The Rising of Bella Casey (17 page)

T
he girls were abject at the loss of Nicholas. Susan and Babsie had doted on him, vying with one another to have him sit on their laps and bringing him out on the street to show him off in his best petticoats. James did not make much remark about the passing of the baby; Nicholas had been too small to play taws or climb trees or skim stones on the canal. But Valentine, being
closest
in age, was baffled by his absence. He searched the house for days convinced that his little brother had gone to play the hidey game and was still undetected in a musty, overlooked corner. But after several weeks, even he gave up the ghost. There was no such surrender for Bella and Nick. The dead child weighed, heavy as an anchor. It was as if Nicholas still lay there on the sheets, in the hollow of their bed, his cries lingering in the night as if in protest at the selfish embraces that had dislodged him, while they
had attended to their own desires. Each time Nick reached out to touch Bella’s arm in the night or throw a lazy arm across her, she would remove it, even if it happened in the unknowingness of sleep. They suffered in silence though in her heart, Bella knew that between them – Nick by stubborn will and she by weak submission – they had let their lovely son die.

There was one punishing consequence that ensured they could never forget. Another child was on the way. John was born with the navel cord twice around the neck and once around the
shoulder
, which caused Bella hours of hard labour. Afterwards she had to go to the Adelaide. The afterbirth had grown to her side and when that was taken away she had to be syringed to stop the
mortification
. The doctor had to tear the afterbirth away with his fingers. When it was done, he warned Bella that it would be dangerous to bear any more. She did not think this would be any sacrifice. Since John had been conceived, Nick had not troubled her. But directly after his birth he began to insist once more upon his conjugal due, except this time he did it not with a tempting word but with a maddened eye. Five babies – no, six, for Nicholas had still to be counted − had been reared in their house, and though, by times, they had all bawled their heads off, it had never knocked a feather out of Nick. He had, indeed, slept soundly through night feeds and added to the racket by his own not inconsiderable trumpeting. But, for some reason, Nick could not bear
this
new-born’s cries. They seemed to magnify in his head and he made such a fuss
about the noise that Bella had to wean John early. She thought that Nick wanted only for tranquility. When baby John woke in the night she supposed that Nick, like her, heard Nicholas’ cries – the ones that had gone unanswered – and the guilt was too much to bear. But as soon as she moved the baby out of the bed, she realised how mistaken she was. It was his own voluptuous wishes Nick wanted satisfied and he was in no mood for tepid refusals.

‘The doctor says I cannot be with child again, Nick,’ she said to him the first night he came in from the alehouse, bloated with beer and insistent with it.

‘And is the medicine man to decree what goes on between a man and his wife?’ he snarled back at her under the covers. He made a grab at her chemise. ‘I’ll have no witch-doctor tell me what my rights are.’

He pulled her roughly towards him. ‘I’m only asking for my due, Bel.’

‘Please Nick,’ she begged.

‘Please Nick,’ he mimicked in a high-pitched whine. ‘Don’t give me that old guff, Bel. Pull down your bloomers and give your husband his satisfaction.’

He bunched a fist at her face while grappling at her nether regions to gain entry.

‘Or I’ll make you.’

She could feel the hard rod of his appetite.

‘How so?’ she asked in the hope her talking might distract or exhaust him.

‘Is this an effing debating society or will I have to give you a belt to get my way?’

‘You wouldn’t,’ she said.

The memory of the first time he had struck her assailed her all in a rush and though many peaceful years had intervened, she saw in the demented set of his face, the capacity for another blow.

‘Wouldn’t I?’ he asked between gritted teeth and then with no more ceremony he straddled her and made his way into her ruined interior.

His appetite could not be sated. It knew no bounds nor could it be safely corralled within the privacy of the bed-chamber. This new ravaging lust could manifest itself at any time of the day or night. Bella could only hope that if James or Valentine woke in the night they would mistake the sounds Nick made – for he was noisy in his demands – as coming from the street, or the
plumbing
. He became like another child who had to be given in to or there would be a tantrum. Once or twice, when Bella demurred, he would take her in his arms by force, there in front of the little ones. There were scenes of degradation that Baby John witnessed that haunted her for years. She prayed that what the baby saw before he had words, would be lost in the murky depths and stay beyond the reach of the memory. Nick would have his way regardless of the location – by the lofts amidst the gurgle of the birds, in the scullery even when Bella was awash with Reckitt’s Blue. He came upon her one morning cleaning out the grate, a
bundle of kindling in her arms, which was scattered on the rug in the parlour as he launched himself at her. What a sight she must have been, her brow smudged with coal dust, her bodice flecked with ash and twigs nestling in her hair. But Nick did not seem to see any of that, Bella realised. He saw instead some darkness that he desperately wanted to possess and she was merely the portal.

Her greatest fear was for the girls. Susan had just finished Final Standard at the Model School but had not proved bright enough to get the call to training. Bella was not altogether surprised; the girl’s spelling was atrocious and her mathematics a disgrace regardless of the time Bella devoted to her. They had fought bitterly over long division and square measure, matters Susan thought were open to disputation. She refused to believe there was only one method to achieve the right result. They were often at loggerheads like this; their natures seemed to grate against one another. In some of Susan’s strange refusals, Bella detected the whiff of Leeper, the father she would never know, but she pushed the thought away. He was finally out of her orbit and she was determined that was where he would stay.

‘The girl’s as giddy as a foal,’ Nick would complain.

Susan was his favourite, which in the past had been a comfort to Bella, the crowning glory of her deception. But in this new dispensation, it became a thorn. Susan had always had a way of insinuating herself into Nick’s good books, no matter how ill-favoured his temper was. With him she played the coquette,
Adele to his Mr Rochester. If she wanted something of him, she would follow him out to the yard when he was feeding the birds, though she hated them as much as Bella did. Bella would watch as Susan billed and cooed, pretending to adore them, then giving a shrill frightened cry when they flapped about her. Nick would put his arm about her and draw her in, which was what she wanted all along. Then she would pounce with her request – a pair of button boots, a trim for her petticoat. That was all well and good before, but with Nick’s new recklessness, Bella did not know what he might make of such overtures.

All of her attempts to protect Susan from the arbitrary lusts of men had been rendered futile. Wasn’t it
she
who wanted Susan to pass from home to marriage without the slightest blemish on her character? Wasn’t it by
her
decree that Susan was idle at home to spare her from the precise danger that had now lodged itself at the heart of their home in the person of Nick?

She would make excuses to get Susan out of the house in the morning when Nick was at his most insistent. Bring the children to school, she would say, which the boys regarded as a great
mortification
– to be accompanied by their big sister to the school gates. Or she would send Susan off to pay some credit off at the dairy, or to O’Neill’s on Marlborough Street to buy blood
pudding
– best to get there early, she would tell her, practically
pushing
her out the door and into who knew what dangers on the street. Susan was perplexed by Bella’s queer requests to go here and there, but she complied with her mother’s wishes.

Guiltily, Bella worried less about Babsie. She had started work at the box factory. The very moment she turned fourteen she wanted out of the traps of school. Bella had tried to talk her out of it but she was determined to follow her friend Cissie Bayliss to Harrison’s Box and Card, where she had already got a start and was earning seven bob a week. Babsie was plucky and being next to two brothers she was better able to fight her corner. She had a bit of a temper – from the Beaver side – but that was no harm for Bella couldn’t see any man take advantage of her without getting a clout for his trouble. But Bella was not sure how any girl, even one with Babsie’s mettle, might deal with the improprieties of a wayward father, dressed in the mental uniform of a man half his age.

One Sunday afternoon she was at the Cadby in a rare moment of peace. Baby John was asleep, the boys were over with their Granny Casey and Susan and Babsie had gone to the Exhibition in Ballsbridge. She was tinkering with Handel’s
Largo
, reading from the sheet music published by Mr Boosey with engravings of trumpets, viols and vine leaves on the title page. She was
playing
pianissimo
, using the under-damper pedal which made the music seem remote as if it were being played in another room. It suited her purpose entirely. She wanted merely to lull herself without rousing Nick who was taking a nap upstairs. But her touch wasn’t soft enough for after a while she heard the creak of a floorboard overhead and the tramp of his boot on the stair.
Her music faltered, her ear tuned now to his tread as she tried to decipher the language of his footfalls. Without turning, she sensed him right behind her and held her hands quite still above the keys. She acted as if she were a statue in the hope that Nick would take her for a piece of the furniture. Lately, his eyesight was failing him so that he frequently mistook people if the light was low. Bella prayed he might take her for some figment of his imagination and walk on past.

The ruse did not work for suddenly he had her neck in an
arm-hold
almost choking the life out of her as he lifted her off her feet and sent her sprawling with a loud discord over the Cadby.
Without
the slightest ceremony he hoiked up her skirts at the back – his own encumbrances he had already unbuttoned – and parting her legs roughly with his hands he took possession of her – she could barely say it to herself – in the rear of the premises. Her face crushed against the edge of the Cadby raised a weal but that was as nothing to his depraved assault, all of it conducted
without
a word. The silence seemed to amplify the bestial act. Then just as casually, Nick withdrew, righted himself and set down a tanner on top of the piano like a liveried young fellow swaggering about a bawdy house. Lifting his coat nonchalantly off a hook by the door, he disappeared out into the street closing the door quietly behind him. Bella stared at the dully glinting coin. She wasn’t even worthy of silver.

When the girls returned, Bella told them she had missed a step
on the stair to account for the mark on her face. They were so full of reports from the Exhibition – there was a replica of a Swahili village with natives dressed up in grass skirts and chiefs with war paint and head-dresses – that her explanation raised no queries. She was lying to everyone now, as if she’d been born to it. But the time came when she could dissemble no longer.

One evening, thankfully after the boys had gone to bed, Nick came home a bit the worse for wear. Bella made no remark about his state. Sometimes the drink invalidated his performance and it spared her. He would not eat, although she had kept dinner for him. But she did not labour the point. He sat by the fire and fell into a fitful doze. Susan was at the other side of the hearth at her embroidery; Babsie, at the table, was helping Bella darn socks. After a brief spell, Nick awoke suddenly, snorting and
startled-looking
. Babsie cast Bella a baleful look.

‘The dead arose,’ she said sourly. ‘And appeared to many.’

‘Hush now,’ Bella said, ‘see to your work.’

Babsie probably thought her craven, but she knew that Nick, hearing the tiniest wisp of conversation, would be convinced that he was the subject of it and that it must be derogatory. Too late.

‘What’s that, what’s that?’ Nick bellowed and rose from the chair, using his arms to lever himself up to full standing.

‘Nothing, Nick, nothing at all,’ Bella said, also rising and
dropping
the sock she was working on. ‘Babsie was just saying …’

He pushed her roughly out of his way and fixed on Babsie. She
stared back at him in a way Bella knew he would take as defiant. It had become her habit to try to guess what Nick was thinking one step before he knew himself. Despite his lack of book
learning
, he had always been quick-witted, but lately it was as if his mind was slowing up like the inner movements of a clock that had not been wound.

‘The cheek of you, Sir,’ he said to Babsie. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’

Babsie looked at Bella, bewildered.

‘Are you making improper advances to this lady? This lady is my wife, I’ll have you know!’

His eyes narrowed but his expression was clouded as if even he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

‘On your feet,’ he shouted at Babsie, ‘when an officer addresses you!’

In a kind of daze Babsie complied, for madness has its own authority.

‘Have you no respect for your superiors? You have no right to wear the uniform of the Liverpools, Sir!’

Bella could see Susan rising slowly behind him,
open-mouthed
. She moved to intervene, silently grateful that whatever phantasm had taken hold of Nick, he had mistaken Babsie for a soldier and not some glad-neck from the street. She interposed herself in front of Babsie just as Nick raised his fist so she caught the full force of the blow. It all but felled her and she staggered back, almost falling over. Susan was whimpering with the fright
of it all, but Babsie was just plain aggravated.