And once more, my expectations were wrong. Every time Bill starts to speak, he falters, beaten by the gravity of it all. I wish I could think of a way to talk this away, to erase what I said. I wish he could ask me to hold him. To make it all better, the way he is always making things better for me. This is something I know how to navigate. I could show him, if he wanted to be shown.
‘Our mother used say that Anna was born during a storm. That was the reason for her swinging moods. For years, I believed that was true.’
I am trying to channel my mother now, who could talk anything down to nothing by a turn in the wind or an itch on the palm. Yes, the truths we are facing could be talked away, if I find the words.
‘I feel like my whole life revolves around her. I’ve to have a constant eye on her and her endless, delicate emotions. ’Tis cruel like, I don’t even know does she realise how much damage she’s done to me.’
Bill looks over to me, stony-eyed, as if to suggest his patience is up. It’s time to stop garnering pity. The jig is up, Tom, you’re caught out. I have to pull the veil off and reveal the hideous face of my family. Knock down everything I’ve worked so hard to build up.
‘Lillian Kealey died. And ’twas Anna killed her.’
I pray he will believe me.
My humiliation, my total and absolute heartbreak, and my greatest joy, when he says,
‘We’ll get this sorted out.’
I don’t know what to say to him. There were few times in my life I felt more fragile than this.
‘Do you believe in God, Tom?’
He asks me, and places a hand on my shoulder. He is touching me.He is not afraid of me. But what a question to ask. In a moment like this, how could I not believe in God? When is He more present than in our guilt, or humiliation, or fear? At His kindest, God is nothing more than a reminder of my failings, of my inability to be glorious. He comes to me often.
‘Of course, I believe in God.’
‘Then you had better pray for that girl.’
Given a moment of thought, I realise that since I met him, Bill has stood in as my God.
Anna
THE EVENING FINDS ME. AThome, I am sewing curtains and waiting for a call to be brought back down to Betty’s house. She didn’t kiss me, I know, but she didn’t turn me away. She might need time. I won’t entertain the idea that it was all in my head. It wasn’t. Not this time.
Jack is out at Doyle’s. I’m not sure where Peggy is; I never really am. It was such a shame to have had to leave in a hurry this morning. Tom bursts in the door. He slams it shut, the cross falling off the wall. The windows shaking in their frames. Clearly ready to strangle me. Let him try.
‘Were you down in the Nevans’ this morning, girl?’
He asks me, trying to be gentle. But I hear the heat in his voice. I know better than to answer him. Tom is in his saviour mindset now, where he knows exactly what is best for all of us, and any deviance from that is criminal.
‘I’m fit to kill you, Anna.’
A cold streak runs through me, but the anger thins out of his voice before he finishes his sentence. He half chokes, as though he is going to cry. He doesn’t want me to answer, I know. And yet I cannot fight the compulsion to further upset him.
‘I don’t know why you’re always putting Bill Nevan before me. It’s like he’s your god, or your daddy. Tommy, you’re nothing but his employee.’
Disappointed, and angry, and then, as if so bewildered by me that he has been left without any other option, he wipes his hand down his face; in defeat, he blesses himself and drops down to his knees and begins blubbering out a prayer. All pointed at me.
‘When are you going to buy us beds?’
I hope that hurts him.
I get on with my sewing. When it seems he has prayed himself to the point of exhaustion, he takes Daddy’s pipe and lies down to sleep. That’s it then, he isn’t going back to work. He isn’t having the rest of the evening; he is skipping straight to tonight. It seems that he hasn’t much regard for what upset him so much before.
It’s all too much for him. I suppose I should be deep in thought, too. Creating a counter to all of the moves he is planning. He mumbles a little plan to himself, but I know that I have time. Tom’s problem is that he needs to have his plan thought out before he can execute it. He never just acts. So I have time to do something myself, before he goes out to get Jack. Before he finds Peggy. And before he secures the details of a plan that the three of them will enact against me.
‘Sorry, Tom. Sorry, Jacky.’
I whisper, as I slip out of the house, undetected. Into the depth of the night.
