The Boy That Never Was

by Karen Perry

  At the same time, my eyes were fixed on the kitchen counter and the scrap of paper he had left tucked behind a coffee cup. Rattling ice cubes into each glass, Spencer kept talking, and for once I was grateful for his verbosity, as it meant he didn’t notice me leaning forwards to pluck that note from its hiding place. He was slicing limes and cucumbers and rattling on about God knows what while I passed my gaze over the scrawl of his handwriting, absorbing that address into my memory. Not an easy thing to do when you’re full of goose and booze and still shivering from plunging into the frigid waters of the Irish Sea, but I managed it.

  And then with the address in my head, I slipped out the front door, Spencer’s voice trailing behind me as I left.

  Downstairs, I found the van where I had left it, parked alongside Spencer’s old Jag. Before I got the key into the lock, a sudden impulse overtook me. I walked over to the passenger side of the Jag and tried the door. Locked. I looked about, found a fist-sized rock by the car’s front tyre and, with barely a moment’s thought, I smashed that rock through the passenger side’s glass window with one heavy swipe. Reaching in, I opened the door while the car alarm screamed around me. I lunged towards the glove compartment and found what I was looking for. I didn’t stop to check if it was loaded, just jammed the gun into my pocket, jumped into the van and took off without once looking back.

  On the road again. Darkness was falling, and the streets were silent and empty. My phone lit up. Someone had rung through to my voicemail and left a message. In fact, there were two messages. I was sure one would be from Spencer. He had tried to play it cool at his place, ease me into trusting him again. But it wasn’t him. The first message was from Cozimo. His voice sounded frail and far away. I could barely make out what he said: ‘Harry, I’m sorry. I should have liked to have talked more. I should have liked to have told you …’ The sentence ended in an excruciating incompleteness, much like our last meeting. The next message was from Robin.

  She sounded hoarse, as if she had been crying. ‘Harry, I’ve left with my parents. I’ll be staying with them tonight. I don’t know what else to say.’ That was it. The phone went dead. I pulled over and rang her back. There was no answer. But I kept dialling. Ten, twenty, who knows how many times. Finally, she answered in a whisper, ‘Harry?’

  ‘Robin.’

  ‘Harry, I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whatever you’re going to say.’

  A long sigh came out of her. I don’t know why, but I was smiling. It was time to come clean, and I felt strangely exhilarated. I knew she wasn’t going to hang up. Wait till she hears what Javier said, wait till she hears about the green amulet, the tarot card, the Sun card, for Christ’s sake, wait till she hears all that, I thought. And the child mummy in London and The Book of the Dead, all of it leading me to Dillon. She would be convinced, won over – not swayed but swept away by the guidance I was receiving. Surely with her own intuitive sense she would realize all this. But before I could tell her anything she said, ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘You’ve been acting so … erratically.’

  ‘I have an address, Robin. The address.’

  A pause.

  ‘This has to stop, Harry. You need help.’

  ‘Don’t you see? Everything is so clear now. He’s so close, Robin. After all this time, I’m almost there. I’ve almost reached him.’

  ‘Jesus, can’t you hear yourself? This is exactly like last time.’

  ‘Last time?’ I said, momentarily thrown. ‘What are you talking about? Today is the first day I’ve told you about this.’

  ‘You’re confused, Harry. You’re not well. You need to see someone.’

  ‘Robin, you don’t understand.’

  ‘I can’t handle this by myself any more. I’ve tried to pretend that you’re all right, that this is just a blip – a temporary lapse brought about by stress. But it’s more serious than that. I finally realized that tonight. Harry – I’m frightened for you.’ The pitch of her voice shifted, and I heard genuine alarm in her tone.

  ‘Frightened for me or frightened of me?’

  She ignored the question.

  ‘I’ve come back to my parents’,’ she whispered desperately into the phone.

  ‘But I want you to come home.’

  ‘No, Harry.’

  ‘Are you leaving me?’ I asked, jolted suddenly by the possibility. ‘Is that what you’re doing?’

  She paused, as if thinking about what I had asked. I waited to hear what she would say next, waited to hear the bend in her voice as she denied it, as she cleaved to my request to come home. But she did not say what I thought she would.

  ‘Maybe I am. You need help, Harry. But you won’t admit it. You can’t seem to understand how far gone you are. Maybe leaving you is the only way I can help you.’

  I held my breath and then slowly, exhaustively let it out again. The line went dead.

  I drove, but it was as if the van were driving itself, as if the steering wheel spun this way and that and my hands just happened to be on it. We turned left, turned right, slowed, speeded up, stopped when necessary. But it was not me, it was the van, it carried me; it was the vehicle, I was the passenger.

  When I got there, the lights were out, except for one downstairs, in the living room. I could see a figure pacing. It was Jim. He was gesticulating, glass in hand, talking to no one but himself. I tapped on the window. He turned and saw me. I must have given him a fright; he spilled his drink. I pointed to the front door.

  ‘Harry,’ he said, opening it. His tone was weak and resigned. I expected him to be confrontational, but instead he fixed me with a look of sadness and utter disappointment. I would have preferred it if he’d punched me. He turned from me then, leaving the door open so that I could follow him into the house. I stepped inside, cleared my throat, and said, ‘Where’s Robin?’

  He winced slightly at the mention of his daughter and my claim on her; then he gathered himself, setting his shoulders back. ‘We’ve always understood each other, Harry. At least, I’ve always thought so.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  One of his hunting trophies, a springbok’s head, hung ominously on the wall on the landing.

  ‘I’m very fond of you, Harry. I like the way you have taken chances in your life. But I want you to stay away from Robin –’

  ‘Stay away from her? She’s my wife.’

  The slump had returned to his shoulders. I could see his mind going through all the possible outcomes.

  ‘I think you should leave now, Harry. She doesn’t want to see you tonight.’

  ‘But I need to see her.’

  He nodded slowly but he couldn’t look me in the eye.

  ‘If I could just see her to explain.’

  ‘Give it a day or two, Harry. Go home. Get some rest. You look like you need it.’

  He wasn’t going to budge. He met my gaze and held it for a moment, but something else was tugging at me, pulling me away from him. I had the address and felt again a keen sense of urgency.

  ‘Tell Robin … tell her that whatever else happens, I want her to know that I’m sorry,’ I said.

  Then I walked back to the van, and Jim shut the door and turned off the porch light.

  The night was pitch-dark. There wasn’t a soul on the roads. I raced back along the M50 towards Wicklow. It felt like I was the last person left in the world. The map was on the passenger seat. I studied it as I drove, making a mental note of how I needed to take the M50 until it turned into the N11, past Arklow and west towards Aughrim. The landscape was mostly blank and dark. The roads were clear until I exited off the N11; then they turned suddenly treacherous. Too little traffic and no grit made it a difficult drive. Once or twice, the car skidded on ice. I was so tired, I could hardly keep my eyes open. The day seemed to have lasted a lifetime. The wipers flicked a fresh fall of snow from the windscreen. In the distance, I could see the soft lights of house
s waver and fade as families settled into Christmas evening.

  When I got to the intersection I was looking for, I drove off the main road and down a narrow lane into what seemed like a valley. It was not a housing estate I was looking for but a single standing house, a lone dwelling. I could tell that much from the address. In fact, I could tell a great deal more, if I am honest. The house itself was not far from a house my parents had owned when I was very young. They had stayed there for only three or four years, from what I can remember, but I had strong memories, so in a way it was like I was coming back to my own childhood place. It was like I was coming home. How strange, I thought. I remember a small red bicycle, my right ankle scabby from banging and grating against the chain ring. I remember the thread of white dandelion seeds blowing into the air, and I remember, one summer day, running away. I had a black sack filled with sweaters and sandwiches. My mother, when she found me, was smoking and talking to one of the neighbours. I was hiding in a bush, still hoping she had not seen me. Then, bending to peer down into my hiding place, she said, ‘Come on, love. Time to go home.’

  On the final stretch of road to the house, the van skidded into a shallow ditch. I pressed on the accelerator, and the engine revved. The tyres spun, but the van didn’t budge. I tried a few more times, but it was hopeless. It didn’t matter. I was nearly there.

  I clutched the steering wheel one last time and looked out on to the dark expanse of the night. The trees and shrubbery about me held their dark outlines, but barely; their forms were slowly dissolving into the night. Beyond them I could make out the Wicklow Hills, the headlamps of cars appearing and disappearing in the distance. I felt like the darkness was entering me. Shivering and exhausted, I climbed out of the van and left it behind. I followed a dirt path for a half-mile. At the end of it, there was a wooden gate and a long driveway. The house was partially hidden by dense trees. Red fairy lights covered a spruce tree in the front garden. A television flickered in one of the front rooms, where no other light was on. A car was parked further in. I couldn’t tell what colour it was or whether it had the licence plate I had been looking for, so I crept past the gate to the fence, climbed over it, in case it creaked, and fell to my hands and knees.

  The grass was covered in hardening snow. I crawled slowly. My face and hands were wet. In the distance, I could hear a neighbour’s voice carry. Someone was saying goodnight. Someone was laughing. The stars were out. A galaxy of stars. I started to shiver again. I got closer to the car, but I still couldn’t make out the numbers. Finally, I made my way to the grass verge and on to the gravel. I shifted my body as quietly as I could over the stones, to the back end of the car. I felt exhausted, dazed as though my head had taken a heavy blow. No one saw me. I crouched there in the darkness and tried to focus. It was the right make of car. I felt a surge of relief and held my phone up to the licence plate. I read each letter and number, one at a time. Yes, I thought. This is it. I leaned back and let out a great sigh.

  Then the front door opened, and a man walked out.

  14. Robin

  Are you leaving me?

  I lay there, the phone still in my hand, the echo of Harry’s voice still travelling through my head, and felt a weary resignation. I wished he hadn’t asked me that question. And I wished I hadn’t said what I had said. This terrible gamble after all the years of love and tenderness and affection, after all the hurt and grief and shared pain. That was it. There was nothing more to be done. For all the questions that littered my mind, I hadn’t the heart or the energy right then to chase answers.

  Still, I couldn’t sleep. I lay there tracing patterns across the ceiling. I wanted to get out of bed, go downstairs and sit in the kitchen and try to work this thing through. But there was a bar of light under my bedroom door that told me my parents were still up. I listened to the hum of their voices coming up through the floorboards. Their conversation was low and hushed. It went on long into the night. I imagined their anxious faces, their bewildered questioning: Had there been any inkling, any foresight of this coming? I imagined them asking themselves how had the child they had reared so carefully, so lovingly, the child they had invested so much in and had such hopes for, how had she come to this? I imagined all this and shrank from it. Sometime later, I heard my mother going to bed and downstairs I heard the sounds of my father lingering, pacing, worrying. I didn’t want to face him again that night. Somehow, his unspoken disapproval hurt more than the harsh words exchanged between Harry and me, and part of me was just so bone-weary, I felt my legs could hardly bear the weight of my body. I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and asked myself how things had come to this.

  My mind drifted through memories. I thought back to a night in this room, many years ago, the first night I brought Harry home. I was nineteen, caught up in my first real love affair, made reckless by it. I smuggled him up the stairs, both of us drunk and giggling. He fell on to the bed while I stood with my back to the door, chest heaving with the effort of suppressing my laughter. He lay on his back, legs crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head, a large, sloppy grin on his face. Already he was assuming ownership of the room. There was no lock on the door – my mother didn’t agree with them – so I took a chair and shoved it under the doorknob. When I turned back to him, his smile was still there, less sloppy now, a serious glint in his eye.

  ‘Now take off all your clothes,’ he said.

  I remember his body, the discovery of it that night, long and rangy and taut. Skin smooth over hard, lean muscle. The line of black hair from his navel down. Thighs that were thick and strong. The surprising weight of him as he lay on top of me, the sharpness of his pelvic bones as he moved above me, into me, slowly at first, with rising vigour.

  Our lovemaking was nervous on my part; I was overly conscious of every moan and sigh, every shudder and creak of the bed, keenly aware of my parents asleep across the hall. On his part, it was mischievous and irreverent. He was a confident lover, one who saw sex as entertainment, something to be enjoyed and not taken too seriously. He liked to nuzzle and lick and tickle, and my laughter aroused him. That was how it was between us back then. In time, he would grow more serious. The humour drained from him as the years passed. After Dillon died, we stopped making love. For a long time, we remained untouched, held apart by our grief – or by something else? Resentment? Unspoken blame?

  But thinking back to that night, I recalled how afterwards, before we drew apart and lay back against the pillows, two separate bodies again, he kissed me along my neck and my shoulder blades – softly, slowly. There was reverence in that act – tenderness – a marked contrast to the mirth and frivolity that came before. It was at that moment that he felt open and vulnerable to me, and I knew how serious things were for him. It was then that I felt the pull towards him, a cord binding us to each other, and I knew it was something lasting, something that would prove painful to break. It was then that I had a glimpse of how much I could hurt him.

  Sometime in the night, a car door slammed shut, and I woke. Confused at first, then surprised that I had managed to drift off to sleep at all, I lay there listening to the noises of the house around me, the pipes ticking and the groan of the syca more outside, bearing its burden of snow. I tried ringing Harry again but just got his voicemail. I had no idea where he might be. I hardly knew what to say to him. Perhaps I should have said that I missed him, that I didn’t mean what I had said. That I wanted him back – not this new, crazed, secretive Harry but the old Harry, the one that was funny and generous and bursting with life and humour, the one everyone loved. The one I had loved. In the end, I didn’t leave a message, just hung up. I think I slept.

  I woke to a dark sky, an unfamiliar room. I checked my phone, but there were no messages. I lay there for a while, watching the dark shapes around the room announcing themselves as a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a long mirror. The room had long ago been stripped of the posters and the toys; the accumulation of junk over the years had been culled, so that it now se
emed bare and somehow diminished. I looked around at the rosebud-print wallpaper, at the tufted headboard and waffle-patterned linen, all of it unfamiliar. This room contained no trace of my past existence here. This wasn’t my home – not now, not any more. And I thought of the house we had left and how I was estranged from it, after what had happened yesterday. I felt, in that moment, alone and completely unmoored.

  Getting out of bed, I pulled the curtains and looked out at the empty suburban street, a faint granular light beginning to tinge the night sky, casting the drifts of snow and the skeletal trees in a ghostly shade. The events of the previous day seemed so distant, so completely removed from any reality, that I could hardly believe them. I thought about how Harry had walked out; I thought about my father’s face full of anger and confusion and my mother paralysed with fear.

  ‘You need to come home with us,’ he had said sternly. The way the kitchen light caught his face made his cheeks seem puffy and his eyes look old.

  ‘For God’s sake, Dad.’

  ‘I can’t leave you here,’ he said sharply.

  That’s when I saw how worked up he was, how deeply this rift that had come between my husband and me had affected him. I saw his sadness and recalled my mother’s words, about how much she missed Dillon but felt unable to ever admit such to me. And I wondered how much they kept hidden from me, my parents, of their own losses and grief, their own sadness and worry.

  As I came downstairs, I heard sounds from the kitchen. It was barely six, but I knew my mother was in there, venting her worry by cleaning the oven or defrosting the fridge. I paused on the bottom step, feeling like a child again, under the shadow of disapproval after some disappointment that had tested my parents’ love for me, for which I would have to strive to redeem myself.

  I pushed the door and found her spooning batter into a muffin tin. She looked up at me and smiled. The brightness of her dressing gown seemed lurid in the early-morning dimness. Her hair had lost its shape, and there were small traces of mascara under her eyes. She looked old and tired and small. Her shoulders seemed slumped, and I saw for the first time that her upper back had grown curved. I had a glimpse of her as an old lady, still glamorous, with her cashmere sweaters and broaches, her lipstick a valiant banner, but shrunken and hunched, hands gnarled at the knuckles, lines fanning out from her eyes.