One Link in the Chain

By Margaret Weise

In 1940s Australia, being an unmarried mother is almost criminal.

Born the product of a brutal rape in a time when illegitimacy is a sin, Margaret Weise tells a story of heartbreak and victimization, of battling for survival.

What else could I do except to keep on living? I couldn’t simply shrivel up and die because I had been raped and had borne a child. What alternative did I have but to go on as best I could? Yet there were people who looked at me as though I should have ceased to exist…

One Link in the Chain is a thought-provoking read; a family saga that demonstrates how lives can be changed in an instant. It is the story of Margaret’s mother, Heather, of how, from the time she was raped, the Catholic Church and society in general treated her as an outcast, something less than human.

After surviving childbirth at the hands of a malicious Catholic midwife, Heather raises her daughter under her parents’ protective roof in an era when unwed mothers are ostracized and scorned.

This is the recollection of Heather’s struggles and small triumphs along the way, as told to her daughter, Margaret, who, in turn, suffered the contempt of others because she was born a bastard.

A captivating and direct account of how past experiences influence our lives today, One Link in the Chain is an accomplished work that reflects on life, heartbreak, and the intensity of mother-daughter relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margaret Weise
• Release date: May 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497788725

Book preview

Chapter One: The Pebble in my Shoe

This is a personal account of my family’s relationships. At its heart is my mother’s struggle for independence, beginning in the first half of last century. It was a time of entrenched attitudes toward women. I grew up closely analyzing the issues, while extricating some sense of my own individuality.

Having thought for many years about my part in the scheme of things, I found inspiration at the genesis, the atmosphere of my childhood. Being cossetted by much love when small, I struggled to comprehend the degree of barbarity and injustice we had to deal with from other quarters. A sense of grievance bothered me like a pebble in a shoe, aggravating, chaffing, rubbing raw, refusing to be ousted.

I have pondered at length the machinations prior to my birth. The loving way my grandmother manipulated my mother assuming she had some God-given right to possess her; the dual-sided monster who was my father, his dealings with my mother and, through him, her experiences with religious and legal fraternities, the nursing community and society in general. These issues appalled me as much as they focused my life-long attention.

How I resented being the target of schoolyard bullies and bigoted teachers because I existed beyond their definition of normalcy. Children are so readily victimized by matters beyond their comprehension.

In dealing with sensitive issues, names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not so innocent. Some characters are composites of various people, while a couple are entirely fictitious. Occasionally I have used fictional techniques to explain the inexplicable and for the sake of continuity in instances where family members weren’t privy to conversations. I have quoted my mother’s account of events verbatim.

You will never find the towns of Kersbrook, Boolgoolie and Murwullanda on a map of this area in Australia. They exist only beyond the shadowland in a realm called Yesteryear.

In my mother’s day men decided whether women would be educated, how much freedom they would be allowed, their ability to divorce an unsuitable or violent partner, their monetary situation and the right to the children’s custody or upbringing. Fathers and husbands were supremely powerful.

Church and state operated like large men’s clubs, generating and wielding absolute control. Little or no appeal against the rectitude of their authority was granted. In some cases, women had also become indoctrinated with prejudicial and intolerant attitudes of the kind that had been handed down for generations.

My mother was conditioned to accept her destiny, not so much by confrontation as by painstaking training in how things should be. Giving birth to me bound her ever more tightly in a web of duty to her parents, held her as firmly as padlocks and chains of steel. By repeating their unquestioning ownership to her, they assumed unequivocal mastery over our future. An illusory sense of shame caused by my birth dogged my mother all her days. My guilt at being the perceived cause of her problems haunted me for decades.

Seventy-three years after her violation, while the century has turned the millennium wheel, I continue to question how much attitudes have changed among the remaining people of her generation and mine.

All her life, well into her twilight years, my mother shed scalding tears over the injustices done to her, reiterating them as though desperate to purge the pain of cruelty. She couldn’t have appreciated how burdened I became on hearing such stories. I suffered from a nebulous feeling of transgression which I finally identified as concern for having been instrumental in her undoing.

The crucible in which our lives were distilled also fired my ability to remember without fear or favor or I might have left those decades so fraught with hostility tightly closed. It is impossible to shelve childhood impressions. The chimera they create continually haunts us. Thus I was forced to analyze this mercurial menace in order to exorcise it.

The image of my father always fills me with mixed emotions, destabilizing my innate need to achieve a sense of balance. I only met him for half an hour and speak mainly from my family’s memories.

Mostly I have written about unremarkable people in commonplace lives. This story will be familiar to thousands of women in and around my generation.

Contemporary attitudes empower us to take control of our lives, enabling us to share our experiences and empathize with others’. Dredging up the past can bring out unexpected emotions, perhaps useful to those who are also seeking some sense of resolution to their lives.

We are a link in a chain of generations, the connection between ancestors and descendants. For myself, I am the fifth generation of eight in our family since we arrived in Queensland, Australia. Writing this book has enabled me to review the many dear ones I have loved and lost, and has given me much time to speculate on those inborn and conditioned traits which caused my predecessors to behave the way they did.

I am feeling as though I’m still waiting at the station for the magical mystery tour of life to begin, when the truth is, the tour is nearly over. One day I was a girl poised on the brink of a future, but poising on the brink took up many years. Now there’s not many left. How swiftly a lifetime passes and how quickly the opportunity to tell that singular tale is lost. This is my story, once lovingly hoarded. Now I let it burst forth.

Chapter Two: Chameleon Man

At thirty-three, Heather was recovering from a severe breakdown which followed on the heels of her mother’s death in October, 1950. Her blue eyes were at last beginning to evince a hard won vitality—or had been until she collected her sister Nell’s letter from the letterbox.

Heather read it for the third time, then opened the door of the wood stove and tossed its shredded pages into the flames. When the last curling vestige had disappeared, she closed the door and walked away.

Leaving the stifling kitchen where the afternoon sun was blazing in the backdoor, she walked absentmindedly along the hallway, pausing to straighten a picture or rearrange a vase of flowers, her mind full of half-formed thoughts. Wearily, she sat down in the cane chair beside the front door and gazed down the deserted street of the small country town, motionless, as if frozen in a photograph.

Sunshine on the gravel street caused shimmering, moisture-laden waves to dance above the surface of the road. Bare patches of earth showed through the grass on the footpath, small areas that would soon be covered by new grass springing into life after the heavy rains, relieving the drought and unrelenting heat. Not the faintest breeze stirred and the sun was huge, pasted onto the brilliant sky.

The drooping marigolds caught her eye but did not register in her mind. How she wished to have her mother around to discuss the decision she had to make.

So he was dying. Why should she care? It was of no importance to her or her child. How dare Nell stir up memories after all these years? Her hands began to shake and her stomach to knot painfully. She rose and wandered back down the hall into the dim lounge room, picking up objects that didn’t need dusting, wiping them with the corner of her apron, replacing them without noticing what she had done.

Moving to an armchair, she opened her book at the page marked by a plaited bookmark her daughter had made for her at school. But she wasn’t able to concentrate and snapped the book shut.

Her thoughts drifted back to January, 1940, to another town, almost another lifetime or so it seemed now in 1951. She sat without stirring, heaviness sitting in her chest like a stone, her uneasy mind travelling back to where it all began.

Time wouldn’t behave as she wanted on this sultry afternoon. Past years wouldn’t go away. Memories of times when she had feared for her sanity, when she had known isolation and shame, hopelessness and fear, encircled her.

Her teenage years had been lonely. Brothers and sisters all married, she remained at home, the youngest daughter. She was sheltered and unworldly, forbidden by her parents to seek employment outside the home, although her siblings had readily been permitted to leave.

I loved Mum dearly, Heather thought. She was kind and nurturing. But she had a selfish, possessive streak where I was concerned, though. Mum knew that her other girls wouldn’t have entertained the idea of being kept as family nurse but she was aware she could dominate me. That process had been going on as far back as I can recall. I’m not weak, but I’m peace loving, perhaps too much so and was unwilling to antagonize my mother.

Maybe I was too submissive and should have asserted my rights while still young. The other girls were all allowed to take employment, although Merle quickly chose to stay at home and let our parents keep her. That was fine by Mum.

My parents’ perception that their reasoning was no different to mine often left me baffled. I resigned myself to my destiny. Those days were enlivened only by visits from the family with their growing broods of children.

Beris Draves was my close girlfriend. Occasionally we played tennis. Sometimes she invited me to her house or to a country dance. My parents’ strategy, however, was to discourage me going where I might meet eligible young men.

‘Yes’ was not a simple word for either of my parents to reply to me.

‘Well, my girl, I’m sure I don’t know.’ Dad liked to answer with a tone of doubt in his voice. He thought this was being democratic. ‘See what your mother says.’ Back and forth as they batted verbal tennis until, at last exhausted, I’d lose interest in going anywhere at all.

Heather recalled the boyfriend, Royce, whom she had had for a short time—a tall, pimply lad. The romance hardly got off the ground. He called me ‘Hopeless Heather’ and swiped at me with his tennis racquet during a game. I sent him packing. In retrospect, I realize Mum had tolerated the attachment knowing it was unlikely to develop further.

And so I grew to womanhood aware that this would be the shape and pattern of life, a life that could hardly be called my own. It belonged to the family and the home, my role preordained by my mother. To help in the care of Grandfather Ulrich who was bedridden with dementia, to do the housework, which Mum wasn’t up to because of her huge hernia, to drive her wherever she wanted to go and to care for my parents until they died.

There must have been some pretense that I’d be allowed to have my own life, Heather mused. When Merle started gathering her Glory Box, Mum bought all the same items for mine. Linen, nightgowns, kitchenware. Did she always intend to bind me hand and foot? Or were there moments when she vacillated, even planning to manage without me at home? Or was it simply a face-saving device?

Heather sat musing, lost in her history. Once or twice a year she had been allowed her to visit her eldest sister, Nell, if she and her sister slogged at the task of persuading their parents long and hard enough.

One such visit was in the January of her 21st year. Little could she know that life would never be the same again following the 1940 trip to Murwullanda.

Her sister, Nell, brother-in-law, Alexander Luxton and their two small boys, young Alexander and young Charles welcomed Heather. Alexander, a dumpy little Irishman, had clasped his bachelorhood to his bosom until he reached fifty, when he decided it was time to settle down.

A cattle buyer by trade, he went about his business on his horse, Diamond. Some days, though, Alexander needed a hand. He couldn’t drive, so on those occasions Nell had to crank up the Hupmobile and organize her husband and boys into the car bright and early for Alex’s rounds.

Whenever Heather stayed with them she went too. Thus, during the 1930s, she met the Flahertys. Brothers Michael and Joe ran a picturesque but poor farm at Nectar Brook, a lush district on the outskirts of Murwullanda. Michael owned the farm. Joe and his family farmed it, dividing the proceeds equally. Joe, his wife and four children worked hard to make ends meet. It was a fine arrangement for Michael, giving him an income and extra time to himself.

The families shared a draughty, large house that did not allow much privacy for its inhabitants. Arrangements were overcrowded, although they were all accustomed to it. When Michael’s daughters came home from the convent for school holidays, where they had boarded since their mother died years previously, they squeezed in where they could, looked after by their aunt whilst their father went about like a carefree bachelor.

In January, 1940, the Hupmobile wheeled into the Flaherty gate one Saturday afternoon. The day was hot and steamy with rain-laden clouds hanging low. Down at the dairy, Mrs. Joe could be seen trudging through the mud in Wellington boots, herding cows into the ramshackle building.

The visitors pushed their way past hibiscus bushes and drowsy dogs, to join the small throng under the house. The six Flaherty cousins came forward with amiable greetings, happy to see Heather, who wasn’t much older than some of the girls and known to them for several years.

The men set off to the paddock to look at the herd, choosing cattle for the following week’s sale.

After chatting a while, Michael’s daughters, Marie and Patsy invited Heather to stay overnight.

‘Of course it’s alright, dear,’ Nell assured her. ‘It’ll do you good. I’m sure one of the girls will lend you fresh clothes and I’ll collect you tomorrow afternoon.’

The men returned from the paddocks and the girls made tea upstairs in the kitchen, bringing the trays down into the shade of the house.

Before the visit ended Nell promised to come out to collect Heather the following afternoon but Michael offered to drive Heather back to town late the next evening.

‘No trouble at all. I have to go in, anyway,’ he assured Nell, head down, eyes averted. He shifted uneasily as he moved one foot backward and forward, shuffling awkwardly, making a furrow in the loose dirt. ‘I’ve got a church meeting tomorrow night.’

In moments of private conversation with his friend Alex, Michael claimed to be still distraught about his wife’s death. He found consolation, however, in the arms of Rita Flannery and a few unnamed others. Each Sunday at Mass, Church Warden Michael proudly led the members of the Parish Council into the Cathedral, followed by Rita. She, in turn, led the girls’ group, ‘The Children of Mary’. A handsome woman was Rita, expecting nothing in return for attending to the sorrowing widower.

All this constituted a fine arrangement for Michael. He felt no obligation to remain true to Rita. After all, they weren’t married. He was eager to enjoy many a quiet fling whenever the opportunity arose.

This was the man who was to alter Heather’s life with such overwhelming results. Michael Flaherty, close friend of Alexander’s, was a huge Irishman with an open, guileless face. Heather thought of Michael Flaherty (if she thought of him at all), as a man belonging to her parents’ generation. Soft-spoken and seemingly sweet-natured, he was thirty years older than she was.

Heather had a delightful stay with the young people who were of an age comparable to hers. After dinner on Sunday night, she climbed into Michael’s two-seater for the journey home. The car puttered along the dirt tracks of the narrow road to town. They felt no need to talk but enjoyed the ride in what seemed to Heather to be companionable silence.

She hadn’t felt the vaguest hint of apprehension until, a mile or so from town, Michael drew the car to a halt.

‘Why are we stopping?’ she asked, seeing no cause for alarm.

He smiled condescendingly at the absurd question.

‘There’s something wrong with the car,’ he replied gruffly.

Walking to the rumble seat, he opened it and took out a travelling rug, then went to Heather’s door. Opening it, he grabbed her hand and dragged her out. His apparent split-second change of personality bewildered Heather. She was unsure how to respond. All too late she realized the danger she was in. Her heart pounded heavily at seeing his lips compress into a hard line.

How often the course of a life is changed in the pulse of a heartbeat, Heather thought many times over the ensuing years.

Heather wasn’t a small girl but she was no match for Michael, who was six feet four and rock-solid. He dragged her to the barbed-wire fence and, reaching forward, spread the wires to push her through. His attention lapsed momentarily. On the brink of hysteria, Heather freed her hand and made a run for it. He caught her, though, and threw her to the ground, then slapped her around the head with his big, open hand.

He hauled her to her feet and pulled her, inch by inch, her screaming all the while, to the cane-field fence. This time, he managed to keep his wits about him, forcing her with more blows to do his bidding.

But again, with a resurgence of hope she made a dash for the open road. Again, he chased her and threw her to the ground. This time there was no escape and she screamed as if her life depended on it.

There was no one to hear.

Later, he drove her to the Luxton’s house and waited for her to get out of the car, his eyes fixed straight ahead, mouth still set. She sat for a while, pale and stressed, not knowing what to say or do about this crime he had perpetrated against her. Her dress torn, mouth bleeding, she said, ‘Why did you do that to me?’

She covered herself as best she could with her tattered clothing, smelling the acrid odor of blood and semen on her body. He drew a deep breath and let it whistle out through clenched teeth.

‘Because you’re young and fresh and don’t dare tell anyone or you’ll be sorry, I promise you that without doubt.’

‘They’ll see what’s happened,’ Heather replied. ‘Surely you don’t imagine Nell and Alex won’t notice? Are you completely mad?’

Her floral dress hung limply about her shoulders and her stockings were laddered to pieces. He gave a hollow laugh.

‘I’ll deny it was me. They’ll all believe me before they’ll believe you. I’ll say I picked you up after someone else dumped you by the roadside.’

‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she said.

‘It’ll be a cold day in hell before I need your forgiveness,’ he sneered, gesturing for her to get out.

‘I’ve no doubt you’ll get there before I do. You’re thirty years further along than I am!’

He laughed, lips curled. ‘Hell’s too good for you Protestant bastards. You’ll have your own special place to rot in.’

‘You wouldn’t have raped a Catholic girl, wouldn’t have violated one of your own!’ she cried, voice rising.

‘You’re right! Get out!’ he ordered, with a disgusted wave of his hand. He shifted the gear into low. She opened the car door and regarded the house into which she had to walk. The verandah light was on, a welcome signal for her.

‘We trusted you. God forgive you, Mr. Flaherty.’

‘What do you bloody Protestants know about God? Well, girl, this is our secret, our lovers’ tryst by the roadside. Remember I warned you and it’s your word against mine.’

With that he revved the engine and roared into the night.

In a state of shock, Heather stared after the car and when it disappeared around the corner, she opened the gate. The house was silent as she let herself in. Nell was waiting in the lounge-room, colored wools surrounding her as she crocheted a brightly-hued rug.

‘Hello, dear,’ she said without looking up. ‘Alex and the boys have gone to bed.’ Her tone was mild, unconcerned. She looked up. ‘My God, Heather, what happened to you?’ She threw her crocheting to the floor, running to take her sister in her arms.

Sobbing and incoherent, Heather clung to her sister. When she could finally explain what had happened Nell rushed off to rouse Alexander, who hurried into the room tying his dressing gown cord about his ample waist. He clucked his tongue at his wife.

‘There was no meeting tonight. I went last week, Nell, remember?’

‘I forgot.’ Nell sighed with vexation. ‘I can’t keep track of everything. Besides, I never thought Michael would have an ulterior motive. We’ve been friends for years! Why don’t you pay attention to what’s going on, Alex?’

Heather sat with her hands pressed over her eyes, as though preventing the vision of what had happened. Blood from the wound on her forehead had congealed on her cheeks and dress. Livid black and purple bruises surrounded one eye. She shook her head, trying to make sense of the incredible offence against her.

‘You’d better get on the phone and call the police right now,’ Alex told his wife. Grateful to be told what to do Nell headed for the phone in the hall.

‘No, no,’ screamed Heather. ‘I couldn’t stand that.’ Heather wasn’t a worldly type but she knew what happened when a girl tried to prove she had been raped. ‘Please, Nell, you know what I mean.’

Deflated, Nell stopped in her tracks, her own vivid memories of 1920 flicking through her mind.

‘Yes,’ was all she said.

Temporarily at a loss, she knew she would soon gain her second wind and be ready for action. Presently it was as if a switch had been turned on in her head and she was briskly efficient again.

‘Go quickly and have a hot bath, Heather, as hot as you can stand it. I’ll see if I can find some brandy to help,’ she ordered. ‘Oh, my God, what if you get pregnant?’

‘Don’t worry about that, dear,’ Alex put in. ‘Women only get pregnant if they’ve had satisfaction, never as the result of a rape, they say.’

‘Stuff and nonsense, you old goat,’ Nell snapped. ‘We’ve two little boys lying in their beds to prove that theory wrong!’

She turned to follow Heather to the bathroom. During later discussion facts emerged to be pondered. Nell knew much about Michael, but was aware only of his relationship with Rita, an arrangement that she regarded as probably sexually adequate for a man of Michael’s age and circumstances.

She and Alexander had no inkling of his predatory designs until it was too late for Heather’s wellbeing. Alex had been privy to many of Michael’s confidences but, thinking about it later, he was certain their close friendship should have been protection for Heather’s safety on a short drive to town. They were both Catholic men and Alex’s wife Nell was an intensely devout convert.

Neither of the married couple had seen Michael’s head hanging, ground-scraping behavior with his avoidance of eye contact. Heather had, but failed to recognize it as the prelude to the subsequent attack, being ignorant of knowledge concerning body language.

The next morning Nell was up early arranging with a neighbor to care for the boys. She drove to the farm, her face grim, her hands gripping the steering-wheel tightly. Alexander sat beside her and Heather was in the back, pale-faced and trembling still from the ordeal.

Michael, in flannelette pajama coat and work trousers, opened the door himself when Alex knocked loudly.

‘Pardon my state of undress,’ he murmured.

‘You’d better come downstairs and talk to us, I think,’ Alex cautioned him. ‘I’m sure you don’t want your family hearing what you’ve done.’ Alex stomped downstairs to where his wife and sister-in-law stood waiting.

Unshaven, hair tousled, smiling indulgently through grizzled stubble, Michael trailed after Alex. Nell felt absurdly relieved, seeing him so ordinary, so normal, a farmer about to set out on a day’s work—even though, in Michael’s particular case, it would likely be a case of supervising poor Kathleen and any of her brood inclined to work.

She opened her mouth to question him, but Alex waved his hand at her to be silent. Heather felt her chest contract. She was beginning to feel quite sick. Alex had been a boxer and his expression was pugilistic as he sprang around on feet that seemed unable to stay put as he jigged up and down.

Suddenly, he decided that antagonizing Michael further would not help Heather’s cause at all, so he made an effort to stand still and discuss the matter in a civilized fashion.

After hearing them out, Michael laughed and slapped Alex on the shoulder. ‘Is that what she told you? That’s a good one. What time did she come in?’

‘Eight o’clock,’ Nell piped up. She drew herself up to her full height. Nell was a large woman, not overweight but heavy-boned in what was known at the time as a ‘fine figure of a woman.’

 ‘I dropped her off at your gate at seven. She must have gone off somewhere with some larrikin. So help me God!’ he added piously as an afterthought.

Beneath his moderate manner ran an undertone of mockery. To lie caused him no difficulty whatever. Alex, infuriated, took a swipe at him. Michael reached out and held his friend off as easily as he would a struggling kitten.

‘I’ll wallop you, by the living God,’ promised Alex.

‘Don’t let this ridiculous accusation come between us, mate,’ Michael said. ‘We’ve been friends through thick and thin for nigh on forty years.’

‘Where’s your conscience, you hound?’ Alex yelled, unable to believe Michael’s treachery.

‘My conscience is clear. Go home and leave me in peace.’ He walked away then called from the landing with a sneer, ‘By the way, what did you say happened to Heather’s face?’

Heather returned home to Kersbrook, stunned. Nell told her she must wait and see. April came and still she waited, hoping daily for a miracle. Eventually she knew she must confide in her mother.

‘I had a niggling suspicion something was amiss. You must tell your Dad. I don’t know what to do, I’m sure.’ Doretta wrung her hands a little. ‘I’m worried, but only a little, mind,’ she added with a wan smile. ‘Everything will come good, dreckly.’

Heather was near to distraction. ‘I can’t possibly tell Dad! He won’t understand.’

‘Of course he will! He’s your father. He loves you. Tell him,’ the old lady reassured her.

‘Soon,’ Heather murmured, thinking she would wait another week just to be sure.

His reaction was impossible to predict. Heather feared the worst. Life had become a downhill spiral and things could only get worse. She dreaded causing a scene that could spin out of control. Heather loved her father but feared his quick, hot temper. He was a strict, unyielding man who expected certain behavior from his offspring and came down particularly hard on them in its absence.  But he adhered to firm guidelines and would listen to no excuses if these blueprints for conduct were violated. No excuses. No margin for error.

Heather teetered on the edge of an abyss, vertiginous, about to topple. An ominous feeling of change clawed at her as she took in her thickening waistline before the full-length mirror in her bedroom. Her neat waist had disappeared.

Late one evening, mentally rehearsing her narrative as she had for weeks, Heather wandered down to the back-gate to meet her father as he came in from milking the cow. Sick with apprehension, she grabbed the gate, trying hard not to quaver, watching for him and dreading his fury.

As he appeared at the door of the milking shed, she covered her face with her hands, pleading for strength and hoping he would listen quietly, with understanding.

He strode across the yard carrying a galvanized iron bucket of warm milk in one hand, a set of harness in the other. Throwing the harness across the paling fence, he unhooked the double-gate and smiled at her.

‘How are you, my girl?’ he asked in his usual brisk manner. ‘Can you take the milk to the house while I put the harness in the shed?’ He handed her the bucket and shut the gate. ‘What’s the matter? Why are you standing gawking? Off you go,’ he told her. Lifting the harness from the fence and turning on his heel, he began to walk off towards the barn.

‘Dad,’ whispered Heather in consternation, barely loud enough for him to hear.

‘Yes, what is it?’ He turned to her and, startled by her white face, smiled kindly at her. ‘Tell your old Dad.’

Raising her eyes to meet his, she began to twist her hands in the end of the belt tied at her waist. ‘Well, come on. It’s almost dark and I can’t stand here shilly-shallying around all evening.’

Still she could not speak. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

‘Come along, girl. What is it?’ he demanded in irritation.

‘Dad,’ she repeated, terrified to go any further.

‘Yes! Yes! Well?’ her father snapped, tried beyond measure. ‘Speak up, for the love of Heaven!’

Slowly she raised her head to look at him, his snow-white moustache bristling with provocation.

‘Dad, I think I’m in trouble,’ she murmured, continuing to twist the belt in her nervous hands.

His brow furrowed. ‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’

‘I think I’m going to have a baby.’ She averted her eyes, unwilling to see the shock on his face. ‘I’m fairly sure of it,’ she added.

Now the moment of gut-wrenching truth was at last accomplished and she tried to stay erect in the slow-spinning world.

‘How did this happen? Whose baby is it?’ His voice was harsh, as distant as if he had spoken to a stranger. His steely blue eyes remained fixed on his daughter’s, although she couldn’t raise hers to meet them.

Something inside him seemed to snap and he took her by the shoulders, shaking her frantically. To him this was the ultimate disgrace—to have a daughter pregnant without apparent prospect of marriage. To his knowledge Heather hadn’t been with any man.

Heather began to sob with a loud retching sound. Ashamed to be manhandling his daughter, the old man held his hands gently on her shoulders until she quieted.

‘Now, let’s get to the bottom of this,’ he said more calmly. ‘Tell me who has fathered this child, Heather.’

‘It’s Michael Flaherty’s baby, Alex’s friend.’ Still she couldn’t glance toward him, could barely breathe, waiting for him to digest the information, dreading the anger which could explode again at any moment.

He did not take this announcement well. ‘How did this come about?’ he bellowed, his face reddening with