On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (25 page)

‘Scared? I’ve lived with fear every day of my life. Since I was five. I learned to accept it. Then I met Aidan and forgot about fear. Then it came back. I’m afraid now I’m going to lose you. Can’t you see? I don’t know what happened up there. I don’t know. Is it something we can put behind us, move on? Or not?’

‘What if it happens again? Ignore it? I’ve been there, trying to deal with things I knew no one could understand. A year before I got out they offered me counselling. I said yes, to get a break from the low-life I spent twenty-three hours every day with. No other reason. Joel, the psychologist guy from Arizona they assigned me to, it took me months to trust him. He was a jerk, that’s all I knew; what could he know. I was dead wrong. He taught me things; taught me that I always had a choice, in everything I did, that nobody could take that away. Stand up, slide down, it was always up to me. He showed me how to think in ways I’d never have known. Joel Vida. Smart man. I was dumb. But for him I wouldn’t be here today. Would you talk to someone like that? About what you were feeling up on the summit, what happened to Aidan, the bombs, all that shit in Baghdad?’

‘Go on, be brave, say the word. Psychiatrist, shrink, psychologist, witch doctor, shaman. Find out if I’m crazy? Think I’m crazy, do you?’

‘No, I don’t. I’m not saying that. No one is one hundred percent sane. I’m not. We can all do with help, at times. If you’d met me in Newark, you’d never have wanted to know me. But I’m not that person now. I never was. I just believed I was, so I acted that way. At first, when Joel talked to me, I thought he was a fool. But he got me to prove things to myself, got me to dig out the real me, up out of a grave. When I look back now, he was brilliant.’

She shook her head. ‘No shrink did that. You made yourself smart. Prison changed you. You grew up, became an adult. It’s that simple.’

‘Wrong. You’re wrong. You didn’t know me then. It’s more than growing up. I had to be the toughest, fastest, bravest; nothing less would do. No choice, zero. Maybe I was for a while, all those things, tough. But life was hell. Now, I just want to live a normal life.’

‘You’re saying a shrink made you what you are. That’s juvenile. Give yourself a break.’

‘Remember the train station last year, when Boxer gave me a problem? I could have hurt him; I knew I could. But I didn’t. Because I’d learned I didn’t have to give in to thoughts like that. I decided that. Me. Not Joel Vida, not Lenny Quin, not Boxer Dunne. In Newark I never knew I could think that way, especially when someone was in my face. Just want you to know that. And Kate was good, too; she helped me; you’d like Kate.’

‘Aidan talked like that, the miracles of talk therapy. I wasn’t persuaded then and won’t be now. He’d been through wars, spent every day dealing with genocide, disease, drought, inhuman suffering, thirteen years of watching people die. Told me he’d had dozens of sessions with counsellors, employed by his agency. Maybe people who’ve spent years locked up need the same type of help.’

‘You don’t believe that. Not for a second. You’re the educated one. It’s not about prison or the work Aidan did; it’s about being hurt, and we’ve all been hurt. You and me, Lenny. Face it, we carry scars, we hide away. Everyone needs to get rid of shit like that. If you’d – ’

‘Stop! Please. Will you. You sound like a damn psychoanalyst I once – I’d be happier if you’d not say another word about it. Your logic is weepy, too self-indulgent for my taste.’ She stood up, brushed feverishly at her dress, then stopped mid-motion. ‘Come with me. I’ll show you inside the cottage. I have a key hidden.’

His unresponsiveness halted her. She leaned toward him. ‘Don’t start worrying about me. Okay? As long as I have you I’ll be fine. Come on.’

She disappeared into the blackness behind the gable and moments later returned with a metal key. The heavy wooden door creaked in. She stood on the step before the threshold, turned, and kissed him. ‘Tomorrow, the photographs in my bedroom are coming down. Nonsensical. Surrounding oneself with pictures of people who are dead.’

‘Person,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Person. One person who’s dead.’

‘That’s what I meant. Person.’ She reached in through the door, retrieved a small box of matches, struck one and touched it to two table candles immediately inside. She glanced back. He had not moved. She caught his jacket, pulled him in.

In a room full of familiarity he was instantly a child again. His thoughts fled to the tiny crowded rooms where he’d lived every day. Here, in front of a big black hearth stood a pair of old soft-chairs with cratered cushions. Underfoot, linoleum squealed at the press of his boots, and a bandy-legged dresser offered undisturbed dust for fingers to write in. To one side of the chimney breast a line of small photographs faced out, except for two, which seconds earlier he’d glimpsed Lenny turning down. Most noticeable though was a legacy of turf fires and tobacco pipes, and a sense of the lives and stories that were lived here.

As he sat back into one of the soft-chairs he marvelled at the love of simple pleasures that had returned to him. He inhaled the room and eloped deeper into his own unrecoverable past.

‘You’re somewhere else again,’ Lenny said. ‘Where are you drifting off to now?’

‘When I was eight and nine. Home. Maybe we’ll go down to Dublin soon.’

‘I’d love that,’ she said, holding a flickering candle. ‘Want to see the rest of the cottage?’

As the door strained in on a cramped bedroom, his grandparents’ wrinkled faces smiled back at him, old hands beckoning him in.

‘Same place and time?’ she asked.

‘No, no, thinking of my grandparents’ farmhouse; they died in the seventies. For a flash it was like they were here, in this room. Like they’ve been waiting for me. For all these years. Strange.’

She coaxed him along a narrow, papered hall to a crooked door. Inside was a cramped kitchen familiar to him in every detail.

‘See, there’s even logs in the scuttle,’ she said excitedly. ‘We could light a fire in the main room. I’ll do it; I’ve done it here before.’

He watched her go about setting the kindling and logs into the blackened grate. Her enthusiasm was life-giving, even childlike. Unlike his own, he thought, it showed on the outside, in her smile and beautiful eyes. Even the blushing he’d seen burn her pale cheeks had a youthfulness about it, as did every movement of her fluid body. He loved her sense of excitement, envied the freedom of it. But her moods, her swings, still worried him; they too were real, a part of her, pieces of the puzzle; she could be vulnerable and confrontational at the same time. She also had an earthiness about her, and an omen of danger that could frighten him, and had more than once. And how quickly she could change. Had he met her at any other time in his life – not that there had been any other time in his life – he would never have possessed her, for he would not have had the will nor the way to understand a woman like her. Here, though, on this isolated island in 1994, all that had changed. Sitting behind her as she built their fire, watching her bring light and warmth to their subterranean world, as he took in this whole woman – he knew, despite his fears, that his soul held one certainty: he loved her.

The first jets of flame from the kindling sent shadows dancing about the room. And just then, as if in intimacy with his thoughts, she turned slowly to him, her eyes in his, and in this instant he felt her to be a part of who he was always meant to be. From below she presented her slightly-parted lips to be kissed. Instead, his mouth teased her sea-scented cheek, denying her, but only until he was helpless once again in the ocean of Lenny Quin. He leaned back from their confluence, stared at her fiery nakedness, stared with all his thoughts, all his welled-up hopes and dreams, and he set his fingers coursing through her hair, out over her warm satin shoulders, and with flames now blazing in the hearth he manoeuvred down to her.

16

Shortly after midnight the small boat pushed away from Intinn, into a noisy strait. Tony sank both oars, beaconed through the blackness by the illuminated belfry of St Brigid’s Church. Five minutes out rain spat down on them in blobs, and soon the winds attacked. Lenny gripped to the gunwales as the boat shot into the air and smacked down. Half-way across, bursts of water and wind forced them off course. But each time, Tony’s strength and nascent seamanship righted their progress. Closer to the mainland, the gusts calmed, he sat up the oars and rested. Lenny’s eyes had not left him since their voyage began; now they stared even more intensely.

‘I didn’t know whether to tell you or not,’ he said. ‘Yesterday, when you were away, there was someone in your apartment, besides me.’

‘Who?!’

‘Your father and fat boy.’

‘My apartment? Doing what?!’

‘Your father was upstairs. Looking for something, I’d guess. Boxer stayed in the hall.’

‘You saw this?’

‘I was under your mountain bike. Feet from them.’

‘What did they – ’

A sudden squall spun the boat, broadsiding it to a wave that cascaded over them and lodged in the hull. Tony re-sank the oars and rowed hard for shore.

‘I’ve had enough,’ Lenny said. ‘I’m leaving there, I mean it, getting far away. Twice before, I thought I smelled cigars in there. Now I know I’m not crazy.’

‘Could be he’s just worried about you. He is your father.’

She went to stand. The boat tipped steeply. ‘Careful!’ he yelled, canting his weight.

She grabbed the gunwales. ‘I’m getting away. That’s it. Damn fool.’

‘Calm down! Will you.’ He bore down, brought both oars up out of the water. ‘I should never have told you.’

‘It’s alright to be spied on at thirty-five years of age? Is that what you think?’

‘Cut the bullshit, Lenny. That’s not what I mean; you know it. I’m trying to stop you getting riled up, that’s all.’

‘Well I am riled up, if that’s what you choose to call it. Every right to be.’

‘Not with me you don’t.. I’ve taken enough crap in my life. So go easy.’ He restarted the sinking, pulling, rising, and sweeping of the oars resumed.

‘I’m finished with Aranroe, Tony. I’m telling you, I’m leaving.’

‘You belong here. Take a break. Get a train to Dublin. Visit Kate. Stay a few days. Enjoy my city.’

‘I don’t know Kate; never spoke to the woman.’

‘She wants to meet you. Told me she can’t wait.’

Lenny’s face released its anger, as though assuaged by a forming thought. ‘Maybe. Maybe I will. Let’s both go. Why not. Get away from here.’

‘I can’t, not now. You and Kate, you’d get along great. I told her you might visit. She’s all for it. She’ll tell you about the terrible things I did, when I was young. She used to mind me, when she could catch me. This is Friday; she’s free on weekends. Get the early train in the morning, come back Monday.’

‘You come too, Tony. Please. Can’t you just please me?’

The boat moved through the headlands, into the placid waters of Loch Doog. ‘Better just the two of you this time; you’ll have fun. I’m heading up on Mweelrea in the morning, really early. The weather’s good until Sunday, bad after that. Might not get another chance.’

‘Go to Dublin, meet Kate,’ she said, as though picturing the event. ‘I’ll do that. It’s okay with Kate, this sudden?’

‘Any time, she said, day or night, doesn’t matter. Kate’s like that, you’ll see. I’ll call her when we get in. You could catch an early train.’

‘No, the quarter past seven bus from Louisburgh is non-stop. Gets to Dublin before eleven, which is perfect.’ As the boat grated against the shore there was a brightness in her. ‘New life, Tony,’ she said, standing in the glow from Horslips Hotel, ‘new life.’

* * *

The mud-splattered taxi pulled into the driveway of Greyfriars B&B Hotel and beeped twice. Paddy scrambled out, began power-walking around the car. Soon, he flopped against the bonnet. Tony stared.

‘The good wife said I’ve to lose a stone and a half, get meself back into shape. There’ll be nothing left of me by the time she’s finished with me.’

Tony acknowledged, climbed into the car.

‘Two hundred and fifty deep breaths every day,’ Paddy said, ‘and they say you’ll live till the day you die or ninety-five, whichever comes first. You can tell Eilis McCann that you’re a living witness to me doing all that – ’

‘Everything went okay this morning?’

‘Quarter past seven on the dot, put herself on the bus, safe and sound.’

‘Sorry about waking you last night, getting you out so early this morning.’

‘No harm. I’d be at the Abbey early anyway. Saturdays you nearly always get someone going up to Knock.’

‘You made sure with Leo Reffo?’

‘Said the very words you told me: had to be private between yourself and himself, I said. And that it was me own suggestion for you to have a chat with him.’

‘Then why are we waiting?’

‘It’s not ten to ten yet. He’ll not be at his place for another twenty minutes. It’s just over the hill and into The Pound.’

‘You know him. What’s he like, Leo Reffo?’

‘Grand man. And a hard man. Nobody’d ever get the better of old Leo. Sixty-four now, ten years older than meself, and as fit as any forty-year-old.’ Paddy’s interlocked hands sat on his paunch, his bulky frame reclining into the angle of door and seat. ‘Poor man’s wife died and left him a few years back. Peggy, nice woman. He’s not himself since. Sour too much. Told me he’ll retire soon, do a bit of market gardening. But who’d run the Abbey? Nobody else’d know how. Head Waiter is all he calls himself. But I’ll tell you this, that VanSant one, she’ll be arse-deep in cow shite – if you’ll pardon my French – the day he walks out them doors. The whole place’ll come down like the Tower of Babel.’

‘Lenny told me he’s helped her, over the years.’

‘Better than that.’

‘Better?’

‘Them farmer fellas with their hay carts, never occurred to me!’ Paddy bounced up. ‘It’s Saturday. They’ll be blocking up the road.’ He swung the taxi out of the driveway and started up the hill.

‘What did you mean, Paddy,
better
?’

‘Ah just that, you know yourself.’