Torn Away

by James Heneghan

  “Go away!”

  They left him alone until dinner time. Kate knocked on the door. He pretended to be asleep. “Declan, will you come down for your dinner before it goes cold?”

  Silence.

  “Then I’ll bring up a bite of your favourite—mince pie and fresh cream.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Declan?”

  “Leave me alone!”

  She went away and left him alone.

  He stayed there for the rest of the day, lying on his bed, his eyes closed against the pain in his heart, thinking over and over again what Matthew had told him. “Listen to me, Declan!” Matthew’s voice: “Listen to me, Declan!

  “The IRA murdered your da.

  “Your da was an informer, a tout.

  “Listen to me!”

  Declan imagined the execution: his da with his hands tied behind his back, a bag over his head, the IRA executioner shooting him in the back of the head—Declan knew how it was done, he had heard the stories of IRA justice. Just one shot; that was all it took, they said. His da. Shot in the head. An informer (“Listen to me, Declan!”), a traitor to the Irish cause.

  “Listen to me, Declan! Listen to me! I’m telling you the God’s truth!” Matthew defending his brother: “Liam Doyle put love for his wife and family first, before Ireland’s struggle for freedom. So they killed him, a man with a pregnant wife. You’ve got to listen to me, Declan!”

  Matthew had told him all this, and Declan believed it. He had to believe it. Why would Matthew lie?

  But what was it he had said about the fighting? “They’re both wrong, Declan, don’t you see that? The IRA and the Protestants are both wrong! They’re killing each other! What good does it do?”

  Was he to believe his uncle Matthew that his da’s death had been all in vain, that they were all wrong? All wasting lives? That their fight for what was rightfully theirs was achieving nothing but more and more hatred and unending violence? The Holy Terrors too? Wrong?

  After a long time he fell asleep.

  When he woke up it was dark, with a moon. He got up off the bed and sat, staring out the window at the black rocks and the ocean.

  He came down to breakfast the next morning, his eyes puffy.

  Kate touched Declan’s shoulder. He wriggled away. “Ah, you must be destroyed with the hunger. Sit down and I’ll make you some pancakes.” She pushed the jug of orange juice across the table toward him.

  Matthew was sitting in his usual chair, reading a thick book. He looked up anxiously and nodded, and went back to his book.

  Declan poured himself a glass of juice. He looked at his uncle. “Sorry about the truck.”

  Matthew raised his head. “The truck can be fixed. It was yourself we were worried about.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Matthew nodded again.

  Father O’Coonor poked his head in the back door. “God save all here!”

  “Come in, Father, I’ve tea made,” said Kate.

  “You’re the hard-working woman, Katherine,” said the priest, smiling, and sitting down at the table. “Matthew,” he said to Matthew.

  Matthew nodded. “Mornin’, Father.” He put aside his book.

  Ana came down the stairs, her face dark with temper. “I’m fed up with him! He can go . . . ”

  “What ails you, girl?” said Kate. “Say good morning to Father O’Connor.”

  “Morning, Father.” Ana rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Thomas is acting up. He wants to wear a shirt with buttons instead of a T-shirt. Don’t ask me why. He got the buttons fastened all wrong, and when I tried to fix them he pushed me away and started yelling and carrying on. And he says he won’t come down to breakfast; he wants to stay in his room like . . . “ She looked at Declan and stopped.

  “Sit down, Ana, and don’t bother your head about the boy,” said Kate. “Sometimes it’s best to leave him be. Buttons is only buttons.”

  Thomas, on the top landing, leaned his head over the banister rail. “Piss! Piss! Piss!” he screamed.

  Father O’Connor’s cup and saucer crashed to the floor.

  It snowed on New Year’s Eve, starting in the morning and falling thickly. In the afternoon they built a snowman which Thomas said looked like Matthew because it was so big.

  They stayed up late with the radio tuned to CBC and toasted the new year at midnight with some of Matthew’s elderberry wine.

  Kate said, “May the good Lord and all His holy saints and angels make the new year a happy one for us all!”

  The next morning it snowed again. Ana and Thomas tobogganed using sheets of cardboard. Declan watched them for a while as they screamed and tumbled. Ana begged him to join in, but he shook his head, and went off alone in the snow.

  All was white and new. New year. New snow. He took the buried path leading along the cliff, between the sea and the mountain, the snow in his hair and eyes. The going was hard and slow. He did not walk far, just far enough to be alone, away from the house, away from people, and he stood with his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets and listened to the ocean and watched the gulls, their cries muffled by the snow. He turned and scanned the high, snowy trees of the forest and breathed in the cold clean air and the silence and peace of this land so far and so different from his own.

  His own land. His own people. His own family dead. Wasted lives. He felt with his thumb the gold ring on his finger and remembered the plain gravestone with its three names in Milltown Cemetery. They were dead and he was alive and it was a new year.

  He watched the snow piling up on the branches of the trees, bending them lower and lower with its weight. When it seemed that the overladen branches were about to snap, they sprang suddenly back, catapulting showers of powdered snow into the air.

  He turned. The ocean stretched out in front of him, flat and glimmering under a leaden sky. He stood in the cold brightness of the snow and felt the vast strength and peace of the land melting into him.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  This was the day.

  Declan had hardly slept. He sat on the edge of his bed and stared out the window at the darkness.

  The house was quiet.

  He was trying not to think. Thinking only made things worse. Don’t think, he told himself. Do what you have to do, but don’t think.

  The sky was growing lighter; he could see the ocean now and the black rocks. He did not think. He breathed. He sat. He opened the window wider and shivered with the cold. Smell of the sea. Creak of the house. Someone was up. Light footsteps at his door. Faint knock.

  “Can I come in?” Ana whispering through the gloom. She came to him. “I couldn’t sleep.” She was dressed: jeans and T-shirt. She sat beside him on the edge of his rumpled bed. “You couldn’t sleep either, looks like.”

  “I slept,” lied Declan. He stood. He wore only Jockey shorts to bed. He pulled open the drawer of the chest and took out a clean T-shirt and shrugged himself into it. His jeans were on the top of the chest where he had left them last night. He pulled them on. No thinking allowed. Socks, bottom drawer. He sat on the bed beside Ana and pulled them on.

  “I kept thinking of you going away from us,” said Ana.

  Declan said nothing.

  “I thought of you flying in the airplane back to Ireland. Alone. Nobody meeting you when you get there . . . “

  “I told you . . . “

  “I know. But nobody who knows and cares about you.”

  Declan slipped his feet into his sneakers.

  “We care about you.”

  He tied the laces of his sneakers. Don’t think. He began throwing his few things into his bag. T-shirts . . .

  “You don’t care about us, do you, Declan?”

  . . . shorts, socks . . .

  “You won’t miss us.”

  “Of course I’ll miss you.” He stopped packing and looked at her. “All of you. I wish I could stay.”

  “So stay.”

  He turned away. “We’ve been through t
his stuff, Ana. I can’t stay.” He was trying not to think, but she was making it very difficult for him. “You know I have to go home. It’s where my family is buried.” He finished his packing and dropped the small bag on the floor near the door.

  Ana stood, took two small steps to the window and looked out. “But this is your home. We’re your family now. I want you to stay.”

  He stood beside her at the window. The sky was brighter now; he could see the beach below the cliff. “Harper wanted to stay too, remember?”

  Ana nodded.

  “But he finally had to go home to the sea,” said Declan.

  “The sea was the only home Harper really had,” said Ana.

  “But he left, didn’t he? He had to go; he couldn’t stay!”

  Ana gave a snort of disgust. “You’re not a seal, Declan! You’re a person! What you need is here, not in . . . “

  There was a tap on the door. Matthew poked his head in. “Come down for breakfast. We have to leave in under an hour. Wake Thomas, will you, Ana?”

  Ana left. Declan wanted no breakfast. He waited until it was late and then he went downstairs.

  Kate handed him a glass of juice. “It’s not too late to change your mind, Declan, love. We don’t want you to go, we’re destroyed with the thought of it, so we are, isn’t that right, Matthew?”

  Matthew nodded mournfully.

  Declan shook his head.

  Matthew climbed behind the wheel of Mr. Sawchuk’s scarred old Chevrolet Biscayne. Kate sat beside him. Matthew’s truck was still out of action; Mr. Sawchuk had insisted they use his car. “Got good snow tires,” he had said. “Might as well use her.”

  Declan sat in the back with Ana and Thomas. Though there had been no new snow, the drive to Langdale took close to an hour.

  Declan said nothing the whole way.

  They drove onto the ferry. Matthew and Kate stayed in the car for the short trip to Horseshoe Bay, but Declan, Ana and Thomas climbed out and wandered around the ferry deck. Ana and Thomas had very little to say; Thomas was unusually quiet. Declan stood at the rail, staring down at the oil-green water sliding past the hull of the ferryboat.

  They drove off the ferry at Horseshoe Bay. Nobody spoke much on the drive to the airport. Kate, who always had something to say, was almost silent. She sat in the front of the car, her eyes to the front.

  The snow in Vancouver had been cleared from the main roads. By the time they reached the airport, the sun was shining weakly.

  Declan had no suitcase to check in, only his carry-on bag, stuffed with clothing and his map of British Columbia which Matthew had said he could keep.

  Matthew gave him his passport and his flight tickets and explained again the route and the timing: Vancouver to Prestwick, Scotland; a two hour wait; then Prestwick to Belfast. He would be met at Belfast airport by Kate’s sister, Bernadette.

  “It’s still not too late to change your mind,” said Kate. “You can still come back with us. We love you, Declan, all of us. We want you to stay. It sickens the heart out of us all to see you leaving.”

  Declan shook his head. He did not speak.

  Kate gave a deep sigh. “Keep your tickets in your passport. You’ll need the boarding pass, so keep that separate. I’ve written down Bernadette’s telephone number and her address in your passport in case something goes wrong and she’s late to pick you up. Also our address and telephone at Otter Harbour.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I put a few candies in your bag for something to chew on and a sandwich in case you get hungry. Matthew put in a couple of paperbacks for you to read. Ah! God go with you, Declan.” She kissed him again, then turned away.

  Matthew’s eyes were wet. He stuck out his hand. Declan shook it.

  “Goodbye, Declan,” said Ana. She kissed him quickly on the cheek and stood back and held Thomas by the hand. She was wearing her big sunglasses.

  Thomas began to make grunting noises. “Aagh! Agh!” he cried. He pulled away from Ana and, arms outstretched, lunged at Declan, but tripped and fell clumsily at his feet. He gripped Declan’s ankles and hung on as though by sheer strength he would prevent him from moving away. “Don’t go, Declan!” he cried.

  Declan crouched down and pulled Thomas’s arms away from his ankles. “Take it easy, Thomas.” He helped him up. “Take it easy.”

  Declan turned and walked through gate number eight, his bag slung over his shoulder. He brushed the hair out of his eyes. Just before he turned the corner out of sight he saw them standing together. He waved to them. They waved back. He headed into the waiting room and sat down with his bag on his knees. He could see the Canadian Airways 747 airplane through the window.

  He did not have to wait long. He handed his boarding pass to the uniformed woman at the tunnel that led to the airplane. She wore bright red lipstick.

  His seat was more than halfway down the aisle. There was already someone in the outside seat, a heavy man in a business suit. Declan opened the luggage compartment over the man’s head, pushed his bag in and slammed it shut. “Excuse me,” he muttered. The man clutched his briefcase in balloon fingers and struggled to his feet. Declan slid past him to the window seat and fastened the seat belt around his middle. He pressed his forehead against the window and saw the jet engines that soon would be high above the clouds, flying him home.

  He had managed to stop thinking all morning, but now as he looked out the plane window, thoughts began to trickle through, the way water does before a dam bursts. He could not stop them coming, so he concentrated on thoughts of home. They would be surprised in Belfast to see him back. The O’Malleys. Brendan Fogarty’s surprised face. This time he was really going home. So why wasn’t he excited?

  He looked through the plane window at the snow-capped mountains. He would miss all this, the vast, peaceful, forested land, and the sea, and the sharp air that smelled of cedar and pine and mountain alder.

  He told himself again, I am going home.

  He heard their voices: “Home is where the heart is.” Kate.

  “We’re your family now.” Ana.

  “Don’t go!” Thomas.

  “You belong here now. This is your home.” Matthew.

  His stomach churned in confusion and despair.

  He thought of Harper swimming out to sea on his way home, and he remembered the way he had felt, that sense of loss, watching the seal’s black shiny nose and bristled whiskers heading away from him.

  And he felt again that deadly emptiness and despair he’d felt before when he had sat alone on his bed in his and Mairead’s room under the Sacred Heart picture, knowing with an awful certainty he would never see his sister or his ma ever again.

  He leaned back on the headrest and closed his eyes, remembering, the memories coming to him in fragments:

  Joe’s slow smile. The joy on his face after running the canoe through the white water needle. Declan remembers the first time, how scared he was. They ran through the “mother of all rinse cycles,” as they came to call it, two more times that first day, and many times since. He remembers Matthew’s face as he holds out his hand to Declan. “Mint?” Matthew bending over a TV set, his big hands resting, limp on his knees, as he searches with his eyes the mass of colored circuits and transistors before picking up his soldering iron. Matthew carrying in his arms a sick seal up the steep cliff. Matthew watching a cougar along the sights of his rifle, hoping it will run to safety. Matthew sitting in his kitchen chair, reading, quiet, his hands curled around the edges of a book, stopping to look up at Kate’s questions; Kate who gets irritated with Matthew’s silence sometimes, asking him questions merely to interrupt him and gain his attention. Matthew, answering her thoughtfully, though he knows only too well what she is up to. He remembers Kate, sitting tall on the edge of a rock, or sprawled on the shingle, catching the shades and colors of the sea and the sky, her lips tight with concentration as she follows the play of light and shadow. Kate, pouring Declan a glass of orange juice from a plastic pitcher. Kate, with one hip leaning agains
t the kitchen counter, elbow supported on one hand, a mug of coffee in the other, listening to Ana blathering on at her about her schoolwork, or an animal she saw, or what she said to Leah, or how she is fed up with Thomas not doing as he is told. Kate, wise Kate, like his own ma, listening to everyone. He remembers Ana, frowning as she holds Declan’s hand in the cold darkness, singing softly to herself a song she has been rehearsing. Ana with her huge sunglasses and her sometimes tilted smile, or her green eyes flashing with fury at Declan when he killed the squirrel. Ana fixing Thomas’s sweater, bunched at the shoulders, or running to grab Thomas’s arm, afraid he’ll run out into the road under the school bus. And he remembers Thomas, happy as he shows Declan a pair of oak bookends he made at school, and wanting Declan to have them to keep tidy the small pile of books Declan has amassed on his chest of drawers.

  “You all right, boy?” said the man beside him.

  Declan looked at him. Of course he was all right. Why shouldn’t he be all right? The man blurred. Then Declan realized his eyes were wet.

  He clawed at the buckle of his seat belt. “Excuse me.” He pushed past the man into the aisle, jerked open the luggage compartment, snatched his bag and ran to the airplane door.

  “What!” The flight attendant threw up her hands in astonishment as Declan flew by her.

  He ran up the rubber-matted slope of the tunnel into the waiting room. The baggage examiners had gone; the X-ray equipment was deserted. He dashed through the barrier and burst into the terminal.

  They had gone.

  Perhaps they were up in the lounge, watching for the airplane to take off. Or they could still be in the parking lot. He ran out of the terminal, down the steps, and across the road to the parking lot.

  Where had Matthew parked the car? It was such a huge lot: row after row of cars. Declan had seen nothing on the way in. Only the Hertz car rental sign. That was the row. He ran along the row, checking the cars. Finally! There! The scarred blue Biscayne! There was no mistaking the old car. No sign of them. He put his bag on the car roof and sat on the trunk. He watched and waited.

  The Canadian Airlines 747 arrowed up into the clouds.