‘That’s Mum and Arthur,’ I said, smiling. ‘She must be only around five years old there.’
‘Look at Arthur. He wasn’t even handsome as a child,’ Weseley teased, squinting and studying it closer.
‘Ah, don’t be mean,’ I laughed. ‘Look at them. I’ve never seen Mum as a child.’
The next page there was a photograph of Mum, Arthur, Rosaleen and another boy.
I gasped.
‘Your Mum and Rosaleen knew each other as kids,’ Weseley said. ‘Did you know that?’
‘No.’ I was breathless, dizzy. ‘No way. Nobody ever mentioned it.’
‘Who’s the guy at the end?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Does your mum have another brother? He looks the oldest.’
‘No, she doesn’t. Not that she ever mentioned…’
Weseley slipped his hand underneath the plastic covering and pulled the photo from the paper.
‘Weseley!’
‘We’ve gone this far-you want to know all this or not?’
I swallowed and nodded.
Weseley turned the photograph over.
It read: ‘Artie, Jen, Rose, Laurie. 1979’.
‘Laurie, apparently,’ Weseley said. ‘Ring any bells? Tamara, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Laurence Kilsaney RIP’ on the gravestone.
Arthur had called Rosaleen ‘Rose’ in the car on the way back from Dublin.
‘Laurie and Rose’ engraved on the apple tree.
‘He’s the man who died in the fire in the castle. Laurence Kilsaney. His name is on a grave in the Kilsaney graveyard.’
‘Oh.’
I stared at the photograph of the four of them, all smiling, the innocence on their face, everything ahead of them, a future of possiblities. Mum and Arthur were holding hands tightly, Laurence had his arm draped coolly around Rosaleen’s neck; it dangled limply across her chest. He stood on one leg, the other crossed it in a pose. He seemed confident, cocky even. His chin was lifted and he smiled at the camera with a grin as if he’d just shouted something at the photographer.
‘So, Mum, Arthur and Rosaleen hung around with a Kilsaney,’ I thought aloud. ‘I didn’t even know she lived here.’
‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she came here on holidays.’ Weseley continued flicking. All of the photographs were of the same four people, all at different ages, all huddled close together. Some pictures were of them on their own, some in couples, but most of them together. Mum was the youngest, Rosaleen and Arthur closer in age and Laurence the oldest, always with a great smile, a mischievous look in his eye. Even as a young girl Rosaleen had an older look, a hardness in her eye, a smile that never grew as large as the others’.
‘Look, there they all are in front of the gatehouse,’ Weseley pointed at the four of them sitting on the garden wall. Nothing much had changed apart from some of the garden trees, which were now big and full, but then had just been planted or were merely shrubs. But the gate, the wall, the house, everything was exactly the same.
‘There’s Mum in the living room. That’s the same fireplace.’ I studied the photo intently. ‘The bookcase is exactly the same. Look at the bedroom,’ I gasped. ‘That’s the one I’m in now. But I don’t understand. She lived here, she grew up here.’
‘You really didn’t know any of this?’
‘No.’ I shook my head, feeling a headache coming on. My brain was overloaded with so much information and not enough answers. ‘I mean, I knew she lived in the country but…I remember when we visited Arthur and Rosaleen when I was young, my granddad was always here. My grandma died when my mum was young. I thought he was just visiting Arthur and Rosaleen too but…my God, what’s going on? Why did they all lie?’
‘They didn’t really lie though, did they?’ Weseley tried to soften the blow. ‘They just didn’t tell you they lived here. That’s not exactly the most exciting secret in the world.’
‘And they didn’t tell me that they’d known Rosaleen practically all their lives, that they lived in the gatehouse and they once knew the Kilsaneys. It’s not a big deal, but it is if you keep it a secret. But why did they hide it? What else are they keeping from me?’
Weseley looked away from me then, continued flicking through the photo album as if to find my answers. ‘Hey, if your granddad lived in the gatehouse, that made him the groundskeeper here. He had Arthur’s job.’
A startling image flashed through my mind, I was young, my granddad was down on his knees with his hands deep in muck. I remember the black beneath his fingernails, a worm in the soil wriggling around, Granddad grabbing it and dangling it near my face, me crying, and him laughing, and wrapping his arms around me. He always smelled of soil and grass. His fingernails were always black.
‘I wonder if there’s a photo of the woman.’ I flicked through the pages further.
‘What woman?’
‘The woman in the bungalow who makes the glass.’
We studied the following pages, my heart thudding so loudly in my chest, I thought I was going to keel over. I came across another photograph of Rosaleen and Laurence together. ‘Rose and Laurie, 1987’.
‘I think Rosaleen was in love with Laurence,’ I said, tracing their faces with my finger.
‘Uh-oh,’ Weseley said, turning over a page. ‘But Laurence didn’t love Rosaleen.’
I looked at the next photograph, eyes wide. On the next page was a picture of Mum, as a teenager, beautiful, long blonde hair, big smile, perfect teeth. Laurence had his arms thrown around her, was kissing her cheek by the tree with the engraving.
I looked at the back of the photograph. ‘Jen and Laurie, 1989’.
‘They could have been just friends…’ Weseley said slowly.
‘Weseley, look at them.’
That’s all I had to say. The rest was plain to see. it was right there in front of us. They were in love.
I thought about what Mum had said to me when I’d returned from the rose garden the first day I’d met Sister Ignatius. I’d thought she hadn’t been speaking properly, I thought she was telling me that I was prettier than a rose. But what if she’d meant exactly what she’d said: ‘You’re prettier than Rose’?
And away from them, at the other edge of the photograph, Rosaleen sat on a tartan rug with a picnic basket beside her, staring coldly at the camera.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dark Room
I didn’t know how long we had until Rosaleen and Arthur returned with Mum, if they were returning with her at all, but I had given up caring about being caught. I was done with their secrets, tired of tiptoeing around and trying to peak underneath things when nobody was looking. Weseley, in full support of my next move led me to the bungalow across the road. We were both looking for answers and I had never in my life met anybody like Weseley who was going out on a limb to help me so much. I thought of Sister Ignatius and my heart tugged. I had abandoned her. I needed to see her too. I remembered how during one of our first meetings she had grabbed my arm and told me she’d never lie to me. That she would always tell me the truth. She knew something. She had practically told me then that she knew something, now that I look back, had quite obviously asked me to question her, and I hadn’t realised it until now.
Weseley led me down the side passage. My knees trembled as I walked and I expected them at any time to give way and send me to the ground like a house of cards. The morning was darkening and the wind was picking up. It was only noon and already the sky had clouded over, great big grey clouds gathering as though the sky’s eyes were covered by bushy eyebrows, its forehead furrowed in concern as it watched me.
‘What’s that noise?’ Weseley asked as we neared the end of the passageway.
We stopped and listened. It was a tinkling sound.
‘The glass,’ I whispered. ‘It’s blowing in the wind.’
It was a slightly disturbing sound. Unlike the tinkling of a chime, it sounded as though the glass was smashing, as the little piec
es, the round and the jagged, hit against each other in the wind. Multiplied by hundreds, it was an eerie sound.
‘I’m going to go down and check it out,’ Weseley said once we’d stepped into the back garden. ‘You’ll be fine, Tamara. Just tell the woman you came over to thank her and take it from there. She might tell you more after that.’
I nervously watched him walk across the lawn, past the workshed and he disappeared into the field of glass.
I turned to the house and looked in at the windows. The kitchen was empty. I lightly rapped on the back door and waited. There was no answer. With a shaky hand, which I admonished myself about being so dramatic, I reached out and pulled down the handle. The door was unlocked. I pulled it open a crack and peered inside. It was a narrow hallway, which turned sharply to the right. There were three doorways off the hallway, all closed, one on the right, two to the left. The first on the left led to the kitchen-I already knew there was nobody in there. I stepped inside, trying to keep the door open so that I wouldn’t feel so trapped and so it wouldn’t feel like I was totally breaking and entering, but the wind was so strong it blew shut. I jumped and once again told myself how stupid I was being. An old woman and the woman who’d given me a gift were hardly going to hurt me. I rapped lightly on the door to my right. There was no answer and so I gently turned the handle and slowly opened the door. It was a bedroom, definitely the bedroom of an old lady. It smelled damp and of talcum powder and TCP. There was an old dark wood bed with floral duvet cover, slippers by the bed and a duck-egg-blue carpet that had seen more than a few Shake ‘n’ Vacs. There was a free-standing wardrobe probably containing all of her worldly outfits. A small dresser with a tarnished mirror sat against the door wall, a hairbrush, medication, the rosary and the Bible all neatly laid out on its surface. Facing the bed was the window overlooking the back garden. There was nothing else, nobody inside.
I closed the door gently and continued down the hall. The carpet was covered by an unusual kind of plastic mat, as if to keep the tiles clean. It made a scraping noise beneath my feet and I was surprised nobody had heard me coming. Unless the woman was in the workshed again, which meant that she’d see Weseley. I froze and almost went back outside but I’d come this far and there was no going back. I reached the end of the hall, where it turned to the right. There was another door at the end of the hall, which led to the television room, which I had already seen through the window. With the television up loud so that I could hear the Countdown clock ticking, I assumed that was where Rosaleen’s mother was, but after all my wondering about her now wasn’t the time for me to introduce myself. It wasn’t her I was looking for. There was a small entrance hall at the front door and to the left of me there was another door, behind which I guessed was the second bedroom.
I knocked so gently the first time I barely even heard it myself. My knuckles brushed against the dark wood as though they were a feather. The second time round I knocked harder and I waited longer, but there was no sound.
I turned the handle. The door was unlocked and it opened.
With my overactive imagination, I had envisaged much about Rosaleen’s secrets over the past few weeks, possibly years, but in reality they had all disappointed me. The findings in the garage, while intriguing and hurtful for me not to have known that Arthur and Mum were friends of Rosaleen since childhood, didn’t live up to the scenarios I had created in my mind. The initial mystery behind the house turned out to be Rosaleen’s ailing mother; the dead bodies in the garage had actually been everything the castle had been stripped of. While intriguing, it was slightly disappointing because it didn’t match up to the level of tension I felt around Rosaleen. It didn’t match up to the level of secrecy she was shrouded in.
But this time I wasn’t disappointed.
This time I wished for seventies carpets and dark wood, for the smell of damp and a badly designed bedroom. Because what I saw shocked me to the core so that I just stood there, frozen, my mouth agape, unable to breath properly.
On each of three walls, covered from floor to ceiling were photographs of me. Me as a baby, me at my Communion, me on a visit to the gatehouse when I was three years old, four years old, six years old. Me at my school plays, me at my birthday parties and other parties, a flower girl at my mum’s friend’s wedding, dressed as a witch at Halloween, a scribbled drawing I’d done during my first year at school. There was a photograph of me at the entrance to the gatehouse from only last week, sitting on the wall, swinging my legs, my face up to the sun. There was a photograph of me and Marcus, him first calling to the house, of another day when we climbed into the bus and went on a journey. There was a photograph of the morning Mum, Barbara and I arrived at the gatehouse for the first time. Then me at the age of around eight years old, standing in the middle of the road to the castle by the house, bored as my mother talked with Arthur and Rosaleen over egg sandwiches and strong tea. There was a photo of me only a fortnight ago at the graveside, placing flowers by Laurence Kilsaney’s grave. There was a photograph of me walking towards the castle. Photographs of me with Sister Ignatius, walking, talking, lazing on the grass, and one of me in the castle, sitting on the steps the morning I first discovered the diary entry, with my eyes closed face up to the sun. I had known somebody was watching. I had written it. The photos were endless like a history of my whole entire life, scenes that I’d long forgotten and some which I never knew had been captured on celluloid.
In the corner of the room there was a single bed, unkempt, untidy. There was a small locker beside that, its surface filled with pills. Before I turned around to leave, my eye caught sight of a familiar picture. I walked to the far wall and took the now crumpled photograph out of my pocket. I held it up to the wall, they were almost a perfect match, though the one on the wall was much clearer. Gone was the finger before the lens and so the priest’s face was visible, Mum beside him with me in her arms. On my pink head was a hand with the ring. This photograph on the wall was much bigger than the one I had found. It had been blown up and zoomed in on and so the ring was very clear, very much in focus and the person who belonged to it was obvious.
Sister Ignatius.
Beneath the christening photograph was my mother holding me over the basin, and the priest trickling water on my head. I recognised that basin. It was filled with spiders and dust now in the chapel in the grounds. Beside that was a flushed face of my mother lying in bed, hair sticking to her damp forehead, me wrapped up in her arms, just born. Another photograph of Sister Ignatius holding me. Just born.
I’m not just a nun. I’m also trained in midwifery. She’d said that only days ago.
‘Oh my God,’ I trembled, my knees buckling from under me. I reached out to the wall but there was nothing for me to cling to apart from photographs of myself. My fingers caught on them and pulled them down as I fell to the floor. I didn’t pass out but I couldn’t stand. I wanted to get out of here. I put my head between my legs and slowly breathed in and out.
‘You’re lucky today,’ I heard a voice say behind me and I snapped to attention. ‘Usually this door is locked. Even I have never seen in here. He’s been busy.’
Rosaleen was standing at the door, leaning against the doorway, her arms behind her back. So calm.
‘Rosaleen,’ I croaked, ‘what’s going on?’
She chuckled. ‘Oh, child, you know what’s going on. Don’t pretend to me you haven’t been snooping.’ She looked at me coldly.
I shrugged nervously, knowing straightaway that I appeared guilty.
She threw something at me and it landed on the floor.
The envelopes I’d taken that morning and left in the kitchen when I’d found the pills in Rosaleen’s apron pocket. Then she threw something else, heavier, which thudded when it hit the carpet. I knew what it was straightaway. I reached out to grab the diary. I fumbled with the lock in an effort to open it and see if the burned pages were gone. Perhaps I’d changed the course already. But my questions were answered before I’d time
to find out for myself.
‘You spoiled my fun, burning those pages.’ She smiled a crooked smile. ‘Arthur and your mother are at the house. I probably shouldn’t have left them…’ She looked off towards the house while chewing on the inside of her mouth. She appeared so vulnerable then, the sweet aunt who was trying to carry the world on her shoulders, that I almost reached out to her but when she turned to me the coldness was back in her eyes. ‘But I had to leave them. I knew you’d be here. I’ve an appointment to meet with Garda Murphy later today. You don’t know what that’s about, I suppose?’
I swallowed hard and shook my head.
‘A bad liar,’ she said quietly, ‘just like your mother.’
‘Don’t you dare talk about my mother like that.’ My voice trembled.
‘I was only trying to help her, Tamara,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t sleeping. She was tormenting herself. Going over and over the past all the time, starting to ask questions every time I brought a meal…’ She was speaking to herself now, almost as though she was trying to convince herself. ‘I did it for her. Not for me. And she was barely eating, so it’s not as though she took much of it. I did it for her.’
I frowned, not knowing whether to interrupt or let her talk it out with herself. While she was deep in thought, I reached for the envelopes. Looked at the name on the outside.
Arthur Kilsaney, The Gatehouse, Kilsaney Demesne Kilsaney, Meath
The next envelope had the same address printed on it but it was addressed to both Arthur and Rosaleen.
‘But…’ I looked from one envelope to another. ‘But…I don’t-’
‘But, but, but,’ Rosaleen mimicked me and it sent shivers running down my spine.
‘Arthur’s surname is Byrne. Just like Mum’s,’ I said in a shrill voice.
Rosaleen’s eyes widened and she smiled. ‘Well, well, well. The cat wasn’t quite as curious as I thought.’
I tried to gather the energy to stand. When I did, Rosaleen seemed to ready herself, to do something with one arm still behind her back.
The Book of Tomorrow Page 25
