The Last Lost Girl

by Maria Hoey

  “No, stay where you are, Dad – I’ll bring mine in here too.”

  He sat back down and let her settle the tray on his knees.

  “Look at that,” he said when he had finished. “The sea couldn’t have done a better job of cleaning that plate.”

  His eyes lit up when Jacqueline brought him apple tart and custard.

  “I found the custard at the back of the press,” she said. “I hope it’s edible. I’ll do a proper shop tomorrow – I promised Gayle I would.”

  “It’s only lovely,” he said, and Jacqueline found herself watching him as he devoured it. His face was intent and, after every mouthful, the slack lips closed over the spoon making a soft sucking sound, like a feasting child. His bony fingers scraped the spoon round and round the bowl, scooping up the last of the crumbs.

  “That was a grand bit of apple tart,” he said and Jacqueline felt her heart swell with an uncommon emotion: gratification.

  Three days later, in that sagging chair that bore the shape of him, he died. The bone of his lamb cutlet was picked clean. His plate, knife and fork were on the tray in his lap. On the floor by his feet lay the TV guide, his evening viewing plan marked in red circles:

  7.55 Wildlife on 2

  8.55 Garden Challenge

  9.35 Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

  So many times over the years, Jacqueline had come upon him in just that way, the sleep-slack face folded on the chin, the chin caved into the chest, the beer-domed belly rising and falling. So many times she had switched on the lamp at his elbow, drawn the curtains and quietly removed the dishes. But there was no doubt in her mind that this time there would be no waking for him. She knew that if she shook him, he would not blink, widen his eyes and nod at his plate, as though he had not been asleep at all, smile and say: “That was a grand bit of dinner, pet, sound as a trout.”

  Even so, Jacqueline bent over him, patted his arm and felt the bobbling of his grey cardigan. She shook him gently. “Daddy, wake up, Daddy.”

  But he did not move and the thought came to her: I’m nobody’s pet now.

  “But he can’t be,” said Gayle. “I’m only after talking to him last night.”

  At any other time Jacqueline would have thought it an inane and foolish thing to say. But the thing she was telling herself inside her head was almost identical: I was only talking to him two hours ago, he can’t be dead.

  “I know it’s hard to believe, Gayle,” she said.

  “But I can’t believe it, Jacqueline. Where is he?”

  “He’s in the sitting room, in his chair.”

  “Are you with him?”

  Jacqueline looked at her reflection in the hall mirror. “Yes, I’m with him.”

  “Stay with him, won’t you, Jacqueline? I don’t want him there on his own.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, poor Daddy, poor Daddy! Are you sure, Jacqueline? Could he not just be asleep?”

  “I’m sure, Gayle,” said Jacqueline even as it struck her that they had both reverted to the childish use of ‘Daddy’.

  “I should have been with him,” said Gayle. “I should be there now. Oh God, I don’t know which is worse, you there on your own with him or me stuck here and not able to see him or do anything.” She began to sob.

  Jacqueline sat down on the bottom stair and was quiet until the worst of the tears had abated. “Are you alright, Gayle?” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m alright. Jacqueline, you know there are things that have to be done, don’t you?”

  “I know, Gayle, I’m just not very sure what they are.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Gayle. “I’ll help you, sweetheart. Have you called anyone yet?”

  “Only you,” said Jacqueline.

  “Right, well, you need to call Dr May – his number is in the little book beside the phone. And after that, the priest.”

  “Why a priest? Dad isn’t religious.”

  “No, but he’s still a Catholic – it’s what you do. You should be able to find the number for the sacristy from the parish magazine. There’s always one lying around.”

  Jacqueline found herself thinking about a passage in Brideshead Revisited: Lord Marchmain in extremis, making the Sign of the Cross. She wondered why, at all the really important moments of her life, she found herself thinking about something she had read. Surely the idea was that books should reflect the human experience and not the other way around – so why was it that what she had read always seemed more concrete to her than anything in the real world, while life seemed like a pale imitation?

  “Are you listening to me, Jacqueline?”

  “Yes, Gayle, you said you’ll try to get a flight tonight and I’m to ring the doctor and the priest.”

  “And Auntie Carol, don’t forget Auntie Carol. See if she can stay over with you tonight so you won’t be on your own if I can’t get a flight until the morning.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry about me, Gayle.”

  “You’re a good girl, Jacqueline,” said Gayle.

  It should have sounded condescending, the older sister talking to a child, but Jacqueline found it comforting.

  For a while there was silence.

  “Are you still there, Gayle?”

  “I’m still here, Jacqueline. I know you need me to hang up now so you can do what you have to do, but I don’t want to. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it feels like, as long as I stay on the phone, this isn’t really happening. Like we’re only talking about things, you know, phoning the doctor and where to find the number for the priest and all that stuff? But as soon as I put the phone down, I know it will be real. And I don’t want it to be real.”

  “I don’t either, Gayle.”

  “But I’m being stupid and I know I am. I’ll hang up now. Will you be alright? I’ll ring you back as soon as I’ve organised my flight home.”

  “I’ll be fine, Gayle, don’t worry about me.”

  After she had phoned Dr May, Jacqueline went into the kitchen to search for the parish magazine. She found it stuffed into the vegetable rack. It had been rolled up tightly and, unfurling it, she stared at the black smudge in one corner, remembering how he had used it to swat a fly. That had been only this morning, and now he was dead. Her mind wrestled with the incomprehensible nature of things while her eye found the number of the sacristy.

  The woman who answered the phone promised to send Father Tom straight away. “God grant him rest,” she said.

  Jacqueline wondered if she meant Father Tom or her father.

  And then there was nothing else to do but wait. She went back to the room where he was and was not, and looked at him in his chair by the window. He did look like he was sleeping. She slid to the floor next to his chair and let her head fall against the armrest. She thought that it would not have surprised her if his hand had reached out and touched her hair as it used to do when she sat this way as a child – nor would it have frightened her. But his hand was quite still and impervious to her will, and Jacqueline stayed that way until they came.

  Chapter 5

  1976

  “Wake up, Jacqueline! There’s a boy in the garden with a guitar.”

  At first, Jacqueline cannot be sure where the voice is coming from. Then her eyes grow accustomed to the dim room and she can make out Gayle in her white nightdress, standing at the far window next to the wardrobe, looking out on the front garden.

  “A boy with a guitar?” she says. “Are you sure you’re not sleepwalking again, Gayle?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Jacqueline. If I was sleepwalking I wouldn’t exactly know it, would I? And I’m telling you there’s a boy in the garden.”

  “With a guitar. You said he had a guitar. It’s the middle of the night, Gayle. What would a boy be doing in the garden with a guitar?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s there and I should know because I’m looking straight at him.”

  “Okay, then tell me what he’s doing.”

  “He’s playing a guitar and singing
. Can you not hear him?”

  Jacqueline listens. She knows the sounds of the night-time house by heart. She hears them when she is reading her book by the light of her torch, long after everyone is asleep. She knows every creak and whine by heart – they do not frighten her. All day long, the house has to listen to the sounds of the Brennans, so Jacqueline thinks it is only fair that at night the house has its turn.

  Gayle is right. There’s a new sound now and it’s enough to make the sleepiness dissolve. Jacqueline jumps onto her knees. Her bed is against the wall and right under the window. She pulls the curtains apart.

  “Don’t let him see you!” whispers Gayle, so loud that Jacqueline wonders why she bothers to whisper.

  “There really is a boy with a guitar,” says Jacqueline.

  “I told you there was.”

  “But what’s he doing here?”

  “I think he’s singing to Lilly,” says Gayle.

  “But why?”

  “Maybe he likes her.”

  “Do you think Lilly knows he’s there?”

  “How do I know?”

  “Well, I’m going to find out.” Jacqueline unlatches the window and pushes it up.

  The boy’s voice rises from the garden.

  “Don’t forget to remember me …”

  Gayle giggles and hurls herself onto the bed behind Jacqueline. She is so close that Jacqueline can feel her breathing in her ear. “Can you see him, can you see him?”

  “Get off me!” Jacqueline wriggles away from her sister, pushing her body further out across the windowsill. The problem with Gayle is that she does not seem to understand how much space she takes up in the world.

  “Be careful!” hisses Gayle. “You’ll fall out!”

  “Well, keep a hold of me then.” Jacqueline gives a little squeal as Gayle’s hands encircle the bare skin of her waist where her pyjama top has ridden up. “Don’t tickle me, Gayle! Oh, I can see Lilly – she’s at her window. Lilly! Lilly!”

  “Shut up!” Lilly’s voice is both a whisper and the crack of a whip and Jacqueline draws her head back as though she has been struck.

  Maybe the boy has heard too, because he loses his place in the song and begins singing the chorus again.

  “Oh, I think it’s the boy from the bus stop,” says Gayle.

  “What boy from the bus stop?”

  “I saw him talking to Lilly when we got off the bus from school.”

  Daddy says Jacqueline is “the eyes and ears of the house” but this is the first she has heard of the boy at the bus stop. If only she didn’t have to wait another whole year before she can go with Lilly and Gayle to St. Teresa’s Convent School.

  “How does he know where Lilly lives?” asks Jacqueline.

  “Maybe he followed her,” says Gayle, “or maybe Lilly told him. Oh no, he’s getting louder!”

  “I hope Daddy doesn’t hear him.”

  “He won’t hear anything in the front garden unless he comes out on the landing,” says Gayle.

  “He might, it’s very loud.”

  “Why doesn’t Lilly make him go away?”

  Jacqueline wriggles herself out a little more. “Lilly!” she calls, as quietly as she can. “Gayle thinks you should make the boy go away before Daddy hears him.”

  “I thought I told you to shut up!” hisses Lilly. “Go back to bed, both of you!”

  Jacqueline pulls her head in again and Gayle lets go of her waist.

  They can hear Lilly’s voice calling softly, “Luca, you’d better go away now before you wake my dad!”

  “Luca,” says Jacqueline. “Lilly called him Luca. How does she know his name?”

  “How would I know? Oh God, I wish he’d just go! Oh no, I think Daddy’s up. Quick, Jacqueline, tell Lilly that Daddy is up. I think he’s going to the bathroom – he’ll hear the boy.”

  “Lilly, Daddy’s up!” Jacqueline makes her whisper as loud as a whisper can be. “He’s going to the bathroom and Gayle says he’s going to hear the boy.”

  Lilly’s head disappears and Jacqueline hears the sound of her window rumbling down.

  The boy has stopped singing and for a while the only sounds are the ones from the bathroom – the flushing of the toilet, the gurgling of the cistern and Gayle muttering under her breath, “Please God, please God …”

  Jacqueline knows what Gayle is praying for – for the boy not to sing, for Daddy to go back to bed, for nobody to get into trouble – and she knows she should want the same things. But what she wants, what she really wants, is for SOMETHING TO HAPPEN.

  “He’s washing his hands,” says Gayle and for no reason Jacqueline starts to giggle.

  The boy begins to sing again.

  “He must only know one song,” says Jacqueline.

  In the bathroom, the water stops running and Jacqueline hears the door open. She holds her breath and closes her eyes.

  “What’s going on in there – is somebody singing? Go to sleep now, girls.”

  Jacqueline opens her eyes and lets her breath out in a loud burst of laughing.

  “Shut up, Jacqueline,” says Gayle.

  “Is that you, Jacqueline?” says Daddy.

  The door opens and Daddy’s head comes round.

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  The boy’s voice rises from the garden.

  “What in the name of …” Daddy pushes the door wide open. He strides over to the window and pulls back the curtain. “I’ll give that little blackguard something to remember alright,” he says. “I’ll shoot him, I’ll bloody shoot him!”

  “No, Daddy, don’t shoot him!” Gayle jumps down from the bed and runs after him as he rushes from the room. “You’ll go to jail!”

  “Don’t be so stupid, Gayle!” Jacqueline calls after her sister. “Daddy hasn’t got a gun.”

  She follows them out onto the landing.

  Lilly’s door is shut. Jacqueline’s mother comes out of her room. She is wearing a white nightdress and it barely comes down to her knees. Her hair is hanging around her shoulders and she has no make-up on her face. Jacqueline thinks it makes her look like someone else, a young girl, a stranger.

  “Will everyone please stop shouting?” she says.

  She goes downstairs. Jacqueline looks again at Lilly’s door and then she hurries after her mother.

  Jacqueline has only been to one play in her life. It was at St Teresa’s Christmas concert. She remembers how, when the curtains came up, all the actors were already on the stage but nobody was moving. It is like that in the garden now. Jacqueline’s mother is standing next to Gayle. Gayle has her arm out and her hand on Daddy’s shoulder. Daddy is standing looking at the boy. The boy is standing next to the magnolia tree. In the daytime, the buds of the tree remind Jacqueline of stumpy pink-white candles, but now in the darkness they give no light. The boy is holding his guitar over his head like a tennis racket or a weapon he might use to hit someone. Then the play begins.

  “I said get out of here – I won’t tell you again.” Daddy takes a step forward and Gayle moves with him.

  The boy takes a step backward and almost falls into the hedge. Jacqueline hears the sound of laughing, and when she looks up Lilly is leaning out of her bedroom window. Jacqueline thinks: Lilly is enjoying the play.

  Daddy takes another step and the boy moves quickly along the hedge and makes a dart for the gate.

  “He’s going, Frank,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “Now come back inside.”

  “If you come back again I’ll skin you alive!” Daddy yells. “Do you understand me?”

  “He understands you,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “Now leave him and come inside.”

  The boy runs through the gate and disappears into the lane and Daddy runs to the gate after him. Gayle screams.

  “For God’s sake,” says Jacqueline’s mother. She follows them slowly across the garden and into the lane.

  Left alone, Jacqueline looks down at her bare feet. The grass is cool and damp, and she wonders
if anyone else remembered to put on shoes. She turns and looks up at the house but Lilly’s window is shut and the curtains are drawn.

  Daddy comes back with his arm around Gayle’s shoulders. Jacqueline can see now that he is wearing his mustard-coloured slippers. Her mother comes next and she is wearing her white fluffy mules. Only Gayle has bare feet like Jacqueline. When they are all inside, Daddy shuts the door and bolts it, top and bottom.

  Jacqueline follows Gayle slowly up the stairs. The soles of her sister’s feet are stained brown and Gayle is shivering, almost, Jacqueline thinks, as though she hasn’t enjoyed the play one little bit.

  On the landing, Daddy stops at Lilly’s door and knocks. “You awake, Lilly?”

  There is no answer, but Jacqueline can hear Lilly’s radio playing “Midnight Train to Georgia”.

  Chapter 6

  Afterwards

  Father Tom was tall, lean, black, and very young. His movements and speech were slow and circumspect and he was deadly earnest. He explained in the gentlest of terms that, under the circumstances, there could be no administering of the Last Rites to Frank. Jacqueline sensed that she was expected to protest and, the priest’s distress on the subject being clearly greater than her own, she shook her head sympathetically. Father Tom then quickly assured her that he could still pray for the forgiveness of her father’s sins. “And I will ask God to graciously receive Frank into His Kingdom.” Jacqueline wanted very much to tell him she thought it was all nonsense, but somehow the priest’s patent sincerity made her hold her peace and she found herself thanking him instead. Things, it seemed, were a whole lot simpler for Dr May, who, once he had satisfied himself with a quick examination, quietly and without fuss signed the death certificate.

  “Why did he die?” said Jacqueline. Spoken aloud the question sounded childish, even to her.

  “He was old,” said Dr May. “His heart just gave out.”

  Jacqueline nodded. She knew Dr May of old. He was short and portly and pushing seventy now; she had always liked his brusque kindness. And why should he make any bones about it? Life ends; there is no mystery.