The Godforsaken Daughter (15 page)

Father Kelly was compiling the parish bulletin when he heard the sound of tires on gravel. He peered out the window, and was surprised to see Martha Clare and her daughter pull up in the driveway. Well, he had promised to drop in one evening. All the same, it must be rather urgent for them to have made a special trip to see him.

He went to the door. A visibly shaken Martha Clare stood on the doorstep.

“Hello, Father. I’m
. . .
I’m glad I got you in. Would you have a couple of minutes—”

“Of course, Martha, of course.”

Over her shoulder, he saw that Ruby was still in the driver’s seat. He thought it odd that she was not acknowledging him, but just sitting there, staring straight ahead.

“Isn’t Ruby coming in, too?”

Martha gripped the priest’s arm, suddenly fearful.

“No, Father. That’s the problem; Ruby doesn’t want to come in. I need to talk to you about her. It’s very serious.”

Father Kelly led the way into the sitting room.

“A cup of tea, perhaps? You look a bit pale, Martha.”

Martha shook her head. “No, Father. Thank you all the same. Father, I
. . .”
She swayed slightly.

Father Kelly helped her into the armchair. “Now, now, sit down there for a wee minute and take your time. Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems . . .”

“It’s the case, Father. Ruby’s got the
case
. . .
”

The word had a profound impact. For a few seconds the priest did not speak. An image was looming at him out of the far past: the image of a young curate entering a darkened room in an old farmhouse, riven with fear and fright.

“Edna’s . . . Edna’s case
. . .
?” he said at last. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I asked her to burn it, but . . . but I know she didn’t.” Martha looked about her, distracted, her eyes beseeching the holy pictures on the walls to lend her strength. “And now I think she’s . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“You think Ruby’s what, Martha?”

“Po-po
. . .
possessed, Father!” Her face crumpled. “Oh dear God, Father!”

He tried to hide his consternation. Resolved to keep the atmosphere light.

“Oh now
. . .
what would give you that idea?”

“She
is,
Father. I’m convinced of it. She’s not herself at all. She’s driving very fast. Something she never did before. And
. . .
the things she comes out with
. . .
well, it’s just not her. Sometimes
. . .
sometimes I’m afraid of her. Afraid, Father, in my own home.”

“Well, now, this must be a difficult time for her. She’s still grieving the loss of her poor father. People do and say strange things in the depths of grief. It’s a hard time for both of you. You’ve come through a lot. Vincent is a great loss. Not only to you but the community as well.”

Tears welled up in Martha’s eyes. She groped in her sleeve for a hankie.

“Maybe I was too hard on her
. . .
taking her away from the farm like that. So sudden and all. But I couldn’t see her doing all that work on her own. It’s a man’s job
. . .
and I needed her in the house with me. God knows, with my weak heart I’m afraid to be on my own, Father
. . .
and now
. . .
well, now I’m afraid to be with
her
.”

“The Lord’s always with us, Martha. Sure we’re never on our own.” He glanced through the window and saw that Ruby was still sitting in the same position, staring blankly through the windscreen. He wondered whether he should go out and have a word.

“And what has Ruby done now that would lead you to believe she might be
. . .
be possessed, as you say? Has she stopped saying her prayers?”

“Oh, we say the rosary every evening all right, Father, but
. . .
”

“That’s grand.”

“But her heart’s not in it no more. I can tell. And I see her go down and stand by
. . .
by Beldam. And that’s not good.”

“The lake?”

Martha nodded. “There was never any luck with it
. . .
And last night—”

“Does she know what happened to her grandmother now?”

“No.” Martha shook her head vehemently. “She’ll never know that, Father. Not unless . . .”

“That’s good. And last night, you were saying . . . What happened?”

“I got up to go to the bathroom and I
. . .
I thought I heard noises coming from her room. Like she was talking to someone. In the morning
. . .
well, it was in the morning that I saw it and I knew . . . I just
knew
.”

“You just knew what, Martha?” Father Kelly was choosing his words carefully.

“The picture of Michael the Archangel smashed on the floor. That’s when I knew. I would die, Father, if all that came back again. I just couldn’t cope.”

Father Kelly looked grave. “That’s too bad,” he said, gazing out the window again. Ruby still sat in that resolute pose. “I’ll come over and do a blessing.”

“When, Father?”

“Tomorrow evening, if it suits. The sooner the better, I think.”

“That’s good. D’you think
. . .
d’you think it’ll be enough, Father?”

“Well, we can only do our best, Martha. The rest now . . .” He gazed out at Ruby again. This time she turned her head, looked at him, then quickly looked away. “Well, the rest, Martha
. . .
the rest is up to God.”

Chapter seventeen

Bel
fast, 1983

O
ut of your vulnerabilities will come your strength,” said the sage.

So which of the sages, thought Henry Shevlin, was that? Yes, he remembered: Sigmund Freud. The great Siggy, as his friends used to call him—though never to his face. Siggy, the founder of psychotherapy. Siggy, the man who gave us the notion of “hysteria,” borrowed from that crazy French doctor who ran the lunatic asylum in Paris. It was, Henry mused, St. Ita’s as seen by Dante: an Inferno housing 4,000 incurably mad women.
Hysteria
. . .
hysterectomy
. . . words derived from an ancient word for the womb. Did hysteria affect women only? Siggy was convinced it did. But Henry had seen his fair share of male sufferers, too.

He swung the white Mercedes convertible onto Finaghy Road—and slammed on the brakes immediately. Two heavily armed RUC officers were directing traffic past a fresh crater in the tarmac. It could have been made by anything, he thought, but most likely an explosive, given the political climate.

One of the policemen raised a hand. Henry wound down the window.

“Where you goin’, sir?”

“Kashmir Road.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to take an alternative route. Through Broadway’s the quickest, then the Falls and the Springfield Road.”

He looked at the dashboard clock, didn’t exactly relish the idea of driving through that part of town, a heartland of Republican sympathizers. But . . .

He turned left at the Broadway traffic circle as instructed, and was soon negotiating a maze of rough streets scarred with graffiti and gable murals commemorating various events in the Republican calendar. Not that murals and graffiti were alien to Belfast; they were part of the cityscape since the Troubles began. The Troubles: code for the bloody internecine feuding between Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and Republican, that had swept across Northern Ireland a decade before and which, sadly, showed no sign of abating.

There were several foot patrols of British Army personnel on duty. At the sight of them, Henry became unnerved. Foot patrols brought the ever-present threat of sniper fire. He tried to speed up but was forced to stop again for a red light.

Only then did he see it.

On a wall across from the junction was an enormous mural. It intrigued him because it was so unusual. Painted in black and white, it depicted three women “volunteers”: one in uniform, and two brandishing firearms, all enclosed within a
♀
symbol. Three women fighters: a Muslim wearing a niqab, a black African, and the third one, the central figure, in the signature black beret of the IRA. There was a slogan daubed to the left of the image. It read:

SOLIDARITY BETWEEN WOMEN IN ARMED STRUGGLE
.

More hysteria, Henry thought. Is this what the—

The thought died abruptly. He was staring at the central figure: the Irishwoman in the paramilitary uniform and beret. She was gazing directly at him.

There could be no mistake: the woman’s face bore a striking resemblance to that shown in the sheaf of posters that lay behind him on the rear seat of the car. The poster with the bold headline that asked,
Have you seen this woman?

It was Connie. That was
Connie’s
face painted on the brick wall.

He was stunned. His eyes were roving over the image. He was recognizing Connie’s distinctive style of painting. He saw it in all her work. They’d once had a lighthearted discussion about it.

“Every artist paints herself,” she’d said. “Or
him
self, if you want to be picky about it.”

“Nonsense! Next you’ll be telling me that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Leonardo.”

“How do you know it’s not?”

“Oh, don’t be daft! The very idea!”

“All right, let’s stick with more recent stuff. You go along to any gallery with portraits—especially group portraits—and I guarantee you’ll see that all the sitters resemble each other. That’s because an artist doesn’t paint what she sees in front of her. She paints what she sees in her head, and that’s usually the face she sees every day in the mirror.”

He recalled their weekend in Amsterdam in 1980. They’d visited the Rijksmuseum, and had stood in awe of Rembrandt’s colossal canvas:
The Night Watch
. They’d annoyed the other visitors by laughing when Connie drew his attention to the almost familial resemblance between all the painted men. Henry had argued—somewhat weakly—that there’d been a lot of inbreeding in Holland in those days.

The loud blast of a car horn jolted him out of his daydream. The traffic light had turned green. He was holding up a line of cars.

Startled, he drove off. He needed to get to the gallery fast.

A knot of rough-looking youths stared sullenly at the shiny white convertible as he pulled up on Kashmir Street. Not to worry. He could keep an eye on the car through the Mondrian’s big picture windows—windows, Connie had informed him, that were shattered more than once during the worst of Belfast’s rioting. He saw a woman waving at him from behind the left window.

“Henry, good to see you,” Maeve Hanratty said as she admitted him. Slim, she was dressed simply and wore little makeup. “Any news?”

“I was hoping you had some for me.”

She was looking at the sheaf of posters in his hand. “You have more
. . .
?”

“Yes. People are putting them up all over the place. It’s very kind of them. I was hoping
. . .”

“Of course. Let me—”

“I need to see what she was working on last,” he said.

“Yes
. . .
yes, of course.” Maeve led him through a door to the studio workshop.

The large, bright space was sparely furnished; there was a trestle table loaded with cans of paint and brushes, a swivel chair, and two stepladders supporting a broad plank. Several huge primed canvases leaned against one wall.

“There it is,” Maeve said, pointing to a large canvas on the back wall. It was done predominantly in monochrome: a muddy brown on a cream background. The theme appeared to be one of violence—or, better said, armed female resistance to oppression.

Henry left the posters on a table and went closer to the image. But he didn’t need to be too close; it was big enough to be viewed from a distance. It was large enough to fit on the gable wall of a house.

Nonplussed, he studied the figures rendered in brown. They dominated the foreground. They appeared to be women in combat uniform. Some held firearms; others were brandishing knives, axes, and what appeared to be tricolors. All looked furious and potentially homicidal. As a body, they were in hot pursuit of a band of fleeing males decked out in bowler hats and sashes. They were clearly members of the Protestant Loyal Orange Lodge.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Maeve was saying.

“What production’s this, for pity’s sake?”

“Oh, it’s not for a drama. It was commissioned a couple of months back by a private individual.”

“A private individual? I don’t understand.”

“Yes, an American gentleman. Didn’t Connie mention him? He’d been to the Lyric to see
A Touch of Class,
and was so taken with our sets he sought us out.”

Henry, not for the first time in the past few days, found himself tongue-tied. But not for long. “When
. . .
when did she
. . .
when did Connie get involved in all of this?”

“Sorry, all of what?”

“This political stuff. I’ve just seen a mural on the Falls Road, which could only have been done by her.”

“Oh, that. No, Connie didn’t actually paint that. It, again, was a commission from Mr. Halligan. She painted the canvas to his specifications. She wasn’t to know that it was going to be copied onto that wall.”

“What?! Wasn’t she annoyed when she heard about it?”

Maeve shrugged. “No, not really. She was quite flattered, actually
. . .
said it wasn’t a bad imitation.”

“God, I really can’t believe what I’m hearing. Are you out of your minds? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Look, Henry, I really think you’re blowing all this out of proportion. She didn’t want to tell you because she knew what your reaction would be.” Maeve sighed. “Besides which
. . .”

Henry glared at her. “Besides which
. . .
what
?”

“Well
. . .
he paid so well, there was just no question of turning him down. And always up-front. In that respect, it showed how much he trusted Connie to carry out the commission and do a good job.”

“Who is this bloody man? I need his address and I need it
now
. The police have to be informed.”

“The p-police?”

“Yes, the police!”

“Harris
. . .
Harris Halligan. And don’t ask me where he lives. He never said. Nor did he leave us a telephone number. He could be back in the States now, for all I know.”

“Didn’t you ask him?”

“Yes
. . .
well, I did, but he
. . .
he just said he’d call us.”

“My God, wasn’t that evidence enough that you were dealing with someone not on the level?” He waved a hand at Connie’s painting. “He commissions this provocative nonsense. He pays large sums of money
. . .
And just while we’re on the subject, how much
did
he pay her?”

“One and a half thousand
. . .
give or take
. . .”

“One and a half thousand
pounds
! Really! And how was it paid?” He held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me
. . .
in cash, right?”

Maeve nodded. “Afraid so.”

Henry was dumbfounded. The reason Connie’s bank account ha
dn’t been debited was staring him right there in the face. With fifteen hundred pounds she could disappear for quite
some time.

Maeve sat down slowly on the swivel chair. “Look, Henry, I don’t know how to say this, but
. . .
but he—I mean Halligan—he took Connie out to lunch a couple of times. But
. . .
I don’t believe there was anything to it.”

“Describe him for me, please. Or are you going to tell me your powers of vision have suddenly deserted you as well as your good sense?
”

“Look, I know you’re upset—”

“Damn right I’m upset! One minute I hear from my father that she was unhappy, and might—just might—be suicidal. Now you’re telling me she’s likely run off with a wealthy American with a fondness for IRA propaganda. Well, it’s a pity you didn’t think to tell me sooner, Maeve, before she disappeared off the face of the bloody earth.”

With that, he took a Stanley knife from the cluttered table and advanced on the canvas. Before Maeve could intervene, he slashed it viciously a number of times.

“I think you should leave!”

“And I think you should tell me exactly what’s going on. For, if you don’t, I’ll have this place closed down.”

“You can’t do that, Henry.”

“Oh no? I own the lease on this building, or had you forgotten? Now, I want the truth. Was she having an affair?”

Maeve was distraught. She’d gone pale, frightened by Henry’s unaccustomed show of temper. “Yes
. . .
no. I mean, I don’t know, Henry. Honest. I was only here during the day. And what I’m saying is true. They went out for lunch twice.”

“Where did they go?”

“Ah
. . .
hmm. I don’t—”

“
Where did they go?
”

Maeve was backing away. “For God’s sake, put that knife down! You’re scaring me.”

Henry looked down at his trembling hand, shocked to see he was still gripping the Stanley knife.

“Sorry,” he said, realizing how menacing he must appear to poor Maeve. He set it back on the table. “Look, I just want the truth.”

“The Europa
. . .
the Europa Hotel
. . .
I think.”

“When?”

“The last time
. . .
about
. . .
about ten days ago.”

He’d wasted no more time but had driven straight to the Europa. It was one of Belfast’s best-known landmarks at that time; notorious for having earned the sobriquet “most bombed hotel in Europe.”