On Bone Bridge

by Maria Hoey

  “People shouldn’t say things if they don’t mean it,” said Rosemary petulantly. “Violet-May was just as bad. She said she wished the baby was dead too – you heard her, Kay, she said she wished the baby was dead.”

  “She didn’t mean it, she didn’t mean it,” I moaned. I had wrapped my arms about my body in a fruitless effort to ward off the horror I was hearing.

  Rosemary, still sitting there next to me, frowned down at me disapprovingly. “I don’t know why you’re getting so upset,” she said accusingly. “You have to have known most of this already. After all that’s why Robbie brought you here to watch me. Because he guessed about Alexander – and Oliver too.”

  I stopped rocking. “What about Oliver?” I said.

  Immediately I had that awful feeling that comes when you have asked a question to which you do not want to know the answer, when the truth is you already do.

  And before Rosemary could speak I said with absolute certainty, “It was you, wasn’t it? It was you making those things happen to him, all those near accidents, all the time it was you. Jesus Christ, Rosemary – Oliver, your own son. I can’t believe this, I won’t, I can’t.”

  “But you do believe it, Kay,” said Rosemary. “Otherwise why agree to come and spy on me? You believe it, just like Violet-May does and Robbie. Even Mummy could believe it. But then she actually saw me throw Oliver’s ball into the pond that day.” She frowned. “She must have been looking out the window. I was sure nobody was around but I didn’t think about that upstairs window – that was stupid of me. I suppose it was that that caused her to take a turn, seeing me throw the ball and watch as Oliver went in after it. It was lucky for me she did take a turn, because otherwise she’d have told Violet-May what happened.”

  “She tried to, though, didn’t she?” I said. “You told me yourself that she kept repeating Violet-May’s name over and over, Violet-May and Oliver’s name – she was trying to warn her.”

  “Yes, she was, but luckily nobody understood what she was trying to say.”

  “And so she died in her sleep,” I said, “before she could tell anyone what she’d seen.”

  “Oh Kay!” Rosemary looked at me as though I was a thing to be greatly pitied. “Don’t you know yet that nothing in life is ever that simple? Things don’t just happen, not the things you really want to happen, not unless you help them happen.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I was thinking about poor Mrs Duff desperately trying to make herself understood, how helpless she must have felt, how afraid and powerless.

  “Don’t you really know, Kay? Just think about it, why don’t you? Mummy knew what I’d done and she’d already tried to warn Violet-May and Robbie that Oliver was in danger. Well, I could hardly let that happen, could I? So I did what I had to do. I always do what I have to do.”

  “You killed your own mother,” I said.

  There was no surprise in my voice. I think I had moved beyond surprise and even for a moment horror, at least that was how it felt to me at that moment.

  “You make it sound so dramatic,” said Rosemary. “But I expect that’s the writer in you, Kay. In fact I hardly had to do anything at all, just a little gentle pressure and then her breath stopped, that’s all it was, I made her breath stop. I had thought about using a pillow, but instead I used a rubber glove. I got the idea from a detective programme I watched on TV – PD James I think it was. I thought that was quite clever of me actually.”

  She looked at me, her eyes shining. She’s pleased at herself, I remember thinking, she’s actually proud of herself. I wanted very badly to get up then and step away from her, get as far away from her as I could, but the horror had returned and I was afraid my legs would fail me, that if I tried to stand I would sag at the knees.

  “You see, I’d gone to her room much later that night,” said Rosemary. “Mummy was still sleeping and she looked so peaceful it was hard to believe she was any danger to me. Perhaps if I had gone away then ... but in any case, I didn’t. I sat down in her armchair and I waited. I waited for a long time and, while I did, I watched her sleeping. She looked quite beautiful lying there. When she was awake she always seemed so sad and worn, but asleep she looked quite different, young and sort of content. Perhaps she was dreaming of Alexander, I never realised how much she cared about Alexander.”

  “Of course she cared about him,” I whispered. “He was her son, her baby.”

  Rosemary frowned. “Yes, I suppose she must have but she never seemed to when he was alive.”

  I said nothing more because there was nothing more I could find to say, and Rosemary continued with her story.

  “I fell asleep and then when I woke up Mummy was awake too, and this time it was she who was watching me. And as soon as I saw the look in her eyes I knew that she knew what I’d done. I pretended not to, of course. I went to her and asked her how she was feeling. I told her how she’d given us all a scare, that kind of thing. But when I put my hand out to touch her, she drew away from me as though I were a serpent or something ... something vile or unclean. That was how it seemed to me, and I knew for sure then that she’d seen me throw Oliver’s ball into the pond. But it was worse than that, she’d guessed that it was I who let Alexander fall too, and of course seeing what she had that day she knew it hadn’t been an accident. And so ...”

  “You’re mad.” I could not help myself.

  “Do you think so?” said Rosemary, sounding almost intrigued. “You know, I find that quite interesting. Violet-May thinks I’m sick and Robbie just thinks that I’m bad but you see it as madness. I don’t see it in any of those ways but I suppose I wouldn’t, would I?”

  “Do they know?” I said. “Do either of them know or suspect what you did to their mother?”

  Rosemary shook her head. “Nobody has ever known about that. Not until now, not until you, Kay.” Her eyes took on a new expression and she shifted her body so that her leg which had been just grazing mine pushed against me. My instinct was to shift away from her, but I fought it. Without actually admitting it to myself I was beginning now to actively play for time.

  “Tell me about Oliver,” I said. “How you managed it all. How you made it look like an accident every time. That time in the car, for instance, when I almost ran over Oliver, that was you too, right?”

  “Well, I didn’t plan it, if that’s what you mean,” said Rosemary. “I was on my way out for a walk when I heard you on the stairs tell Grace you were going to visit your father. I knew you’d hang about chattering in the kitchen with Grace, so after you had both seen me going out through the front door, I just let myself in again by the side door through the butler’s pantry. Then all I had to do was run up by the back stairs to Oliver’s room and lift him from his cot and carry him down the back stairs and out through the side door again and into the shrubbery. He was asleep so he didn’t make a sound and if anyone had seen me all I had to say was that I’d heard him crying and was taking him downstairs. And then, well, I just waited.”

  “You mean you waited for me to drive past,” I said.

  “Yes, but he’d woken up by then though and he was so crotchety I was afraid he’d start mewling and I had to give him something to shut him up.”

  “Raisins,” I said, “you gave him raisins.”

  Rosemary’s eyes rounded. “Yes, I did actually. How did you know? I found a box with some still in it in the pocket of my jacket. I usually keep some on me – they’re the only thing that shuts him up.”

  “I found the box where Oliver dropped it,” I said automatically while in my head I was picturing her skulking in the cool dimness of the shrubbery watching and waiting while she fed raisins to her groggy little son.

  “You pushed him out in front of me, didn’t you?” I said.

  “Well, I might just have helped him along,” said Rosemary. “But first I told him to run to Auntie Kay, Auntie Kay who had lots more sweetie raisins. Auntie Kay, you like the sound of that, don’t you?”

  I said
nothing and I saw Rosemary’s smile twist a little.

  “I think you do,” she said. “I think you’d like it if you could really be their Auntie Kay. Or perhaps you’d like to be even more than that. I’m right, aren’t I, Kay? You’d like them to belong to you, to be your children. I see the way you watch them, and they like you too, Kay. Everybody does, everybody likes kind little Kay Kelly. The boy didn’t need to be told twice to run to his Auntie Kay.”

  She was goading me and I knew it, but what might have hurt me another time was washed away in the bigger realisation.

  “So you pushed him out in front of my car,” I said. “You did that, knowing that he might be killed or badly injured.

  Rosemary shrugged. “An accident, a sad accident, but accidents happen.”

  “And if he had been hurt or killed, I’d have been responsible.”

  “Well, in a way, yes,” said Rosemary. “And of course that would have been a pity for you but after all people could really hardly have blamed you.”

  Her tone was so sweetly reasonable it was hard to keep my train of thought.

  “And of course it was you,” I said, thinking out loud now in an effort to keep my calm, “it was you who was responsible for Oliver ending up wandering alone on Old Road. So how did you manage it?”

  “He was in my car all along,” said Rosemary. “Asleep on the back seat, I put him there when I carried him down from his cot. Of course there was the small risk that he might wake up – but I didn’t think he would – he was in a deep sleep. Violet-May was on the phone to Calvin and my car was out front and I guessed nobody would think of looking there. But, just to be certain, I made sure to be the one who searched the front of the house.”

  “That was why he didn’t get wet then,” I said. “It was raining that day but Oliver was bone dry. I noticed but I didn’t think any more about it.”

  “Did you, wasn’t that clever?” said Rosemary. “I did have a bad moment you know when you volunteered to go searching for him along the road. You see, I’d always intended to be the one to do that.”

  “So what, you drove off with him in the back of the car and what then? You left him on the side of the road, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Pretty much,” said Rosemary. “I stopped the car outside the gates, lifted him out, carried him a little way up the road, left him there, ran back to the car and drove off in the opposite direction.”

  “You drove off and left him there – you left him alone on the side of the road where anything might have happened to him.”

  She shrugged and I wanted to look away but I needed to know it all now.

  “And the attic-room window?” I said.

  “Of course that was me,” said Rosemary. “I’d been out all day and when I came back I went straight upstairs to change. I was passing the playroom and I heard you all in there. I was about to go away again when I heard Violet-May tell you that Grace had gone home. Then I heard you say you were about to go for a nap. I didn’t fancy having to spend time with the children so I hurried off to my room so that nobody would realise I’d come back. Then after I’d changed I decided to go down and make myself a cup of coffee. I heard them in the playroom again – this time Caroline was whining that she needed the bathroom and he, he was screaming. I figured out that Violet-May had been trying to pick him up but he wasn’t about to leave his truck behind. She was trying to calm him down and I heard her tell him to be a good boy and she’d be right back and I knew she was planning to leave him there alone. I went back to my room and waited until they passed me on their way to the bathroom, Violet-May and Caroline. Then I ran to the playroom and he was there on his own sitting on the rug playing with that truck. He looked at me in that way he does when he wants me to know who he really is. So I picked him up, him and his truck, and I carried him up to the attic room. I opened the window and I put a chair against it and then I took his truck from him and I put it out on the windowsill outside. You should have heard him roar. I was sure someone would hear him and spoil my lovely plan. But he shut up when I told him it was a climbing game, when I told him to climb up quickly and go get his lovely new truck. I helped him up onto the windowsill, then I left him there and ran downstairs and hid in Daddy’s study. It all only took a few minutes, nothing could have been simpler. But, after all, it didn’t work that time either.”

  That was when I snapped.

  “Your lovely plan?” I said, jumping up so suddenly that I took her by surprise. “You leave an eighteen-month-old baby on a windowsill in a third-floor room, and you sit there and call it your ‘lovely plan’. You crazy fucking bitch!”

  I had at least the brief satisfaction of seeing Rosemary flinch and then she too was on her feet and we stood there face to face.

  “You can’t actually say that I harmed him,” said Rosemary. “After all, he’s still perfectly fine, isn’t he? All I did was try to exploit situations.”

  “Don’t!” I put my hand up as though it could block her from my sight. It was a visceral reaction because just looking at her right then made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach. “Don’t you dare split hairs!”

  Rosemary just stared at me, her face inscrutable, and suddenly my rage dissipated and I was left feeling physically shaken. I walked slowly back to the bench and lowered myself down.

  For a while, Rosemary stayed where she was, just looking at me and then she came across and sat down next to me once more, not close this time but at the far end of the bench. For a while we just sat there quite still and silent and when I glanced at her again she was staring straight ahead at the water, looking thoughtful, and I could not help myself trying once more.

  “Why are you doing all of this, Rosemary?” I said. “Can’t you see yourself how craz– how it doesn’t make sense?”

  “You know why, Kay,” said Rosemary, without turning her head to look at me. “He’s come back, he’s come back and he’s trying to catch me out. I see him watching me, watching me and waiting. They’re all watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake.”

  “Nobody wants to trick you, Rosemary,” I said gently. “You’ve got things mixed up, that’s all. You’re confused or traumatised or something, I don’t know what exactly, but you have to try to understand. Alexander was your brother, but he died a very long time ago. This little boy now is your son, your little baby son, Oliver. Not Alexander – Oliver.”

  Rosemary had turned now and was staring at me so intently that for a moment I almost believed I was getting through to her. Then she shook her head slowly.

  “I know that’s what they’d like me to think,” she said. “Violet-May and Robbie and now you too, Kay, because I know you’re one of them. You told me yourself that Robbie asked you to spy on me ...”

  “Not to spy!” I said desperately. “He asked me to keep an eye on you, that was all. And that was only because he was concerned about you, after all you’d been through.”

  But even as I was denying it I knew that Rosemary was at least right about this much: Robbie had invited me to the Duff house effectively to watch Rosemary. Just one more pair of eyes, that was all I had been, because he had known, or at the very least suspected that Rosemary was a danger to Oliver, just as she had been to Alexander. And I felt anger rise up inside of me. Why hadn’t he told me, why hadn’t Robbie just told me?

  “It isn’t any good, Kay,” said Rosemary. “I knew what Robbie was up to as soon as he first suggested we all come back to Ireland to stay at the old house. Robbie might have loved that house but nobody else did, except perhaps Daddy. I certainly didn’t, it meant nothing to me, and Violet-May doesn’t give a toss about it either. And if she had been alive, nothing and nobody could have persuaded Mummy to come back here, not even for a visit. She told Robbie so when he told her he’d bought it. It just reminded her of what happened to Alexander.”

  “Then why did you come?” I said. “You didn’t have to, you could have refused and stayed in England.”

  “I wanted to see wh
at they had planned,” said Rosemary. “They thought they had me fooled, you see. Robbie trying to make me believe he wanted me to see what he’d done with the house and Violet-May going on about how nice it would be to have us all here together again. I knew exactly what was going on and so I decided to let them set their traps. I knew I could outsmart them all, I always could. And anyway, none of it matters now. The only question now is what to do next?”

  Her head was to one side now and she was eying me speculatively and I knew then with absolute certainty that she meant to kill me. But how could she? Yes, she was taller than me but I was bigger-boned – there was nothing to be afraid of physically. But even as I reassured myself I saw something in her eyes that told me I was wrong, something that made me certain that Rosemary Duff was not a woman just like me – Rosemary-June Duff was almost certainly insane. And I was afraid.

  I was afraid, but I was also determined not to let her see that. Somehow I knew that the only way was to bluff it, to act like I had no fear for my own safety, no consciousness even of being in any danger. With that in mind I picked up my bag from the bench and got to my feet. I opened my mouth with the intention of saying casually that we should probably get back to the car.

  But before I could get a word out Rosemary had made a lunge for me, pulling me down again with a force that shocked me and made me drop my bag.