The Whipping Club (35 page)

             
It was nearly one week later when the return letter arrived from Officer Dolan, and it was no surprise to Nurse that he did not accept her offer, that his job was too important to risk losing.

             
The letter, though, brought a surprise of a different nature. Nurse’s loss of the man she loved appealed to Ben’s empathetic side; the savior in him responded to her rejection, and for a moment, Marian found herself thinking of Beva. If there was one thing the two women agreed upon it was Ben’s sensitivit
y to the plights of the
underdog.

             
“May I read Officer Dolan’s letter?” Ben inquired.

             
Nurse nodded. She tried to appear strong as she uncreased the folded stationery and left the missive floating on the dining room table.

             
Ben took his time with every word. Dolan’s writing was practically illegible. Why do men (large men) tend to create such tiny, stilted marks? Ben folded the letter and placed it gently in front of Nurse. He walked over to the cabinet and placed the whiskey and three port glasses on the table. He sat down next to Nurse. Still without speaking he poured generously and handed one to each woman.

             
“
Sláinte
,” Ben said. To Marian’s surprise, he attempted an awkward clinking of their glasses.

             
“Cheers,” Nurse giggled.

             
Ben’s kindness was already working; Marian could see it on Nurse’s face. Marian took a chair and raised her glass.

             
“I admire that Officer Dolan, that friend of yours,” Ben said. “It’s not every man who would have the strength to turn you away.”

             
Nurse looked across the room, reddened, tried to keep from another bout of giggles. She finished her glass, as did Ben, and he poured them another round.

             
“No, no. It’s fine,” Ben said.

             
No, no. It’s fine? Did Ben feel talking like Nurse was the best way to get through to her? The only way?
Rather endearing of him, Marian thought.

             
“I respect a man who respects his job, don’t you?” Ben turned to Marian who nodded in agreement.

             
“Things will change, though. I’m guessing we haven’t seen the last of him. He’s smitten with you, Nurse,” Ben said.

             
“Ah, go on—no, no.”

             
“He is. I can tell from the tone of his letter. He’ll be back, you’ll see.”

             
Ben topped off all three glasses.

             
“Ah, I’m off to bed,” he said. “You women have my head reeling.”

             
Ben grinned and downed his drink as did Nurse. When he stood, Nurse stood with him. They chatted gaily, and Marian was delighted to see Ben’s playful nature peek out from its shadowy regions.

             
Late that evening, close to midnight, she lay beside him and massaged his damaged right arm.

             
“She’s going in the morning?” Ben asked.

             
Marian smiled. “You’ve been good, though you’ve had more than a pint to get you through it.”

             
“Ah, you know she’s like your mother. She’d come for the wedding, and stay for the christening,” he said. “I’ve done my best.”

             
“Johanna’ll miss the company, no doubt. There’s no flies on that Jo. She hasn’t lost a card game since Nurse got here.”

             
“The ever whippersnapper Jo.”

             
Marian inched a bit closer to him, his red plaid nightshirt she’d taken to wearing hung off her left shoulder.

             
“Let’s have more kids, Marian McKeever Ellis,” he whispered, capturing the moment. “We thought we would by now. Twenty of them.”

             
Massaging his arm, Marian recoiled when Ben suddenly jerked from the pain.

             
“I’m past my prime, Romeo. And look at you,” she said, as he held his injured forearm, “you’ll be forty this year.”

             
“We’re not too old, Marian.”

             
“You just want things to be different,” she said as a matter of fact, wondering if he was using his arm as a crutch. She couldn’t believe the pain could still be so severe.

             
“Ah, I want things to be better,” he said, his voice rising. “Yeah, I want things to be different.”

             
“Ben,” she sighed. They’d had this exchange before. “Let’s get your arm better, let’s get Adrian home, let’s deal with what’s on our plate before we start thinking about adding more to it.”

             
Sensuality left the room like an embarrassed eavesdropper.

             
Ben turned, lit a cigarette, and lay quietly looking up at chipped pale paint.

             
“Why the cold shoulder?” Marian asked, trying to make light.

             
He didn’t like the condescension in her voice, Ben said.

             
“I’m worried about Adrian more than ever now, after Peter’s death,” she whispered, looking toward their closed door. They’d agreed not to tell Johanna about Peter’s gruesome death. They both felt she was too young to cope with such a trauma. “Please, for Adrian’s sake, try to help him through this,” she said, turning off her night table lamp.

             
“For his sake. For all our sakes, Marian. It’s awful.”

             
If only she knew how guilty he felt about the fate of his son. He pitched Mr. Darby another slant about industrial schools just last week and was told categorically no. Stick to his profile of the Briscoe family and their upcoming trip to New York, and a memorable march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade for our first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin. He felt a powerful urge and ethical obligation to report on these hidden atrocities, even if they hadn’t been personal, but he was denied. He wasn’t sure if he didn’t fight his boss and stayed silent out of fear of losing his job or of being blacklisted. Or was it deeper and more hideous: the selfish fear of losing his reputation.

             
He put out his fag and got up to find an old box of photographs he stored in the closet. Sorting through them for good ones of Tatte he planned to give Adrian one day, he came across an old school award from 1949. Voted unanimously by his peers, “Most likely to succeed.” He tossed the box aside and noticed a piece of pottery made by his
pistoy,
his plucky girl. Wiping it off, Ben brought it out of the far reaches of the closet. He watched Marian as she slept, wondering if she were faking to avoid sex.

             
Marian rubbed her eyes, glanced at Jo’s vase in Ben’s hand. “I’ve been looking for that,” she said, smiling like a dream. “I’m pleased you found it.”

             
He stared at her for a moment and then returned Jo’s handiwork to its rightful place on her night table as he left the bedroom for a nightcap downstairs.

Three months passed since Peter’s death. Adrian trudged to the bakery building by four o’clock each morning, very much alone. At this hour, when the madmen slept in their pious cells, he slowly grew to love the hum of silence in the bleak darkness surrounding him and found that he now craved the quiet, whose mysteries made him feel small, and then his problems somehow became smaller as well.

             
He turned on the bakery lights. Squinting, with a large horse brush in hand, he shoved the squirming rats caught on the sticky board into the boiler. Chores that once made him cringe now were done by rote.

             
Although Peter was gone, although much of his appetite had left him, Adrian continued to steal hot crusty ends of loaves, not ready to relinquish the routine that he and his friend treasured. As his sleepiness wore off, as daylight began, thoughts of Peter flooded him: Peter’s pale face, his beaten down body, his murder. Adrian’s clear memory of Peter’s dreadful end was like a leaking water tap that could not be turned off. Peter had come back from the woods bruised countless times. They killed him, all of the monitors. That night his shirt was torn and bloody. Nothing was said about rape or murder, but Adrian was certain he was killed. Bullied he was that night. God knows the monitors learned from the hardchaw Ryder how to torment.

             
As he entered the kitchen, his thoughts turned to Brother Mack. A kind man, like a father would be, bringing him Urney’s Regal Chocolate bars on Fridays, complimenting his cooking skills. Adrian enjoyed sharing Brother Tyrone’s baker’s lessons with Brother Mack and cooking the flavorful hash he created from a variety of leftover ingredients. And then he thought of his own father, and guessed Da would likely been glad to have him in Surtane, the uncultivated arse he’d been at home. How could he blame him? 

             
Adrian never mentioned Peter’s death to Brother Mack and wondered if he should, wondered if he knew details about the incident. His loneliness grew worse daily, his mind filled with murderous thoughts, and he wondered if he’d end up a killer himself. It became harder to hold back his anger and his growing desire to take Peter’s murderers a hot crusty loaf, a couple of sharp knives hidden up his sleeves. If he didn’t plan a successful escape, he’d end up doing something that would get him dragged off and locked away forever.

Nurse set off from the Ellises’ wearing Marian’s long, navy wool skirt, a simple white blouse, and a multi-colored wool sweater, which came down past her waist and hid the tightness of the unbuttoned waist. Marian’s tan overcoat and an umbrella hung over her arm.

             
Six o’clock on a Saturday morning, one wouldn’t think that the Irish Ferries terminal would be so jammed, but it was late August, the tourist season. A group of children in gray dress knickers ran about the terminal in circles, their guardians opening their luggage for the guards. Loud noises and crowds of people in twos and threes shouting over the competing noise of the children in the terminal made Nurse dizzy.

             
“What is your occupation?”
a customs officer half her age
inquired. “Would you be stating your address in London for us,” he barked at her.

             
A nurse, she replied, letting out a small giggle for no apparent reason, nodding at the strangers around her, making others in line uncomfortable. The young man, obviously new in his position, peered at her, giving her the jitters when he asked in what town was she employed. “Dublin,” she said, her eyes blinking.

             
Do you plan to visit relatives in London, and if so, may we have their whereabouts? May we have a look in your suitcase?

             
To this final question, she said, no, no—she forgot some business and would be back. She had no intention of letting an officer see her personal items, her penknife and the rest of it. A small vacation in a hotel by the sea would be lovely for a few days, and she wondered if the twenty-five pounds Ben had given her would do. She hurried along by foot from the North Wall Terminal to the Heuston train station. She worried that the custom officer might have called the guards as two police officers stood on the next corner, observing her. She averted her eyes and pulled down her kerchief as if she were on the way to church. Why did she torment herself? She wished she knew. But there she was in the heart of Dublin, passing by the familiar blue and cream buildings, and then Mr. Tubs Launderette, imagining being dragged into a Magdalene laundry, door shut, gate locked, an officer patrolling the grounds. She imagined Sister Paulinas’s face and then Castleboro, and suddenly, dots swam before her eyes. She took a deep breath and revived herself from the feeling of faintness. She found herself saluting the officers the way she automatically saluted a priest, and they nodded at her as she passed by.

             
As Adrian had suggested and Marian insisted, she stopped at a shop just outside the train station and pawned Marian’s bracelet, receiving enough for a good lunch and a weekend stay at any fine boarding house in Portrush, the pawnbroker assured her. Off-season rates still applied in some establishments; in any event, she’d have no trouble finding a room.

             
Immediately upon the train’s arrival in Portrush, she relaxed, took in the refreshing smell of the sea. She found herself sitting down on the street curb of an intersection about a ten-minute walk to the main attraction: the sea views and a littering of lively pubs at the pier. While eating an apple, she was approached by a tiny, wrinkled Sister with vibrant, gray-blue eyes, who warned her about the motorcars cranking by. “Are you lost?” the nun wondered.