Ninemile House Page 10

  As Derry drove away, she spotted Gabby’s friend, Angie, emptying a dustbin around the side of the house. Pulling up, she got out and walked over to her, determined to find out if Angie knew something of Gabby’s nightmares. Up close, the poor woman looked tired and harassed to death, but Derry was not to know that with her sister’s departure, Angie’s workload had doubled. Up at five o’clock every morning come rain or come shine, she seldom made it to bed before twelve at night and then Clare, one of the two elderly Magdalenes with whom she shared a room, kept her awake for hours with her awful ratchety snoring.

  “Angie.” Derry put out a calming hand as, startled, the woman dropped the dustbin lid with a clatter to the floor, her hand flying to her mouth lest it brought retribution in the form of one of the nuns down upon her head. Again, Derry wasn’t to know that this was a learned response from years of abuse, years of being crept up on and belaboured about the head or body by some sadistic nun or other and though the beatings had faded away, the reaction, like breathing, had become wholly unconscious. “Do you remember me? I’m Derry’s sister.”

  Relieved, Angie retrieved the dustbin lid and leaned back against the wall. She must have been pretty at one stage, Derry reflected, but her hair, once a vibrant shade of red, that lovely burnt Autumn leaves colour, looked faded as if all the fire had been wrung out of it and her eyes, the sea-green that often went with that particular colour hair, were equally faded and so filled with despair that it physically hurt just to look into them.

  “How is she? How’s Gabby?” Eagerly, Angie waited for news of her friend.

  “Fine,” Derry said. “Settling in well, or beginning to. I know she’s intending to write to you soon. But in the meantime, there’s just one thing, Angie, that’s worrying me. Nightmares?”

  “Ah,” Angie’s face clouded. “She’s still having them then. I hoped that maybe they’d go away once she got out of this dump. They used to leave her in a terrible state altogether. Shaking and shivering. There were times she even frightened me, I don’t mind telling you.”

  Derry wrinkled her brow. “Have you any idea what’s at the back of them? It’s just that I feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I mean, if it’s something I can help with . . .”

  “I don’t know if it is or not,” Angie confessed, keeping an anxious weather eye out in case one of the nuns should come bearing down upon her. They were like rats. You were never more than a couple of feet away from one. “I could never get to the bottom of it. Whatever it is, she’s keeping close as the grave on it.”

  “Is it connected with this place, do you think?” Looking at the massive grey walls and buildings around her, Derry thought Ninemilehouse looked more like a prison than ever. Even the small flowerbed at the front of the building with its sad little huddled groups of pansies failed to introduce more than a faint note of joy.

  Gabby shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I think it’s something that happened to her before she came here. There’s some fella she’s frightened of. She’s been having those nightmares for as long as I can remember.”

  “I see.” Derry felt depressed that Gabby’s friend seemed to know no more than she herself. “Just one other thing, Angie. Do you have any idea where Gabby’s baby is? Any idea who adopted him?”

  Angie’s already prematurely aging face fell into tortured lines, deepening into furrows around the corners of her mouth. “None of us know what happened to our babies. They made us nurse them, you know. I nursed mine till she was six weeks old, long enough for her to get to know me and for me to memorise every feature, every tiny red hair on her head.” Her chin came up with a decisive lift, the small spark of spirit the nuns hadn’t manage to quench, shining out defiantly. “I called her Crystal, her eyes were so clear. Clear and shining and innocent. But the ould bitches weren’t having any of that. What kind of a heathen name is that for a child, I remember one of them asking and the bitter old face on her would curdle the milk while it was still in the cow. The child’s name is Ann, says she, a good plain Christian name and so that’s who she became. Ann. But not to me.” There was a fathomless longing in Angie’s expression. “When I dream about her and I still do, even after all this time, I’m dreaming of Crystal, not Ann. I’m listening to Crystal gurgling and cooing away in her cot, not Ann. Crystal is such a pretty name and, God knows, I didn’t have anything else to give her but, at least, I gave her that. Mind you, she could be called anything now, for all I know. She might even be dead.” Idly she turned the bin lid round and round like a wheel and Derry felt her heart turn over at the loss in Angie’s face. Jesus Christ, but those nuns were a terrible bunch. How could they do such a terrible, heartless thing to another woman? How could they expect her to love and care for her child, establish a bond, and then rip the baby from her arms and give it to someone else. More and more she was coming to realise exactly what her own poor sister had to go through.

  “Gabby had a son, I know that much,” she told Angie, who nodded.

  “I know, but she never spoke about him. None of us did, really. It would have hurt too much. We all knew what the others were thinking, the pain they were feeling and, that was bad enough.”

  “Well, I’m going to find him.” This time Derry’s chin came up. “Apparently he was adopted by a couple from the United States, but I’m going to find him, even if he’s on the bloody moon.”

  Tears gathered in Angie’s eyes and one plopped over and rolled slowly down her face. “You do that, Mrs Quinn. You go and find Gabby’s baby and at least one of us might have a happy ending.”

  When Derry drove away, her own eyes were wet and there was a lump the size of a golf ball stuck in her throat. How many Angies had there been over the years, she wondered. Women whose only crime was to fall pregnant whilst unmarried and, in some cases, not even of their own free will, but because they were the innocent victims of rape or incest. How many had spent their entire lives locked away in hell-hole institutions like Ninemilehouse, paying the price for someone else’s sin. Angrily, she wiped a hand across her eyes. As soon as she heard from Sr Peter, assuming she did, she would set the wheels in motion. Gabby’s baby was out there somewhere. It was time he came home.

  ***

  When Derry arrived back home, it was to find the household in complete and utter chaos. A red-faced and distraught Dilis was screaming in the living room, whilst upstairs she could hear Dara bawling equally loudly. On top of that she could make out the sound of James shouting and underlying it all, another even more terrible noise, like the dying wails of a mortally wounded animal. With a quick look to ascertain that Dilis was in no immediate danger, she took the stairs two at a time to Gabby’s bedroom from whence the noise was issuing, shocked to a halt in the doorway at the scene unfolding inside. In one corner, her sister crouched in the foetal position on the floor, her hands cradling her head, her entire body shaking like a leaf as, above her, James stood, hands clenched into fists, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords. Sobbing convulsively, Dara stood amidst the shattered pieces of what had once been Gabby’s Sacred Heart lamp.

  Galvanised into sudden action, Derry covered the floor in two strides. “What the hell is going on here.” Her scream knifed into James, sending him spinning round to face her. “Don’t you dare lay a hand on my sister, do you hear me.” Like a wild animal, she grappled him by his shirt, fury lending her the strength to drag him over to the doorway and push him outside. “So help me God, I’ll kill you. I swear it. Put one hand on her and I’ll kill you.” Slamming the door in his face, she dashed over to where Gabby still crouched, stooping down to envelop her in her arms. “Shush now, darling, it’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you. Do you hear me? No one’s going to hurt you, ever again. I promise. I promise.” Above the crumpled figure, her eyes sought those of her young daughter who with the advent of her mother was already starting to calm down. “Dara, honey, can you tell Mammy what happened?”

  The little girl pointed to the broken lamp on th
e floor and gave a great hiccoughing sob. “I was just looking at it, Mammy,” she said, “but it slipped out of my hand and broke on the floor. Then,” she broke off to wipe her nose on her hand,” Aunty Gabby spanked me hard and Daddy came up and shouted at her and . . . and then you came in.”

  “But he didn’t hit her,” Derry asked, mightily relieved when Dara shook her head.

  “No,” but Aunty Gabby was really frightened. She kept saying, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me and then she went into the corner and put her hands over her head, like that.” Dara demonstrated what her mother had already seen.

  “Oh, God, what a mess!” Derry said aloud, only too well able to imagine what had taken place. The Sacred Heart lamp had been so important to Gabby. In her mind, it had become her link with Angie, her only friend in the world and she had looked to it for comfort in the unfamiliarity of her new surroundings and at night when the nightmares came. Of course, James wouldn’t have been impressed with her smacking Dara. Fondly thinking of themselves as enlightened parents, neither one of them were fans of corporal punishment but, by the same token, that was the only form of punishment Gabby was familiar with. It was learned behaviour at the hands of the nuns. She knew no better. Dara would mend. In a day or two, probably less, she would have completely recovered from her sore bottom. The damage to Gabby, Derry suspected, her heart sinking into her shoes, would take far longer to heal.

  ***

  “She’s got to go!” Downstairs James, his face like thunder, was waiting in the kitchen. “I’m a patient man, Derry, but no one, and I mean no one, is going to come into my house and assault one of my kids for accidentally breaking some tacky old lamp that cost no more than a couple of bob, if that.”

  Seething, Derry flayed him with her tongue. “You just don’t understand, do you? You don’t want to understand. That lamp, tacky though it may have been, wasn’t just any old lamp. It had become like a kind of talisman to Gabby.” Flouncing over to the kettle, she picked it up, refilled it and flicked the switch to on.

  “Talisman!” The thunderous expression gave way to a sneer. “ What sort of arty-farty nonsense is that?” Dragging out a chair from underneath the table, James plonked himself down on it, extending his long legs to their fullest extent. “The woman’s a menace. She’s unstable. I warned you from the beginning, but did you listen to me! Of course not.” Bitterly, his eyes moved with her as she extracted two mugs from cupboard above the sink, dumped a spoon of coffee into each and glared at the kettle as if it had offered her some dire insult. “When do you ever!”

  Derry squinted at his reflection, distorted to fairground mirror proportions in the chrome of the kettle, his neck unnaturally long, his head compacted to a squashed melon. “If you had been keeping an eye on the twins, like I asked, none of this would have happened. I was only gone for a few hours, for goodness sakes. Is it too much to expect you to look after your daughters and stop them from getting into mischief for such a short period of time? Is that truly beyond your capabilities?” With a serpent-like hiss, the kettle announced that it had boiled and she filled each mug, added a splash of milk, two sugars for James, then chucked the teaspoon on the counter-top.

  Taking his mug from her, James, who was beginning to cool down slightly, began to exhibit the merest touch of sheepishness. It disturbed him to see his wife in such a towering mood and on closer examination of his conscience he was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t over-reacted somewhat. Maybe expecting his sister-in-law to behave like a normal human being was expecting too much. She wasn’t normal. The worry was that she might never be. “I was on the phone. Something came up at work.”

  Derry threw up her hands. “Don’t tell me, let me guess it was-an-emergency? Isn’t it bloody always? You know what James, I’m beginning to get sick to the teeth of this bloody election. Look how it’s keeping you apart from your family. It’s getting so that we’re like ships that pass in the night. It’s a miracle the girls still know who you are.” Visibly trembling, she took the chair opposite. “That’s no way to live and at the risk of sounding like a walking cliché, the idea is to work to live, not live to work.”

  Stung, James laced his fingers tightly round the hot mug, bent his gaze so that he appeared to be examining the old pine table inherited from his own family, with its scratches and scores, the legacy of nigh on a hundred years of families with children. “You knew I was ambitious when you married me. You said that was one of the things that attracted you.”

  “It was. It is,” Derry said quickly, “but we’re not just accessories to your life. Remember that, and work should not be the sum total. I know you love what you do, but at the end of the day, it’s just work. We are your family.”

  “I’m sorry.” James shot her an apologetic grin. “You’re right. I have been neglecting you and the twins and to tell the truth the whole thing is beginning to stress me out. I’m even beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t give up politics altogether and move into something more secure and less pressured. Consultancy, or some such.” A wicked glint entered his eye. “Or maybe organic fish farming”

  Derry smiled back always willing to be charmed by him. Reaching across the table, she took one of his fine-boned, well-shaped hands, remembering as she did so that they we re also one of the things that had attracted her to him and how the very first night he’d made love to her, he played her like a musical virtuoso. “You! A fish farmer? Unlikely, I feel considering the occasional fish and chip supper is as far as you proceed down that particular route. Anyway, politics is in your blood. It’s what you do. You could as soon give up breathing.” Gently letting go of his hand, she picked up her mug and took a thoughtful sip. “You know we haven’t spoken to each other properly like this for ages and the truth is neither one of us is without sin, as it were. Maybe I have been too wrapped up with Gabby lately and maybe you’ve been too much into your work.” Her face brightened. “So, here’s an idea. Why don’t we ask Sheila round to baby-sit the twins and Gabby at the weekend and you and I will put on our glad rags and go out to dinner and spend,” she wafted her fingers mockingly in the air, “a bit of quality couple time together. Millefiori, that new Italian restaurant in Grafton Street is supposed to be excellent. Sheila went there last week. Apparently the osso buco is to die for.”

  James made a little moue of regret. “It sounds wonderful, sweetheart, but I’m afraid I can’t. Have you forgotten it’s the second but last weekend before the elections and it’ll be all shoulders to the wheel. It would be a bit rich to expect the minions to turn up without the boss man showing his face.” Atlas, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he sighed tiredly. “God only knows what time I’m going to get back to my pit.”

  Disappointed, Derry teased with a forefinger at the mass of beige bubbles edging the rim of her mug. She felt thoroughly tired, weary and defeated herself. “It was just an idea. We’ll put it on hold.” Like everything else!

  Late that night she received the first in a long series of silent phone calls.

  “Who was it?” James enquired sleepily, as she trudged back upstairs at one o’clock in the morning. She kept meaning to put an extension in upstairs, but somehow it never moved any further down her to-do list.

  “No one. A wrong number, I expect.” Climbing back into bed, she turned to one side and felt him curve his warm body round her. Drawing his hand across her narrow waist, she closed her eyes. This was the way they always slept, regardless of whether they’d had all out war earlier. Come the night, the white flag was hoisted and all hostilities ceased.

  “Bastards! Why can’t they be more careful?” James muttered drowsily, but if Derry had been able to see his face, she would have seen that his own eyes were wide open and he was frowning at a dimly-lit point on the wall over her shoulder. For a long time, he lay awake, listening to her even breathing. Her conscience, at least, was clear.

  CHAPTER 11

  Deeply ashamed without really knowing quite why and frightened half to death, Theresa ne
ver told anyone about the dreadful ordeal that had befallen her on the night of Michael Kinnane’s seventeenth birthday party.

  The dawn chorus was performing both a requiem for the passing of the night and a paean of praise to the rising sun, when finally she gathered strength enough to stagger through the gaping doorway of the gate lodge. Clutching the ripped material of her dress across her chest with one hand, the platform shoes carelessly swinging from the other, she started out for home, her gait a million miles removed from that of the jaunty young girl who had set out only a few short hours before. All that seemed like a lifetime ago now, a time when, innocence intact, her greatest worry was that her father might catch her wearing lipstick, perfume and a mini-dress. But that innocence was gone now, stolen forever, the brutality of its taking marked by a rash of ugly bruises on her arms and legs and a trail of dark, encrusted blood on the inside of her thighs. Witnessed only by the birds and an old red fox that had tarried too long at his prowling, her progress was slow, like the pitiful shamblings of an elderly woman. When finally she reached the house, she stood for a moment looking nervously for signs of life, a light behind one of its blank, staring windows, a thin stream of blue peat smoke rising up from a chimney, anything to indicate that her mother or father were up and about, but, to her relief, there was nothing. Grey, four-square, unpretentious, the old country house, the likes of which could be found up and down the length of Ireland stood, as it had for over a hundred years, a haven of security for those who lived within the sanctuary of its walls and a touchstone of blessed normality. Covertly, Theresa approached the house from the back, retrieving the spare key from where it was hidden underneath an old flower before carefully inserting it in the lock and opening the door as quietly as possible. Gently closing it behind her, she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness inside. All was silent except for the resonating tick-tock of the grandfather clock by the front door in the hallway and the occasional hiss of a shifting coal that had been banked down for the night in the great, black-leaded kitchen range. The comforting smell of the beeswax lavender polish her mother used on the furniture added to the wonderful sense of familiarity that seemed to hold out its arms to welcome her and which, until now, she had never been conscious of appreciating. Slowly, cautiously, she made her way upstairs, remembering just in time to avoid the loose board on the step half-way up which squeaked horribly and had done for as long as she could remember. It was just one of the numerous jobs on her father’s task list that he would probably never get round to. There was another loose floorboard, almost directly outside Derry’s room and she took extra care to step over that one, reassured by the sound of the gentle snuffling of her baby sister issuing through the tiny gap around the frame where the wood had warped and split. A sudden deeper snore from the same direction told her immediately that her mother, exhausted no doubt from the demands of her family, especially Derry and keeping house, had fallen asleep there too, as she settled Derry down for the night. Theresa sent up a quick prayer of thanks. It was not unknown for her mother to spend the whole night in Derry’s room and, as her father was wont to go down to Doonican’s public house in the evening for a chat and a game of cards, he would have had no way of being alerted to the fact that his fifteen-year old daughter had not come home.