In These Dark Places

by Stephen Duffy

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ I asked him

  ‘No, not at all. We just want to clear up a couple of things, that’s all.’

  ‘Who found her? Where…?’ I asked, the words jarring my mind. ‘Is she…?’

  ‘We can talk about all of that when we get down to the station. Here, hold this against that cut, press it tight.’ He placed a tissue over the gash on my cheek and then spun my legs into the car before going back into the house. That he locked the door before he went unnerved me.

  Twenty minutes later, as we drove out of our cul de sac I could still hear my grandfather’s ranting as he cursed the wrath of God and all of the saints down on me. I was guilty. Without once having asked a single question, I was guilty. I was a murderer. The job of the whisperer was done, and done well.

  5

  I had known her at secondary school, though at the time I hadn’t even known her first name. It was never a case of love at first sight, I was far too young for that. It was a crush, nothing more. A teenage infatuation with the glorious blonde who had waltzed into our school and stole the hearts of every red-blooded boy in that drab and dreary building. I knew her family, everyone did. They had blown into town three years previous, big cars, big house, big money. While many of the families of the kids at our school would have been deemed financially comfortable, the Brandon’s were considered well to do. Their father, Tadhg Brandon, within a year of arriving in Crannstonbarrow, owned not one but three businesses in our town. Three of the biggest and most successful. He had a car dealership out on the bypass, a café and gift shop down on the Barrow Pier and he had The Witch House, the largest and busiest pub for miles around. A skein of generous donations doled out every Christmas ensured that he had the ears of the police, the parish priest and anyone else worth having in his pocket.

  Her brother was two years ahead of me in school. He was a rugby player, with the arms and legs of a Titan, and the attitude to match. You stayed clear of Joe Brandon if you could at all help it. He was one of those kids, we all know one, who has had a sense of entitlement bred into them. Having never wanted for anything in his life and secure in the knowledge that his father could sort out any spot of trouble he might find himself in, Joe Brandon threw his considerable weight around town with never a worry for consequence. As a rule, right through school and for years afterwards I would do my best to avoid him. It was a strategy which served me well, right up until I fell in love with his sister.

  The previous year, before all of the madness had started, I was working in a meat packing plant down in Carneydonnagh. Jobs were hard to come by back then and even though it was a good distance from home, I was happy for the work, discounting the fact that it was only on a temporary basis. My uncle, my mother’s brother, had gone out of his way to get me in the door, pulling in a favour from an old school friend. After all he had done to secure the position for me I felt obliged to take it. The commute was hard, on both myself and my battered old Cortina. It was twelve years old at that stage with well over one hundred thousand miles on the clock and more rust patches than I would have cared to admit. The brakes were spongy, the drive shaft slipped every dozen miles or so and the transmission was about as smooth as a pile of rocks. But it did the job, for a while at least. When the cost of keeping her running began to outweigh what the job was paying me I sold her to a breakers yard in Ashford, and took a room with a family in town.

  They were a nice bunch, not overly friendly, but neither rude nor indifferent. The children were grown up, younger than me, but old enough so as not to be a bother. They came and went as they pleased, to their jobs, to the pub. It didn’t matter to me where they went, just that they were gone was enough for me.

  I worked shifts in the plant. Long shifts. Twelve hours trimming beef can wear you down and do it fast. There were nights that I would fall into my bed, punch drunk with tiredness, having stumbled back to my digs in a stupor. Taking to my bed for the duration of my rest days, I’d curse my decision to leave home. I could have worked with my father, he always needed help in the yard. There was always lumber to be moved, sand to be shovelled. There would always be something to do. But I had spent the summers of my youth working for him, so it would never feel like real work. It would always feel like I was just helping out around the place, the boss’s son getting in the way rather than getting the job done. Had I stayed though, I’d have been working out under the summer sun, the smell of damp sand and fresh timber filling my lungs instead of the rot of the trimming bin in the meat plant. At home, there was the promise of long cool pints with friends at the end of the day while listening to the banter fly from one end of the bar in Foley’s to the other. We could go to The Briar if not Foley’s. Or to The Stoop or Cooper’s, wherever might take our fancy really.

  In Carneydonnagh I knew nowhere and no one. Every bar intimidated me, why that should be the case I don’t know. Maybe it was because everywhere was so unfamiliar to me, everything and everyone was austere. I’d spent my whole life in Crannstonbarrow, never venturing much further than the stream up by O’Neill’s Yard on the far side of town. It was a comfortably insular existence. I knew everything and everyone in our little town Every trail and trek, every shortcut, every back yard and laneway. The best pools in the river for tickling trout on soft summer days. Cool spots in the wood up on Galligan’s Hill, the perfect place for chestnut mushrooms in the autumn. The good holly tree over by the wall of the Big House, the covert in The Common where Johnny Deegan hid his pot still. I knew each and every part of it and I loved it. To be away from all of it during that long summer of 1973 was hard for me, there’s no doubting that. It made me laugh at times when I sat and thought about it. That I, the young man with dreamy notions of world travel forever at the forefront of my mind could succumb to home sickness just forty miles from my bed, well, let’s just say that the irony was not lost on me.

  Those first long evenings in Carneydonnagh were spent wandering aimlessly, lost in my thoughts in the woods out by the concrete plant. The clank and whir of the machinery at odds with the chirping of birds. Some nights I’d take a few bottles of beer out there with me and climb up to the top of the hill that overlooked town. I’d sit there for hours, thinking, smoking, drinking. On a clear evening you could glimpse the sea from there, a dark blue ribbon, hazy with distance. It was a welcoming sight, comforting and reassuring.

  For the want of a dream and to escape the drudgery of the meat plant I’d walk out there almost every evening and stare at the sea, wondering what lands, what adventures might lie beyond that horizon. After twelve hours of mundane chatter on the production line, endless talk of football, drinking tales, politics and whatever else they chose to talk about to pass the eternity, the solitude of that hill was a welcome respite, though the loneliness was tiresome.

  For as long as I can remember I have always enjoyed my own company, preferred it to that of others. I’m not shy nor socially awkward, nothing so dramatic. I can mix well, as and when the need arises. It is just a matter of character that, given the choice of being the centre of attention in a crowded room or alone on a hilltop, it’s the latter I will always choose without fail. There are no long and tedious conversations to endure, no social niceties to be observed, hey, you can even talk to yourself out loud and not worry about being carried off to the loony bin. There is nothing but that silent conversation in your mind, there are no other points of view bar your own. There is none of the judgement which comes so easily to others. Just a silent self-reckoning and peace. I have always enjoyed my time spent alone, just me and my thoughts.

  I was the same as a child. While the other kids milled around in the playground playing British Bulldog or Reliefio, I preferred to sit on the steps of the schoolhouse and eat my lunch in peace and quiet. I would just sit there and think. It wasn’t long before my lunch time habits became the focus of jibes from the other kids. Quick to judge and too stupid to question, I was a freak, weird, strange. Their taunts would bother me every now and again. Most time
s I could ignore them, sticks and stones, you know how it is. Other times I’d have to get down into the mess of things and stand up for myself even if it meant taking on two or three at a time and getting a good beating as a result. I had stood up for myself, that was the main thing. Going home from school with a burst lip or a bloody nose was not such a bad thing in my father’s eyes, provided that I had not started the fight. Granddad was not as sympathetic and he and my father would have many a row about it as I stood in the hallway with a crust of blood around my nostrils and a torn jumper.

  ‘Fighting like a dog in the street,’ he would say, ‘Bringing shame on this house.’

  ‘Boys will be boys, Paddy. That’s how it’s always been. He stood up for himself. You get nowhere in this world by rolling over.’

  And then, my grandfather, turning to me, with an almost monotonous regularity –

  “But I tell you not to resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.” ‘Matthew 5:39, always remember that, boy. Turn the other cheek.’

  ‘Oh, well done, Paddy!’ my father would retort. ‘Teach him to be a sissy! What good will that do him in this world?’

  ‘It’s what the good book teaches. You want to learn him right from wrong don’t ye?’

  ‘The good book? The book, the book! It’s always religion with you isn’t it? Everything can be sorted with the book in your eyes, can’t it? What about an eye for eye, huh? It’s not much good of a book that contradicts itself now, is it?’

  Usually, at this stage, what they had been arguing about would be lost in their on-going rivalry and deeper, truer issues would bubble over, and as I’d slink off to the bathroom to clean myself up, those two men who raised me would go at each other with hammer and tongs. It might only last for ten minutes or it could go on for an hour, but it would always end the same way. The front door slamming hard behind my father as he left for the pub and my granddad would retire to the parlour, locking the door behind him, there to stay for the night.

  At home my chores would keep me busy, and they taught me that solitude was not such a bad thing. A day spent in complete silence picking stones out at Granddad’s allotment, although backbreaking, was something to be looked forward to with a strange anticipation. Peace. Quiet. No small talk, no bullies. No arguing father and grandfather. No societal niceties. Just me and my thoughts.

  Yes, solitude was a precious and cherished thing at home, but in Carneydonnagh that long summer of 1973, it soon became a millstone and I craved for the company of others. Some nights I would walk to the payphone at the top of the town to call home. Granddad would answer the odd time. He’d never ask how I was doing. All he wanted to know was whether or not I was getting mass. What was the church like? Who was the curate of the parish and did he give a good sermon? It was always religion with Granddad, just like my father said it was. Why he even bothered to ask was a mystery to me, what with him knowing full well that I had about as much time for the church as I did for a bullet in my brain.

  On other occasions Saoirse would take the call and before I knew it I’d be in a frantic search of my pockets for more change just so I could stay on the line to her for just one minute more. It was always like that with Saoirse. Her voice alone could calm me, reassure, banish the creeping sense of loneliness which had begun to envelop me. My surrogate mother, only she could put me at ease when the urge to up sticks and high tail it home became too much to bear.

  After a time, not even my walks could keep my spirits up. Phone calls home, even when speaking to Saoirse, could no longer lift my mood. The isolation had begun to gnaw at me. One Friday evening, for the want of nothing else than to be in the peripheral presence of others, I picked what I thought was the quietest and most tame pub in town. I ordered a drink and took a seat in the corner booth, as far from the bar as I could possibly sit. I didn’t want to engage with anyone, I just wanted to be in their company for a while. I took my book out and began to read. A bar maid brought me my drink, and as I thanked her I thought I saw her steal a furtive glance at the book cover and then a second glance at me.

  The bar was full of noise and cigarette smoke. At a table beside the unlit fireplace three old men sat and played dominoes, their smokes just wet butts pursed in the corners of their mouths as they argued politics and hurly. Their caps would be taken off in anger every now and again, as though a bald crown might add weight to the point being made, or assert some final authority on the matter at hand. I watched them for a while, quietly amused by the passion of their spats.

  Further along the bar a couple sat in the snug, believing for all the world that it gave them the privacy to carry on as they pleased. Less than cautious mauling, their inhibitions murdered by the drink. The chink and clink of glasses, the garbled chatter, even the thick haze of cigarette smoke which clung to the air, they were all a comfort to me. A refreshing change from the silence of the woods. I ordered a second drink and it was brought to me by the same girl as before.

  She was pretty. I gave her twenty at the most, perhaps just a little younger. She had dark brown hair cut up in a short bob, her bright blue eyes peered from beneath a meticulously straight fringe. Her pale skin, flawless. She’d been a little heavy-handed with her scarlet lipstick, but hers was a beauty which could carry it off. It was either nature or plenty of full plates, either or, one of them had given her the figure of a forties movie star, curves where curves should be. Curves to draw the second glance of a wandering eye. She lingered by my table, not for too long, but long enough for it to become awkward.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ I asked her, hoping for nothing more than a smile in reply and for her to take her leave of me.

  ‘What’s your book about?’ she asked as she turned to me, cocking her head to the side so that she might better read the title. ‘Madam Bovary,’ she said before I could answer her.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘In a nutshell?’

  ‘Yes.”

  ‘A posh whore, if you’ll excuse my turn of phrase.’

  ‘No excuse needed,’ she said smiling. ‘I’m no shrinking country violet, I’ve seen and heard far worse in here, believe me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah sure,’ she said as she took the seat opposite me. I had been hoping that her reply would be a simple, ‘Yes’. I didn’t want any further embellishment on the goings on of a country pub. ‘Do you see those two, over there in the snug?’ I nodded.

  ‘Another few drinks inside of them and I’ll have to be tossing them out.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, my curiosity piqued.

  ‘You think that they’re, “amorous”, now?’ she said quoting the air with her fingers. ‘Wait till they’re a little more well on and you’ll see. Last week he had his hand down the front of her pants. Down the pants! Can you believe that?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Well it’s true. They seem to think they’re invisible that pair.’

  ‘To each their own I suppose,’ I replied, hoping to bring the exchange to an end.

  ‘Not in here,’ she said as a scowl furrowed her brow. ‘This is a family run place. And besides, it’s just a matter of plain decency isn’t it? That sort of thing should be done in a place where other eyes can’t see it. Not in here, in the middle of a bar.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘There’s no supposing about it. That kind of behaviour’s not right. Well, like I said, not in public in any case.’

  ‘Why don’t you bar them?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be worth the trouble, believe me.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘That’s Con Maguire.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Dan Maguire’s younger brother…’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied, as though her answer had clarified the matter.

  ‘You don’t know who that is, do you?’ I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘Well,’ she said as she settled into her seat and leaned towards
me. ‘Those two like to think that they’re something special around here, you know, that the rules don’t apply to them. They like to throw their weight around the place.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked with a feigned interest. At the time I really wished that she would just leave me be.

  ‘Yes,’ she said nodding solemnly. ‘Once, about a year ago, Sam Denny, he’s the mechanic out there on the Boyle Road, well, he did some work on that fella’s car. He’d smashed it up a bit after racing some fella from Gorey out on the Dublin Road. He did a right bit of damage to it by all accounts and he left it in with Sam for the fixing. Everything was fine, well, at least up until it came time for that fella to pay up. His nibs kicked up blue murder. He said that Sam was trying to pull a fast one on him and that he wasn’t going to pay what he was asking for. In fairness to Sam, he stood his ground. He refused to give it back until the bill was settled. Locked that car up out in his back shed so he did, and he told your man that he could whistle for it until he came up with the readies.’ She stopped talking and leaned back in her chair, regarding me with a cool stare.

  ‘Am I boring you?’

  She was, but I couldn’t say as much. I really wished that she’d go back to her serving and leave me in peace, but we humans are a salacious bunch and there’s nothing like a bit of small town gossip, so I urged her on.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ I said. ‘Please, finish your story.’ She smiled and something in that drew me in deeper still.

  ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘Not two days later, poor Sam found himself trussed up in traction in the hospital up there in Newtown with some cracked ribs, a broken leg and shiners the size of saucers. He told his Ma that he’d taken a spill down the stairs after one too many jars… Needless to say, the other lad was cruising around town in his car that self-same day. The cops didn’t even bother their backsides to question Sam about it even though it was as plain as the nose on my face as to what had happened. Sure, the whole town had heard about the melee they’d had out front of Sam’s forecourt, but I tell you now, there wasn’t a single eyebrow raised. Now, doesn’t that go to tell you something about the mark of the man, even the cops are scared of him. You’d do well to give that fella and his brother a wide berth, especially if you’re making on staying around town for a while.’