Whiskey Island (57 page)

How much more difficult to love another human being, a woman, perhaps, who grows tired at the end of a long day, an imperfect woman whose sacrifices are imperfect, too.

Yet how great is such a love. To love someone, despite her faults, despite a man’s own faults. To look beyond fatigue and imperfections to the perfect soul beneath.

A priest sometimes believes that his duties are the hardest. But how much harder it is, and how equally rewarding, simply to love another person.

How limited is our growth when we cannot.

From the journal of Father Patrick McSweeney—St. Brigid’s Church, Cleveland, Ohio.

36

June 1883

“T
here are some things a woman keeps to herself.” Katie Sullivan took the cup of tea Lena had poured her and set it on the table at her side. “And some things she’d best share with another woman.”

Lena looked up from pouring her own tea. She and Katie were sitting in the tiny garden just off St. Brigid’s rectory. Katie, who did Father McSweeney’s laundry, had come to deliver it, and she and Lena, who had finished her chores for the morning, were taking a rest. Katie’s children were playing nearby at the base of the small fountain just outside Father McSweeney’s office, and their laughter rang off the gray stone walls.

“What is it I should be sharing?” Lena sat back with her own cup.

“Either you don’t suspect or you don’t want to tell me. If it’s the second, it’s no business of mine. After all, the deeper the well, the sweeter the water. But if it’s the first…”

Lena was perplexed. “If you think I’m keeping secrets…”

“Aren’t you?”

“Secret from myself, then.”

Katie didn’t look surprised. “I thought as much. Shall I tell you, or will you wait until it occurs to you on your own?”

“The surprises I’ve had in my life have never been good ones.”

“I think you’re with child, dear. Am I wrong?”

Lena stared at her. “Certainly you are.”

“Am I? Then it’s sorry I am I’ve brought up the subject. But could you be mistaken, perhaps?”

Lena’s heart was skidding. “Why do you say so?”

“You haven’t been eating as heartily, and there’s brand-new color in your cheeks.”

“I’ve had a touch of dyspepsia, that’s all.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you’re looking heavier.”

Lena took a steadying breath. “Katie, it can’t be true. I bled last month.”

“And this?”

Lena looked away. “Not yet.”

“Last month, dear, was it the way it usually is?”

Lena blushed. “Yes…no. No, it wasn’t the same.”

“Just a little, perhaps?”

Lena closed her eyes. “Enough.”

“That’s the way of it sometimes. I didn’t know I was carrying Annie until I felt her kicking.”

When her bleeding hadn’t commenced at all last week, Lena had wondered if perhaps she and Terence had, at last, created a child. But she had put that thought away to take out again on another day. It was much too soon to know. Much too soon to heed the signs.

Unless she had, God forgive her, conceived early in May.

“You’ve waited so long,” Katie said gently. “Will it be such a burden, then? Terence gets stronger every day, and Father McSweeney will surely let you bring your babe to work. It’s a gift, dear. A wonderful gift after everything you had to endure.”

Katie had no idea what Lena had endured, nor how it affected this “gift.” Because if she was pregnant, if she had conceived in May, then she didn’t know whose baby she carried.

“It can’t be true.” Lena shook her head to erase this terrible possibility. “No, you must be wrong.”

“I’m only wrong if Terence isn’t yet the man he was,” Katie said bluntly. “But I see the way he looks at you now, and I think that’s hardly the case.”

Frantically Lena was trying to remember exactly how many times Simeon had forced himself on her after the middle of April, how many times Terence had tenderly made love to her since. One night, the terrible night when Simeon had nearly choked the life out of her, both men had lain with her. Could that be the night she’d conceived?

Whose seed had been planted inside her?

“I can see this is a shock,” Katie said. “But you’ll grow used to the idea. You’ll be a good mother, Lena, calm and strong. You’ll teach your children well.”

Could a child of Simeon’s be taught anything? Could she love a child knowing that its father had taken her by force? Could she pretend for the rest of her life that the child was really her husband’s?

Would she ever know for certain whose child it was?

“Drink your tea, Lena. There’s nothing to be done about it now. What will come will come.”

Lena looked up at her friend. She saw surprise and the faintest disapproval on Katie’s face. The women of Irishtown Bend, even the worst mothers among them, believed that children were gifts from God.

But how many of them had received a gift like this one, never even to know who’d sent it?

Lena felt the tea growing cold in her cup. She knew she had to say something or arouse suspicion. “You’re right. The idea will take some getting used to. But a child of Terence’s will always be welcome in my heart.”

Katie looked relieved. “I’m glad to hear you say so, dear. I’ll begin my knitting tonight. By early next year, we’ll have everything ready.”

She knew of no way to rid herself of the child. She discussed the idea with Granny, telling the old midwife that she had a friend who was threatening to kill the child inside her womb. How could Lena stop her? she’d asked. What might the poor woman do?

Were it simple, Granny told Lena, then half the babes born each day wouldn’t be. There was no easy way to halt a child determined to enter the world. There were herbs and patent medicines, but more often than not, only the mother herself was affected. There were midwives and doctors who sinned against God, but the desperate women who went to them didn’t always return home. Lena should counsel her friend to have the child. She would be safer and, in the long run, happier.

Lena abandoned the idea that she could destroy the child before its birth. In truth, the thought that she could be destroying Terence’s baby would have stopped her anyway. Had she been certain the baby was Simeon’s, she might have felt differently. But how could she risk hurting anything of her husband’s?

By the month’s end she still hadn’t told Terence she was with child. She was adapting to the idea. Each morning, before she went to cook Father McSweeney’s breakfast, she stopped by the church and prayed that the child would look like Terence, and that when it was born she would love it anyway. She was not afraid of detection. Her mother and Terence’s were dark haired like Simeon, and a dark-haired child would be accepted without question. She was more afraid that every time she looked at the child she would see Simeon in its face or mannerisms or expression. Even if the child wasn’t his.

By July, as Whiskey Island melted under a hot, wet wind from the south and swarms of mosquitoes tormented even the leather-skinned terriers, she knew she couldn’t put off telling Terence about the baby.

She chose the moment carefully, when he was nearly asleep in bed. She turned to her side and whispered the news in his ear. In the near darkness she saw him smile as he pulled her closer. “I know,” he said. “Who knows your body as well as I? Will it be a son or a daughter, do you suppose?”

She cared only that the child was blond, like its father. “Whatever you prefer.”

“A lass, I think. With hair as red as her mother’s. Will the good father let you continue to work awhile longer?”

“I think so. I’ve yet to tell him.” She dreaded confessing this secret to Father McSweeney, because
he
would know the enormity of her dilemma.

“I’ll be able to look for a position soon. We’ll manage somehow, don’t you worry. Soon I’ll be the breadwinner again, and you can work for Father or not, as you choose.”

She closed her eyes, but it was hours before she fell asleep.

Rowan had been forced to wait until Nani returned from England before he could question her about James Simeon. Nani had sailed with Julia to act as her personal maid on board ship, but once Julia was settled with distant relatives in Kent, Nani returned to take up her work at the Simeon mansion. Julia’s cousins employed enough servants to care for a hundred overindulged aristocrats, and a woman who spoke with a Hungarian accent was not wanted there.

Rowan waited until the end of Nani’s first week in town before he approached her. Although he and Nani were only friends, he was happy to see her again. Had she been Irish Catholic, he might have been even happier.

“And you had a good trip?” he inquired, as they stole a few minutes together in Simeon’s rear garden.

“The trip back, it was the better. Mrs. Simeon, she was sick the entire voyage over.”

He clicked his tongue in sympathy. He knew Nani felt sorry for her mistress and tried to help her, but he also knew how exhausting that could be.

“Generally, is this a good place to work, would you say? Are you treated well?”

Nani was silent long enough that he knew she suspected his motive. “It’s good enough,” she said at last. “I am paid well and not mistreated.”

“Are others mistreated?”

“You are speaking of Lena.”

He didn’t answer, hoping that would encourage her to go on.

It did. “If others are mistreated, I know nothing.”

“Tell me, what was said when Lena refused to come back to work?”

“I left on the boat. What was said I do not know.”

“But you were here for a day or two, Nani. What was said then?”

“Bloomy was angry. She was left with much to do.”

Again he waited.

She waited longer.

Rowan grunted in frustration. “The last night Lena worked here, she came home with bruises ringing her throat. She told her husband that a man came after her when she left the streetcar.”

“She told me nothing.”

“Perhaps not
then.
But did she tell you anything at other times? Was she afraid of someone?” He paused for effect. “Of Simeon?”

“I saw nothing.”

“I didn’t ask what you saw. I asked what she told you.”

“What she told me, she told
me.
Not for your ears.”

“Do you like Lena, Nani? Is she your friend.”

“This asking you do, it’s not a fair thing.”

“Please tell me what Lena said to you.”

She was silent for so long he had given up hope she would speak. They had turned back toward the house and covered a good bit of ground before she sighed. “A long time before she left, she asked me to stay in the kitchen with her. She said…Mr. Simeon, he…” She shrugged. “She was afraid.”

“Of Simeon?”

“He said things to her. That night, he sent us all away. All but her. And she was afraid.”

He cursed under his breath. “Did you stay?”

He saw tears in her eyes. “I did try. But when Mr. Simeon saw me, he sent me away again. Had I not gone…”

“You would have lost your position. I know.” He slammed his fist into his palm. “And you say this was long before she finally left?”

The rest came flooding out. “Before that night, Mr. Simeon gave
no one
evenings away. Never. But after that…whenever Mrs. Simeon, she went out with friends…”

“Did you ask Lena what was going on? Did you try to help her?”

Nani began to cry softly. “What was it I might do?”

“You didn’t want to know, did you?”

“Mr. Simeon, he never hurt
me.
He never tried.”

“The miserable bastard.” Rowan knew more now than he’d hoped to. He had hoped that Simeon, in a fit of rage, had only slapped Lena and scared her away. But the truth was so much worse. Something had been going on for a month or more, and poor Lena had been left alone night after night to endure it.

He thought then of the child she carried, the child Terence had proudly told him about only one night ago. To his knowledge Lena and Terence had not conceived a child before this. But now she was pregnant, just weeks after the night she’d told him that Simeon had mistreated her.

Rowan was so angry that his vision blurred. He had lived in the same house as Lena Tierney and seen up close what kind of woman she was. She would never have given herself willingly to any man other than her husband. Whatever had happened at the hands of James Simeon had happened against her will.

Had Simeon appeared at that moment, Rowan would have killed him with his bare hands and felt no remorse.

Nani was crying. “Mr. Simeon, he was angry when Lena, she did not come back. He screamed at Bloomy, and told her that he would punish Lena, that she never would have a position. No position anywhere. And he said her husband would rot. Those words, they were his.”

“You should have told me sooner. We’re friends. You could have confided in me.”

“Lena,
she
did not tell you.”

And what woman would? Rowan could imagine Lena’s shame, or even her terror that Terence or he would go after Simeon to avenge her. What chance did either of them have against a man as powerful as Simeon?

Rowan vowed then to temper his anger until he could bring Simeon down. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know when. But someday the millionaire would pay for what he’d done.

“A rich man can use a woman as he wants,” Nani said bitterly. “It was true in my village. It is true here. A woman can only hope to escape a man’s notice.”

“Well, there’s a rich man in this city who hasn’t escaped mine. And he’ll know it one day soon.”

Nani didn’t attempt to argue. She wiped her eyes on the backs of her hands and went into the house.

Father McSweeney guessed the truth and why Lena hadn’t told him herself. “Does Simeon know?” he asked, when she admitted she was with child.

“No! And I won’t be telling him, nor will you.”

He folded the newspaper she knew he had only pretended to read as she served his breakfast. His thoughts and his eyes had been elsewhere. Soon anyone would be able to tell she was pregnant. “Is it Simeon’s child?”