife in the gap and wiggling it about, he was able to force the opening wide enough to get the penknife right in, then push up the catch, open the window and climb inside.
He knew straight away that the house was empty. He didn’t turn on any light at first, not wishing to advertise the fact that he was there until he had seen Maria, but used the torch he had knocked from the windowsill as he climbed in. In the living room someone had drawn across the bay window the thick velour curtain that Maria used to draw in the winter to make the room cosier. Barney knew then he could turn on the light because no light penetrated through that curtain. He surveyed the room. There was a light film of dust over everything, but everywhere else was tidy and the grate cleared. Upstairs the children’s beds and cot had disappeared from the rooms, their cupboards were empty and a lot of bedding had disappeared from their bed.
He recalled what the governor had said in the hostel. Could it be the poor cow was still in hospital? He shrugged. Wherever she was, it suited his plans, for the house was a far more comfortable place to stay than the bloody hostel. He would stay there as long as he had to, come and go the same way as he had that night, and no one would ever know.
‘D’you think there is something wrong with Deirdre?’ Martha asked Sean the following Wednesday morning.
‘She’s quiet certainly,’ Sean said. ‘But maybe she’s just tired. It is coming up to the end of term.’
‘Maybe,’ Martha said. ‘And, of course, she’s doing a solo in the concert. I know she is excited and everything, but it would be natural to be a little nervous.’
‘Have you asked her if there is anything bothering her?’
‘Oh, yes. She says nothing, of course.’
‘What does Patsy say?’ Sean said. ‘Aren’t the two of them always as thick as thieves?’
Martha frowned. ‘Normally,’ she said. ‘But there is something up with her too. Course, that could be something to do with her and Andrew. She has been sharp with him a few times and I heard them having a real spat the other day.’
Sean groaned. ‘I hope whatever it is she’s soon over it before Christmas. I suppose he is still coming to us?’
‘As far as I know,’ Martha said. ‘And travelling to his parents the day after Boxing Day. I hope it is nothing serous between them. They’re probably tired too. It’s been a long term and, from what they both say, I don’t think teaching is an easy job.’
Sean chuckled. ‘Oh, no, indeed not.’
‘I’m glad that Maria is coming out of hospital at the weekend.’ Martha said. ‘With the Christmas holidays beginning on Friday, it would be difficult to find a minute to visit her. Anyway, she has been away from the little ones long enough.’
Sean agreed, but added, ‘She has, and it was kind of you to say she must come to us, but I don’t want you taking on too much yourself and becoming ill.’
‘Am I likely to?’ Martha said. ‘I am as strong a horse. You’ve always said so.’
‘Even horses need a rest now and then.’
‘Sean stop fussing,’ Martha chided. ‘How could I let Maria go back just now? She is scared stiff still, and little wonder. Anyway, she is still very weak. Remember the hospital weren’t that keen on her coming out yet until I said she could stay with me, and she is certainly not strong enough to look after three active children and a new baby on her own. By the New Year she will be stronger. Once the girls are back at school she’ll only have the new baby and Jack all day, and he is a grand little chap.’
‘He is that,’ Sean said, for the little boy always had a smile on his face. He was naturally very funny, and Sean knew he would miss him when they returned to Pype Hayes. He knew too Martha spoke the truth. Maria was nowhere near better yet. Her nerves were so bad, often her hands shook uncontrollably, and even her speech was sometimes hesitant. So, despite his concern for Martha, he’d be glad to have Maria there for a bit so they could all keep their eyes on her and check that she wasn’t overtaxing herself.
‘Now are you sure that you will be all right coming home on your own after the extra dance practice?’ Martha asked, as she tucked the scarf around Deirdre’s neck a little later. ‘It will be black night, and it won’t take me a minute to fetch you.
’
Oh, how Deirdre longed to fall against her mother and say yes, she did want collecting, because since that business with Barney the previous Saturday she was petrified of the dark. But she had just won the battle with her mother to allow her and Sally to come home from school by themselves, and in Sally’s case take Theresa too, and she didn’t want to miss out on her new-found independence. She knew as well that her mother has her hands full enough as it was.
Added to that, most of the dancers were much older than she, and many who were passed over for a solo spot were jealous of Deirdre. If she asked her mother to collect her, she was sure they would make fun of her afterwards. And so she said, ‘No, I’m fine. Anyway, Grainne O’Farrell lives in Orchard Road and we will walk down together.’
‘If you are sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘You are happy about this solo spot, aren’t you?’ Martha asked. ‘You’re not getting in a state and worrying about it, are you?’
‘No. Why?’
‘You seem…I don’t know, different somehow.’
Deirdre could have said anyone would have been different after the events of the previous Saturday, but she could say none of this.
Nor could Patsy, who was also trying to cope with a frustrated and confused fiancé. She was embarrassed with Andrew, feeling, however inadvertently, that she had betrayed him and so wasn’t keen to kiss him or show him how much she loved him. She also hurt too much and too extensively to allow Andrew to hold her tight, or even drape a heavy arm over her shoulder, and so she would push him away and hold his hand instead.
Andrew and Patsy had been controlled in their lovemaking, wanting their wedding night to be something special, and sometimes it had been hard to be that strong. Andrew, then, could be forgiven, when their engagement was open knowledge and the wedding date set, for thinking they might enjoy greater intimacy, not less. However, whenever he tried to press Patsy, she would say primly that you didn’t know what it might lead to. It was so unlike her and he was bloody sick of it and even began to wonder if she had gone off him entirely.