On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (32 page)

From opposite points on a circle connecting them, their eyes met.

‘Maybe I have,’ Tony said with understated conviction. ‘Maybe more.’

‘Oh, I see. So your life is somehow superior to my misfit life?’

‘How could you know what goes on in ordinary people’s lives? You couldn’t. You only know famines and war zones and refugee camps.’

Aidan’s demeanour softened. ‘Sit down, please, we’re both quite upset. We can talk. You have another reason for coming here. Something else you want to tell me.’

‘Can you turn off that squealing?’

‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ Aidan reached under the table, clicked off the opera singer.

‘Tell me what happened in New York, to Lenny?’

‘We fell in love. That’s what happened. Within minutes of meeting. Sounds juvenile, I know; in love at forty-three. I’d never known it before, I don’t mind telling you. Wonderful good fortune, nothing short of, nothing short of miracul – ’

‘What I’m asking you is – ’

‘I know. I know what you’re asking. You want to know about her illness. She described to me some worrying symptoms she’d been having. I pressed her to consult a specialist, talk to a psychiatrist. She wouldn’t. It was obvious she was troubled, she needed someone close who would care for her. There was no one in New York. She was alone and she liked it that way, she told me. In those circumstances I felt any place was better for her than Manhattan. Apart from that, I knew, I was certain, despite having known her just days, that I’d never be the same man without her. That’s it in a nutshell. You’ve seen it in films, in novels, no doubt.’ He shifted forward, began pushing up out of the chair. ‘Perhaps you’ve been fortunate enough to experience it first-hand. I hadn’t.’

‘You can walk?’

‘With a cane. Good days, bad days. Last week I had a nasty bone fragment removed from my knee. The chair is just to help it heal.’

‘What if you’d never taken her to Iraq? Ever think of that?’

‘After the carnage of Amiriya, I never stop.’ He dropped back into the chair, interlaced his long knuckly fingers, set his eyes to the ground. ‘What was I to do? Think about it. Leave her behind in Manhattan, in crisis? Alone? Who would do that? It’s four years since then, the day we literally bumped into each other. Feels like much longer.’

‘Since you heroically rescued her.’

‘It would be fairer to say we helped each other.’ Aidan appeared to retreat, as though indulging what was alive in his mind. When he spoke again his tone had shed its culpability.

‘You must understand that she desperately needed to get out of there. She was ecstatic about the idea of doing relief work, ironically just when I thought I might be burning out. I didn’t pressure her in the slightest. Lord’s truth. Within the week, we landed in Baghdad. And Lenny Quin restored a missionary zeal in me.’ He paused, smiling. ‘Was she marvellous or what. You couldn’t count how many lives she saved, or all the people she brought hope to. Under the most God-awful conditions she had more energy, more imagination, more natural intelligence than I could ever lay claim to, even at my best. Sixteen-hour days, every day, day after day, she answered every call. She was indefatigable.’

‘That’s what I mean; if you weren’t on your way down you’d have had no room for Lenny, or any woman. You needed someone, someone who’d lift you up, prop you – ’

‘Stop. Please. This combative thing does no good. You and I are not enemies.’

Both men receded, Tony impassive, Aidan clearly disturbed.

A short time later, Aidan rose up out of his chair. ‘I wanted to care for her, for her. For who she is. I even asked her to marry me, which you might already have heard.’

‘She said no. I know.’

‘Not, No! She said she wasn’t a believer, had never wished for marriage. Everything for the joy of life, except marriage; that was her credo. Goes back to her childhood, her mother dying so young, maybe. I don’t know; I’m no psychologist. But that’s who she was then. Not now, from what you tell me, concerning marriage, I mean. For which I’m happy. Truly. We all change.’

‘Her answer was the right one. You couldn’t have been all that important to each other.’

Aidan smiled. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Anto.’

‘I’m afraid, Anto, you don’t quite understand. I don’t mean to be rude, but perhaps it’s best that way, in the circumstances.’

‘No, I do understand. You needed to drag her into your world for the relationship to work, and into a war; she didn’t want either and that was her way of telling you.’

‘I had a dream! You understand? To care for people. You’re young; you’ll learn what that means. Without a dream what do I have? What do you have? Fantasies, formless hopes, adolescent lusts. Without a dream, some kind of dream, we may as well not live. You and Lenny have that now. Or, Anto, you would not be here.’

‘I want what Lenny wants. It’s that simple. Ireland is her world, and it’s mine. I won’t be smuggling her off anywhere.’

‘You’re so right; she does belong here. I’m so relieved to hear you say that. This whole country is Lenny. The sky, the air, the rain; it’s all Lenny. How could I ever leave here? When I met her, Ireland became mine too. So many late nights in Iraq we talked about Ireland, how our new life would be. No flies, no burning heat, no land mines, no dysentery or dying children. Then one day, my malaria flared up. I shivered and sweated for five days and nights with no let-up. Only then I began to understand a woman’s love. The power of it. It was like God was tending to me, healing my spirit. She stayed at my side through every minute of that, twenty-four hours a day, even though she herself needed looking after.’

‘Lenny caught malaria?’

‘Oh, no, not malaria. The same problems she’d had in New York. A lot milder, though: not remembering for a few seconds who she was or where she was, brief delusions. Just two occasions, that I know of. The medics around us were used to trauma, the
Médecines Sans Frontièrers
guys especially – Doctors Without Borders, you’ve probably read about them. They didn’t offer a diagnosis, but they came up with medications that seemed to help. You have to understand, everyone adored her; people would go to the ends of the earth for her. Me, too. I couldn’t get enough of her – excuse me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.’

‘It’s all just history. Why are you telling me?’

‘I don’t know, Anto,’ Aidan said with obvious intrigue. ‘I never felt able to talk about it before. Who’d understand? Except you. Strange, isn’t it. Very strange. We’ve both loved something truly special. No matter what the future may hold, for you or for me, neither of us will ever go back to being the men we used to be. Quite extraordinary really.’

‘Hypocrite. You are, you know that? If you’d any fucking balls you’d have said fuck-off when they told you to go to Iraq. But you didn’t. You knew she had problems, and you went anyway, you dragged her with you. Maybe you could’ve gotten the life you say you wanted, but you didn’t fight for it, did you? You played big mister hero.’

‘Hero? It’s not that simple, my friend.’ Aidan’s eyes closed. ‘That order for Baghdad said:
Mass suffering; innocent citizens dying; children sick, starving
. The night we landed in Baghdad, we agreed we’d give it just six months. Then six had turned into eleven. It was then that war came. Unholy war. The night before the bombs hit our shelter – it was a Sunday, tenth of February 1991 – we made a new promise: we’d work on in Iraq for six more months. Not one week longer. We even set an exit date; we’d fly out, spend a week in England, and be back in Ireland by September 10th. We’d buy a small house, become the quintessential invisible couple. Just the two of us, for a while. Until we started having our own children; two, maybe three, we said, who knows. We’d give them, all our, we said, all our, we’d give them all our – ’ Aidan’s face dropped into his hands. ‘What manner of god do I serve?! What manner of god?’

‘So you gave up; you just – ’

‘Amiyira!’ Aidan’s eyes searched up into a void stained by the soot of generations, and he went on as though talking to himself. ‘Sounds like a young girl’s name: Amiriya. Playing in a garden, being summoned to lunch. How many I summoned that day.’ A whistling hiss rose from him and climbed to crescendo: ‘Booooommmm! Booooommmm! One half minute apart. When the first one hit, I ran. Didn’t search for her, didn’t try to save her. I don’t picture it as much now, a picture of hell. I forbid myself even to think about it. Block it out every time, every time it comes back.’

‘Lenny told me.’

‘Charred humans. Ghosts. The serpent, turning living souls into puffs of smoke, melting young bodies. Four hundred innocents. Gone in seconds. Grey blood, like pools of mercury. Limbs, torsos, stuck onto walls. And the ones that crawled out, the corpses that went on living.’

‘So you came back to Ireland to die?’

Aidan braced himself erect, spoke softly, shaking his head. ‘Oh, no. Not to die. No. To be in the same country, treading the same soil, breathing the same air as her. Legs or no legs, I share this with her. Even now. She’s everywhere here. Even in this pig sty. In every Irish face, every street, every film – ’

‘Hey! Hey! I get the picture, loud and clear. Ever think of using the fucking telephone?’

‘I wrote letters to her. Several. Before this leg got bad I got on a train to Aranroe. September 10th 1991, the day we pledged we’d be back in Ireland beginning our new life, seven months after Amiriya. I made it up onto Mweelrea, the foothills. Even knelt down and prayed at the Druidic altar. After that I walked around the village. That’s when they told me she’d gotten married – ’

‘Married?!’ Tony jumped to his feet. ‘Bullshit. That’s a lie. Who said that?’

‘Does it matter? My faith deserted me. I didn’t want to believe it, that it was over, that she could – ’

‘She didn’t! I know she didn’t. Someone was fucking with your head.’

‘She’d found happiness, had her life back, I told myself. A future to look forward to. Children. Everything I ever wanted for her. What right had I to interfere with her dream.’

‘You abandoned her; that’s what you’re saying. What kind of relationship is that? Dumb-ass stupid.’

‘Hey, Brit, want me to mangle the bollox?’ Fogo approached. ‘Will I bury the fucker for you?’

‘Sit down, you uncivilised God-forsaken moron,’ Aidan roared. ‘Sit down!’

Fogo’s hand shot up, middle finger raised. ‘Fuckhead,’ he said, then retreated to his lookout onto the dark wasteland.

Aidan turned back to Tony. ‘I don’t know what kind of relationship it was. Not in words, I don’t. I never knew. Only what it felt like: everything. In a world better than this one. But I have never abandoned her, not to this day.’

‘You’re here in Dublin, a hundred and fifty miles from her, and for three years you never phoned her, even to say you were alive?’

‘My friend, your mind is too young, too innocent. Look at me.’ He hauled his body up out of the chair. ‘Look at me!’ he yelled, forcing Tony’s compliance. ‘Would you approve of your beautiful young daughter sharing my life? Would what you see standing here before you be good enough for your precious daughter?’

‘You mean Charles Quin; he had a hand in this? Or Leo Reffo?’

‘I don’t know. Don’t know about any of that. I believed Lenny had found love. That’s all. In the letters I’d written, before I went up there, I told her how my leg was getting stronger. That the doctors were surprised at how well my skull had healed. I was almost as good as new, I told her. Same old Aidan, almost.’

The air between them turned quiet, interrupted only by the rat-tat-tat of rain. Aidan’s hands swept through his silver mane as a wretchedness seemed to come over him.

‘I begged her to write back, tell me we could still have our dream, become the invisible couple we’d often joked about. Or not, as the case may be. Whatever she wanted. Just let me know. I heard nothing back. After a while I didn’t write any more. Then I realised I was having some kind of breakdown. As it turned out, not too serious. She was praying for me, I told myself. That’s when I started pulling myself together. For a long while now I’ve been really strong again. Over it all. Over Lenny. Finally.’

‘You’re forty-something and you learned what about life? If you’re not brave enough to go all out for what you want, who the fuck’s going to give it to you? The god you pray to? Who? Who the fuck’ll give it to you? I’m asking you, who?!’

‘Anto, that’s you. Who you are. Me, I trust in God, and in people. Too much in both at times, perhaps. But like I said, none of that matters now. Really, it doesn’t. Even if they lied to me in Aranroe, if Lenny knew nothing of it, now she has you. And I can see you’d let no man change that. So, God bless you both.’

Aidan’s chair rolled over the gritty floor, followed the arc of the table until the two men were closer than they’d been up to now. With firmness in his countenance, Aidan rose up, stood unaided.

‘No, Anto, I’m sorry. I go on here. I, too, am part of this land, and forever will be. I will never go back to England. Nor anywhere else, ever. Not even in a box.’

* * *

Shortly after exiting the tenement he found a phone kiosk by the river. He pulled the brass handle, then stalled, tussling with his thoughts. Two linking girls moved toward the kiosk. He stepped inside. The girls crinkled their faces and waited against the Liffey wall.

‘Kate, shhhhh, don’t say my name! Is Lenny nearby? Just say yes or no.’

‘Tony, where are – ’

‘Kate!’

‘She’s in the lounge with Ferdia, playing draughts. Something’s wrong, what is it? Where are you?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. I only have a minute, Kate, I’m in a coin box. You guys getting along well?’

‘Everything’s wonderful, Tony. Lenny’s crazy about you, she never stops – ’

‘Kate, what are your plans, you and Lenny?’

‘We walked around Dublin today. Lenny’s staying till Monday evening. She’s taking the afternoon bus tour to Kilkenny tomorrow. I’ve been called in, unfortunately; I have to work, but she said she’s grand going on her own. I’m taking Monday off instead; we’ll go somewhere nice. Tony, she’s really worried; she phoned you earlier, your B&B, and again after we got home. Where have you been?’