A Woman Unknown Page 0,72

crushing me to a pulp. But after the first step, he gave up. ‘Will you carry up these blessed crutches? I’ll manage best under my own steam. I’m used to being on my knees.’

I carried the crutches up the stairs, and then turned to see Fitzpatrick making rapid progress on hands and knees.

Once upright again, Fitzpatrick dipped his fingers in a small font of holy water that was nailed to the wall where in a different house there may have been a light switch. The font was attached to the base of a metal crucifix, about six inches long, the tiny thorn-crowned figure looking sadly down at the water below his feet.

The bedroom window was open a little but gave no breeze. A sheet had been rigged to stretch from the posts at the bed head to its foot, providing a canopy. Candles flickered on the mantelpiece and washstand. I hung back as Fitzpatrick adjusted his crutches and approached the bed, stepping round three women who knelt at the bedside, telling their beads with a low murmur, as if chanting spells.

Fitzpatrick touched the dead woman’s forehead. I brought myself to look at Deirdre’s mother for the first and last time. Mrs Hartigan’s skin had a parchment-like quality, with many small lines, like cracks in old paper. There was a sharpness to her features and the severely parted grey hair and closed, deep set eyes made her look already like an effigy on a tomb.

Fitzpatrick stepped back. ‘Say goodbye,’ he ordered.

I hesitated. It felt strange to be paying respects to a woman I had not known, and too intrusive to touch her, as Fitzpatrick had. But having come into the room, I could do no other than approach, ignoring the kneeling women on my right.

I almost touched her forehead, sufficiently close to feel a cold tingle in my fingers. This would get me nowhere. Where is your daughter? I asked silently

You’ll be the last to know, came the dead woman’s wordless reply.

Fitzpatrick disconcerted the praying women by awkwardly using his crutches as an aid to lowering himself to his knees. He pulled beads from his pocket to join in.

I glanced around the room. There was a flowered dress on the back of the door, carefully placed on a hanger. It did not belong to the dead woman, or the aunts. It was a short-sleeved summer frock. How much time did Deirdre spend here? I wondered. And was she here now? Perhaps she had dashed to hide in the cellar when someone said, Your husband is coming.

It was then that I noticed Eddie in the corner of the room, looking every inch the boxer, dazed from life’s punches but waiting to spring into the ring. One look at his unhappy face told me that Deirdre was not here.

When the rosary came to an end, two of the women stood up nimbly enough and after kissing the dead woman’s forehead, and touching her cheek and hands, they left. The remaining woman then pushed herself to her feet, using the edge of the bed. Fitzpatrick, forgetting his own infirmity, moved to help her, saying, ‘Sorry for your loss, Aunt Brenda. She looks at peace. Her troubles are over.’ He then spoke to the dead woman. ‘Mona, your life was hard but you saw your son at the last. You died a contented woman.’

Brenda was not unlike her sister Mary, but her hair was still black, and her bright eyes looked altogether more intelligent, and more wary. ‘Is that so? Is that so indeed, or did himself downstairs, turning up in the image of his father, push you over the edge altogether, Mona? That and the rattling of the cart they call an ambulance, bumping her over the cobbles all the way to Roundhay until the poor soul’s insides must have been shook about and her very bones worked loose.’

Fitzpatrick adjusted his crutches. ‘That nursing home was a good clean place,’ he protested mildly. ‘And sure isn’t the matron’s family from Kilkenny? Deirdre did what she thought best.’

‘I don’t hold Deirdre to blame. But where is she?’

Fitzpatrick looked uncomfortable. ‘Here’s the point. I’m at a loss to know where she could be and I have this lady here helping me to find her.’

‘Aye well you’re looking in the wrong place. No one has seen her here.’

A heavy silence filled the room. Through the open window came the voices of the men, talking quietly in the street below.

‘Do you hear that, Mona?’ the aunt addressed the