The Ballymara Road

by Nadine Dorries

  Someone held out a hand. It was no longer Maura supporting her, but a man she didn’t know, and she smiled at him as the others circled round her, calling her name.

  ‘Mammy,’ she whispered, looking for Maura. ‘Mammy, I have to find my baby.’ She held her face up to the watery sunlight reflected in the glistening snow, so pure and white and cold.

  ‘Do ye know where my baby is?’ she asked the man as he took her hands and led her into the deep snow towards the river’s edge. And there, he pushed her down into the cold rushing water, and held her still. The last thing Kitty saw was a lady with long red hair and a beautiful smile, who looked just like Nellie, holding out her arms.

  ‘Did ye know Kitty was back?’ Aengus asked his aunt and uncle as they sat down to bacon and tatties from the range, before they began their day’s work.

  ‘No, I did not. Well, I never, I had no notion,’ said his aunt.

  ‘Well then, we will be seeing a lot more of ye around here seeing as ye have such a soft spot for the girl,’ said his uncle, laughing.

  ‘I think she may be poorly now,’ said Aengus. ‘She was asleep on the settle and, later, I saw her wave from the bedroom.’

  ‘’Tis unusual for anyone to be ill when it snows,’ said his aunt. ‘The snow freezes all the sickness solid, so it does, inside and out. There is no cure for any ailment as good as the snow.’

  Later that morning, when Aengus was leading the cows back out and taking feed to the pigs, he looked down from the top of the hill. Below him he could see Liam and Rosie, Julia and Maeve, running along the bank of the Moorhaun River, at the point where it passed from their own land onto the McMahons’ farm. He saw his uncle run out of the barn and he heard Maeve scream.

  And then he saw Kitty in her blue floral nightdress, floating on the fast river, and Maeve and Liam, running to catch her.

  He looked to the top of the Ballymara Road, at the point where the road, the river and the village met and, for a brief moment, his eye was caught by a very large black car, gliding out of the churchyard and turning right, across the top of the Ballymara Road, away from Bangornevin and on towards Galway, the heavy wheels cutting through the snow with ease.

  ‘Who the feck?’ he whispered under his breath. As he was on his way down the hill, he wondered who was the red-haired woman, kneeling at the side of the riverbank next to Kitty.

  Before he reached the bottom of the hill, she was gone and now, all he could see through his tears was Liam, staggering across the white, river-worn pebbles, carrying Kitty, dripping wet and limbs hanging lifelessly, like a broken rag doll.

  4

  WHEN HE LEARNT that he was to be sent to Liverpool to assume responsibility for the parish of St Mary’s, Anthony Lamb had insisted that his sister, Harriet, accompany him. He knew he would need all the help he could find, in a parish where the priest and a respected parishioner had been murdered within weeks of each other.

  His wish had been granted. En route he had broken his journey in Dublin to collect Harriet, as well as to help her shut up the house, which had been their childhood home and where Harriet, the remaining spinster of the family, had been living alone.

  Although she was only thirty-five years old, Anthony was aware she had sacrificed much of her own life, caring for both their elderly parents until their deaths, and he felt an overpowering obligation to protect her.

  ‘Isn’t life funny, Anthony? If Mammy and Daddy were still alive, I would still be in Black Rock, helping to run the house. Daddy just wouldn’t countenance giving up the surgery to retire. God knows, he loved all his patients.’

  Her parents’ deaths had not been a great shock, to Harriet or to any of her eight siblings. Both had lived to a ripe old age and her father had still practised as a family doctor almost up to the day he died aged eighty-five.

  Harriet, having been the youngest of nine, appeared to have missed out, as each of her brothers and sisters had carved out their paths in countries and towns too far away from Dublin to be any help when it was needed. Surprisingly, when trouble arose at home, in the places where her sisters lived the postal service often seemed to be struggling to survive. The postmen were always on strike in Watford, Luton, London, Chicago and New York, all at the same time, or so it had seemed.

  Harriet occasionally resented them all, every last one of them, apart from her beloved Anthony, and then felt tormented with guilt. Her life had been given over to caring for her parents and she had longed to break free. To move away from Dublin and experience some excitement of her own, if only for a short while.

  ‘It is not so much funny, as the way God planned it, Harriet,’ Anthony said gently, smiling at his sister. He sensed she was a Catholic out of duty, not commitment. Harriet smiled back. Her lack of true belief was the guilty secret she would always carry.

  Pressing her face up against the cab window as they headed up towards the four streets, she changed the subject. ‘Gosh, Anthony, would you look at those shops.’

  Anthony had asked the cab driver to take them on a short tour around the city of Liverpool before they arrived at the Priory. It had given him huge pleasure to see the look on Harriet’s face as they drove past Lewis’s and down Church Street.

  ‘The housekeeper’s name is Annie O’Prey. I have already written to her,’ Harriet said as she settled back again on the cab seat. ‘She said she would have a hot supper ready for us when we arrive and that Sister Evangelista would be waiting for us. Then tomorrow, it’s down to work. Sister Evangelista did say we would be rather thrown in at the deep end.’

  Father Anthony sighed. He had hoped to begin his time on the four streets on a more positive note, but he was at a loss to find a positive in a double murder. The world was changing fast and holding a community together in England was difficult at the best of times.

  As they drew nearer, Harriet became entranced by the docks. When the klaxon sounded, the cranes, which loomed like spectres, ceased to swing and men began to appear at the top of the steps, hurrying home. Each one looked directly at the cab and lifted a hand in greeting as they looked to see who was entering their domain. Harriet felt slightly self-conscious, but Anthony smiled and waved from the window with a smile for each work-weary face they passed. A car on the four streets was an event, unless it was a police car.

  As they pulled into the Priory drive, Harriet’s heart sank. It wasn’t because of the rows of back-to-back houses, the towering, smoking chimneys and the all-too-apparent poverty of the neighbourhood; none of that bothered Harriet in the slightest. Anthony had prepared her well and she knew what to expect. What troubled her was the eerie Victorian tombstones peering at them over the Priory wall out of the darkening mist, and the knowledge that Father James had met his ghastly end just yards from the Priory front door, where the cab now paused. She looked over the graves, down towards the river, and cold shivers ran down her spine.

  The Priory door flew open. Sister Evangelista, who filled the brightly lit doorway with Annie O’Prey hovering behind her, sang out in greeting, ‘Ah, thanks be to God, ye have arrived at last. Come away in, now.’

  After an exchange of introductions and greetings, there was a bustle in the driveway while they tripped over one another, each trying to ease the other’s burden and carry the largest number of bags indoors.

  The cab had long since disappeared.

  ‘I’ll be going now, queen, if that’s all right,’ the cab driver had said to Harriet, taking the money from her gloved hand. ‘It’s a bit creepy round here, like, since the murders and I’m a bit of a wimp. I’m not one of youse Catholics.’

  Father Anthony, who had carried a trunk indoors, could be heard struggling up the stairs to a concert of instructions from Sister Evangelista and Annie O’Prey. Harriet stood with the remaining bags, waiting for him to return and take her own trunk, which was too heavy for her to lift.

  She looked up at the red-brick building covered in lichen and ivy, at the tall sash windows on the top floor and the even taller chimneys.
She counted eight, soot-blackened doubles and she couldn’t even see over the other side of the roof. She had yet to set a foot indoors, but her heart was already yearning for their white-rendered, sea-facing, welcoming home close to Dublin.

  Harriet shivered. The snow-covered ground had frozen. She could feel the mist penetrating her woollen coat as it drifted over the gravestones and onto the Priory lawn, lying at her feet and rolling out a carpet of welcome, all the way to the front door.

  Father Anthony’s voice boomed out into the damp air.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sister, I think that maybe ’tis a painting now on the floor as I cannot see round this corner on the stairs.’

  Harriet smiled. Anthony had never been very practical, always bookish.

  ‘Whaaa!’

  Harriet screamed sharply as, apparently from nowhere, a frozen little hand grabbed her cuff. It was the iciness of the fingers that shocked her as much as the unexpected company.

  ‘Sorry, miss, sorry, shh, please don’t scream, me da will kill me if I make a nuisance of meself.’

  Little Paddy was standing next to Harriet with Scamp at his side.

  ‘Oh, my Lord, you scared me half witless,’ said Harriet.

  Laughing out loud at the sight before her, her laughter vanished when she saw how cold the poor boy looked. Into the light stepped another young boy, who was better dressed.

  The one who had seized her cuff spoke first.

  ‘We came to say hello, miss. Are you moving in today? My mam says you have come from Dublin to live here and you must be relieved to be safe at last. Is that true?’

  Harriet instantly warmed to him. How many youngsters would go out of their way to say hello? she thought to herself. Most children were shy, especially boys.

  Little Paddy continued, ‘Are ye going to stay for long? They sent a priest already to replace Father James, but he spent just the one night in the Priory. He said the place needed to be burnt down and that it was unholy. Me mammy said he was really just scared.’

  Harriet was thoughtful. It occurred to her that the dog looked better fed than Little Paddy, not realizing that her own chicken supper was already in the dog’s stomach.

  Harriet could hear the clumping of Anthony’s feet on the hallway stairs.

  ‘Well, I will be too exhausted to travel back tomorrow, so I will be here for at least two nights, that’s for sure, and if I know my brother he won’t be leaving until there have been definite improvements.’

  ‘Goodness me, who have you there?’ asked Anthony as he stepped out onto the driveway.

  Sister Evangelista bustled to his side. ‘Heavens above,’ she exclaimed. ‘You will get yourself frozen standing out here and what are you two doing here?’

  Harriet wanted to hear more from the boys, to include them in the conversation, but was amazed to discover that they had vanished. Where they and Scamp had stood only seconds before was now empty space and it was as if they had never been.

  Less than an hour later, they were all gathered round the fire in the study, chatting to Sister Evangelista after enjoying Annie O’Prey’s shepherd’s pie and sponge cake. Harriet sat back in her chair, fighting to keep her eyelids open, and smiled sleepily as the conversation buzzed around her.

  ‘That was a lovely supper, Mrs O’Prey,’ Harriet had said. ‘I have never had cake as good as that anywhere before in my life.’

  Annie O’Prey beamed from ear to ear. She liked Harriet instantly.

  When Harriet smiled, Annie knew at once that the four streets were going to be lucky with her. She could feel it in her bones and see it in Harriet’s eyes.

  As the new father and his sister ate upstairs, Annie cleared away the pans in the basement kitchen, while chatting to her dead friend, Molly, whose bloodstained reflection gazed back at her through the kitchen window from the deep, dark night.

  ‘Well, Molly, I can see as clear as the nose on your face they are just grand. The father and his sister, they is just what we need around here now. Yer man, the father, he is nothing like Father James, nicer altogether, if ye ask me, and his sister, well, she knows a good cake when she tastes it. I could always bake a better sponge than you, Molly, and that’s a fact.’ Annie turned the tap on full and filled the bowl with fresh water.

  ‘But, you know, there are enough families on the docks could do with a bit of her kindness, that’s for sure. I’ll just finish this pan, Molly, and I’ll make us a cuppa.’

  Molly had been Annie’s closest friend in life. Annie hadn’t told anyone, but she knew that, even in death, nothing had altered.

  Upstairs, Sister Evangelista spoke in hushed tones as she related the events that had rocked the congregation and the community to its core. While Annie conversed with Molly in the kitchen, in the study Sister Evangelista recounted the details of Molly’s violent death.

  Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. They heard the quiet voice of Annie O’Prey and the louder one of another woman, full of anxiety.

  ‘I had better see who that is, Father,’ said Sister Evangelista.

  The study door burst open. Harriet was lost for words as Annie O’Prey appeared before her, in an obvious state of distress. For the second time that night, Harriet came face to face with Little Paddy, now standing at his mother’s side. Both were in tears as, for the first time in her life, Peggy struggled to speak.

  Maura knew she was in hell.

  Leaning against the bar of the Anchor, she held the phone out to Kathleen and watched the smile on the other woman’s face slowly fade as, on the other end of the line, Rosie told Kathleen the news.

  Kitty was dead.

  ‘Kitty is dead, Maura. Kitty is dead.’

  With no preamble, Kathleen had said it, just like that. And in just the three seconds it took her to tell Maura that her beautiful, precious and beloved daughter had gone, before Maura’s very eyes Kathleen was transformed from the upright, proud and bonny almost sixty-year-old she was to a woman who looked nearer eighty.

  Maura heard the screams. She thought they came from Kathleen but then realized they were her own.

  ‘Carol, get out here and help me quickly,’ Bill called to his wife and, together, they put their arms round Maura and led her to a chair.

  ‘Sorry for your troubles. Sorry for your troubles. Sorry for your troubles,’ Carol and Bill repeated, over and over.

  Kathleen pushed a glass of port into Maura’ s hand, but it was too late. Maura stumbled and as she hit the sawdust-covered floorboards she kept on going, plummeting all the way down, deep into her own living hell.

  Tommy carefully guided a pallet of jute across Huskisson dock and took the ropes, whilst Jerry lit up a quick fag. The light was fading and they were minutes from the klaxon ushering them home.

  ‘Oi, Stanley Matthews, get yer corner quick,’ shouted Tommy to Jerry as the pallet swung round.

  Jerry ducked and then, with the grace of a leopard, sprang back up to take his rope and helped to ease the pallet down. Holding his thumb up to the crane driver and moving his head from side to side, he frantically blinked away the smoke from the smouldering ciggie that dangled from his bottom lip. There was no man alive who could light up as fast as a docker.

  ‘What’s Bill’s lad doing, Tommy?’ asked Jerry. Throwing Tommy his tobacco tin for him to make a quick roll-up, Jerry unhooked the ropes and the pallet rested safely on the cobbles.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Tommy. With a quizzical frown, he let the rope and hook swing back to the crane, then followed Jerry’s gaze.

  They could see Billy speaking to a policeman in the hut positioned halfway down the dockers’ steps. The officer waved Billy on as he raised his helmet and rubbed his brow, scanning the dockside.

  ‘’Tis bad news,’ said Jerry.

  He watched as little Billy clambered over a wall of stacked jute and ran up to men who were working. He was pulling on their jackets and seemed to be asking questions. He was shouting, agitated.

  ‘Aye, ’tis that to be sure. I
’ve never seen that kid run before. I wonder what it can be,’ said Tommy thoughtfully.

  He took a long drag on his ciggie and lifted his cap to wipe the sweat from his head with his sleeve and, as he did so, he noticed a gang of men point towards them both. Tommy instantly knew not only that little Billy was running towards him, but that he carried the worst news.

  Tommy, overcome with a desire to turn and run himself, knew that he would never forget these last seconds as little Billy covered the ground across the dock. He sensed that nothing would ever be the same again.

  ‘Stop him, would ye, Jer,’ said Tommy, a note of desperation in his voice.

  With a furrowed brow, Jerry turned to Tommy, but it was too late. Little Billy was within hearing distance and he was shouting as loud as he possibly could. ‘Tommy, Tommy, ye have to come to the pub, me da says to tell ye ’tis bad news. Maura needs ye, Tommy, ’tis Kitty, your Kitty, she’s dead.’

  ‘Tommy is on his way. Tommy is on his way. Tommy is on his way.’

  Since there were no words of comfort that had any meaning or could even begin to make sense, Kathleen and Bill continued to reassure Maura with the promise of Tommy’s imminent arrival, in an attempt to penetrate her despair. As though Tommy’s presence would alter anything.

  Tommy was the last person Maura wanted to see. If Maura had known that there was a choice – either your husband hangs or your daughter lives – Tommy would have hanged.

  In the blackest days following the news of Kitty’s death, Maura could not look at Tommy without wishing he was dead. She hated him. He had killed the priest and, for that, they had paid the unthinkable price.

  Tommy couldn’t help Maura. As far as he was concerned, the root of all the evil in their lives was Maura’s vanity and her desperation to be better than everyone else they knew.

  ‘Why else would she be so pally with the priest?’ he said to Kathleen as she tried to comfort him through his anger. ‘I always knew what her game was: she wanted one of our lads in the seminary, to be a priest.