Wednesday's Child (28 page)

‘Well, well, well. We have a visitor. Isn’t that grand, Connie?’

‘Maybe I was a bit hasty,’ I said as the old women plonked herself down on an armchair in the corner.

She reached over and began to fiddle with an old radio that looked to be an antique. Suddenly music filled the room in a great gush of sound. She quickly turned the volume down so we could talk. I recognised the song by Count Basie’s orchestra with Tony Bennett on vocals: ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’, a show-tune from
My Fair Lady
. Nice.

‘Whether you were hasty or not, it seems to me that Connie must now decide what to do, mmm?’

‘Yes.’

I sipped the black tea and looked at Connie, who was nibbling at a pink wafer biscuit and gazing wide-eyed at us through the darkness.

‘Tell him,’ she said, so quietly that I had to ask her to repeat it.

Mrs Jones nodded.

‘All right, child. We’ll tell him.’

And they began to speak, Connie first, then Mrs Jones, until it seemed that both voices became one and my head began to swim and it was like I was dreaming what they said, Connie’s tale becoming my nightmare until I thought I would scream. But I did not, and the story unveiled itself before me like a picture made of a spider web.

‘I don’t remember when it began,’ Connie said. ‘In my mind, it was just always happening, as far back as
my memories go. When I think hard, I can remember being in a bed with bars, like a cot, and a man coming. I don’t know who he was, but that doesn’t mean anything, because people often don’t have faces in dreams. He comes and he … touches me. Puts things in me. Hurts me. Then he’s gone. Most children remember their first day at school or a birthday party or a trip to the circus as their earliest memory. I remember him. The Man.

‘As I grew up, Mick would come to my and Denise’s room in the night, and wake us up and one or other of us would have to go to the shed with him. I don’t know why he’d bring us out there,’cause he had his own room. Maybe he didn’t want to do it where he slept. We’d never know who it was going to be, and there was no pattern to it. He might take me for three nights running, then her for one, then me again for six, or I might not have to go with him for months on end. I hated it. It should never have happened and I knew it and he knew it and he knew I knew it. I’d fight him, and bite sometimes, but it made no difference. Once I bit it when he made me put it in my mouth, and he beat me so bad they had to bring me to the hospital. But it was worth it, to see the look on his face.

‘They would have “visitors” over, sometimes. They would tell us that they were friends of Daddy’s, or friends of Mick’s. We’d never have seen them before, but we were supposed to be “nice” to them. You know what
that
meant. Sometimes they
were all right – gentle with us, y’know what I’m saying? But sometimes they’d want to hurt us. One of them told me he wanted to hear me scream, and he kept hurting until he made me, even though I tried really hard not to. I didn’t want to please him, the bastard.

‘They’d give us stuff, from time to time, the visitors. Toys, sweets, but Mick or Daddy would always take them away. When I got a bit more sense, I realised that they were getting paid for letting these fellas have their time with us. But I didn’t know that for a long time. I was too little.’

‘I watched them coming and going in that house for years, the huge woman and her dark men,’ Mrs Jones said. ‘I’ve lived here all my life, and I know that there are bad people hereabouts, bad men, and I know what they do. I know their desires and their urges. That house became a beacon to them; they were drawn to it like moths to a flame. I saw the destruction of Connie’s sisters and I was afraid to do anything. Once I hid young Geraldine when a car arrived, and the young man, Mick, came, and he kicked my door in and he hit me and took her back. He said if I interfered again, he’d kill me. I believed him, and I did nothing for a time, because I was old and weak. But even the old become angry, and anger can be a powerful ally. Anger and guile.

‘I waited. There is a terrible madness in that family, almost as if the evil in them couldn’t allow them to function any more, like it was rotting them from the inside. I saw as the two old ones and their son came
more and more under its control, and then I gathered my courage and I paid them a visit. I was mortally afraid, but I knew that I had to act. They were all sick the day I went, babbling and gibbering like monkeys. I told them I wanted Connie to do some work for me, get things from the shops and suchlike, and that I was afraid in the house because of break-ins down the village and wanted her to stay overnight with me sometimes. I said that I’d give them a few bob from my pension the odd time to make up for it. They were so far gone that day, they would have agreed to anything. Connie began spending a lot of time at my house. When Mick came banging over a week later, I smiled and told him that sure, hadn’t he given me permission to have her. You see, they all suffer from the sin of pride, too. They don’t like remembering the episodes when they aren’t in control. Don’t like it at all. And so we became friends, young Veronica and I. But like you said, I couldn’t protect her all the time. They still got to her.’

‘They brought us on trips sometimes,’ Connie said. ‘Instead of the visitors coming to us, we’d be brought to them. A car would come and one or both of us would be put into it and we’d be taken somewhere and it would happen. When I started going to Mrs Jones, it happened less and less, because I made sure I was hardly ever there. It got so’s I only slept at home if Mick was staying somewhere else, and Daddy was gone so mad he was only a danger to himself. But I suppose it must have been eating me up some
way, because I was always in trouble. I would just get mad for no reason, and I’d hit people and shout at my teachers and I couldn’t concentrate. I got moved from school to school, and the guards were at the house a lot because I robbed things in town every chance I got. They never charged me – I think they felt sorry for me. One day, when I was ten, I was going to get the bus home from school when I heard a shout, and there was Mick in a car with two other men. He told me to get in, so I did. There wouldn’t have been any point in running away. They’d have caught me.

‘They took me to a house and kept me there for a long time. I lost track of time. Night, day, it was all the same. Men and some women, all the time wanting … wanting me to do things. Bad things. Worse than usual. I don’t remember much of it.

‘Then Mick was there, and he told me that if I didn’t get my act together and stop drawing attention to the family, this was how it could be. Not just now and again, but for good. This could be my life. And he meant it, every word. He made me learn a story to explain where I had been, and dropped me home. I was good after that. They never heard a peep out of me at school, and you’d be surprised how being scared focuses the mind. My work improved.

‘It still happened after that. It didn’t stop, but you see, we’re getting too old for them now. That’s how it works. Nobody told me, but I know. I worked it out. Geraldine told me that it stopped for her when
she got to be like a woman, and Denise is like that, and I nearly am. It won’t be long now. Y’see? It’s not so bad, when you think about it.’

I thought I would vomit. A sheen of sweat beaded my forehead and I found the air too close to breathe in the room. It was worse than I had dared imagine. I wanted to scream, to run over to number eight, smash the door in and beat them all until they were nothing but a red mess.

Connie smiled at me. She actually smiled.

‘So there’s not really much to worry about.’

Mrs Jones nodded and gazed at me with those eyes that were too young for a woman of her years. I tried to stop myself from trembling, and wondered desperately what I was going to do.

I sat outside the O’Gorman house, staring at it. I had been calling several times a week since Gillian and Libby had gone again, but no matter how much I blew the horn, the place remained implacable and unresponsive except for the slavering of the hounds. It was late evening and there wasn’t a light on in the place. Dusk had descended, but I felt the need to sit in vigil for some reason.

I believed that I had let Gillian down, that I had failed her. If she was in there, I wanted her to know that I hadn’t given up on her. So I stayed, listening to the night-time sounds and feeling sorry for myself.

Things had gradually begun to fall apart and I was powerless to prevent their continued descent into
dysfunction. I knew that I had lost all focus after Max McCoy’s death. But, if I were honest with myself, it had started before that. I had become far too involved in the three ‘big’ cases on my books, to the utter detriment of the others I was supposed to be involved in. I told myself that I was directing my time according to greatest need, that I was prioritising, but I wasn’t so sure any more. The children I dedicated myself to were the ones who had nobody else. The kids in residential care or in the youth project had many other workers to depend on. If I didn’t see them for a few weeks, there would be plenty of other people to pick up the slack – that’s what I told myself. But my absence from these other cases had become more and more constant and my superiors, as well as the other staff involved, were far from happy. I protested that I was spread too thinly, had many cases in crisis, that there were always flash fires that needed putting out. The problem was, I couldn’t believe the excuses that night. I
wanted
the tougher cases, I craved the challenge. I needed to feel I was on the edge, flying by the seat of my pants.

But I had also, for whatever reason, come to care deeply for these children: for Connie, Gillian, Victor, Ibar and Cordelia. It had gone beyond professional detachment. They called to something deep inside me and I had no choice but to respond. I was at the point where I had to admit that it was having a negative effect on the rest of my life. I was going down and I was pulling everyone else down with me.
I had talked to Josephine about it – I’d had no choice, she had called me into her office and asked me what the hell was going on with me – and she had been characteristically supportive while giving me a proverbial kick up the arse at the same time. I needed, she told me, to wind up these cases as quickly as possible, and direct my attention back to the other less dramatic ones. And maybe I would benefit from that counselling we had discussed before. I baulked at this suggestion, my natural arrogance feeling that I would work it out for myself in the end.

The tip of my cigarette glowed red in the shadows, and somewhere in the night a fox barked, followed by the scream of a vixen. I pushed the self-indulgent thoughts aside and turned my attention back to the gloom-soaked building before me. There was only one thing for it: I had to get a look inside. The real challenge was:
how was I going to get past the Hounds of the Baskervilles?
I picked up my mobile phone and rang a number. I didn’t know how to get past the mutts.

But I knew a man who did.

‘You look awful.’

‘Yeah. I know. Things’ve been … challenging … of late.’

‘I worry about you young people. You need to take some time off. Have some fun. There’s more to life than this, you know.’

‘Soon. I’m planning on taking some time soon.’

‘I hope so. I shall check.’

‘I know you will.’

‘This is what you want. It works. I used one myself when I was doing family casework across the water. You press this red button and it emits a sound, undetectable by the human ear, but quite unpleasant for our canine friends. They won’t be able to come within twenty feet of you. You just need to make sure you have a full battery pack in it, because if it gives out while you’re within range of the dogs you’ll be in a bit of bother, won’t you?’

‘I’ll make sure.’

‘There has to be easier ways to make a living, don’t you think?’

‘You’ve been doing it for thirty years. You’re not in any position to talk.’

‘Ah yes, but I’ve learned from my mistakes, you see. I know when to shut off. I don’t think you do.’

‘I’ll have to remind you to give me the recipe for that.’

‘I think it’s something you need to learn for yourself, Shane.’

‘In that case the lessons have already started.’

‘Make sure you pay attention. You
will
be tested later.’

The machine was as big as a paperback book and a deep grey. On one end was a torch, on the opposite a gauze covered dome. A red button was embedded into one side, a blue into the other. The blue was for the torch, the red for the dog-deterrent. I checked
that the batteries were in place and stepped out of the car. The two dogs at the front of the house looked up, but made no move or sound. They were getting used to me by now and were less agitated at my presence. Of course, if I placed one step onto their territory, that would change rapidly. I walked past the posts that had not had a gate hitched to them in many years. The two dogs out front looked at me with what could only have been surprise (dog faces are sometimes hard to read) and stood up. I knew this was a warning. They were saying: ‘Okay now. That’s far enough.’ I took another step. That was it. They immediately exploded into noise and motion. I raised the box and pressed the red button.