An expression crossed the young priest’s face. It was a curious expression, disgust, maybe, or shock. “So, I thought. But then he told me things that made my skin crawl. One thing, in particular, about a girl… about a pregnancy with a married man. He didn’t say whether it was him or not. She was terrified and didn’t tell anyone, hid the pregnancy for a while. The girl was in a terrible state…still hadn’t told her parents. They called a midwife and a doctor, but all too late. There were two children, twins. One was already dead by the time he was born. The other one was whipped away quickly. Mrs. Hannigan, Nora, looked after him. It wasn’t because she agreed with any of it, the hidden nature of it, the cover-up, the secret of who the father was. But, she felt sorry for the baby, that was all. She had a big family of her own and was happy to take on another one.”
“It’s often the way,” Father Stephen spoke softly.
“Ask a busy person if you want something to be done willingly. Nora Hannigan has a big heart.”
He asked the question both he and Maggie were desperate to ask.
“What happened to the mother?”
Tom took in a big breath that was almost a sob.
“The poor girl died. Infection, haemorrhage, infection…I’m not sure. She died two days after the baby was born. They should have got her into the hospital, but they didn’t. It sounded like she was delirious or something like that…talking. Letting it all out, how the man had promised that everything would be all right. He was going to leave Ballytierney with her late at night just as soon as he could get the money together. They were to get the boat to Holyhead.”
“Then they’d go south to London. First of all, this was to happen well before the baby was born. But time passed, and then in the last few weeks he told her it would be after the birth.”
Maggie shuddered, right down the back of her neck as though a spider crawled there. This had echoes of her own story, though it was a hundred times worse. She wanted to know who the girl was and who the father of the baby was—but there was something more pressing that she had to ask him.
“What were his own feelings about it? When he told you the story?”
“That was the thing. We had talked you see, openly. I told him one or two things that maybe I should have kept to myself. The girl I liked. My doubts about the priesthood.”
He gave a quick look at Father Stephen, who had pushed the chair he was sitting on, right back, almost tilting. He was sitting in what looked like an uncomfortable position, and he was looking down.
“He must have thought I was something I wasn’t—a kind of man who was…I don’t know, reckless, not caring. There’s a world of difference between the doubts I was expressing to him and what he thought I was. Like him, I suppose. I really wasn’t. I’m not, I mean. He realised it.”
Simon Crowe sounded a complex man at the least. Maybe a bad, immoral man, but Maggie was too distant to judge that. She hadn’t known him.
“Father Stephen let the chair return to its proper position and raised his eyes to look at Tom. “Who was the girl and who was the man?” he asked. Direct.
“The girl was the sister of the O’Hehir’s.” Maggie had worked that out.
Father Tom shook his head, his eyes troubled.
“I’m not sure who the father was. I couldn’t stay there anymore. He whispered things in my ear about the world being an evil place and how you had to be strong to survive and that I was a weakling to have been suckered in by the church. It was terrible like he’d turned against me in one minute. He also warned me against ever saying anything to anyone. Mocking about the sanctity of the confessional.”
“I went away, spoke to his wife, met Doctor Cash. It was all preying on my mind. I thought something must have happened to bring all this up—it had happened years ago. I went back to talk to him. I’d calmed down. I wanted to get it straight in my mind…why he had told me such a tale of suffering and deceit? Why? Why me?”
He bit his lip; looked very young. “I got it into my head that I was the baby. And…that Simon Crowe was my father and that was the reason he’d chosen to tell me. Nothing to do with confession or the fact that I was a priest.”
Maggie’s heart had begun to thrup…thrup…in her chest.
“I went back. Mary Crowe looked at me as though I’d gone mad. She took me up to him, though…I waited until she’d gone and I said it to him. “You’re my father, you covered up my mother’s death, and now you’re lying there, and you don’t give a damn.”
I shouted…other things too. I can’t remember all of them, just that after a while it was as though I came back into myself. I was shaking, and I had to get away from Simon Crowe and away from Inishowen House. That was it…except it wasn’t.
“You’re stupid, lad,” he said. “I thought you were smarter. You were adopted, I mention a baby who went for adoption twenty-five years ago. So, you put two and two together and make half-a-dozen.”
“By now, he sounded wheezy. His chest…he was talking too much. I stepped back into the room a bit nearer the bed. I could make out what he said.”
“The baby wasn’t you. He was brought up in America. But the father might have been me.”
“I said he was getting out of breath, but he still gave a laugh. Couldn’t believe he’d laugh. I thought I heard something too, outside…”
“But, Father Tom, you didn’t do anything wrong. Why didn’t you tell the story to the Inspector? Protect yourself?”
Maggie tried to make sense of how he had behaved. He shouldn’t have gone back and confronted Simon Crowe, but he would have wanted to know if there had been the chance that this man was his father and the woman who had died had been his mother.
“My head was a complete mess. Adoption is a strange thing. There are whole stretches of time when it fades into the background of your life. You have more important things to think about…then something comes up, and it all rears up, and it’s like you can’t stop thinking about it, and everything reminds you of it.”
He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed between his eyes. “It’s more than that, though. I’m full of doubts. Maybe this is what this is really all about.”
Maggie put her hand on his arm. “Don’t make any decisions or do anything at all at the moment,” she said.
Maggie was the one who had to take decisive action in this house.
Chapter Seventeen
“I’m going home now.”
The fog had lifted from Ben. He no longer felt drunk, just drained. Sad and angry. He’d worried about the wrong things. His career and the irritation of dealing with the super. He should have anticipated danger.
“We’d like to keep you in for the night, Inspector Cronin, Ben?”
The young doctor addressed him by his first name in a diffident way.
It wasn’t his fault, but the last thing Ben intended to do was to spend the night in the hospital. He wasn’t hurt. What was all this about? The world had recently been at war. Men and women too had witnessed colleagues being killed. He wasn’t about to have a breakdown.
“I’ll be fine. I’d sleep better in my own bed, and if I’m worried about anything, I can telephone you.”
He would sleep with a good drink of something strong inside him. Not too much, though. If today was the worst day of his life, tomorrow didn’t promise to be a lot better. He wouldn’t be back at work, properly. Others would sweep in now and look in his desk, files and his drawers and scrutinise everything he’d done since this whole thing had begun. He would be offered support and sympathy and all the rest of it, but the fact remained that he was in one piece. Ben Cronin, the senior officer, had taken a young guard into something like that, and Ben had been the one who walked away.
“There’s been a phone call.”
He lifted his head just enough to look at the nurse. Lying here, he was willing his body to work, to fight off the weakness that he couldn’t understand. It must be all in his head, and the only way he knew how to deal with it was the focus a
hundred percent on literally putting one foot in front of the other.
“She says she’s your daughter and to tell you she was asking for you.”
That was all, and for the moment it was more than enough. He had enough emotion for one day.
* * *
“Both of us? Are you sure?”
Frank nodded and in Gerry’s stomach was something like a rock. It was more than discomfort, a dragging heavy feeling.
She’d come in with Father Stephen, who had talked to her about what had happened on that farm. It jolted Gerry out of her own worries. She’d already heard about it. Of course. The radio news and papers had been full of it. It was because it was a guard, of course. Any shooting was, thank God, so rare, that it was big news. But, the fact that the victim was a guard made it somehow more shocking. Why was that? She had the feeling that it was made out to be so huge, so sensational because anything that threatened the forces of law and order was seen to be intolerable to society.
Once, Gerry had read that arson and poisoning were treated more seriously than other murder—because they were indiscriminate. The perpetrator wasn’t bothered who became a victim, and this made him, or her, particularly dangerous. Killing a guard was one of the most serious crimes anyone could commit, and she could see the reason for this.
Straightaway it was clear there was something different about the way Frank looked and moved. He wasn’t back to himself or anything like, but he was no longer so apathetic.
Every muscle in his body seemed strung out and stretched, and the lines in his face were so much sharper. Funny, that Gerry hadn’t noticed his weight loss until this moment.
“I wanted to make my confession,, but at some point, you need to hear this story too, Gerry. I don’t want to tell it twice…though maybe I’ll have to.
“I was a young man…it didn’t seem to matter…it all got out of hand.”
Gerry’s failure of courage caught her by surprise.
She felt sick and dizzy, and a sudden silly image came into her mind of a child putting her hands over her ears and singing “la, la, la” to block something out. Once this was said, it couldn’t be unsaid. “Frank. Maybe you’re best talking to the priest on your own first. To Father Stephen. You’ve been very unwell. I don’t want you to say anything you might regret.”
Father Stephen looked at her, frowning, compassion in his eyes.
“If I don’t tell you now, I might never be able to. Please hear me out.”
She’d stood up from the armchair in the corner of his small bedroom. Father Stephen sat on a hard hospital chair, and Frank was perched on the edge of the bed.
Gerry sat back down and tried to summon back the strength she’d felt in the days since Frank had been taken in here. It had fled or at least it was very elusive.
She breathed slowly. That was something Doctor Cash had told her to do when she had been having those panic attacks years ago.
“Go on.”
There she braved it. Running away wasn’t going to help. Whatever had happened had happened, and the fact that she turned her back on it wasn’t going to reverse it. She had enough of keeping quiet in the cause of a quiet life. See, where it had got them.
“It was before we married.”
She nodded. He’d said it as though it would make it less hurtful or bad.
Maybe it would. Hurtful wasn’t the right word, anyway. She wasn’t sure anything from Frank’s past could hurt her anymore. She wasn’t sure, though…
“I’ll get on with it. There were parties with beer and spirits and music. Not in pubs though…and a bit more…more everything…than you’d get in Flanagan’s pub.”
He shook his head. “It was stupid and reckless, but Moira O’Hehir and there was another girl as well, a daft creature from Moynard village…they seemed, well, game, I suppose.”
“For God’s sake.” Gerry hadn’t meant to utter a word. But, it was that word, “game”.
“Right, not the best way to put it.”
“No, Frank, try innocent…young…gullible.”
The wince on his face emphasised how narrow and sharp his features had become. “Right. Whatever you want to call it.”
Just for a second, the edge was back in him for the first time since the incident at the bank. She felt a tremor in her stomach. No. She wasn’t going to become that pathetic woman, ever again. He could have as much edge as he liked and lose his temper, but she wouldn’t be cowed again, and if that meant walking out the door, then she’d go.
“A lot of messing around went on. Further than we should have gone. But, they were willing.”
Or drunk, but there was no point in pulling him up on any of this now. No matter what she or anyone else said, the past had happened; couldn’t be undone.
“We weren’t sure who was the father of the child she said she was expecting. That’s the truth. It could have been Donal Taffe, it could have been Simon Crowe’s, or it could have been mine.”
He looked, first at the priest and then at Gerry. His face was an unhealthy dark red now. You wouldn’t think a man of his age could blush with shame, but he did.
“Maybe this should have been saved for the confession box, Frank.” Gerry couldn’t sit there any longer. She was beset with that restlessness again. How could she get out of this room, just for a few minutes? This had to have time to sink in. “I want to get some fresh air.”
“Just hang on a minute, Gerry. I’ve nearly finished. Please.”
She forced herself back down in the chair.
“It all went haywire when she told us she was pregnant. The fun and games had gone badly wrong. No-one knew what to do. The only one of us who was married was Crowe—the one with the most to lose, you’d think. But, he was the one with the coolest head. He had the money too, and believe you me, you can sort a lot of troubles out if you have the wherewithal.”
Gerry was hot, and the ball of tension in the middle of her body made her feel…what was it? Sick? Hot? On the edge of some awful screaming panic. But, she had to hear him out now. She was on the rollercoaster ride at the fair and had to cling on now until the end.
“Simon had a plan that both girls would go to England. He’d set them up with a flat, and he even thought of jobs…he had it all worked out, they could take it in turns with minding the child and working. He didn’t get the Catholic view at all–the shame angle. It made no sense to him. Then, the canon started putting pressure on Moira…he didn’t know that there was any doubt about the father’s child. He thought it was me and it was a lot simpler to allow him to go on thinking that. He wanted me to marry her. That was it, to his way of thinking…cut and dried. She was panicking by this time, and I played along—with what Simon said we should do, said she should go with the other girl first, and I’d follow on. I played for time.” He bowed his head, back to the defeated look.
“Excuse me, what was the girl’s opinion in all this? Seems like everyone was telling her what to do with her life…her child’s life.”
Gerry couldn’t stop herself. What he said about the girl, his attitude, the whole story said more about him and his cronies than it did about the unfortunate girl.
He was dismissive. “She had no idea what she wanted. I told you they were a pair of daft young ones. Not a clue.”
Gerry’s heart did feel as though it fell. She’d known there was something -something making him guilty, at the back of his breakdown. Maybe what she’d thought of as conscience was self-preservation–worry and fear that his secret was going to be exposed.
“I wasn’t going to marry her—of that I was sure. They were a quare lot, out on that farm. I always thought it, and good God, but time has proved me right. What that brother did…well.” He shook his head.
Father Stephen said, “Sadly, people do lose their reason. It does happen. He isn’t the first person living in an isolated situation to resort to the shotgun—though usually they turn it on themselves.” Once again, he surprised Gerry by his level of understanding. The c
ountry needed more priests like him.
“What happened?” It didn’t take a genius to tell that this story wasn’t going to end well.
“Anyway, time went on, and her family found out. There was holy hell, and she was thrown out, in the middle of the night like something out of a story.”
The atmosphere in the room was bereft; as though the air and peace had been sucked out by the words spoken, by the story unfolding with its sad predictability.
“I am ashamed.”
They both looked at him. He hadn’t sounded ashamed, so far. Gerry knew she’d spend days, weeks, maybe the rest of her life seeking the truth of that; because maybe there was some shame. Otherwise, how would he have ended up here?
“Nora Hannigan took her in. She was an awkward woman, difficult, even back then, but when it came to it, you couldn’t fault her.”
“It isn’t always the people who are in the front of the church who are the best Christians.” At least Father Stephen didn’t follow the party line, and it was reassuring to hear him talk like this; especially after her recent dealings with the canon.
“There were two babies. Mrs. Hannigan knew what she was doing, she’d worked with the local midwife. But, it was not straightforward when it came down to it.”
Gerry looked at him; intently. The daftest things raced through her mind; how he’d been when their children had been born. On the surface, he’d been delighted and gone through all the telling the relatives and wetting the babies’ heads rituals. But what had been going through his head at those times? Now, he was relating this as if it was detached from him. Daft thought, but it was almost as though he was standing in a witness stand. She shivered.
“One of the babies was born dead, and the other one was healthy a boy. By now the canon was involved. He was well involved. In the thick of it. He insisted that Moira and the baby should be taken off to St. Malachy’s. It’s a big place on the outskirts of the city, here in Cork, I mean.”
“What happened?”
Now Gerry just wanted this story over with and to get out of this damned place before the lack of air choked her, or she shouted something very bad at her husband.
The Body at Ballytierney Page 21