Hanna

Sligo, Ireland, 1961

It was her first visit to Dr Dorian Black’s surgery, and Hanna liked him straight away.

She had only been living in Killa for a few weeks at the time. After her father died suddenly, two years before, her mother Margaret decided they needed a new start and rented a small cottage in Killa, a fishing village on the north-west coast of county Sligo. Margaret hoped proximity to the sea would help heal their ongoing grief. Indeed, Margaret’s spirits lifted as she began a new life among people who knew little or nothing about her, fitting easily into the friendly new parish. Hanna, just thirteen, had settled well into the local convent school. Their home was at the end of the pier, and Hanna developed an appetite for the fresh, salty air, spending hours sitting on the front wall reading and watching the sea. However, this time spent in the chilly air had also resulted in a nasty cough. Margaret, overly protective of her only child, had brought her straight up to the local surgery where she had been greeted by this kind, handsome Dr Black.

‘Now, we’re going to have to take a little look in your mouth, Hanna. Can you open wide for me?’

Hanna opened her mouth widely and he peered in. He smelt of soap and she felt strangely pleased to be in the company of a nice man, even if he was only their doctor. Most of the men they knew from home were farmers, rough and ready, smelling of manure or beer. This man was clean and gentle, like her father. She missed him. It had been two years now and Hanna had started to find it hard to call his face to mind.

‘Now, that doesn’t look too bad.’ Dorian leaned back and took his stethoscope from around his neck. Hanna smiled at him. His accent was refined, barely detectable as Irish. She reminded him of a Jane Austen hero, handsome and dapper like Darcy, but friendly and open too, like Bingley.

‘Well, young lady,’ he said, ‘I think you’ll live.’ Hanna laughed.

Then he turned his attention to Margaret. ‘But, I am writing you a prescription for some antibiotics to clear this nasty cough.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Margaret said.

‘Please,’ he said, smiling, ‘call me Dorian.’

‘Thank you, Dorian.’

Hanna noticed her mother blushing. Margaret was taken with him and, for a moment, Hanna felt pricked with possessive irritation. She reminded herself that her father was dead and it was nice, after all, to see her mother smiling.

As they were leaving, Dorian signalled Margaret to stay back for a private word. For a split second she had a dreadful feeling that there was something wrong with Hanna. After losing Liam, she knew she had become unnaturally attached to her daughter. There was just the two of them now. She couldn’t face it if Hanna were sick.

‘I was wondering,’ Dr Black said, his eyes downcast in shyness, ‘if you would do me the honour of allowing me to take you and Hanna out to dinner this evening.’

❊

Over the coming weeks, Dorian courted Margaret. It was like a dream. This charming, erudite man had come into their lives after all the pain, hurt and shock of the last two years. She could hardly believe her luck in finding love again and, although she was as head over heels as a schoolgirl, it was Dorian’s kindness towards Hanna that truly won Margaret’s heart. Most men would have baulked at taking on another man’s daughter, but every time they went out for a drive, to a nice hotel for dinner or to a movie theatre, he always made sure to invite Hanna. Even when they went to Dublin for a weekend, Dorian insisted she and Hanna shared their own room in the Shelbourne rather than have Hanna enduring the upset of her mother being with another man.

That, he said, was the reason for his marriage proposal just two months after their initial meeting.

‘As soon as I met you, Margaret, I knew you came as a family unit. Hanna is an important part of what I love about you. I want to look after you – both.’

All the ladies of the village were delighted when it was announced that their good doctor, at the age of thirty-seven, was finally getting married. The bride wore a simple cream wool suit and her young daughter, quite a striking looking child (although clearly bashful in the face of all the attention), followed her down the aisle in a pink dress. Dorian had no family, so the day was marked with a catered drinks reception in the local hotel where all of his neighbours and patients came along to help celebrate their beloved doctor’s good fortune.

‘Finally,’ Mrs Murphy said to him after her third glass of sherry. ‘We were beginning to wonder what was wrong with you!’

He laughed then put his hand on his new wife’s shoulder. ‘Well, I just had to meet the right girl.’

Margaret giggled at being called a girl and slapped his arm playfully. She reached her arm out for Hanna and drew her into her side.

‘Ah – or should I say, girls?’ Dorian corrected himself. Everyone laughed.

❊

A year passed and Hanna turned from thirteen to fourteen. She became more independent and began to speak her own mind. She was glad that her mother had Dorian to focus on, instead of just her, and she came to trust him. While she knew her stepfather would never be a replacement for the father she so deeply loved, Hanna grew fond of him as time went by. Dorian Black loved her mother, there was no doubt about that, and he made her happy. Hanna also understood that he had been kind and generous regarding her as well. As the nuns pointed out to her in school, ‘It’s not every man would take on another man’s child.’

Dorian never patronised her, or talked to her like she was a poor child, as so many people did since her father died. He treated her as an equal, and she liked that. Dorian allowed her to call him by his first name. When she first did it, her mother tutted, insisting she call him father to show him proper respect. But Dorian had been on Hanna’s side. ‘Don’t push the child, Margaret,’ he said. ‘I am not her natural father. There is no reason she should look on me as such. Hanna is old enough to make up her own mind about the role I play in her life.’

Margaret became worried that Hanna was moving away from her, that she was losing her. Dorian was as wise and reassuring as ever. ‘Hanna is becoming a fine young woman,’ he told her. ‘She is not your little girl any more, Margaret. Sooner or later you’ll have to accept that she’s an adult.’

Margaret pursed her lips and remained silent on the subject. Hanna could tell she didn’t like it but it was important that her mother understood she wasn’t a child any more. Dorian was right, she was becoming a ‘young woman’ and her mother just had to get used to it. United in that understanding, a bond grew between stepfather and stepdaughter that felt to Hanna like friendship, or maybe even love.

Then, as Dorian and Margaret Black were coming up to their second wedding anniversary, Margaret came down with a nasty bout of flu. At first it seemed not to be serious but then her symptoms worsened with lethargy and headaches. Weeks passed and Margaret remained bedridden. With little appetite and no energy to lift herself from the bed, it appeared that there was something more serious underlying the illness. Hanna was worried and asked Dorian if there was anything more they could do. He reassured her that her mother’s recovery was just around the corner.

‘It’s only a virus,’ he promised.

But Hanna could see that despite all the tinctures and medicine Dorian was administering, Margaret seemed to get worse. One afternoon, when her mother was barely able to open her eyes and smile at her when she came in from school, Hanna asked Dorian if it would be better to move her mother to a hospital. Dorian looked at her, stricken, but also a little annoyed.

‘I know you are worried, and so am I. But she is my wife, Hanna. Nobody can look after her as well as I can. Please,’ he said, his eyes were wide and pleading, ‘trust me. Let me do this. For you. For both of us.’

Hanna could see that this was hard for Dorian. He loved her mother too. Dorian wanted her mother back as much as she did.

So she sat at Margaret’s bedside each evening and prayed for her to wake up. Dorian kept reassuring her that her mother would get better soon. But she was constantly asleep, and seemed to be fading away before Hanna’s eyes.

Every few days she asked, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Just be a good girl,’ Dorian said, ‘and leave your mother to the experts.’ He kissed her forehead, sent her to school each day and told her that everything was going to be all right. Soon her mother would be better and they would be a happy family again.

One day Hanna came home from school and found Dorian standing in the hallway to meet her. His face was stricken. Hanna remembered the expression from when she was eleven years old and her mother told her that her father had been killed in a car accident.

She screamed out. Dorian ran across the hall and held her in his arms. She sank her head into his chest, drawing what comfort she could from the smell of soap and tobacco on his cashmere sweater. The smell of a father. He was all that was left of her family now. Hanna did not remember much of the next few hours. Dorian administered tea and comfort and, eventually, to stop the jagged sobbing that she feared would snap her body in half, a sedative to help her sleep.

Late at night or early the next morning – she could not be sure – Hanna was woken by the sound of Dorian opening her bedroom door.

‘Father?’ she called out in her groggy state. It was the first time she had called him that.

She could see from his outline against the light from the hall that it was Dorian, but he did not reply.

Instead he walked silently across the room towards her. Hanna was briefly warmed with a child’s moment of relief that a parent is nearby. She felt the warmth of his breath as Dorian leaned down to kiss her on the forehead, as he had done a hundred times before. But he did not kiss her as he had done before. Instead, he kissed her on the mouth and bore his body down and into her.

Her body clenched as the first pain shot through her, but after that, Hanna did not struggle or scream. Her limbs, in any case, felt too weak and he was too heavy to fight. She kept her body as still as she could. Afraid to move. Terrified that any movement on her part might be read as encouragement. His body was heavy and his touch firm and confident. The same chest she had leant against for comfort when her mother was sick, the same hands that had patted her back with reassurance, betraying themselves in this appalling act. Hanna was numb, unable to comprehend if this was really happening. Why was he doing this? Had she done or said something to invite it? This man called himself her father. Although, she now realised that he never actually had. She had not allowed it. She had demanded that she call him by his first name. Perhaps if she had called him father, as her mother had wanted, this would not be happening.

After he had finished, Dorian lay down next to Hanna. She had not realised she was crying until he gently wiped her tears away with the palm of his hands. Her body flinched at the gentleness of the gesture. There was something even more terrifying about that than what had gone before. The betrayal of it.

‘I probably should not have done that… but you looked so sad.’

Hanna did not know how to react. Sad? Her mother had died. Was that what you did to people when they were sad?

‘You are still crying,’ he said, and then he began to cry himself. It was terrible to see a man cry. Despite what he had done to her, Hanna wanted him to stop. She wanted to make his tears go away.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. He told her that he missed her mother and had simply acted out of grief. He said he would never do it again. He seemed so contrite, so upset by his own actions that when he said, ‘Do you believe me Hanna? Please. I’m sorry. Forgive me,’ she said that she did and would.

Although she knew in her heart that things would never be the same between them, she wanted to believe him.

Nonetheless, Hanna locked her bedroom door that night. Over the coming days, through the drama of the wake, funeral and burial of her mother, Dorian’s actions became subsumed by Hanna’s despairing grief.

The night after the burial, she heard him try the door of her bedroom. She was protected by the lock. He went away and she told herself that he would not come back again. The locked door had made him pause. She would just have to continue locking it until he came to his senses.

Over the coming days things returned to normal. As normal as they could be without her mother. Dorian opened the surgery and Hanna went back to school. Every night, she locked her bedroom door and every night Dorian came tapping gently. With no reply he left and after two weeks the tapping stopped. Hanna finally believed it was over.

The Monday after her mother’s Month’s Mind Mass Hanna came home from school and met Dorian’s housekeeper, Eileen, at the door. She was most upset and bustled past Hanna with barely a greeting.

When she got into the house, Dorian called her into the drawing room. Standing in front of the tall bookcases in the Prince of Wales wool three-piece suit he wore for work, he had a stern expression that filled her with dread.

‘What’s the matter with Eileen?’ she asked, trying to keep a note of fear out of her voice. It was the middle of the afternoon, a bright sunny day. Nothing bad could happen.

‘I dismissed her.’

‘Why?’

‘I decided we don’t need her any more. You are old enough to cook and clean for us both.’

Hanna was afraid, but she knew that she had to stand her ground.

‘I don’t cook and clean. My mother did all of that for me, as well you know.’

Dorian stood for a second, his mouth twisted into a sardonic smile, then, in one deft movement he was across the room and beside her. He felled her to the ground with a slap to the side of her head. She thought she would pass out, but then he grabbed her and, pulling her up by the root of her long ponytail, dragged her over to the grand piano. He held her neck down so that her face was pressed hard on the polished, mahogany surface. As he dragged up her school uniform, he spat, ‘This will teach you to lock your bedroom door you cruel little bitch. I tried to be nice but this is all you understand. You think you’re so beautiful, so alluring, but this is all you deserve.’

Hanna had never known pain like it.

She never locked her bedroom door again.

Irish Catholic tradition marking the end of an official grieving period.