Hide Her Name

by Nadine Dorries

  The Priory had been the best cover for them all. No one would have suspected a priest, or so they had thought.

  Although he didn’t need to, he dropped his voice to a whisper.

  ‘Do the police have the pictures? Can we be identified? Do they know we let the priest into the hospital? Are you running?’ His questions chased one another down the line.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ the bishop replied. ‘How can I run? Do I not need to find out what is going on? They don’t have the pictures. I put them meself into the incinerator at the convent, with the help of the sister.’

  Austin breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe.

  ‘In that case, why do the police want to interview the housekeeper?’

  ‘She apparently had a long chat to one of the neighbours, a Molly Barrett, from Nelson Street. The next day, the police were at her house for most of the day.’

  ‘Look, we didn’t murder the priest, I keep telling Stanley. That is what the police are looking for. A murderer. Not us.’

  The mortuary door clicked open. Austin almost jumped out of his skin as Stanley stepped in.

  ‘Aye, but we don’t know who killed him. The sister has a notion the Doherty house is connected and the Kitty girl is pregnant. We don’t know if any of that is true. My worry is that their enquiries will lead them to us and the group.’

  There was silence for a moment as Austin accepted a cigarette from Stanley and bent his head to take a light.

  ‘Well, you keep finding out what is happening and we will do our bit here. We need to make sure that we shut down any clues that may lead them to us, don’t we, Bishop?’

  ‘True enough,’ the bishop replied. ‘Now I have a plan to move the girl back to Dublin, out of the way as soon as possible and I need your help.’

  As Sister Evangelista helped Daisy load her bags into the car, she chatted to her about the police request to interview her.

  ‘Have ye any idea why, Daisy?’

  ‘I haven’t, Sister.’

  ‘Did ye say anything to Molly, when she visited, that might give ye a clue?’

  But Daisy just stared vacantly out of the window and didn’t reply.

  Alice saw Jerry first, before he saw her. He was sitting at Brigid’s table, tucking into a plate of food. He looked so natural, chatting to Brigid as she washed up at the sink, that a stranger looking in would have thought it was something Jerry did every night of his life. Joseph was now perched on his knee, trying to grab the fork before it reached Jerry’s mouth.

  ‘Oh Lordy, what are you doing here?’ Alice exclaimed, in a voice far too high-pitched. ‘I left a stew in the oven at home.’

  Before Jerry could answer, she reached out for Joseph and turned to speak to Brigid. ‘Has he been good?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s been grand, no trouble at all,’ said Brigid, moving over to wipe the hands of her own tribe, who sat round the table.

  ‘Thank you, Brigid, you have been fantastic.’

  ‘I had baked a pie, but Mrs McGuire went off to the fish and chip shop. Jerry didn’t know if you had left anything for him, so I gave him the pie. Sean will no doubt have that as well as the fish and chips when he finally arrives home, being the greedy pig that he is now.’ Brigid was grinning. Jerry was still tucking into the pie.

  Joseph was nestled against Alice’s chest, half asleep.

  Two of Brigid’s babies were asleep in the pram, which was where they would stay until their elder sister was old enough to be transferred from her cot to a bed.

  Everything is so normal, thought Alice, and yet only feet away I have just kissed your husband.

  She wanted to laugh out loud.

  ‘How was the housekeeper?’ asked Jerry, who was genuinely interested.

  ‘Oh, well, not that great, I’m afraid. I would like to call again but we will see. It’s having the time. Not that easy at the moment.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Brigid, generously rushing in. ‘I will have Joseph any time, so I will. It’s not a problem at all for me.’

  Alice began to fake her protest but Brigid cut her off. Brigid was playing into Alice’s hands, beautifully.

  ‘I won’t hear a word, now shush. If ye need to go again, just bring him over to Auntie Brigid.’

  Alice didn’t feel a shred of guilt. Not a flicker of remorse.

  What she did feel was jealousy. It had been brewing since the first time she had met Sean alone. And now, at this moment, in Brigid’s kitchen of perfect pastry and well-behaved children, it was stronger than ever. Alice was jealous of the Brigid who in just a few moments would fuss round Sean as soon as he walked in and slipped into their ordered and happy family life.

  A realization dawned upon Alice. Sean was two different men. There was the man she had come to know, who had sat in the pub with her, and the man he would become when he walked into his own home and sat at his own hearth.

  She didn’t want to be there when that happened.

  Claiming Sean as her own would be easy. Removing him from the grip of his wife, daughters, mother and his comfortable domestic routine would be much more difficult.

  ‘Jerry, I am taking Joseph over to bed, he is almost asleep,’ she said, pulling back the pram quilt and laying Joseph down.

  As Alice fastened the studs on the side of the pram hood, Jerry spoke while he was still eating. ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he spluttered, shovelling the last forkful down, and thinking that whatever Alice had prepared for supper would not be a patch on Brigid’s pastry.

  ‘Would ye like some on a plate to take home, Jer?’ asked Brigid innocently, not realizing that Alice would perceive the offer as a direct attack upon her competence as a wife.

  Jerry, desperate to say yes, looked to Alice for approval.

  ‘No thanks, Brigid. He has to eat the food I prepared at home yet.’

  Alice locked eyes with Brigid and smiled as she spoke. A thin smile. Her mind elsewhere.

  Thinking. Brooding. Plotting.

  ‘Ah, ’tis the only way to a man’s heart, making him good food, I can guarantee that, so I can,’ said Brigid as she stood with one hand on the back door and the other in her apron front pocket. She cut a lonely silhouette framed in the light, watching them both walk down the path together. ‘’Tis how I caught my Sean. Once he had tasted my pastry, he didn’t stand a chance,’ Brigid chuckled.

  ‘Really?’ Alice threw the reply over her shoulder, laced with more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘I’ll have to remember that one for the future.’

  Mrs McGuire walked down the entry and stopped as Sean loomed into sight. ‘Sean,’ she called out. ‘What are ye doing, stood there?’

  Sean looked at his mother and was speechless.

  How could he say, ‘I’m waiting for Alice to leave my house so that I can go home’? His mouth flapped open and closed again while he desperately tried to form a sensible sentence. They both heard the back gate click shut and turned together to see Alice and Jerry walking towards them.

  ‘Hello, Alice, Jerry,’ shouted Sean. He was playing for time while he thought what to say to his mother.

  ‘Hello, Sean. Hello, Mrs McGuire,’ said Jerry. ‘Jesus, Sean, ye have the best pie waiting for ye in your house. I almost stuffed the lot down and left ye nowt.’

  ‘Kathleen will be delighted to hear that the best pie you have ever tasted was made by Brigid,’ whispered Alice sharply under her breath to Jerry, just as both men roared with laughter.

  Without realizing it, Sean’s eyes were fixed on Alice.

  Hers gave nothing away. Mrs McGuire forgot to ask again why she had found her son standing alone, kicking the entry wall, rather than in his own home.

  Little Paddy ran in through the back door, shouting, ‘Mammy, Da, I have the ciggies.’

  ‘What took ye so feckin’ long, ye lazy article?’ grumbled Paddy, as he took the fags. ‘I bet ye fecking dawdled all the way, didn’t ye?’

  ‘I did not, Da, I ran all the way.’

  ‘Ran, my arse, ye
bleeding liar.’

  ‘Da, I did, I ran.’

  Big Paddy cuffed Little Paddy across the ear with one hand whilst he snatched the ciggies from him with the other.

  He had run out of cigarettes an hour earlier and had been pacing the floor, glancing at the back door every thirty seconds, waiting for Little Paddy to return.

  The dog lay on the floor, with his tail tucked in and his ears down, as close to Little Paddy as he could possibly be.

  Little Paddy began to whimper.

  ‘Stop crying like a babby, Paddy,’ said Peggy as she walked into the room.

  ‘I can’t help it. Da just hit me over the ear and called me a liar. He said I didn’t run home with his cigs, an’ I did.’

  ‘If yer da says ye didn’t, ye didn’t and don’t cheek him.’

  ‘I did, I’m not a liar, Mammy, an’ Alice and Sean can prove it, so they can.’

  ‘Alice and Sean?’ said Peggy. ‘How can Alice and Sean prove it?’

  Big Paddy was taking out a ciggie and putting a second one behind his ear, ready to go before the first one burnt out.

  ‘Because they both saw me in the entry and I spoke to them. They saw me running, so they did.’

  ‘Alice and Sean?’ said Peggy for the second time. ‘What were they doing in the entry then?’

  Peggy had begun washing the dishes and was rinsing a dinner plate under the running tap.

  ‘They was kissing,’ whimpered Little Paddy.

  Peggy had leant over to lay the plate onto the draining board. Paddy had struck a match to light his ciggie. Both looked at each other in shock as the plate slipped from her hand and smashed into pieces all over the kitchen floor.

  17

  KITTY AND NELLIE stood anxiously waiting, just inside the open front door, excited and holding hands, sheltering from the midges. The light was fading fast when they spotted the lights of the farm van trundling down the Ballymara road.

  As it passed, it illuminated the rhododendrons on the opposite side of the road. Kitty wondered if her mother would be as taken with their size and wildness as she had been.

  Liam’s younger brother, Patrick, who was driving, teased both girls, slowing down just outside the front gate, then grinning and waving through the window, before speeding onwards towards the McMahons’ farm to turn the van round.

  Kitty ran to wait at the gate. Patrick and Kathleen had been to Dublin to collect Maura and had left long before the girls had woken.

  Kitty could scarcely contain her excitement. Now she and Maura hugged and held onto each other tightly, before walking down the path and in through the front door.

  The fire had been stacked high and the flames made the kitchen brighter and warmer than usual. The smells of burning peat and freshly baked bread competed with each other. Maeve, who was moving the dishes of food around the table to make space for the salmon, quickly removed her apron. Glancing in the mirror hanging above the sink, she pushed the stray strands of auburn hair behind her ears and, licking the top of both index fingers, ran them quickly across her wayward eyebrows.

  Both of the dogs were fast asleep, stretched out on their sides in front of the fire, paws covered in the softly drifting peat ash. Their legs were twitching in a dream world, chasing rabbits.

  ‘At last,’ beamed Maeve, scooping Maura into a hug.

  Maeve would never betray the fact that she had been more than a little worried about Maura’s arrival. For Maura lived in Liverpool. A city of sophistication. With bright lights and modern ways. With music and culture and fancy clothes. Liverpool had everything Mayo didn’t. Maeve had heard there was a clothes store called C&A, stocking every fashion you could find in the magazines, and a Woolworth’s bigger than any building Maeve had ever seen. The doctor’s wife also came from Liverpool and she had proudly shown Maeve the china she had bought in a store called Lewis’s.

  But one look at Maura told Maeve she had nothing to fear.

  ‘Bernadette’s lovely friend. I have heard so much about ye,’ said Maeve, linking her arm through Maura’s.

  A look of sadness crossed Nellie’s face. Then came that familiar ache in her diaphragm. The deep loneliness she could never explain. The longing for a mother she never knew. She wanted to plead with Maeve, Say her name again. Please, say it like you used to say it to her.

  ‘The child has been pacing around all the day, looking up the road waiting for ye, so she has.’

  Maeve grinned at Kitty, who nuzzled in and tightened her arms round her mother’s waist, sheepishly burying her face in Maura’s shoulder.

  Kitty inhaled deeply the scent of her mother, the familiar mixture of Nelson Street and cigarette smoke. She was calmed. Everything was better than it had been and it would be even better, now that Maura was here.

  Nellie watched Kitty hugging her mother.

  She had Alice, but Alice had never hugged Nellie.

  She looked at the expression on Kitty’s face. Nellie knew she had never felt whatever it was Kitty was feeling right now.

  Nana Kathleen had been watching too and now she put an arm gently round Nellie’s shoulder, kissed the top of her head and asked, ‘Are ye glad to see me home, or what, young lady? And where’s me kiss, for goodness’ sake?’

  Almost as soon as Maura walked into the house, Liam’s brother, Finn, arrived with his wife Colleen, as did the McMahons from the farm next door. Each had seen Patrick’s van pass by or turn at their door. Julia, Nana Kathleen’s sister, and her husband Tom, also pulled up in their van outside.

  The noise in the kitchen was deafening, as everyone made Maura feel welcome.

  Kitty was keen to hear the news from home.

  ‘Has Sister Evangelista said anything about my being away?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Not at all,’ Maura replied gently. ‘The sister has her hands full, mind. They have Daisy from the Priory in the sick bed at the convent and she has been there for days. No one knows what is up with her, but she has taken to her bed, so she has, and they all seem in much of a dither.’

  Maura didn’t add that the police had been at the convent every day, wanting to interview Daisy, and were being given short shrift by Sister Evangelista. This news gave Maura some comfort. What on earth could she possibly say to the police that would present any danger to them?

  In honour of their guest, Liam had opened the bottle of whiskey, usually kept until after the harvest. The weather had been so good of late that the village was preparing for the harvest to begin the next day.

  As usual, Kitty woke not long after falling asleep.

  She wondered if the night would ever come when she slept all the way through. Now she strained to hear if anyone else was awake.

  Maeve, Kathleen and Maura were still in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and placing them in a pan big enough to bathe an average toddler. Their voices were muffled but comforting enough to send Kitty straight back to sleep.

  ‘It was very plush,’ said Kathleen, as she plopped another peeled potato into the cold water in the pan. ‘I have never been inside anything like it. Polished wooden floors, a big oak press and very smart rugs and curtains. I wasn’t allowed to see the bedrooms. The Reverend Mother said no one is allowed to, but she assured me that the beds were very comfortable. If the bedrooms are anything like the morning room and the hall and stairs, it’ll be the poshest room Kitty will ever have slept in.’

  ‘Did they seem kind enough, though, Kathleen? I don’t care about posh. God, the child is used to nothing like posh, it’s kindness she needs.’

  Maura sat down, wiping her hands on the clean apron Maeve had loaned her.

  ‘She was the Reverend Mother, Maura, more businesslike, I would say, but the young novices, they seemed lovely, now, and I’m sure they will be the ones Kitty has more contact with.’

  ‘And what is this Rosie O’Grady like, then, who will be delivering the baby? I know she is your sister-in-law, Kathleen, but is she a good woman?’

  ‘She’s Julia’s sister-in-law, not min
e, and a very well-qualified midwife. What is more, she will keep her trap shut.’ Kathleen rubbed the top of Maura’s arm comfortingly as she said this. ‘I wish the boat had come in earlier and ye could have come to see the Abbey with me, Maura, but this morning was the only time the Reverend Mother had free and time is short.’

  Maeve looked at both women. Her heart was heavy and she hated the conversation. With no children of her own, she would love to have adopted Kitty’s baby but Liam wouldn’t hear of it. He was still hoping, even though Maeve was approaching forty, that one day soon they would be blessed with their own son.

  ‘Let Kitty have tomorrow, before ye tell her,’ Maeve said. ‘Kitty and Nellie have looked forward to the harvest so much and they will have great fun. If ye ask me, I think one or two of the village lads may have their eyes on our little ladies.’

  Kathleen poured away the cold water from the two big hunks of bacon in which they had been soaking all day, and put the pan under the tap to refill the pan.

  ‘Aye, well, they may do, but Kitty is just beginning to show. We can’t wait too long before she is taken to the convent. She can have the harvest and then I think we have to take her. But we will let her have her last day here without worrying about what the next will bring. She doesn’t need to know yet.’

  ‘We can all drink to that,’ said Maeve, with a wink, emptying out the remainder of the whiskey into the glasses.

  They sat on the settle in front of the fire. Maeve kicked an ember out of the fire, then jabbing the poker into the flaming peat, she lifted it up to light her last cigarette of the day. The heat from the embers almost singed her eyelashes and tears sprang to her eyes. Wiping her face with her apron, she passed her cigarette along to the other two so that they could light their own.

  Picking up her glass, Maeve said in a quiet voice, ‘Who says it’s a man’s life, eh?’

  In unison, all three lifted their glasses, took a sip of the whiskey from one hand and a large pull on their cigarette from the other.