The Therapy House

by Julie Parsons

  ‘Like, for example? Jealousy? Resentment? Ambition? Greed? All round nastiness?’

  ‘Yeah, you could say, things like that,’ she looked away. ‘Anyway, the commune bit of it fell apart, but the therapy bit grew from strength to strength.’

  ‘So he never settled down, got married or anything like that?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘I think it was what happened to him in the war. He was very damaged. I think he always thought that he was about to die.’

  ‘The guy who sold me the house, his name was Bradish.’ McLoughlin shifted. His back was acting up.

  ‘That was Jack. Ben had four children, all with different mothers. He left Jack the house. Jack hung onto it for as long as he could, but eventually decided to sell. We thought we could raise the money ourselves to buy the place, but in the end we went our separate ways. It’s sad really. Ben was a great teacher and leader. I learnt a lot from him. He was a wonderful man. I miss him still.’

  They sat in silence. McLoughlin looked around the garden. He could see that it once had form and structure. At the far end, in the old greenhouse, a luscious climber clung to life, twining itself through and around some kind of trellis.

  ‘What’s that?’ He pointed.

  ‘Oh, that,’ she got up and began to walk through the long grass. She pushed the door open. ‘Look, grapes.’ He followed. There, nestled among the large leaves were bunches of small green fruit.

  ‘Are they?’ He reached up to pick some.

  ‘Don’t,’ she batted his hand away. ‘Leave them. They’re not ripe yet. Ben planted the vine. He was very proud of his grapes. He tried to make wine once but it didn’t work. But we’d have grapes, often, lovely, lovely grapes.’

  Again that feeling of jealousy, of her intimacy with others. They stood side by side in the ruined greenhouse. It was warm, even with half the panes of glass missing. He’d restore it. He’d keep the vine. And maybe sometime he and she would sit in the garden and eat the grapes together.

  A shout then, someone calling out.

  ‘Mick, hey Mick, you there?’ Ian stood on the top step.

  Elizabeth pushed past him. ‘Better go. Work to do.’ She walked quickly away, towards the house.

  ‘Mick, hey, come on, someone to see you,’ Ian’s voice was insistent.

  ‘OK, OK,’ McLoughlin followed her. He waited until she had disappeared from sight. Then he looked up. A man was standing beside Ian at the back door. Soberly dressed in a dark suit. Calling out to him in a voice he recognised from the judge’s funeral.

  ‘Michael McLoughlin, hallo.’

  They stood in the judge’s upstairs sitting room. Liam Hegarty had unlatched the shutters and pushed them back. Sunlight flooded in. McLoughlin looked around. His gaze moved from the dark stain on the pale green carpet to the sofa and three armchairs, pushed awkwardly against the wall, the grand piano in the bay by the window, to the mahogany cabinet, its doors smeared with black powder and finally to the portrait above the fireplace, the glass also smeared and dirty.

  McLoughlin walked slowly towards it. The man in the picture fixed him with his steady gaze. His eyes were very blue. His hair beneath the peaked cap was dark brown with a slight wave. His expression was stern but there was a hint of a smile on his full mouth. His uniform was smart, his leather belt shiny.

  Hegarty stood beside him. ‘It’s good isn’t it?’

  McLoughlin nodded. ‘Very nice.’ He took a few steps back. ‘It’s a Keating?’

  ‘Yes. I remember Seán Keating coming to the house once. The picture had been damaged. See, there.’ He pointed to a small blemish below the chin. ‘My mother was moving it and it fell. The glass broke and a piece sliced into the canvas. So Keating came and took it away, patched it up, brought it back. You wouldn’t notice really,’ he paused, ‘of course it could have an impact on its value, but John would never have sold it and whoever in the family gets it now, I doubt if it’ll be going under the hammer.’

  ‘Worth a few bob though,’ McLoughlin regretted the words as soon as he said them. Not the time or place. But Hegarty didn’t seem bothered. He shrugged, stepped back a couple of paces and folded his arms, his head to one side.

  ‘Well,’ he paused and McLoughlin remembered, of course, Hegarty’s view of the painting wouldn’t be just personal. He probably had a few Keatings in his own collection. ‘Hard to know whether the value would be based purely on its status as a painting. It also has, what you could call, its iconic status. It’s been used so many times. Posters, book covers, there was talk of it being on one of the new euro notes. It’s been on stamps, and every time Easter comes round, well. And, of course, with all these centenaries, 1913, 1916, 1920s, and onwards. I’d say it’ll get quite an outing.’

  Hegarty moved closer again. He reached up, one long thin finger, gently pushing the gilt frame a fraction to the left. ‘There, that’s better.’ He turned and looked around. ‘What a mess. I’ll have to get Mrs Maguire in. She’ll sort the place out.’ He gestured to the chairs. ‘Why don’t we sit down?’

  McLoughlin shrugged. ‘Sure, if you’re comfortable here. If you don’t mind.’ He waved towards the mark on the floor.

  ‘No, it’s OK.’ Hegarty moved to the sofa and took his place. McLoughlin sat on one of the armchairs. It was large and soft and his back instantly began to complain. He fumbled for a cushion and pushed it into the space behind him. He smiled apologetically. ‘The back, you know? I was a bit too free and easy with a shovel this morning and it’s punishing me now.’

  Liam Hegarty smiled. ‘Backs, we all have backs these days. Everyone has their favourite cure, their miracle worker. Physiotherapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, massage, ach.’ He threw his hands up in the air. ‘John, now, John had an operation a few years ago. Some kind of disc fusion, something like that. It was a great success. I think he was half in love with the surgeon. A very smart young woman. It was she who suggested he got the dog. Said the exercise would be good.’

  ‘You’ve come for him, I take it.’ McLoughlin felt a sudden pang of something.

  ‘The dog? No,’ Liam looked away, ‘no, that’s not why I’m here. As I said, I wanted to ask you something. I wanted your opinion.’

  There was silence for a moment. Liam Hegarty took off his glasses. He pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket. He polished them, holding them up to the light to check for smudges, then replaced them on the bridge of his nose. He blinked a couple of times. Then cleared his throat.

  ‘I remember you from when we had that terrible robbery. I liked you, the way you treated us, the way you treated the whole thing. I liked your manner. You were efficient. You were thorough. You were also very kind to my daughter.’

  McLoughlin remembered. She was fifteen when it happened. The raiders had climbed in through her bedroom window. She woke to see a man in a mask beside her. He’d grabbed her, put his hand over her mouth, walked her into her parents’ room. She said she could smell smoke from his hand. And the tang of cheese and onion crisps, and something else, she wasn’t sure what. The men had tied them all up, her and her two younger sisters. Tied up her mother. Beaten Liam until he had given them the combination to the safe. They had loaded the best of the paintings into their van, taken passports, lots of jewellery, and taken the oldest daughter with them. Insurance policy, one of them said. They released her six hours later. Dumped her on the side of the road, fifty miles away, in her pyjamas, the middle of winter.

  ‘She spoke to you about it. She wouldn’t speak to me or her mother. She never told us what they did. But we knew they did something bad.’ He looked away. ‘You didn’t catch them. They were pros.’

  ‘No, we never caught them. At the time we assumed there was a paramilitary element. But maybe not, maybe they were just gangland. They were very organised.’ He remembered the daughter well. Her name was Sorcha. He’d see
n her death notice in the paper years after and wondered what had happened. Wondered if it might have been suicide. But it was a heart attack, apparently.

  ‘I got some of the paintings back. There was a Jack Yeats, a little beauty. It surfaced in London and a couple of Louis le Brocquys. They knew which ones to pick. But I didn’t care about the paintings. You can replace them. But Sorcha,’ his voice tailed off.

  ‘She died,’ McLoughlin leaned forward.

  ‘Yes, I don’t know, afterwards,’ Hegarty paused, ‘she seemed OK. We sort of got back to normal. But she got sick. We didn’t understand what was going on. She lost a lot of weight. We thought it was just a diet, a teenage thing. But it was more than that. She pretty much starved herself to death. Eventually her heart gave out.’ He sighed, his shoulders sagged. ‘We did everything we could to save her, but somehow we couldn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I remember her well. She was very brave.’ There was one man in the back of the van with her. He didn’t take off his mask. He held her down, the hand over her mouth as he raped her, more than once. She described his body. He had an appendix scar. He had a scattering of moles across his stomach. And he smelt of smoke and cheese and onion crisps, and that other smell. She couldn’t put her finger on it. A sort of menthol, she thought, peppermint maybe.

  ‘Anyway,’ Hegarty straightened up. ‘That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because of John’s death.’

  McLoughlin looked at him. Hegarty was staring at the floor. Then he stood and walked over to the dark stain.

  ‘We’ll never get this out. The carpet’s ruined. I never liked the colour. I thought John should have got the boards sanded and got a nice rug. Something Persian or Turkish, like the ones in the hall and on the stairs.’ He rubbed the carpet with the toe of his shoe. ‘But he said no, the floor wasn’t in good condition. Better to cover it up.’ He moved to the mahogany cabinet. ‘The guards insisted on taking all my grandfather’s things. For forensic examination they said. You’d know all about that.’ His hands were smeared with the black fingerprint powder. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped himself clean. ‘The gun, you know about the gun?’ He turned back towards McLoughlin.

  McLoughlin nodded.

  ‘And you know, of course, about the other injuries. You saw them. The violence done to his head, his face?’

  McLoughlin nodded again.

  ‘And you know that whoever killed him was here in the house for some time. Both before and, we understand, afterwards.’

  ‘Yes, of course I know and I also know, much to my shame and sorrow, that he was in the house when I was here. I keep on trying to figure out how,’ he slapped his knee in emphasis, ‘how it was that I didn’t hear him going down the stairs and out the back door. But I suppose, my attention was focused…’ and he pointed towards the blood stain.

  Hegarty didn’t respond immediately. He pushed the glass doors and they closed. He walked around the room, stopping to look out the windows for a moment, then moved to the piano. He bent down and touched the keys, then lifted his hands. Again his fingers were darkened with the fingerprint powder. Again the handkerchief came out of his pocket.

  ‘He was a fantastic pianist, you know. He could have been a professional. His teachers in the Academy wanted him to take it up full time.’ He touched the keys again. The sounds rang out. Scales, up and down, up and down. ‘But our father was against it. And what the Da wanted, the Da got. He wanted John to be a barrister. He wanted John to be a judge. And John loved his father and wanted to please him.’ Hegarty closed the piano lid with a bang. He walked back to the sofa and sat down.

  ‘This isn’t easy to say. I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing telling you. But I’ve talked it over with my wife. Do you remember her?’

  McLoughlin nodded. Her name was Sally-Anne. She was small and blonde and had been very pretty. A rosebud mouth and round blue eyes. But tough. She’d tried to stand up to the raiders that night. One of them had punched her in the face.

  ‘Sally-Anne said I should talk to you. She said you’d know what to do.’

  ‘Sally-Anne, of course. I didn’t see her at the funeral.’

  Liam Hegarty shook his head. He looked at his hands. ‘Sorcha’s death hit her very hard. She doesn’t go out really, these days. She said she’d be more use helping with the reception afterwards. She likes doing things like that.’ He sighed again, and took off his glasses. Again he polished them with his handkerchief and replaced them on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘There’s no easy way to say this. John was homosexual. I always knew it. Our mother knew it too. Da probably had some idea but of course we never spoke of it.’ His words came out in a rush. ‘John went to college. Did brilliantly. Went to the bar, did brilliantly. Got married to Miriam, lovely girl, good wife, great mother. They had the four children. John was mad about them. He was a fantastic father, gave them everything. But, there was this thing. It was part of him. It wouldn’t be denied.’ He stopped. Silence. A dog barking outside. McLoughlin recognised Ferdie’s plaintive tone.

  ‘So,’ McLoughlin spoke slowly, ‘so, are you saying that you think your brother’s death might have had something to do with his sexuality, is that what you think?’

  Hegarty looked at him. He shrugged. He looked away. ‘I just don’t know. But it was John’s one secret. Everything else about his life was public. He was well known. He was liked, respected. He was part of the establishment.’ He pointed to the portrait. ‘Our father was a national hero. One of the greats. For years to come Dan Hegarty will be revered. The stuff of legend. There are songs, ballads about him. That’s a heavy burden to carry.’ He crossed and uncrossed his legs. He shifted on the soft cushions. ‘There’s something else and it’s part of why we thought I should speak to you.’

  McLoughlin staightened. He wanted to get up and stretch, unlock the kink in his lower back. A bit of yoga would help. A few dog poses.

  ‘You remember the robbery?’

  ‘Of course. I remember it well.’

  ‘They took the paintings and they took everything from the safe.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’ The safe was buried in the floor in a large walk-in wardrobe. Underneath a rack of shoes. Imelda Marcos jokes were made. Poor taste at the best of times, but Sally-Anne Hegarty obviously loved her Manolos, her Jimmy Choos.

  ‘I told you about the jewellery and our passports. I didn’t tell you about the cash. Close to seventy thousand pounds. Money from sales of paintings. Undeclared.’

  ‘Seventy thousand pounds. What would that be now? A hundred thousand euros? Probably more?’ McLoughlin could see the embarrasment on Hegarty’s face. ‘Ah, no, you didn’t tell us that.’

  ‘But it wasn’t just the money. There was an envelope. Photographs. Pictures of John taken in a club in London, years ago, the sixties. He’d been blackmailed. He told me about it. I dealt with it. My older brother, my hero, better than me at everything. School, college, sport, you name it. The one thing I could do. I could fix things. I had access to cash and I paid up. I got the photos back, negatives too.’ Hegarty’s eyes were fixed on his shoes.

  ‘Who had them?’

  Hegarty looked up. ‘A little thug, an Irish guy would you believe. A roofer by trade, but a handy little sideline in extortion. He’d a mate who worked in the club. Opportunists really. So,’ Hegarty fiddled with the tissue, ‘I brought in my own muscle. Got the photos back. I kept them in the safe.’ He put his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. ‘Why I didn’t get rid of them immediately, I don’t know. I just shoved them in there. Sally-Anne told me to burn them. I was going to. And then.’ He looked up. His eyes behind his glasses were red rimmed.

  McLoughlin stood. The pain in his back was intense. He walked to the window and looked out. Ferdie was running around on the green. A small boy was holding up a ball. Ferdie waited, ears pricked. The boy threw it and Ferd
ie ran. McLoughlin turned and stood with his back pressed against the wall.

  ‘Did anyone ever use the photos?’

  ‘No, never. For a while I expected something to happen, but time passed. I tried not to think about. I tried not to think about it so hard that somehow it was as if it had never happened.’

  ‘And your brother, did you tell him?’ McLoughlin shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘Eventually. It took me a while.’ Hegarty got up. ‘I put it off for a long time. I felt so bad that I’d messed up, but eventually I had to tell him.’

  ‘And, how did he take it?’

  Hegarty shrugged. ‘With his characteristic cool. One of these days, he said, someone will knock at the door. And we’ll handle it, the way we handle everything.’ He walked towards the stain on the carpet. He looked down.

  ‘And did that ever happen?’

  Hegarty shrugged again. ‘Not as far as I know, but, John’s face, the guards told me what was done. It was destroyed. They advised me not to look at him. Our doctor identified his body,’ Hegarty paused, ‘It wasn’t an ordinary killing. There was something else going on.’

  McLoughlin took a deep breath. ‘I take it you haven’t told the Guards about this.’

  Hegarty shook his head. ‘I know you’re going to tell me I should, but I just can’t. Not yet. I might be wrong. It might be someone with an axe to grind, a grudge. I know that’s what the Guards think. And maybe they’re right.’ He walked towards McLoughlin. He held out his hand. He put it on McLoughlin’s shoulder. ‘We need help. I know you helped Sorcha. I know she talked to you. I often wanted to get in touch with you when she was so sick. But the doctors took over. She spent months in hospital. They’d feed her up, back to normal weight, but as soon as she came home she’d stop eating. I always thought it was the shame that killed her. She just wanted to disappear.’