In These Dark Places

by Stephen Duffy

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’

  Camille had been waiting for me in the hallway at the back of the bar when I came home.

  ‘How bad is it?’ I asked her.

  ‘Bad. It can only get worse though, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘You’d have to be dead not to have noticed it over the last year or so.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘So, I just go home now, is that how this goes?’

  ‘Gabriel, I don’t want you to leave, not now. Not ever. It’s been wonderful having you here, really it has…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But you need to go home now.’

  ‘Surely this will all blow over, wont’ it? I can just keep my head down and in a few weeks…’

  ‘That’s not all there is to it, Gabriel.’

  ‘Really? What else is there to…?’

  ‘You need to go home and face your demons, Gabriel. They’re eating you up before my eyes and I can’t bear to see you go through it. You need to go home and put things to rights. This anti-Irish thing is only a part of it. A big part, but only a part nonetheless…’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t believe you’ve told me everything… Everything to do with Ellie’s death that is.’

  ‘What? What do you mean by that?’ I asked. My heart hammering in my chest.

  ‘Who is Dan Maguire?’

  ‘How do you know that name?’

  ‘You call it out in your sleep almost every night.’

  ‘What? You’ve been in my room while I sleep?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Gabriel. I mean you call it out, loudly, almost every night. Even some of the other guests have heard it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Gabriel, I don’t know what happened between you and Ellie and this Dan Maguire person and I don’t want to! All I know is that you are never going to find peace until you face up to whatever it is that’s tormenting you. You have scars, trauma, they run deep. I’m old enough and wise enough to know that unless you face it head on, you’ll be haunted by Ellie and Dan Maguire for the rest of your days.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever…’

  ‘You won’t know until you stand up to it, stare it down, beat it. I’ve been meaning to say to this to you for months but every time I’ve even broached the subject, the mere mention of Ellie’s name sends you back into your shell. You close up tighter and faster than a clam in hot water. What happened tonight, to that man in London, that’s reason enough to go and I’ve said as much to the other fellas staying here. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, that goes for any of the Irish around here. But for you, well, you’ve needed to go long before now. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you that until now. Go home, Gabriel. Put your past to rest, put Ellie to rest. Move on.’

  25

  Word gets around fast in a small town. I had only been back in Crannstonbarrow for two days, my family didn’t even know that I was home. But, like I told you before, Tadgh Brandon had everyone in that town in his pocket and it didn’t take long for someone to go running to him. There were no smashed windows, no graffiti sprayed onto the exterior of Coyne’s Bed and Breakfast. Just a note. In a pristine white envelope, taped to the exterior of the door to my room.

  ‘Welcome home, Murderer’, it read.

  Mother Coyne was serving breakfast in the front room. There were six guests seated around the table. A distinct hush fell over them when I entered the room. It seemed Mother Coyne just couldn’t hold her tongue. I threw the note on the table.

  ‘You’re lucky that’s all that came my way last night. Joe Brandon might well have tried to burn this place to the ground to get at me. And where would you be now for that?’

  She blushed considerably and tried to play the fool by shaking her head, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Mrs Coyne. That note hardly walked itself up to my door. Either you did it for him, or you allowed him in to do it. Either way, I’ll be thanking you to keep your nose out of this. You have a duty of care to your patrons, as a paying guest I expect security of person and the protection of my privacy. If anything else like that is to happen, well, I’ll make sure that whatever Joe Brandon has coming my way, well, let’s say I’ll be happy to make sure that I’m here when it arrives.’ Her face flushed deeper and she indicated that she understood with a barely perceptible nod of her head.

  The low rumble of a souped up engine grew to a roar as I stepped out onto the porch of Mother Coyne’s that morning. I’d heard that sound a thousand times before and I knew without having to hurry down to the road to see, that it was Joe Brandon’s car. He was stalking me. Not subtly, that wasn’t his style. He wanted me to know he was around. He wanted to mess with my head for a little while. He wanted his bit of fun first, before… Before what? I didn’t dwell too much on that. I didn’t need to. I only knew that it wouldn’t be fast and it certainly wouldn’t be painless.

  My plans would have to change. I had hoped to get at least a week at home to gather my things before moving on, but thanks to Mother Coyne’s indiscretion, that plan was out the window. I’d be lucky to have another day at best. It was December 31st 1975. I had a new job waiting for me in Granard, just outside of Longford. A new council estate. My gaffer from the crew in Wigston had arranged it for me, through the friend of a cousin’s friend, that kind of thing. I wasn’t due down there until the middle of January, but with the Brandon’s breathing down my neck, I thought it best to hit the road as soon as I could. I could get lodgings anywhere between Dublin and Longford and no one would have a clue as to where I was. That suited me just fine. I had a few loose ends to tie up first and then I’d be gone.

  It had taken me just over a month to sort out my affairs over in Leicester before moving on. I had wanted to move on right away, but it hadn’t been as easy as I had thought it would be. Besides, I couldn’t just up and leave on a moment’s notice. I owed it to my gaffer to see out the month. He had taken a chance on me on nothing but the good word of a friend of his who knew my father from their time on the sites. Trouble did flare up for the Irish as Camille had predicted but it was nothing as severe or as sustained as she had thought it might be. There was a bit of trouble down in Enfield where the assassination had taken place, but that died down after a week or so. There was no real hurry.

  Camille was of a different opinion, however. Since our conversation on the back stairs she had distanced herself from me. She wasn’t rude about it, nor was she cold, she did however, avoid me when and wherever possible. I no longer found my laundry done for me, nor were there any cold bottles of Guinness waiting for me in my room when I came home in the evenings. She no longer invited me to sit and read with her and at every and all opportunity she pressed me to move back home. It didn’t take me too long to realise that whatever she had heard me say in the troubled mumblings of my sleep, it had unsettled her.

  When I tried to engage her on the subject all she would say is that I would come to no good, that I would never be happy unless I was to go home and put things right. She said I needed to square things with the house or I would never have peace. There was no coldness in her insistence that I leave, but there was a maternal tone to it, she wasn’t asking me to leave, she was telling me. What she may have heard me call out in my sleep I would never know for sure, but it was painfully obvious that it didn’t sit well with her. That she knew the name, Dan Maguire, didn’t sit well with me either. What else might I say in my sleep that might push even the most understanding and friendly of people into questioning why I had fled Ireland? It was time to go. I wanted to go if the truth be told. I was tired of England. I missed home, I missed my family. I missed not being able to visit Ellie. I left Leicester on Christmas Eve. It was clear from Camille’s signals that she wanted me gone by then. She had no intention of spending another Christmas with me.

  Despite that, our goodbye was warm and genuine. She was sad to see me go,
I truly believe that. On the other hand, she was also glad to see me go. She might not have known the full story, but she had pieced together the few pieces that I had revealed to her that the story of Ellie and I was deeper and more tragic than I had at first let on. I think of her often. I never got in touch with her after the day we said goodbye. I’m sure she’s well dead at this stage. The pub is still there though. I looked it up one day out of curiosity. It’s a boutique hotel now, and it’s now called The Plough. I miss my time spent there. They were happy days, and Camille was the only true friend I’ve ever had as an adult. Who knows what may have become of us if I had stayed. Perhaps we might have one day realised that we loved each other. We might even have overcome the difference in our ages to have made a go of it. But that’s life, isn’t it? It always has a different agenda to you.

  I got a message to Saoirse through her friend. I still had her number from my time in Leicester and she duly passed my instructions on to my sister. Saoirse was ecstatic to see me. We met up at Granddad’s old allotment. That was the only place that I could think of which I was more than certain that Joe Brandon didn’t know about. I made my way there through the back field and lanes. Saoirse was waiting patiently for me, the things I had requested neatly packed up in a storage carton. Even in the pouring rain she had waited for me.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Gabriel! It’s so good to see you. How are you? God, I’ve missed you.’

  A punch to my arm.

  ‘What was that for?’ I asked as I rubbed the spot where she had hit me.

  ‘That’s for stopping calling. Don’t ever do that again, alright? I was worried sick about you! We all were!’

  ‘Even Granddad?’

  She looked down at the ground.

  ‘No, I didn’t think so. Miserable old bastard still thinks I killed her, doesn’t he? Is he still cosy with Jessop?’

  ‘No, he’s…’

  ‘Well, at least that’s something I suppose. Old bastard finally saw through that lad, did he?’

  ‘He’s dead, Gabriel.’

  ‘Oh. When?’

  ‘Last summer. A stroke. Dead in his bed.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m sorry to hear that to be honest. ‘

  ‘I don’t blame you. He was out of order in what he said, in what he did to you.’

  ‘That was Jessop, he always had Granddad’s ear. He’d have sold his soul to the devil himself if Jessop had told him to. I suppose that somehow or another Jessop managed to blame me for it.’ Saoirse looked down to the ground once more.

  ‘You’re joking me? Did he? Really?’

  ‘Yeah, he did. Did it from the altar too, on the morning of Granddad’s funeral. He said that he died of shame. He said that Granddad never recovered from the shock and shame of having a killer as a grandson. We all knew that it was bullshit. We walked out, me and Dad, some of the congregation walked out too. He just lapped it up and kept on spewing his crap.’

  ‘Well at least Dad has the business back. That’s something I suppose.’

  ‘No, no he doesn’t.’ Saoirse shifted on her feet and looked away past me.

  ‘What? Why not? What do you mean?’

  ‘The business was Granddad’s…Dad fucked up again after you left. Drink, gambling, he sold his share out to Granddad to get the bookies off his back.’

  ‘Yeah, and?’

  ‘He left it to the diocese, Gabriel. He left it to the church. Jessop obviously got to him. If he couldn’t get at you, he’d go for the next best thing, your family.’

  I was furious. An anger I had never known before exploded in me, I wanted to kill him. My head was pounding, my heart hammering. I made to leave. I was going to the rectory. I’d drag Jessop out into the street and I’d kill him, right there on the town green, in front of the whole town, I’d kill him. Saoirse grabbed me by the arm and wrapped herself around me raising her feet off the ground to stop me from walking.

  ‘No, Gabriel. Don’t! Where would that get you? Think!’

  ‘How long before it goes? What about the house?’

  ‘Yeah, that too.’

  ‘When? How long have we got? Surely we can fight it? We could prove that Granddad was coerced… we can…’

  ‘We did all that, Gabriel. We lost. They took the house and the yard in October…’

  ‘What about, Dad? Where’s he now?’

  ‘He got a flat in town. A council job. It’s small but it’s clean…’

  ‘Is he drinking?’

  ‘Yeah, more than ever. It’s like he doesn’t care anymore. He’d love to see you, Gabriel. Can I tell him you’re home?’

  ‘Yeah, but not yet. Give me a day or two, will you?

  ‘For what? What do you need a day or two for?’

  ‘For nothing… I don’t know, just enough time to get my head around all of this.’

  ‘Promise me you won’t do anything stupid will you?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Jesus, Gabriel, it’s so good to see you, it really is. I’ve missed you so much. Dad too, and Rob. He asks after you in his letters.’

  ‘How’s he doing over there?’

  ‘He’s doing great. He loves it. He got a job with a good firm, only as an intern but still.’

  ‘Good, I’m happy for him, he deserves it, he worked hard to get there. And what about you? Are you still up in Multyfarnham?’

  ‘Yeah, my second year now… When did you get back? Where are you staying?’

  ‘Out in Mother Coyne’s. Two days ago, why?’

  ‘Does anyone know that you’re back, other than Mother Coyne that is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Gabriel, you were never any good at it.’

  ‘Brandon. Joe Brandon knows that I’m back. There was a note…’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Gabriel, you can’t hang around. He’ll kill you as soon as look at you…’

  ‘Well he hasn’t, and he won’t. At least not yet. He wants to have his fun first. He wants to play silly little games and he’s more than welcome to do that, it’ll give me enough time to…’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To go and visit Ellie.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Listen, I have to go. I don’t like being out and about too long, chances are someone will see me.’

  ‘Okay, yeah right, you should get back to the B and B. Promise me something though, won’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, what?’

  ‘Well, two things, actually.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t go doing anything stupid. And come and see Dad before you take off again, alright? Can you promise me that?’

  ‘Done, and done.’

  ‘Right then, go on. Get out of here before someone sees you and goes tattling to the Brandon’s.’

  ‘I love you, Sis.’

  ‘I love you too, Bro. You know that, right?’

  ‘I do.’

  I watched as Saoirse made her away across the allotments, tiptoeing her way past the puddles and the patches of mud, the rain teeming down on us from a lead grey sky. When she reached the gate she turned and blew a kiss at me. I did likewise. She climbed over the gate and disappeared into the gathering gloom of Dargan’s Lane. I wondered would I ever see her again, her or my father.

  I made my way back towards Mother Coyne’s by way of Curran’s Lane and then I cut my way across Dargan’s Common coming to the B and B from the rear. From the top of the common I could clearly see Joe Brandon’s car parked up at the end of Coyne’s Lane. He was waiting for me, and he wasn’t alone. There was someone else in the car with him, and I would have bet every penny I owned that it was Earl Jessop in the passenger seat beside him.

  I told you before that it’s funny what you hold on to from your childhood. Random memories and such. They’re imprinted onto your brain, sometimes you don’t even know that they’re there until something triggers their resurrection. As I made my way down from the common I caught sight of The Fola, a ribbon of dullness in the soaked green land. I could see the
oxbow bend where Peter and I used to paddle so many summers ago. I remembered the day I had pressed him on Jessop for one last time as we skipped stones across the tanning stained waters.

  ‘Did he get you to pose for him?’

  As a child that question had never hit home. As a grown man, it spoke volumes to me. I remembered the day myself and my Father had called to the Rectory with the collection money after Father Atkins had died. That brown manila folder which had spilled from the safe as I gawked on in wonder at such an unbelievably cool marvel. The small brown envelopes labelled with surnames that had spilled out of it. O’Connor, Johnston, O’Donnell, McCarthy. All the names of boys from my school.

  “Did he get you to pose for him?”

  Walking down from the Dargan Common that night, it hit home. I knew what had been in those envelopes. They might even be there still, in that safe. I could hear Peter’s voice in my head working out the logic of it, showing me how it all fit together. I could harm no one I cared about. Only Jessop. Peter’s Dad was long gone, a heart attack in 1969. Peter was dead. Only Jessop would suffer if I were to get my hands on those pictures.

  One plus one equals two. Always, except of course if you’re jumping to conclusions. I didn’t believe I was. I was full sure that I knew what was in that folder that day and why Jessop had been so keen to lock it away so quickly. As I lay in my bed in Mother Coyne’s that night, I finally believed that I had sure-fire way to ruin Jessop.