Only We Know

by Karen Perry

  He accepts a mug of coffee, then casts his eyes around my apartment. It’s all pitiful enough – two rooms painted in pastel shades, a galley kitchen and a bathroom the size of a cupboard, books stacked precariously against the wall and house-plants at different stages of decay. This has been home to me for the past four months, two rooms in a three-storey Edwardian red-brick villa, its façade tired and unloved, in the heart of Dublin.

  ‘When did you start doing house-calls, Reilly?’

  ‘You’re my first patient.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  ‘I was worried, Katie. The way you left yesterday –’

  ‘I was sick …’

  He fixes me with a look that reminds me suddenly and painfully of my father.

  ‘Listen, Katie,’ he says, his voice lowered. ‘What happened yesterday … We were all appalled, repulsed by the thought of some sicko trying to squeeze a few quid from us for pictures of a corpse. But you … you were white as a sheet. And while the rest of us were discussing it, you bolted from the room, hardly stopping to pick up your bag. Eddie at the door said he’d never seen anyone take off out of there and across into Mother Kelly’s as fast.’ He pauses. ‘But, they were just pictures, Katie. And not the worst you’ve seen. You’re a tough cookie. Why did they upset you so much?’

  I couldn’t tell him. It would mean peeling away all the layers until we got to the one dark place I didn’t ever want to shine a light on. ‘Listen, Reilly,’ I say. ‘I appreciate your concern, really I do. But I’m fine. Honestly.’

  He looks at me in that considering way of his. ‘There’s something else,’ he says. ‘Luke Yates.’

  The way he says it makes the words dry up inside me. I see the hesitation on his face and it sends a jolt of alarm right through me.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘You haven’t heard.’ A statement, not a question.

  ‘Tell me.’ My heart is pounding.

  ‘I’m sorry to do this, Katie,’ he says softly, ‘but Luke Yates is dead.’

  2. Nick

  The cufflinks, slightly tarnished, sit on a bed of cushioned black velvet in a matching black box. They’re old, but the box is new and this makes me think of Julia. My guess is that it was she who packed them so carefully for their journey, even though the gift is supposedly from Luke. Had it been up to him, I’m sure my brother would have slipped them into an envelope, sealed and addressed it, then hoped for the best. I hold them up to the light, my hand shaking a little. I see my father’s initials engraved in an elegant script on the flat gold discs and remember an evening on the veranda at the house in Lavington: Dad – just home from work – sitting with Mum, loosening his tie and taking off his cufflinks, the clinking sound they make against the hard surface of the table as the screen-door opens and Jamil brings the drinks.

  The memory slips away, blotted out by the sounds from the streets. Outside, the city is raucous. Car horns blare. I can hear the whine of a scooter, and the crash of something heavy spilling onto the ground. Nairobi is at full throttle, vibrating with life and urgency. But in this room, just for a moment, the world seems to be holding its breath.

  The package arrived yesterday, a padded envelope containing the box and a note:

  Wear these on your big day, Nico. And be happy. Your brother, Luke.

  Today is my wedding day.

  The door opens. It’s Murphy. He brings with him a gust of energy.

  ‘Well, now,’ he says, clapping his large hands together and rubbing them briskly. ‘How are we set?’

  ‘Good,’ I say, trying to steady myself.

  ‘Here, let me do that.’ Before I can protest, he takes the box from my hands. ‘Show me your cuffs.’

  He fixes the cufflinks in place, his fingers firm yet gentle despite their size, his brow gathering in a frown of concentration. I can’t help thinking that it should be my father here, steadying me. But Dad is long dead.

  ‘Not nervous, are you?’ Murphy glances at me with his small, shrewd eyes.

  ‘No,’ I say, though I’ve felt uneasy since I read Luke’s note.

  ‘Good. You’ve nothing to be nervous about. You have your whole life ahead of you.’

  He clasps my shoulder, holds it for a moment. I can sense his restless energy. He takes my jacket from the chair-back and holds it up for me to slide into.

  ‘We’re in plenty of time, so there’s no panic,’ he says.

  Beyond the window, Nairobi’s skyline is swathed in mild sunlight. I nod.

  ‘The weather is good,’ Murphy says. He means well. And while I’m ready for this day, something is nipping at me.

  Murphy has known me long enough to realize when something’s up, but before he can say anything, we hear whistling from the hall. It’s Karl. He flings open the door. ‘Hello! Hello!’ In his hand, the box that contains the rings.

  ‘You remembered them,’ I say drily.

  He grins and shakes the box next to his ear. ‘Would I forget? Come on.’ He closes the door behind him. Karl is small, slight and fair. His hair is cropped close to the skull. Already the energy in the room has changed. It fizzes with his presence. This morning, he is wearing a blue suit that fits neatly, a skinny black tie, and Vans on his feet. His pork-pie hat sits far back on his head. He’s clearly made an effort – he looks like he’s even shaved. No sooner has he closed the door than he’s fishing for smokes in his pocket. As he pops one between his lips, Murphy comes forward to protest.

  ‘None of that now,’ he chides. ‘Can’t have the groom turning up stinking of smoke.’

  Karl pretends to be offended, but he does as he’s told, not questioning the priest’s authority, not cowed by it either.

  ‘Hey, Father Murphy,’ he says, his eyes shooting to Murphy’s hairline. ‘I see you’ve been to my barber.’

  Murphy laughs. He had until recently sported a head of greying but still thick unruly hair that he never seemed able to keep neat. It was a shock to see him with stubble. It drew attention to his cheekbones, giving him a puritanical air.

  ‘Well, now,’ Murphy says. ‘Your parents would be very proud of you today, Nick, making this commitment. I know it’s difficult for you not to have them here.’

  My phone rings. Murphy seems a little embarrassed at his show of emotion. He reaches for the phone on the table, but instead of handing it to me, he answers it.

  ‘Murphy here,’ he says jovially. ‘Ah, hello.’

  I look at him expectantly, waiting for him to hand me the phone. ‘Yes, he’s here …’

  He glances in my direction and turns, his shoulders hunched. Something in his demeanour suggests he is put out by whatever he is hearing. He grunts. I wait for him to turn, but instead he raises a finger and leaves the room.

  ‘What’s that all about?’ I say to Karl.

  He shrugs. ‘Wedding arrangements, no doubt. He doesn’t want you worrying about anything. You know Murphy, he’d rather shoulder the whole mountain.’

  ‘Show me the rings,’ I say, to dispel the unease left in Murphy’s wake.

  Taking them from the box, I weigh them in my hand. ‘Heavier than I remembered.’

  ‘They’ll weigh you down,’ Karl jokes. ‘Come on, let’s have a smoke while Murphy’s not here.’ He opens the window, lights a cigarette and passes it to me. ‘We’ll spray you with air freshener or something.’

  Side by side, we lean against the windowsill, sharing the cigarette like a couple of truant schoolboys.

  ‘Keep the speech short, Nick, right? I mean, as best man, I’d like to be able to say my piece, and I know what you’re like, hogging all the air-time. People don’t like speeches that ramble.’

  I drag on the cigarette and smile. The truth is I’m the quiet one. Even as a child, I hung back, preferring others to do the talking for me. There was always Luke who had plenty to say – enough for both of us. When I was eight I didn’t speak for a whole year. It was like something had stuck inside me. Post-traumatic stress disorder, I suppose you’d call it. Back
then, we didn’t call it anything. My parents, for reasons of their own, chose not to have it closely investigated. They preferred to wait it out. I drew a lot of pictures and listened to a good deal of music. I spent hours at the piano. It took Luke to bring me back to the world of the speaking. ‘It’s my birthday,’ he said, one morning, standing in the doorway to my bedroom.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I said hoarsely, forgetting myself, the words making a croaking sound in my throat. Luke ran to tell Mum and Dad I had spoken and that was the end of my self-imposed silence.

  Now I prefer to let my music do the talking for me. And even though I’m not one for words, when I’m at the piano and Karl has his sax, what passes between us is the most soulful discussion I can imagine.

  When Murphy gets back, he says nothing about the call, but seems perturbed. He hands me the phone.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about right now,’ Murphy says, straining to sound upbeat. He waves his hand about. ‘Boys, boys, boys. Really! Do you have to smoke?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he says, checking his watch. ‘Right, put that out, Karl. Time to go.’

  Karl makes some comment about the condemned man, gives me a friendly thump on the back and ducks out after Murphy.

  Before I follow them, I glance at my phone to see who has called, but under ‘incoming calls’, nothing is listed.

  A few nights ago, I’d called my brother. When he answered, I could hear the noise of a party in the background. Almost immediately, I felt like hanging up.

  ‘There’s something I wanted to tell you,’ I said, hearing him step away from the clamour. ‘Luke, I’m getting married.’

  There was a pause. Luke coughed. ‘That’s great news, Nick. Congratulations!’ Even though he tried to sound happy for me, he couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘When’s the big day?’

  ‘Next week …’

  ‘Next week? Well, now,’ he said. I had taken him off guard. ‘And the lucky girl?’

  ‘Her name’s Lauren.’

  I gave him some details, although it was difficult because she was lying next to me, listening to every word. I thought that by telling him about her I would break the spell. There was a nagging fear that Luke might say something that would shed a drop of poison into the one thing I held dear. That he might have balked at my marrying her after we’d been together such a short time – that he might even caution me against it. When Lauren and I are together, the love between us seems ancient and solid, but while I was talking to Luke, it felt fragile and bare.

  ‘It would be nice to meet her some day,’ Luke said. He sounded agitated. ‘And the wedding – it’s in Nairobi, I take it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You know I won’t make it. Not at such short notice.’ The noise of voices and music grew in the background. He must have been making his way back closer to where the party was, keeping an eye on it.

  ‘It sounds like you’re celebrating yourself,’ I said.

  ‘A little shindig here. Nothing to top a wedding.’

  My brother could be the life and soul of the party, and there had been many times when I’d heard his school pals laugh at his jokes when they came back to our house after school. Their playful banter was not for me, though – as the younger brother I was excluded, watching from a distance or overhearing what he shared with an inner circle that had not included me since we’d left Nairobi.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We didn’t decide to get married until a few days ago. It’s kind of a spontaneous thing.’

  Whatever script I had planned was faltering. My words petered out.

  ‘Spontaneous,’ Luke repeated. I imagined him shaking his head.

  ‘No invitations, nothing like that,’ I said. It wasn’t supposed to be a party. It was just me and Lauren, and a couple of friends, simple and low-key. None of Lauren’s family was coming over either. She’d made the call to them and received the kind of stunned response she’d expected. But we’d kept our promise to one another: create as little fuss as possible. I wanted our marriage to be an intimate affair, not like Luke and Julia’s society wedding, which had made the Sunday supplements and glossy magazines, but once Karl had got wind of our plans, he had told others. Before we knew it, a party had been planned, with a venue, a band and a guest list. I told myself that Luke wouldn’t have come anyway, but in the brief pause in our conversation, I imagined what he would have said of it afterwards if he had.

  ‘It’s the principle of the thing,’ I could hear him saying to Julia.

  Why hadn’t I sent him an invitation? Because his presence would stir up too much? Or because he might have felt obliged to come even though he might not have wanted to return to Nairobi?

  The truth is, I didn’t want him intruding into my world, into a reality I had made for myself, into something that had nothing to do with him.

  ‘I never saw you as the marrying type, Nick, but I do hope you and your bride-to-be have a lovely day,’ he said, and sounded like he meant it, which only made things worse. I wondered what he meant by ‘not the marrying type’.

  ‘I’ll be thinking of you. It’s …’ He hesitated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. I want the best for you, Nick. I always have.’

  I felt a lump in my throat. I wanted to say ‘thank you’, to say ‘sorry’, but what I said was ‘Murphy will do the honours.’

  ‘Murphy? Your wedding, Mum’s funeral … What would we do without him?’

  The sarcasm was there, but I chose to ignore it. Luke slurred his next words: ‘You left so quickly after the funeral …’

  ‘You know me, Luke. Not one for goodbyes.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said.

  The party was louder now as he moved closer to it, and further, it seemed, from me. I could hardly make out what he said next: ‘I suppose there’s never a right time to say goodbye.’

  He thanked me for calling, offered his congratulations again, and said something about meeting up in the not-too-distant future, but it was all a blur, words running into each other as a seam of panic threatened to open inside me. I mumbled goodbye, put the phone down on the bedside table and turned to Lauren. She pulled me to her, but said nothing.

  Club Iguana looks bereft in daylight, decrepit and forlorn. It is a small space, already filling with an expectant murmur: friends of Lauren’s from the university, friends of mine from the music scene. There is the clinking of bottles and glasses. A barbecue begins to smoke. Smiling faces greet us. Murphy leads me into the growing mêlée where people clap me on the back and embrace me. Despite my awkwardness, I’m moved by how happy people are for us.

  I’ve not been there long before there’s the honk of a car-horn followed by a resounding cheer. Karl takes my arm. ‘She’s here,’ he says, pulling me outside just in time to see my bride arriving on the back of a pick-up truck with lilies in her hands.

  There’s a tremor in the smile, a lowering of the eyes: a mix of shyness and nerves that’s not like her at all. For a moment, I’m taken back to that night in this club, sitting at a piano, when I first saw her, standing at the entrance. Above the din, through the miasma of smoke, I was so aware of her, trying hard to concentrate on the music while she wove her way through the tables until she found a seat. My eyes sought her out as if she were drawing me to her through the shadows. I couldn’t wait to finish the set, pull up a chair next to her and begin a conversation. When I closed the lid of the piano and stepped away, when I went up to her – surprising even myself – a beer in each hand, and offered one to her, she accepted it as if our conversation had started long ago. She smiled at me, nervously, unsure. We began to talk, and it felt to me as if we were picking up where we had left off, even though we had never met. That was how easily we slipped into it, how natural it seemed.

  I experienced a strange, easy comfort in Lauren’s company. I didn’t feel I had to try to impress her. We’d both trav
elled around the world, estranged from the rest of our families. I guess we shared the unanchored quality that brings drifters like us together.

  When I held her in my arms that first night, it was as if meeting her was more like a slow remembering that, deep in my bones, I knew her well, that I had known her all along.

  She was scared by how rapidly we were falling for each other. I was too. But she didn’t pry or push or question me. Lauren’s own vulnerability meant I knew somehow that she wouldn’t try to prise me open, as others had wanted to, until I surrendered to her the things I kept to myself.

  ‘Are you ready?’ I say to her now.

  ‘Ready,’ she says nervously.

  There is no altar. Instead, Murphy stands by the piano, waiting for us. He clutches an old prayer book in his trembling hands. After some prayers, come our vows.

  I say mine, then look at Lauren.

  Murphy asks: ‘Do you take Nicholas to be your lawful wedded husband?’

  The words catch in her throat. Someone makes a joke, something like ‘no regrets now’ and she says, ‘I do,’ and I feel sudden relief.

  We eventually sign the register and there is a cheer. Karl picks up his saxophone: the room fills with the caramel tones of ‘These Foolish Things’.

  ‘Okay?’ I ask Lauren.

  ‘Okay,’ she answers, laughing. She smiles in happy disbelief. I take her in my arms and kiss her. I want to tell her I can’t believe it either, but that it feels so right.

  Across a stretch of grass, a few kids are riding an ostrich. We have drifted outside where the sun has risen higher in the sky. I sip a beer and feel a lightness come over me. The rest of the band members have taken out their instruments: they cluster around Karl – Bill on double bass, Philly on trumpet, Pierre on the drums. Another friend, Sam, is filling in for me at the piano. ‘Can’t have you working on your wedding day,’ Karl had said to me, with a broad smile that, for an instant, resembled my brother’s.