“I won’t,” she said, stuffing the unseen, and apparently very tiny thing, into the pocket of her jumper.
Myrne looked at me. “Did you want one?”
“You’re ridiculous.”
He shrugged. “At least Mary-Anne likes me.”
“I do, I do!” said she, throwing her arms round his waist. “I love you, Mr Myrne.”
“See?” he said, smirking at me. “She loves me.”
“She’ll tire of you soon.”
He frowned; and I laughed.
“That’s not true,” he said; “is it, Mary-Anne?”
“No, no! I’ll always love you, Mr Myrne!”
“That’s what you once said about a squirrel named Harold,” interposed Kerry.
“Who?” said Mary-Anne.
“See?” I said to Myrne. “It doesn’t look good for you.”
He sighed.
“How about a game of cards?” I asked him.
“Have I ever been known to decline?”
“I want to play!” Mary-Anne said excitedly.
“Everyone to the kitchen!” I said, reaching for Thea’s hand. “Just a hand or two before bed, though.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, as she pulled her hand rather roughly away from me. “It’s late.”
“Well, all right. I’ll be there in a little.”
“I won’t hear you come in. I’m exhausted.”
I watched her close the door, and stood for a moment in the hall. But Myrne was calling my name, and threatening to thrown all of the cards upon the floor (to the end wherein I, of course, would have to pick them up), if I did not make haste. So I turned from the bedroom door, and went to the table; took the cards from Myrne’s hands; and flung them over his head. Mary-Anne screeched with laughter, as he got down on his hands and knees to collect them.
***
I woke in the middle of the night, feeling chilled. I shivered, and looked over to the other side of the bed – but it was empty. I put my hand to the sheets, and felt them cold. It seemed that Thea had gone from the room some time ago.
Teeth chattering, I got out of bed, shoved my feet into a pair of slippers, and pulled a sweater over my head. The door to the bedroom was ajar – but I could see no light in the hall without.
“Thea?” I said quietly, creeping out into the hall. I peered down to the end, into the kitchen, where all was equally black.
When I came into the kitchen, I did not even realise that Thea was there. But then my tired eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and I saw her sitting at the table.
“Thea.”
She did not seem to hear me. She was sitting straight up, looking out of the window with glassy eyes, which reflected very eerily the moonlit night.
I went to sit beside her, but she still did not appear to notice. I leant over so as to see her face more clearly – and, in the process, saw the empty glass on the table before her. Next to that was a bottle of whiskey, about two-thirds drained.
While I sat, watching her carefully, she reached for the bottle and poured a generous amount into her glass. She then took the glass to her mouth, and emptied it in what I thought were two long swallows.
All this, and she never once looked at me.
“Thea,” I said again, reaching out to touch her hand.
She turned towards me with a start, clutching her glass with white knuckles. “What are you doing up?”
“How about you?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“You could have woken me.”
Her face went somewhat darkish, then – and I hardly recognised it. Even her voice was different.
“I don’t need you all the time, you know.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I replied – in a tone quite as firm as I could muster, in an effort to hide the small amount of hurt which her words engendered.
Her face fell neutral again, and she looked away. She took another sip of whiskey.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She wasn’t listening.
I took the glass from her hands – and her head snapped up immediately.
“Give that back.”
“No.”
She reached for it, but I moved it away.
“I don’t care,” she said. She took up the bottle and drank from it.
“Give me that bottle, Thea.”
“I won’t, damn you!”
“Since when do you talk to me like that?”
She looked at me, and then at the bottle.
“Please give that to me, Thea.”
Her voice was rather softer when she said, “I don’t want to.”
“I think you’ve had enough.”
I held out my hand for the bottle, but she did not move to pass it to me; so I tried to take it from her. She swerved out of the way to avoid my grip, and fell right out of her chair.
I looked down and saw her there on the floor, bottle held tightly to her chest. She sighed, and then stood the bottle up near her hip.
I reached for her hand. “Come on. Let me help you up.”
She reached out to me, and I assisted her back into her chair. She had left the bottle on the floor; I picked it up and set it in the sink.
I leant back against the counter, folding my arms over my chest.
The kitchen was frigid. I looked at Thea, who wore nothing but a thin nightdress. Her feet were bare.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
She shook her head, her eyes fixed once more upon the window.
“Can you tell me, Thea, what’s the matter?”
“There’s nothing the matter.”
“Then can you tell me,” I persisted, gesturing to the bottle behind me, “why this is near-empty?”
“I drank it.”
“How quickly?”
Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. She sat up so straight, and looked so innocently into the empty space before her – her face was so thin, and her height less obvious while she sat at the table. All this, coupled with the smallness of her voice when she answered, and she might have been mistaken for a small child.
“Not very,” she said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“What matter to me?”
“I only want to know, Thea,” said I, taking the bottle up in my hand, “why you needed this!”
“It’s not the only one,” she said.
“Where are they?”
She pointed over her shoulder, at the cupboard under the sink. I opened it up, removed the buckets and sponges in front – and then saw a row of empty liquor bottles. I counted twelve in all.
As they had not been there before, they were only about a three-and-a-half week accomplishment. I wondered how she had managed to drink them all, without anyone seeing.
“Where did you even get these?” I asked, astounded.
“Ethan Rowley. End of Dobbey Street. Makes whiskey.”
I closed the cupboard, not sure what to say.
Thea did not speak for a while. But, after a time, she glanced back at me, and seemed newly surprised at my presence.
“You’re awake, Katie?”
I went to sit by her again. “I’m awake, love. And I’ll sit with you, if you want me to.”
She reached for my hand. “That would be nice.”
I sat watching her. It only took a few minutes, though, for her to set her head down upon the table, and fall fast asleep.
I shook her by the shoulder. “Wake up,” I said. “Let’s go to bed.”
She looked all around, and appeared disoriented. “Katie?” she said. “Where are we?”
“In the kitchen,” I said. I took her hand, pulled her up to her feet, and added, “Soon to be in bed.”
“Aye,” she said, leaning against me as we walked. “I would rather be there. Will you stay?”
“Where else would I go?”
***
I thought that she would drift off immediately, and sleep well past sunup. I was correct in t
he former, but not in the latter.
The room was still dark, when I felt her moving about. I opened my eyes and looked blearily in her general direction, trying to see her in the blackness.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just can’t get comfortable.”
“Come here,” I said, sliding over to put an arm around her. “Lie right there.”
“That’s better.”
I kissed her forehead. She kissed my lips – and I tasted the whiskey on her breath; and I remembered the dozen empty bottles under the sink.
“Might I ask you something?”
“I already know what you’d ask,” she said. “You needn’t bother.”
“Well, then I suppose you can just answer.”
She moved away from me a bit. “I don’t think that I want to talk about this.”
“Well, I do.”
“I really don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Is that really true?”
“Nothing that I want to say.”
“Well, that’s a different story.”
She seemed to want to come back to me; but her muscles remained stiff, holding her away.
“You could just call it a bad habit,” she said. “One I picked up along the way.”
“Surely you can stop now?”
“You shouldn’t pretend to be so sure about things like that.”
“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s just say that I’m not sure about anything – and you can tell me all the reasons why I shouldn’t be.”
“It’s nothing very mysterious,” she said, looking down at her hands as she spoke, most likely because she did not want to look at me. “So many things happened, Katie! You know that as well as I.”
“I do. But what has that to do, with what’s happening now?”
“We all needed a way to cope,” she said. “Mine was the drink. I took more of it than I should have, maybe – but it was what it was. And now it is what it is, because I can do nothing but take it when I feel that I need it.”
“And when is that?”
“It’s all changed,” she said. “Some for good, some for not. The reasons before, no one has to say aloud; but the reasons now are best left alone. They’re not even real reasons – just thoughts that upset me sometimes.”
“Those are reasons enough,” I said.
A thoughtful look passed now, over her haggard countenance; but only a moment it lasted; and then she looked up at me, somewhat accusingly.
“What is that for?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, don’t start lying now.”
“You almost left without me,” she said. The words burst forth like things unexpected, things unplanned; and though she looked as if she regretted them, the very moment she said them, she seemed to feel the need to finish what she had begun.
“What if I had never found you again?” she asked. “You would have been gone – gone forever.”
“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“You tried to.”
“I didn’t know!”
She sat up, looking angry now. “So what if you didn’t? I didn’t either – but I wouldn’t have done that to you.”
“Maybe I should never have told you,” I said; not thinking for a moment that I could have actually attempted such a feat, but feeling that I must consider it, for a time, as a feasible thing, in light of the charges being forced against me.
“It’s not as though you could have hidden it,” she said, with no change at all made to the sharpness of her voice, or the hardness of her eyes. Perhaps this was only because I had expected a softening of both; and did not want to acknowledge, the fact that her coldness only grew worse.
“Do you mean me to feel guilty?” I asked. “Because – and trust me on this, Thea – I already do.”
“I don’t want that. Do you think I want that?”
“It hasn’t a thing to do with what you want.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she moaned, clutching her head. She pulled her hair with both hands. “Why did all this have to happen? We were fine, Katie. We were fine! Everything was perfect. It would be perfect still, if that damned boy had never come.”
“You know that that’s not fair. He loved you, Thea.”
A rueful look came into her face; and the apology she set forth, imbued with an equal ration of shame, was scarcely audible.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “No one should be sorry for anything – because no one did anything wrong.”
She heaved a great sigh.
“And you’re right,” I said. “It was perfect. But I’ve learnt as much, as that perfect things have a tendency to break.”
“Are we broken?”
“Of course not. And whatever is wrong – it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Because, let me tell you something –” I took her face in my hands. “–they can’t break us. Things around us will fall apart; we can do nothing about that. But it doesn’t even matter, don’t you see? Because we’re still right here in the middle, and I’m holding your hand.”
“Always?”
“Always and always.”
There were no more words, then – because there was nothing else to say. I said nothing of what she had done; and she said nothing of what I had done. Those things were connected, just as we were.
***
The next morning, I opened my journal. I took up my pen, and wrote of what seemed to be more truth – simple, open and honest – than I had let myself experience for ages. I knew that, though it may have been only a fleeting thought, it was well worth saving.
January 1, 1918
Before I say anything else, I feel that I should say this:
I AM HAPPY.
It may not be such a strange and wonderful thing, for some; but I’ve come to understand that it’s more than just a right. It’s a gift.
I want to say, that all the goodness of the moment compensates completely for the less-than-favourable past – but I’m not altogether sure that it’s true. It’s all right, though, because I suspect that that’s just the way of life. Even when I first came to Thea, and things seemed so perfect, the horrors of my childhood did not simply vanish. Even now, I can’t help but think of those things of the not-so-distant past. They have come to create their own kind of small orbit inside my head. I am usually able to look past them; but if I intentionally call them to focus, they are as clear as ever.
And they bring with them, bitter but true, the same emotions as they elicited upon conception.
I remember Tyler, and I still miss him. Terribly, some days. But then I think of all the things he did for me, and all the things we did together, and it makes me smile.
If there was ever a person who could make me smile, it was Tyler Ashley. His being dead makes no difference in that he still makes me happy.
I remember Niamh, all too well. I remember the things she made me feel, and I still sometimes feel the guilt that she inspired in me. I never told Thea about her; and I don’t think I ever will. That part of my life had nothing to do with her – and was done, quite honestly, all because of her absence. Now that her presence is indefinite, I cannot bring myself to feel the necessity, which at times has laid hold of me, of speaking of Niamh Carlin. Maybe that decision is a marker of a flaw in my character; but it is my decision nonetheless.
The past never goes away. All we can really hope for, I think, is alleviation; and for the power to take what’s happened to us a little less personally.
Does that make sense?
Chapter 48
“I’m going out for a while,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Thea looked up. She was sitting at the table, mixing something (which possessed a very strange, nearly unpleasant smell) in a large bowl, and filtering it into several small bottles. As usual, her hands and face were smeared with her work.
�
�A few hours?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
“To Wimple Street.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why would you want to go back there?”
“There’s something of mine, that I want back.”
“Can you really want it that badly?”
I smiled at her and said (though I was not sure that I truly believed): “It’s not as though I’m searching for ghosts.”
“You shouldn’t joke about things like that,” she said, shaking her spoon in the air.
It was true enough – surely I shouldn’t. I remembered Ian Platt, and the solidity of his spirit; recalled the night I had touched him, and experienced the tangibility of his flesh.
God forbid, that my father should have ended up as such! I was sure that, were he in such a state upon the day of my visit, he would attempt to seize from me every ounce of the life which I had taken from him. No matter, if it would not grant him realness. Surely, at least, it would make him feel much better.
Once outside, I went to collect the horses. Mary-Anne noticed my preparations to leave; came over to me and asked, “Where are you going, Kate?”
“Only for a little ride, Mary. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Can I come?”
“Not this time.”
“Well, all right,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking a little grumpy.
“Oh, come now,” I said, chucking her under the chin. “Thirteen-year-old girls shouldn’t walk about with such looks on their faces.”
She smiled in spite of herself, and went back to join the others.
“Are you ready?” Myrne called.
I looked over at him. He was sitting with Kerry in the yard, tossing a ball back and forth with Joseph.
“The horses are,” I said. “No thanks to you.”
“I would have helped, if you’d asked.”
“You saw me doing it. Why should I have to ask?”
“Now why do have to be like that?”
“Oh, just shut up and come here. I want to get going.”
I had fastened a wooden wagon to a rope coming down from Charlie’s saddle. “You don’t mind, do you, boy?” I asked.
He snorted at me.
“Where are you going, Ma?”
I looked down at Joseph, and saw him standing with his hands on his hips. (He had recently taken to imitating this habit of Thea’s.) At times, you know, it was something of a shock – to see him walking and talking, and skipping and bounding. When I woke in the night, and looked to the place where his crib used to stand, I occasionally expected to see him there still, fast asleep. Oh, but no! He slept now quite alone! He had a handsome smile, inquisitive green eyes, and downy hair atop his head the colour of wet sand.
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