The Angels of Lovely Lane (6 page)

Dana had seen the bundle of knitting on the chair in the kitchen and each night she had gone to bed knowing her mother would be sitting up well into the small hours, surviving on far less sleep than was good for her as she worked like a mad woman to finish the clothes she wanted to send Dana away with. Clothes she could be proud of. She had already knitted the navy blue cardigan on the list and was worried sick that the two little pockets she had worked into the front would make it unacceptable for wearing on the wards.

‘The food is very different over there in Liverpool. It’s not what you would be fed at home,’ she whispered under her breath as she looked around the café, not wanting to offend anyone who might be visiting from Liverpool. As she spoke, the waitress placed two plates of buttered seed cake on the table. ‘And I doubt there’ll be any of that. I hear they are still on the rationing, God help them.’

But it wasn’t the seed cake her mother really wanted to discuss, or the shortage of butter. That wasn’t the reason she had agreed to hitch a seat with Mr Joyce, and traipse around Galway. She wanted time with her daughter alone, out of the house. It was the men in Liverpool she wanted to talk about.

‘Listen while I tell ye, Dana,’ she said, pouring the steaming tea from a large brown earthenware pot through the strainer balanced on her cup, ‘the men in Liverpool, they can be very forward so they can. Different from Irish boys altogether. I want you to promise me ye will keep away from all men until ye have finished the training, and that ye will come home and visit me as often as ye can, so I can see for meself now that ye aren’t wasting away. And Dana, ye must attend mass at least twice a week. Never miss mass, Dana, promise me that now, make me that promise. I know it’s going to be hard with your shifts, but you must pledge me those three things, will ye? That’s all I ask. Jesus, I don’t care if ye never get married, not at all I don’t. There are better things can happen in this life and I’m all for the nursing.’

Dana knew her mother was lying. As the mother of an only girl, Mrs Brogan wanted a lot more for her daughter than green-toothed Patrick and the house next door. She did want her to marry, and to marry an Irish boy at that, but she was also scared of losing her.

‘I don’t want to become one of those women who only gets to hear about her children in a letter,’ her mother was continuing. ‘Sure, Mrs McGuffy, she hasn’t seen her lad since he left home five years ago, not once. Mind, ye have to ask why would he want to come home with a father like that. I’d keep well away too, but I feel sorry for her so I do, on the days when she’s not soaked in the drink, anyway. I dread people asking me so how long is it since you’ve seen your Dana now, knowing full fine well I will have to lie to save me the embarrassment. I’ll never be off my knees, I can see it now.’ Her voice was beginning to rise as she contemplated having to atone for the sin of lying.

‘I will, Mammy. I promise I will come home every holidays. Ye won’t be embarrassed by me. Sure, I will be the most dutiful daughter. I want ye to be proud of me.’ Maybe it was because she was an only child, but Dana knew she carried all her mammy’s hopes and dreams for the adventures she had never had herself.

*

On her last night in Ireland, her parents threw a goodbye party in the village hall and every resident, other than the very elderly and the infirm, attended. When a free drink was on offer the village united, and everyone who had given out about Dana’s being above herself, or accused her in whispered conversations of being no better than she ought to be, arrived with a generous gift in hand. If there was a party to be had, all was forgiven. Dana laughed at the prospect of trying to lift a case so full of parting gifts. She knew her mammy would make her pack even the small net of potatoes Mrs Gallagher had brought, tied with a ribbon at the top.

‘’Tis the first thing they all miss when they leave home,’ Mrs Gallagher whistled through her toothless gums, ‘so best to be taking some with her.’

‘Mammy, I cannot carry potatoes all the way to Liverpool. Surely to God they have them over there,’ Dana hissed when Mrs Gallagher left their side, which she did the second someone asked her was she wanting a Guinness.

‘I’m not saying they don’t.’ Mrs Brogan was offended. ‘No one in their right mind ever had a bad word to say about a potato, Dana. But they won’t have come from Belmullet and that’s what’s important. And, sure, ye cannot leave a gift behind. That would be most rude.’

‘But Mammy, ’tis a sack of potatoes!’ Dana was becoming exasperated.

‘Aye, but it’s only a small one, Dana, and would ye look at that lovely ribbon she’s tied around the sacking. The time she must have taken threading that.’

Dana moved to stand near the main doors to greet her friends. Those who worked in Dublin had travelled back on the train to Galway. Her father had taken a trailer on the back of the van to collect them. It took a party back home to tempt them to leave the bright lights and the night life of Dublin town. Everyone knew someone who was working in Liverpool, and numerous pieces of paper and envelopes were shoved into her hand bearing the names and addresses of former Belmullet and Atlantic coast residents who had sailed the well-worn route across the Irish Sea before her. Some were nuns working in schools and convents, some were priests, saving souls on the back streets of Liverpool. She recognized all the surnames and that was all she needed. ‘I’m a Brogan from Mayo,’ was all she would ever need to say by way of introduction.

‘There’s a Brogan in Watford, now,’ her da had said. ‘My cousin who was gone when he was just sixteen, he finished up there. You’ll find him easy enough if ye need help. Just ask anyone for Danny Brogan. They’ll all know him.’

It was the first helpful thing he had said since the day the letter had arrived at the start of the summer.

Once the fiddlers struck up and the Guinness flowed she danced with the best of them, until, exhausted and hot, she stopped to fetch herself a glass of water and pay a visit to the privy. Some of her friends were having fun dancing with their peers, while others, exhausted from the journey back on top of a week’s work, sat on the chairs to gossip. A neighbour’s baby lay on her mammy’s knee, thumb in mouth, sucking away. Dana caught Mrs Brogan’s eye as she left the hall and made a sign between the dancing and jigging heads, that she was off to find herself a drink. Her mother nodded and smiled in response, tapping her feet to the music. Another neighbour sat next to her, nursing her own babby and waved across as well.

For a moment, a shiver of fear ran down Dana’s spine. If she hadn’t got into St Angelus, if she had been pressured into marrying green-gob Patrick, in a few years from now that could have been her. Dana could see the pleasure on her mammy’s face as she kissed the neighbour’s baby on the top of his head, and she struggled to understand how a life of nothing but selfless giving and hard work could ever make for happiness. Dana had to do something, make something of herself, before she settled down to that. All her mother needed to experience bliss was for those she loved to be having a grand time. Even her da, standing at the bar with his friends, looked relaxed. She heard the familiar roar of laughter and could see his shoulders shaking up and down as a friend shouted something in his ear.

Slipping out of the back door, she stood on the step for a moment and closed her eyes to let the cool air lower the temperature of her burning cheeks. It was hot in the hall and perspiration trickled from her neck down between her breasts. She undid the buttons on her cardigan and pulled her blouse out of her skirt, shaking the material to let the cold fresh air waft up and over her body. Feeling better she started along the cinder path to the outhouse, and caught herself in surprise as from nowhere Patrick stepped out into her path.

‘So, you’re off then,’ he said, putting a cigarette into his mouth and pulling hard.

She steeled herself and straightened her back, and for the first time in her life in her own home town she felt uncomfortable and scared.

‘I am, Patrick. I’m away in the morning. Isn’t that why you are here, to wish me well and say goodbye?’

She sounded stronger than she felt. She had noticed a change in Patrick over the past few months. He had not concealed his disappointment well.

Patrick flopped to the side and, smirking, leant against the wall of the turf shed. ‘Is that so? Do ye think ye will be marrying some grand and fancy doctor and selling the farm, then?’

Dana ignored him and, taking a breath, lifted her head higher than usual. Hoping she looked a great deal bolder than she felt, she walked purposefully on. Aware of every step she took, she felt her heart beat faster, her mouth become dry and the hairs on her arms bristle and rise. She wasn’t scared of Patrick. He may have been counting on the fact that their fathers had been planning their wedding day and the unification of the two farms for more years than she could remember, but as far as she was concerned that was their plan, not hers. He may have been affronted by her lack of response to his clumsy romantic advances, but nevertheless, they had known each other since birth and played together when they were children. They had walked to school together every day until they had parted ways, he heading to the boys’ side of the school and she to the girls’. He was her old playmate, whose shoelaces she had tied until he was ten because he could never get the hang of it himself.

As she came alongside him, she could smell the alcohol. He looked agitated. His eyes were red and wild-looking; his lip snarled in a way she had never seen before. This was not the Patrick she knew, and she felt her skin tighten in response to a rush of adrenalin, as goose-pimples covered her body.

As she quickened her steps and hurried by, he pushed himself away from the wall and stretched up to his full height, fixing her with his gaze, but he said no more. Once more, she had outwitted him. God, I’ll be glad to be gone, she thought, as she rinsed her hands under the tap in the privy and splashed the cold water on to her face. She hung around, hoping someone else would follow her in, so that she could engage in bright chatter and wait to walk back with them into the hall. Or maybe Patrick would finish smoking and join his da and the other lads in the pub they had known since they were kids. Surely he would be gone by now. As she looked outside, she saw that her prayers had been answered. The path was clear, and all that remained of Patrick was his cigarette smouldering on the cinder path. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, she left the outhouse and walked down the cinder path.

She didn’t see his hand shoot out from the shadows and grab at her arm, or feel him pull her violently towards the turf shed. It was all so quick that before she could scream he had pushed her inside and slammed the door with a bang.

‘What are you doing, you fecking eejit?’ she snapped, feeling instantly guilty for being in a dark enclosed space with him. Her nostrils filled with the smell of the dark brown peat, and she felt the cut bricks digging into her back as he pushed his weight against her. She knew that if she were seen in the shed with Patrick she would be viewed as the guilty one. It would be she who was whispered about, not he. No two people in a dark enclosed place would be believed to be up to any good. They would laud him as a bold lad and condemn her as a harlot.

Patrick didn’t reply. He had other plans. As he pulled up her blouse with one hand and her skirt with the other, he pressed his wet lips on hers and she fought the instinct to retch. Whatever he had learnt with Monica, it had not been finesse. She managed to get both her arms in front of her and shoved him with all her might, but it was useless. Patrick had spent his entire life working on a farm. Each of his arms was the width of a newborn baby and his muscles bulged hard against her own. She felt trapped. Weightless. Despite pushing him with every ounce of her might, until she was drained of breath and gasping for air, she had made absolutely no difference. He hadn’t moved an inch. She was imprisoned.

‘Think you’re too fecking good for me, do you?’

Patrick pinned her legs to the wall with his knees and pain shot up her thighs from the sheer weight of him. Drops of spittle landed on her face as he spoke. Her stomach heaved with the stench. How could her own father ever have thought this was the man she should spend her life with? Her instincts were to scream, and as she tried with what was left of her breath, a thin reedy wail escaped. This isn’t happening, she thought. He will come to his senses in a second. This isn’t happening. It cannot be. Letting go of one of her wrists, he again tugged at her blouse, frustrated at the full-length underslip which covered her bra. He pulled down at the top hard to expose her breasts.

‘I know what to do with you.’ He spoke into the side of her face and she could feel his hot breath against her skin. ‘I’m no eejit. You think I was going to wait for you?’

He laughed out loud and slammed himself into her again, until she could feel his iron-hard erection pressing an indentation into the soft flesh of her thigh. ‘Ye just need to be shown what you’ll be missing while you’re away, missus. Think yer fuckin’ bold with ye’re fuckin’ gobshite clever words? Ye won’t be so bold when I’ve fucking finished with ye.’

At that moment, Dana realized, Patrick was too far gone and consumed by his own need for revenge. She was done for. With what breath she had left, she began to sob and begged him to stop.

‘Patrick, don’t. Let me go. I will talk about it outside, so I will. I promise I will think about it all again. I won’t go if ye don’t want me to. Please, just stop.’

He wasn’t listening to a word she said, and she felt consumed with horror as he thrust one hand up her skirt between her thighs and hurt her, his jagged fingernails stabbing into her flesh. Tears of pain flooded her eyes and she wanted to give up fighting, to give in and die, for him to be gone and the pain to be over. She could hardly breathe because of the weight of him, pushing against her with the full length of his legs and thrusting the hard bone of his pelvis into her soft belly. He was taller than she was and twice her size. She started to gasp for air as he forced the last breath out of her. She felt light-headed, and her head began to swim.