Part 5 of the Coroner’s Handmaiden
Grainne jerked awake to the sound of the matron’s heavy tread on the stout wooden ladder that led to the attic bedroom. Her eyes snapped around to the alarm clock at the side of the bed. Had she slept in? She struggled into a sitting position.” I couldn’t have, the alarm on that bloody wind up clock would wake the dead,” she muttered. As soon as the thought resonated with her she instantly remembered Dr Hammy’s workroom from the night before.
The bedroom door opened. Grainne felt her eyes widened in shock. Emily Anderson stood there holding a breakfast tray. She .bustled into the room and placed the tray on the scarred side table beside the bed.
Grainne mind jumped about in alarm. She shrank back against the iron headboard. What the hell was going on! It’s usually me who is serving breakfast to her and Dr Hammy, she thought.
She looked at the tray suspiciously. It was laid out with a dainty cloth, cream jug and sugar bowl. Steam spiralled upwards from a bowl of porridge. A mug covered in roses stood beside a matching rose patterned teapot waiting to be poured.
.Grainne looked at her employer askance. The doctor didn’t kill me last night so she is going to poison me, she though in panic. “I don’t eat porridge,” she said starting to push down the blankets.
The matron made a tut tuting sound and then forced a smile. “The doctor has instructed you must stay in bed today. He thinks you are overwrought.” She crossed her arms under her ample bosom and sniffed as if the very idea that someone like Grainne could possible suffers from such a thing was ludicrous. “He will come up and see how you are feeling after he sees to Denis…Dr Harris,” she said hurried on a slight blush spreading on her cheeks.
Despite herself Grainne smirked. Daffy Denis, Dr Hammy called the pathologist behind his wife’s back because of the way he threw out his feet when he walked.
“I’m not sick. I’m gettin’ up.”
“Eat your breakfast when it has been made for you.”
“Who made the porridge?”
Grainne squeaked.
“The doctor made it,” the matron smirked. Turning on her heel she strode out closed the door behind her.
Ignoring the breakfast tray Grainne leaped out of bed. She barely noticed the coldness of the room as she scrambled into a skirt and jumper.
But she did notice her best pair of nylons had a ladder. She gritted her teeth. “Nice one Neil,” she growled fastening the top of the stockings to her suspender belt. I suppose I should be happy a ladder in my stocking is all I got from his rolling me in the hedge; she reflected searching around under the bed for her flat shoes.
The crunch of car tyres on the gravel told her the matron was leaving for the hospital. She’s going early today, she thought looking out the window. It’s barely light yet. As she watched the car passed under the canopy of trees and Grainne was sure she was something like the shape of a head roll out of s bag on the back window of the car
Hastily she dropped the curtain. “No way am I waiting for Dr Hammy to come and check me over,” she moaned beginning to feel sick for real.
“I saw a side to him last night I didn’t recognize,” she shuddered.
She retched remembering his face looming above her as she began to regain consciousness. Her first thought had been one of relief that he was there. But in the flickering light cast by the toothless skulls some instinct told her to close her eyes and remain motionless on the work room floor.
Chattering in excitement Dr Hammy had bent over her. With sudden clarity she knew why the girl who had worked there before her had fled from the doctor’s house.
She shuddered remembering how he had touched her mouth and bending close had sniffed at her.
Shocked, she cried out. There had been a sound outside. She’d cried out again praying Neil had come back to save her.
Dr Hammy had put his hand to her lips and before she could call out again he had flicked a snow white hankie over her nose and mouth.
When she’d come around she was in her own bed and the matron was fussing over her; and now she was serving her breakfast in bed! Something was very wrong.
Was she afraid she’d leave like the last girl? Or, worse still for her, is she afraid I’d report her husband to the Garda?
A sudden thought struck her. Had the last girl left or was she buried somewhere in the garden?
Panic propelled her down the stair and into the back hall. She listened. But all she could hear was the thump, thump of her own heart. Carrying her shoes in her hand and trying desperately not to make a sound she pulled back the bar on the door. Slipping on her shoes she stumbled outside.
She froze as her feet made a crunching sound on the loose gravel. Every second that passed she expected the doctor to appear. Throwing caution to the wind she ran across the grass and into the main drive.
In the early morning light the shadows behind the trees were not as frightening but just the same she hurried past them. Out of habit she looked towards the river.
The fisherman wasn’t there.
Once on to the Lifford Road she slowed her step. What am I going to do? She thought her footsteps loud in the still of the morning. Should I go home to killybegs? Or, should I cross the border into Strabane and try and get another job?
She remembered her mother and granny talk of ‘the Lagan’
But that had been years ago. “It couldn’t be any worse that working for the Andersons’, she muttered. There is strange going-on in that bloody house and it’s nothing to do with the old wives tales of it being haunted, she mused.
“One thing I am sure of is that I am not sleeping another night there,” she muttered as she half walked half run down the road in the direction of Lifford glad of the headlights of the occasional car to break the gloom of the early morning.
Passing the Inter County Hotel she was startled to see Neil’s car parked in the forecourt. Anger imploded in her. “He abandoned me to the weird Andersons and came to the weekly disco to satisfy his need for a woman!”
Some boyfriend he turned out to be, she raged to herself. Dr Hammy and that mad bitch of a wife of his could have me murdered and buried under the weeds for all he’d care, she fumed. I bet he wouldn’t even go and tell the Garda about the strange figure that had floated out of the workroom and into the old garden cum graveyard, she thought.
Fury made her fearless. She stepped off the footpath and onto the tarmac car park of the hotel.
Through the double glass doors she could see the night porter, Bobbie Mc Kinsley asleep in a chair; his feet splayed out; his mouth lolling open;
The heavily curtained hotel rooms that faced on to the road stared blankly back at her. She wondered which room Neil was asleep in.
When she’d first met Neil he had been seeing a receptionist who worked in the hotel. “Free bed and breakfast and everything else a man would want from a woman,” he’d boasted.
Jealous rage coursed through Grainne knotting her gut. He went back to her, she thought, when he didn’t get what he wanted from me.
Am I wrong not to give in, she skid herself?
An old saying of her granny’s popped into her head. “Depending on the like of that boy is like depending on a broken stick.” How many times had she heard her granny tell her mother that about her father? “And in the end it turned out to be true,” she muttered. “He put his love of the sea in front of her.” Thinking of her father made her feel heart sick. If he was here he’d know what to do, she thought.
A Garda patrol car drove slowly past on the road. It slowed and then stopped. Grainne let her finger drop from the hotel’s emergency night-time bell.
Crossing the road she walked purposely along in the direction of Butcher Street. As she passed the police patrol car she could hear its engine ticking over with a quiet purr. After a minute the car started up again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the its lights sweep across the grey blue Elm Bank building and cruise past the locked up pubs in Bridge Street heading back to the Barracks.
She quickened her step and hurried past theTriconnell Stores.
And reaching the end turned into Main Street.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed a bleary eyed waitress opening up Canning’s Cafe.
“You missed a good Disco in the ‘Counties’ Andrea Laughlin yawned sleepily putting tea and toast down in front of Grainne. She stood for a minute. “You and Neil…?
“Finshed,” Grainne said bitterly.
Andrea looked at her.
“Why are you open so early,” Grainne said hastily to stave off the barrage of questions the waitress was about to launch into.
“The fish man from Killybegs is delivering the frozen fish this mornin’ – he wants to get finished early to go to a music festival,” Andrea responded rolling her eyes.
Grainne’s hand shook as she lifted the mug of scalding tea to her lips. It was what her granny called ‘an answer to prayer’.
She rose to her feet knocking her knee on the table. The tea sloshed into the saucer. “Sorry,” Grainne apologised to the huffy looking Andréa. “Will you do me a favour? Will you ask the fishman to wait for me – give me a lift home?”
She could feel the waitress’s eyes follow her as she ran out of the cafe.
The Garda patrol was doing its rounds again as she rushed headlong back up the road. This time she didn’t hesitate. She hammered loudly on the hotel doors demanding to be let in.
Neil was part of this.
She wasn’t going home without her pay and her clothes.
And drunk or sober Neil was going to help her face Dr Hammy
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 