Mary, Mary

by Julie Parsons

  The only compensation for all this was that a couple of times he’d managed to get quite close to her. Not close enough to smell her, but near enough to see that she was looking tired and worried and very unhappy. Yesterday they’d passed each other on the steps which led from the Round Hall towards the Law Library. Their feet had stepped onto the first step at exactly the same moment. She was wearing a short black skirt, and long black boots, laced up the front. Unfortunately, the fat guard was between them. She didn’t see him immediately. She looked as if she was on another planet. He’d noticed that expression on her face before. Glazed and indifferent. She had to move slightly out of the way to let them pass. The guard said, ‘Excuse me,’ to her and she turned, swivelled just a little bit towards him. She had that mechanical ‘you’re excused but don’t bother me any more’ smile on her face, but when she saw him so close her face changed completely. She went red for a moment, and then white. The way she had that day in the church in Monkstown. He was about to stop. He thought he’d speak to her, but suddenly the guard recognized her too, and pulled him away, hard, dragging him by the handcuffs, the metal digging into his wrist-bone, catching it, pinching the skin. And he looked at him, nasty stare, which said, ‘Don’t even think about it, not for a moment.’ The pig.

  He should never have made that statement. He couldn’t understand what had happened to him that day. Why had he been so scared? Why had he let that cop bully him? Get under his skin that way. It was so stupid. They had offered him a solicitor and he had turned the offer down. They had said they’d get his mother or his father or anyone else he wanted. And he’d said no. He was easy meat after that.

  He told his barrister what had happened. After he’d talked to the other guys in Mountjoy. They’d said, you’re crazy. They’ve fuck-all evidence against you. Fight it. He was a funny guy, that barrister. He never looked him in the eye when they met. He always stood and paced around behind him, asking the same questions over and over again.

  ‘You did know the girl, didn’t you?’

  ‘How well did you know her?’

  ‘For how long did you know her?’

  ‘What did you feel about her?’

  ‘What did she feel about you?’

  ‘What did you do together?’

  ‘Did she enjoy it?’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Did you ever fight, have rows?’

  ‘Did you ever hit her?’

  ‘How did she respond?’

  ‘And you saw her last, when?’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘When was it?’

  ‘And how was she, when she left you?’

  ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘You didn’t go to the guards when you heard she was missing?’

  ‘You didn’t hear she was missing?’

  ‘You were sick. Flu, fever, weak, couldn’t get out of bed.’

  ‘And when you recovered?’

  ‘You still didn’t know she was missing. You don’t read newspapers, or watch TV?’

  ‘And what happened to you in the Garda station?’

  ‘Threats, inducements? Were you scared?’

  ‘What time did you finish giving your statement?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Over and over again, repeated and repeated.

  ‘Will you get me out of here?’ he asked him once.

  The barrister didn’t answer. ‘Lunchtime, I think,’ he said, and he left the room.

  The pathologist had interested him. He liked the way he described Mary, went through the medical evidence, painted a picture with his words. Probably a better picture than the photographs the cops had taken. He’d caught a glimpse of them when the barrister had left the album open on his desk. He didn’t think much of the framing of the images, and the cheap colour. His photographs were much better. Not, of course, that he’d been able to take any on the canal bank. A pity, really. Black and white would have been best. A big white flash and the body lying on the grass. Blacks and shades of grey, contrasts with the white of her skin. And it had been so interesting when the pathologist had said that she’d been pregnant. He could tell that everyone was shocked. Except for him. She’d told him all about that. And that she’d had an abortion. Got rid of it. Didn’t tell her mother. He didn’t approve of abortion. It was wrong. To kill something so weak and helpless. Who knows what might have happened to him and to Molly if abortion had been legal here? Swept away, both of them, flushed down the sink.

  He stretched, lifting his cuffed arm, pulling at his wrist and the wrist of the guard he was locked to. It was nearly time to go back in for the afternoon session. The Round Hall was busy now, full of people. Standing in groups, the talk and chatter rising like steam to the dome above. It must be raining outside. People were shaking water from their coats, closing umbrellas. A couple of women had just come in together. He recognized them. Journalists. There was one in particular that he liked the look of. A girl with dark hair and a big mouth. She was a giggler. She sat at the end of the bench chatting to everyone who came in. Even the guards seemed to like her. She had very long legs and she often wore tiny skirts or tight leggings. He’d caught her looking at him more than once. He’d like to put his hands around her throat and squeeze until her eyes began to pop, and then he’d fuck her till she screamed through his fingers. She was standing just in front of him. She had one hip stuck out. He watched the way her bottom moved underneath the clinging black material of her skirt. She turned towards him, laughing, chatting. Her tongue slid out and licked gently from one side to the other. He thought of a lizard sitting on a rock in the sun, flicking insects deep down into its long throat. One day, one day. Soon.

  45

  McLoughlin finished his second pint and picked up his cigar. He tapped the tip carefully on the rim of the heavy glass ashtray, already overflowing with cigarette butts and screwed-up crisp packets. Half an inch of ash dropped off, spilling across the table’s chipped black veneer. He leaned back into the lumpy upholstery and puffed hard. Lunch-time. He’d love another drink. Preferably a large vodka. He could quite easily spend the rest of the day with a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other, and to hell with the world. This afternoon the head of the forensics lab would be on the stand. Hairs, fibres, dust, body fluids. Christ. In some ways it was even worse than pathology. At least there you still had some semblance of the human being, some shape, some form. Forensics was all about reducing everything to the nasty leftovers, the detritus, the rubbish. There’d be a lot of talk about fluff under the mattress and in the cracks in the floorboards, bits and bobs found down the plughole and beneath the lino. And she’d have to sit there and listen to it all, keeping her face still and unmoved. Not giving anything away.

  He had asked her to have lunch with him. She had refused. She wasn’t rude. Just very remote, her face set and closed, her hands gripping her bag, her shoulders hunched. He knew that it was crazy the way he’d allowed himself to become so fascinated by her. Sad was the word to describe it, he thought. Sad in the sense that kids nowadays use. Pathetic, ludicrous, laughable. All those silly fantasies. Meals he’d cook her, wine he’d pour for her, places they’d visit. A total heap of crap.

  Finney stood beside his table, his anorak slung over his shoulders. He looked pale, hollows under his eyes, and McLoughlin noticed he’d cut himself shaving. The remains of a piece of bloody tissue were still stuck to his neck. McLoughlin dropped the end of his cigar on the floor and ground his foot down onto it. He stood up and pulled himself out from behind the table. Not for the first time he noticed that he seemed to take up more space than usual. Fucking middle age. He straightened up and selfconsciously sucked in his belly.

  ‘Come on, boss. We’ll be late.’ Finney held open the door for him, giving him a shove in the small of his back to propel him on his way.

  ‘Watch it.’ He glared back at the younger man.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Finney held up his hand
s in mock surrender. ‘It’s just I know you. I could see that look in your eye. That “wouldn’t it be nice to stay here all afternoon?” look.’

  ‘Cheeky little fucker, aren’t you?’ McLoughlin grabbed his head in an arm lock and dragged him across Chancery Place, dodging in and out of the heavy stream of traffic, which poured across the bridge from the south side.

  ‘Hey, let go. Sorry, I didn’t mean it.’ Finney banged ineffectually on McLoughlin’s back, laughter shaking his shoulders. ‘Stop. Please. I give in. I promise.’

  McLoughlin dropped his arm, suddenly, and Finney reeled back, overbalancing and nearly collapsing on the footpath.

  ‘Come on,’ called McLoughlin over his shoulder, ‘you’re going to be late.’

  They caught up with Margaret just as she walked up the steps and in through the double doors that led into the Round Hall. She stopped suddenly in front of them. McLoughlin looked past her. Fitzsimons was seated on a bench by the door to Court Number Two, his legs splayed out in front of him, his head flung back against the wall.

  ‘Hey, Billy,’ McLoughlin called out.

  The guard looked up from his paper. McLoughlin jerked his head towards Margaret. The guard stood, pulling Fitzsimons up from his seat.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said, and pushed him in the direction of the court. Margaret walked on quickly, heading towards the sign for the ladies’ toilet.

  The afternoon proceeded as McLoughlin had predicted. Dr Pat O’Malley, head of the lab, was his usual phlegmatic self. As always he kept any speculation, any supposition, out of his voice and his answers. He was an empiricist first and foremost. Measure it, quantify it, analyse it. Then report on exactly what you have observed. He could say that the samples of hair found in the accused’s house matched the hair of the victim. He could say that the fibres found matched clothes similar to the ones she had been wearing when she was last seen. But as her actual clothes had not been found it was impossible to say that they were an actual match. However, they had done tests on fibres taken from other clothes that the deceased had worn in the two months before her death and they had matched exactly fibres found in the accused’s house and his car.

  The questions moved on to body samples. Skin and tissue. It was all very clear-cut, very easy to define. No fuzzy boundaries for Dr O’Malley, thought McLoughlin. And so it should be. God forbid that we should find ourselves in the situation like in Britain where half their forensics seem to be corrupted or tainted, whether by design or misfortune. We have to believe absolutely in the power of scientific analysis, or else we’re finished, he thought.

  Margaret felt sick. She could taste the oxtail soup she had eaten for lunch, curdled now, bitter. She put her hand in her jacket pocket and felt the smooth surface of a small photograph. She had found it today in the inside pocket of her bag. It was passport size, one and a half inches by two. She took it out and rested it on her lap. It was one of a sheaf that Mary had got before they left New Zealand. For her new maroon Irish passport. She had put them on the kitchen table, four strips, half of them taken with Louisa. The two of them laughing, clowning, pulling faces. And then one strip, mock serious.

  ‘Mugshots,’ Mary said. ‘Which one looks most Irish, would you say, Ma?’ She had torn off two and gone to the post office to send away the forms, and Margaret had picked her favourite of the other two and slipped it into her bag. And forgotten all about it. Until lunchtime. Sitting in the gloom in Conway’s, eating lukewarm soup. And her hand had slipped as she lifted a spoonful to her mouth, and thick liquid, Franciscan brown, had dropped onto her skirt, and begun to set and congeal. She had fumbled in her bag, looking for a tissue and found instead the photo. She cupped it in the palm of one hand, folding the other protectively over it. Mary peeked out at her through her fingers, so pretty, so happy. Or so she had seemed.

  But she hadn’t told her she was pregnant. She hadn’t told her she was going to have an abortion. She had told Louisa. And it was Louisa who had gone with her to the clinic, who had waited and brought her back to her home. Who had lied to Margaret that she was ‘Fine, just fine. She’s got a bad period. You know the way she gets, so she’s going to stay here with me for the night. She’ll be home sometime tomorrow. OK?’ More lies, more deception. How can I blame her? she thought. When I started it.

  She had sat in Conway’s, the soup growing cold, and a pain in her chest, like a heavy stone on her heart. What had they talked about, herself and Patrick, the first time they met here? Politics maybe, books they had read, films they had seen. She remembered that she was wearing a long brown pleated skirt, with a pair of dark brown suede boots. And she had waited across the road in the Rotunda’s lighted doorway until she saw him go into the pub. And then counted to a hundred before sauntering casually through the door. She had been so nervous to begin with, her words tumbling from her mouth. And he had been nervous too. She was surprised. She hadn’t expected it.

  They had stayed drinking until closing time. Then he had gone to use the phone, borrowing, she remembered, twopences for the box. She didn’t ask who or why. They had walked down Parnell Street and he had kissed her, pushing her into a dark doorway and wrapping his heavy navy blue overcoat around her.

  ‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said.

  He pulled away for a moment, then he took her hand. They walked quickly past the Parnell monument, and across O’Connell Street, towards Gardiner Street. That night the place had been all but deserted, barely a straggler to be seen in the gloom. She leaned into his body, struggling to match his stride. She had lost her gloves somewhere, and she slipped her right hand into his coat pocket, feeling a bunch of keys, a handkerchief and some loose change. He turned left, up the hill towards Mountjoy Square, pulling her with him. He stopped at the first house on the right, and fumbled with the lock. Outside it was dark, cold, misty. Inside was a perfect Georgian hall, black and white chequered tiles, walls the colour of faded ox blood, and a huge gilt mirror. They stood together, looking at their reflection. Then, still looking in the mirror, he took her face between his hands and kissed her again, first on the forehead, then on the bridge of her nose, then on each cheek and finally on her mouth.

  He used another key at the top of three flights of stairs to open a small door, which opened again onto attic stairs. High up in the eaves, three perfect rooms. Wallpaper striped a dark ivy green and cream covered the walls, and the ceiling was painted with the same ivy colour. Faded Indian rugs covered the floorboards. A tapestry quilt in rich reds, yellows and blues was strewn across a shining brass bed. Bookshelves ranged across one wall. In the other a small marble fireplace, laid with turf, and beside it on the floor a record player. Records were piled in two high stacks on another shelf. He knelt and shuffled through the sleeves.

  ‘Listen.’ he said.

  Kathleen Ferrier, again. Loud crackles from the dusty surface.

  ‘Hum it again, the way you did in the car,’ he asked.

  That had been Friday night. They had stayed there in those rooms until Sunday. She had phoned in sick to the hospital, and made some excuse to her father. She put her head under the pillows when he spoke to his wife, and tried not to hear that he called her darling, then opened her arms to him again as he climbed back into bed beside her.

  ‘This place, it’s so lovely,’ she said.

  ‘It belongs to Hugh, my younger brother. He’s away at the moment.’

  ‘And do you often bring girls here?’ she asked, suddenly, furiously jealous.

  He just smiled, and ran steaming water into the huge old bath in the green tiled bathroom.

  He cooked her meals. Breakfast. Rashers and eggs, sausages and black pudding. And fresh coffee. Fillet steak for supper. Biscuits with cocoa at midnight. And when he slept she lay with the bedside lamp still burning and watched him. The smooth pallor of his skin, his long black lashes lying on his cheek. The way his hair curled down over his forehead. And she pulled back the sheet to look at his body. The thick black hair covering his chest,
the shape of a bat’s wing. Tapering into a thin black line, which she traced with her finger, from his navel to the top of his pubic bone, where it spread out again, thicker, more springy, coils of hair that tickled her nose as she bent to kiss him.

  They said goodbye on O’Connell Street. They didn’t touch, not here, out in the open. He pulled away as she tried to take his hand.

  ‘I’ll phone you,’ he said, but she didn’t believe him.

  None of it had changed much. The house in Mountjoy Souare was still there. It was empty. About to be demolished, the barman in Hill 16, just around the corner on Gardiner Street, told her, when he recognized her, poured her a drink, said he was delighted to see her again after all these years. And when she tried her keys they still worked, and the rooms on the top floor were just as she remembered. Except smaller, more cramped. She’d gone to all their favourite places that dreadful day last summer, after McLoughlin had come to see her and told her about Mary’s pregnancy. He’d been so clumsy. Read to her from the pathologist’s report. Stumbled over the unfamiliar words. Left her distraught, needing to be comforted, to talk to the only person who could share her grief. So she had traced their time together. Gone first to her old flat in Pembroke Road. Her former landlady’s daughter was living there now. She didn’t remember Margaret, but she let her in, to climb up the stairs to the room on the top floor that looked across Wellington Road to the mountains. And from there to every other place she could remember that they’d spent time together. Talking to Patrick as she walked through the crowded streets, telling him how she needed him, that she couldn’t bear the pain any longer, that she couldn’t do this by herself. And waiting for an answer. But there hadn’t been one. Until now.