The door creaked open and Grace came into the room. She was wearing her pyjama bottoms and a sweatshirt Deirdre had never seen before. It must be Neville’s. It was navy with the name of some US university plastered on the front. Grace wouldn’t normally be seen dead in something like that. This is how we lose our kids, Deirdre thought. I didn’t even know there were bits of him here. I didn’t know about that sweatshirt.
Grace went to Lisa and shook her hand. She kept her head bowed, mumbling her condolences into the ground but then, her eyes betrayed her, landing on her mother’s face, despite herself. She ran over, fell to her knees, and buried her face in Deirdre’s lap.
“I’m so sorry, my darling,” Deirdre whispered. “I’m so very, very sorry.”
There were other words and they would have to be spoken, but not now. Not in front of this other mother, who was grieving her son, and who didn’t know and would never know what really happened because it wouldn’t make any difference.
“Lisa found this letter. It’s for you from Neville. Take your time. You don’t have to read it now, darling, if you’re not ready,” she said, even though Lisa was leaning in and her desperation was terrible to see. If it were my son, I’d want to know now, Deirdre thought. Grace took the letter but she never raised her head and she made no move to open it.
Deirdre looked over at Lisa and mouthed, “Sorry”.
Lisa nodded, put her cup on the table and stood up.
“I’d better be off. Owen will be wondering what I’m doing. I asked him if he wanted to come with me but… he’s not very strong at the moment. He’s been on sedatives since we found out. I don’t think he wants to wake up most of the time.”
Grace looked up.
“Please stay. I think you should read this too. It’s the only bit of him we have now. I’m not gonna keep it to myself, Mrs Mulholland. But can I have a look on my own first?”
Lisa nodded and sat down again.
Deirdre took Grace’s hand in her own. It was still so small.
“Do you want us to go outside for a second, love?”
Grace shook her head, stood up and walked to the window. She stood staring out at the lawn and the hedge and goodness knows what else, until there was the sound of paper tearing. Deirdre had to look away. It was too hard to see Grace’s bent head, the vulnerable white of her neck and the trembling in her shoulders. But Grace was bearing this so she must too. She’d brought her daughter into this world and so she must stand beside her as long as she breathed. Lisa’s head was bowed. She’d her own cross to carry, no longer a witness to her child’s pain, unable to help any more. Grace turned back to the room. Her face was suddenly swollen and red, as if the mere touch of these new tears had melted the mask she’d put on to hide the ravages of the last hours.
She handed the note to Lisa and came to Deirdre, dropping her head onto her mother’s shoulder. Deirdre pulled her close.
Lisa read, out loud as though she didn’t believe she could be permitted to keep the words for herself: “Grace, I’m sorry for doing this and for not being able to tell you why. It’d never make sense. But just know I loved getting to know you and being with you. We threaded our lives with beautiful moments, a gorgeous necklace of good times. That’s all that really matters. For me, this is as good as it gets. I can’t go on, every day, waiting for the string to break. I can’t do that, Grace. But you will and you’ll have more moments to hang on your necklace. I’m just glad they’ll be beside the ones we made together. I love you and I’m so sorry I never learned how to live, Neville.”
Grace let out a sob that reverberated through Deirdre’s arms and into whatever it was that made up her soul. She held her girl as tightly as she could. Lisa was crying quietly, her tears falling onto the letter until she noticed and dabbed them off gently with her fingers. She folded the letter back into its envelope.
Outside, the ice-cream van was coming round again to tempt kids with late-afternoon treats. The children squealed as they ran to it. The same thing would happen tomorrow and all the tomorrows until the kids went back to school. There was no other way.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The bus slalomed gracelessly through the blind bends of the road heading west, past sheep grazing in purple heather, wind-flayed bungalows surrounded by twisted evergreens and headlands stretching cat-like into the sea. Deirdre’s eyes were closed but she was not sleeping. She had left Dublin early and even though the opening of the motorway last year made the cross-country ride less of a tractor-filled obstacle course than in the past, she was tired now as she got closer to home. She couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that she was reliving the horror of the last few days. She just felt too utterly empty to summon the energy to switch off.
She sensed the arrival of the bus in the town; people began to fold their papers and gather their bags, filling the air around her with the twittering and rustling of anticipation. She opened her eyes. The bus was labouring up the hill from the little port to the main street. It was a monochrome afternoon, dense clouds scudding across the sky, squeezing the light out of the air, casting a dull sheen on the choppy sea. She’d walk to the house. It was only about two miles and now that she had made it here, she was, of course, doubting her decision to come. Typical, she thought. Rushing all this way and now dragging my feet. Homecomings were always like this for her. Whenever she made the trip down from Dublin as a student, the anticipation that propelled her out of her digs tended to evaporate by the time she hit the River Shannon. The optimism that things would be different this time could only carry her halfway across Ireland it seemed, or maybe it was because the force field of her new life only reached that far. Any further west and she was back to being the girl she had been, no longer immune to the slights that hurt her then and could still sting now.
She hoisted Grace’s rucksack onto her back and started walking along the main street, past the shops that seemed to shrink a little more between each visit. She’d take the sea path. It was longer but it’d be light for a few hours yet. Her dad knew she was coming but she hadn’t given him a fixed time and he was unlikely to be worried. It was rare that he was in when she came home. It was as if he didn’t want to seem too excited, too needy, so she usually found herself pushing open the back door only to find the kitchen empty, the kettle sizzling on the range, the clock slowly ticking out the seconds until she could leave again. Usually, it was just the ghosts who greeted her. Séamus always turned up around five minutes later. She guessed he watched her arrival from some corner of the fields, hidden by one of the trees he had planted to keep out prying eyes, hat pulled low, stick in his hand, motionless as a stone. They were an odd family, for sure.
She was glad when she’d made it through town. She didn’t want to be stopped by any of the old lads or ladies who might remember her and start at her with their questions. Especially not today. Usually, it’d be no bother to lie. Sure, that’s what everyone did all the time. The ‘I’m grands’, ‘Not a bothers’, and ‘Can’t complains’ that were like the diesel in Ireland’s engine, keeping the country going even when the road had run out. But today, she knew she wouldn’t be able for the charade. There was just too much other shit in her head and she was terrified she might blurt out something mad, like ‘My husband’s in hospital with a gunshot wound’ or ‘I’m just down to visit my dad whose sheltering a Rwandan, on the run from the cops and the drug gangs.” That would send a fire raging through the invisible gossip networks that were the only kind of wifi in this part of the world.
She’d got as far as the beach now and slowed her pace as she stepped off the tarmac onto the track that ran just above the drifts of pebbles. The grass had no give, it was hard under her feet. As a child, she’d preferred to wobble her way across the stones, deliciously thrilled by the prospect of falling or wrecking her shoes and getting yelled at when she got home. She’d be unlikely to see anyone down here now, or only tourists anyway. Locals didn’t really go in for walks along the coastal path, although maybe things had
changed, she warned herself. One of the problems with coming home was that her eyes never seemed to be able to go beyond the patina of the past. Half the time, she didn’t register what was really in front of her. She was like a defective computer that wouldn’t save the changes you made to a file. There was just the original – the view from her eyes as a child. The font size changed but the content never did.
The wind was getting stronger and there was the promise of rain on it. Pauline used to laugh at her whenever she’d said that she could feel the rain coming.
Pauline had been a life-saver these last days. She’d pretty much moved in with Deirdre, cooking for the kids, tidying, doing all the things that Deirdre couldn’t face doing any more.
“You’re stuck and ye need to get unstuck,” she’d said. “You don’t think things will ever be normal again, we never do. I certainly didn’t after Peter walked out. I thought the world would end cos my world had ended. We think we’re so important, don’t we?”
And she’d let out a smoky chuckle.
“But life goes on, Dee. What other way is there?”
Deirdre stared out at the seething sea. There was a cormorant standing on a rock, wings spread to dry. It looked like a feathery crucifix. What did her dad call them? Cailleach dubh. Black witch. She shivered and hurried along. Whatever Pauline might say, the rain was on its way. She checked her phone. No signal. It was hard to believe there were still places in Ireland where you could fall off the grid, but it made sense that her childhood home would be one of them.
For the first time in days, she really was alone, apart from the cows in the fields, staring at her over the swaying clef-heads of the ferns. For a wild moment, she wondered if she could take off over the walls, run away into the mountains, start again on her own with a simpler life. Then she thought of her kids, suddenly, with a rush of guilt. It had been years since she had forgotten them for even the windowpane of time it took to create a daydream.
She started walking again, pulling her thin denim jacket tighter around her. Cara would probably be trying to get in touch. She’d been spending a lot of time with Grace since she’d turned up at their door, an hour or so after Lisa left, white as a sheet with an older woman Deirdre had never seen before. The woman said she was Theo’s aunt and then corrected herself. “I mean, I’m the sister of his foster mother. Can we come in?”
They all sat down awkwardly around the small kitchen table. Deirdre hadn’t realised that Cara and Theo were an item. She’d never really gotten to know Cara – she couldn’t see what Theo saw in her but then what had she seen in Fergal? There was no knowing what really went on in other people’s heads or hearts. Apparently, Cara had texted Grace when Theo hadn’t come back in the morning and found out what had happened.
“I spoke to him a couple of hours ago. I think he was on a bus. He said he couldn’t talk much but he was on his way to your father,” she said, wide eyes raking Deirdre’s face for confirmation. She was too young for this. Deirdre told her she’d got a text too but nothing since.
“I’m half out of me mind because he was so upset about Neville, and now… Are the Gardaí after him? D’ye think they’ll be looking for him?” Cara said.
“I don’t think so, though to be honest, I don’t know for sure,” Deirdre said. “They don’t really care about working class lads kicking off against each other and I’m guessing they already know that’s what this was, in a way. You can see their point. I’m fairly certain Fergal won’t press charges. Not in his interest to have the Gardaí digging into things. And Pauline got rid of the gun, so it’s hard for the cops to follow up on that.”
She looked up at her friend, standing arms folded like a rebel guardian angel by the back door. Pauline hadn’t told her what she’d done with the weapon and Deirdre had no intention of asking. The police had searched the house while Deirdre was in the hospital but Pauline said they were like teenagers, looking without bending their knees.
Cara’s eyes didn’t leave Deirdre’s face, though Cath shifted awkwardly in her seat. She’s still getting used to it all, Deirdre thought, looking at the older woman. She’s still fixing these new lenses over her eyes, poor thing.
“I can’t get through to him now,” Cara said, pulling her own phone from her pocket and holding it out, as though she thought Deirdre would be able to press a button and dial her into whatever dimension Theo was in.
“There’s no mobile network where my dad is and that’s just how he likes it,” Deirdre said, trying to smile. Nobody else did.
They all fell silent. Grace came in. She hugged Cara and they disappeared upstairs.
Cath picked up her bag, stood to leave.
“Thanks, Deirdre. I’ve to go now. Can Cara stay with you for a while longer? She’s that upset I don’t want to send her home, still without knowing. And maybe your dad will call when Theo gets there?”
“I doubt I’ll hear from him tonight now,” Deirdre said. “But I’ll call him tomorrow. Sure, let Cara stay the night. It’ll be some comfort for Grace too.”
She walked Cath to the door, side-stepping the place where Fergal’s blood had leaked into the carpet. They hadn’t managed to scrub it all out so she’d put a rug over the brown stain but it was more than she could do yet to casually walk over it. She’d had to throw out a few cushions and a pair of curtains over the years when her own blood had been spilled. She couldn’t throw the carpet out though. Jesus, those CSI types would have a field day in her house with their ultraviolet, blood-detecting light. The place’d light up like a Christmas tree.
“Can you forgive Theo? For what he’s done?” Cath hesitantly said on the doorstep.
Deirdre stared at her. She’d forgotten that not everyone knew the full story. Time to come clean even if it was to a woman she’d only just met. The road would be long so better take the first step as soon as she could. If Fergal was to stay gone, to stay away, she had to be able to name what had happened to her, why she’d kicked him out.
“Fergal’s been beating me for years,” she said slowly. “I’m not sorry at all he got shot. Got what he deserved if you ask me. I’ve told him not to come back. So really, Theo did me a favour. I don’t think I’d have had the courage to leave Fergal on my own. I wanted to, I’d even decided to just before Theo arrived but I’m not sure I would’ve gone through with it. Even though I knew what he was, what he’d become, I couldn’t make the break. Ah, I won’t bother you with it all – it’s the same old story everywhere. Thinking he’d change, worrying about the kids. It’s stupid, I know. I’m like every woman ever. It’s always the same clichés. Trouble is it doesn’t make it any less real.”
Cath put a hand on her arm, left it there for just a second. It was so spontaneous and so discreet a gesture, Deirdre could feel herself beginning to unravel. She blinked hard.
Cath was halfway down the path but then turned and walked back to Deirdre. She looked like she was puzzling something out.
“You know, Theo’s a good lad, really. I know, he messed up getting into the drugs and all but with what he’s been through… well, it’s no surprise. I don’t know how much he told you but he’d to be so tough at such a young age and he saw terrible things, unimaginable things that’d have us on our knees. That have had me on my knees. He’s always just been trying to fit in. Same as we all did. But I think we put too much on him. We thought fitting in was just a thing that you did and then it was done. It’s never done, is it? And then he’s never really known what happened to his family and I don’t know why we didn’t cop that that would be a problem. We should’ve been on that, looking for answers too. But the whole thing was so awful, so incomprehensible. It was too hard to look at the individual stories. Even Theo’s, even after we knew him. It’s difficult enough to process the numbers, to accept the scale, without having to recognise each individual’s nightmare. You get so bogged down in asking, ‘How could anyone do this?’ and ‘What makes people kill their own neighbours, butcher kids they grew up with?’ that you forget
to ask ‘What happened you, what happened to your family?’ I don’t blame my sister or Jim but I should’ve known better. I thought I was great – giving Theo a second chance by getting him out. But he never asked for a second chance, and I, of course, just assumed life here would be better and that would be enough.”
Deirdre stayed quiet. She wasn’t really sure what Cath was talking about but it was clearly important to her.
“I think Theo does a great job living in the middle space,” Cath said. “I suppose we all do it to one degree or another, don’t we? Even if it’s just that little area where what we thought would happen and what happens overlap. Isn’t that where most of us are?”
She smiled, gave Deirdre’s arm a final squeeze, and headed off.
The sea path had taken Deirdre all the way to her father’s house, finally running parallel with the road. She knew a place where the stones were low and she could hop over easily. It was still the same. She climbed over, landing hard so that the gold dust from foxgloves growing on the verge scattered into the air and onto her shoes.
As she crossed the road, she saw Theo sitting on the front wall. He’d his earphones in and his eyes closed. She stopped, unsure, suddenly shy. What was she trying to do here? But there was no going back now though.
She was nearly upon him when he opened his eyes. For a second he looked scared but then he pulled the earphones out and jumped up to give her a hug.
“Deirdre, you’re a sight for sore eyes. I was that sure I’d never see you again,” he said, his voice too high and too full.
“Why? I told my dad to tell you Fergal’s okay.”
Rain Falls on Everyone Page 26
