She waited for me to comment, and when it was clear I wasn’t going to, she continued with a grimace, ‘Probably a castle belonging to a rebel family. They all got screwed by the Brits, one way or the other. Some things never change. Even if one of these people did save a few passages of the game, what you’re saying is—it’d be like reading the credits to a movie rather than seeing the movie?’
‘Something like that, yes. But they liked your son.’ I pointed to the emails, half embarrassed, to demonstrate that I’d been doing what she wanted, though I was no longer sure about this. ‘They miss him, and some of them are grieving for him.’
‘I’d say he was the clever one, Ferdia. He would’ve got to the top level, or whatever you call it, and stayed there.’
It was unsettling, the mixture of pride and remorse, yearning and defiance in Moira’s voice. It seemed that, whereas I’d been looking for Niall Howley behind the character of Ferdia, trying to guess or deduce Niall’s state of mind from comments Castle of Heroes players made about him, Moira wanted me to help her do the opposite. It was her son’s other life that she was interested in.
The player tributes I’d brought her were some help, but they didn’t come anywhere near satisfying her.
I opened my mouth to say I’d email the players back with different questions, when she said, ‘That picture. The one he left. Do you think Ferdia really looked like that? Was that how he dressed?’
‘I guess they’d have worn uniforms of some sort,’ I said, nervous now about saying the wrong thing.
‘Well, they wouldn’t stand up in lines and march.’
I flinched. Moira noticed and reacted with a slow, derisive smile.
I decided that asking questions might be a better way to go. ‘When do you think Castle of Heroes might have been set?’
‘Maybe around the Armada. Elizabeth the first. If it’s one of the great rebel Ulster families.’
My guess was that a time frame hadn’t mattered much to Sorley Fallon. I suspected that his approach to history had been a ragbag one—pick a name here, a style of dress there. The main thing was the contest. The settings could vary according to his whim.
I didn’t mind chatting to Moira about all this, though at every step I was bound to reveal my ignorance of Irish history. But I couldn’t help being conscious of her husband’s presence in the house, if not actually within earshot, then somewhere just outside it.
Moira understood, or else her own awareness of Bernard’s critical and judging presence tipped the scales, because she roused herself and handed back the emails. I hesitated before taking them—I’d expected that she’d want to keep them.
I told her I’d send off some more. I hoped Sgartha and one or two others would answer my questions about Ferdia and his prowess in battle. Best, of course, would be to talk to Sorley Fallon.
. . .
I was surprised to find that Bernard Howley wasn’t in the house and that it seemed as if Moira might have known this all along. She called through the back door to let him know that I was coming out, and for a second they could have been any older couple, habits known so well that a few half words were all they needed.
Bernard stood in the open air, framed by trees, bushes and a trellised fence. Two tall eucalypts in one corner, a clutch of three silver birches in another, gave the garden balance. In between were smaller apple and plum trees, flowering shrubs and creepers that gave off mingled, wind-shredded scents of acacia and fruit blossom.
Niall’s father motioned me forward and indicated a green wooden seat in a spot out of the wind. He didn’t sit down though, and, in the circumstances, I too felt like standing.
If I’d met him socially, I’d probably have thought of his face as pleasant. His features were small and regular, and his resemblance to Niall grew on me as we talked. I guessed his hair had been blond, and his blue, wide-spaced eyes suggested that the similarity between father and son would once have been striking. He was taller than Niall looked in his photo, with a heavier build.
He held himself very erect, one hand on the back of the garden seat continuing to extend the invitation I’d declined. Instead of looking at me as we spoke, he addressed some part of his own anatomy, his hands mostly, a forearm hidden under a shirt that smelt strongly, even out there, of dry-cleaning chemicals.
We began talking, of all things, about Niall’s car.
‘What happened to it?’
‘The police returned it to us,’ Bernard said, frowning at his fingernails, ‘along with my son’s computer and his—personal effects.’
‘Which were?’
‘His wallet and his car keys.’
Bernard reminded me of Mikhail Litowski at the Telstra Tower, though they weren’t alike to look at. It was the stiffly upright stance, the self control, though I sensed that in Litowski it would go much deeper.
‘My son’s wallet,’ Bernard went on, ‘was in the car. There was his driving licence, credit card, and about fifty dollars cash.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Just his wallet and car keys. Oh, and his work pass. One of those clip-on passes.’
‘Why would Niall be carrying his work pass? He’d finished work for the day.’
Bernard checked his spotless shirt cuffs and replied, ‘I have no idea.’
‘Where’s the car now?’
‘I sold it. Don’t know about sold. Gave it away practically. The boy who got it couldn’t believe his luck.’
‘Do you have his address?’
‘Somewhere,’ Bernard said. ‘If I haven’t thrown it out. Look, where is all this leading? I really want to impress upon you, Ms ah—?’
‘Mahoney,’ I said, thinking that he knew perfectly well.
‘What help can you possibly be to my wife? You’re not a trained counsellor. You’ll only end up doing harm. Moira needs to be helped to put the tragedy behind her, not to dwell on it. If she’s offering you money to perform some sort of an investigation, then I’m prepared to offer you a larger sum to stay away from her, from us.’
He finally looked at me, a long level stare. I was sure this had been planned as well, the timing of it, the carrot and the stick in one.
‘Mr Howley,’ I said, ‘why do you think your son killed himself?’
I didn’t think he was going to answer me, but eventually he did.
‘Niall lost control, of this game—I don’t know what else to call it, but game seems an obscene word—of his personal life,’ Bernard paused and took a couple of deep breaths, ‘God knows, I never thought Natalie added up to much, I thought Niall was worth ten of her in fact—’
‘Moira told me that at the time Niall moved back here, after breaking up with Natalie, you advised her—she said your view was that neither of you should intrude. You should let him work it out for himself.’
I meant to be cruel, to pay Bernard back. He went pale and pressed his lips together, biting them. Then he said, ‘We knew we had to let go. Whatever Moira says now she knew that as well as I did. It’s hard, was hard, an only child, and one who’d always been so—’
‘What happened that night?’
Bernard looked at me again, not a long, calculating, hostile look, but quick, appraising, wanting to know what his wife had said.
‘I’m sure Moira’s told you that Niall came home. Briefly. And that neither of us saw him.’
The wind picked up a notch and complained around a garden shed’s aluminium corners. My wisteria would probably not flower for another four weeks yet, but Bernard’s—I thought of it as his—was covered in buds about to burst. It had left its trellis way behind and climbed, a reckless child, above the fence and higher, threading its way around a crab apple tree and reaching long brown fingers out towards the silver birch.
It seemed out of character, to let the plant run wild, without a proper climbing frame, and nowhere near the house where it could use the eaves. It seemed out of character for Bernard, whose compost heaps against the back fence were shaped into perfec
t pyramids. Suddenly, I wanted to tell this man about my own garden across the lake, flowers on my desk bespeaking hope, good things to come as well as bad, this man with his attention to pruning and neat edges, so much of the outward appearance of careful treading, careful tending.
‘It’s all Moira’s done these last few months,’ he said. ‘Blame herself. And me.’
‘For what exactly?’
‘For being hard. Insensitive. For not having recognised a cry for help.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think that, with hindsight, it’s possible to rewrite any person’s history. And that’s what my wife, very understandably, is trying to do. But unfortunately, it won’t do her, or our son, any good.’
‘What really happened that night?’
‘I’ve told you. Niall came home and went to his room. He was there for a little under half an hour. I know the time because there’s a wildlife documentary Moira likes to watch and it had just started when we heard the front door open, and it finished a few moments after Niall went out. Of course neither of us took it in. We were too tense.’
‘What do you think Niall was doing in his room?’
‘He destroyed all his papers, notes. He could have spent twenty minutes or so getting rid of them that night, although I’d have thought it would take longer to do such a thorough job. Since we didn’t see him leave, we don’t know what he took with him. He could have had a bag, a briefcase, anything.’
‘Your son owned a briefcase?’
‘Well no, he didn’t actually, not that I’m aware.’
‘There’s also the computer picture.’
‘There you are then,’ Bernard said, as though this alone accounted for the time Niall had spent in his room, and his reason for returning to the house. He sounded annoyed, as though I was again asking unnecessary questions.
‘Were you satisfied with the coronial inquiry?’
‘It was a terrible ordeal. I don’t want to be reminded of it.’
‘Do you know the person Niall went out to meet?’
‘Eamonn? Is that who you mean? Niall worked with him. Yes, you could say I knew him. As well as I knew any of my son’s friends.’
‘Did he come here, to this house?’
‘Not very often. What I mean is, my son wasn’t terribly outgoing, he didn’t seem to need people all that much. Sometimes I used to wonder if he needed anybody. He didn’t seem to miss the company of people his own age, or go looking for it. I guess you’d have to say Natalie was an exception to that. But take one example—Niall never wanted birthday parties. Even when he was quite young. When we asked him he said no thanks, he’d just as soon not bother.’
‘But they were real friends for all that, he and Eamonn?’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘Did you see Eamonn after Niall died?’
‘Well, he came to the funeral.’
‘Did you talk to him?’
‘Not much. To tell you the truth, all of that’s a blur.’
‘So you know of nothing about the meeting with Eamonn, or anything that happened that evening or that day which might have triggered Niall’s decision?’
‘I’ve already told you what I think.’
‘Are you angry with your son Mr Howley?’
‘Angry? When your son kills himself, do you feel angry? You feel everything, yes, including anger. But it’s nothing like the anger I feel towards you for coming here and asking such a stupid question. It’s not a human scale of anger.’
He waited for me to apologise for being stupid, and when I didn’t, he went on. ‘You want to know what I think. I think my son was lost to me, not that night, but weeks, months before it, years. Now I can blame myself for that, or Niall, or circumstances. But blame—the word, the activity, has become meaningless to me. Just like the word anger, in the way you used it. You know, I can’t remember a time when my son wanted to share his interests with me. There must have been a time, mustn’t there, when he was four, five years old, when he couldn’t help it? But I can’t remember. I can’t remember a time when he and I were open to the possibility, when he ran in to me and said, “Hey Dad, look at this!” Was that my fault? You see, this is where blame leads you. It’s a road with no end.’
He paused, then went on, and now he sounded very tired. ‘I do know that by March, April, when Niall and Natalie broke up, and Niall came back here, back home, it was too late. And he told us nothing. In the end he told us nothing.’
Six
I wrote to Sorley Fallon, expecting to be ignored. If I was serious about helping Moira, I couldn’t put it off any longer.
I introduced myself then typed, I need to find out why Niall Howley killed himself.
I stared at this sentence, surprised at how personal it sounded. Up till then, I’d been thinking it was Moira’s need, not mine.
Fallon emailed straight back. Over the next few days we had a sort of conversation.
I suggest you try talking to his family.
I’m already doing that. You’ll understand that they’re in a bad way, his mother especially.
I’m sorry.
A master of the short reply. Was he concerned, or just curious enough to continue?
I like your website.
Thanks.
What’s business like there on the Antrim coast?
I get by.
Your jewellery’s impressive.
I’ve some end-of-season specials if you’re interested.
Can I take a raincheck on that? What happened to Ferdia? What went wrong?
It’s a long story.
I’d established a link to Fallon, but a wrong move would snap it. Not making moves wouldn’t get me anywhere either. I wedged my courage into my fingertips, and pictured Fallon licking his. How much of his jewellery business did he do by mail order? I imagined opening a well-sealed box on one of those brooches with a dagger pin.
While trying to work out my next question, I arranged to meet Niall’s friend, Eamonn, at the hospital where they’d both worked, Niall as a radiotherapist, Eamonn as a nurse. I’d told Moira that I intended contacting Niall’s former work colleagues and his ex-girlfriend, Natalie, who was away from Canberra on a field trip. She didn’t argue with me, or insist that she’d only hired me to investigate the MUD. She did ask, though, for my latest news from Fallon.
Monaro Hospital had that special incandescence of new expensive places. We’d all seen the five-star accommodation ads on TV when it had opened to a fanfare three years ago. Tastefully decorated rooms with views of the Brindabellas. Especially tasteful flower arrangements, not those desperate floral loopings that surround the seriously ill. The ads for the new hospital had infuriated me. Since my mother died I’d developed, like many people I guess, a dread of hospitals as buildings.
I could have arranged to meet Eamonn in a bar in Civic, but I needed to see where Niall had worked. Being there wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The café was on the ground floor, not far from the main entrance, and this entrance, the shops surrounding it, the massed, shiny glass, the fountain, were exactly like the foyer of a large hotel. Only the number of people in dressing gowns and wheelchairs, the white coats of the staff, gave the place away.
One of the nurses who’d looked after me at the time of my car accident had been a man. He’d been taciturn, competent and kind, and I’d left my own stint in hospital well disposed towards male nurses in general.
Eamonn had the same gentle, though not self-effacing manner. The fine lines around his eyes and mouth suggested that he liked to smile, found quite a lot to smile about, didn’t have to fake a cheerful expression for some poor patient who was feeling lousy. The prospect of half an hour spent talking about his friend’s suicide apparently didn’t make him feel he had to look like an undertaker either.
Both in its variety and quality, Eamonn told me, the food in the cafeteria was unusually good. He spent the first few minutes after we’d introduced ourselves singing the cook’s pr
aises, then explained that he and Niall had met at Dickson College here in Canberra.
‘We did the same Year Twelve subjects. You know, physics, advanced maths, the heavy stuff.’ He smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘We were both interested in medicine. Well, I’d been interested in it since I used to pinch my sister’s nurse kit. Niall was coming round to it. His first love, all through school, was computers.’
‘And after school?’
‘Radiotherapy,’ Eamonn said mildly, carefully.
‘I guess there’s a fair bit of computing in that.’
‘Sure.’ Eamonn nodded. ‘But it was the healing that was important to him.’
‘To you as well,’ I said, sensing that he wanted this acknowledgment.
Eamonn smiled again, bending his head over his coffee and pastry. I took a mouthful of my apple cake and pronounced it delicious, though it wasn’t.
‘We decided we didn’t want the full six years then residency. Well, for me it was never really a serious consideration, but Niall toyed with it. And his folks would’ve supported him financially. No worries about that.’ I heard a note of bitterness, but Eamonn’s face wore the same accepting, even amused expression. ‘One weekend he read this article on cancer and radiation therapy. I remember he brought it to school on Monday to show me. That was it, his mind was made up after that.’
‘Where did he do his training?’
‘Sydney. We both did. I came straight back. Niall stayed on for another year.’
‘Didn’t you like Sydney?’
‘It was okay.’
In spite of Eamonn’s praise of the food, he was only nibbling at it. ‘I guess I’m not exactly the adventurous type.’
‘Do you like it here?’
‘It’s pretty amazing working in a place where absolutely everything is new. Being the first. You walk into a ward and you think, this is going to be what we make it.’
‘And Niall?’
‘Well he was the first too, of course. The radiographers all started together.’
‘Do you live at the hospital?’
I realised I didn’t know whether there was on-site accommodation for nurses.
The White Tower Page 5
