Islandbridge

by Brady, John

  Declan’s side of the bed would always be cold, and the clothes there always unruffled. She wished she had told him how she looked at the stains on the sheet from his side, and the other secrets she had been too sparing with. His belly and his hair there, how he frowned in his sleep sometimes.

  All in the long ago, as Nana used to say. She had to pee. She wondered again while she pushed herself upright if they had been putting something in her drink to keep her like this. Probably not: they all knew you could harm the baby.

  She held her stomach again, felt the shifting weight settle, thought of how it was possible this baby could grow to be an adult. It held none of the wonder for her now. Like everything else, that had faded and fallen away somewhere, and on she went, a familiar enough figure in a familiar place but not trying much to figure out why this all seemed to be happening to someone else. It was someone she knew, yes, and was on good terms with, but still a stranger in many respects, someone else.

  This had frightened her the most. It was losing your mind, she believed. People went mad like this when they shed themselves of who they were, or had been. She got used to it, even remembered the details of where she was when it first happened. It was like a sudden, silent snap, and immediately she was cold and terrified. They expected her to be numb, she realized later, the lines and lines of Guards at the funeral, the Superintendents and even the Commissioner she’d heard but couldn’t tell which one he was in that daze of strange hand-holding and hand-shaking and hand-patting.

  Disconnected, that was all. You lift a receiver; expect tone, a voice, an engaged burr. But there’s nothing, and there never would be.

  Her legs were swollen a long while now. Her ankles felt they’d give way easily. She threw a cardigan on and headed out into the landing.

  Róisín, God love her, was awake before she even crossed the threshold. Going to the toilet only, she told her.

  She pulled the cord for the little tube light over the mirror and backed onto the seat, her spine as straight as a board. “Are you all right?” from Róisín. “Will I come in?”

  She told her she was. The cabinet still held Declan’s stuff and it probably always would. She shuddered when the thought came to her about his toothbrush, and how a person could need one, and use one, one minute and then never again. No more shaving foam needed, or an Elastoplast for a cut. The vitamins she’d made him take were still untouched in their bottles by the cooker.

  She looked down at her knees, almost hidden by her stomach. A part of her knew that this was dangerous, to be thinking you were gone and that this was someone else here in your place, but it no longer scared her now. She had been able to let her mind go to the hospital room where they’d brought Declan, and where she’d looked at his unmarked face.

  Yes, he had let her down, by keeping things secret. Yes, she should have sensed it, with the arguments about emigrating. “Trying it for a little while,” was Declan’s way of getting it out. Then it was how lousy Dublin was, and how Guards weren’t likely to get proper pay for a long time.

  Money: the anger she’d felt as she took the envelope he’d covered in cello tape, and the letter, from the tin had shamed her and made her want to just end things when the two Guards had come out to the house, O’Keefe and the sergeant, only an hour after she’d come home furious with the insult of waiting in the hairdresser’s. She had been crying with the anger all the way back, hoping Declan would be at home already, knowing that it was impossible somehow, so she could lay into him.

  Declan had lied. There was no other way to say it. And he had stolen. Or taken a bribe, if that’s what you wanted to call it. All the should-haves that raced and collided in her head since: should have gone to O’Keefe, should have gone to her, should have gone to his sergeant – to anyone, right away.

  She herself should have said nothing about the tin or the money. But they had gotten her in a weak moment. All very gentle and polite, of course, but they must have known. Declan had been seen with this Rynn man. What did she know about that, they had been asking.

  “Are you coming out?”

  It was Róisín wanted to know.

  She considered the anxiety in her sister’s tone. How they all must worry, she thought. How strange it had been to see the same pinched wary look on Róisín’s face that she had seen on the detectives’ faces, the ones who had asked her about the money. Were they afraid for her, as well as of her? She was set aside from them now, a different person. How useless and maddening to her the phrase going around her head for so long now: there’s no going back.

  “Are you?” from Róisín.

  “I am. Go back to bed. I’m grand.”

  Her thoughts vanished then, and she was left with a sudden clarity. The Guards wanted this wrapped up. They didn’t believe her. That Superintendent who’d come out to the house on his own a fortnight ago, he’d been sent as a last chance, she decided later on. He sat in her kitchen and told her that they could not get a case on Rynn for this, no matter what was in the letter Declan had written. That was unless she could tell him anything about the matter, that she had maybe forgotten to tell the other Guards . . . ? “Forgotten?” Well, had Declan never once mentioned this matter to her? Not once . . .?

  The look on that Superintendent’s face, she’d never forget. The grey uniform, the gold braid on his collar. Did they think that would impress her, frighten her, or something? They had gone through the house for Declan’s things, twice.

  She had his pay stubs, his membership at the rowing club, old notebooks, patches from American police that were to start a collection, all the birth and baptismal stuff, the insurance and bank books, the second set of keys for his drawer.

  Had they really needed to take away even his work shirts?

  Later, the Superintendent’s quiet voice that reminded her of a teacher discussing something you’d done with your parents sitting next to you: no, she could not have the letter back. No “sorry, but . . .”; no “in due course”; not even an “at the present time.” But it was addressed to her, she remembered telling him. Not the money, of course not – just the letter. She’d wished she had asked him directly: do you think I knew about this? That I was in on it? Is that why you have that look on your face?

  The radiator sighed. She ran her finger along its edges. She’d heard it in the mornings as the water would heat up and begin to move through the pipes. The timer would click or do whatever it would do, the flame would light up and the water would start to flow. The Gas Company man would come by and read the meter, some electronic signal would be sent, the bank’s computer would signal back. The summer would come and the heating would be off. Then one night, probably in late September, there’d be a cool evening and someone would say that it’d be no harm if the heating was on tonight. Just for the present time. And it’d start again. Things just went on, with or without you.

  She stared hard and unseeing at the row of tiles. Declan had tiled it with the ones she had picked out. He had used little matchsticks to keep them apart until the cement set and he could put on the grout. Declan was full of little tricks like that.

  Some days still, it was like she was dead, herself. Was that a bad thing to think, as bad as thinking nothing could ever get better? In the first few days, and weeks, she’d thought she wouldn’t get to Christmas, much less to the due date.

  She hadn’t seen the other part coming at all, with her parents. She’d turned to her father for advice about how to deal with what the Guards were doing, what they were insinuating. She had first gotten only the wait-and-see line, and somehow she’d managed to swallow that. But not long afterwards her father had been more direct. He was frightened and angry too as much as worried about her, she could see then. This time it was: let them do it their way, we’ll see. And when she pressed him, he was direct, with that odd mixture of apology and annoyance that he tried to make up for later: let it rest awhile, it would only be worse if it got public. Focus on your health, on rest, on the baby.

  She
was too exhausted to understand that, or go back at them, any of them, then. How could it be that everyone had gone against her on this? How did that start? She had put it away somewhere, thinking about it every day, but all the time aware of it slipping into that other place like everything else had.

  “Can you sleep?” came Róisín’s voice.

  There was a pleading in her voice. For the first time she could remember, Eimear Kelly wanted to smile. It was Róisín herself who’d conk out at the drop of a hat.

  “Of course I can,” she lied. She actually didn’t mind lying there a couple of hours. She could replay the words and the faces and the memories; maybe cry awhile; think.

  She let herself down on the bed, turned, and lay down. The baby stirred, stretched, reached out. She placed her hands on her stomach again and let her eyes grow used to the near dark again. A lot of the time she had imagined that the ceiling and roof would disappear and she could be looking up at the night sky where Declan might appear, in a way you couldn’t see him, but there all the same, floating over her. There were the stabs in her throat and chest as the grief flooded over her, but tears didn’t follow.

  When it passed, she was back to thinking about that Superintendent again, and how his face had told her more than anything else that he wanted this out of the way, and over. They’d be looking into the widow’s pension, of course, and to see what could be done. Et cetera, et cetera. How could she not notice the hint? No, no-one had to say “scandal” or “disgrace” or “best not to bring it up.”

  It took an effort to find something else to think about, but she did it. The man she’d gone to see, the Dr. Herlighy that worked with Guards, had been nice. He’d told her she’d feel alone, no matter how kind and loving people were. He had a nice smile, the look of a man who had come through some bad times or illness himself. The words he had used had stayed with her.

  She thought for a while that he must have hypnotized her. Then later she didn’t care. Even with the baby, she’d feel alone, he’d said, adrift. Other words he had used too, she remembered how true it was, that feeling of floating. Unmoored, he’d said; offshore. Stranded. Maybe he was big on the sea or something.

  Now she heard the low steady breathing from Róisín. There was almost a whistle in it when she was deep asleep. Her mind went to the times they’d shared in the Gaeltacht, and their brothers Conor and Liam too, supposed to be learning Irish. Declan had been in the same village before, but a different year. Then she saw Róisín coming up to the flat to visit them; going in to work with her, acting as if her new Junior Ex position in Foreign Affairs must be the most glamorous thing in the entire world. But Declan appeared again now, coming into the office in uniform to pick her up those evenings before they got engaged. She enjoyed the looks he got, but he laughed about it.

  Everyone wants the best for you, Eimear: Herlighy’s voice, it was. They want you to return to them; they want your suffering and pain to lessen. They want you to be healthy and well, to come back to life fully, the best you can, bit by bit. They want you to turn toward the sun–

  Turn toward the sun?

  She opened her eyes wide: he had hypnotized her, that Herlighy. How else could she be replaying words like that over and over again. They were like a spell, or a poem. The bugger, she thought. But it seemed to have done something for her.

  Still, nobody could really see into her mind or read her thoughts. She was certain of that. She knew she could continue to keep this to herself, the rage at how everything had changed so fast, at how everything had been ripped from her. It was the Guards who had stripped her of pieces of Declan while they made out to honour him in their salutes and cortege and prayers. The man who’d been driving the car that evening without his lights on yet. Her own family, she’d had to admit, for all their love: they were ashamed in some way they might never say. Still she knew, just as she knew what was going on in that Superintendent’s head.

  A coldness came over her then when her thoughts fixed on the other one, the man she didn’t like to think of, whose name she fought not to say in her mind even lest she scream it out loud: Rynn.

  She wrenched her thoughts away, fled to her childhood and school, to work, to the holidays on her aunt’s farm. Soon she stopped, and her mind settled back on Declan. She had even thought the impossible, and it didn’t terrify her now: Declan had let her down. Declan, with his stubbornness and his loyalty all mixed up, had brought this on too. It was no use saying bad luck over and over again, or that something in Declan had been broken that night so that a part of his mind, his judgment maybe, had given way.

  He had been working away secretly, planning for weeks or even months. He had even bought the tickets to New York. They had asked her about that every time they’d come out, the detectives, and later that bastard Superintendent. Maybe they had run out of ideas and had sent him out in uniform to impress her, or to frighten her.

  If only Declan had said one word, she would have known. One word.

  She felt that numb weariness that she had come to dread was close now, and she seemed to be sinking through the mattress further, into that pit as she’d called it, in the sessions with the psychiatrist. If she came out of this, and somebody asked her what it was like, she wouldn’t say what she’d heard and read other people said, like “nightmare” or that. She’d remember the blinding pain in her heart as much as the numbness after, the indifferent wondering if she’d make it at all, or even want to make it.

  She wouldn’t hold back telling about the thoughts of killing herself, and the worrying if she was damaging her baby with that thinking, if he could pick it up from her. She’d say how everything normal had been completely turned into something else, often frightening and loaded with a dread: a chair where Declan had sat, a word someone used. She wouldn’t forget to tell them of the sudden, overwhelming hatred of things, of people – complete strangers even; of the way things were, and couldn’t be changed; the blame she wanted so much to pin on someone.

  Her own shallow breathing alternated with Róisín’s down the hall. The baby gave a stir, a stretch. She had come to believe that the baby seemed to know what she was thinking. “The baby,” why didn’t she just call it “he”? Declan liked the name John, after his mother’s uncle who had died young. But they had both liked the name Liam.

  Liam: how many times had she seen Declan and herself in the house here after Liam would be born: in Declan’s arms, or sleeping beside them; feedings, playing, the soothing to sleep, the night waking. Everyone just assumed she’d move back home for a while after the baby was born. Would she? She wondered if she’d ever have a man again, even to talk with, to sit next to in the car, to hold on to at night. There was nothing wrong with that, she now believed; that wasn’t betrayal.

  Chapter 12

  MALONE PICKED UP MINOGUE just after two o’clock. Malone ha corralled his work car, the Nissan. It smelled of McDonald’s again.

  “My head’s still spinning,” said Malone. “But I’ll go with it. How about yourself? Like old times, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “They came for me at the exact same time,” Malone went on. “Remember I was talking to you, and I says, ‘Hold on?’ And then when I go to say something to you, you’re gone already?”

  “Indeed.”

  “‘Indeed’? Didn’t it kind of freak you out? But wait, you got the big wigs, didn’t you. I had two normal fellas shooting questions at me.”

  Minogue’s arms went out reflexively as Malone threw the Nissan into the curve that led through Kevin Street. A car horn faded behind.

  “It doesn’t seem to have taken much out of you.”

  “Ah, come on. They knew I couldn’t have had anything to do with Lawless getting murdered. They just wanted to know how I’d gotten involved in the thing in the first place.”

  From somewhere under, or by the seat, Malone drew up a half-finished bag of chips. Minogue looked at the bruise on Malone’s cheekbone. It had spread.

  “I
didn’t hold back anything from last night either,” said Malone. “Did you?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “They showed you pictures? Lawless . . . ?”

  “They sure did.”

  “I heard that Lawless was done yesterday evening. Someone saw him last around seven or so. And then he’s spotted lying there on the steps at eight o’clock. That’s when that priest got called, Father Coughlin. He must have told someone about our little get-together at the church the other day.”

  Minogue yawned again.

  “Dear Diary,” Malone started out. “I am going down to my colleagues in Kilmainham Garda station to see what a bollocks they made out of the Emmett Condon case.”

  “That’ll go over well there, that approach. You’d have a matching clout on the other side of that thick head of yours, I’d be thinking.”

  The Nissan was not designed for what Malone seemed to want to do in his detours through the laneways and cramped streets behind Thomas Street.

  “What’s your hurry, Tommy? Slow down, will you.”

  Malone crumpled the empty bag and tossed it into the back.

  “Easy knowing you didn’t get battered last night.”

  “This isn’t about settling scores with some George character. This is about us looking over the case files asking a few polite questions – watch that van, will you.”

  “So,” said Malone. “He’ll show up along the way. I’ll bet you anything.”

  “And you’ll do what if he does?”

  Malone looked over for long enough to get a rise out of Minogue.

  Minogue looked back at the report to check the detectives’ names again. Fintan Donnelly was supposed to be waiting for them at Kilmainham Station to give them the rundown. Never heard of him. He wondered if Donnelly was newer, or if he and Malone would be facing a veteran who’d be only as helpful as his orders had told him.