The Girl From Yesterday (26 page)

‘Oh yeah. Well, when I say I’m related to the Blaneys, it’s the wife I’m related to.’

‘Dora?’

‘Yeah. She’s me cousin. Dora Pointer is her maiden name.’

This knocked me for six.

‘You serious? She’s your first cousin?’

‘Yeah. Used to know her really well. We all kind of lost touch with her in the last five or six years. I think stuff got a bit weird for her, y’know?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well,’ Gladys settled down to tell her story, leaning back in her chair and swinging her legs. ‘Dora was always the smart one in her family. She done real well at school, straight As right the way across the board – even in Irish! She wasn’t the best lookin’, but she was
nice
if you know what I mean. She could talk, knew how to present herself. Her ma and da – my da’s brother is her da, obviously – her ma and da weren’t rich or anything, but they worked hard and they saved their money and they sent her off to college. She trained to be a teacher – did ya know that?’

‘I did,’ I said. ‘How’d she meet Tom Blaney?’

‘Now, now, good things come to those who wait,’ she laughed, waggling her finger at me. ‘She went to St Patrick’s teacher training college in Dublin. As far as I know she lived on campus, never went out on the tear or nothin’ like that. Got the best degree you can get – straight As again. She got a job in the primary school in Toberclancy, ten miles over. I heard she was doin’ great, the kids all loved her. And then the school had a fundraisin’ evenin’ – a dinner dance I think it was – and Tom Blaney was invited.’

‘Love at first sight?’

‘I think it was for her. Tom isn’t George Clooney, but he has . . . um . . . what do you call it . . .’

‘Charisma?’

‘That’s the one. They started goin’ out. From what I heard they never spent any time in his place, always met out or at her home. So she got these ideas about what the Blaney mansion was like. I remember her calling to see me ma one time, and she was all full of what her life was going to be like when they got married – how Tom was goin’ to look after her. She’d have the best of everything.’

‘Were you at the wedding?’

‘No.’

‘Your mum and dad?’

‘No. Do you know what?
Her
ma ’n’ da weren’t even at it. I don’t even know there ever was a weddin’. We were all
told
they got married, but let me tell you, Dora kept awful fuckin’ quiet about the whole thing after that. She gave up her job, moved out to that house and that was that.’

‘But you stayed close to her?’

‘She would call in from time to time. But almost as soon as she got married, she changed. It was like a piece of her got left behind or broken. Like, Dora was always a little bit full of herself, always wanted to tell you about her latest ’complishments. She wasn’t pretty but she always had nice clothes that fit her well and the right colour in her hair for the time of year.’

‘There’s a right colour for different times of year?’

‘Oh yeah. After she got married, she stopped bothering. I remember her ma, me auntie, saying that, sure, she didn’t
need
to bother anymore, ’cause she had her man. But that didn’t wash with me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dora would want to rub all our noses in it. That was the way she was. If she married some rich bastard, she’d want to be visiting us dressed in an outfit none of us could afford, reeking of the most expensive perfume imaginable, with the best haircut and finely manicured nails, telling us about the super amazing holiday she’d be going on next month.’

‘And that didn’t happen?’

‘Shane, when she called, at first, she was just scruffy – none of her clothes were new, and they all looked creased and crumpled. Her hair looked as if it could do with some product in it, and she seemed tired. The next time I saw her she was beyond scruffy. She was
dirty
. She smelt and her face was a mess of spots.’

‘That’s not good,’ I said.

‘She would never talk about him, about Tom. She got pregnant, but there was no joy in it. The last time she visited, I came in and she had been talkin’ to my ma, and I saw she had been cryin’. I offered to go out, but she said no, she was leavin’. I remember she said to me ma: “I’ll make sure Gerry gets that document.” And me ma said: “You have to look after yourself, Dora. Those children are all Blaneys, and he’ll never let them go. But it’s not too late to save yourself.” They hugged and Dora left, and I never saw her again.’

‘She said she was going to give a document to Gerry,’ I said. ‘And this was – what – five years ago.’

‘Yeah. Maybe a bit less.’

My head was spinning. But I couldn’t do anything about it just then.

‘Okay, chatterbox,’ I laughed. ‘Have you picked something to read yet?’

‘What about one you wrote?’

‘If you don’t pick one soon you’ll be reading to the whole class!’

So she read me one of my own articles on the court proceedings, and I pondered the slowly forming picture of what was really going on in the tormented world of the Blaneys.

I sat with Sid Doran and Josephine Welch in a meeting room in the offices of child services.

‘Jacob Blaney, Tom’s father, was schizophrenic,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter what Tom says, the facts are irrefutable. There are years of records supporting what Gerry is saying.’

‘So?’ Josephine said. ‘That means nothing to us.’

‘Schizophrenia has a hereditary element,’ I said. ‘Listen to what the children have been saying:
Good Daddy
and
Bad Daddy
– the man goes through phases when his personality changes utterly, when he is just not the same man. They told me recently that he talks to his father – and not like a prayer the way any of us might talk to a deceased loved one in a moment of crisis, but as if his father is talking back. He’s hearing voices. He is clearly paranoid, convinced people are out to get him, out to do him harm. I believe that Doctor Brunswick was saying as much to Tom in court that first day. He is ill too. And the children are suffering, and have been for years.’

‘What you’re saying may be true,’ Sid said, taking copious notes as he was wont to do. ‘But where do we go with it? How do we use this to help us?’

‘Gerry and Dora are using it,’ I said. ‘They’re trying to drive him to breaking point.’

‘Gerry and Dora?’ Josephine said, looking at
me
as if I was mad. ‘His brother and his wife?’

‘Dora gave Gerry the information about Jacob being ill. When the old man died, all his papers were given to Tom. Tom put them away and didn’t pay them much heed. Remember, he and Gerry had little idea of how sick their father was, because he wanted it hidden from them. But Dora, she’s a teacher, she’s bookish, so she tries to put some shape on the records. She told me herself that she had tried to use them to put together a book for the kids about their family heritage, maybe even please Tom. I think she found the details of Jacob’s illness then. When living with Tom the way he insisted upon got too much for her, she went to Gerry and gave him the ammunition he needed to make Tom sell the house and the land – thereby freeing her.’

‘You have proof of this?’

‘I have it from a reliable source,’ I said.

‘But it’s gotten so nasty,’ Sid said. ‘The thugs, the threats . . .’

‘The threats were meant to increase Tom’s paranoia, I think. If you remember, Dora was never really threatened, and the only child who was actually outwardly involved was Jim, as the oldest boy. I believe they wanted Tom to get more and more wound up and hopefully have a complete breakdown. But then things went wrong.’

‘You made the referral.’

‘Yep. Having the kids put in care was never a part of what Dora wanted. I think she hoped to take them with her when she finally had Tom committed. So when it looked as if they were going to be taken by you guys, she got Gerry to use all his influence to put a stop to it.’

‘And he did, too,’ Sid said, underlining something sharply.

‘But he realized it might not hold. So he had me almost beaten up and had the bishop warn me off on pains of losing my job. But you see there is one factor neither she nor Gerry could control.’

‘Which is?’ Josephine asked.

‘Tom’s schizophrenia,’ I said. ‘He’s much closer to breaking than any of them had expected, and he is, literally, killing the children, maybe Dora too. They’ve done it, they’ve destroyed him. But I am telling you this: those kids need to come out
now
. I’m not saying Dora shouldn’t come with them. Frankly, I don’t care as long as you get them out.’

‘I think we have enough to get the injunction overturned,’ Josephine said.

‘I think we have more than enough,’ Sid said.

‘Call me,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll keep you posted.’

The injunction was overturned later that day.

About ten minutes after that case was lost, Gerry won in his civil dispute against his brother. You win some and you lose some, I suppose.

Tom went berserk in the courtroom. He overturned the table in front of him, threw a chair at the judge and jabbered loudly to his long-dead father. Luckily Doctor Brunswick was there and calmly sedated him. Robert Chaplin was so excited by this ending to what had been the most dramatic three days of his life that he spent the night in the office writing.

I was less excited, but it had not escaped me that this would make the children’s move easier. As the crowd milled about the courtroom I got a message on my phone. Paying no heed to the number, I opened the message and began to read. My eyes grew wide. I blushed. Closing the message, I checked the number. I didn’t recognize it, but I thought I recognized the style of the author. Jeff McKinney, it seemed, was an equal opportunities pervert. Gender was not a barrier where his attentions were concerned.

Dora sat opposite Josephine, Sid and myself in a vacant office in the hospital.

‘Your husband had been committed, Mrs Blaney,’ Josephine said matter-of-factly. ‘He seems to have had a very severe breakdown – his grasp on reality has fractured, somewhat.’

‘It’s been fractured for a long time,’ Dora said without much feeling. ‘For as long as I’ve known him, anyhow.’

‘That’s for you to come to terms with,’ Sid said. ‘The most important factor in all this is your children. We are faced with a significant question: should they continue living in your care?’

‘Why is that even in question?’ Dora asked.

‘Because they are likely to be spending the next fortnight in this hospital recovering from the treatment they have had to endure over the past months.’

‘All at the hands of my mentally deranged husband,’ Dora said sulkily.

‘I am prepared to accept that the beatings and
some
of the sexual abuse was down to him, Mrs Blaney,’ Sid said, ‘but the starvation, the atrocious hygiene, the failure to deal with basic things like nits – I know you were the primary caregiver. That is neglect at its worst. And that falls at your feet.’

‘He wouldn’t let me feed them,’ Dora said, still with no feeling or even a hint of remorse. ‘He checked the food before he left and again when he came back. If anything was gone, we all got it.’

‘I see no bruises on
you,’
Josephine said. ‘Yet your children are black and blue, all of them.’

‘He raped me, but wouldn’t hit me,’ Dora deadpanned. ‘He didn’t want me marked – not physically, anyway. Sometimes he made me sleep with Jim. But I never touched him, I swear. I’m not like that. Even though he tried to make me that way.’

Josephine sighed and riffled through her papers.

‘When the hospital signs them out, the children will be returned to your care, Mrs Blaney. I am assigning a family support worker to you, however. Do you know what that means?’

‘No, and I don’t think I want to.’

‘It means that a worker will be sent out to your home for something in the region of eighteen hours a week to help you with things like behaviour management of the children, finance, diet and food, hygiene, getting the electricity turned back on – that type of thing.’

‘And I have no choice in this?’

‘No Mrs Blaney, you do not,’ Josephine said. ‘If you refuse the worker entry, we will simply go to court and get a supervision order. You can get your brother-in-law to try and get that process derailed, but I expect he would find such a petition less well received this time around.’

‘That will be all, Mrs Blaney,’ Sid said. ‘Do you need me to call you a taxi back out home, or are you able to drive?’

‘I don’t want to go back out to that house,’ Dora said, and for the first time there was real fear and pain in her voice.

‘You are quite safe,’ Josephine said. ‘Your husband will not be getting out without your knowing about it.’

‘That’s not it,’ Dora said. ‘I don’t want to be in that dark, damp hole on my own.’

‘Why not?’ Josephine asked.

‘Because the place freaks me out, that’s why!’ Dora snapped back, clearly genuinely upset.

Josephine looked at Sid, eyebrows raised.

‘I’ll see if I can book you in to a room in The Grapevine for a few nights,’ Sid said. ‘And we should also see if we can get you access to the family bank accounts. Things like hotel rooms need to be paid for. Let’s go, then, shall we?’

Sid and Dora left. Josephine picked up her sheaf of paper and straightened it.

‘Happy?’ she asked me.

‘As I can be, under the circumstances,’ I said.

‘You were uncharacteristically quiet,’ she said.

‘I had no right to say anything,’ I said. ‘I have no authority. Besides, Sid tends to say what I would, most of the time.’

‘Very
simpatico,’
Josephine said.

‘Yeah. I’m going to see the kids,’ I said.

‘Off you go then.’

I left her to her paper straightening and her sarcasm. It was starting to wear me out.

Emma was lying in a foetal position in bed when I found her. She was in a ward full of children, but the curtain had been left pulled around her, and she seemed isolated and very small and vulnerable.

‘Hey Emma,’ I said, pulling a chair over to her bedside. ‘How are you?’

Her eyes were open and she looked right at me, but there was only heartache in her eyes. I saw that her hair had been cut quite short and anti-louse lotion had been put through it. It managed to smell sweet and bitter all at the same time.