The Truth Will Out

by Anna McPartlin

  The other evening when I left Delamere’s I walked home through Devil’s Glen. I was surrounded by tall leafy trees, the waterfall, the bending, trickling river, the well-worn closeted trails, and I felt full, as though my heart was bursting, and I don’t know why, but it felt warm. In Devil’s Glen I can breathe, slow and hard, my head and heart full of the whole world. For that short time I’m in love with this life, no matter how horrible it can be.

  I had a dream last night: I was riding Betsy and she was galloping faster and faster through the woods and every now and then I’d have to duck to miss a branch and my heart was beating wildly and I could feel the saddle under me and the reins pulled tight. We emerged from the wood and suddenly we were on the Head, speeding towards the two lighthouses and then down the steep pathway that zigzagged towards the cliffs and to the third lighthouse that seems like it belongs in another country – somewhere that’s never without sun.

  Just as we passed it and before we reached the cliff edge I saw Matthew and he waved and I let go of the reins so that I could wave back – and then we were falling through the air, Betsy and I, and I didn’t care. I was happy to fall. There was silence, no screaming or neighing. I woke up before we hit the water, and although I was sweating I wasn’t scared. It sounds strange but it was a good dream.

  6. I’m not scared

  James arrived a little after ten on Wednesday morning. He brought Malcolm. His former best man was now reduced to labourer and possible buffer.

  ‘Coffee?’ Harri asked, as nonchalantly as possible under the circumstances. James was non-committal but Malcolm was gasping. ‘I thought you were going to wait until you found a place before you picked up the fish,’ she said, although the sooner they were gone the better.

  ‘I know you hate them.’ He tried to smile.

  You’re a gentleman and too good for me. ‘I wouldn’t have minded. Besides, it’s really only three of them. The others are fine.’

  Malcolm took one look at the tank. ‘It’s him, him and him, isn’t it?’ he said, pointing.

  She nodded.

  ‘If they were people they’d be warlords,’ he concluded.

  Harri had no idea where that notion had come from but it instantly made sense to her. ‘You’re right.’

  James sighed. Obviously he didn’t see it. He got busy with the tank. Malcolm followed Harri into the kitchen, where she made the coffee. ‘So?’ he said aggressively.

  ‘So?’

  ‘How many times do you plan on breaking my best friend’s heart?’

  ‘I think I’m done,’ she said, and poured the coffee.

  ‘I hope so,’ he replied, accepting a mug. ‘What now?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘He will always love you.’

  ‘You sound like Whitney Houston.’

  ‘Don’t joke – he’s devastated.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Suddenly Harri was crying. Stop it, you fool!

  Malcolm’s anger disappeared and they found themselves hugging. ‘I’ll miss you, Harri Ryan.’

  Harri couldn’t respond, so busy was she sobbing on her ex-fiancé’s best friend’s shoulder. When eventually she managed to halt the torrent of tears, they pulled apart, and Malcolm gratefully left the kitchen, taking his coffee and a mugful for his best and equally devastated friend, who was deliberating on the most feasible way to dismantle an extremely large fish tank without risking the life of its occupants.

  This is going to be a long day.

  They were gone before three hours had passed.

  Harri searched the apartment but all trace of James had disappeared so she curled up on the sofa and didn’t move for hours.

  George buzzed Harri’s apartment at a little after six. She made her way out to the front where he was parked and settled into the passenger seat.

  ‘Aidan admitted he blurted,’ he said, with a sigh.

  ‘Aidan’s as spreadable as butter.’ She attempted a laugh. Harri hated tension.

  ‘In so many ways,’ he joked, before returning to serious. ‘I’m sorry for the silence.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘I saw Mum freak out and I couldn’t handle it.’ George was not used to witnessing his mother’s outbursts. She had seemed so unstable it had terrified him.

  ‘Mum freaked out?’

  ‘Don’t you freak out, Harri, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, slowing her breathing.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ she said again.

  ‘But I know one thing – whatever it is we’ll get through it.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Agreed,’ he confirmed. ‘And it could be nothing.’

  ‘Agreed,’ she repeated. ‘But, George?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Everything in me is screaming that life will never be the same again.’

  ‘Drama queen!’ he teased, but somehow he knew she was right. They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  Two days earlier, Father Ryan had just come out of Mass when the call came.

  ‘We need you in Dublin.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re telling them.’

  ‘You’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘We have no choice.’

  ‘You’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence.’

  ‘She has to know.’

  ‘There could be repercussions for both of us.’

  ‘Duncan, it was a different time. Church and state had a lot more power then. Besides, Harri is your daughter.’

  ‘She’ll hate us.’

  ‘Maybe for a time, but in the end she’s a Ryan.’

  ‘We can’t lose her.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘So you’ll definitely be there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you, Father Ryan.’

  ‘You’re welcome, brother.’

  George used his key. Harri followed him, holding on to his coat-tails like a peasant from another time and place. Can I have more cheese, sir?

  They sat at the dining-table. Duncan was opening wine. Gloria was nowhere to be seen. Father Ryan’s presence was a surprise. He was smoking in the back garden.

  George looked at him longingly through the window. ‘Do you mind if I join him?’ he asked Harri.

  ‘Okay.’ She smiled.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘Okay,’ she agreed. Stop saying okay, Harri.

  Outside Father Ryan greeted his nephew. ‘George.’

  ‘Uncle Thomas.’

  ‘You look well.’

  ‘I feel well.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘So you’re in on it too.’ George was never one to dillydally.

  ‘It’s not for me to talk on this occasion,’ Father Ryan said, and took a deep drag.

  George followed suit. ‘Yet you’re here.’

  They were silent for a few moments.

  ‘George?’

  ‘Uncle Thomas?’

  ‘No matter what happens here tonight, your parents – my brother and his wife – and I … well, we did what we all believed to be best. I want you to know that.’

  Before George could respond Father Ryan had stubbed out his cigarette and gone indoors.

  The meal passed in silence. Gloria had been last to join the table. She was pale and, although smiling and pleasant, her hands were rarely away from her neck. They all picked at their food. No one pretended to be in the humour for small-talk. Harri and George remained silent, although their minds were swimming with questions. They waited. Everyone seemed to be waiting.

  Eventually it was Duncan who spoke. He stood as though he was giving a speech. ‘I’m not sure what to say,’ he opened. ‘Harri, I’m not sure what to say,’ he repeated, looking directly a
t his daughter.

  Her eyes filled. George held her hand, wondering what the hell was going on. Gloria was crying while feigning a smile, and it was frightening.

  ‘You need to understand that you are,’ Duncan faltered, ‘you are our miracle.’

  Suddenly Harri was back in time to when she was barely ten and sharing a seat with Nana on Nana’s bench.

  ‘Harri,’ Nana had said, ‘did I ever tell you that you are a little miracle?’

  ‘Why, Nana?’

  ‘Because you were sent from Heaven when we needed you most.’

  Harri controlled her breathing. I’m not going to panic. I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine. Duncan continued. ‘Thirty years ago Glory and I were pregnant with twins.’ He smiled at Gloria and she bowed her head to signal that he could continue. ‘It was one of those times,’ he smiled at the memory, ‘a great time.’

  Father Ryan scratched his hand, momentarily distracting everyone. ‘Sorry,’ he said, slightly embarrassed. Bloody central heating will be the death of me.

  Duncan continued: ‘The pregnancy went perfectly. No problems.’ He was nodding to himself. ‘It was just perfect.’

  Harri’s stomach was turning, George’s too. Just say it.

  ‘Glory went into labour around three o’clock on the thirtieth of April. I was working on a murder case. They were rare then. Your mother was seven weeks early and I was in Kildare. Nana got her to the hospital.’ He smiled at his wife. ‘Don’t forget this was before the mobile phone. I didn’t even know Glory was in hospital until nine that night when I called home and Nana was waiting. It was another hour before I made it to the hospital. Harri had been born and George was coming. Glory was near dead.’ His eyes filled and Gloria closed hers and bowed her head. ‘She was bleeding badly and screaming.’ He stopped. ‘She was screaming that she was gone. I thought she was telling me that she was tired and giving up. The doctors and nurses didn’t speak – they were too busy trying to save George. And then you came,’ he turned to George, ‘and I held you and I don’t know if it was moments or minutes before I asked about Harri.’ He looked at his daughter, eyes brimming. ‘Your mum’s womb was so damaged it was a miracle that George survived. They had to operate. They had to take it.’ Again he looked at his wife.

  He stopped talking. He just stopped. Moments passed – it seemed like hours.

  Father Ryan stared him down. ‘Duncan.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He looked weak for the first time in his life. His stature was diminishing before them. His mighty hands, which his wife had once described as shovels, betrayed fear in the form of a slight tremor. He clasped them together so tightly that the fingers on his left hand went white.

  ‘Tell them.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, teetering on the edge of a new reality. No turning back now.

  Harri’s heart was beating so hard her chest wall threatened to crumble.

  ‘Dad?’ George encouraged, feeling the same pain.

  ‘Harri was dead,’ Duncan said. ‘She had died a few minutes after delivery.’

  Harri instantly disappeared into numbness, as though she had been switched off.

  George looked from his sister, who was staring blankly at the wall opposite her, to his mother, who was staring at the floor, to his father, who was staring at his daughter, and on to his uncle, who was staring at him and appeared to be silently praying.

  ‘Harri’s here, Dad,’ George heard himself say.

  ‘Harri died soon after birth. We buried her, son, and your mother, well …’

  ‘They let me hold her,’ Gloria said out of nowhere. ‘I got to hold her just that once.’

  ‘She’s right here,’ George pleaded.

  But Harri knew what her father had meant because suddenly everything made sense, all those feelings of dislocation she’d experienced over the years. I don’t belong here.

  ‘Harri?’ her father said. ‘Harri?’

  ‘Just talk,’ she heard herself order.

  ‘I couldn’t live with it,’ Gloria said.

  ‘Mum!’ George cried.

  ‘I wanted to disappear. I so desperately wanted to die. I can’t describe it. I was lost, George. I loved you, but I was so lost without her.’

  She stopped talking and everyone at the table stared at Harri, but Harri was gone: she was in another place, untouchable.

  George was still clawing through this new reality. ‘Mum?’

  ‘I had to stay in hospital for weeks, and then I came home to you, George, but I still wasn’t right.’

  ‘Several weeks after you were born and your sister died I investigated a death in Wicklow,’ Duncan said, taking over from his wife. He looked at Father Ryan, who nodded to him. ‘Your uncle Thomas called. He had requested that I be sent. It was a young girl. She was seventeen. She’d given birth in a wood. She’d died, but against all odds her baby girl survived. The baby was you, Harri.’

  Harri shot to her feet and passed out.

  George remained static. His twin sister was on the floor and yet he couldn’t move. Get up, George. Move. But he couldn’t because suddenly she wasn’t his twin and it was all too incredible for feet or legs to function as normal. Gloria broke down. Duncan moved quickly towards Harri but he was further away than Father Ryan, who got down on the floor, held Harri in his arms and whispered words that were inaudible to those around. Damn him and his whisperings.

  She woke after a few seconds or maybe it was a minute: for those observing her collapse, time had stood still.

  ‘Uncle Thomas?’

  ‘Yes, Harri?’

  ‘I knew. It sounds insane but deep down I’ve always known!’ She was crying.

  ‘Shush now, angel,’ he said. ‘You are loved. You were always loved.’ He held her tight, and in the background, Duncan, Gloria and George disappeared, if only for a moment.

  13 June 1975 – Friday

  They say Friday the 13th is unlucky and maybe it is, but not for me. Today has been amazing. First of all HE has moved into a place outside town with his bank-wall-leaning friend, the one who helped him take his stuff from the garden before. Mam is still determined not to let him in the house no matter what Father Ryan says about the sanctity of marriage. She’s got a cleaning job at the Crow’s Nest, and I told her I could help out with the bills now that I’m working. She’s sad but I’ve seen her a lot sadder. Mostly I think she misses my dad. I know I do. He was sick for so long that sometimes I forget what he was like as a normal dad, but then every now and then out of nowhere I see him and he’s healthy and strong and smiling and hugging me. I think he really loved me and I think he loved my mam. It’s nice to have that. It’s nice to hold on to.

  Matthew took me riding today. It was weird without Henry leading me around but he promised I’d be okay. Betsy knew I was a spaz so she took care of me. We rode far away from the arena and the trails. I had no idea how big the Delamere property was. It’s huge, like their big stone house, which is like a castle without the turrets. I’d say it gets really cold in winter. We rode for ages and then we stopped and settled the horses and sat together under a tree. Matthew told me about boarding-school. He doesn’t really like it much but it’s better than being ignored at home. His mam is dead. She died when he was two. She fell from a horse and broke her neck, not exactly encouraging when I had to ride Betsy back to the yard. He’s lovely and he’s not stuck-up at all. He’s just not used to attention. He goes to an all-boys school. He has a few friends but he’s not a rugby player and unless you’re a rugby player you’re no one. I couldn’t imagine him being no one. It’s impossible.

  Sheila and Dave are back together after being off for nearly a whole week. He promised not to shove his fingers up her privates and she promised to let him lie under her duvet with her. They haven’t met up yet but as soon as they do she’s going to call or come over with an update.

  I met Dr B down by the pier this evening.
I was sitting by the Eliana and he sat beside me. He was quiet, much quieter than usual. I asked what was wrong and he told me it was nothing. He was lying so I asked him again. He shouted at me to go away, which was funny because I was there first. I pointed this fact out and asked him what was wrong again. He said I was a kid and wouldn’t understand, and he got up to walk away. I told him I would. He stopped dead and looked at me like I was some kind of alien. I reminded him that honesty was refreshing. He sat down again and he cried. I sat with him in silence for the longest time looking out over the sea towards where Wales should be.

  When he stopped crying I asked him what was wrong again. He told me I was too young. I told him that maybe I was old enough. He said that he had left Cork because he had fallen in love. So? I said. He said it was with a man!!!!!!! I didn’t see that coming. I nearly fell off the bench. I don’t know about much but I know he’s a really good person and I don’t warm to many but I warmed to him. I told him that. He thanked me but I know my words mean little. Dr B hates himself. He thinks there is something wrong with him. I don’t. I think he’s lovely. I wish he could see that. I don’t care who he loves and I promised I’d never tell. I’ll keep his secret. Oh, I’ve just thought of something – is Father Ryan telling him he’s wrong to love a man the way he’s telling my mam she’s wrong to leave my stepfather? FATHER RYAN, PLEASE SHUT UP!

  7. Gone

  Harri was lying face down on the pillow, her mobile phone resting beside her. Go away. Go away. Go away. She picked it up with the intention of throwing it against her hotel-bedroom wall, risking damage to the expensive wallpaper. She needed to aim correctly so as to risk minimum damage because even in the most terrible turmoil Harri appreciated good décor. She used to think she was like her mother that way. Before she took aim she realized it was a call from George.

  ‘Harri?’

  ‘George.’

  ‘I’m sorry for running.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘You were on the floor. First I couldn’t move and then all I could do was run.’

  ‘You left your car in the driveway,’ she said, as though it was important.