Blue Is the Night (14 page)

Brown had wanted to know about Doris’s mother but Doris said she could not tell him very much as her mother had died when she was young.

Lucy said that was a lie, you naughty thing, your mother was not dead, but Doris said so what? Brown was too nosy by half, tell him anything and he’d write it down.

She remembered that her mother was tall with bright red lipstick on a thin mouth and she wore leather gloves even when she was in the house. Father wanted her to take them off but she said that everywhere was covered in germs and bacilli and she would only take the gloves off in order to wash her hands, rinsing them under the tap again and again.

Often Mother was not there when Doris came home from school and when she asked where she was Father said that she had one of her headaches but that Lucy would look after Doris. Doris asked Lucy if headaches went on for days. They must do because her mother was often gone with them. It must be terrible, Doris said.

‘There’s plenty like her in this house of Broadmoor with them kind of headaches,’ Lucy said.

‘What’s good for headaches?’ Doris said.

‘Damn all me or you can do to help that class of thing,’ Lucy said. ‘If there was flowers here it might cheer her up but there’s nothing except the cold grey stone.’

There were flowers in Broadmoor. Doris was surprised that Lucy didn’t seem to know. They were grown in the garden at the side of Male Medical. There were lilies and carnations which Father wore in his buttonhole and pink roses which grew on into the frost of November.

Doris went to the garden although she was not allowed. She told the warder at the door between their house and her father’s office that she had been summoned to him. The man unlocked the door and told her to go to the office and not to turn aside from her path and Doris nodded her head and said yes.

Frost lay on the garden since morning as the high walls blocked sunlight on winter days. The cold frames were empty and the earth sat in frozen clods on the beds. The roses that stood against the north wall were wizened and without bloom. Doris was disappointed as there would be no flowers for her mother. She saw that there was a man standing under the eaves of the garden shed. He was still with his hands by his sides as though he stood sentry to something within. He raised one hand. She thought that his hands must be cold standing out in the frost. He unbent one of his cold hands and crooked his finger to summon her.

‘What is your name?’ he said. She could see little of his face in the shadow of the eaves.

‘Doris.’

‘What are you looking for, Doris?’

‘I am looking for flowers for Mother. These ones are all dead.’

‘There are flowers in the shed behind me. They keep all the best ones as their own. They can’t help themselves.’

‘Maybe I should go back.’

‘It would be a shame to go back without flowers for your mother. They say a mother’s love is a blessing.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘They let me come down here for fresh air. I don’t tell them I can smell the flowers that are hidden.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘My name is Saucy Jack.’ He seemed to step forward a little into the frozen winter light. She could see that his eyes were dark blue.

‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ she said.

‘Saucy Jack never tells.’

‘I’d better go back.’

‘Without flowers for your mother? She might be sad.’

‘Where did you get the flowers?’ Lucy said.

‘They’re for Mother.’

‘I didn’t ask you who they were for. I asked you where you got them.’

There was a vase of pink roses on the dining-room table. The waxen blooms reflected in the French polish. Lucy thinking of wake rooms of her childhood, the scent of floors, dark polished wood, undertones of decay.

‘From the garden beside Father’s office.’

‘You’re not allowed there.’

‘I wanted flowers for Mother.’

‘There’s nothing in that garden, Doris Curran. The winter has it stripped bare.’

‘There were some put away in the shed.’

‘Fresh-cut roses in the middle of winter?’

‘They hide them from everyone.’

‘Who told you that, Doris Curran? Who did you see in the garden?’

‘I seen not a soul.’

‘You are a wicked child, Doris Curran, the very spawn of darkness.’

‘That is God’s honest truth.’

‘Child, I lived in Female Segregated my first years in this place and there was them in it as could lie before they opened their mouths, and I fear I am not hearing the truth from you.’

‘I told you.’

‘Be that as it may, if it is found out that I so neglected my duty as to let you stray into that Gethsemane then I will be sent back to Female Segregated without hope of reprieve.’

‘I won’t tell anyone. As long as Mother gets the flowers.’

‘You promise there was no one?’

‘I never saw a soul.’

‘If I am put back in a cell then you will be sent away to school. There is no one else to care for you.’

Lucy looked at the roses. Doris saw her bless herself quickly. As though there was something profane about the blooms. As if something unholy was abroad in the dark room.

Doris watched Lucy leave. The smell of the roses filled the room, flowers placed beside a fresh-dug grave, wreaths laid on the grave spoil. It was coming night and the klaxon had sounded from Male Medical to return all to their cells. Saucy Jack was watching her. His blue eyes could see through all that was placed in their way. She had not told a lie. She had said to Lucy that she had not seen a soul and had not. For there were those without souls in whom the light of mercy did not shine.

The decision to retry Taylor was announced in the week following his acquittal. The retrial was set for 24th October. The Belfast Newsletter reported that Attorney General Curran was ‘anxious’ to ‘see justice done’.

‘Placed the whole thing right at his door,’ Ferguson said.

‘Where he wanted it placed,’ Harvey said.

‘He’s looking for a fair trial.’

‘Please, Mr Ferguson,’ Harvey said. ‘Your newly acquired interest in justice is commendable. Perhaps you’d like to pull the lever when they drop Taylor through the trap door.’

‘Curran will hang him this time.’

‘You have to find a way to stop him.’

‘Why would he stop? He’s Attorney General.’

‘A position he will rot in if he persists in this course.’

‘There’s the stick, Harvey. Where’s the carrot?’

Harvey laughed. An arid bark. ‘You think Curran would sabotage the case on the promise of preferment?’

‘Not Curran. Me.’

‘You didn’t do very well the first time around, Harry. A hung jury was most unsatisfactory.’

‘Bloody McKenzie. That’s what comes of sending a boy to do a man’s job.’

‘So what man are you going to send this time?’

‘Myself. I’m sending myself.’

‘Very well, Ferguson. There’s a seat on the bench in it for Curran if you get a satisfactory outcome.’

‘And for me?’

‘What do you want?’

‘The corporation solicitor would do me fine.’

‘You drive a hard bargain. Make sure you’re more than just another backstreet blowhard. We’ve already got too many of those.’

‘I won’t let you down.’

‘I thought letting people down was what the likes of you and I did. Lunn will want the job when it comes up.’

‘I can deal with Lunn.’

They were crossing the main hall of the museum. It was the beginning of autumn. Dead leaves blown through the doors were made animate by the wind and the hall of limestone and basalt was filled with a dry scuttling.

‘You haven’t asked about Takabuti, Ferguson.’

‘That damned thing. Gives me the creeps every time I think about it.’

‘You should come and see her in her new home. She’s really rather gorgeous.’

‘I’ll give it a miss.’

‘Our most popular exhibit.’

‘She ended up in the right city, that’s for sure.’

There were footsteps on the staircase. Ferguson looked up. Patricia and her friend Hilary were coming down the stairs. Hilary waved to him. ‘There’s your Mr Ferguson, Patricia.’ She came over to them. Patricia followed. She was pale and gave Ferguson a wan smile, biting her lip.

‘We’ve just been to see the mummy. She gave old Patricia here quite a turn.’

‘Some people find her quite disturbing,’ Harvey said.

‘I can’t see it myself. She seemed perfectly deceased and dried up. Reminded me of our French teacher, only more fun.’

‘I thought it was hideous,’ Patricia said, raising her head. There were two spots of red high on her cheeks.

‘Why do you say that, Patricia?’ Ferguson said.

‘She felt cruel. Evil.’

‘My friend has a very active imagination, whereas I see the good in everybody. Calm your overactive imagination, Patricia Curran. It’s not like the wall-eyed old biddy is going to follow us home or anything.’

Ferguson watched Patricia. He wanted to tell her that the princess had already followed him home. He knew what she was. She shuffled in. She came unbidden to his dreams, the bejewelled princess, scented with gravemust.

Ferguson and Harvey went with them to the door and watched as the two girls walked off in the autumn evening, the noise of the city stilled for a moment, a premonitory hush. At the iron scaffold of the Palm House Patrica stopped and looked back.

‘It’s a pity the father isn’t more like the daughter,’ Harvey said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because you can scare her and you can’t scare him.’

When Esther came home Ferguson was in the dining room with papers and books spread out on the table. Transcripts, law reports, jury lists. Working his way through murder trials in far-off cities, doctrines handed down from medieval courts, the doings of beadles and sheriffs, the law scratched on to parchment. The defences of automatism, of diminished responsibility. Regina versus McNaughton. Regina versus White. Statutes and cases. All this gathering of lore coming down to one thing, a body on the floor, blood pooling.

Esther put her hand on his shoulder. He could smell gin.

‘I wonder if I could sentence a man to hang?’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Nothing. Just something Harvey said today.’

‘If the price was right you could hang a man, Harry. What are you looking at? Taylor?’

She leaned over him so that he could feel the warmth of her body through her coat.

‘I’m trying to find a defence for him but I’m not having any luck.’

She shifted so that he could no longer feel her weight. It was her way of reminding him. Of consents given in the past, the old carnal permissions. Reminding him that they were both entitled to memory.

‘What about the jury?’

‘I daren’t try it twice. Curran realised what happened first time around.’

‘Afterwards then.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sometimes you think you’re doing the right thing. Everything’s under control. And then it all unravels.’

‘You might be right. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place.’

‘Glad to be of help.’

‘You should go to bed. I might be here for a while.’

Ferguson heard his wife’s feet on the floor above him. He imagined the clothes flung on a chair, the rustling undergarments, Esther walking barefoot across the floor, picturing the ankle, the bare instep. He imagined placing his fingers on the back of her neck, the inside of her wrist, chaste touches. He heard the bed creak and then there were no more noises. He worked on until dawn. He went upstairs and opened Esther’s door. He went over to the bed and looked down at her. She was making small, troubled noises. He thought of Patricia that day. He wondered what was troubling his wife, a haggard visitant in gravecloth. He smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead. She did not wake.

He went into his own room and opened the curtains. He placed his head against the cool glass. Wind tossed the trees on the street. Light from the shipyard reflected on black storm clouds, a dull industrial flare. Ferguson lay down on the bed and slept. He woke at nine and went downstairs. He telephoned Lunn’s office and made an appointment to see the solicitor.

Patricia had arranged to play tennis on Saturday morning. When she returned at four o’clock she went to the scullery. She put her racket in its wooden press and tightened the frame around it. She slipped a packet of ten Black Cats from under the washstand and broke the cellophane. She had taken a match and a piece of striker from the house. She struck and cupped the match to light the cigarette. There was a mirror on the door of the cabinet above the mangle and she watched herself in it. She liked the way that Esther Ferguson smoked, the way she struck world-weary poses, narrowed her eyes to look through the smoke. There were ways of holding yourself that Patricia was anxious to learn. Hilary said she looked like a courtesan when she smoked. She said she should be wearing something diaphanous, something sheer and revealing.

She turned at a sound. Desmond was standing in the doorway.

‘You should put that out.’

‘Says who?’

‘Mother’s looking for you. She’s on the warpath.’

‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘It’s the talk of the town, Mother says.’

‘What is, for goodness’ sake?’

‘You and the Douglas girl. Down in the Stranmillis graveyard with the entire Campbell rugby team if you believe half of what you hear.’

‘And do you, Desmond?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Believe what you hear?’

‘All I know is you’re going to catch it. Particularly since Father’s trial is starting on Monday. All he needs is for the jury to hear that the Attorney General’s daughter is a creature of the lowest kind.’

‘I’m nothing of the sort, Desmond, and you know it.’

‘I’m only repeating what Mother said.’

‘I’m not surprised since you’re incapable of having an opinion of your own.’

Her brother stepped into the scullery and closed the door behind him. He spoke coldly.

‘I do have an opinion of my own, Patricia. I have a very firm opinion about you.’

‘I thought you might.’

‘Mother said she wants to see you in her bedroom at five.’

‘I shan’t go.’

‘That would not be a good idea.’

‘It’s the only one I can think of.’

‘You can’t run away from every problem.’

‘It’s you that runs away, Desmond. To your university and handing out leaflets and your rotten old Moral Rearmament.’

‘I used to think that Hilary Douglas was a bad influence on you. Now I think it’s the other way round.’

‘Send me a leaflet. I’ll think about the error of my ways.’

‘Please, Patricia. You know what Mother’s like. It’ll be worse if she smells tobacco from you.’

‘That’s rich. You gave me my first puff. That summer in Mourne. On the hillside behind the old house.’

‘So I did.’

She put her hand on his arm. Lost in the sunlit uplands of childhood. Desmond and Patricia had been left alone with a housekeeper. There had been boating trips. Roaming through fields. Minnows in jars.

‘Was there a dog who went everywhere?’ Patricia wondering if she had dreamed it. A characterful half-breed with wiry hair and a quizzical tilt to its head.

‘There was a dog. Nipper.’ Desmond looking at her, suddenly eager for any allurements that were on offer, half-recalled affections. On the night of Patricia’s murder he was to find her corpse and raise it from the ground and proclaim that there was life within although the body was cold and stiff. Following the trial and conviction of Iain Hay Gordon for the murder, and the incarceration of his mother in an asylum, Desmond left the bar to become a missionary priest. He worked for five decades in South African townships where he acquired a reputation for courage in confronting apartheid. Growing old in the close-packed shanties. Listening to the night winds on the veldt.

Patricia ground the cigarette out beneath her heel and picked up the butt.

‘I’ll go to Mother,’ she said. She touched his arm as she left the scullery.

Patricia knocked on her mother’s door and opened it. Doris was sitting at her dressing table. She did not look round. Her sewing basket was open at her side.

‘You wanted me, Mother?’

‘I have heard disgraceful reports of your behaviour. That a mother should have to listen to such things about her own daughter.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong, Mother.’

‘I suppose smoking isn’t wrong. I can smell it from here. Where did you get the cigarettes? Down at the graveyard with some unsuitable young man. I hope that’s all you got from him.’

‘Mother. Don’t speak to me like that, please.’ Patricia catching the tone-shift in her mother’s voice, trying to see her face in the dressing-table mirror.
That’s the way to talk. That’ll put manners on the little vixen.

‘Them’s the boys to do damage to a girl. Them’s the saucy boys.’

‘Mother, please. You’re frightening me.’

‘You don’t frighten too handy.’

‘I promise I won’t go near the graveyard again, Mother. I promise.’

‘Come over here.’ Patricia crossed the room until she stood beside her mother. Doris took hold of her right wrist and bent it back.

‘You’re hurting me. Please.’

‘The world is full of hurt. It’s about time you knew it.’

Patricia heard car wheels on the gravel outside.

‘Father’s home.’ But Lance Curran never came home early on a Saturday evening. Doris kept her head turned away. Patricia glimpsed her eyes in the mirror and they seemed devoid of human expression. She twisted in an effort to escape but Doris’s grip did not weaken.

Ferguson got out of his car and looked up at the bedroom window above the front door. The curtains were red and the two women were backlit. It was difficult to put meaning to their movements. He went to the door and took hold of the bell pull. Within the house a brass bell made toll. In the room above the door Doris released Patricia. The girl backed away from her, holding her wrist. When Doris turned from the mirror her face was white and there was a drop of blood on her mouth where she had bitten her lip.

‘Take me away from here,’ she said, ‘take me away from this house.’

‘Oh Mother,’ Patricia said.

Ferguson had intended to visit Lunn at home that evening. He had driven through the Shankill and Sandy Row. Groups of men stood on street corners and watched the car as it passed. The road to the Malone area took him into the environs of the university and of the museum. He told himself he did not believe in succubi or their pomps but he wished that his route did not take him past the grey museum building and the mummy blind in the tomb dark.

He had ordered police posted at the bottom of the Malone Road earlier that day and had expected to see a tender but he saw none. The message was clear. Curran had sought to go alone on this case and he had been granted his wish.

The mansions of the wealthy stood on the Malone hill, the terracing below them erected on the mudflats and silt beds of the estuarine plain, the ground on which they stood wet and disease-prone, shallow sea to the east, open marshland to the south.

On his way up the hill he saw several groups of young men. Older men stood behind them, backed into the gateways of the large houses, under the shadow of old-growth wisteria and holm oak in the gardens behind them as though they were kernes summoned from the treeline by woodcraft.

Ferguson stopped at a phone box halfway up the Malone Road, but the bakelite receiver had been snapped in half and the copper and zinc wiring loom had been stripped from its tin box and now lay on the ground. He got back into the car and drove to Curran’s. On his way he saw Desmond driving down the road in the company of a man he knew to be part of the Moral Rearmament movement.