The only result of my repeated raps on Maggie’s wooden door was sore knuckles, so I used my key to get in. For a split second I thought I had made a mistake. I checked the key in my hand as if it had betrayed me and opened the wrong door. The most remarkable thing was the reek of pots left unwashed too long, unemptied garbage, and under it all some rank smell of rotting meat. My stomach heaved, and I stepped back outside for a moment, then opened the door again and went inside. Two wool blankets and a pillow were on the easy chair by the window, and the closed curtains added a murky, nightmarish light to the whole scene. Heart thumping, I called out, “Maggie? Are you there? Maggie? It’s me, Delia.”
The kitchen clock ticked and outside in the street a bus ground its gears. A small sound, something between a gasp and a sob, made me jump.
“Maggie?”
I took a few steps into the room, stopped and listened. The sound came again from behind the sofa. Maggie was crouched there, knees draw up, peering out from between her hands, which were over her face as if she were a child who believed that if she hid her face no-one could see her. She reeked of sweat.
“What’s happened, Maggie?”
“Don’t let them in. Shut the door, shut the door.”
“It’s shut,” I said. “Locked up tight. Look.”
I pushed the sofa forward so she could see the door. She scrunched further into herself. I eased into her space and sank down beside her. Up close she smelled pretty rank and it was all I could do to touch her, but I put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned into me like a child.
“What’s going on?” I asked her again.
“I don’t want to get caught.”
“By who? Who’s going to catch you?”
By now I’d figured out what she was afraid of, but wondered if she knew anymore. Her eyes were wild and haunted, and she muttered under her breath, so I had to ask her again.
“They will. You know who.”
I could get no more out of her, so I went to the kitchen to put the kettle on in the firm belief that a good cup of tea would sort some of this mess out. Two dirty pots sat on the stove, one with the lid still on it, the other with a half inch of mould on the bottom. The sink had bits of rotting vegetables lying in a couple of inches of rancid water, scum floating on the surface. The sole of my shoe stuck to the floor and made the sound of a child’s sticky kiss when I pulled it free. I backed out of the room. I gave an involuntary scream when I bumped into Maggie, who was standing behind me.
“It’s all right,” she said. “The door’s locked. Nobody’s here but me. Nobody. And you. That’s all. It’s all right.”
It wasn’t all right. It was never all right again. In the end, after I retched a dozen times during the undertaking, I cleaned the flat. I persuaded Maggie into the bath and washed her. When she was dressed and had some dignity restored, I called an ambulance. The next day, after I’d spoken to the doctor assigned to her, I walked through St. Stephen’s Green. Up and down the paths I went, hardly realizing what I was doing, until I grasped that Maggie would be ill for some time. All the plans we had for my child would not now come about.
A few days later I left for Cardiff. I cried all the way back, heartbroken for Maggie as I tried to work out how to break the news to Mam and Da. Back in my own flat I locked the door, kicked off my shoes and cursed the day I’d ever heard of Daniel Wolfe.
Shocked to find myself in tears again at these memories, I blew my nose, wiped my eyes and drew the mantle of nurse around me as I walked the last quarter mile to the Big House.
21
“She’ll settle in here yet.” Daniel rubbed his hands gleefully at the thought. He saw Jude setting up a studio in the house as a certain sign she’d taken to the place. “Maybe she’ll marry Mike and the place will come alive again.”
There was no point in trying to temper his elation. If she didn’t stay, he’d not know about it. Besides, I was beginning to rethink this trait we have to make our wishes and dreams smaller, more manageable. If I had learned anything these last months, it was that keeping hopes and dreams small doesn’t prevent disasters. Hadn’t I got the means to keep Maggie in St. Mary’s just by being bold enough to ask?
“Maybe so,” was all I said. “It might indeed be so.”
It seemed everyone was settled in except me. Iris had her feet well under the table. She’d moved into the front room upstairs and got work during the busy hours at the café in the village. Sometimes she and Jude worked the garden. Jude had begun to run with Iris on the weekends and they went in to Limerick to the cinema now and again. If Jude was out with Mike, Iris sat in the parlour with a book or scribbled in her journal. To avoid her I took myself off to my room after Daniel was settled. Tidying up one evening I found the Limerick Press I’d bought on my trip to the city but never read. With nothing else to do I sat down and read it from front to back. A small column caught my eye about halfway down one page. Mr. James McCann did not show up for a court appearance. He was out on bail awaiting trial on charges for drug dealing and intimidation, and it was believed he had left the country. I wondered if he could possibly be the Jimmy McCann that Adele was running from all those years ago. If he was, he’d improved none in the interval.
“You look gloomy,” I said to Jude.
“Ah, I am, a bit.”
It seemed like time for a good cup of tea so I put on the kettle while I kept an eye on Jude, who was slumped at the kitchen table, staring at nothing. And it wasn’t a nice place, it would seem, by the frown on her and the sighs that wafted through the kitchen and mingled with the scent of almost-baked scones. She’d been out the night before with Mike, and as far as I knew she hadn’t come home until almost noon.
“Want to talk?” I asked.
She sighed again, but didn’t answer. The kettle came to a boil so I rinsed out the teapot, spooned in loose tea. Steam from the boiling water woke the tannin scent of the tea. I put the pot on the table and covered it with a cozy.
“Delia, do you think it’s a problem that Mike works here? I mean, that I’m going out with him and he works here?”
I poured the tea and put the sugar in front of her.
“Well, it could be. Do you think it is?”
“I don’t. Or I didn’t before last night. It was our first night out with his friends. They were, well, not exactly welcoming. Or some of them, anyway.”
“What does that have to do with him working here?”
I was pretty sure I knew, but didn’t want to prejudge.
“Oh, I heard one of the guys say something about Mike being on the pig’s back. You know, I’d completely forgotten that expression. At first I thought nothing of it, but as they got a bit drunker, one of them said something about his being in with the boss’s daughter.”
“And what’s wrong with that? Aren’t you a fine woman? Any man would be happy to be associated with you.”
The scones smelled done, so I took them out of the oven and turned them out on a rack to cool. Jude got up and poked them with her finger, then sucked the scorch off it.
“Well, I don’t think they meant that exactly. It was an ugly thing, like he was only with me because of who my family is, you know. That we’re rich.”
“Drunken rubbish. Did you consider at all the difference in your circumstances before?”
It had been a consideration with Daniel at first for me. Yet I let him persuade me it didn’t matter at all. My family never had a lot of money, but we had land and enough to keep us happy, so it was not in my mind that money was more valuable than happiness. Not until we were desperate to keep Maggie up in Dublin and the farm in our hands. It never occurred to me back then to consider that most of the money was his wife’s.
“No. I didn’t think of it at all,” Jude said.
I put plates for the scones on the table, then sat down opposite her and fiddled with filling my own cup whil
e I considered how to answer that. I must have been quiet a long while because she broke into my thoughts.
“I never think of myself as rich, because I worked for what I have myself. The only handouts I got from Daniel were my education paid for and a very handsome wedding present. Other than that, I earned what I needed.”
“That will change when Daniel’s gone. You will need to think of yourself a bit differently, I expect. Mike is a good lad. There’s no calculation in him at all. But folks will talk about the two of you. Just ignore it. Eat a scone. They’re best hot and slathered with butter.”
She brightened and cut into one. The butter melted away in the heat as soon as she spread it.
“At least those goofs’ girlfriends tried to shut them up. So not everyone thinks the same as they do. I tried not to let it ruin my night, the first time meeting his friends, but it did. I don’t think they’re very good friends.”
“Eat your scone. Mike has a good head on his shoulders. It’ll sort itself out.”
I mentally crossed my fingers as I spoke.
“Iris has been in touch with some of the nurses who were at the hospital at the same time as Margaret Butler was there. Don’t you think it odd that there are two Margaret Butlers around?” Jude said, licking butter off her fingers.
“It’s a common name here. You know that, surely? Half the female population of the country is named Margaret, and there must be half a million Butlers. Besides, she won’t learn anything new. I told her as much as anyone knows, I’m sure.”
When I thought back on the conversation later, I realized that between Jude and Mike, my natural concern was for Mike. I’d known him since he was a lad, and he had the most to lose if things didn’t work out. He was a good gardener and arborist, but he loved Kiltilly, and work here for him would be hard to find if he ended up needing to leave his job with Daniel. Or I supposed by then it would be his job with Jude. His feeling for her must have been deep to risk that much. Jude would be fine. These days women had so many more options. There was the pill, for one. And other contraception was easy to get, unlike in my day. Not least, she had her own money.
It was clear too that soon I would have to talk to Daniel about our child. At least that. Iris nosing around Cardiff would turn up the fact of my pregnancy sooner or later. Best if he heard it from me. The thought of unburdening it all seemed like such a relief, but in the end it would accomplish nothing much at all. Possibly I’d feel less guilty, but I doubted it. And I couldn’t tell him everything anyway, because I was quite sure the whole story would change Daniel’s mind about the farm.
22
Traffic in Limerick was mental. horns tooted, engines revved, drivers ran yellow lights, rolled down windows to chat with friends they spotted on the street, and lined up at stop lights like impatient chargers. The new dress had I bought for Daniel’s dinner swung from my arm in a glitzy bag. Maybe it was too glam for me. It wasnt like I went to fancy dinners every day of the week. Besides, I wanted to look good meeting Oliver Pike again. The last time I’d seen him had been in Stephen’s Green the day after Maggie had moved into St. Mary’s. He’d been kind to me then, and I’d needed kindness. A discreet man, he’d never said a word to Daniel, or anyone else, as far as I know, about my being pregnant. The prospect of meeting him awoke in me the young woman discarded by Daniel, and the need to show I had done just fine nagged at me, even though I told myself it was silly. I’d had my hair cut and a touch of colour added at Fancy Cuts in Kiltilly that morning. It had five days to settle before the dinner, and I had a chance to get it fixed again if I decided I didn’t like it. On impulse I went into Todd’s to have a look at the lipsticks and grab a cup of coffee before heading to the station to catch the bus home.
A woman bumped into me as I dithered in the entrance, torn between a good cuppa or a trawl through lipsticks. We apologized to each other, and I could hardly believe my eyes when she turned out to be Adele’s sister, Leigh.
“Delia. Delia Buckley, oh my God, I haven’t seen you in years. How are you?” she said before I had a chance to recover from my surprise. To be honest, these past weeks I had thought about looking her up, but had no idea whether she was in Limerick or abroad. She was working in London now, she said, and was just home for a few days to celebrate her mother’s birthday. We agreed to catch up over coffee.
“I was just thinking of you the other week,” I said after we’d polished off a couple of scones and jam and caught up a bit. “I saw a Jimmy McCann up on charges and wondered if it was the same one Adele was mixed up with years ago.”
“Jesus, it is. And they let the little fecker get away. You know, I haven’t seen nor heard from Adele since Cardiff. After the arrangements with Maggie posting letters fell through, sure we couldn’t stay in touch, really. Then I moved away, but I’d no way to contact her. You know, it was my fault Jimmy found her in Dublin that time. He followed me and I led him right to her. She was terrified it would happen again. You’d think by now he’d have forgotten all about her.”
She cut open another scone, slathered it with jam and then pushed her plate aside.
“I’m always wondering how she’s getting on, you know? Now Jimmy’s afraid to show his face for the moment, she could come back for a visit.”
“You never heard from her at all?” I said. “She was very good to me that time.”
The waitress came by and cleared away the empty scone plate. Leigh and I dropped into silence. Leigh had a great look of Adele about the mouth, but her eyes were grey and rounder than Adele’s. A terrible loneliness rose in me, a sadness for Adele and myself, for the young women we were in Cardiff.
“Do you think Jimmy would still be a danger to her and her child after all these years?” I asked Leigh.
She pulled her plate toward her again but left the end of her scone, then took a sip of tea.
“Yeah, I do. Yeah. He accosted me in the street the last time I was home, asked about her. I told him I’d no idea where she was. He called me liar, but he went off. He’s a right shite, but there’s ways to deal with the likes of him these days. I wish I knew where Adele was, to let her know she should come home. We’d be able to get the law on Jimmy these days, not like before, when the police got away with not giving a damn about women being battered.”
The information didn’t make me feel any better. I don’t know exactly what I expected to hear, and having heard this had no more idea of anything than I had before. It was only later as I drove home that it occurred to me I should have asked her for a photo of Adele.
Daniel was dozing on the couch, his chin sunk onto his chest. The fire was lit, the first time since summer, and the turf threw off a comforting scent with the heat as I read my way through the Limerick Press, something I did every week since I spotted the article about James McCann.
A song drifted from upstairs sung in Iris’s beautiful contralto. Daniel stirred, and before opening his eyes called out, “Fran? Is that you?” He struggled to wake. Jude stared at the ceiling with a mighty frown on her face.
“See, I told you Iris’s like Fran. She laughs exactly the same way, and her voice is almost identical,” she said to Daniel.
“It is very similar, all right. For a second there I was confused.”
He yawned once, then the two of them sat staring at the door as the air “I Dreamt I Dwelled in Marble Halls” floated through the room. A door banged upstairs and the sound was cut off. We sat entranced, each one longing for the song to recommence.
“She must be Fran’s daughter,” Jude said finally.
“She can’t be,” her father said. “Fran would never have stayed away so long without a word. Never.”
“Maybe she was ashamed of being pregnant, or something like that.”
Daniel sucked his teeth at Jude.
“Why? Why would she? Her mother might have been upset, but her mother was dead. All we would have done is help he
r. God, right then new life in the family would have been a blessing.”
I stood with such abrupt violence the newspaper fell onto the floor, the pages separating and drifting down into an untidy pool. Daniel looked at me, the light of what he’d just said dawning in his eyes. We stared each other down a moment, then I walked out of the room with as much calm and dignity as I was able to muster.
“Delia, Delia,” I heard him call after me, but I kept going. I grabbed my coat from the coat tree in the hall, opened the front door and walked out. Halfway down the drive I had to stop, my legs shook so much. I sank onto the ground by one of the rhododendrons, the damp smell of the earth in my nose.
“Delia. Delia, what’s the matter?”
Someone shook my shoulder and called my name. Dazed and disoriented, I came to myself. It took a few seconds to realize that it was Mike shaking me. The sun was low, heralding twilight. Cold to the bone, I shivered and shook like an aspen. Mike pulled me to my feet and put an arm around me.
“What’s happened? Come on up to the house. We need to warm you up.”
“No. No. Not to the house. I can’t go there.”
Mike took his jacket off and wrapped it around me. The heat in it from his body went through my thin coat.
“I’ve got my van. I can take you home,” Mike said.
“No. I don’t want to go there, either. Would you mind going to your place? I need a bit of time.”
He looked up at the house, then back at me. I put a hand on his chest.
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