The City of Strangers (33 page)

‘You don’t have to think about it any more. In two days we’ll be on a boat, heading home.’

‘I don’t want to go upstairs. I used to think she was still up there! I thought she’d be mounted on the wall above the bed, like one of his fish.’

‘Niamh, that’s terrible!’ laughed Kate.

Her sister laughed too; Stefan could hear she had to work at it.

More wood was thrown on the fire.

‘Pity to waste those clean sheets though,’ said Niamh, giggling now.

‘What?’

‘So where is he, Kate?’

‘Niamh, don’t be so stupid!’

‘Well, you seem to like him. I do know when you like someone.’

‘He’s down in the cellar.’ Kate lowered her voice, but he could still hear her perfectly. He smiled. ‘So shut up! He’ll be back up any minute.’

‘Well, he’s nice enough.’

‘I don’t believe you sometimes. He’s nice enough! Is that all it takes?’

‘What do you want it to take?’

He had finished what he was doing. The lamps were filled. But he stood still where he was. It was hard not to want to hear the answer to that.

‘Anyway, of course I like him. He didn’t have to do this.’

‘That’s not why you like him. You know that perfectly well.’

‘Whether I like him or not, whatever the reasons,’ snapped Kate, ‘I’ve got more important things to think about now.’

‘Are there more important things to think about, little sis?’ Niamh’s laughter was more natural now. She was enjoying teasing her sister. It was a moment of something between them that hadn’t happened in many years.

‘At least you sound like Niamh again.’ Kate’s voice was happier. He knew she was smiling. ‘Let’s say I’d rather get to know Mr Gillespie first, not jump into bed and then find out if he’s worth knowing afterwards. Shh!’

Stefan had moved, just a fraction, but Kate had heard something.

‘What?’

‘What’s he doing down there? Do you think he can hear?’

He moved quickly and quietly to the stairs and clumped noisily up.

He pushed open the door from the cellar.

‘I’ve got three lamps. I need to get the wicks trimmed right and make sure they’re working for tonight.’

As he carried the lamps through to the kitchen Kate eyed him suspiciously, not at all sure he hadn’t heard something. He looked slightly awkward, but he kept walking. The lamps clattered on to the kitchen table.

‘Don’t you think you ought to help him trim his wicks?’

‘Niamh!’ Kate hissed at her sister.

She just giggled, then lay back on the sofa and closed her eyes.

Kate was standing at the back of the house, looking out towards the lake. It was late afternoon. West along the lake the sun was low in the sky. Stefan was loading logs into the basket again. He looked up from the barn door, watching her.

Niamh had been talking about Jimmy Palmer again. The idea that there was some way she could be with him was still pushing its way through all the confusion in her head. She kept coming back to London. London was a place where people didn’t care what you did. There were parts of London where you could live how you wanted to live, just like there were parts of New York. Jimmy had played in London before, when he was working on the boats. He’d played in Soho; he knew people there.

Kate didn’t think this was any time to argue with her sister. Anything that kept her positive, anything that kept fear away, anything that made her strong, anything that gave her purpose, was something she would listen to.

Stefan understood that, but he knew he had to tell Kate what had happened to the trumpeter. Maybe as soon as they got across the lake, when they were in Canada; maybe that was when Niamh had to know. Or maybe he should say it now, so at least Kate understood. He couldn’t go on nodding every time Niamh mentioned Jimmy Palmer. Kate would have to make the decision about telling her; it couldn’t be his. There wouldn’t be a right time, but she would know what was the best time. He walked over the grass towards her.

‘I wish we could get on with it,’ she said.

‘I guess it has to be night time.’

‘I know.’

‘How’s Niamh?’

‘She’s OK. Up and down. I don’t know really, I mean inside.’

He nodded. Whatever was inside her, it was a mess.

‘I think it’ll take her a long time. The truth is, I only know a little bit of it. What he did to her. I don’t know why he married her at all. I know she wanted security more than anything, a place to be safe. She thought he would give her that. It probably wasn’t very clever, a man twice her age. But she thought he’d look after her, and she could give him, I don’t know, companionship, affection. It wasn’t enough, for either of them. He was, he was just – it was as if he felt nothing but contempt for her. She did try –’

Kate was crying, quietly. Her sister’s pain had become very close.

‘She’s still such a long way away.’

‘It’ll be over soon,’ said Stefan; he knew it wasn’t much to say. He knew it wasn’t the truth either. One journey would be over, but only one.

‘I don’t know. I look at her and I don’t know when it’ll ever –’

He knew it wasn’t the time to tell her about Jimmy Palmer now.

She looked up at him.

He stepped closer and put his arms round her.

She pressed her body against his. She needed him to hold her.

It was a long kiss that neither of them wanted to end.

She broke away and laughed awkwardly.

They looked at each other uncertainly, unsure.

‘So what now?’ he said quietly, looking into her eyes.

‘I don’t know, Stefan.’

‘Well, since you went to the trouble of airing all those sheets –’

‘You bastard, you did hear!’

‘Well, maybe a bit,’ he smiled.

She nodded, and for another moment they looked at each other.

‘All right, so what now?’ she said.

‘You did say we should try and get some proper rest.’

She took his hand and they walked back to the house.

*

It was almost midnight. Niamh Carroll stood on the veranda of Loch Eske, looking into the darkness. Clouds had rolled in off the lake; the sliver of a crescent moon that appeared occasionally between them gave almost no light. There was an owl in the trees nearby, waiting for something too; there was the shriek of a vixen further away along the shore; there was the rhythmic lapping of Lake Ontario, almost too quiet to hear.

Niamh was smoking a cigarette; she felt easier now. Soon the boat would come. And across the lake the journey home would begin. Earlier that day the idea of crossing that water in the darkness had been another fear to add to all the fears she carried with her, not just the simple fear of being taken back to a room with bars, but the fears she had no names for that had broken her hope and her spirit down the years. Those were the fears that had driven her into Dominic Carroll’s arms in the first place. The life that had drifted away from her because she had always thought there must be more; loves she had snatched at too hungrily, too many times, that had lifted her up and then crushed her; the empty places where she had left her family and her childhood; the alcohol and the drugs that had made being awake like sleeping, and yet never let you sleep.

When all she had wanted was a safe place to be, and someone strong to put a wall around her, Dominic Carroll seemed to have that strength. She only met him because she had carried messages for the IRA, for no great reason except that another man she thought she loved asked her to and because, for a time, she thought it was something that mattered when nothing mattered. She had met Dominic on the boats she worked on, as he travelled back and forward to Europe. He had been kind; he had been funny. He had trusted her; he had made her feel what she was doing for the IRA did matter after all, that there was something bigger than her own obsessions and fears.

In New York he had taken her to the theatre, to restaurants like the Rainbow Room. He was always a gentleman when every man she met expected to sleep with her for the price of a drink. He was a decent man; a man who revered his dead wife. She liked him for that and she had had no intention of replacing the first Mrs Carroll. He would give her the safety and strength she needed; she would try to take away the loneliness in his heart. And when he asked her to marry him, it seemed a way out of the darkness that was always threatening to swallow her. It was only when they were alone together for the first time that she saw what she had never seen, that marriage was simply his way of paying her. There would be no friendship, no companionship; what mattered was how she looked on his arm and satisfied him in a dark bedroom, in a furtive, loveless act of sex.

She stubbed out the cigarette and immediately lit another one. She wasn’t afraid of crossing the lake now. It felt right that it was taking her away, not just from her imprisonment, but away from this place, the place she first understood the man she had married. It would be a journey that would begin in the dark, but there would be light at the end of it. She didn’t know what would happen. She didn’t know what it would mean to see her mother and father again. But Kate had found her; she had found Kate. It was a beginning. And all these new things, all these new questions, were about decisions and choices. They were things to be afraid of, but they were real; they carried hope in a way nothing had for a long time. She heard her sister laughing in the house, calling to Stefan; ordinary things, ordinary laughter. She smiled and took a deep breath.

Then she frowned.

In the darkness along the bay, right at the end of Lakeview Road, where it turned into the County Road, there were lights, flickering through the trees. It was still too far for the sound to carry, but she knew it was a car.

And there was only one place to drive along that road.

Niamh burst into the house. Kate was packing the few clothes they had into a bag. Stefan was walking lazily in from the kitchen with a cup of coffee.

‘There’s a car coming. Someone knows we’re here!’

Kate and Stefan stared at her. It had been so quiet all day. They had seen nothing, heard nothing. They had all felt it was over; even Niamh had started to feel she was safe. Helplessness and terror were in her eyes again.

‘There’s nowhere else to go,’ she said. ‘They’re coming here!’

‘How long before the boat comes?’ Kate pushed aside the shock.

‘Get your coats on,’ said Stefan quietly, nodding. It wasn’t over, whatever the car meant. ‘Go out the back door and get down to the jetty.’

Kate closed the bag. She picked up Niamh’s coat from the sofa. She had to help her on with it. Niamh was frozen. Stefan went to the oil lamp on the table and turned it off; he hurried back into the kitchen and put the lamp out in there too. He came back in, carrying it. Now they were standing in the darkness. He put the lamp down and walked to the window. He could see the headlights in the trees clearly, still some way off along the road.

Kate walked to the front door, pulling on her own jacket, and turned the key in the lock. She turned back to pick up the bag and take Niamh’s hand, pulling her through into the kitchen. Stefan left the window and followed her. They could hear the sound of the car now. As they moved through into the kitchen the headlights swept across the living room windows and lit up the room behind them. None of them spoke now. The kitchen door was open. Kate and Niamh were already outside, heading to the lake. Stefan came out afterwards. As he caught up with them he suddenly stopped, cursing under his breath. He had forgotten the lamp they needed; it was still inside.

‘Behind the boathouse, in the trees. I left the lamp. We have to –’

Kate nodded and ran on with Niamh.

He turned back inside.

He walked quickly, quietly through the kitchen to the living room again. The lights of the car were still on, pointing towards the house, shadow-lighting the room. He reached the table where he had left the lamp they had to signal the boat with. As he picked it up there were voices. Two men were on the veranda, at the door. There was more light on the veranda. One of the men was shining a torch. A key was being pushed into the lock.

‘I can’t turn it. There’s something already in –’

‘I’ve got a back door key, I’ll go round there,’ said the second man.

Stefan froze. He knew the last voice well enough; he thought he knew the other one too. Footsteps were already moving off the veranda. He might make it out of the back door before the second man got there, but he would be moving across the grass when he came round the side of the house. He wouldn’t make it to the trees without being seen. He had no time left to weigh the risk. It was too late; he couldn’t get out. He walked to the stairs and opened the door down to the cellar. He stepped in and pulled it shut behind him. As he reached the bottom of the cellar steps footsteps sounded above him, through the kitchen to the living room. The key was turned in the front door and the first man’s footsteps creaked across the floor above him.

‘The back door was open,’ said the man who had let him in. ‘There’s a fucking fire in the grate! Some bastard’s living in the place! Jesus Christ!’

Stefan knew who he was listening to. He had recognised the voice immediately. It was Dominic Carroll. But Carroll seemed surprised to find someone had been in the house. There was no sign he knew who that was. There was no sense that the two men were looking for anybody, expecting anybody to be there. It made no sense but what they’d found was a surprise.

‘Fucking hobos! Let’s get some lamps on. You take a look round.’

‘I’ll start upstairs, Mr Carroll. I’ll do the house first.’

Now Stefan knew the second man; the voice was Aaron Phelan’s.

He heard footsteps climbing the stairs. Meanwhile Carroll’s footsteps moved across the floor above him. He was at the table, lighting the lamp. The cellar was solid black. There was nothing to see. Then, looking up to the bottom of the door to the living room now, there was a thin line of light from the lamp. Stefan knew there was a way out of the cellar. A pair of trap doors opened up at the back of the house, outside. He could find his way to it and get it open. He would need to climb up on something, but it wouldn’t be difficult. It might make some noise though. He couldn’t do it now, but he had to do it soon. Now they were looking through the house. They were bound to come down to the cellar.