On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (17 page)

Her fingers swept across her full watery eyes. ‘Tony . . .’ Her voice asked only for his acknowledgement, for an equal intimacy.

He gave neither.

‘Tony, Tony.’ She made his name sound sad and sweet, like it contained everything they had been and might be. And she waited as if for fate, without forcing him from his withdrawal.

She had a story, no doubt, he decided. He didn’t want it. What he thought he had, he never had. Get to Mweelrea, climb. Away from this woman, the only one he’d ever even thought he loved. He tried to stop shaking.

‘I’m so sorry, Tony. I should have said something. There’s a perfectly good explan – ’

‘Said something?’ His words exploded. ‘That you lied? That what you said was a rotten lie? Remember? Do you? Love – was that it?’

‘Please listen to me; there is an – ’

‘You married, that it? Or just this guy’s lover? Maybe others’ too?’

‘No, I’m not! None of those things. I’ve never been married. And I am not seeing anyone! No I didn’t tell you everything. But I did not lie to you, Tony. Not once.’

‘Your bodyguard?’ he said, gesturing to the intimate portrait over the bed. ‘Chauffeur? Daddy’s personal chef? The fucking gardener?’

‘Stop it! I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you if you let me. Can we go downstairs now, get a cup of tea, can we? Talk about this calmly?’

‘Fuck talk,’ he said. ‘Fuck talk.’ He angled his shoulders to pass her in the door frame. She blocked him, hand reaching to him. He backed away, made to push past her again. She blocked him again, face in pain, arms open to him.

‘Tony!’ she yelled.

He jumped, then fixed his eyes on her.

‘Listen to what I’m saying. Please. You need to hear me. We’ve each had our own lives up to now. Some things will never go away, good and bad. But we can live for now, today; they’re your words. Nothing has changed; I still feel the same for you.’

‘Feel? For me? Run off to him. Sham fucking lousy shit life.’

‘Stop it, I said! You’ve been hurt; I know that, and I care. I’ve been hurt too, in ways you don’t realise. But I’m, I’m – ’

She tried to go on but seemed to fall into an inner struggle, and then her features firmed into sadness and she just stared at him.

‘Think you know what real pain feels like?’ he said. ‘You’re the expert on pain?’

He heard his words only after they had left him, knew them to be shields against his own suffering, and he felt again the solitariness into which he knew he could sink. His hands pressed hard against his temples. He powered past her.

‘Tony. Tony, wait! Please.’ She continued to call after him, until the thump of the front door sounded.

12

‘You look terrible!’ Cilla glared at him. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘Can I come in?’

She poked her head out, scanned in both directions, then followed him into the kitchen. ‘Don’t tell me she was there? She wasn’t there?!’

His look made her cringe.

‘Don’t worry, she’s doing great, better than ever.’ He fired a stare at her. ‘Ever been in there, in that apartment, upstairs?’

‘What reason would I have? Tell me what happened.’

‘You said you’ve known her for years.’

‘I didn’t say I know her; I just know her in a certain way. I told you, I come from a little sodden farm, not a castle. Leo knows her; I’d say he’s the only one. Why are you asking me this anyhow?’

He paused before answering her, sounded less angered. ‘Remember you said I was different?’

‘Wasn’t that long ago that I’d forget.’

‘I want to know what you meant. What’s different?’

‘Don’t know. Just different.’

‘You must know. You said it. Why would you say it?’

‘Hold on. Why are you so bothered? What’s got you so upset? Tell me what happened?’

‘Just tell me what you meant. It’s important to me. Or is everyone in Aranroe a fucking liar, including you?’

Cilla’s glare imposed a lull between them.

‘If it means that much to you, I’ll tell you,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re different because you’re not like most fellas. Probably other reasons too.’ She looked away, then back at him, softer now. ‘You’re going to think I’m mad but I’ll tell you; I started really thinking last night when we were in that restaurant. Things I never thought before. Private things. About me. Then after that, when you were asleep on the couch, my eyes wouldn’t close. Just lying there I was, thinking all kinds of stuff. Nice things, different things. I started laughing so hard I was sure you’d wake up and think there was a madwoman in the attic. I could’ve sworn you were going to try to talk me into bed, you growing up in America and all that. But you didn’t, and that made me feel, feel sort of really special.’

He reciprocated her silence, the hard edge of his distress now assuaged. Once again her simplicity was challenging what he believed about himself; her simple openness had just punished him, exposed his narrowness, and in this moment she enriched and complicated his thinking.

‘Sorry,’ he said with obvious embarrassment. ‘An odd time the temper just happens. Hard to stop it; goes back a long way.’

‘What’s there to be sorry for? I’d love you to tell me about who you are really.’

‘I didn’t mean what I said. I could never see you as a liar.’

‘Don’t be a silly man. Aren’t all girls liars. You should know that, a fella your age.’

Their eyes connected, and for him underlined what was different in these moments; they had each revealed a chunk of their inner worlds.

‘I have to change for work,’ Cilla said. ‘Stay as long as you want; the key’s always under the geranium pot.’ Then passing behind him she trailed a hand along his shoulder. ‘I finish at ten. See you later tonight, maybe?’

He forced a smile.

* * *

After Cilla had left he walked the short distance to his B&B, blocking from his view in every step the great dome lording over the bog and rock and water of this world. And soon, like a man from whom new hope had been too soon taken, he crashed onto his bed, arms across his eyes. America had taken his young years, nobody could give them back, not one day. He’d never know how it felt to be eighteen and nineteen and normal. Or twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six. Except in a sub-world, prey to perverts and psychopaths, a trophy of penitentiary scum. And in all of life no romance that counted, but one. Was this, too, part of what was dragging him down, that he had never learned to understand women, how they thought and functioned, what they sought and needed?

Maybe it was none of that but what the shrinks warned him about. Fit in, they said, stay on guard: depression, conflicts, losing control, giving up. Since he got out eighteen months ago he’d been up and down, but he’d managed, even survived Eva Kohler’s madhouse. Now this, end of the dream, her deceit, making love to him, obsessed with someone else, and a room full of drugs. So many holes to fall into, everywhere. So many things he just didn’t get. Even Cilla: clever, sexy, strong, just as much a riddle.

How far down did all this bury him, he asked. Could he cope? Honour his oath, re-find his spirit, become himself again, belong, ever? With anyone? Could these people understand only their own? Was he one of them? Or was he lost still, a misfit still, native nowhere, slipping back into the darkness?

Mweelrea was still there; that was all. He’d climb, tomorrow, early, grate once again against stone and earth, rest somewhere along the way, in yellow heather, minus civilisation, minus everything. At dawn.

* * *

Hours later it was hunger that awakened him. He split the curtains and was blinded by a bright evening sky. He needed to move, escape, breathe country air.

Outside, Paddy McCann called out, and shuffled toward him. ‘I have a wee letter here for you. From her good self. And strict orders to wait and bring a reply back to her.’

Tony took the envelope and glared at Paddy.

‘I’ll be leaving you to read it in private,’ Paddy said. ‘Chance for me to get in a little bit of a walk around the driveway. I’ll tell Eilis I did half a mile.’

‘Hold on, Paddy.’

‘Won’t be far, just give a shout when you need me.’

‘Hold on. There won’t be any reply. Take it back.’

‘Couldn’t do a thing like that,’ he said, still retreating. ‘Wouldn’t be fair on herself. Not in the best of spirits at the minute. Y’know yourself the way the women are.’

Tony watched as Paddy’s big out-of-synch frame moved away. Despite his distrust of these people, this was the quality he admired most in Paddy, compassion. But he wouldn’t be taken in by it.

‘Don’t give me any shit, Paddy. Take it back to her!’

‘Afraid I couldn’t do that, sir . . . wouldn’t have the courage.’

‘I’ll tear it up, right here.’

‘No, no, I have it, sir,’ Paddy hurried back. ‘I could say I talked to your good self, that you were on your way someplace fierce important, the hounds of time were after you, and that you’d not a chance to read it but you took it with you, and, and, you said, you said you would, that you’d read it.’

Tony offered no response.

‘Not a right thing to do, make up a lie to tell herself. Could you, could you just – ’

Tony threw the letter into the taxi. Paddy reached in, plucked it out.

‘Couldn’t you just take one peek? The first page. It’s probably only – ’

‘No, I said! The answer is no. You understand?’ He moved off along the long driveway.

Paddy followed. ‘What if I run you down to the village? You could read it on the way; there’d be no charge, not a red penny. How’s that?’

Their eyes engaged. With both hands, Paddy offered the envelope again. Tony shook his head, continued his departure. Paddy scrambled back into his taxi and moments later slowed alongside Tony. ‘I’m headed to the village anyway. Give you a free lift for nothing.’

Tony’s expression terminated what was happening between them. The taxi drove ahead toward the exit but stopped after twenty yards. The horn blared once, a long, loud blare. Paddy’s hand emerged dangling the envelope. It dropped, spun twice, landed flat on the grass border. The taxi drove out through the gate and sped away.

Tony stopped at the spot, stared at the small cream envelope. He watched it transform, become a chute to a time long ago, to a cell at eighteen, nineteen, twenty. It was his father’s letters then that had kept him alive; he’d ached every day for them, and for Kate’s, and never expected mother’s but was glad if one came. For those first three years he could not write back: couldn’t or didn’t, not once. But his father’s letters still came: four or five, at least, every month, sometimes more. Later, he found a way, was able to write one letter, two pages that took weeks to sound right, to send, to say the things he hadn’t been able to say, the feelings that saved his sanity every solitary day, that reciprocated the love he received from all of them: Kate and Pat and Violet, mother and father. And then the dark that befell the world, the news that father was gone. He’d never asked, nor been told, if his one letter, his two pages, had arrived in time. Late by a day or two, maybe by hours, or minutes, or maybe not, maybe early, in time; he didn’t know. All hope died then, the childhood memories he’d been cherishing became unbearable, some soon unrememberable.

Up to that day his often carved oath had been to build a real life when he got out, as father had insisted he could, just as he had assured him that he would be there for him the day he walked free, that the first thing they’d do was dig a hole together in the back garden, plant a sapling that over time they’d watch grow strong and straight. They’d all be together again, he had preached, a family. But he wasn’t there, father, gone long before the gates opened. And they never were again, never could be, a family. His fifty-two-year-old heart couldn’t hold on, letters said, or words that said as much, not for one more mail delivery. Just his heart, not the man, who’d always be waiting.

One too-late letter, maybe. A letter that might have held off death. A letter in front of him now.

Claire Abbey

Monday, September 5th 1994

Dearest Tony,

The situation is not how you are seeing it. You have my solemn promise. Please allow me to explain some events of my life which I have told you nothing about.

Tomorrow, they say, will be a beautiful day. Can we walk along Silver Strand, go up the cliffs to Killadoon? It
’
s a good hike, three miles to the summit. I
’
ll wait for you on Station Road beach, at 9am.

My deepest hope is that you
’
ll say yes. If you cannot come, I
’
ll go alone. It
’
s time I did.

Losing you would be unbearable.

All my love, Lenny.

13

He turned off the hill into a sea of charcoal and blue, waves of uniformed school children streaming toward some indiscernible academy. The pageant and banter brought back flashes of his earliest years at Gardiner Street School in the heart of Dublin. These fresh bouncing bodies, enraptured in a young world which he lamented would too soon pass, seemed oblivious of him until he enquired of the location of Station Road beach. In response came a blur of eagerness, alas in a dialect he found incomprehensible. But from all the small hands jabbing in the air, he gleaned he was moving in the right direction, so he pressed on in patchy sunlight.

At the next corner, pedalling toward him came an aged postman moving barely fast enough to remain upright.

‘Station Road beach, I do,’ the postman said as though preparing for conversation. Tony was soon consuming the man’s life tale, and listening lifted him. He felt his spirit lighten, like this stranger was re-igniting what he believed was lost. Maybe these were his people after all, he thought, maybe he was closer to home than he believed: how they danced all over you, sang to you, felt you worthy of their stories, of their trust and time, and seemed not to doubt you’d feel the same for them; how they made light of the hard outer world at every opportunity, and when there was no opportunity, how they invented one; they played with what others called suffering until it wasn’t suffering but something essentially good for you, a redeeming purgatory ordained by God. They seemed at one with the mill of living. And as for those he’d called liars the day before, they now seemed in some way saintly; maybe equally saints and liars. As a race, there was no denying it, these people inhabited a realm beyond him, a holy place that he might rise to, this Irishness.