by Karen Perry
‘We all went,’ I go on, not sure why I’m telling her this now, but propelled by some need to let the story out. To let it out so that I can let it go. ‘Even Luke’s dad. Six of us and the driver crammed into a HiAce van that seemed held together with rope and prayer, bumping and rattling over the worst road in Kenya down to the Rift Valley.’
How hot it had been in that van. The smell of sweat mingling with the peppery scent of the driver’s tobacco. My bare knees knocking against Luke’s and Nick’s. I had lost the argument for a window seat, my mother snapping at me, afraid I might cause a scene. All that long afternoon, Nick kept pinching me, trying to make me squeal, tears coming to my eyes as I bit down the shriek that I knew would only annoy my mother more. Luke sat in a prickly silence, keeping his gaze fixed on the countryside flashing by, his expression unreadable.
The excitement at the first sighting of a zebra went a long way to alleviate my tiredness and discomfort. Then the sudden appearance of giraffes languorously tugging leaves off tall trees only yards from the road seemed to carry us through the last long hour of that journey.
‘How long did you stay there?’
‘Three nights. Then, on the last morning, when we were due to leave, our driver turned up drunk. He had been drinking all night with the Masai, and when the adults saw the state he was in, they hit the roof.’
I have a vivid memory of my mother throwing her hands up in a gesture of exasperation before turning her back on the others and walking away.
‘After a while, someone decided a new driver needed to be found so my mother and Mr Yates went off to the nearest village to look for one. The rest of us were left to wait.’
Sally Yates was sunbathing and the driver had gone to the van to sleep it off. We children sloped down towards the river. In my mind’s eye, I can see it – the stillness of the tall grass, yellow against the black clump of bushes and thorn trees that flanked the narrow stream; the low droop of branches, not a breeze whispering through the trees. No movement at all, but the sound of those girls on the other side, laughing. I hear their voices in my head and instantly draw back from the memory.
‘So what happened?’ Tanya asks, pulling me back into the present.
‘Sorry?’
‘After that?’
I’m momentarily rattled.
By the time they came back, it was done.
But I don’t say this.
‘They found another driver and we went back to Nairobi and the next day my Mam and I flew home to Ireland.’
I finish my drink, return the glass firmly to the table.
‘Did your parents stay together?’ she asks, and I see curiosity in her eyes.
‘Yes. Although I wouldn’t say either of them was very happy.’
‘Oh.’
Not happy, but relieved. That is how I’ve come to think of it. They had been given a glimpse of something terrible, and after that they clung to one another – and to me – fearful of letting go in case the terrible thing crept back. Sometimes, when she thought I couldn’t see her, I’d find my mother staring at me as if she didn’t understand me, as if I was a stranger to her, someone who’d slipped in during the night, and I was this unknowable creature, under her care but utterly strange to her.
‘Do you think Luke was happy?’ I ask her now.
She thinks about it for a moment, her brow furrowing with concentration. ‘For the most part.’
‘I know he suffered from depression,’ I offer.
‘From time to time. Luke was always very up and down. When he was up he was flying, but when he was down it was like he was lost in a fog or something. Every now and then, he’d have to take time off work to …’
‘To what?’
‘To walk the black dog. That was what he called it. The depression. I don’t know. I suppose some people have it. When it got really bad, he would spend some time in a clinic: St John of Gods.’
‘How was he in the last few weeks?’
She winces. ‘Outwardly, he seemed okay. But there was something bothering him. You could see the signs. I found I was watching him, waiting for him to go into another slump.’
‘What caused it, do you think? Did he have money worries?’
‘Not exactly.’ She draws out the word. ‘There were a few problems. He felt like he’d overstretched himself with the country house he’d bought into. And if the banks called in his loans, he’d have been sunk. His mother’s charity was taking up a lot of his time – he was concerned about it, and in recent months he’d asked an accountant to look things over. Sally, for all her good points, was not one for keeping the books up to date. But I don’t think he was unduly worried about money issues. He seemed to have it under control.’
‘What, then?’
I see her hesitation, the way her eyes pass over the table between us, the way she uncrosses then crosses her legs. She knows something. I feel the quickening of anticipation.
‘One day, a few weeks ago now, I walked into his office and saw him sitting at his desk, looking like he’d just seen a ghost. He was so pale, his skin was almost grey. I thought he was ill. I asked if he wanted a glass of water, a painkiller, something – but he just sat there, not moving, staring at the desk in front of him. And that was when I saw it.’
‘What?’
‘A bird. A dead bird.’
My heart just about stops.
‘Someone had sent him a dead bird in the post. It was lying there on the table in front of him, this tiny little thing, the claws drawn up like it had rigor mortis.’
‘What kind of bird was it?’ I ask, my voice cracking.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t want me to touch it, or even come close to it. When I moved towards him, he put a hand up and told me he’d take care of it.’
‘Do you know who sent it?’
‘No idea. He wouldn’t talk about it – just clammed up.’
‘Do you think he knew?’
She shakes her head. Then, as if suddenly remembering, she says with conviction: ‘He said something that made me stop. He said: “Tanya, my past is coming back to haunt me.”’ She glances up at me then, and if she sees the fear in my eyes, she doesn’t remark on it. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I say, looking around for the lounge boy and signalling for the bill – I don’t want her to see how shaken I am. I don’t want her to witness the fear that is crawling up from my toes, the sickness and panic that are colonizing my whole body.
It’s late. I’m tired and unprepared for the day that lies ahead, a day that’s going to be hard. Besides, I’m afraid of what I might confess if I sit here much longer. Tanya has a weepy air about her now and I don’t want to hear any of her confessions either, so I make my apologies, explaining that I’m dead tired and will probably sleep in my clothes, the shoes still on my feet. She smiles in sympathy and bids me goodnight.
But I don’t sleep. Instead, I sit by the window high above an intersection that is quiet now, only the occasional purr of an engine rising to greet me, while I smoke cigarette after cigarette. My mind wanders along dark, lonely tracks, all of which lead back to the river. The girlish laughter; Luke saying, ‘Come on,’ the urgency of his excitement; Nick glancing over his shoulder to check for me. Then later, bouncing along in a different van with a different driver, a black ache of dread in my heart, all of us silent as we headed back to Nairobi. I remember the quietness of that space and how unnatural it seemed, as if it was something dangerous that might shatter at any moment. I got the window seat, but it was a hollow victory, and stared flatly at the zebras and giraffes, my eyes opened now in a way I didn’t want them to be. Beside me, I could feel the gentle shake of Nick’s body as he cried, his head down, tears falling onto his lap making dark circles on his shorts. I don’t know whether Luke cried then, although he did later. He was staring at something out the window I couldn’t see.
Nobody said a word.
I hadn’t thought I would ever come back here. I had tried to put that
part of my childhood behind me, yet still I had come to think of it as the defining moment in my life. In the dark hours, when I lay alone and unloved in my bed, salty tears of self-pity drying on my cheeks, I would turn to that moment, allow myself to peek at it from the distance of time, and think about how it might have changed me, how, if it had never happened, I might have become a different person and lived a different life.
I’d thought I was strong enough to come back. I’d told myself the memory of what had happened had diminished with time, lost its weight and significance. We had only been kids, after all. But sitting at the open window of a dim, unfamiliar room, absorbing the night smell of this foreign city, I feel the power of that event surfacing again. And this time I am alone. My mother dead, my father too, Luke and Luke’s parents. All gone, all shadows now. Just me and Nick left. But Nick feels far, far away from me, even if what happened still binds us, and as the night grows later, it’s as if a veil has been lifted, a door opened, and what it reveals I don’t want to see. But it’s there in the room with me, weaving its way inside, a dull insistent hum running through my head all night long.
9. Nick
It starts almost the moment I step off the plane – the sense of displacement. Something strange is happening. It’s as if in my absence things have changed just fractionally, an imperceptible shift but enough to disorient me. Lauren feels it too. On the flight, we’d barely spoken, Lauren sleeping for most of it, while I was lost in my thoughts. Now, as we move through the airport, she turns to me and says: ‘Check out the security.’
Her eyes travel in the direction of soldiers in fatigues, guns in their hands, the straps slung over their shoulders, their gaze hard and unrelenting.
‘It’s like a war zone,’ she says.
The military presence persists throughout the building and outside to where the taxis and buses line the pavement.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she says, and we climb into the nearest taxi.
‘What about Julia?’ I say, as the taxi pulls away from the kerb.
‘She’s a grown-up,’ Lauren mutters. ‘She can take care of herself.’
Lauren is swamped by fatigue after the whole drawn-out rigmarole of my brother’s death. Something has changed in her over the past few days, and while I can’t place my finger on what it is, I know enough to draw back from asking her, not now, not yet, not with what lies ahead of us over the next few days.
The taxi turns onto familiar streets as we near home, and still the strangeness persists.
‘It’s so quiet,’ Lauren says.
She’s right. There isn’t a sinner on the roads, no visible life apart from the dogs that roam the pavements, slinking against the walls, sniffing at the drains. Even after dark, these streets are usually alive with talk, movement and music, the vibrant nightlife spilling out of bars and clubs, but now it’s all shut away behind closed doors, the air hanging still and quiet. There’s nothing but the slow hum of fear.
‘Curfew,’ the driver explains. He pulls in to where Lauren indicates, and I fish for money in my wallet.
I take the bags and follow Lauren up the steps to our home – a few rooms above a bar, a front door with a missing number, only the ghostly outline of the lost digit fading a little more each day. Lauren jams the key into the lock and, with effort, turns it, throwing her weight against the sticking door so that we burst into the room.
The first thing I notice is that someone has opened the windows, which is a relief. Stepping inside and flicking on the lights, I see my wedding suit laid out on the table and wrapped in plastic, cleaned and pressed, and underneath it, Lauren’s dress carefully folded. A note is propped against an unopened bottle of wine and Lauren reads it quietly, saying over her shoulder, ‘Karl.’ I smile to myself at my friend’s thoughtfulness.
There are no plants in the apartment that needed watering, no pets that had to be fed; everything here is exactly as it was when we left. But it feels different now somehow, as if all the furniture has been moved around without our knowledge. Below us, the old man’s bar is quiet.
Lauren takes her bag and goes to the bedroom. Through the half-open door I can see her emptying her case, putting clothes away. I fix us a couple of drinks and look about the place. These few rooms are a far cry from the space we had in the house in Lavington when I was a boy, where the rooms seemed endless and sunlight filled the kitchen. I can still remember how we cycled around it in a large loop and lost ourselves in its gardens. There’s nowhere to hide in this apartment – not that I’ve ever wanted to. We’ve been happy here, Lauren and I.
When she comes out of the bedroom, and crosses to the sofa, she sinks into it with an air of exhaustion and kicks off her sandals.
‘Drink?’ I ask.
‘Please.’
She takes the glass from me, swallows the full measure in one gulp and wipes her mouth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do that before. But, then again, this week is full of firsts.
I sit down and see that she is holding something. ‘What’s that?’
‘Haven’t you seen it?’ she asks. ‘Julia had them done. All the guests got one.’
I study the card’s black lettering, its elegant font, the itinerary of events listed as if it was a wedding we were all there for, not a memorial.
‘Look at this,’ I say, shaking my head. I read it silently:
At four o’clock, there will be a prayer service in the Safari Club, after which I hope you will join us for a glass of champagne to celebrate Luke’s life, a man who touched the hearts of so many.
I rub the paper between my finger and thumb, and stare disbelievingly at the black border – it’s out of the Victorian era.
My temper rises.
‘A prayer service in the Safari Club? Come on. A church I could understand, but the thought of us all standing around an urn in a hotel …’
‘You okay?’ Lauren asks.
I give back the card, run a hand over my face. ‘Tired, that’s all,’ I say, the blood pounding in my temples. ‘I’m just not sure this is what Luke would have wanted. It seems so stagey, so formal.’
‘What would he have wanted?’ Lauren asks, watching me with her clear eyes.
Something in her expression makes me draw back from telling her. ‘I don’t know,’ I say quietly.
‘I’m exhausted,’ she says, getting to her feet. ‘You coming to bed?’
‘In a while,’ I say.
‘Don’t stay up late, honey,’ she says gently. ‘Tomorrow will be a long day.’
I stretch out on the couch, rest my half-empty glass on my chest and listen to the gentle creaking of our bed as Lauren finds a comfortable position to sleep in. Funny how quickly and easily you can adapt to another person’s ways, their routines, their very presence in your life. Part of me knows I should join her, wrap myself around her and feel the warmth of her body in my arms as this day fades away. But the other part of me fears the oddness that seems to occupy this space, that it will follow me into the bedroom, and that is something I don’t want to think about.
It feels as if nothing in the room belongs in it. Not the furniture, not the table, not the pots and pans, or any of the paraphernalia of a life lived together. The sepia photograph of Mount Kilimanjaro, which we had climbed together, hangs in an old antique frame as if it holds no relevance for me. The egg cups in the shape of old VW Beetles, the sofa we had dragged from outside a charity shop, the tapestry of the three African village women, one carrying a large pail of water on her head, the tribal masks we had worn when we were drunk and spoken through in voices not our own – the same unnerving shiver goes through me now as it did then – Lauren holding the mask over my face even as we came to one another to embrace and then make love.
She likes games, my wife, but that one had surprised me – that she would want to disguise herself, play at being someone else. Again, as happens frequently, I have the sense that I don’t know my wife well. If I’m honest, it’s part of the attraction that within
our relationship we keep a part of ourselves separate from the other, enigmatic, unknowable.
Lauren asked me about my family, listened to my stories, probed a little but never pushed it. She, too, was sketchy with detail about hers – there was pain and disappointment, I could tell: her mother had been married before, but it hadn’t worked out, so she’d remarried. Her father worked in a community college teaching history and she had a brother and a sister.
I sit up and let the alcohol do its work. Lauren has taken Julia’s invitation into the bedroom, but something of its aftertaste lingers. I think of the events that lie ahead of me and feel the hours that are to come already dragging me down. The peculiarity persists. It’s pointless to think I can dispel it now, not until all of this is done. I drag myself from the couch, enter the darkness of the bedroom, lie flat on the bed, and listen to the gentle rhythms of my wife’s breathing.
I lapse into a half-waking, half-sleeping state, and I’m there again, at the coroner’s. She, the coroner, walks ahead of me. ‘Follow me,’ she has said. And I do. My legs are weak as we enter the room; a heaviness fills my chest. The light is ghostly. There is a single table, a body covered with a sheet, which the coroner carefully draws back. I look at it, trace the lifeless limbs, the torso, and when I come to the face, I ask: ‘The blood on his eyelids and lips?’
From the surrounding shadows, she answers: ‘Hanging compresses the veins, but arterial blood flow continues. It causes small bleeding sites on the lips, inside the mouth and on the eyelids. The face and neck congest with blood and become dark red.’
I look back at the body. But what I see now startles me, because it is not Luke’s face or Luke’s body on the table in the morgue, but my face, my body.
I wake with a jolt. I’m covered with sweat. The room arranges itself around me and my heartbeat slows. I lie down again to await sleep, but it stays with me, the image: my own pallid face, lidded and blank.
