A Keeper

by Graham Norton

  ‘Yes.’ Elizabeth wondered where this was going. Questions about her trip to Kilkenny perhaps?

  ‘Edward Foley was the name?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Noelle leaned forward. She clearly didn’t know what was coming next.

  ‘Well, I found the letter I was telling you about. The one from his mother.’

  She bent stiffly and retrieved her handbag from the floor by her chair. ‘I shoved it in here somewhere,’ she said, unzipping the bag and rummaging in its contents. She glanced at various envelopes. ‘No, that‘s not it, no.’ Her face suddenly brightened. ‘Here it is. I’d kept it all these years in with the old photo albums. I knew I had it somewhere.’ She handed the slim envelope across the table to Elizabeth.

  She looked at it.

  ‘This is from Edward Foley’s mother?’

  ‘Yes. Catherine Foley, I think she signs it.’

  Elizabeth stared down at the letter in her hand. It made no sense, but there was no mistaking what she held. Pale blue Basildon Bond and the neat handwriting in black ink. Both identical to the letters she had found in Convent Hill. A cold hand reached across the decades and gripped her stomach. Her poor mother.

  THEN

  Something was wrong. What was it? Patricia lay rigid as a corpse. Then, it struck her. The wind had stopped. The stillness made her uneasy. There was a metallic taste in her mouth and her head felt thick and heavy on the pillow. Downstairs she heard a door open and shut. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to banish the horror of the night before. How could she ever leave this room again?

  Her memories came in and out of focus like a half-remembered dream. She could picture herself stumbling through the dark, her sobs swallowed by the wind in the trees and the deep pit of the night. She had never felt so pathetic in her whole life. Even when her mother had died she hadn’t been so upset. Of course, she understood that the tears weren’t just for the humiliation back in the pub, they were for her life. A life so devoid of hope that she had allowed herself to imagine that Edward could be her knight in shining armour. She felt like such a fool. How had she become so deluded? Placing her feet carefully, she had marched slowly forward, her hands outstretched to protect her from branches or anything else that might confront her in the blind blackness of the night. All too soon of course the lights of a car had pinned her to the hedge and then Edward was out on the road, coat flapping in the headlights, pleading with her to get in. She knew she had been screaming at him but couldn’t remember exactly what. She ended up collapsed into a shuddering ball in front of the car. Edward had half-lifted, half-helped her into the passenger seat. She remembered the familiar smell of her coat which she kept pulled over her head on the drive back to Castle House.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you. We weren’t trying to trick you. We just thought it was the best way to do things. We …’ His litany of apologies and explanations washed over her and all she really heard was the word ‘we’ repeated over and over again. It made her feel sick to think of them working as a team, the two of them plotting and planning what to say to her. Even worse was the thought of Edward sitting still while his mother read Patricia’s letters aloud to him. Private! It was all meant to be special and intimate and now she felt so exposed. All she wanted to do was go home and end this nightmare. Why had she come back? If only she had kept to her resolve to finish things she would have been spared all this. She pushed herself lower into her seat. ‘Mammy can explain things. Mammy will tell you how it happened.’

  Patricia groaned.

  Mrs Foley was standing in wait in front of the house, her shadow stretched across the grass like a thin giant. Had she already heard that something had happened in the pub?

  ‘What is it? Is everything all right?’ She had taken Patricia’s other arm in a firm grip and helped her indoors with Edward.

  ‘She knows,’ was all Edward said.

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘The letters, Mammy. She knows about the letters.’

  Mrs Foley said nothing more.

  The three of them weaved their way like drunks into the house and through the hall to the brightly lit heat of the kitchen. Patricia sank down in a chair and stared at her clenched hands on her lap. She was aware of Edward and his mother standing apart and staring at her. The lid of a simmering pot rattled in anticipation.

  Predictably it was Mrs Foley that broke the silence.

  ‘Will you have some food?’

  An indignant Patricia glared at her. How dare this woman think that a plate of dinner was going to help her overlook this betrayal? The expression on Mrs Foley’s face suggested she was taken aback by the red swollen eyes and running nose of the young woman sitting at her table. She took a step forward.

  ‘Edward meant no harm. It was my fault. I’m not going to be around forever and I just wanted to see him settled. He is very fond of you, Patricia.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He can’t.’ Her voice was a high-pitched rasp. ‘If he cared he wouldn’t have lied to me.’ She threw an accusatory glance towards Edward but he had his gaze firmly fixed on the far corner of the room.

  ‘No, no, Patricia,’ Mrs Foley said in a soothing voice. ‘Edward meant everything in those letters. Those were his feelings.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I was just trying to help. He’s not a stupid boy. It was just that, well, school wasn’t for him.’ Her hands made a strange calming gesture as if she was patting an imaginary dog.

  ‘But, you read my letters! Out loud, the two of you sat there. Those letters were meant for him, just him.’ She jabbed a finger in Edward’s direction. ‘I feel sick. I want to go home. I just want to be at home.’ The thought of being in her own bed in Buncarragh hugging a pillow made her begin to sob once more. A long thin thread of snot left her top lip and slowly descended onto her lap. She could hear Mrs Foley moving around the room.

  ‘We’ll put the kettle on. A hot-water bottle. A cup of tea. A good night’s sleep. You’ve had a bit of a shock, that’s all. Teddy, will you make yourself useful and get down the cups?’

  Patricia heard his thick-soled shoes moving across the lino. She couldn’t bear to look at him. What a useless lump of a man he was! Patricia had never considered herself a violent woman but she wanted to do him physical harm. She wanted to hurt him, make him feel something. How could he have managed to never learn to read and write? She wondered if there was something wrong with him. She stole a glance at his broad back, his coarse hands holding the delicate china cups. How had she ever thought he was handsome or sensitive? He was Frankenstein’s monster. He turned and she saw his big gormless face. Patricia buried her face in her hands, a hot knot of fury and regret.

  The morning sun crept past the curtains and gave the small bedroom a golden glow. Patricia tried to remember coming upstairs or going to bed but couldn’t. She wondered what more had been said. It was only when she thought of getting up that she realised that she couldn’t. Her legs were almost like dead weights and she became light-headed if her head left the pillow. A quiet whimper escaped her lips. This was no time to be ill. She longed to go home but even she had to accept that the trip was very unlikely to happen today. A light tapping at the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  The door cracked open and Mrs Foley’s foot pushed it further ajar so that she could come in balancing a tray with a small pot of tea and a rack of toast.

  ‘I brought you up a little breakfast there. I didn’t think you’d want to come downstairs just yet.’

  What did that mean? Had something else happened last night? Rather than asking any questions, Patricia just said, ‘Thank you.’

  The older woman looked drawn and had applied some rouge and lipstick which gave her the appearance of an elderly ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘I’ll just pop it down there.’ The tray was wedged into the side of the mattress, pinning Patricia against the wall. ‘Did you manage to get some sleep?’

  ‘I did. I don’t feel very well,’ she blurted out like a
child.

  ‘Well, have a bit of toast. That might settle you.’ Mrs Foley placed her chilled bony hand on her forehead. ‘No temperature. That’s something.’ She turned and closed the door quietly behind her.

  The toast tasted good. She ate two slices and then drank her tea. Sick or ill weren’t the precise words for how she felt, but something wasn’t right. Peculiar. Yes, she decided, that was just the word for it, peculiar.

  She only realised that she had fallen asleep when the crash of the tray hitting the floor woke her up. Her body felt even heavier than before. She thought she remembered Mrs Foley coming in to clean up the mess but she might have imagined it. The rest of the day was a blur of sleeping and waking. There had been no sign of Edward all day but at some point his mother had spoon-fed her a bowl of soup. It had been dark outside. The old woman had helped her onto a commode by the window. Patricia knew she was supposed to be angry with this old lady but found that she was just grateful to her for her kindness.

  The next day passed by in a similar fog of deep sleeps interrupted by visits from Mrs Foley with various offerings of sandwiches or soup. Patricia was vaguely aware that this was the day she was supposed to go back home to Buncarragh. She had meant to ask if she could use the phone to call her brother to explain what happened but she wasn’t sure she had. The wind was back and the rattle of the window seemed to fill her head whether she was asleep or awake.

  On the third day she woke to find she was wearing a nightdress that didn’t belong to her and the chair where her clothes had been folded neatly was now empty. More tea. She remembered getting sick over the side of the bed and now a smell of Dettol hung in the air.

  Was it the fourth day when Mrs Foley told her about the doctor’s visit? Apparently they had called him out and she had slept right through. He could find nothing wrong, she was told, but maybe she was a little anaemic. She had sipped at a cup of beef tea, while Mrs Foley wiped the drips of liquid from her chin with a towel. Patricia wanted to cry but she found she didn’t have the strength. Sleep.

  Looking back she wasn’t sure when she had lost track of the days. Had it been the fifth day or the sixth, or even a week? More? She didn’t know. Time ceased to matter, and her world had shrunk to her narrow bed and the short shuffle across the room to use the commode. Sometimes she heard Edward and his mother talking downstairs. She recognised that they were not normal conversations. They were arguing. She could hear the anger but couldn’t make out the words. The phone had rung a few times. It must be for her. It must, but it never was. When she remembered she repeated her plea to let her brother in Buncarragh know where she was. They would be worried about her. Even as she said the words she doubted them. Would anyone really care? Worse, she wondered if anyone had even noticed her absence. She had vanished and the world looked exactly the same.

  Mrs Foley did her best to reassure her.

  ‘I phoned the shop. I spoke to a very nice woman, your sister-in-law I think …’

  ‘Gillian?’ Patricia asked, trying to imagine her reaction to this call from a strange woman in County Cork.

  ‘Gillian, that’s the very woman. Well, she hopes you get well soon and you aren’t to worry about a thing. Now you can stop your fretting, that’s all sorted.’

  Patricia put her head back on the pillow, relieved that people knew where she was.

  That night she dreamt she was back at Convent Hill. The house looked the same as it always had but she knew she must have been away because she was very happy to be back home. Patricia was looking for her mother. In her dream she wasn’t dead, Patricia just couldn’t find her. She looked in the rooms on the ground floor and then raced upstairs to check the bedrooms. In the wall between the bathroom and her own room there was a door that she had never seen before. Finding it unlocked she stepped through it. Had she just forgotten this room? It was lined with dark wood panelling and in the centre was a round table covered with books. How had she never seen this room before? Had her mother been keeping it a secret from her? On the far wall she noticed another door. Opening it she found herself at the top of a wrought-iron spiral staircase that led down into a large conservatory filled with tropical plants. Brightly coloured parrots fluttered beneath the glass ceiling. She carefully descended the staircase. The smell reminded her of the botanical gardens in Dublin. When Patricia reached the bottom step she saw a long dark room behind her full of terracotta pots and gardening equipment but as she walked through it the room became a kitchen, but like the ones you might find in a hotel, with metal surfaces and oversized ovens. At the far end there was a grey wooden door. It was rattling and Patricia felt afraid for the first time, uneasy about what was behind it. She had scarcely touched the handle when the door exploded inwards and Patricia found she was standing in front of Castle House being whipped by the wind, staring out to sea. She was back! She had been in Buncarragh but now here she was again. She tried to scream but made no sound. When she woke the wind from her dream was still howling outside her window.

  The next morning as the door was pushed open, she knew at once that something was different. She heard the clatter of the spoon against the saucer as the tray was manoeuvred into the room and looking up she was surprised to see, not Mrs Foley, but Edward. He stood by the bed holding her breakfast. Patricia patted the mattress and he put down the tray. Despite everything she found herself worrying about how she looked. She imagined how her unwashed hair clung to her brow, her pale, sweaty complexion devoid of make-up. She pawed ineffectually at her parting to try and improve its appearance.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  She stared up at him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Her voice sounded small and dry compared to his.

  ‘Working. Busy. You know yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘This is more my mother’s thing.’

  ‘She has been very kind.’

  Edward said nothing. She remembered the raised voices. Patricia reached for the waiting teacup on the tray. Edward gave a sudden cough. Glancing up she saw that he was shaking his head.

  ‘What?’ she asked. Edward thrust a finger to his mouth to indicate she should be quiet. Then he leaned forward and pulled the teacup away from her hand. Again, he shook his head. ‘You’d like a glass of water?’ His voice sounded slightly raised. ‘OK, I’ll get you one.’ He picked up the cup of tea and left the room. She heard him crossing the landing and going into the bathroom. He returned with a small glass of water and put it on the tray along with the now-empty teacup. ‘I’ll let you have your breakfast.’ He widened his eyes and pointed at the teacup a few more times while shaking his head vigorously, then he left her alone, closing the door softly.

  What had just happened? Patricia looked at her tray and then at the flaking paint on the back of the closed door. Could Edward be trusted? Was his mother putting something in the tea? She found it so hard to think. Her head felt heavy and thick with sleep, and yet a small spark of reason told her that this must be what being drugged felt like. Why would Mrs Foley not want her to leave? She took a couple of sips from the glass of water that Edward had brought her and then lay her head on the pillow, panting slightly from the effort of just trying to think.

  For the next two days she made it her mission to avoid drinking every cup of tea she was given. Some she poured into the commode but it was too obvious-looking so she began to simply pour it down the side of the bed next to the wall. She hoped she would be long gone before Mrs Foley discovered the brown soaked corner of carpet under the bed.

  At first, she felt a little stronger, more alert – but then she was plagued with bad headaches, stomach cramps and diarrhoea. Mrs Foley kept her plied with tea to aid her recovery but Patricia didn’t drink a drop. By the end of the third day she felt a little better. She wondered if she was well enough to get to the bathroom because she was becoming concerned the tea lake under the bed might make its way into the room or cause a stain to appear on a ceiling downstairs. She got out of bed and for a moment felt so dizzy she was certain she wo
uld fall. Grabbing the chair by the bed for balance, she waited till the room steadied itself. Tentatively she moved one foot and then the other before letting go of the chair. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. Opening the bedroom door as gently as she could she stepped out onto the landing.

  Patricia was struck by how big it seemed after the fog of days spent in her simple cell. She took a step towards the bathroom, holding her cup carefully. She didn’t want to leave any tell-tale stains on the carpet. Another step and she was able to steady herself on the banister. She held her breath and listened. Just the wind and the distant call of a gull. Putting one foot carefully in front of the other, she slowly made her way towards the bathroom. Her heart was beating loudly and her blood seemed to be rushing inside her ears. The inside of her mouth was dry. Once more she paused and strained to hear any sounds in the house besides the groans and rattles caused by the constant storm. Silence. Another few steps. She was nearly there. A floorboard creaked. She gripped the cup and held her breath. Nothing. Another couple of steps and she had reached her goal. She lunged towards the toilet and poured the tea into the bowl. Immediately she regretted it. She was a fool. Why hadn’t she used the sink? If she flushed the toilet Mrs Foley would come running but if she didn’t the tea would just sit there to incriminate her. Her breathing was coming in short bursts now as she began to panic. All at once the bathroom was flooded with light and turning her head she found Mrs Foley’s face inches from her own. She screamed.

  ‘Look at you, out of bed,’ the old woman said, her voice betraying no emotion. ‘Isn’t that …’ She stopped short and Patricia realised she had seen the cloudy tea-coloured water in the bowl. Her eyes went to the empty cup in Patricia’s hand. Mrs Foley’s lips tightened and a hard cold stare took hold of her face. Edward had been telling the truth. Patricia felt sick. She realised that for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, she was in real danger. Her whole body was gripped by a breath-stealing fear.