by J. M. Hewitt
Mary, when did she visit me? Yesterday, or was it last week, or even last month? No, wait, its Bobby’s funeral today and he was still alive when Mary last came to see me. And what had Mary wanted? Oh yes, for Bronwyn to be out of her son’s life, that’s right. I’d almost forgotten about my wife’s indiscretion, but did I call Kieran? Like a spinning wheel the machinery in my head turns and with each click I recall a little more information. I don’t want to tell Bronwyn what I arranged for Rose, but it is important that Bronwyn also knows how a wife should behave, even if her husband is not there and other opportunities present themselves. I wiggle my fingers and she recognises my signal and clasps my hand.
“Stop what you’re doing with him,” I say and squeeze her fingers as hard as I can. I must still have some strength as she flinches and tries to pull away. I hold my grip firm, I’m not letting her run away again this time. “He’s put his filthy hands on you, and you let him. You’re my wife.” I finish, my voice husky and raw, which seems to have more of an effect than if I’d yelled at her.
“I’m not seeing him,” she whispers.
“Bad things happen when your actions are bad,” I cough. “Look at Rose, look what they done to her. Stay away, Bron, do you understand?”
Her face is devoid of all colour and she sways a little in her chair. Or maybe I’m the one who is swaying, I’m not sure, but I know I can’t stay awake much longer and I need to know that I’ve made the consequences clear.
A forceful wind picks up, wrenching her away from me and spins her back off the chair, towards the door. I call out, weakly, I’m not done yet, I haven’t finished, but it’s too late, the door is banging closed and she’s gone.
Chapter 34
May 7th 1981
Connor has been home for over a week and Mary has kept a close eye on him. He goes to work every day; she knows this because she’s been calling the office where he is still working in an administrative capacity until his leg heals completely. On the occasions that he has answered the telephone she has hung up straight away. If someone else picks up, she asks for him, and makes up a nonsensical question about dinner or what time he will be home.
He has been getting home later than usual and she is certain he has been going round her house. But when he gets back he is miserable, shutting himself away in his room, so she is sure that nothing is happening. Mary wonders about the sudden change of Bronwyn’s heart. Was she threatened? Did Danny send his man around to have a word? Whatever, he is home and that’s enough, for now anyway.
But how much longer is she going to have to live on tenterhooks like this? And it’s not just Connor; it’s this house.
As if to acknowledge her thought, something creaks upstairs and Mary shudders. When the girl let the noose take her full weight something must have pulled in the roof beams. Now, all she hears, day and night, is the creaking as the upper foundations shift upon the fracture, which means she is reminded all the time of what happened up there.
Mary scoops up her John Player cigarettes and lights one up with a shaking hand. She can still smell death on the landing as well, even though she’s been scrubbing at it for a month. She doesn’t want to move out, but simmering below the fear is a red, hard anger that she may have to sell up.
She’s up on the landing, scrubbing again when Connor arrives home. She sits back on her heels, wipes the sweat from her face and looks down the stairs.
“I haven’t started dinner yet,” she calls. “I’ll put it on in a minute.”
Silence, the sound of the front door closing and then his face appears at the bottom. “It’s all right, I’m not hungry.”
He doesn’t wait for a reply and she sees his shadow receding as he makes his way into the living room. She turns back to her bucket and scrubbing brush and looks at the thick pile carpet. It’s ruined, it’s not made to be chaffed at every day with a stiff brush. She throws the brush into the bucket, ignoring the splash on her skirt as it hits the water. She puts her head in her hands, pulls at her hair and then covers her ears. She’s sure she can hear the girl laughing at her, which is strange, because not once did she ever hear Rose laugh when she was alive.
Chapter 35
May 7th 1981
After she leaves Danny’s block, Bronwyn heads for the waiting area, looking for Sue’s nephew, Joe.
He’s there, as though waiting for her, and from him Bronwyn gets the same impression as she does of her neighbour Sue; open, friendly and willing to talk.
“I want to know who has been to visit Dan,” she says. “Is that possible?”
Joe seems pleased to be asked to help, and he slides the visitor book over. “It’s all in there, everyone who comes and goes.” He’s proud of their apparent ability to keep a simple log and she refrains from sneering, instead, she fixes a smile in place as she turns the pages.
She can see Mary’s name, two, three times, but it’s someone else she’s looking for now. She slams the book closed when she locates the name she’s seeking, shakes her head at the irony of his surname, smiles winningly at Joe, and throws him a wave as she leaves.
It doesn’t take much to find out the address of the name she now has, and just as the sun is setting she finds herself on Kilmorey Street. Kieran Lynch opens the door and she can tell by his expression that he knows exactly who she is.
“Kieran, can I have a word?”
He glances behind him, into the house, and then down at his bare feet as though to say that he can’t come out.
“I can wait,” she says without breaking eye contact.
He disappears inside and minutes later he joins her on the step, trainers on and zipping up a tracksuit top. “Let’s walk,” he says, and without waiting he lopes off down the path.
“What happened with Rose James?” she asks as they walk side by side.
As she glances at him she sees that he looks positively sick and she knows she’s hit on the right track. Glancing up and down the street she nods to the kerb. “Let’s sit here a while.”
He doesn’t talk for a long time and she takes the opportunity to study him. He’s young, a lot younger than Danny, probably not even in his twenties yet. His brown hair is fashionably long, touching his collar, and his eyes are a piercing blue. It’s his eyes that she notices most, they are fear filled and nervous, never settling on one object, instead, flicking left and right as though someone is going to jump out at him at any moment.
“I was to scare her, make her leave, because she shouldn’t have been there.” He stops suddenly and she sits on her hands and stays still and silent, not wanting to push him so much that he flees back home.
“I understand what you had to do, it’s your job,” she says kindly, though she feels anything but kind at the moment.
He looks at her then, a look filled with disgust. “I didn’t do what they’re saying, I put the fucking thing up and showed it to her and... and that was supposed to be enough.”
“So, what happened? Because she was hanged, you know.”
“Not by me, not by me!” he cries, and his face screws up as he drops his head into his arms.
“If not you, by who?” Sensing she is close she takes her hand out from underneath her and lays it on his arm. “Who did this to her, was it Mary Dean?”
When he raises his head his face is even paler than it was a moment ago but now he is looking at her earnestly. “I’ve seen stuff before, shootings and beatings and the like, and it’s fine, you do what needs to be done. But I can’t sleep for knowing what she done. It’s fucking haunting me.”
“What who done? Tell me, Kieran, it’ll help to get it off your chest.”
He rubs at his nose and looks sideways at her. “Rose did it herself. She took the noose, she put it round her neck and then she just stepped off the top of the stairs.”
Bronwyn sits back and breathes out hard. She imagines it, but it still doesn’t ring true. She can’t believe that Rose would have had the gumption to end it. And the guilt showers her again; how depr
essed must she have been and yet nobody helped her, not even me, thinks Bronwyn. My lifelong friend and I was so wrapped up in myself I done nothing.
“But Dan sent you there, yes, to scare her into moving out?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, but Mrs Dean asked Danny to help her, she wanted Rose gone. Listen, Bronwyn,” he says with sudden urgency as he swivels round to face her. “You won’t tell Danny that I told you this, will you? I’ll get fucking shot myself. I’m no snitch, I’m no grass.”
Is it her imagination or does he give her a funny look when he says that? She raises her eyes heavenward as the chant starts up in her head. Supergrass... supergrass...
She pats his hand. “Listen to me, Kieran. Get yourself away from all this. None of your people are going to survive this. You’ll all be dead, as dead as Rose is either from a fucking strike or a bullet or just a long life lived very disappointingly in prison. Get out while you can.”
He won’t leave though, what other options are there for him? He’ll be in all the way and he probably will die before he reaches thirty. It’s a depressing thought, but one she knows all too well is a reality.
“One thing, has he sent anyone after me?” she holds her chin high as she asks, the last thing she wants to do is show any fear, and she is surprised when he answers her truthfully.
“I don’t know, there’s something... but I don’t know what’s happening yet.”
He is telling the truth, she’s sure of it, he’s practically a child still, unable to lie with conviction. He won’t last long in this kind of life, not spilling all his secrets to her without her even threatening him. “Well don’t wait too long, Danny’s not going to last much longer.” She means it flippantly, just to show this boy that she’s not afraid of him, but when Kieran glares at her she can see it was taken seriously and for a moment she hates herself. How can she joke about the impending death of her own husband?
“Maybe you should take your own advice and get away from all this,” he snaps and stands up. “Don’t you be coming round here again.”
She lets him go then but continues to sit for a long time after he’s gone.
His words hang in the air. Was it a warning, or a thinly veiled threat?
Chapter 36
May 20th 1981
I find peace in sleep. The last few weeks were a frightening time where I couldn’t distinguish between what was real and what was a dream. Sometimes it was a fucking nightmare. Strength comes in waves followed quickly by fatigue. I can’t see at all now and the blinds are down all the time because even with my eyes closed the light hurts them. Today there was an ache in my stomach and I was carried to the toilet. It was a bad sign, after so long without a bowel movement, when you eventually need to go it is the body’s way of preparing oneself for the next stage. My system is clearing out, just like me.
So I’m at the end of my journey. Many have gone before me, everyone is going and I wonder if our deaths are still having the same effect on the outside world as it did for those brave souls who went before me. I hope so, or what is it all for?
Sometimes my wife comes. We don’t talk anymore and in fact, maybe she doesn’t come. I said that I struggle to define what is life and what is unconsciousness, didn’t I? I choose to believe that she does come and she sits, sometimes stroking my hand but very gently, because my skin hurts to be touched now. It was agony when they carried me to the bathroom yesterday, why they couldn’t have just shoved a bed pan under my arse I’ll never know. A last act of mean spirited ‘fun’ for them, maybe. Though that’s a little unfair, most of the people who work here in this hospital wing have been surprisingly...tender, is the only way I can describe it. They don’t even eat in front of us and I have no doubt that they go home at the end of the day and see us in their own nightmares each night.
But Bronwyn, there’s a lot I would like to say to her, but my voice has vanished. My throat works, I can feel my Adam’s apple chaffing inside, but nothing comes out. I suppose we said all we needed to, but it would be nice to chat to her again. Batting words back and forth, her never backing down from an argument, me either, and eventually settling it in the only way we knew how, in bed.
Would I have done things differently? Hindsight is a wonderful and cruel thing.
Oh, she’s off again, I can hear her little sigh and the scrape of the chair as she gets up to go back to the house in Kidds Road to plug in the fire and put melancholy songs on while she pours a bottle of wine down her neck. She thinks I never took any notice of her, but I know her inside and out. I know her better than she thinks.
I try to smile at her, I peel my lips back and they stick against my dry gums. Then I hear her speak but it’s not to me, it must be to one of the medical staff. They are always there, I can’t see them, but I hear them and by their touch I can feel their kindness.
“Do it,” I hear her say, and then, though I don’t hear her leave, I know that she’s gone.
Before I slip back into welcome sleep I have a funny thought, a memory surfaces. Her final words are the same ones that I spoke to Kieran when he came to see me the other day.
Do it.
Chapter 37
June 15th 1981
It has been a strange summer so far. Nothing has happened; Connor has remained at home and seems to have given up going to Bronwyn’s house. The broken beam in the loft still creaks. Danny Granger remains in prison, alive or dead Mary does not know. She no longer watches the news on the television and when she leaves the house, which is infrequently these days, she purposefully avoids the headlines or places where she could hear snippets of information.
And even though everything seems back to normal, or as close to it as possible, Mary can’t move on. It’s what is not seen that is her problem. It’s the laugh of Rose that occurs whenever she moves across the landing, a tinkling, girlish melody, sometimes collaborating in time with the creaking beam to create a haunting musical score. Mary doesn’t believe in spirits of the dead but she does firmly buy into ghosts of the mind and the memory.
Sometimes she opens the loft hatch and sits halfway up the stairs. The air swoops in, cooler than it is outside, and she stares up into the dark recess of the roof.
“I hate you,” she finds herself whispering.
And she doesn’t know who she is talking to, Danny, Rose, Connor, God, herself?
Today she has spent hours in the kitchen. It’s the only room that she can breathe in at the moment. The living room, the window which although is replaced is cleaner and brighter than the others, is a constant reminder of the night the rocks smashed a hole in the pane, allowing the cold night and the hatred to seep indoors. And the bare spots on the carpet and the table where bleach eroded them is a painful reminder of the spring and summer where it seems to Mary now, thinking back, that she became quite unhinged through the stress. Upstairs is out of bounds, memories of her in her bed, clutching the quilt tight, straining to hear evidence of stealthy footsteps sneaking into forbidden rooms.
The staircase is her own self-flagellation; it is where she goes for penance. Though she tells herself that she had no part in the girl’s death, she knows she has to pay in some way.
It is late now, an ink black sky outside and Connor is having his first night out with someone. She doesn’t know who, if it’s a girl or his male pals. The dynamic of their relationship has changed and she gets the impression that her son now sees her as domineering and over protective. She’s not, she’s only ever wanted to be allowed to love him the way she never had the chance to love his father. She just wanted to keep him safe, especially from the girls, because women can be wicked in their ways.
Carrying the heavy glass ashtray, she drags on her cigarette as she moves through the darkness to the stairs. The hatch is open but it is silent for once, and she stills as she looks up into the eaves. Did she not close the loft door earlier? Was it even today that she had it open or was it yesterday that she sat on the stairs, whispering hate filled words and berating herself?
The net curtain moves downstairs and hooks over the umbrella stand. Mary pauses on the top stair as the movement catches her eye. The door is open, the thought forms but is not fully processed before figures melt out of the shadows of the bedroom doorways, three, four, five of them, like ants moving towards a dropped boiled sweet on a pavement.
I won’t scream, thinks Mary as they gather round her. I won’t give them the satisfaction.
And she clamps her lips together, determined not to even whimper as they grip her arms and pull her onto the landing. She stumbles, one of them tears the cigarette out of her mouth and puts it between his own lips, grins around it at her. And it’s only when she is falling backwards that she looks up. Out of the darkness up there a rope snakes its way over the beams, threading out of the hole down towards her. The intention is clear, just like it must have been for the girl as she stood in this very spot.
They are holding her now, cables ties bind her hands behind her and the rough, frayed edges of the noose slips easily over her head. Her toes curl, desperately gripping the top stair like a swimmer before he performs a dive. As they push her, firmly, squarely in the small of her back, she abandons her promise not to scream.
Swinging through the air her voice is cut. She inhales, building up for another scream and realises too late, there is no air left to breathe in anymore.
Chapter 38
15 July 1981
My life froze in that recovery period of more than a month. It’s not even done yet; I’m still taking each day so very slowly. There is a big gap between my almost death and where I am now; my almost life.
