The Angels of Lovely Lane (7 page)

Pinning her to the wall with his forearm across her chest, Patrick fumbled with his free hand at his belt and trousers. Dana heard the leather belt slip as the buckle opened and it slid undone. His trousers fell to his knees and he pulled his langer clear of his oversized shorts before wrenching her skirt up and ripping the front of her knickers away. She knew the consequences of what he was about to do. At that moment she doubted she would leave the turf shed alive, convinced that Patrick would kill her once he had satisfied himself. Even if he didn’t, she was sure she would be pregnant at the very least, and bearing a child to a man like Patrick would be as good as being dead.

‘Oh, God, no.’ She began to cry. ‘What are you doing? Get off me.’

She let out one long, screeching wail, delivered by an overwhelming need to emerge from the ordeal alive. The future she had always dreamed of was at her fingertips, only days away. She no longer cared if anyone saw her. She was already someone. She was a girl from the villages who was leading the way for others. She was breaking free of the pattern of existence that had been the lot of girls like her for generations. Patrick swore again as he slammed his hand over her mouth.

‘Fucking shut it. Shut it,’ he hissed as he thrust himself against her. His knees jabbed into her thighs and she felt him, shockingly exposed, hard, wet and naked, jabbing, pushing his way further up her thigh, searching, grabbing at the flesh of her leg until she felt his dirty fingernails cutting into her skin once more.

He failed to find her. ‘You fucking witch,’ he hissed, forcing her legs apart with his knee until she thought she would split in two with the pain.

She bit into his hand, hard, her teeth ripping at his flesh. He pulled his hand away and she let out another terrified scream but still it didn’t stop him. She knew he was on the brink of violating the most private and precious part of her life. She had no defence, no way of protecting herself. She was trapped in the vice of his thighs, and as the fight left her she slipped down the wall. Her only thought was that Patrick was about to destroy her life and her dreams.

Suddenly, Patrick pulled away from her sharply, and for a moment she failed to understand what was happening. The shed filled with light and she became aware that the door was open and that Noel, her own daddy, stood in the centre of the room. In a split second, he had made complete sense of the entire scene.

Patrick didn’t know what had hit him as Noel Brogan lifted him by the back of his collar and ejected him from the shed. Dana heard the unmistakable snap of a bone as Patrick hit the ground outside. There was a scream, then Patrick’s sobs and her daddy’s swearing. The sound of the band and the dancing was louder and Dana almost wept in relief for small mercies. She knew a hail of blows must be raining down on Patrick. It was the Irish way. Fists and boots first, words later. She rearranged her clothes, desperately wanting to be out of the gloom of the turf shed and into the now fading light outdoors. As she stood in the doorway, clinging to the frame to hold herself upright, she saw Patrick scuffling across the cinder path and scrambling away, dragging his dislocated foot behind him. His nose and mouth were pouring blood and he was crying like a babby.

Dana’s father retrieved his cap from the ground and busied himself with knocking the cinder dust away with the back of his hand to give her privacy while she straightened the rest of her clothes and wiped her eyes with the handkerchief that had somehow remained inside her skirt pocket. ‘Is this your fault?’ he asked her at last.

‘Oh, God, oh God,’ she cried. ‘Did ye not see what he nearly did to me, Daddy?’

Noel ignored the question. His voice was as cold as steel when he spoke. Dana did not have the pull or the ways of her mammy when it came to her father.

‘Did you ask him to come in here with you?’

Noel was unlike Patrick’s father. He was not a violent man when it came to women, but he could give any man a good kicking if needed. But, he had to know it was for good reason. Men in their village talked with their fists and ended up in the gaol, but not Noel. It was yet another hold his wife had over him. ‘Use your fists and I will leave you.’ He was afraid she would, because he knew she had somewhere to go and someone who was waiting. Someone who had never stopped waiting.

‘No, Daddy, I did not. Do you think I’m mad? Do you think I would want to do anything with that disgusting creature?’ She was screaming now and pointing at the hobbling, retreating Patrick as she spoke. ‘He dragged me in. He said he was going to show me what I would be missing while I was in Liverpool. Daddy, he was going to...’

Dana could not speak out loud the words to describe what Patrick had been going to do. Sex was not spoken about at home. Dana saw the temper flare up in her father; she watched as the redness rose from his neck and spread across his face. He was angrier than she had ever seen him before. He looked as though he were about to explode, and when he spoke it was in a voice shot through with steel.

‘Why in God’s name was I not given sons?’

The tone, and the coldness of his words, frightened Dana. She had never seen him like this before. He wiped his mouth and placed his cap back on his head. ‘I will deal with Patrick, but if I find you are lying to me, if you encouraged him or egged him on, there will be trouble. ’Tis here you will be staying tomorrow, not Liverpool.’

For the first few seconds after he had spoken, Dana was filled with disbelief. She felt the anger surge through her at the deep, hurtful injustice of her father’s comment and she could barely hold back the torrent of words that rose in her like stale vomit. She wanted to scream and rage at him, but she knew that with her father this got you nowhere. With the strongest will she could summon to keep the telltale anger from her voice, she said, ‘Do you know what I have just been through, Da? This is my night, my party and your best friend’s son has just tried to rape me. The boy you wanted me to marry has just pushed me in here and tried to... to...’

Her words tailed off and her bottom lip trembled as her voice deserted her. She was choked by the tears that threatened to claim her. But she stared at her father defiantly.

‘Yes, well, I will be asking Patrick questions too. But as I say, if I find out ye are lying to me...’

‘How do you intend to work that one out, Daddy? Will you take his word over mine? Here, look at this!’ She pulled up her skirt to reveal the indentations of Patrick’s dirty fingernails and the blood trickling down her thighs. ‘Do ye think I asked for this?’ Now she was crying hard.

Her father had moved away, disturbed, having intended his words to remain unchallenged. He glanced back at her, and Dana saw him flinch when he saw her thighs. For a moment, there was silence between them.

‘No, I’ll take your word, Dana. Cover yerself up now. I have to believe ye, because your mammy’s heart would be broken if there were to be any scandal about you in the town. You are her golden girl, and I don’t want her to be made unhappy. But let this be a lesson to ye. Ye can’t lead someone on the way ye have Patrick for all these years and not expect there to be consequences when ye let him down. What has happened to ye tonight, ’tis yer own fault. Now, pull yourself together and then come back inside as though nothing has happened. I will make sure Patrick is taken home.’

Dana’s breath came in short gasps. She wanted to run at her father and throw herself at his back and pummel him with her fists. To scream at the injustice of it. To make him suffer for what Patrick had just put her through. She watched as he retreated down the path, knowing he would take her word, not because she spoke the truth, or because he believed in her, or because there was blood trickling down her thighs or because he was moved by her tears, but for the sake of her mother. His first instinct was to protect her mammy, not herself, because Dana had not been the son he had wanted to carry on the farm. He had never forgiven her for that. For a moment, she felt too weak to step back inside the hall. She was shaking like a leaf and all she wanted was to be comforted by her mother, who had loved her twice as much to compensate for her father, and to be back in her own bed in her own room. Her evening had been ruined in a way she would never forget.

In her heart, Dana knew she would never forgive her father for doubting her. For thinking she had led Patrick on. For doubting her morals and her integrity. It would be a long day before Noel Brogan’s daughter ever spoke to him again.

*

The day she left home was both the best and the worst of Dana’s life.

‘Make us proud,’ her mammy said, as Mr Joyce waited at the gate with his van ticking over, ready to take her to the station. He ran the closest thing they had to a taxi and serviced the villages for miles around.

‘I will, Mammy. I’ll try my best,’ she said, as her grandmother shuffled out of the door into the yard and pressed a ten-shilling note into her hand. Her father remained indoors with his back to the fire, smoking his pipe, ignored. Dana had not confided the events of the previous evening to her mother. She knew all hell would erupt, and she was anxious that nothing should delay her leaving. One day she would tell her, just not now.

Suddenly she heard her name being called, and when she looked up the road she saw some of her friends running to catch her, their mothers and siblings running behind. Dana beamed and waved. Mr Joyce took her case and her heart sang while her friends clamoured around her, chattering and hugging her as between them they loaded the last of her bags into the back of Mr Joyce’s van, and her mother cried.

‘Go on now, get in the van and be away,’ one of them said, ‘before yer mammy’s a wreck.’

Two minutes later, she was peering through the back window at the people she had known all her life, standing in solidarity, waving her off as a group. She knew that within five minutes they would all be in the farm kitchen drinking tea, her daddy being told to go and find something stronger to slip into it, this being the day Dana left for Liverpool. As the van moved down the road and along their bottom field she could see the cows impatiently lowing at the field gate waiting to be milked just as they had, twice a day, every single day of her life, and it occurred to her then that her entire life had revolved around that very routine and that now, from this moment, that would no longer be the case. The steadfast boundaries which had controlled her life were fading into small specks in the distance and in their place was nothing by which to count the hours of the day. She had begun to miss the cows and the stability they represented before they were even out of the village.

There was no sign of Patrick or of his poor beaten mother and greedy father. She had thought that as the van pulled away they might have slipped into view, knowing a free drink would be in the offing in the Brogan kitchen. She knew they would not be able to stay away for long, and that within the hour one or other would be round at the house to check that she had actually left.

‘Mighty grand of you to be off to St Angelus,’ Mr Joyce commented as the farm faded into the distance. He had cleaned the van in her honour, and her mammy had looked pleased as he pulled up outside the house.

‘You’ll be leaving in style, Dana. I like that.’ Admittedly, the floor of Mr Joyce’s van was carpeted with potato sacking and cabbage leaves, but it still smelt better than her father’s, which had been used for transporting the pigs to Castlebar market only the previous day and had yet to be washed out.

Mr Joyce had told her every day she had done well to be accepted by St Angelus, usually within five minutes of her arriving at the shop. Dana was grateful for his praise. She had received little from anywhere else. Until the past few days, she had been made to feel as though having done well and winning her place at St Angelus were being perceived as a crime.

The road was rough and bumpy, cut into the hills a century ago by starving men in return for a handful of grain and barely touched since. Her mother’s old leather handbag, given to Dana for Liverpool and now perched on her knee, was a weight in itself. Stuffed with the food her mother had made for the journey, it pressed down on her woollen skirt, prickling and chafing the scratches still raw on her thighs.

A feeling of relief washed over her as Mr Joyce put his foot down on the accelerator and the farm shrank to a small dot in the distance. As it did so, tears stung the back of her eyes. The village she had known and felt safe in all her life suddenly felt far too small, and dangerous. It was tainted. An entire lifetime of safety and comfort within familiar boundaries had been destroyed within seconds by the actions of one man. She had promised her mother in the café in Galway that she would return home as often as possible. How could she do that now, with a monster living next door and a father she felt she no longer loved?

She would cross that bridge when she had to. Right now, she couldn’t get to Liverpool fast enough. A city she had never before set foot in suddenly felt like a safer and more comfortable option than living next door to Patrick O’Dowd. Patrick, who had grown into a threatening and violent man, who had Dana in his sights and would not be satisfied until she was his.

Biddy Kennedy lifted her freshly baked apple pie out of the oven and shuffled across the concrete floor towards the sink in her oversized slippers, worn down at the back and holed in the toes, to set the enamel plate down in front of the window for the pastry to cool. There was no need to open the window, because the draught that whistled through the cracks did the job well enough. It was the fourth day in January, and as Biddy took a deep breath she detected a change in the breeze that blew up from the Mersey. The rain was pouring steadily, as it had been for most of the day, and the moonless winter sky was black and forbidding.

‘Snow is on its way,’ she said to the cat, who had jumped on to the wooden draining board and now pushed himself up against her hand, purring. ‘Get down, you thieving bugger.’ She picked him up and set him down on the floor before she shuffled back across the kitchen and closed the oven door.