Another Kind of Life (15 page)

I sometimes feel sorry now for the little girl I once was, sitting in her lonely corner of the kitchen. In all senses, that range was the only warmth I received; by its side, I learned to
decipher adult language, to understand the words that were spoken and, more importantly, to understand the significance of the silences in between.

I got books that first Christmas back in Dublin, and a new pair of boots. Grandfather Delaney came for dinner and slept in the big winged armchair by the fire all afternoon. We girls had to be
silent. It wasn’t hard. There was no cheer for us that festive season. Hannah was disinclined to play the piano; May sat quietly, poring over the atlas Grandfather had given her from his
library. There was little that was new. Grandfather didn’t believe in making a fuss over Christmas.

I remember thinking, even as a precocious nine-year-old, how ridiculous it was that everybody had to pretend to be happy on the same day of every year. As if happiness were something we could
experience to order.

We all went to bed early that night. I couldn’t bear any longer to see Mama’s eyes fill every time any of us looked at her. May slept instantly, but thrashed and tossed so much
during the night that she kept me awake.

I took my pillow and made my way to Hannah’s room. She was not asleep. Wordlessly, she turned down the bedclothes on one side and waited until I had climbed in beside her.

She kissed me on the forehead.

‘Good night, Mouse,’ she said.

I was glad. She didn’t need to say anything else. I understood that this was now part of our private language. We were both thinking of him. In our own way, this was our gift to Papa, our
way of wishing him a happy Christmas.

‘A
RE
YOU
REALLY
sure about this, Cecilia?’

Mary was braiding her sister’s hair carefully. She tried to cover up the bald patches, brushing wisps of fine, tired hair from one side to the other, trying to hide as much as possible. Of
all the injuries which Cecilia had suffered, Mary found these open, hairless patches of scalp the most difficult to look at. It seemed as if all her sister’s vulnerability lay just below the
surface of the tender pink weals that littered her scalp. They had been raised and angry before, in the days immediately following the attack; now they looked flat and defeated, like the discarded
cocoons of some predatory insects. If she pinned up the plaits, then perhaps the scars wouldn’t be so visible. Not that Cecilia would notice anyway, not any more.

‘Aye. You heard what Father MacVeigh said. And Dr Torrens. Why should them girls get away with it?’

Mary didn’t answer. Instead she said: ‘All right, pet. Just so long as ye’re sure.’

Mary didn’t tell her what Myles and the others had said, how they’d been pressing her all week not to let Cecilia make her deposition. She had listened to them, growing more and more
fearful for her sister, for herself. They had insisted that in this city there were great big yawning gaps between what was lawful and what was right. That too many times, the law hurried to meet
you, and justice was left trailing somewhere behind, so confused by complexity and contradiction that it lost its way, disappearing like smoke. The law is not for people like us, Myles had said,
and in her heart Mary believed him. But Cecilia wanted to do this. Something in her determination had made Mary realize that in some strange way, this was part of Cecilia’s groping towards
being well again. She couldn’t stop her, not now.

‘You’ll be with me, won’t ye?’ Cecilia’s voice was childlike again, all the certainty of a moment earlier suddenly evaporated.

‘Aye, I will, o’ course. Don’t you worry yerself, now.’ Mary hugged her, resting her chin on Cecilia’s shoulder, seeing both their faces reflected in the cracked
mirror which Mary had propped up on the kitchen table. Something inside her lurched with pity as the paleness of Cecilia’s skin was made even more apparent by the silvery shadows of mildew
ghosting everywhere behind the old glass.

They made their way to Clifton Street for three o’clock. The policeman who had visited them at home the day before yesterday had been kind enough; a big, imposing man
with a dark uniform and a deep voice. Mary had let him in, her face tight in the effort to conceal her hostility. She didn’t trust him; didn’t trust any of them. The deposition was
nothing to be frightened of, he had told them. All Cecilia had to do was to tell the ‘whole truth’. He stressed this several times during the interview, until Mary wanted to ask him
sharply what did he think Cecilia was doing now. She was glad she hadn’t. Cecilia simply turned her blank eyes to him then and said with quiet conviction: ‘I haven’t ever told
anythin’ else, sir.’

Now they sat, Mary holding her sister’s hand tightly, waiting for the Justice, Mr Dobbin, to arrive. A small, thin man emerged from somewhere among the shadows of the huge room and glided
over to where they sat. His hair was a yellowing white, like old parchment, his bushy eyebrows startling in their blackness. Mary thought his face was as colourless as his hair, as though he spent
too much time indoors, hiding from sunlight.

He whispered that Mr Dobbin’s clerk, Mr Fleming, would be the one writing down everything Cecilia said, and that she must direct her answers to him. Mary nodded, and watched as this
slight, somehow dusty man of indeterminable age effaced himself from the room. The door closed behind him with a sigh.

Cecilia tugged at her sleeve. ‘Is he thick? Does he think I’m hard o’ hearin’ as well?’

Her tone was half irritated, half amused.

Mary felt instantly guilty. She had developed the habit of responding for Cecilia on so many occasions in the weeks since the attack. Sometimes it was to stave off situations which Cecilia
couldn’t see coming; other times she was as bad as everyone else: treating her sister as incapable of speaking for herself. Mostly, though, she felt on guard in her sister’s presence,
like a soldier charged with protecting the innocent. She couldn’t help it; old habits die hard. Now she felt her nervousness increase on Cecilia’s behalf.

She was afraid of what might happen to her sister’s words, once they became indelible marks on paper. What if someone twisted them? What if someone ridiculed her, or made her change her
story, or reduced her to tears? They couldn’t just get up and leave – the policeman at the door would surely stop them, make them stay no matter what. Even the room seemed disapproving
of them – its high, elegant ceiling, the rich, nutty wood-panelling everywhere, the vast desk: all were like a reproach to her and Cecilia, casting light on their shabbiness, their
unimportance, their sad, ordinary lives.

Suddenly, a door in the panelled wall opened, and two men emerged, dressed in black, their expressions grave. One of them, the taller one, sat in the high-backed chair behind the desk. Mary was
so terrified that her mind went blank, her ears filled with a frantic whistling. She was hardly aware of Cecilia’s being led away from her to another table, much too far away for her to
comfort. It was as though she became suddenly paralysed, rooted to the floor, unable to stop Cecilia before it was too late.

And then everything went still as Cecilia’s voice, clear and steady, began to describe the events which now became eerily unfamiliar to Mary’s ears. It was as though her sister were
telling someone else’s story, the tale of someone not related to her, someone she had never even met. Hearing Cecilia speak made everything become detached, separated from the reality they
had both known and felt together. Drained of the emotion that had accompanied them in real life, the events lost their potency, their urgency. Mary wanted to interrupt, to cry out ‘But it was
much
worse
than that!’

‘. . . A girl named Ward saw what happened. A mob gathered of about a hundred. They were all workers in the same factory as myself. A girl named Agnes Neill caught me by the hair and
dragged me to the ground, and hit me on the back of the neck with her fist.’

At this point, Cecilia’s voice began to waver. But she didn’t stop. Mary wanted her to; she wanted them both to go home. She had the strongest feeling that every word Cecilia uttered
was like the cutting edge of a spade slicing remorselessly into soil. It was digging deeper and deeper into a pit of trouble for herself, for both of them. A shaft of sunlight pierced the high
window and Mary felt her face grow suddenly warm. At the same time, as though realization had come with the yellowy, dust-trembling brightness, she knew that she could never go back to Watson,
Valentine and Company. She knew it as clearly as she knew her own name. She would never be safe in the mill, not after today. What before had always been a threat, breathed in as naturally as air,
was now a certainty, a palpable reality. She would be singled out, marked even more than before.
Taig; fenian; traitor.
Her life there – their life there – was over.

As she listened to her sister, Mary was suddenly filled with an intense joy. This might not be how Ma would have wanted it: it might not be how any of them would have planned for it to come
about, but the end result was the same. They were free, free of the mill’s sickness and corruption. She would find something else for Cecilia and herself to do, she would make sure they
didn’t starve. The only important thing now was to look after her sister.

She felt filled with pride as she watched these men in their important clothes listen to Cecilia’s story. They didn’t bully her, didn’t interrupt, didn’t mock or threaten
her. Maybe all of this would make no difference to anybody, ever. Maybe these pages would be filed away into obscurity somewhere, forgotten quietly, their dark ink left to fade into oblivion. It
hardly mattered; whatever was done with them would make no difference to their lives. But the fact of the attack had miraculously brought something good in its wake: she and Cecilia had been given
– no, had
earned
a second chance. Mary was determined that the rest of their lives would be lived out somewhere, anywhere, far away from the fears and cruelties they had learned to
believe were an inevitable part of daily existence.

Something had been transformed in the telling of Cecilia’s tale: its horrors had somehow been lessened; their grip around Mary’s throat began to loosen. She felt suddenly light and
giddy, and full of heady compassion for her sister. She had stood up to those girls with the hard faces and tough, brutal bodies; they no longer diminished her. Mary swore that she would never
again have to be their victim.

L
ATE
IN
J
UNE
, some three years after we had returned to Dublin, Mama told us she had a surprise for us.
Her voice was light, intimate – but I sensed effort beneath its brightness. We girls were all going on a little holiday, she said, to our cousins in County Cork. I remember Hannah looking at
her sharply, as though she didn’t believe her, as though her words contained more than their surface meaning.

I had noticed that about Hannah since our return from Belfast: she treated Mama almost as an equal, and was frequently bold and outspoken in situations where May and I kept our heads down.
Whatever we might have thought privately, or indeed discussed later between the two of us in our bedroom, in Mama’s presence, May and I were the very souls of meekness and discretion.

‘Why?’ Hannah asked now.

Mama had some letters in her hand, as Lily had just brought the morning post. We were sitting having breakfast together, with the French windows wide open into the garden. For once, there was
warmth in the bright morning light.

Now Mama’s smile faded and she placed the letters and the silver letter-opener back down on the table again. She looked at Hannah coolly, and something in her tone warned Hannah to take
her questioning no further.

‘Because that is what I have arranged for you, Hannah.’

‘Aren’t you coming, Mama?’ I asked, more to break the dangerous silence I could sense building across the table between the two of them than for any other reason.

‘No. I have things I must do. I may have to go away.’

Her tone was flat, precluding all further discussion. It was the tone she always used when anybody mentioned Belfast – although nobody had dared to mention it here. That name was always
left simply hanging: nothing was done with it once it had been spoken. It seemed to float in the air, trailing long threads of silence in its wake. May and I had learned long ago to let it hang,
reluctant to get snared in the knotty complexities it brought with it. Once Mama said ‘away’, the three of us understood at once. May and I kept quiet, but in those days, Hannah was
different.

‘I’d prefer to come with you, Mama.’

Her tone was firm, adult, as though she were the mother, and Mama the child.

‘That’s not possible, Hannah, and I really don’t wish to discuss it with you here. The subject is closed.’

Even Hannah wouldn’t dare reopen it after that. I ate my egg and soldiers and watched my plate intently.

Somehow, I knew. Papa was coming home. By now, he had spent over three years in prison. We weren’t supposed to know that, of course, at least May and I weren’t. But Hannah had let it
slip once, late at night, about a year after our return to Dublin. We were all in her bedroom, putting curling papers in each other’s hair. She had clapped her hand to her mouth as soon as
the words were out, and looked, stricken, first at May, and then at me. We two were actually standing behind her, with curling papers and a hairbrush in our hands. We stared at her reflection in
the mirror, which stared back at us.

‘I didn’t mean to say that,’ she whispered, the tears threatening. ‘Please don’t tell Mama.’

‘I knew it,’ said May softly. ‘I heard you and Mama on the train that night we came back to Dublin. But you said I was wrong: you told me I hadn’t understood what
I’d heard.’

‘Mama made me promise,’ said Hannah, openly sobbing now. Her hands were clasped tight together, the knuckles showing white. ‘Please don’t say I told you.’