The Honey Queen (19 page)

‘How could you run off and leave me a note like this?’ David demanded.

Today, in this angry state, he seemed so big and tall, and she felt the old instinctive fear take over.

‘I can’t believe you’d be this cruel, Peggy,’ he added, brandishing the note. ‘We weren’t a seven-day fling, we were special, we had something special. What was wrong? Why did you run out on me?’

Her rational mind told her he was a good, decent man who had every right to be angry, but the irrational part of her, nurtured over her lifetime, made her scared.

‘Fifi!’ she screamed.

Fifi’s head appeared in the doorway.

‘Something wrong?’ she said.

‘Yes, t-t-there is,’ stammered Peggy.

David had calmed down but was looking at her strangely.

‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ he asked in astonishment. ‘Peggy, I’m angry but I would never hurt you,’ he said, as gently as he possibly could. ‘I came to say I’m crazy about you, really crazy in love with you to be honest, and I’ve never said that to another woman, not ever. It was love at first sight for me but I …’

He took a step towards her, but she flinched and moved away. When she went into the fear zone, she couldn’t come out of it: she felt frozen in fear, in emotional lockdown. Nothing could break through.

‘Peggy. Stop looking at me like that. You look as if I’m going to hit you or something. I swear I would never do that, never.’

She could see the bewilderment in his eyes and suddenly he looked like her David again: not threatening at all.

But still, he was a man. She knew what men were like, how their mood could change in a flash, how the hail-fellow-well-met air would suddenly vanish into tyranny. And women with pasts like hers inevitably chose men who’d give them a similar future.

With Fifi behind her, she could tell him to go. It was the only thing to do. Love at first sight and crazy love weren’t for someone like her. The past had marked her too much to ever fit into that simple mould.

‘Please go,’ she’d said. ‘Now.’

‘You heard her, David,’ said Fifi.

With one sad look at Peggy, he left.

‘Do you want to tell me what that was about?’ Fifi asked, and Peggy shook her head. ‘I grew up not too far from where he lives,’ Fifi added. ‘He’s always seemed a decent guy – but I’ve been proved wrong about that sort of thing before. Did he hurt you or upset you? If so, we have to do something about it. No guy should get away with that.’

Again, Peggy shook her head. Some guys did get away with it, for entire lifetimes, and nobody ever called the police because nobody ever saw it. The only people who did were the people who lived with them, and if they’d said anything about it, nobody would have believed them anyway.

Sure he’s a lovely man. A real family man. I won’t hear a word said against him.

When she’d been small, she’d learned that people didn’t want to believe in tyranny unless they saw it with their own eyes, and how could they when the tyrant in question was so skilled at fooling people? Street angel/house devil didn’t go any way to explaining the truth behind the façade. When nobody saw, nobody helped.

‘No,’ she whispered, trying to calm herself. ‘He’s a good guy but …’ She didn’t know how to explain. It would sound so strange to Fifi. ‘I slept with him and then I realized it was a mistake,’ she said. ‘He was nothing but kind to me. It’s my problem, Fifi, not his. That’s all I can say.’

Fifi stared at Peggy, questions in her eyes, but thankfully she didn’t ask them.

‘Fair enough. If you want to talk, I’m here. Now, tea?’

‘Hell yes,’ said Peggy.

They hadn’t mentioned it since, but sometimes Peggy caught Fifi looking at her, trying to figure out what to make of her.

That evening, David had phoned her mobile. When Peggy didn’t pick up the call, he left a message:

I don’t know what was going on this morning, Peggy. I know I frightened you and I don’t know how, because that wasn’t my intention. I like you. A lot. I felt something special with you. I’m sorry if it was one-sided but I didn’t think it was at the time. Good luck with your life. Bye.

Peggy listened to the message with a combination of misery and relief. If only she hadn’t gone out to the Starlight Lounge that night, if only she hadn’t met David. How could he ever understand? Nobody could, not unless they’d gone through it. The way she had.

Life had never been fair to Tommy Barry – or at least, that was his firm belief. He hadn’t been given the family farm in Carlow, even though he was the eldest son. That honour had gone to his younger brother, Petey. Tommy had interrupted the reading of the will by flinging back his chair and shouting at his mother when the solicitor read it out.

‘I’m the oldest, he’s only a boy, what does he know about running a hundred acres of fine land?’ Tommy raged, his anger directed towards his mother.

The solicitor, the older Mr Burke, had seen many a fight on the reading of a will and he had been warned by Mrs Barry that voices might be raised at this one. So he had his secretary, Miss Reagan, waiting at the door to phone the police if things got too heated. He was surprised to see Tommy Barry in such a temper because Mr Burke had always thought Tommy was a charming young man, very friendly to all he met. But still, money and the leaving of it did strange things to people.

Constance Barry, for all her obvious pain now that her husband was dead, had kept remarkably calm, Mr Burke thought in admiration.

Constance herself had known this would come. Tommy had expected everything to go his way from the time he was a child. To her abiding sorrow, and unlike her other three children, he had never understood about hard work or kindness, for all that he was outwardly so charming. That was the worst of it, Constance thought: Tommy’s ability to fool people with his act. That her own son should turn out that way was heartbreaking.

He’d left the farm years ago. Farming wasn’t for him, he’d said haughtily. Even though she’d written to him, he hadn’t turned up when his poor father was ill and Petey could have done with help milking the cows. But he’d responded when he heard his father was dead, sure enough. He’d made sure he was home for the funeral and the reading of the will, dragging his poor young wife with him and that sweet baby who went rigid every time her father held her. Babies had great wisdom, Constance thought sadly, knowing she might never see little Peggy again once Tommy had stormed out in temper, which he would.

She only wished there was something she could do for poor Kathleen and little Peggy, but what?

‘You haven’t worked on this farm since you were sixteen and got a job in town,’ she told him now, her voice calm and clear. ‘Your father wanted you to go to agricultural college, but you said no, you preferred to be making your way—’

‘Only till I got the farm,’ said Tommy furiously.

‘Once you told your father you weren’t interested in the farm, there was no question of you taking it over,’ Constance went on. ‘Pete has worked so hard.’

Tommy looked angry enough to hit her, though she’d never known him to be violent. Looking at his pale, anxious wife, Constance hoped that this was still the case. Kathleen seemed to have grown thinner and more fragile in the two years since Tommy had married her.

‘I’ll fight you in the courts,’ Tommy hissed at them all. Then he grabbed Kathleen by the arm. ‘Come on! Don’t stand there looking up at me like an idiot, we need to get out of here. I won’t have them laughing at me,’ he cried, half dragging her from the room.

Constance watched with great sadness. What had she done wrong to bring up such a son? He’d always been different but should she have done something about him when he was a child, worked out how to make him like his siblings who were all easygoing? Tommy had always had a darkness about him, yet people didn’t seem to notice it: instead, they saw the great charm, the attractive face. Those things must have lured in the fragile Kathleen but why would she stay with such anger?

Constance sighed at the thought of the life ahead of Kathleen and little Peggy. Kathleen might have chosen to marry the sort of man she was used to and their baby would grow up knowing nothing better, an unbroken cycle. If only there was something Constance could do to help in some way.

Peggy learned from an early age that her father wasn’t like the fathers of other children. He didn’t sweep her up in a great hug when he got home from the garage the way Letty’s dad did, and he never smiled at her mother in that romantic way Sarah’s father smiled when Sarah’s mother handed him a cup of tea and a biscuit.

What was oddest for the young Peggy was that her father was so charming in public, smiling at her and her mother, making people like him – and then the moment he was alone with his family again, it was as if he’d flicked a switch, turning off the public display of charm. Then, he’d be bitter and controlling again, demanding his dinner. If he was in a bad mood, even the sight of Peggy would make him angry. When she was little and hadn’t yet learned how life was, she might cry, at which point Tommy would shout at her to get out of his sight or he’d show her the back of his hand and really give her something to cry about …

She didn’t understand it at all.

‘Your father hasn’t had what was rightfully his, so he gets a bit upset,’ Kathleen would whisper by way of explanation whenever Tommy flew into one of his rages, a state of affairs that could be brought on by all sorts of circumstances from someone annoying him at work or putting his money on the wrong horse at the bookies.

Theirs was not a home where people were invited in on a regular basis, but on the few occasions they did have visitors, the charming Tommy held sway: praising his daughter for her cleverness at school and prophesying great things for her in the future.

In public he’d even be complimentary about her mother.

‘Isn’t this a great apple pie?’ he’d say as everyone sat down to eat while Kathleen hovered nervously. ‘My wife has a light hand with the pastry, that’s for sure.’

When they were alone, no such nice words ever passed his lips. He communicated through the medium of spite, telling his wife that her outfit was ridiculous on her, or telling Peggy that he’d been disappointed in her school exam results. Nothing was ever positive, no compliments ever passed his lips.

He was forever changing jobs, so they moved many times when Peggy was young. She got used to always being the strange child in the schoolroom. She knew how to blend subtly into the background so that no teacher ever asked what was going on or why. That was the easy way to do it.

As Peggy got older, the family settled in the ugly bungalow outside Portlaoise, but Peggy remained a mystery to most of the kids in her class. She wasn’t allowed to go to anyone’s home because she could never invite anyone back to hers. At least her father wasn’t a drinker, she thought as she got older. If he had been, she and her mother would be dead. His rage plus alcohol would have made for a lethal combination.

She learned how to sit quietly in a room so as not to be noticed while her mother made embroidered napkins for Carola Landseer’s craft shop in the summer and handknitted sweaters in the autumn. Peggy learned how to knit and sew too and she’d sit, fingers clicking, creating something beautiful and soft to bring in a bit of extra money for Kathleen. Early on, Peggy discovered a safe place inside her head that she could retreat to, dreaming of a time when she and her mother could leave Portlaoise and set up a knitting and craft shop of their own.

She’d paint it the lavender of the Farmer’s Kitchen, a quaint establishment where her mother worked several days a week, serving tea to elegant ladies like Carola Landseer and her friends. Carola’s husband was a Presbyterian minister, a decent man who was always fighting for the rights for the underprivileged, even though he and his wife lived in a large home on the outskirts of town. Carola began to take a special interest in the shy woman who served her tea and who made such beautiful things for her shop.

Peggy suspected that Mrs Landseer had long since guessed that something was amiss in the Barry household. If Mrs Landseer caught sight of Peggy making her way home from school, she would call her over. It was subtly done, but there was a running theme to her questions.

‘And your mother, is she doing well?’ Mrs Landseer might say. ‘She seemed a little strained the other day. Is everything all right at home?’

How Peggy longed to tell her the truth. But her mother would have been mortified to discover that someone she admired was privy to their business. There was a danger that if Carola heard what went on in the Barry household, she’d confront Tommy. And then Peggy and her mother would pay the price.

All through her teenage years, Peggy imagined her mother and herself living in peace somewhere far away from her father. They’d be happy, just the two of them, never needing anyone but each other, with no overpowering presence colouring every day with fear and darkness. Carola became closer to Kathleen, talking to her and telling her she was a victim of abuse.

‘He doesn’t have to hit you to abuse you,’ Carola explained once, when she visited the house at a time when Tommy wasn’t home. Peggy stood outside the door and listened, praying with all her heart that her mother would pay attention to Carola, even if she didn’t pay attention to Peggy.

‘Look at you, Kathleen, you’re skin and bone from fear. Nobody has to live like that. You must leave him. I will be here for you.’

When she was eighteen, Peggy told her mother she was leaving. She wanted to earn money so the knitting shop could become a reality for them both instead of just a dream.

She had to wait till she was twenty-one for the money left to her by Grandmother Constance, a woman she’d never met. The will had stated that the money should be held in trust for Peggy until she came of age, a fact which enraged her father, who ranted that the money should by rights have been his. He was furious that ‘the old bitch’ had kept his inheritance from him.

‘Come with me, Mum, you don’t have to stay with him,’ begged Peggy at the time. ‘Nobody should live this way, being shouted at like you’re a dog. Even a dog shouldn’t be treated the way he treats us. It will never get better, never. And without me, he’ll grind you into the ground even further.’