The girl clutched her shawl tightly around her shoulders against the night chill. But once she had crossed the Portobello Bridge to the Rathmines Road the walkway was firm and reassuring. The smooth surface helped to ease the discomfort in her leg. The rate-payers of the new affluent suburbs to the south of the city could afford good roads, which contrasted with the broken, uneven pavements within the old City Corporation area.
The ground here is hollow and low. When the wind is still and the night is moist, the mist that rises from the Grand Canal lingers and thickens. Tonight it had quite overwhelmed the gas lamps’ feeble efforts at illumination. But she knew her route well. She could see the faint glow from the Portobello Cavalry Barracks that lay beyond Blackberry Lane, where she lived. To her left she could faintly make out the darkened bulk of the Roman Catholic Church of St Mary Immaculate.
There was no sound of any other person on the footpath, but she was accustomed to the silence of the road at this late hour. The public houses that she had passed on Camden Street and South Richmond Street had been noisy and filled with loud-voiced men and women bawling and shouting. Out here it was as quiet as the countryside. A new terrace of lawn-fronted red-brick houses was hidden across the road in the fog. The southern side, along which she now made her way, was still bounded by meadow fields.
She sensed the pressure of the cold air pushing behind her a moment before she heard the hissing of the steam tram on its outward run from the city. When she glanced over her shoulder she saw it forming out of the mist behind her, its bull’s-eye lamps deploying a meagre illumination over the cobbles. She caught a momentary glimpse of passengers in the dimly lit interior. Men with hats, huddled in overcoats, drawn in tight against the November air. Two or three tired-looking women, probably making their way back to the houses where they worked in service. It would be the last tram from the city for the night. She heard the church clock strike the half-hour after eleven as the vehicle disappeared into mist.
There was no street light where Blackberry Lane rose from the fields to meet the road, but she knew the bramble hedges that grew at the place where she would turn. She could make her way blindfolded to the cottage at the end of the rutted laneway. Even in the darkness, she knew how to navigate the cart tracks, ankle-deep with rainwater. She knew how to avoid the thorns and the nettles on either side. She could not afford to destroy her boots or muddy her waitress uniform.
Perhaps ten yards up the lane, she knew, a wooden gate gave entry to the meadow field. The children of Blackberry Lane were in and out through it, winter and summer, tolerated by the farmer who accepted the futility of trying to keep them out in the first place. Now it was invisible, obscured by the mist. But she knew that something was wrong when she heard the scrape of its iron bolt being drawn back.
She had walked the lane many times in darkness. She was not frightened by its night sounds. Foxes, rats, badgers, sometimes a wandering cow pushing its head through the bramble. But she knew that none of these creatures could draw a gate bolt. She froze, straining to see through the fog.
The first blow came out of the darkness, taking her across the mouth and nose. It was solid and hard, not a fist or a hand. She felt teeth splinter in her mouth. The second blow came to the side of her head, setting off an explosion of red and yellow stars behind her eyes. Immediately she felt the warm blood flowing into her mouth and down her face. She tried to scream, but the sound caught in her throat. Her legs buckled and she pitched forwards, face downwards, into the mud.
Now the man was on her from behind. One hand came around her cheek and clamped across her mouth. The other pushed a rough rope down over her head and around her neck. The noose bit deep into her skin, and she heard him grunt as he dragged her towards where the gateway opened to the field. Once in there, she knew, it would be hopeless. She gasped for breath, scrabbling at the hand clamped across her mouth, but he was too strong and his grip too tight.
She felt mud and stones against her face as she tried to clutch at the reedy grass on the laneway’s edge. Then, a foot or two from where she knew the gate opened into the meadow, her hand found a jagged stone, perhaps the size of an apple. She fastened her fingers around it, pushed herself upwards as best she could and swung the stone with all her strength. She felt it connect with his head, and the hand across her mouth flew away. She heard him scream in pain. The rope slackened as he fell back. She drew in air, rolling, squirming away into the thorny ditch.
Now she found herself in a space of earth where the brambles had thinned. Perhaps a fox’s run or a badger trail. She tried to undo the rope that was still knotted around her neck, but her fingers were slippery with the blood from her head and face. Somewhere in the laneway she heard a shouted call. Then another. Men’s voices. Running footsteps in the fog. She started to feel a shivering warmth that travelled from her legs and then ran upwards through her body. She felt a weightlessness. Her hiding place seemed to darken, and there were no more sounds.