He stacked his dirty plates in the dishwasher and put on the kettle, cleaning and tidying while he waited for it to boil. He put three large spoons of coffee into a heavy jug, poured the water onto it, then stirred briskly. While he waited for the grounds to settle, he got out the mop and bucket and washed the grey lino. Then he sat down again, pouring coffee into a mug, and brandy into a glass. He picked up the file and began to read.
Simple story, really. Or so it seemed. The girl had gone out with some friends on the Saturday night. They’d been drinking in the Globe in George’s Street. She’d left just before eleven. Said she had to get the DART home because her mother was by herself with her grandmother who was ill. The guards in Dun Laoghaire had spoken to the friends. Three girls and a boy. All aged between eighteen and twenty. She’d met them at a dance class in Digges Lane. They said they liked her, she was fun, but she wasn’t involved with any of them. Not really. After the reports on the news and in the papers last week, a TV shop at the bottom of George’s Street had given the guards a video. They’d a camera mounted in their window, and a playback facility to a large monitor. And they’d a tape running. They’d checked it. And there was the girl. She’d stopped to look at herself. The tape was time-coded. It was exactly 23.01. She could have been going that way to Pearse or Tara DART station, but the more usual route would have been along Wicklow Street. Still, it was something. He hadn’t seen it yet. Finney could dig it out tomorrow, and check any of the other CCTV cameras in the George’s Street area.
He turned over the pages. There was something here about the mother. Margaret Mitchell, doctor. Aged forty-four. Widow. Had lived in New Zealand since 1975. Nothing he didn’t already know. And a log of her calls to the station. Persistent. He could imagine. A lousy job, trying to fend off a frantic mother.
He looked up suddenly. There was a bang, glass and metal rattling together. A woman’s voice, sharp and accusatory, chimed with the insistent whining of a Siamese cat. Cat and woman arrived in the kitchen together, legs and feet entwined.
‘You didn’t feed him.’
‘I didn’t know he wanted to be fed.’
‘Well, if just occasionally you thought about his needs, about anyone else’s needs.’ Her voice slithered and slurred. She smelt of the pub. Cigarette smoke and the sweetness of lager. She pulled out drawers and slammed cupboard doors, finally finding a tin of cat food and an opener. She piled a plate high and slopped it onto the floor, cubes of brown meat and orange jelly spilling everywhere.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘I’ve just washed that.’
‘Makes a change.’ She squatted beside the purring cat, her movements awkward, uncoordinated. She stroked his cream body. The cat arched beneath her touch.
‘Nice pussy, good pussy, sweet pussy, Mummy’s baby,’ she chanted into his pointed brown ear. She looked up at McLoughlin accusingly. ‘You didn’t tell me you were involved in that case.’
‘Which case?’
She stood up and helped herself to brandy, slopping the liquid carelessly into a tumbler. ‘Which case,’ she mimicked. ‘I saw you on the nine o’clock news. In the pub. Everyone was talking about it.’
‘You were out when I got the call. Hillwalking, wasn’t it?’
‘You should have come with me. Then they’d have had to find some other star to lead their investigation.’
He sat back and looked at her. When had it all happened? That they had stopped loving each other. No magic turning point. No single incident. Just the slow, sad accretion of contempt and dislike leading to revulsion and despair.
She finished her drink and stood up. ‘I’m going to bed. Are you coming?’
‘In a while.’
There was a photograph on the mantelpiece in the sitting room. He’d bought the silver frame for it for their first anniversary. It had been taken the summer before. Janey on the pier in Dun Laoghaire. She was wearing a long loose dress covered in small pink and white flowers. Her hair, iron grey now, stood up around her face in blonde curls. Her blue eyes were crinkled up against the sun and her cheeks were flushed with happiness. They had gone that day on his motor scooter to the pier and then to Killiney for a picnic. They had found a spot on the hill with nothing between them and the sea but the gorse and the bracken, and they had made love. It had been his first time to go all the way, but not hers. He felt then that he had never touched anything as wonderful as her full breasts. He lay with his head between them, and when he was ready she pulled him into her. He came, he remembered, almost immediately. But she had smiled and kissed him and told him she loved him. He got up now and walked down the passage to the bedroom. He opened the door. The sound of gentle snores drifted towards him. He closed the door, quietly.
When next he looked up from the file it was very late. He poured himself another brandy and opened the french windows that led out onto the tiled patio. The city was laid out below, glittering, shining. The streets and roads ploughed deep furrows of light through the dark. Roundabouts glowed like magic symbols. Further away to the east, the twin chimneys of the Pigeon House pointed their totem signs into the sky. He moved his gaze westward, upriver. Down there, moored, safe from harm, lay the real love of his life. A thirty-two-foot gaff-rigged ketch. Sea Horse, her name written in flowing script along her port bow. Norwegian pine and oak. Bought for a song as a wreck ten years ago. Lovingly restored, rotting plank by rotting plank. He thought of her now. Rocking gently on her chain, keeping time with the undulations of the tide.
He sat down on the ground, his back against the wall of the house, the day’s sunshine trapped in the stone, warming his back and his thighs. He would, he decided, drink until he fell asleep. Out here, where the air was fresh, on his own.
10
The girl and the dog sat on the stone steps outside the house, waiting. The girl rested her head on the dog’s golden shoulder. It was very hot. The dog panted loudly. Strings of saliva dripped from his pink and black lips. The girl smoothed her white T-shirt down over her plump little breasts and carefully tucked it into the elasticated waistband of her blue and white gingham skirt. She crossed and recrossed her legs, swinging first one foot and then the other. She put both feet on the ground and leaned over to admire the shine of her patent-leather shoes. Her face smiled back at her. She began to sing tunelessly.
‘When the red red robin
Goes bob bob-bobbin’
Along, along.’
She got up and dragged the toe of her shoe through the gravel on the drive, making the shape of hopscotch squares. She hopped awkwardly up and down, still muttering the words of the song
‘Red Robin,
Bob-bobbin
’Long, along.’
The dog followed her, jumping up to catch her attention, scraping her plump white arm with its long claws.
‘Ow, stop it, Bella, don’t.’ The girl pushed the dog away, and sat down again to inspect a scratch on her upper arm. ‘Sore, Bella. Not nice.’
She put the thumb of her left hand in her mouth and sucked hard. Spit gathered in the corners of her mouth. The index finger of her right hand twisted and untwisted a lock of her fine, mouse-coloured hair. The dog lay down and rested its head on her feet. The girl’s heavy-lidded eyes lost focus and half closed, then opened suddenly as she heard the sound of a car. Her thumb came out of her mouth with a loud plop. She wiped the spit away from her chin and stood up quickly. She had been told many times that she must not run towards the car when it came around the corner past the big bushes. She had been told that she must stand very still, like a statue, until the car stopped. Then and only then was she allowed to move.
But today she could not wait. She didn’t remember how many days it had been since she had seen her brother. It seemed like a very long time. The last time he had come he had brought her red ribbons decorated with little white cats. He had plaited her hair in two pigtails and tied them with the ribbons in big bows. She had refused to take them out even when she was going to bed. She had gone to sleep chewin
g the ends. The next morning Mammy had taken off the sodden ribbons and thrown them in the rubbish. She had cried and screamed and when Mammy wasn’t looking she had tried to lift the heavy lid off the bin to find them, but she couldn’t manage by herself.
He knew she would be waiting for him, that she would run out into the middle of the gravel circle in front of the house. He crouched down low over the steering wheel as he swung the big black car around her, once, twice, three times. She waved and waved and blew kisses. He pretended to drive the car straight at her, but nothing he could do would dampen the welcome she gave him. It had always been that way. He remembered the day they had brought her home from hospital. He was thirteen. He didn’t want her, a sister, a baby, someone who needed to be looked after, someone they might love more than him. But they left her lying in the carrycot in the hall. He knelt beside her and looked at her screwed-up face. And then she opened her eyes and smiled, right up at him. He put out his finger and touched her lips. She opened her mouth. Her tiny tongue, pink, kitten-like, lolled out and licked him. He put his finger in her mouth and she sucked it, hard.
He stopped the car suddenly and as he opened the door she rushed to him, scrambling up on his knee and flinging her plump arms around his neck.
‘Hey, hey. Calm down, Molly. It’s OK. I’m here now.’ He unwrapped her arms and cradled her against his chest. She was getting far too grown up for this, he thought. She had, he noticed, a faint black down on her upper lip and her body gave off an adult, oniony smell. Her checked skirt had ridden up her heavy white thighs, and he smoothed it down again, carefully.
‘Nice skirt, Molly. Is it new?’
She nodded, her thumb back in her mouth.
‘Hey, my girl, you’re not supposed to suck your thumb, are you?’
Again the silent nod. And then the lips opened and the childlike voice said ‘But I like sucking my thumb. It makes me feel nice.’
‘Well, I have something else that will make you feel nice. Here.’ He manoeuvred her off his knee onto the passenger seat, and reached over to open the glove compartment. ‘Now, look in there and see what you can find.’
She knelt up on the seat and clumsily shoved her hands into the small space.
‘Careful, Molly,’ he warned.
‘Look.’ She had something in both hands. In one was a small cardboard box, shaped like a swan, and in the other a large glossy brown shell decorated with small cream circles all over its humped back.
‘Presents for me,’ she crowed, ‘lots of presents for Molly.’
‘Put that back.’ He grabbed at the shell. ‘The chocolates are for you, but not that.’
‘Aaah.’ Her voice rose. ‘That’s not fair. You said look in there and see what you can find.’
‘But the chocolates are for you. See.’ He carefully opened the little box. ‘They’re all your favourites.’
Her fingers hovered over the selection. He made to prise the shell out of her other hand.
‘No!’ She pulled her hand away. ‘No. I like this. It’s pretty. And, anyway, you know Mammy says I’m not allowed to eat choccies, only at my birthday party.’
‘Mammy doesn’t have to know, does she, Mollser?’
‘I’m going to tell her, I’m going to tell her, it’s not fair. You said there was a present for me. I want this.’ And she waved it in front of him, then hid it behind her back, tears pouring down her round red cheeks.
‘OK, OK. Shh.’ He took a tissue out of his pocket and dabbed her face. ‘Look, you can have it, but you can only play with it in the car, because it’s called a shell, and shells live in special places, deep down at the bottom of the sea, and they have to be kept in the dark most of the time, except when special people are playing with them. So I have to keep it here in the glove compartment, to make sure it’s safe.’
‘But I want to show Mammy. Why can’t I show Mammy?’ Her voice rose in a whine.
‘You can’t and that’s that. It’s our secret and if you tell her I’ll tell Mammy that you didn’t stand like a statue, that you ran out before the car stopped, and you know what Mammy will do, don’t you, Molly?’
‘She’ll be cross.’
Yes, he thought. You could put it like that. But the word didn’t really express the glacial withdrawal of affection, the retreat into anger and recrimination.
Molly reached into the box of chocolates and helped herself. The shell lay abandoned on the seat. He picked it up and held it against her ear.
‘Do you hear that, Molly-moo? That’s the sound of the sea and all the whales and dolphins and the other big fish that live deep down where the shell has its house. That’s the sound they hear all the time.’
‘When they wake up?’
‘When they wake up and have their cornflakes and just before they go to sleep at night. That’s the last thing they hear, the sound of the sea.’
Molly sighed, a shuddering goodbye to her tears, and laid her face against his arm.
‘Jimmy, I love you. When I grow up will you marry me?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘And I’ll have a white dress with a white thing on my head. And I’ll look so pretty just like Barbie doll.’
No, he thought. You’ll never be pretty, with your flat features and your mouth that’s always open and your tongue that hangs out, and your squat little body. And you’ll never grow up. You’ll always be the same silly little Molly, even when your hair is grey and your features are wrinkled. And who will look after you then? He pulled her face close to his and kissed her gently on the lips.
11
Margaret woke. She was lying on her back, the sheets and blankets tucked tightly around her. She didn’t remember going to sleep, but she knew she had woken in the night, her face wet. She had lain quite still and cried very quietly, the tears seeping from her eyes and trickling down into her ears. Then she had fallen asleep again and dreamed, strange unconnected scenes of mountain tops covered with snow, of fantastical birds with snakes’ heads and elephants’ feet, of tables covered with luscious tropical fruits, heaped high on pewter platters. She was sitting at the top of the table eating a feejoa, a silver-grey fruit from New Zealand shaped like a large acorn. She had sliced it in half with a penknife and was scooping out the soft flesh with an elegant silver spoon. Catherine, her mother, was seated at the other end of the table, and John, her father, was midway between the two. Margaret had reached out and taken his hand, and he had reached out and taken Catherine’s. A warm current flowed between them. Even now, after she woke, she could still feel the tingling in her fingers.
She had no idea what time it was. Sunlight flitted around the curtains and winked in the bevelled edge of the pier glass in the corner. She got out of bed slowly, testing the strength of her legs before she stood up. Her body felt weightless, insubstantial, disconnected. Only her memory was real, and with her memory, her pain.
She stood in front of the mirror and pushed her tangled hair away from her face. I have aged, she thought. I feel as old as my mother, as sick and as near to death as she is. Why does my heart keep on beating? Can I not will it to be still? She picked up a hairbrush from the dressing table and turned it over. Trapped among its bristles were fine black tendrils. When she was a child Catherine had made her brush her hair one hundred strokes every night before bed. ‘You will regret it in years to come if you don’t look after your hair properly,’ she had warned. ‘Look.’ And she sat down beside her on the long stool in front of her dressing table and uncoiled her own shining plait. It was, Margaret recalled, one of the few things they ever did together. She still maintained the daily ritual. It was a time for reflection. She started now, counting the strokes under her breath as the brush sliced through her thick locks.
There are, she thought, two ways of looking at this. As a doctor I understand death. I have seen it many times. The easy death where the patient slips away, slides into unconsciousness and then into that further stage beyond, and the hard death where the patient struggles and cri
es, is frightened and confused, refuses to give in and let go, knows exactly what is happening right until the end. I have seen the young and the old die, the good and the bad. I have even, she thought, been responsible for hastening death. At least twice. The first was a man who had tried unsuccessfully three times to cut his wrists. He told me what he wanted to do. I showed him his mistake. He was assuming that the protuberant blue veins running from his hand along his arm were important. He didn’t realize that he needed to cut through the radial artery, which lay deeper along the lateral aspect of the wrist. I showed him how to do it, exactly where to put his blade. The second time a woman in her mid-fifties came to me with the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s. I did all the tests and confirmed her suspicions. The woman said she did not want to continue her life. She knew the decision had to be taken quickly. So I wrote her a prescription for sleeping pills and cautioned her about the dosage. She thanked me and kissed me goodbye.
I understand, thought Margaret, what happens when the heart stops pumping oxygen through the body, pushing its sweetness into every blood vessel. But I don’t understand the loss of being, the negation of existence. It must be the reason why so many people believe in an afterlife. To make sense of the essentially meaningless. I know it in an abstract way, but I can’t accept it. All I have is the knowledge that I will never see Mary again, that she has been taken from me and I will have to live with that. Until I, too, die.
She reached one hundred strokes. Her hair hung on her shoulders, gleaming, sleek. She twisted it into a knot high on her head and clipped it in place with one of Mary’s slides. Wooden, in the shape of a sea horse. She knotted the belt of her dressing gown and crossed the corridor to the bathroom. Narrow stained-glass windows cast lozenges of yellow, bright blue and scarlet on the black and white floor. A large bath stood on gnarled lion’s feet. The walls were white ceramic and the pipes were chrome. Between the two windows hung a gilt-framed mirror, and above the rectangular washbasin was a round shaving mirror on a retractable arm. Margaret had always loved it here. When she was small she used to perch on the side of the bath watching her father shave. The morning ritual was always the same. He would wear his old tartan dressing gown. He would take his favourite razor out of its leather case. He would fill the basin with hot, hot water, load up the worn bristle brush with lather and transform his face into a Christmas card Santa Claus. Then scrape, scrape, scrape, metal on skin. Splash, splash, splash, the razor in the basin. Scrape, scrape, scrape again. Finally he would turn to her and say, ‘Now, Maggie, feel that.’ And she would run her hand over his cheeks and his chin. ‘What do you say?’ And they would chant together, ‘Smooth as a baby’s bottom,’ and laugh, while Catherine rattled the door handle and fretted.
Mary, Mary Page 4
