2004 - Dandelion Soup (23 page)

Siobhan supposed he would. It was funny to think someone had never seen their own daddy. She’d hate not to have seen her daddy, she loved him to bits.

Then it hit her like a thump in the belly from a wet sack of flour. Soon she’d be away from her daddy for whole weeks and months at a time. Her heart raced and her eyes felt scratchy with tears.

“What’s up, Siobhan?”

“Nothin’.”

“Then why are you sad all of a sudden?”

“I’m not, all right? Look, what sort of a name is that anyhow?” Siobhan said, blinking rapidly and pointing at a name on the wall.

Fatgit Flaherty!

“There’s another one, look. Bigbollocks O’Grady!” said Donny.

“Donny, did you know that Padraig sometimes used to get out of St Joseph’s at night and walk about the place on his own?”

Donny grinned widely.

“Yep, he told me. It’s a secret, though, and you mustn’t tell.”

“How did he get out?”

“There’s a way of getting into Sister Veronica’s room through a cupboard in the old laundry. Sister Immaculata showed him,” Donny said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“Is that the poor old thing that drowned herself?”

Donny nodded and sniffed and felt for the rosary in his pocket.

“That was sad, wasn’t it?”

“I know. She was real nice to everyone and they can’t even bury her without a body.”

“Why do you think she did it?”

“She was always saying she wanted to escape or that someone was going to come and rescue her, but no one believed her.”

“Was she nuts?”

“A bit, but not in a scary way. She told Padraig that once she nearly got away.”

“How?”

“She said there was a peddler selling pencils who came to save her but that they locked her up and wouldn’t let him in. She used to say all sorts of daft things like that. Just made it up as she went along, I reckon.”

“Well, she has escaped now, but what a way to go. God, fancy killing yourself like that. She’ll have been eaten up by fish by now.”

“Shut up, Siobhan.”

“Or swallowed whole by a whale. Imagine being tea for a whale!”

“Don’t!”

“That wouldn’t be so bad, though, you can survive inside a whale’s belly for ages and then hope that they sneeze or sick you up and then you can swim like billy-o for the shore.”

Donny brightened up a little at the thought. He imagined Sister Immaculata crawling exhausted up a faraway beach and someone kind finding her and looking after her.

“That would be good,” he said with a smile.

“Why did she show Padraig the secret way?”

“They were real good friends and they got in there once to listen to a meeting that was going on. Padraig was real upset after because that’s when he found out they wouldn’t let him go to that posh school.”

“Have you ever got in there?”

“You must be joking. But Padraig worked out that he could get out of the cupboard into the study and then climb out the study window and escape.”

“Fancy creeping around in the dark of night! I’d be terrified, but he is a brave bugger. Can you keep a secret, Donny?”

“Sure I can.”

“He told me that one night when he escaped he saw Miss Carmichael in the horse trough dancing naked.”

Donny giggled.

“He did not!”

“He did so! It was only her reflection, though!”

“Well, that’s not what he told me.”

“What did he tell you, Donny?”

Donny lowered his voice.

“He said he saw the face of his mammy.”

“But his mammy’s dead.”

“Exactly, Siobhan, so it was her ghost that he saw.”

Siobhan felt a shiver of fear skedaddle up her backbone.

“Padraig said that seeing her face was a sure sign that somehow he was going to escape from St Joseph’s.”

Siobhan bit her lip. She wondered why he’d told her that old nonsense about Miss Carmichael. She swallowed hard. He hadn’t told her because he knew she couldn’t keep a secret and he was right. She’d gone and told Sinead about the Black Jew’s little girl, hadn’t she? Still, ringers crossed, she didn’t think Sinead would tell. If she did she’d paste the piss out of her.

“Would you like to get into the cupboard, Donny?”

“No way,” Donny said, and stared at her nervously.

“Are you scared to?”

“Nope.”

“Bet you are, too. Padraig O’Mally isn’t afraid of anything.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Let’s get in there then and have a snoop around.”

“We couldn’t.”

“I dare you, Donny Keegan. Double. Triple dare. Come on. Race you back to the stile. Last one there is a shitey stinkpot!”

Siobhan ran in front Donny hot on her heels, the pair of them racing wildly through the long grass, leaving an explosion of dandelion clocks and buttercup pollen in their wake.

On her way back from Dr Hanlon’s, Miss Drew called into Donahue’s for a few odds and ends. As she opened the door the bell jingled above her head and Donahue looked up from the newspaper he was reading.

She was surprised to see Donahue looking quite bright eyed and bushy tailed, he usually looked a wreck whatever the time of day you came in.

“Morning, Mr Donahue.”

“Miss Drew.”

Donahue had known Miss Drew for most of his life and yet they still weren’t on first-name terms. They’d sat in the same classroom together at the Ballygurry school; she’d been a spiteful little thing then, quick to tell tales, quick to drop anyone in it to get on the good side of the schoolmaster.

He still had the marks on his legs where she’d once jabbed him with a sharpened pencil.

“Well,” she said, “it’s grand to be back in Ballygurry amongst friends. No more foreign travel for me, that’s for sure, as long as I live. Thanks be to God.”

“Ah, and how is that?”

Miss Drew leaned conspiratorially towards him and lowered her voice even though the bar was empty except for the ginger torn cat And the cat, who had felt the toe of her boot up his backside many a time, slipped away hastily under the high-backed old settle.

“It was a nightmare out there. A terrible, hellhole of a place. It was full of savages and light-fingered lunatics. Oh, and the stink! It was enough to turn your stomach.”

“Your friend Miss Carmichael liked it enough to stay on then?”

Miss Drew twisted up her face into a hideous grimace.

“Miss Carmichael is no longer a friend of mine and I told it to her straight,” she said emphatically.

“Ah, get away with you. You’ve been friends for years, like a pair of them Pekinese twins.”

“Siamese, Donahue. Pekinese are a type of cat. Ah well, they say you never really know someone that well, someone secretive like Nancy Carmichael.”

Donahue scratched his head.

“Ah, she’s not a bad old stick, a bit hoity toity at times but we’ve all got our faults, Miss Drew.”

“Well, Nancy Carmichael is not all that she’s cracked up to be, you know.”

Donahue busied himself with wiping glasses that didn’t need wiping, but Miss Drew pressed on relentlessly.

“Course we never really heard what happened to her father, did we?”

Donahue sighed. “Died young as far as I can remember,” he said with a shrug.

Miss Drew cleared her throat and spat out the words as if they were slivers of glass.

“Illegitimate, more like. And I have the proof.”

Donahue jumped and almost let a glass slip from his hand.

How the hell did the spiteful old cat find that out?

“Ah, was she now? Well, Miss Drew, she won’t be the first and she won’t be the last.”

Miss Drew looked at Donahue through bright, narrowed eyes. She reminded him of a cat with a bird in its mouth.

“Well, I hardly think that she’s the right sort of person to be on the church cleaning rota, or the orphanage committee, come to that. I don’t think Sister Veronica will be ovef impressed when she finds out the truth.”

“Ah well,” said Donahue, “there won’t be any need for the committee for much longer with them orphans all being shipped off…”

“Well, anyhow, it’s my Christian duty to see that people are aware of her, um, er, background.”

Poor Nancy Carmichael, Donahue thought; by the time this evil old shite-hound had traipsed around the village telling all and sundry what she’d found out life wouldn’t be worth living when Nancy got back from Spain.

“And before I forget, 111 take a tin of pilchards and a packet of fig rolls.”

Donahue lifted down a tin of pilchards and grinned. Miss Drew looked a bit like a pilchard herself! He hoped the bloody things had bones in and choked her.

“I’m off to see Mrs Cullinane, catching up on everything that’s happened since I’ve been away.”

“You’ll have heard about the poor old nun, I take it?”

“Dreadful business. It’s a selfish thing and a sin to take one’s own life. She wasn’t really a proper nun, you know, she was a bit simple in the head and her family paid to have her looked after.”

“Well, she didn’t seem simple what I saw of her. It’s very sad all the same.”

Miss Drew did not reply but left the shop, and the bell above the door gave a mournful clang.

Donahue had a horrible taste in his mouth after the conversation with her. He was sorely tempted to pour himself a stiff drink; a man deserved a drink after talking to that sour-pussed old bitch. He changed his mind, poured a glass of dandelion and burdock, crossed to the window and watched Miss Drew scuttling across the road to spread the gossip about poor Miss Carmichael to Mrs Cullinane.

Old Mrs Carmichael, Nancy’s mother, had been a friend of his own mammy. They’d been in service together when they were both young girls at Kilgerry House up near Rossmacconnarty.

He crossed the bar to look at an old photograph that had been hanging there in the bar for as long as he could remember. He took it down, fetched a cloth and began to wipe away layers of dust and grime. It was a group photograph that had been taken outside the front of Kilgerry House.

He hadn’t looked at it properly in years and yet when he was a child he used to be able to point at each face and recall the names of all the people.

He tested his memory now.

There was his own lovely mammy at the end of the line wearing her housemaid’s cap and apron, looking young, pretty and shy. God bless her, she’d been a good mother to him. At the other end of the row was his daddy, though at the time they were both single, just at the stage of making eyes at each other across the stable door or the coal scuttle. There was the cook, Miss Yeats. Lady Fitzallen. A slim, sad-faced woman with a faded prettiness about her.

“She’d the patience of a saint putting up with all his comings and goings, the dirty old goat, he’s fathered more children than an alley cat, the dirty old dog,” his mammy used to say. She’d been very fond of Lady Fitzallen and had visited her up until her untimely death.

Lord Fitzallen was standing next to his wife. A smug-looking bugger if ever there was one. A right hard-faced old bastard. Donahue’s daddy couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Kilgerry. He said old Fitzallen treated his dogs better than people, including his own family.

Hell, what was the name of the old housekeeper, a big-boned piece with arms like a navvy and the snout of a boxer? Miss Innis or something like that. She had six fingers on one hand and four on the other, or maybe it was toes?

He scoured the photograph for Miss Carmichael’s mother but couldn’t find her. Nelly Jones she was called in those days. Ah, there she was at the back. A girl with a long horsey face, haughty looking like she had a bad smell under her nose. She’d been the nanny at Kilgerry. Damn! There was something else his mother had told him about her but he was beggared if he could remember it.

He looked more closely at the photograph. On the bottom, in a fine hand, someone had written,
Tenth birthday of Henry William Fitzallen
.

Of course! He’d forgotten all about poor Henry. He was the little boy who had hanged himself. There he was, standing in front of his mother, Lady Fitzallen, her hands resting protectively on his shoulders. He was a big-eared self-conscious-looking boy dressed in a sailor suit his head tilted to one side, squinting into the sun.

Donahue shivered.

He’d hated hearing that story when he was little. Nelly Jones, Nancy’s mother, had gone to call Henry William one morning as she always did, but had found his bed empty and discovered him hanging from a rope in the bathroom.

Apparently he’d had a beating off his father the night before for some wrongdoing or other. They never knew whether he meant to hang himself or if it was a prank that went wrong.

“He was a sensitive little fellow, a darling little boy. He thought the world of his mother. You can bet your life that there was more to that than met the eye,” Donahue’s mammy had always said.

Nelly Jones had been so distraught that she’d left Kilgerry soon after.

Donahue smiled; he used to get really jealous when he was a little boy because every time his mammy had looked at the photograph she’d put up her hand to touch Henry’s face. Many a time, on the sly, Donahue had glared up at the little boy and poked out his tongue when his mammy was out of the way.

Lady Fitzallen was never the same after the boy took his own life. She went to pieces completely and even though she had two more children she never recovered properly.

A year after Henry’s death she’d given birth to another son, George, the same year Donahue had been born, and then a daughter many years later. They were a family cursed. There was some gossip about the boy George; Donahue seemed to remember that he had been sent off in disgrace. And then, years later, the only daughter had disappeared and never been found.

Dear God. Anyhow, his own parents had got well acquainted, a bit of how’s your father and then Bob’s your uncle and there was a quick wedding and a swift exit from Kilgerry and a long and happy marriage.

Nelly Jones, the nanny, had surfaced again a few years later, now called Mrs Carmichael, recently widowed, with a toddler, Nancy. She’d bought the little house in Clancy Street and lived out her respectable widowhood in Ballygurry. He’d never liked Mrs Carmichael much, she was a funny old stick with her airs and graces and swanky talk.