Letters From a Patchwork Quilt

by Clare Flynn

  ‘My eldest child is Jane, now the boys are gone.’

  ‘Stop that!’ She looked around, terrified that someone might overhear, but the bar was empty.

  Now here he was, forced to lurk outside to imbibe a tot. He hadn’t wanted to be there at all, but Mary Ellen threw one of her tantrums, screaming at him, insisting that he give Marian away. The ceremony brought back the nightmare of his own marriage, twenty years earlier and it was as much as he could do not to take a drink in the church itself.

  Now sitting here, he let himself wallow in self pity. If God existed he was a cruel and merciless deity. What had he done to deserve the life he had been given? Losing the only woman he could ever love, losing the only profession he wanted to follow, living in this godforsaken town, forced to play the role of father to the bastard daughter of a priest – the very man who had ruined him.

  He took another swig, and brushed the hair out of his eyes, blinking in the sun, then closed his eyes and leaned back against the stone steps.

  He opened his eyes to see Clementina, his youngest, sitting beside him. She said nothing. Just slipped her tiny hand into his and leaned her head against him.

  ‘Why are you all on your own, Dadda?’

  ‘I just needed a bit of air, Clemmie, love.’

  ‘Will you tell me a story, Dadda? The one about the naughty boy who ran away from home.’

  ‘Come here, lass.’ He lifted her onto his lap and stroked her hair.

  Clementina. The only one of his children who had managed to get under his skin. The only one he’d lay down his life for. The only one who understood him without question, deaf to her mother’s often-voiced criticisms of him. Clementina, who had inspired a fierce love in him, without even trying.

  He had tried to see Gertrude: night after night for several weeks after their last meeting he’d slipped out of the Tudor Crown and gone round to her home in Lawson Street, stepping into the narrow alleyway behind the houses and knocking on her back-door. He knew she was inside but she didn’t answer and he was afraid of causing a scene and alerting the neighbours. After a few weeks he gave up. There was a limit to how much pride a man could swallow.

  One evening, a few weeks after Marian’s wedding and six months after his argument in the sand dunes with Gertrude, Jack had just unlocked the doors to the pub and was polishing glasses behind the bar, when his first customer of the night, Paddy Flanagan, appeared.

  ‘Give me a pint, landlord, and one for yourself,’ said the Irishman. ‘It’s a bad business that’s gone off, isn’t it?’

  ‘Lost on the horses again, have you, Paddy?’

  ‘No. Haven’t you heard?’ He nodded towards the empty corner table, where Bill Logan usually sat. ‘What’s happened with old Bill.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Arrested. They took him away this morning. He’s to stand trial at the assizes in Newcastle for murdering his wife.’

  Jack continued to pump the beer, oblivious to the fact that it was spilling over onto the floor.

  ‘Yes. Shocking. You could have knocked me down with a feather too, Jack. Hey – I think that pint’s poured, mate!’ Paddy reached for the brimming tankard. ‘I know Bill had a temper and word was he used to knock his woman around, but I’d never have thought he’d go so far as to do her in.’

  ‘He’s killed her?’ Jack leaned against the counter for support.

  ‘Beat the living daylights out of her. Poor soul. The neighbours are feeling bad, I can tell you. They heard her screaming but did nothing. Reckoned it happened quite a lot. It was only this morning when she didn’t open the door to clean the step that they went round to check. Looked through the window and saw her. Lying in the hearth, covered in blood. He’d kicked her in the belly and hit her over the head with a poker. Knocked the bells of Shannon out of her. Her skull was all stoved in. Hey, you all right, landlord?’

  Jack turned away from the bar and was sick in the sink.

  ‘Good lord, Jackie boy, you’ve a weak constitution. Did you know the lady?’

  Jack wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He shook his head. He couldn’t frame a response. He wanted to push Paddy Flanagan out of the bar and slam the bolts of the door shut, but he knew he couldn’t. Dead. How could she be dead? Not possible. A mistake. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Two men entered the pub and greeted Paddy.

  ‘I was just telling Jack here about what happened over in Lawson Street.’

  ‘Terrible. My missus said it was because she’d been doing the deed with another man.’

  ‘Usual story.’

  ‘Can’t blame old Bill then. He’d not stand for another fellow tupping his wife. Who can blame him?’

  ‘How did he find out? Did he catch the blackguard?’

  ‘Seems she were up the duff. And we all know that can’t have been on account of old Bill. Married to two women for more than thirty years and never managed to put a bun in either oven. Bridget Bailey who lives next door to them says Gertrude were trying to hide it but at six months the penny finally dropped with Bill that she wasn’t just eating too many pies!’

  The men all laughed. Jack could feel the sweat on his face.

  ‘Can’t say as I’m surprised she had a fancy man,’ said Paddy. ‘Bill was more than thirty years older than her. A young healthy woman like that. Stands to reason she’d be getting it elsewhere if he couldn’t hoist the mainsail!’

  They all laughed again.

  ‘Not that she was much to look at.’

  ‘No oil painting for sure.’

  ‘Still, she had a nice pair of diddeys.’

  ‘And you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire.’

  Jack flung the cloth down and rushed out of the bar.

  ‘What’s up with the landlord then, Bob?’ someone asked the tap-man.

  The coroner examined the body and confirmed that the victim was carrying a child. Logan was charged not only with the murder of his wife but also of his unborn baby. When he read this in the newspaper, Jack felt sick with the knowledge that it was his child. One quick fuck in the sand for him to make her conceive a child, after more than ten years of Logan trying. One quick fuck in the sand was also the cost of Gertrude’s life and probably Logan’s too by the time the courts finished with him. Jack didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to accept that it was true. He kept hoping that it was all a terrible nightmare and he would wake from it.

  Gertrude’s funeral was paid for by the parish. Jack didn’t go to the service, which by all accounts was packed. Nothing like a good murder to pull in the crowds. While the rumours continued to circulate about Gertrude’s infidelity and the paternity of her unborn child, they didn’t appear to have reached the presbytery and the general consensus was that Mrs Logan was the hapless victim of a belligerent and drunken husband. This view was widely propagated by the League of the Cross and the Temperance League who held a joint rally to draw out the lessons on the evil consequences of drink.

  Jack didn’t go to Logan’s trial either. He knew he wouldn’t be able to bear hearing the gory details of Gertrude’s death and he didn’t want to see the man in the dock. There had been a half-hearted attempt to reduce the charge to involuntary manslaughter while of unsound mind but, as the cause of his loss of reason was assumed to be alcohol, this went nowhere.

  The day Logan was hanged, Jack drank as though the temperance campaigners had won the battle and alcohol would no longer be available. He got through a whole bottle of whisky. He drank to forget, trying to sluice away the knowledge that he had been the cause of Gertrude’s death. Bill Logan may have been the one who wielded the poker that cracked open her skull, and whose hobnailed boots had kicked to death the baby in her swollen belly, but Jack knew that Gertrude would still be alive if he had not seduced her on the beach that wintry afternoon.

  He kept trying to make sense of what had occurred. She had lain down, opened her legs and let him take her. What could he have assumed other than that she wanted
it as much as he did? Why hadn’t she told him she was expecting his child? Now she was dead he wished he had persisted in his efforts to see her again. He had given up too easily.

  If only she’d told him she was expecting his child, he could have run away with her. Couldn’t he? Wouldn’t he?.

  But he knew he wouldn’t. She would have known that too.

  He was haunted by the picture of her trying to keep the pregnancy a secret from her husband. Perhaps she had attempted to abort it? Jack clenched his teeth. He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to close his eyes and forget he had ever met Gertrude Logan. The only way to forget was to drink. The amnesia didn’t last long but it helped for a while.

  The nightmares were the worst part. Rather than Gertrude, he would be lying in the sand dunes with Eliza, making love, her body yielding, soft, tender, excited, moving under him – then as they climaxed together her body changed. Hard, cold, heavy-limbed, broken, bloodied. Dead eyes open in a smashed and battered face – Gertrude’s eyes, sad, accusatory, disappointed. He would wake, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets in the small hours, unable to fall asleep again, night after night – until he discovered that if he was heavily drunk he fell into a sleep more akin to a coma.

  Late one night when he locked the pub and stumbled up the stairs, Mary Ellen was standing on the landing, waiting for him. He slumped against the wall, pushing his hair out of his eyes and struggling to focus.

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  He said nothing, just leaned against the wall as the floor rose up to meet him.

  ‘You should be ashamed, Jack Brennan. You’re a holy show. Don’t you care that you’re setting a terrible example to your daughters? Don’t you care that you’re shaming us all? You’re blind drunk. How do you think it feels that everyone in the League knows my own husband is a drunk?’

  ‘How do you think I feel that my wife is trying to get us thrown out of our home and me out of a job?’ His words were slurred.

  She curled her lip in disgust. ‘Then you’d have to get a proper job. Become respectable, not a common landlord who serves liquor to men while their families go hungry. Your daughters and I could go into church without bowing our heads in shame.’

  He laughed an ugly, hollow laugh. ‘You’re as likely to hang your head in shame as the Pope is to come to Middlesbrough and run naked round Albert Park. Shame’s never been high on your list, has it? You’ve never felt it and you’ve never shown it. Not even when you let that old devil of a priest shove you up against the wall and grind away. Not even when you let your father force me to marry you when I was committed to someone else. Or when you hitched your nightgown up and forced yourself on me.’ He jerked his head and the sudden movement caught him off balance and he slumped back against the landing wall.

  Mary Ellen’s face was rigid with pent up rage. ‘You’re my husband. It was your duty to give me children.’ She hissed the words through clenched teeth as she choked back the tears. ‘Be quiet or the girls will hear.’

  ‘So you do have some shame? You don’t want them to know that their mother is a hussy who lifted her petticoats for the parish priest. Have you told that to Father Reilly in the confessional yet? What would your sainted son-in-law think if he knew Marian was a priest’s bastard?’

  She lunged at him, but in his drunkenness, he slithered down the wall to the floor. Her momentum carried her forward. She tripped on his legs, which were stretched out in front of him, and hurtled over him down the stairs.

  She screamed as she was falling, then crashed to the bottom of the stairs, landing in a crumpled heap at the bottom. The noise brought Ursula and Alice onto the landing.

  ‘What’s happened, Papa? What was that noise?’

  He looked up at his daughters standing side by side in their nightdresses, then looked down the stairs to where their mother lay limp, splayed out on the floor like a discarded rag doll. Ursula stepped over him and pattered barefoot down the stairs.

  ‘Oh dear Lord, I think she’s broken her neck. She’s dead. Oh, Mama.’ Her words turned to a cry of fear.

  Jack remembered little of the rest of that night. There was a flow of people in and out of the pub - neighbours, the Mintoes, the doctor, a pair of policemen and Father Reilly. Someone sent word to the Reformatory to break the news to Marian. Through it all, Jack nursed his aching head and tried to piece together what had happened. He told the police he and Mary Ellen were going up to bed and she had slipped at the top of the stairs and fallen. Alice and Ursula, if they had heard the arguing, said nothing, but he felt the pressure of their silent judgment.

  When Marian arrived in the early hours of the morning with her husband, she saw at once that Jack was drunk. After looking at the body of her mother, now laid out on tables in the saloon bar, she turned on him.

  ‘If you hadn’t been drunk you could have saved her. You could have caught her before she fell.’

  ‘Now, now, Marian,’ said the parish priest, ‘You can’t say that. You weren’t even here. Those are steep stairs and the wood is very worn and slippery. Accidents happen.’

  ‘He forced her to live in this filthy den of iniquity. My poor mother hated it. She couldn’t bear living above a public house, breathing in the stink of beer every day. It’s all his fault.'

  Malcolm Vickers took his wife by the arm and led her away, nodding to Jack as they left.

  He lost his licence. The police and the town council acknowledged that there was no evidence of foul play, but Jack’s evident inebriation was enough for them to determine he was not to be entrusted with a liquor licence. He heard the news the day before Mary Ellen’s funeral.

  It was a bitter blow. He’d come to enjoy life as a landlord. As well as the ready access to alcohol he’d liked the banter with the men who gathered at the bar each night. It had been a welcome escape from Mary Ellen as she had rarely ventured into the public rooms. The temptation was to walk away, to leave Middlesbrough at last. To set off for America. He might never find Eliza but he might find a new life, a new sense of purpose.

  Tempting as the idea of flight was, Jack knew he had to face his responsibilities. He had three daughters at home, depending on him. He couldn’t just leave them.

  He stood at the open graveside as Mary Ellen’s coffin was lowered. The woman whom he blamed for the complete ruination of his life was gone forever. It had happened so quickly. He’d not intended for her to fall, but now that it had happened he silently cursed that he had not thought of this as a way to dispose of her years ago. As the sods of earth tumbled onto the lid of the coffin he imagined how different his life would have been if he had pushed her down the stairs soon after they’d arrived at the Tudor Crown. He fought the urge to spit on the coffin.

  Malcolm Vickers approached him as they walked away from the graveside. ‘Mr Brennan, I understand you’re leaving the Tudor Crown?’

  Jack looked at his son-in-law, suspecting that the man was crowing over his ignominious dismissal. ‘They’re looking for another landlord, but we can stay on until they find one.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Do my best to keep the family out of the workhouse.’ Jack spoke with bitterness, but was filled with shame and humiliation. Just a few months earlier this man had stood before him asking to marry Marian. Jack had had the upper hand. Now, Jack suspected Vickers wanted to crow at the expense of his father-in-law.

  Vickers persisted. ‘Marian tells me you used to be a teacher.’

  Jack nodded.

  ‘I was wondering if you might consider taking up a teaching post at The Reformatory. At present I am the only lay teacher, but Father Ignatius, who is the principal, has expressed his agreement to my proposal we take on another.’

  Jack looked at Vickers in astonishment, unable to speak.

  ‘I am willing to put your name forward,’ said Vickers. ‘As long as you sign the pledge and turn your back on alcohol, I will keep the matter of you losing your job between us. God rejoices in the salvation of every soul fro
m the evil of drinking.’

  Jack was open-mouthed.

  ‘The school inspectors have complained that there is insufficient emphasis on the traditional elements of the school curriculum. The brothers are exemplary in their moral and spiritual guidance for the wretched sinners who are under their care, but one man alone can’t cope with teaching two hundred boys, try as hard as I might. There would of course be some conditions before I could put you forward for the post. As well as remaining teetotal you will be expected to attend Mass with the rest of the school and to do all you can to reinforce the Catholic values we hold dear. Marian has told me that you are rather lax in your churchgoing?’

  Jack swallowed. ‘It’s been difficult. Running a public house… Sundays are our busiest days.’ Why was he trying to justify himself?.

  The thought of being under the thumb of the church once more was anathema. He didn’t want to be obliged to Vickers, or to Marian. And giving up drink? He hated the thought of those smug Temperance people. Hated the thought of Mary Ellen exacting a victory over him even in death. He ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes. What should he do? His career as a landlord was over and this was a chance to do again what he most loved to do. He had his daughters to think of. Clementina was only four.

  Do you think I’ve a chance then?’

  ‘The decision is Father Ignatius’s but I do have his ear. The fact that you are Marian’s father will certainly help. He has been very impressed with her and so I’m sure he will be willing to consider taking on her father.’

  Jack swallowed again, then took a deep breath. He nodded at Vickers’s. ‘Thank you, Malcolm. I appreciate it. I won’t let you down.’

  ‘Understand me, Mr Brennan, I do this for Marian and her sisters, not for you. I trust you will not let them down.’

  35

  The Cricket Match

  Clementina had spent the last eight years living in a boy’s reform school. Even though she didn’t like being surrounded by so many boys, with no girls to play with, St Dominic’s wasn’t so bad. Most of the time she was free to do what she pleased. She’d mostly forgotten her mother, who’d died when Clem was five. Her other sisters had gone to heaven too. Her big sister, Marian, tried to act as though she was her mother, but Clem wasn’t very happy about that. At least she still had her father.