Marilyn’s Child

Praise

Acclaim for Lynne Pemberton:

‘A rags-to-riches story with plenty of sun, sea, sand and sex thrown in … Escapist bliss’

Tatler

‘An ideal light, pacy summer read.’

Mail on Sunday

‘A tale of glamorous lives and ruthless ambition – impeccable.’

Manchester Evening News

Romantic suspense, mystery and intrigue in a tropical setting – a terrific read.’

Annabel

‘The material that great bestsellers are made of, a heady blend of success story, intrigue and a smattering of sex’

Sheffield Star

‘Perfect holiday reading’

Sunday Express

‘A bittersweet love story to keep you on tenterhooks’

Woman’s Realm

For Robin and Bobby I love you both, very much

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Part One: THE FATHER

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two: THE SURROGATE FATHER

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Three: THE GODS

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Keep Reading

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Part One THE FATHER

When I was fifteen I knew how it felt to want someone. I mean really want them in every sense of the word. It happened very quickly, in a flash of absolute clarity, and it made the most perfect sense. There are moments, I’m sure, in everyone’s life, when absolute certainty stifles reasonable doubt. So it was with me. Of course he, the object of my adolescent longing, wasn’t of like mind – well, not then, not in the beginning. His moment of truth would come later, much later.

The past is a place I visit often – too often. It’s an unhealthy pastime, the retreat of the old and the dying who have nowhere else to go. I’m young, so why do I keep returning? Wallowing in it, embracing it? I even have to admit enjoying the pain. What use recrimination? What use regret? Had his thoughts been of me when he chose to leave? Had he wondered what would become of me without him? I’ve tried to patch it up, my broken heart that is, but I’m still searching for the right dressing, so I continue to bleed. In my head I can hear his voice, it never goes away; the deep resonant music of memory plays over and over again in the dark corners of my mind. ‘Our childhood baggage is merely pawned, to be retrieved or returned to us later in life, in one guise or another … There is no escape, Kate, nothing is ever what it seems.’

I close my eyes, my thoughts racing, my heart pumping hard. I’m travelling back, and the sensation is akin to a fast ride on an express train. The landscape of my life flashes past so quick I have no time to take any of it in. I can feel his presence, he’s close, very close, closer than he’s been for a long time. He looks exactly the way he’d looked the first time I set eyes on him, at precisely ten past four on a wet afternoon in March 1978.

Chapter One

In the quiet of St Winifred’s church I listen to his movements; from under half-closed lids I watch him mount the pulpit steps. He hasn’t seen me. I’m kneeling, hands folded in prayer, head bent, all manner of things going on in my head except worship. It’s dark in the church; he’s wearing a black soutane, his back towards me, clothed in shadow. Suddenly he lifts his head: a wedge of light from the window above the nave touches his crown, which is the colour of a roasted chestnut. Now he’s facing the empty church and, as if practising a sermon, he begins to mime. Desperate to stay hidden, I wriggle my body down into a crouching position and in the silence listen for his footsteps. When after a few moments I hear him descend from the pulpit, I raise my head a fraction to see him start down the aisle. As he gets closer I can see Father Declan Steele has full curling lips, darker in the centre, and heavy lids above navy blue eyes. Irish eyes, framed with spidery lashes, below ruler-straight eyebrows, thick and coal black. My best friend Bridget Costello had been right when she’d said he looked like Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby, except the curate is better looking.

I want to sneeze; Sod’s Law, when I want to be as quiet as a mouse. I pinch my nose with thumb and finger, inwardly cursing the weather. For the love of God, I wish the rain would stop! It’s been lashing down for three days, the hard slanting type that stings bare flesh. In a mad rush as usual and thinking of other things I’d run out without my mackintosh. I hate my mac. It’s long, reaching almost to my feet, and made of a scratchy material in a dirty grey colour. But it’s the only coat I own, part of a set of clothes given to me by the Sisters of Mercy.

So now I’m wet, soaked to the skin. But then we’re always wet in Ireland, wet or cold, or both. The cold is the worst; it seeps into my bones because there isn’t much flesh on them. Before November is out I’m wishing my life away. I’d cheerfully miss Christmas; it’s not a happy time for me anyway. Christmas is for families. I’ve seen them on my way back to the orphanage from church, quick furtive glimpses through sitting-room windows dressed with fake snow and bright tinsel: florid-faced mams, ale-swigging dads, grandmas and kids with glowing cheeks all gathered around gaudy Christmas trees, a wholesome family picture, opening presents and feasting their faces full of chocolates from a selection box. Later they would eat turkey and ham and Christmas pudding with lashings of brandy butter.

Last year it snowed on Christmas Eve and the trudge to church, hand in hand with Bridget under a sky as blue as my eyes, had been like walking through another village, a magical place transformed to silver brilliance. Bridget and I, at the back of the snake of girls, as far from Mothers Paul and Thomas as possible, had played a game of placing our feet in the footprints made by the girls in front. On the surrounding hills a huddle of sheep formed a grey blob against the gleaming white. The unmarked snow lay in thick wedges on the rooftops of the village; the church spire was sullen in contrast. The trees surrounding the church were woven with white, and the snow cleared from the churchyard drifted into our faces and pricked our eyes.

At the Good Sisters of Mercy Orphanage we have a tree dressed by the parish Christmas fund, and a make-believe present. I say make-believe because it’s an only-for-show present. On Christmas morning the parish priest visits to inspect the orphanage. The gifts under the tree are all wrapped in shiny Christmas paper. After he’s left they are all taken away. None of the girls knows where they go and no one dares to ask. One year we got to open the presents on the insistence of Father O’Neill. I got a pair of trainer shoes that were too tight: they nipped my toes. Foolishly I complained, and got a clip round the head for my trouble. The same year we got to eat the for-show-only meal. It was pork, rich and fatty, and it made me feel a bit sick. You could have played football with the pudding, and the custard was runny, like Maureen O’Leary’s snot. All in all, I was rather pleased when the following year there was no inspection and we had the usual porridge and a rasher with fried bread.

I’d like to miss it all and jump straight into spring. Why do we have to have winter? Other countries don’t. Some people wake up to sunshine every day. I suppose that would get a bit boring, but every other day would be nice. No more huddling under blankets no thicker than toilet tissue, bony legs close to my chest, hands as stiff as a corpse and as blue as Mother Superior’s lips (she’s got a bad heart). What joy never again to hear the nocturnal chorus of chattering teeth, hacking coughs, rasping wheezes and the constant sniffing from noses that become, from December to March, like running taps.

Thinking of winter causes the face of Theresa Doyle to surface. Countless times in the past couple of months I’d longed to throttle her or wished her phlegm would choke her. The sound of her coughing had made me feel physically sick. In that dark middle-of-the-night time when minutes turn to hours I would have given anything to stop the deathly rattle emanating from her infected tubes. After Theresa died of whooping cough, I’d confessed my sinful thoughts to Father O’Neill, who had given me double the usual ten Hail Marys and Our Fathers to say every day for a week. I’d been desperate to tell the priest that being in a state of grace and chanting Hail Marys in my head every day would make no bloody difference to poor old Theresa or, for that matter, to me wishing her dead. Well, not dead but quiet so I could get some sleep.

I’d also wanted to ask him why God let bad people live and good people die. Like Theresa, a few months off her sixteenth birthday, or the kind-hearted Colleen Corrigan who’d worked in the bread shop. Why was Colleen, a good mam, taken by cancer at thirty-two, leaving a husband and four lovely kids? These sorts of questions are forever nagging at me, yet they stay where they are in my head, unuttered and unanswered. My confusion has nothing to do with Theresa’s death. No, my doubts had started much younger, as far back as I can remember.

In my mind I challenge the priest: So tell me, Father, why is it the pair of them, Holy Father and merciful son, let so many terrible things happen? I visualize the face of Father O’Neill looming above me; inwardly I quake at his imagined reaction. He scares me, this big man of God – not as much as Mother Thomas, but close. His hair is the exact colour of ripe tangerines. Even when he speaks normally, one to one, his voice rises at the end of every sentence like when he’s in the pulpit. But it’s his eyes that are really terrifying: deep set with coal-black pupils, the kind Mother Peter says can see right into your soul. I know I’m not the only one afraid of the bogeyman priest; even Mother Thomas, who I thought was unshakeable, quakes in his presence.

So, Father – I continue my imaginary conversation with the priest – why is it that this absentee father and wayward son have caused more than enough trouble, for me at least, yet I’m expected to love, cherish, adore, and obey them? To believe that if I worship the pair of them all the days of my life everything will be OK? You see, Father, it’s not that easy, at least not here in Friday Wells, not where I live in the Good Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. For a start they aren’t all good, the sisters that is, and there’s not a lot of mercy. I’ve never had a natural appetite for the rich food of the Lord, Father, I suppose it’s because I was force fed. Do you know, Father, Jesus was the first word I ever heard and learnt?

I have these imaginary conversations often, and not only with the parish priest. I have some really heated arguments with the nuns, particularly Mother Thomas. How I wish I didn’t have the sick feeling in my belly when she comes near me, and could muster the courage to tell her out loud what I really think. The mere thought of her reaction makes me shudder.

Hugging myself tight I feel my nose twitch and a moment later let out a loud sneeze. The young curate, level now with the pew where I’m kneeling, looks surprised, and his surprise turns to shock as I leap to my feet and, like a rabbit springing from a magician’s hat, jump into the aisle and block his way. I can see Father Steele is startled, but to his credit he recovers quickly and appraises me with lazy interest.

He’s taller than I’d first thought and broader, big-boned with a high forehead and a deep dimple in his chin. I’m beaming – I can feel it stretching my face to aching point. After a couple of minutes it begins to hurt and I’m forced to relax my mouth. To be sure, this film-star curate would make even the likes of Lady Susan Anderton lost for words. And, according to Bridget, since Susan had left Friday Wells for London she’d been going out with pop stars.

Mother Thomas had said the new curate had far too much charisma for a priest. I’d looked up charisma in the dictionary, and, after being in Father Steele’s presence for a few minutes, I was inclined to agree with her. With characteristic boldness I say, ‘Do you think you’ve got charisma, Father?’

I watch the slight rise of his eyebrows. ‘Do you know the meaning of the word, child?’

‘I do that, Father.’ I quote:’ “Ability to inspire followers with devotion, divinely conferred talent or power.’”

In a bid to hide his surprise, the curate digresses. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that it’s wrong to be talking this way about your elders?’

I nod vigorously, my head bobbing up and down. ‘All the time. Mother Paul is forever telling me that my chatter will get me into no end of trouble.’ Placing my hands on my hips, I wag my finger, imitating the nun’s voice: ‘“You’ll wear that tongue of yours out.” To be sure, it’s got me fair worn out. I wish the cat would bite it clean off.’

My eyes are smiling, and so is his mouth – I suspect against his better judgement, but I don’t care. I’m pleased as Punch to have made him smile, it makes me feel warm all over. ‘Kate O’Sullivan, at your service, Father.’

‘Kate is a grand name, my mother’s name.’ He repeats: ‘A grand name.’

‘It was Mother Peter who called me Kate O’Sullivan, the first name to come into her head the night I was taken in by the Good Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. I’ve no mam and dad, see. Well, none that anyone knew of at the time – just a name, that’s all.’ I lower my eyes. ‘My name wasn’t chosen out of love or thought, or in memory of some dead ancestor.’ I hang my head. ‘I’ve no idea where I came from.’

I know he’s beginning to thaw, to feel sorry for me, I can see it in his eyes. I have this effect on men, so Bridget is always telling me. But until now I’d never thought much about it, never cared about manipulating the opposite sex. From the age of ten Bridget had taught me how to flutter my eyelashes, to lower my head and peep sideways from under half-closed lids. She said all the film stars did it and they got the men they wanted. One night, when I was about eleven, encouraged by Bridget, I’d dressed up. We’d waited until lights out and all the girls were asleep. We had to be very quiet so as not to wake the nuns or Elizabeth Rourke, an older girl, the dormitory enforcer, who would go running to Mother Thomas to report us. With socks stuffed down my nightdress and my mouth pouting, I’d walked on tip-toe, wiggling my hips. Bridget had shown me how to throw my shoulders forward and jiggle my breasts, copying the showgirls she’d once seen at a travelling fair. A year later I ceased to need socks; my tiny plum-plums, as Bridget called my breasts, grew into melons.

It happened very quickly, creating so much attention that I set about denying their existence. The rest of my body was reed-thin, which made my breasts look even bigger. At bath-time Mother Thomas could not look at my body. She’d spin me around so my back faced her and scrub so hard that my skin smarted. The day before my thirteenth birthday she’d found lice in my head. Gleefully she’d shouted, ‘Dirty head, dirty head!’ Filled with shame and self-loathing I’d sobbed as she shaved and scrubbed my naked skull with a foul-smelling soap.

Afterwards I’d said to Bridget, ‘I wish I’d been born a boy, life would be so much easier. Don’t you wish you’d been born a boy?’

With a shrug she’d come back with, ‘To be sure, Kate O’Sullivan, I’ve no wish to be a boy, but I wish I’d been born with a face like yours.’

Now, looking at the new curate, all thoughts of being a boy are banished. With a suddenness that scares me, I want to be a woman. I wish with all my heart I was wearing anything but the shabby pinafore and white blouse of the orphanage. I imagine myself in a figure-hugging long black dress, cut low at the front and back, like I’d seen film stars wear in old black-and-white films. I’d never seen anyone in a dress like that here in Friday Wells; I doubt the curate has either. What would he think, how would he react if I was all togged up like a film star? Would he, I wonder, be tempted?

Temptation: the evil word careers around my head. Men of the cloth, I tell myself, are not tempted by the sins of the flesh. Priests are not normal men, who, according to Bridget, are all the same, wanting one thing: the hole between a girl’s legs.

Whenever she talks about her secret place she giggles in an odd way, as if nervous, pointing to her crotch and saying in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘But you mustn’t let them inside until you know they intend to marry you. Or, God forbid, you end up having a baby with no husband.’

I notice an edginess about the curate. He’s shuffling from one foot to another, seeming eager to get away. I don’t want him to go and search my brain for something to hold his attention. ‘Where are you from, Father?’

‘Dublin, if you mean where was I born.’

‘I’m going to Dublin, as soon as I’m sixteen, in less than three months’ time. I’ve got a scholarship to art college. I can’t wait until I can leave the orphanage, for my sins.’

He interrupts: ‘Hush, girl, don’t talk so. You’re lucky to be alive. You’ve the good sisters to thank for taking you in, looking after you, putting food in your belly. You should be thanking them and the good Lord every day of your life.’

I chew on my next words: do I swallow or spit them out? I decide to risk the priest’s wrath. There was something about the young curate that loosened my tongue – not that it needed much unravelling. And unlike Father O’Neill this man was young – I reckoned about twenty-eight or -nine – and soft-spoken, with what I called the mushy look in his eyes, a bit like Dr Conway when he’d treated me for my burst appendix. ‘Bad case of peritonitis,’ he’d said. ‘You’re lucky to be alive, Kate.’ With the same sympathetic expression as I now see in the young curate.

‘I’ll not be thanking them for much at all, Father, because I don’t feel thankful. That’s the truth. The good book tells us not to lie, or to sin. So how is it that the good sisters do both? When I’m famous, and I will be, they’ll all read about me in the newspapers. Then they’ll be sorry.’

Father Steele shakes his head. ‘Strong words for one so young.’

‘Not so young, Father, sixteen soon. Old enough to leave this Godforsaken place. When I go I’ll not be looking back.’

‘Wherever you go, child, try to go unencumbered.’ His eyes leave my face for a moment; when they return I can see they’ve changed. There’s something in them that had not been there before. I’m not sure what, but feel rather than see that he’s sad.

‘Our childhood baggage is merely pawned, to be retrieved or returned to us later in life, in one guise or another, so mark my words it will only weigh you down.’

My expression mirrors my confusion, and he seems to understand.

‘Remember, Kate, wherever you go, you’ve always got God.’ He pauses. ‘Now I must be on my way.’

The curate begins to walk down the centre aisle towards the door. I fall into step beside him, aware that he’s not pleased with this intrusion. ‘I have my doubts about God as well, Father,’ I say, walking briskly to keep up with his long strides. ‘I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. I feel like his name has been on my lips ever since I could talk. Did loving Jesus save the sweet Colleen Corrigan, as good a person who ever drew breath? Will a thousand Hail Marys stop Paul Flatley beating his long-suffering wife? Or will saying the Lord’s Prayer stop the badness spilling out of Mother Thomas’s mouth every minute of every day? If I worship God for all the days of my life, will it make any difference? Will it bring back my friend Theresa Doyle? Will it help me to –’

We are at the door when he stops walking. ‘Hush, child, stop it at once. Don’t speak so.’ Father Steele seems genuinely concerned, an angry red spot appearing on each of his cheeks. ‘Have you confessed your doubts?’

‘No, Father. I don’t think Father O’Neill will listen to me.’

The curate looks stern. ‘I’m sure he will, that’s what he’s there for.’

‘For the love of Jesus, there have been lots of times I’ve wanted to ask Father O’Neill why he, the Almighty I mean, lets terrible things happen to innocent people. You see, Father, it’s very confused I am. I don’t know what to believe any more.’

I pause for breath: a quick glance to monitor his reaction confirms that it’s all going better than I’d hoped. I’ve got his attention, the next step is to grab his interest, enough to make him think me a special case. Poor little orphan girl, mixed up, disillusioned, in need of religious direction. I’m pleased to see a look of self-righteousness come over his face. Piety I can deal with, I’ve seen it enough times on the faces of the nuns.