They say she gave a good fight. Her fingernails were caked with blood and skin. One man was questioned in Ballymoney with scratches on his face. Someone knows something, someone hid someone. Somewhere somebody cleaned this up that damp April night in 1988. Some have said they saw a girl fitting that description around the Cushendall and Cushendun camping areas. Others say that she probably took a lift with a lorry driver and he drove her into the forest and then attacked her.
In spring 2018 the police issue a statement that they are tantalisingly close to solving the case. They arrest two men aged sixty-one and fifty-eight in the Loughguile area. They are released without charge. The police believe that the perpetrators knew the forest in detail, they believe someone is covering for someone. Loyalties shift and Time changes things. Her dead body was found deep into the vast forest, an area not used by the general public. The local people of the rural surrounding villages – Cloughmills, Loughguile and Armoy – refuse to believe that it could be a local man. The word down the pub is that it must have been military, an English soldier or soldiers, driven crazy with bloodlust from all the Troubles and all the killing that was happening around them then. The military have their own law. So the soldiers that were stationed there then, were they tested and swabbed too? And has their DNA been included in the screenings?
What happened next? Did she get in a strange car with soldiers? Was she taken somewhere else before the forest? Was she held captive? What were her stomach contents? Was she drugged? What happened to that poor girl?
They knew. When they came home so late they knew.
When they came falling through the door they knew.
They were dishevelled and they knew.
Their knuckles were bloody and filthy, mud caked the knees of their trousers and the soles of their shoes and they said nothing. Their face was scratched, they knew. They said nothing. It has been thirty years now. They worry and sweat in the night. They twist and turn in the sheets. They live with it now, they won’t stay in the old house, not now, and not since then. They sweat in the night, they twist and turn in the guilt, they do not rest, sleep is no friend to the guilty. They read the papers, they know the police are closing in. And thirty years is a long time to sweat. Thirty years is long enough to not sleep for worrying about a thing. Thirty years is too long to bite your tongue.
She wasn’t just a hitchhiker, say her name, her name was Inga Maria Hauser.
Everything Is Nothing But Nothing Is Worth Something to Someone
Now they are gone. There used to be a grandmother and a grandfather living in this house but they are not here any more. This was the house of Old Man Willeford and his wife Rose. I lived here for five years, from aged nine, but then I ran away. That is all over and they are all gone now. When someone has been a bad person, or a cruel person, the grieving is strange. This is the end of a house and home. Nothing and everything, everyone and no one. Everything is nothing, nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect.
I did not want to live with my mother’s father and mother. I was there in my pyjamas, the fire and madness, my bare feet, the tip of my tongue in the gap where I lost my tooth, and then suddenly I was here living under this roof and sleeping in that box room. My mother would not have given me to these people. She had nothing good to say about her own childhood: she physically shrank and shook her head when Old Man Willeford was mentioned. She also shrugged and shook her head sadly about Rose. When my mother was alive we never visited her parents. There was no apple-pie love here. No jolly family Christmas, no Easter egg hunts, no learning to swim or being taught to ride a bicycle, no happy childhood memories, not one, not with them, no, there was no blowing out the candles on the birthday cake. I was nine, turning ten, and it was as good as going to live with strangers. But on paper they were family and my next-of-kin and so my fate was sealed. After the fire, after the first day I met Mrs Death, they were given custody and off I was sent. That first night sleeping here, up in that tiny box room, was the longest of nights, a long darkness, a cold hole, that lasted five years until I ran away . . . and now they are all dead and here I am.
I enter through the front door. This is the very door I slammed aged fifteen and ran from, this is me, I am crossing the threshold, a doorstep I swore I would never darken again. Mrs Death has been here, I can smell her. I step over several months of unopened post cluttering the step. The hallway smells of musk and damp. Acrid wafts from the downstairs toilet, bleach and urine. Sickness happened here. Neglect. Sorrow. Grief. I’m at the house where death happened, where Mrs Death has been at work. Mrs Death took my grandmother swiftly but Old Man Willeford, she took her time, she pushed him, now, didn’t she?
I touch the garish orange wallpaper and through my fingertips the rooms echo with all the years. I can feel it and hear the orchestra of the past and the once-living. The hollow song of ages, the chorus of time passing, the faint sound of a ticking clock, laughter, tears, boredom, anger, fear. Mostly fear. This was a house that was filled with worry and fear; this was a house of tears. A place where things were thrown. I hear a slap and cry, a broken glass, the smashed plates, followed by long and stilted silences. Unhappy drinking happened here, my grandfather’s hard hand clutching the bottle, the jangle of ice in a tumbler of whisky. This was a house where you bit your tongue and held your breath. There it is below my shoes, the carpet of eggshells, trodden on, oh so very carefully. This is a house of secrets and all that hurt vibrates even now. I feel it all. This was an ordinary house on the outside and inside it was never a happy home.
On the hallway walls the remaining pictures hang askew. There is a sun-stain patch on the wall, it betrays where for decades was a gold-framed painting of tigers, not a great painting but a familiar shape even in its absence. Objects are meaningless, everything is nothing, but somehow everything is worth something to someone. Everybody must be worth something to somebody.
The people are all gone now. The wife, Mrs Willeford, Rose, my grandmother, if she were alive, she would be furious to see her home in a mess like this. If she were alive, she would be weeping. The curtains hang crooked. Everything is in the wrong room and wrong place. But we mustn’t be precious about things. Things are just things, you cannot use things in your grave. I find it peculiar, the random objects people keep and the things we discard. It is so odd the stuff we hoard and the important items that get lost – we lose honesty and trust and love but hey here’s a Blackpool Tower snow-dome paperweight; we make sure to keep that safe instead.
There are items you can see my grandmother Rose obviously meant to ‘keep for best’. I find her paper umbrella from Hong Kong. It is ripped and has a snapped spoke, now how did that happen? It hung from that hook by the living-room window for all these years, decades, dusty and untouched. Other people are not careful with other people, I mean, with other people’s precious things. Only the dead know why these things were kept and treasured.
Wrap your life in a tissue and save it for best.
Home is where the heart is and hearts got broke in this kitchen. I remember, I can feel it and I can hear it, the kitchen table remembers, the walls remember, the carpet remembers. I remember, I remember a cacophony of a Sunday dinner, the chatter, the talking, a chink of sunlight hitting the spot where the pot steams, a moment of happiness, togetherness . . .
Shush, the news, listen to the news, bloody politicians, shush, bloody listen, you’re not listening, bloody listen, you never listen! Wolf, how many times I have to tell you? How many times? Bang! Listen! Bang! Listen! Bang! Bang bang bang!
He always shouted. I don’t like being shouted at. I don’t like being shouted at when I am eating. It is hard trying to chew and not listen when you are being shouted at when you eat. I don’t like being shouted at in the bath. I don’t like being shouted at when I am naked. I don’t like being shouted at in bed. I don’t like being shouted at when I have only just woken up. I don’t like being shouted at when I am trying to read a book. I don’t like being shout
ed at when I am looking out at the rain. I don’t like being shouted at because I forgot something. I don’t like being shouted at because I don’t know something. I don’t like being shouted at because I am not a real girl and because I am not a real boy and because I am not a real person. Fuck. I am crying again.
I stand in the kitchen and take a deep breath, my mind searches for recall, the smells, the spicy aroma of jerk chicken and rice and pea. The sizzle of plantain. Curried goat. This was the smell of this kitchen, tender succulent meats, chilli and ginger and herb and spice. The sound of my grandmother sucking out the bone marrow, chewing on the knuckles, grease around the mouth and fingers, slurping, licking, feasting. How many around that round table that one time? How did we all fit? Oh boy!
I remember how she smiled for one second, her smile was like a pale winter sun coming out from behind a cloud then swiftly returning to grey. But there had to be some glimmer of hope, occasional happy times, some reason she stayed with the old bastard all those years. There had to have been good times, so we would trust and open ourselves up . . . yes . . . only to be slapped back down again. Up and down we go.
Every good memory I have of this house is followed by a stink, the sinking feeling, the next event, a doomy feeling and a shadow. This house of cards fell with a clatter of shattered promises, dirty secrets and broken ties. The teapot handle is all her fingerprints. I reach out and hold the handle. I hold the chipped handle that was once held by her – by my mother’s mother and the mother of the house. I can feel her, I can hear her now. I suppose she wasn’t a bad woman; she was surviving, her marriage, her choice, her life. She loved her husband no matter what. She covered up for him.
Rose begged me not to go to the police. How the kettle boiled and the tea pot was filled over and over again by my grandmother, by his wife, by the woman of this house. Her glasses steaming up as she poured. Oh boy. Put the kettle on. Oh boy. Put the kettle on. Oh boy. Put the kettle on. It is like tea is everything, tea makes everything alright again.
She said quietly, Do you want tea? Have some tea. My eyes were hot, my heart punching through my chest. I looked her in the eyes as I pushed my tea cup off the edge, it splashed as the china cup smashed onto the linoleum. I was too angry to speak to her for another second. That is when I left. I slammed that front door and never returned . . . until today.
This ghost of a love, how it coughed and spluttered to burn; I can see her now, all ash and dust. This house is dead: it is nothing but the lonely song of a woman in a sad and lonely life. Trapped. My grandparents were prisoners of their own lies, a tangle of ropes of lives all knotted in deceit. No life is ever tidy, no journey easy and no path runs straight. And what we leave behind is so strange and incoherent.
In the sitting room I find a leather box. It is filled with newspapers from the day of the Royal Wedding, magazine cuttings and pictures of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. This is the hard evidence of a life, of an existence: diaries, photographs, records and books. An old RAF uniform. Some silver cufflinks. A white china rabbit. I put the china rabbit in my pocket.
Three nails jut out of the wall – remember, three wooden ducks flying up the staircase. All that is left is the sentimental, the memories attached and detached. Leather photo albums – turn up the volume on these images – the good times past, parties and birthdays, holidays, weddings and funerals, births and deaths. There were once some good times, see! Look at the big happy faces, the cousins, second cousins, all the same eyes, or is it same forehead, same nose? I remember this photograph being taken and how he said, Why you can’t sit still, Wolf? Hurry up and take the picture, sit still, for crying out loud, Wolf, will you sit still! Why you never still, child? Say cheese! Capture the moment, snap, snap, snap, the moment when life was happening, and all of this was unimaginable, the time when you were all grinning and framed in the moment, in this time, this year, this place.
Objects are meaningless. No and yes.
Everything is nothing but somehow everything is worth something to someone, just as everyone is worth something to someone. I’m done. I leave through the back door. The garden is wildly overgrown. The old roses have grown chaotic and tall, their fat pink faces grin down at you. I remember these roses, they used to smell divine, but they are covered in greenfly now. My grandfather loved this garden and Rose loved roses but neither loved me.
I remember Old Man Willeford would stand by that kitchen window and suck his teeth and grumble about the weather, all weather, the frost, the rain, the sun, all the weather was against him and his garden. Before any thunderstorm he was like the sky, he rumbled and grumbled along with the stormy weather as though he was made of cloud. The pear and apple trees have grown tall and unkempt, all are heavy with new fruit. This year when that fruit ripens and hangs heavy on the branch there will be nobody here to make fruit pies, crumbles and chutney. This abundance will windfall and rot in the overgrown weeds.
We leave all this behind. Everybody goes in the end and leaves this: odd socks; a box of silver cutlery; letters that mean everything and nothing; newspaper articles of a fairy-tale wedding and photographs of before; an overgrown garden. All I take is this one item, a white china rabbit. Even I know there is no bargaining with Time – Mrs Death was called and she came. She took the wife first and swiftly. And Old Man Willeford, husband, father, grandfather, lover, abuser – Mrs Death took him last. He died alone, he died knowing what alone really is. There is alone and there is dying alone, that’s as alone as you can be. I did not run to his bedside to hold his hand. I was told he was dying but I didn’t go to the hospital. I have to live with that. He died knowing he was not forgiven by me. He did not get away with it. And this is the end of that, that man in that house, the end of the many secrets and lies, the violence and hurt. I can feel all of it vibrating in the walls, rumbling in the brick, which of course will be a problem for the new family who buy this place.
It is then I have the strangest thought: Mrs Death will leave me soon.
I pick some sage, leave it on the back doorstep.
There is a jam jar on the step. It is filled with three things: green scum water, a dead bee and unanswered questions. I pick it up and empty it onto the long yellow grass. The three most important things in the world do not fit into a jam jar, I know that now. I say the words Love Love Love into the jam jar. I hear it echo, hollow and true.
Wolf: The Tower
Present day, Cushendall, County Antrim, Ireland
A sudden downpour falls through bright sunshine that April afternoon when I arrive in the sleepy village of Cushendall in County Antrim. As the iron key turns to open the heavy door, the old tower leans and creaks hello. The fat spiders twirl in their spinning webs down in the dungeon. The raven winks from the rafters. The spirits stir and flicker.
The caretaker is a butcher. He has left a letter on the kitchen table, a leaflet that is a potted history of the village and the tower and instructions for how to switch the water on and off. It is all so welcoming and friendly:
Welcome to the Curfew Tower
This tower was built in the 1800s
It was built as a prison to keep riotous people,
now it is a haven for artists and writers,
another kind of riotous people
You’ll be safe to stay in here
Call me if you need anything,
you’ll find me in the butcher’s and
my number is here . . .
But the cold door key is in my cold hand and the shape is cold and the feeling is cold and I am thinking about the key and the door and the cold. Am I safe now? Safe from what? Safe in the tower. Am I imprisoned? Isolated? Or protected in a fortress? What is this and which is it? Can it be neither? Can it be both?
I look at the key, big and cold, and tears spring to my eyes. My eyes see things all blurry. Is this real? Was any of it real? The key feels real. The walls, the cold old walls. Yes, the thick and sturdy walls of this tower feel real. Why am I here? Am I being punished? Fo
r what? No. Not at all. This will be home for a while, I guess. Wait! I cannot just leave myself in here . . . Hang on, this cannot be right? What will I do in here on my own? Be calm. All I have to do is stay here in the tower now and read and write and have a little think . . . The Desk? How can I finish this book without The Desk? How will I write this without The Desk? These stories were always inside you, inside me, inside here. And not inside The Desk? No. Not inside The Desk, inside my own head. Tears are welling up in my eyes.
One long silent moment. I have a slow realisation. Not The Desk? Not The Desk? Just the desk, a desk? What are you saying? So, does that mean . . . I am alone? Am I alone?
Was I always alone?
I think I am alone.
Alone with my own head.
Oh it’s so quiet and empty inside here now. I mumble to the empty kitchen. What am I going to do with my own self alone in here? I sit at the table. A twiddle of the thumbs. Now what? Well? Are you just going to sit there in your coat at the kitchen table? Come on, Wolfie, I say to myself, make your mind up, are you coming or going? Are you staying in or going back outside?
I glance around and find the kitchen is homely. There are tins of tomatoes and beans, bags of pasta and rice. Look where I sit, now this will be a good sturdy kitchen table to write at in the mornings while I have my breakfast. I knock on the kitchen table as you might a door. I knock a-rat-a-tat, yes, that is a good table for writing, isn’t it? And there is tea! Look! I get up and walk over to the sink and fill the kettle to make tea. Nice tea. Tea makes the world all alright again. Oh shit. I sound like my grandmother. The sound of the kettle click, the sound of the teaspoon in the cup, the sound of the dripping tap, the gurgling of the water in the kettle, these new sounds. This is home for now, just for a while. Outside the barred kitchen window there is a robin in a pot of lavender in the garden. The old window rattles with the wind. I read somewhere that the robin is a symbol of spirits passed, that they carry comfort and messages from the dead. These pretty red-breasted birds often appear to people when they are grieving, when people are in mourning they come to bring comfort. Well, look, here is your robin, Wolf. I start to cry again, it’s a strange cry, like a child cries when it is overtired with a scrunched-up nose. I don’t even know why I cry, a feeling, a stone in the chest, the weight of it makes me cry.
Mrs Death Misses Death Page 13
