The Fall Girl (14 page)

My father smiles. ‘No. She wasn't too fond of it.'

‘Me neither.'

Enjoying our middle-of-the-night chat, I nestle down in the bed. ‘How come Mammy never tells me about when she was small?'

‘Some people don't like to talk about the past, love.'

‘Why not?'

‘All sorts of reasons.'

‘Was she not happy?'

‘She had a tough childhood.'

‘Did Aunty Lily have a tough childhood too?'

‘She did.'

‘Their daddy wasn't very nice to them, was he?'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because when I asked Mammy about him once, she told me to stop annoying her head and her cheeks turned red.'

‘I see.'

‘I don't think she likes Aunty Lily any more either, Daddy, because she gets mad when I ask about her too.'

‘The wound is still raw, love,' he says, looking down at his knees. ‘She's still grieving. We have to be patient with her, you and me. She'll come round in the end,' he nods, ‘you'll see.'

‘So, when Mammy gets happy again, will you get happy too?'

‘I am happy, love,' he says, turning to face me. ‘I've got you, haven't I?'

With tousled hair and dressed in pyjamas, he looks soft and soppy and I wonder how my mother can stop herself from loving him.

‘Yeah,' I smile, ‘you do.'

He leans towards me and kisses my forehead. ‘Now, how about some shut-eye?'

‘I'm on my Easter holidays,' I say, tightening the sheets around me. ‘I don't have to get up early.'

‘Ah, but
I
do.'

‘Can I sleep here, Daddy?' I don't want to leave him alone again. ‘I'm lovely and cosy here.'

He hesitates, then smiles and says, ‘Aye, OK. I don't see why not.'

After climbing into bed, he switches off the lamp and lies with his back to me.

‘Daddy,' I whisper.

‘What?'

‘Sometimes, I try to remember Aunty Lily's face, but I can't. Does that ever happen to you?'

‘Yes. I think it happens to everyone when they haven't seen someone for a long time.'

‘But I can still remember Lesley's face and I haven't seen her for a whole year.'

‘Go to sleep, will you?'

‘Maybe that's because she's not dead.'

‘Ssh.'

‘Goodnight, Daddy.'

‘Goodnight, love.'

Outside a gust of wind whirls and rattles the windowpane. I move towards the centre of the bed, nuzzling my knees into his back and wrapping my arm around his waist. I feel safe … perfectly happy.

The next thing I'm conscious of is the fierce fingers digging into my upper arms and dragging me away from the warmth of my father's bed.

‘Stand up,' my mother screams, as my legs topple out on to the floor.

Still dazed from sleep and the unexpected bluntness of my awakening, I stumble to my feet and try to straighten up.

‘Mammy.'

‘Don't you dare speak to me,' she roars, walloping my arms, legs and back.

Then she pushes me ahead of her into my own bedroom, spitting obscenities at me through gritted teeth.

‘You're nothing more than Mary Magdalene's bastard,' she snarls, levelling her rabid face with mine.

I don't understand what she's talking about and I'm too scared to ask.

Tightening her grip on me, she orders me to say an act of contrition.

‘O my God,' I snivel.

‘Louder,' she roars.

‘I'm very sorry for –'

‘From the beginning,' she says, shaking me.

‘O my God, I'm very sorry for all my si-si-sins –'

‘Si-si-si … start again.' The veins on her neck are bulging.

‘O my God, I'm very sorry for all my sins because they offend Thee who art so good and and and …' My mind goes blank.

‘And with Your help,' she yells.

‘And with Your –'

‘From the start. On your knees this time.'

I turn and kneel by my bed. Although my nightdress covers me down to my ankles, I feel naked. ‘O my God, I'm –'

‘Join your hands, you heathen,' she seethes, yanking my hair and striking me hard across the face.

The pain makes me gasp.

‘Now,' she says with icy crispiness, ‘say an act of contrition and say it properly this time.'

‘OK,' I sob. I feel a hot dribble of urine trickling down the inside of my legs.

‘Go on.' She's towering over me.

Joining my hands, I take a deep, quivering breath. ‘O my God, I'm very sorry for all my sins because they offend Thee who art so good and with Your help I will not sin again.'

‘Right,' she says, ‘now get up and get dressed.'

I don't budge until I hear her footsteps on the stairs, at which point I flop down on the floor, let the piddle spill down my thighs and sob, my cotton nightdress seeping up the acidy fluid and clinging to my smarting flesh.

After lunch that afternoon, my mother tells me to put on my jacket. At the front door, she takes my hand, walks me down the street and out the Castleowen road about a half a mile. When she turns left down Quarry Lane, I tense up, knowing that there are two Alsatians at the third farmhouse in the lane and that they're never tied up.

‘What about the dogs?' I ask, slowing down.

‘We won't be going that far.'

In the garden of the first house, a boy whom I know as ‘Tommy the ba' is playing in his garden. He's twelve, goes to a special school and lives alone with his mother, who says hello to everyone whether they bother to look at her or not. Angelina and Attracta told me once that Tommy's father was a Protestant and his mother wasn't allowed to marry him, and that that made him a bastard.

Tommy's jumping over imaginary hurdles now and shooting imaginary aeroplanes with an imaginary gun.

‘Do you see that buck-eejit?' my mother says, pucking me with her elbow.

‘Yeah.'

‘Take a long, hard look at him.'

Tommy spots us and starts waving furiously with both arms. Although he's smiling, I can tell by his questioning eyes that he doesn't understand why we're not waving back.

I'm not brave enough to answer him or to wave back: I know my mother would cut the hands off me. All I can do is return a smile because my mother isn't looking at my face.

When two men emerge from the gap of a neighbouring field and start strolling towards us, my mother turns on her heels and marches me back home in silence.

In the living-room, she lifts her sewing basket from the top
of the dresser and perches herself on the fireside armchair. She nods towards the sofa and tells me to sit down.

‘Do you know what happens to girls who sleep with their fathers?' she asks, rummaging through her sewing paraphernalia.

From my neck up, my skin tingles, as if rows of ants are criss-crossing my face. I'm terrified of giving her the wrong answer, but I have no idea what she's getting at. Silence is my only option. She pulls a handful of socks, some wool and a darning needle from the sewing basket and then leaves it on the mat by her feet.

‘Of course you don't,' she says, showing no anger at my ignorance. ‘But I'm about to tell you. And when I do, you're going to thank me. And that will be the end of it. Is that clear?'

‘Yeah,' I say, as she settles herself in the armchair.

‘All daddies are men,' she says, breaking off a length of darning wool, ‘and all men get strange urges in the middle of the night.'

Feeling uneasy, I look down at my knees, hoping that this chat isn't going to last too long.

‘Look at me when I'm speaking to you,' she snaps. And when I do, she adds, ‘Oh, embarrassed, are you?'

‘I –'

‘Embarrassed as you may feel now, Frances Fall, it's nothing in comparison to how you'd feel if you ended up being the mother of a gombeen like that unfortunate Tommy boy down the lane, who never asked to be born and, by right, should never have been.'

I wish she'd stop saying such horrible things. She's making no sense.

‘I don't know what you're whingeing about,' she says, when she sees my eyes bloating with tears. ‘You'd have a sight lot
more to cry about if you ended up with your father's baby inside you. Oh yes,' she raises her voice when I turn my head and stare out the window, ‘that's what happened to that Tommy boy's mother. You didn't know that, did you?'

I shake my head. ‘Angelina and Attracta said –'

‘That it was a Protestant man. Oh aye, that's the rumour all right. But I know better. I have my sources, and very reliable sources they are. There's not a Protestant in the county that'd touch yon one with a bargepole. Her father put that story about to save his own reputation, God forgive him … though I doubt He will, under the circumstances.'

I don't like hearing about strange, bad things that make sense only to adults. It frightens me to think that my father could get funny urges and do secretive things to me in the middle of the night, maybe even while I'd be sleeping. I don't want him to put me up the pole.

‘Get yourself a tissue,' my mother says when she notices me wiping my nose on my sleeve.

For the rest of the afternoon, I wander from room to room looking for something to do. In my bedroom, I pick up my Tiny Tears doll, but as soon as I do, I drop her back into her pram; I don't want to be her mammy any more.

As I lurk behind the net curtains in the sitting-room, I see Nuddy Neary leaning on his bike across the street and blocking the footpath. He's talking out of the side of his mouth to Mrs Reilly. She's nodding, smiling, and at the same time trying to manoeuvre her way past him and his bike. Maybe he's telling her things she doesn't want to hear.

I walk my guilty body across the room and sit down on the piano stool to practise for my upcoming exam. Miss Piggott has been showing me how to use the pedals, but my feet keep slipping off them and, every time they do, I burst out crying.
I cry again when I play the scale of C minor and end up hitting the last note with the wrong finger.

Back in the living-room, my mother carries on darning her pile of socks. I take my colouring book and crayons from the dresser drawer, sit down on the sofa and start flicking through the pages.

By the time my father arrives home from work, my eyes are sore and my face feels as if it's been stretched from all the crying. I don't look up when he comes into the room.

‘Evening, Rita, Frances,' he says, sitting next to me. ‘Looks like there's rain on the way; it's got very cloudy out. Do you want me to take in the clothes from the line, Rita?'

‘I'll do it myself when I finish this sock.'

I've found a picture of a ballet dancer and I'm taking my time colouring around the edges of her tutu: I don't want to make a mistake.

‘You're very quiet this evening,' my father says, patting my knee.

I leap up, letting the colouring book and crayons drop and scatter around the floor.

‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Why are you so jumpy, love? Are you OK?'

I nod as I bend down and start gathering up the crayons. On my hunkers, I watch as he turns to my mother and stares at her with a dropped jaw. She's sitting with her legs outstretched and her eyes downcast, humming her obliviousness. As she weaves the darning needle in and out of the woollen strands and draws the thread through, her fingers are strangely graceful, uncharacteristically patient, slow and arcing, like a carefully drawn smile.

My head is addled. I've been thinking all sorts of queer stuff about my mother and Aunty Lily, and why they couldn't talk about my grandfather. And why my mother insinuated that my father might have a sexual interest in me. What if it happened to her? No! No! Stop thinking. It's not helping.

I've tried to put it out of my head, but I can't. The thought of my mother and her father at it makes me want to puke. Maybe that's why my parents left Glendarragh. And maybe he did it to Lily too and that's why she went to London. What if I'm
his
child? Jesus! That would explain the birth cert thing. No. No, I couldn't be. She was in her twenties when she had me. I'm so confused. Why won't my father put me out of my misery and just tell me the truth? He knows I don't buy the ‘slip of the pen' explanation. I told him so the night I rang him from the hotel in Kilkenny.

I'm lying on the bed in the hotel. Though I'm tired, I can't sleep; I'm too excited.

‘Daddy,' I whisper, remembering that I'd promised to let him know if I decided to stay the night in Dublin.

I pick up the phone, dial 9 and our home phone number. I'm calm.

‘Hello.' He's out of breath.

‘Daddy, it's me. Are you all right?'

‘Aye, I hurried in from the garden when I heard the phone. Where are you?'

‘The Royal Dublin.'

‘So you're staying the night?'

‘Yeah.'

‘What time should I expect you tomorrow?'

‘I was thinking of staying a few nights, Daddy. I haven't had a summer holiday in years. So I thought, why not have a bit of a break before going back to work next week?'

‘I see.'

‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing.' A few seconds' silence.

‘What is it, Daddy?'

‘Well, it's your mother's anniversary on Monday. I thought maybe –'

‘Don't, Daddy.'

‘For
me
; come to the Mass for
me
.'

‘I can't.'

‘You mean you won't.'

‘OK, then, I won't.'

‘You got it all wrong, you know.'

‘I know what I saw.'

‘I told you; it was a slip of the pen, that's all. You've got to believe me.'