Hush, Little Baby

by Shane Dunphy

  I nodded. They dress as men of the cloth, Clive had said to me. Had the cleric upset him in some way?

  ‘Did Clive seem agitated when the priest was with him?’

  ‘He got a bit quiet all right, but I thought he was just shy.’

  ‘And the attack happened after this visit?’

  ‘Almost an hour and a half after it. And he’d been chatting to a few other people in that time.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘What about the visitors’ book? Did he sign that?’

  Claudia pushed it over to me across the desk. ‘He did, actually.’

  I opened the page for that day and ran my finger down the list of names. There were only three: one was my own, and the other two were those of women. I read their names out to Claudia, and she confirmed they had indeed been in that morning.

  ‘You must be mistaken.’

  ‘Sure, I was standing right here. He wrote something down. Maybe he got the wrong day.’

  I checked the pages before and after but to no avail.

  ‘I’m telling you, he definitely wrote his name,’ Claudia said irritably (I was interrupting her report writing now). ‘I heard the pen scratching.’

  ‘Okay, chill out. I’ll have one more look, then I’ll get out of your hair.’

  Looking a little more closely, I saw that, other than the three names, something had indeed been written on the page. There, in the margin, was a doodle, something that a person might draw absent-mindedly while talking on the telephone. This however, seemed to have been sketched purposefully. The picture was small and had been rendered with an economy of pen strokes, giving the impression that the artist had practised it until the act of drawing it became second nature – almost like a signature. It was a picture of a goat’s head.

  9

  Vera Byrne laughed, a sound that never failed to make me want to cringe.

  ‘So, I said to Helena, I said, “Sure, those children will be home with me before the New Year.” She looked like she didn’t believe me, but I told her to mark my words. “They know where they belong, and the social workers know it too.”’ She turned to smile smugly at me. ‘Isn’t that right, Shane?’

  I forced a smile. Larry and Francey Byrne, grown several inches in the six months since I’d begun working with them, were seated on either side of their mother in the access room of Dunleavy House, a comfortably decorated sitting room that had been fitted with a camera and sound-recording technology to capture all supervised access visits. I had been accompanying the Byrne twins to these visits, initiated at their request, since their father, Malachi, had been imprisoned, and I had come to dread them.

  The children were not the only ones to have changed. With their mother, the ageing process seemed to have gone into reverse: Vera looked ten years younger than when I had first met her. Dental work had straightened and whitened her teeth. Her hair, once stringy, constantly thick with grease and speckled with dandruff, was now full-bodied and carefully coiffured. Vera’s early, stumbling attempts at make-up had developed into skilled application, with the result that several male social workers who had come into contact with her mentioned that they found her quite attractive.

  She was a consummate actor. She presented herself as a caring, sensitive parent, working desperately hard to prove to the authorities that she deserved to have her children returned to her care. I was not fooled. I knew that she had horrendously abused Larry and Francey, perpetrating some of the worst sexual abuse I had ever encountered, locking them up in a dark, specially modified cupboard for days at a time, hardly feeding them and making them live in the garden shed. She had somehow persuaded Malachi to take the blame for everything. Her lumbering husband had been Vera’s weapon, and, even though I knew prison was causing his reserve to crack, I was aware that he could still be wielded by her, a blunt instrument largely unaware of the damage he could inflict.

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see how things develop, Vera,’ I said, feigning the friendliness that had become our mask during the access visits.

  In truth, there was no love lost between the twins’ mother and me. She was in no doubt that I was aware of her true intent, and it galled her. Yet she, in her twisted, tormented way, was determined to have the children back. And her force of will was such that she was quite capable of doing it.

  Something that bothered me a great deal about these visits was that Vera could distress the twins right under my nose, with a look, a tone of voice or an apparently harmless gesture. It had taken me almost a month to work out why Larry and Francey were often so disturbed after the meetings that they reverted to their old, semi-feral patterns of behaviour: running about on all fours, losing control of their bladder or bowels, and disappearing for hours into the wilderness behind their residential home.

  The real problem, of course, was that I couldn’t prove what Vera was up to. I tried to make myself hyper-aware during the visits, taking note of each nuance of verbal and physical interaction, but I quickly began to feel as if I were viewing a movie in Japanese without the benefit of subtitles. What was clear was that there was a deep, complex bond between this woman and these two youngsters, the dimensions of which would always be hidden from me.

  However, I gradually began to pick up on the subtle changes in Vera’s behaviour that could so distress the twins: there might be a slight shift in tone that resulted in one of the twins lapsing into silence with a cowed expression; or a flick of the wrist that made Francey start in alarm; or a word used in an odd, out-of-context manner that caused both twins to blanch.

  I spoke to Ben about it. His many years of experience, combined with a deep, instinctive understanding of how children thought and felt, meant his advice was always invaluable.

  ‘It’s not unusual for children in care to act out after an access visit with their parents,’ he told me. We were sitting in the kitchen at Last Ditch House, and he was nursing a cup of green tea. ‘It’s a pretty harsh reminder of what has been taken away from them. I mean, they’re brought from their new residential home, with its team of staff whom they’ve bonded with and who are, to all intents and purposes, acting as parents. They’re brought to a cold, clinical building where a social worker sits in while they’re “visiting” with the person who gave birth to them, who shares their DNA. It’s a very cruel, artificial environment, really. Should we really be surprised that Larry and Francey regress a bit afterwards?’

  ‘I suppose not – I just reckon there’s something happening that I’m not picking up on. There seems to be a hidden code for communication going on. It’s not even body language; it’s almost telepathic.’

  ‘Look, you were close to your mother, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you ever notice when she was in bad form, but, if you really thought about it, couldn’t say how you knew? It could have been a facial expression, the way she stood, something about her eyes … d’you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What’s going on between the children and Vera – and I know you don’t like her, so we have to take that into consideration too – is a perfectly natural thing. It’s the kind of telepathy all families share, and it comes from growing up together, living in the same house, having meals at the communal dinner table. Now throw into the mix the fact that this was a very isolated, introverted family. Larry and Francey weren’t seeing any other children, and had no other adult role models. Malachi and Vera didn’t associate with anyone outside the home, so far as we can tell. They had one another. For years their world was the family and their awful, frightening house. You’ve formed a very strong relationship with those children, and I can see they’re very fond of you. But it will never have the intensity of the one they have with Vera. How could it?’

  Ben had a way of cutting to the core of an issue and making me look at it from perspectives I might not have seen otherwise. Was I allowing my negative feelings about Vera to colour my interpretation of the access visits? I had supervised innumerable such m
eetings throughout my career, and had seen many children respond badly. I had never been so bothered by it before, and usually attempted to stop the children seeing their parents only when drugs or alcohol were involved: that is, the parents arriving drunk, stoned or both.

  I was of the committed belief that children should live with their biological families if at all possible. I had done my level best, over the years, to work with parents in dire circumstances, so that they could continue to care for their children. What was different about all those cases, I asked myself, as I sat in my chair, looking out at that tangled, untamed garden. The difference, I finally decided, was that those parents had truly loved their children and ultimately wanted the best for them. No matter which way I turned it over in my head, I could not bring myself to accept that Vera Byrne had anything other than a powerful sense of ownership over Larry and Francey. The twins were part of her estate. She seemed to equate them with the Byrne homestead in Oldtown. They were part and parcel of her desire to reclaim the glory she believed was once hers. In reality, this sense of importance was utterly misplaced: the powerful Byrne family that Vera had married into had long since fallen on hard times. Vera’s biological family, so far as I knew, were from a rural background, with little or no claim to any fame or high status. It seemed that Vera relished the heightened gravitas she felt she had attained on becoming Malachi’s wife, and was not going to give it up without a fight.

  I arranged a meeting with Ethel Merriman, the Health Service Executive social worker attached to Larry and Francey’s case. The office Ethel worked out of was situated in a low, prefabricated building in the grounds of the hospital where Johnny Curran had spent his convalescence, right next to the mortuary. Ms Merriman was probably about fifty-five but looked as if she would prefer people to think her much younger. Her suit was cut loosely, and I guessed it had probably cost her most of a week’s wages. She had ash-blonde hair and a grave demeanour: everything she said was invested with deep seriousness and the weight of great authority. I doubted there was much laughter in Ethel Merriman’s life. The job can do that to you, if you let it.

  The room I was shown into was cramped, with just enough space for a desk and two chairs. The walls were adorned with posters advertising various support services for the sexually abused, or people in financial difficulties, or those addicted to alcohol. Casting my eyes about, I could see nothing that spoke of Ms Merriman’s personality.

  ‘I’d like to speak to you about Vera Byrne,’ I said, after we had sat down. I was not offered tea or coffee, and my host pointedly checked her watch as I began speaking.

  ‘Yes, Vera. A remarkable woman, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘She is certainly unique,’ I acknowledged.

  ‘No, not unique. I have met many women who have recovered after enslavement at the hands of a barbaric partner. Each was remarkable in her own way.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. Would you say that Vera has fully recovered?’

  Ethel blinked, as if I had leaned over and tweaked her nose as I asked the question. ‘She has transformed herself physically. Her home is a model of cleanliness and good taste. She is attending classes in women’s studies and personal development. She arrives at her access visits with the children punctually, and interacts with them in a healthy, respectful manner. She visits her husband sporadically, to carry out specific exercises in emotional detachment, so that she can successfully exorcize his influence from her psyche.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I would most certainly say she is on the road to a full and well-deserved recovery. What she has already achieved is a testimony to her strength of character.’

  ‘Have you read the case file?’

  ‘I should be insulted by that question.’

  ‘I mean no insult by it.’

  ‘Of course I have read it. Many times, thoroughly.’

  ‘Then you know that the twins have indicated, as has Malachi, in his way, that Vera was actually the instigator of the abuse. A brief meeting with Vera’s husband will prove to anyone that he is quite incapable of the depth of premeditated cruelty the twins’ disclosures contain.’

  ‘I am aware of the allegations you have made, Mr Dunphy. Your reports are quite creative. Have you ever considered a career in writing?’

  ‘I’ll keep it in mind. You see no grain of truth in what you’ve read?’

  ‘I see only the age-old story of a brave woman being blamed for the faults of a loutish man. Vera had no choice but to act out Malachi Byrne’s lurid fantasies, and she fully accepts the damage she was forced to inflict upon her children. She is doing her utmost to mitigate that harm, and I feel strongly that the best manner in which the healing could be facilitated would be to return Larry and Francey to her care. I have made a recommendation to the Senior Social Worker that we begin preparing the children for the move.’

  I felt all the strength drain from my body. It was what I had feared. I had to struggle to form the next sentence. Haltingly, I said, ‘I have been supervising access. The children are regularly hysterical afterwards, and I don’t believe that Vera has their best interests at heart. I, frankly, cannot believe you are even contemplating reunification.’

  Ethel Merriman leaned forward slightly. Her perfume was heavy in the small room. It smelled expensive, and oddly flirtatious. ‘Mr Dunphy, you were asked to consult on this case by residential services. To be honest, I think they were a little premature in calling in an “expert”.’ She made inverted commas in the air with her fingers. ‘I understand the children were quite challenging at that time, so we’ll permit the staff at Rivendell their little indulgence. However, the twins are quite well behaved now, so I really don’t see why you need to remain involved. Let me also leave you in no doubt’ – she stood up, indicating that our conversation was over – ‘I do not care what you think about my decisions. You seem to have chosen your side, and, surprise surprise, you’ve allied yourself with the husband.’

  I remained sitting. I wasn’t finished, and Ethel Merriman was not going to bully me, regardless of how tall she made herself. ‘I’m on the children’s side, Ms Merriman. They’re the only ones who count.’

  ‘And yet I know you are visiting that thug of a man in prison for cosy little chats. I’ve heard you bring him gifts and have even been seen holding his hand. Are you perhaps a little infatuated?’

  I laughed. There was nothing else to do. ‘My God, Ethel. You’ve got me. I’m having a jailhouse romance with Malachi Byrne. I’ve been baking cakes with files hidden inside, and going home to watch DVDs of Prisoner Cell Block H while I cry myself to sleep.’

  ‘You may mock me, but I have my sources. Do you deny you’ve been seeing him?’

  I stood then, so we were eye to eye. I wasn’t intimidated, but I was certainly angry. ‘Think, for a second, about the Byrnes. There are still so many questions unanswered: whole swathes of the children’s lives, their family heritage, the pathology that led to their parents behaving in the way they did. Also, Ethel, I’ve been afraid that some short-sighted pen-pusher will come along and decide to give custody of the twins back to Vera, and the only one who can say for definite that she was the brains behind the abuse is Malachi. So, yes, I’ve been visiting The Shaker, even though it near kills me to do it. I bring him fruit, and comic books, and some clothes, and I’ve been trying to gain his trust, so that perhaps he’ll admit to what actually happened. Unfortunately I’ve not really been getting anywhere, because Vera’s “exercises in emotional detachment”’ – it was my turn to make inverted commas in the air – ‘scare him half to death. He’s still under her influence, and, as long as he is, I don’t think he’ll ever talk.’

  ‘A fact that is inconsequential, as he has nothing to say.’

  I sighed deeply and shook my head. ‘I’ll say this final thing, Ethel, then I’m going. Larry and Francey will not survive a reunion with their mother. I haven’t the slightest doubt in my mind that she’ll kill them. Not today or tomorrow. She’ll do it slowly, cruelly and sadistically. She�
��s a sick, dangerous woman, and she’s taken you in hook, line and sinker.’

  I opened the flimsy plastic door of the office, and then looked back at her, sadly. ‘I’m going to fight you on this. It pisses me off, if I’m honest, because we should be working together, but I can see that is never going to happen. I’ll see you around.’

  I walked back to my car through the icy rain and then found that my hands were shaking too much to drive. I sat with the engine running and the heater on, and smoked three cigarettes before I was able to pull out of the car park.

  I made some pasta, drizzled it with extra virgin olive oil, tossed wild mushrooms, garlic, cambazola and roquette through it, and ate in front of the evening news. The world was going to shit, but I didn’t need the television to tell me that. So I got my coat, scarf and gloves again, and went to catch the last boat to Salt Island.

  Malachi met me with the kind of smile an errant child might give an indulgent uncle. He had some bruising about his right eye, and a partially healed cut on his thinly stubbled head.

  ‘Have you come to visit me, mister?’ he asked. ‘Oh, yeah, you said I could call you Shane.’

  ‘Have you been fighting again?’ I asked, frowning.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I had to hit some fellas that was tryin’ to take stuff from my room. I think I hurt one of ’em pretty bad. He fell down and he din’ get up again. The men in the hats had to come and carry him away.’

  The phrase ‘honour among thieves’ is an overused one. In prison, small luxuries like books, chocolate or cigarettes are guarded jealously and pilfered at the earliest opportunity. I could only guess the thieves had made a mistake and gone into the wrong cell, or that they were new inmates and did not know who they were messing with.

  ‘Did you get put in the hole?’ I was referring to solitary confinement, often utilized as a punishment.

  ‘Yeah, they sent me down to that dark room, all righ’, but I got real scairt an’ I screamed an’ screamed till they let me out. I din’ like it down there so much.’