The Penance Room

by Carol Coffey

  “In God?” Aishling asks with raised eyebrows.

  “No. I believe in God but I saw more than I understood. I knew that I was beginning to believe in things I shouldn’t.”

  “Like what?”

  Steve looks suddenly serious and I know he is wondering if he should continue.

  “Come on,” Aishling says. “I told you all about myself. I told you things hardly anyone else knows about me.”

  Steve nods his head and looks directly at her. “There were many things that I began to question. I believe that there is no hell, that purgatory is life and if we don’t make amends for our sins, we become trapped here.”

  Aishling lets out a loud laugh. “Are you telling me that you believe in ghosts? Now you’re trying to wind me up!”

  Steve laughs and shrugs his shoulders as he walks out the door. “There are many things we don’t understand. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

  Aishling shrugs and smiles a half smile at him. “You need to speak with Martin so. His room is so crowded at night there’s hardly room for me.”

  Steve moves out into the hallway and as he passes me he winks and I smile.

  “I might just do that.”

  Chapter 20

  At twelve thirty that night, my mother and Kora arrive back and collapse into chairs in the Penance Room. Aishling is waiting up. She has worked all day with Greta and Tina has come in to cover the night shift.

  “How is Jeff?” she enquires.

  “He’s out of surgery. We waited until we knew he was stable before we left,” my mother replies.

  Kora looks exhausted and doesn’t speak.

  “What happened?”

  My mother looks at Kora and when she doesn’t offer information, she decides to fill Aishling in on the story.

  “Ben D’Arcy said Jeff felt dizzy. He was helping him brand cattle in the pen. Thank God there was a neighbour there to raise the alarm. I can’t bear to think what would have happened otherwise. He was sitting on the side of the pen when he felt light-headed and fell in. I’m not surprised. He’s been overdoing it lately, working all day and sitting with his father every evening. He got a real going over. Horn went right through his leg and his arm’s broken. They put two pins in it. His cheekbone is broken too and they had to stitch an open gash on his forehead. He looks a state but they think he’ll be fine.” She squeezes Kora’s arm.

  Aishling looks sympathetically at Kora. “Does Jimmy know?”

  My mother nods. “We went and sat with him. Kora told him and it’d break your heart. He started crying and Kora – Kora hugged him.” My mother smiles at her sister through her tears. “Dad would have been proud of you, Kora.”

  Kora’s mouth gave a small smile but her eyes didn’t change their sad expression. She got up to leave.

  “Is Andy asleep?” my mother asks.

  Aishling nods.

  “Kora, stay the night, please. I don’t want you on your own.”

  “You can share my room,” Aishling offers.

  Kora relents and, after ensuring that Tina will call her if the hospital phones, she drags her tired body up the stairs.

  “What a day! Between the sisters’ story and poor Jeff, I’m worn out,” my mother says.

  One by one the group go to bed. I decide not to sit with Tina and go to my room where I try unsuccessfully to sleep. An hour later I go to Martin’s room and I am disappointed to find him sound asleep with a smile on his face. I return to my room and look out the window. I can see the streetlights shining on the far end of the train line. There is no one about except our cat, staring up at me and hissing. I pull my blind down and decide that I will cope on my own when my imaginary train passes. I try to focus on Penelope and Victoria and all the awful things that happened to them. I try to imagine the life they would have had if their mother hadn’t died or if their father had been a nice man but I cannot. Some things are just too hard to imagine, like the life I could have had if my foot hadn’t got stuck on that train line, or if I had never been deaf. Sometimes when I sleep I dream of walking with my parents and listening to their words but a feeling chokes me and I wake up waving my arms about as though I am drowning. I know what this is. It is the same thing that wakes Martin and makes Wilfred sit alone in his room listening to sad music. It is guilt. As I drift off to sleep, all I can hope for is that the sisters and everybody else here, including me, finally find peace.

  In the morning, my mother and Greta have agreed that Penelope should be taken out of the room while Victoria is telling her story. Mother wants Victoria to feel that she can say whatever she wants to and we know that she will not speak freely if Penelope is in the room. Greta takes a reluctant Penelope to town to look around the shops. As she is leaving she looks into the Penance Room at her sister and gives her a look that turns my blood cold.

  When she is gone, we all sit down to listen to the quietly spoken Victoria tell her story. Henry is here, sitting next to Victoria, and he has brought his fiancée with him, a tall Australian girl with a booming voice that bounces off the floorboards and travels up through my feet. She is deeply tanned with large brown eyes and is smiling confidently at everyone. She is the opposite of the ladies and the meaning of this is not lost on my mother and Kora who I see smiling at each other through the corners of their mouths.

  “So, Victoria, we know that you returned to Australia and that your father was based in Broken Hill. What was life like then?”

  Victoria looks like she is on the stand in a courtroom. She doesn’t look directly at Steve but looks across the room at the stained-glass window and begins to speak.

  “Daddy was becoming stricter. We saw more of him as he rarely got sent away. There were no wars to fight and he was getting older. Daddy loved a good war. He said it kept him alive but I remember thinking this was a strange thing to say as people die in wars but I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t polite to answer Daddy except to say ‘Yes, sir’.”

  “You called your father ‘sir’?” Steve asks. We could see the surprise on his face.

  Victoria nods, unsure why Steve thinks this unusual.

  “Everybody called Daddy ‘sir’,” she replies flatly.

  Steve shakes his head and his expression is serious. He seems disturbed by what the sisters went through. Victoria doesn’t seem to notice and continues.

  “Penelope and I were bored at the house. Henry was gone and we had nothing to do all day except sit and read. We were not allowed to read any rubbish and Daddy usually chose our books.”

  “So no romance novels, the ones I see you reading here?” Steve says..

  “No,” Victoria answers, slightly embarrassed.

  “Did you get a chance to experience any real romance?” Steve asks. He does not know the can of worms he just opened.

  Tears spring to Victoria’s eyes and she looks downward. I move forward, anxious to see her lips move. I don’t want to miss one word she says.

  “James was an officer at my father’s base and he would often call to our house with messages for father. He was nice to me and once when father was in hospital with his bad leg, he brought me flowers. Penelope was afraid for me. She became really angry and . . .”

  Victoria stops speaking.

  “Please go on, Victoria,” says Steve.

  “I began to slip out of the house. We had large grounds. Penelope used to play piano every evening for Daddy so I’d meet James at the boundary wall of our property. No one ever went that far so we were safe. We were in love and James wanted to marry me. He was going to ask my father for permission.”

  Victoria looks up. “Maybe we should talk about Penelope. Maybe we should talk about India?”

  “Penelope should tell her own story, Victoria.”

  “But it’s important. It’ll explain why she – it’s important.”

  Steve relents. He knows as much as we do how intertwined the sisters’ lives are, how much of their life they lived as one.

&
nbsp; “When we arrived in India, Penelope turned seventeen. Daddy said she looked just like Mother and he’d take her out of our bedroom some nights and she would not come back for a long time. She would tell me to lock the door when she’d leave so . . . to make me safe. She’d cry when she’d come back and we’d sleep in the same bed. I’d try to comfort her. I asked her what was wrong but for a long time I didn’t understand what was happening. He tried to put us in separate rooms and Penelope said she’d tell the servants so he didn’t separate us. She said we could only stay safe if we were together. Penelope tried to make herself look ugly and she was happy to wear old-fashioned dresses and she’d only wear a little powder. She said it was important not to draw attention to yourself. She didn’t want me to wear anything pretty as she was afraid Daddy would start to take me out of the room at night also.”

  I see my mother nod to herself, finally understanding Penelope’s constant need to control her sister’s clothes.

  “Penelope changed. She was nervous and she started to make me nervous. I was always afraid at night of the door handle turning. I thought Daddy was beating her but there were no marks and there were always marks on poor Henry’s back. Even when we returned to Australia it didn’t stop but it started in India which is why Penelope never talks about our life there. That’s why I kept James a secret from her. She didn’t understand why I wanted to be with him and she was afraid of what Daddy would do when he found out. James was so good to me. So very kind. He even posted my letters to Henry although I never received a reply.”

  Henry squeezes his aunt’s hand. He hadn’t expected her to be so lucid. Even though Victoria is the younger of the two, Penelope always seems stronger and more coherent. I know that my mother and the other staff present are wondering if they have misjudged Victoria, if all the time her confusion was really fear of upsetting Penelope.

  “He treasured those letters,” Henry says even though there is a look on his face, a look that tells me that his father was so lost in alcoholism that he couldn’t help himself, never mind his tortured sisters.

  “Did James ask for your hand?” asks Steve.

  “He tried but . . .”

  “So how come you didn’t marry?”

  “One day James arrived at the house. Daddy was in his study and he asked to speak with him. There was already someone speaking with Daddy so James stood in the hallway and paced up and down. He looked so nervous, standing there in full uniform. He looked . . . it is my most precious memory of him.”

  Victoria moves her hand towards a small cameo brooch neatly pinned to her collar. Tears form in her bright blue eyes and her lips tremble.

  “He gave me this. In the garden one evening. I’ve never taken it off.”

  Kora and my mother look at each other. My mother moves her hand towards her sister and I watch as they hold hands for a moment. Steve moves his head slightly to bring Victoria back from her memories. She looks confused for a moment as though she is struggling with the next sentence, trying to make sense of a moment that changed her life forever.

  “Penelope hid on the stairwell and listened to us speaking. I asked her to be polite and to come down. James told me that he was going to defend India from Afghanistan. He wanted to live in India permanently and that it was his hope that we could marry soon so I could join him there when the war was over. I heard Penelope running down the stairs and, for a split second, I felt as afraid of her as she was of Daddy, and in that moment I wrongly believed that it was Penelope and not Daddy who would never let me leave that house. I don’t know whether it was the mention of India that made her angry but she charged down the hall and grabbed at James. She begged him not to ask Daddy for my hand, that it would only bring trouble on me. She even suggested we run away together. James managed to prise her hands from him and stood back. He didn’t know what to do. Penelope looked insane and he was afraid of her. Daddy opened the study door at that exact moment and shouted at us to go away. I think poor James almost died of fright. Daddy gave Penelope and me a look and we crept to our room. We never heard James leave and all I could think about was Daddy’s answer to his request to marry me. My heart pounded wondering if I was going to get out of the madness of that house. Penelope kept saying that it was too late, over and over, and I had no idea what she was talking about. She understood Daddy better than I ever did.

  “That night as we got ready for bed, Penelope went to the kitchen and brought up a knife. She put it on her beside locker and said that whatever happened, I was not to leave the bedroom if Daddy asked. I was so afraid that I could not sleep. We were both awake when Daddy turned the handle. Penelope stood immediately in the dark room and moved toward the door. He pulled her outside and even in the darkness I could see his eyes glinting at me. He knew I was awake and came towards me. I could hear Penelope crying but I could not see her. He leant towards me and said, “You are a filthy who–” Victoria can not finish the sentence but she doesn’t have to. We can imagine how the sentence finished.

  “I cowered in the bed and pulled my knees towards my chest. He said, ‘You made a fool of me, Victoria. I thought you were the good one but you were showing yourself to him, weren’t you?’

  “I didn’t answer at first but I began to cry and Daddy didn’t like tears.

  “‘Weren’t you?’ he screamed.

  “I said, ‘No, Daddy. I didn’t do anything. James is a gentleman.’

  “He leant towards me and I could not stop crying even though I knew it made him angrier.

  “‘Well, you’ll never see him ever again, ever. I’ve made sure of that.’

  “Then I let out a huge roar. I think I screamed ‘No!’ and Daddy hit me so hard that I am not sure what happened next. There were noises and something fell – I think it must have been the photographs on Penelope’s beside table. I heard Penelope scream. I jumped up and could see shapes moving, Penelope pulling at him from behind, trying to move him away from me. So brave, my sister. Much braver than me.”

  “What happened?” Steve asks, unable to bear the suspense.

  “He turned and lifted her right off her feet by her throat. Even though she was gasping and fighting to breathe, I heard her say ‘I’ll tell.’ I thought he was going to kill her.”

  Victoria’s lips start to tremble and one heavy tear falls down her face, leaving a long furrow in her make-up. Her hands move up towards her throat as if she is reliving her sister’s pain.

  “I started to scream, hoping one of the servants would come but no one came to help us. The servants’ quarters were in the basement at the other end of the house so Daddy knew no one would hear us. Then suddenly he let Penelope drop to the floor. She lay completely still and I was sure she was dead. I was terrified. I thought that the one person who could protect me was lying dead at my feet in the darkness. He came toward me and suddenly I saw no reason to go on. I saw the knife glinting in the floor. It had fallen when Daddy pushed into the table. I lifted it and – I – had no choice. I raised it to him and my hands shook – he – he knew I couldn’t do it and he laughed, right there, in my face with my sister at his feet. I knew I was beaten. I could not win.

  “There was no way out. I moved the knife and slashed the blade across my left wrist. I heard him shout and he grabbed the knife before I could cut my other wrist. I fainted and – and when I woke up my wrist was bandaged and the doctor was standing over me. The sun was rising and my head hurt from something he had given me. Penelope was sitting in a chair looking at me and there were bruise marks on her neck. She was crying. Daddy was in the room, standing over me. When I opened my eyes he gave me one of his warning looks. He said, ‘Thank God you’re okay. I’ve told Doctor Scott all about Penelope and you fighting. He has suggested I get you both the right help, away from here, that you need hospitalisation to sort out your nerves.’

  “I opened my mouth to speak but he ran his hand over my face and pressed down hard, hurting me. Doctor Scott didn’t realise what was going on. When Daddy left, Penelope look
ed at me. I had never seen her look so frightened before. She stood and grabbed Doctor Scott’s hand. She told him all about Daddy and what he was doing to her but he didn’t believe us. He said that he’d had no idea how ill we were. He said Daddy had told him all about our imaginings and that the poor man had kept it to himself for fear of losing us but now that we had attacked each other with such violence, Daddy had no choice but to send us to a psychiatric hospital where we would get the help we needed. We were locked in that room for the rest of that day with servants bringing us food and emptying our nightjar.

  “The following morning we were taken a long way to a hospital in Sydney even though there was nothing wrong with us. We asked if we could go to London, to our brother who would take care of us. We didn’t realise that no one believed us, that they thought we were insane. Each week a doctor would ask us questions about the delusions we had but we never changed our story. When we were there quite a few years they tried a new treatment on us. They put electricity on our heads and jolted us and oh my, it was frightful. Then they would ask us those same questions but we said no, we didn’t hurt each other, Daddy hurt us. But you see Daddy was an important man and no one would believe us. After a while they said we were incurable and we just walked around a large locked ward all day with other people. They gave us medication to keep us calm and other tablets to cure our violent thoughts even though we didn’t have any. At night we were locked in a long room with lots of other women and Penelope and I had beds beside each other. We used to hold hands in the dark. Some of the women screamed when the lights went out and even though we were afraid, we didn’t have to worry any more about Daddy turning the door handle at night.

  “The whole time we were there, Daddy never came to see us. We didn’t want him to. Sometimes, our nanny Betty came to see us in Sydney. She had been our nanny when we were younger but Daddy kept her on as our companion and if we went to town, she had to go with us and make sure we didn’t speak to anyone. Daddy had thrown her out when he realised that I had been meeting James in the garden. I remember her sitting facing us in the visitors’ room and staring at us. She was tearful. I knew she felt guilty that no one had punished Daddy for what he did to Penelope and that we were locked away for no good reason, but even if she had told the police what she knew, no one would believe her word against my father. We asked her to write to Henry, to tell him where we were but she was too afraid.