The Girl From Yesterday (15 page)

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. She was kneeling on the ground, plucking the petals from a daisy one at a time.

‘Nothin’.’

‘You seem unhappy.’

‘I’m a’right, Ya can’ be happy all de time, can ye?’

‘Well, that’s true,’ I said. ‘But usually you want to play and you like to have a chat and to show me interesting places in the fields and in the woods. Today you just seem to not want to do anything. And that’s not like the person you usually are.’

‘Maybe I’m tired today. Or maybe I has a pain in my tummy.’

‘Do you?’

‘Not in my tummy.’

‘But you do have a pain?’

Without looking back at me, she held out her wrist, which was bruised almost black.

‘How’d you do that, sweetie?’

‘It just happened.’

‘I bet it hurts, right?’

She nodded.

‘I have some painkillers in my car. I can get them.’

‘What they?’

‘Um – tablets? Medicine?’

‘Make de pain go ’way?’

‘Hopefully, yes.’

‘Daddy won’t mind, will he?’

‘I’ll talk to him, or your mum,’ I said. ‘Do they know about your wrist?’

‘Daddy does, anyway.’

‘Does he?’

She turned and rested her head on my shoulder.

‘Maybe if my arm gets better from your medicine, maybe then we could play some games or go fer a walk.’

‘If you like,’ I said. ‘But you know, sometimes it’s fun to just be still and watch the clouds. Did you ever play Cloud Shapes?’

‘No. What’s that?’

I picked her up and put her sitting on my shoulders.

‘Let’s get those painkillers, and then I’ll show you how to play.’

She proved to be very good at it.

Robert Chaplin held his head in his hands and said nothing for a long time. I wondered if he might have gone to sleep. But after what seemed like an age he said:

‘This is going to fuck everything up.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘You go to social services with your evidence and they take the kids into care. Of course, Tom Blaney will know it was you, and the entire bunch of them will refuse to deal with the
Western News
, and who could blame them. This – the biggest story of my career – falls asunder. Brilliant.’

‘It doesn’t have to work that way,’ I said.

‘Paint me a different picture then,’ Chaplin said.

‘There is no guarantee the kids will be taken into care. The evidence is kind of vague. I still believe that we are dealing with neglect and physical abuse, but the sexual stuff is by no means definitive. I think it far more likely that a Family Support Worker will be asked to visit a few hours a week. That’s a person whose job it is to teach about nutrition, hygiene, behaviour management – that kind of thing. I also think the family will be asked to connect the electricity and the mains water, and to send the kids to school. From what I can gather the children are barely literate.’

‘What you are describing is as much the death of my story as the other way. What you are suggesting could happen will be the end of the Blaneys’ distinct character. If they stop living that strange life of theirs, half their mystique vanishes.’

‘You understand that I cannot leave the children in danger.’

‘Of course I do! It was always going to be a risk when I hired you – god-awful bloody do-gooders! Can’t keep your nose out of anyone’s business!’

‘I can also make the referral anonymously.’

Chaplin perked up a bit.

‘You can?’

‘I can explain my circumstances and ask that my name be kept out of things. That way, the Blaneys need never know it was me who called it in.’

Chaplin rubbed his eyes.

‘Well do it that way then, please. It’ll still be touch and go, though – remember, the Blaneys fucking own this town. They’ll more than likely find out.’

Part of me – a big part – thought Chaplin was probably right.

But I left the office and made the referral anyway.

Child services were based in an old hospital a mile out of town on the Galway side. I told the girl at the counter why I was there and waited as she talked quietly into a phone.

‘Someone will be with you shortly,’ she said.

They weren’t. I had my Lee Child book with me and had three chapters half read – I was too antsy to concentrate on it properly – before I heard my name being called. Standing at the counter was a broad man of about my own age with a shaved head and a thick reddish-brown moustache. He was dressed in a grey sports coat over a T-shirt with the Batman logo on it and blue jeans.

‘I’m Sid Doran, the duty social worker,’ he said, taking my hand and shaking it, but not really making eye contact. The duty social worker is the person who sits at the end of the phone, answering and recording all calls that come into the child protection offices. He organizes the initial investigations and decides if a case requires further intervention.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said.

He brought me to a small office and we sat.

‘How can I help you today?’ Sid asked, opening a yellow legal pad and taking an expensive-looking pen from his breast pocket.

‘I am sure you are aware of the Blaney family,’ I began, and told him about my concerns, about how the children had indicated that they were not getting fed regularly, about Dom’s bruises, about what the principal of the primary school had said, and then I took out the pictures and gave him a commentary on Good Daddy/Bad Daddy.

Sid listened and took copious notes, pausing occasionally to ask questions or to get me to go back over something he had not understood fully. Because I had kept track of all visits for the newspaper, I had dates and times on everything.

‘That is incredibly thorough,’ the social worker said when I was finished.

‘I worked as a child protection worker in one form or another for most of my life,’ I told him.

‘Why the change of career?’

‘I’m going to be honest and say burnout,’ I forced a smile.

Sid sat back and looked over the pages he had written.

‘Pretend you had just caught this case,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’ve been around this family quite a bit by the sound of it. What’s your gut instinct about what’s going on?’

‘Well, my gut tells me there is most definitely
something
going on,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think that.’

‘Yeah, but go beyond that. Get specific for me. Take this Good Daddy/Bad Daddy thing. Looking back on the time you’ve been out at the house, would you say the children are afraid of their father?’

‘I would say that the only child who has any real relationship with him is the eldest boy, Jim. The others are pretty indifferent to him. But you see, isn’t it possible they have created a situation where they can separate the man from the actions? When he’s nice, he’s Good Daddy, and therefore kind of harmless. When he’s bad, he’s Bad Daddy and he does awful things – but Bad Daddy is a different entity to Good Daddy. If you’re angry with him or afraid of him, you’re
not
angry or afraid of Good Daddy. I think in their world, where they don’t see anyone other than the immediate family, these children have created a way of coping with the fact that their dad has some serious issues.’

‘But you never saw him do anything inappropriate?’

‘I thought getting Jim to hit that guy who had come out to warn them off was sort of inappropriate.’

‘But within certain cultural frameworks it was understandable.’

‘You can explain almost anything away using that argument.’

‘Perhaps.’

Sid continued to go over his notes.

‘I’d like my name kept out of things for the time being,’ I said. ‘I am involved with the family in my capacity as a journalist, and I’d like to continue in that vein. I will, of course, continue to pass any relevant information on to yourselves.’

Sid seemed not to have heard me. His eyes were still on his pages of writing.

‘Sid, did you get that?’ I asked.

He looked up sharply.

‘Yes, of course. I’m sure we can do that for the time being. Thanks so much for stopping in.’

I was a bit nonplussed.

‘Is that it?’

‘I may have to call you again, but for now, I think we’re done.’

He stood. I did too, and shook his hand.

‘We’ll be in touch if we need anything else,’ Sid said again as he waved me out the door.

I drove off feeling like I had made a serious mistake. Chaplin’s dagger-like gaze, which was waiting when I got back to the office, didn’t make me feel any better.

I had bitten the bullet, and figured that my best course of action was now to focus on the things I was supposed to be doing, like working for the newspaper, teaching my classes and perhaps putting some effort into making the house I had moved into a home: it had remained little more than a shell in the months since I had arrived.

Chaplin’s jealously took the Blaney story as even more of a personal quest. Books on local history and even an ancient tome on the Ponse de Blaney clan formed a solid wall about his desk. He barely spoke to me, simply barking instructions as to where he wanted me to go and what he wanted me to write. One day it was an obituary for a local sporting hero, the next a double-page spread on a shoplifting epidemic in the town centre. I took it all in good spirits and tried to invest every item with some enthusiasm and a sense of the dramatic. I developed a style not unlike that which Stan Lee had used in the Marvel comics of the sixties and seventies, all heavy alliteration and pregnant pauses. I received no complaints from Chaplin, so assumed it was going down reasonably well with the readers.

In the evenings Millie and I explored the highways and byways around Garshaigh. We would get into the car and drive until we were lost, then get out and walk for an hour in as straight a line as we could manage. I found the countryside rich with wildlife, alive with history. My greyhound and I found old round towers, badger setts that stretched for a quarter of a mile, and a colony of roe deer living in an old apple grove near the ruins of a Georgian manor.

As I took the paper more seriously, I began to see why the local people might protest at an attempt to turn this landscape into an urban sprawl. Gerry Blaney, it appeared, might truly be the Machiavelli Chaplin painted him as.

One day in early December I was having lunch in the café when Carla, who had come to refill my coffee mug, nodded at the window.

‘I think someone wants to see you,’ she said.

Looking up, I realized that Gladys Pointer was standing by the door outside, gazing in but looking uncomfortable.

‘She there long?’ I asked.

‘Maybe ten minutes. Want me to run her?’

‘No. I’ll ask her in. She obviously has something on her mind.’

Gladys didn’t even pretend she wasn’t looking for me.

‘Thought you’d never ask!’ she said when I stuck my head out the door.

We sat down and my companion ordered a hot chocolate with marshmallows.

‘So what has you hanging about out in the cold trying to catch my attention?’ I asked. ‘We’ve class in two days’ time – what can’t wait until then?’

‘I wanted to get you on your own,’ Gladys said. ‘I wish
she
wasn’t here,’ this directed at Carla, ‘but I suppose I’ll have to make do.’

‘Carla is busy,’ I said, patting her on the hand. ‘She won’t be listening to anything we say. So, come on then – what’s the story?’

‘Okay. You gave me a lot of praise the other night when I sang.’

‘It wasn’t empty praise, either,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t trying to butter you up or anything of that nature. You were amazing.’

She grinned and flushed a bit.

‘You’re a good teacher,’ she said.

‘Now who’s buttering who up?’ I said, laughing.

‘No. You are. You’re the best teacher I ever had.’

‘I don’t think you had a very good time at school, Gladys, did you?’

‘I fuckin’ hated it,’ she said.

‘That was probably partly because of your own unwillingness to be there, and maybe you had one or two unsympathetic teachers along the way,’ I said. ‘But look, you’re back now and you’re liking it. That’s good, right?’

She took a spoonful of mushy marshmallows. I knew she had something important to say. She would get to it in her own time.

‘I told you how in school they said I was dumb.’

‘You did.’

‘Well, you never treat me like that. You talk to me just like everyone else, you make me think I can do anything I want.’

‘That’s because you can. You are a smart young woman.’

‘See, there you’re wrong. I’m not.’

‘Of course you are! Why would you say you’re not?’

‘I’m not like the rest of them girls, Shane. I
am
thick. Really, really stupid.’

‘Stop, Gladys, for God’s sake,’ I said, getting annoyed. ‘Has someone been giving you a hard time?’

She shook her head and continued to consume her frothy, gloopy drink. I was always amazed at her capacity to have conversations like this while continuing with whatever else was going on. It was always like such momentous things were secondary concerns.

‘I can’t read, Shane,’ she said, looking me dead in the eye for the first time. ‘I have never gotten the hang of it, and now I’m doing this course and we have project work due and I can’t do none of it.’

I sat back and considered what she’d said.

‘You can’t read at all?’

‘Oh, a little bit,’ she said, clearly vexed by the question. ‘I can write my name and I can manage road signs and I can just about work my way about a menu in a chip shop.’

‘So you know your letters and you can recognize words and syntax – the order words need to go in a sentence.’

‘Yeah,’ she stopped scooping out her unctuous beverage. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘You
can
read, then,’ I said. ‘You’ve just never tried to tackle something like a book, and I doubt you’ve ever read a magazine or a newspaper.’

‘I can look up what’s on TV in the little insert that comes around with the
News,’
she said. ‘But that’s as far as it goes.’

‘Look, I’m not a literacy teacher,’ I said. ‘There are people specially trained to work with people with those kinds of difficulties. But I’ll tell you what – you come around to the class an hour before kick-off this week, and we’ll take a look at your reading ability and see if we can’t help you a little bit.’