MARY-BRIGID GASPED when she saw her father’s face next morning. She watched, perplexed, as he walked slowly around the kitchen as if all his bones hurt. His left eye had turned a horrible purple-black colour.
‘Daddy! Daddy! What happened to you?’ she screamed, half-afraid.
‘I was in a bit of a fight, pet, and now I’ll have to take it easy for a few days.’
Mary-Brigid’s head was full of questions about who her father had been fighting and why, but one look at her mother’s white face and blotchy, tear-stained eyes, told her not to say too much.
‘Hurry along, Mary-Brigid, or you’ll be late for school!’ urged Eily, lacing up the child’s heavy black brogues and fetching a small can of milk and a wrapped chunk of soda bread for her.
Mary-Brigid ran to say goodbye to her father before setting off on the three-quarters-of-a-mile walk with her mother to the small white-washed school at the crossroads.
‘Ouch!’ he said, as she flung her arms around his neck. ‘Listen, pet, not a word about this to your teacher or any of your friends, d’ye hear?’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘If anyone asks you, Mary-Brigid, your daddy was at home here with us all night,’ added Eily.
Mary-Brigid stared from one to the other. She didn’t understand a bit of it, and now her mammy and daddy wanted her to tell a lie on top of everything else.
‘’Twill be a lie,’ she said softly.
‘’Twill be a fib,’ said her mother, ‘and one that you will tell if anyone asks you. You’re a big girl now and you know enough not to discuss the goings-on of last night with anyone.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Mary-Brigid, who, if the truth be told, felt more like a small scared girleen than a big girl who could be trusted to keep a secret.
The Hennessys were gone. Not a single one of the boys came to school and the schoolmaster was right annoyed with them. Joe Clancy, a twelve-year-old neighbour, had called to the cottage door, only to find it wide open. There wasn’t a trace of the twins or any of the family. They’d all scarpered.
‘Gone! Just gone!’ he told the whole class, as Mary-Brigid pretended to look at the map of Ireland on the wall and tried to make sense of what was going on.
The next few days she spent helping Eily with the heavy chores, trying to hold the cow steady as her mother milked it, and helping to clean out the small, stinking pigpen, while her father remained hidden indoors until the bruises on his face began to fade.
She missed the twins. ‘Twas lucky that she had the little cat to remember them by. She couldn’t help but wonder where they had run off to. At school Sally Nolan told her that the police were searching for Mr Hennessy. They said that he had half-killed the land agent and if they caught him he’d be put in prison forever or hung.
Mary-Brigid could hardly play or sleep with the worry of it all, and her dreams were haunted by the vision of her daddy in irons and chains being transported to some far-off land.