Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

‘Like what?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Like, today. What are you doing today?’

There was a pause before he said, ‘You know, Karen, patience is a virtue.’

‘I’d just really like to know what you’re doing to find my sister.’

‘Would you like to discuss it over a drink?’

I hung up.

I rang St Joseph’s in Cork. I didn’t know who I should speak to. The place was run by nuns. The woman who answered the phone identified herself as Sister Margaret.

‘I’m trying to find out if my sister visited in the last five weeks, please? Her name is Annie Doyle.’

‘And why would she visit here?’

‘She… she had a baby there in 1975. The baby’s name was Marnie. I have her date of birth, if that helps? She stayed there until December 1976, when she gave up the baby.’

There was a rustling of papers then.

‘I see. Do you know what her St Joseph’s name was?’

‘No… I… what do you mean?’

‘All the girls who come here are given new names.’

‘Her name is Annie Doyle. She’s missing. I think the guards were in touch with you?’

‘Not that I recall. If you can’t give me her house name, I can’t help you.’

‘Wait, but don’t you keep records? Where did you send her baby? She might have gone looking for her.’

A long silence followed.

‘I don’t know who you are talking about. Perhaps she went away because she was ashamed.’

Ashamed. I bit my tongue.

‘Lots of girls in her position go away.’

‘Away? Where?’

‘Just… away.’

‘Can I come and see you? I can bring a photo. It’s been in the papers. The guards are looking for her.’ I couldn’t hide the desperation in my voice.

‘We don’t talk to the papers. Nobody who leaves here ever comes back voluntarily.’

This one was a right bitch.

‘Can I find out where her baby is, at least? She could have gone looking for her.’

‘If your sister was here for two years and left without her baby, it means that she took a while to make up her mind, but she must have eventually signed the adoption papers. The whereabouts of the child is privileged information and will not ever be released. The baby will have been placed with a good Catholic family. I can’t help you. Goodbye.’

I reported what I had discovered to my parents. Ma cried. Da broke down too, which wasn’t like him. ‘I should never have sent her there. We could have kept her here. She wouldn’t be the first on the street to have a bastard child.’

Ma reared up on him. ‘Bastard child? That was my grandchild, and yours too. She might have been all right if we’d kept her at home, but you were always too bloody proud for your own good. I let you beat her and I let you send her away and now, I think… I think she’s…’

Ma didn’t finish the sentence, but we all knew what she was thinking. I left the house and went back to my own flat. I couldn’t accept it. Annie, my big sister? Annie was larger than life, people said. She couldn’t be dead.

Ma and Da had always been a team. I hadn’t known till now that Ma had wanted to keep Annie and her baby at home. The cracks in their relationship began to appear then. On a later visit home, I noticed Ma had moved into my old room.

My relationship with Dessie strengthened. He had been really kind and helped me put up posters in shops and bars near where Annie had lived and in buildings she had cleaned. O’Toole fobbed us off with excuses and didn’t return Da’s calls. I tried to believe that no news was good news.

But by Christmas, Annie had been gone for six weeks. I rang O’Toole myself. On Christmas Eve, I met O’Toole – Declan – for a pre-arranged drink in O’Neill’s on Suffolk Street. I had tried to arrange a meeting with him in the station, but he had refused and insisted on a drink instead. ‘Less formal, you know what I mean?’ I knew what he was playing at, but I had no other way of speaking to him. He was already drunk by the time I joined him. I told him the nun in St Joseph’s had no recollection of anyone from the guards ringing there about my sister. He didn’t care enough to deny it. He just shrugged his shoulders and smiled awkwardly.

‘You need to forget about her. All this worry will give you wrinkles and you’re a beautiful girl.’

‘What? I’m not just going to forget about her.’

‘We could go back to my flat and open a bottle of vodka and I could help you forget?’

He put his hand on my thigh. I knew he was sleazy, but I hadn’t thought he would be so obvious.

‘No, thank you,’ I said, removing his hand, unable to keep the disgust out of my voice. ‘You’ve met my boyfriend, Dessie?’

‘Don’t be a fucking ice queen. You’re better-looking than your sister, you know. You could charge more.’

I threw my glass of Guinness in his face. He jumped up, and as I hurried out of the bar, he roared after me, ‘You stupid fucking bitch! She’s dead. Everyone knows it but you.’

All the pressure got to Andrew in the end, I suppose. My relationship with him was strained, to say the least. I was used to being the one who was looked after, but now I’d find him weeping in the shower and uncommunicative for days at a time. He stopped socializing completely, took sick days from work and stayed in bed. I urged him to see a doctor, but he said he was afraid of what he might say. He didn’t want to be anywhere near me. One evening, I found him in bed in one of the spare rooms.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I don’t want to share a bed with you any more.’

‘But, darling, why? What have I done?’

He looked so exhausted. ‘Nothing. You managed everything really well. I just hate that you were able to.’

I ignored the implication of what he was saying. ‘Come back to our room. Laurence would be so upset if he thought we were fighting. And we’re not fighting, are we, darling?’

He allowed himself to be led back to our bed. I offered him one of my tranquillizers, but he refused. ‘You and your pills,’ he said. I kissed him gently on the mouth, but he turned his head away, unable to respond. I hoped that he would snap out of this humour soon. Apart from anything else, it was tedious.

I should have taken it more seriously. My poor husband had physically aged a decade in a month, his movements had slowed down, and he started shuffling around like an old man. I should have realized that the strain of keeping our secret on top of the financial trouble would be too much for him, but when I look back on it now, I am so sorry that Laurence’s birthdays and Christmases were ruined for ever. The twenty-fifth of December will never be a good day for us.

The day started off relatively well. I made a special appeal to Andrew to get out of bed and be in good spirits for Christmas Day and Laurence’s birthday. We gave him our birthday gifts, and we all exchanged Christmas presents. It was almost how it used to be. Andrew’s mother Eleanor was due to come over after she had dined at Andrew’s brother’s house.

After dinner, Andrew and I were in the kitchen, cleaning up. He was moaning about Laurence’s weight and his uncouth girlfriend. He was being quite cruel about the idea of them being a couple. I did not like her either, but my intuition told me it was a passing fancy. Helen’s mother was Angela d’Arcy, a poet of note, so status-wise she was just about acceptable, but Andrew, so quick to be irritated these days, said, ‘What does she even see in him?’ and then I saw Laurence. He had been standing at the kitchen door and heard Andrew’s whole tirade. We had allowed Laurence to have a little wine with dinner to celebrate the fact that he was eighteen, but I don’t think the drink suited him, because he had this really aggressive, hostile expression on his face when he looked at Andrew, as if he despised him.