The Godforsaken Daughter

by Christina McKenna

  Where Ava Shevlin saw coldness and detachment in the husband she once loved, the young Henry saw patience and forbearance. Admirable qualities, which served him well as a doctor. The great gusts of pique and wrath he often observed in his patients—“those fearful displays”—were the result of having ceded control to that most invidious of emotions: fear. “Fear, Henry, is what makes the world a terrible place. Your mother isn’t upset with you and me; she’s merely afraid of life.”

  Having become a therapist, Henry understood all too well what his father meant. He couldn’t take away the fears that each of his patients presented, but he could stand with them at the cliff edge, on the riverbank, the lip of a high-rise building, and gently pull them back from the metaphorical brink. He offered hope and medication, and he listened to them with a finely tuned ear and a brotherly heart.

  He was forty-two and starting an unexpected new phase in his life. The city of Belfast, where he’d spent his career, could no longer keep him bound. He’d requested a transfer from the Mater Infirmorum Hospital, his employer of fifteen years. Had spotted an ad for a temporary consultant at an outpatient clinic in the town of Killoran. The clinic was run by the community health center, and referred its serious cases to St. Ita’s mental institution in the city of Derry.

  Henry secured the position with ease. Killoran, with its catchment area of a few thousand souls, as opposed to Belfast’s half a million, seemed the ideal place. Fewer patients meant a less hectic schedule, a narrower focus, and fewer demands. Just what he needed.

  This dramatic shift in circumstances was not of his making. Sadly, the decision had been forced upon him. Constance, his wife of nine years, had vanished. Weeks of feverish searching had proved futile. The weeks had ripened into months, to become a year of waiting. He’d finally faced up to reality: Constance wasn’t coming back. It was time to draw a line under the tragedy, to move on.

  He could no longer remain in the home they’d shared for so long. Because it was no longer a home. Her absence had regressed it to the mere house it had once been. There were too many memories. Too many lonely nights of waiting for the phone to ring. Too many days of waiting for her to come through the front door. Yes, it was time to move on.

  The memory of the evening she went missing would never let him go. He’d gone over it and analyzed it so many times. He’d found a note on the kitchen table when he’d arrived home from work at his usual time of 5:30. It was May 25, 1983.

  “Going for a walk, darling. Love you. Always.” That was what the note said.

  He’d thought nothing of it . . . to begin with. Had grown used to such notes, especially at that time of year. Constance, a born walker, had always looked forward to the finer weather. May was her favorite month. The pre-summer days meant saying good-bye to heavy clothing, and dispensing with the gloves she loathed, yet was forced to wear against her Raynaud’s syndrome.

  But with darkness falling and still no sign, Henry poured himself a brandy—an uncustomary indulgence. He wasn’t much of a drinker and prided himself on his imperturbable nature. Psychological crutches were for his patients. She’s dropped in with Betty, he told himself, after finishing the drink in two gulps. Yes, that’s it. She’s chatting with her sister over a coffee and has simply lost track of time. Betty would be back from her weekend with the mother-in-law in Bangor. There would be much to discuss.

  He had to remain calm. This unexpected warp in his routine was a challenge in ways he couldn’t have anticipated. He subscribed to the psychotherapeutic model of Émile Coué. Had been using it very successfully in his practice for years. Émile Coué, the man who coined the famous maxim, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”

  Now Henry Shevlin called on the great master’s precepts to steady himself. The conscious will was what you focused on. To feed and strengthen your conscious will, it was imperative to bring the unconscious will—the imagination—under control, by feeding it only positive thoughts and images. What you think about exclusively turns into reality. Therefore Henry immediately began picturing the best possible outcome, his eidetic memory coming to his aid when he most needed it to. The pictures were coming. Clear and detailed pictures.

  He was picturing Connie in Betty’s pristine parlor, chatting over coffee. What was she wearing? He went further back: to the breakfast table. Yes, her white dress with the forget-me-not pattern. How extraordinary! Forget-me-not. Over the dress: a white cardigan, the final two buttons done up at the waist. Shoes? He hadn’t noticed those, but it was a fair assumption they were the beige slip-ons she favored for walking.

  He saw her check her watch. Betty halting in midflow, scowling at the interruption.

  “God, is that the time? Really must be going. Henry’s long home and I didn’t mention I’d be dropping in with you.”

  Call Betty! Wouldn’t that be the most sensible thing to do? Henry’s eyes locked on the phone. No, he decided. Calling Betty would mean giving voice to his anxieties. Endorsing his doubt. No, Connie would come through the door any minute. Plant a kiss on his cheek. Apologize. Settle opposite him in the armchair with a glass of her favorite Sancerre, and ask him about his day. That’s the way it had always been. And that’s how it would be now.

  However, sitting there in the armchair made him feel unproductive. Action! He needed to take action.

  Her handbag. Maybe she decided to do some late shopping after the walk. The city-center shops were open late on a Thursday. He looked in all the usual places for the handbag and was relieved when he couldn’t find it. She had gone shopping then.

  And so the minutes ticked away. The clock striking down the hours till the shops shut at 9:00 p.m. A taxi back home would take twenty minutes at most.

  At 10:00 p.m. he was forced to phone Betty.

  “No, she never came here. Is something wrong?”

  “She went for a walk this afternoon and didn’t come home.”

  “Oh my God! Have you called the police?”

  No, he hadn’t called the police. Betty was a catastrophist. A black-and-white thinker with few wanderings into that much more yielding zone of gray.

  He waited until midnight. Half an hour later, he found himself at his local Royal Ulster Constabulary station, filling out a missing-person’s report.

  A bulky constable, yawning his way through a list of questions.

  “Five foot four, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hair?”

  Henry reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. “Here, I have a snapshot.”

  The RUC constable studied the portrait.

  “Blonde,” he said aloud, while scribbling the word down. “Recent pitcher, this?”

  “Yes, a couple of months back. It was taken for a gallery brochure.”

  The constable looked up. “Right.”

  “And how does she wear it?”

  “Wear what?”

  “Her hair, sir. Always tied back like that?”

  “Yes, usually . . . in a ponytail.” Henry made an explanatory gesture at the back of his head. “Worn . . . worn high.”

  The constable studied the shot again. “Eyes . . . blue?”

  “Blue, yes.”

  “Any distinguishing features?”

  “No . . .”

  “What was she—?”

  “Sorry, sorry, yes, she has . . .”

  “Has what?”

  “A distinguishing feature.” He pulled back the cuff of his shirt. Pointed to a spot just above the wrist on his right arm. “A small tattoo, here. A butterfly . . . blue. A blue one.”

  “Right. Wouldn’t be seen by anyone, unless she’d be in the short sleeves,” the constable said, stating the obvious. “And clothes. What had she got on, sir?”

  “A white dress with a blue pattern . . . small flowers. Forget-me-nots, I think. Knee-length a
nd . . . and a cardigan . . . white as well.”

  “Just plain white?”

  “Yes . . . no, no. At the back it has a sunflower . . . embroidered into it. She . . . she did it herself.”

  “What color? This sunflower?”

  “Eh . . .” Henry thought it an odd question. “Yellow. Yellow, of course . . . yes, yellow with a brown center.”

  “How big?”

  “Size twelve.”

  “No, sir, not the cardigan, the flower. Did it cover the whole back or—”

  “Yes, yes, of course . . . sorry, Constable. Yes, it covered the entire back.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Sorry, why’s it good? I don’t follow.”

  “The cardigan’s distinctive. You say she embroidered it herself, therefore there wouldn’t be another one like it.”

  Henry shook his head. “I never thought of that.”

  “Shoes?”

  “Sorry, can’t remember. But she did have her handbag. Brown leather . . . a shoulder bag. I know that for sure, because it’s not in the house.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say she usually walked in Lady Dickson Park?” The constable sat back in his chair and relaxed his viselike grip on the pen. “Would she usually take her handbag on a walk, sir?”

  “No, not usually. But if she intended to do some shopping afterwards, she might.”

  “There are no shops in Lady Dixon Park.”

  “I’m quite aware of that, Constable. But there’s late-night shopping on a Thursday.”

  “This is Wednesday.”

  Damn! How could he have mistaken the date? A calendar on the police officer’s desk was showing Wednesday, May 25.

  “Marital problems?”

  “No. Why are you asking that?”

  “Procedure, sir. Could she have been seeing someone else?”

  “No.” Henry looked the man straight in the eye. He dropped his gaze to the form again. “If you’re looking for a chief complaint, Constable, I can assure you that you won’t find it in that area.”

  “Chief complaint? I don’t think I follow . . .”

  “I’m sorry. That’s professional jargon. I doubt if it’s relevant here.” How remiss! What would a simple policeman know about psychiatry and diagnostic procedure?

  “A suitcase missing?” the officer pressed on.

  “I didn’t check. Why would I check such a thing? I love my wife. She loves me. I’ve absolutely no reason to doubt her. I’m missing her already and you’re painting her as some kind of harlot.”

  “We need a full pitcher, if we’re to find her. These questions might be hard, but we must have facts, and you must face facts.”

  Henry relented. He knew he’d get nowhere by being awkward. “I’m sorry,” he said, letting his gaze fall on the constable’s pen, poised again over the report form. Bitten nails. A slight tremor in the left hand shielding his note taking from view. Conscious of his spelling, despite the uniform. Be patient, Henry—he heard his father’s voice—everybody is afraid of something; everybody has lost someone. “You have to do your job. It’s just that . . . well, it’s just that I never expected to be sitting here at this hour of the night answering questions about . . .”

  Out in the corridor a pair of duty boots marched past: heavy, assertive. In their wake a scuffling sound. A slurred voice raised in song. “And I’m off tae join the IRA and I’m off tae-morrer morn—”

  “Aye, you wouldn’t be much bloody good to the IRA in your state. Get in there!”

  A door slamming. Keys jangling.

  Silence.

  “It’s good that she took the handbag,” the constable said into the pause. “More for us to go on. We can check for bank withdrawals.”

  “I see.”

  He slid the statement across the desk for a signature. “Go home, sir. Try to get some sleep, but not in the marital bed.”

  Henry was nonplussed. “Why not?”

  “We’ll need to see the bedroom. Look at her effects. It’s important you don’t tidy anything up. Stay by the phone. Keep it free, in case she calls.”

  The constable got up. “We’ll check phone records, of course.” He opened the door. “Don’t worry, Doctor. Ninety percent of people show up within forty-eight hours. Perhaps she just wanted to be on her own for a bit. Women are hard to fathom at times.” He smiled. “But you don’t need me to tell you that—you being a psychiatrist and all.”

  Henry managed to reciprocate the smile, grateful for the man’s reassurance. But he knew, as he walked away, that in the troubled city of Belfast, with its relentless succession of shootings and bombings, a woman missing for a few hours would figure low on the RUC’s list of priorities.

  He returned home in the early hours, finding the house eerily quiet without her. All the warmth and comfort he’d taken so much for granted: gone like a puff of breath in winter. He went immediately up to the attic to check on the suitcases.

  No, they were still there, gathering dust from the last vacation. Relief swept over him like a blessing. So she hadn’t left him.

  He sat down on a beanbag and stared at the cases. Connie’s: the biggest of the set. She loved clothes, and always insisted on taking most of her wardrobe with her. So many happy holidays had been packed into that blue Samsonite. Their most recent, on the island of Crete the previous August.

  He saw them on the terrace of Hotel Hyperion, sipping Metaxa as the sun sank over the Mediterranean. Connie’s blonde hair burnished bronze in the evening light; her easy smile, eyes bright with happiness. Her pale fingers clasping the glass, savoring each tiny sip of the Greek brandy. His butterfly. She loved butterflies. Loved seeing them in summer. That delight in them mirrored so keenly in her own life. So hungry for adventure. Trying out new things: jobs, hobbies, hairstyles. Flitting from one experience to another, eager to soak up the thrill of it all.

  “Why don’t we move here, darling? Wouldn’t it be heaven?”

  Henry, the realist. Always the realist: “Yes, it would be lovely, but not practical, as you—”

  “Oh, stop spoiling the moment. Just say ‘yes’ and let me dream. I’m tired of Belfast. The shootings, the bombing. We’ve no ties, really. We’re as free as birds. We could live anywhere in this big, bright, beautiful, scintillating world.”

  “Hmmm . . . You see the world as bright and beautiful because you’re on holiday. Unfortunately, I’m under contract. My patients need me.”

  “You’re not indispensible! I expect there are mentally ill people in every country. You’d always find work.” She’d taken a larger sip of the brandy. “Only trees stay in the one place all their lives. And we’re not trees.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “‘Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which one fits me and is most becoming?’”

  “Oh, stop quoting that morose poet! Now look who’s spoiling the moment.”

  “Sylvia Plath was not morose. She was a realist, trapped by others’ expectations. A bit like me.”

  She’d gotten up then and slammed down the glass.

  “Connie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m going for a stroll.”

  “On your own.”

  “Yes, on my own. I’m not a toddler. And I wish you’d stop treating me like one.”

  Is that why she’d done this? Just to show him? Had he been too restricting?

  The doctor put his head in his hands. Maybe I should have listened more. Maybe I should have given her the same ear I give my patients.

  He got up and went downstairs. Clear, almost palpable in his mind, the image of her rising from that table at Hotel Hyperion and stalking off.

  He went immediately to the writing bureau. Opened the locked drawer and dug down through their
shared collection of personal papers: birth, marriage, graduation certificates, bank statements, until he found the object of his search.

  He drew out the passport and leafed through its pages, hopeful. But, alas, it was his own face that stared back at him.

  He reached back into the drawer, a feeling of dread taking hold. His fingers made contact with bare board. He pulled the drawer out as far as it would go, and hunkered down to get a closer look.

  But the back of the drawer was empty. Connie’s passport: gone.

  Chapter three

  In the time it took Martha Clare to rise and dress, Ruby had the tea made, the table laid, the mother’s favored cup and saucer in position, and her chair cushion plumped, ready to receive her.

  On the table: a cream sponge Ruby had made that morning, perfectly risen and finger-light springy, due to the care she’d taken in beating sufficient air into the mixture. Baking came as naturally to her as breathing. As a child she’d watched her mother, and as a girl had helped her aunt Rita, who used to own a cake shop. The farm work had taken her away from all those domestic pursuits, but now she was rediscovering, as with her knitting, the joy of those long-neglected skills. And it pleased her that her foray into farming hadn’t diminished her talent in the kitchen.

  Martha Clare, a brittle-boned sexagenarian, frail as a festive meringue, sharp as a hacksaw when her blood was up, sighed her way down the stairs and proceeded unsteadily to the table.

  She waited for her daughter to pull out the chair—“Might put my elbow out. Them chairs are too heavy for me these days. Have to watch my bones. Dr. Brewster said so.” Ruby knew the mantra well and was on guard like a lady’s maid, obeying a set of unspoken commands just to keep the peace. Being indoors with the mother day after day was a fresh trial to be gotten through, a burden to be borne.

  Martha gathered her cardigan about her and settled herself. The garment seemed much too big for her, but Mrs. Clare, always on the slight side, had lost even more weight following her husband’s death. Vincent Clare had taken care of everything outside the home. The farm business was his world, the domestic sphere hers. But with his passing, Martha was forced out of her comfort zone and into a world of lawyers and paperwork pertaining to his affairs and their sixty-plus acres of land. The stress of it all had taken its toll, robbing her of sleep and the desire to eat.