Patricia Falvey (38 page)

I WAS SO
distracted, I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t go home to my empty house, and I couldn’t go to Theresa’s house. I couldn’t face all the questions and curiosity just now. But I could not be alone. Da, I thought wearily, why in God’s name are you not here this night?

My feet kept walking. Dusk gathered. Children laughed and shouted as they banged on doors and jumped in and out of shadows. Halloween was coming, the night when the dead get up and walk again. I shivered and kept going. How I got to Queensbrook House, I don’t know. I have no recollection of making a decision to go. I just ended up there at the front door. I lifted the knocker and let it fall. Piano music, low and melancholy, drifted out. A light was on in Owen’s study, but the rest of the house was dark. I supposed that even the bravest of children would not rap on the Sheridans’ door, threatening tricks. The piano playing stopped and I heard footsteps in the hall. Owen’s voice called out as the door opened.

“I’m sorry, children, I was not expecting you. Can you wait while I see what we have in the kitchen? Apples, maybe, or…

“Eileen?” There was a rough catch in his voice. I got the vague impression that he had been weeping. But he smiled then in the dim light. “Come in, come in,” he said. “I am delighted to see you. Forgive me, I gave Kathleen the night off, and my family is away for the weekend. It’s only myself here. I didn’t hear you at first.”

As he talked he held the door open wide for me. It did not occur to him that I had said nothing, and he had obviously not noticed the state I was in. I brushed past him and trudged down the hall into his study. He followed me in and turned up the lamp.

“How is the project coming?” And then, “Eileen, what is it?”

He took my arm and led me to a chair beside the fireplace. He leaned down and raked the dying embers into a faint blaze. Then he went to his sideboard and poured a glass of whiskey. The man always seemed to be giving me whiskey, I thought idly.

He waited until I had drunk the whiskey. It coursed through me like a hot knife. Tears spat from my eyes. I blinked and put down the glass. Owen came over and knelt on the floor in front of me. He took my hands in his and rubbed them gently to warm them. The gentleness of it made me want to weep again.

“Tell me,” he whispered.

“It’s Lizzie!” I blurted out. “Lizzie’s alive. She’s been alive all this time. And all these years I thought she was dead!” The tears flowed now, running down my cheeks and dropping on my coat. I made no attempt to stop them.

“Oh, Eileen,” he breathed, “that’s such wonderful news!”

I nodded. “And I don’t know why I’m crying like an eejit,” I stammered. “It’s dancing for joy I should be, but I’m so sad I just can’t stop. And I went to see Ma, but she wouldn’t listen.” I looked up at him. “I thought the news would make her well again. I thought…”

He put up his hand and brushed the tears off my cheeks. “Ssh,” he whispered, as if to a child. “It’s all right. Of course you are sad. All these years you have grieved for your lost little sister, and now you discover your grief was misplaced. You are mourning now for all that grief you endured.”

In an odd way, his words made sense. I had to mourn the grief before I could accept the happiness that had replaced it. He understood so completely that my gratitude was enormous. I began to cry again. He moved up and sat on the arm of the chair. He enfolded me in his arms. I laid my head against his chest and sobbed. I smelled the starch in his linen shirt and the sweet odor of his tobacco. I pressed my face close into his chest and lost myself in the oblivion and comfort of his presence.

“As for your mother—it will take time,” he whispered. “In time she will understand. Perhaps when you are able to bring Lizzie to her…”

I looked up at him then. It had not even occurred to me that since Lizzie was alive, I could find her, touch her, bring her to Ma. My heart leapt with sudden joy.

“Will you help me find her?”

“Of course.”

My sobs gradually subsided, and I gave him a weak smile. He had not moved from the arm of the chair. He smiled down at me. “Better?” he said.

I nodded. “Yes.” I thought I must look a sight, and I smoothed my coat and hair, my hands fluttering nervously about myself. “Thank you,” I whispered.

He got up again and pulled me out of the chair. “Come over here and lie down,” he said, indicating the daybed.

Wordlessly, I let him lead me to it and I sat down. He picked up my feet and swung me around so I was half sitting and half lying. Then he sat at the edge of the bed and began undoing the laces of my boots. I watched him, as if from far away. The dying flames painted gold streaks on his pale hair. His fingers were nimble as they uncrossed the laces. I wished I had polished my boots that morning. Slowly he unbuttoned my coat and slipped it off from underneath me, the way I did with Aoife when she fell asleep in her clothes. He undid the top buttons of my blouse and his fingers brushed against my throat. A flush rushed up to my face. I closed my eyes briefly.

He stood up. “I think this calls for Champagne. We must celebrate Lizzie’s resurrection. What do you think?”

I nodded. “Yes,” I murmured. “I’m ready now.”

He left the room and I heard him rummaging about in the kitchen. I heard cupboard doors open and close and the tinkle of glassware. I was in a daze, warm and wonderful and yet not real. It was a dream I was going to be unhappy to wake up from. He returned carrying a silver bucket with a bottle inside it. Two glasses sparkled in his other hand. Pure crystal, I thought. He set everything down on the sideboard.

“Now,” he said, smiling. I watched as he put a white cloth around the bottle and rocked it back and forth. When the cork popped and the golden liquid spilled out over the rim, I jumped a mile.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” I exclaimed.

He laughed. “A wonderful sound, isn’t it, Eileen?”

He filled the two glasses and brought them over and sat beside me on the daybed. I sat up, bracing myself with one elbow. He handed me a glass and then clinked his against it. “A toast to Lizzie,” he said.

“
Sláinte!
” was all I could think to say.

When we had sipped, and I had sneezed from the bubbles, he said, “And now you must tell me all the details.”

“There’s not much to tell,” I began. But to my surprise, there was. I told him not just the notation about Lizzie and who adopted her out, but the whole experience, from the memories when I walked into the Fever Hospital to the names of all the poor children recorded in the ledgers. I told him about Ma and her velvet hat and the fear in her eyes. When I had finished, I looked up at him.

He drew his face close to mine. I smelled the Champagne on his breath. I waited. His lips covered mine in a long, soft kiss. Pure, it was, I thought. Chaste.

He drew back. His eyes shone violet in the firelight. “Eileen,” he whispered, “I want very much to make love to you. But I do not want to take advantage of your condition. I could never forgive myself for that.”

I smiled. “No man has ever taken advantage of me against my will. You should know that by now.”

He smiled back. “Aye. How could I have forgotten that?”

My arms rose and wound around his neck. I pulled him closer. His lips pressed hard on mine, and he forced my mouth open. Gently his tongue caressed mine. I jumped a little from the shock of it. James had never kissed me like that. Owen smoothed my hair. His breathing became hard. Images of James and the priests and the cackling mill women all swam in front of me. A shiver rolled down my spine, but still I did not push him away. I had all my senses about me, and I knew in that moment I wanted Owen Sheridan as much as he wanted me.

He leaned back and looked at me.

“You are so beautiful.” There was a choke in his voice.

Slowly he unbuttoned the rest of my blouse, his fingers caressing each small button. I trembled. “Ssh,” he whispered, “ssh, my lovely Eileen. I will not hurt you.”

Then his hands were on my breasts, warm and urgent. They rose beneath his hands like gently kneaded dough. Then he was kissing them, teasing my nipples. Oh, the lovely pain of it. I moaned. He drew back and reached for the bottle of Champagne. Slowly he drizzled the golden liquid upon each nipple, as if anointing them, and then he licked them dry. The tiny bubbles tickled me into a state of mad arousal. I moaned again and called his name.

In time he was on top of me. Skin upon skin. My clothes and his lay crumpled on the floor. The harvest moon outside the window lit our limbs white as ghosts, but our passion burned with a life force. His lips moved down over my belly to my groin. He pushed my legs apart, and I offered myself up to him. I writhed under his tongue, arching myself back and forth. All sense of the outside world, this house, this room, left me. The only reality was the fire concentrated in the core of my being. When he raised himself up and slipped inside me, I screamed. The scream released all the spirits inside of me—an exorcism so raw and powerful that I thought it might kill me. And maybe it was killing the old Eileen. I wanted to kill her, to erase all her fears and anger and pain. I writhed beneath Owen. “Yes,” I called out. “Yes.” I called out for my sweet executioner to bring me to the brink of oblivion and beyond.

At last it was done. I saw myself lying on the strand of the sea, my arms and legs outstretched. I had washed up on the shore, torn and sore from the sharp stab of the rocks. But I was smiling. I was alive and peaceful as a newborn. I laughed aloud.

“Eileen?” Owen’s voice brought me back to him. I opened my eyes and was startled to see him.

“Owen?”

“Yes, my love.”

He rolled to my side and took me in his arms. The dim fire had long since extinguished itself, and the moon had risen out of sight.

“Stay with me tonight,” Owen whispered.

He reached for my coat and covered our bodies with it. I sank into his arms, my body a lead weight from pain and pleasure. I slept as I had not slept since I was a child.

I COLLECTED AOIFE
from Theresa’s house early on Sunday afternoon.

“I slept late,” was all I said.

Theresa eyed me. She knew better, of course. I had never slept late in my life. I was not even up to telling her the news about Lizzie. My thoughts were tripping over themselves in my head, and no straight sentence could have come out of me.

“Your brother Frank was here last night,” she said offhandedly.

I was startled. “Was he?”

“Aye. He said he was up at your house but you weren’t there. He said all the lights were out.”

“I… I went out for some air,” I said. “I turned the lights out so the children would not be banging on the door.”

Theresa rubbed the dishrag across the kitchen table. “I thought you’d be here earlier to take her to mass in Newry. Now she’s missed going and that’s a mortal sin—”

“Will you whisht!” I said. “Sure she’s only a baby. You sound like your oul’ ma.”

Theresa sniffed and rubbed the dishrag harder. I had forgotten all about mass. Paddy and the Mullens must be wondering what happened to me. I had never missed a Sunday before now. Inwardly I cursed myself.

“Come on, Aoife,” I said sharply. “It’s time to go.”

When we got home I told Aoife to go out to play—something I rarely did—but, stubborn child that she was, she refused to go. Instead, she sat on her little chair and stared at me. She had an old woman’s head on her shoulders, that child. I brewed a pot of tea and tried to ignore her.

I was taut as a cat waiting to pounce. I couldn’t relax. I was sore from the places where Owen had been, and part of me wanted to caress them. Instead I boiled water on the hob and dragged out the tin bath. Aoife squirmed.

“Not bath,” she cried. “Clean.”

I had bathed her yesterday before taking her to Theresa’s. What a lifetime ago that seemed now. “It’s not for you,” I said more sharply than I meant.

It occurred to me that I had never taken off my clothes in front of the child. I had always bathed late at night when she was upstairs in bed. But I undressed now, slowly and deliberately. I had already exposed my body to a man I hardly knew, so what was the sin in exposing it to my own child? Aoife watched my every move. I sank into the hot water and rubbed myself raw with carbolic soap.

I made no excuses for myself as I lay there and thought about what I had done. Sure I could have said it was the shock of hearing about Lizzie or the upset about going to see Ma that had left me not in my right mind. Or I could have said it was out of loneliness I did it. I could have said I deserved a little comfort after the life I had been through. But I would have none of it. I had done what I did deliberately. I had wanted to do it. No one had forced me. I had knowingly committed a sin, and a mortal one at that. I had slept with a man who was not my husband. I had disgraced myself and God. I wondered idly why I cared about what God thought. I imagined having to tell the sin in confession. I imagined a young priest having to give me absolution. I wondered how many desperate women such a priest would have to absolve in his life.

The water grew cold, and still I lay there. Every time Owen’s face appeared in front of me, I turned away and closed my eyes. I would not let myself remember any of it. No matter what punishment others might think I deserved for this, it was nothing to what I knew I would inflict on myself. The truth could not be escaped. I was as much a prisoner of guilt as any other Irish Catholic woman. I laughed. “You thought you were so different, Eileen O’Neill,” I said aloud to myself. “The rules never applied to you! Well, look at you now. Your knees will be as red and raw as oul’ Mrs. Conlon’s saying novenas for the rest of your days, begging forgiveness from the Virgin.”