She took him and he entered her and it was like nothing he had ever known. She was in control, holding him back but he felt her willingly give way with ease as with one movement, he rolled her over; she was under him, where he wanted her to be, and he entered her again, this time he was in control. He would take what he wanted, how he wanted, as was the way with all the men of Ballyford. He was his father’s son. She would not dominate him. Her breasts, cold and firm, pressed hard into his chest and her wasted skeletal hips, as sharp as knives, jabbed into his own soft flesh as oblivious to the pain, he pushed himself, deeper and faster. Her nails clawed at his back and her teeth sank into his lips until he felt his own blood, mixed with hers, slip into his mouth. The pain was exquisite until an explosion of light engulfed him and as he closed his eyes and screamed out in ecstasy, he saw a beautiful young woman, with flaming red hair and green eyes and she was somewhere in the future, smiling down at him.
*
He was woken by the sound of banging on his door.
‘The driver is ready Lord Owen, when you are right.’
Owen sat bolt upright. He was drenched in a cold sweat and his heart beat rapidly. He was alone. He knew it in his heart. She had never been in his room. He had been alone all night. Thank God, thank God. She had not been in his room, but she refused to leave his mind. Don’t be a mad man. You left her in the poor house four hours ride away, he thought. Of course he had. It’s a dream. Get up. Get dressed. Get out.
‘Thank the Lord,’ he said, as he fell back against the pillows and uttered a whispered prayer. He had never before felt such relief. It was a dream.
‘I will be five minutes, tell him,’ he shouted back.
‘Right you are, m’lord. I have your breakfast downstairs ready for you before you leave.’
In a panic, he checked his travel bag, but his report was untouched, safe inside. The leather wallet was secure and fastened. The bolt and the catch on the door were just as he had left them. His heartbeat refused to steady to a gentler pace. Why are you checking? he said to himself. No one has been here since you put the bolt across the door last night. It was just a dream. Calm down. Calm down.
He hurriedly pulled on his clothes and took down his jacket and hat from the back of the door. He poured the water from the ewer into the bowl to splash his face and help him to calm before he went downstairs. As he raised his head his blood stained lip met him in the grey and mottled reflection in the mirror and holding onto the edge of the nightstand, he thought he might faint. His head was muggy and his mouth felt thick and tasted of blood. He wanted to leave the chamber as quickly as possible, but then he imagined he could see it, her hair, like a spider’s web, fanned out across the bolster and he picked it up and held it to his face. It smelt not of him, but of a country woman. Of peat smoke and fire. It smelt of her.
*
The matron had almost completed her morning rounds of the poor house, counting those who had died during the night, but had been missed by the porters with the body trolley. She would need at least a dozen beds today.
As she finished in the main hall, the stench of filthy bodies followed her along the corridor to the inner courtyard. As she scurried along, she fumed to herself.
‘How dare they give my room away? I’ll show them how difficult it will be without me around here. I will.’
She was on her way to check on the girl whose room, until yesterday, had been her own. She had been ordered to evacuate it, because a girl was coming who had to be given very special treatment.
‘No one has special treatment in this poor house,’ she had told the chairman of the board. ‘All are the same before God, all shall be treated the same.’
‘That may be so Mrs Foley, but unless we have money to run this place, all shall suffer. ’Tis God himself asking you to make this sacrifice and am I to tell him that your answer is no?’ the chairman replied, thinking about the two hundred pound donation that would be made, upon the girl’s arrival and for each quarter that she remained in the poor house, until such time as her long term future could be secured.
Mrs Foley wanted to ask the chairman of the board, why didn’t he offer her a room in the big house of his own? He had plenty of them by all accounts. Paid for by the donations to the poor house. She was quite sure that the benefactors from Dublin and America, few as they were would be less than pleased to hear that their money provided luxurious accommodation for a man who sat at a table each day and ordered others around. Why did she have to surrender her room? She had worked hard for what little privilege she had.
‘Surely, sir, you see that I need my room. I must keep clean, to pray, to have somewhere for me to escape from the fever, or I’m in danger of catching it meself. I work sixteen hours a day, I need a place of my own.’
Despite her rage, the chairman had remained immovable. Now, less than pleased, she marched down the corridor towards what had been her own private sanctuary. There were times during the day when she felt as though the poor house was the devil’s own waiting room, and she needed to escape, just for five minutes, to catch a breath and take a slug of her porter.
She had to hide it from the priest. He disapproved of all drink. The man is not natural, she thought to herself. No one can survive the Irish climate without drink. ’Tis what the drink was invented for.
She was sure that the only reason she had remained disease free was because of her secret stash of alcohol. If she was now going to be forced to sleep on the straw in the eaves with other members of staff who had no Galway family, she would need it more than ever. How else could she keep herself sane in this building of death and madness?
No, it wouldn’t do. She would take her room back. She turned the key in the lock, flung the door open and shouted, ‘We rise now for mass. ’Tis five forty-five. Mass is at six. Get up and out of my bed. I’ll be having my room back, just as soon as your benefactor has left Dublin.’ She moved over to the wash stand, and checked to see if anything had been touched.
‘What is your name?’ Reassured and comforted by the fact that her bottle of porter lay in wait, her voice softened a little.
She moved towards the bed, to the girl who had arrived the previous day. The brown blanket lay on the bed in a mound and there was no movement from within.
Mrs Foley looked into the chamber pot. It hadn’t been used. A furrow crossed her brow as she looked for the carpet bag the girl had carried with her.
Now, she shook the brown blanket and stepped back in shock.
‘Merciful God,’ she exclaimed, looking under the bed and around the room. ‘She’s gone, how can that be?’
Mrs Foley hurried back to the door and, just to convince herself that she wasn’t going mad, tried her key in the lock. It worked. She looked around the room, not knowing whether to feel happy or perturbed. It appeared that the girl had disappeared into thin air.
Her room was now once again her own.
*
The workmen arrived at the cottages on the Mulranny road with nails and boards to seal the front doors.
‘The landlord wants these cottages left,’ the sergeant said to the soldiers, who had spent the past few weeks tumbling one cottage after another.
‘This lot were cleared out by the estate workers last week and what was in them, burnt to a cinder. We will tumble the last one up in the field there and meet you all at the end of the road. It’s back to Dublin tomorrow.’
His words were greeted by a half-hearted cheer from soldiers, sickened to their stomachs by what they had seen out in the country. Things weren’t great in Dublin, but they were a whole lot better than out here in the windy, western wilderness.
‘Aye, sergeant,’ said two of the soldiers, who were keen to get out of the bumpy cart.
‘By all that is holy, this one is creepy,’ said Seamus, who was as wide as he was tall.
‘’Tis that,’ said Michael, with an almighty bang and more confidence than he actually felt, kicking open what was left of the door.
&nbs
p; Seamus began to pull the rotting wood of the door away from the frame, while Michael kicked around the detritus of the clearance with the toe of his boot. In the dark of the cottage, he hit on something hard and he bent down to take a closer look.
‘Here, what’s this?’ he said, almost to himself.
‘What does it look like then?’
‘It’s a wooden box, there could be money in here.’
‘Don’t be an eejit, Seamus, if the people who lived here had money, they would be on a passage to America by now.’
As Michael pulled off the lid of the box both men jumped backwards in disbelief. Lying in the box were the remains of a baby, not yet fully decomposed. A knitted toy lamb lay at her side and the posy of flowers in the baby’s hand remained remarkably well preserved.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Both men crossed themselves and removed their caps.
‘What do we do?’ asked Seamus.
Michael dropped to his knees. ‘We say the rosary and then we carry this little babby to the priest at Mulranny. ’Tis all we can do for the poor little colleen.’
*
Mrs McAndrew held the muslin sieve while the water from the boiled nettles and herbs filled the stone jar.
She heard a tap on the door and made her way over slowly and painfully to open the top half of the stable door.
Her arthritis was bad these days, but as she had passed her hundredth birthday, she couldn’t complain.
As she opened the door, the cold sunlight filled the small dark windowless cottage.
‘Ah, ’tis you,’ she said. ‘I wondered how long it would take for you to return. Your little girl, they buried her last week, did you know?’
Eilinora knew. ‘I’ve just been to her grave at Mulranny.’
‘Well, the famine is no one’s fault, Eilinora, not anyone we can blame anyway. You need somewhere to live. Stay with me, but ye must promise to put your gift to good use. Will you do that?’
Eilinora nodded her head and looked down at the floor. She would tell Mrs McAndrew what she wanted to hear. She needed somewhere to live.
‘No one must know you are here, not anyone from up at the castle. You have used your gift for evil means, Eilinora. But I am far from scared of you, lady. My gifts are older and more powerful, I put mine to good use and we must do the same for you. I will be gone soon. You can carry on my work. Will you do that?’
‘I will, I will do that for you, but first, I have news of my own. I’m with child.’ She followed Mrs McAndrew back into the cottage and as she walked at the old woman’s pace, a smile crossed her face.
‘I knew that as soon as I saw you,’ said Mrs McAndrew. ‘’Tis bad work you have done here Eilinora, bad work. You have arrived at my door for a reason and I’m sure what that reason is. I know you blame the old lord for your mother’s death. I was there when she was birthing, there was nothing could be done and I couldn’t use my powers to save her or her daughter. It wasn’t his fault. No one knows who fathered the child she carried. You have it in your head ’twas his. You must get that notion away. ’Tis the past and there is nothing we can do about that. Our powers, they are for the future. We have to put everything right.’
‘We can soon,’ said Eilinora, ‘when I have finished.’ Eilinora knew more than Mrs McAndrew guessed. For now, she would keep her secrets close. She buried her mother and her baby sister on the same day. With her mother’s last breath, she passed her powers onto Eilinora and she would use them and she would revenge the death of the mother she had loved, for a long time to come.
*
Owen travelled to Lancashire on the train with his wife. They were to attend a shooting party in Scotland and they had taken up almost two carriages with cases and enough staff for the long weekend.
Owen thought Lydia seemed quieter than usual, preoccupied almost. He knew she was deeply concerned about the health of their son. Lydia had spent the week in and out of Harley Street, visiting one doctor after another and yet not one could diagnose the problem. Their son lay down on the opposite bench and they both looked at him, faces etched in parental love and concern.
‘Are you well, Lydia? Do you feel strong enough to take on the shooting party? The organization has been a lot of work for you stuck in London, I understand that.’ He leant over and gave his wife’s hand a squeeze.
He suddenly felt a sense of relief wash over him. He had almost been ensnared by the girl he had found on the road. Or had he? Had he lost his senses? He thought he must have. He had felt as though he were under a spell when in the presence of the girl from the Mulranny Road. To be back on English soil and free from her, in the company of his wife, well, it was a relief. He was a God fearing man. He understood the evil of temptation and God knew, he had been sorely tempted. As he leant back in his carriage, he felt a sense of triumph. He had been tested and he had survived because it must have been a dream, it had never happened. As each day passed, the sensations which had assailed him that morning in the inn faded until now, they were almost gone. He felt calmer; the past more distant, the memory of her, the smell, the invasiveness of her aura, it had gone for good. He had passed the most severe test that the devil could have placed in his path and he was grateful for that.
He had decided that within the month, he would return to Ballyford and that this time, he would take Lydia with him. He was sure, over time, Lydia would agree to join him. Most landlords had fled and had declared that they would not return until the land had lain fallow and the blight and typhus had spent itself out. He would be different. He would lead by example and return soon. With Lydia by his side, his strong Lydia, he could do it.
Lydia smiled and replied, ‘Oh, I’m fine. I’m just worried about our son. I hope the doctors get to the bottom of it all soon.’ Then changing the subject, she said, ‘Do you recall the girl you took into Ballyford, Owen, the one you picked up on the Mulranny Road? I told you to take her to the poor house, do you remember? I believe the carriage dropped her in Galway on your return. Well, Hudson has received a letter from Mrs Gibson and Shevlin yesterday, she has only turned up back at the castle, and get this piece of information, she’s pregnant, too. She can’t have been that starved or sick. Shevlin says she was hiding in Mrs McAndrew’s cottage and Mrs McAndrew refuses to let her be sent away. The Irish, they drive me to distraction. They are beyond comprehension.’
Lydia paused for breath whilst she dug around in her bag for a handkerchief.
‘Anyway, I’m sure as soon as her child is born, Mrs McAndrew will have no trouble tracking down who the father is. She has a witches’ knack for that sort of thing.’
Owen felt an icy trickle of fear run down his back as he looked into the all-knowing and familiar eyes of his wife.
The train swayed around a corner and swayed again as it righted itself. Owen jumped to his feet and, lifting his hand, clasped the leather strap hanging down as he looked on the shelf for his bag. Anything to avert the gaze of his wife and conceal the redness of his face.
‘What in God’s name is wrong with this train,’ said Owen as the train lunged once more but he never heard Lydia’s reply, only the screams of the staff in the next carriage as the train once again lurched to the side. At first the brakes screeched so loud that they drowned out all other noise and then there was silence as the train, having left the tracks, slowly fell to its resting place, hundreds of feet below the viaduct.
The last thing Owen saw before he met his maker, was the face of the girl with flaming red hair and the green eyes, smiling down at him.
~
We hope you enjoyed this book.
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About Nadine Dorries
About the Four Streets Trilogy
Also by Nadine Dorries
An invitation from the publisher
About Eilinora
This is the story which sets in motion the events of Nadine Dorries’s brilliant Ru
by Flynn.
It is 1846, famine is gripping Ireland and nowhere is it crueller than in Mayo on the west coast. Owen FitzDeane of Ballyford Castle is a good landlord, but even he is powerless to save all his tenants. When he comes upon a half-dead girl beside the road, he insists on taking her back to the castle, to see if they can save her. But Eilinora is no ordinary girl and soon superstition and fear begin to swirl around her, while Lord FitzDeane of Ballyford falls deeper under her spell.
Reviews
THE FOUR STREETS
‘A vigorous and vibrant story of childhood in Fifties Liverpool... she has so vividly captured the Four Streets and its larger-than-life characters, the result is as fast-paced as it is entertaining. An addictive novel to be devoured at one sitting.’
Sunday Express
‘The characters are engaging, the street scenes cinematic and the theme of the novel powerful. One night I found myself reading it in the bath. You don’t do that for work.’
Ann Treneman, The Times
‘Catholic Liverpool, Irish immigrants and dark secrets... a funny and sometimes shocking saga. I couldn’t put it down.’
Cristina Odone
‘The characters are engaging, the streets scenes cinematic and the theme of the novel powerful.’
The Times
‘Angela’s Ashes with a Scouse accent.’
Irish Times
‘A heartbreaking tale.’
Liverpool Echo
About Nadine Dorries
NADINE DORRIES grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool. She trained as a nurse, then followed with a successful career in which she established and sold her own business. She has been the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire since 2005 and has three daughters.
Connect with Nadine on Twitter, @NadineDorriesMP.
A Girl Called Eilinora Page 5