The Girl on the Cliff (38 page)

‘That’s all for now, Kathleen. We may need to speak to you again.’

Kathleen stood up disconsolately and walked out of the sitting room, her eyes stinging with tears. Her mother was waiting in the kitchen. She glanced up as Kathleen came in, her own eyes full of anxiety.

‘What did they want, Kathleen?’

‘I don’t know, Mam, I don’t know. They asked me lots of questions about Joe, but they wouldn’t be telling me why. I know Lily was hurt, but that was from falling down
the rocks, wasn’t it? Not because someone –’ Kathleen put her hand to her mouth – ‘Oh, Mam, you don’t think the guards think that Joe –’

‘We’ll be seeing you now, Mrs Doonan.’

One of the guards stood on the threshold of the kitchen.

‘Right then,’ Sophia sighed. She stood up and followed them.

Kathleen climbed the stairs to her bedroom and paced wretchedly around the confined space, knowing something was dreadfully, horribly wrong. Leaving her bedroom, she knocked on Joe’s door. Receiving no reply, she pushed it open, and found Joe lying on his bed, hands under his head, staring at the ceiling.

‘Joe.’ She walked across to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. ‘How are you?’

Joe did not reply. He continued to stare at the ceiling, his eyes full of misery.

Kathleen put her hand on his thick arm. ‘Are you after knowing what happened to Lily last night? And why the guards are here?’

Eventually Joe shook his head.

‘Did you see her fall and hurt herself, Joe? That
is
what happened, isn’t it?’

Finally, he turned his eyes to Kathleen and shook his head slowly. ‘Can’t remember. Asleep.’

‘Oh, Joe, I’m scared. You have to remember. Did you see Lily fall and hurt herself?’ she repeated.

‘No,’ Joe again shook his head. ‘Asleep.’

‘Joe, please, it’s important you listen to me,’ Kathleen said urgently. ‘And try and understand what I’m saying to
you. I don’t know for certain, but the guards might have taken it into their heads that you hurt Lily.’

At this, Joe sat bolt upright. ‘No! Never hurt Lily! Never!’

‘I know that, Joe, but they don’t. And whatever’s happened to Lily has sent them here. To find out about last night. And I’m thinking they might be trying to pin the blame on you.’

‘No! Never hurt Lily!’ he shouted, thumping the bed.

Kathleen could see the betrayal and anger in Joe’s eyes. ‘You don’t have to be telling me. I know how you love Lily. But maybe those guards downstairs don’t, and might be seeing what happened to Lily through a different set of eyes. Will you be promising me that you won’t get angry if they ask you questions you don’t like? Please, Joe, try and keep calm, even if they ask you if you hurt Lily,’ Kathleen entreated him.

‘Never hurt Lily, love Lily!’ Joe repeated again.

Kathleen bit her lip in despair, understanding there was nothing she could say or do to protect her beautiful, gentle brother from himself. ‘Ah, Joe, maybe I’m looking on the black side. Maybe Lily will be able to tell her own story.’ Kathleen knelt on the bed and put her arms around Joe tightly. ‘You just be yourself, and tell them that you were asleep.’

‘Will,’ Joe nodded vehemently.

Kathleen was still hugging him when her mother came in a few minutes later, her face pale, to say that Joe was wanted downstairs. She watched him heave himself to standing and leave the room, the feeling of dread in her heart overwhelming.

The guards took Joe away that afternoon for further questioning. Two days later, another guard came to the house and told the three of them that Joe was to be charged with the rape and assault of Lily Lisle. He was to be kept in Cork jail until the trial.

When he’d left, Sophia sat down in a chair at the table. She put her head on her arms and wept silently. Seamus went to put his own arms around her, tears in his eyes too.

Kathleen watched her parents, the despair etched on their faces, and knew they were broken.

Eventually, Sophia looked up, clasping her husband’s hand. ‘He didn’t do it, did he?’

‘No, pet, we know he didn’t.’ Seamus shook his head slowly. ‘But what we can do to put this wrong right, I just don’t know.’ Seamus turned to Kathleen. ‘Surely someone in this house must remember what happened that night? What possessed you, girl, to drink poteen? You know what it does to a mind, especially one as slow as Joe’s!’

‘Pa, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.’ Kathleen wrung her hands, desperate to tell him the truth about how Gerald had deceived them all into drinking it.

‘And the guards are taking the word of the Englishman, as always. Maybe I could go and speak to him, go and speak to Gerald?’ Seamus paced around the kitchen.

‘And will he be telling you the truth? Someone did this to Lily, and we know it wasn’t our Joe. But what can we do?’ Sophia shook her head in anguish. ‘If it was Gerald, will he ever admit it? Never!’

‘What about Lily?’ asked Kathleen. ‘Could I go and see her? You know how close we’ve always been, Mam.’

Sophia looked questioningly at her husband. ‘What do you think, Seamus? Should Kathleen go and visit Lily?’

‘I’d say anything was worth a go at this stage,’ agreed her father.

The following day saw Kathleen on the bus up to Cork city. Lily was being cared for at the Bons Secours Hospital.

When Kathleen walked into her room, Lily’s eyes were closed. Kathleen studied her, the black and purple circle around her left eye, the cut to her lip and the bruises on her lower jaw. She swallowed hard, knowing that it was impossible to even consider that Joe could have done this to his beloved Lily. She sat down in the chair by the bed, knowing that when Lily woke up and they spoke, she must keep calm, and not become hysterical at the dreadful injustice that was happening to her brother.

Eventually, Lily opened her eyes, blinked, then noticed Kathleen sitting next to her. Kathleen reached for her hand. ‘How are you?’

‘Sleepy,’ answered Lily, ‘very sleepy.’

‘Will they be giving you something to help with the pain? Maybe it’s making you drowsy.’

‘Yes,’ Lily licked her lips. ‘Could you pass me some water?’

Kathleen helped Lily sit up to drink some. When she’d finished and Kathleen had replaced the glass on the table next to her, she asked gently, ‘What happened to you, Lily?’

‘I really don’t know.’ Lily closed her eyes again. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘You must remember something,’ Kathleen urged. ‘You don’t think … I mean, you know that Joe could never have done this to you. Don’t you, Lily?’

‘The police keep asking me the same questions and I can’t answer them.’

‘They’ve arrested him, Lily. They’ve arrested Joe,’ Kathleen whispered. ‘They’re blaming him for what’s happened to you. You will tell them, won’t you? Tell them that Joe loved you, would never hurt you … you know he wouldn’t. Please, Lily, tell them that.’

Lily’s eyes remained closed. ‘I don’t think he would, no, but I can’t tell them what I don’t remember.’

‘What about Gerald? Did he try and … ?’ Kathleen couldn’t voice the words. ‘Did you have to fight him off …’

Lily’s eyes shot open. ‘Kathleen! He’s my half-brother. I can hardly accuse him of doing this, can I? Besides,’ her eyes began to close again, ‘as I said, I can’t remember. Now, please, I’m very tired and I don’t want to talk about this any more.’

‘Lily,’ Kathleen fought back her tears, ‘if you don’t speak up for Joe, they might send him to prison!
Please
, I’m begging you, I –’

‘That’s enough of that,’ said a voice from behind her.

Aunt Anna was standing by the door, arms folded. ‘I think it’s t-time for you to leave, Kathleen. As Lily has asked you to.’

‘Please, Aunt Anna,’ said Kathleen in desperation, ‘they think our Joe did this to Lily and you know how he’s always adored her, wanted to protect her.’

‘Enough!’ Her aunt’s voice was harsh. ‘You’re becoming hysterical and that’s not g-good for Lily. I suggest you
allow the police to complete their investigation. No one has any idea what Joe might d-do when drunk, and I hardly think you’re in a position to comment either, young lady. You apparently p-passed out from drink and saw and heard nothing.’

‘No, but I did see Gerald and he had blood –’

‘I said enough! I wish you to leave my daughter’s room
now
, or I will have you removed. And let me tell you, Sebastian and I are in full agreement that the man who has assaulted our d-daughter deserves everything he gets! And we shall see to it that he does!’

Kathleen ran from the room, tears blurring her vision. She left the hospital and sat down on a bench in the pretty gardens outside. It was useless, useless … and Joe, because he was Joe, was not equipped to protect or defend himself from what was happening to him. If Lily wouldn’t speak up for him, or Aunt Anna, she knew all hope was gone.

Three months later, Kathleen sat with her parents and watched Joe sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape and assault of Lily Lisle. Joe’s solicitor had managed to plead for Joe, due to his limited mental capacity, to be placed in a secure institution up in the Midlands.

Kathleen knew she would never forget the look of confusion and fear on Joe’s drawn face, pointing to his family sitting at the back of the courtroom as he was taken roughly by the elbows, a guard on either side of him.

‘Joe!’ Sophia screamed across the room. ‘Don’t take him, please! He’s my son, he doesn’t understand! Please … he’s my baby, he needs me … Joe! Joe!’

As Joe was led out of the dock and disappeared from view down the steps, Sophia slumped in her chair and cried pitifully. ‘He’ll die in there, locked up with the mad ones, and none of his precious animals around him. Oh God … oh God …’

Kathleen sat next to her mother, with her father, equally heartbroken, trying to calm her, and stared straight ahead.

She knew then that she would never forgive the Lisles for what they had done to her family for the rest of her life.

‘Oh, Mam,’ Grania said softly as she watched Kathleen’s shoulders heaving as she wept. She moved to put her arms around them. ‘Oh, Mam.’

‘Sorry, pet, it’s the telling of it that’s so painful.’

‘Mam, I just don’t know what to say. Here, have a tissue.’ Grania pulled one from the box by her bed and patted her mother’s eyes gently.

‘I know you’ll be thinking this was a long time ago,’ said Kathleen, trying to pull herself together, ‘but, Grania, I see Joe’s innocent, trusting eyes every day of my life. He didn’t understand, you see, what was happening to him. They put him in that place, that
terrible
place full of mad people who would scream and shout at the top of their voices, bang on locked doors to be let out.’ Kathleen shuddered. ‘Ah, Grania, you have no idea.’

‘No, I’m sure I don’t,’ said Grania quietly. ‘So, did you try appealing?’

‘Would you be surprised to know the solicitor we saw advised us we’d be wasting our money to try?’ Kathleen chuckled sadly. ‘Besides, Joe went into that place and
deteriorated. He’d always struggled with his speech, but when he got there, he gave up completely. I’d doubt he uttered a word for the next ten years of his life. He’d sit by a window, staring out, and even when we went to visit him, he didn’t seem to understand who we were. I think they must have put him on drugs, like they did all of them. Something to keep them quiet, make the nurses’ lives easier.’

‘Is he still there now, Mam?’

‘No,’ Kathleen shook her head. ‘He died of a heart attack when you were twelve. That’s what they told us anyway. Joe always had a heart-murmur, but I’d reckon it wasn’t the technical workings that went wrong, but the fact it snapped in two.’ Kathleen sighed. ‘What did that poor boy have to live for? He’d been accused of hurting the person he’d loved more than his own life. And ended up losing his freedom because of it. Joe didn’t start out with many brains, so I’m sure that working out what had happened to him was impossible. So he coped by disappearing inside himself. At least, that’s what the psychiatrist told us.’

‘Oh, Mam,’ Grania shook her head, ‘it’s a terrible story. Did Lily ever talk to you about it again? Did she remember what happened?’

‘That day at the hospital was the last time I ever spoke to Lily Lisle,’ said Kathleen. ‘Aunt Anna swept her off to London as soon as she was home and we didn’t see hide nor hair of her again. Until she arrived back at Dunworley House with husband in tow, many years later.’

‘And what about Gerald?’ Grania asked. ‘From what you’ve just said, I gather he must have been the real perpetrator of the crime?’

‘That’s what I’ll believe until my dying day,’ reiterated Kathleen adamantly. ‘It had to be one of them, and it could not have been my gentle Joe. But at least there’s some comfort there. I heard from someone who used to work up at Dunworley for Mr Sebastian Lisle,’ she spat the name out, ‘that Gerald got himself killed while he was overseas. Not, I might add, because he was serving his country in combat, but at a drunken brawl outside a bar in Cyprus. He died before Joe did, at the age of twenty-four. Which is how Lily came to inherit Dunworley House.’

‘Do you think what happened to her that night affected Lily? I mean …’ Grania trod carefully, knowing it was painful for her mother, ‘Alexander has told me that Lily suffered serious mental instability.’

‘I wouldn’t be able to say, because Lily was always an odd child and a strange teenager,’ mused Kathleen, ‘and she never let on whether she remembered what had happened that night. But you’d be thinking, wouldn’t you, if she’d remembered any of it, that it would affect her?’

‘Yes, of course it must have done,’ Grania agreed. ‘It also explains why you’ve been so worried about my association with the Lisles. I really understand now.’ Grania grasped her mother’s hand. ‘And I’m sorry if my connection with them has upset you and brought back the past.’

‘Well, as your daddy has said to me over and over, the past has nothing to do with you. But it destroyed my family, to be sure. Mam and Dad were never the same again. And, of course, it wasn’t just Lily, but Mam’s sister, Anna, who refused to speak up for her nephew. Even though my mammy begged her to tell the guards how harmless Joe was, Anna refused. If she had, Grania, they might have
listened. After all, she was the Squire’s wife and would have been heard.’