Authors: Nadine Dorries
Now she was an accomplice. She had helped to burn the photographs and destroy all the incriminating evidence.
‘Tell the police Daisy has run away,’ the bishop had said, when he issued the latest instructions. ‘We need to sneak her out and return her back to the convent in Ireland, where she will be safe.’
Sister Evangelista’s heart had sunk. Everything was moving too fast. She was sure there were things the bishop knew and she didn’t. Who on earth were those two men, for example? One of them had looked very familiar, but she had no idea why.
Had she seen him in the Priory ever?
God, this was a mess. What did the bishop propose to do about Molly? He couldn’t send a couple of men to carry her off to a convent and God alone knew what Daisy had told her.
Sister Evangelista turned to face Howard. From the corner of her eye, she saw that the car the two men had arrived in slipped slowly and silently down the hill away from the back gate of the convent garden.
They knew, she thought. They knew. They must have seen Miss Devlin switch on the cloakroom light and open the back door with Howard behind her, and they had vanished, taking the case with them, so that it didn’t look as though they had planned to sneak Daisy away. She remembered where she had seen the familiar one and felt faint and sick. He had appeared in one of the photographs. But the bishop had sent him?
Her mind was screaming, her heart was racing and pounding against her ribs. As she opened her mouth, she felt sure her voice would wobble and crack, and yet out it came, each word dripping in falsehood, succeeding in concealing her inner turmoil and panic.
‘Hello, Officer. Daisy has been a little upset. Her nerves are very bad, and we thought a bit of night air would do her good and calm her down.’
Howard looked at Daisy’s face. It was blotched and streaked with tears.
‘Hello, Daisy,’ he said gently. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, queen, if yer nerves are bad, like, but do you know, I think the sooner we get this interview over, the better things will be, don’t you agree, Miss Devlin?’
Miss Devlin was keen to impress Howard.
‘Oh, I do indeed,’ she trilled.
Howard thought that if Miss Devlin or Sister Evangelista knew what Molly had told him and Simon, they would be very keen for Daisy to be interviewed too.
‘Well, I am sure the morning will be fine, won’t it, Daisy?’ said Sister Evangelista. ‘But if you don’t mind, I shall put her back to bed now, especially if you are coming back in the morning. I know how keen you two are, I imagine ye will be here for breakfast.’
Sister Evangelista managed a laugh. It was hard, but she managed.
Not her usual laugh. You would normally have to look at her to know she was laughing or catch her shoulders shaking. Her entire life in a convent, from when she had arrived as an orphan, had trained her to practise a special, silent laugh, cultivated over years so as not to disturb the peace. Tonight it was more like a pebble rolling around in a tin can. But a laugh it was.
As she put Daisy back to bed, a novice joined them with a depressing but expected message.
‘The bishop is on the phone, Reverend Mother, and he said he needs to speak to you without delay.’
Sister Evangelista knew that he would be very unhappy indeed to hear Daisy was to be interviewed by the police in the morning. She had done all she could, including convincing everyone that she was ill, to prevent the interview from taking place. It was out of her hands.
The girl was simple. Surely they could see that? As the sister pulled the cover over her, Daisy smiled in gratitude, a woman who still looked exactly like a child.
Sister Evangelista sighed as she left the room. It was all in God’s hands now. She had resigned herself to the fact that she had lifted the entire situation up to the Lord and felt a huge sense of relief as a result.
As she moved towards her office to speak to the bishop, she knew she would not, could not, challenge him. She could not be sure that the man he had sent was in the photograph, but curiously she felt bolder. She would be keeping a very careful eye out from now on and would be more forceful with her own opinions.
As was her custom, Molly sat and watched the ten o’clock news whilst eating a slice of warm millionaires’ shortbread.
She had made a fresh batch for the police officers tomorrow.
Molly knew they must interview Daisy and hear her words for themselves, but that would happen soon enough. They had told Molly that she would need to be a witness in court and that her evidence would be crucial to the case.
Molly liked that. Nothing she had ever done in her entire life before could ever have been described as
crucial
.
This was an occasion. Tomorrow, she would take out her curlers, put in her teeth and tell the police that Maura Doherty vanished in the middle of the night. No one in that family had ever spent a night away from Nelson Street and now, suddenly, two of them had disappeared.
This was news. Possibly, even
crucial
news.
It infused her with a feeling of self-importance that she was the only person her friend Daisy had told about witnessing the murder. Molly had told the police and no one else.
The police couldn’t rush Daisy. Molly had told them that and they agreed. They had already met her, they knew they would have to coax the information from her gently. That was why they were waiting for her to leave the sick bay at the convent.
Molly smiled as she heaved herself out of the chair and bent down to switch off the television. Annie O’Prey will have seven kinds of a fit when she knows what I have been keeping from her, she thought to herself, carrying her cup and plate over to the kitchen sink.
Tiger let out one of his piercing howls from the yard and Molly heard the tin bin lid slip onto the yard floor and clatter across the cobbles.
‘That bloody cat,’ she said to herself, as she opened the back door. ‘The bin will be full of river rats in the morning. Tiger,’ she hissed. ‘Tiger, come here, here, you naughty boy.’
It was pitch-black outside. The night had settled down and the street slept. There was not a shaft of dawdling light to ease her way to help her find the cat.
Molly heard another noise, this time from the outhouse.
‘Tiger, is that you? Here, you daft cat,’ she said.
There was no response. All was quiet.
‘Ah sure, well, I need to go to the lavvy anyway,’ she muttered as she shuffled across the yard and opened the outhouse door.
Molly kept a candle and a box of matches on the ledge and knew exactly where to put her hand. Plagued by a weak bladder, she could have the candle lit within seconds. As she struck the match, she shuffled round to negotiate her way down onto the lavvy seat.
That was when Molly saw him, waiting for her, behind the outhouse door.
The wooden mallet hit her so hard on the side of her temple that it carried her across the outhouse and into the wall. As her skull shattered, the last thing she saw was Tiger, with claws extended, leaping onto her attacker, but he was too late.
Molly was dead before she hit the floor.
T
HE STRAW BALES
had been restacked, cloths folded and dishes put away. The bales almost reached the roof of the barn. Nellie and Kitty lay on the top, chins in hands, and gazed out over the harvested fields.
The barn retained the heat of the day and their nostrils were filled with the thick scent of straw and hay, mingled with freshly cut oats. The smell from the midden entered inwards as the breeze altered direction and, unwelcome, rested with them awhile.
Oat sheaves, which yesterday had stood five feet tall and swayed in the breeze, were now stacked into rounded mounds, dotted casually across the fields.
The girls could hear the river running in the distance.
The surface of the fields shimmered a platinum harvest gold in the last rays of the red sun as it slowly dipped behind the emerald mountain that rose from the foot of the furthest field.
‘That must have been the best day of me life,’ said Kitty wistfully, squinting into the middle distance to watch Jacko as he began to lumber slowly across the stones on the edge of the riverbank.
‘Aye, mine too,’ said Nellie.
Nellie sat up cross-legged and studied her white socks intently. Tiny, bright-red straw bugs were weaving their way in and out of the white threads. Distracted, she attempted to pick them out, one at a time, with her nails.
Giving up, she nudged Kitty.
‘What about the glorious Aengus, then, eh? He took a right shine to you, so he did.’
‘Oh sure, he did not.’ Kitty blushed.
‘Oh my God, he so did and ye to him. Ye should have seen your face.’ Nellie began to imitate Kitty. ‘Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, Aengus, I’ll just have to ask my mammy. Now hang on a moment, er, yes, she said yes, a yes, that is. Not that I’m keen now, but, yes.’
Kitty extended her leg and with her foot ejected Nellie straight off the top layer of straw and she landed on the half-layer below. Both girls were laughing as Maura appeared at the front opening of the barn and called to them.
‘Come on now, girls,’ she shouted up. ‘Time to come indoors. Kitty, ye need to have a bath.’
‘Why in the name of God do I need a bath?’ asked Kitty indignantly. ‘I had one on Sunday.’
‘Just do as I ask, please.’ There was an element of tension in Maura’s voice and Kitty picked up on it straight away.
‘What’s wrong, Mammy?’
Maura immediately reverted to a mask of gaiety. Kitty’s last night had to be a nice one. That was all that mattered.
While Maura and Kitty stepped inside and Kitty took her bath, Nellie sat on the edge of the stone sink and watched the back of the truck loaded with oats disappear down the Ballymara road.
A dark cloud had gathered in the sky above the farmhouse and the air was becoming oppressive. Nellie could hear thunder in the distance but as yet there was not a drop of rain falling on Ballymara.
‘Eat fast now, Jacko,’ she shouted. ‘It’ll be all wet soon.’
A rumble grew louder in the distance and Nellie took herself inside. She wanted to speak to Nana Kathleen. Something was occurring. She could sense that Maura was tense and a feeling she didn’t much like had slipped into her gut.
As Kitty lay in the bath, she guessed people were talking about her, because she heard her name mentioned more than once. Maura had told her to wash her hair, even though it had been washed only two days ago.
She looked down at the peaty-brown bathwater, which was the colour of weak tea. She still couldn’t get used to it and marvelled at the colour each time she filled the sink.
‘Is this water safe?’ she had asked Maeve on her first night.
‘Well, at least five generations have been drinking it here in this house and no one dies before their fourscore years and ten, so I reckon it must be so,’ Maeve had said.
Kitty looked down at her belly. The mound was now breaking the surface of the warm brown water. She hadn’t noticed that a few days ago. She slowly ran her hand over the firm swelling. She pressed gently to see if she could feel anything. It’s a baby in there, she thought to herself, a baby girl or a baby boy. In there.
It felt alien and unreal.
She sat up, rubbed herself down with soap, rinsed it away and then quickly stepped out of the bath. She did not want to look at the visible manifestation of that awful night.
When Kitty arrived back in the kitchen, Maeve and Maura had set the tea out on the table and Nellie was sitting in the big chair by the fire.
‘Now then,’ said Maura, in a breezy tone. ‘Come and sit down, we need to have a chat.’
‘Oh no,’ said Kitty, ‘not another chat, Mammy.’
Her heart sank. Last time Maura wanted a chat it was to tell her she was pregnant. She never wanted to chat again.
‘Is our holiday over now, is that it? Do we have to go home? Nellie, are you coming with us or are ye staying longer? Oh, Maeve, I will miss ye so much.’
Kitty had jumped to conclusions and also to her feet to hug Maeve, who, with her arms wrapped round Kitty, moved her back over to the fireplace and sat down with her on the wooden settle, winking above her head at Maura.
Nana Kathleen walked into the room, having just closed the front door.
She had met Liam outside and waved the truck down as he drove past to turn round at the McMahons’ farm.
‘Go back to the village and stay at Colleen and Brian’s for ye tea. Don’t come back now until as late as ye can. Give little Kitty a bit of space while we tell her what is happening, will ye now?’
Liam’s face was covered in grain dust from the thresher and, as he frowned, specks of it fell from his eyelashes. He lifted his cap and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes.
‘Jesus, the poor feckin’ girl,’ he said as he put the cap back on. ‘I’ll be off then.’ And he rammed the gearstick back into first, put his foot down on the accelerator and drove the truck as fast as it would speed back down the Ballymara road. As Kathleen reached the door she looked back and saw Liam had one hand lifted in a wave to her as he passed.
Just the way his father, Joe, had always done before him.
Kathleen smiled and, at the same time, she felt the familiar pain of loss somewhere deep in her heart.
‘Shift up now, missus,’ she said to Nellie as she tapped her knees with her hand, indicating that Nellie should move over. Nellie jumped out of her seat and then as Nana Kathleen sat, she plonked herself back down on Kathleen’s knee, a more cushioned resting place than the chair itself.
Nellie was quiet. Studying Kitty and Maura, she had placed her thumb in her mouth and, leaning her head back on Nana Kathleen, began to suck it for the first time in years. She was exhausted. The heat of the day and the glow from the fire were forcing sleep upon her. She adored the smell of the burning peat in the huge fireplace. The brown bricks, hewn from the earth and pulled on a cart by Jacko, were a novelty after the coal and coke back home.
Nellie had spent each evening she had been at the farmhouse on the same chair as her nana, lost in her thoughts as she watched the flames flicker. She blinked furiously and fought to keep her eyes open but she lasted only moments as, enveloped in the familiar smell of hearth and home, and on her nana’s bosom, she fell into a deep sleep.