The Hunger Within

by J. M. Hewitt

  I don’t expect it will go all the way. I have a good chance of coming out of this. I’m not starting first, that’s down to Bobby. I think I’m about fifth in line and due to commence my hunger strike in around the second week of March. Also, Thatcher will concede to our five demands. She has to, she can’t be seen to allow people to die, even if her own iron will won’t let her see it, her advisors will.

  Right now I’m still on the blanket and ‘no-wash’ protest. The hunger strike will be nothing like this, nothing can be as bad as this. I mean, it will be difficult not eating, but not impossible. I’ve been hungry before, many times.

  Today I awoke after a fitful sleep. I never thought any place could be colder than the Kidds Road house, but my cell is. At least at home I can put on extra clothing or get another blanket. And no matter what faults I found with the house, I know I’d never wake up with maggots stuck to me like I did this morning.

  I pulled them off my skin, retching. The flies get in, attracted by our shite that covers the walls and so after, later, come the maggots.

  I wonder if Bronwyn will come in today, if that mad Mary has made her see sense. The Dean woman might not even have seen her yet to convince her. I need to be patient. I know that, and I can be. I’m not going anywhere.

  I think some more about Mary Dean. I’ll admit that she intrigued me. Parents always do, probably because I never had any of my own. And yet they are all so different. Look at Bronwyn’s mother and Mary. Alia has always seemed too eager to please, letting Bronwyn get away with murder, as if she was afraid her daughter would walk out and never return. And yet Mary, she seems to be a proper mother, looking out for her boy. I wonder why she came to see me, sitting there looking at me like I was some sort of exhibit in a zoo. I barely remember shooting her son; I was sent out to do a job and I done it. We have to keep at it, showing that we are in control, telling them through our actions what we want. Christ, it’s not like we killed him or anything and to be honest, from what I’ve heard, the shot was off anyway, it barely grazed his skin. I don’t like to dwell on that too much, I’ve never been a poor shot, I don’t know what happened that night. I think of Mary and how she doesn’t like Rose. That’s interesting, I could think of worse women that her precious son could end up with. The one thing about Rose is that she is compliant, willing to please. She’ll never cheat on him, she’ll be a good daughter in law and she’ll have his dinner waiting on the table every evening without fail. Sometimes though, compliance isn’t enough. Sometimes you want someone to shout back at you. You want a spark, a firecracker, like my Bronwyn. Keeps it interesting, doesn’t it?

  I wonder if Mary Dean will come again. If she does it means she wants me to get rid of Rose. I can do that, being inside won’t stop me. That wouldn’t be hard at all.

  This life right now, with the cold and the maggots, that is hard.

  But it can only get easier.

  Everything can only get easier.

  *

  Mary stiffens as she hears Rose up and about upstairs. She closes her eyes, and snaps them open quickly when all she sees behind her eyelids is the girl in her son’s bed. Oh, she’s not so old and out of touch that she is naïve to what happens between the youth of today, but she also knows the part of their body that men think with, and how a woman uses her flesh to get what she wants. She’s got to be careful, Mary reminds herself. She needs to push Rose away but not Connor with her.

  Finally, the sound of Rose plodding down the stairs comes to Mary’s ears, and she prepares herself. The girl comes around the corner, hesitating on the threshold of the kitchen.

  “Breakfast?” Mary’s voice is far from friendly, but just the offer seems to throw Rose off balance.

  “Yeah, please,” Rose replies, guardedly.

  The girl is wary, but willing as she comes in and sits down in the empty chair facing Mary. She perches on the edge of the seat, as if ready to take flight at any moment. Mary is silent as she boils the kettle and busies herself getting fresh tea cups and plates out of the cupboard.

  “I didn’t realise that you were not a full Catholic,” Mary says her carefully thought out and prepared words as she pours the water into the teapot. “You’ve got a little bit of us in you. Who would have thought?”

  As she carries the pot and cups to the table she chances a look at Rose’s face. As she expected, the girl looks confused.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, I know it’s not the same thing, obviously,” Mary trills a little laugh that sounds so very false to her own ears. She cringes, but pushes on, taking a deep breath. “It must have been difficult, the circumstances. Do you ever see your father?”

  Rose shakes her head and looks dazed. “My mother doesn’t speak about him.” She lowers her eyes and says, almost shyly, “I don’t know who he is.”

  Mary feigns surprise, wills her face to redden as if she has been caught out. She begins to speak, tripping over her words purposefully. The girl is so slow though, just gawping at her. “I’m sorry,” Mary demurs. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  It actually takes long minutes of silence, which Mary uses to fill a milk jug, before Rose appears to find the words.

  “Hold on, do you know my father?”

  A little bit of tea has dribbled from the teapot spout, and Mary goes over to the sink to retrieve a new dishcloth from the cupboard.

  “Just that he was a Protestant,” she says, casually, her back towards Rose. “Just that he raped your poor mother.”

  There’s a beat of yet more silence. Not a sound from behind her as Mary makes a show of rooting through the cupboard for the cloth, even though she can clearly see a new packet right in front of her. She can hear the girl breathing heavily behind her. Strange snuffling noises grow louder, like the sound that a newborn baby makes before breaking into a cry.

  “Ah, I knew I had some,” she says, standing upright and holding up the pack triumphantly.

  But when she turns around Rose has vanished, her tea left untouched, and Mary is alone in the kitchen.

  *

  Bronwyn, as always, is Rose’s first port of call. She hammers on the front door, and when there is no answer she opens the side gate and goes into the back garden, peering through the kitchen window. There is no sign of life, and Rose leaves, closing the gate softly behind her.

  She walks on, not back to Connor’s, but towards her own home, scuffing the soles of her boots along and trying not to think of Mary’s words. Could they be true? Or did Mary really dislike her that much, that she would speak so cruelly?

  Soon she is at her own front door, letting herself in, recoiling again from the aroma in the hallway. She doesn’t look for her mother, instead she heads for the kitchen and the old tin where Kathleen keeps all her papers and documents. It is where it always is, at the back of the pantry. She pulls it down, opens it up and tips the contents onto the kitchen table. She roots through home insurance certificates and receipts and finds at the very bottom of the pile her birth certificate. Snatching it up she scans it, noting that the father’s name is blank. She doesn’t know what she expected, and a blank space doesn’t mean anything, does it? She pushes the tin to one side and covers her face with her hands. She is shaking and she wraps her hands around herself. The tremors running through her body are not due to the cold though, they are a result of Mary’s wicked words. Why would she say what she did? It’s beyond spiteful, it’s cold-blooded and evil. Just vicious.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her mother’s voice makes her jump, and she spins around to face her.

  Kathleen lurches over to the other side of the kitchen, all the while looking at Rose out of dull, dead eyes. As she moves, Rose smells the alcohol along with an unwashed, stale smell and clothes that give off the scent of fried food.

  “Connor’s mother says that you were raped, and that’s where I come from,” Rose blurts out the words before she can change her mind.

  She wants to add on a plea, tell me it i
sn’t true, but she forces herself to stay quiet.

  “Connor’s mother,” repeats Kathleen, as she stumbles and leans against the worktop to support herself. “Connor’s mother says that, does she?”

  Rose nods. “It’s a lie though, isn’t it, why would she say something so cruel?”

  Kathleen shrugs and turns away, but not before Rose sees the tears shining in her mother’s eyes. The emotion is something that Rose isn’t used to seeing, not that sort anyway. Anger and a cold demeanour are usual, tears are not. She takes the little piece of sentimentality and moves across the room towards Kathleen. Kathleen, seeing her approach, reaches blindly for the handle on the back door.

  “Don’t touch me!” she shrieks, and pulling open the door she blunders into the back garden.

  “Mam, please stop,” Rose calls as she follows her mother down the very bottom of the garden.

  They reach the fence and Kathleen turns, wildly seeking a way out.

  “Just… go, won’t you?” Kathleen wipes her sleeve across her face, a trail of tears and mucus clinging to her top. “You should have stayed away, you shouldn’t come back here.” Kathleen pauses, seems to catch her words and then lets them tumble free anyway. “I don’t want you here!”

  Rose flinches as though she was physically punched. She wants nothing more than to leave, but she’s come this far, she’s questioned her mother about something that she must find the answer to. Because she thought that Mary was being hateful with her painful words, but her own mother’s reaction has planted doubt in Rose’s mind. Suddenly it’s the most important thing in the world, that when she leaves this house for the last time, it is with the facts, though even as she thinks this she wonders if she really should know the truth. Sometimes, lies are easier both to tell and to live with. She makes to speak again, to ask it once more, but Mary holds up her hand.

  “Yeah… yes. Yes.” Mary speaks the same word, several times, choking on sobs.

  She is underwater, a strange sensation running throughout her whole body and guilt is the one that burns the fiercest. I’m going to faint, thinks Rose. I’m going to fall down right here on the garden path. So sure that she is on the verge of collapse, Rose goes quickly down onto her knees. She focuses on the weeds growing between the paving slabs and feels the hard concrete underneath her hands. She can hear her mother, breathing heavily and still choking on her tears. Oh, my poor mam, how much she must hate me… The lightheaded feeling passes, but still Rose doesn’t get up. She rubs the pads of her fingers up and down the path, the rough ground catching on her fingers. It seems a long time later when she catches the rancid scent of Kathleen as she moves past her and she chances a look up and behind her. Her mother has gone back into the house, and the door is closed behind her. After a moment, Rose hears the scrape of the inside bolt pulled across.

  She remains in a kneeling position, blinded by unshed tears, and she leans forward and vomits onto the grass.

  Chapter 11

  The forest is deathly quiet, Bronwyn had only passed a couple of dog walkers braving the cold on her own journey there, and she relishes the alone time. She had taken a bus to Chapel Road and then walked the rest of the way. She picks up the trail that she used to walk with Danny and after walking for about fifteen minutes she stops. She doesn’t want Danny to be a part of this expedition; this is solely for her and Emma. Bronwyn changes direction, walking off the track and into the forest. There is no footpath here but she enjoys the crunch of the dead leaves beneath her feet. It’s wet in parts; the rain has seemed relentless since last autumn. She catches sight of a fallen branch and remembers the last time she came here, back in the wood collecting days.

  They had found an axe, just a small, hand-held one, in the shed when they moved into the Kidds Road house. Danny had been overjoyed at his find, brandishing it around and playing the fool, making Bronwyn laugh with his antics. They had bought it here to the forest and he had hacked away at small branches of younger trees. It wasn’t very sharp, it was practically blunt, and before their next visit Danny had cleaned it with steel wool and sharpened the blade with a flint and a file. The next time they were in the forest she had sat back while he hacked away and they had returned home with enough firewood to get them through the winter. She can’t recall which winter that was, maybe seven or eight years ago now.

  She kicks at a pile of leaves absentmindedly. Maybe she’ll put the electric fire upstairs in her bedroom and get the real wood fire going again. Maybe eventually she’ll find someone else to sit in front of the flames with.

  She shakes her head, it’s not time for that sort of thinking. For a long while it’s just going to be her, her and Emma and the thought of what might have been.

  Soon she comes across the duck pond and she carefully sets her bag down at the edge. She crouches down at the edge of the bank and plucks some pebbles from the icy cold water. They are good ones, worn smooth from years of being in the free flowing stream, making a century old journey and eventually ending up here in this pond. She puts them in the carrier bag that she bought for this purpose, and then moves up into the meadow. Heather is growing in abundance here, suited to the acidic soil. She pulls a few pieces up and wetting the roots, in the bag they go. Heather will look nice in the garden, especially down by the railway track.

  As she heads out of the forest and back towards the bus stop, she feels lighter and this time when the hope springs she lets it in. No more dulling it with drink, she tells herself sternly.

  As she walks down the main road, swinging her bag of stones and heather, she wonders about getting a lump hammer and maybe smashing the concrete up from the Kidds Road garden.

  She passes a group of three British soldiers. They stand casually in someone’s front garden, following her down the road with their eyes.

  “Supergrass!” One of them with shorn dark hair and bright blue eyes shouts across the road to her.

  Bronwyn looks over at them, wondering if she heard correctly. His mates take up the chant, the melody rising into a crescendo. It sounds like a football chant. “Super, supergrass, grassy-grasshopper, SUPERGRASS!”

  The term is well known and they are calling her an informer, adding the grasshopper, which means ‘copper’ in rhyming slang, line in for their own amusement. So everyone, even the Brits know, that she had her own husband arrested. The implications of this being common knowledge doesn’t escape her and clutching the bag tightly she turns away from the soldiers, tucks her chin in and walks quickly on, head down.

  *

  “I think I done something really stupid.”

  Mary pounces on Connor as soon as he limps through the front door, taking his arm and guiding him through to the living room.

  He leans against the couch and tilts his head on the side as he regards his mother.

  “Why, what did you do?”

  She closes the door to the living room and lowers her voice, even though Rose isn’t here. Mary wrings her hands, pastes what she hopes is a worried expression on her face.

  “I didn’t realise that Rose didn’t know about her father.” She stops talking and slaps at Connor’s arm. “You should have told me!”

  “What? What?” Connor leans forward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, God,” Mary whispers and covers her mouth with her hands. “You don’t even know?”

  “No!” He exclaims. “Where is she? What’s happened?”

  Mary sinks down onto the sofa and groans. “I didn’t realise that she didn’t know that her mother was raped, and Rose was the product of it.” She looks up through her lashes at her son, somewhat pleased with the expression of disbelief that he wore. “I don’t think she knew, and she went off somewhere, I’ve not seen her since.”

  Connor deflates before her very eyes. Mary watches him carefully. Is it a look of disgust on his face now? Knowing that he’s let that into his life and his bed and his heart? He snaps his head up and glares at his mother.

  “How do you kn
ow?”

  She has prepared for this question. In fact, she was surprised that Rose didn’t ask it herself earlier.

  “I went to town, early this morning. You know what the women are like around here, they must have heard that she’s here, they couldn’t wait to tell me.” She sighs, deeply. “I presumed it was common knowledge, I mean if they all knew, surely she did?”

  “She never mentioned anything to me,” says Connor as he struggles to maintain an upright position. “I’ll have to see if I can find her.”

  Mary nods, eagerly. “Please tell her I’m so very sorry, I just didn’t know…,”

  He looks at her long and hard as he leaves the house, the door banging harder than normal behind him. Mary gets up and goes into the kitchen. Was it too much, her last words? Mary doesn’t apologise to anyone, even if she’s in the wrong. Did Connor pick up on that? Did he see through her?

  She shakes her head to dispel the thought and flicks on the oven. As she moves around the kitchen she gets out the things for dinner. Connor will be hungry when he returns, with or without the girl. She gets two plates out and puts them under the grill to warm. Even if she comes back with Connor, Rose won’t want any dinner, of that Mary’s sure.

  *

  Bronwyn hears someone knocking on her door, but she’s down by the railway track and she doesn’t want to leave yet. It might not even be her door, she reasons, perhaps one of the neighbours has visitors. Or it might be people from her own community, come to batter her for grassing up Danny. She ignores it but soon though, she hears the gate open and close and round the side of the house Connor comes into view. She thinks of staying low, let him think that nobody is home, but, almost against her will, she raises her hand.