Only We Know

by Karen Perry

  There was blood on the floor, Nick.

  Around me, the other passengers are bracing themselves. I’m not the only one to grip the arm rests. I take a deep breath and wait for the next side-swipe from the elements. My stomach quivers. I close my eyes, press my head back against the seat and wait it out.

  The whole time I was back, I seemed cloaked in a sense of disbelief – numb to the reality of the situation. Nothing about it felt right, from the suit I was wearing to the press of people’s hands against my own: the words spoken, condolences offered, a box with a body in it – my mother’s – her withered limbs, her shrunken frame. A brief moment alone with her, masking my shock at her papery skin, the groove worn into the tissues of her nose where the tube had entered her nostril, her ribcage protruding like that of a malnourished child, her flesh having wasted away. One last kiss before they closed the coffin – and, Jesus, how I didn’t cry out in fright at the stone coldness of her forehead as I pressed my lips to it …

  Murphy said the Mass. He spoke fondly of Sally, of how she had touched the lives of many, but the words seemed to string together and buzz in my ears, as if something were wrong with their rhythm, something that made me shift in my seat. I remember Luke walking to the edge of the grave after Mum was lowered. He bent down, picked up a handful of earth and threw it onto her coffin. I can still hear the echo of the stony soil, like a melancholy snare drum.

  I push away the memory and, gradually, the plane levels off as we find a smooth line. People sigh with relief. The nervous energy is still there, but it’s venting itself now in movement and chatter.

  ‘You okay?’ I ask Lauren.

  ‘Fine,’ she says, but I know that this whole episode is not what she’d expected. She’s still jittery and nervous.

  ‘Hey, I’m so sorry about this – all of it. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.’

  ‘I know you will,’ she says.

  ‘This is supposed to be your honeymoon.’

  ‘Our honeymoon,’ she corrects me.

  ‘We’ll still do it – Madagascar, the whale-watching, the whole thing – I promise.’

  She raises my hand to her mouth, places a kiss on my palm. ‘He’s going to be okay,’ she says.

  I shrug, unsure how to answer. ‘I hope so,’ I say.

  ‘We’re together, that’s all that matters,’ she says. ‘Everything will be fine.’

  Part of me wants to believe her. Part of me almost does. But the way she says it, earnest and sincere, makes her seem so hopelessly young. My twenty-three-year-old bride is still brimming with youthful optimism because she hasn’t lived long enough for something to shake her confidence in the world.

  The plane lands to ripples of applause. We disembark, collect our luggage and find our way through the airport to the taxi rank.

  In the taxi, Lauren talks to the garrulous driver while, through the window, I watch the city slide by: the mangy pubs, the foul-smelling butchers, the convenience stores and fast-food joints of my memory. There are new sights too: Polish grocers, the halal shop and Asian markets. Dublin has changed in a short time, even if the crooked curve of houses are the same. The hymn the city hums goes something like ‘Dirty Old Town’. The streets have a familiar meanness; like an aunt’s kiss, they say, ‘Welcome back.’ The winding roads and church spires say, ‘We knew you’d be back.’ And so, I suppose, did I.

  We make it to the coast road and I ask the driver to pull over at the top of the hill. We pay the fare and the taxi takes off.

  ‘Where’s the house?’ Lauren asks.

  When I point towards the bottom where grand houses cluster near the shore, she looks at me, a question in her eyes.

  ‘I didn’t feel well,’ I say. ‘Needed some air.’

  We begin to walk. The road is steep. On one side of the road, houses are dotted along the hill; on the other, the land falls away to a magnificent stretch of coast. On this sunny morning, the sweep of Dublin Bay sparkles, its beauty calling out to me in a way that I find painful.

  I remember Dad bringing us out here some Sundays, to the beach in Killiney, Luke hanging back to talk to him about the latest rugby results as I ran ahead. There was something about the coast Dad loved in autumn. Maybe it was the air or the light or just the lonely pleasure of walking with no real destination in mind. Either way, I wanted to collect shells and stones on those walks. Dad said something about hearing the ocean when you held a shell to your ear. ‘And when you hold the right one – you can hear the waves crashing far off.’

  I spent years trying to find the right shell to hear those waves. Luke, on the other hand, kept talking to Dad about tactics and transfers. ‘What do you think of …?’ was his insistent refrain. By then, it seemed he paid me hardly any heed at all – vying as he was for all of Dad’s attention.

  On the way home from those windy walks, Dad bought us ice-cream at Teddy’s in Dún Laoghaire. ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ he’d say, even though she never came on those walks and rarely asked about them. But, still, it was a secret we shared, and it was a bearable one. Some of the happiest moments of our life after Africa involved standing dumbly on the pier licking ice-cream, shivering, glad to be around Dad as he hummed old show-tunes to himself.

  I doubt he could have foreseen Luke living here, Luke going missing. Or me here waiting to hear any news of a brother who is by now a stranger to me.

  Lauren walks on ahead. I can tell from the way she holds herself that she’s breathing in the sea air gratefully after all those hours on the plane. At the same time she’s trying to calm herself for the situation she finds herself in. As we near the foot of the hill, where my brother has his home, Lauren slows, then stops, her attention snagged on something below. I come up behind her.

  The beach, pebbled and craggy, is lapped by the blue-green sea. Three men in luminous yellow jackets walk along it, the intervals between them wide and evenly spaced, their pace deliberately slow and measured.

  Lauren puts out her hand to steady me. She doesn’t say anything – she doesn’t need to. On this bright morning, we stand watching the guards conduct their search, sweeping the beach for the presence of a body.

  Julia is standing in the doorway as if she has been waiting all morning. ‘Nick,’ she says, coming forward with her arms outstretched. I step into her embrace. She feels so small and insubstantial against me, as if she is made of air. We hold onto each other for a moment and I feel the heave of her body as she gulps back tears. When we pull away I notice the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the kind that no amount of make-up can hide.

  ‘Why is it that you and I only ever see each other on sad occasions, Nick?’ she asks, holding both of my hands in hers. Her smile, for all its bravery, is thin and pained. She is barely holding herself together.

  Lauren is beside me. I make the introductions and the two women embrace as if they’ve known each other for years. We follow Julia into the house; a man wearing an earpiece carries our luggage. When she instructs him to put our suitcases into the spare room, I find myself awkwardly stammering that we have our own accommodation.

  ‘What?’ she says, pausing on the step. ‘Why aren’t you staying here?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Julia. We just thought it would be better … We didn’t want to be under your feet.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be.’

  ‘And we’re only a short taxi-ride away, if you need us to come out here quickly.’

  She bites her lip, her eyes searching my face, and I can see the fight going on inside her head. My cheeks burn with shame.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Whatever you want.’

  I can’t help but feel that already I’ve let her down. Julia leads us through the hallway into the expansive living area. I glance around at the high ceiling, the wide, cool space. I remember this house from my mother’s funeral. Today it feels even bigger, more cavernous, than it did then: an echo chamber of domestically troubled conversations. If it ever had a soul, it’s gone. There’s no warmth, and the welco
me we have received is a frightened one.

  My sister-in-law directs us to the cluster of sofas and asks if we want tea or coffee; even under such testing circumstances, she remains the perfect hostess.

  ‘Julia,’ Lauren says, laying a hand on her arm, ‘sit down. You must be exhausted.’

  Julia turns to me and in her movement there is the suggestion of defiance and despair. ‘Please,’ Lauren says, her tone gentle but insistent. ‘Let me make the tea. I’m sure I can find my way around your kitchen. You two should talk.’

  Julia smiles, then sits on the sofa. I sit a short distance from her while my wife leaves us alone.

  ‘She’s lovely, Nick. You’re a lucky man.’

  ‘How are you holding up?’ I reach across to her.

  Instantly she crumbles, her defences falling away at my touch. ‘Oh, God, Nick,’ she says, ‘what’s happened to him?’

  For a moment, I sit there, my hand resting on her shoulder, a tremor of fear in my fingers. She leans her head back and opens her eyes. ‘I just keep expecting the door to open and him to walk in.’ She wipes the corners of her eyes with her fingers. ‘It’s been three days.’

  Three days, I think. What good can come of this? ‘What do the guards say?’

  ‘They have a tape,’ she says. ‘A security camera at the end of the road caught him staggering down the street, disoriented, holding a hand to his head. Then he gets into a car. Now they’re looking for it and the driver.’

  ‘A taxi?’ I say.

  ‘They’re asking so many questions,’ she says, ‘about the business, money, Luke’s behaviour. I hardly know what to tell them.’

  ‘When I spoke to him on the phone the other night, he sounded a little downbeat.’

  She glances at me. ‘Things haven’t been right with him for a while, Nick. Your mother’s death hit him hard.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, my voice almost a whisper.

  ‘He’s been very up and down these past few months.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Mood swings. Erratic behaviour.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Well, like that outburst on national television,’ she says. ‘It seemed to come from nowhere. And there’s been speculation that it was all calculated, all part of some grand plan to kick-start a political career, but if it was, then I never knew about it. I mean, Luke never expressed any desire to go into politics. Even the charity, which everyone points to as an example of his social conscience, even that didn’t have much to do with Luke. It was always Sally’s project. Luke just provided her with a steer. And when she died and the directorship passed to him, it was a burden, a nuisance, not some kind of vocation.’

  ‘What about your man out there?’ I ask, inclining my head. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Gary?’ she asks. ‘That’s more of it. He was Luke’s idea. This paranoia he had that we needed security, protection. I said to him: “Protection from what? What is it we’re supposed to be afraid of?” But he wouldn’t tell me. He just became evasive and moody whenever I pushed him on the subject.’

  ‘How long has he been here?’

  ‘Not long. We took him on shortly after the Late Late Show appearance. God knows what I’ll do with him now. Just him and me in this house – it creeps me out. Are you sure you won’t stay?’

  She’s pleading, which almost makes me give in. I offer a smile to take the sting out of it.

  A hush then, nothing but the far-off sounds of industry in the kitchen. Then: ‘Did you see the guards out there?’ she asks quietly. I nod, thinking of the yellow jackets, the deliberate spread of them moving over the beach.

  Julia is twisting a hankie between her hands. Something drops inside me – with it a shiver of unwanted nostalgia. I want, more than anything, to get away from this house – this mausoleum – the widow on the couch, but then the door opens: Lauren is there with a tray. Setting it on the table, she begins passing around cups and saucers and I welcome the distraction, seizing my chance. ‘Would you mind if I took a look at the study?’ I ask.

  ‘All right,’ Julia agrees, getting to her feet, but I stop her, telling her I remember where it is.

  I leave them, the two women, the clink of their teacups and their soft conspiratorial whispers echoing behind me.

  When I open the door to his study, I feel as if I’m trespassing. I pause on the threshold, unsure and nervous. The air smells sterile, as if the place has been scrubbed with an industrial cleaner, all traces of a struggle erased.

  I step into the room, allow the door to close behind me and, in the quiet dimness, I take it all in: the books, the golf clubs in the corner. The desk occupying the centre was once my father’s – solid and mahogany, a stern piece. The armchairs that cluster around the fireplace came from my parents’ house too, along with the oil painting above the hearth. In fact, it’s as if this one room has taken on the life, the charm, the personality that once persisted in our home in the Wicklow hills, a house that has been sold, abandoned, and is now overrun with weeds and dust. All that remains of it seems to be here in this room, so utterly out of place in the rest of this house.

  At first glance, everything appears normal. Untouched. But a closer look reveals disturbances. The wall behind the desk is blank where it had once been filled with framed photographs. In a cabinet is an assortment of awards – slabs of Perspex engraved with words I haven’t the heart to read; chips have appeared in a couple, a great fissure passing through another that speaks of an episode of violence. A chair that had once sat by the desk has been moved. I peer down at the floor, the heavy pile of the carpet, and see the mark made by the rub of a soaked cloth. It was here that the blood must have been.

  On the desk lie reams of papers, files neatly stacked. The room is cluttered, claustrophobic with work, but more than that I feel something else: a presence.

  I remember him here, the day of Mum’s funeral, sitting behind the desk, a tumbler of whiskey in his hands, watching as I stood by the fireplace. From beyond the door came the low hum of voices, the house crowded with mourners. We had escaped for a few moments, and it was to be the only time in that whole long day that we were alone.

  ‘So, Nick … what are you going to do now?’

  I felt a familiar nudge of irritation. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘With yourself. With your life,’ he said.

  Already he was assuming the parental role. But that wasn’t the only reason for my irritation. Asking me these questions, as if what I was doing was not real – as if playing music was a pastime, not a career; a hobby instead of a vocation.

  ‘Head back to Nairobi, I suppose,’ I said. I was reverting to a moody teenager, but I couldn’t stop.

  He seemed to sigh, as if I had disappointed him. He stared at me for a minute, tipped his whiskey down his throat and set the tumbler firmly on the desk. ‘I think you should know that there’s no money in the will,’ he said.

  I was shocked by the crassness of his statement.

  ‘She’s left it all to the charity. Every penny of it.’

  ‘I don’t care about the money, Luke,’ I said, in a low voice.

  He caught my eye, my tone, and gave a quick smile. ‘Yeah, I know. Did you know she’s made me the sole director?’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Fucking poisoned chalice.’

  ‘I thought you’d relish the opportunity.’

  ‘Oh, please. I don’t have the time. It was fine for Mum – she liked nothing better than flitting off to Nairobi to inspect a new water-pump or whatever. Where am I going to find the time for that?’

  ‘Employ someone,’ I said. ‘Have Murphy do it. He’s already involved.’

  Something changed in his face then. He grew quiet, swinging his chair slowly from side to side. ‘He laid it on a bit thick today, don’t you think? All that talk about Mum and Dad. And did you see him out there just now?’ he continued, gesturing to the room beyond. ‘Sitting in a corner getting quietly sozzled, as if he’s about to burst into tears.’


  ‘That’s Murphy,’ I said. ‘You know what he’s like. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He loves the grand gesture.’

  ‘What he said during Mass – about Mum, the trials she went through. What do you think he meant by that?’

  ‘Her illness. Dad’s death. I dunno.’

  ‘You don’t suppose he knows, do you? About what happened back then?’

  I felt a tilt of sudden emotion. We never spoke about it. Never. And I heard again my father’s words in my ears: Not a soul. Ever. Do you hear me? You must never tell anyone.

  ‘No,’ I said, hearing the sternness in my own voice. ‘He doesn’t know. No one does.’

  ‘Just you, me and Katie now,’ he said, in a wistful kind of way.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, conceding something, getting to his feet and picking up his empty glass. ‘Let’s have another drink. Then you can play us a few tunes – liven up this party.’ Clasping an arm around my shoulders, he squeezed me to him. ‘Make you sing for your supper, eh, Music Boy?’

  The stains to the left of the desk, caught on the tiny barbs of the tufted carpet. They have been scrubbed, and the thick woven carpet has been steam-cleaned, but the blood, its density and weight, is still there.

  I bend down to touch the place: as my fingers brush the carpet fibre I know it’s Luke’s blood and my ears fill with an unnatural humming.

  A shadow falls over me and I almost cry out in fright.

  ‘Nick? Are you okay?’ Julia asks.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, straightening and leaning against the desk to try to stop the trembling in my legs.

  ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? The atmosphere in here,’ she says, hugging herself.

  ‘A bit, yeah.’

  She glances at the empty wall, then bends down to pick up a cardboard box I hadn’t noticed. Now I see that it contains the fallen photographs, rent from their frames; the glass that was shattered has been swept away and discarded. She sifts through them, then picks one out and holds it up. It’s of Luke and me as kids. ‘I don’t know why he had that hanging in here,’ I say.