Mary, Mary

by Julie Parsons

  He took a deep swallow from his glass.

  ‘It’s unbelievable. I sit here day after day, listening to the radio, watching the television, and all I hear, from Morning Ireland until the last news bulletin of the night, is excuses. What about some action? Remember de Valera, how he dealt with the IRA in the forties?’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Mammy. Times are different now.’

  ‘Different? Really? All that’s different is the response. The killing and the maiming in the name of a united Ireland still goes on. And what about all the rapists, the child molesters, the wife beaters, the drug addicts, the vigilantes? Do you know what I have, Michael? I have what they call, nowadays, compassion fatigue. I’m fed up to the back teeth with the way the weak are terrorized by the strong. I’m sick of watching everyone fall over backwards to help the criminals and do absolutely nothing for those who have been hurt and abused. Do you know they brought a woman in here the other day? Eighty-two years old. Older than me. She was raped in her own home by some little bastard with a syringe. Raped, beaten, terrorized. She’d been well able to manage on her own up until that. But now she’s had it. She lies in her bed crying, night and day. What about her rights? But of course it’s not “politically correct” to say that, is it? Not among all you younger people.’

  ‘Actually, Mam, I met a woman, a “younger” woman, the other day who agrees absolutely with you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yeah. The dead girl’s mother. Margaret Mitchell. A real toughie.’

  ‘Is she? We saw her on the news too. She didn’t look tough. Beautiful, I thought. But destroyed.’

  ‘Not yet she isn’t.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m grand.’

  She looked carefully at him. Her gaze was knowing. It made him feel like a ten-year-old again. A naughty ten-year-old. Caught with his hand in her purse.

  ‘You were lucky, you know, to get away with it. In your father’s day you’d have been transferred somewhere cold and remote with only a handful of sheep for company.’

  He looked at his shoes. They needed a polish. They were good leather. Brown brogues. Expensive. But worth it, he always thought, to spend money on clothes. He poured the end of the bottle into his glass. He had blamed the drink for what had happened. The affair. He shouldn’t have messed around at work. Not with a girl who was his junior and was married. To another guard. There had been a scandal. He was out of order. They’d held an inquiry. He had thought he would be busted. Lose his job. He checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation clinic for six weeks. It got him out of the way until the gossip died down. Except that it never really had. He was still suspect. That’s why he needed a good result in this case. To redeem himself. To show that he was a good guy. That he was on the right side.

  He looked at his mother. She was tired now. Her face was grey and sweaty. She tried to behave as she always had. In control, at the centre. As she was when his father was alive. The household revolving around her. But all that had ended the day he died. Shot in the head during a bank robbery. In the main street in Dundrum. Everyone said he was a hero, but he should have stayed out of it. She brought home the tricolour from his coffin. Kept it with his uniform in the cupboard in the bedroom. But nothing was ever the same again after that day. For any of them. Ever again.

  19

  Six o’clock in the morning. Thursday, 17 August. Midsummer long past and the northern hemisphere inching away from the sun.

  It had been growing lighter for the last couple of hours. The sky was the colour of a homing pigeon’s wing, shades of grey overlapping, light trapped between layers of cloud as the bird’s feathers trap air. The sun hung just to the east of the Kish Bank. It was due to rise at six minutes past six. The Fraser Bank and the Muglins would feel its warmth first. Then it would spread, slowly and steadily, over Sandycove, across Scotsman’s Bay, setting the mica in the granite of the East Pier a-sparkle, as it began its measured track across the country. Yellowing fields of wheat and barley, grey lakes with glinting metallic waves, mountains of purple and blue, silver stone pavements all turning on their axis towards the sun.

  At six in the morning it was already warm. Throughout the city, sleepers lay with arms and legs splayed, bedclothes scattered. Skin against skin was damp and clinging. Light pushed through the curtains and blinds left open to make the most of the night air. A cat paused on a doorstep, a mouse limp in its mouth. A robin circled, its tet-tet-tet a shrill proprietorial proclamation, before settling on a garden fence. In ponds and streams water lilies’ pink and white buds, mitred like the nose-cones of rockets, waited for the first rays of sunlight, their cue to open. A hand reached out to a radio, then fell back limp. A burst of music, the brisk chatter of the news headlines and finally the weather. It will continue dry with mainly sunny skies. Light, occasionally moderate, south-west winds and becoming very warm with maximum afternoon temperatures of twenty to twenty-six degrees.

  Jimmy lay on his side. His cheek rested against a ragged teddy bear. Both hands were buried between his legs. His eyelids fluttered, stopped, fluttered again, his eyeballs rotating and rolling from side to side, following the pictures that played across the fine skin. He opened his mouth and grunted out a couple of syllables. Sweat beaded his forehead. His top jaw clamped down on the bottom jaw, grinding tooth upon tooth.

  ‘Aaagh.’ The cry burst out of him. He rolled over on his stomach. His breathing was slow and deliberate. Muscles softened and released as his body relaxed. The teddy bear dropped onto the floor beside the bed. Its brown eyes stared at the ceiling. A fly landed on its button nose and perched, cleaning its proboscis with its feet. The bed creaked as Jimmy rolled over again. The fly tensed. Its movements ceased. Then it fluttered its transparent wings and rose, circling around the bed before heading for the open window.

  McLoughlin’s eyes opened slowly, The alarm had just gone off. Beside him Janey snored softly. He felt as if he hadn’t slept at all. His mouth was filled with acid and his eyes with grit. Fragments of dreams stayed with him. He ran his tongue around his bottom teeth. Some time in the night he had woken in panic. His teeth were crumbling, shards of enamel sticking to his tongue. He tasted the metal of his fillings and gagged.

  Now he sat up and took a mouthful of water from the glass on the bedside table. It was stale and tepid. He swished the water around his mouth, checking that there were no gaps, and spat it back into the glass. Janey stirred and turned towards him, She was wearing her usual T-shirt and cotton leggings. Her breasts sagged against the faded cotton. As her head slumped sideways on the pillow he noticed that her hair was thinning around the crown. He suddenly felt sorry for her. She hadn’t aged well. He used to wonder how different things might have been if they had had children. He didn’t think about it that way any longer. Mostly he tried not to think about it at all.

  He got out of bed and walked through the house onto the terrace, picking up a pair of binoculars on the way. The city sloped beneath him towards the boundary of the bay. Sunlight sparked off the bonnets and windscreens of the hundreds of cars already beginning to crawl towards the centre. He sat down on the wooden bench and scanned the view. In a garden a few hundred yards away a woman was hanging washing on a line. He fiddled with the focus to get a better view. She was young, probably in her twenties. Her hair was short and blonde, unbrushed. A cigarette drooped from her mouth. She worked methodically. Children’s bright T-shirts pinned together, then a row of men’s shirts, white and blue. Next, little girls’ dresses, hung by their puffed sleeves, and socks in bunches, like overripe fruit. Underwear, bras, black with lace, and an all-in-one kind of thing, like an old-fashioned corset, but without the bones, and finally pants, pale pink and white like scallop shells edged with sea foam. He could feel their softness against his cheek and smell the silk and nylon. I shouldn’t be doing this, he thought. But he didn’t put the glasses down.

  The woman finished her task. She stood for a moment looki
ng around her. She turned towards his gaze. McLoughlin felt a sudden panic, but her face was distracted, expressionless. She flung the cigarette down on the parched lawn and gathered up her plastic laundry basket. The cigarette smouldered, a pale blue ribbon of smoke curling. One slippered foot crashed down, grinding it into the brown grass. Then she disappeared from his view.

  McLoughlin got up and went back into the kitchen. He made coffee, strong, and switched on the radio. A familiar voice filled the room. The chief Garda press officer was answering questions about the Mitchell murder. He assured the interviewer that on this, the day of the girl’s funeral, the gardaí were confident that an arrest was imminent. Bullshit, thought McLoughlin. The smooth voice continued. On behalf of the gardaí he wanted to extend his condolences to the young woman’s family and to reassure them and the rest of the community, particularly women, that everything that could be done was being done to catch the culprit. And, of course, he appealed to the public to come forward if they had any information, no matter how insignificant it might seem.

  Dappled sunlight ebbed and flowed across the black and white tiled floor in the kitchen in the old house in Monkstown. The voice continued, rising and falling. Margaret reached out and yanked the plug from the socket. The voice stopped mid-sentence. She got up from the table and walked down the hallway. She opened the front door. The sky and sea were the palest blue, the merest hint of the colour they would be at midday. She sat down on the granite steps, pulling her dressing gown around her. She had stayed awake all night, keeping vigil. Mary’s body lay half a mile away in the church. It had been taken there yesterday at five o’clock. The coffin had been closed at four-thirty. Margaret had kissed her daughter over and over again. She had gently combed what remained of her curls, carefully shaping them around her bruised and battered face. She had talked softly to her, explaining what would happen next. She told her about the graveyard and her grandfather who would be near. Then she had taken Mary’s hands in hers, and turned them over, examining each palm, tracing the life-line, looking for signs.

  How could I not have known? she thought. I should have known. I should have known something. She slid her index finger along Mary’s right palm, folding her limp fist over it, willing her to cling, to latch on the way she had when she was a newborn. She remembered. Lying stiffly in a high hospital bed in London. Her stitches were tight. She felt as if she would never walk easily again, but she knew that already she had begun to heal, her skin renewing itself. They had done an episiotomy just before she had begun to push. The doctor looked up from between her legs. He was wearing small round glasses and thick sideboards crept down his cheeks. He said brusquely, ‘Pant, pant hard.’ A nurse held the mask over her face and told her to breathe. She felt gloved hands, fiddling, poking, and the sharp sting as the scalpel sliced through her taut perineum. After that it was easier. She gritted her teeth, her fingernails making red crescent moons on the forearm of the nurse who held her up. And at last that sensation. The big fish rippling out in a gush of salty water. She would have done it all again, just for that moment.

  ‘Let me see,’ she demanded, and the doctor held the baby up, genitals towards her. She saw the swollen red mound of her vulva and the strength of her legs, bent and kicking, testing the open space after nine months in the muscled womb.

  Later when she had been stitched and washed, and the baby swaddled in the hospital’s green towelling blankets, Margaret hauled herself out of bed. She took the baby from the scratched metal cradle and laid her out, carefully unwrapping the layers that surrounded her. She observed her movements. She stroked her cheek and watched how her tiny open mouth turned towards the physical contact, seeking the nipple. She ran her finger down the wrinkled sole of her foot, watching the downward curl of the toes. She turned her over and stroked her spine, checking the responses, the way she curled and moved from the pressure. Finally, she put her two large index fingers into the baby’s tiny fists and pulled back, waiting to see how well she clung, so tightly that her whole body lifted from the bed, her head falling back.

  ‘You’ve a perfect baby, a little beauty.’ She looked up. A young man was standing at the foot of the bed, her chart in his hand. A small gold cross was pinned to the lapel of his black jacket.

  ‘It’s Mrs Mitchell, isn’t it?’

  She turned back to her task. ‘Dr Mitchell, actually.’

  He glanced down at her chart. ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry. I’m Father Pat Kinevane, the hospital chaplain.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that I say mass at ten every morning in the chapel. It’s on the ground floor.’

  Margaret concentrated on dressing the baby. She fiddled with the nappy pins. They seemed so large and clumsy, so man-made, in comparison with the baby’s small exquisite body. As she struggled with the spring her fingers slipped and she pierced her own skin.

  ‘Ah!’ She sucked her finger, annoyed.

  ‘Here. Let me.’

  He came around beside her and picked up where she had left off. He took the pin from her hand and carefully stuck it through the heavy cotton nappy. He held the baby up with one large hand and gently eased the tiny vest and nightgown over her dark head. He did up the small white buttons and wrapped her tightly in the towelling blanket.

  ‘There. All done.’ He held her out to Margaret.

  ‘Thank you, Father. I’m impressed.’

  ‘Nothing to it,’ he replied, ‘at least, not when you’re the eldest of ten. I’ve wiped more bottoms and changed more nappies in my short life than most women these days will ever get near.’

  Margaret sat gingerly on the side of the bed, suddenly conscious of the shortness of her nightie. She pulled it down with one hand and awkwardly cradled the baby to her.

  ‘I take it you’re from Dublin,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. And you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I understand that your husband died recently.’

  She said nothing. Her throat was tight and sore.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to pray.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  The noise of the ward reverberated around them. A radio played loudly. Stevie Wonder singing ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ was punctuated by the clatter of a trolley laden with aluminium teapots and plain white crockery, pushed carelessly by a nurse who bumped against the end of Margaret’s bed. She winced at the pain of the stitches. A group of men swung through the glass doors, laden with bunches of flowers and boxes of chocolates, elaborately wrapped. Loud congratulations and cheers were exchanged. The priest jerked his head in the direction of the noise. ‘You wouldn’t want to be feeling tired with that lot around.’

  ‘Listen.’ Margaret reached out and touched his sleeve. ‘There is something you could do for me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t have a priest and I’m emigrating to New Zealand in a couple of weeks’ time.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you baptize the baby for me, here, before I leave the hospital?’

  ‘Well.’ He paused, and ran his hand lightly over the baby’s downy head. ‘Don’t you want your family with you?’

  ‘I just want it done. As soon as possible.’

  The sign of the cross made with water. The giving of the name, Mary. The bestowing of the blessing.

  And now it has come to this. Margaret knelt in the front pew, the coffin covered with flowers just out of reach. The words of the priest guaranteeing protection, the love of God and everlasting life, bounced from the high-panelled ceiling to the worn brown tiles of the aisle. St Margarita’s stained-glass look was serene, the lilies in her hand unfaded, untouched by time. The cry of anguish from the mouth of the dying God filled her head.

  Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani? O God, O God, why hast thou forsaken me?

  Beside her, Catherine gazed open-mouthed at the altar. Behind her was a throng of the curious. As she left the church she noticed Inspector M
cLoughlin and Sergeant Finney. They both looked anxious and unhappy. McLoughlin took her hand. His palm was damp. She wiped her hand down her skirt. Most of the people milling around outside the church were strangers. A TV news camera turned its long lens on her. A woman with big teeth and a red suit tried to ask her questions. Men called her name and pointed cameras at her. She turned away, her features rigid. One man in particular caught her attention. His hair was very fair, almost white. When he took his camera away from his face he was handsome. He reminded her of an angel from a Botticelli painting, golden, pure. He looked at her and smiled. It was such an open, joyful expression that she found herself responding. Her face creased into his mirror image. Appalled, she put her hands up over her mouth. How could she smile today of all days? When she looked again he was gone.

  I have gazed into the abyss, she said to herself. I have looked and the worst of it is that there is nothing to see.

  20

  The address was Tritonville Road, Sandymount. The name was Anne Brady. Finney had found her. He had checked the list of the mourners at the funeral. And at last come up with someone other than her mother and her neighbour, who had known Margaret Mitchell, McKenna as she had been, when she was young.

  McLoughlin drove slowly down the road checking the numbers. He stopped outside 186. It was Victorian, two-storey over basement, paved front garden with a boat trailer parked at an angle across it. There was a brass plate below the doorbell on the pale pink front door. Dr Anne Brady, General Practitioner.

  She made him coffee, offered him slices of home-made ginger cake. They sat in the kitchen, the door to the garden open, so, she said, she could keep an eye on the children. There were three of them. All girls. Aged six, four and a year. The older two were having a doll’s tea party on the grass, while the youngest slept, face down in her playpen.

  ‘How do you find it,’ he asked, munching on the cake, ‘working and having such young children?’