The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters (56 page)

‘HARRISTOWN.

HOME OF HAIR.

MUST BE SOMETHING IN THE RAIN.

AND PURE HARRISTOWN RAIN’S WHAT’S IN GROWANT.

‘And there’s a picture of the Swiney sisters painted on the wall, jest in case someone misses the point. It’s a copy of that ridikelus portrait ye had made of your piggy selves, like ye was the royal family sittin’ in state! Some scamps have added some amoosin’ detail to the picture, and we’ve somehow never found time to clean it off. That’s how busy we’ve been.’

‘I’ll break every second bone in her unlucky carcass,’ whispered Darcy.

‘You’ve grown rich on us so?’ asked Oona faintly. ‘Rich there?’

‘We’ve been trading oft the back of ye something fierce. Every time ye thought ye was risin’ above me and Harristown, ye was simply helpin’ me and Harristown on our way. Like Growant were the nit and ye was the Swiney Nitsters,’ she giggled, the high little breasts on her jiggling with merriment above her neat breastbone.

My first thought was that Tristan and Mr Rainfleury had been negligent. They had told us they were doing every possible thing to find and do down the Growant people. But they had not thought to look all the way back to Harristown, where it all began. The Eileen O’Reilly and her uncle had had the run of the place, free to exploit us – even as Tristan and Mr Rainfleury had.

But Tristan and Mr Rainfleury had not been diligent on our behalf in any way at all recently. I realised something that I should have understood an age past. It was a long time since either of them had been truly interested in us. The two men had made their fortunes on us and moved on, and they had colluded in so doing. Their betrayal had been orchestrated and symphonised. They relied on our not noticing – and our stupidity had been reliable. They had not traced Growant because they didn’t care that we failed. They had seen to it that they themselves were no longer contaminated by our failure.

The faces of my sisters showed the hurting passage of those same thoughts across their minds. Darcy muttered, ‘They’re just a pair of scuts and nothing better! Damn them and the dogs who gave birth to them.’

‘Ye’ve been as dead in the brain as
seven
Julia Pastranas, wid two smart fellies sellin’ the use of your bodies,’ crowed the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘Rainfleury and Stoker didn’t even wait till ye was dead. The world is laughin’ at ye.’

Ida said, ‘I don’t care what people think about us. When we were just Swiney girls in Harristown, no one thought about us at all.’

But I flinched, and most of all for Oona. How long was it since she had received a tender private letter from her hero? Weeks, I knew it. How long since Mr Rainfleury or Tristan had been to see us? I counted back the months and found myself in the middle of the previous year. They’d not even had the courage to face us, to see our starving features and our shabby clothes.

Darcy, Pertilly, Oona, Berenice and Ida stood quietly, though they let the air out of their chests simultaneously, with an audible noise. It was Berenice who asked, finally, ‘And your partners in this Growant business? Is it just your uncle?’

‘Well, until recently, so it was. But we’ve lately been joined by two gentlemen with a heap of practical experience in the field.’

I remembered Tristan’s letter:
Out of compassion for their plight, I have been looking to find the people work in other establishments
.

The Eileen O’Reilly’s face was avid as she watched Darcy grasp the sharpness of the truth. Tristan and Mr Rainfleury had simply transferred the material benefit of the Swiney empire into the realm of Growant. The Swiney Godiva Corporation had been dissolved at their convenience, leaving them with no responsibilities towards us, apart from those one might think moulded by years of tender connection with Enda, Berenice and Oona. They had realised that they might be rich on hair without paying the Swiney Godivas for the privilege. And they had not let sentiment or loyalty get in the way of their profits.

‘They was false to ye from their mouths to their marrows!’ guffawed the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘Pure poetry, ain’t it, poor Oona? Ye’d be the most unpoethical of girls not to see it.’

She hesitated, her face rueful at the sight of Oona’s tears. She turned to Darcy. ‘Yet don’t be givin’ them fellies too much splendour for their cunnin’ and their cruelness.
You
helped desthroy yourself, Darcy Swiney, so ye did, draggin’ your poor sisters down beside ye. It wasn’t just meself and Mr Stoker and Mr Rainfleury who piled the bastely ignominy on your foolish Swiney heads.’

She pointed at Darcy. ‘Look to your own black-eyed, black-tongued sister, girls! She’s the one who’s cut all your seven throats with her black tongue and her suppuratin’ bitter mouth. Aich person Darcy Swiney ever offended has lined up to take their revenge. Is there a child in Harristown, who Darcy Swiney once beat the lard out of, who has not grown up rejoicin’ in a chance to do her down by workin’ in the Growant factory? I see ’em grinnin’ at their work all day, even when the stuff burns their fingers.’

She took a step towards Darcy. ‘Did ye not treat Stoker and Rainfleury to the length of your snaky tongue all these years, Darcy Swiney? Did ye not offend the poor auld hairdresser, Miss Craughn? Did ye not put a great trouble on her? Did she not get bastely disobliged by ye? Well, hairdressers make good spies, Darcy Swiney. Miss Craughn has become a friend to me, and do we not enjoy a good chat about past times, and does she mind at all if I have a shred of paper handy with a pencil on the side? She does not. Your groom in Dublin, who ran back and forth with the brown envelopes to place your bets, did he ever get anythin’ but a sour look for his pains? He’s only too pleased to remember your great run of black luck for me. And what of those poor fake Pertillys? Did ye not bully aich one on them till they ran away on ye? But for your behavin’ against good manners, Darcy Swiney, your sister Swineys would have no enemy in the world.’

Darcy spat on the ground. ‘Were you so tenderly brought up yourself ? Weren’t you just the biggest splash in the puddle, with your greasy crubeens to give out?’

None of my other sisters had words for her feelings.

‘Ah!’ said the Eileen O’Reilly into the silence. ‘Why do ye let that Darcy make people hate ye, girls? Ye’re big enough to look crooked at me in the great mob ye are, but one by one ye aich have mouse hearts.’

So Alexander had said, I thought,
mouse hearts
.

‘Mouse hearts, you say?’ Ida smiled. ‘No, a mouse heart is
this
big.’ She pinched her thumb and index finger together. ‘You must take the very smallest knife to divide it. A lamb heart is also but a morsel. A goose heart even less.’

‘What is it at all that ye are talking about? That Ida’s as deminted as ever,’ the Eileen O’Reilly laughed. ‘Ye must be proud of her, Darcy Swiney, for the Devil is. I am sure ye fashioned Ida that way by your cruelty to the poor creature.’

The Eileen O’Reilly tapped her finger on Darcy’s breast. ‘And in speaking of poor creatures, do ye know what we found when we ploughed the clover field near your hovel? We found a little skellington of the tiniest dead babby. No bigger nor a doll. There was one of those awful shoe dollies of yourn buried wid it, jumbled up inside the shreds of a linen pillowcase, wid the name “Phiala Swiney” sewed on in red thread. Very rough, it was, that stitching. There was a date, too, somethin’ in 1854. Do ye know somethin’ about that, Darcy Swiney?’

Darcy’s face was set in pale sweating stone.

The runt looked around the rest of us. ‘I see none of your sisters do. In fact, Manticory has a partikeler startled look about her.’

‘ “Phiala”,’ I said. ‘That means “saint’s name”.’

The name Annora always called so longingly into the twilit garden, the name she always gave her favourite goose.

The butcher’s runt asked, ‘What were ye, Darcy, eight year old, was it? When that babby met its death. The same year ye tried to poison me. Are ye tellin’ me ye had nothing to do with that skellington?’

Oona and Berenice held one another’s hands, mouthing the word ‘Phiala’. Unconsciously, they shaped the syllables to sound like Annora’s all those years ago, back in Harristown, when she had keened the words into the dewy night.

Darcy’s face was stiff with rage. She said nothing. I thought again of all those letters from Phelan Swiney, Mariner. Our real father did not lie dead in the clover field, so was our correspondent really an impostor? Had we kept him away from us all these years? Had I tacitly helped Darcy to do that, by believing him in prison for hair despoiling or, more likely, killed and buried?

‘Your dark hair was inscribed wid crime from the day ye was born, Darcy Swiney,’ cried the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘With nits and shame and bashings and doing away with innocent creatures, so it was! In love with death, your whole black life, a great black witch, ye are. But I’m not freckened of the likes of ye!
Where’s Millwillis?
Do ye not know that the police will be here shortly to ask the same?’

Despite the solidity of her victory, there was something slightly ill at ease about the Eileen O’Reilly. Why had she needed to seek us out in such a paroxysm about Millwillis? She’d not been able to resist the deliciousness of telling us about our own betrayal by Rainfleury and Tristan, but there was something frayed about her own manner. She might have enjoyed unravelling the Swineys, but she surely remembered that she was putting herself at risk by dealing so with Darcy.

‘Do your people know you’re in Venice?’ Darcy asked.

The Eileen O’Reilly blushed a shade of late-autumn plum.

‘No one knows? I thought as much. So your relations with Mr Millwillis were not quite respectable then?’

She did not meet Darcy’s eyes. Darcy visibly rallied. She walked around the Eileen O’Reilly, inspecting her tight dress from all angles. ‘
That
’s knocked the indecent rejoicing out of you, hasn’t it? Is this the hysterics of an abandoned harlot herself that we are being forced to witness here? Did the dirty hack amuse himself with you, pretending to be interested in your old secretarial skills, in your Italian tongue, maybe even taking advantage of them too? But did he pay you in wages, or in kind? Do you lack a decent explanation for your absence? Perhaps it would be better if you
never
went back to Ireland? Perhaps you’d like to join him, wherever he is?’

The Eileen O’Reilly took each blow as it came, screwing her blue eyes closed for a second, and then returning to her defiant stare. But her skin coloured its way through every shade of blanched and blushing.

‘A red face is not becoming to the complexion, although it matches that unpleasant pale red on your head,’ said Darcy tranquilly. ‘A colour indeed thought to be the sign of a fool in many parts of the world.’

The Eileen O’Reilly’s eyes skittered over the many doors that led from the entrance hall and fixed on the one to the back garden. She spun round to face the water-gate. Could she even swim, the poor little butcher’s runt?

Berenice and Oona were behind her. Darcy and I stood in front. Ida was to her left. The vastness of the ship’s lantern barred her right. And from the large pocket of Darcy’s housecoat protruded the handle of the hammer that had already delivered us from Millwillis.

I said to Darcy, ‘Best step away. Best leave her.’

But Darcy’s eyes were fixed on the girl in front of her.

The Eileen O’Reilly uttered a moan, high-pitched like a shrew in a cat’s jaws.

‘You have lost the run of yourself, runt,’ replied Darcy. ‘And just think, if I’d murdered you the first time I’d wanted to, I’d be out of prison by now.’

She took a step closer to the Eileen O’Reilly.

‘Cover your eyes,’ ordered Darcy. ‘All of you, now. Ida! You—’

Chapter 51

Darcy lay on the floor, a thin snake of blood coiling out of her left ear. Her mouth was open, and her black eyes too, but there was no light in them. Her left temple bore an angry contusion embossed in the shape of the head of the hammer Ida had snatched from her hand.

The Eileen O’Reilly was kneeling on the floor, cradling Darcy’s broken head in her arms. She shrieked at Ida, ‘What has took ye? For why have ye murthered your own sister?’

Ida said, ‘She shouldn’t have drowned my cat. She shouldn’t have pulled my hair. She shouldn’t have sold my violin. She shouldn’t have put me in the madhouse. She shouldn’t have said what she did. All the things she said. For years and years, she said and said. She made bitterness out of sweetness and hardness out of softness. She was as crooked as the Devil’s hind foot. She spent all our money that we worked so hard and horrible to get, and she spent it on her bedlam tricks with the lottery. She should not have pushed Enda on the stairs. I was behind her. I saw it. She should not have made Alexander hate Manticory. She should not have killed your friend Mr Millwillis, no matter how bad he was. She should not have taken us away from Harristown. Do you remember what you used to say about her, back in Harristown?’

‘That she was a Divil, and the Divil’s creature, a snake, with all God’s curses on her,’ whispered the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘That Darcy Swiney had a forked tongue on her. Beyond anythin’, she was. There was no beating her; she had got the gift of getting one over ye, no matter what. And since we found that little skellington in the clover field, I’ve been sure she was a murderess besides. Did she kill Millwillis?’