Ninemile House Page 3
“Theresa was the same.”
One thing she and her sister had in common, then.
“She was like your father’s shadow, always trailing him over to the stables, helping with the grooming and mucking out and occasionally even riding the horses out in the morning, although thoroughbreds are notoriously highly-strung, so that didn’t happen very often. Still, she had a natural seat, your father said and he was as proud of her as he would have been of any son. She dreamed of owning her own horse and competing in the Grand National over in England one day.” She gave a throaty chuckle. “Just like Elizabeth Taylor in that film National Velvet. Mind you, she was every bit as beautiful.”
“So what went wrong?” Avidly, Derry hung on her words, desperate to learn more about the sister who had been dead to her for so long.
A closed look stole over her mother’s face, but then she seemed to come to some decision and when she looked at Derry again, the faded eyes overflowed and a tear slipped down her cheek. “Michael Kinnane,” she said baldly, “that’s what went wrong. God rot him wherever he is.”
***
By the time Derry left the hospital the rain had set in, great slanting sheets borne in from the Atlantic on a westerly wind. Pulling her collar up around her ears, she made her way down several winding backstreets to where she’d parked her car. Not the safest place to leave a top of the range Z3, a tenth wedding anniversary gift from James, but with parking at a premium in Dublin, you took what you could get. Fortunately, the few dodgy-looking characters lurking nearby were more interested in getting their latest fix than in vandalising or stealing her car. Still, she breathed a sigh of relief once she was inside, with the doors safely locked, and it wasn’t as if this was a journey she’d be making for much longer.
The doctor too her to one side as she left her mother that evening. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing further that can be done. The best we can hope for now is to make her as comfortable as possible. It’s all palliative care from hereon in, I’m afraid. After that . . . ”
Folding her hand between his capable ones, he squeezed comfortingly and even in the midst of the turmoil she was feeling, she found herself wondering how often he’d had to hand down a death sentence before and how he still managed to sound so sincere, so caring.
“Thank you,” she’d said, remembering her manners like the good girl she was brought up to be. Thank you, Dr Burke. Thank you for telling me my mother is dying. Thank you for turning my world upside down. Leaning her head on the steering-wheel, Derry allowed the tears to fall freely, as freely as the rain that was battering on the windscreen. In another lifetime, she was riding high. Thirty-five years of age and already an acclaimed journalist, married to James, Jude Law look-alike, one of Ireland’s most popular junior politicians and darling of the public. Mother to two beautiful twin daughters and affluent resident of Killiney in south County Dublin, Derry was one of the privileged ones, one of the successful elite, a mover and shaker in society with the world at her size 5 Prada’s. Then in the space of a heartbeat, it was all change. Her mother, the mainstay of her life was dying, and her sister, dead for the last thirty years, was living. Somewhere she had a niece or nephew, about whom she knew absolutely nothing. James was being difficult. The twins were being, well, five-year-old twins, and her erstwhile mega-successful career was in danger of fizzling out like a burnt-out meteor and falling rapidly to earth. Derry could hardly remember the last time she’d had a major scoop. If things continued in such arid vein, sooner or later she would find herself sidelined to the women’s pages, extolling the virtues of this foundation or that cellulite treatment and smiling vacuously from above her by-line at the top of the page, carefully airbrushed, of course, to fit in with the content.
A sharp rapping on the driver’s window brought her hurtling upright.
“Hey, Miss, d’ya want some weed?” Outside, one of the unsavoury-looking characters had detached himself from the shadows and his ferret-facet, jaundiced in the light from a nearby street-lamp and bearing a long scar from a knife-fight at some earlier stage in his life, pressed close to the window. Thank God she had locked the doors.
“No thanks.” She mouthed the words and shook her head. What she really needed was a stiff drink, a course of Prozac and the ability to turn back time. Fingers trembling, she fumbled the key in the ignition, gunned the engine and begged him to give her the excuse to run him down.
CHAPTER 5
Ballyliss – Co Tipperary 1969
“I won’t be long, Mam!” Theresa called, giving herself a last brief examination in the hall mirror, before heading out the back door. It had to be brief in case her mother came out of her little sister’s bedroom and demanded to know what she thought she was doing wearing lipstick. Lipstick and perfume. And her only just turned fifteen! In her parents’ book, only trollops wore make-up. According to her father, youth was the only adornment a girl needed to make her beautiful. But a little bit of lipstick, Theresa reasoned, and a dab of 4711 Eau De Cologne would make her even more beautiful. And she wanted to be beautiful. Had to be beautiful if Michael Kinnane was to kiss her again. Michael Kinnane. His name was like a prayer on her lips. Tall, with wavy blond hair and the deeply tanned skin that came from spending most of your time outdoors, eyes blue as periwinkles, and a smile that would stop your heart, Theresa had been in love with him since she was about first years old and had first spotted him out exercising one of his father’s horses, although he was only a couple of years older than herself. The image of them, the golden haired youth and the enormous, black Arab stallion had imprinted itself on her brain and a nameless kind of longing had risen up in her, which only now could she recognise as love. Love in its purest, most innocent sense.
“Well, see to it that you behave yourself,” her mother’s standard admonishment followed her out the door, as she busied herself putting her sister, Derry to bed who, judging by a spirited bout of squalling coming from the room, wasn’t going down without a fight. “And be back home by latest half past nine.”
“Ten, Mam,” Theresa bargained, as she always did. “I won’t finish mucking out till then.” Mucking out indeed! She allowed herself a small smile. There was going to be no mucking out tonight. Instead, she was going to a party. Michael’s seventeenth birthday party. Her first real grown-up party. The excitement of keeping it to herself over the last couple of weeks had almost killed her, but she knew her parents would never have let her go. Never for one minute did they forget that Daddy worked for the Kinnanes and that, nice and all though they were, socially, the two families were on a completely different footing. But Michael didn’t see it that way. In his eyes, she wasn’t just the trainer’s daughter. In his eyes, she was the most beautiful girl in the world. He’d told her that. Right before he kissed her in the stables last week. Theresa felt her face flame at the memory and the little clutch of excitement the touch of his lips engendered start up again in the pit of her stomach.
With a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching from the house, she dashed round to the shed at the back where she’d hidden the mini-dress and high heels she’d borrowed from Kitty McDaid. Two years older than Theresa, Kitty spent a fortnight every year over in London visiting her married sister and consequently was regarded by her peers as something of a style icon. No one else they knew had ever been to Carnaby Street, shopped in Biba or been to see the Beatles in concert. To her parent’s generation, though, the general consensus seemed to be that Kitty McDaid was a brazen strap, whose predicted less-than-spotless future was mulled over with narrowed eyes and even narrower lips. Theresa felt very daring and very grown up as she slipped out of her dungarees and into the dress. Cut from delicate white cheesecloth with a rosebud pattern, the dress had a sweetheart neckline, sleeves that belled out just above the elbows and a skirt that flared out high up on her slender thighs. It was the most beautiful thing Theresa had ever seen. The shoes, the same pink as the rosebuds adorning the dress, with a small platform sole
and narrow ankle straps completed the outfit, but, Theresa, being unused to wearing high-heels, deemed it wiser to put back on her gum boots and slip the shoes on as soon as she reached Kinnane’s driveway.
A short time later, tottering unsteadily up along it to the front of the house, she found herself feeling unaccountably nervous, nauseous almost, perhaps because she had never actually been inside the house before. Any time she spent there was spent in the stables or paddock. She tried to shrug off the feeling of butterflies dive-bombing her tummy. After all, she had known Mr and Mrs Kinnane all her life and although Mr Kinnane had the reputation for being something of a hard man and could be a bit sharp at times, generally he confined his ill humour to those who worked for him. For Theresa, though, there had always been a smile and a couple of teasing words about all the hearts she was going to break when she grew up. Once, when she was younger, he had even hoisted her up on his shoulders galloping like a pretend horse around the paddock. But his hands were rough against the tender inside of her thighs and the whole experience had left her feeling uncomfortable in a way she had no words to describe. Instinctively she had avoided him for a long time after that, although she often felt the burn of his eyes as she busied herself about the place. But all that was in the past and determinedly, Theresa raised her chin and flicked the luxuriant mass of her hair back over her shoulders. Thanks to Kitty McDaid and her borrowed finery, tonight she felt as good as anyone else, even Deirdre Kelly and Coleen O’Neill, girls from her class at school, both of whom had also been invited to Michael’s party and the pair of whom would, no doubt, be dressed up to the nines. Deirdre’s father was a doctor and Coleen’s a solicitor and, young though she was, Theresa knew the old saying about birds of a feather. Still, she vowed, stopping briefly to adjust an ankle strap, she would wipe their eye for them when they saw how crazy Michael was about her. Her heart soared in her breast as she approached the front door and tentatively raised her hand to knock.
The minute Michael’s mother opened the door, Theresa knew she’d made a big mistake. Stepping back a bit, her eyes widening, the woman raked her up and down in consternation.
“Theresa? Good heaven’s child, what on earth have you got on and what are you doing here anyway? Is something wrong at home?” And then Theresa heard the giggles, the shame-making sniggers as, drawn by the tone of Mrs Kinnane’s voice, a number of the young guests, including Deirdre and Coleen congregated behind her for a gawk.
“The . . . the party,” Theresa stammered, feeling tears well up at the back of her eyes and barely able to get the words out. “M – Michael.”
Mrs Kinnane’s brow cleared. “Asked you to come along to help, did he? Thoughtless boy. He should have said. Besides we’ve got more than enough staff to cope and, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re not exactly dressed for the part, Theresa, are you? In fact, I’m surprised your mother let you out in that get-up. I always thought she was a very sensible kind of woman, myself.”
More sniggers, a couple of barely–suppressed catty comments from the on-lookers and Theresa wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up and swallow her. So much for her mini-dress and high-heels. With great clarity, she suddenly she saw herself through the eyes of her detractors, a young slightly ridiculous figure in a cheap dress and tarty shoes, and the insight weakened her, so that for a moment she had to reach out and clutch at the doorframe. Like ice-water trickling through her veins, she knew for a certainty that where these people were concerned, she was an outsider and would never be good enough to mingle with their kind. From within the house came the wonderful smell of something cooking, the clink of silver and crystal, a snatch of animated conversation, a few notes of the latest Beatles song. “Love Love Me Do”. A different world from hers. Full of excitement. Full of promise. But not for her.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mrs Kinnane, reached out and patted her shoulder, her diamond engagement ring winking an SOS in the light spilling down from the great Waterford Crystal chandelier that lit up the hallway. “You go on round the back to the kitchen. I’m sure we can find something for you to do, a bit of washing up or the like and I’ve an old apron you can throw on.”
It was all too much. With her dignity in ruins, Theresa turned and ran back up the drive, but the high-heeled shoes impeded her progress and the final insult came when she went sprawling on the ground, her mini-dress flying up around her waist. With gales of laughter ringing in her ears, she dragged herself out of sight and into the ruins of the old gate-house that stood at the top of the drive where, burying her face in her hands she cried until she could cry no more, sinking eventually into an exhausted torpor.
***
Ninemile House Convent – Tipperary 1999
“Gabby, Gabby, wake up, you’re having that nightmare again! I could hear you roaring like a bull from all the way along the corridor.”
Shaken awake, Gabby struggled to sit up in bed. “Oh, Angie,” she gasped, tears still running down her face, “that man. I’m so frightened. Don’t let him touch me. Please don’t let him touch me!”
“What man?” Angela demanded, slipping in beside her and shivering from cold in her threadbare nightdress. “Gabby, why won’t you ever tell me? Who is he? What did he do? I can’t help you, unless you tell me everything.” But Gabby had withdrawn once more into herself, just as she always did and Angela knew the subject would never be broached again. Not until the next nightmare. “Go back to sleep,” she told her friend now, wrapping the still trembling figure in her arms, even though she knew if the nuns caught her there’d be hell to pay. “You’re all right now, do you hear me? I won’t let anything happen to you. Promise.”
***
“You can’t just come wading in here reading the Riot Act.”
Leaning across her heavy oak desk, broad hands firmly planted one at each corner, Sr Peter bent a glacial stare upon the young woman staring so coolly back from the other side. She disliked the type intensely. Self-possessed little upstarts who’d got further than they’d ever expected and who, as a consequence, thought they could go around throwing their anorectic weight about the place. Oh the days of respect for the religious were well and truly past, all right!
“Where were you for the last thirty years, eh? Where has all the sudden concern for your sister come from?” Deep grooves traversed her forehead. “And now, because for some unknown reason it suits you, you come marching in here like you’ve some god-given right to turn Gabby’s life upside down.”
Derry met her stare head-on. “Theresa! Her name is Theresa and she is my sister,” she said levelly. “I’ve a perfect right to enquire after her.”
“Enquire after her, is it?” Sr Peter sneered. “After three decades of silence? Well, it took you long enough, I must say. For all you know she could have been dead and buried.”
Never the most patient of people and overwrought from recent events, Derry struggled to hold on to her temper. “Look, Sr Peter, until just over a week ago I actually did think she was dead and buried. And now, I find she isn’t, and I want to see her and take her home with me. Is that so difficult to understand?”
Sr Peter’s hands whitened about the knuckles and her eyes, hard at the best of times, shot flints across the desk. “Take her home is it. Now, you understand this, Mrs Quinn. Gabby, Theresa, if you insist, is institutionalised. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since she came to us. The world’s moved on. It’s a different place. Your sister would be lost out there. Confused and frightened. Here is the only place she knows. This is where she feels safe. It’s where she belongs now.”
“I’ll look after her,” Derry asserted, her chin going up in the air as a defence against the older woman and looking a lot braver than she felt, because this was an argument that James, too, had raised. “She’ll adapt.” She curled her lip. “She adapted to life in this . . . this hellhole, didn’t she?”
“This hellhole, as you call it, has been her home, the only one she’s known since your parents com
mitted her.” The nun thrust her formidable chest out. “And yes, I hold my hand up, mistakes were made by the Sister of Compassion, amongst others. God knows the press has had a field day over the past few years pillorying us and, in many cases, deservedly so.” Her chins rippled. “But times have changed, Mrs Quinn, and Ninemilehouse has changed too. The few women left here are no longer badly treated. Yes, they work in the laundries and kitchen, but only to give them a sense of purpose and they get paid too. Not much, I grant you, but it’s all we can afford. We don’t get the same kind of funding from the government or support from the public as before. And we’re not as black as we’re painted, you know. What people don’t seem to realise, to appreciate is that the Magdalene Homes provided the public with a valuable service for a long time. Where else would all the unmarried mothers have ended up, do you think? In work houses? On the streets, selling themselves body and soul to every lowlife going? Most, you can be sure, wouldn’t have seen a year out. Neither they, nor their children.” Slowly she let herself sink into the old leather chair behind her, causing the springs to groan, motioning Derry into the chair opposite. “Best you think on, Mrs Quinn, before you go scooting up on the moral high ground, shaking your banner at the likes of me. People, including your own mother and father, let me tell you, were only too happy to lock away and forget the evidence of their family’s shame behind high convent walls.” Her chins rippled again. “So hold on to your stone and don’t go casting it just yet, will you?”