CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The room was so dark when David opened his eyes that, at first, he couldn’t be sure his eyes were really open. His lips were cracked and dry, his throat parched. The last time he’d awakened… was it really the last time?… she had tried to help him relieve himself in a pail by the side of the bed. The ensuing mess that followed had resulted in a sharp slap to his already throbbing face and a shrill threat to withhold water in future. A threat she had obviously made good on. David licked his lips in agony. How long had it been since he had had water? He waited until his eyes adjusted to the dark. How long had he been tied to this filthy bed?
As the light from his window began to filter into the room, his eyes filled with tears at the prospect of another day. Dear God, would he ever see Sarah and John again? Were they okay? How long had he been gone? Had they come looking for him? If they made it as far as the old woman’s farm, a big if, they would either be turned away or killed, and he had no way of knowing. The woman, Betta, told him daily that no one was looking for him. Once, she told him she heard that the two Americans had left, along with everyone else, to go to Dublin. As desperately alone and abandoned as that news made him feel, a part of him hoped it was true. There was no way Sarah could survive and take care of John out here. At least in the city there might be facilities or laws or provisions for the refugees. He cursed himself for allowing them to stay.
What had he been thinking? That they could hold out in the midst of Mad Max 2012 and survive?
Recently the woman had begun talking about a gang of gypsies that was going from hamlet to hamlet, murdering whole families, taking food, slaughtering the livestock. She was terrified that they were coming for her next. She talked incessantly of how she might secure the farm against them. She begged his advice. She promised to free him when they came so he could protect them both. Yesterday, she told him the American woman and her son hadn’t left after all. She heard that the gypsies had murdered them. She had wept for his loss.
His stomach muscles tensed as he heard her beginning to move about in the other end of the farmhouse. This signaled the fact that his nightmare would resume shortly.
He had ridden to Balinagh, however many weeks or months ago now he couldn’t tell, and met Julie. She was waiting for him in front of where Siobhan’s Dairy used to be. She sat on a small Highland pony, her hair down by her waist, looking pretty and farfetched like something in an Irish fairytale. Why hadn’t he realized it couldn’t be true? Why hadn’t he taken one look at the pretty lassie in her pastel gypsy dancing skirt and realized what a lie she was? Did he even question it? Did he even wonder, if she was a widow with two small children and a farm to run, who was at home taking care of everything while she was perched on a pony, her hair flowing in the wind? No, he saw what he wanted to see. A damsel in distress. Not what she really was—bait for the trap that would snare him.
David struggled to a sitting position against the headboard. The light was strong enough now for him to take inventory of the room and of himself. The room was small, big enough just for the single bed he lay on and a dresser filled, he knew, with the old woman’s dead husband’s clothes. His left arm, broken in two places, was strapped awkwardly to his chest. It had stopped hurting him weeks ago, whether because it had finally mended or had died, itself, he had no way of knowing. Both legs were loosely tied to the end of the bed. His right arm was manacled to a long chain which was attached to, of all things, a boat anchor, rusting in the corner of the room.
When he had first arrived at the farm with Julie, he saw immediately the disrepair of the place. There were no cows that he could see and no children. Julie took him into the farmhouse where a woman in her late fifties sat at the table waiting for him. She broke into a broad grin, her teeth yellowed and brown, and she clapped her hands in delight.
“Saints be praised, you’ve come,” she said.
David smiled and extended his hand.
“I’m glad to help, ma’am,” he said. “You’re Julie’s mother?”
“Sure, can’t you tell the resemblance?” The woman laughed good-naturedly but David noticed that Julie did not join in. “Please sit and have a cuppa, you’ll be tired from your ride in from town.”
“Okay, great, thanks.” David sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “I didn’t realize your place was so far from Balinagh, you know?” He smiled and accepted a mug of tea. “I can’t believe Julie rode there all on her own. It took us nearly four hours to ride back.”
“Sure, it’s a great long way,” the woman said, offering a cup to Julie who shook her head. “Which is why we’re never there. And why the needing of a man was so desperate.”
David looked at Julie. “So it’s not you that needs help?” he said. “It’s your mother?”
Julie looked away and her mother answered for her.
“Sure, nobody would come help an ugly crow like me,” she said laughing. “You’ll not be blaming Julie for our little ruse, eh? I practically had to beat her to do it.”
Julie looked back at David.
“I’m sorry, mister,” she said. “But me mam needed help, same as you thought I did. No difference.”
Except for the part about being lied to, David thought with growing anger. But he said: “You’re right. There’s no difference. And I’m here now.” He stood up. “Can you show me the well?” He looked at the older woman. “Was that part true? You have a well that’s collapsed?”
“Ah, sure, don’t be mad at us, now,” The woman said. She indicated the kitchen chair again. “Plenty of time for that and too late to get started today, so it is. My name is Betta, by the by. And you’ll be called?”
It didn’t matter how many times he’d told her what his name was. She always called him Danny. He’d been on the farm a total of two days when he fell off a ladder, hit his head and broke his arm. Julie had left long since. At first, Betta had been the soul of care and attentiveness while he lay helpless and disoriented. The head injury was the most disabling, preventing him from even getting out of bed for weeks at a time. During that time, Betta fed him, cleaned him, and sang to him as he dipped in and out of consciousness. She set the arm break, badly, but in the way of countrywomen who have had to do this and worse many times over the years—efficiently if painfully. Gradually, David got stronger although his broken arm mended poorly. His head cleared and he spent more and more time out of bed, even if it was just to shuffle to the outhouse and back. The stronger he got, the more anxious Betta seemed to become.
One morning, before he was awake, she crept into his bedroom and chained him to the anchor in the room. He could move about the room but not leave it. When he broke the bed and the window frame in an attempt to free himself, she waited until he’d fallen into an exhausted sleep, slipped in and tied his feet to the bed.
That had been nearly two weeks ago.
David developed pressure ulcers lacerating his backside and thighs and he could feel the muscles in his legs shorten by the day. His days consisted of alternating threatening her and begging her to free him. Hers, entreating him to stay with her willingly. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to let him go. There was much work to do on the place. Didn’t he think she wanted to free him to do it?
Once, she got close enough to him and he was able to grab her by the throat with his weak arm. He would’ve killed her, but in the end he couldn’t do it. The next day she drugged his food with over-the-counter chloral hydrate and strapped his broken arm to his chest. He remembered feeling relief she hadn’t rebroken it.