Beatrice Page 13

  After a while, Sarah got used to her new life in Ireland. She began to feel as though she actually belonged somewhere. Gradually, she stopped minding when the girls took her clothes because they would give her something of theirs instead. Slowly she came out of her shell. In fact, sometimes she used to have fun with them when they brushed their hair at night, and talked about their fellas. Bríd continued to speak little, but her attitude had softened towards Sarah, and sometimes she would even ask her about England and what her life had been like there.

  Sarah still often thought about her mother and father, usually at night, when everyone was asleep. Listening to the comforting rhythms of her sisters-in-laws’ steady breathing, her own insides would run cold as she realized that she had grown up in a house with no mother love. The relationship which Margaret had with her daughters was so very different from Sarah’s own experience. They were close, living in each other’s pockets, and giving out and speaking their thoughts and emotions as if it was a right, like breathing the fresh air around them. She vowed that she and Beatrice would be like this one day.

  The house at Glenamona was small and dark, but it ceased to be depressing. What it lacked inside was made up for by what was outside. Sometimes Sarah would stand in the yard at the front of the house and feel she was standing on the pin-head of a protected circle. Behind the house lay a field, and then the bog. In front of her was an orchard full of apple trees; their rosy scent filling her nostrils. In the distance you could see a new spruce forest which circled the land. They were in an enclave, removed from the outside world. It was somewhere you could stay hidden for ever. Maybe here, she thought, she could lick her wounds and forget about Anthony. Maybe here, she could devote herself to her child, be able to appreciate Joe, and be a good wife.

  EITHNE

  Lisa lights up. My mother says nothing. In fact she goes and gets an ancient ashtray.

  ‘Cheers.’ Lisa tips her ash.

  She is still wearing her padded jacket, and is sitting slouched on my parents’ sofa. She looks like a blonde giantess. I nurse my mug of tea. We are both cold. I had forgotten how the wind cuts you on Sliabh na Caillaigh. My mother stokes the fire.

  ‘I can’t believe you went up there today,’ she says. ‘It’s gone so cold.’

  An icy wind whistles around the house, backing her up. The light is failing. I begin to wish I had not come home.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’ I ask.

  ‘On his way.’

  She always says that. Sometimes he would appear, sometimes not. No one speaks. We can hear the trees beating the back windows, too close to the house. Daddy had chosen a bad site – boggy and damp in the winter, too dark in the summer.

  ‘So where are you from, Lisa?’ asks Mammy.

  ‘Golders Green, in London.’

  ‘I know it,’ she says. ‘I used to live in London. Quite nearby, in Hampstead.’

  ‘It’s lovely round there. There’s a great swimming pool in Swiss Cottage.’

  ‘Do you swim much?’

  ‘Every day. I’m training to be a lifeguard.’

  ‘Really?’ Mammy is looking puzzled. ‘So how do you know Eithne?’

  There is a pause. Lisa looks stumped; she glances over at me.

  ‘Lisa’s at art college. They sent her on a study trip to Ireland, and she was placed in the print studio,’ I say quickly. ‘We just hit it off.’

  ‘You must be very busy, Lisa,’ says Mammy, ‘studying fulltime, and then doing your lifeguard thing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lisa says looking uncomfortable.

  It is hardly surprising that Mammy is curious. Lisa is not like any of my other friends. For a start she’s only a kid. I had been finding her hard to take. She’s loud, talks too much and has bad manners. We have absolutely no mutual interests. Even her taste in music is completely different. I have almost decided that I won’t tell Mammy who she is; that I’ll tell her all about it when I find Beatrice. But after Lisa slipped on Witch’s Hill, I feel differently about her. It’s all an act. She appears brash, tactless, insensitive, but she does have feelings, she is vulnerable. And I can identify with that. I am beginning to feel protective towards her. It is a strange emotion; the only other person who has ever made me feel like this is Daddy.

  ‘I hope you’re hungry,’ Mammy says, getting up and leaving the room. Lisa puts out her cigarette. She takes her coat off, and drops it beside her on the sofa.

  ‘Did you grow up here?’ she asks.

  ‘More or less. We lived with my Granny till I was about four. When she died, Daddy built this house.’

  ‘Is that Beatrice?’ she asks.

  A photograph hangs above the fireplace. It is my sister, in Majorca, just a few months before she disappeared. She looks stunning. Tanned, and with cascades of auburn hair. She smiles at us.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ Lisa, uncharacteristically whispers.

  That holiday in Majorca was our downfall. If only she hadn’t gone missing over there, the Gardaí would have taken her disappearance here more seriously. Not that they did not investigate it. But you could tell they thought she had run away, because of Majorca. People went missing every day.

  And now this . . . Lisa sitting opposite me in our house. The Gardaí had been right, and my instincts had been wrong. I had thought she was dead. Lisa was a beacon, my angel of hope.

  ‘I don’t look like her, do I?’ she asks me.

  ‘No, not a bit,’ I say.

  ‘No wonder you thought I was lying,’ she says.

  ‘I would never have believed you unless I had seen it in black and white. I really thought my sister was dead.’

  Lisa gets up, and stands in front of the fireplace. Hands on hips; head on one side. She stares at the picture. Then she traces Beatrice’s smiling face with her finger. Imagine seeing your mother for the first time.

  I hear the back door open, a gust of freezing wind blasts through the house. Daddy. He comes in.

  ‘Eithne. Hello, darling,’ he says.

  He has been drinking.

  ‘Hi, Daddy.’ I get up and hug him. He stinks of cigarettes, although he doesn’t smoke.

  ‘Is Leo not with you?’

  ‘No, he couldn’t make it. I’m just down for a couple of days. This is a friend of mine, Lisa.’

  ‘Hi, how are you?’ she says staring up at him.

  ‘Is that an English accent?’ Daddy asks.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So where are you from? Don’t tell me . . . let me guess now . . . North London would it be?’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ says Lisa, impressed. ‘Howd’ya know?’

  ‘Oh, I spent years in that part of England. I worked on the building sites, see. Best part of ten year I was there. It certainly never got this cold in London,’ he says, stamping his feet.

  ‘Would you have a jar, girls?’ Daddy asks as he goes over to the drinks press.

  ‘What’s a jar?’ asks Lisa.

  ‘It’s a drink,’ I say. ‘Alcoholic.’

  ‘No, thanks, I don’t drink whiskey that much.’

  ‘Eithne?’

  ‘No, Daddy, I won’t. Why don’t you wait till after dinner?’

  He pretends not to hear me and pours himself a drink.

  Mammy comes back into the room. She barely acknowledges Daddy. It is incredible how two people can live in such a small space and so separately. It is painful to watch.

  ‘Dinner,’ she announces, and whips round out of the room.

  We eat. Floury spuds, boiled, with the skins curling off them, turnip, which has been boiled into oblivion and a pile of greasy, nearly burnt, sausages. Mammy never took to cooking. Daddy gets stuck in, I focus on the potatoes, I can see Lisa playing with her food out of the corner of my eye.

  ‘Do you not like sausages, Lisa?’ asks Mammy.

  ‘It’s just they’re very fattening, Mrs Kelly,’ she says. ‘I have to watch my weight.’

  Mammy stares at her, and then looks over at me. She can’t work out what th
is girl is doing here.

  We eat in silence. I have always hated meal times at home. My rash is burning through my top, and I can’t stop rubbing it. At least it’s distracting me from possibly the most bizarre dinner of my life. There sit my parents chomping away in front of their granddaughter. Yet they don’t know it. How am I going to tell them? Or should I at all? My head is pounding, and my stomach is heaving – it’s hard to get the food down.

  The phone rings.

  ‘Will you get that, Eithne?’

  I go out into the hall. It’s Leo. He’s furious.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Eithne? You told me you were going to think about it.’

  ‘Leo, I’m stressed out as it is . . . I don’t need this.’

  ‘You should have stayed here. Then we could have talked about it, worked something out.’

  ‘What was there to talk about? It’s my family business and I have to sort it out, Leo, not you, but me, on my own.’

  There is a pause.

  ‘I’m your husband, I am your family.’ He is calmer now, no longer shouting. ‘I want to help you.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry, but what can you do? Lisa is my niece . . . I checked all the papers again this morning. She really is Beatrice’s daughter. All of a sudden my sister is no longer dead. Imagine how that feels?’ He says nothing, and I continue, ‘It’s like one minute I’m happy, and the next I am so angry I could explode. I’m hot and throbbing all over, and then I feel as though ice has been trickled down my back. How could she do it, Leo? How could she leave me and never come back?’

  ‘She must have had good reasons,’ he says.

  ‘But what? What could be so big that it stops you from contacting your family ever again? I just can’t imagine what that could be.’

  ‘Eithne,’ he pleads, ‘come home and talk this over with me. I don’t like that girl, Lisa, I still don’t trust her.’

  ‘Will you bloody wake up?’ I hiss. ‘I don’t care if you like her or not. She’s my niece. For fuck’s sake, why can’t you support me, rather than do my head in?’

  ‘You’re losing it, Eithne,’ Leo says, he is angry again, and his voice is tight and bitter.

  ‘Well, if you can’t understand what I have to do, that I have to introduce Lisa to her grandparents, then I don’t see much hope for our marriage—’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he says quickly, ignoring my comment about our marriage. ‘For God’s sake, Eithne, don’t tell your parents. Come back home tomorrow, please.’

  ‘I can’t deal with this,’ I say wearily. ‘It’s hard enough without you trying to sabotage me. Go back to your precious commission – just leave me alone.’

  And I put down the phone.

  It rings again. I stand in the hall trembling, but I don’t pick it up. Why is he doing this to me? It stops then rings again. I am shivering. An image of the sacred heart glares down at me from the wall. I hate tacky religious iconography, but suddenly this picture holds new significance. The heart is an entity in its own right, pulsing with blood, encircled with thorns, with pain, but it keeps on beating, it does not give in. I put my hand on my chest and breathe deeply. My sacred heart.

  Later, I take Lisa to the pub. It is a relief to get out of the house, away from my mother’s beady eyes. Daddy has gone down to the village pub, so I drive into Kells. I take Lisa to the trendiest place I can find. A jukebox blares out in a corner, but the pub is deserted. We sit up at the bar.

  ‘Eithne Kelly!’ says a voice.

  Coming up from the cellar with a crate of Finches orange is Deirdre Maloney, Beatrice’s old pal.

  ‘Deirdre!’ I say. ‘Jesus, long time no see!’

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen you in ages,’ she says, wiping her hands with a dishcloth. ‘Last thing I heard you were getting married and up in Dublin. Are you settled there now, will you ever come back?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Deirdre.’

  ‘Well, do you have any kiddies yet?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘I’ve two myself now,’ she says proudly. ‘Darren, he’s six, and Sinead, she’s three. Darren’s a little devil so he is. Sinead’s great – a daddy’s girl though, that’s for sure. Maybe you’ll come back when you have kids. A lot of folk do.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’

  ‘So what’ll I get you girls?’ she asks.

  ‘This is Lisa, a friend.’

  ‘Nice to meet you. So?’

  ‘We’ll have two pints of Guinness, please, Deirdre.’

  She puts the pints on, and then comes back to the bar. Her voice drops an octave, and she is whispering although there is no one else in the pub.

  ‘So,’ she asks, ‘did you ever find out what happened to Beatrice?’

  ‘No – ’ my throat tightens – ‘no more clues.’

  She turns to Lisa.

  ‘Did she tell you about that?’ she asks her. ‘About her sister disappearing like that, all those years ago?’

  Lisa nods.

  ‘Awful tragic! Your poor mother – we were all upset – I was in bits. We’d just been on holiday together, and she was my best friend. Do you remember when she went missing that time in Majorca?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I say sparsely. I just want her to shut up.

  ‘I was so mad with her . . .’ says Deirdre, ‘and then I found the sketchbook, do you remember, Eithne? You found the pearls, didn’t you?’

  She turns to Lisa, who is mesmerized.

  ‘I was walking the dog about ten days after Beatrice disappeared, and I always go down by Lough Bane, because my parents’ house is right on the lake. This day, I was right on the other side of the lake, on the opposite shore to the one we swim from, right by the woods. Well, I was walking along and I saw something red, at the water’s edge, it was a miracle that it hadn’t been swept away.’

  Deirdre spoke with the ease of someone who has told the same story many times.

  ‘I pulled it out, and my heart froze, it did. Because I recognized it immediately. Beatrice had brought it with her on holiday. It was her little red sketchbook. Well, I was terrified. I called the dog and ran back to the road. All of a sudden those woods seemed very dark, very evil. I was scared someone might have been hiding in them, watching me pick up the book.’

  ‘What happened to it?’ asks Lisa.

  ‘I took it straight to the Gardaí,’ says Deirdre, finishing off the pints and placing them down in front of us.

  ‘It was no good to them anyway – they got no prints.’

  FOUR: THE SKETCHBOOK

  SARAH

  In the end she had to wear Margaret’s old wedding dress. It was too long for her, and too tight across the bust. Looking in the collection of hand mirrors which the three girls, Aoife, Bríd and Mary, held up, Sarah averted her gaze. She looked awful.

  Not that Joe seemed to notice; he kept complimenting her. His flattery got more flamboyant as the day wore on: she looked pretty as a picture, she looked like a princess, she was his beautiful bride, stunning in virginal white. She shouldn’t even have been wearing white.

  It was the longest day of her life. The preparation, peppered with drinks; the wedding in the church and the exchanging of vows, that was the quickest bit. Then came the reception, which went on hour after hour: the meal, the band, the disco, the sandwiches, the residential bar. They had a room booked in the hotel, but Joe wouldn’t let go of her all day. It was as if he was worried she might run away. Maybe he could read her thoughts.

  Her stomach churned, she wasn’t only sick with nerves, she really felt like vomiting. Every fibre within her body told her she was doing the wrong thing, but she was powerless to stop the Kellys and their tide of relatives and friends. It seemed as though the whole town was there but no one was on her side. She kept wishing a miracle would happen. In the church, she prayed for Anthony to suddenly appear, resplendent, demanding her return. But nothing happened.

  Sitting in the hotel bar, dizzy from everything she had drunk, she looked around. Eve
ryone was singing, swaying to and fro. She could go now, just run. What was stopping her? But then she looked over at Margaret, fiercely nursing Beatrice. When she and Joe had registered Beatrice’s birth, Joe had made sure he was put on her birth certificate as Beatrice’s father. Margaret would never give the child up and Sarah couldn’t even consider going on her own.

  It was daybreak before Joe took her up to their bedroom. She was exhausted, but there was no chance of sleep. For the past six weeks they had been sleeping in separate bedrooms; the only time they had been together was once under the aspen trees. He didn’t even give her a chance to take off the dress.

  ‘Mind,’ she said, ‘your mother’s dress . . .’

  But the skirt was pushed up around her head, and he was inside her before she could say another thing. She tried to join in, but she was hampered by the dress, and by the time she pulled it off her face, Joe had finished. He crashed out on the bed then, his pants around his ankles, snoring loudly. Now she couldn’t sleep. She lay down in her dress and squeezed her eyes tight shut. She went through the whole day again, but turned it into a fantasy: Anthony and Sarah were walking out of an English country church, arm in arm, sprayed by confetti, and she was looking beautiful in a dress which fitted perfectly, and was ivory, not white.

  After they were married in the church, Joe started planning for their new house. He kept on about it; his father had left him a small site, and now he wanted to get down to working out what the house was going to look like – how many bedrooms should they have, would they build one or two storeys? Sarah tried to be interested, but in her heart she could not find it in her to care. Her family had never owned their own house; it was an issue that was never a priority. She found the Kellys’ interest in ownership quite alien. She knew the reason for it went centuries back: all the Kellys’ ancestors had been evicted by their English landlords during the time of the famine. It was a very sore point. But still she found it hard to join in their obsession with land. Conversation around the dinner table constantly went back to what was happening with sites and land and property, and that field and this field – who had sold what and to whom and for how much. Besides which, everything in her life seemed so surreal she was afraid to see it transformed into bricks and mortar, and actually made permanent.