The Hunger Within Read online

  Mary seems to decide not to pull Rose out of the ambulance and finally she climbs up inside as well.

  The ride to the hospital is fraught with tension. Rose sits beside Mary, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. Connor slips in and out of consciousness while the paramedics work, fixing drips to him and checking his vital signs.

  At the hospital, Mary and Rose are left alone. With Connor not there, they have to acknowledge each other.

  “How long have you been with him?” Mary asks in her thick Irish brogue.

  “Six months.” Rose stares down at the carpet.

  Mary says nothing but watches Rose quietly for a while. Rose can quite imagine that she’s wondering what is so special about her that Connor would risk his life for. And the answer is; nothing. There is nothing special about Rose, she can hardly believe Connor was ever interested in her. She is quiet, plain, dull, even.

  “Connor’s dad was a Catholic,” says Mary, and Rose looks up in surprise.

  “I didn’t know that, isn’t he—?”

  “Dead. Yes, that he is.” Mary looks Rose straight in the eye. “Killed by his own men, your men, ‘cause he was with me.”

  Rose looked back down to the floor at Mary’s words, spoken so matter of factly.

  “They wanted me out, they wanted to run me out of town but I stuck it out, raised my boy, worked hard. Nobody bothers me now.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Rose, and she’s not sure if she’s expressing her condolences for Connor’s father’s death, or apologising for bringing trouble to Mary’s door again. And she wonders why they don’t bother her now? Does Mary lead such a solitary life that generation’s past have forgotten that she even exists?

  “But can you stick it, girl?” Mary’s eyes glint in the dim light of the room. “Sitting there, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, looking like you wouldn’t say boo to a goose. If your family threw you out and your friends spat at you in the street, could you handle it?”

  Rose raises her head and meets Mary’s gaze head on.

  “I could. I can. I love your son, Mrs Dean, and I’ll give up anything for him. We’ll move away from here to somewhere where stupid politics don’t matter. I can handle it.”

  Mary laughs; a harsh, brittle sound without any humour.

  She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t believe Rose.

  *

  It’s dawn when Rose leaves the hospital. When news had come from the operating theatre that Connor was going to be okay, she made her promises to Mary that she would return that evening.

  Mary had not commented, hadn’t even looked at her and with a whispered goodbye Rose had fled.

  Standing in the bus shelter Rose slumps at the thought of going home. Her mother, who she lives with, is worse than Mary Dean with her rage. News will have spread and she can’t face her mother. Not yet. There’s only one safe haven left to her. The same haven she has used since childhood.

  Bronwyn’s.

  *

  Though the sun has not yet fully risen Bronwyn is up and on her second coffee. She stands in her usual spot, looking at the green curtain, sipping from her mug and thinking about Dan in the bathroom last night at the same time as trying not to think about it.

  An urgent hammering on the front door shatters the morning silence and she jumps, slopping coffee over her hand.

  “Jesus,” she hisses, clutching at her scalded hand and hurries to open the door before the racket wakes Dan.

  Before the door is even fully open a small, brown shape squeezes in and lurches through to the kitchen.

  “Rose!” Bronwyn closes the front door and goes into the kitchen. Rose has sunk into the kitchen chair and put her head in her hands. “What in hell has happened to you?”

  “I went to meet Connor, just as I got there some lads jumped him.” She looks up at Bronwyn, her eyes red and puffy. “They grabbed me, they made me watch…” Rose clamps her hand over her mouth and scraping her chair back, she staggers across the kitchen and vomits into the sink.

  Bronwyn closes the kitchen door softly and goes to her friend, rubbing her back.

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “No, I got away,” Rose turns on the tap and the women watch as the water swirls around the sink. “They shot Connor. They kneecapped him.”

  The hysterics are over. Both Bronwyn and Rose have lived all their lives with shootings on their doorstep. It’s like a cancer, everyone knows someone who has been shot, bombed, beaten. Rose should know better than to get in with a Prod, it’s risky, life threatening – for both parties - and she knows that.

  “Is he worth it? Really, I mean,” Bronwyn asks as she leads Rose back to the table.

  “Yeah, he is.” Rose reaches across the table and grabs Bronwyn’s hand. “I’ve never had this before, not with anyone.”

  Maybe that’s the problem. Rose is so inexperienced that she’s gladly accepted the first man who has looked at her. Bronwyn hasn’t met Connor, all she has is Rose’s words of praise about the man.

  “What, would you not fight for Dan, if you couldn’t be together, if society was keeping you apart?” Rose, still clutching Bronwyn’s hands, is imploring her to understand. But she’s chosen the wrong example and Bronwyn pushes Rose away and puts her own hands under the table.

  “I don’t think I’d fight for anything anymore.”

  Bronwyn gets up and goes to the window where she picks up her coffee mug. It’s cold now, but she gulps at the thick black liquid anyway as she stares at the green curtain.

  *

  As Rose walks down her own street she thinks about Bronwyn’s cold words and wonders when her friend became so jaded. When they were teenagers Bronwyn used to be a firecracker. She was loud and defended her friends and family with a warrior-like stance. She fought and laughed and danced and drank. Now she has faded away into nothingness. She’s like me, thinks Rose, quiet and subdued and unhappy. And the encounter in Bronwyn’s kitchen has almost made her forget about the previous night’s trauma, until she walks past the Parkenson house. From the corner of her eye she sees Mrs Parkenson in her garden. Rose slows down and is about to nod a greeting when suddenly a great gob of spit lands on her shoe. It is Mrs Parkenson’s teenage son, she hadn’t seen him at first as he’s standing by the fence. Rose’s mouth falls open and she looks wildly around, noticing now that everyone is outside. All of their neighbours are hanging around the gates, watching her do the walk of shame.

  And she doesn’t know how to react, this is something totally new. Raised single-handedly by a mother who ruled with a rod of steel, she’s spent her whole life playing by the rules. Never had she given her mother a moment of trouble or worry and, unlike Bronwyn, she had never shoplifted, skipped school or been in trouble with the law. She had never given anyone cause to chastise her. Until now.

  “Traitor!” shouted someone and the yell is like a starting pistol.

  Now her mother is coming at her, out of her own gate five doors away and Rose feels her face go cold but there’s a fascination there too, just how much Rose’s own mother, Kathleen, is holding the same sort of fury that Mary Dean had earlier. Kathleen doesn’t share the physical similarities of Mary. Where Mary is tall and stately, Kathleen is slight, but she’s moving at a speed that Rose has never seen before and then she’s there, in front of Rose and Kathleen’s hand shoots out, grips her daughter’s arm and in one fluid movement, she’s pulled down the path and into the house.

  Kathleen slams the door shut and turns to face her daughter.

  “Mam—”

  Kathleen slaps Rose’s face. Hard. “How could you?” Kathleen’s face is ablaze with fury. “Why couldn’t you stick to your own?”

  Rose flinches at her mother’s wrath and tried to summon Bronwyn in her head. When she’s in a bind she always thinks of what Bronwyn would do. Bronwyn would just tell Kathleen to fuck off.

  “He’s just a friend,” Rose whispers.

  “That’s a lie!” Kathleen roars as Rose begins to shake. S
he doesn’t know how to placate her mother, she never has. She can never reach her.

  “Mam…,” Rose is openly crying.

  “A Protestant pig! My daughter and a pig. I’m a laughing stock! My neighbours, who always respected me, are laughing at me!” Kathleen shouts.

  They never respected you, they think you’re a witch. When I was a child the other kids dared each other to knock on this very door and outrun the witch. But Rose doesn’t say that aloud. She has never stood up to Kathleen, but she wants her mother to try and understand what danger she had been in last night.

  “They left him on the ground and came after me. I had to run away, I had to hide because I was so frightened and I was all alone out there. I could have been shot or raped…,” she tails off, knowing her words won’t have made an impact anyway.

  There’s no love here, she thinks, nothing like Mary’s love for her son. Why is that? Why does my mother care about what the neighbours think instead of caring about me?

  Kathleen’s face is ashen and Rose frowns. “I don’t know what to do, mam.”

  Her mother’s movements are slow now, not jerky and fast. It’s as if the rage has left her and in its place is nothing. Kathleen reaches past Rose and opens the front door.

  Rose glances out at the people still holding court in the street. What’s she supposed to do? Leave? What is Kathleen asking of her? And her mother isn’t even looking at her anymore, she’s fixed her empty stare on a spot on the wall.

  Rose slips out of the door and it closes softly in her face.

  The crowd shift behind her. They are quiet too, perhaps sensing the unease. Rose walks down the path. The fear and her tears have gone. She doesn’t know what just happened. She doesn’t know what to do. And she’s fast running out of people to go to.

  *

  Bronwyn is still in the kitchen when Dan comes down. She automatically glances at the clock. It’s early, for him, anyway. He moves past her without speaking and goes out into the garden. She watches from the window. The shed door is swinging open and he slams it closed, props a brick in front of it to keep it shut.

  “Rose’s man was shot last night,” she says, when he comes back into the kitchen.

  Dan, bare-chested, opens the fridge. The contents have not changed since the day before and he slams it closed.

  “Did you hear me?” she asks.

  He mumbles, rubs at his head and reaches for his rolling tobacco on the side.

  “Fucking kids,” he mutters.

  “What?”

  Deftly he rolls a cigarette and opens the back door again. A rush of cold air comes in and she shivers.

  “Can’t you hear them?”

  She hadn’t, but now she does. They are playing two doors down. She imagines them bundled up in thick winter clothes, chasing around the garden. They are young, no more than toddlers, really. Their mother, Sue, seems to pop one out every year.

  “They’re just playing,” she replies. “Did you hear about Rose?”

  He shakes his head, lights the fag and sucks on it.

  “Her boyfriend got shot.”

  “Who the fuck is her boyfriend?”

  His interest is piqued now and his attention is so unfamiliar that for a moment she doesn’t know how to continue.

  “Connor… some lad, protestant, obviously.” She stops talking, watches him through narrowed eyes as he flicks his ash outside the door.

  Suddenly she needs to get out. The kitchen is stifling now, though moments earlier she had felt the cold blast of winter and she pushes back her chair sharply and stands up.

  “I’m going out,” she says.

  He has moved outside now, and she sees his hand rise in a dismissive gesture, or maybe he’s just flicking his cigarette.

  She’s breathless as she pulls her coat on, puts her keys and purse in her pocket and slams the front door behind her. She waits until she hears the slam of the back door that tells her he has retreated back into the house before making her way up the side of the house. She shoves the brick out of the way with her foot and pulls the shed door open. In the dusty gloom she can make out shapes stacked up neatly against the far wall. Pinching her lips together she nods, once to herself, before quietly closing the door and putting the brick back in its place.

  Images of last night’s clothes, balled up and discarded in the bathroom wash over her. Dan in front of the mirror, naked, touching himself, visibly aroused. Shaking her head as if to dispel the thoughts, she hurries back down the alley and across the street to the telephone box on the corner. With shaking fingers she digs a coin out of her pocket and rings Rose’s home and Kathleen answers, short and sharp, and Bronwyn groans inwardly.

  “Hi, Mrs James, is Rose there?”

  Someone is breathing shallowly on the other end but nobody speaks. Bronwyn is about to repeat herself when there is a click and a dialing tone in her ear as Kathleen hangs up.

  Well, Rose must have told her all about Connor. But, where had she gone? In times of trouble the two girls always went to each other, but obviously Rose hadn’t come back to her.

  Maybe she has gone back to the hospital. She hangs up the receiver and taps her fingernails on the phone. She opens the door of the phone box, looks up and down the street before retreating back inside. She digs around in her pocket, slips another coin in and dials a number before she can change her mind. A nameless, faceless, bored sounding man answers at the other end. Bronwyn talks quickly, spilling out her words fast so she can’t change her mind. The man is speaking at the other end, asking questions, but she’s said enough. She hangs up and as she backs out of the telephone box, Bronwyn sees a bus turning the corner at the top of the road. She steps off the kerb and flags it down.

  *

  At the hospital, Rose sits in the waiting room. Mary is there, accusing in her silence. When she can no longer bear it she speaks up.

  “What happened to Connor’s dad?”

  Mary glances at her but says nothing.

  “I need to know what to expect, my mother… I think she kicked me out.” Rose says haltingly. “I mean, I know what to expect, obviously, after last night. But, will you tell me?”

  Mary’s face is so taught and pale that Rose thinks she might slap her, just like her own mother did. But to her surprise, Mary answers. Her words are faltering, halted, heartfelt.

  “I can’t… they got him. Like they got Connor,” Mary swallows loudly and shoots a look at Rose. “I can’t tell you much more, do you understand, girl, that I don’t think about that night?”

  Rose nods her understanding, but after a pause Mary continues talking.

  “They got him, they used a gun and a bullet, just like with my boy. And if they’d have stopped there he would still be here today.” Mary stops, gulps in air and finishes in a rush. “But they didn’t.”

  It soon becomes apparent that Mary is not going to say anymore, so Rose stands up.

  “More coffee?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Does Connor know? I mean, have you ever told him the whole story?” asks Rose as she retrieved two more coffees.

  “He knows everything. I never keep anything from him.” Her voice is full of pride, boastful that she is so close to her son.

  But he doesn’t tell you everything, thinks Rose spitefully, he didn’t tell you about me.

  A nurse comes in and casts a glance at Rose before turning to Mary.

  “Mrs Dean, your son is awake and asking for you.”

  Mary nods and sweeps out of the door. Rose, still at the coffee machine, puts the drinks aside and runs after her.

  *

  “Hey!” Connor’s eyes are wide and anxious as Mary strides into his room with Rose following close behind her. “You two...”

  Mary reaches him first, hugging Connor before standing back. Rose moves forward, crying already. Relief that he’s not dead, not like his poor dad.

  “It’s okay. I’m all right, see?” Connor grips her hand. He shows them his leg, tells that ho
w the doctor said he was lucky, it was clean, no bones damaged. The shot was off, just a flesh wound.

  Despite the good news on his leg he looks awful. His right eye is swollen closed, and he has stitches in his forehead, where he had received a vicious cut. Rose sits on the edge of the bed, taking care not to touch his bandaged leg.

  “Girl’s been kicked out of her home,” announces Mary.

  Connor looks horrified. “Does everyone know?”

  “Yes,” Mary replies, and at his expression, “what did you expect?”

  “What are you going to do?” he questions Rose.

  There is a lull in conversation so awkward that Rose thinks she may start crying again. The silence stretches into minutes and Rose is just about to say that she will stay with Bronwyn, when Connor turns to his mother. With a look that Rose can’t quite decipher he says, “She’ll have to stay at ours.”

  Rose doesn’t want to look at Mary, but she does. She wishes she hadn’t.

  Chapter 5

  The curtain moves, three pairs of eyes look up, no doubt in relief that someone else is there to help the awkward conversation.

  “Bronwyn!” Rose cries and stands up to greet her friend. Relief that she is there, a fourth person who will fill the hateful silences.

  “Bronwyn, hey?” Connor smiles in her direction. “Rose’s friend?”

  Bronwyn studies the boy in the bed. He’s nothing like she expected. How did Rose land this one being as plain as she is? She hates herself immediately for the thought but she can’t ignore it. He’s quite dark skinned, his hair is as dark as hers and he is extremely good looking; dark eyes and chiselled, classically handsome features. He seems an awful lot younger than Rose though, something her friend had not mentioned.

  “I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances that we finally meet,” says Bronwyn and then turns to Mary. “Hello. Are you Connor’s ma?”

  “That I am,” she replies and stands up. “I’ll wait outside.”