The Godforsaken Daughter (24 page)

Chapter twenty-nine

R
uby sat in the back of the speeding vehicle, heading toward Killoran. She was feeling dazed from the drama of the previous night and still sleepy from the sedative Dr. Shevlin had given her.

She’d been roused at 10:00 a.m. by May hammering on the door and trying the handle. But Ruby had made sure to lock it when the doctor departed, and again upon leaving the house. They would not be getting their hands on Edna’s case.

Not ever!

Martha Clare sat stiffly in the passenger seat. May was at the wheel. Having just passed her driving test, she was being extra careful and driving at a steady 45 mph.

A taut silence hung in the car. Mother and sister had barely spoken to Ruby back at the house. Now Martha turned back to her.

“I’ll be going in with you to talk to that doctor . . . just so you know. You needn’t think for one minute you’re going in by yourself, to tell him a pack of lies like you did last night . . . acting as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Well, not this time you won’t! You mark my words.”

Ruby said nothing. Just stared out the window. She was mortally ashamed at what had happened and was inwardly cursing May. If she hadn’t been so damned nosy, none of this would have happened.

“Are you listening to me?”

Ruby kept her eyes fixed on the view beyond the glass, tried to concentrate on the landscape slipping past: the fields, the sheep, the herds of cows grazing lazily, the sweeping grace of the Slievegerrin Mountains. The terrain of her childhood. The terrain of her youth. Another world. A bygone world now, pulled so cruelly from her by the woman with the grim face and hectoring voice who sat in the passenger seat.

Ruby tried to ignore her now. Martha Clare could take everything from her, but not her memories. Her precious memories. She saw herself on the road, herding cattle from one field to another, her father positioned in the mouth of a gate. Motorists stopping for his kindly wave. Next minute, tramping the drilled fields with him, checking potatoes for blight. Felt the smooth firmness of the spade handle in her hands as she dug them out. Heard his voice reach across time. “A good crop, Ruby, a good crop. Aren’t we blessed, now?”

A tear escaped Ruby’s eye.

Martha unbuckled her seat belt, all the better to confront her daughter’s impertinence.

“Now, you listen to me, young lady. You are not going to make a laughingstock of me. Your father and me did the best we could for you down the years, and this is
your
thanks. Trampling all over his memory, God rest him . . . dancing half-naked in the middle of the night round a bunch of stones on a stool, trying to drown yourself! Isn’t it a blessing he’s not here now to see how you’ve turned out? My God, I never thought it would come to this. Never in all my born days . . .”

“If Daddy was here it wouldn’t have come to this,” Ruby said under her breath. “Wouldn’t have to put up with
you
.”

“What was that?”

“I said I
wasn’t
trying to drown meself.”

“Oh, so walking into Beldam without a stitch on, in the middle of the night, isn’t drowning yourself? What would have happened if May here hadn’t had the presence of mind to look out the window? You wouldn’t be in the back of this car now. You’d be at the bottom of Beldam. You have May to thank for saving your life.”

Ruby looked at her mother’s scowling face, and suddenly she was seventeen again, traveling with her father back from Donegal. Her mother’s reproving eyes might be older now and more lined, the earrings more discreet, but the badgering message, the skirl of invective, was still the same. Ruby had let her down. Ruby had always let her down. It was as if the intervening years had never been. In her mother’s eyes, Ruby was still seventeen. Her growth retarded. A life quashed, ignored, overruled, because Martha Clare willed it. She had written the script and forced her daughter to play the part.

Ruby started to sob; sob for the lost years, her dead father, the thwarted ritual and the fate that was surely hers; the prison of St. Ita’s mental institution. She saw the wordless Aunt Marjorie in that tub chair. Faces, restless and resigned, behind locked doors. Kindly nurses in starched uniforms. She heard the jangle of keys and the clanging of tea trolleys. Worst of all, the grilled windows, high up and small, to keep the crazy people in and the daylight out.

“And you can stop that blubbering,” her mother was saying. “You’re not a child.”

“
Then stop treating me like one
,” Ruby wailed, releasing herself from that awful reverie with an anger both sudden and brutal.

“How
dare
you—”

“Mummy, let it go. Don’t go upsetting yourself. She’s not worth it. We’ll get her into St. Ita’s today and then you can get some rest.”

“
I’m not goin’ into Ita’s!
” Ruby roared. She thumped the back of May’s seat out of sheer frustration, to drive the message home.

The car swerved onto the grass verge.

May screamed.

The mother, still unbelted and facing Ruby, was thrown backward. Her head hit the windscreen. She let out a long moan and fell off the seat.

“Oh God! Mummy!”

A horn blared.

A bridge came into view.

May, unused to driving, was losing control.

A truck loomed out of nowhere.

Ruby’s instincts took over. She lurched over the driver’s seat and grabbed the steering wheel.

“
Let go!
” she screamed at her sister.

May ducked down. Using all her might, Ruby managed to swing the car sharply, just grazing the side of the lorry.

She steered the vehicle off the road, crashed through a gate. Careered down a small incline. Bounced over rutted ground, before finally rattling to a halt in the middle of a field.

A dazed silence reigned inside the car. May, slumped over the steering wheel, was sobbing like a child. Ruby, collapsed on the backseat, was struggling to regain her breath. The mother was still moaning.

Then: “Jesus, Mummy, wake up, wake up!” May was leaning over Martha.

Martha’s eyelids fluttered briefly.

“Jesus, Ruby, look what you’ve done! Mummy’s dying . . . oh God . . . oh God!”

Ruby bailed out of the back. She felt her mother’s pulse. It was weak, but not weak enough to merit concern.

“She’s
not
dying.”

“How the hell would
you
know anyway?”

“Oh, my head . . . my head,” the mother moaned.

“See, she’s able to speak. Look, help me get her into the back.”

After a tussle, the sisters managed to get Martha into a sitting position on the backseat. She’d gone very pale. Saliva was dribbling down her chin; her hands felt clammy.

May got in beside her. “Mummy, Mummy, you’re gonna be all right.”

“I’ll drive to the hospital,” Ruby said.

But when she turned the key the engine would not respond.

“Oh God, what are we gonna do now?”

Ruby tried the ignition several more times. She sighed. It was useless.

May was frantic. Sobbing her heart out. “God, you are such an evil bitch! If you hadn’t thumped my seat, none of this—”

“Shut up! If you’d kept your eyes on the road, none of this would’ve happened.”

Ruby got out of the car and slammed the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To get help. What do
you
think?”

Paddy McFadden’s Austin Maxi rattled its away along the road out of Killoran. Beside him sat Jamie McCloone, and in the backseat sat Rose, getting side views of everything like a dog.

“He didn’t keep you long, that Dr. Shelfin,” she said. “And that was a good thing, ’cos I filled him in on a lot of things, Jamie, tae save you the bother.”

“That was very good of you, Rose. I’m not much good at that oul’ talkin’ when it comes tae them doctors.”

“I know what you’re saying, Jamie. My father was something the same. But he always said a good laugh and a long snore will keep the doctor from your door. They were his very words. And you know, Jamie, he could snore like a buffalo in a tin mine . . . lived till he was ninety-nine and never darkened a doctor’s door.”

“God, he must of had great health altogether,” Jamie enthused.

“Health? You never seen the like of it. He was driving his car, cutting his grass, drinking his stout and smoking his pipe a couple of hours from the grave, truth be—”

“God, there’s a wommin on the road wavin’ her arms,” Paddy interjected.

Rose stuck her head between the men’s shoulders.

“You’re right, Paddy. She must’a broke down. Maybe you should speed up a wee bit.”

At his wife’s bidding, Paddy depressed the accelerator pedal and went from his usual 40 mph to an ungodly 45.

“Begod, I think that’s Ruby Clare!” exclaimed Jamie as the car closed on the frantically waving figure.

“Is it, Jamie?” Rose put on her cateye spectacles and leaned farther into the front to get a closer look. “Well, she’s a lovely, big, strong-lookin’ lassie, so she is!”

Paddy brought the car to a halt and wound down the window.

“Thanks for stoppin’!” Ruby said, breathlessly. “We’ve had a wee bit of an accident. Mammy’s hurt.”

Rose bailed out immediately.

“God, that’s terrible news. C’mon, Paddy and Jamie. You wouldn’t be Ruby Clare, would you?”

“Aye.”

“Rose McFadden’s me name. God, that’s a lovely cardigan, Ruby. Did you knit it yourself?”

“Thank you, Rose. Aye, I did . . . the car’s down that field.” Ruby pointed. “We need to be quick.” And with that, she galloped off, not bothering to look at the two men.

Rose’s Sunday shoes were not suited to the rough ground. She nearly fell twice. Jamie and Paddy helped her up.

“Maybe you should wait in the car,” Paddy said.

But a bit of rutted earth was not going to hinder Rose McFadden from being part of this great drama. Ruby had already impressed her. The tumbling ginger hair, the modest blue dress cut on the bias and that white hand-knit cardigan with them complicated stitches. No, by Rose McFadden’s lights, if this Ruby Clare could knit like that she could maybe bake just as well, too: a gift for any man. And she knew who that man was. He’d been sitting right there in front of her in the passenger seat, beside husband Paddy. Rose’s matchmaking skills, dormant for far too long, began firing into life.

“No, I’m all right,” Rose assured the men. “You run on after Ruby, Jamie. My Paddy and me’ll be right behind you.”

Jamie took off. He’d dressed in his Sunday best for the doctor and his feet nearly left him as he slid down the incline. He could see Ruby’s car in the middle of the field. Ruby was already there, pulling open the rear door.

“God, she’s a well-lookin’ lassie!” Rose declared. “Isn’t she, Paddy?”

“Aye, a well-lookin’ lassie right enough, Rose.”

“And no engagement ring on her finger neither. ’Cos that was the very first thing I looked for. And you see that cardigan she’s wearing? That’s a double basket weave, slip-stitch honeycomb rib, if I’m any judge. St. Anne the Astonishing couldn’t manage a stitch like that, and she tolt me she knit it herself, so she did. God, wouldn’t she be a great match for Jamie?”

“Would she not be a wee bit tall for Jamie maybe?”

“Och, Paddy, when did a couple of extra inches ever come between a man and a wommin?”

“Well . . . I s’ppose, aye . . . know what you’re sayin’ right enough, Rose.”

Ruby arrived back at the car. To her complete surprise, she found her mother sitting upright, eyes wide open, taking tiny sips from a bottle of water held by May.

“Oh, thank God you’re all right. I stopped some people out on the road. They’re comin’ now to help. They’ll take you to the hospital.”

Martha said nothing. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t look at Ruby.

“She’s not going to the hospital!” May snapped. “She says she doesn’t need to.”

“What?!”

“All right there?”

Ruby turned at the sound of a male voice. She was astonished to see a well-dressed man with a worried look peering at her. He looked familiar.

“Oh . . . I know you, don’t I?”

The man shyly proffered a hand.