Mary, Mary

by Julie Parsons

  ‘He?’

  ‘He.’

  ‘In the cell in the basement, probably. But he’ll be here soon. How do you feel?’

  She didn’t reply. She stepped forward. ‘I’m going to sit down,’ she said, moving away from them.

  McLoughlin watched her seat herself in the first row of the second of the two blocks of seats that stretched from the bottom of the judge’s podium to the door at the back. Already most of the public benches were full. He looked from the judge’s empty chair to the registrar and court stenographer who sat below him, and from them to the instructing solicitors for the state and the accused who sat side by side, facing the court, at floor level. Files were piled haphazardly on the polished desk in front of them, and on the benches where soon the senior counsels would take their place.

  A steady drone of conversation drifted up to the large square skylight overhead. Any minute now. Margaret’s hands were sweating, but her mouth was dry. Strange and contradictory are the ways of the body, she thought. The sweat is caused by increased activity in the capillaries close to the skin, the result of an accelerated heart-rate because of the amount of adrenaline in the bloodstream. And the dry mouth comes from the same increased hormone levels, which shut off the routine functions of the body, like growth, reproduction and digestion. No wonder she could feel her breakfast, frugal as it had been, lying in her stomach, unchanged.

  A flicker of movement to her right. A change in the level of noise in the room. The hairs on her arms prickled. Cold, so cold. Her body contracted inside its shield of clothes. She turned her head, slowly. He was standing just inside the door, flanked by two guards. Close, so close. He was looking straight at her. His face was alight with a smile, an expression of recognition. She reached down for the briefcase at her feet. She rested it on her lap and put her thumbs against the locks. They snapped open. She put her right hand inside. She took out a piece of dark blue material, plaited into a short rope. She put the bag back down on the floor. She wound her hands around the rope of linen, testing its strength, stroking it with her fingertips. Then she looked at him again. They had led him to his seat. A guard had taken off his handcuffs. He was sitting now, at right angles to her, twelve maybe fifteen feet away. He looked relaxed, comfortable. His skin was pale, but his hair shone in the light, which fell, soft and diffuse, through the glass above.

  A small figure appeared from the back of the court. A girl who pushed and shoved her way through the crowd of guards in the aisle. She was wearing a red velvet dress with flounces and long white socks pulled up over her bulky calf muscles. Her feet were shoved into patent-leather slip-ons. She was holding a small bunch of flowers in one plump hand. Limp white daisies and crushed yellow dandelions. As she bustled towards him she was making a noise, a kittenish mewing sound. She hurled herself over the wooden front of the row, throwing her arms around his neck and covering his face with loud kisses. He pulled her arms from him, pushed her away. Then he stood up and leaned over, kissing the tips of his fingers and planting them on her flushed cheeks. A middle-aged woman, her expression bleak, hurried towards them. She took the girl by the arm and dragged her away. As she turned round, Margaret saw her features, heavy eyelids, puffy cheeks, wet open mouth. The girl began to cry, noisily, her anguish silencing the room. The woman pulled her by the arm, rushing her past where Margaret was sitting. She could have reached out to touch them, the girl sobbing loudly, and the woman, her blonde hair neatly permed, and her expression set in the concrete of unrelieved misery.

  Jimmy looked again towards Margaret. A moment of panic showed, as he chewed the inside of his cheek, his face distorted, his chin trembling. Then she watched him as he sat down slowly, pushing himself into the straight back of the seat, calming himself, the skin of his face settling in its usual way over the bones of his forehead, his cheeks, his chin and the cartilage of his nose.

  McLoughlin watched from his position beside the door. He could see the dark shine of Margaret’s sleek head, and her small hard shoulders. He noticed the way the muscles in her upper back shifted and tensed underneath the fine wool of her jacket. He watched them as she bent to lift her bag from the floor. He saw how her arms were rigid as she snapped open the locks. Then he waited to see what she would do next. Nothing obvious, he knew that. There would be no outbursts of emotion, no torrents of sobbing, no spitting or abuse. Not from her. He saw how Fitzsimons looked at her. But he couldn’t, from where he was standing, see her face. He wondered what expression she had as she sat, so close to him, nothing between them but fifteen feet of light blue carpet.

  The noise level dropped suddenly as the door to the Round Hall was closed and the tipstaff preceded the judge into the court. It should seem anachronistic, McLoughlin thought, even silly, the gowned figure, shuffling forward, rod in one hand, mumbling in a muffled voice, ‘All rise.’ But he found himself standing straight, feet together, shoulders thrown back, resisting the desire to bring his right hand up to his shoulder in the kind of smart salute he had been taught in Templemore. He couldn’t remember how many trials he had observed, in how many he had been an active participant, but they never failed to move him in a way he found hard to define. This was what it was all about. The prosecution of justice. He could be, and he was, as cynical as the next man, but he knew when it came to it that the law and rule of law was all anyone had to hang on to. Without the judge, the pompous well-fed barristers in their wigs and gowns, the whole creaking, tedious bureaucracy, it was a short tumbril ride to the punishment beatings, the vigilantes, the blood-covered baseball bats.

  The judge settled himself on the bench, and leaned forward to say a few words to the registrar. Then he cleared his throat and called for the jury.

  This was the moment of real mystery, thought McLoughlin. Take twelve people, with no training in the law, no guaranteed level of education or intelligence. Give them the power to assign guilt or innocence, and watch what happens. Somehow or other these twelve people take on the mantle of the court. They are transformed by the responsibility placed upon them. They become greater than the sum of their parts. He watched as the jury-keeper opened a small door in the wall to the right of the judge, and they shuffled into their places. Eight men and four women. Most of them were aged, he reckoned, between twenty and thirty. The defence solicitor had done his best. He had limited powers of challenge, but within those limits he had managed to pick a jury which, on balance, looked as if it might favour the accused. But who could ever tell?

  The registrar called the jury roll, number first, followed by name. McLoughlin looked towards Jimmy. He was still standing, straight, expectant, a sombre but responsive expression on his face. The registrar read the charges in a rapid monotone . . .

  ‘James Fitzsimons. Count number one. You are charged that on the thirteenth day of August nineteen ninety-five, in the Dublin Metropolitan district, at a place unknown, you did murder Mary Mitchell, contrary to section four of the Criminal Justice Act, nineteen ninety-four. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?’

  Without hesitation came the answer. ‘Not guilty.’

  ‘Count number two. You are charged that on the fifth day of August nineteen ninety-five at twenty-two Canal Lane, Dublin 2, you did falsely imprison Mary Mitchell, contrary to section 2(1) of the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?’

  Again the answer. ‘Not guilty.’

  ‘Count number three. You are charged that between the fifth day of August and the thirteenth day of August you did rape Mary Mitchell, contrary to section two of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act, nineteen eighty-one. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?’

  The same response. ‘Not guilty.’

  The judge leaned forward, his jowls beagle-like beneath the yellowing wig. ‘And who is appearing for the defendant?’

  There was silence for a moment. Then a tall thin figure, wigged and gowned, pushed his way quickly to his place on the front bench. He stood still for a moment, waiting for the silence, which came
quickly, then bowed his head slowly. When he spoke his voice was clear and strong. ‘May it please your lordship, I appear on behalf of the defendant, instructed by Mr Simon McGinley. And my apologies for my lateness, which was unavoidable.’

  McLoughlin smiled at the unnecessary theatricality of it all. All this bowing and scraping. More game-playing, more dressing-up. More playing to the gallery. And then without warning he saw Margaret rise to her feet and push past the other people in the same row. She turned towards the door behind him and he saw her face. Anger was scrawled across it. He tried to stop her, but she brushed him out of the way. He followed her into the Round Hall, quiet now, like a school playground after classes have begun, but she had disappeared outside, through the glass door that led onto the quays. He quickened his step, ignoring the uniformed attendant, and hurried out under the building’s huge Portland stone porch. He crossed over to the river and looked up towards O’Connell Street, then down in the direction of Heuston Station. He ran back over the road, dodging through the heavy traffic and up Chancery Place, left and on to Chancery Street, past the Bridewell and left again on to Church Street. It had begun to rain, a soft, drenching drizzle. Water dripped down his forehead and into his eyes. Fuck the woman, he thought, holding his jacket closed and feeling yet again the wet of his socks and shoes. He stopped at the iron railings that bounded the playground outside Church Street Corporation flats. The miserable concrete rectangle was deserted. Washing sagged on lines strung between metal poles. A burnt-out car was falling to pieces beside a row of swings, their seats lashed together with a thick piece of chain. Two women walked past him, pushing an old-fashioned pram. They looked suspiciously in his direction, and as he turned towards them one of the women shouted, ‘What you fuckin’ lookin’ at, mister?’

  ‘Not you, you fat ugly cow,’ he muttered under his breath, as he hurried back down the street and onto the quays. Perhaps, after all, she might have returned to the trial. She probably just needed a breath of fresh air. He’d probably overreacted. As always. Wherever she was concerned. The rain dripped down his neck and seeped through the seams on his shoulders. He felt cold, miserable and foolish.

  35

  I must begin at the beginning. That is what I must do. But what is the beginning? Is it the day that I was born, or the day that he was born? Did it start when my father stopped outside a house in Merrion Square and took my hand and ran my fingers across the engraved surface of a shining brass plate, tracing the name and the letters that followed it? That will be you, he said, when you grow up. And I smiled at my reflection, butter yellow, against the grimy brick. Or maybe it began when I sat next to a boy called Joe Macken, our first day in pre-med physics, assigned alphabetically to our seats, and I lent him a biro because his had leaked all over his pocket. And three years later he invited me to his twenty-first birthday party. Was that what set the clockwork in motion? Wheels grinding, gears meshing, chance and coincidence colliding? Or maybe the beginning was quite simply my willingness, my desire, my sudden surprising need to be loved?

  Margaret stood in front of a high wide mirror, fluorescent light carving grooves under her eyes and around her mouth. Behind her the cubicle doors were open, ten identical lavatories reflected along the wall. She had stumbled from the Four Courts up the quays in the rain, and eventually hailed a taxi. She had told the driver to bring her to the airport. There was no reason for her choice of destination, just an overwhelming desire to be alone, to be in a place that held no memories, that did not resonate with desire or sorrow.

  Water had soaked through her shoes, and mud had splashed up her legs. Her hair was plastered to her scalp. She had taken it out of its wooden slide and shaken it loose to encourage it to dry. The skin in her face felt taut. Rainwater had leached out its natural oils and left behind a husk, creased and crinkled, cross-hatched like a dry riverbed. She turned on the tap and held her hands under the warm flow. The tops of her fingers, from the first joint to the tips of her nails, were dead white. She turned them over and held them up in front of her face. The skin was soft and wrinkled, like something, she thought, that you’d find when you lifted up a large stone. A small slug-like creature, soft and wet, its body transparent so you could see the workings of its internal organs. She remembered standing, shivering, her hair wet and dripping down her back, a small towel wrapped around her shoulder. Behind her, way out in the sea, her father, one arm waving as he trod water. ‘Come back in, Maggie, it’s lovely.’ But she stood and shivered, her feet and hands an identical pale blue, her finger- and toenails yellow, her little nipples scratching against the elasticated material of her bathing suit, and her teeth banging together.

  She drank the hot whiskey she had ordered in one large gulp and asked for another. The airport bar was empty. She sat by the big window that looked onto the runway. Should it be called the runaway? she thought, as she lifted the steaming glass, her hand not quite steady. She had to think about it now. She had to turn her attention back to what had happened this morning. I am so stupid, she chastised herself. How could I not have realized that he, given his job, his life, could be involved somehow or another with Mary’s case?

  He? Why did she still refer to him as ‘he’? At least give him his proper title. Mary’s father. Mary’s real father, not the fictional, made-up version. Not the ‘David Anthony Mitchell, marine biologist. Born in London, orphaned at the age of seven. Brought up in a Barnardo’s home’ The man she had fixed so firmly in her memory that she believed, as much as Mary, as much as everyone else, that he had once existed. She remembered. She had sat down one morning when she was eight months pregnant, with a pen and a piece of paper, and she had drawn up his dimensions. Like an architect designing a building. Name, date of birth, place of birth. Height, weight, colour of hair and eyes. Likes and dislikes. Education and occupation. Where and how they had met. She had practised and rehearsed his vital statistics until they came automatically, like the words of a nursery rhyme or the ten times table. And how surprised and relieved she was that everyone else believed them too. She had torn a photograph from a magazine of a man who fitted the description and she had gone to a photographer and asked him to make her copies. She had sent one to her parents. Mary had spotted it amongst the clutter on the mantelpiece in Catherine’s room.

  ‘Look, Mummy,’ she had said, picking it up, ‘it’s our picture of Daddy. Doesn’t he look nice?’

  She had had six copies made. One was in her office, three were scattered around her house, and there was one more. It was missing. Mary had always kept it in her bag, and her bag was gone.

  Poor David Anthony Mitchell. She had bought some books and clothes in a second-hand shop in Portobello. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, a couple of dog-eared Charles Dickenses, A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield. Some old orange Penguins. Graham Greene and Kingsley Amis. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando in a handsome Hogarth Press first edition, and a few old books on birds and butterflies, fish and insects. She had carefully printed his name on the flyleaf of the books, and had his name embroidered, boarding-school style, on ten old handkerchiefs. There was a microscope at home in Mary’s bedroom that she told her had belonged to her father. Just think, she had said, when you put your eye against the glass, his eye would have been there too. Years ago. When he was about your age. The lies had come easily. She raised her glass to the memory of the man she had created, saluting him in the shadowy reflection that the rain-spattered window gave back to her. But now she could delay no longer. She had to deal with the real man, not the convenient figment of her imagination. She waved her hand at the barman. I will wait for another drink and then I will think about him.

  She stirred the black cloves, like tiny bones, around in the sugary whiskey, pressing the slice of lemon against the glass to extract as much of its tartness as she could. Now it was time to bring him out into the light of day. Name him. Christian name, Patrick, surname, Holland. Not heard the name out loud for twenty years until McLoughlin had said it in
the kitchen last night, and the sound of it had caused her hands to lose their grip, the vase to fall to the floor. Not seen for the same number of years until today when she recognized his tall, angular body as he hurried to his place at the front bench. Not heard his voice until he announced himself to the court as the senior counsel defending the killer of his daughter, her daughter, Mary.

  Now I will indulge, she thought as she drank again from the warm glass. Starting with the twenty-first birthday party. The one Joe Macken had invited her to. Just before Christmas 1972. His family had a large farm somewhere in Co. Laois. They thought, he said, that when he qualified he would go home to take over his uncle’s rural practice. But they were in for a surprise. Joe wanted to be a plastic surgeon and live far away in the heat and the light. The New World. As far as possible from the mud and the damp and the smell of wet dogs. Come with me, Margaret, he said. It’ll be fun. But she just laughed and kept him at bay with jokes and silly games. He was a nice boy, handsome, with a wide smile and a long nose. But he was just a boy.

  He had arranged that she would get a lift to the party. His cousin, a barrister in Dublin, was coming down with his wife. They would pick her up, drive her safely in their nice warm car. Then she would stay the night, and they would drive her back again the next day, after breakfast. It was all arranged. No, she protested. I’ll get the train. But he insisted. Kept on phoning her at home to confirm the arrangements. You’ll like Patrick, he said. He’s a bit older than us, and he seems a bit formal to begin with. But he’s got a great sense of humour. And his wife, Crea, is a sweetie.

  But when the car pulled up outside the house, it contained only one person. A man with curly hair, falling down over his collar, who explained that his young son had whooping cough and his wife had decided to forgo the pleasures of the party to look after the child.

  She pulled her black velvet cloak around her as she sat in the passenger seat beside him. The atmosphere in the car was brittle and tense. He looked as if he was carrying the aftershocks of a row in the stiffness in his jaw and neck and the way he accelerated the car in the confines of the narrow sea road. She remembered wishing, as he drove up the hill, that she could get out and find her own way to the party. She had made a few polite attempts at conversation, but eventually she gave up. He fiddled with the radio and found music. Kathleen Ferrier singing. Her strong dark contralto sliding over the notes. The sorrow of Orpheus losing his love to the underworld.