Inch Levels

by Neil Hegarty

  *

  The previous evening, Robert had moved around the house unplugging lamps and flicking switches: now only one light burned in the hall, outside the children’s bedroom; the living room, where she sat on the sofa and he sat in the deep armchair, was in gloom. Now he said, ‘And no, you can’t leave me.’

  Margaret had intended to be kind, circumspect: not to describe the suffocation of her life, the corridors that ended in a blank wall, the days and months of her life running away like sand in an hourglass, with nothing to show for it. She did not love him, she felt nothing for him, really – this was no marriage.

  He listened, composedly. No sign of his temper. No sign of anger, of despair – of anything, really. He listened from the depths of the armchair, the tips of his fingers pressed together in front of him. She could just make out his shape, there in the darkness: he seemed calm, dreadfully composed.

  ‘I need to stay here, the girls will need some sense of a stable environment, their things about them. But you can take all the time you need to find another place.’

  He sat, looking at his fingers.

  ‘Look: can’t we have a light on?’

  He looked at her now through the darkness, then shook his head a little.

  ‘No.’

  She opened her mouth to speak again: but now he held up a hand to silence her, shook his head again.

  ‘And no, you can’t leave me.’

  She caught the glint of his eye in the darkness. ‘Why? Why can’t I?’ She laughed, a little uneasily as he shrugged. A short silence.

  ‘You can’t, because if you do, I’ll pull the plug on the girls’ lives.’ Another shrug. ‘Do you want me to tell you how I can do that?’

  Margaret stared at him.

  ‘It’ll be easy,’ he added. ‘The easiest thing in the world. If you stay with me, though,’ he added, as though offering her a most beguiling choice, ‘I won’t have to.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Now Robert sat up, turned in the gloom: the glint left his eyes, which were dark now, and his outline was dark against the thicker surrounding darkness.

  ‘Inch Levels,’ he said. ‘You can imagine the rest.’ And then, in the same reasonable, almost jaunty tones, ‘But if you stay with me, I won’t have to go to the police, I won’t have to blow the whistle on myself, I won’t have to do that to the girls.’ He pressed his fingertips together again. ‘Stay with me, and we’ll carry on; and nobody need ever know; and our girls can get on with their lives.’

  Margaret sat very still. She didn’t ask the natural question, not yet: why he had done it; why, in the first place. She was instead chilled by the familiarity of the story, by her sense that this story was horrible – was horrible beyond description – and yet was not wholly unexpected. She had married – badly, though of course she had not known quite how badly, had not known the extent of his periods of silence, his flashes of temper, his black fits, his deep and profound introspection. But she had known she was marrying him on the rebound: not from another man, but from her family, from her mother, and with a sense of desperation.

  And six years and two children later, she realised the extent of her mistake.

  But now, in this instant, she saw that a trap had been sprung – that leaving Robert was indeed impossible. Because it was true: she could not after all leave her husband, not if it meant that her children’s lives would be blighted by the facts attached to their father. Of course, she thought in this instant, they’ll be blighted in another way: they’ll be blighted by living in the midst of an unhappy marriage – but I’ll find ways to compensate for that. Won’t I? Clarinet lessons – her thoughts in a tumbling rush – and checks, and balances: and there is time, only a few years, really, not many years before the two girls fly the nest. I can manage until then. Yes, she thought: surely I can.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ Robert said coolly. ‘I can feel it, even from here. You need to pull yourself together.’

  ‘I’m chilled.’

  ‘Chilled. I’m the one who should be chilled, Margaret. Pull yourself together.’

  This was brutal – but worst was the familiarity of this story: as though she knew it already, as though she had come across it long ago, in some story, or book or magazine; or had intuited it at some deep, cellular level.

  As though – yes, she had imagined that something like this might happen, at some point. It wasn’t so very surprising.

  She almost physically moved away from this thought. And now she asked the question.

  ‘Why?’

  No, she thought: I don’t want to know the why. The why is too much for me. I don’t want to know about the why; I don’t want to understand something like this.

  In any case, she knew Robert too well to expect an answer. And of course she knew herself even better. Yes: she would make her bed. She would change her mind, make her decision: she was prepared to weather anything now, rather than admit these facts into the light, to the gaze of her children.

  She was prepared to weather anything.

  Up to and including the death of a child?

  Yes, even that. And he knew it.

  ‘It wasn’t intentional,’ he said. ‘Have we a deal?’ His voice was dead and cold in the darkness.

  She nodded – but he was looking again at his fingertips and did not see the movement.

  ‘Margaret. Have we a deal?’

  She had to say the word.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. A deal.’

  And there was more too: more Margaret was prepared to do. She was prepared to spread her net. She was prepared to yank her brother into this situation.

  Yes, this too. Because here was Patrick sitting on the bench under the sycamore trees on the grey city walls of Derry. Saturday morning now, and here she was, telling him her story.

  Silence when she had finished. Margaret watched him, there on the bench under the sycamore trees. She was good at watching. She had watched Robert, earlier, watching her have breakfast. She had watched her children shovelling cornflakes, watched them put on coats and scarves and go out to the garden. She’d taken her time with her own breakfast: a cup of tea and then another cup, and perhaps she’d have another slice of toast and honey? – and so on and on. ‘Have you anything else to say?’ Robert said at last. But – no: she shook her head. She had nothing to say; at any rate, not at the moment. The deal was sealed.

  And at last she moved, leaving the table just as the sun reached the side of the kitchen window and began to shine onto the table. The edge of a square of pure light: Patrick, when he was younger and they had just moved into their new house, had liked to move things – knives, pens, the edge of a newspaper, anything with a side – across the tabletop, sliding it across in time with the sliding of the sun shining in from the skylight above. ‘A straight line, look!’ he exclaimed. Cassie would look, would praise. She, the superior elder sister, would scoff – ‘so what? big deal!’ – when in reality she envied his focus, his concentration. She thought about him as she slipped out of the kitchen and away from her husband: Patrick, whom she was going to draw into this ghastly affair. And she watched him as they settled themselves around the table in the cafe – until their mother appeared so unexpectedly and joined them.

  What would happen now? Well, time would tell, of course: but she was fairly certain that nothing would happen. Nothing to upset the steady tenor of their lives. She would not leave Robert; she would certainly not turn him in; her brother would not, either. Nothing would happen. They would carry on; they would put all this behind them.

  And so, in time, would the remnant of the other family, of the Casey family in their bungalow on the hill overlooking Lough Foyle. Already she had acknowledged the limits of what she was prepared to do. She would tell her brother; and that would have to be an end to that. She would get it off her chest, and move on. They would all move on.

  And even this fresh news, this news of the deat
h of the girl’s mother, that newly minted news: it changed nothing, not in its essentials. Everyone would press on.

  12

  As Margaret spoke, Patrick remembered her birthday meal. Her feast. The windows rippling, visibly buckling as the wall of sound collided with the house – not that that had put them off. They had eaten like – like pigs, he remembered, like pigs that night: like pigs eating their own kind. They made their way through pork fillet and platters of potatoes, and lemon meringue pie and birthday cake; they stuffed themselves. Martin opened a bottle or two of red, with his usual care and reverence: ‘Smell that,’ he said. ‘What would you say? Blackcurrant, would you say?’ Patrick said nothing to that – not a thing; there was nothing left to say, the barrel scraped clean – but Margaret laughed. ‘Blackcurrant, Daddy!’ she said. ‘You spend all that money on a bottle of wine,’ she said, ‘and then you say it reminds you of Ribena!’

  A little laughter: Margaret tittered at her own joke; and their dad laughed at himself; and even their mum smiled a little, a very little, as she forked the pork from pan to platter, carefully, piece by piece by piece. The mandarin orange segments pressed into the cream on the side of the birthday cake, Patrick remembered, and gleaming prettily in the lamplight.

  Robert, though. He didn’t smile. Patrick remembered that, now. He didn’t smile and he had even less to say that night than was customary. He just sat there and said nothing. Cleared his plate, though: ate every last thing.

  Margaret talked on.

  And now Patrick saw in his mind the previous day’s sun, setting in a cold sky: and the woman stepping out on her final walk. How had she moved? Slowly, tentatively, with indecision? Or with something like confidence, telling herself that if this was to be her final act, she had better perform it with panache?

  No. He could hardly imagine the latter, really.

  No, he saw her as a somnambulist: setting out from the house, closing the front door behind her, and heading down the hill and out towards the rocks. Chances were that nobody else was even around: a chilly October evening and not much to be seen on the pier or down by the water; the sun setting behind her, shining red onto the black cliffs of Benevenagh on the far side of the lough. And the shock of the icy water on her calves, on her knees; her coat beginning to float up around her waist, her movement hampered, slowing; the iron resolve in taking another step and another, until contact with the sea floor was lost. Had she stones in her clothes, dragging her down? – plucked from her garden or the side of the road, weighed judiciously in the palm of her hand before being transferred to her coat pockets? And that cold white current that flowed silently just offshore taking her, then, and depositing her a little later a couple of miles down the coast.

  Easy to accomplish. And how straightforward to imagine. He could see it all.

  He had heard about it, early that morning. A short report on the radio: and then he had a few minutes to fritter away while waiting for Margaret; and he had spent it away in the kitchen department at Austin’s – and there he had heard more thoughts on the matter. ‘It was selfish of her,’ opined one woman, speaking to her friend between the rows of food mixers, ‘to leave her two other girls like that. Selfish of her, really.’

  The other woman demurred, mildly. ‘People that would do a thing like that: they’re not in their right mind, are they? So you can’t call them selfish.’

  ‘Well, and what will those girls do now?’ said the first woman. ‘And what about their poor father? Sure, I know she couldn’t have been in her right mind, of course I know that,’ she went on, looking around at the gleaming appliances, ‘but still. She could have caught herself in time, is what I think. Now,’ she went on, ‘I fancy a Kenwood, myself. In red, would you say?’

  ‘I like the silver.’

  But the first woman shook her head decisively. ‘Silver, no. Not the silver. Think of the dirty hand marks showing up. Red.’

  Now Patrick sat on the bench, and said nothing.

  So yes: perhaps there had been a premonition. That’s what his dream had been, of course. Of course. That was it: of course he had never talked to anyone about this; what would he say? My dream, he would say: let me tell you about my dream, the dream I have over and over. Let me tell you about that. This was his own private dream – but of course nobody would ever want to know anyway; nobody ever wanted to hear about other people’s dreams.

  So there it was: the plants severed at the roots. A premonition. And – information that nobody would have wanted; information that was useless to anyone, that was pointless.

  And nothing else: only the whirl and gyre of his own head, into which nobody would ever think to look. They would ask him about history, if he was lucky: about policies and war and personages: that was all. If they bothered to ask, bothered to enquire, then – but the real facts and truths and history – yes, the real history – nobody would ask. They would come close: did you hear about? Did you? Did you hear about? Terrible, isn’t it?

  And at a same time, an uprush of sick pleasure. Gladness, that at last Robert had shown his colours. Hadn’t they always been apparent?

  He had Robert, now.

  And he felt himself flush, felt Margaret’s eyes on him.

  And then what? Well, who could say? And then what? And then what? What was he supposed to do with this information? A few sycamore leaves drifted down, falling splayed and crisp on the cobbled surface before him. Margaret sat silently – but he turned now.

  ‘Why did you tell me?’

  To tell me what to do.

  That was what he expected Margaret to say. Why else would she confide in him, tell such a terrible story?

  She must need his advice, his guidance; she must need him to formulate a plan for the future.

  So he felt sick again – a wave of nausea that ran through his body like electricity – when she shrugged, when she said, ‘Confession box? I want to get it off my chest.’

  Was that it? Was that the point of this – recitation? Because it amounted to nothing more than a recitation – a story, held comfortably at a remove – if reality was not to be allowed to intrude.

  To ensnare him, then: was the truth of it. She had ensnared him. She wanted to involve him in this hellish history, but she didn’t want to do anything more. She wanted to talk it over with him – and that was it; and then to get on with life. ‘What? Not to make some plan? Not to do the right thing?’

  His mouth was dry and his lips felt stretched and dry too, as though they might crack at any moment. The weight of unwanted information. What would he do now?

  ‘This is the right thing.’ He opened his mouth, but she carried on. ‘Nothing. We do nothing. We carry on.’

  Patrick sat, looking straight ahead, at the terraced streets and cathedral spire and the blue hills beyond. Then he turned to her.

  ‘Hardly.’ A pause, and then, ‘To carry on regardless? And you mentioned absolution? Don’t you need restitution for that? Isn’t that what we were always taught?’

  He meant it cuttingly, but Margaret was uncut. She laughed – a most incongruous sound in this context. Yellow sycamore leaves scudded along the cobbles in front of her, and she said, ‘You’re not joining up the dots. I’ll be staying with him, won’t I? Isn’t that restitution?’ Strands of hair were blowing in the wind and she tucked them neatly behind her ear. ‘The most complete kind?’

  Already she had it worked out. So Patrick thought, so it seemed. Repent at leisure, was to be her mantra: for the decisions made, the objectives followed through, the choices clung to, over years and in the face of all the evidence in the world. She would see it through. He watched her, feeling himself filled with spite and hate. And feeling degraded and soiled; and betrayed, at being pulled into something that had nothing to do with him.

  ‘Forgive, and carry on? Is that it?’

  Margaret looked at him. ‘I never said forgive. I won’t forgive him, and I won’t forgive myself. Carry on, I said.’ Her feet scuffed at the yellow leaves. ‘And
after all, this family doesn’t make a habit of forgiving. You’ve never forgiven me for marrying him, have you? Our father has never forgiven our mother for being the sort of woman she is; and she has never forgiven him for marrying her, for being so weak. So, don’t you think there’s plenty of experience out there? I have it all at the tip of my fingers.’

  Patrick said carefully, ‘So year after year, for the rest of your life, this is the way you’ll live?’

  But he hardly listened to her reply – for in the midst of all this, something was being ignored, was being skirted with deftness and efficiency. She might live the rest of her life in this way: yes. Focused so squarely on her own penitential ways? Yes. Ignoring the howls at the door, the fist thumping the table, the need for justice, for vengeance? The child who would never return home, the life snuffed out, the second life taken away, the family that must rearrange itself – somehow – around this gaping hole?

  No. Nobody could ever do that.

  But Margaret was watching him, was reading his mind. ‘People do it all the time,’ she said. ‘They make a deal with themselves, and they live with it. Robert will never hurt anyone again,’ she said, ‘and I’ll make sure of it. The only hurt will come to Robert himself, and to me. Nobody else. That’s the deal.’

  Patrick thought: but what about me?

  ‘I shouldn’t have phoned you this morning.’

  This was a concession – but Margaret’s tone was cool.

  ‘I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have; I panicked, for a moment. I should have left you out of it.’

  But it was too late now. Patrick too saw years and years ahead. Loyalty, binding his tongue. Unwanted knowledge carried like a stone. The drag of it, year by year. Complicity, and the silence and isolation, the degradation – of the soul, of the heart – that it brings. His mind had been settled – so virtuous! – on the woman who had walked into the sea the previous evening. Of course his mind dwelt on it, on this catalytic moment: now, amid the darkness and confusion, he could see the woman’s family, the scene silent and terribly clear as though he were standing there, viewing the internal spaces of the house as through a transparent glass screen. But now, there he was, allowing these thoughts to waver away from the dead child, her mother, her family. Moving his thoughts like pieces on the draughts board, deliberately onto new terrain. To check, to block, to overcome.