Local Whispers

by C K Williams

  Betha’s eyes narrow.

  “So, you see,” Kate goes on, “I have reason to be concerned. And I believe that it may have something to do with Alice Walsh. Which is why I am here. She was your friend, wasn’t she?”

  Betha snorts. “We were the only ones not making her life a living hell, that’s for sure.”

  Kate leans in. “What do you mean?”

  Betha glances at her brother. He seems to be silently pleading with her. She shakes her head. He nods. She shakes her head again. He nods more fiercely. She crosses her arms, shakes her head once more and turns back to us. “If she didn’t tell you, it’s not for us to say.”

  Enda bites his lip. I glance at him. The hole in his sock has grown very, very big.

  “Are you sure you cannot tell us?” Kate asks softly.

  Betha shakes her head again.

  But then Enda speaks up, and for a moment, I am surprised to find that he can talk. “Maybe we should, though,” he says. “For her.” And he looks horribly forlorn.

  “Fuck,” Betha says, scrubbing a hand across her face, her mouth. She gets up and walks to the kitchen sink. While she splashes water onto her face, Kate turns to Enda. “Do you think it would help with the murder investigation? Have you talked to the police about it?”

  “Not about this,” Enda replies, looking increasingly nervous. He keeps glancing at the door. I wonder why.

  “You can tell me,” Kate says gently. “I’m a doctor. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

  It is Betha who answers, from the kitchen sink. “I mean, maybe we can tell her.” She turns around to face us. She is staring straight at Kate. “Because it was you who helped her, right? With the abortion?”

  A shadow passes over Kate’s face even as I stand up straighter. They know. “How do you know that?” Kate asks.

  Betha shrugs. “She told us.”

  “We had to pry it out of her,” Enda corrects gently.

  “Alice Walsh told you that she was pregnant?” Kate asks. “She told you about the abortion?”

  “She did not seem to have anyone else to talk to,” Enda says, still sounding miserable. “She seemed so ashamed.”

  “Is that why you’re receiving death threats?” Betha asks, voice sharp. “Because you helped her?”

  “Death threats?” Enda looks at Kate, shocked.

  But Kate merely nods. “I believe so, yes.”

  Betha scoffs. “That’s not right. That’s just not right.”

  “If we tell them, we should tell them now, Betha,” Enda says.

  She throws up her hands. “Fine. Fine, her schoolmates were picking on Liz, on Alice, because she was queer and they didn’t like it.”

  Kate and I exchange astonished glances.

  “She was… queer?” Kate asks. “As in, she loved women?”

  “Well, she didn’t say it in so many words,” Betha says, and those words seem to hurt. They seem to hurt her very deeply. “But I think I could tell. And so could her classmates.”

  “But the pregnancy…” I begin, unsure of how to continue.

  “Maybe it was a praying-the-gay-away thing,” Enda says, staring into the distance.

  “Women do that a lot when they first suspect they fancy other girls,” Betha explains. “Sleeping with a man. As if they just haven’t tried hard enough yet, being heterosexual. As if they need a penis inside of them, to know for sure.”

  “You know this for certain?” I ask. “That Alice Walsh identified as queer?”

  This time, it is for Betha to bite her lip. She looks just like her brother when she does that. “No,” she admits. Again, it seems to be painful just to speak the words: “I wanted to ask her. We were supposed to have dinner, her and me, the day she was murdered.” She swallows. “Goes without saying we never did.”

  We are quiet for a moment. Then she continues, trying so hard to make her voice sound anything but raw: “So no, we don’t know anything for sure. But I am pretty sure. She as good as admitted it. When she told us about the priest.”

  She jerks her head at Daniel.

  I feel Kate stiffen. “What?”

  Enda looks at his feet. Betha raises both eyebrows. Some part of her is enjoying this, some righteous teenage part that would also rather be angry than hurt. “Do you mean you don’t know? You didn’t suspect?”

  “Suspect what?” I ask. “Out with it.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Your priest. He’s gay. And Liz knew.”

  13:21

  No one speaks. No one makes a sound. No one even moves a muscle.

  Then Daniel starts. “I have to go,” he says and walks out, without looking at anyone.

  The door closes behind him. It rings loud in the silence.

  “She went to confession a lot when she started having… doubts,” Enda says. “He helped her. Shared his own doubts. He encouraged her to do what she felt was right, with regards to the baby, too.” He glances at Betha. As if there is more to say.

  I look at Kate. She has not stirred.

  Am I wrong, or does she even seem… a little relieved? Underneath the hurt? “There was something else,” Enda says. He takes one last look at Betha, then he turns to Kate: “We might know something. About the father.”

  “Her father?”

  “No, the father of the baby.”

  Kate leans in. “Enda, this is so very important, so please think carefully. Did she tell you who it was?”

  And he shakes his head. “She only said it was a friend of her father’s. She said it was horribly inappropriate, but she was so desperate, so full of doubts, and he offered, and was so kind and understanding about it, and then she took him up on it. She thought it would be easier with an experienced man. And it couldn’t be someone from school. They hated her in school.”

  A friend of her father’s. If there was any relief in Kate’s face, it is now gone.

  “Did the father know?” she asks.

  Betha breathes in. Then out. “She hadn’t told anyone yet, not when we last spoke. But she wanted to.”

  Kate nods. Then she rises. “Thanks so much, you two,” she says. “Have you told the police?”

  They nod.

  We make our goodbyes, then we leave.

  Daniel is standing outside. He is leaning against his car. He looks very pale.

  16:37

  We are having very strong drinks at Kate’s house. We are all sitting in Kate’s sitting room, Kate on the floor with her back against the coffee table, facing the back door, Daniel and I on the sofa. I am awkwardly holding my gin and tonic. Daniel is clutching his glass hard, as if he might want to crush it. Kate has already downed hers.

  The conversation so far has been stilted. Perhaps dominated by silence would be a more apt description.

  “Did you know that Alice Walsh had been sleeping with a friend of her father’s?” Kate asks him.

  “No, I didn’t know,” he says. “Kate, listen, I am sorry.”

  She shakes her head. I believe I was right when I thought that she looked relieved, underneath the hurt, when she first heard he was gay. I think I know why, because I have known her for twenty years. If she had been Daniel’s one and only, her responsibility to him would have felt larger, her guilt at not loving him back the same way he did heavier.

  This way, she does not need to feel guilty for not loving him. She can stop asking it of herself.

  “I assume you wanted to try it,” she says. “You wanted to be sure.”

  Daniel puts down his glass and buries his face in his hands.

  In light of his distress, we have silently agreed to make up and rally for now.

  “How about,” I suggest, “we focus on what we know about the case: Alice Walsh told Enda and Betha that a friend of Patrick’s was the father of the child she aborted. She had not told him yet, but she had perhaps meant to.”

  “Do you think she may have gotten around to it? And that was why she was killed?” Kate asks.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Da
niel says, lowering his hands from his face. He seems to be pulling himself back from a place very far away when his eyes focus on Kate. “Who could it be?”

  Kate puts her hands to her lips. “William and Pat are close, of course. Sean could be considered their friend, and he is much closer in age to Alice Walsh than William.”

  “There were so many men standing outside their house with the neighbourhood protection,” I say. “There may be many friends we are not aware of.”

  “And do we truly think she admitted it to the father of the child?” Father Daniel asks. “She was so ashamed, too ashamed almost to talk to me about it, and I knew that she had been pregnant. She came to speak to me about the abortion. She pretended it was in general terms. She also talked about loving women in general terms, at least to me. Would she tell the friend of her father’s?”

  “Do either of you know anything about Alice Walsh’s taste in men? Did she have any sort of special connection with either Sean O’Doherty or William O’Rawe? Or another friend of her father’s?” I ask.

  Kate shakes her head. “Not that I’d know, but then again, I wouldn’t. I can much more easily imagine it to have been Sean, though. I cannot imagine Alice Walsh having sex with William O’Rawe. He is so much older than her.”

  “He is attractive in a way,” I say “And he had a rifle.”

  “Do you really think that William O’Rawe, fifty-nine, came down here last night and held a vigil with his mum’s rifle?” she scoffs.

  “Someone was here. Kate, you are still pretending that there is no real danger. You’re still pretending that there is no one out there out to get you, and I don’t understand why. Aren’t you scared?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Kate stares at me. “I am scared shitless.”

  “Then why…”

  “Because women have been scared shitless for far too long! Because being scared won’t help!” She is out of breath, looking at us intensely, as if she was willing us to understand just by sheer force of will. “What has it accomplished for you, being worried about me?”

  “If I had come with you to the graveyard, you would not have been attacked.”

  “You cannot protect me,” Kate answers.

  “I think I can,” I insist. “I am stronger, I am—”

  “You cannot protect me, because I do not want you to.”

  “Then why call me?” I ask. “Why call me? What do you want from me?”

  “Support,” she says, as if it was the easiest answer in the world.

  And perhaps it is.

  “I do not want you to protect me,” Kate says, standing right in front of me. “I want you to support me.”

  I wish there was anything I could say except what a shit friend I have been. I reach for her. Carefully. As carefully, Kate leans in. Rests her forehead against my chest. Slowly, I wrap my arms around her shoulders. Scratch her scalp.

  “Like that?” I ask quietly.

  “Hmhm.” She makes a contended noise. “Good start, that.”

  I rest my head against the top of hers, lowering my hands to rub her shoulders through the fine layer of chequered wool. All the lies, the unspoken and the half-spoken and never-spoken, they fall off of me. It is such a relief to hold her.

  “How about that, also helpful?”

  “Very.”

  And she laughs then, quietly. It is the most intimate moment I have had in years. It is so intimate, her hair in my nose, the scent of her shampoo, her compact lithe elegant body breathing, just breathing against mine, that for the briefest moments, I manage to forget that we are not alone.

  Until Daniel clears his throat in an intensely awkward way. “I’d better be going,” he says, rising to his feet. But instead of leaving, he turns to Kate. “I am very, very sorry, Kate. I should never have… I should have been open from the start. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.”

  I can feel how deep the breath is that Kate takes before she turns to face him. “Dan,” she says, “I wish I could have loved you. Even though I was not what you were looking for. Not really.”

  Daniel swallows. His expression is as raw now as it was earlier, standing in the freezing cold in the graveyard. “I wish I could have loved you, too,” he says before he makes to leave.

  I rise to my own feet. “Are you sure you should be driving?”

  His voice is very, very dry: “I’m fine.” He lifts his glass, to show he has only had two sips.

  Kate looks miserable. And so does Daniel. Especially as he takes one last look at me before he goes.

  “I think one of us should go after him,” Kate says quietly, “and I think it shouldn’t be me.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I say as I separate and follow Daniel out into the hall.

  He is just about to put on his sensible coat. His sensible coat, sensible hat, sensible gloves. And yet nothing about this man seems sensible to me. Not the car he drives, not the way he speeds, not the women he chose to sleep with. Not the way his expression is twisted and his voice is raw and his eyes cannot meet mine.

  I bury my hands in the pockets of my cardigan. It is soft and warm against my skin. It matches how calm I am feeling. How soft and warm.

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “No, trust me, I do,” he mumbles, putting on his hat.

  I take a hesitant step towards him while he fumbles with his gloves.

  “There is nothing,” and I make sure to stress the word, “nothing wrong with needing time to figure things out.”

  “I know,” Daniel says, still trying to struggle into his gloves.

  “So why don’t you stay,” I suggest again, taking another step towards him, less tentative this time. It seems ludicrous now, having suspected him. “We could have another drink, take your mind off things. There is a comfy sofa, too. You probably don’t want to drink and drive.”

  He opens his eyes. He looks straight at me. His brown eyes and his stormy expression. His long throat and tall silhouette and the way he swallows. Like he is swallowing down words desperately clawing their way up his throat.

  “No,” Father Daniel says softly. “No, believe me, I’d rather not stay. It would not be wise. It would only make me realise, ever more clearly, how I have been trying not to commit one sin by trying my hands at a lesser one.”

  That is when I realise.

  What a fucking idiot I have been.

  He has been looking at me like that all this time. At me.

  And his stormy expression might not be one of hostility.

  He is still looking at me.

  There is a knock on the door.

  Daniel turns around quick as lightning, almost tearing the door open before I can even do so much as move a muscle. “No, Daniel, wa—”

  It is a man with a rifle.

  It is Sean O’Doherty.

  17:13

  “So I spoke with O’Rawe, and he told me you’d paid him a visit.”

  Father Daniel has left. Now it is Sean O’Doherty standing in the living room. He is dressed in what to me seems to be an H&M version of combat gear, gratuitous camouflage pattern in all shades of grey, and carrying what appears to be a fairly empty duffle bag. Looking at the two of them, Kate with her suit and the innate elegance of a professional dancer, and Sean in his fake combat suit and inflated arms, I cannot help but wonder once again how the two of them ever ended up in a relationship.

  “He said you’re sniffing around now. Interfering with the case,” Sean continues. “This is exactly the kind of anti-social behaviour Neighbourhood Protection is here to prevent.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Listen, I’m sorry to say this, but the community would like both of you to leave.”

  Kate makes an impatient sound: “Get out, Sean.”

  “No, I’m serious, Kate. You got to go.”

  Kate says nothing. She merely raises her eyebrows.

  Sean throws up his hands. “See,” he says, “I knew you’d be like that.” He pulls the duffle bag off his shoulde
rs and throws it onto the coffee table, scattering the letters, our lists. “Pack your things, Kitty. You’re leaving.”

  “The hell I am.” I wish that she would sound outraged at least. But instead, Kate’s voice is tired. She looks so tired of fighting.

  “Listen, you can come sleep at my place for the night, and then I’ll drive you up to Newry, and we’ll find you a hotel,” Sean insists.

  “You were significantly less kind at the graveyard,” Kate replies.

  He narrows his eyes. “Stop being so selfish!”

  “Stop saying I’m selfish!”

  “No, seriously,” he goes on, jabbing his finger at her. “You were selfish when we were together, you were selfish at the graveyard, and you’re being selfish now! Just accept some goddamn fucking help when it’s offered.”

  Kate is going increasingly pale. I see how it takes effort for her to draw herself up, to turn her expression into one of stone, not allowing for any of her doubts to show. “It’s very nice of you to offer, Sean, but I don’t need your help. I’m fine where I am.”

  Sean tilts his head at me. “You think he will protect you?” He even laughs a little as he says it.

  Why, thank you, Sean.

  “Shut up, Sean,” Kate repeats.

  He turns to me, ignoring her entirely. “You think you can? Mate, you’re wrong.”

  “Leave him alone,” Kate insists, taking an aggressive step towards Sean. He goes on ignoring her, looking at me.

  “Listen, I need to know that she’s safe, because I care about her. So you tell me she’ll be safe for tonight, and that you’ll both be out of here tomorrow, and I’ll be out of here. Not trying to stake any claims where the land’s already been ploughed.”

  “Will you listen to me?” Kate asks, desperation tinging her voice now. “Sean, listen to me.”

  He does not budge, still looking at me. “You will leave in the morning, won’t you? Go to Newry?”

  She stares at him, her arms shaking, her mouth hanging open. Her hands are clenched into fists.

  And it is terrible. It is so terrible watching her trying to speak to him, looking at him, and all he does is keep looking at me. I search and hold Sean’s gaze, then I say: “Kate is right there, Sean.”