The Blue Pool

by Siobhan MacDonald

  “Could Sarah be with Luke?” Kathy asked hopefully.

  “I guess…”

  It was the most benign of possibilities. But Sarah had hardly mentioned Luke over the last few days. Kathy didn’t want to air any of the more sinister suggestions that were chasing around her head. Again, she shut her eyes as if to shield herself from the more disturbing possibilities. There had to be a benign explanation. Of course there was. She could not contemplate anything more ominous.

  “Possibly…” Charlotte said carefully.

  “Charlotte…” Kathy hesitated, “do you want to tell Mrs Nugent that Sarah could be with Luke?”

  “I don’t think so, Kath,” said Charlotte. “Tell Mrs Nugent about the fisherman that she has never heard about? The scruffy fisherman that Sarah’s been at pains to hide from her? I’m sorry, Kath, I’m not that brave.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Charlotte,” said Kathy. “I suppose that’s a daft idea. There’s no way Sarah’s with him anyway, no way she wouldn’t go home.”

  “I know. She wouldn’t do that,” said Charlotte. “Sarah was on her way home and for some reason she hasn’t arrived just yet…”

  It sounded funny hearing Charlotte say that Sarah wasn’t there yet. Like she could still be out on the road somewhere. In her mind’s eye, Kathy could see Sarah jumping up and down and acting the clown on the mound of stones.

  It wasn’t possible that she could still be there, was it?

  Of course not.

  That was daft as well. Someone would have given her a lift. And even if she hadn’t managed to get a lift, she’d have gone back to the cabin. That’s what Kathy would have done.

  Sarah could have phoned though, couldn’t she? Maybe not. She didn’t have any money. That was what had landed them into this hellish mess in the first place. Sarah still could have phoned. She could have reversed the charges. Maybe there were no phone boxes? Actually, come to think of it, Kathy couldn’t remember seeing a single phone box anywhere near the cabin. Then again Kathy hadn’t been looking for one.

  “I don’t remember seeing a phone box around the Blue Pool, do you, Charlie?” Kathy asked.

  “There aren’t any there, why?” asked Charlotte.

  “Oh, I was just wondering – you know if maybe Sarah hadn’t managed to get a lift… if she’d walked back to the cabin. Maybe that’s where she is. Maybe she couldn’t ring home because there was no phone box.”

  Maybe it was as simple as that.

  “But there’s a phone box in the village alright,” said Charlotte, flatly.

  “Oh, there is?” Kathy’s heart sank.

  Even as she’d been jabbering on, Kathy knew – she just knew, she was talking rubbish. All the while the tightness across her chest was closing in.

  “Well, that’s it,” said Charlotte, tersely. “The long and the short of it is that none of us has a bloody clue where Sarah is. You and Ruth hitched to Ennis, leaving Sarah to hitch on her own. And now no one knows where the fuck she is.”

  They were indeed the facts.

  Plain and simple.

  Ruth and Kathy had hitched together, abandoning Sarah to her fate. Kathy didn’t detect a sense of blame in Charlotte’s voice. Charlotte wouldn’t do that. She was merely stating facts.

  “So, Kathy,” said Charlotte, sighing, “Do you want to phone Mrs Nugent and tell her exactly what happened? The woman needs to know that you split up and that Sarah was hitching alone. Her mother is entitled to know that.”

  Of course she was.

  But did Kathy have to be the one to tell her? Mrs Nugent didn’t have a good opinion of Kathy. Most of Mrs Nugent’s visits to their student house had been impromptu, and any encounters Kathy had had with the woman had been really embarrassing. The last encounter had involved Kathy bundling Josh White and his Tesco bag of magic mushrooms out the back door and hastily covering herself in a beer-stained dressing gown in the middle of the afternoon. What on earth would Mrs Nugent think of Kathy now?

  “Oh… I’m not so sure, Charlie… I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with the woman… not properly I mean… It’s not that I don’t want to… It’s just that… would you, would you mind terribly?”

  “Okay, Kath. I’ll do it,” said Charlotte. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll phone her back and I’ll tell her what you’ve just told me. But I hope to God that Sarah turns up and soon. For all our sakes. I don’t know about you – but I feel sick to my stomach.”

  The phone went dead.

  * * *

  “What’s up, love? That sounded serious.” Kathy’s dad came out to the hallway and handed her a china cup. The steam from the tea unfurled in the hall.

  “Aw, it’s nothing, Dad,” said Kathy. “Just one of the girls – she didn’t make it home last night. Stayed with a friend, I expect.”

  “That’s all? You’re sure?” His kindly eyes examined her.

  Kathy nodded.

  Her father looked confused. Both he and her mother looked bewildered more often than not these days as if the world they lived in no longer made sense to them.

  “I’m sure, Dad. That’s all. I’m going to go back to bed for a snooze,” said Kathy as she popped a kiss on his hollow cheek. She skipped up the stairs with as carefree a gait as she could muster.

  Kathy turned on the electric oil-filled radiator in her bedroom. Even though it was September, a chill enveloped the house. She curled up in bed with the blankets tightly wrapped around her, up over her chin, and over her ears. She told herself when she woke up everything would have righted itself. Sarah would have turned up and they’d have a laugh about it all. It took a while but sleep came and released her for a few short hours.

  It was mid-morning when Kathy woke. After dressing she decided to tackle some laundry. Reluctant to leave the house in case she missed a phone call, she busied herself with the domestic tasks that her mother no longer had any interest in.

  Kathy felt a growing sadness as she moved from room to room, neglect and apathy evident where once there’d been care and pride. The only thing she noticed that her mother had done was to add to the collection of photographs of Lawrence in the front room.

  Sarah’s whereabouts gnawed away at her. On three occasions that afternoon Kathy went to pick up the phone. But who could she ring? Should she ring Ruth? Ruth didn’t know anything, and if she did, she’d have rung with news. Should she ring Charlotte? What was the point in that? Charlotte would have rung if she knew anything more. Kathy really didn’t want to hear about Mrs Nugent’s reaction to them splitting up when they were hitching. So there wasn’t really any point in ringing anyone at all. Someone would ring her when Sarah turned up. If Sarah turned up.

  It was ten thirty that night before Kathy went out to the phone in the hallway again. This time she picked up the receiver. Sarah was sure to have turned up by now. But why was no one ringing Kathy? Maybe Mrs Nugent didn’t think it pressing to let any of her friends know. Mrs Nugent didn’t have a liking for any of Sarah’s friends – they’d had caused her to stray from her academic goals.

  Reluctantly, Kathy resolved to leave the phone calls ’til the morning. It was too late to ring anyone now anyway. Her nerves were shredded. To make dead sure she’d sleep, she went to the drinks cabinet she’d polished earlier and swigged neat vodka. She then went back to her bedroom and half an hour later, she fell into a woozy sleep.

  Sunlight was coming through the split in the curtains when she heard the phone ringing. They’d found Sarah! Kathy sprinted down the stairs, three at a time. But she was mistaken. It was only the vet making arrangements to see one of the cattle with an injured leg.

  More hours passed and Kathy smoked one cigarette after the other, glowering at the phone, willing it to ring. “Come on, bloody ring. For the love of God, Sarah – where the hell are you?”

  In exasperation, Kathy left the house and went in search of her mother who was somewhere out on the farm. When Mam wasn’t staring at her ever-growing shrin
e to Lawrence, she would go off alone, up the fields. Kathy imagined she found some solace in this practice, as if in her solitary wanderings she might somehow conjure up memories of Lawrence by treading the soil that he had once worked.

  Sometimes, Kathy imagined she saw Lawrence’s face out in yard, peeking from behind a bale of hay, watching her fondly as he used to do. Sometimes, she imagined the nearby song of a chaffinch to be his whistle as he worked away. Kathy missed him so much. She didn’t like being around the farm any more. It was empty without Lawrence. And he was never coming back.

  It was hard to grasp the reality that she’d never see him again. Sometimes, when she came home at weekends, she could trick herself into pretending that he’d just gone into town to do some jobs. That he’d be back later. That he was here as usual with Mam and Dad on the farm. But as time went by it was becoming more difficult and more difficult to play these mind games.

  It had been easier back in university. Away from the farm. In university, she’d tried to forget. Maybe she’d tried too hard. In fact, there was no maybe about it. She’d definitely tried too hard. Throwing herself at Josh White. Partying, drinking, screwing her way around. Doing anything to stop herself from thinking about Lawrence. About how different things might have been.

  Kathy came upon her mother exactly where she suspected she would find her. She was leaning over a fence in the field behind the hay barn. That field. Except it looked different now. The big horse chestnut was gone. Her father had cut it down shortly afterwards. There had been no conversation about it then or since. He’d just gone one afternoon with his chainsaw and cut it down. All that remained was the base. Something that had once been a thing of beauty was now a rotting stump.

  “You’ve been gone for ages, Mam,” said Kathy, taking her mother’s thin arm. “Come inside with me. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

  “I don’t care much for a sandwich, Lovey, but maybe a cup of tea. Yes, that would be nice. I’ve been out here a while. I don’t know how long. A cup of tea would do just fine.”

  Her mother’s lack of interest in food concerned Kathy. She drank lots of tea but ate little and rarely. She’d lost weight and like a ripe rosy apple that had shrunk and wizened, she was withering away.

  “Well, maybe just some tea-brack, Mam. Mrs Ryan dropped some over.”

  The neighbors were kindly and all this time later had not forgotten them. They were still dropping in food parcels. Kathy suspected that many of these were left uneaten and found their way into the bin or chicken feed.

  They rounded the corner to the front of the house and Kathy’s heart suddenly skipped a beat. And then another. Her mother let out a gasp and she squeezed Kathy’s arm. A police car was parked in the driveway. The last time the police had been here was for Lawrence. Her mother’s face was ashen.

  “Mam, it’s alright. It’ll be nothing. Don’t worry.”

  Kathy squeezed her mother’s arm. She was sick with trepidation. What on earth were the police doing here?

  Not about Sarah.

  Please God, don’t let this be about Sarah.

  Charlotte

  Missing

  August 1991

  Day Three.

  Still no news.

  A local policeman had been up to the cabin to take a look. Richard had been annoyed with Charlotte. She hadn’t left the key in the usual place in the gap under the window ledge where he’d instructed the sergeant to look. The sergeant eventually thought to look underneath the flowerpot by the door but precious time had been wasted and Richard had been made to feel foolish. However, once inside the cabin the sergeant said everything looked in order, there was nothing to report. And no, there was no sign of Sarah.

  It made no sense.

  It was all too weird. Charlotte was beginning to question her sanity. At first, Richard had told Charlotte to take it easy. She wished she could, but whatever had happened was a complete mystery to her. Why did Sarah have to be so bloody reckless? So gung-ho, without a thought for any consequences? Charlotte tried to keep her fear and frustration in check. She really did. She tried to channel her emotion into anger. Anger she could handle. Fear, she could not.

  Mrs Nugent had gone very quiet when Charlotte had told her about the hitch-hiking. About the girls splitting up. Deathly quiet. Charlotte had heard the woman breathing on the end of the line. And then there came her parting salvo.

  “And I thought all you girls were supposed to be friends.”

  Click. The phone went dead.

  Charlotte felt completely wretched. What should she do now? She couldn’t understand it. She’d thought and wrestled and puzzled over it for hours. Eventually she’d phoned Richard in Galway. This was way too freaky for her to handle alone. Charlotte didn’t know what she was going to do, but she knew she wanted Richard around.

  Richard was solid. Reliable. He wouldn’t flap. He’d know what to do. When they were kids, it had always been the two of them against the world. Charlotte always looked out for Richard and Richard always looked out for her. That was the way it was. Richard would bring calm to the situation. He’d probably just laugh and tell her these things happen all the time. Not to worry.

  But when he arrived, having swapped a shift with a colleague, Richard didn’t tell her any of those things. Richard didn’t laugh, or tell her not to worry, or that these things happen all the time.

  “Why didn’t you ask for more money, Charlotte? You know I’d have given it to you.” He sounded really angry.

  “Come on, Richard. You think I don’t feel bad enough already? I’ve been over it a thousand times. I can’t keep sponging off you and the lads forever. You paid my car insurance, the lads bought me the car. I can’t just keep on taking stuff all the time. It’s embarrassing.” She hadn’t meant to let the tears come, but anger and frustration were all beginning to take their toll.

  “Aw, Charlie, come on now, please don’t cry…”

  Richard put his arm around her shoulders. There were only the two of them in the house. Mum and Dad had gone on a council trip to Prague and wouldn’t be home until the end of the week.

  When she stopped crying Richard did his best to take her mind off things. He said he’d rustle up some food for them and maybe a video for later.

  “I’m getting the hang of at this cooking lark, you know, Charlie. How about one of my Spanish omelettes? You’ll feel better with something inside you. No offence, but you look like shit.”

  He didn’t look great himself. He looked quite worried.

  “None taken.” Charlotte grinned and blew her nose.

  She’d been living off Cornflakes and coffee, not feeling hungry since it happened. An omelette sounded good. Promising that she’d be quick, she went upstairs and ran a bath. Lying back in the bubbles, she went over the last few days in her head.

  The way things were with Mrs Nugent, it occurred to Charlotte that the woman might not even ring if there was any news. She’d probably let them stew in it. If Charlotte were in Mrs Nugent’s shoes she’d do exactly that. Much as the prospect filled her with dread, Charlotte was going to have to call the woman back.

  Fresh and warm in her favorite sweatshirt, she braced herself and dialed the Nugent home in Dublin. The call was picked up immediately.

  “Wynn Nugent speaking,” the voice was shaky, unsure.

  “Oh, hello, Mr Nugent, this is Charlotte Moran – Sarah’s friend.” She was nervous.

  “Ah yes, the young lady with the car.”

  “That’s right, Mr Nugent.”

  “I’m afraid our Sarah isn’t home yet.”

  Charlotte’s stomach flipped. “Oh, I see, I was just wondering if you could –”

  “Not home yet, imagine that?” he interrupted. “Our other two weren’t like this at all you know… no bother… Ava and Penny didn’t give an ounce of trouble. But our wee Sarah has to be different.” He sounded baffled.

  Charlotte squirmed. “I know you’re busy, and I hate to ask, but if there’s any news at all, c
an you or Mrs Nugent let me know?”

  “Angela’s with the police as we speak. She’s in the drawing room. Would you like me to get her for you?”

  “No, no, don’t disturb her please. It’s just that…well, if you hear anything.”

  “Certainly, Charlotte. Your number’s here on the hall table on the list along with all of Sarah’s numbers.

  “Thanks, Mr Nugent.”

  “Charlotte?”

  “Yes, Mr Nugent?”

  “Sarah’s going to be okay. Oh, there’ll be a story no doubt – there’s always a story. Always some drama with our Sarah. And her mother will put a halt to her gallop for a while. But don’t you worry. My Sarah’s coming home.”

  “Of course she is, Mr Nugent” Charlotte said softly. Her hand was shaking as she replaced the receiver.

  Jesus Christ, that wasn’t easy. Where the hell was Sarah? What the hell was going on?

  “Omelette’s ready!” came a shout from the kitchen.

  Charlotte’s interest in food was short-lived. But she’d have to try to eat after Richard’s efforts. His aproned figure presided over a gooey mess.

  “Go on, Charlie, tuck in. Do you good.”

  She felt queasy even looking at the plate. It was something of a car crash. Something that the cat sicked up. Burnt bits of egg were clumsily disguised with cracked black pepper. However, it had been made with love so she did her best to make approving noises. She forced some mouthfuls down.

  “I heard you on the phone to the family. I take it there’s still no news?”

  “No news.”

  His face darkened. “You shouldn’t have gone to the Blue Pool. A bunch of girls alone.”

  It wasn’t what Charlotte wanted to hear. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the Blue Pool was my idea.”

  “Richard, none of this is your fault! You must never think that. The holiday was your idea and it was a good idea. A great idea, in fact. We’re not a bunch of bloody kids. We all have to take responsibility for our actions. It was Sarah who was reckless. Always thinking she can do what she likes!”