Only We Know (16 page)

‘Sorry?’

‘After that?’

I’m momentarily rattled.

By the time they came back, it was done.

But I don’t say this.

‘They found another driver and we went
back to Nairobi and the next day my Mam and I flew home to Ireland.’

I finish my drink, return the glass firmly
to the table.

‘Did your parents stay
together?’ she asks, and I see curiosity in her eyes.

‘Yes. Although I wouldn’t say
either of them was very happy.’

‘Oh.’

Not happy, but relieved. That is how
I’ve come to think
of it. They had
been given a glimpse of something terrible, and after that they clung to one another –
and to me – fearful of letting go in case the terrible thing crept back. Sometimes, when
she thought I couldn’t see her, I’d find my mother staring at me as if she
didn’t understand me, as if I was a stranger to her, someone who’d slipped
in during the night, and I was this unknowable creature, under her care but utterly
strange to her.

‘Do you think Luke was happy?’ I
ask her now.

She thinks about it for a moment, her brow
furrowing with concentration. ‘For the most part.’

‘I know he suffered from
depression,’ I offer.

‘From time to time. Luke was always
very up and down. When he was up he was flying, but when he was down it was like he was
lost in a fog or something. Every now and then, he’d have to take time off work to
…’

‘To what?’

‘To walk the black dog. That was what
he called it. The depression. I don’t know. I suppose some people have it. When it
got really bad, he would spend some time in a clinic:
St John of
Gods
.
’

‘How was he in the last few
weeks?’

She winces. ‘Outwardly, he seemed
okay. But there was something bothering him. You could see the signs. I found I was
watching him, waiting for him to go into another slump.’

‘What caused it, do you think? Did he
have money worries?’

‘Not exactly.’ She draws out the
word. ‘There were a few problems. He felt like he’d overstretched himself
with the country house he’d bought into. And if the banks called in
his loans, he’d have been sunk. His
mother’s charity was taking up a lot of his time – he was concerned about it, and
in recent months he’d asked an accountant to look things over. Sally, for all her
good points, was not one for keeping the books up to date. But I don’t think he
was unduly worried about money issues. He seemed to have it under control.’

‘What, then?’

I see her hesitation, the way her eyes pass
over the table between us, the way she uncrosses then crosses her legs. She knows
something. I feel the quickening of anticipation.

‘One day, a few weeks ago now, I
walked into his office and saw him sitting at his desk, looking like he’d just
seen a ghost. He was so pale, his skin was almost grey. I thought he was ill. I asked if
he wanted a glass of water, a painkiller, something – but he just sat there, not moving,
staring at the desk in front of him. And that was when I saw it.’

‘What?’

‘A bird. A dead bird.’

My heart just about stops.

‘Someone had sent him a dead bird in
the post. It was lying there on the table in front of him, this tiny little thing, the
claws drawn up like it had rigor mortis.’

‘What kind of bird was it?’ I
ask, my voice cracking.

‘I don’t know. He didn’t
want me to touch it, or even come close to it. When I moved towards him, he put a hand
up and told me he’d take care of it.’

‘Do you know who sent it?’

‘No idea. He wouldn’t talk about
it – just clammed up.’

‘Do you think he knew?’

She shakes her head.
Then, as if suddenly remembering, she says with conviction: ‘He said something
that made me stop. He said: “Tanya, my past is coming back to haunt
me.”’ She glances up at me then, and if she sees the fear in my eyes, she
doesn’t remark on it. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I say, looking around for
the lounge boy and signalling for the bill – I don’t want her to see how shaken I
am. I don’t want her to witness the fear that is crawling up from my toes, the
sickness and panic that are colonizing my whole body.

It’s late. I’m tired and
unprepared for the day that lies ahead, a day that’s going to be hard. Besides,
I’m afraid of what I might confess if I sit here much longer. Tanya has a weepy
air about her now and I don’t want to hear any of her confessions either, so I
make my apologies, explaining that I’m dead tired and will probably sleep in my
clothes, the shoes still on my feet. She smiles in sympathy and bids me goodnight.

But I don’t sleep. Instead, I sit by
the window high above an intersection that is quiet now, only the occasional purr of an
engine rising to greet me, while I smoke cigarette after cigarette. My mind wanders
along dark, lonely tracks, all of which lead back to the river. The girlish laughter;
Luke saying, ‘Come on,’ the urgency of his excitement; Nick glancing over
his shoulder to check for me. Then later, bouncing along in a different van with a
different driver, a black ache of dread in my heart, all of us silent as we headed back
to Nairobi. I remember the quietness of that space and how unnatural it seemed, as
if it was something dangerous that might
shatter at any moment. I got the window seat, but it was a hollow victory, and stared
flatly at the zebras and giraffes, my eyes opened now in a way I didn’t want them
to be. Beside me, I could feel the gentle shake of Nick’s body as he cried, his
head down, tears falling onto his lap making dark circles on his shorts. I don’t
know whether Luke cried then, although he did later. He was staring at something out the
window I couldn’t see.

Nobody said a word.

I hadn’t thought I would ever come
back here. I had tried to put that part of my childhood behind me, yet still I had come
to think of it as the defining moment in my life. In the dark hours, when I lay alone
and unloved in my bed, salty tears of self-pity drying on my cheeks, I would turn to
that moment, allow myself to peek at it from the distance of time, and think about how
it might have changed me, how, if it had never happened, I might have become a different
person and lived a different life.

I’d thought I was strong enough to
come back. I’d told myself the memory of what had happened had diminished with
time, lost its weight and significance. We had only been kids, after all. But sitting at
the open window of a dim, unfamiliar room, absorbing the night smell of this foreign
city, I feel the power of that event surfacing again. And this time I am alone. My
mother dead, my father too, Luke and Luke’s parents. All gone, all shadows now.
Just me and Nick left. But Nick feels far, far away from me, even if what happened still
binds us, and as the night grows later, it’s as if a veil has been
lifted, a door opened, and what it reveals
I don’t want to see. But it’s there in the room with me, weaving its way
inside, a dull insistent hum running through my head all night long.

It starts almost the moment I step off the
plane – the sense of displacement. Something strange is happening. It’s as if in
my absence things have changed just fractionally, an imperceptible shift but enough to
disorient me. Lauren feels it too. On the flight, we’d barely spoken, Lauren
sleeping for most of it, while I was lost in my thoughts. Now, as we move through the
airport, she turns to me and says: ‘Check out the security.’

Her eyes travel in the direction of soldiers
in fatigues, guns in their hands, the straps slung over their shoulders, their gaze hard
and unrelenting.

‘It’s like a war zone,’
she says.

The military presence persists throughout
the building and outside to where the taxis and buses line the pavement.

‘Let’s get out of here,’
she says, and we climb into the nearest taxi.

‘What about Julia?’ I say, as
the taxi pulls away from the kerb.

‘She’s a grown-up,’ Lauren
mutters. ‘She can take care of herself.’

Lauren is swamped by fatigue after the whole
drawn-out rigmarole of my brother’s death. Something has changed in her over the
past few days, and while I can’t place my finger on what it is, I know enough to
draw back
from asking her, not now, not yet,
not with what lies ahead of us over the next few days.

The taxi turns onto familiar streets as we
near home, and still the strangeness persists.

‘It’s so quiet,’ Lauren
says.

She’s right. There isn’t a
sinner on the roads, no visible life apart from the dogs that roam the pavements,
slinking against the walls, sniffing at the drains. Even after dark, these streets are
usually alive with talk, movement and music, the vibrant nightlife spilling out of bars
and clubs, but now it’s all shut away behind closed doors, the air hanging still
and quiet. There’s nothing but the slow hum of fear.

‘Curfew,’ the driver explains.
He pulls in to where Lauren indicates, and I fish for money in my wallet.

I take the bags and follow Lauren up the
steps to our home – a few rooms above a bar, a front door with a missing number, only
the ghostly outline of the lost digit fading a little more each day. Lauren jams the key
into the lock and, with effort, turns it, throwing her weight against the sticking door
so that we burst into the room.

The first thing I notice is that someone has
opened the windows, which is a relief. Stepping inside and flicking on the lights, I see
my wedding suit laid out on the table and wrapped in plastic, cleaned and pressed, and
underneath it, Lauren’s dress carefully folded. A note is propped against an
unopened bottle of wine and Lauren reads it quietly, saying over her shoulder,
‘Karl.’ I smile to myself at my friend’s thoughtfulness.

There are no plants in the apartment that
needed watering, no pets that had to be fed; everything here is exactly as
it was when we left. But it feels different
now somehow, as if all the furniture has been moved around without our knowledge. Below
us, the old man’s bar is quiet.

Lauren takes her bag and goes to the
bedroom. Through the half-open door I can see her emptying her case, putting clothes
away. I fix us a couple of drinks and look about the place. These few rooms are a far
cry from the space we had in the house in Lavington when I was a boy, where the rooms
seemed endless and sunlight filled the kitchen. I can still remember how we cycled
around it in a large loop and lost ourselves in its gardens. There’s nowhere to
hide in this apartment – not that I’ve ever wanted to. We’ve been happy
here, Lauren and I.

When she comes out of the bedroom, and
crosses to the sofa, she sinks into it with an air of exhaustion and kicks off her
sandals.

‘Drink?’ I ask.

‘Please.’

She takes the glass from me, swallows the
full measure in one gulp and wipes her mouth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen
her do that before. But, then again, this week is full of firsts.

I sit down and see that she is holding
something. ‘What’s that?’

‘Haven’t you seen it?’ she
asks. ‘Julia had them done. All the guests got one.’

I study the card’s black lettering,
its elegant font, the itinerary of events listed as if it was a wedding we were all
there for, not a memorial.

‘Look at this,’ I say, shaking
my head. I read it silently:

At four
o’clock, there will be a prayer service in the Safari Club, after which I
hope you will join us for a glass of champagne to celebrate Luke’s life, a
man who touched the hearts of so many.

I rub the paper between my finger and thumb,
and stare disbelievingly at the black border – it’s out of the Victorian era.

My temper rises.

‘A prayer service in the Safari Club?
Come on. A church I could understand, but the thought of us all standing around an urn
in a hotel …’

‘You okay?’ Lauren asks.

I give back the card, run a hand over my
face. ‘Tired, that’s all,’ I say, the blood pounding in my temples.
‘I’m just not sure this is what Luke would have wanted. It seems so stagey,
so formal.’

‘What would he have wanted?’
Lauren asks, watching me with her clear eyes.

Something in her expression makes me draw
back from telling her. ‘I don’t know,’ I say quietly.

‘I’m exhausted,’ she says,
getting to her feet. ‘You coming to bed?’

‘In a while,’ I say.

‘Don’t stay up late,
honey,’ she says gently. ‘Tomorrow will be a long day.’

I stretch out on the couch, rest my
half-empty glass on my chest and listen to the gentle creaking of our bed as Lauren
finds a comfortable position to sleep in. Funny how quickly and easily you can adapt to
another person’s ways, their routines, their very presence in your life. Part
of me knows I should join her, wrap myself
around her and feel the warmth of her body in my arms as this day fades away. But the
other part of me fears the oddness that seems to occupy this space, that it will follow
me into the bedroom, and that is something I don’t want to think about.

It feels as if nothing in the room belongs
in it. Not the furniture, not the table, not the pots and pans, or any of the
paraphernalia of a life lived together. The sepia photograph of Mount Kilimanjaro, which
we had climbed together, hangs in an old antique frame as if it holds no relevance for
me. The egg cups in the shape of old VW Beetles, the sofa we had dragged from outside a
charity shop, the tapestry of the three African village women, one carrying a large pail
of water on her head, the tribal masks we had worn when we were drunk and spoken through
in voices not our own – the same unnerving shiver goes through me now as it did then –
Lauren holding the mask over my face even as we came to one another to embrace and then
make love.

She likes games, my wife, but that one had
surprised me – that she would want to disguise herself, play at being someone else.
Again, as happens frequently, I have the sense that I don’t know my wife well. If
I’m honest, it’s part of the attraction that within our relationship we keep
a part of ourselves separate from the other, enigmatic, unknowable.