Darling Jim

by Christian Moerk

  Niall didn’t say anything for a while, but just listened to the beep! sound and knew how stupid it was of him to have got trapped in here with this piece of work.

  “So you’re a storyteller, too,” Ned said, bemused. “Like my Jimmy? Wizards and dragons and fair maidens for you, is it?”

  “I’m no seanchaí,” Niall admitted. “I’m trying to draw the story of my three friends. As a comic book. I’m afraid I haven’t got very far yet.”

  The wizard clapped his magic hands and laughed. “A comic book? For children? Oh, how perfectly marvelous! But why not tell Jim’s story, instead? Much more dramatic.”

  Niall looked past the amber gold around Ned’s pupils and saw Jim’s quicksilver temper inside somewhere, but he didn’t waver. “Because all he did was tell his own story, over and over. And the women he killed got a notice on page thirty-four of the local paper and a closed-casket funeral.”

  Ned pushed the red button on his armrest one more time. He looked at his guest with something close enough to regret to pass for genuine. “And I know the story he told, too,” he said. “About the prince who kills his crippled brother and is turned into a wolf? Heard it on the radio. Except you’ve got it backwards. Everybody does.” Footfalls outside in the hallway. It could be Theo. It might be Otto. Or both. “I was the one who sent Jim away from home, you understand?” He tapped his dead legs with clenched fists. “I was born with these loaves of bread, he didn’t leave me under my horse. That’s just angry projection. I told Jim how to talk to women, what to do with them in bed, that kind of thing. He took things a bit too—”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Just a moment,” he called out, and looked back at Niall. Ned’s eyes were wide, and the spell they cast now was Jim in the flesh, limp legs or not. He could have told any story, until the end of time, and Niall would have believed every word of it. “I found him in bed with our big sister, Aisling. It was late summer, as I recall. They weren’t playing cards, tell you that. Our father sent her away to school in Switzerland. Old girl was never quite right after that. Did a runner before graduating and moved in with a French punk musician, who taught her what to do with needles. She’s buried right out back. Want to see the headstone? It’s really quite beautiful. Just like the one I helped put up for Jim in that wretched little town, what is it? Castledown . . . Castlesome-thing?”

  “No, thank you,” Niall said. “And if you don’t mind, I should be going.”

  “Should you?” asked Ned, with mock incredulity. “But you know more about my brother than anyone who’s come by. So much more to share. Why should I let you leave? Give me just one good reason.”

  Niall’s hands gripped for the knife blade, and he remembered it was no longer there. The wolf’s head grinned at him, confident of one last kill even beyond taxidermy. “Because you lie awake at night, wondering if you might not be worse than your brother,” he said, rising and opening the door. He stared right into Otto’s fish eyes. “And if I walk out of here unmolested, you tip the scales back in your own favor. At least for one night.”

  There was another faint chirp from the shortwave radio’s dying battery, as if it agreed. Ned nodded to Otto and smiled. He seemed relieved. “Otto, would you be so kind as to drive our new friend here anywhere he wishes to go?” He turned to Niall and cocked his head, as if to a worthy adversary. The tattoo with the twin boys holding hands could just be glimpsed on his left forearm, before he buttoned his shirtsleeve again. “You would have made a good man for my security team,” he said. “What kind of training do you have?”

  “I used to be a postman,” Niall said, shrugging. “But I got fired.”

  “Perfect. A civil servant confidence artist. You bluffed your way in, and guilted your way out. Might have made a decent grifter. I’m sure my brother would have agreed.” He leaned forward in the chair, his eternal mobile prison, and gave Niall a smile to remember him by. “We’re not bad people, so park that condescending smile somewhere I can’t see it. And have the presence of mind never to come visit me again.”

  AS NIALL LOOKED out the rear window of the soundless Rolls-Royce taking him home to his shoebox flat in Ballymun, he saw the wizard’s black gates closing behind him. Whatever family secrets still lay buried inside would stay forever hidden.

  The wood anemones averted their petals from the road and didn’t dare look up again until they were quite sure the car was gone.

  Postscript

  A

  KNIGHT’S

  REWARD

  • 10 •

  It’s true what they say about cats, Niall thought, as he picked up Oscar from the biology students next door. You can be gone a moment or a decade, and they’ll stare at you as if you’ve insulted them personally.

  His flat looked exactly the way he’d left it, only with a film of gray dust everywhere, and Oscar delighted in stirring it up, because he knew it bothered Niall’s sinuses. Mail had piled up in the box downstairs, most of it delinquency notices from his long-suffering bank, a fitness club, and the art school where he still owed a fortune in tuition for learning something he’d never made a dime at. The kicker had been the bright orange NOTICE OF EVICTION—30 DAYS sticker he’d found on his front door. Jennifer, from across the hall, had passed him when he tried to peel it off and pretended not to notice.

  Niall made some tea, leaving a few spare bags for Oscar to eviscerate to his heart’s content. He’d missed the bugger. Looking around at the humble remnants of his life, there was nothing to suggest he had fought like a medieval knight for fair maidens, two of whom were already dead before he set out on his quest. The answering machine blinked FULL and his mobile had conked out long ago, because he had no money left to pay the bill.

  The only proof that any of it had actually happened was the one bent sweat-stained diary he had managed to save. He’d got no treasure for his efforts. No triumphant return to the castle courtyard, with a kiss from the grateful princess. It was back to the salt mines and obscurity.

  You should have sent your diary to a real knight, Róisín, he thought, as he flipped through it, recounting in his mind the first time he’d set foot in Castletownbere. The three of you deserved a better champion to keep your memory alive. Bronagh was probably dining out on having chased the “dangerous pervert” out of town, Niall guessed, and wondered how good Donald Cremin was at looking up names in the telephone directory. He consoled himself with the fact that he’d soon be history inside the concrete tower he’d come to love like a benign disease. The wizard would keep chasing intruders, Niall guessed, forever denying that his brother had been anything more than an apt pupil at his brother’s knee.

  O’Driscoll, that’s what the no-neck bodyguard in the forest had called Ned, wasn’t it? It struck something familiar inside Niall, and he tried to remember something Jim had said about his twin mythological princes. Wasn’t O’Driscoll merely a modern form of saying Ua Eitirsceoil anyway? Wizardry. Smoke and mirrors. He closed the book, which had begun to come apart at the seams, and knew he wouldn’t open it again.

  He was going to get a good night’s sleep. And tomorrow, he’d go up to Malahide and ask Mr. Raichoudhury for his old job back. All right, he’d beg for it. Niall pulled a black number-two pencil out of his bag and held it in his hands a moment. Nothing happened, not even a slight tingle to get an image moving from his brain to the lead tip. The story of the man-wolf tearing up the countryside and all the women in it was as dead inside him as an old newspaper. He snapped the pencil in two and tossed it into the trash.

  He felt tired, and his eyes hurt. He stared at the black book again. There was no way he’d keep Róisín’s diary, not now. It was dragging him down like a millstone around his neck. The cops? He thought one last time and realized he’d spent the last week running from them all over West Cork. The law would just love a visit from him, once they checked with Bronagh. No, he’d have to throw it away somewhere it would never be found. But first he had to get some Dublin air into his lung
s, and go get that bike. With my luck, it’s probably stolen, he mused, and pocketed the diary one last time. On impulse, he grabbed a couple of pencils, too, because you just never know. Niall opened the front door and glanced back at the orange tabby, who had jumped onto the kitchen counter to show him how easily an eraser can be shredded into a thousand pieces.

  “Feel free to wreck anything you like, ya old bastard,” Niall said, pulling the door shut. Behind him, Oscar merely blinked at him, as if to say, And I need your permission for that, gyppo?

  THE CALENDAR SAID it was summer, all right. But the wind blowing across the river Liffey as Niall pulled his bicycle along the quay felt Siberian.

  No one had touched his bike, which he’d forgotten to lock again, of course. One small bounty for staying true to three vanished princesses. And now he just let the arctic breeze carry him from the station down toward the center of town. There was more espresso in the air than lager, and had been for some time in the shiny new city that had embraced New Europe and forgotten it was actually still in Ireland. Niall passed a café, where the slurping sound of someone making cappuccino froth sent him farther on down the footpath. He finally found a dirty pub without a smart name or outside wicker chairs. Perfect, he thought, counting through the fistful of banknotes he’d just got for cashing his severance check. “Yer a god, Mr. Raichoudhury,” he mumbled, and went inside.

  “Howya,” said the barman, adjusting the volume on a TV, where a stern-looking woman was going on about how two lads up in the North had been killed when a helicopter fell on them. “Pint?”

  “Guinness, please,” said Niall, feeling at home again. He paid for his beer and picked the table farthest away from the door. The foam was thick enough to make a soft ice out of. The chatter of students bragging about last night’s accomplishments blended with TV commentary from the British Army about how their helicopter was brought down by “parties unknown, at this stage.” A jukebox somewhere played “Brothers in Arms,” and Niall hummed along about how every man had to die, while he turned Róisín’s diary in his hands like a stone tablet he was itching to plant somewhere far away.

  He hadn’t seen the figure before it spoke. “Drinking alone is bad luck,” it said.

  Niall lifted his head and recognized Aoife instantly. The way she stared at him, directly and fearlessly, left no doubt.

  “You’re . . . What’s . . . ?” he said, spilling the glass like an eejit but catching himself.

  “Just let me speak for a moment, okay?” she said, sitting down. “Can I do that?” Her cropped blond hair was so short it was barely there. She wore brand-new pink combat boots with her black overcoat and hid something in her lap.

  Niall merely nodded and only just remembered to close his mouth.

  “You had every chance to go to the guards and tell them everything you know about us,” said Aoife, finishing Niall’s beer. “And you never did, not even when your own life was at stake. I’ve come to thank you for that. Been keeping an eye on you ever since you came walking into Castletownbere. And now I need to ask you a question.”

  “Sure,” Niall said, his heart beating into his fingertips. “Anything you like.”

  Aoife looked out the window at something Niall couldn’t see from where he sat. “Why did me and my sisters matter to you that much” she asked, nervously picking at a nail, “that you’d risk everything for our sake?”

  “Because they were buried before anybody knew what had happened to them,” Niall said. “And because I was the one who found Fiona’s diary, not the cops. You mailed both of them yourself. You should know. I was”—he searched for the right word—“entrusted. After that, what choice did I have?”

  “All the choices in the world,” she protested, but smiled despite herself. “No one asked you to get chased up the road by Donald Cremin and his gang of mucksavages. Or to get an earful from Bronagh every five minutes.”

  “She does a good job, doesn’t she?” Niall asked. “Keeping your trail cold? And people off ya?”

  “Not good enough. You found me.”

  “No, I didn’t. Just your tracks.”

  “Too close anyway.” Aoife sighed and eyed the bar. “I made a few new friends along the way, trying to stay hidden. This one girl I met in a shop up north had a motorcycle. Became like a fourth sister, really. She offered to help out wherever Bronagh couldn’t.” A shake of the head. “A proper desperado, that one. Beat her cheating boyfriend half to death in Tyrone someplace. Reminds me of Rosie.” She fell silent and looked at the notebook in Niall’s hands. “Is that . . . ?”

  “It’s for you,” he said, pushing Róisín’s diary across the marble tabletop. “I don’t want it anymore.” It was as if the black canvas groaned the moment Aoife’s fingertips touched it. She glanced out the window again, smiling at something. “I had to leave them in Aunt Moira’s house, once I knew they were dead,” she said, gripping the notebook harder. “Do you understand?”

  “Anything I tell you about that will be a lie,” Niall said, “because before I can answer, I have a question for you, too.”

  “We’re talking about the same thing, then,” she said, gripping both his wrists and smiling the way people do if they need to be forgiven.

  “The reason you left Castletownbere and your sisters to begin with, after Jim—” Niall began.

  “Hang on,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “I’m not sure you’re getting—”

  “And the way you stayed gone for nearly three years after that,” he persisted, not allowing himself to keep this last secret bottled up. He’d bled for this, got beat up and threatened and fired, and whatever else. The black gates opened one last time and let three princesses out onto the fields before it, alive and well before the wolf or his wizard could reach them. “There could only be one explanation. And it’s the same one that made you escape so quickly after you raced upstairs and found both your sisters dead, isn’t it? You had something to protect, your sisters wrote. Protect from prying eyes everywhere. From judgment.”

  Aoife didn’t say anything, at first. Then she signaled for Niall to rise and join her by the window.

  “Where are . . . ?” he said, but did it anyway.

  Outside, people were taking the long way home from work, and a couple of taxi drivers stubbed out their cigarettes before getting on with it. He was about to ask Aoife what he was supposed to be looking for, even if he could guess. Then he saw it: a brown Vauxhall Royale with wobbly tires was parked across the road.

  From the backseat, a child’s hand waved back at Aoife.

  Niall looked closer and saw it was a little girl, most of her face obscured by a waterfall of the blackest curls. He guessed she couldn’t be much older than three. An adult in a black leather jacket held her close and grinned at Niall, who stood there, gobsmacked. He recognized her, even without the helmet visor. It was the speed-demon girl on the black motorcycle. A proper desperado.

  “My daughter will never know she was fathered by a wolf,” said Aoife. “And when I walk out of here, you won’t see me again. Poof. Gone. Just like in a fairy tale. Now do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Niall said, taking a breath and smiling. “Yes, I do.”

  Aoife put the notebook in her pocket and turned to leave. Two gardaí by the front door leaned in to ask the barman something Niall couldn’t hear. The blond pixie looked back at Niall. C’mon, boy, now’s yer chance, her eyes beamed. Be a hero. Getcha name in the papers. When she saw he didn’t take the bait, she turned around and came back.

  “Where did you come from?” she asked him, and smiled wider this time.

  “A castle deep in the forest,” he answered. “Where all the wolves are long dead.”

  “Sounds like a wonderful place,” Aoife said, and appeared to hesitate. “Don’t tell anybody how to find it.” Behind her, the law shuffled back outside. She took something out of her pocket and handed it to Niall. It was wrapped in the same kind of laced napkin he’d found around the knife. When she saw he was about
to open it, she stopped him.

  “Wait until I’m gone.” She nodded toward the bulk in her hands. “I nearly threw that in the river many times. But I always thought, If I do, then me and my two sisters will be forgotten for all time. That’s why you’re the only one I trust with it. I know you will understand. And when you’ve seen enough, tell our story. I hear that you’re a cartoonist. Draw something beautiful.”

  “We call it ‘graphic artist,’” Niall said, feeling his throat getting choked.

  “Good luck, Niall Cleary,” she said, kissed him on the cheek, and walked out the door. As her left arm swung up to wave at the only family she had left, Niall noticed the handcuff bracelet still there, around her wrist. Must have taken forever to saw through the chain, he guessed. A moment later, the Vauxhall rattled out of its spot and down the quay.

  Niall’s fingers knew what was inside the package Aoife had left behind. They unwrapped the white fabric and uncovered the last thing, the only thing, he would have dreamed of as a reward for his faith and loyalty.

  It was a plain black notebook.

  He listened for the hidden music that accompanied the pictures inside his brain, right before one particular image manifested itself there. It rose up slowly, blending with the speaker’s voice and the rattle from video poker machines nearby.

  He opened the book and turned the first page. Aoife had written:

  The diary of Aoife Jeanine Walsh, with much love to Niall, a true knight in shining armor. We’ll never forget you.

  No, there would be no kneeling before Mr. Raichoudhury, thanks all the same, thought Niall, as he closed the book and put it into his bag. His fingers tingled again, and couldn’t wait to get around a number-two pencil that would render every detail of what happened when three women defeated a wolf dressed as a man. And the arts academy would just have to keep sending him reminders of how deeply in debt he was. He would give all the money he had left to the landlord, hoping for a reprieve. Because he hadn’t completed his quest. The most important part—the telling of it—still lay ahead.