Some Kind of Fairy Tale

by Graham Joyce

  But he couldn’t. He and Richie hadn’t spoken in a long, long time, and two words might as well have been two hundred thousand words. He couldn’t do it. He cursed under his breath and drove away.

  “COME IN, LAD.” DELL spoke in a strange kind of whisper.

  “Where is she?”

  “Are you going to take your coat off? And your shoes? We’ve got the new carpet.”

  Peter took off his coat and handed it to his father before untying his shoelaces. He felt a wave of frustration with his father, that at a time like this he was concerned with clean carpets, but said nothing. He made to move down the hall but he felt the flat of his father’s hand on his breastbone.

  “Don’t go upsetting anyone. Your mum’s had a fall.”

  “I’m not here to upset anyone!” Peter tried to keep the keening note out of his voice. “Is she through here?”

  “Come on.”

  Peter took a step into the living room and stopped just inside the doorway. His mother lay on the couch. She was sipping tea and had an ice pack on the knee she’d cracked when she’d slumped to the floor. But Peter was more interested in the woman nursing Mary from the armchair next to the sofa. Even though she wore dark glasses, it was his sister, Tara: of that there was no doubt.

  Tara stood up. She seemed an inch or two taller than he remembered. Her soft nut-brown hair was maybe a darker shade, and still fell around her face in a tangle of curls. Behind the shades and around her eyes there might have been one or two lines but she hardly seemed to have aged. She just looked pretty grubby, like she’d been living rough.

  “When did you cut your hair?” she said.

  “Oh. That would be about fifteen years ago.”

  “You had such lovely long hair!”

  “Everybody did then. Do I get a hug?”

  “Of course you do.”

  Peter stepped forward and he held his sister in his arms. She held him tight. He inhaled the smell of her. She didn’t smell like he remembered. Now she smelled of something belonging to the outdoors he couldn’t identify. Rain, maybe. Leaf. Mushroom. May blossom. The wind.

  It was a long time before she broke the clench. Peter looked over at his mother stretched out with her ice pack and her leg up on the couch. She gave him a pained smile and dabbed at her eye with a tissue.

  “So where you been, Tara? Where you been?”

  “She’s been traveling,” Dell said.

  “Traveling? Twenty years is a lot of travel.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mary said from the couch. “And now she’s come back home. Our little girl has come back home.”

  WITH TEA BEING THE drug of choice in the Martin household, Dell concocted more of it, thick and brown and sweet. After all, they’d had a bit of a shock; and whenever they had a shock or experienced a disturbance of any kind they had poured tea on it for as long as any of them could remember. The fact is they poured tea on it even when they hadn’t had a shock, usually six or seven times a day. But these were extra-special circumstances and Peter knew he had to wait until the tea had arrived before he could begin any line of questioning. Even when the tea did arrive, the questioning didn’t go well.

  Peter had hardly taken his eyes off his sister since his arrival. The same half-smile hadn’t escaped the bow of Tara’s lips since he’d walked into the room. He recognized it as a disguise of some kind, a mask; he just didn’t know quite which emotions it was intended to camouflage.

  “So where exactly has all this traveling taken you, Tara?”

  “Goodness! All over.”

  “Really? All over?”

  She nodded solemnly. “Pretty much, yes.”

  “Tara already told us some of it, Peter,” said Dell. “Rome. Athens. Jerusalem. Tokyo. What was that place in South America?”

  “Lima. In Peru.”

  “Really? Traveling all this time? Constant traveling?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  “Always moving?”

  “Well,” Tara said. “I might have settled here or there for a few months, but always with a view to moving on.”

  Peter nodded, but he was only pretending to understand. He scrutinized his sister’s clothes. She wore threadbare jeans with huge bell-bottoms, of a kind that had strayed way out of fashion when he was a young man and had probably come back in again. She wore a grubby dress over the top of them and long strings of beads. A woolen cardigan was a couple of sizes too big for her, the arms of which reached to the tips of her fingers but failed to hide her dirty fingernails.

  Peter couldn’t help himself. “You look like you could do with a bath.”

  “Steady on,” said Dell.

  “But Tara,” Peter said. “No word? Not even a postcard? No good-bye, no announcement, no—”

  “I know,” said Tara. “It’s unforgivable.”

  “Do you know what you put these two through? What you put us all through?”

  “Before you came, I said to Mum and Dad that I will understand it if you hate me.”

  “We don’t hate you,” Dell said. “No one hates you.”

  “But—” Peter tried.

  Dell cut him short. “Peter. I know there’s a lot to get into. But I won’t have you say anything to scare her away again. Okay? I won’t have it.”

  “I’m not going away again,” Tara said.

  Peter ran his hands through his close-cropped hair.

  “What about you?” Tara said. “Tell me about your life.”

  “My life?” Peter said. “My life?”

  “Mum says you have children.”

  “Get the photos, Dell. Get them,” said Mary, too quickly.

  “Tell me yourself,” said Tara. “I want to hear everything.”

  Peter sighed. “I married a lovely girl I met at university. Genevieve. We’ve got three girls and a boy.”

  “Tell me their names!”

  “Well, my eldest is fifteen going on twenty and her name is Zoe and—”

  “That’s a lovely name.”

  “And then came Jack, he’s thirteen. Running wild. Then a bit of a gap because we weren’t … well, we did, and we had Amber, who is seven, and Josie, who is five.”

  “Amber has webbed fingers,” Mary said.

  “Mum, please.”

  “Small thing,” Tara said, smiling. “A very small thing.” Then her smile dropped for the first time. “I’m sorry I missed it all. I really am.” Suddenly Tara vented a huge sob. She squeezed her eyes shut and her lip trembled. She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve and sniffed. “I’m sorry I missed it all. They sound so wonderful. Are they like you?”

  “God help them if they are.”

  “The boy is the spit,” Dell said helpfully. “The girls take more after their mother.”

  There was a silence. Dell had a photograph album that he handed to Tara. “These are all old. It’s all digital now, isn’t it? Things change so fast.”

  Tara studied the photographs. “But they do look like you!”

  Dell turned to Tara. “Zoe even looks a bit like you.”

  “She’s almost the same age as you were when you left,” Peter said. He looked at Mary. She shook her head at him in fierce warning.

  “Will I get to meet them?” Tara said.

  “Of course. If you want to.”

  She held up the photo album. “Where was this photo taken?”

  “Oh, that one’s in Greece. Before we had the kids. You said you were in Athens, didn’t you?”

  “Not for long. Couldn’t get out quick enough.”

  “So where were you in Greece?”

  “Crete. Some of the islands.”

  “Really? Genevieve and I lived for a whole year in Crete. Were you ever in Mytilini while you were on Crete?”

  “Yes, one or two nights I think. But I just passed through.”

  “Wouldn’t that be amazing? If you were there the same time we were there?”

  “These things are possible.”

  “What year was it?”<
br />
  “Peter, stop interrogating the girl, will you?” Dell was wringing his hands. “Look, she’s hungry and I’m going to rescue what I can of Christmas dinner and we’re going to sit down and enjoy it, and you can sit down with us, too.”

  “I’ve had my Christmas dinner, Dad.”

  “Okay, but no more questions.”

  “Don’t you think this is a day for questions? You realize we are going to have to tell the police?”

  Tara looked startled. “Is that really necessary?”

  “You bet it is!” cried Peter.

  He explained to her what had happened after Tara had walked out of their lives some twenty years earlier. He explained how everyone had feared the very worst, feared that she’d been abducted or killed. That there had been wide-ranging searches conducted. That neighbors and friends had, along with a huge force of police officers, carried out searches at the Outwoods and at every other place they could think that she might have gone. That her photo had appeared in all of the local newspapers and some national ones; that her face had appeared on national TV; that known sexual offenders had been dragged in for interrogation; that not a clue had turned up, not a hair from her head; that the search was eventually scaled down; that her mother and father went into a state of shock and mourning from which they had never entirely recovered; that he and her boyfriend at the time, Richie, who had himself fallen under a cloud of suspicion, had continued to search the countryside and local beauty spots for months and even years afterward.

  “They had frogmen searching the pools and the lakes, Tara. It went on for days. Weeks. Yes, even after all this time I think we have to inform the police, don’t you?”

  Tara looked ashen at these reports.

  Suddenly Mary was on her feet, the ice pack slithering to the floor. “Stop it! Stop it! All I know is that Tara has come home for Christmas Day and it’s a miracle to have her home and I don’t want to hear any more talk of it! I want no more questions today! Peter, you can stay here and be pleasant or you can go straight back to your family. That’s an end to it.” And with that she collapsed back on the couch.

  “You don’t have to go,” Tara said gently. “I’m the one who should go.”

  “No,” Peter said. “It’s just …” He didn’t want to say any more, because he couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t be a direct criticism of his sister’s outrageous and hitherto unexplained behavior. He hauled himself to his feet. “Look, I should get back. The kids. It’s Christmas Day. Maybe you could meet them. Tomorrow. What do you say, Dad, do you want to bring Tara over tomorrow?”

  “That sounds perfect. All right with that, Mary?”

  It was all right with everyone; it was all right because for the moment it got Peter out of the house.

  Peter went to the door and Tara followed him. She hugged him again, and with her back to Dell and Mary she narrowed her eyes at him and made a shape of her lips, as if to tell him she had something to say to him, but not in front of Dell and Mary.

  He wished his parents a happy Christmas. Then he regarded his sister sadly. “Happy Christmas, Tara,” he said.

  “Oh, my. Happy Christmas, Peter.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A fairy tale … on the other hand, demands of the reader total surrender; so long as he is in its world, there must for him be no other.

  W. H. AUDEN

  The light was beginning to fade when Peter let himself into his cottage. The door, swollen and damp, was still sticking. He’d have to fix that. Except that he’d repaired the door hinge recently, which was why the door was now sticking. “One job makes another” was a common saying in the Martin household.

  Whatever was happening with Tara, Peter felt heartened to come back to the cottage, to the mess of kids and dogs, and a home permanently falling apart and finding new ways to demand maintenance. He liked to see Jack and the girls sprawled over the carpet, absorbed with whatever fad or kiddie toys were the interest or excitement of the moment. He never objected to untidiness in the way that Genevieve did. But Gen was his rescuer. She was the architect of his salvation.

  He opened the living room door and they all looked up from what they were doing. Gen with her large brown eyes and slightly freckled face framed by a tumble of unruly dark curls; the girls, who all really did look like her clones; the dogs. Then the dogs laid their heads back down.

  “Did you see her?” Gen asked.

  “Jack shot a rat,” said Josie.

  Peter flicked his head to indicate that Gen should come out to the kitchen. She got up.

  “Are you going to talk about your sister?” said Amber.

  “Yep,” Peter said.

  “Can we listen?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well. Now, then. Tell them why they can’t listen, Gen.”

  “It’s a touchy subject for Dad,” Genevieve announced. “He’ll tell you all about your aunt Tara after he’s had a chat with me.”

  “We’ll listen at the door,” Amber said brightly.

  “You’ll get an ear infection,” Peter said. “Listening to things you shouldn’t.”

  “Rubbish,” said Zoe. “Take no notice of Dad.”

  Genevieve closed the door behind her, and together they went into the kitchen. They sat down and she held his hand across the table. “You really do look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Mum and Dad. They’re sitting there like it’s fucking normal. We all thought she was dead and she walks back into their lives after twenty years and it’s like, oh, hello, have a cup of tea and a piece of ginger cake.”

  “They’re probably in shock, Peter. Did she say anything?”

  The back door swung open and, along with a blast of wintry air, Jack came in. “I shot a rat.”

  “Good man. Put it in the trash can.”

  “Do you want to look at it?”

  “No, I don’t need to look at it.”

  Jack looked disappointed. “It’s a big one.”

  “Are you in or out?” his mother said. “Either way, close the door. In or out.”

  “I’m in. I’m getting cold.”

  “Where’s the rat now?” said Genevieve.

  “On the grass.”

  “Put it in the trash.”

  “I was thinking o’ hangin’ it up outside. You know, like a rogues’ gallery.”

  “Absolutely bloody not! Get it in the trash.”

  “What, pick it up with my bare hands? Not likely.”

  “Just pick it up by the tail,” said Peter, “and chuck it in the can. You killed it, you dispose of it.”

  Jack waited for a few seconds of routine defiance before going outside to confront the dead rat. Peter closed the door after him.

  “Well?” Genevieve said.

  “She said she’d been traveling.”

  “Traveling where?”

  “It was cock-and-bull.”

  Jack came back in and went to the sink, where he made a great show of soaping his hands and washing them under the hot-water tap until they gleamed. They had to wait in silence until he was done. Peter slammed the door shut on the outside cold. “Were you born in a barn, Jack?”

  Jack made a noise like a sheep.

  Genevieve got tired of waiting. “How do you know?”

  “I caught her out on a couple of details.”

  “What’s that?” Jack said, drying his hands on a tea towel.

  “Use a proper towel for drying your hands,” said Genevieve.

  “Why?”

  “You’ve just been handling a rat. And look at this muck you’ve trailed in.”

  “Jack, give me and your mum a minute, would you?”

  “Is this about our so-called Aunty Tara?”

  “Yes, sod off, would you? And take your bloody shoes off before you go in the living room.”

  “Did you get to actually see her?”

  “Jack!”

  After they’d got rid of Jack, Genevieve asked what Tar
a had said about disappearing without a word.

  “Nothing. I wasn’t allowed to ask. They’re coming over tomorrow. The three of them.”

  “Heck.” Genevieve looked round at the kitchen. “We’ll have to tidy the place up before they get here. It’s incredible.”

  Peter was about to open his mouth when the door opened. It was Zoe. “The dog’s been sick,” she said.

  ON BOXING DAY, WHAT with Dell, Mary, and Tara expected around midday, it was all hands to the pumps, or all shoulders to the wheel, to try to pull the cottage around to some semblance of order. Which meant that the children pitched in to lift one out-of-place object only to set it down in another out-of-place venue. In the end a lot of Christmas toys got scooped under the sofa or parked behind the curtains, all in the name of tidying. Genevieve supervised while Peter grumbled; Zoe hoovered as Amber hovered; Jack put things in boxes and Josie took things out again.

  All because Tara had come home. Peter’s confusion and resentment were growing by the minute.

  Genevieve had never met Tara. She and Peter had been together for three years before he even mentioned to her that he had a sister. Tara was two years younger than Peter and she had doted on her older brother. He, in turn, had always been protective toward her, and in childhood they had been as close as the print on a legal contract. Then at the age of nearly sixteen one summer Tara had gone out of his life.

  When he’d told Genevieve what had happened to his sister and that they had come to accept that she was dead—perhaps after some sexual predator or psychopath had abducted her and buried her body in a secret place—she had quickly understood what a mighty stone this was in his heart; that the experience had almost been enough, but not quite, to petrify all feeling inside of him. Tara was occasionally mentioned in passing, and Genevieve had always listened calmly whenever he spoke about her, knowing that even his sister’s name had been a plug, a cork to a reservoir of hurt that should be faced but never would be.

  Tara’s name had occasionally surfaced in conversation with the children’s grandparents, perhaps if they opened a family photo album; or referenced if they wanted to locate a particular time in the family’s history. But it was always a name that flared for a second or two and was ushered on, a spark from a burning log watched briefly for its danger and allowed to smoke out.