The Whipping Club (39 page)

             
Mrs. O’Rourke walked over
to Marian with Anna and Rona,
a soda bread, jumping jacks, and a packet of pink gum cigarettes for Johanna in the girls’ hands.

             
Looking up with squinting eyes at the faded mother, Marian said, “You don’t give a tinker’s ass about my son. Go on home.”

             
“Take that inside, girls.”

             
Marian brushed Mrs. O’Rourke away with her hand.

             
“Not true. I care about them all.”

             
“You’re nothing but a mole. Do you know,” Marian began, and then broke down as if she were trying to remember what her mind could barely grasp. “He won’t be allowed out of there,” she mumbled. “Tell me, Mrs. O’Rourke. Why the hell did you ring the police that time? Why didn’t you just ring me, tell me to come get my kids from the Donnybrook Church?” she said.

             
Mrs. O’Rourke looked stunned.

             
“I rang the ambulance. You know that,” she said. “It was the medical people who took me to police because Johanna ran away. I tell her to wait while I call an ambulance for her. She was bleeding a lot. When I get back, she was gone. The medical men took me to police to help find her.”

             
“We’re neighbors,” Marian said. “I wished you had just rang us, not an ambulance.”

             
Mrs. O’Rourke nodded almost imperceptibly, saying nothing to defend herself. Marian glanced up at her. She looked drained by the whole ordeal, too.
Guilt will do that to a person
, Marian thought.

             
“I try to do a good deed, what a neighbor would do,” Mrs. O’Rourke said.

             
“I don’t need a meddling neighbor, Mrs. O’Rourke. What I need are friends.”

             
Marian focused on several housewives loitering by her front gate. “I want to say to the lot of you, that I know you don’t give a hoot. And that you’re all a lot of tinkers.” She paused, watching the reaction to her words. The ladies shook their heads no. “Though I see you’re not tinkers exactly,” she continued, a fit of defensive laughter coming out of her.

             
“Go on home, Mrs. O’Rourke. What more can we say?”

             
As usual Mrs. O’Rourke’s facial expression was hard to read. Maybe there was nothing to read. Maybe her life was stunted for good.

             
Marian sighed and pulled what was left of herself together, and slowly made her way up the steps and through the front door.

During the seven-block ride to the Donnybrook Station, Ben continued his long rant against the system. What seemed like hours later to the bedeviled policemen, Ben was delivered to a cell, hoarse from the shouting. His final words echoed against the walls of the small station.

             
Officer George Conrad who was charged with guarding the prisoner made a grimace that told Ben he agreed with him.

             
“The children in those institutions,” Ben shouted, insisting on being heard, “the laws don’t protect any of them, not a single one.”

             
Within the hour, Father Brennan
arrived at the police station.
Officer George Conrad took him aside and Ben overheard him confide to the Father that Ben’s cellmate was potentially violent. Hoping this disclosure would encourage Ben’s signature on the bail bond so he could be released, Father Brennan relayed the message and quickly discovered his niece’s husband had no intention of cooperating with the authorities.

             
Ben would do nothing until his son was released from his “prison term” at Surtane, he declared.

             
Once again Conrad tried to reason with him, reminding him that the boy had been court ordered to put in a full stay until the age of sixteen, insisting that there was nothing anybody could do to change the outcome.

             
Ben roared. “Then I’ll stay in this bloody hell until he’s sixteen.”

             
“Ben, there’s no sense sitting in a jail,” Father Brennan mumbled. “Don’t you think you’ll be more useful on the outside, Ben?” But Father Brennan’s efforts were half-hearted. It was more than obvious that Ben was not about to back down, and although Father Brennan would not admit it, he admired Ben for his fortitude.

             
“Father, you know what we’ve been through. You know what Marian has suffered. You’ve seen Johanna’s confusion,” Ben said, and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I won’t eat or drink until I free my son.” He pounded the bar, shouting into the air after Father Brennan’s retreating figure.

             
Throughout the gloomy night, Ben’s guilt overwhelmed him.

He admonished himself for asking only once, and meekly at that, to publish his comprehensive story about abuse behind the walls of industrial schools. When Mr. Darby had turned him down, calling his idea rubbish, he was embarrassed and never brought it up again.

             
Marian had been right all along. He had spent too many years backing down.

             
How had they justified the unthinkable: turning their backs on their first born?

Early the next morning, Marian and Father Brennan arrived at the police station.

             
“Where’s my
maidelah
?” Ben asked Marian. He missed Jo and worried about how she was holding up.

             
“At home with the neighbors,” Marian answered with a sigh,

walking toward Officer Conrad and the front desk. Father Brennan followed her.

             
“He won’t leave,” Father Brennan whispered to Marian, looking over at Ben who was hanging on their every word.

             
“Would you be willing to help us with the Brothers at Surtane?” Marian said.

             
Conrad did not give Father Brennan a chance to respond. “I don’t think a visit to Surtane is the answer,” he said. “Better do some of our own digging first.”

             
“That’s right,” Ben called from across the small room. “Let’s check into the breaking and entering charge at the Ringsend hotel. That doesn’t sound like my son.”

             
“I agree,” said Father Brennan, walking over to Ben. “We should stay away from Surtane for now.”

             
Marian stood with her back to Ben at the officer’s desk, talking quietly to Officer Conrad. Again, Ben’s voiced boomed out at them. “Breaking and entering, my ass. Has anyone talked to the manager at the Jolly Roger? Who exactly has pressed charges against him?”

             
“Officer Conrad, you look like you know something. Is Brother Ryder involved?”

             
Conrad didn’t answer. “I remember my own son at Adrian’s age, caught shoplifting along with other indiscretions. Lord knows the trouble he might have found himself in or what godforsaken institution my son might have been sent to if I was not a police officer,” he said to Father Brennan.

             
“Adrian has a friend staying there,” Marian told Officer Conrad. “Nurse mentioned her.”

             
Officer Conrad left his paperwork and joined Father Brennan in front of Ben’s cell.

             
“Your wife is right. I made some inquiries late last night. There seems to be no one who knows the facts. Except a Rosemary, who indeed claims to be Adrian’s friend and says he did not break into her room.”

             
“All the lies,” Ben answered angrily. “No doubt Ryder’s involved in this. We’ve got to get into Surtane, Marian. We know they’re hiding something.” Ben turned to Conrad. “What about Peter Twombly’s death? What I told you last night.”

             
“I’ll go to Surtane, ask some questions,” Conrad responded.

             
“Marian, let’s get Robert Thompson from the
Times
on the phone,” Ben shouted.

             
She looked over at him, gripping the bars.

             
“Would we do that, Officer? Would we ring the
Times
?” Marian said.

             
“Tell him I’m here,” Ben said. “And that I want to talk. Tell them I refuse to eat until justice is done.”

             
“What are you saying, Ben? You’ll lose your job,” she said.

             
“I don’t give a shit about my bloody job, Marian! Get him on the phone.”

             
Marian heard her husband sound like the young man she’d married and sighed. She dialed, and held the phone receiver in the air.

             
“Get down here, Thompson!” Ben shouted at the phone. “I’m at the Donnybrook jail, being held for trying to protect my son. Tell Darby I will not sign any bond unless the guards get my son released from Surtane. God knows they’ll kill him. They’ve killed enough souls already.” He thought about Johanna again, no doubt sullen, home alone, panic-stricken. 

             
“I have a right to protect my own son!” Ben shouted. He shook the prison bars with all the violence he could.

             
Marian put her ear back to the receiver briefly, then hung up.

             
“Thompson’s coming down to the station, Ben,” Marian said.

She came to him and put a hand throu
gh the bars. He took it in his.
Officer Conrad looked ragged to Ben after such a long night. The man spent hours trying to get some sleep but couldn’t with all Ben’s ruckus about Adrian.

             
“Johanna spoke to Adrian,
and he mentioned a union card,
Father,” Marian whispered to her uncle, touching his arm.

             
Father Brennan looked into his niece’s desperate face and found himself saying to Officer Conrad, “The Customs House could most likely get him a union card, couldn’t they?”

             
“Yes, go see Mickey down there,” Officer Conrad murmured into Father Brennan’s ear. “Tell him George suggested it. He’ll sort it out.”

Father Brennan glanced at the officer’s cheek still swollen from Ben’s blow and then at Ben.

             
“If you can help, Father, but if not, we’ll manage,” Marian said.

             
Father Brennan left the jailhouse. Ben was not sure the Father would be willing to break the law,
to lie to a Customs Officer to
obtain a union card for Adrian.

A band of undeterred wives from the neighborhood were milling in the Ellises’ kitchen on Sunday afternoon, preparing a roast beef with drippings they would later serve with tea. There was an egg collection, sliced ham and cold meats. Whatever was left over would be taken home for their husbands.

             
At eight o’clock in the evening, Mrs. Brady arrived to prepare a light repast; the neighbors worked in shifts. The house had taken on the character of mourning, pettiness was put aside and people tended to the necessities.

             
Marian spent the previous night awake. Stomach or intestinal or posterior pains, she didn’t know which kept her from sleep. She wondered if she’d ever be able to forgive herself for the pain she caused her child.
And Johanna
, she thought,
what of her
? Finally, she had no choice but to succumb to her faith, the little of it that remained. She had to trust in humanity, however harsh, and in a God she hoped existed. Rather than have the life sucked out of Adrian for another three and a half more years, she would have to bear the unbearable and come up with a plan to free him.

             
If Adrian were to be safe, he would need his freedom.

             
Marian sat on the stoop that Sunday with a strange serenity, a detachment, and a dull peace she could only attribute to exhaustion. The physical pains were gone and in their place was emptiness. She felt nothing. Marian accepted this for the moment and found a bit of relief in it. She could not expect to find peace if she forever blamed the State, or the Church, or God, or herself, or the times in which she lived.

             
The paradox taking seed inside her didn’t come with an explanation. She needed to look at the situation in a different way. Her entire focus had to be on how to get Adrian out of Surtane.

             
Mrs. O’Rourke came to Marian’s
door, even after the previous
insults, a barmbrack cake in her arms, and invited Marian over to her own house for tea.