Fragile Lies (9 page)

K
illian

S
ometimes
, there is a glimmer in the dark. A chink. Memories roll across the waves. Coil like fish seeking escape. Flash like lightning in a stormy sky. Voices call. He holds the sound in his fist, hugs it to his chest. Reaches into the dark and listens … listens …

H
e looks strong today
, Missus. Have a cup of tea. A biscuit, take two. You’re skin and bone, God give you strength. How do you keep doing it? He knows what I’m saying, don’t you, Loveadove? You mark my words, Missus. He’ll be drinking tea with the best of them before you know it.

Come back to me, my darling boy. Dreams are good but you can’t live in them forever. We’re all here, Terence and Laura, and Duncan’s come too.

Always here! Always here! Smelly ward. Wanna go home.

Hush at once! Killian can hear you.

Can’t! Can’t! Retard. Wanna go home!

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell who? Tinker bell is out of action. Ha ha ha.

I’ve got a belly stud, Killian. Look. Mum did her nut when she saw it, didn’t you mum? I can play your guitar now. I listened to REM the other day and heard you singing clear as a bell in my head. Everybody hurts … hold on hold on …

Your temperature is good, little soldier. Normal. My daughter ring from Manila. She pass her exams for university. I am very proud of her. Let me fix your pillows. Your father – he is late tonight. He is lost like you. How sad to see such unhappiness when family are near and can hold each other.

Bridesmaids! Jealous whores, more like. They won’t turn up for fittings and they keep making remarks about my dress. It’s not a meringue, it’s not! Blood pressure’s stable. Good lad. Wish mine was. They refuse to wear pink shoes. Say they look tacky. I ask your holy pardon! Whose wedding is it anyway?

Wake up, mate. How long does a trip last? Sorry I fucked up. Left you on the pier. How crazy were we? Wired to the fucking moon. What were we fighting over anyway? Some shit piece of junk jewellery.

Lay thee down now and rest: May thy slumber be blest. Lay thee down now and rest: May thy slumber be blest … Granny is here, Killian. Look, I’m shaking the glass snowball. See the flakes dancing. Stop fretting We’re with you every step of the way … Lay thee down now and rest: May thy slumber be blest. Lay thee down now and rest: May thy slumber be blest.

I’m late tonight, Killian. Give me a chance to catch my breath and I’ll tell you everything. I found her … found her … found her. I thought she was an apparition, my fury summoning her from the ether. It was too easy, you see. All that searching, scanning cars, the faces of drivers, wondering if she was among them, watching her on video, she had taken over my mind – and there she was in the flesh, driving impetuously and much too fast from Sheraton’s driveway. I thought I’d lost her when she accelerated away but she had to stop at the end of the road, you know how dangerous that junction can be, and before she could escape again I forced my attention on her. A light bump, skilfully executed.

She was puzzled rather than angry as she surveyed the damage. Not that there was much to see, at least outwardly, but all I saw was the dent of your body beneath a sheen of polished silver. I wanted to strike her, watch her fall helplessly at my feet. Instead, I offered her coffee. There was a hesitancy in her smile – how well I know it now, how familiar her gestures seem. She refused and drove away.

What would we have discussed if we had sat opposite each other sharing a pot of coffee? A portrait of my son? How could I have uttered such foolish words? I spoke without thinking yet in that instant I wanted her to know you, to stroke you to life with her brush, capture your innocence, the hopes you once cherished.

She lives a long ways down the road, Killian, hours away. I’ll have to make time, leave you for a while. She talked about childhood holidays and sounded nostalgic for sunshine summers. But she too suffers from selective memory. Of course it rained. Just as it rains tonight, splashing silverfish off your window pane.

I was nine years old when I went to Trabawn with Harriet. We stayed in a guesthouse that smelled of gravy and toilet cleaner. Under the shelter of rocks on a windswept beach we shared sandy cheese sandwiches. Waves swept me off my feet. My mother had died in the spring. Harriet cried and pretended it was rain on her face. There were children in raincoats, jumping from high sand dunes. Was she among them, I wonder. A young freckle-faced girl running through the summer, engraving memories on her soul that would last forever?

T
rabawn
, 1969–1980

T
rabawn never changes
. That’s the most wonderful thing about it. Lorraine is convinced the population of farmers and fishermen falls into a magic slumber when the Cheevers leave at the end of their summer holidays and only awaken again on their return the following year.

Soon Market Street is left behind and the countryside spreads greenly before her. Uncle Des pulls out into the centre of the road and passes them, loudly honking his horn. From the back window Virginia and Edward shake their fists triumphantly. The two cars race each other to see who will reach the caravans first. Old Red Eye, the one-eyed dog, is crouched, waiting in the lane.

“Barking mad as usual, daft mutt!” Lorraine’s father laughs loudly as the dog ducks and dives beneath the whirring wheels. He enjoys this annual contest of wits which he wins every time – for who, he shouts, slapping his leg for emphasis, but a suicidal mongrel will argue with a blue Toyota Corolla?

Celia, the owner of the caravans, waits at her gate to welcome them. She wears hobnailed boots and a long red skirt. Her hair is tied in a hairnet which sparkles with coloured beads. Two donkeys graze in her garden. A cat with yellow slanting eyes watches them from the gate post. The Strong family from Galway have already arrived. Mrs Strong is shaking mats at the door of her caravan and shouting at her husband to fetch water from the pump. Adrian Strong runs down the caravan steps to greet them. He is an only child and too spoiled for his own good, claims Aunt Josephine.

“Spare the rod and spoil the brat,” she says every time he comes to the beach with his surfboard and fancy snorkelling equipment. Lorraine’s mother says he will break hearts when he grows up. Uncle Des calls him “a nancy boy” and Lorraine’s father always has him on his team when they play beach volleyball. Soon Adrian and Edward are lost in the heart of the sand dunes. They shout and fling fistfuls of bubbling seaweed at those who dare to follow, especially small girls.

The abandoned car at the end of the field is a little more rusted than the previous year but the door opens with a shriek and the steering-wheel still turns. The tree with a branch like a sofa that serves as a swing is still standing but each year the hidey-hole hedge has a little less space in which to hide. The girls rush to Celia’s garden to greet the donkeys. She calls her donkeys The Philosophers and allows the girls to ride them bareback up and down the lane. The one with the darker coat is called Aristotle. Plato is skinnier and has a white mark on his ear. Celia’s gingerbread is fresh from the oven, cooling on a wire rack, and there is fresh milk in a bucket behind her kitchen door. In the evenings she tells them stories about banshees and fairy forts and how the rat-a-tat-tat on their caravan roofs is not from crows pecking, as the adults believe, but is actually the step of tiny dancing fairy feet. In bed at night, Virginia whispers that Celia is actually a witch with warts on her left breast. Lorraine cannot imagine the old woman in a witch’s hat riding high on a broomstick but she pretends to believe her cousin, because Virginia, being a year older and from London, knows everything.

London is much better than Trabawn, says Virginia. It has trains that run under the ground, Spangle sweets, fireworks in November, pop stars with fur coats and a queen with a crown. Once, when Virginia curtsied and handed Queen Elizabeth a bouquet of golden roses, the queen shook her hand and said, “Thank you, my most loyal subject. I will treasure these flowers forever.”

“Liar, liar! Dirty knickers on fire,” chants Edward when Virginia tells this story, which she does many times. Lorraine is not sure what to think. She is an only child, fanciful and shy, but for the next two weeks she has a make-believe sister and her world is perfect. How she envies Virginia’s self-confidence which comes, Lorraine is convinced, from being English. But she never says this aloud because when Virginia’s father drinks too much he shouts, “Up the IRA,” and sings “A Nation Once Again” with tears running down his cheeks.

Virginia swings upside down from the branches of the highest trees. On the beach she is the fastest runner. Faster even than Adrian Strong. When everyone else obeys the Golden Rule and swims parallel to shore she heads like a shark towards the rock where the cormorants perch. Once she pretends to drown, flailing her arms and shrieking “
Help! Help!
” until Adrian dives in fully clothed to rescue her. Her father slaps her afterwards. Hard, stinging slaps across her legs. But she doesn’t cry, not once, just as she never apologises for the rows and the tantrums that come without warning and swallow Lorraine like a giant rumbling wave.

At the end of the lane there is a farmhouse with a byre where Frank Donaldson milks his cows. He tilts the cows’ udders and squirts milk towards the girls, laughing loudly when they scream and dash for cover. Celia warns them not to fall in love with Frank who has turned twenty-two on his last birthday and has a townie girlfriend called Noeleen. Virginia says she would prefer to be a buried alive in quicksand than settle on a smelly manure farm. Lorraine imagines marrying a farmer like Frank, only with Adrian’s face, and wearing her jeans tucked into wellingtons as she herds cattle down the lane. At night they signal messages with their torches towards Adrian’s caravan window and he answers – dots and dashes, short flashes, long flashes, see you tomorrow, girls.

In the evenings the adults gather around the campfire to sing the same songs they sing every year. They grow noisy and drink from long glasses then order the children to perform their party pieces. They won’t take no for an answer, even when Edward hides his head in his knees and curses softly, chanting each word like a slow litany. When Adrian plays guitar and sings “Puppy Love” he sounds far better than Donnie Osmond.

“Young ladies! Don’t hide your lights under a bushel. Virginia! Lorraine! On your feet immediately.” Aunt Josephine encourages them forward. They sing and dance, swaying together while the moths spin crazily above the campfire flames and the vampire bats with blood in their eyes flit between the trees.

“Time for sleep, young ladies. Tomorrow is another day,” Aunt Josephine shouts when she hears them giggling. On alternate nights, the girls sleep in each other’s caravans. Lorraine lies under Virginia’s bunk and thinks about tomorrow, imagines it waiting outside in the darkness, a closed flower preparing to open yellow petals and release the sun. She knows exactly what the next day will bring: games of hide-and-seek, treasure hunts, picnic dinners on the caravan steps, the shivery ache of sunburn, the soothing touch of calamine lotion on hot skin.

On Friday night there is music in O’Callaghan’s pub. Aunt Josephine calls it “our night out on the red hot tiles of sin”. She snaps her white handbag closed and herds them down the caravan steps. The seats in O’Callaghan’s remind Lorraine of church benches. Those who come late have to sit on beer barrels. They arrive early to avoid the beer barrels and Mr O’Callaghan shouts from behind the counter where he is pouring pints; “Begob! It can’t be that time of the year again. The Cheevers have arrived.” He wears a beige cardigan with leather patches on the elbows and calls Lorraine and Virginia “the lovely little girleens from the big smoke”.

Musicians with beards and peaked caps play endless tunes that all sound the same to Lorraine. Her father recites a funny version of “Galway Bay” and everyone laughs, no matter how often they hear it. Uncle Des puffs out his chest, raises his fist and sings “A Nation Once Again”. Someone always shouts, “
Tiocfaidh ár lá
,” which, Uncle Des explains in his loud bossy voice, is Irish for “Our day will come”.

Aunt Josephine’s face turns bright red. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Des Cheevers, or your boat may rock in mid-ocean.” She has a proverb for all occasions. If she can’t think of a suitable one she invents her own.

Virginia and Lorraine clap each other’s hands in the clapping game and chant, “
My mummy told me if I was goody that she would buy me a rubber dolly. But when I told her I kissed a soldier she wouldn’t buy me a rubber dolly
.”

As the night wears on Mr O’Callaghan’s cheeks turn puce and his eyes disappear into narrow slits. Lorraine thinks his face will explode and his skin shrivel like a burst balloon.

“Blood pressure, poor man,” says her mother.

“Drinking the profits, more likely,” insists her father.

“Drink and be merry for tomorrow we fall upon the sword of Damocles,” intones Aunt Josephine.

Uncle Des says nothing. He is gazing at Roisin O’Callaghan’s bosom. She is Mr O’Callaghan’s wife and whenever she leans over their table to place a glass of whiskey before him, his hand brushes against her knee.

Virginia swears Lorraine to secrecy. She must promise on her heart that she will never tell this secret to anyone, even under pain of torture and violent death. Uncle Des has a girlfriend in London. Her name is Sonya. She wears red stilettos and dyes her hair blonde.

“Peroxide,” says Virginia and her mouth puckers just like Aunt Josephine’s when she says, “Eyes to the front, Des Cheevers,” every time women in bikinis walk past him on the beach.

Sonya is being hunted by kidnappers who will kill her if they find her. Virginia’s father is her protector and Virginia must not tell anyone – even Aunt Josephine, who leaves Uncle Des in charge of Virginia when she has to bring Edward to the eye hospital. But as soon as she drives away Virginia’s father dresses in his happy shirt with the pineapples printed over the front. He holds her hand and they take the bus to Sonya’s hideaway house. Sonya giggles just like a little girl. There are ladders in her tights and her hands are hidden under the sleeves of her jumper. She owns a pet canary called Cassie who sings for Virginia when her father and Sonya are in the other room where she must not go. Sonya makes whimpering noises that sound like pups – whimper whimper. Virginia and Lorraine giggle, hands across their mouths in case the grown-ups hear. But when Virginia imitates her father – snort snort snort – they collapse against each other, helpless with laughter.

“Laughter is the best medicine,” says Aunt Josephine, coming in to kiss them goodnight.

“Castor oil,” shrieks Virginia.

“California Syrup of Figs.” Lorraine gathers her knees into her chest and splutters. She has absolutely no idea why she is laughing but it is the funniest thing in the world. Nor does she know if this is one of Virginia’s tall tales but in the pub she watches her uncle’s hand trailing across the curve of Mrs O’Callaghan’s dress and his mouth becoming moist when he chats to women at the bar and how he always stands too close to them, as if their words are precious pearls.

Sometimes they fight; they are, after all, small girls. Lorraine’s cheeks sting as she sulks behind the sand dunes, wondering why she is being punished. What words or deeds have triggered her cousin’s indifference? There are no clues. No rules to follow. Nothing she can do to prevent it happening again. She watches Virginia swimming with the boys and playing French cricket on the hard sand. The bat looks as light as a feather in her hands. She hits the ball every time and the boys groan loudly when it sails above their heads. The boys from the village join in. Those who manage to catch the ball fling themselves across the sand, hoping she will pay attention. When she is bored with their company she climbs the rocks, singing loudly, ignoring Lorraine but looking as happy as if her cousin is beside her, joining in.

Lorraine imagines a switch in her cousin’s head that clicks on and off. The “off” switch makes Lorraine disappear. She is breathless with resentment, knowing that Virginia does not care. On such nights she sleeps alone, watching Virginia’s caravan to see if her cousin will signal an apology. No torch flashes in the night and she vows never ever to forgive her. No matter how often she begs on her bended knees, even if she’s kneeling on broken glass or nails, she will never
ever
forgive her.

When morning comes Virginia knocks lightly on the window. She stands bare-foot in the damp grass. Cobwebs tremble on the bushes and Old Red Eye, no longer suicidal but quivering with excitement, tongue lolling, is waiting by her side. Lorraine leaves the caravan, moving quietly so as not to awaken her parents. They climb the stile. The faint pulse of the sea grows louder, beating time against the cry of seabirds flying low over the foam. The little girls lift their feet, dancing forward, toe prints etched on the sand ridges that wriggle like snakes away from the retreating tide. It is easy to believe they are the only children alive in this hazy white universe and, no matter how hard she tries, Lorraine is unable to remember why Virginia made her so cross.

J
ust when it
seems as if time has sculpted the years into an unchanging blueprint, adolescence kicks aside the ramparts of childhood. Mood swings replace tree swings. The carnival they loved is, suddenly, too small, flaking paint, tarnished brass, commandeered by children who look
so
young. It’s impossible to stop giggling and chests are curving into breasts with a tendency to wobble violently when dashing from the sea. The village boys come to the beach at night and light bonfires. In the mornings Lorraine sees empty beer cans and a circle of black ash on the sand. The beach parties are strictly forbidden but the caravan campfires are beginning to lose their charm. The repetitiveness of adult songs that once sounded funny or sad, or simply seemed wonderful because they were always the same, hum like a saw through her head. Virginia sticks fingers into her mouth and pretends to retch each time her father clears his throat to sing “Ireland Boys Hurray”. The attractions of the beach parties are too much to resist. When the adults are sleeping off the effects of wine and gin, the young people escape to the dunes.

Across the driftwood flames, Lorraine watches Adrian Strong watching her. He has been her torment for years, dragging her under the waves or waylaying her in ambushes to pull her hair or war dance around her. Now he is sturdy and tanned. His hair is bleached even blonder from the sun and his eyes remind her of autumn, the deep gold of fallen leaves. They smoulder with something only she can see and the intoxication of first love sets her limbs shaking. On the beach he no longer drags her under the waves but lifts her high in his arms and shouts that he has captured a mermaid. She flails against him, unsure whether her screams are from fury or the sleek wet touch of his skin when he slowly lowers her back into the water.