by Karen Perry
Still, it’s there. Fear cementing in my gut, lodging itself within me. I’d felt it at the Meridian, pressed against the desk, wild with the urgency of my fear, the stream of words coming out of me, the receptionist telling me to slow down, to calm myself, getting to her feet and leading me to a private office as if I was a child, and all the while I’m telling her about this envelope that was slid beneath my door in the night, demanding to know who delivered it, babbling about my room number, my privacy, my personal safety, all the while my voice rising on an arc of panic that her patient responses could not seem to assuage. She didn’t know who had put it under my door; there was nothing in the book about any delivery for me. She would check with the night desk later to see what they remembered. Everything she said was reasonable and steady, but all the time I stood there feeling thin and light with nothing to anchor me.
The priest continues to talk and I try to keep up but it’s so difficult with this pain in my guts and all these people in the room I barely know. I see Julia, her head bent, shoulders stiff with tension, and I think of her narrowed eyes as she looked at me that morning on the beach, the coldness in her voice when she said You and those boys … Could she be the one? No, of course not, I tell myself. She’s hardly going to post a dead bird to her own husband, surely. For all her froideur, I can sense that there was love between them and that her sadness is genuine.
There’s no one here I can trust. Except Nick. But Nick has his back to me, and I feel how closed off he is, locked in his own orb of grief.
When the priest gets to the part about Luke being reunited with his parents in Heaven, I get a kind of floating feeling, as if my heart is beating somewhere outside my chest. The anxiety that has taken hold of me – it’s like I’m nine years old again, waking in the night to see my father’s face, bleary with sleep and love and fear, saying: ‘This will pass, Katie.’ The waters closing over my head. His eyes seeking out some shadow of the dream that troubled me. ‘Good things lie further down the road – I promise you.’ And after he’d left, I’d try to stay awake, everything in me working to keep sleep at bay, fearful of those dark waters coming over me again, the heaviness in my chest, as if I couldn’t breathe. Now, in this room, even though I’m wide awake, the dream has returned, and I feel again the water sucking at my limbs, the black boughs of the trees above me drooping down into the river.
I need a cigarette. I need a drink. Nick takes his place at the lectern and recites a poem, staring hard at the sheet of paper, his voice so low I have to strain to hear him. A jar full of ashes stands on a plinth. Within it lie fragments of hard fibres. All that remains of a life. The three of us, back here again. The belt so tight now I can scarcely breathe. My chair scrapes the floor as I get to my feet, eyes following me, but I don’t turn back. Through the doorway quickly, into a room carpeted with close-clipped green nylon, like fake grass, the walls busy with twisting vines and hanging fruit. The music of a string quartet seeps through hidden speakers. I take a glass of juice and knock it back, feel the skin stretched tight across my face, nerves prickling through my skull and hair. The ceremony has ended and others have started filing in. Someone brushes against me and I spring away, as if I’ve been shot, my bag falling to the floor. Bending to pick it up, I can feel my legs trembling, and I can’t tell if that’s from the fear crawling around inside me, or from thinking of Luke, what’s left of him in that jar. It hits me then: he isn’t coming back. Ever. My bag on the floor becomes a blur.
‘Here, let me,’ a voice says.
There’s a hand under my elbow, and I’m being steered to a chair in the lobby, gulping in lungfuls of air, tears streaming down my face. I’m vaguely aware of him, this person, the steadiness of his hand as he sits me down, the calm of his voice as he tells me to wait there. Faces of strangers in the lobby turn to me now as the grief flies from me, as if my chest has opened and hundreds of birds come screeching out.
‘Here,’ the voice says, and I look down at the brown hand extending from a white shirtsleeve, holding out a glass containing an amber-coloured liquid.
I don’t ask what it is. I close my eyes and fling my head back, feeling the warmth of the drink flooding my throat. Almost a month of abstinence is thrown away in a heartbeat.
‘That will help,’ he says, and I open my eyes to him.
Murphy. The priest.
He sits opposite me. In his own hands he cradles a matching glass. Now he raises it so that it’s almost level with his eyes: he looks like he needs it as much as I do.
‘I have a rule about this sort of thing. Delay your first drink of the day until after the sun has set.’ He glances past me to the glass doors that open onto a sun-soaked driveway. Then his eyes meet mine and I see the humour in them. ‘I make exceptions for funerals.’
He sips his drink and my nerves begin to calm a little. He keeps a steady watch on me, his eyes frank and appealing. Large hands make his glass seem very small. There is a weariness about him, a premature hunch of the shoulders, wrinkles running through his skin as though he has absorbed all the sins of all the confessions he has ever heard: a lived-in face to rival Beckett’s. Over his nose and cheeks runs a network of broken capillaries – a drinker’s face.
I look again at the whiskey in the glass. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. ‘It’s not like me to fall apart in public.’
‘Oh?’
‘I prefer to do my crying alone in an empty room.’
‘What a lonely image,’ he remarks, a frown shadowing his brow. Then he spreads his hands in a gesture of understanding. ‘This is a memorial service. Tears are to be expected.’
‘I’m Katie,’ I say, smiling to cover my embarrassment and offering my hand. As he takes it, I surprise myself with how shy I feel. His is a searching gaze, and he holds my hand for a second too long, as though trying to get the measure of me.
‘Katie. I remember you.’
‘You do?’
‘And your mother. Helen, wasn’t it?’
‘You knew my mother?’
‘Just a little. We met once or twice when you were here.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’re like her, you know. About the eyes, I see it – the same interested gaze.’ Then, changing the subject, he says: ‘It was good of you to come all this way.’
‘I couldn’t not,’ I tell him, and sense the push of truth in those words.
‘Are you travelling south tomorrow with the rest of us?’
‘I’ve come this far, haven’t I? May as well see it through.’ I try to sound nonchalant, as if the thought of going back doesn’t scare the hell out of me.
‘Good.’ He smiles and nods his approval, breathing deeply, his hand going to his chest.
‘Beats me why he wanted all this, though,’ I say.
‘Why is that?’
‘I don’t understand why he’d want to come back to a place he hasn’t been to in thirty-odd years.’
‘Perhaps it was where he was happiest.’
I cast him a doubtful look.
He leans back in his chair, an expansive gesture, and says: ‘I remember them – the Yateses – when they first came out here. You couldn’t help but notice such an attractive family – beautiful, I would go so far as to say. The mother – now, she was something. Oozed class. He had it too, Ken, a kind of muscular charm, a sense of great capability. And then those two fine boys – so vital and engaging. Something so optimistic about that family. It was like being in the presence of sunshine. They thrived here in Africa. Such a shame, when they left …’ His eyes film with a kind of sadness.
The way he says it, that faraway gaze, and I’m back in that field again – the boys in shorts, knees scabby and scraped, Luke restless and bored, turning towards the lea of the hill, saying: ‘Let’s go to the river – see if those girls are there.’ The command in his voice, the determination in his eye. Did I feel the faintest beat of indecision? I think I did, yet I don’t trust my memories of that day – ragged and worn as they are.
‘I’ll never forget the night I went to see them,’ Murphy says now. ‘It was the night before they left and I was calling over to say goodbye. He came down the steps to me – Ken. I had never seen anyone change so rapidly. The pale, hollow-eyed person that came forward to greet me. And Sally, too, all the radiance gone out of her. I didn’t see the boys. And I kept asking them why – why were they leaving like this? What had happened to make them want to go so suddenly? It was almost as if they were scared.’
‘They had birds – Nick and Luke – as children,’ I say then, and he looks up at me sharply. ‘I remember a birdcage hanging on their veranda. Two little sparrows. Do you remember?’
Confusion crosses his face and I watch him carefully. I hadn’t intended to ask him this – I’m not even sure why I have. A small bubble of suspicion, perhaps. My nervous state. Everyone’s a suspect. He holds my gaze, confusion shifting to something else, a kind of understanding.
‘They were starlings, not sparrows,’ he corrects me. ‘And, yes, I do remember them.’
The way he says it, patient, forbearing, as if he’s seen it all before – people racked by grief and confusion – and the generosity of his understanding make me hang my head, a rinse of shame going through me. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s just –’
‘No need to explain. This must be strange for you, coming back here. Under these unhappy circumstances.’
‘I keep thinking about him,’ I say now. ‘Luke, going back to that derelict house, holing himself up in that lonely place, and then …’ I can’t bring myself to say the words, emotion catching in my throat.
He nods, then spreads his hands wide. While his accent is a mixture of Irish with a peppering of South African, his gestures are more Mediterranean – that Gallic shrug.
‘When something like this happens – when someone we love takes his own life – we struggle to find a reason for it because it is so tremendously difficult to think of him being in such pain that he couldn’t see any way forward, except the obliteration of death. We keep asking ourselves, “Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t I notice he was in such pain? Why didn’t I do something?” It’s a natural response. But, Katie,’ he says gently, ‘it’s a false path. Don’t go down that road, girl. Don’t torture yourself. Luke had a lot of problems – financial, emotional. He was not well. Whatever drove him to do what he did, it came from inside himself, not from anywhere else.’
Despite myself, I can’t help but feel disappointed with his response, priestly as it is.
I finish my drink, return my glass to the table and thank him for his company.
‘You’re leaving?’ he asks, as I pick up my bag, get to my feet.
‘Tell Nick I’m sorry, will you?’
‘Of course.’
Just as I’m about to leave, I feel it – the nudge of curiosity, of suspicion. I look at Murphy. ‘That night when you went to see Sally and Ken, when you went to say goodbye, did they tell you what it was that scared them? Did they tell you why they were leaving?’
If he is surprised by my question, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he says, ‘No. They never did. Too scared or too proud. And I’ve learned over the years that some secrets are not meant to be shared. I do remember this, though. When I left them that night, and Ken walked me to the door, I put out my hand to shake his, and all of a sudden he drew me into his embrace. There was a ferocity in the way he clung to me that I’ve never been able to forget.’
Something inside me falters at the thought of Mr Yates, wild with anxiety, brought to the brink, and I have an overwhelming desire to be outside, to breathe in real air, not this purified oxygen. Murphy reaches out to steady me. His hand on my arm is so big and strong that it makes me feel like a child again, and I don’t know whether I like that or not.
‘Let him go, girl,’ he says, his face old and tired. Then he withdraws his hand and sits back. I can hear his dry cough all the way across the lobby until I am out on the street.
Back at my hotel, I’m told there is no news about the envelope delivered in the night, but my bag has shown up. I go to my room, shower and dress. Just shedding the clothes I’ve been walking around in for the past two days is a relief. Afterwards I sit quietly, sipping a beer from the mini-bar and smoking my way through a carton of Marlboro Lights. The beer has an industrial taste that is something like guilt. The afternoon light falls in blocks on the carpet. The room is in disarray: clothes spill from the open suitcase. My phone has been ringing on and off for the last hour but I don’t answer it. I’ve left it on the bedside table where it continues to give the occasional bleat. I’m still jumpy as hell, my mind growing tired from the endless tracks it keeps going down. The newspaper clipping of Cora’s death, the images of drownings. The birds. I think of Luke – ‘My past is coming back to haunt me’ – and feel the slow creep of terror at the thought that keeps surfacing: Someone knows.
A knock at the door. I nearly jump out of the chair. I peer through the spy-hole, then open up, eager to see him, knowing somehow that he is the only one I can turn to about this – all of this.
Nick steps into the room and straight away I say: ‘Someone knows.’
I put a hand to my mouth, turn from him as he closes the door and walk towards the window.
‘Someone’s been sending me things – threats, I suppose. A kind of coded message. I kept thinking it had something to do with work, but now I know it can’t, it just can’t. Pictures, newspaper clippings and worse …’
The words peter out as I turn to him. He’s standing, staring at the generic brown furniture, but I can see how blank his gaze is, how stunned he is by his grief. The expression on his face: as if he’s just witnessed an accident. Blood on the road. He hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.
He sits on the bed and lowers his head into his hands. From within that cupped space I hear his voice, low and choked, saying: ‘I’m so fucked, Katie.’
He lets his hands drop and I see the tears on his face. His vulnerability – I can’t help but think of the dark-haired boy Murphy described as I sit next to him, my arm going instinctively around him, pulling him towards me. Just for a moment, I forget my panic. ‘You need to sleep,’ I say.
‘I need a drink,’ he replies, pulling a bottle of whiskey from his jacket pocket and making a sound that is supposed to be a laugh but comes out strangled and strange.
I take it from him, and go to the mini-bar for glasses.
‘I’m going to nip down the hall for ice,’ I tell him, the thrum of my pulse alive in my ears. ‘Back in two ticks.’
He smiles drowsily at the floor as I close the door behind me.
At the ice machine, I stand with my arms folded over my chest, silently furious with myself for letting him in – into my room, into my thoughts. I can feel how deeply lodged within me he is and always has been.
When we were children, he felt like a brother to me. Later, when we were students, on the cusp of adulthood, that same closeness was there, but it had become compromised. As our friendship rekindled and came alive again, I felt the subtle lacing of new threads of feeling between us. The young man he had grown into had echoes of the brother I’d remembered him to be: the shyness, the dark hair shadowing his face, the fierce goodness inside him – and the music. Of course, the music. But there was something else that I couldn’t help but be drawn towards: a sadness that lay just beyond the corners of his smile, and I could tell that he, too, felt lost and bewildered and distrustful of his place in the world.
And there was the problem of sex, the complication of attraction between two people with an already tangled past, two people with self-inflicted scars on their palms that marked them for ever as siblings. My friends in college could not seem to understand the friendship between me and Nick. ‘When are you two going to get together?’ they would ask me, and I would laugh and protest that I just didn’t feel that way about him, hoping they wouldn’t see through me.
Then one night at a party, we ended up alone in a room together. It was l
ate, the party well past its prime, and the crowd had dropped away, just a few stragglers occupying dim corners of the house. We sat on a bed and talked, and in the whispered darkness we returned to that field in our childhood. We went back to the river. Once only, I listened to him reliving it – what had been done; the parts we had all played in it, Nick, Luke and I. And I listened to his account of it with a kind of slow-burning shock, afraid to speak, afraid that if I said anything he would stop, clam up, return to his habitual silence. But what he said confused and frightened me. It made me wary of my own memories, casting them all in doubt.
How long did we talk that night? Hours, perhaps. The whole house silent around us as if we were the only two people left. And as the granular light of dawn crept across the sky, the talking stopped, and it was just the two of us lying on that bed. I knew from the measured way he was breathing, holding himself so carefully still, that he wasn’t asleep. And I, too, feigned stillness, yet every inch of me was waiting, poised for what might happen between us. All it would have taken was for one of us to reach out, for one to turn towards the other. And yet neither of us moved. You see, it was in the room with us now – that thing from the past. Summoned like a spirit through all the talk, and it seemed to lie alongside us, that dead girl like a third party. I felt her presence and knew he did too, and it occurred to me then that it would always be like that between us. That no matter how close we grew to each other, she would always be there, holding us apart.
And now, as the ice tumbles into the bucket, I feel her again. Walking back to my room, I’m so aware of those old emotions stalking me, waiting for my guard to come down and my good intentions to crumble.
Nick is sitting on the bed when I return, reaching to put the phone down.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to call Lauren.’
‘Of course.’
We perch on either side of the bed, sipping our drinks, awkward in each other’s company. He is the first to speak.
‘You must be surprised to see me.’
