His tears came like a torrent and Niamh knew she wanted her mother too, badly, and she wept with her young brother. When Catherine attempted to comfort the children, Tom pushed her arms away. ‘Not you, I don’t want you. I want Mammy.’
Niamh was more polite and she submitted to her grandmother’s embrace, but held herself rigid so it was like hugging a lump of wood. Things hadn’t really improved since then, for the children seemed burdened down with sadness and loss. Others noticed it, particularly Tressa and the children’s aunts and uncles. Even the teacher at the County School in Ballintra had expressed concern, and their schoolwork began to suffer as they lost interest in it.
‘They’ll get over it,’ Catherine snapped when Johnnie expressed concern.
‘Aye, and at what cost?’ Johnnie pointed out. ‘Can’t you see you are punishing the children because of something Lizzie has done, and which I firmly believe was not her fault.’
‘What you believe is of no account,’ Catherine said. ‘As for the children, I am keeping them away from their mother for their own good. They can’t be expected to understand this. They are only children.’
Lizzie was unaware how much her children suffered, but she sent them a letter every week, dredging up incidents to amuse them. She wrote to her parents too, enclosing the postal orders. She never mentioned Georgia. She couldn’t bring herself to. She wanted to win her mother round and thought mentioning Georgia would not help her case, and so Catherine remained ignorant of the fact that she had a granddaughter residing in Birmingham, England.
All his life, Neil had sought his mother’s approval. He’d had little time for the father he resembled and often thought his mother didn’t like him because of it.
He’d resented his brother, yet he knew he would have been his willing little slave if Steve had ever given him a kind word. But Steve had followed his mother’s lead in disregarding him and had pushed him away.
When his father died, Neil had shed no tears; and later, when Steve was killed, he’d thought, at last Ma has no one but me.
It was a blow for him to learn that her affections could not be transferred just like that. But she wanted someone to blame for Steve’s death, and her hatred was redirected from the sniper who’d shot him to the wife who’d betrayed him and taunted his memory by flaunting her bastard for all to see, and without a bit of shame about it.
Neil was disturbed by all his mother told him about the half-caste child, and although he thought Steve probably had many offspring peppered around the place he said none of this. For the first time, his mother was relying on him, looking to him for some solution. ‘Are you not shocked, son? Are you not incensed with that wanton defiling your brother’s good name?’
‘Yeah,’ Neil said, and he was shocked that Lizzie could do such a thing in the first place, and then doubly shocked that she’d brought the child back with her and thought she could just carry on as if nothing had happened. ‘What d’you want me to do, Ma?’
‘See to her, son, what else?’
‘Okay, Ma,’ Neil said. ‘I’m your man.’
Later, in the pub, Neil met Stuart, who had called to see Lizzie as a good mate’s duty to her late husband. He’d been unaware of the set-up at all, as he’d been unaware of Lizzie’s heart thumping in her chest, her
clammy hands and her voice so dry she could barely speak. He told Neil she was, ‘As cool as a cucumber about the whole bloody thing.’
Mind you, he hadn’t studied Lizzie much at all. He couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off the dark-skinned child and he’d thought fervently,
Thank God that Steve knows nothing of this.
‘If Steve had lived he’d never have allowed it,’ Neil said. ‘He’d have killed her if she’d tried that sort of caper.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ Stuart said with feeling. ‘She said she’d intended getting rooms, but that wouldn’t have saved her. He couldn’t and wouldn’t have stood for it.’
‘My mother thinks she shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.’
‘Yeah, and she’s bloody right as well.’
As the night wore on, the two men were joined by another mate of Neil’s called Roy, and, in the course of many pints, towards closing time Neil told him about his sister-in-law. ‘What she needs is a good seeing-to,’ Roy said. ‘If she’ll open her legs for a nigger, she’ll open them for anyone.’
‘Yeah,’ Stuart added. ‘Bet she’d welcome good, honest white boys with open arms. Have her begging for it.’
‘Begging for mercy more like, before I’m done,’ Neil said. ‘Come on then,’ he announced, draining his pint. ‘What are we bloody waiting for?’
Lizzie and Celia were both fast asleep, curled up together in the double bed, when the knock came at
the door. Lizzie struggled to sit up. Beside her, Celia murmured sleepily, ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ Lizzie answered. ‘Go back to sleep.’
She lit the lamp beside the bed. It was almost half past eleven. Who but someone bent on mischief would call at this time of night? Well, she’d not go down, she thought. Let them knock all they liked, and she thanked God she’d not got out of the habit of locking and bolting doors since the time she was attacked.
Outside in the yard, Neil was annoyed to find the door locked. Few bothered doing that, but he’d got this far and wasn’t going to go home now. ‘Hide in the entry,’ he told Roy and Stuart in a whisper.
‘Why?’ Stuart said, wondering if the idea, formulated over many pints in a congenial pub, was so good now, here in the icy black yard. ‘She’s locked up and gone to bed, man.’
‘Well, she can bloody well wake up,’ Neil hissed. ‘I reckon I can get her to open the door, but she won’t if she sees you.’
‘I don’t know.’
Roy, however, was turned on by the whole experience. He hadn’t had a woman in weeks and his groin ached with desire; he was in no mood to go home unsatisfied. ‘Give him a chance, man.’
Stuart was still doubtful. He shook his head. ‘I dunno.’
‘Well, go home if you’ve lost your bottle,’ Roy said.
Stuart couldn’t go home. He lived miles away. He’d only intended staying at The Bell for the one that night to settle his nerves after his encounter with Lizzie earlier. It was Neil’s offer of a bed for the night that had
encouraged him to stay on. And so, now, he had little choice and he melted into the darkness alongside Roy.
Neil banged the door again, but this time he called, ‘Lizzie, it’s me, Neil.’
Neil! Lizzie eased herself out of bed to avoid rousing Celia, pushed her feet into slippers and grabbed a warm shawl from the wardrobe to cover herself, for the room was like an ice box. She lifted the blackout shutters from the window and peered out, but could see nothing.
With a sigh of annoyance, she got the lamp from the side of the bed and lit it. She slid up the window, letting blasts of damp, sooty air into the room. Risking the warden, she leant out, her arm extended, and in the light she saw Neil standing swaying in the yard. He was drunk, she realised, and she wanted no tête-à-tête with him in that condition. ‘Neil, go home!’ she pleaded. ‘Whatever it is can wait until morning.’
‘No, it won’t,’ Neil insisted. ‘It was summat our Steve wanted me to tell you. This is the first chance I’ve had.’
If Lizzie was suspicious at all, she thought it only a little odd that Steve could have instructed his brother with any message of importance. But it probably wasn’t that important—in his drunken state it just appeared so.
‘Neil, it’s late.’
‘Come on, Lizzie. It will only take a minute.’
Lizzie gave a sigh. She had no wish to go downstairs and speak to Neil, but she guessed he wouldn’t be easy to persuade to go home, at least not without raising the court. And she couldn’t stand at the window
all night, letting the night air waft over those still sleeping, not to mention risking a two-hundred-pound fine if the warden was to catch sight of the light and could trace its source. ‘All right,’ she snapped. ‘You are a nuisance, Neil, and a couple of minutes is all you’ll have.’
She closed the window and snuffed out the light and Neil allowed himself a smile of triumph. Roy and Stuart had heard the conversation and moved into position behind him. Lizzie considered dressing, but decided against it. If she did that, Neil might take it as an indication to stay later, so she held the shawl wrapped about her while she ran down the stairs. She poked life into the fire and lit the gas lamps, but turned them low before she went to open the door.
Her first impression of Neil, whom she’d not seen for nearly six months, was that the army had made a man of him. He’d never be tall, but the way he stood so straight made him appear taller. His eyes seemed darker and even his skin more defined, but his mouth was slack and his words slurred. ‘Hello, Lizzie.’
‘Neil.’ Lizzie inclined her head and opened the door wider. She wasn’t afraid of Neil, but she was cautious. She knew Flo would have wasted no time telling her son about the half-caste child and might not have told him anything at all about the attack, either when it happened or since, but at least the message from Steve wouldn’t have any connection with that.
But, suddenly, Neil’s arm shot out and sent the door crashing open, yanking it from Lizzie’s grasp. It twisted her hand so that she cried out with the pain of it, and she lost her grip on the shawl, which fell from her.
‘Told you,’ Neil said to his two mates, who’d crowded in after Neil and closed the door behind them. ‘Gagging for it, she is. Even dressed for the part.’
Paralysing fear gripped Lizzie, but she forced herself to remain calm and she said angrily, ‘How dare you burst in like that. And you, Stuart, is this any way to behave, abusing the hospitality you’ve received here many a time?’
Before Stuart could answer, Neil sneered, ‘Like you abused your marriage vows, playing the field while my brother risked his life daily, until in the end you gave birth to a black man’s baby.’
‘That wasn’t how it was, Neil, really it wasn’t,’ Lizzie said, desperately trying to pierce through his befuddled brain. ‘I’ll tell you what really happened sometime. When you’re sober perhaps.’
It was a mistake telling Neil he was drunk. Neil grabbed Lizzie suddenly by the front of her nightdress and said in a voice full of venom, ‘You’ll tell me nothing. I don’t want your version of anything because I wouldn’t believe a word you say, anyroad. You’re a lying whore.’
Even as Lizzie protested, Neil pushed her away a little and powered his right fist into the side of her cheek. The suddenness of the assault caused Lizzie to stagger slightly and she put a hand to her throbbing cheek as tears trickled from her eyes. Her mind was telling her to stay upright, not let herself fall, but she couldn’t keep upright after the second blow to the other side of her face and she sank to her knees.
Maybe this was it, she thought. This was what Neil wanted, to beat her because of the false tale Flo had
told him, or at least she must have omitted to tell him the whole truth so he’d assumed the rest and he’d come to avenge his brother. But still she would not allow herself to show fear. By God, she thought wryly, that convent was a good training-ground for most situations.
She’d seldom seen a man so angry as Neil that night. Even when she’d annoyed Steve in some way, she’d never seen him look as murderous as his brother did at that moment. And that was the word,
murderous
: from his dark, forbidding eyes in a face brick-red and swollen in temper, to the spittle forming around his mouth. It caused a shudder of fear to trail down Lizzie’s spine like an icy finger and she swallowed the lump in her throat. Her own voice was slurred because one of her lips was split as she said, ‘Well, Neil, I hope you’re satisfied. I expect there was no message from Steve at all. I would say that all this has the markings of your mother on it.’
‘You sodding bitch!’
The third blow caused Lizzie to fall to the ground with a groan. Blood was running from her lip and gushing from her nose and Stuart looked from her to Neil with distaste. ‘There was no need for that.’
‘There was every need.’
Roy, on the other hand, had been excited by the violence of it, and his erection was so strong it made him say, ‘For God’s sake, hurry. If you aren’t man enough to take her, then I will.’
‘Piss off!’ Neil said. ‘That pleasure is all mine. You take your bloody turn.’
Lizzie forced herself back to reality and she told
herself she couldn’t lose consciousness. She was about to be violated a second time. Jesus Christ! She’d fight this time. And she fought, valiantly, lashing out with her hands and nails, which she raked down Neil’s face, and then kicked at him as he came nearer.
But, eventually, Roy held her legs and Stuart had a hand over her bruised mouth, so that the scream she gave changed to a strangled yelp. Neil was astride her, her nightdress pulled up to her shoulders, and he was fingering her with one hand and unzipping himself with the other. Panic coursed through Lizzie for she knew she was helpless to do anything to stop this.
But the yelp Lizzie gave had roused Celia. In the darkness Celia felt the bed beside her and, finding it empty, she struggled to sit up. The child still slept peacefully, she could hear her shallow breathing, so the sound hadn’t been from her. She lit the lamp beside her bed and in its light saw the blackout shutters had been removed from the windows, and she remembered the knock earlier at the door.
Surely now she could hear the mumble of voices in the room below. And she could, for Neil had his throbbing penis between his hands and he was saying to Lizzie, ‘By Christ, I’m going to enjoy this and we’ll take you one by one till you cry for mercy.’
Celia got up and, without stopping to cover herself and not owning slippers, she ran across the room and down the stairs, hardly feeling in her sudden anxiety the icy chill of the lino. She stopped for a brief second in the doorway and took in the scene. Some man she’d never seen before was astride Lizzie; no prizes for guessing what he was at and he’d already left his mark
on her, or someone had. Her face was a mass of bruised pulp covered in blood, and her two eyes were like mere slits.
She only recognised one of the men and that was the one with his hand over Lizzie’s mouth. He was Stuart, who’d been at the house earlier. Lizzie had said he was a friend of Steve’s and she’d not taken to him then, nor she’d seen had he believed Lizzie’s story of the rape, so this visit presumably was to teach Lizzie a lesson.