by Anne Bennett
Oh God, Bridie thought in annoyance. The bloody man was a pest and the only thing to do was humour him. She wasn’t exactly frightened, she was unnerved, but knew better than to show him that. ‘Go home now, Uncle Francis,’ Bridie pleaded with a sigh of impatience. ‘Go and sleep it off, for God’s sake.’
‘Sleep off this madness I have for you?’ Francis cried. ‘The thing that gets between me and sleep, my work, my peace of mind? Dear Christ, Bridie, you don’t know what you do to me.’
That’s it! Bridie thought, angered at last. This sort of talk had to stop and if Francis wouldn’t listen to reason, maybe he’d listen to fury. How dare he think he could just accost her whenever he had the notion and spout such rubbish? ‘Now look here, Uncle Francis …’ she began angrily.
She got no further for suddenly her mouth had been covered by his. But this kiss was different from the others, for she felt her uncle force open her lips and thrust his tongue into her mouth.
Revulsion filled her being and she fought him like a wild thing, lashing out until she felt her own arms firmly pinned her to her sides. She writhed, squirmed and wriggled, trying to free her feet to stamp on his toes, or release her knee so that she could thrust it into his groin. But Francis held her so fast to him that she could do none of these things. Suddenly, she realised with horror that her struggles to escape had excited her uncle further. She was crushed into him so tightly that she felt his penis rise and harden and heard him moan as if he were in pain. But Bridie knew it was no pain. Never in her whole life had she been so terrified.
Francis released her mouth and her arms to pull the dress down over her shoulders and expose her breasts. Bridie gave a yelp of terror and, pushing him with all her might, she twisted from his grasp.
As she attempted to run, Francis made a grab for her and she felt her bodice nearly ripped from the dress entirely as Francis used it to swing Bridie round to face him. He held her as she stood before him, her dress open to the waist, her breasts exposed. She wanted to die with shame. Bridie saw her uncle’s eyes looked stranger than ever and his breath was coming in short gasps. ‘Ah God, Bridie. You’re lovely, so you are.’
Bridie trembled from head to foot. ‘Please let me go Uncle Francis. I won’t tell a soul, I promise it, on my mother’s life.’
‘Let you go?’ Francis repeated, as if in surprise. ‘You stand with your luscious breasts inches from my face and my manhood throbbing and ask me to let you go?’ He grabbed her hands as he spoke and forced them down the front of his trousers. Bridie felt the nausea rising in her throat and she prayed silently for the ordeal to stop. Oh Jesus Christ help me!
‘Please, Uncle Francis, stop this now!’ she cried, somehow managing to pull her hands free. ‘For pity’s sake.’
‘Ah, pity’s sake,’ Francis said. ‘What about the pity of an uncle who cannot get you out of my mind?’
‘No! No!’ Bridie shrieked and tried to twist from Francis again. For a few moments, they swayed together as Francis fought to still Bridie’s mouth with a kiss without losing his tight hold. Suddenly, Bridie gave an almighty heave, hoping to take Francis unawares and break free. But Francis held on as they both overbalanced and they went crashing down on to the leaf-strewn mossy ground.
For a few moments, Bridie lay stunned, and then she became aware of the twigs and tree roots sticking into her, pressed down as she was by Francis who lay on top of her, kneading her breasts and then rolling her nipples roughly between his fingers.
Her mouth was free and although she was screaming inside, she couldn’t seem to form the sound. The kneading stopped and Francis fastened his mouth around one of Bridie’s nipples, biting and nuzzling, while his hands went beneath her underskirts, pulling at her bloomers.
‘Oh, Dear God, no,’ she cried. ‘Uncle Francis, please, please leave me alone.’
It was if she’d not spoken and as she wriggled and writhed and struggled beneath him, she felt his fingers inside her and let out a cry of agony. Immediately a hand was across her mouth. ‘Shut up, you silly bitch,’ her uncle said. ‘You’ll enjoy this if you let yourself and though I’ve no desire to hurt you, if you make any noise, I’ll knock you senseless. Do you understand?’
Oh God, she understood all right. She lay transfixed with abject fear for she knew he meant every word. This man, with the wild eyes and slack lips, was a stranger, not the uncle she’d loved near all her life. Tears streamed from her eyes as terror engulfed her.
‘After this you’ll be begging for it,’ Francis said.
Oh dear sweet Jesus, please don’t let this happen to me, Bridie prayed silently, even as she saw Francis unzip his trousers. Let someone come. Let something happen to stop this.
But nobody came. There was only Francis’s voice, telling her to lie back and enjoy it, for by God he was going to, and assuring her he’d never hurt her, not in all the world. And then she knew he spoke lies for pain, such as she’d never felt in all her life, shot through her as Francis entered her and she groaned in sheer agony and despair.
It seemed to last for ever, an eternity, but eventually Francis stopped his panting and pulsating and let out a cry of triumph. He slumped across Bridie. She lay still, terrified to move in case she should rouse him in some way. Every part of her body ached and she wanted to die. For such a thing to happen to her … Oh dear God, what should she do? What could she do? She felt defiled and utterly dirty, filthy and so bitterly ashamed.
She didn’t know how much longer it was before Francis came to. He stumbled to his feet, shaking his head in a bemused way as if he didn’t know how he’d got to be there. In the moonlight dancing through the orange and brown leaves he saw Bridie, lying on the ground. The bodice of her dress was nearly ripped off, her underclothes pushed up to her waist and her lace bloomers to the side of her.
He zipped his trousers up and wondered why Bridie made no move to cover herself. ‘You all right?’ he asked.
Bridie wondered if she’d ever be all right again. She made no answer and Francis became uncomfortable. ‘We’ll say nothing about this,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t like your parents to know the little wanton you are. I wouldn’t like them to hear how you left the dance early. When I came to find you, not wanting you to walk home alone, you waylaid me in the wood, wearing only that dress that doesn’t leave much to the imagination. You made up to me and I had to be quite firm with you.’
‘That wasn’t how it was,’ Bridie said. ‘I shall tell the truth. What about my dress near torn in half?’
‘That happened as I struggled to stop you stripping off,’ Francis said. Bridie looked at him with anguished eyes. How could she go home and burden her parents with this? It would be her word against Francis’s. Even if they believed her totally, it would split the families in half.
‘Look,’ Francis said, guessing some of the thoughts running through Bridie’s mind. ‘Best say nothing. After all, there was no harm done.’
No harm done, Bridie thought. Christ!
‘Come on.’ Francis held out his hand to help her to her feet but she barked out, ‘Leave me alone. If you lay one hand on me ever again, by Christ I’ll kill you even if I have to wait years to do it!’
Francis laughed a little nervously. ‘Aren’t you taking our bit of fun a little seriously?’
‘Our bit of fun? Don’t flatter yourself,’ Bridie said with scorn. ‘There was no pleasure or enjoyment for me in what you did, just shame and revulsion. Get out of my sight before I scream my head off and hang the bloody consequences.’
Much later, when Francis had skulked away into the night, she got onto her hands and knees and then to her feet, staggering slightly.
Everywhere seemed to ache or throb and she’d thought she’d probably have a mass of bruises in the morning, a fact she’d have to hide from her parents. She also found that blood had trickled from her and had stained the ground and some of her petticoats and dried onto her legs. She pulled on her bloomers and rearranged her clothes, and hoped she could reach the r
elative safety of her bedroom without her parents, or anyone else, catching sight of her. She had no idea of the time, no idea whether the dance had finished and no way of knowing. She made for home in a roundabout route. When she got to the head of the lane, unmolested and unseen, she gave a sigh of relief.
The cottage curtains were open slightly, but the Tilley lamp on the windowsill was lit, so Bridie knew then her parents had gone to bed. She hoped they’d be well asleep too, for their bed was in a curtained alcove in the room and if Sarah was awake, she’d be likely to get up to find out what Bridie had thought of her first dance.
Bridie lifted the latch of the cottage stealthily and stole in quietly. She could hear the snuffly snores of her parents and thanked God silently. But still she had to wash the blood from her legs. She lifted a small pan of water from the bucket by the door and took it into her room.
She took the lamp in the bedroom with her and undressed, flinging the ruined dress to the back of the wardrobe along with the kid boots, now not fit to be worn. Then she tipped the water into the chamber pot and began to wash herself all over, dabbing gently at the bruises and abrasions that she could see with a handkerchief from her drawer and rubbing the blood from her legs.
She folded the soiled underclothes to hide the bloodstains and put them at the bottom of the drawer, intending to hide them until she had her period when she could pass the blood off as her monthly bleeding. She eased the window open and tipped the water away before putting on her nightdress and getting into bed. She didn’t feel much cleaner. Even if she was immersed in water for hours and her skin rubbed raw, she’d never, ever feel clean again.
When Bridie woke the next morning, it was daylight and she lay for a moment and let the events of the previous night wash over her and felt her face, her whole body, grow hot with shame as she remembered what had happened.
She got out of bed and began to dress, but all she had for her feet was an old pair of boots of Terry’s which were far too big for her. They’d have to do though. Maybe her parents wouldn’t notice. She hoped Rosalyn would have taken her things home with her and prayed she’d bring them round later, for not even for a million pounds would she go to her house and risk meeting her uncle.
She found out that her father had already done the milking when she went into the kitchen where her mother was frying rashers at the fire for breakfast. ‘We let you lie,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s not often you have the chance to and you were powerfully late in last night.’
‘Thank you,’ Bridie said, but her tone was muted, her eyes downcast. Sarah was not surprised – Rosalyn must have told her the news.
‘So Rosalyn told you then, about her going to America,’ she said as she broke eggs into a pan.
‘You knew?’ Bridie said accusingly.
‘No, no, not at all,’ Sarah said. ‘Not till last night anyway when Delia came to tell me. She apparently mentioned it to Ellen, but it was all up in the air then so Ellen said nothing. Pity, though, that Rosalyn chose to tell you last night. It would have spoilt the night, news like that.’
Aye, as if that was the only thing to spoil it, Bridie thought to herself.
‘You’ll miss her,’ Sarah continued. ‘God, the two of you have been thick since you were weans.’
‘Aye, I’ll miss her,’ Bridie agreed. ‘But I’ll get used to it soon enough, no doubt.’
‘Aye, surely. Life goes on.’
In a way, Bridie was glad to have the excuse of Rosalyn leaving to explain her dejected attitude, for she found she couldn’t forget, even for a second, that revolting scene in the woods and she knew her parents were worried about her, for her mother said she looked as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
Later that day, Rosalyn came around with the things she’d left. Bridie had been on the lookout for her, not wanting her parents to discover she’d left the dance early, and she pulled her quickly into the barn where she exchanged Terry’s boots for her own. ‘Where did you disappear to, Bridie?’ Rosalyn asked. ‘Daddy was hours looking for you. Did you just head for home?’
‘I might have,’ Bridie snapped, the mention of Francis playing the part of a concerned uncle making her feel sick. ‘You were hardly bothered and I don’t think it’s any of your business anyway.’
‘Oh, Bridie, don’t be like this!’ Rosalyn said. ‘I know you’re upset I’m leaving, but …’
‘God, don’t you think a lot of yourself?’ Bridie cried. ‘Don’t you pity me, Rosalyn McCarthy. Pity yourself or some other in need of it. I’m grand, so I am.’
Rosalyn went home, offended. Bridie didn’t blame her and felt bad about upsetting her dearest friend, who would soon be gone, and probably for ever. Another thing to blame Francis for, she thought, spoiling the last weeks they’d have together.
An uneasy truce was formed between Bridie and Rosalyn, however, and Rosalyn was glad. She was leaving in just over a month’s time and didn’t want to go without making it up with her cousin.
As for Bridie, she was desperately unhappy. She couldn’t look at her uncle Francis, or speak to him unless forced to, but she could not afford to draw attention to this and invite awkward questions. She wished the two families didn’t see so much of each other. There were days when she seemed so sunken in misery that nothing seemed to lift her. ‘I didn’t think she’d be as upset as all this at Rosalyn leaving,’ Sarah remarked to Jimmy one day. ‘For all they’d been bosom friends. She always seems to bounce back, our Bridie, but I can hardly reach her at the moment. I wish she was still small and I could cure any hurt with a kiss and a hug. I mean, it’s even stopped her monthlies.’
Bridie had realised that herself one day when, searching for clean underwear, she came upon the soiled petticoats. Her heart seemed to stop beating as realisation dawned. She sat down on the bed because her legs had begun to tremble. Rosalyn was due to sail in two days’ time, and it was a month since the dance – she should have started her period a week after it.
Oh dear God! Surely she couldn’t be pregnant? The disgusting episode in the wood couldn’t have resulted in a child?
The worry of it clouded Rosalyn’s departure and haunted her every minute of the day. Should she write and tell Mary, she wondered? But how could she write something like that? And would Mary feel bound to tell her mother? Maybe she was panicking over nothing, she told herself. All sorts of things could stop periods. She heard it said often enough.
Rosalyn left on a drizzly, early November day and the two girls kissed and hugged and vowed they would write. Bridie watched her climb into the rail bus, carrying Maria’s two-year-old while Maria held the baby in her arms and the older child by the hand, and she felt black desolation sweep over her at the loss of her friend.
A week later, Bridie realised that she had missed her second period and two weeks after that she was sick in the chamber pot as she got out of bed. The same happened the next morning and the next and almost every morning after it. She was whiter than ever and dark smudges had appeared beneath her eyes. ‘That girl will sicken if she goes on like this,’ she overheard her mother say to her father.
‘She looks far from well indeed,’ Jimmy agreed.
‘I’ve heard her being sick a time or two as well,’ Sarah said. ‘God knows, she’s thin enough already. I think I’ll have the doctor look her over if she doesn’t pick up. Maybe she needs a tonic.’
Jesus! Bridie knew what sort of a tonic the doctor would order and that news would tear the heart out of her parents. What was she to do? Eventually they would find out. Pregnancy was something no one could hide for ever.
She lay in bed, night after night, thinking what to do as one November day slid into another. But there was no solution. If she were to tell her parents now what had happened the night of the dance, doubt would linger. They’d wonder why she’d said nothing that night. Francis had his story ready too; he’d already told her what he’d say if she accused him. Dear Lord, he might deny it altogether and lay the blame on one of the young lads at
the dance.
He might say they’d been around her all night like bees around a honey pot and suggest she had been more than willing. And hadn’t he told Rosalyn he’d searched the place for Bridie and not been able to find her? She knew with dread certainty that Francis would be believed before her.
When news of Bridie’s pregnancy got out, her parents would be destroyed. Out would go their respectability, their standing in the community. The two families who’d helped each other and shared things for years would be rent apart. It would be particularly hard for her parents to cope; maybe they’d find it so hard they’d have to leave the farm, their life’s work, perhaps even leave the town.
And the townsfolk would blame her. She must have asked for it, they would say, must have done something to provoke such a thing. God, she could almost hear them. ‘Can you trust the young hussies these days, wearing less clothes than is decent and teasing and tormenting honest men? Jesus, it would take a man to watch himself.’
There would be little or no sympathy for her. She’d be the disgraced single parent and her parents dragged through the mud with her. And at the end of this, would be a bastard child that no one would want, a symbol of her loose behaviour, a child that would be held up to ridicule and scorn because he or she had no father.
She knew it would be better if she was well away from the place before the pregnancy should be discovered. Yet, she asked herself, how could she just up and leave? But she knew in her heart of hearts that she must. Though her parents could not manage without her on the farm, neither could they cope with what she carried in her belly and she had no right to shame them like that.
Other people had begun to notice that Bridie looked far from well. Father O’Dwyer had stopped her in the church porch and commented on how pale she was. ‘Mind, I suppose everyone has poor colour at his time of the year,’ he had continued. ‘It doesn’t do my old bones much good either. We’ll all feel better in the spring, what d’you say?’