The Final Silence (2 page)

Her mother embraced him.

‘Och, Raymond, I’m so sorry,’ she said.

His arms remained by his sides, his back stiff and straight. ‘Thanks for coming, Ida,’ he said.

When they put his wife in the ground, Uncle Raymond brought a finger to his eye. But there was no tear to wipe away. Even though Rea could recall only the most vague image of his face, she remembered clearly how silly the action of wiping away a non-existent tear seemed to her.

She asked her mother about it on the drive home in the Mini Metro.

Ida stayed quiet for a while, watching the road ahead. Then she said, ‘Well, he was always an odd cratur.’

After that, they never talked much about him. Rea knew her mother had tried to contact Raymond, by telephone, by letter, but never a reply. He faded from their lives like mist from a window.

The phone call had come a week ago.

Rea had been sitting at her kitchen table, eating a microwaved ready meal straight from the plastic container, scrolling through the listings of a jobs website on her iPad. She lifted her mobile knowing it would be her mother’s name on the display. Ida had a knack of calling at awkward moments. When Rea was eating, or in the bath, or on the toilet, or trying to get out the door, she could almost guarantee the phone would ring.

‘It’s Raymond,’ Ida said.

Rea’s mind scrambled to connect the name to anyone she knew. God help her, she didn’t want another one of those verbal tennis matches where her mother insisted Rea knew someone while Rea swore blind she didn’t.

Och, you know him surely, Ida would say.

I don’t, Rea would counter.

Och, you do.

No, I don’t.

Back and forth until Rea would be ready to scream.

Before any of that could happen, Ida said, ‘He’s dead.’

Rea heard a watery sigh in the phone’s earpiece.

‘Who’s dead?’ she asked.

‘Raymond,’ Ida said, exasperation in her voice. ‘Your uncle Raymond. My brother.’

The white wisp of a man by the graveside came back to her. The finger at the dry eye. The features she could not form into a real face.

‘Jesus,’ Rea said.

Ida tutted at the minor blasphemy.

‘Sorry,’ Rea said, not meaning it. ‘How did he die?’

‘They’re not sure,’ Ida said. ‘Maybe drowned, but they don’t know.’

‘Drowned?’

‘He was found in the Lagan yesterday afternoon, all snagged up in the weeds.’

Rea heard a crack in her mother’s voice. A sharp, high-pitched inhalation. She pictured a tissue screwed up in Ida’s fingers, ready to dab at her cheeks. Keeping it all bound up tight like a ball of string in her breast in case she made a show of herself. Ida Carlisle was the kind of woman who wept at her kitchen table, a cup of tea going cold in front of her, at least one closed door between her and anyone else.

‘They found out who he was from his wallet,’ Ida said. ‘It took them a day to find out he was related to me. The police called at the house this evening.’

‘Was Dad there?’ Rea asked.

‘No, he was at a party meeting. He says he’ll be home as soon as it’s over.’

Rea suppressed a curse. Graham Carlisle made his wife look like a well of warm emotion. God forbid he should let Ida’s bereavement get in the way of his ambitions. He’d had a seat at the Stormont Assembly for five years now, and they were grooming him for Westminster. They would announce his candidacy at the next general election. To him, all else was secondary.

‘I’ll come over,’ Rea said. ‘Give me half an hour.’

Before she could hang up, Ida said, ‘I didn’t know him.’

Rea kept silent, left the space for her mother to fill with whatever troubled her.

Ida took a quivering breath and said, ‘He was my brother, and I didn’t know him. I haven’t seen him in near thirty years. I don’t know if he still lives in that wee house. I don’t know if he married again. I don’t know if he had any children. I could’ve passed him on the street, and I wouldn’t have recognised him. I should’ve known him better.’

‘You tried,’ Rea said. ‘I remember you writing him letters and sending him Christmas cards. You did try.’

‘I should’ve tried harder.’

Ida brought another bin liner from the living room and added it to the row in the hall. The black plastic jarred against the clean featureless white of the walls. Even the stairs on which Rea sat had been painted the same colour. Combined with the aged black and white tiles of the floor, it gave the hall the feeling of an institution, as if it led to a headmaster’s office, not a home that should have sheltered a family. Only the stained glass in the front door offered any relief from the monochrome decor.

Rea’s father had promised to drop by and take the bags to the dump in his big four-by-four Range Rover.

Not that there were many to carry.

Raymond Drew had gathered little of the clutter that most people do throughout their lives. His wardrobe had been filled with cheap chain store and supermarket clothes, invented brands, shirts that come in packs of two, a suit made of a material that crackled with static electricity under Rea’s fingertips. Every item of apparel he owned filled one bin bag – minus the suit, which he was buried in – with another for shoes and belts.

A box rattled and clanged with a meagre selection of pots and pans, cutlery, and another held a toaster and a kettle. Yet another held a yellowed dinner set, plates of different sizes, cups, a teapot, all covered in a floral pattern.

‘I bought that,’ Ida had said when Rea found the set in a cupboard. ‘A wedding present for him and Carol.’

An old cathode ray television in the back living room looked like it hadn’t worked in years, and a music centre complete with a turntable. The tone arm didn’t have a stylus. Rea looked, but couldn’t find a pair of speakers to go with it.

It was as if these things, along with the scattering of clocks and ornaments, were placeholders. Items set around Raymond Drew’s house to give it the appearance of a home. Like a film set, Rea thought. Props. She imagined knocking on the walls and finding they were facades made of plywood.

Most important of all, they had to search for letters, bank statements, bills, any official looking paperwork. Rea’s father had called his solicitor, David Rainey, before he’d even thought to comfort his wife. Rainey had told Graham to find any and all documentation that might help determine the size of the deceased’s estate. They’d need everything they could get their hands on to take to court and apply for a grant of letters of administration, the authority to deal with Raymond’s affairs. Once that was done, Ida would be her brother’s sole heir.

‘I think that’s the last of it,’ Ida said.

Rea counted them. Eight bags and boxes in total.

Ida read her mind. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it?’ She climbed the stairs and sat next to Rea. Her voice resonated between the hard surfaces of the stairwell and the hall. ‘What kind of life did he have? Here all alone. He had nothing. No one. There’s not even a photograph around the place. Him or Carol. You’d think he’d have a picture of his wife, wouldn’t you? But there’s nothing. Just . . . this.’

She waved a hand at the packed-up detritus below. Rea put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. Ida fetched a balled-up tissue from her sleeve, touched it to her nose as she sniffed.

Ida Carlisle was a small woman, wider than she’d like at the hips, her hair lacquered in place once a week by a fey man at a city-centre salon, grey roots showing through the dyed brown, the merest hint of make-up on her face. Enough to make herself presentable, never enough to be showy.

‘There’s always the back bedroom,’ Rea said. ‘There could be an Aladdin’s cave in there, for all we know.’

The door to the bedroom at the rear of the house was different from the others. The rest were panelled wood, probably hung there when the house was built a century ago. But the back bedroom door was a solid featureless white with a new handle and a lock.

The day before the funeral, a locksmith had opened the front door of the house, fitted a new tumbler and left them with a set of keys. They hadn’t found the locked door upstairs until he’d gone. Rea’s father had made a half-hearted attempt at putting his shoulder to it, but the door wouldn’t budge. Rea had tried kicking it below the handle, like she’d seen in a police documentary, but she’d only succeeded in bruising the ball of her foot and straining her calf.

‘There’ll be nothing in there but old dust and air,’ Ida said. A tear escaped her eye. She caught it with the tissue before it could drip from her cheek.

‘We’ll see,’ Rea said, stroking her mother’s back.

Neither Ida nor Graham Carlisle were comfortable with shows of affection. Hugs. Kisses. Cuddles. Such displays were for infants and television dramas. Rea couldn’t remember ever being told by either of her parents that they loved her. She had no doubt that they did, but to tell her so would run against their Presbyterian grain.

At the age of eighteen, when Rea left home for university, she made a decision: regardless of whether they returned the gesture, she would tell them she loved them. And she would hug them, and she would kiss them. If that made them cringe, then tough luck. She would not live her life with her emotions tied up and hidden inside her.

‘No point in worrying about it now,’ Ida said. ‘I talked to your father last night. About this place.’

‘Oh?’ Rea asked.

‘When we’ve got it all sorted, all the legal nonsense, we think you should have it.’

The house had belonged to Raymond’s wife, and she’d inherited it from her parents. When she died, Raymond had stayed on. Now, once the estate was settled, it was Ida’s to do with as she pleased.

‘But Mum, I can’t . . . it’s too much to . . .’

‘It’d get you out of that shared place. You’d have a home of your own. No mortgage to tie you down. A house is too hard to buy these days, I mean for a girl on her own, even with the prices falling the way they have.’

Rea shook her head. ‘But this place has got to be worth a hundred grand, maybe a hundred and twenty. You and Dad could have that for your retirement.’

‘Your father retire?’ Ida smiled. ‘He’ll not retire until he drops. Besides, he’s got enough money put away to keep the both of us.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ida said. ‘It’s too big a thing. I can’t get my head around it.’

‘Well, think about it. You’ll see it makes sense. Dear knows, there’s precious little left of your uncle here. Hardly anything to show for him being here at all. Whatever’s in that back room, you can give it to charity, or dump it, or . . .’

She screwed her eyes shut. Her shoulders jerked.

Rea tightened her hold on her mother, brought Ida’s head to her shoulder. The tears came, Rea felt the wetness through her T-shirt, and Ida seemed to melt against her. Only for a few seconds. Then it passed, and Ida came back to herself, sat upright, stiff and proper like before. Only a redness to her eyes offered any proof of what had happened. They would not mention it again, Rea was sure.

She went to speak, but Ida’s mobile phone pinged.

‘Och, fiddle,’ she muttered, reading a text message.

‘What?’ Rea asked.

‘Your father. He’s not coming. He got held up at a committee meeting.’

‘All right,’ Rea said. ‘I’ll take the stuff to the dump. It’ll take a few runs, but no matter. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?’

‘Sleep?’ Ida snorted. ‘I haven’t slept for a week.’

‘Well, go and try. I can manage from here.’

Ida smiled and stroked Rea’s hand. ‘You’re a good girl.’

The closest she’d come to affection in years. Rea leaned in and planted a kiss on her mother’s cheek.

‘Get off!’ Ida swatted her away in mock outrage.

She stood and descended the stairs. At the front door, Ida turned and regarded her dead brother’s life bagged up and ready to be disposed of. She shook her head once, offered Rea a regretful smile, and left.

Rea stayed on the stairs for a time, watching the ripples of sunlight through the door’s stained glass. It wasn’t a bad house, and it was a nice street. A small tingle of excitement in her belly.

A house of her own.

For the last couple of years she’d shared a place with two other women in the Four Winds area, a sprawling suburb to the south-east of the city. The two housemates were younger than Rea, one of them by more than a decade, fresh out of university and working for a legal practice. They made Rea feel older than her thirty-four years. She caught herself wanting to mother them, to scold them for staying out too late, or for the clothes they wore. And she felt they regarded her as a desperate old spinster aunt, constantly trying to set her up with their work colleagues.

Once, she had reluctantly agreed to go on a blind date with one of them. He’d been a pleasant enough gentleman, not bad looking, tidy, polite. When he showed her a photograph of his youngest grandchild, Rea felt like screaming.

Three months had passed since Rea had lost her job. She’d been at the consultancy firm in the city centre for almost six years, specialising in recruitment processes, devising interview strategies and aptitude tests. A good salary, too, enough for her to save a decent amount towards a deposit on a house. Since she’d been laid off, the rent on the shared place was eating into her savings, and she had been facing the horrifying prospect of having to move back in with her parents.

Rea suppressed a shudder. Now a lifeline, a chance to have a house without the burden of a mortgage. But could she take a dead man’s home? And it needed work. A new kitchen, new central heating, and probably a list of things hidden beneath the surface. Rea knew from her friends’ tales of buying houses that the real costs were the hundred secrets the previous owner kept from you. She doubted her savings would cover it.

But still, a house of her own.

She thought of the room upstairs. Her mother was probably right, nothing in there but dust and air. But if she was going to take this place as her own she wanted to see every room, locked or not.

Rea Carlisle decided that before the day was done, she would have the door to the back bedroom opened.