Hush, Little Baby

by Shane Dunphy

  The children, delighted at Johnny’s decision to get up on the floor, joined in. Some of the girls knew how to step-dance, but none of the boys did, and before long we had bodies flying this way and that in a kind of spectacular, chaotic celebration. Maggie led us into ‘The Sailor’s Bonnet’ for a fourth run (Irish tunes are played three times, as a rule), to keep the momentum going for the dancing, and then we finished with the customary reel ending of three descending notes, and the children collapsed in a sweaty, exhausted, laughing heap.

  ‘Tilly, sing us a sad one,’ Bill called.

  Tilly declined, but I guessed that this was expected, because both brothers continued to heckle her until Maggie spoke up decisively: ‘Sing about the poor collier.’

  Tilly nodded, and a hush fell over the room – even the children remained silent.

  ‘Goin’ to the Zoo’ had not done Tilly justice. She sang un accompanied – sweet and clear and pure, like mountain water. Her shyness was not an act, for she kept her eyes closed throughout, and occasionally I picked up a gentle tremble in her delivery, but it only added to the delicacy of her performance. She took my breath away.

  The song Tilly sang seemed oddly appropriate, telling as it does the story of a girl whose husband is taken from her by the war; he returns terribly changed by its violence and brutality. The song follows the course of the psychologically and physically ruined man’s relationship with his partner: even when he is there, he is not really present. I have a recording of the song by the transcendent Anne Briggs, but had, until that evening, never truly been hit by the emotional resonance of it. I realized, as I listened to Tilly sing, that I had not even considered how much she might miss Gerry, her husband. I had only ever looked at her situation from my own perspective – that she would be glad to see the back of him because of his abusive nature. Yet she had certainly loved him. It would not be so unusual for her to be lonely, to miss his company. I heard the loss, and the longing, in her song, and realized how near-sighted I had been.

  As I walked o’er the stubble field, below it runs the seam

  I thought of Jimmy hewing there, but it was all a dream.

  He hewed the very coals we burn and when the fire lies leeting

  To think the lumps was in his hands – it sets my heart a-beating.

  So break my heart and then it’s o’er; so break my heart, my dearie.

  Then I’ll lie in the cold green ground, for of single life I’m weary.

  More jigs and reels followed, and Maggie sang a gorgeous version of ‘Peggy Gordon’. By a kind of mutual consent, we finished there, as it was late, and the children had school in the morning.

  ‘How ’bout a cup of tea for the road?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Yes, Mammy,’ Tilly said, and put on water to boil.

  ‘I’m just going out for a smoke,’ I said.

  I walked a little distance away from the trailer, watching the black, roiling mass of the River Torc rush and tumble past. To my left, cars and trucks thundered to their destinations on the dual carriageway. Above me, stars winked and twinkled.

  ‘Shane!’

  ‘Over here,’ I said, and turned to find Tilly wrapping her coat about her. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing. I just thought I’d take the air with you for a bit.’

  She came over beside me. ‘Cold night,’ she said, her breath coming out in clouds.

  ‘Beautiful, though,’ I added.

  The awkward silence I expected to come never descended. Neither of us felt the need to speak. Finally I flicked the butt of my smoke over the railing into the water below.

  ‘Thanks for inviting me and Patrick here tonight,’ I said. ‘It was a fantastic evening.’

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ Tilly said, smiling. ‘Thank you for … for staying with us. You’ve given me and the little ones a chance to start our lives again. I know I made it hard for you, but you never gave up on us.’

  A hundred niceties came to mind, but I ignored them. ‘It was my pleasure,’ I said.

  She nodded, and we both watched the Torc stream away into the darkness for a time, comfortable in one another’s company at last.

  The presbytery was a large stone building in the grounds of the city cathedral, within shouting distance of the main shopping area. A skinny secretary showed me into a surprisingly threadbare waiting room, where I sat for almost ten minutes, flicking through back issues of the Irish Catholic and some magazines about the work of missionaries in Africa. Just as I was about to go out to the reception room to make my presence felt again, I heard muffled steps, and a tall, thin, grey-haired man with a priest’s collar came in, beaming.

  ‘I’m Eddie Downey,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘How can I help you?’

  The priest had deep, intelligent eyes and smelled of pipe-smoke and brandy. He was in his late sixties, possibly older. There were tufts of hair on his cheekbones where he had not shaved high enough, and the shoulders and collar of his black shirt were dusted with dandruff.

  ‘I’m from the Dunleavy Trust, Father. I’ve been working with Clive Plummer.’

  ‘Ah, yes, young Clive.’ Father Downey shook his head and motioned for me to sit. ‘Tragic. A young life ruined.’

  ‘Father, Clive became severely upset after a visit from a priest last Monday morning. No one at the hospital seems to know who the priest was, as he neglected to sign the visitors’ book. Clive’s father suggested it might have been you – you’re a friend of the family, and he thought you might go out to see Clive.’

  Father Downey studied me for a time, his bushy brows knitted. ‘Yes, indeed, I did visit Clive. Was it last Monday …’ He considered for a moment. ‘Yes, I believe that must have been me. I’m sorry he was upset afterwards. I suppose I reminded him of his poor mother’s passing. I was with the family a lot, before the Lord took her. She and I were close. I tried to bring as much comfort as I could.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you could try to remember anything you and Clive talked about during your visit,’ I said. ‘He’s lapsed into a very confused state, and I’m grasping at straws as to how to bring him back. Did he express any fears to you, anything that sticks in your mind?’

  The priest shifted on the sagging couch, his long legs crossed. ‘To be honest, I thought him to be in quite a jovial mood.’

  ‘Did you mention his mother?’

  ‘Of course. She and I were close friends. We said a prayer for her, before I left.’

  ‘But he was happy to participate in that?’

  ‘He asked me to pray with him.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ I said. ‘I’m exploring every option, you understand. I’m scared we might lose him.’

  Father Downey showed me to the door. ‘He’s bad, then?’ he asked, as we stood on the step.

  ‘Clive is locked deep inside himself. He’s trapped in some kind of nightmare, where all about him are demons and devils, all this horrible imagery. I can’t reach him, Father, and I’m out of ideas.’

  My companion tutted, gently. ‘Yes, he was beginning to become fascinated by the occult, before his dear mother was taken.’

  This was something I had not heard before. ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Tarot cards and Viking runes, Paganism, crystals … it was a hobby of hers, you see, all that New Age nonsense, and Clive, who was very dedicated to her, became fixated upon it.’

  ‘Roberta never mentioned that to me.’

  ‘Yes, well, I imagine it’s quite a sensitive subject. I believe Cynthia and her husband felt that these rituals might be able to effect a cure for her cancer where medical science had failed. I tried to warn her that dabbling in such things could have a negative influence, but she was too wrapped up in it all to hear me.’

  I thanked him for his time and went to my car. This was certainly an important discovery, and answered a lot of outstanding questions. There was a logic to what Father Downey had said. I dialled Roberta’s number on my mobile phone.

  She admitted that
she had no knowledge of Clive having any interest in magic, spiritualism or any other aspect of the occult. But then, she said, she hadn’t been around, and teenaged boys did often dabble in that kind of thing for a time. It wouldn’t be unusual.

  I agreed with her, and drove back to the office. All afternoon, something was niggling at me, and it was almost dinnertime before I worked out what it was. I drove to the Plummer house, and asked Roberta to let me into Clive’s room again. I spent an hour and a half going through his clothes, books and belongings, until I was absolutely certain. The search proved my suspicions to be correct.

  Roberta had assured me – and I’d asked her again, to be sure – that not a single thing had been removed from her brother’s room since his incarceration. I had now looked in every drawer, on every shelf, between each page of every book, and nowhere did I find one shred of evidence to suggest that Clive had had even a passing interest in the occult. There were no Stephen King or James Herbert novels. There was not even so much as an Iron Maiden CD, a DVD of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a poster of the girls from Charmed.

  Either Clive had a stash of magical paraphernalia hidden somewhere, or Father Edward Downey was lying.

  PART THREE

  Closing Time

  Oh, all the comrades that ever I had, I’m sorry for their going away.

  And all the sweethearts that ever I had, I would wish them one more day to stay.

  But since it falls unto my lot, that I should rise and you should not –

  I’ll gently rise, and softly call: ‘Goodnight and joy be with you all.’

  ‘The Parting Glass’, traditional Irish drinking song,

  from the singing of TOMMY MAKEM

  12

  I was in a café, having a smoked turkey sandwich with Dijon mustard and a cup of coffee, when my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t know.

  ‘Hello, is this Shane Dunphy?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘My name is Thelma Rice. I’m a social worker, based in the Dublin city-centre offices.’

  ‘How can I help you, Thelma?’

  ‘It’s more how I can help you, actually. I was contacted by a colleague who told me you’ve been asking about a young girl named Katie Rhodes?’

  ‘Yes. I’m working with her at the moment.’

  ‘She must be in her teens now.’

  ‘She’s fourteen. How do you know Katie?’

  ‘It’s an odd story, actually, but I think it tallies with these games you told my friend about. You mentioned abandonment scenarios coming out in play.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I motioned to a waitress for another cup of coffee.

  ‘I was working on a child-protection team some, gosh, it must have been ten years ago now. I was on the duty roster one particular morning – I don’t have the files any more, I moved from that post a long time ago, but this story sticks in my memory, so you needn’t worry about my getting the details mixed up – and a call came in from a concerned woman in the Dolphin’s Barn area.’

  In Ireland, the duty social worker is the person who sits at the end of the phone to take calls as they come into the community-care office. The duty team, usually two or more staff, will then carry out an initial investigation into these cases to see if they warrant any further intervention, and, if they do, will pass them on to the relevant departments.

  ‘According to the caller,’ Thelma continued, ‘an elderly man she knew had a very small child living with him, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere and who was being severely neglected. This woman lived two doors down from the old guy, and she maintained that he was a bachelor, with no relatives she was aware of. She regularly saw the child sitting at the window, though she was rarely seen outside the house, and was certainly not being sent to school. The little girl seemed to be wearing the same clothes every day and was being generally maltreated, she believed.

  ‘I went out to the address at the first opportunity. His name was Alphonso Drake. He was in his early seventies – he refused to tell me exactly what age, so he might actually have been older – and he was, he insisted, living alone. The place was pretty dishevelled – old, rickety furniture, windowpanes so grubby you could barely see out of them, a kitchen with so much mould it was starting to develop a personality – you’ve seen it all yourself, I’m sure. I sat and talked for a while, and was actually on the verge of leaving – I was in the hallway – when I spotted it: a child’s doll, sitting under a chair. I had him then, and he called her downstairs.’

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘She was just four years old, a tiny bundle of black hair and attitude. She wouldn’t say a word to me, just turned her face into his leg. I asked ’Phonso where he’d got her, and he said she’d just turned up on his doorstep one day. She’d been living with him for three months at that stage, apparently. She didn’t look badly cared for, I must admit. Her clothes were a bit worn, but he said he washed them by hand, and put her in one of his old shirts while they dried, and I can vouch that they weren’t hugely dirty. She had to stay in the house when he went to buy food, but he only ever used a little newsagents at the top of the road they lived on, which was also a post office, where he drew his pension, so she was never alone for more than a few minutes.

  ‘I asked him why he’d never called anyone, and he said because he knew they’d take her away. He was lonely and liked having her around. He seemed to think she was his niece. He was in some way related to the Rhodes, through the mother’s side, I think. She called him “uncle”, at any rate.’

  ‘My God. What did you do?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave her with him, could I? I checked missing-persons reports, but she wasn’t on any of them. We didn’t know where her parents were, and the old geezer couldn’t even remember their first names. We put her in res.’

  ‘Did she open up any more when she was there?’

  ‘A little. She finally said her daddy had thrown her out of the car on to the side of the road, and that she had walked to her uncle’s house.’

  ‘At four years old?’

  ‘That’s what she said. When she was asked how far she’d walked, all she could say was “a long way”. How she even found his house, I’ll never know.’

  ‘So did her parents come looking for her, or what?’

  ‘Nope. We finally tracked them down. They were living in Meath, and when I got hold of the mother and told her we had her daughter in care, she seemed genuinely surprised. Of course, she and the husband completely denied the abandonment allegation. They maintained they’d made an arrangement with ’Phonso to look after Katie for a while. They needed a break, they said, and he liked the company.’

  ‘And she ended up back with them, I suppose?’

  ‘Beds were short, as they always are, and here were a mum and dad who seemed to want their child. They attended some parenting classes – what can I say?’

  ‘Any idea why this never showed up in her files?’

  ‘Her parents never lived in Dublin, as far as I know. I’d guess no one ever thought to ask us for any paperwork on Katie.’

  ‘Thelma, you’ve helped a lot.’

  ‘How’s the kid doing? She was an angry little girl, the short time I knew her.’

  ‘Well, nothing much has changed, then.’

  ‘That’s what I figured.’

  Katie was nowhere near as happy as I was to discover this little nugget of information from her past.

  ‘Never happened,’ she declared, when I recounted the story.

  ‘You don’t remember, huh?’

  ‘No, you’re not listening to me: it never fucking happened. I would definitely remember somethin’ like that.’

  We were sitting on beanbags in the playroom. I had the guitar slung across my lap, and was strumming it absently. ‘Actually, you might well forget such an upsetting event. I’ve worked with lots of children who had bad things happen in their lives, and their memories sort of walled up those things, so they couldn’t hurt them.’
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  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘It’s the way our minds work.’

  ‘I’m not like that. If somethin’ happens to me, I remember it. I can tell you anythin’ about my life you want to know. Go on, ask me anythin’ y’like.’

  ‘Okay, tell me about your Uncle Alphonso.’

  ‘I just told you, I don’t have a motherfuckin’ Uncle Alphonso!’

  ‘See, you actually do. So you can’t remember everything.’

  ‘You’re a titwanker.’

  I didn’t respond, just strummed a diminished ninth chord. Katie sulked for a while, pretending not to look at me but keeping watch out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘What if this Rice Krispie woman is wrong? What if it wasn’t me? That could have been some other kid, right?’

  ‘I’ve asked them to send me copies of all the reports that were made about the little girl and the old man. I think it’s unlikely Thelma was wrong, but I suppose she might be mixed up about it. We’ll see.’

  ‘I don’t want her to be right,’ Katie said, after several more minutes of silent sulking.

  ‘I know.’

  Darth Vader glowered over the prone shape of Luke Skywalker, who was cowering on an outcrop above a dizzying drop, the pastel world of Cloud City falling away beneath him, giving way to oblivion. Luke was nursing the stump of his severed hand, determined to kill himself rather than let this embodiment of evil finish him off. The young man’s face was a mask of pain, fear and anger, Vader’s helmet and visor, as always, impassive as the apparatus within sucked air in and out of his body.

  ‘Luke,’ the voice of James Earl Jones intoned, ‘I am your father.’

  ‘Nooo!’ Luke screamed, every fibre in his body willing it not to be true.

  ‘No!’ Patrick gasped beside me, as one of the greatest cinematic shocks in history cast its spell upon him.

  ‘Didn’t see that one coming, did you?’ I asked, unable to suppress a smile.