The Girl From Yesterday (23 page)

‘What does this have to do with anything, Father?’ I asked. ‘With the greatest of respect, I grew up in an Ireland with an obscenely wealthy Church whose authority was only questioned when it was brought to light – after years of collusion – that that power was being unspeakably abused.’

‘I am surprised to find that you are a bigot, Mr Dunphy,’ Father Ahern said, his voice pregnant with anger.

‘No, I’m not a bigot,’ I said. ‘I just don’t think playing the poor mouth is very seemly in these times. And I assure you, our readers won’t go for it.’

‘Whether you like it or not, Mr Dunphy, the Church has been through some real challenges in the past, as it is going through a period of difficulty now. And throughout those times there have been people who have helped us – come to our aid, despite personal cost – and those who have turned away and disowned us.’

‘To each their own,’ I said. ‘You cannot blame a population who has been abused and lied to for being angry. If you want people to accede to your moral authority, you need to demonstrate that you have some.’

‘You are not from Garshaigh, are you, Mr Dunphy?’

‘No. But I bet you know that.’

‘You grew up in Wexford. It was terrible, what happened in Ferns – a real hotbed of clerical abuse. Don’t think for a moment that I support abusers. Those men who did those terrible things deserved to be prosecuted. The Holy Father saw they were divested of their powers as priests and rightly so. I know you were part of the investigations. I admire that.’

‘I appreciate your candour,’ I said. ‘Father, this is getting us nowhere. I really don’t have an axe to grind against the Church – I have made my peace with it, and have good friends who are involved with religious orders. I don’t know you, and I don’t know the bishop. Tell me what you need, and let’s see if I can help or not.’

‘Very well,’ Father Ahern smiled, opening his hands expansively. ‘Let’s do that. Allow me to cut to the chase, as they say. Over many, many years, the Blaney family has done innumerable acts of service and charity for Mother Church. In fact, it is claimed that Siegfried Ponse de Blaney brought back a chalice from the Holy Land that was said to have been owned by Paul the Apostle. Siegfried gave this relic to the Bishop of Garshaigh in 1249. Because of this selfless act, the bishop made him a Knight of the Church, and that title has been handed down, from father to son, ever since. It is not simply a conceit, Mr Dunphy. It means that the family are
under our protection.’

‘Father, I have a great deal of affection for the Blaneys,’ I said, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘I seem to be doing nothing lately but talking about this family, and trust me, I have done
a lot
of soul searching and I do feel that I have done my level best to help them. But you have to understand, I am not a social worker, I am not employed by child services – there is not a damn thing I can contribute to whatever campaign you lot are trying to mount!’

‘Do you know that the injunction is being challenged by the social work department?’

‘I did not know that,’ I said. ‘But I’m not surprised.’

‘The Blaneys have been dragged through the mud for long enough. His Lordship wants it stopped. A
lot
of people locally want it stopped. You will begin a series of articles celebrating the history of the Blaney family. I know Robert Chaplin is in the midst of writing a book on them, I’m sure he will give you the bare bones of their accomplishments – that should suffice. I know you cannot address the challenge outright, but we can sway public – and even judicial – opinion in other ways.’

I sighed and stood up.

‘I have to get back to my class,’ I said. ‘Thanks for dropping in.’

‘You’ll do it?’ Father Ahern asked, looking pleased. ‘No.’

The priest looked as if he might pitch backwards in shock.

‘You do not understand – if this travesty continues, the fallout will be terrible!’

‘I do understand. There is no way to do this where the children will not suffer. But I also know that if they stay where they are, their suffering will be worse.’

I opened the door.

‘You are aware of the bishop’s role in the school here?’

I closed the door and walked back to the desk.

‘I am aware of that, Father,’ I said. ‘If you want to try and have me sacked, you go ahead. Who knows, maybe you’ll do it, too. But let me tell you this – you won’t stop those children being helped. You managed to slow up the process a bit, but that’s just a blip. Go on.’ I slammed my hand down on the desk, making him jump. ‘Do your worst. If I have to lose a part-time job to make sure Winnie sleeps safely at night – well, it’s a small price to pay.’

I walked out and didn’t look back this time.

I needed some space and to taste the wind so instead of walking Millie through the town, as I usually did, I took the road that led to the beach. But I turned off to the left before reaching the sand, heading into the woods.

I let Millie off her lead and she scouted ahead, virtually invisible in the darkness with her black coat. I kept track of her running ahead of me by the ID disc on her collar jingling against the metal tag with her microchip details engraved on it. She loved the woods – for my dog they were a cornucopia of scents and sensations. Her entire being seemed to become alert. Even in the dark I could feel the electricity emanating from her as she barrelled about, sniffing here, peeing there, rooting in the undergrowth someplace else.

I had brought a torch, but only used it where I was genuinely worried I was going to hurt myself. The cover of night felt good. I was starting to develop the sense that Garshaigh – not just the people, but the personality of the town itself – was closing in on me like an enormous black-gloved hand. I acknowledged that I was being just a little bit paranoid, but the regularity with which people were popping out of the woodwork pointing the finger of blame at me over the Blaney case – or outright assaulting me – was becoming more than slightly irritating.

As a professional child protection worker, I was used to people trying to sway my opinion one way or the other – and not just the families and friends of the children on my case books. It was quite usual for the people on my team to disagree on the management of cases, and there could be a fair amount of healthy and occasionally heated debate.

The difference in those instances was that I was part of a large, government-run organization (or a wealthy voluntary one) and had the weight of the entire system behind me, along with all the other groups I regularly worked with – I had been friends with many members of the police force when I worked in the city, and had a wide network of colleagues and associates to call on in moments of doubt.

In Garshaigh I was not exactly isolated, but I was certainly the odd man out in the Blaney case. And I knew that was why I was being targeted. The lead man on the case was Sid Doran, but he was a social worker with the Irish health services, and therefore not a man to send a bunch of thugs after. He had a legislative role and was a state employee, so interfering in any way with his legal challenge of the injunction could result in criminal charges being brought against the interfering party.

Josephine Welch was the social work team leader and senior social worker in the Garshaigh area. As team leader she co-ordinated the case, but in reality had little to do with the Blaney family and had more of an administrative role in the whole thing. I had heard that she took her position
very
seriously and was a hard woman. I’d had a little taste of that myself on my first meeting with her. She was not an easy person to influence one way or the other.

From what I could tell, Nathalie Lassiter at the school had already been got to. By the time we had the case conference she was already saying she was not supporting a move into care for the Blaney children – a complete turnaround from what she had told me at previous meetings.

I wondered how Doctor Sounding was faring – had he been approached by anyone?

The trees broke in front of me, and I knew I was on the Blaney’s land. Flat fields stretched towards the horizon, and the sea opened up to my left. Millie took off at a sprint, running in great loops, enjoying this rare chance to do what nature had designed her for. I watched her for a few minutes, then followed a natural path through the field. Every now and again I could hear the whirring alarm call of a snipe. Once a fox crossed my path, totally disinterested in me. Millie gave her distant cousin a disdainful glance, and continued with her foraging.

I found the ash grove with little difficulty, but had to use the torch to find my way through it. The path was criss-crossed with roots and brambles, and I had to pick my way daintily through them. Moments later I was out in the hollow and there, looming above me like a claw reaching for heaven, was the Mass rock. Millie looked at it and whined, then trotted back over to me. Using the torch I found a flat area, approximately where Emma, Dom and Winnie had sat with me.

‘This is an ancient place,’ a voice said and, slowly, Lonnie emerged from the trees.

‘Isn’t everywhere ancient, if you really think about it?’ I asked.

‘Most places have layers of existence piled one on top of the other. Not here. This place is much as it was when people first walked on it.’

‘Well the church is claiming it as its own,’ I said. ‘Welcome to the Blaney family Mass rock.’

‘They prayed to many gods here, over the millennia,’ Lonnie said. ‘No faith had a specific claim.’

‘You’ve gotten very learned since taking up ghost duties,’ I said.

‘I’m trying to strike a Yoda-like presence.’

‘It’s working. I like it.’

‘Thanks.’

We sat listening to the trees for a while.

‘It’s worse than ever down at the house,’ Lonnie said.

‘Really?’

‘It’s all coming apart for them. If something is not done, there will be a great tragedy.’

‘It’s out of my hands, Lonnie,’ I said. ‘It’s all down to Sid and social services.’

‘You can’t affect the outcome of the case,’ Lonnie said, ‘but that doesn’t mean you can’t be there for the children.’

‘How? Tom has threatened to kill me if I come near the place. This is as close as I want to risk getting – at night, when they’re all asleep.’

‘Tom is so far from reality right now, he doesn’t know what’s going on. The kids come here a lot. If you were to come out early and wait for them – with some food, perhaps? It would mean a lot.’

‘You think?’

‘They’re in a bad way, Shane.’

I scratched Millie behind the ears. She was lying between the two of us, content.

‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I know you will.’

Nearby a barn owl shrieked as it careened through the sky, a pale ghost on the wind.

‘Lonnie,’ I asked.

‘Yes, Shane?’

‘I’m completely off my head, aren’t I? I mean, I’ve really gone off the deep end.’

‘Very probably,’ he said. ‘But then, who knows? Sanity is just a state of mind.’

‘That is utterly meaningless,’ I said, but he was already gone, absorbed by the darkness.

‘You alieve in God?’ the girl asked me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s a very hard question.’

‘My dad says there bes a God and angels an’ all.’

‘Does he?’

‘He says we gots ta pray to them. That be like talkin’, on’y nobody talks back to ya.’

‘Do you like praying?’

‘No. It’s stupid. I think it be a right waste of time.’

‘Some people get a lot of comfort from it,’ I said. ‘They really feel God is listening.’

‘You pray?’

I marvelled at the complexity of the conversations I had with this child. She knew how to put me on the spot.

‘Sometimes, yes.’

‘You pray t’ God?’

‘No. I talk to my mam, sometimes, and I have a . . . a very good friend who died, and I talk to him, sometimes, too. Actually, I talk to him a lot.’

The girl sucked her teeth and thought about that.

‘They ever talk back to ya?’

‘Sometimes it’s like they do. Especially my friend.’

‘If somebody talked back when I prayed, I might do it more.’

‘What do you say?’

‘To God?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Mostly I ask for stuff.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘Stuff I can’t have.’

‘Toys and things like that?’

‘No. Not like that.’

‘What then?’

‘I ask him to make things better.’

I put my hand on her shoulder.

‘That’s a good prayer,’ I said.

‘He
musn’t think so, ’cause He still hasn’t made it happen.’

I met Sid Doran for lunch in the restaurant at The Grapevine the next day. I hadn’t been back to the hotel much since moving out, and even when I had lived there I hadn’t felt brave enough to eat in the restaurant.

I perused the menu as I waited for the social worker to arrive. They had prawn cocktail. They had Caesar salad. They had garlic mushrooms. The soup of the day (I had been told as I sat down) was cream of vegetable. Probably out of a packet. There was a steak sandwich – hard to mess that up. Unless you cooked the steak to the point of leather. I wasn’t making much headway.

Jeff McKinney rolled in the door of the restaurant, saw me and scowled. He scooted over.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I would have thought it was obvious that I was having lunch,’ I said.

‘I could have you thrown out,’ McKinney said. ‘I think I will.’

‘Do you know who I’m having lunch with?’ I asked.

‘Why should I care? One of the little whores from your class, I’d guess.’

‘I’m meeting a social worker.’

He narrowed his eyes.

‘Why?’

‘Maybe I’m going to tell him about the foul message one of my students showed me the other day – a message that came from your phone.’

McKinney went pale for a millisecond, then regained his composure.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

He rolled away a little, then turned rapidly and said, in a voice that was almost a shout:

‘You’re a sick fuck, you are!’