The Four Streets: The Ballymara Road Part 8

As Howard had looked at Jerry, he had been consumed with guilt that he and Simon had ever suspected Jerry of being involved in the priest's murder. Here he was, rushing straight to his neighbour's side in a time of crisis. Howard knew that his own Alison had baked a plate of biscuits and dropped them over earlier. Howard was in awe of how much people cared for everyone else here. How could he and Simon have ever thought the murderer had been so close to home?

The tragedy that had greeted her on her arrival at the four streets enabled Harriet to play her part. She spent a great deal of time with Nellie, as a result of Nana Kathleen voicing her need for help.

'I am at the end of me wits, with nowhere to go, what with Nellie and Maura and Tommy. Everyone is in shock, but I have never known our chatterbox to be so quiet. She's scaring me, so she is, and I have to admit, I'm at a loss what to do.'

Harriet had left the Priory at that moment and accompanied Kathleen home. Whilst Kathleen organized others to help care for the Dohertys, Harriet spent hour after hour sitting with Nellie, holding her hand and slowly trying to coax her to speak.

Nellie barely uttered a word for almost a month and, when she did, it was as an accompaniment to a flood of wretched tears.

'I have never heard nor witnessed such sad tears, Anthony. They sounded as though they were pouring straight from her heart,' Harriet had confided in her brother over supper that evening.

'Maybe that is it now. Maybe she will begin to accept what has happened and improve,' Anthony had replied.

He himself was weary from struggling with Maura and Tommy. He felt that, along with losing their daughter, they were losing their faith, somehow blaming the Church. It was as though they didn't altogether trust him.

'How did she drown, Anthony, do we know? It seems so tragic. One of the women told me that her cousin lives in Bangornevin and that the water where Kitty was found was less than a couple of feet deep. Can that be so?'

'Well, sure enough, if it had happened in England, it would be suspicious, certainly, but it wasn't even in Bangornevin, Harriet. It was on a remote farm just outside, in a place called Ballymara, with no one and nothing around for miles. She must have slipped and knocked her head on a rock. 'Tis a stony river and a famous one for the salmon, so I'm told.'

Jerry and Kathleen would be forever grateful to Harriet.

They were well aware that it was only because of the time that she had spent sitting at Nellie's bedside, soothing, reading and even singing to her, that Nellie had surfaced from her own deep grief.

On one of the rare nights when Kathleen had allowed herself to break down, she had cried to Jerry, 'If wasn't for Harriet, I think we would have lost our Nellie with the grief as well as Kitty. I have never known the like, a child not wanting to eat or speak. I was out of me depth, Jerry, we both were.'

It was only when Nellie had recovered that Kathleen allowed herself to grieve. Once she knew everyone else was out of the woods, in the privacy of her own home, beside her own fireside, when Jerry and Nellie were asleep, she allowed her tears to flow.

Little Paddy and Scamp did all they could. Paddy would step silently into the Dohertys' kitchen each morning, whilst Scamp waited patiently by the back door, to ask both sets of twins the same question every time.

'You all right, lads? D'you wanna game?'

Each time they said yes and the boys slipped out, to escape the gloom within. Too guilty to leave the house on their own, they jumped at the chance when Little Paddy called and offered.

For Harry, his asthma made running difficult and football impossible. Often he didn't play but just sat on the stone at the edge of the green, watching them all and waiting. He sometimes cried as he sat there, for his Kitty. Although by day, the mood of the house had improved, by night, everyone cried their own tears, under the cover of darkness.

5.

THE WINTER HAD pa.s.sed and it was the first sunny day of the year when Daisy walked up to the large greenhouse with her basket and an order from Maggie for Frank.

'Morning, Joan,' shouted Frank, giving Daisy a wink.

'That girl tells me she is simple,' Maggie had said to Frank on Daisy's second day. 'She is not simple. Daisy has just never had anyone talking to her for any length of time and she's been frightened out of her wits by the priest she worked for. She speaks funny, mind, but 'tis her tongue not being exercised enough, nothing else. I tell you, one week of working with me in that kitchen and she will be talking as well as I do. No one will be calling her simple then.'

'What's she doing here? Have you found out why she arrived in the early hours on Christmas morning?' Frank enquired.

'I'm trying, Frank, but it's hard. I can't help the others if I am caught out so I have to be careful. Here, one of the girls sneaked me a letter. Can ye take it to the post office?'

Frank nodded and put the letter into his large coat pocket. Being caught would mean him and Maggie being turfed out on their ears. They were too old for that to happen a second time, but it never stopped him helping the girls when he could.

Maggie and Frank grinned at each other.

'Come here,' said Frank and, removing the short distance between himself and Maggie, he threw his arms round her.

Maggie was uncomfortable with affection of any description, preferring to display a tough and practical exterior. A front belied by her acts of kindness and the degree of danger she frequently placed herself and Frank in, by helping the girls in the mother and baby home.

'Ger off, you fat lump,' she exclaimed as she pushed Frank away, but he took no offence.

Frank knew his wife's capacity to love. He had seen her face as she held their baby. That was when Maggie had been soft, on the days she had walked out to the fields, carrying his lunch in one hand and holding their son on her hip with the other. That Maggie had never pushed him away. That Maggie had laughed when he threw his arms round his wife and baby son. If he closed his eyes for long enough, he could see her back as they walked away from him in the sunlight, his child, resting on his mother's shoulder, smiling at his da and his small hand waving goodbye.

'Maggie has sent me for greens, Frank,' said Daisy.

'Has she, now? Well, let's grab some of these, then, shall we?'

Daisy followed Frank, whom she liked and trusted, into the greenhouse.

It had taken Daisy her customary while, but she had eventually opened up to Maggie and Frank. Each day, Maggie extracted a little bit more of Daisy's extraordinary history.

'How is it up at the kitchen today then? Is Maggie's temper holding up?' Frank said.

Daisy laughed. 'Yes, it is. She gave one of the novices a right scolding. I thought the girl was about to faint with indignation, but Maggie doesn't care.'

'Aye, that's because she knows they would fall apart if she left. They don't want to be on the wrong side of Maggie or they would all starve, so they would, but I wouldn't dare push it, mind. Me and my Maggie, we don't have too many choices now. Are ye coming down to us for supper?'

'I am, Frank. I have something to ask you and Maggie this evening but I would like to ask you together, if that's all right with you?'

'Of course it is, Daisy,' said Frank.

'Shh,' she said as she looked around. 'You know the trouble we get into for using our real names.'

Daisy wasn't really angry with Frank, and, with a smile, she picked up the wicker basket and headed off back to the kitchen.

That night, as Daisy sat in Maggie and Frank's kitchen, she told them her tale in detail.

She left nothing out. She spoke about her abuse at the hands of the priest and the bishop. It had been the very same bishop who had appeared in Maggie's kitchen and had spoken to her on Christmas night.

'He told me that I was here for my protection. That I should never tell anyone anything at all about my life in Liverpool. He said that there were some very bad people around and I could suffer the same end as my friend, Molly Barrett, who was murdered in her own outhouse. He really scared me when he said that. Molly was the only person who knew I had seen the murder. I know that on the night she was killed, she had told the policeman about it that very same day. It was the same policeman as brought me here to the convent.'

Maggie and Frank both made a sharp intake of breath. They interrupted only to whisper the words, 'Yeah, yeah, go on now,' as encouragement for her to continue.

She told them about Miss Devlin, and how Daisy's family in Dublin had made contact, wanting her home for Christmas. She told them about Sister Evangelista and the school and all the residents on the four streets. As Maggie poured mug after mug of tea, worried that Daisy might stop, she told them about Maura and Tommy Doherty, and about little Kitty, who, she was sure, the priest had made pregnant, which was why he had been murdered by Kitty's da, Tommy.

And the last thing of all that she told them was about the goings-on at the Priory. How strange men came with pictures of children and how she and Sister Evangelista had found hundreds of black-and-white pictures in the dead priest's desk drawer.

'All the children in the four streets are poor and the priest is very powerful. If I or anyone else told what happened to us, no one would believe us.'

'Aye, well, 'tis no different in Ireland,' said Maggie. 'Make such an accusation in any of the villages around here and in no time at all ye would find yerself living as a penitent in a place like this, that's for sure.'

'It is all so wrong,' said Frank, 'and I don't mind saying that I don't understand all that much of it, but I do know this: you have to go back to Liverpool, Daisy, and see justice done. You have to take all of this to the Gardai.'

'How can I?' asked Daisy. 'The bishop knows what I have seen at the Priory and what he has done to me himself. That is why he has me prisoner here. I am trapped.'

'He was terrified of you telling your brother anything, Daisy. That's why you were as good as kidnapped by that policeman, who is obviously in cahoots now with the bishop, wouldn't ye say so, Frank?' said Maggie.

She had no trouble at all in picking up the various threads of life in a city she had never visited and, having never left the countryside, could barely imagine.

'You were sent here to be hidden and to be hushed up,' said Maggie. 'Do ye have the address of your family in Dublin?'

'No, I don't. Miss Devlin arranged everything. They would have been waiting for me at the port, but the policeman took me off the ferry. We pa.s.sed through what looked like a kitchen and I saw him hand a man who worked in there a ten-shilling note and then we came out of a door and down a ramp different from the one I saw everyone else leaving by. I never even saw my family. They must be worried about me and Miss Devlin will have been out of her mind.'

'Why did ye not say something to someone as he was leading ye off the boat?' asked Frank.

'I was scared and at first I thought he was taking me to my brother's house. I had no idea.'

'Don't ask such stupid questions, Frank,' Maggie remonstrated with him. 'Do ye remember what she was like when she first arrived here? As nervous as a kitten she was. Look at her now, talks fifty to the dozen, she does. 'Tis me that can't get a word in edgeways these days. All this girl needed was for her mouth and brain to be worked a bit.

'Simple, my a.r.s.e. I'll give ye this, Daisy, the butcher would find ye an easy one to cheat. Yer counting is not strong and yer trust in others is blind, but ye can hold yer own in any conversation and I'll take the credit for that. Frank, pop a drop of poteen in these mugs. Enough of the tea now, we need to think of a plan. Daisy, ye is welcome on that mattress, but ye can't sleep there forever, or in that storeroom the nuns have put you in. They keep plenty prisoner up in that place, but they can't keep ye. We have to find a way to get ye back to Liverpool. I'll tell ye this, it'll be a long time before Sister Theresa notices, so little attention do they pay ye.'

Frank and Maggie's chance to smuggle Daisy away arrived more quickly than any of them had expected. Sister Theresa had taken the decision to compete with the Abbey and convert the old stables into a laundry.

She was swayed by the opulence of the Abbey, which she and her nuns had cause to visit from time to time, and by the luxury of Sister a.s.sumpta's office. She took little convincing that a laundry was what they were missing.

The carpets and silver picture frames ate at her heart each time she visited. Her envy was not unnoticed by Sister a.s.sumpta.

'Did you see the way they were looking at my ornaments?' she asked Sister Celia, following Sister Theresa's latest visit to the Abbey with Sister Virginia in tow to spy.

'Were they?' asked Sister Celia.

'Were they? Of course they were. Are your eyes afflicted all of a sudden? Rome has given them next to nothing. They have a lot of catching up to do. It'll be a few years before they can afford a Persian runner or a set of French doors in the study.'

Sister Theresa, unhappy with running the most recent and the poorest convent in the area, had very different ideas. Rome had indeed been mean.

'There is machinery now that can turn those girls into a far more productive operation altogether,' she had said to Sister Virginia on their return journey from the Abbey. 'We have enough money saved to install washers and dryers. That means the girls we take on can turn round twice as much as the Abbey, at the very least, I would say. The hospital may decide to transfer its custom to us on this side of Galway.'

'Won't the girls become soft altogether if we use machines?' sniffed Sister Virginia, who was driving the new Mini the nuns had purchased from Donegal only the week before.

'No, not at all. They will still have to do all the work, the lifting, the sorting and the ironing. The machines mean that we won't lose a day's drying when it's wet and we can put more dirty laundry through and faster too. The longer we keep that bit of information from Sister a.s.sumpta, the better. They have used their own money to buy fancy ornaments and carpets. We will use ours to buy washing machines and, once we do, we will be secure forever. It's all about making sure there are enough funds to keep the convent running, come what may, Sister Virginia. I think Sister a.s.sumpta forgot that, somewhere along the way back there.'

Within a month, Frank had opened the gates to the delivery of industrial-sized washing machines and dryers.

A week later, he welcomed the fitters who would convert the barn into a laundry. Although Irish by birth, they were based in Liverpool, travelling back to Liverpool every Friday night and returning on Monday morning. It occurred to Frank that this arrangement could be quite handy. He made a point of chatting to them as they unloaded their vans. It took him only a couple of days to strike up a friendship with the works foreman, Jack, who knew the location of Daisy's former home, the four streets.

Thursday was Frank's regular night for a jar at the local pub, a habit of which Sister Theresa was blissfully unaware. When he found out that the workmen were boarding there, Frank arranged to meet Jack in the bar after work. A week after they had first arrived, Frank strolled down to the pub to meet Jack. He needed to take a measure of the man's trustworthiness.

As he walked into the bar, Frank greeted the foreman, who was more than pleased to have someone fund his night of Guinness.

It took six pints before Jack agreed to smuggle Daisy out of the convent. It took a further two to convince him to deliver her personally to the police station and to stay with her until he could be sure she was safe. Daisy had provided Frank with enough details for him to work out the address of the Priory and of Nelson Street.

The decision was taken not to smuggle Daisy out until the day the job finished and the workmen were leaving for the last time. That way, it would look as though one of the workmen was to blame. Frank and Maggie would be free from suspicion.

As the day approached, they became more and more twitchy and Frank worried that Jack would change his mind.

'Jesus, we have helped many in the mother and baby home to hear word from a relative or snuck out a letter. I've even smuggled food into the dormitory for the girls, all of which would see me strung up, but I've never done anything as bold as this,' said Maggie to Frank.

The thought of what they were about to do almost made Maggie shake with fear, but she would not let this deter her.

The night before they were due to put their plan into action, there was a gentle ring on the gate bell.

'Jesus, who can that be?' Maggie almost jumped out of her skin.

Frank had already opened the door from which he could see the gate.

''Tis the foreman, Jack.'

A minute later, Jack was standing in front of the fire with a mug of Frank's poteen in his hand. He looked on edge.

'I'm not sure we should be doing this, Frank,' he said. 'If we are caught, the Reverend Mother may stop our money and, sure, 'tis serious money. I have wages to meet for the week's work on Friday night. I cannot risk the men not taking their pay packets back to their own families.'

Maggie began to speak, but Frank held up his hand and stopped her. Instead, Maggie placed her arm round Daisy's shoulders. She looked crestfallen.

'I understand that now, Jack, sure I do, but how about this? We carry on with the plan and, if we are caught, Maggie and I will own up. We will say that it was us that smuggled Daisy into the back of yer van and ye had no idea whatsoever what was happening.'

Maggie and Daisy both gasped. Maggie was more aware of the consequences.

They would be turfed out of their home there and then. No amount of Maggie's prowess in the kitchen would save their necks from that. Within an hour, Frank and Maggie, together with what belongings they had, would be on the wrong side of the convent gate.

'Well, I'm sorry to say as I know the risk to you now, but that would put a different complexion on things. As long as I could have your word, Frank?'

'As true as G.o.d, ye have my word,' said Frank, holding out his hand to shake Jack's.

'Did I do the right thing, Maggie, love?' Frank whispered to Maggie later that night as they lay in bed while Daisy slept on the lodge floor in front of the fire.

'Ye did what yer heart told ye to do, Frank, and that can never be wrong. I'm sure someone or something was guiding yer words as there was no time to think.'

'There will be plenty of time to think tomorrow, if we are caught,' whispered Frank.

Maggie stroked Frank's arm and silently said her own prayer that they could safely survive the next twenty-four hours.

They had helped lots of the girls, but none had presented as great a risk as this.

The following morning, the tension they all felt was palpable.