Ninemile House Read online

  “Let’s put that on your bedside table,” she suggested, the aesthetic part of her rebelling at the jarring note the ugly object was bound to strike amongst the beautiful and tasteful decor. Gabby did that childlike clapping thing again, as Derry removed the beautiful Laura Ashley table lamp that went so perfectly with the décor and replaced it with the grisly looking Sacred Heart light that went so much against the grain. Still, if it made her sister happy, it was a small price to pay.

  ***

  Following the spaghetti Bolognese debacle, Derry led her sister upstairs once more, where Gabby made straight for the Sacred Heart lamp and switched it on.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? I’ve never owned anything like it before,” she confided, her hand gently caressing the rosy glass, as it bled its gentle light in a red pool across the table top. “We didn’t really get presents in the convent.” Her brow furrowed in remembrance. “Well, we did on Christmas Day, but then we had to give them back later that evening, so they could be wrapped up again and brought out the next year too. The first time it happened, I was in floods of tears for days, but the next year I knew what to expect, so it didn’t upset me quite so much.”

  Derry’s eyes filled with tears at this further evidence of the so called Sisters of Compassion’s sadism. The poor women, some of them little more than kids! Had those bloody nuns all sat around dreaming of more and more humiliations to dump on their heads? Whipping was too good for them. Much too good!

  “Okay, now that we have your lamp sorted, let me run you a bath,” she suggested, hurrying into the en suite bathroom, so Gabby couldn’t see her dabbing furiously at her eyes. “It’ll help you to sleep.”

  “But I had a bath last Saturday,” Gabby objected, trailing in behind and watching mouth open as her younger sister unstoppered a glass bottle and poured a good helping of the pink, liquid-silk contents beneath the running tap. A moment later the delightful scent of orchids and lilies rose on the steamy air, and the water turned white and bubbly and frothed in the deep enamel bathtub.

  “But today is Wednesday.” Appalled, Derry replaced the lid on the bottle and put it back on the shelf. Whatever happened to cleanliness being next to Godliness? Unbidden, visions of old-fashioned galvanised baths rose to mind and an army of nuns and pupils lining up all waiting to use the same water. Fortunately, things turned out to have been not quite so bad. The convent, it seemed, had graduated to indoor plumbing, although Gabby confessed that in the old days, she and the other Magdalenes used to bathe in the big industrial sinks of the laundry. Even nowadays, presumably to save on electricity, baths at the convent were limited to strictly once a week.

  “Well, in this house,” Derry explained gently, swooshing the bubbles around with her hand and testing the temperature with her elbow in the same way she did for the twins, “everybody bathes at least once a day. I generally like to have a quick shower in the morning and a long luxurious soak at night. It helps me to wind down after a stressful day. I’m sure you’ll find the same.” Straightening up, she turned off the faucets and wiped her hands on a towel. “Now off with those clothes, like a good girl, and jump in.”

  “In front of you?” It was Gabby’s turn to look appalled. “I will not! You go outside or turn your back Derry Quinn and don’t be so dirty. That’s a mortal sin, you know, looking at bare people. God will punish you for that.”

  Her sister looked so outraged that, after the first shock of her words, it was all Derry could do not to burst out laughing. Those nuns! Those nuns! They had an awful lot to answer for. “Oh, Gabby, don’t be so ridiculous. Do you think I’m the slightest bit interested in seeing your bare backside? It’s bad enough seeing my own. “But fine, fine,” she made calming motions, as Gabby’s lower lip trembled and she got more and more agitated, “I’ll go and wait for you outside. There’s plenty of big fluffy towels on the radiator and remember to wash behind your ears. And don’t forget all your bits,” she added sotto voce, amused despite herself at Gabby’s prudishness, and feeling, oddly enough, that that little exchange had brought them even closer as sisters. Roll on the days when they could argue about clothes and kids and husbands and, oh everything, all the things that sisters argue about, just because they can, because they’re sisters and because nothing and no one can ever change that.

  Fetching Gabby’s tatty old nightdress from the drawer, she played with the idea of lending her one of her own, deciding on balance that the other woman had already experienced enough change for one day. Better to leave her with something familiar, a kind of security blanket, as it were. Tomorrow would be time enough to commence on the long process of reintegrating her sister into society. And updating both her and her wardrobe!

  A short time later found her, much to her surprise, down on her knees, beside a freshly washed and fragrant Gabby, engaged upon the business of saying the nightly prayers she had all but forgotten. Memories that had been locked away somewhere deep within her psyche came tumbling back thick and fast and, once again, she was a child, kneeling at the side of her bed, her tiny hands steepled between her mother’s in prayer. With a little effort, she could still smell the blue Amami hair-setting lotion her mother used on Saturday nights, so that her hair would be nice and curly for Sunday mass the next day and the lighter scent of the Ponds Cold Cream she used on her face, in those days, many a woman’s only nod to skincare. A touch more imagination and she could still feel her mother’s breath, soft and warm as a kiss on her cheek, her voice a deeper, more mellifluent version of her own praying earnestly, teaching her daughters to pray. But only one despite the hellishness of her life had seemingly remembered and kept the faith.

  “Oh, Angel of God, my guardian dear . . . Gabby looked expectant. “Well come on, Derry, join in.”

  “To whom God’s love commits me here.” To her surprise, Derry found the words came back easily, fluently. “Ever this day be at my side,” like my sister, she thought, like my sister, “to light and guard, to rule and guide . . .”

  “Amen.” Gabby made the sign of the cross.

  “Amen,” Derry said, knowing that whatever happened from hereon in, no matter how difficult things became, she would never, ever abandon her sister. From now on they were inextricably linked, and nothing and no one would ever pull them asunder.

  “Sleep well.” Bending over the bed, into which Gabby had climbed, looking absurdly young and fresh faced for a woman of her years, Derry dropped a light kiss on her forehead.

  Gabby smiled up at her, “And tomorrow, the sea!”

  “Yes,” Derry promised, “tomorrow, the sea.”

  ***

  James laid claim to her that night and though she was exhausted from the day’s events, Derry responded eagerly, recognising subconsciously that this was his way of re- asserting his position of dominance in her life, that beneath all the Alpha male breast-beating and posturing, her husband was feeling vulnerable and threatened, worried about the effects that the wild card that was her sister would have on all their lives, worried about the vote and the forthcoming election.

  “I love you,” she told him afterwards, her head resting on his shoulder, her arm thrown lightly across his chest. “You mean the world to me.”

  Pulling himself up on one elbow, he searched deep within the dark pools of her eyes, luminous in the light of the moon filtered through white muslin curtains. “Do I, Derry? Do I mean the world to you?”

  “The world. The universe.” Reaching up, Derry traced a hand gently down his high cheekbones, encircling his mouth with her forefinger, reading his face as if by Braille, committing to memory every feature of this man she adored. “I’ve loved you since forever, since even before we met.” She smiled up at him. “I always knew you were out there, see? Somewhere, waiting for when the time was right, for when we’d come together.” Placing a hand round the back of his neck, she drew him down, placed a long lingering kiss on his lips. “James Quinn, you and I are soul mates. You and I are meant. And that’s just how it is. Nothing you, nor I, no
r anyone else can do about it.” She winked cheekily. “So get over it!”

  “How about I get over you instead? Literally?” In one swift movement, James straddled her, pinning her arms behind her head and her body to the bed with the pressure of his own. Her breath coming in short, excited gasps, she strained against him delighting in the muscular firmness of his chest against the soft fullness of her own, revelling in the feeling of her power over his erection, rock hard and insistent against her thigh, and already demanding admittance. And, much to her surprise, any residual exhaustion seemed simply to melt away, and with a sigh of total satisfaction, she relaxed herself to receive him.

  At two-thirty a.m. they were awakened by ear-splitting screams coming from the spare bedroom. Wide awake in an instant, Derry shot out of bed, and was still tying the knot on her dressing-gown as she rushed through the door, dimly registering the twins on the landing, wide-eyed and tearful themselves, and James coming out behind her and shepherding them back to their room. “Gabby! Gabby! What’s wrong! What’s the matter!” At first she didn’t see her sister, crouched down as she was in a corner of the bedroom, her hands held protectively over her head, as though expecting a hail of blows to rain down upon her at any second. Her heart quailed at the sight. “Sweetheart, it’s just me, Derry, don’t be frightened.” Hunkering down, she took the shaking figure in her arms, horrified by the boniness of her thin frame, but more so by the expression of sheer panic looking out from Gabby’s eyes. “Shh, now, it’s all right,” she soothed. “Everything is all right, now. You’ve just had a bad dream, that’s all. Just a bad dream.” As some of her sister’s terror started to abate and the shaking became less, Derry gently helped her to her feet and back across the room into bed. As she settled the blankets round her, James popped his head round the door.

  “Is she all right?” His gaze went anxiously to the figure in the bed.

  “She’s grand. Just a bad dream. Probably the strangeness of everything,” Derry said, as much to convince herself as him. Deep down she had a terrible suspicion that what Gabby had experienced was far more than just a nightmare. The sheer terror and hysteria on her sister’s face pointed to that. “Are the twins all right,” she asked, then reassured that they were fine, waved him away. “You go on back to bed. I’ll stay with Gabby for a while. Sitting down on the side of the bed, after James had gently closed the door behind him, she took one of Gabby’s hands, stroking circles on the back with her thumb, in an unconscious echo of her mother. “So, tell me, does this happen very often? Do you get many nightmares?”

  Gabby didn’t meet her sister’s eyes. Instead, her head turned towards the Sacred Heart lamp on the bedside table, seeming to draw comfort from its rosy glow. “Sometimes.”

  “And is it always the same dream?” Sad, Derry noticed the calluses on her sister’s fingers and palms, a legacy of years of hard, unremitting work, and the way her nails was broken and ingrained with God only knew what. No She Umara hand cream for her!

  “Always, the same dream,” Gabby confirmed shakily.

  “And do you want to tell me about it,” Derry asked. “You know whenever Dilis or Dara have a bad dream we talk about it. We take it out of the realms of the subconscious where we can examine it. That way, we can deal with it. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Gabby shook her head. Derry tried again. “Okay, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the Bogeyman only exists in dreams. If we take him out of the dream and put him in the light, turn him around, look at him from all angles, his power diminishes and we see that, actually, he was never real in the first place, but only a figment of our imaginations. And, therefore, he has no power to harm or frighten anyone.”

  Turning her head away from the lamp, Gabby looked straight at her, her dark eyes twinned with her own, but deeper, more knowing, more anguished. “Oh no, Derry, you’re wrong. Some Bogeyman do exist. Mine does.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Like most women, there were few things Derry liked better than a marathon shopping spree, but after just a few hours spent shopping in Gabby’s company, she vowed never to set foot in another shop so long as she lived. Truly, it was like shopping with an alien. In fact, after scarcely any time at all, the company of a little green man from Mars might have proved a welcome distraction. Virtually everything startled, frightened or shocked her; the size of the shops, the crush of people on the streets, the babble of voices, the noise of the traffic, the fashions – especially the fashions. Her eyes almost started from their sockets when, at one point, a gaggle of young teenage girls strutted past, miniskirts up to their behinds, boobs falling out of low-cut T-shirts, podgy little midriffs with pierced bellybuttons boldly on display. Manfully, Derry tried to bring it into perspective for her unworldly sibling.

  “As, you can see, anything goes these days, Gabby. It’s not like when you and I were growing up. People nowadays tend to have a much more relaxed attitude. It’s more a question of live and let live and you know that’s not always a bad thing, certainly better than in our day.” And Gabby, God help her, should know all about that! Just look at what other people standing in judgement had wrought upon her. “On the whole, people tend to be far too busy taking care of their own lives to be bothered about what anyone else is doing.” She laughed easily. “Anyway, you’ll get used to it, I promise. In a week or two, you’ll be as un-shockable as . . .” Bewildered her voice trailed off as, beside her, Gabby came to an abrupt halt her face stiffening to wax-work horror as a Marilyn Manson look-a-like, sporting an upside down crucifix round his neck and an assortment of bondage type straps linking one trouser leg to another, sauntered casually towards them. Just one step behind came a pirouetting Morticia Adams, possessor of kohl-rimmed eyes, a deathly white visage and a split, serpent tongue, which she waggled at them as she twirled passed, trailed, in turn, by something else, gender indeterminate, swathed in a large black cloak, with a mini coffin-shaped rucksack thrown across its back.

  “Completely harmless,” Derry reassured her terrified sister, resisting a sudden almost overpowering urge to burst into laughter. Poor Gabby! Talk about a baptism of fire. All they needed now was a Gay Pride parade to come mincing past and her whole indoctrination into modern day Sodom and Gomorrah would have been completed in just one day. God knows what she was going to make of all the violence and sex on TV. “Ah, here we are.” Determinedly bright, Derry dragged her frozen sister through the glossy plate-glass door of Brown Thomas’s Department store. “Just wait till you see this place, they’ve got the most gorgeous clothes, pricey, admittedly, but gorgeous.” And so they had, but Gabby, unfortunately, wasn’t interested in any of them. Everything was greeted with varying degrees of outrage, castigated for being too short, too low cut, too tight or too trollopy.

  “I’m not wearing that,” Gabby exclaimed in horror yet again, as Derry held up a beautiful wrap-around navy dress by John Rocha. “There’s no neck in it.” The next offering, a chocolate-brown knitted dress by a hideously expensive designer based in the Aran Islands met with a similar outpouring of scorn. “Far too tight,” Gabby declared, wrinkling up her nose. “I’d look like a right one in that.” By which, Derry took it, she meant prostitute. A grey Stella McCartney trouser-suit almost brought her to the brink of apoplexy. “Trousers?” Gabby’s voice rose to such a pitch, every head in the shop came swivelling their way. “Trousers are for men. Sr Peter says women who wear trousers are an abomination.” God only knows what she must have made of the tight-blue jeans, Derry had worn on the two occasions when they had met.