Ninemile House Read online

  “Oh, Gabby, of course they do.” With a sinking feeling, Derry was beginning to realise the magnitude of what she might have let herself in for. Of course, she had forgotten that when Gabby - she had to make a conscious effort to call her Gabby and not Theresa - had entered the convent, cars, especially in a backward area like Ninemilehouse were few and far between and, true for her, the few that existed were only driven by men. The priest usually, the odd wealthy farmer and occasionally the guards, though quite often they too had to be content with either Shanks’s mare or pushbikes. “The world’s changed a bit since you were last out,” she told her gently. “These days, women can do virtually anything men can. And practically every dog and devil has a car. In fact, if you haven’t got one, people look at you a bit funny, like you might be retarded or something.”

  “I didn’t know women could drive.” Gabby still looked unconvinced. “Are you sure you won’t crash. I don’t want to die yet, you know.”

  Derry had to smile at that. “Well, if I do, it’ll be the first time and unless we’re terribly unlucky, that’s not going to happen. Now get in, would you. We’ve got a fair old journey ahead of us.”

  When, gingerly, Gabby finally got into the car, the seatbelt turned out to be another mystery. Leaning forward, Derry clipped the buckle into place, patiently explaining what it was for, then wishing she hadn’t bothered as her sister looked more terrified than ever and her grip on the brown-paper package intensified till her knuckles took on the chalk white of a corpse. With an inward sigh, Derry fastened her own seatbelt, switched on the engine and pulled carefully away.

  “Don’t look back, Gabby,” she warned as she drove through the huge metallic gates that added to the convent’s prison-like air. “Never look back. That’s all in the past now, I promise you.” Removing her hand from the gear stick, she patted her sister’s knee gently. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Isn’t that exciting?” She slid a sideways glance across at Gabby, who was sitting bolt upright back against the seat and was dismayed to see tears raining down her cheeks. Grinding to a half again, Derry looked at her perplexed. “God almighty, what’s the matter? I thought you’d be made up to be getting out of that place.”

  “I am,” Gabby sobbed, making no attempt to stem the flood of tears, her nose beginning to run like a child’s. “It’s just that . . . just that . . . “

  Reaching across her, Derry rummaged in the glove compartment, extracting a packet of the baby wipes she always kept on hand for the twins and pulled one free.

  “It’s just that it’s all a bit overwhelming right now. Is that what it is?” She held the tissue to Gabby’s nose, while she blew into it. “Listen to me love, it’ll all work out fine.” The endearment came easily. Naturally. “You’ve got me to take care of you now. And I will! Do you hear me? It’s going to be great having my sister back. We’re going to make up for the time that was stolen from us both. We’re going to get to know each other the way sisters should.” Tenderly, she took another baby wipe from the packet and dabbed at the tear drops on her sister’s cheek and then, almost miraculously, like the sun peeking shyly out from behind a rain cloud, Gabby smiled, a long, slow, sweet smile.

  “Look,” she instructed, pointing off into the distance where a mountain lofted majestically above the green and brown and mauve patchwork of fields. “Do you see that mountain, Derry? That’s Slievnamon, the mountain of the women. Isn’t it beautiful?” Dreamy eyed, her soft Cork accent more pronounced than ever, she followed the direction of her own finger. “I used to look out at it from my bedroom window, sometimes for hours on end and never grow bored. Angie used to cod me that it was just a big hill, an overgrown ant heap.” Earnest, she nodded. “But it’s more than just a mountain, Derry. It’s like magic. Look at the way it changes as the rain clouds sweep across the peak. Like a frown on a perfect face. That’s what Sr Peter said.”

  “Really?” Derry couldn’t imagine the sour-faced nun saying anything so poetical, but maybe beneath her black habit and starchy manner, there lurked the soul of a bard. Somehow, she doubted it.

  “And when it’s sunny, it sparkles and the sheep grazing on the sides stand out like giant daisies. Then, in autumn, the ambers and golds make it look almost as if it’s on fire.” Gabby’s face was glowing and suddenly Derry realised that the beauty of Slievnamon was all her sister had, her only escape from the drab reality of life in the convent and she was touched that she wanted to share it with her.

  “Yes, Gabby, it’s beautiful,” she told her and Gabby rewarded her with yet another great beaming smile, causing a faint memory to tug at the corner of Derry’s mind, a teasing image of a young girl twirling her round and round by her baby arms, a barely recalled echo of girlish laughter, a lingering sensation of joie de vivre.

  “One day, I’m going to climb it.” Determined, Gabby stuck her chin out. Like Derry’s it was pointed and the same dimple she had wondered about did, indeed, play at the side of her sister’s mouth. “One day, I’m going to climb right to the top and just sit there for hours and hours and hours. I am, Derry. I’m telling you, I’m going to climb right to the top.”

  Moved by such fervour, Derry smiled. “One day, Gabby, but not yet, eh? Because right now, you’ve got a whole family to meet and they’re dying to meet you.” And this time, when Derry started the car up and pulled away, Gabby was smiling softly and her grip on the Sacred Heart package eased slightly.

  A short time later as she manoeuvred the car out onto the main road, Derry found herself gripped by another recollection, this time of a big black car and the same young girl’s blurred face gazing forlornly out of the rear window, her hand half raised either in farewell or supplication. Her sister’s face, Derry realised with a pang that brought tears to her eyes and a sudden clutch to her heart, on her way to a lifetime of humiliation and servitude.

  ***

  “Get back in the house, Derry!” As sharp today, as it was all those years ago, her mother’s voice fleshed out the skeletal bones of recall. “Theresa’s gone now. Theresa’s dead. Remember that. Theresa’s dead. You have to forget her now. We all have, although God knows that’s easier said than done.” With just a little more striving, Derry could still feel the slight push on the small of her back that set her small chubby legs stumbling over the doorstep, and hear once again the ever decreasing drone of a car engine as it carried her sister off down the winding Cork roads and out of her life.

  Later that night there had been a storm and she had lain in bed sucking her thumb and watching the way the lightening lit up the night through a gap in the curtains; great grasping fingers of electricity that scratched and ripped their way across the grainy black surface of the sky. “Nothing to worry about,” she’d comforted her five-year old self. “Theresa says that’s just God taking pictures, and the noise is just the little angels banging on drums.” And when the storm had finally passed far away overhead away and the habitual silence of night closed back in round the house enveloping it in a thick black shroud of secrecy, she’d become aware of another sound; her mother keening as though her heart would break and her father shouting angrily, his voice falling like shards of broken glass into the stillness. Derry had pulled the blankets over her head then and in the morning the memory had been successfully erased. Until now.

  CHAPTER 8

  Killiney, South County Dublin – 1999

  Gabby looked as though she might cry. Miserably, she pushed the mound of spaghetti round and round on her plate, causing Dilis and Dara to giggle loudly and do the same with theirs. Anxious, Derry exchanged glances with James, whose expression was nothing short of thunderous, his hand reaching more and more often for his glass of wine.

  “What’s the matter, Gabby?” she asked eventually, when her sister’s meal had taken on Vesuvian proportions on one side of her plate and was in danger of erupting over the edge onto the crisp cotton tablecloth. “Don’t you like your food?”

  Putting down her fork, Gabby hung her head an
d muttered into her plate refusing to meet her sister’s eyes.

  “What’s that?” Derry strained to hear above the twins who, in imitation of their aunt, unceremoniously dumped their own cutlery, dropping their heads so low onto their own plates that their beautiful blond hair trailed in the food.

  “Worms.” Gabby’s voice was barely audible, so much so that Derry was sure she must have misheard her. “I can’t eat this, Derry. They’re like big white worms.”

  “Worms?” Startled, Derry’s eyes flew to her husband’s. “Is that what you said?” she broke off as light suddenly dawned and the twins commenced on a rowdy, sing-song chorus of ‘big white worms, big white worms’. “Oh, gosh, how stupid of me.” She ran a distracted hand through her hair. “I’m sorry, Gabby. It simply never occurred to me that you might not have eaten Spaghetti Bolognese before. It’s such a common dish these days. But, of course, the convent . . .” her voice trailed off helplessly.

  “It’s nothing like worms,” James smiled and kept his voice light, but anyone who knew him well would have recognised the thread of steel running through the words and Dilis and Dara immediately stopped their trick-acting and picked up their forks again. “It’s spaghetti, Gabby, pasta, noodles made from wheat flour and water. It’s an Italian dish that’s usually served with a variety of different sauces – the one we’re having is called Bolognese, which is made mainly from minced meat and tomatoes. Why don’t you just try a small bit? You might find you actually like it.”

  “You don’t have to.” Derry rushed in, raging with herself for being so bloody stupid. Why, oh why, hadn’t it occurred to her that the nuns would have been unlikely to have had anything as sophisticated or foreign as pasta in the convent. More likely, it was plain foods, boiled bacon, cabbage and spuds all the way, and maybe a dried up, tough as old boots roast on Sundays to ring the changes. The kinds of food she, herself, had grown up with, in other words. Yes, indeed, it was far from Italian pastas she was reared. And Spaghetti Bolognese was messy to eat at the best of times, all that twirling it around the fork. She, herself, still managed to drop half of it on her lap, even now. “I can easily make you something else, Gabby. How about egg on toast?” She was coaxing now, trying desperately to make amends for the embarrassing position in which she had inadvertently placed her sister and the ‘worms’. You couldn’t blame the twins for laughing, really you couldn’t. Her only excuse was that spaghetti was quick and easy and with five-year-old twins, a demanding career and a house to run, quick and easy wasn’t to be scoffed at. “Maybe with a sausage or two and a rasher? It’s no trouble, really. To be honest, I’m not much in the mood for spaghetti, myself. It’s one of those things I can take or leave.”

  “Why can’t we have some toast, Mammy, and an egg . . .” Dilis began, only to subside under a murderous look from her father.

  But, Gabby pushed her plate away. “No, thanks, it’s all right. I’m not really hungry, just a bit tired. Would you mind if I just went to bed, Derry?” Her voice remained small, timid, and sensing James’s annoyance and no doubt frightened by it, her whole mien was downcast, her shoulders hunched into her neck, head lowered, like a child fearful of being punished.

  Picking up on Gabby’s fear, Derry shot James a filthy look, realising all too belatedly, that men were also a species with whom her sister would have had very little in the line of contact since entering Ninemilehouse. And just look at where the contact she’d had previously had led. No wonder the poor thing was terrified. She made up her mind to have a stiff word with her husband. If ever his spoonful of sugar technique was called for, it was now with his sister-in-law.

  Pushing her chair back from the table, she rose to her feet. “Of course, I don’t mind, Gabby. You must be exhausted after the day you’ve had.” She waved a subsiding hand at the twins who were making moves to climb down from the table. “Not so fast, you two. You haven’t finished your dinner yet. Let me just go and settle your aunty and then I’ll be right back. James, keep an eye on them, would you?” She smiled at the children. “Now say goodnight, God bless, Aunty Gabby.”

  “Goodnight, God bless, Aunty Gabby,” the twins echoed obediently, puckering up their small mouths to blow kisses, whilst James unbent enough to nod curtly.

  “Goodnight, Gabby. I hope you sleep well.”

  Derry scowled. The sooner he started raiding the sugar bowl, the better.

  With a shy goodnight and a smile for them all, Gabby followed her sister up to the beautiful room she had prepared for her and which, when she’d first laid eyes on it had convinced her there had been a terrible mistake.

  “I can’t sleep here,” she’d protested, looking, as Derry was to recount later to James, a bit wild round the eyes and upset. “This is your room. I can’t let you move out of your room for me. It’s far too good. What if I get the sheets dirty?”

  Derry had laughed at that. Poor Gabby, she still had the laundry on the brain and after thirty years, who could blame her? “Well, then I can wash them,” she said lightly, making a mental note to introduce her to the wonders of Mr Hotpoint in case, heaven forbid, she thought she was going to have to sing for her supper, or rather, wash for it. “And it’s not my room. It’s your room. I had it decorated specially for you. So, tell me, do you like it?”

  Overwhelmed, which was exactly the emotion Derry had hoped for, Gabby, gazed around the feminine oasis of soft blue and white, her gaze lingering on the huge French bed, then travelling beyond to the gilt-edged dressing table, on which Derry had laid out a beautiful silver-backed hairbrush, comb and mirror set, along with every conceivable type of cosmetic and face cream, and even a Lalique crystal atomiser filled with own favourite scent. At a hundred odd Euro a bottle, Estee Lauder’s Private Collection, wasn’t cheap, but Derry just knew her sister would appreciate it every bit as much as she did. “It’s gorgeous, Derry. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Eyes shining, Gabby took a tentative step forward, her feet sinking into the thick welcoming pile of the cream Wilton carpet. “Even Sr Peter’s room is nowhere near as nice as this and she had the best room in Ninemilehouse.” She omitted to mention that she had only seen the inside of the nun’s room on one occasion, having been peremptorily summonsed with regard to some perceived misdemeanour or other, and punished severely with a broad leather belt. A criss-cross of raised silver scars traversing the back of her legs still served as a reminder of that visit. Further beatings had followed over the years, although none quite so bad.

  Oblivious to her sister’s thoughts, Derry grabbed her by the wrist and almost dragged her across to the window. “And, Gabby, just wait till you see the view from your window. “Look!” She pointed to where the tide soughed down on the beach below, not two hundred yards away, running backwards and forwards in lace-trimmed little rills. “That’s Dublin Bay out there. Just look at it. Watch how the waves cut colours, like a bolt of watered silk. Sometimes blue, sometimes green, now and again turquoise and even silver, would you believe.” She pressed her nose against the pane of glass, right alongside her sister, who was looking more enchanted than ever, if that were possible. “See, it will remind you of the way the colours change on your mountain, the Mountain of Women. And, you know what? As the sun sinks down, it stipples a path of pure gold all across the top of the water. Isn’t it just beautiful?”

  “Amazing.” Gabby drew in a deep ragged breath. “I’ve never seen the sea before. Oh, Derry, it’s huge. Far, far bigger than I imagined. It seems to go on forever and ever.”

  Derry flinched, reminded once more of the paucity of her sister’s life up till now, and how she had been deprived of even the simplest things; things which most other people take for granted. At forty-five, already a middle-aged woman, she had only just had her first glimpse of the ocean in an island country surrounded by sea. Unbelievable! A lump formed in Derry’s throat.

  “I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow I’ll take you and the girls down on the beach and if it’s not too cold you can go for a paddle and we’ll look for
shells and I’ll teach you the names of the different kinds. Would you like that?” Her heart sank as Gabby clapped her hands together in delight, a childlike gesture far more fitting to her five-year-old daughters than to a woman grown. To Derry, it suddenly seemed as though she had gone overnight from having two children to three. James was right. She really had no notion as to what she was taking on with Gabby, but she was beginning to get some idea and the fear, like in a Hitchcock movie, was starting to build.

  ***

  It took barely a minute to liberate Gabby’s few possessions from her suitcase, all of which needed to be chucked straight into the rubbish bin, with the case, itself, leading the way. Her nighty was scandalous, a shapeless grey rag that had been washed and patched time and time again till it was all but threadbare. Whoever patched clothes in this day of disposable everything? Apart from what she was wearing, Gabby had only one other dress, if it could be called that, a shapeless, woollen jersey in a disgusting shade of moss green and a black pleated skirt of the kind that made everyone, no matter how skinny they were, look as though their hips were panniers on a South American donkey. Her underwear was nothing short of disgraceful, comprising of no more than a couple of grey vests and knickers so huge they would have made the infamous Brigid Jones’s seem like mere scraps of frivolity. Not a La Perla or Agent Provocateur in sight, nor even a Dunne’s Stores plain white cotton. And not so much the hint of a bra, Derry noticed, recoiling from a wad of thick orangey-looking tights, in which the runs had been mended to form neat sausage shapes. Disgusting! Incredible! Archaic! Before they looked at the sea or anything else, she made a vow to take her sister shopping. A complete makeover was the order of the day, starting at the top of her head and working right down to the soles of her feet. Poor, poor Gabby! There were better dressed tramps on the streets of Dublin. Those bloody nuns wanted whipping. Careful not to show her distaste, she folded Gabby’s few paltry possessions away into a drawer, then turned her attention to where her sister stood, protectively cradling the Sacred Heart lamp in her hands, like it was some rare and precious jewel.