Ninemile House Page 9

  His opposition came as no surprise. Derry had expected as much and had all her arguments prepared in advance. She just hoped she could remain as reasonable as she’d planned and not go off on one. Even before she spoke, though, she could feel her face stiffening into an expression of mutiny. “It’s her baby, James. Don’t you think she deserves to know what happened to him, or her? And don’t you think he or she deserves to know his or her mother too?”

  His handsome face corrugating into folds of anxiety, James kicked that line of reasoning straight into touch. “And did Gabby ask you to do this? I mean, did she come right out and say, Derry, can you help me trace what happened to my baby?” He set his glass down on the coffee table in front with a decisive thud that, to Derry, sounded like a mini death knell. “Or is this something that’s come out of a clear blue sky? Or is it, perhaps, the product of your plainly fevered brain?” The last sentence was coated in acid.

  Derry’s face went into full mutiny, her mouth taking on such a line of obstinacy, it was difficult to speak. Convinced she was right, nothing and no one was going to deter her from tracking down her sister’s baby. “No. No, she didn’t say anything, exactly. But I know she’d be delighted.” Her eyes widened at the stupidity of the male of the species. Why couldn’t he see what was staring him in the face? Any normal woman would give anything to be reunited with a child who had been stolen from her years before. And yes, stolen wasn’t too strong a word. She almost overbalanced as, James jumped to his feet, his hand scything through the air.

  “No. No. No. No! You can get that monstrous thought right out of your head, Derry. Isn’t it enough that you’ve gone wading into Gabby’s life turning her world upside-down, albeit with the best of intentions? Tell me, just what gives you the right to go wading into someone else’s, a perfect stranger’s, because we are talking a stranger here, Derry, and you can forget all that blood being thicker than water bollocks.” Striding over to the drinks cabinet, he re-filled his empty glass, carelessly sloshing some of it over the rim onto the cream carpet below. Derry could see the veins in his neck bulging out like ropes and his normal tanned complexion grow mottled and red. She couldn’t recall the last time she had seen him so angry that the words came shooting out of him like bullets. “That baby is no longer a child, but an adult of, what did you say, thirty, now? An adult, possibly with a whole family of his or her own. Adoptive parents. A partner. Children even.” He drained the glass in one gulp. “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that they’ve made a whole life for themselves, one that doesn’t include Gabby – one, dare I say it, in which they don’t want to include Gabby. Hasn’t it occurred to you that in the whole of that thirty years, not once have they come looking for her? An adopted child can ask to see their file when they turn eighteen. Your sister’s child turned eighteen a long time ago.” Furious, he picked up the decanter again, thought better of it and replaced it on its silver tray. “And it’s not as if it would have been that hard to trace her. You managed easily enough.” In two strides he was back across the floor and glaring down upon her like a sergeant major on a recalcitrant recruit. “So back off, Derry. For God’s sake, think this through, before you go wading in where angels fear to tread. For Gabby’s sake. For the child’s sake!”

  Furious herself now, Derry’s chin came up so high, it was a miracle her neck didn’t snap. How dare he! How dare he tell her what was right for her sister. Gabby’s child was family. Her family too! “I have thought it through.” Deliberate to the point of iciness she kept her voice soft, but there was an unmistakeable thread of steel running through it, which anyone who knew her would recognise easily. It was her Greenham Common, I-will-not-be-moved voice. It was her don’t-trample-on-me-just-because-I’m-a-woman-and-your-wife voice. “Tomorrow,” she told him, matching glare with glare, “I’m going back to that hellhole convent and I’m going to demand some answers from that frosty-faced bitch, Sr Peter. Marching over to the door, she spun on her heel, fired one last shot across his bows. “And I’m not bloody leaving until I find out where Gabby’s baby is.”

  TEXT BREAK

  “Thereeesa, Thereeesa. Where aaaare you? Where aaaare you?”

  Theresa felt so cold, her teeth were chattering. The wall of the gate lodge was damp against her back and yet the sweat had begun to pool on her forehead. Little beads that bled down her cheeks, dripping off her chin onto her heaving chest. She could feel the unevenness of the brickwork digging through the thin cheesecloth of her dress. Outside the moon cast a wavery light, as though reflected from under water, instead of from the otherwise pitch black sky

  “Thereeesa?”

  “Michael?” Scrabbling to her knees, his name came out on a rasp. A sharp stone bit into her palm, but she scarcely registered the pain as it pierced her flesh. “Michael, is that you?”

  And then, as so many times in her dreams, the silhouette appeared against the broken window, the unmistakable outline of a man, filling it head and shoulders. Then, with lightening speed, he was at the door, his presence savage in the stillness of the night, eyes feral bright in the dimness, and he was reaching for her, his hands outstretched, bony fingers clawing at her. She opened her mouth to scream . . .

  “Gabby! Wake up, Gabby, it’s all right. It’s all right.”

  “Oh God! Oh God!” Gabby jerked awake, to find herself being cradled in Derry’s arms, her cheeks wet with tears. “Don’t let him get me, Derry. Please don’t let him get me.”

  “Who?” Derry demanded, searching her sister’s pale face for clues. “Who is he, Gabby? Oh, please, can’t you tell me who it is you’re so frightened of?”

  “N-nothing. N-no one,” Gabby lied, her eyes frantically searching out the lamp on the bedside table, fixating on the opalescent un-lit heart. “I’m sorry I woke you. It was just a bad dream. Just another bad dream.”

  “Sure? And you’re okay now?” Anxiously, Derry watched her sister as she settled back beneath the bedclothes. “You don’t want me to stay with you? Well, I’m only in the room across the corridor. Remember that, Gabby. I’m just a few feet away. Call if you need me. And I’ll tell you what, why don’t I turn the lamp on for you? It’ll give you a bit of comfort.”

  Back in her own room, James, his face a study in weariness, was propped up against the headboard. “I’ll say two words,” he told her, jerking his head towards Gabby’s room. “Pandora’s box!”

  Without replying, Derry just climbed in and turned her back to him. It was a very long time before she slept. It didn’t take a sleuth to figure out that something was playing on her sister’s mind and whatever it was, it wasn’t just a dream. Pandora’s Box! Maybe James was right!

  CHAPTER 10

  “You might have checked to see if it was convenient before you came storming in here.” Sr. Peter glared at Derry, as unannounced she marched straight into her office. “But then storming in and issuing ultimatums is becoming a bit of a habit with you, young lady.”

  “I’ve come about Gabby’s, or should I say, Theresa’s baby,” Derry said without preamble. Right from the start she had decided that as far as the nuns were concerned, attack was the best form of defence. Having been educated by them herself, she was familiar with the breed. As with every walk in life, some were good, some were bad and some, like Sr Peter, were sheer bullies, who revelled in their little bit of power. And let’s face it, it was easy to exert your power over those who were weaker than you. There was no glory in it.

  Unmoved, Sr. Peter lowered her eyes to the writing pad upon her desk, making a notation of some sort with a fountain pen of the sort that had gone out of fashion some twenty years before. Derry wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find that the woman still used an abacus instead of a calculator. It would save on the batteries anyway.

  “The child? And what about the child?”

  Derry scowled, her eyes shooting sparks across the small space between them. “What- happened- to-it?” She spaced out the words through gritted teeth. “Where-is-it?”

&
nbsp; “So you want to do a bit more stirring, do you? Not content with turning poor Gaby’s life upside-down, you want to go stirring up a hornet’s nest. Has no one ever told you some things are best left well alone?” With a mildness she didn’t feel, Sr. Peter pushed her chair back with a grating sound, her head lifting to scan the young woman’s face. Pale, almost colourless eyes, clashed with brown.

  Derry couldn’t believe it. It might have been James speaking, except for the habit and veil. If it hadn’t been so outlandish, she might have suspected that he and Sr Peter were one and the same person. An old joke came back to her – have you ever seen them in the same room at the same time? But Derry wasn’t in the mood for humour. With the bit between her teeth, she wasn’t for turning. Not until she got what she wanted and the sooner the nun cottoned on to that, the better. “I’m not leaving until I know what happened to it? Who adopted it? Where is it now? I’ve got a right to know.”

  “Have you, indeed?” Sr. Peter, laid her pen to one side, picked up a piece of blotting paper and dabbed at the freshly written words on her pad. “And what about, Gabby, might I ask? Is this at her behest or yours?”

  “Both!” Derry said emphatically, grabbing the nun’s eyes in a visual headlock and managing to sound one hundred per cent convincing. “Still, it couldn’t have come as a complete shock to you. You must have known that when Gabby was free, we’d come looking sooner or later. And, most likely, sooner.”

  The nun raised her eyebrows at the word ‘free’, guessing correctly that it was chosen for inflammatory purposes and refusing to rise to Derry’s bait. “It had crossed my mind,” she admitted. “Still, I was hoping that common sense might prevail, but I might as well wish that all the world would see sense and come back to the one true, holy, Catholic and apostolic church.”

  “So? Can you tell me where the child is?” Derry realised with something of a shock that she was actually trembling. She hoped that the nun would think it was from rage and not because Derry was almost on the verge of tears. So much hinged on the older woman’s co-operation. “What did she have?” Despite her best efforts, a catch entered her voice.

  “A boy!” Sr. Peter capitulated, deciding all of a sudden that she wasn’t up for a war of words. The arthritis in her back was playing up something terrible and it was plain to a blind man that Gabby’s sister wasn’t going to be moved. “Gabby had a son.”

  “A son!” Derry found herself smiling, gripping onto the edge of the desk for support. Her sister had had a son and she had a nephew. What’s he called?” In her excitement her words tripped over one another. “Where is he? Do you have an address for him?”

  “Shush now.” The nun waved a calming hand. “One thing at a time.” She eased her bottom back a bit against the chair, flinched as arthritis gave her another reminder of its vindictiveness. “His mother called him Michael, I believe, but his adoptive parents might have called him something else. Most of them did, you know. It was a way of breaking with the past. New name, new start, so to speak. It’s the same policy we followed with the girls here. Give them a new identity, a fresh slate.” Except that it wasn’t a fresh slate. Instead they paid over and over, reminded daily of their perceived sins by the mere fact of their incarceration in these prison-like convents.

  Deflated, Derry collapsed onto the chair opposite. “Oh, I see. Yes, yes of course, I understand. I should have thought of that, but, do you know where he is? Have you an address for him? Even an old one?” Any clue from whence to begin her quest.

  Sr Peter eyed her warily. “The best I can tell you is that he’s in the States, somewhere. His adoptive family were American – a very nice couple. I met them once briefly. The father was something big in medicine. A surgeon, maybe.”

  Derry’s eyebrows shot up. “In the States somewhere? Sr Peter, the States is a very big place. Can’t you be a bit more specific? Like, can’t you narrow it down to just one state?”

  All good deeds will be duly punished, the nun thought beginning to regret her candour. “With barely concealed satisfaction, she shook her head. “No. No, I can’t. People come and people go. It was never the convent’s job to keep track of them. Our mission was to find the child a good family and once it was adopted that was the end of it, as far as we were concerned. The adoptive family could have moved move to Timbuktu and we wouldn’t have been any the wiser.” She wagged her head, comfortable that the decisions made in the past were the right ones. “And that’s how it should have been. Everyone left to get on with things in their own way, with no interference from outsiders, do you see?”

  “Oh, but you must have some idea.” Despite her best efforts not to crumble in front of Sr Peter, Derry felt her eyes well up. Suddenly, tracking down her lost nephew seemed like the most important thing in the world.

  Never a fan of sentimentality, the nun eyed her in disgust. “Now don’t start blubbing, there’s a good woman. I can’t abide wailing. Now look, I can’t promise anything, but I might be able to dig up an old address, for you.” The willingness of the words were betrayed by the look of doubt draping itself across her doughy features. “I’d have to send down to our mother convent, where most of the old files are kept. But, Mrs Quinn, you have to realise that things weren’t the same back then. Records, dare I say it, weren’t kept as assiduously as, perhaps, they should have been. There was no such thing as computers back then, you know and there’s always room for human error.”

  Derry’s eyes widened. But we’re talking about babies here, she wanted to shout at her. Human lives! Why weren’t records kept assiduously? I’ll bet the bloody kitchen accounts were. I’ll bet the bloody convent could account for every last potato or pint of milk. With an effort she bit her lip, knowing Sr Peter was her only hope. Better not to antagonise her more than she had already. The woman didn’t like her and God almighty, the feeling was mutual. “I really would be grateful if you could send down there, then,” she said, making a huge effort to inject the right amount of subservience into her voice, and hating herself for it. Still, where needs must, she’d shake hands with the devil.

  “Very well,” Sr Peter stood up, nodding both assent and dismissal. “Leave me your telephone number and I’ll contact you if I can find out anything.”

  Hastily, Derry scrabbled in her handbag, extracted one of her business cards and handed it over, not missing the way the nun’s mouth quirked sarcastically when she read the profession, journalist, under her name.

  “Mrs Quinn.” The nun’s voice stopped her as she reached the door. “I do urge you, one last time, to really think this matter through. For your sister’s sake.”

  Derry wheeled around. “It’s for my sister’s sake that I’m doing it.”

  Sr Peter sighed and just for a moment, she looked almost compassionate. “Look, I realise that your intentions are good but the road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. My advice to you – take it or leave it – is to let the sleeping dogs lie.”

  Derry was just about to jump down her neck again, but there was something in the nun’s expression that stopped her. Something knowing. Something vaguely frightening. “Thanks for your help,” she said, and let herself quietly out of the office.

  “Came in like a lion,” Sr Peter muttered to herself, “went out like a lamb.” As the echoes of the young woman’s shoes died away on the marble corridor outside, she shambled painfully over, one hand held to the small of her back, to an old grey metal filing cabinet that stood in one corner. Flicking through the worn green folders inside, she pulled out the one labelled in scratchy old typeface, McManus Theresa, bore it back to her desk and began to read. It didn’t take very long. There were just two entries, both typed in the same old-fashioned, fast-fading font. The first was a simple note detailing the birth of Theresa’s son, Michael.

  6 December, 1969 – delivered to Theresa Anne McManus, a son, Michael Paul McManus, 7lbs 3oz. No complications. Mother and child doing well.

  The second announcing his adoption by an American c
ouple, Dr Harvey and Mrs June Murphy, and listing their address as 202 Jacksonville Street, New York, USA. The surname came as no surprise because, as a rule, the convent only adopted out to Catholic families and those with some sort of Irish connection took precedence over the rest.

  Closing the file, Sr Peter pushed it to one side, anchoring it with a large dome-shaped paperweight with a blue and white statuette of Our Lady of Lourdes inside. Through the open window, she could hear Mrs Quinn’s fancy car starting up. She’d phone her in a couple of days. In the meantime, it would do her no harm to stew a bit. Too high-handed by far that young woman was and plainly unfamiliar with the old adage about patience being a virtue.