by Maeve Binchy
‘But what would be more excellent,’ said Christy, ‘would be if you invited us home for a cup of coffee.’
‘Maybe the girl lives with her Mam and Dad,’ said Gerry.
‘No, I live on my own,’ said Jo proudly and then could have bitten off her tongue.
‘Well now,’ Gerry brightened. ‘That would be a nice way to round off the evening.’
‘I don’t have any more drink though, I wouldn’t have any beer …’
‘That’s all right, we have a little something to put in the coffee.’ Gerry was struggling into his coat.
‘Are you far from here?’ Christy was asking.
‘Only about ten minutes’ walk.’ Her voice was hardly above a whisper. Now that she had let them know that the coast was clear, she could think of not one way of stopping them. ‘It’s a longish ten minutes, though,’ she said.
‘That’ll clear our heads, a nice walk,’ said Christy.
‘Just what we need,’ said Gerry.
Would they rape her? she wondered. Would they assume that this was why she was inviting them back – so that she could have sexual intercourse with both of them? Probably. And then if she resisted they would say she was only leading them on and insist on having their way with her. Was she stark staring mad? She cleared her throat.
‘It’s only coffee, mind, that’s all,’ she said in a schoolmistressy way.
‘Sure, that’s fine, that’s what you said,’ Christy said. ‘I have a naggin of whiskey in my pocket. I told you.’
They walked down the road. Jo was miserable. How had she got herself into this? She knew that she could turn to them in the brightly lit street and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind, I have to be up early tomorrow morning.’ She could say, ‘Oh heavens, I forgot, my mother is coming tonight, I totally forgot, she wouldn’t like me bringing people in when she’s asleep.’ She could say that the landlord didn’t let them have visitors. But she felt that it needed greater courage to say any of them than to plod on to whatever was going to happen.
Gerry and Christy were happy, they did little dance steps to some of the songs they sang, and made her join in a chorus of the last song the Great Gaels had sung. People looked at them on the street and smiled. Jo had never felt so wretched in her whole life.
At the door she asked them to hush. And they did in an exaggerated way, putting their fingers on their lips and saying ‘shush’ to each other. She let them in and they went upstairs. Please, please God, may Nessa and Pauline not be in the kitchen. They never are any other night, let them not be there tonight.
They were both there. Nessa in a dressing gown, Pauline in a great black waterproof cape; she was colouring her hair apparently, and didn’t want bits of the gold to fall on her clothes.
Jo smiled a stiff ‘good evening’ and tried to manipulate the two men past the door.
‘More lovely girls, more lovely girls,’ said Gerry delightedly. ‘You said you lived by yourself.’
‘I do,’ snapped Jo. ‘These are the girls from next door, we share a kitchen.’
‘I see,’ Pauline said in a huffed tone. ‘Downgraded.’
Jo wasn’t going to explain. If only she could get the two drunks into her own bedsitter.
‘What are you doing, is that a fancy-dress?’ Christy asked Pauline.
‘No, it’s not a fancy-dress, wise guy, it’s my nightdress – I always go to bed in a black sou’wester,’ Pauline said and everyone except Jo screeched with laughter.
‘I was just going to make us some coffee,’ said Jo sharply, taking down three mugs with Visitor painted on them. Gerry thought the mugs were the funniest thing he had ever seen.
‘Why do you put Visitor on them?’ he asked Jo.
‘I have no idea,’ Jo said. ‘Ask Nessa.’
‘So that you’ll remember you’re visitors and won’t move in,’ Nessa said. They all found this very funny too.
‘If you’d like to go into my bedroom – my flat, I mean, I’ll follow with the coffees,’ Jo said.
‘It’s great crack here,’ said Christy and produced his small bottle from his hip pocket.
Nessa and Pauline got their mugs immediately. In no time they were all friends. Christy took out a bit of paper and wrote Christy and Gerry and they stuck the names to their mugs – so that they would feel part of the gang, he said. Jo felt the vodka and the heat and the stress had been too much for her. Unsteadily she got to her feet and staggered to the bathroom. She felt so weak afterwards that she couldn’t face the kitchen again. She went to the misery of her bed, and oblivion.
She felt terrible in the morning. She couldn’t understand why people like Uncle Jim had wanted to drink. Drinking made other people ridiculous and made you feel sick, how could anyone like it? She remembered slowly, like a slow-motion film, the events of the night before and her cheeks reddened with shame. They would probably ask her to leave. Imagine coming home with two drunks, and then abandoning them in the kitchen while she had gone away to be sick. God knows who they were, those two men, Gerry and Christy. They might have been burglars even … Jo sat up in bed. Or suppose when she had disappeared … suppose they had attacked Nessa and Pauline?
She leapt out of bed, uncaring about her headache and her stomach cramps, and burst out of her door. The kitchen was its usual tidy self: all the mugs washed and hanging back on their hooks. Trembling, she opened the doors of their bedrooms. Pauline’s room was the same as ever – huge posters on the wall and a big long clothes rail, like you’d see in a shop that sold dresses, where Pauline hung all her gear. Nessa’s room was neat as a pin, candlewick bedspread, chest of drawers, with photographs neatly arranged; little hanging bookshelf with about twenty paperbacks on it. No sign of rape or struggle in either room.
Jo looked at her watch; she was going to be late for work, the others had obviously gone ages ago. But why had they left her no note? No explanation? Or a note asking her for an explanation?
Jo staggered to work, to the wrath that met her as she was forty minutes late. Jacinta said to her at one stage that she looked pretty ropey.
‘Pretty ropey is exactly how I feel. I think I’m having my first hangover.’
‘Well for you,’ said Jacinta jealously. ‘I never get a chance to do anything that might give me even a small hangover.’
She was dreading going home. Over and over she rehearsed her apologies. She would put it down to the drink. Or would that be worse? Would they find her even more awful if they thought she was so drunk last night she didn’t know what she was doing? Would she say she had been introduced to them by a friend, so she thought they were respectable and when she found out they weren’t it was too late? What would she say? Just that she was sorry.
Neither of them were there. She waited for ages but they didn’t come in. She wrote out a note and left it on the kitchen table. ‘I’m very very sorry about last night. Please wake me when you come in and I will try to give you an explanation. Jo.’
But nobody woke her, and when she did wake it was Saturday morning. Her note was still on the table. They hadn’t bothered to wake her. She was so despicable they didn’t even want to discuss it.
She made her morning cup of tea and stole back to bed. It was lunchtime before she realised that neither of them was in the flat. They mustn’t have come home.
Jo had never felt so uneasy in her life. There must be a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, there had been no arrangement to tell any of the others their movements. She had realised this on Thursday night. They all lived separate lives. But what could have happened that they had disappeared? Jo told herself that she was being ridiculous. Nessa lived in Waterford, or her family did, so she had probably gone home for the weekend. Pauline was from the country too, somewhere. Well, she had to be, otherwise she wouldn’t be in a flat. She’d probably gone home too.
It was just a coincidence that they had gone the same weekend. And just a coincidence that they had gone after the visit of the two drunks.
Jo stood u
p and sat down again. Of course they had to be at home with their families. What else was she imagining? Go on, spell it out, what do you fear, she said to herself, that those two innocent-looking eejits who had a bit too much to drink kidnapped two big strong girls like Pauline and Nessa? Come on! Yes, it was ridiculous, it was ludicrous. What did they do, hold them at gun point while they tidied up the flat and then pack them into a van and bear them off?
Jo had often been told she had a vivid imagination. This was an occasion when she could have done without it. But it wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t pull a curtain over the worries, the pictures that kept coming up of Christy hitting Nessa and of Gerry strangling Pauline, and all through her mind went the refrain, ‘There must be something wrong, otherwise they would have left me a note.’
It was her fourth Saturday in Dublin. The first one she had spent unpacking her case and getting used to the hostel; the second one had been spent looking at flats which were too expensive and too far from work, and which had already been taken by other people; the third Saturday she had spent congratulating herself on having found Nessa and Pauline; and now on this, the fourth Saturday, Nessa and Pauline had most likely been brutally murdered and ravaged by two drunks that she had brought back to the flat. How could she explain it to anyone? ‘Well, you see, it was like this, Sergeant. I had two double vodkas in the pub bought by these men, and then when we came home – oh yes, Sergeant, I brought them home with me, why not? Well, when we came home they poured whiskey into our coffees and before I knew where I was I had passed out in a stupor and when I woke up my flatmates were gone, and they never came back. They were never seen again.’
Jo cried and cried. They must have gone home for the weekend. People did. She had read a big article in the paper not long ago about these fellows making a fortune driving people home in a minibus; apparently lots of country girls missed the crack at home at weekends. They must have gone off in a minibus. Please, please St Jude, may they have gone in a minibus. If they went in a minibus, St Jude, I’ll never do anything bad for the rest of my life. More than that. More. If they’re definitely safe and they went off yesterday in a minibus, St Jude, I’ll tell everyone about you. I’ll put a notice in the two evening papers – and the three daily papers, too, if it wasn’t too dear. She would bring St Jude’s name into casual conversation with people and say that he was a great man in a crisis. She wouldn’t actually describe the whole crisis in detail, of course. Oh dear Lord, speak, speak, should she go to the guards? Should she report it or was she making the most ludicrous fuss over nothing? Would Pauline and Nessa be furious if the guards contacted their homes? God, suppose they’d gone off with fellows or something? Imagine, if the guards were calling on their families? She’d have the whole country alerted for nothing.
But if she didn’t get the guards, suppose something had happened because of those drunk men she’d invited into the house, yes, she, Josephine Margaret Assumpta O’Brien had invited two drunk men into a house, not a week after that nun in the hostel had said that Dublin was a very wicked city, and now her two flatmates, innocent girls who had done nothing to entice these men in, were missing, with no trace of them whatsoever …
She had nothing to eat for the day. She walked around hugging herself, stopping when she heard the slightest sound in case it might be a key in the lock. When it was getting dark she remembered how they had written their names on bits of paper: they could have taken them away with them, but they might be in the rubbish bin. Yes, there they were, Christy and Gerry, scrawled on paper with bits of sellotape attached to it. Jo took them out with a fork in case they might still have fingerprints on them. She put them on the kitchen table and said a decade of the rosary beside them.
Outside people passed in the street going about the business of a Saturday night. Was it only last Saturday that she had gone to the pictures with Josie and Helen, those two nice girls in the hostel? Why hadn’t she stayed there? It had been awful since she left, it had been frightening and worrying and getting worse every day until … until This.
There was nobody she could talk to. Suppose she phoned her sister in the hotel, Dymphna would be furious with her; the immediate reaction would be, come-home-at-once, what-are-you-doing-by-yourself-up-in-Dublin, everyone-knew-you-couldn’t-cope. And it was a temptation to run away. What time was the evening train to Limerick? Or tomorrow morning? But she didn’t want to go home, and she didn’t want to talk to Dymphna and she couldn’t explain the whole thing on the phone downstairs in the hall in case the people in the flat below heard – the people in the flat below! That was it!
She was half-way down the stairs when she paused. Suppose everything were all right, and suppose St Jude had got them on a minibus, wouldn’t Nessa and Pauline be furious if she had gone in and alarmed the three nurses downstairs? They had said that they kept themselves very much to themselves; the nurses were all right but it didn’t do to get too involved with them. Yes, well, going in and telling them that you suspected Nessa and Pauline had been abducted and maltreated was certainly getting involved.
She went back up the stairs. Was there anything that the nurses could do to help that she couldn’t do? Answer: No.
Just at that moment the big blonde nurse that she had spoken to came out. ‘Hey, I was just going to go up to you lot above.’
‘Oh, really, what’s wrong?’ Jo said.
‘Nothing’s wrong, nothing at all, we’re having a party tonight, though, and we just wanted to say if any of you lot wanted to come, it starts at … well, when the pubs close.’
‘That’s very nice of you. I don’t think …’
‘Well, all we wanted to say is, there may be a bit of noise, but you’re very welcome. If you could bring a bottle it would be a help.’
‘A bottle?’ asked Jo.
‘Well, you don’t have to, but a drop of wine would be a help.’ The nurse was about to walk past her up the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’ Jo asked, alarmed.
‘I’ve just told you, to ask the others, the ones in the other flats, if they’d like to come …’
They’re not there, they’re not at home, they’re gone away.’
‘Oh well, all for the best, I suppose,’ the girl shrugged. ‘I’ve got my meat and my manners now, can’t say they weren’t asked.’
‘Listen,’ Jo said urgently, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Phyllis,’ she said.
‘Phyllis, listen to me, do the girls up here go away a lot?’
‘What?’
‘I mean, I’m new here, do they go home for the weekends or anything?’
‘Search me. I hardly know them at all. I think the punk one’s a bit odd, a half-wit, between ourselves.’
‘But do they go away at weekends or what? Please, it’s important.’
‘Honestly, I’d never notice, I’m on nights a lot of the time, I don’t know where I am or whether people are coming or going. Sorry.’
‘Would the others know, in your flat?’
‘I don’t think so, why? Is anything wrong?’
‘No, I expect not. It’s just, well, I wasn’t expecting them to go off and they, sort of, have. I was just wondering whether … you know, if everything’s all right.’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘It’s just that they were with some rather, well, unreliable people on Thursday, and …’
‘They’re lucky they were only with unreliable people on Thursday, I’m with unreliable people all the time! Maureen was meant to have hired the glasses and she didn’t, so we had to buy paper cups which cost a fortune.’
Jo started to go back upstairs.
‘See you later then. What’s your name?’
‘Jo O’Brien.’
‘OK, come on down when you hear the sounds.’
‘Thank you.’
* * *
At twelve o’clock she was wider awake than she had ever been in the middle of the day; she thought she might as well go down as stay where
she was. The noise was almost in the room with her. There was no question of sleep. She put on her black dress and her big earrings, then she took them off. Suppose her flatmates were in danger or dead? What was she doing dressing up and going to a party? It somehow wasn’t so bad going to a party without dressing up. She put on her grey skirt and her dark grey sweater, and went downstairs.
She arrived at the same time as four others who had been beating on the hall door. Jo opened it and let them in.
‘Which are you?’ said one of the men.
‘I’m from upstairs, really,’ Jo said.
‘Right,’ said the man, ‘let’s you and I go back upstairs, see you later,’ he laughed to the others.
‘No, no, you can’t do that, stop it,’ Jo shouted.
‘It was a joke, silly,’ he said.
‘She thought you meant it!’ The others fell about laughing. Then the door of the downstairs flat opened and a blast of heat and noise came out. There were about forty people crammed into the rooms. Jo took one look and was about to scamper upstairs again, but it was too late and the door had banged behind her. Someone handed her a glass of warm wine. She saw Phyllis in the middle of it all, her blonde hair tied in a top knot and wearing a very dazzling dress with bootlace straps. Jo felt foolish and shabby: she was jammed into a group of bright-faced, laughing people and she felt as grey as her jumper and skirt.
‘Are you a nurse too?’ a boy asked her.
‘No, I work in the post office.’
‘Well, can you do anything about the telephones, do you know there isn’t a telephone between here and …’
‘I don’t give a damn about telephones,’ she said and pushed away from him. Nessa and Pauline were dead, battered by drunks, and here she was talking about telephones to some fool.
‘I was only making conversation – piss off,’ he shouted at her, hurt.
Nobody heard him in the din.
‘Which are your flatmates?’ Jo asked Phyllis.
‘The one in the kitchen, Maureen, and the one dancing with the man in the aran sweater, that’s Mary.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jo. She went into the kitchen.
