Prosperity Drive (11 page)

The weather was glorious. So hot that the tar on the road to the beach melted and the children's feet stuck to it. She remembered having to stop Owen scraping the black stuff off with his fingers and eating it; he thought it was liquorice. There were long, lazy days of picnics and sandcastles and dips in the sea. Quinny was not equipped for the seaside, Irene noticed. She had no swimwear, and she seemed to have nothing even vaguely summery in her wardrobe. Her only concession to the heat was that she dispensed with stockings. Her legs looked pale and sorrowful stuck in her kitten heels and she didn't shave her legs, Irene saw, so there was quite a thicket growing there. Irene offered her one of her old bathing suits, though she thought it would be a bit of a squeeze for Quinny to get into it since she was much better endowed on top than Irene was. (Miss Pays-Bas had told her that was why Irene hadn't got into the top five in London.
Vulgar creature.
)

‘It's alright, Missus,' Quinny said, ‘I'm not much good with water. Can't swim.'

Irene felt sorry for her. While she and Owen paddled in the shallows and Rory bobbed in the breakers, Quinny sat miserably behind the candy-striped windbreak looking after Fergal. It made Irene feel like a girl again, larking about in the surf with the boys, while Quinny seemed more like the mother, sitting in the shade and watching their fun remotely. And Owen was returned to her. He could not resist the fun of the water, the one place Quinny couldn't follow him.

But with Quinny there was always the grit in the oyster. One afternoon when Irene had gone to the beach shop, Quinny had let Owen – it would be Owen, of course – bury his sandals. They were newly bought, the ones with the clover pattern and the blond soles. Quinny was always engaging in this kind of play with them, Irene thought crossly, not
supervising them but sinking to their level. When she came back with a net of oranges for the children (no crisps and chocolate bars for her boys; she insisted on healthy snacks to protect their teeth), she interrupted their game, so it wasn't until they were getting ready to pack up and go that the absence of the sandals was discovered. Irene was furious.

‘They can't have gone too deep,' Quinny said when they started their search. But an hour later, when Irene and the boys were reduced to dogs, scrabbling at the sand with their paws, her nonchalance had disappeared.

‘Where did you last see them?' Irene demanded.

‘I don't know,' Quinny said forlornly. ‘That was the whole point of the game.'

They excavated until the sand all around their encampment was a field of coarse rubble. Owen used his spade and thought it all part of the silly game Quinny had started. Towards the end, Rory let out a victorious halloo when he unearthed one sandal. But that was nearly worse. What good was one? The light began to fail. The beach was deserted now, and they were steeped in a chilly salmon-coloured dusk. The children were getting shivery, the baby in Quinny's arms yelling to be fed, but Irene insisted they continue. She'd wanted to punish Quinny, but in the end the children had been made to suffer by the fruitless search. There'd be trouble, Irene knew. Liam couldn't stand the idea of waste. He wasn't tight-fisted, exactly, but he was frugal by nature so that she had to account for every penny of her housekeeping allowance. She was thriftier than he knew – she still had that Connolly gown and all her other beauty queen finery. In case, she told herself, in case she might find an occasion – some function to do with Liam's work, maybe – where she could wear them again. But, she suspected, those taffeta and satin dresses lovingly preserved in their plastic shrouds represented something different to Liam. For him, they spoke of an extravagant nature that might sprout again at any moment. The very things that had
attracted him – her style, her poise – had become vices that must be reined in.

‘The price of Owen's sandals will come out of your wages,' she said to Quinny as they trooped back home through the darkening dunes.

‘Yes, Missus,' was all Quinny said.

The days at the beach were memorialised not in holiday snaps – because Irene was useless with the camera; that was Liam's domain – but by an unseen hand. On one of those long, lazy days a John Hinde postcard photographer had captured the scene. Two years later, when Irene had had the courage to return to Courtown, Owen spotted the card on the swivel rack in the beachside shop.

‘Look, look,' he screamed, ‘it's Quinny!'

Irene ignored him as he tugged at her sleeve. It was a scene that had been replayed again and again. The sight of any long-haired girl on the street could prompt him. He would run after her, calling out Quinny's name, Irene in resentful pursuit. She was weary of trying to explain to long-haired strangers why her son was clinging to them. The sightings on the street were always heartbreaking; he would be inconsolable for days, crushed by the enormity of his own expectation.

‘Now, Owen, you know it can't be Quinny. Quinny is …' Irene didn't like to use the word.

‘But she's here,' Owen insisted, waving the card at her. ‘Look, look.'

He was getting so hysterical that she bent down to look at the card, and she saw that Owen was right. The photographer must have stood in the dunes at the curve of the beach – the view was a long one. The sky blared blue. Irene and her boys were reduced to heads bobbing in the frothy water, but Quinny's face was captured quite clearly in side view, and wearing Irene's straw sun hat. Some old sense of propriety flared in Irene.

‘You're absolutely right, Owen,' she said, feeling her voice tremble. She bought the card to appease him and in the hope that it might provide solace. But part of her wished he had never seen it. While Owen was in the world, she realised, Quinny would have a hold over her.

Quinny took Owen on a morning in September; well not exactly took him, she was technically in charge of him. Irene didn't know how to explain this – Quinny went missing, and for several hours she had no idea where her son was (though she never told Liam this). Quinny was supposed to be taking Owen to the barber for his first big boy cut. Up to then, Irene had used the scissors on his baby curls, but she'd decided it was time. Time to let go. This was the first step on his journey to boarding school; Irene reckoned she'd better get used to it. In a year's time, Rory would be sent there.

They set off at eleven, Owen happily (a jaunt with Quinny!), and Irene expected them back within the hour. When lunchtime came and there was no sign of them, Irene began to fret. The barber's was only in the village, a ten-minute walk away. She considered putting Fergal in the pram and going in search of them, but Rory would be in from school for his lunch so she couldn't leave. When Rory arrived, she pretended nothing was amiss; she fed him and he went back to school. She put Fergal down for his nap – it was 2.30 now, and for the first time she gave in to panic. Where could they be? Had there been an accident? She thought of ringing Liam at the office, but she didn't. She didn't want to disturb him, and she didn't want to be accused of scaremongering, once more making a mountain out of a molehill where Quinny was concerned. Anyway, she felt vaguely implicated – why hadn't she brought Owen to the barber's herself and left Quinny with the baby? Wasn't it Fergal that Quinny was employed to mind, in the first place?

Rory came in from school and asked mildly where Owen and Quinny were.

‘They're having a day in town,' Irene lied.

The lie emboldened her: this is what she would say to Liam. Already she was thinking ahead. This way it would appear as if the trip was sanctioned, instead of their toddler son being missing for the best part of the day and Irene having done nothing about it.

At six she heard the key in the door and rushed into the hallway, praying it wasn't Liam, because now she was more afraid of his censure than the fact that Owen was missing. A tousled-looking Owen appeared, holding Quinny's hand. He was filthy. There was grime on his face and chocolate stains around his mouth. His baby curls, she noticed, were still intact.

‘Thank God,' she said, forgetting to be cross with Quinny. ‘I was out of my mind with worry. Where have you been?'

‘We went up the Pillar,' Owen declared proudly.

Irene looked at Quinny.

‘Nelson's Pillar?'

She was expecting a rush of apology, some abject excuse for keeping the child out for seven hours, some explanation, but Quinny said nothing.

‘I'll bring him up for his bath, Missus,' was all she said as if she was simply resuming duties.

She led Owen upstairs. (He kicked up a terrible fuss when Irene insisted on a bath, but with Quinny, he was always docile.) By the time Liam came home, a scrubbed and dressing-gowned Owen was having his tea with Rory, and everything was back to normal. Irene was relieved she didn't have to explain her neglectful part in the affair. But she was determined to get to the bottom of it. Tomorrow, she would tackle Quinny.

But she didn't. She interrogated Owen instead.

‘We were on the bus,' he said. That was a novelty for him. ‘On the upstairs.'

‘And what about Nelson's Pillar?'

‘It was dark,' he said, ‘but Quinny held my hand.'

Irene had never been inside the Pillar. There were 168 steps that wound up in a spiral to a viewing platform at the top. Liam had wanted to take her during their courtship, but Irene hadn't liked the sound of it.

‘You can see for miles from up there,' he had said.

But it was the enclosure Irene was afraid of, the seeping granite walls, the imprisonment of it.

‘And what did you eat?' Irene asked, because Owen was fond of his food.

‘Crips,' he answered.

‘Crisps,' she corrected, though usually she found his lisp endearing.

He nodded.

‘And chocolate?' Irene prompted, remembering his muddy mouth. ‘And what else?'

His brow furrowed in concentration.

‘Quinny has a little boy,' he volunteered.

‘What do you mean?' Irene said, and she shook him.

‘I'm her little boy,' Owen said and smiled cheesily. It was the closest Irene ever came to striking one of her children. She raised her hand, then let it fall.

Over the following weeks there were several more disappearances, though none as alarming as that first time. If Irene asked Quinny to run to the shops, she would always take Owen with her, and the errands took longer than they should have. She would take detours to the park (Owen loved the swings). They went to view the building site. Eight new houses were being built on to the end of Prosperity Drive. There were pyramids of gravel and sand on the road and the churning of cement mixers all day. She took him to the sheep field – Quinny seemed to know all the secret places in the neighbourhood – and into the grounds of St Jude's, the cancer hospital
at the end of the avenue. Owen came back from that expedition excitedly proclaiming he'd seen the bald children. Irene had ruled St Jude's out of bounds precisely because there were children there, sick and dying children whom she didn't want Rory or Owen exposed to.

‘St Jude's is no place for him,' she said to Quinny. But what was meant as a reprimand came out feebly, and still Quinny made no apology.

‘Nita asked us in,' she said. ‘Isn't that right, Oweny?'
His name is not Oweny.

Nita Dark lived in the gate lodge at the entrance to the hospital. Mother of a little coloured boy who was in Low Babies with Owen. Irene was not sure she approved but Owen and Mo were friends, so she couldn't exactly forbid the association. But she didn't want to encourage it either. The first day he'd come home from school, Owen had asked why Mo was a different colour.

‘He's a baby from the missions,' Irene had lied, furious at having to defend Nita Dark's unsavoury morals. ‘He's from Africa.'

Trust Quinny to pal up with Nita Dark, of all people.

‘She's a brave woman,' Quinny said as if reading Irene's mind.

‘Or foolish,' Irene said.

Quinny made a dissatisfied pout, like a child being corrected. Then she lifted Owen up and carried him off to give him his lunch. Irene felt wrong-footed. As always with Quinny, they never got to talk about the real trouble.

The day,
that
day, it was Liam who found her. He had Owen in his arms and as soon as he put the key in the front door he could smell the gas.

‘Stay back,' he shouted at Irene and Rory, who were trailing in behind him. But in his panic he carried Owen into the kitchen so Owen
saw.

‘Holy Jesus!' Liam cried and shut the door on the sight.

‘What is it?' Irene asked.

‘Quinny is praying,' Owen said.

It made them notorious. The house where the maid had gassed herself. What could drive a girl to do such a thing? Irene saw that question in the eyes of her neighbours. An unwanted pregnancy. That's what they thought, Irene was sure, and they would look at her and wonder why she hadn't exerted her authority more firmly. How could she explain that was not it at all? With Quinny the worst had already happened, before she had ever darkened the Devoys' door. It was nothing I did, Irene wanted to say, but of course, this being Prosperity Drive, no one came out with any such accusations.

She and Liam went to the funeral in a country church near Kells, though Irene didn't want to.

‘We have to,' Liam said, ‘we were
in
loco parentis
.'

‘She was the maid, Liam, for God's sake.'

The maid who had tried to purloin her son and then did
this
to them! Brought disreputable death into their midst. Quinny couldn't even be buried in consecrated ground because of what she'd done. She was taken away after the funeral to God knows where.

Her parents were there, her father a rough-looking man unkempt with grief, her mother a version of what Quinny might have become. Fleshy, jowly with startling high-built black hair. Quinny also had two brothers, it turned out. Grown men, large, bewildered.