Ninemile House Page 15

  Gabby’s lips narrowed into a thin white line. “Well, I don’t know where you heard that from, Derry, but it’s a load of old rubbish. I’ve never ridden a horse in my life. I’ve never even been this close to one before.”

  Stunned at this blatant lie, Derry was just about to protest, but something cautioned her to let it pass, at least for the moment. Instead, she laughed lightly. “Oh sorry, my mistake. Maybe it’s because I like riding so much myself that I just assume everyone else does too. I must have you mixed up with somebody else.”

  “But I do like horses,” Gabby assured her, plainly worried that her sister might have taken offence. “It’s just that I don’t know anything about them.”

  “Well maybe you can learn some day.” Deliberately making no big deal of it, Derry turned her attention back to the horse. “Come on you,” she said affectionately, nuzzling her face into the side of his neck. “Let’s go for a bit of a gallop and blow the cobwebs away.” Springing onto a nearby mounting block, she pulled herself up onto his back and with a light dig of her heels into Frisco’s sides cantered off across to the far side, conscious of the envious burn of Gabby’s eyes on her back every single step of the way, the almost tangible longing that for reasons known only to her sister she was determined to deny.

  It had been Sheila’s idea to take Gabby to visit Frisco, in the hope that it might kick-start her into talking about her childhood and pave the way for Derry to open the tricky subject of the child she had been forced to give up and the attempts the American PI was making to track him down. But so far, Gabby hadn’t given an inch. Disappointed, but not yet disheartened, Derry still had one more string to her bow. Mary, her friend, whose stables these were, had recently given birth to a baby boy and Derry intended to call into the house to see them both before they left for home. Maybe, just maybe, the sight of the child would open the floodgates.

  ***

  “Here Gabby, hold Damian for a minute for me, while I go and make the tea.” Primed in advance, Mary handed her newborn son into Gabby’s arms and bustled off to the kitchen with Derry hotfooting it after her on the pretext of going to lend her a hand. Peeking around the door a few moments later, she watched her sister hold the baby carefully away from her almost at arms length, making no attempt whatsoever to cuddle him, to goo at him or to play with him or even, as is most women’s natural instinct, to breathe in deep lungfuls of his sweet baby smell. With the taking of her own baby, it seemed that Gabby had completely closed down the maternal side of herself and now she was at a total loss as to how to react. But there had to be some way to get through to her, Derry thought, some key, some combination that would unfasten the lock that had clicked into place thirty years before. Reluctant, she put the matter back on hold.

  A second opportunity presented itself far sooner than she anticipated. Settling down to watch one of Gabby’s favourite Australia soaps one night, she was amazed to find the storyline centred on the adoption of one of the character’s baby.

  “Why is she having it adopted,” she asked Gabby casually, not missing the sudden tension in her sister’s body and the way she was perched on the edge of her chair, her eyes glued to the screen, as if fearful of missing a second. At first Gabby didn’t answer, but when Derry repeated the question, the words came hurtling out of her with all the velocity of a machine gun.

  “She was a bad girl. She wasn’t married. It’s for her own good.”

  “Oh I see. And is that what happened to you,” Derry probed gently but, her face suddenly frozen, Gabby didn’t reply. “It wasn’t your fault,” Derry continued gently. “You were just a child yourself. What happened to you was wrong. All wrong. You shouldn’t have had to pay such a high price for one mistake. These days you can have a whole raft of illegitimate children and nobody bats an eyelid.” Erroneously, she took courage from Gabby’s silence. “But we can try and make it right.” She took a deep decisive breath. “Gabby, we’re going to find your baby. We’re going to find Michael. The people who adopted him were -” So sudden and so piercing was Gabby’s scream when it came, that she almost toppled off her seat with shock.

  “No! No! No! Derry you don’t understand!” Leaping to her feet, Gabby began grabbing and breaking everything she could get her hands on, flinging ashtrays and glasses from her with such fury that Derry found herself cowering with her hands over her head. “You don’t understand a thing. I don’t want to see Michael. I never want to see Michael again. I just want to forget he ever existed.” Finally exhausted, she subsided into an armchair, covering her face with her hands and bursting into noisy tears that went on and on till able to take no more, Derry ran blindly out of the room.

  To his credit, James refrained from saying, “I told you so.” Instead, he cradled his devastated wife in his arms, patting her gently on the back at intervals, as he would one of the twins and dropping a succession of comforting kisses on her wet face.

  “It was always a risk, Derry. There was no way you could have known she’d react like that.”

  “But you warned me,” Derry sobbed, soaking his shirt front. “And I was too arrogant to listen. I thought I knew what was best. I always think I know what’s best for everybody.”

  “Look,” James patted her again. “You were only doing what you thought was genuinely right. The fact that I disagreed is neither here nor there. I’ve always been a cautious curmudgeon. You should know that. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m always right either.”

  “But she went ballistic! Really ballistic!” Hiccoughing, Derry peeled herself off his shirt long enough to look up in his face with wide, still shocked eyes. “Throwing things about the place. Screaming and shouting. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. If there had been a knife handy, she’d probably have stuck it in me.”

  “Nonsense,” James cuddled her close again. “She didn’t aim anything at you, did she? So there was never any intention to harm you, was there?”

  “I suppose not,” Derry sniffed, slightly mollified. “But you know what’s puzzling me? Angie said she was wonderful with Michael. You’d think she’d jump at the chance of being reunited with him.” Her brow corrugated as she tried to bring the conversation with Angie to mind. Was that, in fact, what she’d said? And slowly it came back to her. She never spoke about him, that’s what Angie said and Derry and, presumably Angie too, had read that as meaning that Gabby couldn’t bear to because she loved him so much. Never for one minute had it occurred to her that the opposite might be true, that she might have viewed his adoption as heaven sent.

  ***

  Hands steepled in prayer, Gaby knelt on the floor, rocking backwards and forwards before the new Sacred Heart lamp, James at Derry’s insistence had acquired from God Knows where. On the bed, her clothes lay in a pile, only the ones she had taken from Ninemilehouse, though, and nothing her sister had given her. She’d want all of those back, of course, and rightly so after the trouble Gabby had caused, breaking all her beautiful crystal like that and wrecking the sitting room like a mad woman. It was only a matter of time before she came to take her back to the convent and steeling herself,

  Gabby waited for the knock on the door.

  “Oh Sacred Heart of Jesus,” her voice intoned, like the scratching of an old gramophone record, “I place all my trust in thee. Oh Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in thee.”

  ***

  Theresa heaved and retched the contents of her stomach into the outhouse toilet, one hand vainly trying to hold the strands of her long black hair out of the way, the all-pervading smell of the cloudy-white Jeyes Fluid at the bottom of the pan, catching in her throat and causing her to gag all the harder. Beads of sweat gathered on her brow and ran down into her eyes in little rivers, the salty content making her eyes tear-up, and still the awful gut-clenching heaving went on till, eventually, it seemed that the only thing left to void was her internal organs themselves. When, mercifully, it was finally over, she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, unaware that her mot
her, her normally ruddy face bleached to a ghostly white, her mouth stretched wide with the horror at the inference of what she had just heard, stood waiting for her to emerge. And as the door slowly opened and Theresa, staggered out, she launched herself at her like a missile, belabouring her wildly about the face and head, obscenities she had never before uttered hurtling like poisoned darts from her mouth, her flailing hands catching in and ripping her daughter’s hair out by the roots. Shocked beyond reason by both the violence and the unexpectedness of the attack and genuinely ignorant as to its cause, Theresa tried hopelessly to defend herself, but only when, she collapsed cowering in the mud churned up by an earlier downpour, did her mother finally back off.

  Towering above her daughter, one fist raised, as though ready to strike at her again, she set about demanding answers.

  “So, Miss, who is he? Who did this to you?” Her breath coming in hard painful gasps, her whole body heaving with exertion, she took a threatening step forward. “I’ll have his name from you or, so help me, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

  Barely able to speak and terrified out of her mind, Theresa quailed before her. “Who, Mammy? Who are you talking about?”

  “Who Mammy? Who Mammy?” Her mouth twisted in vicious mimicry, her mother screamed her rage to the heavens. “The man who did this to you, of course. WHO-IS-HE?”

  Shuffling quickly back on her knees, Theresa cringed against the wooden planks of the outhouse, as her eyes glittering dangerously, her mother moved another step closer. “Nobody did anything to me. I-I swear. I-I’m just a bit sick, that’s all.”

  “Oh, no, Theresa. That’s no ordinary sickness.” Raking distracted fingers through the salt and pepper mix of her hair, almost as thick and long as her daughter’s and unbound, as it was still so early in the morning, her mother shook her head in disbelief. “I know that kind of sickness well. I suffered from it morning, noon and night when I was expecting both yourself and Derry? And don’t think I haven’t seen you these past few mornings galloping up the garden, with your hand held over your mouth. Indeed I have and, God help me, I’ve tried to block it out, to pretend that it wasn’t what I thought, that I was evil for even thinking it.” All the anger going out of her suddenly, she crouched down beside her flinching daughter, reached out and this time traced a gentle, sorrowful hand down along the red marks and bruises inflicted by her own violence. “Oh, Theresa, Theresa, child, I’m sorry for hitting you. It was the shock of it all! I wanted so much more for you, a good life and a happy one, and now – now, you’re ruined.” Defeated in her hopes and dreams, she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. “Barely fifteen. Just a child yourself. Oh, for the love of God, tell me who was it did this to you and there might be some chance that we can salvage something.”

  Theresa didn’t tell her mother and when her mother told her father that his little girl was pregnant by some unknown man, in a towering rage and with the tendons on his neck standing out like steel cords, he bullied and cajoled her by turns for the name. Theresa blanched, but stayed silent on the matter. When frustrated beyond all measure, he flayed the tender skin from her back with his broad leather belt and the white of her blouse turned crimson, Theresa, tears flowing freely, clamped her teeth against the pain, but offered no name.

  Father Dooley arrived, summonsed as a last resort. Ranting and raving, he threatened her with hellfire and brimstone and every conceivable kind of damnation both his own imagination and the weighty tome of his bible could supply. Though her heart was quaking in her boots, Theresa didn’t tell. Instead she stood quietly before him, her eyes modestly cast to the floor, the infuriatingly perfect picture of disobedient obedience. Frustrated, the priest spat full in her face, cursed her for the devil’s spawn and struck her over the head with the same bible. Theresa crumpled to the floor, but when he returned to his presbytery, he was no wiser as to the name of the culprit.

  Theresa told no one. No one at all, because no matter how afraid of them she was, no matter how afraid they made her feel, her greatest fear of all was that the man would come back and the next time, she was in no doubt, he would kill her.

  Traumatised both by the beatings and the horrific news that she was expecting a baby, Theresa heard her parents arguing long into the night, suspects’ names ricocheting back and forth between them like bullets shot from a gun. And time and time again, one name wended its way up along the stairs, down the corridor and into her bedroom. Michael! Oh, Michael!

  “T’was Michael Kinnane, wasn’t it?” Pounding up the stairs, her father yanked her out of the bed and jabbed the accusation into her chest. His face was so close to hers she could feel both the mist of his spittle and the heat of his cigarette-scented, slightly-sour breath against her already flushed cheeks. “You were always sweet on him, running around batting your eyes, but we all thought it was just a bit of childish flirting. Innocent! God, what an easy target you must have been. The trainer’s daughter! His birthday present to himself, the dirty little bastard!” He jabbed again, more forcefully, almost knocking her off her feet. “Oh, yes, we’ve been working it out, your mother and me. That’s why he had that big argument with his father after his seventeenth birthday. His old man must have found out and that’s why he took off and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him ever since. And so well he could take off, free as a bird, and leave you here to pay the price! Leave us here to pay the price with our hard-earned respectability trampled into the mud.” He straightened. Six foot in his stockinged feet, he managed to look somehow diminished. There was a hunch to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before, a vanquished bent to the normally proud set of his head. “I’m finished there now. There’s no way I can go to work for Kinnane again. I’d be a bloody laughingstock. God knows how he’s managed to look me in the face for the past few months. Maybe he was laughing up his sleeve at me all along for all I know. Like son, like father!”

  He cried, her father, the day Father Dooley came in his shiny black Anglia to take her to Ninemilehouse, his big bull’s head cradled in his hands, tears oozing from between his fingers, a terrible sound coming from his mouth that even all these years down the line, Theresa flinched to remember. He was a broken man. She’d broken her father.

  Her mother cried too, folding her tightly in her arms, then without warning almost violently pushing her towards the priest, as if to hold on too long to her, would be to relent.

  Kneeling on the back seat of the priest’s car, the rough leather ridges digging into her bare knees, she pressed her face against the rear window and watched her family, father, mother, and baby Derry turn and go back inside the house. Then, she cried, soundlessly her mouth wide open in the way of a child, a torrent of tears and snot raining down her face and dripping onto the priest’s upholstery.

  After that, she remembered only snapshots of the journey, the back of Father Dooley’s red neck bulging out over his dog-collar, a girl she knew from school seemingly suspended in time as she jumped from one square to the next on a hop-scotched pavement, a barrenness of brown and green fields, a lone amber-eyed ram peering through a gap in a fence, the great grey concrete arch of the Ninemilehouse Convent looming out of nowhere and the maw of the rusty metal gates creaking open to swallow them up.

  Sr Alphonsus, a nun, whose comfortably-round Russian peasant-doll body, apple cheeks and twinkly blue eyes, belied the true sadism of her nature, ushered them into the convent and, as they passed through a warren of highly-polished marble floors, Theresa became aware of a number of ghostlike creatures flattening themselves against the walls, faces pallid in the gloom, eyes downcast, shapeless grey shifts lending to the spectral appearance. This was her first glimpse of the Magdalenes, the penitents, the fallen women, the misfits, the mentally impaired, the orphans, the dross, the hidden sinners. The shame of Catholic Ireland.

  The following day, dressed in a shapeless grey shift herself, her hair shaved almost to the bone, Theresa, re-named Gabby, joined the ranks of inmates expurgating their sins in the grea
t industrial sinks of the Ninemilehouse laundry. Thirty years later, she was still there.

  ***

  “Gabby?” Gabby froze, as the expected knock sounded on the door. “Gabby, can I come in?” When no answer was forthcoming, Derry eased the door open and peered round the jamb, her gaze going from Gabby kneeling on the floor, to the bed where her clothes were tossed in a pile. “Good heavens, Gabby, what on earth are you doing? Why are your clothes piled up like that?”

  Gabby didn’t turn round, but she did get to her feet, slowly, like an arthritic old lady, holding on for support to the bedside table upon which the Sacred Heart lamp rested. “Can you lend me a suitcase Derry, only you threw mine out, didn’t you?”