‘Please God, no. Please let me go home. Dear God. Please stop.’ She whispered her prayers over and over again, while Barry began to rub himself against her.
‘Good girl. Good girl.’
Her tears had started to fall. She felt his fingers between her legs, doing things, awful things. The glass of the shop door was cold against her buttocks, then there was the sound of a zip and she could feel his thing against her thigh. It was clammy and warm. She shuddered but made no sound. It became more difficult to know what he was doing. She could feel the knuckles of the hand holding his penis moving back and forth against her skin. He centred himself and moved it between her legs, still pumping furiously. His breathing was fast. ‘You’re all right, love, I’m not going to …’ He pushed his face very hard into the side of her head and let out a series of little gasps followed by a groan. Lizzie could feel a warm stickiness between her legs. Barry had stopped moving. His full weight was against her and he was breathing heavily. She began to shiver violently.
Barry stepped back and turned away. He bent down to fumble with his flies. She stared at him but he wouldn’t look at her. Not raising his eyes from the ground he just said, ‘You got me all hot and bothered, didn’t you?’
Lizzie didn’t answer. Her legs felt weak and she found herself sliding down the door till she was crouched on the ground. After a moment or two, Barry just walked around the van, got in and drove off.
As the sound of the engine faded away, Lizzie thought about God looking down at her. Was he floating high above the market square, with the lights from the shops spilling out on to the deserted streets? Could he see the frail little girl with messed hair and lipstick smeared across her face slumped in the doorway? Her skirt was rolled up around her waist and her knickers stretched between her knees. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t sure what had just happened to her, but she was in no doubt that it was the worst sort of sin.
She stood up. She had to get back to Angela’s. She took off her knickers and wiped herself as clean as she could with them, though she could still feel the damp stickiness between her legs as she walked up the hill. She shoved her underwear in a bin, making sure the pale blue cotton was hidden beneath some old newspapers.
There were lights on in the house. Thank God. She paused to make one final effort to look more presentable before she rang the bell, but the expression on Angela’s mother’s face when she opened the door suggested it had not been enough.
‘Lizzie! We’ve been worried sick. What happened to you?’ She found herself being pulled into a hug, her face nestled in the ample bosom of Angela’s mother, and the relief at being warm and safe brought on another wave of muffled sobbing tears.
‘There, there. You’re home now. John, put the kettle on!’
‘Lizzie!’ It was Angela in a pink and white nightdress at the top of the stairs. Making her way down as quickly as she could, she tried to hug her friend from the other side. Through her sobs, Lizzie wondered if they could smell Barry on her. Could they tell what had happened?
The four of them gathered in the front room and Lizzie drank a cup of sweet tea. It transpired that Angela had been told by someone at the Stella that Lizzie had left, so she and her father had expected to come home to find her waiting. When she wasn’t there, they decided they would wait to hear something. There was no point driving round half the night. Lizzie was sensible and would phone them. When she hadn’t, they had got very concerned and Angela’s father had been all set to go out looking for her when she had rung the bell.
Lizzie told her side of the story without mentioning the doorway of O’Keefe’s, and everyone went to bed relieved and happy. Everyone apart from Lizzie. She lay under the covers and touched her skin where his hands had been. She still had the metallic taste of his tongue in her mouth. She spat into the candlewick bedspread.
The next few weeks were hard. Life returned to normal and yet Lizzie knew that for her, things could never be the same again. She thought about that night all the time. The graze of his stubble, the heat of his hands, the animal noises pressed against her ear. What could she have done differently? Should she have called out, bitten him, run away? She longed to have that night to live again so that none of it would have happened. She couldn’t concentrate on anything; her schoolwork suffered, and of course the nuns just assumed she had fallen in love with some lad. They had seen it all before.
It was about a month later that she had started to feel sick. On more than one occasion she was forced to run out of the classroom, and once she hadn’t made it to the toilets and was just sick in a waste-paper bin she found in a corridor. Of course her mother noticed and encouraged her to see the doctor, but Lizzie refused. She didn’t know exactly how, but somehow this illness had to be something to do with what had happened the night of Brian Bello and the Diamond Dust.
A few weeks later, she found she couldn’t zip up her school uniform skirt, and counting back to her last period she realised that she had missed one. She couldn’t be sure, but she had a horrible dread that somehow she had become pregnant. She knew she should talk to someone, but who? Angela would probably just panic and tell the whole convent, so she was useless. Her mother would kill her because she had been so stupid. The doctor would tell her mother and that would just lead to her being killed a little later. In the end, Lizzie decided that the only person who could help her was the priest.
She sat in the confessional, breathing in the familiar smell of dusty wood and wax polish. Father Mulcahy listened patiently behind the screen as she spoke. A list of minor sins went on at length while she tried desperately to summon up the courage to say what she needed to. Finally she blurted out her confession.
‘A man did things to me.’
It was such a relief to at last tell another living person what had happened to her, to speak the words out loud. She gave him a version of events that she felt was suitable for a priest to hear, and finished by explaining why she was there. ‘I think I’m going to have a baby, Father.’ The words hung in the air and she lowered her head in the darkness of the confessional and began to cry. ‘What am I going to do?’ she asked between sobs.
Father Mulcahy was a man of the world. He had worked with the missions and had even spent six months as a young deacon in north London. He had talked to girls like Lizzie before. He tried to calm her down. He asked her simple questions, leading her through what exactly had happened, but even after she had described to him in as much detail as she could the events of that night in Ballytorne, he still wasn’t clear if it was a possibility that she was expecting a child. Erring on the side of caution, he arranged for her to see a doctor he knew up in Cork. The girl on the other side of the grille from him did not deserve to have her reputation ruined by local tittle-tattle.
Lizzie’s worst fears were proven to be correct, and she found herself sitting on a hard leather chair opposite Father Mulcahy up in the priest’s house. Her world had ended and she sat with her head bowed, twisting a hankie soaked with her tears between her thin, trembling fingers.
Father Mulcahy had an idea. Did she know Mr and Mrs Burke? She didn’t. The priest explained that Mrs Burke was having a very difficult pregnancy. She had been confined to bed and they needed help around the house. He would speak to them, but if they agreed, Lizzie would go and live on their farm. When the time came, he would take the baby from her and find it a home. Lizzie began to consider the possibility that she might get her life back. The end of the world had been postponed.
Father Mulcahy was wonderful. He arranged everything. With his help she left the convent, though it was agreed that it was only temporary; she could go back. Her parents were surprised, but accepted the priest’s explanation. Lizzie was doing her Christian duty by going to help Mrs Burke for a few months. Had they guessed what was really happening? Afterwards they had never spoken about her returning to the convent. It was as if they knew their little girl was damaged goods. She didn’t like to think about it, but she had to admit that i
t seemed likely they had seen through the priest’s plan and just been relieved that they didn’t have to deal with any of it. In just a couple of weeks she was sitting beside Mr Burke with a small suitcase on her lap, being driven up the hill to the farm, where her life would change in ways she could not know.
Mrs Meany stopped speaking. By now PJ had reached over and was holding the old lady’s hands. Her skin felt like waxy brown paper, and her tears had formed a shallow puddle on the surface of the table.
‘So that’s your baby buried up there?’ he asked tentatively, his voice little more than a whisper.
The old woman looked up, her brow creased.
‘No. No, that’s Mrs Burke’s baby. They found Patricia Burke’s little boy. He only lived for a couple of days before he was taken. It was such an awful time. I kept looking at Mrs Burke howling into her pillow and I thought about how I’d feel when the priest came to take my baby. I suppose that’s why I went along with the plan.’
‘Plan? What plan?’
‘My baby was due in a few weeks, though no one from the village knew, of course. Mr Burke sat me down the afternoon their little boy died and explained that my baby could stay on the farm with them. Nobody would know it was mine, because nobody knew yet that they had lost their own baby. I remember I was nervous because of what Father Mulcahy would say, but at the same time I was so happy because my baby would be staying. Not with me, but in Duneen.’
‘And is that what happened?’
‘Yes. I had an easy birth, thank God, and Mrs Burke just wrapped my little boy in a blanket and carried him back to their bedroom.’
‘But what about birth certificates? Health visitors? Did no one notice that the baby was still so small?’
‘Mr Burke thought of that. He changed doctors and the new midwife helped fill in the forms, and that was that.’
PJ’s mind was working fast.
‘So your baby …’
‘My baby is Tommy Burke.’
9
A heavy grey mist lay low over the whole valley. Brid could hardly see the trees at the other end of the yard. She decided that they had better leave soon. Crossing the kitchen to get the packed lunches out of the fridge, she shouted through the open door into the hall to tell the children to hurry up.
‘You won’t get much done today,’ she commented to Anthony, who was sat at the table with his second mug of tea and his iPad.
‘Sure it might lift, and I’m only planning to put out a bit of top dressing. I’d say I’ll get it all done.’
‘I thought you did the top dressing yesterday,’ Brid said distractedly as she tried to scrub a stubborn piece of porridge from a spoon.
Anthony didn’t speak. Brid turned to find him staring intently at the screen of his iPad.
‘Anthony?’
He looked up.
‘I was supposed to, but I ended up having to go out to Maher’s for a few more sacks …’
A pair of anoraks and heavy schoolbags burst into the room. Between them they were carrying a large square of plywood, with various model houses and cars stuck to the surface.
‘What in God’s name have you got there?’ asked Brid.
‘It’s my geography project,’ said Carmel. ‘The one about the farm. It’s due today.’
‘Look! The tractor is bigger than the barn!’ Cathal said laughing.
‘Shut your face.’
‘All right, you two. We don’t have time for that. Are you planning to bring that thing now, because I’m telling you, it won’t fit in my car.’
‘I have to bring it. It has to be handed in today or I’ll lose marks.’
Brid approached the plywood square that was now resting against one end of the kitchen table and measured it with her arms.
‘No. There’s no way. Anthony, do you need your car, or could I use it to get this thing into school?’
Anthony looked up as if he hadn’t been listening to any of the conversation. ‘The car? Sure. I can use yours and we can swap back at lunchtime. The keys are on the hook.’
‘Great. Thanks. Right, come on, you two.’
‘Bye, Dad,’ the children chimed in unison.
‘Goodbye,’ he called without looking up from the small screen in front of him on the table.
The fog wasn’t lifting, so after Brid had dropped off the children and what remained of the plywood farm, she thought she’d get a bit of shopping done. She drove the mile or so outside the town to where they had built the new supermarket. It had been open for about seven years, but everyone still referred to it as new. The car park was fairly empty, so she got a space near the door. She was about to climb out of the car when she remembered that she’d need a euro for the trolley. Impatiently she grabbed her handbag off the passenger seat and went through the various pockets and zipped pouches where she normally kept her change. A few coins, but no euros. She wondered if Anthony kept any change in the car: nothing in the little well beside the gearstick or in the bottom of the door, but the glove compartment maybe?
Leaning across, she pressed the small chrome button and the flap fell forward. Dozens of white squares of paper were stuffed in the compartment. She pulled one out and examined it. It was a parking ticket from the hospital car park. She reached in and took another one. The hospital car park. She grabbed a handful of them. All for the hospital car park.
Her mouth was dry. What was wrong with him? What terrible disease did Anthony have that meant he couldn’t tell her? She noticed the date on the ticket she was still holding. Yesterday. She sat perfectly still, trying to decide what to do next. She’d have to say something. It wasn’t as if she’d been snooping, and whatever it was, surely it was better she knew. She suddenly felt a huge surge of affection for Anthony. That poor man, suffering all alone, trying to protect her feelings.
Bobby’s barking sounded muted and distant through the fog, making Evelyn feel nervous. She couldn’t afford to waste time this morning tramping across fields looking for him. Abigail was going into the operating theatre at three and both the sisters wanted to see her before then. They had been warned that afterwards she would probably be groggy or asleep till the next morning. Evelyn had made a list of personal things she was going to pack in a small weekend bag to take into the hospital for her.
‘Bobby! Bobby, come! Good boy …’ She peered into the thick milky air. Nothing. She sighed. She would have to go back into the house and change her shoes if she was going to go looking for him. She debated how long to wait for him to appear of his own volition. She tried calling again: ‘Bobby, come!’ She thought she heard something moving through the foliage, and then there he was, like a shadow set free moving along the fence back up towards the house. ‘Good boy!’ As he drew closer, however, Evelyn realised that any praise was premature. His golden fur was caked in dark, wet mud.
Once he was close enough, she grabbed the dog by his collar and, bristling with anger, frogmarched him up into the yard. As they approached the hose, Bobby realised what was going to happen and began to wriggle and pull away. Evelyn struggled to keep hold of him while also trying to turn on the outside tap. Her grey and white tartan skirt was now nearly as dirty as the dog, and the water from the hose splashed up off the concrete on to her legs.
As she pleaded with Bobby to stand still, she was overcome by a profound loneliness. There was something pathetic-seeming about a woman struggling by herself to wash a dog that had no interest in being clean. She allowed herself to imagine for a moment that PJ was here with her, helping to hold Bobby still. They would both be laughing as they got drenched by the unruly hose. Ridiculous, she chided herself. She got the feeling that PJ wasn’t that keen on Bobby, and besides, he might have a heart attack attempting to wrestle a big wet dog. She let go of the collar.
‘Fuck it,’ she said out loud. ‘Fuck you.’ And even she wasn’t sure if she was addressing the dog, PJ or herself, but there was a certain satisfaction in saying the words. She turned off the tap and watched Bobby doing a victory lap
of the yard before stopping beside her and shaking himself vigorously. She felt utterly defeated.
Leaving Bobby locked in the yard to dry off, she headed upstairs to collect Abigail’s things. In the bathroom she picked out some toiletries, then headed across the landing into her sister’s room. It felt strange being in here alone. The bed was neatly made and a half-drunk glass of water sat on the bedside table next to a brightly coloured seed catalogue. She took the dressing gown off the back of the door and then went over to the chest of drawers. As she slid open the top drawer, the smell of lavender and wood polish reminded her of when she had come to visit her sick mother in this room. She took a few pairs of underwear and tried to remember the rest of her list. No bra – Abigail could wear the one she’d had on – but a clean top for when she was discharged; something nice and warm. She opened the bottom drawer, thinking it was the most likely place to find her sister’s knitwear, but the contents were not what she was expecting. On one side were plain grey blankets and on the other a stack of photo albums.
Without picking it up, Evelyn opened the album on top of the pile. There was a black and white photograph she never remembered seeing before. It was her mother and father, very young and smiling up at her. They were standing on a bridge – was that Patrick’s Bridge in Cork? – with their arms linked against the breeze that was whipping her mother’s coat out to one side. She turned the page. Her father as a young man on a tractor. Another page. Her parents and another couple sitting on a blanket in some sand dunes. Her father had taken off his shoes and socks and all four of them seemed to be finding it hilarious. It was their life before the three girls came along, but why was it hidden away here? Did Abigail think these photographs would have upset herself and Florence?
She shut the album and was about to close the drawer when something else caught her eye. It was a small corner of material sticking out from under the stack of books. Evelyn froze. She slowly reached out her hand and tugged at the fabric. It was really nothing more than a tattered rag, stained black by what looked like oil. She smoothed it out on the floor. In one corner, where the oil stain was lightest, she could make out the faint remains of a pink rose. Her heart was thumping and her mind swirled in a confusion of unanswered questions, but one thing was certain. She was holding the remains of Tommy’s scarf.
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