The Last Lost Girl Page 3

  “Well, at least she’s not a religious nut,” she says. “That’s what she calls your ma. She says only a religious nut would have twelve kids and call them all after stupid saints!”

  Regina does not look annoyed at all. “Only the girls are saints – the boys are popes.” She rhymes them off on her fingertips: “Peter and Stephen and John and Paul and Leo and Baby Pius. Dympna and Catherine and Veronica and Goretti and me. See, six popes and six saints.”

  “Well, it’s still stupid,” says Jacqueline. “So what else did she say about my mam?”

  Regina closes The Lives of the Saints. “That she thinks she’s something she’s not and that she wouldn’t be going around with her nose in the air if it wasn’t for Maisie Day. That she –”

  “What about Maisie Day?”

  “My ma said if it wasn’t for Maisie Day your ma and all the rest of you would be living in Beechlawns the same as we are.”

  “Why would we be living in Beechlawns?”

  “My ma says you would, if Maisie Day hadn’t left your ma and da the house in Blackberry Lane.”

  Jacqueline stares at Regina. She knows the story of Maisie Day. Even though nobody has ever told it to her from beginning to end, she has fitted together the pieces she has heard.

  The beginning of the story she heard from Daddy, how he and her mother had met in London. Jacqueline doesn’t even need to imagine this part because there are photos of her parents in the sitting room. Daddy is in a funny checked jacket and her mother is wearing a swing skirt and white shoes with silver buckles. There is another photograph of them on their wedding day: Jacqueline’s mother in a white dress with a wide skirt and white high-heeled shoes and Daddy in a suit with a white flower in his buttonhole.

  The next part of the story Jacqueline heard from Lilly.

  Lilly told her: “I was born in London but Mam didn’t want me to grow up in England so we came home. At first, we lived with Nanny and Auntie Carol, but Mam and Nanny didn’t get on and one day they had a big fight over the dishes and a tea towel got torn in two …”

  Jacqueline had trouble imagining her mother fighting anyone over a tea towel.

  “So then Mam told Daddy that he’d better find them a place of their own or she’d pack her bags and take me and get on a plane back to London. So the next day Daddy went off on his bike. He was gone all day and when he came back in the evening, he told Mam to hop up on the crossbar because he had something to show her.”

  This part of the story is Daddy’s again and Jacqueline has heard it so often it feels just like a memory, as though she had been there with them that day. She can almost hear the sound of the wheels on Daddy’s bicycle going round and round, imagine them crushing the daisies that grow in the thin strip of grass that runs up the middle of Blackberry Lane. She can see her mother sitting on the crossbar, legs swinging, her feet in the shoes with the shining silver buckles. She can see the two of them moving slowly under the tunnel of trees, passing the gap in the hedge where in summer the yellow light spills out from the buttercup field.

  The next part is Lilly’s again: “And when Daddy knocked on the door and Maisie Day opened it, Mam got a fright because Maisie Day looked like an old witch with a pointy nose and chin and no teeth.”

  “And was she a witch, Lilly?” Jacqueline wanted to know.

  “No, of course she wasn’t a witch,” said Lilly. “She was very kind and she gave me sweets and she kept a goat in the garden and she used to tell me that the droppings were the goat’s currants.”

  “And then what happened, Lilly?” asked Jacqueline.

  “We came here to live and we had only one room and there was no running water and no electricity.”

  “But we do have running water and electricity, Lilly.”

  “We do now, but we didn’t back then. We had to use oil lamps and get water from the well in the garden, but Mam said it was better than living with Nanny and, anyway, Daddy told her it was only for a while until the Council gave us a house. But it was years before that happened and Gayle was born …”

  Jacqueline thought, I’m not in the story yet – everyone else is there except me, and she felt suddenly jealous of Lilly and Gayle who got there first and remembered the time of wells and oil lamps.

  “Then Daddy got a letter from the Council, telling him we had a new house. He and Mam went to get the key, and when Mam saw the new house she burst into tears. Daddy thought it was because she was so happy – the new house had running water, an inside bathroom, three bedrooms and shiny black-and-white tiles in the hall. But Mam wasn’t crying because she was happy, she was crying because she didn’t want to leave the house in Blackberry Lane. Daddy said, ‘But what about the bathroom and the running water?’ But Mam said she would rather live in one room with no bathroom and no running water for the rest of her life than live somewhere where there were no trees. Maisie Day heard Mam crying and that was when she said we could all stay with her if we liked. She said we could have another room and Mam could use the kitchen. And then, when Maisie Day died, Mam and Dad found out she had left the house to us, because she had no family of her own.”

  “What happened to the goat?” Jacqueline wanted to know.

  Lilly said she didn’t know what happened to the goat, Daddy didn’t know either and Jacqueline’s mother said she didn’t remember any goat. Jacqueline could not help thinking it was a pity it was not a story in a book, because then she’d have been able to find out what had happened to the goat.

  Jacqueline can hear the ticking of the clock on the Quinns’ mantelpiece and, from outside, the sound of the boys and girls yelling to one another. She thinks about the house in Blackberry Lane, the sloping garden and the orchard that she loves. She wonders why it has taken her until now to realise that the place with no trees was Beechlawns. She supposes that if her mother, instead of crying, had loved the bathroom and the black-and-white tiles, she herself would probably have been quite happy living here in Beechlawns. Lilly certainly would, and the children playing outside in the street sounded very happy. She tries to imagine living here or anywhere that is not Blackberry Lane but she cannot do it. In a way she cannot explain even to herself, the place in which she lives makes her who she is. Daddy, her mother, Lilly and Gayle: they are the Brennans who live on Blackberry Lane. If they did not live there, they would be other people with other lives.

  Jacqueline realises Regina is staring at her.

  “I suppose you don’t want to read my ma’s stupid book now, do you? Is it because my ma doesn’t like yours?”

  Something in the sound of her voice makes Jacqueline think she might be about to cry.

  “Because what does it matter?” says Regina. “Your da doesn’t like my da so we’re even now.”

  Jacqueline would like to argue, but Regina is right – Daddy says Slinky Quinn is a weasel. Jacqueline has never seen a weasel but she thinks Slinky Quinn’s eyes are too small. He never remembers Jacqueline’s name and once, when she met him up the river by herself, Slinky looked her up and down in a way that made her feel funny.

  “If you keep this up, young Brennan,” he said, “you’ll be nearly as good-looking as your sister.”

  He did not say Lilly, but he didn’t have to: everyone always meant Lilly.

  “Let’s start with Saint Goretti?” says Jacqueline and Regina smiles and opens The Lives of the Saints again.

  “Yeah, that’s a good one,” says Regina. “She was stabbed to death by her brother because she wouldn’t have sex with him.”

  Why, Jacqueline wonders, does everyone want to have sex with their daughters and their sisters? She smiles at the idea of Goretti Quinn with a knife stuck in her heart.

  “I’m glad,” she says.

  “Glad that Saint Goretti wouldn’t have sex with her brother?”

  “Glad that she was stabbed to death,” says Jacqueline.

  Chapter 4

  Afterwards

  “You need a good haircut, Dad.”

  He was stan
ding at the kitchen window and turned as she came in. The unkind morning light made the changes in him more starkly obvious, the brown patches on his face and hands, as though someone had tried to mend him with the wrong coloured wool. In the loose cardigan his body looked like bones in a grey bag.

  “Is that your breakfast?” she asked.

  He looked down at the whisky glass in his hand, raised it in a mute toast to Jacqueline and drank. “Can’t you cut it for me?” he side-tracked her. “Gayle always does it when she’s home.”

  “I’m not Gayle, Dad, I can’t cut hair. But I’ll take you into the town and you can have it done properly there. I’ll ring and make an appointment somewhere.”

  “The barber’s on the main street will do fine,” he said. “But it’s not that bad, is it? Can’t it wait until Gayle comes home?”

  “Yes, it is that bad and, no, it can’t wait until Gayle comes home. She won’t be here for another month at least, not until Alison’s baby is out of Intensive Care and home.”

  “Alison’s baby …” His eyes turned hazy. “Gayle tells me the poor creature is no bigger than a bag of sugar.”

  “So I believe,” said Jacqueline. “But Alison was premature too and look how she’s turned out.”

  “So she was, so she was,” he turned his back on Jacqueline again, “but that was a long time ago. Gayle tells me she’s not getting married either – Alison.”

  “So I gather, but I don’t think she’s been with the father very long.”

  He shook his head a little mournfully. “Sure I don’t suppose it matters these days, as long as she’s happy.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter, Dad.” Was Alison happy? Jacqueline had no idea. She pictured her niece as she had last seen her. She was certainly a smiler, with dark eyes and sallow skin and black curling hair.

  “Little Alison, it’s hard to believe.”

  “Not so little anymore, Dad,” said Jacqueline. “She must be thirty now.”

  He appeared not to have heard her and raised the whisky glass again.

  Jacqueline left him to his contemplation of the garden and, as she walked away, she wondered how many hours of every day he spent that way.

  She drove him into the town for his haircut.

  “You’ve changed your car,” he said. “You’re a great one for changing your car.”

  “Am I?” Off the top of her head, Jacqueline counted seven. Four more cars than I’ve had men, Dad, she thought of saying, but didn’t. “That old Ford Fiesta of yours doesn’t owe you anything. We should look into getting you another one.”

  “Don’t be silly, love,” he said. “I think that one will see me down.”

  “Now you’re being silly,” she said, but as they drove into the town she found herself wondering what would happen when he could no longer drive, no longer look after himself. She had never really thought of him as old before now.

  She knew she had made a mistake as soon as they walked into the salon. The music was raucous and the black-clad stylists all looked like adolescents.

  He looked around him with clear dismay. “Are you planning to get me a makeover or what? I told you the barber’s would do me grand.”

  Jacqueline avoided his eye. “It’s a bit trendier than I expected alright, not the way I remembered it at all. But we’re here now so we might as well stay.”

  But she didn’t stay; she waited until he had been draped in a fluorescent pink gown and bent backwards over a basin and slipped away. She told herself that this was as good a time as any to buy that underwear Gayle had gone on about, so she left the car and walked to the shopping centre on the outskirts of the town.

  But there, too, the music seemed too loud and, faced with the array of men’s underclothing available to her, she realised that she had not done her homework. She knew neither his size nor style. Perhaps she should have asked him: What do you fancy when it comes to knickers, Dad? She thought about texting Gayle but Gayle didn’t really do texts – Gayle did long involved phone calls. Jacqueline’s courage failed her at the thought and she abandoned the project in favour of a cup of coffee and an Apple Danish. Halfway through the pastry, her conscience pricked her: just how long did a man’s haircut take? He was probably sitting there now in that awful disco salon, waiting for her. She quickly finished eating and hurried back into the town. At least she could deliver on her promise of a nice dinner. Gayle was right: a cursory inspection of the cupboards had confirmed that her father’s idea of vegetables was limited to onions and tinned peas. She picked up some green beans and carrots and then headed for the butcher’s.

  While the steaks were being cut, an elderly man came through from the back of the shop. He was whistling but stopped abruptly when he saw Jacqueline.

  “Hello, Mr Sweeney,” said Jacqueline.

  Everything about the man had changed, she thought, everything but those big sombre eyes. She half expected him to ask the question she had, in the past, come to dread: Is there any word of your poor sister?

  “Back with us for a while then?” said Mr Sweeney.

  Jacqueline nodded. “Just for a while, Mr Sweeney.”

  “Well, I see you’re looking after him well.” He nodded at the steaks as the young butcher bagged them.

  “Doing my best, Mr Sweeney.” Jacqueline paid for the meat, picked up the bag and hurried from the shop.

  This, she thought, imagining the butcher’s eyes on her back, this was why she stayed away.

  “It’s Jacqueline Brennan, isn’t it?”

  About to push open the bakery door, Jacqueline turned and looked into a stranger’s face. The man was tall and handsome, probably somewhere in his mid-thirties, and he was smiling down at her. Jacqueline tried to place him but failed.

  “You haven’t a clue who I am, have you? Pius, Pius Quinn.”

  Popeye, thought Jacqueline, and she smiled involuntarily at the memory of a screaming infant waving his legs above the top of a pram. “Of course,” she said, “Pius.”

  “Wait till I tell Regina I saw you, Jacqueline! You’re looking great.”

  “I doubt that,” said Jacqueline, but Pius was smiling at her as though he really meant it. There was no doubt, she thought, that he for his part really was looking great, and she smiled again at the miracle of one of the Quinns having turned out good-looking.

  “Always thought the world of you, Regina did,” said Pius. “How’s the family anyway – your da keeping well?”

  Jacqueline said her da was keeping well. She should, she knew, return the courtesy by asking after Pius’s family, but Agnes was dead and she didn’t care how Slinky was.

  “Actually, my dad is waiting for me right this minute,” she said, “so I’d better run. But it was nice seeing you, Pius. Bye.”

  In the doorway of the bakery, she looked back. Pius Quinn was standing where she had left him, smiling after her. She waved to him, then hurried into the shop and picked up the first apple tart she saw.

  As she came through the salon doorway, she met her father’s accusing eyes in the mirror. He shook his head and the wattle under his chin waggled from side to side.

  “Are you happy now?” he said. “They’ve scalped me.”

  After she had put the food away, she went upstairs to change her shoes. She caught her reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe door and thought about Pius Quinn saying she looked well. But people said that all the time, even when it wasn’t true – particularly when it wasn’t true. She did it herself and she had no idea why. But overall, she decided, she didn’t look too bad for forty-eight. She was neither fat nor thin, her hair was thick and healthy – the same ash-brown shade it had always been, more or less, if you ignored a little grey coming through at the temples and in the parting. She should have done her colour before coming down to Dublin. But then again, why should she? On the off-chance of running into Pius Quinn? She leaned in closer: there was a wrinkle on the bridge of her nose she was almost certain had not been there yesterday. Nose wrinkles – you didn’t reall
y expect that – around the eyes, yes, she had a few of those, but nose wrinkles? Oh well, never mind, best to focus on her good points. She had nice eyes – everyone always said she had nice eyes. She stared into her own eyes: they were bright and green as ever. There was a hair on her chin and she brushed at it but it did not move. She frowned and touched it with the tip of her finger. It felt coarse and it was dark, much darker than the hair on her head, almost black in fact, and it was growing out of her chin. It was only short now, but no doubt it would grow. Should she pluck it? She had read somewhere that after the age of forty, if you plucked your eyebrows they never grew back. But they also said that if you pulled out a grey hair from your head, two more would spring up in its place. Was that a universal law that applied to chin hair too? Jacqueline frowned. Was this how it would be from now on: wrinkles and facial hair springing up like mushrooms overnight? Another thought struck her: Pius Quinn had probably been looking at the hair on her chin when he told her she was looking well. He hadn’t been admiring her, he had been trying to cover up his fascination with her chin hair. She looked at her reflection in disgust and conceded for the first and only time in her life that Mrs Quinn was right about one thing: the Brennans did care too much about their looks.

  She served him his dinner in his chair by the sitting-room window. There were bald patches where his head and arms had rested over the years and he had bottomed his shape into the seat. Gayle had said: “I’m sure he never sits down at the table for his meals anymore. I’ve found peas down the back of that chair of his in the sitting-room, so when I’m home I make him sit at the table to eat. Make sure you do the same.”

  When he saw Jacqueline coming with the tray, he flung his paper aside and snatched off his reading glasses. “I’ll come into the kitchen, love,” he said, “and eat at the table.”