Esther hurried home. She was late for tea. She hoped she’d be able to slip inside and freshen up, wanting to wash away that strange musty smell that clung to her after being with Con. She wondered if her mother had noticed, could she tell? She was lucky, there was no-one around, only Liam sitting in the corner of the kitchen reading a comic. She washed and, wasting no time, returned to the kitchen. Strange, the tea was almost cooked and yet there was no sign of her mother. She turned down the oven and drained the huge saucepan of potatoes before busying herself laying the table. Majella appeared, pushing through the wooden door.
“Where’s Nonie?” she asked, glancing around the kitchen.
Esther shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“She was with you! Nonie went with you!” insisted Majella. “Sure I saw her following down the path behind you. Where did the two of you get to?”
Esther’s cheeks flamed; she felt like a small child caught out in some misdeed. “Honest, Mammy! I don’t know where she is. She wasn’t with me!”
Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders. “Nonie went with you, I saw her with my own eyes trailing along after you. You must have seen her, Esther! Where did you go anyways?”
“Honest to Jesus, Mammy, I didn’t see her since about three o’clock.”
“Where were you then all afternoon,” questioned her mother sharply, “if you weren’t minding your wee sister?”
“I just went for a bit of a walk and to call on a friend,” lied Esther, aware of the rush of mortification that washed over her. Secretly she cursed Nonie for drawing attention to her absence and inviting her mother’s suspicions. Majella was about to question her more, only her younger brothers came in from playing football and Ger and Donal arrived in starving and the tea was ready to eat. “She’ll turn up,” added Esther lamely, serving the food out on to the plates and half expecting Nonie to push in the door at any minute.
“She’s out playing with the dog, Mammy. You know what she’s like about time unless someone reminds her,” suggested Liam, helping himself to another potato.
“Aye, I suppose you’re right,” murmured Majella. “It’s just that I can’t help worrying about her.”
“We’ll all go and look for her in a few minutes,” offered Tom, sensing Majella’s concern. “Promise!”
They all ate quickly, Nonie’s dinner kept warm for her. Afterwards Donal and Tom decided to go and check with a few of the neighbours, while Gerard drove up and down along the coast road to see if there was any sign of her, or if she had taken a lift from anyone. The rest of them searched all her favourite haunts—down on the beach, the rocky cove, the old graveyard, the ruined cottage—all aware that in a few short hours the heavy red sun would drop down behind the scraggy hills and fields and they would be in darkness. Majella Doyle was getting more frantic with every minute. “Nonie’s afraid of the dark. We’ve got to find her before it gets dark!”
A few of the neighbours who were fond of the wee girl insisted on joining in the search too. Nine-year-old Paddy was red-eyed from crying. He was the closest to Nonie in age and couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen her run off somewhere.
“We were playing football,” Liam reminded him. “It’s not your fault.”
Guilt and shame and foreboding crawled around Esther’s insides. Why in God’s name hadn’t she played with her young sister, let her walk with her, why had she been so obsessed with getting to see Conor that she had forgotten about Nonie?
They trudged through field after field, sheep baaaing at them curiously, a startled corncrake swirling up in front
of them, Liam and Paddy and Tom running on ahead searching for her.
As dusk fell the air stilled, and the tide rolled in deep below them. Their voices caught on the wind as they called “Nonie!” again and again.
“There’s Mixer!” yelled Liam, running towards the dog, Esther praying that her sister was close by.
“Nonie! Nonie!”
The black and white collie ran towards them, tail wagging, crazy with barking, winding in and out between them, his coat and paws matted and soaked with dripping wet turf. “He’s been up on the bogs!”
“We’ll search up on the bogs!” ordered Gerard.
Acres and acres of uncultivated bogland stretched out in front of them. The rich brown soil was heavy and clinging underfoot, reeds and rushes and assorted wildflowers pushing their roots down into the peaty clay, clinging to the top surface and dancing in the slight breeze. All winter long the bog lay flooded and damp, and come summer the locals excavated it, digging deep, sinking bog holes into the dark heavy turf, digging it up, turning it and leaving it to dry. Out behind McGuinness’s place alone there were about three acres of it. The panting dog led them in that direction. Esther held her breath as her brothers and a few of the neighbours spread out across it.
Sweet Jesus, she prayed, don’t let this be! “Nonie!” she shouted aloud, her voice like bog cotton, wisping away unheard.
“Christ!” Donal had stopped, transfixed; Liam and Ger and even young Paddy all running to join him. Esther stood watching as her brothers began to cry, Tom and Donal plunging forwards and wading up to their waists now in the heavy rain-filled turf pool. Esther raced to join them, Ger holding on to his mother as her legs almost buckled under her.
Floating face-down, wrapped in her muddied white shroud lay Nonie, her yellow ball bobbing in the brownstained water.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” prayed Majella aloud. “Not my baby!”
“Mammy!” sobbed Esther, unbelieving, wanting to hug and comfort her mother.
“You! Don’t you dare touch me, you bloody little bitch. Get away from me!”
“Don’t mind her, Esther,” consoled Tom. “You know she doesn’t mean it, it’s just the shock and because she’s so upset.”
“She came up here after you, searching for you!”
“No! She didn’t, Mammy, I didn’t see her!” she pleaded.
“This is all your fault!” cried her mother, turning away from her.
Donal had carried Nonie home across the bogland, Gerard trying to lead Majella with the support of Maureen Murphy. Esther held Paddy’s hand, her youngest brother whimpering like a terrified puppy. Dr. Lawless and the sergeant
were immediately called to the house. Her mother screaming for more than an hour when she saw Nonie laid out. The sound piercing them all.
The women of the parish did a great job. They had washed the dress, every inch, till all the dirty brown staining had been bleached out of it. Maureen Murphy had tended to the corpse, washing and fixing the little girl’s curly hair till every trace of the clinging black mud was gone and the huge, ugly, purple-coloured bruise on her forehead could scarcely be seen. ‘Twas a sorry end for the child out there in the fields on her own, she thought as she laid Nonie out.
Esther still could not believe it. Nonie gone. The house was quiet, too quiet. How could one small six-year-old have made so much noise, filled the cottage so? The boys were in bits, their eyes red-rimmed with grief. Even big bullying Gerard had bawled like a baby when they’d got home, clinging to their mother for comfort.
But Majella Doyle could give no comfort. She sat in the armchair, white-faced and stone cold, locked in a world of her own.
Esther felt like a part of her had died too that day. She could feel her mother blaming her for what happened every time she looked at her. So she ironed shirts, and set out her brothers’ suits. She pressed her mother’s costume, and contacted relatives telling them the time and day of the funeral. There were a hundred and one jobs to do and she filled her unquiet mind with them.
The small church was packed to capacity, some of the
neighbours having to stand outside, Father Brendan glad of the support for the bereaved family. He had been up in Doyle’s most of the day and evening before. The little girl had reminded him for all the world of a saint, lying there in her wooden coffin. The mother now sat in the front row of the church. Bernard Lawless had given her something to take the edge off what was happening; she was obviously still in shock, sitting there like a stone statue at her own daughter’s funeral. In the congregation he knew there was hardly a woman who hadn’t suffered the loss of a child, usually in infancy or at birth, or during epidemics, but somehow this loss had been more tragic. Women had to learn to carry this cross, and put these things behind them. Majella Doyle would in time get over the child’s death. He began the familiar Latin words of the mass as the people joined him in prayer.
Esther knelt, watching the priest up at the altar. Usually Nonie pushed and shoved in the pew beside her, playing with her gloves, pulling at her mantilla, bored by the long mass. Today there was no-one to shush or scold. Her sister was gone.
Suffer the little children. That’s what Father Devaney had talked about in his sermon. Nonie would always have been a child. Her body might have grown up, but her mind would have stubbornly stayed in the place of games and rhymes and tricks. She would never have grown up. Comfort, the priest had said they should take comfort from the fact that Nonie had so recently made her first confession and received the sacrament of First Holy Communion. How in God’s name could they take comfort from that! They who had practised and preached for weeks in the
kitchen with her all about Jesus and his mother, and God his father, and how much they loved her. They had loved her so much, they had let her fall and suffocate in a stinking bog hole up the back of beyond. Esther almost choked with anger at it all.
For more than half an hour they had stood outside the church in Carraig Beag as almost everybody in the area came to pay their respects. Esther had not realized how much her sister had been loved. Total strangers shook her hand, their eyes welling with tears. “Such a dote!” “A grand wee lassie!” “God be good to her.”
Con had come, he and Nuala McGuinness sitting near the back of the church. He had held her hand for a long time when they had come to offer their sympathy. Nonie had been laid to rest beside her father in Carraig Beag’s small graveyard. The heavy earth had been dug up, Esther wanting to scream as it reclaimed her sister, watching the earthworms weave in and out of the exposed dark clay as the small pine coffin was laid on top of Dermot Doyle’s. Sea-breezes belted against the mourners as the final prayers at the grave were said. Aunts and cousins and distant relations had appeared out of nowhere, filling the house. Trays of sandwiches were passed around, glasses filled, tea poured. Bottles of whiskey, sherry and porter, supplied by McEvoy’s, were drunk. A fine funeral, that’s what they would all say afterwards, thought Esther. A fine fecking funeral!