Theo’s eyes widened.
“He didn’t die? I thought I’d killed him. There was so much blood, I thought there was no way he could make it.”
“No, he’s still in hospital but he’s going to be alright. His liver was damaged but they operated. He’s going back to his mother’s when they let him out.”
Theo listened, all the while shaking his head.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said when she finished but she couldn’t place the tone: it was somewhere between relief and regret, maybe.
Deirdre caught a movement at the front window – a figure pinned between the light from the kitchen out back and the window in front, just the shape of a man gliding around the edges of his life. She turned and sat on the wall beside Theo. Her dad would come out to her when he was good and ready.
“Cara asked me to come, Theo. She wanted me to tell you that it’s alright, that you can come back. The Gardaí aren’t interested, Fergal’s not pressing charges and she’s desperate to see you. Cath is worried too. Come back, Theo. Sure, there’s nothing for you here.”
“I dunno, Deirdre. There’s still Gerrity and his lot. What if they come after me or after Cara? I’ll never be free of it all.”
Deirdre didn’t have an answer to that and so they fell silent, listening to the waves smash on the sand and the shrieking of the gulls. It was getting dark now, the last of the light gathering on the rim of the sky. The sun flared suddenly, as if to tease them with a late reminder of what could’ve been if only it could have been arsed earlier to push through the clouds. She’d been wrong about the rain.
“And I’m not sure it’s true there’s nothing for me here, Deirdre. This place has worked some kind of magic on me,” Theo said. “And your dad, he’s been good for me. He doesn’t give a shit but maybe that’s what I need right now. And you can tell, he’s a hard man, with all the baggage that brings. It’s like I’m being forced to think about what happened here. Really think about it. And I’m remembering things. And part of that is because of your dad. He took me to a lake out on the bogs and something happened. Something good, really good. I always thought my father killed Shema, our worker, but I was wrong. At the lake, it all came back. Or maybe I’d never really forgotten it. It’s just I’d only been able to see part of the picture. That’s why I thought my father had killed someone.”
He fell silent, blinking hard.
“And now, because I know that my father didn’t, it’s like someone’s given me back my right to be happy, to travel my own road. I’m not cursed after all. It sounds daft, I know, but I thought I had to somehow pay for what he did, that his sin was mine and that was just the way it had to be. But if he didn’t kill anyone and only tried to save us, then it doesn’t have to be like that. I can just be, or try to be, the person I am now in this place. Maybe even in any place?”
He paused, and the wonder of that idea made him smile.
It was a lot to take in and he’d been babbling like a child so that Deirdre felt like her head was only just catching up with her ears. But there was no denying Theo looked happier than she’d ever seen him. Maybe there were other beds for them after all.
“We all have the right to be who we are, Theo,” she said. “I think I’m just realising that myself. Maybe the things we think are holding us back are just in our heads.”
“Maybe,” he said. Then he frowned.
“But there’s one thing still missing, even after everything I remembered down here. I don’t know what happened to my brother, Clément. I saw the others, I’ve remembered what happened to them, but he’s not in the picture. I mean, he is, he has to be, but maybe I didn’t even see that bit at the time. Maybe I can’t bring back the memory because it’s just not there. Maybe whatever happened to him happened in the dark, beyond the places I could see. But someone must’ve seen something, someone must know something. He was real, he was there, and I want to know what happened. It’s like my brain’s been lying to me all this time and now it’s lying again, cutting him out. So, I’ll not come back yet, Deirdre. And not just because of Gerrity. I might even head up to Donegal, spend a few days with Jim and Sheila. But tell me, how’s Cara now? And Cath? And Grace? How’s Grace coping?”
Deirdre filled him in but she didn’t mention Neville’s letter. He’d need to read that himself, if Grace would let him. That comfort, if comfort it was, was not hers to give. Then she felt rather than heard her father at the door behind them.
“You’ve arrived then?”
She turned. It’d been a while since she’d seen him and he was more stooped than she remembered. He used to fill that door, but now the light from the bulb in the hall spread all around him so that he looked frail and otherworldly. She couldn’t see his face in the gloom. She squeezed Theo’s hand.
“I’m going to have a word with Dad.”
“No worries,” he said. “I’ll probably take a little walk down the beach myself.”
He planted his hands on the wall and lifted himself off, a jaunty move that belonged to a younger boy on a different wall. He smiled.
“I’ll not be long.”
Inside, he was stoking the fire in the range, sending a fine coat of ash into the air around him. She saw the birthday card she’d sent him two months ago on the windowsill. No sign of a card from Cian. The kitchen looked neglected, like her dad. The last rays of the sun spotlighted the thin film of dust on the windowsill and on the counters. The lino hadn’t been brushed, never mind polished, in yonks and there were dirty plates and cups all over the table. She put down the rucksack, shrugged off her jacket, and started piling the dishes together, taking them out to the sink in the back kitchen. He gave her a look but said nothing.
“How are you, Dad?”
He grunted.
“Not too bad, considering the mess ye dropped me into.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Like I told you, I panicked, and you were the only one I could think of who could handle this. I thought Fergal was going to die, you see. I thought Theo would need to hide.”
“Hiding’s not always the answer.”
Deirdre started running water into the sink. No washing-up liquid, of course.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked. “And why didn’t you tell him that Fergal was okay, after I told you? And what the hell is this business of a lost lake or something?”
Séamus harrumphed. He was sitting in the armchair by the fire, chewing his lip, head lowered but eyes watching her every move.
“There’s fresh tea there in the pot. Pour us both a cup, won’t ye?” he said.
Deirdre sighed. When her dad didn’t want to talk, there was no moving him. Sure, let him stew. She was in no rush now. She went to the cupboard for the cups and every movement – her steps across the room, the way she reached to the bottom of the cupboard to open the door because the handle had fallen off years ago, the taking of the tea towel off the rail on the range to hold the handle of the stainless steel teapot – was a recollected one, of the now and from the then, smoothly switching her onto well-worn tracks.
When he’d had his tea, and after he’d switched on the news, and after he’d watched silently for a few minutes, her father decided he could speak. He muted the box.
“I didn’t tell him straight away because sometimes ye have to confront the worst of what ye are. Sometimes, ye need to look right down into the black and see your reflection. It’s the only way to know who ye are and who ye are going to be.”
Deirdre said nothing. She was that afraid he’d stop. For a moment, they sat, looking straight at each other, the steam off the tea rising around them, the flickering of the telly and the dying rays of the sun sending dust motes swirling around their heads. Part of me has always been here in this kitchen, Deirdre thought, surprised.
“That lad is lost, ye can see it in his eyes. I’ve met plenty like him. None of them black, mind you, but lads who felt left out of the world, lads who weren’t sure where they belonged, what their place was. I watched
some of those lads pick up guns, or make bombs, or just throw stones. Of course, they believed in the cause. We all did.
“But now, the way things are, everything settled today, peace mostly, ye wonder what was really driving us all those years. What drives anyone to step off the road and into the grass? It’s not always just about the cause. It’s personal too. Ye get caught up in something that takes ye over because, maybe, sometimes there’s not enough of anything else to tie ye down. So off ye float. Wasn’t necessarily the case for me, but there was an element of that, not knowing how to be. Not knowing how to be a good father, a good husband, especially after yer mam was gone. It was easier to adopt some higher calling than just to be stuck with what I was, found wanting, useless.”
Her father sighed.
“I took Theo to Loch an Cháillte because it’s helped me deal with the stuff I’ve done. I know the legend’s just blather but it’s been some comfort to me and that’s not to be sneered at these days. I’ll take ye out there tomorrow, if ye want.”
Deirdre nodded.
“I’ve a thing or two to tell ye there too,” he said, shuffling towards the door. “Then, we’ll see.”
As he passed her, his hand hovered just above her hair, so that the movement of the air became a caress that he could not bring himself to give. Deirdre froze but he didn’t stop.
“Goodnight, Sarah,” he called from the hall, and she knew it wasn’t a mistake.
You’re still here too, she thought. Of course, you are.
Deirdre sat a while longer in the darkening kitchen. She felt restless, almost excited. Somewhere in the back of her mind, tiny, translucent ideas were coming to life, thin stalks stretching and fleshy leaves unfurling. She looked out the window and saw Theo on the beach. He was flinging pebbles into the waves and there was a looseness and joy to his throws that reminded her of Kevin. Tiny buds pushed through the leaves, opening like a symphony. What if she came back? What if there was a new life here? What if she decided, on her own, to rebuild her dreams here, in her father’s house? It was such a delicate thought, so fragile, that she barely dared breathe as she looked on it. Too early to pick these flowers but they were there now and they would grow and tomorrow she would check them again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was the smell that got him first. As soon as the plane doors opened, it crept in, seeping into pores, sliding down noses and throats. It conjured up sticky heat, thick soil filled with sprouting seeds, rain-soaked earth and saturated, hot air. Theo closed his eyes as the people around him jostled to be the first to get out. Phones beeped, voices rang too high after hours of silence, joints creaked. He breathed deeply, and the smell switched on lights in his brain, bringing the sweet taste of plantain to his tongue and tingling his skin with the remembered caress of hot rain. It awoke other darker memories too but these he refused, picking and choosing like a child in a sweet shop. A tall man in a smart cream jacket toppled towards him, his hand shooting out at the last minute to stop his fall.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“That’s okay,” Theo replied.
It was a few seconds before he realised that he’d spoken in Kinyarwanda. He listened. Most of the voices around him were speaking in Kinyarwanda. He’d been understanding everything but he hadn’t registered what he was listening to.
It’d been five weeks since the shooting, since he’d fled Dublin on a bike, ended up by a lake with an old man, and finally unlocked that room in his head. He’d stayed with Séamus for a few more days after Deirdre arrived, then headed to Donegal, where Jim and Sheila were waiting, as they would always be waiting for him. He wasn’t sure what Cath had told them; Jim’s eyes were misty when he picked him up at the bus stop and Sheila held him a little longer than usual on the doorstep but they didn’t say anything about what had happened. That evening, while they were sitting outside watching the sun dip behind the mountains around the lake, Cara called. Jim brought the phone outside and handed it to Theo.
“Theo, they’ve arrested Gerrity.”
Theo walked into the garden, where inky shadows were smudging the day’s sharp edges.
“For Neville?” he asked.
“No, no, not for Neville. Not even for drugs, would ye believe. Or not directly. It’s to do with some lad’s disappearance last year. Deirdre said his name was Billy Mannion, from Blanchardstown? Maybe ye didn’t know about it? Michael told Pauline there’s some CCTV footage of him getting into a car with Gerrity the night he disappeared. Apparently, someone came forward with it last week, and that led to more cameras, and then they found his bones, scattered around a field in Wicklow. Seems Billy’s family’s been working this whole time to find out what happened. Michael thinks Gerrity’s going down hard for this. He’s getting out too, heading over to England on the ferry, so Deirdre says.”
Theo was silent.
“D’ye hear me, Theo? You can come back now, he’s been arrested. He’s not going to be worrying about you. He’s got bigger problems. Please, come back. I miss you. Cath misses you. Ye can’t keep running just for the sake of running. I’m here, I need you.”
Theo turned back to the house. Jim and Sheila were talking in low voices, trying not to listen. They just wanted him to be okay. That’s all anyone wanted for him, all he wanted for himself. Maybe it was time to stop trying to outrun the shit in his head.
“Listen, I’ll even let ye play your poetry podcasts to me,” Cara said. He let himself laugh and it felt like a new beginning. So he’d gone back to Dublin and he and Cara had walked again to the cemetery in Howth and laid yellow carnations on the graves of both of Theo’s heroes: Phil and Neville.
Now, he was here.
Cath had said a guy called Martin Sebiroro would meet him at arrivals. He worked in the genocide archive and Theo would stay with him for a night and then they’d travel together to Kibungo. Cath had arranged everything. She said Martin had said he would try to dig out whatever information there was before Theo came, but he couldn’t guarantee anything.
“What have you got to lose?” she’d said, Cara nodding beside her.
How could he explain that he didn’t know and that this unknowing terrified him? What if he didn’t recognise his home or the place where his father had died? It had taken so much time and effort, his whole life, to pull the pieces together; he didn’t want to shatter the reflection now by chucking sticks in the pond. But then there was Clément. He was still there, earnest and silent in Theo’s head, demanding a reckoning.
Kigali airport was all sharp angles and gleaming floors. Theo couldn’t remember what it had been like when he left but he’d definitely come through here then. He remembered being on the plane and Cath bending over him to do up the seatbelt. An absurd gesture after all he’d been through in the previous months. He should’ve had a seatbelt for life. When the plane started down the runway, his whole chest swelled with terror so that he could hardly breathe. He was so scared, they were going too fast, they were going to die. Then there was the moment, between the tarmac and the sky, when it felt like everything had stopped, even time, and he thought he was already dead. Which made sense because he thought the air hostesses had to be angels; they were so clean and perfect.
Martin was holding a sign with Theo’s name written in red capital letters. He’d written the full name: Théoneste Mukansonera. Those twenty letters sang so loudly he felt his face becoming hot. It was like seeing his name in a book or in the newspaper or hearing it in court. It was startling. Like I’ve stepped outside myself and I’m looking in, he thought.
He greeted Martin in English. The tourist he felt he was.
“Welcome,” Martin replied. “Welcome home.”
They stood for a minute. Martin, a thin lad in a neat, short-sleeved checked shirt and black slacks, looked steadily at Theo, his smile stretching across his lean face, his head bobbing. Theo didn’t know what to say. He shifted his sports bag from one hand to the other, breaking the spell.
“Let me take that,” M
artin said. “My car is outside. Follow me.”
It was already dark but the air was warm and heavy with the heady scent of the flowers growing around the terminal and the bitter tang of airline fuel. Theo shrugged off his jacket, pulled a water bottle from his rucksack and drank deeply.
“I think you do not recognise this place?” Martin said as he pulled open the boot of the car. “Of course, this airport was only renovated in the last years, so it has changed very much.”
“I left when I was seven,” Theo said as he got into the car. “I don’t remember much of anything. I don’t think I’d ever even been to Kigali, except for when I left.”
Martin nodded.
“Your accent? It is what? You do not sound like…”
“Like you? Nah, I don’t, do I? My accent is Irish, well, Dublin really,” Theo said, reaching for the seatbelt.
“I didn’t know they spoke different in Ireland to how they speak in England,” Martin said. “Of course, I have never been to either place so how should I know?”
He drove silently until they were through the barriers and onto the main road, heading into the city.
“It will take only about twenty minutes to get to my house. It’s a pity you cannot see now, but tomorrow when we will go to Kibungo, you will see how pretty Kigali has become.”
Theo nodded. “So Cath said you might’ve been able to find out something about my brother, Clément? Did you have any luck?”
Martin didn’t take his eyes from the road, even though there was barely any traffic.
“You have just had a long journey. You must be tired. You have waited many years. What is one more night?” Now he finally turned, and Theo saw that his smile was still wide but thin. Still, he was right: Theo was exhausted and the truth could wait one more night.
Kigali was pretty, Theo thought as they drove back through the city just after dawn. Pretty was the perfect word for the bright colours, the tree-fringed streets, the conspicuous order. Even the motorbike taxis seemed to obey the rules better than the average taxi driver in Dublin. Everywhere Theo looked he saw reflections of himself and realising this, he couldn’t imagine how he had ever coped in a place where his image was so absent. I’m invisible here, he marvelled, as they sat at a busy crossroads, watching a man with mattresses piled high on his head weave through the motorbikes and cars. I’m just a lad in a car. I don’t mean anything else. It was exhilarating.
Rain Falls on Everyone Page 27
