A Girl Called Eilinora (6 page)

Owen busied himself with the bag, which held his reports and quills. He knew he had to say something before she left the carriage, but he did not know what.

She glared at him, proud and defiant. Her blue eyes flashed at his, transfixing him. As she spoke, Owen felt his mouth dry as his heart beat faster. He could make no sense of what she said and there was nothing he could say to respond that would make any sense.

‘Our paths will cross again, both very soon and far, far into the future. ’Tis a bad day’s work ye do here and ye shall pay the price.’

‘I have provided for you,’ he replied, anxiously. ‘You will be looked after.’

He was puzzled by the look she gave him, a look filled with resentment, despite all he had done for her, but then she was down the steps of the carriage and gone.

He shivered and pulled his cloak around him. He was alone, and yet the atmosphere in the carriage was intense. He felt as though he were being watched. His emotions were conflicted. She had ensnared him with her beauty, distorted his judgement, and terrified him with her words. As he sat there with his eyes closed, he could smell the lingering aroma of peat and smoke and if he didn’t know better, he could have sworn she was still there in the carriage with him.

The driver stopped at the inn four hours outside of Galway, to rest the horses before they continued on to Dublin the following morning. That evening, as he ate a supper of rabbit stew, Owen wondered how there were no shortages closer to Galway and Dublin and yet in Mayo people were starving to death on the streets. The situation was as abhorrent to him as it was to Mrs Gibson, although it would be almost impossible to convince her of this should he have tried.

In his room, the fire and the candles had been lit, the water in the ewer was hot and outside, the moon had risen. He worked on his report by candlelight, applying the finishing touches until his eyes stung and he could work no more. He placed the report into its leather folder, safely inside his bag and hung it on the bedpost. He locked the chamber door and pulled the bolt across tight. He reasoned with himself that the report was an important document; he needed to keep it safe. But in truth, he knew that the feeling of foreboding which had pervaded the atmosphere since they left Galway was still there and it made him afraid. He got into bed and laid his head on the bolster, feeling his head spin, with a strange giddiness. It was a feeling that had been growing in intensity since breakfast in the carriage.
I drank too much porter with my meal tonight
, he thought to himself, as he closed his eyes and gave himself up to the unfamiliar sensation.

*

She came to him in his sleep. Her silken skin tingled against his own, as she slipped between the cool linen sheets and lay next to him. Her face was above him and his hands lifted upwards and slid into her long dark hair, which fell over his face and brushed across his chest. She pressed against him, her flesh, the length of her long limbs, greeting his own and he responded and pushed back in welcome. He felt her soft belly become taut in response to his touch as his hands explored and probed her deeply in a way they had never done with any woman before. Her kisses felt like they were on fire; her lips, in contrast to her body were hot and everywhere at once. At the same time as her tongue was in his mouth, her teeth were biting his nipples as she moved down. Her lips encased him, sending his senses reeling as her hair slipped and fanned out across his thighs, stroking each raw nerve. He felt her move, inhaled her own warm breath, smelt her peat smoke skin and he swayed with her, surrendering to her caresses, giving freely of his own.

He was drunk. He was in heaven. He was asleep. He tried to roll her over, to own and order and possess her, but she gently pushed him back as in one flawless movement, her limbs slipped over and astride him. As he tried to enter her, she bent forward and whispered into his ear,
She’s trouble that one
.

He opened his eyes, startled, but she forced him back and pulled herself up and away and pushing his chest with her hands, she pinned him against the bed as she moved across his body and down again. She buried her face into the nape of his neck. She bit the inside of his thighs and his senses conflicted and screamed out in confusion. It was too much. She was everywhere. She was nowhere. He breathed deeply and vacillated between awareness and sleep, between dreaming and a conscious readiness for what must surely come next.

She took him and he entered her and it was like nothing he had ever known. She was in control, holding him back but he felt her willingly give way with ease as with one movement, he rolled her over; she was under him, where he wanted her to be, and he entered her again, this time he was in control. He would take what he wanted, how he wanted, as was the way with all the men of Ballyford. He was his father’s son. She would not dominate him. Her breasts, cold and firm, pressed hard into his chest and her wasted skeletal hips, as sharp as knives, jabbed into his own soft flesh as oblivious to the pain, he pushed himself, deeper and faster. Her nails clawed at his back and her teeth sank into his lips until he felt his own blood, mixed with hers, slip into his mouth. The pain was exquisite until an explosion of light engulfed him and as he closed his eyes and screamed out in ecstasy, he saw a beautiful young woman, with flaming red hair and green eyes and she was somewhere in the future, smiling down at him.

*

He was woken by the sound of banging on his door.

‘The driver is ready Lord Owen, when you are right.’

Owen sat bolt upright. He was drenched in a cold sweat and his heart beat rapidly. He was alone. He knew it in his heart. She had never been in his room. He had been alone all night. Thank God, thank God. She had not been in his room, but she refused to leave his mind. Don’t be a mad man. You left her in the poor house four hours ride away, he thought. Of course he had. It’s a dream. Get up. Get dressed. Get out.

‘Thank the Lord,’ he said, as he fell back against the pillows and uttered a whispered prayer. He had never before felt such relief. It was a dream.

‘I will be five minutes, tell him,’ he shouted back.

‘Right you are, m’lord. I have your breakfast downstairs ready for you before you leave.’

In a panic, he checked his travel bag, but his report was untouched, safe inside. The leather wallet was secure and fastened. The bolt and the catch on the door were just as he had left them. His heartbeat refused to steady to a gentler pace. Why are you checking? he said to himself. No one has been here since you put the bolt across the door last night. It was just a dream. Calm down. Calm down.

He hurriedly pulled on his clothes and took down his jacket and hat from the back of the door. He poured the water from the ewer into the bowl to splash his face and help him to calm before he went downstairs. As he raised his head his blood stained lip met him in the grey and mottled reflection in the mirror and holding onto the edge of the nightstand, he thought he might faint. His head was muggy and his mouth felt thick and tasted of blood. He wanted to leave the chamber as quickly as possible, but then he imagined he could see it, her hair, like a spider’s web, fanned out across the bolster and he picked it up and held it to his face. It smelt not of him, but of a country woman. Of peat smoke and fire. It smelt of her.

*

The matron had almost completed her morning rounds of the poor house, counting those who had died during the night, but had been missed by the porters with the body trolley. She would need at least a dozen beds today.

As she finished in the main hall, the stench of filthy bodies followed her along the corridor to the inner courtyard. As she scurried along, she fumed to herself.

‘How dare they give my room away? I’ll show them how difficult it will be without me around here. I will.’

She was on her way to check on the girl whose room, until yesterday, had been her own. She had been ordered to evacuate it, because a girl was coming who had to be given very special treatment.

‘No one has special treatment in this poor house,’ she had told the chairman of the board. ‘All are the same before God, all shall be treated the same.’

‘That may be so Mrs Foley, but unless we have money to run this place, all shall suffer. ’Tis God himself asking you to make this sacrifice and am I to tell him that your answer is no?’ the chairman replied, thinking about the two hundred pound donation that would be made, upon the girl’s arrival and for each quarter that she remained in the poor house, until such time as her long term future could be secured.

Mrs Foley wanted to ask the chairman of the board, why didn’t he offer her a room in the big house of his own? He had plenty of them by all accounts. Paid for by the donations to the poor house. She was quite sure that the benefactors from Dublin and America, few as they were would be less than pleased to hear that their money provided luxurious accommodation for a man who sat at a table each day and ordered others around. Why did she have to surrender her room? She had worked hard for what little privilege she had.

‘Surely, sir, you see that I need my room. I must keep clean, to pray, to have somewhere for me to escape from the fever, or I’m in danger of catching it meself. I work sixteen hours a day, I need a place of my own.’

Despite her rage, the chairman had remained immovable. Now, less than pleased, she marched down the corridor towards what had been her own private sanctuary. There were times during the day when she felt as though the poor house was the devil’s own waiting room, and she needed to escape, just for five minutes, to catch a breath and take a slug of her porter.

She had to hide it from the priest. He disapproved of all drink. The man is not natural, she thought to herself. No one can survive the Irish climate without drink. ’Tis what the drink was invented for.

She was sure that the only reason she had remained disease free was because of her secret stash of alcohol. If she was now going to be forced to sleep on the straw in the eaves with other members of staff who had no Galway family, she would need it more than ever. How else could she keep herself sane in this building of death and madness?

No, it wouldn’t do. She would take her room back. She turned the key in the lock, flung the door open and shouted, ‘We rise now for mass. ’Tis five forty-five. Mass is at six. Get up and out of my bed. I’ll be having my room back, just as soon as your benefactor has left Dublin.’ She moved over to the wash stand, and checked to see if anything had been touched.

‘What is your name?’ Reassured and comforted by the fact that her bottle of porter lay in wait, her voice softened a little.

She moved towards the bed, to the girl who had arrived the previous day. The brown blanket lay on the bed in a mound and there was no movement from within.

Mrs Foley looked into the chamber pot. It hadn’t been used. A furrow crossed her brow as she looked for the carpet bag the girl had carried with her.

Now, she shook the brown blanket and stepped back in shock.

‘Merciful God,’ she exclaimed, looking under the bed and around the room. ‘She’s gone, how can that be?’

Mrs Foley hurried back to the door and, just to convince herself that she wasn’t going mad, tried her key in the lock. It worked. She looked around the room, not knowing whether to feel happy or perturbed. It appeared that the girl had disappeared into thin air.

Her room was now once again her own.

*

The workmen arrived at the cottages on the Mulranny road with nails and boards to seal the front doors.

‘The landlord wants these cottages left,’ the sergeant said to the soldiers, who had spent the past few weeks tumbling one cottage after another.

‘This lot were cleared out by the estate workers last week and what was in them, burnt to a cinder. We will tumble the last one up in the field there and meet you all at the end of the road. It’s back to Dublin tomorrow.’

His words were greeted by a half-hearted cheer from soldiers, sickened to their stomachs by what they had seen out in the country. Things weren’t great in Dublin, but they were a whole lot better than out here in the windy, western wilderness.

‘Aye, sergeant,’ said two of the soldiers, who were keen to get out of the bumpy cart.

‘By all that is holy, this one is creepy,’ said Seamus, who was as wide as he was tall.

‘’Tis that,’ said Michael, with an almighty bang and more confidence than he actually felt, kicking open what was left of the door.

Seamus began to pull the rotting wood of the door away from the frame, while Michael kicked around the detritus of the clearance with the toe of his boot. In the dark of the cottage, he hit on something hard and he bent down to take a closer look.

‘Here, what’s this?’ he said, almost to himself.

‘What does it look like then?’

‘It’s a wooden box, there could be money in here.’

‘Don’t be an eejit, Seamus, if the people who lived here had money, they would be on a passage to America by now.’

As Michael pulled off the lid of the box both men jumped backwards in disbelief. Lying in the box were the remains of a baby, not yet fully decomposed. A knitted toy lamb lay at her side and the posy of flowers in the baby’s hand remained remarkably well preserved.

‘Jesus Christ.’ Both men crossed themselves and removed their caps.

‘What do we do?’ asked Seamus.

Michael dropped to his knees. ‘We say the rosary and then we carry this little babby to the priest at Mulranny. ’Tis all we can do for the poor little colleen.’

*

Mrs McAndrew held the muslin sieve while the water from the boiled nettles and herbs filled the stone jar.

She heard a tap on the door and made her way over slowly and painfully to open the top half of the stable door.

Her arthritis was bad these days, but as she had passed her hundredth birthday, she couldn’t complain.

As she opened the door, the cold sunlight filled the small dark windowless cottage.

‘Ah, ’tis you,’ she said. ‘I wondered how long it would take for you to return. Your little girl, they buried her last week, did you know?’