Faithful Place

by Tana French

  I said, “You know something? Sooner or later, you’re going to have to ditch this idea that you’ve spent your life being everyone’s little knight in shining armor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s entertaining to watch, but there’s a fine line between illusion and delusion, and you’re bouncing along that line.”

  Shay shook his head. “You don’t have a clue,” he said. “Not the first fucking clue.”

  I said, “No? Kevin and I were having a little chat, the other day, about how you looked after us. You know what sprang to mind—Kevin’s mind, not mine? You locking the pair of us in the basement of Number Sixteen. Kev was what, two, maybe three? Thirty years later, and he still didn’t like going in there. He felt well looked after that night, all right.”

  Shay threw himself backwards, chair tilting dangerously, and burst out laughing. The lamplight turned his eyes and mouth into shapeless dark hollows. “That night,” he said. “My Jaysus, yeah. Do you want to know what happened that night?”

  “Kevin pissed himself. He was practically catatonic. I ripped my hands to coleslaw trying to get the boards off the windows so we could get out. That’s what happened.”

  Shay said, “Da got fired that day.”

  Da got fired on a regular basis, when we were kids, up until people more or less quit hiring him to begin with. Those days were nobody’s favorites, specially since he usually ended up with a week’s wages in lieu of notice. Shay said, “It gets late, he’s still not home. So Ma puts the lot of us to bed—this was when the four of us were all on the mattresses in the back bedroom, before Jackie came along and the girls went into the other room—and she’s giving out seven shades of shite: this time she’s locking the door on him, he can sleep in the gutter where he belongs, she hopes he gets bet up and run over and thrown in jail all at once. Kevin’s whingeing because he wants his daddy, fuck only knows why, and she tells him if he doesn’t shut up and go asleep, Daddy won’t come home ever again. I ask what will we do then, and she says, ‘You’ll be the man of the house; you’ll have to look after us. You’d do a better job than that bollix, anyway.’ If Kev was two, what would I have been? Eight, yeah?”

  I said, “How did I know you would turn out to be the martyr in this story?”

  “So Ma heads off: sweet dreams, kids. I don’t know what time of night, Da comes home and breaks the door down. Me and Carmel leg it out to the front room and he’s throwing the wedding china at the wall, one bit at a time. Ma’s got blood all down her face, she’s screaming at him to stop and calling him every name under the sun. Carmel runs and grabs hold of him, and he smacks her across the room. He starts shouting that us fucking kids have ruined his life, he ought to drown the lot of us like kittens, slit our throats, be a free man again. And believe me: he meant every word of it.”

  Shay poured himself another inch of whiskey and waved the bottle at me. I shook my head.

  “Suit yourself. He’s heading for the bedroom to slaughter the whole bunch of us on the spot. Ma jumps on him to hold him back and screams at me to get the babies out. I’m the man of the house, right? So I haul your arse out of bed and tell you we have to go. You’re bitching and complaining: why, I don’t want to, you’re not the boss of me . . . I know Ma can’t hold Da for long, so I give you a clatter, I get Kev under my arm and I drag you out of there by the neck of your T-shirt. Where was I supposed to take yous? The nearest cop shop?”

  “We had neighbors. A whole shitload of them, in fact.”

  The blaze of pure disgust lit up his whole face. “Yeah. Spill our family business in front of the whole Place, give them enough juicy scandal to keep them going for the rest of their lives. Is that what you would’ve done?” He knocked back a swig of booze and jerked his head, grimacing, to keep it down. “You probably would, and all. Me, I’d’ve been ashamed of my life. Even when I was eight, I had more pride than that.”

  “When I was eight, so did I. Now that I’m a grown man, I have a harder time seeing where locking your little brothers in a death trap is something to be proud of.”

  “It was the best bloody thing I could’ve done for yous. You think you and Kevin had a bad night? All you had to do was stay put till Da passed out and I came and got yous. I would’ve given anything to stay in that nice safe basement with yous, but no: I had to come back in here.”

  I said, “So send me the bill for your therapy sessions. Is that what you want?”

  “I’m not looking for any fucking pity off you. I’m just telling you: don’t expect me to go running off on a great big guilt trip because you had to spend a few minutes in the dark, once upon a time.”

  I said, “Please tell me that little story wasn’t your excuse for killing two people.”

  There was a very long silence. Then Shay said, “How long were you listening at that door?”

  I said, “I didn’t need to listen to a single word.”

  After a moment he said, “Holly’s after saying something to you.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “And you believe her.”

  “Hey, she’s my kid. Call me soft.”

  He shook his head. “Never said that. I’m only saying she’s a child.”

  “That doesn’t make her stupid. Or a liar.”

  “No. Gives her a great old imagination, though.”

  People have insulted everything from my manhood to my mother’s genitalia and I never batted an eyelid, but the idea that I would diss Holly’s word on Shay’s say-so was starting to get my blood pressure rising again. I said, before he could spot that, “Let’s get something straight: I didn’t need Holly to tell me anything. I know exactly what you did, to Rosie and to Kevin. I’ve known for a lot longer than you think.”

  After a moment Shay tilted his chair again, reached into the sideboard and brought out a pack of smokes and an ashtray: he didn’t let Holly see him smoking, either. He took his time peeling the cellophane off the packet, tapping the end of his cigarette on the table, lighting up. He was thinking, rearranging things in his mind and stepping back to take a long look at the new patterns they made.

  In the end he said, “You’ve got three different things. There’s what you know. There’s what you think you know. And there’s what you can use.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. So?”

  I saw him decide, saw the set of his shoulders shift and harden. He said, “So you get this straight: I didn’t go into that house to hurt your mot. Never even thought of it, up until it happened. I know you want me to be the evil villain here; I know that’d fit in great with everything you’ve always believed. But that’s not the way it went. It was nothing like that simple.”

  “Then enlighten me. What the hell did you go in there to do?”

  Shay leaned his elbows on the table and flicked ash off his smoke, watching the orange glow flare and fade. “From the first week I started at the bike shop,” he said, “I saved every penny I could, out of my wages. Kept it in an envelope stuck to the back of that poster of Farrah, remember that? So you or Kevin wouldn’t nick it, or Da.”

  I said, “I kept mine in my rucksack. Taped it inside the lining.”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t much, after what went to Ma and the few pints, but it was the only way I kept myself from going mental in that gaff: told myself, every time I counted it up, that by the time I’d the deposit on a bedsit, you’d be old enough to look after the little ones. Carmel’d give you a hand—she’s a sound woman, Carmel, she always was. The two of yous would’ve managed grand, till Kevin and Jackie got big enough to look after themselves. I just wanted a little place of my own, where I could have mates around. Bring home a girlfriend. Get a decent night’s sleep, without keeping one ear open for Da. A bit of peace and quiet.”

  The old, worn-out yearning in his voice could almost have made me feel sorry for him, if I hadn’t known better. “I was nearly there,” he said. “I was that close. First thing in the new year, I was going to start looking for a place . . . And then Carmel got engaged. I knew she’d want to have th
e wedding fast, soon as they could get the money off the credit union. I didn’t blame her: she deserved her chance to get out, same as I did. God knows the pair of us had earned it. That left you.”

  He gave me a tired, baleful glance, across the rim of his glass. There was no brotherly love in there, barely even recognition; he was looking at me like I was some huge heavy object that kept appearing in the middle of the road and cracking him across the shins, at the worst possible moments. “Only,” he said, “you didn’t see it that way, did you? Next thing I knew, I found out you were planning to take off as well—and to London, no less; I’d have been happy with Ranelagh. Fuck your family, yeah? Fuck your turn to take responsibility, and fuck my chance to get out. All our Francis cares about is that he’s getting his hole.”

  I said, “I cared that me and Rosie were going to be happy. There’s a decent chance we were about to be the two happiest people on the planet. But you just couldn’t leave us to it.”

  Shay laughed smoke out his nose. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I almost did. I was going to beat the shite out of you before you went, all right, send you off on the boat all bruises and hope the Brits gave you hassle at the other end for looking dodgy. But I was going to leave you go. Kevin would’ve been eighteen in three years’ time, he’d’ve been able to look after Ma and Jackie; I figured I could hang on that long. Only then . . .”

  His eyes slipped away, to the window and the dark rooftops and the Hearnes’ sparkling tackfest. “It was Da that did it,” he said. “That same night I found out about you and Rosie: that was the night he went mad down in the street outside Dalys’, got the Guards called and all . . . I could’ve hacked three years of the same old same old. But he was getting worse. You weren’t there; you didn’t see. I’d had enough already. That night was too much.”

  Me coming home from moonlighting for Wiggy, walking on air; lights blazing and voices murmuring all along the Place, Carmel sweeping up broken china, Shay hiding the sharp knives. All along, I had known that that night mattered. For twenty-two years, I had thought it was what had sent Rosie over the edge. It had never occurred to me that there were other people a lot closer to the edge than she was.

  I said, “So you decided to try and bully Rosie into dumping me.”

  “Not bully her. Tell her to back off. I did, yeah. I had every right.”

  “Instead of talking to me. What kind of man tries to solve his problems by picking on a girl?”

  Shay shook his head. “I would’ve gone after you, if I thought it’d do any good—you think I wanted to go yapping about our family business with some bint, just because she had you by the knackers? But I knew you. You’d never have thought of London on your own. You were still a kid, a great thick kid; you hadn’t the brains, or the guts, to come up with anything that big all by yourself. I knew London had to be your one Rosie’s idea. I knew I could ask you to stay till I went blue in the face, and you’d still go anywhere she told you to. And I knew without her you’d never get farther than Grafton Street. So I went looking for her.”

  “And you found her.”

  “Wasn’t hard. I knew what night yous were heading off, and I knew she’d have to call into Number Sixteen. I stayed awake, watched you leave, then went out the back and over the walls.”

  He drew on his cigarette. His eyes through the trails of smoke were narrow and intent, remembering. “I would’ve worried I’d missed her, only I could see you, out the top windows. Waiting by the streetlamp, rucksack and all, running away from home. Sweet.”

  The urge to punch his teeth down his throat was starting to build again, somewhere far in the back reaches of my head. That night had been ours, mine and Rosie’s: our secret shimmering bubble that we had built together over months of work, to sail away in. Shay had smeared his grubby fingers over every inch of it. I felt like he had watched me kissing her.

  He said, “She came in the same way I did, through the gardens. I got back in a corner and followed her up to the top room, thought I’d give her a scare, but she hardly even jumped. She had guts, anyway; I’ll give her that much.”

  I said, “Yeah. That she did.”

  “I didn’t bully her. I just told her. That you had a responsibility to your family, whether you knew it or not. That in a couple of years, once Kevin was old enough to take over, yous could head off wherever you liked: London, Australia, I wouldn’t give a damn. But up until then, you belonged here. Go home, I told her. If you don’t fancy waiting a few years, find yourself another fella; if you want to go to England, off you go. Just leave our Francis alone.”

  I said, “I don’t see Rosie taking well to you giving her orders.”

  Shay laughed, a hard little snort, and ground out his smoke. “No shit. You like the mouthy ones, yeah? First she laughed at me, told me to go home myself and get my beauty sleep or the ladies wouldn’t love me any more. But when she copped I was serious, she lost the rag. She kept the volume down, thank Jaysus, but she was raging all right.”

  She had kept it down at least partly because she knew I was just a few yards away, waiting, listening, just over the wall. If she had screamed for me, I could have got there in time. But Rosie: calling for help would never have occurred to her. She had been well able to sort this tosspot all by herself.

  “Still see her standing there, giving out yards: mind your own business and don’t be annoying me, not our problem if you can’t get yourself a life, your brother’s worth a dozen of you any day, you dozy bollix, yak yak yak . . . I did you a favor, saving you from a lifetime of that.”

  I said, “I’ll be sure and write you a thank-you card. Tell me something: what did it, in the end?”

  Shay didn’t ask, Did what? We were past that kind of game. He said, and the rags of that old helpless rage were still caught in the corners of his voice, “I was trying to talk to her. That’s how desperate I was: I was trying to tell her what Da was like. What it felt like going home to that, every day. The things he did. I just wanted her to listen for a minute. You know? Just to fucking listen.”

  “And she wouldn’t. My Jaysus, the cheek of her.”

  “She tried to walk out on me. I was in the doorway, she told me to get out of her way, I grabbed hold of her. Just to make her stay, like. From there . . .” He shook his head, eyes skittering across the ceiling. “I’d never fought a girl, never wanted to. But she wouldn’t bleeding shut up, wouldn’t bleeding stop—She was a vixen, so she was, gave as good as she got; I was covered in scrapes and bruises, after. The bitch nearly kneed me in the balls, and all.”

  Those rhythmic bumps and whimpers that had made me grin up at the sky, thinking of Rosie. “All I wanted was for her to stay still and listen. I got hold of her, shoved her up against the wall. One second she was kicking me in the shins, trying to scratch the eyes out of me . . .”

  A silence. Shay said, to the shadows collecting in the corners, “I never meant for it to end like that.”

  “It just happened.”

  “Yeah. It just happened. When I realized . . .”

  Another fast jerky shake of his head, another silence. He said, “Then. Once I got my head together. I couldn’t leave her there.”

  Then came the basement. Shay had been strong, but Rosie would have been heavy; my mind snagged hard on the sounds of getting her down the stairs, flesh and bone on cement. Torchlight, the crowbar and the slab of concrete. Shay’s wild breathing, and the rats stirring curiously in the far corners, eyes reflecting. The shape of her fingers, curled loose on the damp dirt of the floor.

  I said, “The note. Did you go through her pockets?”

  His hands running over her limp body: I would have ripped his throat out with my teeth. Maybe he knew that. His lip pulled up in disgust. “The fuck do you think I am? I didn’t touch her, only to move her. The note was on the floor in the top room, where she put it—that was what she was doing, when I came in on her. I had a read of it. I figured the second half could stay put, for anyone who wondered where she’d go
ne. It felt like . . .” A soundless breath, almost a laugh. “Felt like fate. God. A sign.”

  “Why did you hang on to the first half?”

  Shrug. “What else was I going to do with it? I put it in my pocket, to get rid of later. Then, later, I figured you never know. Things come in useful.”

  “And it did. My Jaysus, did it ever. Did that feel like a sign, too?”

  He ignored that. “You were still at the top of the road. I figured you’d hang on for her another hour or two, before you gave up. So I went home.” That long trail of rustles, moving through the back gardens, while I waited and started to be afraid.

  There were things I would have given years of my life to ask him. What had been the last thing she said; whether she had known what was happening; whether she had been frightened, been in pain, tried to call me in the end. Even if there had been a snowball’s chance in hell that he would answer, I couldn’t have made myself do it.

  Instead I said, “You must have been well pissed off when I never came home. I got farther than Grafton Street, after all. Not as far as London, but far enough. Surprise: you underestimated me.”

  Shay’s mouth twisted. “Overestimated, more like. I thought once you were over the pussy blindness, you’d cop that your family needed you.” He was leaning forward across the table, chin jutting, voice starting to wind tighter. “And you owed us. Me and Ma and Carmel between us, we’d kept you fed and clothed and safe, all your life. We got between you and Da. Me and Carmel gave up our education so you could get yours. We had a fucking right to you. Her, Rosie Daly, she had no right getting in the way of that.”

  I said, “So that gave you the right to murder her.”

  Shay bit down on his lip and reached for the smokes again. He said flatly, “You call it whatever you want. I know what happened.”

  “Well done. What about what happened to Kevin? What would you call that? Was that murder?”

  Shay’s face closed over, with a clang like an iron gate. He said, “I never did nothing to Kevin. Never. I wouldn’t hurt my own brother.”