Deirdre didn’t hear the front door but something made Grace come into the sitting room and when she switched on the light, she gasped and rushed to the sofa where Deirdre was still curled up, knees to chest, head buried in her arms.
“What’s happened, Mam? What’s wrong?”
Deirdre could hardly bear to look at Grace, so flushed and beautiful and hopeful and everything that she herself had once been. For her to find her mother like this. That hurt more than anything he could do. He was nothing but Grace was everything – a justification for her past, the fuel for her future, absolution for her mistakes. Deirdre felt sorrow wash over her. After everything I wanted for my girl, I have trapped her right in the middle of my nightmare. We are killing her dreams.
She watched pity and anger ripple across her daughter’s face. There were no answers to the questions that would come. And those questions – of why and what – were not interesting to Deirdre. She was too ashamed to even look for answers and she was beyond reasoning this now.
I just wanted the fairytale for her, she thought. She deserves the fairytale. I swore my home would be different, full of love. We were going to be better parents, the best. Now, we have shot the prince and burnt down the happily-ever-after castle. What kind of dreams can she have now? She swallowed a sob so deep she felt it twisting her insides. She had to pull herself together.
“I’m alright, love. I was just a bit sad and I must’ve conked out. Too much Bacardi with Pauline.” She tried to smile. “You alright?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mam. What happened to yer face? Was it Dad again? I thought he was staying in tonight, minding the boys?”
“He’s here, don’t worry, love. It’s all fine. He was a bit upset but he’s gone to bed now and I think I’ll just sleep here tonight. You go up to bed now, you must be knackered.”
“It was him! What the hell is wrong with him? Is anything broken?”
Grace was looking her over now, her hands caressing Deirdre’s arms, as though she was afraid to break her.
“No, no. It’s grand. Go to bed, Grace. There’s nothing you can do.”
It was no good. Deirdre started crying again, and then she couldn’t stop.
Grace left the room quietly but came back with two cups of tea and a folded blanket under her arm.
“I don’t know what to say, Mam. You can’t let him do this. You have to talk to him, or get someone to talk to him. What about Grandad?”
“No, no.”
Deirdre forced herself to sit up. She took the tea and looked Grace straight in the eye.
“You can’t tell him, Grace. He’ll go mental and do something stupid. No, leave him out of it.”
Grace started to protest but she cut her off, too harshly she knew but this was important.
“I mean it. I don’t want him to know about… this. Not him of all people.”
Grace glared at her but Deirdre met her look head on. She would control this as much as she could. Fergal might think he had the upper hand but he would not bring her down to that level. They would not talk of her as the beaten woman. She would keep her public dignity at least and her place in her father’s eyes.
But Grace deserved something, sitting here beside her, face like thunder, the essence of life itself, all bright cheeks, and perfume, and the fresh scent of youth, of a future yet to be past. She took a deep breath.
“I know it looks bad but he’s just frustrated. I can handle this, pet. And I promise, if the day comes that I can’t, you’ll be the first to know. And anyway, what would I do, Grace? I’m not young, I’m not you, I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t want to lose you kids. No, this is my life. This is where I am.”
I got myself into this, she thought, imagining what her own mother would have said. Sarah Flaherty had been a tough woman even before her epic battle with the cancer that colonised her ovaries. Sarah didn’t do self-pity and she didn’t encourage it either. She’d been a teacher down at the primary school before she fell ill and even today, her former pupils would sometimes come up to Deirdre when she was home to say what a good influence Mrs Flaherty had been. Firm but fair, that’s what many of them said.
“Will Dad get another job?”
The hard edge of the almost-woman was gone from Grace’s voice. Now, it was the voice of a child, confused, needing comfort. Damn Fergal for telling the kids. Deirdre had wanted to wait until after the exams but he just blurted it out at breakfast, needing the pity, she supposed. He was always like that.
“Of course, he will. He’ll have to find something. Don’t worry, Grace. This is just a blip.”
Grace kissed her on the forehead, picked up the cups and headed for the door. Then she turned.
“I’ll head down the Liffey Valley after the exams, Mam. I promise. I’ll find something for the summer.”
She tried to smile and then walked out.
Deirdre curled up under the blanket. Jesus Christ but how many more times could one heart break?
Fergal left early the next morning and it wasn’t to Mass either, Deirdre thought as she heard the door slam behind him. When he came back for his tea, he kept a civil tongue in his head but the house was heavy with words that weren’t said so that the very air around them felt thick and sluggish. Grace was out and Deirdre blessed her daughter again. There would have been a scene for sure if Grace had been there but as it was, Fergal just asked where she was and Conor piped up: “Out with her poncy, posh boyfriend.”
“Who asked you to pass comment on her boyfriend?” Fergal snapped. “I don’t see girls lining up outside to go out with you.”
Conor flinched at the contempt in his father’s voice, then his shoulders slumped and Deirdre knew there’d be silence now for days. What was going on with Fergal? He was usually nice to Conor. Why was he so bloody angry all the time? She was so cross she dared not raise her head, fearful of catching Fergal’s eye and triggering an explosion. Instead, she poked viciously at her peas and carrots. How did it get like this?
Kevin was quiet too. She’d taken him to Claremont beach out at Howth yesterday. Before the day had fallen off a cliff. They’d walked for ages – the water was still too cold to really swim although a few brave souls were bobbing up and down. Old lads and ladies with nothing better to do, she’d thought, and then immediately berated herself. Sure, weren’t they the only ones with the gumption to brave the water? Just cos they had grey hair didn’t mean they were washed up. You’d think she of all people would know not to judge the book by the cover. Would she never learn? Kevin tried to skim stones and peppered her with all sorts of questions about seagulls and fish and cruise ships. Then he listed the places he was going to visit when he was grown up.
“You can come with me, Mam. It’ll be great craic. We’ll go to see the windmills in Holland and the icebergs in the… is it the Arctic, Mam?” She nodded. “And we’ll go to Pompeii to see all the burned people.”
“I don’t think those people were burned, Kev. I think they were smothered in ash, or something. You know, you always see the pictures of them in terrified poses. Like this.”
She threw her hands in front of her face, opened her mouth and eyes wide in horror, and let everything out in a silent scream. Then Kevin struck his own pose and she took pictures on her phone, and then they had ice-creams on a low wall at the edge of the sand, and everything was so wonderful she could see again the point of being alive.
Now, at this table of razor-edged silences and scraping knives, she wondered if those moments would be enough.
CHAPTER SIX
The track was narrow and so Theo’s world at that moment was nothing more than the green stalks rising above him on either side, the blue sky that wouldn’t dull its light for them, and his mother’s back ahead of him, with Angélique’s head bobbing above the red-and-green wrap that held her between her mother’s shoulder blades. He looked down and there were his feet but they were little feet and they were different – callused and dust-covered, and he was wearing green flip
-flops. He could hear Clément’s soft breathing behind him. He wanted to say something – where am I? Where are we going? – but his father, who he knew was up ahead although he could not see him, had said not to talk, that they were playing a special game where they had to move silently, like snakes, through the fields, as far as they could, as quickly as they could. It wasn’t much of a game, Theo thought, but he would never argue with his father. Where was Shema? Was he ahead or behind? Theo wanted to turn around but for some reason, he couldn’t. His head seemed to be stuck, facing forward. Now, they were in a ditch, all of them crouched down together, even his father. Theo couldn’t understand why his father, so tall, so strong, was hunkered in a ditch, among the plant roots, discarded corn husks, and the beetles. But still he couldn’t speak. Now the sky was darker, finally, and they were running. The air was full of panting and feet slapping the ground and he could still just see Angélique’s head bobbing ahead of him, as though it was its own source of light. The track was getting narrower, the rough grass scratching his legs, fear crushing his chest. And still he couldn’t speak. And now there was noise, and screaming, and he could see his father’s silhouette against the light – where was the light coming from? – and his arm was raised and he was holding a machete, and Shema was on the ground, and for some reason, even though it was dark, Theo could see Shema’s terrified eyes, boring into him, begging him. What did he want? Theo still couldn’t speak. And then his father’s arm fell and Theo screamed and screamed. And then someone was calling his name, and he looked around, and his mother wasn’t there any more and Clément was gone too, and he was alone, but someone was calling him from the deep grass beside the track, and he wanted to go to them, but he was scared, and he didn’t like this game, and he wanted to go home.
“Theo, Theo! Baby, wake up. You’re having a nightmare. Baby, it’s okay, shush.”
Precious was cradling him in her strong arms, stroking his head.
“Hush. You are crying, my darling. Was it the same one? The same nightmare?”
Theo nodded, then whispered, “Yes.”
He was shaking, all of him, his body, his brain, his blood. It’d been a while since he’d had such a vivid one. Mostly his nightmares were collages of disjointed images: bodies flashing across his eyelids just before he dropped off, slashed, broken, like grotesque parodies of the human form; the snarling faces of men with knives at roadblocks; or sometimes it was just the screaming, echoing through the darkness he’d worked so hard to nurture in his mind. Sometimes he was back in the mud, among the papyrus, everything buried except for his eyes. He could feel the sludge moving around him, stirred by unseen creatures; he could smell the dank air in his nostrils; he felt again the fear that kept him and all the others submerged in their mucky shrouds all the hours of the day. In other dreams, about other things, he would suddenly find himself in a gigantic field full of head-high grass and he would watch the grass bowing down, starting at the edges and moving in to where he was, so that he knew that soon he would be left standing with no cover in the middle of the field. Sometimes he saw the field but sometimes he just felt that pure, naked fear, something he couldn’t control. It set his heart racing, he couldn’t breathe and when that happened, he got up and walked.
He would do that now. He gently lifted Precious’ arms from his shoulders.
“Do you want to talk about it, sweetness? Would that help?”
He could see her eyes in the feeble light from the street lamp outside. He raised his shaking hand to her cheek.
“Nah, there’s not much to say, babe. It’s what I told you before. I just keep seeing my father killing the old lad who worked for us. It’s always the same shit. And I can’t stop him, there’s never anything I can do.”
“You were only seven.”
She said the words slowly as though she had never said them before, as though she could make them new so that this time he would see the truth of them.
“I know, I know. I don’t blame myself, not really. But I won’t be able to sleep now. I’m going to go for a walk. That alright?”
Precious sighed and slumped back on the pillows. He kissed her forehead. He’d had to tell her his story after she moved in – he hated rehashing the whole thing but she demanded to know why he screamed in the night, why he called out ‘Shema, Shema’ in the voice of a terrified child, why he woke with tears on his face. So he told her some of what he remembered, unearthing only the barest bones, brushed clean of all the flesh and blood. Still her hands flew to her mouth, the universal sign for crimes so terrible they could not be named. He faltered a little in the telling. It’d been a while and he’d forgotten, to be honest, how many gaps there were. It was like pulling a pair of old trainers from the back of the cupboard only to realise they were green, not blue as you’d remembered, the brand was different, and you couldn’t for the life of you remember where you’d bought them. And then you started to question if they were really yours.
He’d told Precious he was Rwandan that first night they met in Spirals but he hadn’t felt the need to go into the whys and wherefores of how he got to Dublin. She never asked until after she moved in and realised that sharing his bed meant sharing his nightmares. Precious, who sank easily into the deep sleep of the righteous, definitely picked the short straw on the bed-sharing, even if she did snore like a congested Darth Vader.
By the time he got outside, it was 3 am. He walked along the deserted streets as quietly and quickly as he could. He always walked silently. He didn’t get those people who stomped through life, all noise and clatter. Michael was like that. All heels ringing, jewellery jangling, and general all-over creaking and squeaking. Maybe it was a sign of insecurity – whipping up a personal storm just to make sure you were really here.
He popped in his earphones but turned the volume down. These could be mean streets and he didn’t want any lively lads sneaking up on him. He was well in with Gerrity’s crew now but that was a double-edged sword. Protection, maybe, but also risk. He’d earned a bit of a name for himself in those shadows on the dark side that most people never saw but he was still small fry in the grand scheme of things. Michael had said Gerrity was pleased with him, with how much cash he was bringing in. It made no difference at all to Theo what Gerrity thought. But it amused him that Michael thought this kind of sweet-talking would somehow make him happy.
He was listening to a podcast about Yeats this week. He’d come across a fair few of the poems before, mostly at school, but it still wasn’t an easy listen – a lot of the images were fierce complicated. All those gyres, and circles, blather about Byzantium, and roses; what was with the roses? But he liked Yeats’ use of folklore, tales of brave men fighting epic battles. Shema used to tell him stories like that about their own heroes and ancestors. He’d forgotten most of them but he did remember the tale of how Gihanga, the founder of Rwanda, followed a gazelle through deep forests to find a wife. He tried to remember where they’d been when Shema told him that story but he could only call up the old man’s last face, eyes bulging, lips twisted. Theo quickened his pace but, of course, he couldn’t outrun himself. He’d learned that from Shema too. “Theo, you can outdistance that which is running after you but not what is running inside you,” he’d said one day. Theo couldn’t remember why – had he fought with Clément? Was he mad about something? – but he did remember where. They were sitting together under a mango tree at the edge of a field of sweet potatoes that Shema had been weeding.
Theo often went looking for Shema when he came home from school. He would help him with whatever he was doing in the two fields where they grew plantains, sweet potatoes and beans. Or sometimes, he would watch him pick tea. They had one large field of tea plants, a brilliant green diamond on the hillside. Shema would push slowly through the dense foliage, gently plucking the leaves and dropping them over his shoulder into the basket on his back. Theo would trot behind him, the tea reaching as high as his head so that it was like walking on the bottom of a green sea. But he wou
ldn’t have thought that then because he’d never seen the sea. How many of his memories had he remade in that way, rebuilt with new information? And were they still true if he was seeing them through a different prism?
Sometimes his father would come to the fields too after he finished at the school. He would not pick the tea – that would have looked weird – but he would talk to Shema, about the crop and the price they could expect per bag, and then catch up on the day’s gossip from the village.
At times they would all sit together under the mango tree and his mother would join them, with Angélique nodding to the world from her sling, her small eyes squinting in the sun. Clément would come too if he’d finished his homework. They would drink milk and, if it was the season, they would eat ripe mangoes, tearing off the skin and biting into the firm flesh so that juice ran thick down their chins. His father and Shema would sometimes drink banana beer, urwagwa. Theo must’ve tried it at least once because in his head the word had a taste. It was sharp, sweet, strong. Shema, who brewed the beer behind his hut, drank from a calabash – he cackled that that way he couldn’t see how much he was drinking and so didn’t need to worry – but Theo’s mother usually brought his father a cup. Shema would say that Thomas was a schoolteacher, an important man, and so he could not drink without measure, like him. His father would laugh, sipping delicately, exaggerating the gesture to make Shema laugh even more. Theo could still almost taste the happiness of those afternoons but in the end, Shema had failed to see that the man he trusted would turn out to be nothing more than a conduit for the blood-lust of his tribe. Did that mean that the warmth Theo remembered was just the sun and the beer in their bellies?
“Get offa me! I said, get off!”
Theo stopped, the yelling wrenching him out of his reverie and away from the poems slipping softly, almost unnoticed, through his ears. He pulled out his earphones and realised where he was. He’d walked in a circle, his usual night route, and was a few streets from home. The shouting sounded like it was on the same road, just around the corner. It was a girl. Probably just a lover’s tiff. He should leave well enough alone. None of his business. He started to turn around, thinking he could get home another way.
Rain Falls on Everyone Page 8
