The Convictions of John Delahunt

by Andrew Hughes

  Her chin lifted. She noticed my cravat was still loose and she tried to tie it, but her right hand couldn’t grip. After a moment, I took the ends from her to finish the task.

  The houses in Dominick Street were three storeys over basement, and, like those in Grenville Street, had been split up into tenements and furnished lodging-houses. Mrs Redmond lived and worked in the basement of number fourteen. When we knocked, the door was answered by a woman in her late thirties, with grey streaks in long red hair. She introduced herself as Mary, Mrs Redmond’s daughter, and invited us both into a large, warm room. It had once been the kitchen for the entire house, and it reminded me of my home in Fitzwilliam Street. A large fireplace took over most of the back wall, where a fire was lit despite the summer day. A black kettle and small cauldron hung suspended over the coals. The wall adjacent contained a cooking range, with polished metal stoves and a ceramic butler’s sink.

  Mrs Redmond stood at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes taken from a muddy sack with a short blade that was slick with starchy water. The sleeves of her floral housedress were pulled up over wiry arms. Her hair was pinned, but silver strands hung down over her lined face. Three children played on the ground on the other side of the table, two girls and a boy between the ages of about four and seven. They were engaged in a loud conversation, but they quietened when their grandmother shushed them. Mary called over, ‘Mammy, Helen is here.’

  The heads of the children all turned to look at us. Mrs Redmond squinted at the doorway and smiled. She dropped her knife into a large pouch at the front of her apron, then wiped her hands on a cloth. As she came closer she said, ‘Show me your hand.’

  Helen did so, and Mrs Redmond examined the fingers. ‘Try to close your fist, as hard as you can.’

  The sinews of Helen’s wrist stood out. Her fingers only curled in by half an inch, but Mrs Redmond was satisfied. ‘It will heal eventually, but it might take a few months.’ She looked at me for the first time and seemed to size me up while speaking. ‘Boileau is quick to sell the lead tablets but he never fully explains the hazards.’ She offered her hand. ‘You must be John.’

  I said yes and gripped her clammy fingers.

  Mrs Redmond led us both to the kitchen table. Her daughter had been preparing tea, and she brought over a tray with a pot and four mugs, a tumbler of water and a bottle of laudanum with a yellow, creased label. The old midwife smiled at Helen and said there was no need to worry; it would be over soon. She pulled the stopper from the laudanum and allowed three drops to fall into the glass of water. Faint tendrils expanded and disappeared. ‘Drink this,’ she said. ‘It’ll help you relax.’

  Helen sipped at the water. One of the little girls came over to inform her grandmother of a transgression committed by her brother. Mrs Redmond turned the girl around with a hand on her shoulder, and said she would deal with him later. The little girl toddled off, satisfied that justice would be done.

  Mrs Redmond asked if we had the money. I was going to suggest we wait until after the procedure, but now wasn’t the time to cause a fuss. Mrs Redmond slipped the banknote into her apron, where she had put the knife, and looked at Helen. ‘Are you ready, dear?’

  Mary said she would get the room ready, and went out into the hallway. Helen handed me her bag. The midwife told me there was a couch in the corridor where I could sit and wait. She patted my shoulder. ‘It won’t take long.’

  The corridor was dimly lit with three rooms leading off it. Mrs Redmond pointed to a ragged yellow couch, then she opened one of the doors and brought Helen inside.

  For a moment, I could see into the delivery room. A fire burned low in a wrought-iron fireplace. Mary was already in the room, unfolding a large white sheet and placing it over a long table, as if setting it for dinner. An uncovered worktop contained white porcelain basins, several folded rags, and a number of metal instruments, such as a long scissors with tongs instead of points, a set of pliers with spiked teeth in the jaws, and a tarnished pair of forceps with a corkscrew handle.

  The door closed. I tried to make out the muffled voices within, but all I could hear was the chatter of the children back in the kitchen. I threw Helen’s bag on to the sofa and sat down beside it.

  The bottom half of the hallway was covered in panelled wood painted white; the top half had a green wallpaper. The walls were bare except for a crucifix and a framed print of Pope Gregory. The open doorway to the kitchen allowed a rectangular glare of sunlight to intrude. I had nothing with which to tell the time apart from the light, and I watched it creep up the jamb to the lower hinge.

  Out in the street, a church bell tolled for midday. Lyster was waiting for me in Bracken’s. Perhaps I should have sent him a message, to let him know I wouldn’t be able to meet him.

  A cough in the hall made me turn my head. The youngest girl stood at the edge of the kitchen looking at me. Her bare feet made no noise on the brown tiles as she came forward, with a ragdoll held in the crook of her elbow. She clasped it awkwardly, so one of the doll’s arms was forced up and over its face. She stood before me, only a head taller than the front of my knees. Like her mother, she had thick red hair and a square chin, and she regarded me with serious eyes.

  ‘Would you like to know my doll’s name?’

  I said I wouldn’t.

  She nodded, as if she didn’t seem to mind. She looked over her shoulder at the closed door, and then back at me. ‘Granny is helping that lady feel better.’

  It had been a while since I had heard Helen referred to as a lady.

  The child pricked her ear, then turned and ran back towards the kitchen. A moment later I heard what caused her alarm: footsteps coming towards the door. I sat up in the couch.

  Mrs Redmond’s daughter came out. She only opened the door wide enough so she could squeeze through. Red streaks covered a white apron that she had donned. She swept a broad lock of hair from her eye with the back of her thumb, keeping her bloody fingers extended and away from her face.

  Mary composed herself, then turned to me. ‘It worked.’

  From inside the room I could hear Helen emit a moan – for long enough that she ran out of breath.

  ‘All we have to do is stop the bleeding. I need to fetch some more water.’ She disappeared into the kitchen.

  The door hadn’t been closed properly. It slipped from its latch and creaked slightly ajar so I could see a sliver of the room, including the lower half of the table. Helen’s knees were raised up and draped with a blanket. Her lower legs were bare and her toes gripped the edge of the bench. The white cloth covering the table was doused in blood. Helen cried quietly with quick uneven sobs. I had heard her cry like that once or twice in Grenville Street; late at night, when she thought I was asleep.

  I didn’t know if this was normal. There was always going to be a degree of trauma. When Mary came back from the kitchen I looked away from the door. She carried a bundle of cloths beneath her arm and a basin of clean water. She had taken the time to wash her hands.

  I stood up so she couldn’t pass, and spoke in a low voice in case Helen could hear me. ‘Please tell me, is she in danger?’

  One of the cloths slipped from the bundle on to the floor, and Mary looked down as if glad of the diversion. I picked it up and draped it on her arm.

  She thanked me. ‘She’s bleeding more than she should. The womb has been scraped and it may have been cut. We just have to wait for the blood to clot.’ She inclined her head towards the room. ‘I have to go back in.’

  That didn’t answer my question, but I stepped aside. She went through the door and closed it over with her heel, pushing against it from the inside to ensure it shut tight.

  I listened at the door with my ear pressed against the wood. I could hear the muffled voices of Mrs Redmond and her daughter. Occasionally Helen would let out quite a loud cry and I was tempted to walk in. But I’d be of no help, and might have caused further distress. I thought I should pace up and down the hall, but I couldn’t see the purpose of t
hat either, so I retook my seat on the sofa.

  The little girl and her sister peeked at me from the door to the kitchen. They were standing there as Helen’s cries became louder. The final one was particularly long, with an inflection almost of disappointment. The girls’ eyes widened. The smaller one put her hands over her ears.

  Afterwards there was silence, except for the faint clatter of a horse passing on the street outside. The doorknob turned and Mrs Redmond stepped out. Her shoulders were stooped and there was no colour in her face. She looked to her right and slowly shook her head.

  ‘Wait till I get my hands on you two.’ The girls in the doorway scurried off.

  She turned to me. ‘Helen will be well. She’s lost quite a bit of blood, but the haemorrhage has stopped.’ She bent her head to the side to stretch her neck. ‘Mary is just cleaning her up, then you can go in and see her.’ She walked towards the kitchen with a weary step, her arms behind her back to untie the apron strings.

  When I was allowed in, Helen still lay on the table, though the bloody sheets had been removed and were balled up in the corner. There was a metallic smell in the room. Her legs were resting flat and a blanket covered her lower half.

  Mary cleared away basins of murky water. Another table was covered in used rags and the metal instruments lying askew. On a sideboard, a smaller basin stood alone. It was of white porcelain, with hairline cracks and a blue rim, covered with a folded yellow cloth.

  I bent over Helen and kissed her pale forehead. She lifted her arm and laid it over the back of my head. Mary brought in a chair and placed it beside me. I sat, leaned over the table so my face was close to Helen’s, and stroked her hair. The basin across the room was in my eye-line. At a point along the rim the yellow cloth ruffled up, but the gap into the bowl was too shadowy to see.

  I wondered what they were going to do with it. The fire burned in the hearth behind me. Were they just waiting for us to leave before they put it in there?

  Helen’s eyes were closed and her breathing had become steady, as if she was drifting to sleep.

  There would be a long back garden attached to this house. Plenty of room for a stillborn graveyard. Helen’s eyelids fluttered open.

  Maybe they were going to hand it over to us as we left, concealed in a small box, and tell us to take care of it ourselves.

  A tear gathered, and trickled over the bridge of her nose. ‘I’m sorry, John.’

  I told her she had nothing to be sorry about.

  Helen continued to suffer over the next several days in Grenville Street, and, for the most part, she was confined to bed. Mrs Redmond had given her a bottle of laudanum to bring home, telling her to take three drops with each meal. She also gave her a thick glass syringe with a leather plunger. Twice a day, Helen had to inject herself with tepid water while squatting over the chamber pot – to remove blood clots and other fragments that might have remained. I waited on the landing while she did so. She dreaded it, for the sting was excruciating, and she began to take a dose of laudanum an hour before each rinse.

  She abstained from food and even water as much as possible, and would lie in bed for hours in a stupor. The more alert she was, the greater the pain. At night she suffered insomnia as a result of being bedbound during the day. Once more, laudanum was the solution. The sedative allowed her moments of feverish sleep. She would squirm in the bed and speak nonsense. Sometimes she would push the tangled bedclothes off when it became too hot, or open her eyes suddenly and look at me as if I was a complete stranger.

  One night she began to speak about her family. She said we would have to tidy the room because her mother was coming to visit tomorrow. They were going to make plans to celebrate her brother Arthur’s commencement.

  I reached over to shake her shoulder. She sat up and sought out my face in the gloom. ‘Arthur never liked you,’ she said. Then she lay back down again.

  It fell to me to look after the household, though that only meant bringing in supplies and keeping the place relatively tidy. With my college fees, the rent, and the trip to the midwife, only fifteen pounds remained of the Cooney reward money. I became frugal with my purchases, selecting cheaper bottles of wine and secondary cuts of meat.

  I began to wonder how much the Castle might give for information on a back-street abortionist.

  One afternoon in late June, I was reading a textbook by the windowsill. The sash frame was open a few inches, and sounds from the street drifted from below: children at play, carts trundling by, housewives in conversation.

  Lyster stood on the pavement across the road looking up at our room. He wore a light flat cap and a waistcoat over a white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. His hands hung down by his waist. I paused at the window and regarded him. How long had he been standing there? He continued to stare at me for several more seconds, then put his hands in his pockets and walked away. Still standing over my chair, I watched until he reached the corner and disappeared.

  Helen was in bed, lying on her side, sore and lucid. She asked what had caught my attention.

  ‘Lyster was outside looking up at our window.’

  She raised her head from the pillow, then reached across for the laudanum on her bed-stand. ‘Him again.’

  That night, her sleep was feverish once more. She pushed herself up on her elbows and looked around the darkened room with glazed eyes. ‘John, where’s that bloody rag?’

  I told her she hadn’t been bleeding for more than a week. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  She swung her head towards the hearth. ‘No, the one in the fire.’ Her eyes seemed to gain focus. ‘I saw you burning a bloody rag in the fire.’

  I reached out and brushed her cheek. Her eyes didn’t waver. I said it was gone; all burnt up.

  She nodded, laid her head down and drifted back to sleep.

  Helen got through the first bottle of laudanum in less than two weeks. I bought her another, which only lasted ten days. When the liquid was nearly gone she reduced the dose, taking only a couple of drops at a time, and she complained that she could hardly feel any effect. When there was less than a teaspoon left, it had to be sloshed about so enough could collect on the dropper. Once or twice I saw her lick the glass wand, like a child licking jam from a knife. She asked me to go to Boileau and buy some more.

  ‘Why don’t we wait to see how you’re feeling in a few days?’

  Helen was hunched over her desk, scraping the nib of her pen in a spiral over a sheet. The ink had long since run dry. She shifted in her seat. I thought she was going to argue, but instead she nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

  When the bottle was empty, I gathered it up with some other rubbish to throw on a tip in the back yard. Helen stopped me. ‘There might be a dose in it yet.’ She filled it with water and left it on the table to soak for half an hour, then drank directly from the bottle.

  The sediment and residue inside the glass was more potent than she realized. After a few minutes, I noticed her breathing had become quick as she sat at the kitchen table. She said she didn’t feel well and leaned forward on her elbows. One of them slipped from the edge and her head dipped, as if she’d dozed off for a moment.

  She giggled and stood up, tipping the chair over, and walked towards the bed with an unsteady step. I put my arm around her waist in case she fell.

  Helen tried to pull away. ‘Mrs Redmond said you’re not to touch me for a month.’

  She laughed again, but there was no mirth in her eyes, and she struck the top of my hand with her balled fist.

  ‘Helen, please.’

  She broke free of my grasp, crossed the room and fell face first on the bed. She lay perfectly still, with her face between a pillow and the covers, and her feet still on the ground. I picked up her ankles and placed them on the mattress, then put my hand on her back. Her breathing was shallow, as if she struggled to fill her lungs, but there was no distress on her face. I pulled tangled hair away from her mouth and nose and turned her so she lay on her side. She weighed very little.

>   Two days later, I lounged on the bed, sitting against the headboard with my shirtsleeves rolled up. Helen shivered beneath the blankets beside me, wrapped in a shawl, a cold sweat on her forehead. ‘It’s no use,’ she said. ‘I need more of the medicine.’

  I put my book down on my stomach. ‘Are you not feeling better at all?’

  She said she was feeling worse. ‘I ache all over.’

  ‘That’s because of the laudanum.’

  She began breathing heavily through her nose, signalling another wave of nausea. She scrunched her eyes, then abruptly pushed back the covers and pulled the shawl from around her shoulders, allowing it to slip on to the floor.

  I put my hand on her forehead. During these flushes she liked it as she said my fingers were always cold. I spoke to her softly. ‘Try to give it another day.’

  She kept me awake during the night with her incessant scratching. The skin beneath her knees and on the inside of her thigh had become red and inflamed as if infected with scabies. The itching drove her to distraction and she couldn’t help herself.

  The rhythmic rasping set my teeth on edge. Mostly I was disturbed by the way she held her breath while doing it, then finished with a long sigh and heavy panting.

  ‘You’re just making it worse.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Does it not hurt?’

  She said it stung like anything. But after a few minutes she started again. I reached over beneath the covers and took hold of her wrist.

  The following morning she felt wretched again. Her teeth chattered while she spoke. ‘You’ll have to get me some more.’

  I asked what of her original ailment, had that not healed?

  She didn’t reply. Beneath the covers she continued to shiver. I lay down beside her and draped my arm over her shoulders, but she twisted them and turned away. ‘I can’t breathe when you do that.’