Briony looked down at her sister, her elder sister, and shook her head, trying to comprehend what was going on.
‘What do you mean, tell him things? What things?’
Eileen swallowed hard.
‘You won’t let on I told you? You mustn’t let him know I said anything, see. Because he said if I told anyone, he’d kill me.’
Briony screwed her eyes up and said, ‘Oh, he did, did he? Well, I won’t let on, darling. You tell me and I’ll see what I can do. How’s that?’
Eileen grabbed Briony’s hands in hers, relief flooding her face. Briony saw the fear there, and the worry. She felt an urge to take Joshua and throttle him with her bare hands for putting that terror there in the first place.
‘Come on, Eileen, you tell Briony. I’ll look after you.’
‘He made me tell him about us, Bri. About me dad, and Henry Dumas ... He knows everything. About the boy, about me dad, what I did to me dad. He says he’s going to tell the police. And he makes me do things to him. Awful things. I don’t know why he’s doing it. He was nice to me, Briony, always nice. He never hurt me before...’
She started to cry harder. Briony stroked the fine dark hair gently.
‘Come on, up you get, I’ll help you undress and put you to bed, then we’ll sort all this out once and for all.’
Eileen sniffed loudly and allowed Briony to help her up. As she slipped her dress off, Briony saw the bruises and scratches on her body and clenched her teeth. She made the bed and helped Eileen into it, smoothing the covers over her with kind hands. Eileen’s face, so white, so pinched, broke her heart. Briony felt responsible for all that had happened. Kissing her sister on the forehead, she left the room.
In the kitchen Molly and Elizabeth O’Malley were sitting at the scrubbed table, tea cups in hand, mouths clamped shut. Briony walked in and shut the kitchen door behind her.
‘What’s been happening here?’
Elizabeth O‘Malley shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I came today to see her like and then your ma arrived. We had a row and Eileen just went mad. Attacked me. And her language!’
‘She must have learnt that off your son, our Eileen never said a bad word to my knowledge all her life.’
‘My Joshua is a decent man, I’ll have you know ...’ Pride in her son overrode any fear of Briony Cavanagh.
Briony poked her face into the older woman’s.
‘Your son is an animal, and that’s what’s turned our Eileen’s head. Now get up off your fat arse and go and get the doctor. Then go home, go anywhere, but get as far away from me as possible. Oh, and another thing. Your son won’t be living here after today, so expect him home at some point.’
Molly grinned in anticipation of all that was to happen in the next few hours. Her Briony would sort it all out, she knew that without a doubt. When Elizabeth O’Malley had left, she smirked and said:
‘That told her. If you’d have heard the carry on here today!’
‘Shut up, Mum! You’re as bloody bad, coming round here tormenting the life out of her. Eileen’s ill. She’s ill in the mind, Mum, and if you hadn’t got me round that ponce’s house to marry her, none of this would have happened. She should never have married anyone, not after what happened to her. Dad taking her to Dumas broke her; the day the old man died finished her. Remember when she used to wander off? How she couldn’t cope with anything? Well, I think now she’s gone over the edge and you can thank yourself for that, not the O’Malleys, mother or son. Yourself.
‘Now listen to me and listen good. In future you leave everything be, and keep that big galloping trap and hooked nose out of other people’s business, right? Because I blame you for all this today. You and myself. I should never have listened to you.’
Molly’s mouth dropped open. That Briony could talk to her like this spoke volumes. Molly felt the first twinge of shame envelop her.
‘I’ll tell you something else, Mother, he knows all our business. About the old man, Dumas, my boy, everything. He made her tell him, been torturing the life out of her with it. How’s that for the icing on the fucking cake!’
‘NO! She told him? Dear God in heaven, the stupid, stupid girl.’
‘Not stupid. Frightened, terrified, mentally ill, lots of things, Mum, but not stupid. We were the stupid ones to countenance the marriage in the first place. I’ll see Joshua O’Malley meself, and shut his trap up once and for all if he ain’t careful. He needs knocking down a peg and I’ll see to it myself!’
Kevin Carter, Briony’s driver, was surprised by the look on her face when she emerged from her sister’s house. Her usual good nature seemed to have deserted her and her face was a mask of anger. She got into the back of the car.
‘Elizabeth O’Malley’s, pronto.’
Without further ado, he drove. Briony sat in the back. Wrapped in her coat, she stared out of the window at the passing streets. Children played on the pavements, men lounged against the lampposts. It was like going back in time. The streets were no different from how they had been when she was a child. Since the war times had changed. Only the people in these streets had been passed by. They still lived in the same back to backs, soot-blackened and small. They still kept a few chickens if they could afford it, or a rabbit or two in a hutch knocked up out of a jerry crate. They still lived hand to mouth, still had that look of hopelessness about them.
The car pulled up outside Elizabeth O’Malley’s and Briony got out slowly. It was seven-thirty, still light enough to see everything that was going on around her. A group of ragged children hunched around a doorway, their game of five jacks forgotten as they gazed at the lady in the deep green coat who owned a car. One little girl scratched at a festering flea bite on her ankle and broke the skin. She dabbed at the blood with dirty fingers.
Briony saw curtains twitching, and a mother with a young child on her arm stopped where she was and stared at her. Briony recognised her: Lily Bains, a girl she had gone to school with. She smiled and nodded and banged on Elizabeth O’Malley’s front door. The knock resounded through the house and instinctively Briony knew no one was there.
‘Lily, do you know where she is?’
Lily stepped back a pace, unsure whether to talk to Briony, a woman who was spoken of in hushed whispers these days; the girl with whom she had once played Tin Pan Alley and shared some childish dreams.
Briony walked towards her. ‘Come on, Lily, cat got your tongue? Where’s the old bitch O’Malley? Have you seen her son?’
Lily heard the gentle tone and shook her head. ‘They went out about an hour ago. I think Mother O’Malley was moving because they had some bags. I hope she was, I can’t stand the old cow.’
Briony forced a smile.
‘Any idea where she could be moving to? Has she anyone who’d put her up like?’
Lily shook her head again and the child smiled. Briony saw the caries in the child’s teeth already; he was no more than a year old.
‘The only place she’s welcome is the church, and I don’t think she’s really welcome there. How are you, Briony? You look really well. Really smart.’ The last was said with admiration.
‘You look well and all, Lily. This your boy?’ She stroked the child’s face with soft hands. He chuckled. Lily puffed out her cheeks, aware that they were being observed. Now Briony had singled her out for attention, she could brag about how she had grown up with her and people would be impressed.
‘I’ve got four, this is me youngest. I married Danny Little, remember him?’
‘I remember him, he used to show us his birds’ eggs.’
Briony knew the O’Malleys were long gone, and somehow she was reluctant to leave Lily, a reminder of times past. Of her real youth.
‘He still collects them, Briony. Knows all about birds does Danny boy.’ Lily’s voice dropped. ‘I heard you’re doing well. I’m glad, Briony. I’m glad you got away from here. You was always a clever girl, always had your eye to the main chance, you did!’
Briony smiled. ‘That was me, all right, Lil. It was lovely seeing you. You must know where I live. Come round one day and we’ll have a cuppa, talk about the old days.’
‘Maybe I will and all.’ Both knew that she wouldn’t, that her children were infested with lice and she wouldn’t have the guts to take them to Briony’s house, but it was nice to be offered and she respected Briony for that. Opening her bag, Briony took out all the money she had in it, about eight pounds, and pushed it into Lily’s hand.
‘No! No, Briony, I can’t take that! No, it was lovely to see you, and talk to you. I don’t want your money.’
Briony laughed then.
‘Well, you’re the only one who don’t! But you’re the only person I really want to have it. Take it, there’s plenty more where that came from!’
Lily looked at the money in wonder.
‘I won’t say it won’t come in handy, girl!’
‘Listen, Lily, if ever you need anything, you come to me, right?’
She nodded, tears in her eyes.
‘Thanks, Bri. It’s funny but we was at rock bottom today. Danny got laid off at the docks. This’ll keep us going for a good while.’
Briony and Lily embraced, the child between them crushed by their bodies. He shouted to remind them he was there.
‘Tell Danny to go and see Bobbie Phillips tomorrow at the Royal Albert. He’ll have a job, I’ll see to that.’
Lily nodded, her throat constricted.
‘Tara, mate, see you round.’
‘Tara, Bri, and thanks again.’
Inside the car Briony was aware of Kevin Carter looking at her as if she’d gone mad.
‘Saint Vincent’s church, Kevin.’
Her face looked more relaxed than it had earlier and she waved at her friend until they turned the corner of the street.
Father McNamara was not surprised to see Briony Cavanagh in his hallway. He smiled at her and showed her into his library.
‘Now then, Briony, what can I do for you?’
‘I’m looking for Elizabeth O’Malley and her son, Joshua.’
The priest nodded. ‘I see, and why would you be looking for them. You’re related now, aren’t you? Didn’t I see him married to your sister not two weeks since?’
Briony smiled.
‘You did, and now he’s left her. I want to have a little talk to him. Only I can’t find him, or his mother.’
The priest lit himself a cigar and puffed on it for a moment to get it fully alight.
‘That woman is like one of the deadly plagues, a mouth on her like nobody’s business. Has she put you out like?’
‘You could say that, Father. Now have you seen them?’
‘No, I haven’t seen them.’
Briony stood up.
‘Thanks anyway. I’ll just keep looking. Do you know if they have any relatives at all? Someone they could go to?’
The priest looked at the girl before him, weighing up in his mind whether to speak out or not.
‘Sit back down and tell me what’s happened. Then I’ll answer your question.’
Briony sat back down and told the priest about Eileen, a carefully edited version, leaving out the juicier bits.
‘So Eileen’s in a terrible state and he’s to blame. I want to see him and set the record straight once and for all. I think I owe him that much.’
‘Poor Eileen. She was never right, that one, I saw the change in her myself, God love her and keep her. Didn’t she used to work for that feller with the moustaches who owned the blacking factory and half the dock properties?’
Briony screwed up her eyes to slits and nodded. ‘As I did, Father. I worked for him as well.’
‘Ah, that’s right indeed.’
Briony and the priest looked at one another in unspoken communication.
‘She wasn’t right, poor girl. Maybe the work was too hard for her? I remember your father taking Communion afterwards every week, regular as clockwork.’
Briony didn’t say a word. If you took Communion, you had to have your Confession heard. She knew the priest was telling her he knew exactly what was wrong with Eileen and still she didn’t speak.
The priest sighed. He had hoped to trade information. This girl and her family intrigued him.
‘Well now, if I remember rightly, Elizabeth O’Malley has a brother in Islington. He’s a bit of a demon by all accounts, another one with religious mania. I don’t think they really get on, but that’s not surprising, is it? You ask around Islington and I’m sure you’ll find him.’
Briony nodded and stood up.
‘Thanks, Father.’
‘Would you like me to go and see poor Eileen?’
‘My mother would like that, Father. There’s just one thing, before I forget.’
‘What’s that, my child?’ The priest looked up at her with his hands clasped together on his lap, cigar clamped firmly between his teeth.
‘Don’t ever try and find out my business or my family’s again. What you guess and what you know is up to you. But in future remember where the money comes from for your expensive cigars and whisky, because there’s plenty of other churches who’d welcome me with open arms. No questions asked.’
She left the room, leaving a stony-faced Father McNamara whose Havana cigar had suddenly lost its expensive taste.
Chapter Twenty-three
Eileen was tucked up in bed in the house where all her troubles had started. Cissy and Mrs Horlock fussed over her, Molly stared at her in bewilderment, and Briony soothed her. But inside her head nothing was right. Her thoughts seemed to run off on tangents; she wasn’t sure what was fact and what was fiction. She stared vacantly around her, smiling at times but always quiet. Too quiet.
Briony left her in Mrs Horlock’s capable hands and she and Molly retired downstairs to the library to talk.
‘You’re good to have her here, Briony.’
Molly’s voice was stiff. She was still upset about what Briony had said to her, and wasn’t sure how to approach her daughter now. Briony turning on her had shocked her more than she cared to admit. Molly liked to think that everything was fine, that the horrors her daughters had experienced were now relegated to the back of their mind, as they were to hers, but Briony had brought them all back. She had reminded Molly that in her own way she had played an integral part in their unhappiness, that in effect she had condoned what her husband had set out to do. Molly lost no sleep any more over Paddy’s demise. In fact, since then she had experienced a measure of freedom which would have been unheard of had he still been alive. Now she had to try and ingratiate herself once more with this powerful daughter.