Long Goodbyes (11 page)

The school bell rang. The conversation would have to carry on later as well. We trooped into the school building, a line of adolescent youth with acne-blotted faces and a million fermenting hormones fighting for supremacy. The teenage years suck. Just sayin’.

Brady was first up in the afternoon.
 

‘Well, I hope you’ve all completed your epilogue assignment?’ she posed the question in an entirely rhetorical fashion. If we hadn’t, it was doom all round. I shot Fin a look. He looked uncomfortable. Like I said, I can
always
tell when Fin’s rawmaishing me.

Brady seemed happier than usual. How can you be happy teaching sixth form English Lit. in the back of beyond? I can’t get my head around that one. She needs to get out of here and get a life. Like all of us.

‘Because . . . ’ Brady paused, hovering by the blackboard like a circling kestrel, her slitty eyes casing the joint. She’s like that, is Brady. You never know where she’s going to drop. ‘Because, Mr McLeish, if I may have your
undivided
?’

Jimmy McLeish grinned awkwardly. He is such an eejit, is Jimmy.

‘
Because
I heard from the author yesterday, and he has very kindly agreed to publish the best epilogue in the new edition of his novella. Not only that, but he tells me that if there is more than one epilogue he and his publisher consider fit to be included, then that’s just what they’ll do. So you’re all in with a chance to have your own creative writing actually published in a real, bona fide book.’

That, I had to admit, was pretty cool. Sure, there were a couple more schools involved, but I felt pretty good about my piece. I read a
lot
and my favourite author is Conan Doyle. I love the way his characters talk. I don’t get maths, but English has never been an issue for me. Some people can do it, some can’t. Like most things in life, really.

‘Now, can anyone give me a reason why the author might have chosen to conclude his book the way he did?’

Well, that was blindingly obvious. I put my hand up.

‘Rory?’

‘Because,’ I said,
 
‘it’s one of those apocryphal stories where no one can be sure what actually happened. Everyone’s heard of Jenny MacLennan, but no one seems to know if she was a murderer or a spy or what. So it’s left like a kind of open verdict.’

‘I think that partly answers it, Rory. Anyone else?’

To my amazement Fin stuck his head above the parapet.
 

‘Finbar?’

‘I think the author wanted to show that…maybe nothing is ever quite what it s-seems…’ Fin stammered a bit and there were a few titters. ‘Or that m-maybe sometimes people don’t believe the truth ‘cause they just can’t. Don’t
want
to believe it, like. So, they’re always looking for something rational to explain the impossible.’

Even I was impressed by the last bit. Where’d Fin get that one from? Maybe there was more to Fin than I knew.

Sunday evening, and for some reason I couldn’t get the story of Jenny MacLennan out of my head. To the point where it was getting, like, annoying, you know?

So I was hanging out in the square outside Feargal’s when Fin comes bouncing up looking like he’s won the lottery.

‘I’ve been up there,’ he said. His face was all shiny, like he’d been for a cross-country run or something.

‘Up where?’

‘To the
house
.’

‘What house?’

‘
The
house.’

‘No way. It’d take you frickin’ hours.’

‘I’m a fast cyclist. Anyway, it’s gone now, all burned down.’

‘I could’ve told you that. I’m surprised there was anything to see at all.’

I could tell that Fin had something to tell me. It was that look on his face. Sure, I’ve known the kid from when he was a toddler, so I know him, you know?

From inside Feargal’s someone struck up a tune and I heard old Patrick’s voice join in the melody. When the village is gone and the bars with it old Patrick’ll still be sitting somewhere, whiskey in hand and a song on his lips. That’s how he is.

‘So, d’you want to know what I found or what?’

‘You’re going to tell me anyway, aren’t you?’

‘I just fancied a ride out, so off I went. I wasn’t even thinking of the house when I left, sure I wasn’t, but after a bit I just had an idea. Why not, I thought? If there’s nothing to see, there’s nothing to see. It wasn’t like I was doing anything else. So I headed west.

‘I got lost a few times, but there was always some kid to put me right. I got there just after lunchtime. It was pretty much like any other seaside village. I stopped on the green, sat on a bench and ate my sandwich. Watched the world go by. Well, a couple of old folk was about it. Then I rode up the lane towards the coast, looking out for the MacLennan cottage.

‘I found what was left of it. Looked like it had been demolished, right enough. You’d miss it if you weren’t looking. The garden was still there, though, with a broken fence and gate - the fruit trees, too. It was dead quiet like, just the birds singing. It gave me the creeps, so I didn’t hang about. I cycled down to the cliffs. There’s a cool path all the way to the main beach, so I left the bike at the top and went down. In the book it’s the beach where they met the dog. So I climbed rocks for a bit and had a paddle, you know. Then I looked up and saw what was left of Kilmareich House. Just one of the walls; that’s all you can see from the beach nowadays.
 

‘Anyway, I went back up the cliff path and followed me nose. You have to walk through bushes and trees and all to get anywhere near it. When I got to the gates I felt really weird. It was like I was
in
the book, you know? But it’s just rubble and the roof’s fell in and all. Looks like no one’s been there for years. So I had a root around, not really looking for anything, just poking about in the ruins.
 

And that’s when I found it.

‘I knew pretty much what it was straight away. It wasn’t plastic, it was that stuff they used to make radio parts out of way back before plastic was invented. My da reminded me what it was called when I showed it him - ‘cause I couldn’t remember the name at the time.
 

‘
Bakelite
.

‘So, according to the story, Kilmareich House was empty from around 1880. And, like, no one would have had a radio there, or anything near it, ‘cause they hadn’t been invented. It was a weird shape, the Bakelite piece. I looked it up when I got home. It’s one of those tappy things they used to use on a radio transmitter - you know, to tap out Morse code or something like it. It was half burned away by the fire, but maybe that’s what the fire was all about - destroying evidence. But this part got saved somehow. Maybe it rained.

‘Anyhow, Mr Rory Keane, that’s what I found - so now I
definitely
don’t believe in ghosts.’

Fin went off then, hands in pockets, obviously pleased with himself. And I had to hand it to him, it was a pretty nifty piece of work. The really annoying thing was what he did with the bakelite. Did he keep it?
 

Did he hell.
 

He chucked it into the Atlantic on his way home.
 

So he says.
 

But like I said, I can always tell when Fin’s rawmaishing me.

the final chapter

Jean Brady, spinster, forty-four years of age, teacher and book club chairwoman, felt the wind on her face and sighed with pleasure. She had long abandoned trying to determine the reason for her fascination with this particular area - but today, perhaps, it was just that the book was preying upon her mind, as was its central character, Jenny MacLennan. Or maybe it was because her late adoptive parents had let slip on occasion that her real mother, about whom Jean knew very little, had enjoyed a special affinity with this stretch of coastline.
 

It was a calm evening and the sea was a blue band topped with white, curling horses. Jean made her way along the path leading down to the beach where the rocks lay like discarded slates from a giant’s building yard. She imagined Jenny and Jack walking on the shoreline hand in hand, and Conall the wolfhound braving the surf with his long, loping strides.
 

My goodness, Jean, your imagination knows no bounds!
 

It was Friday evening and the weekend lay before her like a lover’s promise. Here again was the brief opportunity to empty her head, to allow the beauty of her surroundings to heal the week’s bruises. For, in truth, the likes of Jimmy McLeish and Peter Dalton were driving her to distraction. Jimmy would be a farmer after he left school, for heaven’s sake, and what did farmers want with Shakespeare and Owen? Jean sighed. She feared that her determination to teach the likes of Jimmy and Peter the finer points of English poetry construction was, like the action of water upon limestone, gradually being eroded. It was hard,
so
hard, to get through. Yes, there were exceptions. Rory, for example, was a natural. He had an affinity with the written word. It was obvious, and oh so welcome. For the most part, though, it was an uphill struggle, and by midweek she would find herself asking the same old question: why? Why did I come here at all?
 

But you know why; you know
exactly
why. Jean stopped walking and drank in the view.
Yes
, she said to herself.
Yes. You came because of this.
 

She shaded her eyes as the setting sun dipped and the sky became a kaleidoscope of red and orange, turning the Atlantic into a painter’s palette of such beauty it almost made her weak at the knees.
 

‘Youse goin’ swimmin’?’

Jean whirled around. ‘Oh!’ She quickly composed herself. ‘You made me jump.’

A ginger-haired boy was sitting on a rock formation above and to her left. He had a commanding view and had obviously been following her progress from the cliff path down to the beach.

‘I’m always here.’

‘Are you now?’ Jean had recovered sufficiently from her surprise to make a rapid assessment. The boy was around ten or eleven years old, she reckoned. Old enough - just - to be on the beach by himself. But still…

‘Where are your ma and da?’

‘Long dead, missy.’

Jean frowned, a little taken aback. He spoke like an adult, not a minor. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

’S’all right.’ The boy shrugged. ‘Most of ‘em died. Not just mine.’

Now she was a little closer she could see that he was dressed not in jeans and T-shirt, as she would have expected, but in a one-piece, colourless garment which he had gathered at the waist with a length of dirty string. His feet, she noted with disapproval, were bare and filthy.
 

‘Most of whom?’ Jean probed. It was an unusual statement for a kid to make, and in such a throwaway fashion, as though it should have been apparent to her that this was a natural, expected eventuality.

‘The families. All of us that worked around here, when there was work to be had.’

The sun had vanished into the sea and the breeze was beginning to chill Jean’s bare arms. She rubbed the cold flesh vigorously, glanced up and down the beach. She and the boy were the only souls in sight.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Everywhere,’ the child said.
 

Jean felt a cold perspiration on her forehead.
My god. Maybe I’m sick. What’s wrong with me?
She knew with a certainty which defied explanation that this boy was not real, and yet very real.

‘You’re right,’ the boy said. ‘I’m dead as well. Like all of ‘em.’

Jean looked into the boy’s eyes. They were deep blue, lived-in eyes which somehow negated any fear she might have felt.

‘What do you want?’

Her voice seemed far off, carried high by the wind so that she wondered if the boy might not hear her question, but he replied immediately.

‘I wanted to tell you about that night. The night Orla Benjamin was murdered.’

Jean rubbed her eyes. She was overtired, overworked. Stressed.
Something
…

But when she opened her eyes again the boy was still there, dangling his feet over the edge of the rock, watching her with a curious half-smile. His hair ruffled in the breeze and she could distinctly make out the freckles around his nose and forehead.

‘You wanted to tell me-?’

‘I was there,’ the boy interrupted. ‘I’d been there a while, y’see. He was a kind soul, Mr Maclennan. But I felt her anger, I did. She knew I was there too, but I never spoke to her. His sister heard me one night, tho’. I was cryin’. Sometimes I do that.’

I am mad
. Jean allowed the possibility to enter her thoughts.
I am having a breakdown.

‘Yous’re all right,’ the boy nodded. ‘I’ll be away soon and you’ll be fine. Just listen ter me awhile, afore
he
comes. And he will, you’ll see; he likes the young women, Ms Brady, so he does, especially
you
- his wee girl an’ all - but I’ll be sure to be away when he shows up; yous’ll be all right.’

‘He?’

‘No matter. Listen ter me, now will ye?’

‘I will.’ Jean’s face felt slack. ‘I’ll listen. But what’s your name?’