In My Mother's Name: A totally addictive and emotional psychological thriller Page 25

  ‘That’s not her, Shane. Those poor girls all look so alike.’ And they did, like birds tossed from a nest, their white, full-length nightdresses billowing, their hair scraped back from their frightened faces. The girl he had mistaken for her mother carried a swaddled baby in her arms. She appeared to have hunched away from Lilian’s camera, as if she feared what its lens would capture. Her protective stance tugged at Adele’s heart. Had the baby been wrenched from her arms as soon as the flames were quenched and order restored?

  ‘She’s Marianne.’ Shane sounded too insistent to be ignored. ‘I’d recognise her anywhere.’

  ‘My mother was dead before that fire broke out.’ Adele wanted him to stop fantasising. Otherwise, the pressure inside her head would explode. ‘Her body had been cremated by then and I was in Crannock with my grandmother. The date is on my birth certificate. I’m sorry, Shane. This fire started seven days later.’

  She prised the photograph from him and showed it to Lilian. ‘Did you know this girl?’ she asked.

  ‘Thirteen of them were staying in Atonement at that time but I was never on personal terms with any of them,’ Lilian replied. She slipped on a pair of glasses and peered more closely at the image. ‘I barely knew the Thorns and those who had to speak to me did so only when it was necessary. They made sure to keep the girls out of sight whenever those they considered to be ‘outsiders’ were around.’

  Adele had a niggling feeling that something she had read in the Reedstown Review contradicted Lilian’s memory. ‘Thirteen?’ she said. ‘Did you say that was the number of girls rescued?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I read in a newspaper report that twelve were rescued.’

  ‘That’s wrong. Thirteen was the number I counted that night.’

  A dazzling flash, that was what it seemed like, attached itself to Shane’s bewildering claim. Adele was afraid to look at him because then she would see hope when surely what he claimed was beyond all probability… and yet… and yet… He continued examining the other photographs, searching for another sighting of the girl. One that would confirm his hunch. Adele refused to think of it as anything other than that – a hunch buoyed by his yearnings – but that single blurry image was the only one he could find.

  Lilian made tea. What else was she to do when momentous thoughts were being entertained? She cut bread and cheese and opened a jar of home-made chutney. The dog snuffled about under the table and, finding nothing to his satisfaction, barked to go outside.

  ‘Malachi Norris,’ said Lilian when the tea was ready to pour. ‘He could be the man to ask. He was with the Thorns for a while and stayed on in Inisada after the fire. Not that he ever became part of the community. Far from it. He’s a loner. Comes and goes, does a bit of house painting when he’s short of cash. I always use him when I need odd jobs done.’

  ‘Where does he live?’ Shane asked. Like Adele, he was struggling to eat so as not to offend Lilian’s hospitality.

  ‘He has a place out by the waterfall,’ she replied. ‘It’s more like a shack, really, but he keeps it dry and warm, and the isolation suits him well enough.’

  ‘Does he have a telephone number?’

  ‘Perish the thought.’ Lilian gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘People call on him when they want work done, or he comes to them. He has an instinct that always tells him when he’s needed. I’ll go with you. He knows me well enough to trust me… but he gets a bleak look about him if I even refer to his time with the Thorns. Rumour had it that his paints accelerated the fire but I don’t know the truth of it and Malachi never uses two words when one will do.’

  ‘Marianne mentioned him in her diary,’ said Adele. ‘He helped her friend to escape.’

  ‘I heard one of them got away all right.’ Lilian paused, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Winnie O’Donnell, now there’s a woman who might be able to help. We walked through her land the last time you were here. Remember?’

  Knee-high grass and a woman waving at them as she left her car, it seemed so long ago since Adele had walked towards the farmyard with Lilian, unaware that her life was about to be changed, irrevocably.

  A waterfall flowed from a cleft high up on a rocky bluff, gloriously free as it lunged towards the waiting river. Malachi’s shack was practically invisible behind a screen of trees. After knocking three times on the wooden door and not receiving an answer, Lilian checked the side wall.

  ‘That’s where he leaves his bike.’ She pointed at the empty space. ‘He could be anywhere. Leave him a note and I’ll give it to him when he’s back. Let’s check with Winnie O’Donnell. She had a fine flock of hens in those days and she used to supply eggs to the Thorns. There was talk in Inisada at the time that she helped one of the girls to escape. Not that she ever admitted to it. She’s over a hundred now but still sharp as a tack. She might be able to put a name on this wee girl who has you all in such a state.’

  Winnie O’Donnell seemed moulded into her rocking chair. Impossible to imagine her ever rising from it, yet her bright eyes never stopped moving. She surveyed Adele, her head tilted, a smile crinkling her parchment skin.

  ‘Lilian tells me you’re the one put The Marianne Diary online.’ Her voice quavered but was still distinct. ‘Well done, girl. Time that place was shown up for what it was.’

  ‘Do you think you can help us?’ Adele asked.

  ‘I might and I might not. My memory’s not what it was. It’s a shame what age takes from us.’

  ‘It took nothing from you except your weight,’ Tricia joked and pointed at a framed photograph on the wall of Winnie in her seventies, a stout, sturdy woman with a formidable expression. ‘Cup of tea, anyone? I don’t have to ask you.’ She surveyed her grandmother fondly. ‘Your insides are pure tannin.’

  ‘We’ve all got to die from something.’ Winnie was philosophical. ‘Better tea than dementia, that’s what I say.’

  The atmosphere in this country kitchen with its wood-stained ceiling beams was relaxed and Adele fought to contain her impatience as the chit-chat continued. Finally, the old woman put on her glasses and examined the photograph Shane handed to her.

  ‘Magnifying glass,’ she said to Tricia, who found one for her in a drawer.

  ‘So hard to tell,’ she sighed apologetically. ‘I’ve a clear recall of the other one who escaped. Big as a mountain she was with that baby still kicking, and prepared to run over nails to get away from yon place.’

  ‘Was Barbara her name?’ Adele asked.

  ‘That was it, sure enough.’

  ‘Lilian said you were good to her when she ran away.’

  ‘I hid the pair of them in the barn,’ she said. ‘Her and the boyfriend, tucked under hay, they were, when the Thorns came looking. I lied to their faces and they were afraid to push me too far. They didn’t want the Gardai checking out what they were doing in Atonement. I got rid of them sharpish and the pair of lovebirds escaped the following day. Hidden in a trailer of hay, and it got them to the station in Castlebar. Last I heard they were on the train to Dublin. She sends me a Christmas card every year and I send one back to her.’

  ‘So, you have Barbara’s address?’

  ‘It’s in my notebook.’

  ‘Would you mind giving it to me? I’d love to contact her about my mother.’

  Winnie nodded and picked up the magnifying glass to look again at the photograph. ‘This little one was a different kettle of fish altogether when she came here.’

  ‘She came here?’ Shane knelt by her side and helped her to focus the magnifying glass on the girl.

  ‘If memory serves me right, she’s the other one who bolted. She was a scared wee thing. Such sad tears. That’s what I remember most. The tears and the shivers. She smelled of smoke, God love her. Singed, like she’d been up close and personal to that inferno, and almost impossible to get a word out of her. She’d left her baby behind and she was heartsore at that. But something else was wrong. She was too petrified to tell me what it was. She hid behind the
sofa when a man came looking for her. A beast of a man, he was, but I was well able for him. Told him… well, never mind what I told him, it’s not for young ears. I wouldn’t let him in. I played ignorant of seeing anything that night except the house going up in smoke. It used to be a grand house until that daft Charlotte got religious and signed it away. After he left, the girl asked me to ring a priest. I was glad enough to do that for her and he came the next day.’

  ‘A priest?’ Shane’s voice cracked, as if this information had struck a chord with him.

  ‘That’s what she called him, though he was dressed like a regular lad when he arrived to take her away. That’s the last I saw of her.’ Winnie closed her eyes, her mouth slowly opening as she nodded off.

  ‘She nods off like that all the time,’ Tricia said. ‘She’s told me the same story a dozen times. That’s all the remembers from that night. More tea, anyone?’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Adele. ‘We’ve taken up enough of your time. Thank Winnie for us and remind her to send Barbara’s address to me.’

  ‘I’ll see that she does.’ Tricia walked with them to the gate and waved them off. The cool air was a relief after the kitchen. Fields of barley rippled in the sunshine but even here, in this peaceful dip of the valley, they could see the blackened gable wall of the House of Atonement.

  It was late when they returned to Brooklime. Lilian had given the photographs to Adele and she was anxious to scan them into her laptop. She paced the living room as Shane worked at enlarging, enhancing and sharpening the images. Was he aware of the fever he had unleashed within her? Such headiness was perilous. It raised her to great heights and would make the fall all the harder.

  ‘My God! Look at this.’ Shane sat back from the screen and beckoned her over.

  Mesmerised, Adele bit into her knuckles as she stared at the enlarged photograph. She realised that the young girl was going towards the camera and not away from it as she had thought at first. Going towards an older woman, who had extended her arms to take the baby from her.

  ‘That’s my grandmother.’ Her index finger trembled as she pressed it against the screen. Noreen should have been in Crannock caring for a week-old baby yet there she was, gaunt and almost spectral, standing at the edge of the conflagration. She stared at Noreen’s rapt gaze; the same gaze that had claimed ownership of Adele so often.

  Shane peered intently at the clustered group and zoomed in on another figure. ‘That’s Jack Bale.’ His expression mirrored Adele’s confusion. ‘What on earth was he doing there?’

  Looming behind her waif-like mother, his face just visible over her shoulder, was the former sergeant. He was out of uniform, yet it was impossible to mistake his broad forehead and menacing stare.

  ‘He must be the man Winnie mentioned,’ she said. ‘Can you see my mother in the other photographs?’

  ‘That’s the only one. But it proves Marianne was alive that night and afterwards when Father Breen took her away.’

  ‘You think he was the priest who collected her?’

  ‘Who else could she turn to for help? He’s the only person who believed me that night at the Garda station. Marianne would have known she could rely on him.’

  ‘What does it mean, Shane? Did she die afterwards or could she still be…’ Adele faltered, unable to utter that wondrous word. She had never known an instant in her twenty-four years when she had believed her mother was alive, except in dreams. The radiance of those dreams, the instant of blissful belief as she awakened. Then, reality, another day dawning, but it was that same bliss she felt now as she stared at the slight figure in the photograph.

  ‘She was alive that night?’ Shane seemed equally dazed by this realisation.

  Noreen was visible in other photographs. It was obvious from her stance that she was distraught and frightened. She must have been constantly moving around the courtyard, if the different backgrounds were any indication. Shane zoomed in on another photograph that showed the back view of Jack Bale standing at the foot of the steps leading upwards to the house. What connection had he to the House of Atonement? And what was Noreen doing there? It was impossible to know the story that was being played out in the midst of the pandemonium but such questions were irrelevant compared to the bigger one. Could it be… was it possible that Marianne had witnessed the carnage that had ended the life of Gloria Thornton and brought the sodality to its knees?

  And afterwards, what then? Had she died on a different date or was she out there somewhere, unaware that her daughter had spent her life yearning to know her?

  ‘Why did my grandmother change the date on my birth certificate? Or tell me my mother was dead if she’s not…’ Adele bit down hard enough on her lip to draw blood. She had pleaded with her mother so many times to send her a signal. Nothing dramatic, just something that could not be brushed off as a coincidence. Like a butterfly landing on her hand when she was meditating or the scent of a rose in a sterile room. Never once had she experienced anything that suggested such an ethereal link was possible. Could this failure to communicate with her daughter be a sign that she was alive? Like a dangerous star about to fall to earth, this possibility quivered before Adele. She needed to calm down. Marianne must have died at a later date. Otherwise, why had she not torn the world apart as she searched for the baby she had finally been able to love?

  Part 4

  49 Marianne

  Sometimes, when she dwelled too long on the past, she took out her death certificate and examined it. ‘Marianne Mooney. Age 16. Cause of death―thromboembolism.’ It was such a stark diagnosis, yet that same word always rushed a song through her mind and cast her back into time and tears.

  Thumbelina, Thumbelina tiny little thing

  Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing

  Thumbelina what’s the difference if you’re very small?

  When your heart is full of love you’re nine feet tall.

  She was unable to imagine her baby being tall. Or having eyes of a definite hue. Adele had been dark-haired, a slick of black hair when she was born, smooth as a skullcap against her tiny head. Her Thumbelina, framed forever in a cocoon, her milky gaze, still impenetrable.

  Her marriage certificate was the only certificate Marianne possessed that was not fake. George Maclure was seventy years old when they married and still strong enough to appreciate what Parkinson’s would take from him. She would have cared for him regardless of certificates but he wanted to make the way ahead as clear-cut as possible for her. His death seemed such an abstract concept then. He was still active and his hand trembled only slightly when he signed the register that made them man and wife.

  His deterioration had become more noticeable over the past six months. Sometimes he forgot her name and how she came to be in his care; but nothing, no illness of the mind or limbs, could dim the love he felt for her, or her love for him. Not romantic, nor passionate, but love had other dimensions and theirs had grown from a raw beginning into one that sat easily with both of them. He was in her care now. Time with its corrosive edge was leaving him as helpless as the baby she had abandoned on the night Gloria Thornton died.

  In the mornings, when George was showered and dressed, she wheeled him to the veranda where he could watch the birds: the tui with its exotic plumage, the speckled thrush that reminded her of home, as did the chaffinch, and other birds that were once strangers to her until he taught her to recognise them. He had accepted his illness with a quiet dignity that had surprised her in the beginning. He had been a rumbustious personality, and had terrified her when she first came to live with him.

  ‘You’ll be here for just a short while,’ Rory had assured her when he brought her to Cape Maclure. ‘Trust me.’

  She had trusted him and, even when she lost the belief that she would ever find her daughter, she still maintained that trust in him. She often wondered how he had managed to acquire her death certificate. He was a priest then, ordained to follow the path of righteousness. The real path, not the one that Gloria Thornt
on magicked from her craziness. A narcissist. The term had become familiar to Marianne in recent years. When she applied it to Gloria, she decided it was a perfect fit. Visions and grandiose notions, her ability to sway a crowd with her deluded beliefs, her sense of entitlement that convinced her she had the right to take babies from the arms of their mothers and sell them to the highest bidder. Not that Marianne had had the insight or the language to apply that term to Gloria in those days. Gloria was just a monster then. One who had imprisoned her, and others like her, for the sole purpose of stealing their babies.

  Ireland had changed. Rory told her so on his last visit. Survivors, that was what they were called, the women who had endured the Magdalene laundries. She thought of Miss Bethany, who had held the laundries as a threat above the heads of those who laboured in Atonement, insisting that packaging Gloria’s tatty merchandise was so much more important than washing dirty clothes.

  The person she was in those days seemed like a wraith now. She had never before been outside Ireland and when she left for the first time, she did so by stealth. A fake passport. She had never asked Rory how he came by all that fake documentation. He had always moved in strange circles, a prison chaplain before he was sent to Reedstown to become her saviour. It was inevitable that he would eventually leave the priesthood. He claimed that the path to righteousness had too many banana skins for him to manoeuvre and he was better suited using his hands, rather than his words, to aid the stricken.

  She did not dwell often on that time. The black dog growled a warning when she did. That was what George called the dark moods that swept her far away from him and onwards to the edge of the cliff. Some mornings, when it lay across her bed, she found it impossible to shift its weight. Then, she longed for an authentic death certificate. One that meant what it said. A deep, peaceful sleep with nothing to penetrate the oblivion.

  She had learned techniques to overcome those urges: meditation, yoga, journaling. She had kept a diary when she was in Atonement, but it would have burned with all her other possessions on that terrible night. What did it matter, those ramblings of a child? Nothing mattered except holding Adele close, so close, as she ran through the smoke to hand her over to her mother with a whispered prayer. The previous time her mother had visited Atonement, she had lain her cheek against Marianne’s stomach and felt the throb of the baby’s heels. She would love her granddaughter and care for her until Marianne could return to claim her.