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Authors: Shane Dunphy

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BOOK: Crying in the Dark
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5

One week later

Through the kitchen window, I watched Bobby and Micky Walsh talking to something that wasn't there. It was a disquieting experience. The kitchen, as always, was in semi-darkness. With Biddy's permission, I had been through the house to see if I could do anything about the pervasive gloom that seemed to cocoon it. It was a beautiful summer's day outside, but inside was dark and actually a little chilly. I had washed all the windows thoroughly, made tie-backs for the curtains and aired the place, but the eternal twilight remained and there was a peculiar smell I just couldn't get rid of. I had finally put it down to a design flaw in the building. The sun always seemed to be shining just at the wrong angle.

I watched the two boys closely. This was the first time that Biddy had allowed me to see them when they were with ‘him', and permission had been granted only when I promised not to intrude upon whatever was happening.

The boys' eyes were fixed at a particular point in the air. The brothers were different heights; Micky, as I've already mentioned, was significantly smaller than Bobby. He had to angle his head much more than his sibling, and I thought he would surely get bored with it and look away, but he didn't. They both continued to focus on a patch of air, around six feet above ground level. I looked to see if there was some point of reference for them, a mark on the wall at that point or a branch from the ditch adjacent to them, but, if there was, I couldn't see it. It was simply a patch of empty air.

I couldn't hear what was being said. The windows were double-glazed and no sound came through, but I could see from the boys' body-language that they were having an animated conversation – although not with each other. Bobby would speak, and there would be a pause. Both boys, seated cross-legged on the ground, would talk together, just as they would if they were speaking to me or their mother, but then one would shout the other down, finish saying his piece, wait again, all the time looking at something I couldn't see. It really did look for all the world as if they were talking to, listening to, responding to an invisible person.

The play-work had so far produced nothing. I'd tried a range of different methodologies – sand and water, clay, role-play, storytelling – but I was beginning to see that the boys were not going through a grieving process at all, because, as far as they were concerned,
their father was not dead!
Their behaviour with me was always pleasant and respectful. To be honest, I had fun with them. They were easy to work with and I looked forward to coming over and spending time with them. When the subject of their father came up, which it did at almost every session, they behaved as if their relationship with him was perfectly normal. I asked them on my third visit how they knew when to go out to the garden to see him.

‘I hears him calling us,' Micky said. ‘He shouts
“Micheál! Micbeál!”
and I goes out and there he is, down by the ditch.'

‘Do you hear it like that too, Bob?'

‘No, he calls to Micky.'

‘Do you not hear him calling then?'

‘No, but I sees him when we goes out there. I loves my daddy.'

‘Boys … do you know your daddy is dead?'

This may seem a terribly blunt statement, but a primary rule in childcare is that you are always truthful with the children you work with. I wanted them to see that, from my point of view at least, their father was not there. The boys stopped making the castle they had been building in the sand-tray I had brought over and looked at me solemnly.

‘No,' Bobby said with firm resolution. ‘You see, Shane, that was a mistake. Daddy told us he wasn't ready to be dead. They made a mistake.'

‘Weren't you ever at his grave?'

‘No.' Micky shook his head vigorously. ‘There idn't any grave, cause he's ain't dead.'

And that had been the end of the conversation on that matter. As far as both boys were concerned, their father was very much alive and well.

I watched the drama unfolding outside with rapt fascination. I had absolutely no idea how the hallucination worked. I did, however, know one thing for certain:
they were seeing something.
Of that I was in no doubt.

My mobile phone rang.

‘Yeak.'

‘Hi, Shane. Ben here. Could you swing by the Henrys as soon as possible? Mina has done a bunk again.'

‘No problem. I'm just about done here anyway.'

Dirk Henry sat in his study behind a huge oak desk, a glass of whiskey in his hand and a cigar smouldering between his teeth. He had come home from work to meet me, so he was dressed in an immaculately tailored grey suit. He was not in a good mood.

I don't know what he did for a living. He had snorted at me that he was involved in finance. I thought that that was a pretty broad field of endeavour, but kept the opinion to myself.

‘We did as you suggested, Shane, and operated the alarm system.'

‘And?'

‘It worked. She has not escaped from the house.'

I waited, saying nothing. Dirk was obviously used to chairing meetings, and he had a flair for the dramatic. I knew that a punch line was coming, and I gave him the opportunity to deliver it in his own time.

‘She ran away from the workshop this morning.'

It made sense. If one avenue of escape was cut off, Mina was always going to look for another one.

‘You didn't think to inform the workshop that she maybe needed to be watched?'

Dirk's eyes narrowed. ‘I would have thought that was your job,' he said very quietly.

I shrugged. Dirk was probably used to having employees tremble when he squinted like that and lowered his voice. But I wasn't his employee, and men in suits have rarely frightened me. I stood up.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To look for your daughter.'

‘Where the hell are you planning to look?'

‘Well, I'm going to begin by going over to the workshop to see if anyone there had any ideas, seeing as there seems to be something of a shortage of them around here.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘It means that I want to begin looking for Mina, and that I'm not prepared to sit around here any longer while you make yourself feel better by showing me how tough you are.'

I left him chewing on that, and went out to the car, feeling quite pleased with myself. Which probably made me just as childish as him.

Community workshops for people with special needs all look alike, built to the same basic design. I think they're supposed to appear welcoming, but to me they all seem like factories, and there is nothing welcoming about that. Workshops are supposed to be about something called
industrial therapy.
That's supposed to mean that people can receive healing or personal development through work. I spent some time in a workshop once, on the floor, just like one of the ‘trainees', as they call the individuals with disabilities who work there. I had been offered a job as a supervisor, but first wanted to see what it was like from the trainee's perspective. I asked if I could do a week putting together industrial cables, which was what the particular room I was supposed to be supervising made. The manager looked at me as if I had just sprouted a second head, but agreed. I lasted for one day, by the end of which I thought I was about to go insane. I never took up the job. I could not stand over asking anybody, special needs or not, to do something I was not prepared to do myself. Since then, I have always thought that
industrial therapy
just means cheap labour.

‘Mina came in this morning as normal,'
Brendan, the manager of the workshop, told me.

He was a beefy man with a large paunch and the huge shoulders of a body-builder. We sat in his tiny, stuffy office, overlooking the floor of the workshop.

‘How'd she run off?'

He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with a grubby-looking handkerchief. He was sweating profusely.

‘Security has never been much of an issue here, Shane. Our people just don't run away. Most of them are actually afraid to go outside on their own. In general they lead fairly sheltered lives, so the door is never locked. No one ever told me that Mina was a flight risk. If I'd known …'

‘I'm not here to point the finger of blame, Brendan. That's kind of a pointless exercise at this stage. The horse has bolted.'

‘Yeah, well I feel bad about it.'

‘You'll be more careful next time. Could be something you and your people need to develop some policies on, eh?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Would you say Mina's happy here?'

Brendan looked at me blankly. ‘I don't follow.'

‘Do you think she enjoys her time here – doing the work, being with the people?'

‘Well, I think so. She's never complained.'

‘Do you get many complaints from the trainees, Brendan?'

‘Well … um … no, I s'pose not.'

‘Who does Mina hang out with? Does she have any particular friends?'

‘Have you ever worked with special needs, Shane?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then you'll know that they don't really have friends. Not in any real sense. They'll latch on to members of staff, have favourites that way, but they tend not to develop close relationships with one other.'

‘That has not been my experience.'

‘Oh, well, it's what I've seen.'

‘Thank you for your time. Can I go down to the floor and chat with a few of the trainees? They might know something that could help.'

‘Yeah, no bother. You'll not learn much, though.'

I smiled without humour and went down the flight of metal stairs to where the trainees worked. The workshop was divided up into different sections. There was an area that did screen-printing, a facility that packaged plastic bin-liners, one that made synthetic clothes lines and another that produced craft-work – various knick-knacks and oddments. Mina worked in this last section, so I made my way across the large room to where I had been told her work-station was. The atmosphere of the place was pleasant enough. It was light and airy and there was a buzz of conversation along with the clang of machinery. The craft department was cordoned off from its neighbouring section by a wooden partition. I introduced myself to the supervisor, who told me her name was Ellen. She had a Northern accent and was a pretty, dark-haired woman in her early thirties.

‘Do you mind if I chat to the guys here, and see if anyone has any idea where Mina's run off to?'

‘Aye, that's fine. We're dead worried about her. I only noticed she was gone when we came back from tea-break. It's not at all like her. She's such a conscientious wee lass.'

‘Any thoughts yourself as to where she might have gone?'

‘Jesus, no, none at all. She's a quiet girl really. She never says a whole lot.'

‘She hasn't mentioned anything out of the ordinary, something that made you stop and think?'

‘No. Sorry. Sure, have a chat with the lads; they might be able to help.'

‘Could you introduce me?'

‘Of course.'

Ellen walked to the centre of the work area and held up a hand. The people working at their desks all put down the pieces they were busy with and looked up.

‘This is Shane. He's here to ask ye about Mina, who, as you all know, has gone away without telling anyone where she was heading. Shane would like to ask each of you if you have any thoughts on where she might have gone to, seeing as how you're all her friends. So please do tell him anything you think will help.'

The trainees looked warily at one another and returned to their work.

There were six people in this section. Some said that they knew Mina well, while others said they had barely spoken to her. After forty-five minutes, I was ready to give up in frustration. The last member of the team was a man in his forties, Hughie, who seemed to have a slightly more severe learning disability than his colleagues. He wore thick eye-glasses with black plastic frames, and he looked directly over my shoulder as I spoke to him, never at my face. He rocked quite violently during our conversation. I got the impression that he was rarely at ease, and that I was adding greatly to his discomfort. I decided to keep the conversation as brief as possible.

‘Hughie, do you and Mina ever chat at all?'

‘What? Me and Mina? Oh, yeah … yeah … we're good friends, me and Mina. Good friends we are.'

‘Has she ever told you about places she likes to go?'

‘Yeah … yeah … Mina likes to go … likes to go to the workshop to be with her friends. To be with Hughie.'

‘What about other places?'

‘Likes to go to the Abled-Disabled Club. I go there – Hughie goes there too. We dance to the music and we play games.'

‘That's nice, Hughie. That sounds like a lot of fun.'

‘Yeah!' he laughed out loud and his rocking became even more erratic. ‘Hughie has fun at the Abled-Disabled Club!
Fun!'

‘Is there anywhere else she likes to go, Hughie?'

‘My daddy brings me for a pint on a Sunday after Mass! Hughie likes to go for a pint. A pint of Guinness and a ball of malt.'

‘I wouldn't say no to a pint myself right about now, Hughie, I'll tell you that much.'

‘And Mina goes for a pint in The Sailing Cot.'

The Sailing Cot? The name suggested a waterfront setting, and Garibaldi Street, where Mina and her parents lived, was nowhere near the river.

‘Are you sure about that, Hughie? She likes to go to a pub called The Sailing Cot?'

‘Oh yeah. Pints in The Sailing Cot. Mina says that.'

I said my good-byes and rang Dirk from the car.

‘Have you ever brought Mina to a pub called The Sailing Cot?'

‘No.' I've never heard of such a place.'

‘Have you ever heard her mention it?'

‘No.'

‘Okay. I'll get back to you.'

BOOK: Crying in the Dark
9.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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