Blood And Water (27 page)

In their room that night, Joan worked hard to keep the mood upbeat with her wild stories of the various foster homes she’d passed through. Some of the stories Martha had never heard before, others she’d listened to several times over but they were so outrageous and entertaining she was happy to hear them again. And Joan was a natural raconteur, transforming some truly toe-curling horrific episodes into hilarious comedic adventures. It was her defence mechanism, Martha knew that.

“You should write a book, do you know that?” she said to her friend when the giggles died down.

“Nah,” Joan replied, lying on the bed with her hands behind her head, “I couldn’t be arsed,” the comment triggering another round of uncontrollable laughter and a loud batter on the wall from the guest in the next room.

“Keep it down in there! Some of us are trying to sleep!”

The girls only laughed harder and louder.

When finally Joan could chatter no more, Martha closed her eyes to the darkness and tried to remember the face of her sister, but it refused to come. She tried to piece it together bit by bit: blue eyes, yellow hair with natural gold highlights that glistened in the sun, eyebrows that moved with the rise and fall of her voice and a smile that lit up her face like sunshine. But the image refused to coalesce.

Falling asleep as the birds were beginning their dawn chorus, it felt like seconds before she was dragged out of the bed and down to breakfast by a well-rested Joan.

“Jesus, I slept like a log. You?” Joan asked as she wolfed down the deliciously greasy Irish breakfast with all the trimmings: beans, mushrooms, tomatoes.

“We won’t need to eat for a week, eh?” she remarked between mouthfuls without taking her hungry eyes from the plate.

“You’d swear you hadn’t eaten in weeks,” Martha joked, watching her stuff her face.

“You’re not hungry?” Joan enquired and, without waiting for her answer, pulled Martha’s plate closer to pick from it what she fancied.

They washed after breakfast then walked down the street towards the church which was set into the hill and surrounded by a low wall. They pushed open the heavy metal gates that whined in objection. Laughing nervously at the Amityville cliché, the girls walked along the pebble path to the back of the grey granite building. It was a sufficiently small town cemetery and didn’t take them long to find the stone they had come to see. Plain and unadorned, flat and grey, a stone edifice emerging as if growing from the soil with her name etched simply in plain black letters. In front of it, lying delicately on its side, lay a small posy of daisies tied up with string.

Slowly Martha slipped to her knees and ran her fingers across the words cut deep in the cold slab. She’d thought she would cry, had expected tears to flood down her face but they never came. Instead she felt an incredible weight lift and her heart fill with a bizarre feeling of joyful release. Finally she was here and able to say hello and goodbye to the sister she barely remembered and hardly knew.

“Are ye relatives?” a gruff voice asked from behind them.

Both girls jumped and turned. Behind them stood a woman who looked like she had seen better times, her hair a tangled mess and her face grubby with grime from God only knew what. She held tight on to a variety of different shopping bags, each full to bursting with stuff. She looked down at Martha with suspicion.

“Yes, I’m her sister,” Martha replied cautiously, wondering who she was.

“She didn’t tell me she had a sister.”

“You knew her?” Martha was immediately on her feet.

“For a while, a short while,” the raggedy lady chortled, nodding her head with a rueful smile. “I knew her all right. I knew all them girls. Terrible waste.”

“What happened to her?” Martha asked.

“Not very close then?” the woman retorted sceptically, taking a step back, her guard raised once again along with the return of the suspicious look.

“I was only nine,” Martha told her. “Too little to know. And we didn’t find out until after they buried her here.”

Martha sadly looked down at the lush green grass, letting the soft sound of the wind whisper to her as it chased through the headstones into the trees.

“Where was the accident?” she asked eventually. “Where did she drown?”

“Over yonder,” the lady relayed, using her head to demonstrate the direction of yonder. “Along the Golden Strand. But you’ll have to ask them bitches in the big house what happened. ’Snot up ta me.” She sniffed while shifting the bags between hands then turned to get on her way. “But I’ll tell ya this much, lassie – ‘twas no accident.”

“No accident?” Joan repeated after her. “What does that mean?”

But the woman ignored her and began to walk away.

Martha hurried after her and reached out to stop her, placing her hand on the old woman’s arm.

“Please, tell me what you mean?”

“Get your dirty mitts off me!” the woman shouted, lifting her make-shift walking stick defensively at Martha who jumped back to avoid being walloped.

They let her go and watched as, mumbling to herself, she waddled between the graves to the other side of the cemetery and out to the field beyond.

“Well, that was weird!” Joan remarked. “She was a bundle of laughs. What the hell did she mean by that?” She looked at Martha who was still watching the woman disappear from sight. “And where is this big house?”

Martha shivered. “We can always ask someone,” she suggested, looking round at the empty graveyard before kneeling back down in front of the simple headstone.

“Well, we’ll not get an answer in here,” said Joan. “Let’s ask at the pub – don’t they always know everyone’s business?”

“Can we stay just a little bit longer?” Martha asked, reluctant to leave.

“Sure. We can stay as long as you want,” Joan said, plonking herself down beside her friend.

Together they let the serene calm of the country graveyard settle around them.

Martha and Joan marched off together, across the road and down the hill.

I’ll be back later for a proper chat,
Martha silently promised the spirit of her sister, who she hoped was somewhere watching and listening.

The walk to Donegan’s Pub didn’t take long and even at that early hour of the morning it was open and with good custom. Each of the patrons turned as the door opened and the two young girls walked the short distance to the bar that ran the full width of the thatched building.

Once her eyes adjusted to the dreary darkness, Martha took stock of the room, which smelled of stale beer and cigarettes.

A short, round man polishing a glass looked curiously at them from behind the counter.

“Can I help you there, ladies?” he called with humour in his voice, and a
watch-this
glance at his customers, like they had wandered in unwittingly and would be mortified by their mistake.

Confidently Martha approached the bar, unaware of the entertainment their presence was generating.

“I wonder if you could help us? We’re looking for the ‘big house’?”

He looked at them like they were speaking a foreign language. “Are ye serious?”

Martha looked nervously at Joan who shrugged her shoulders, equally confused.

“Yes,” she answered cautiously, afraid she’d done something wrong.

“Well,” he said, putting down the glass and leaning onto the bar with his elbow, “that’d be the big house at the end of the road there. Go out the door, look right and sure there it is, like the name says, the big house, right at the top o’ the hill in front of ye.” He waved his arms with a flourish, his voice laced with sarcasm.

Sniggers rippled through the dark and smoky room. Both girls blushed.

“What do ye want up there?” he asked, intrigued and feeling a little sorry for them and his mockery.

“My sister was there. I think she might have stayed there.”

“Have ye lost her an’ come to find her?” he asked kindly now.

“No,” Martha replied bluntly and without thinking. “She’s dead.”

A deep pull of breath sucked the air from the room.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he told her, standing upright and bowing his head at her, in a gesture of sympathy.

“Please, don’t be. It was a very long time ago. I … we’re only here to see where she’s buried.” The room now fully attentive. “Me and my mam, we never got to say goodbye.”

She spoke with such innocence that each patron in the bar felt like they had slapped those girls one by one with their ridicule.

In the resulting uncomfortable silence a man got off his stool and stepped towards them.

“Let me take you up,” he offered.

“Good man, Jimmy lad,” the barman commended. “Come back when you’re done up there, ladies, and I’ll make ye a nice hot Irish whiskey!”

“Thank you,” both girls said in unison as Jimmy held the door open for them.

“So,” he asked as he walked them up the road, “you say your sister stayed here?”

“Well, I think so – I only remember the name from when I was young,” Martha replied cheerfully as Joan struggled with her tired legs and full stomach.

Sensing their complete ignorance, he asked tentatively, “Do you know about this house?”

“What do you mean?” Martha asked, her feet pounding the path.

“Well, has anyone told you about what things happened here, maybe when your sister was here?”

“No,” said Martha uncertainly.

“Do you know how long she stayed?”

“No, but then I never asked. I think she was here on a holiday. She died in a swimming accident. So what kinds of things are you talking about that happened here?”

“What was yer sister’s name?” Jimmy asked as casually as he could. Girls from the big house came and went. They hardly ever saw any of them in the flesh. They were just silhouettes in the windows. But girls who died in swimming accidents were rare and to his knowledge there was only ever one.

“Lillian Byrne,” she replied, taking no heed of the brief stumbling pause in his pace.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, through the gates and up the weed-infested gravel drive, clearly in need of attention. As was the house: it stood gigantic, rambling and grey. A daunting cheerless place that made Martha shiver and wonder just what Lillian had been doing there.

A chill wind passed over them, prompting Joan to take hold of Martha’s arm.

“Jesus,” she whispered, like talking was forbidden, “this makes Butlin’s feel like the feckin’ Ritz.”

“Can’t say I’m liking this place much either,” Martha replied as they reached the front door.

Jimmy leaned forward to press the doorbell which echoed loudly on the far side of the door. They didn’t have to wait long before they heard the rush of feet and the pull of a bolt.

A grey-haired woman wearing an apron and a scowl pulled the door open.

“What is it?” she growled.

“I think these ladies are here to see Gráinne.”

She looked at them quizzically then back at Jimmy. “What for?” she snapped. He didn’t bother to answer. Turning to the girls, he shook Joan’s hand first then gripped Martha’s tightly, placing his other hand over it.

“Good luck now,” he said, his voice soft and his smile meek. “Please, come back down for that whiskey when you’re done.” Then he turned and left.

They watched him go.

“I think he likes you,” Joan joked with a giggle before they turned their attention back to the aproned lady grimacing at them in the doorway.

“Well?” she said with a snap that made them jump. “I haven’t got all day.”

Without knowing what else to say, Martha took Jimmy’s lead. “We’re here to see Gráinne.”

“And who,” she asked smartly, “might
we
be?”

“I’m Martha Byrne, and this is my friend Joan McCarthy.”

“Wait here,” the woman instructed, shutting the door in their faces.

“Bloody hell,” Joan huffed. “She’s a real cow. A million times worse than Bad Betty. And that’s sayin’ something.”

They waited in silence at the door for what seemed an age, soberly taking in the miserable surroundings, before footsteps and muffled voices were heard again. The door opened for a second time and this time a woman who introduced herself as Gráinne greeted them.

“Come in,” she invited with a smile. “You shouldn’t have left them out here, Ita!” She threw the grumpy woman a chastising glare then stood aside to let the girls into the bare and hollow hallway. Sunlight struggled to get through the cracked and wired skylight overhead, making it dank and intimidating.

“Let’s go where we can have a chat,” Gráinne directed pleasantly and marched them at a smart pace down a corridor that led deep into the bowels of the house.

Joan and Martha struggled to keep up while Ita, thankfully, appeared to lose herself somewhere along the route. Trotting behind Gráinne, the sound of their footsteps bounced off the floor to the walls and back again. They almost ran into the back of her ample bottom when suddenly she stopped and turned into one of the many doors lining the route. Unlocking it, she led them into a cosy sitting room, with a small sash window that overlooked the avenue.

“Come in, take a seat,” Gráinne invited as she went from lamp to lamp, turning them on to bring a warm glow to the room which smelled delightfully of vanilla. A clock ticked loudly, sitting on one of the book-lined shelves.

Both girls sank into the old-fashioned sofa whose springs it seemed had given up long before, while Gráinne took the wing-back chair opposite.

“So,” she enquired looking from one to the other, “you’re here to talk to me?”

“Yes,” Joan offered, glancing at Martha. “We’d like to ask you about Lillian Byrne. She was Martha’s sister. We came to see her grave. She’d never seen it before.” Joan nodded towards her silent friend.

Gráinne looked to Martha with a sympathetic expression. “What can I tell you?” she asked kindly.

“Why was she here?” Martha asked nervously. “Lillian, I mean. Why did she stay here?”

Leaning forward, Gráinne took her hand and with a sympathetic tone said, “I didn’t know your sister. She must have been here before my time, but she was likely here for the same reason as most of our girls. She had a baby.”