Inch Levels (29 page)

*

‘And what happened then?’

Robert paused, moistened his mouth.

‘Father, you know what happened then.’

The priest replied, with a touch of asperity even at this ghastly moment, ‘Indeed I do not.’ Less of your lip, was what he appeared to mean. Priests, as Robert well knew, tended not to lose sight of the importance of status, regardless of whatever else happened to be going on at a given moment.

On the other hand, it was true: the priest did not in fact know what happened then.

*

No time, no time. The lane might seldom be used, but that didn’t mean that someone, anyone, might not drive or cycle or saunter past at any minute. No time to waste, and the thing to be done clear: within a minute, the back of the van is standing open and the girl – who after all weighs very little – deposited inside, and the door closed again. And that’s all there is to it. He hasn’t even had to waste time checking that she is indeed dead: his instincts are clear enough about the difference between life and death.

That’s all there is to it. That, and presence of mind. Robert knows that certain precautions have always to be taken: and so he pulls the sleeves of his sweater over his hands before he picks the child up. No need for fingerprints. And within another minute, the lane is deserted again, and only the bicycle, lying in the ditch, is proof that anything at all has happened on this cool afternoon.

Robert drives, then, south along the coast road: the tide is well out, and the flats are exposed, with a wading bird or two busily pecking at the rich mud. Close to the city, he indicates and turns right and up, steeply up the hill again, passing a lonely church, and then onto the hilltops once more. They are purple with heather at this time of year, and greying with the fading grass: behind him the broad, glassy surface of Lough Foyle narrows to the river, and now in front of him Lough Swilly stretches sinuously north and south, silver in the evening light; and there he is, driving across the narrow neck of land pinched between. There is Inch Island directly ahead now, and the flatlands of Inch Levels: he knows where he is bound. Calmly, quite calmly, all the while. He knows – he knew from the moment the back of the girl’s head hit the surface of the road; so odd, the way in which the mind works – where he’s going, to a lonely, secret place: he knows when to turn off the main road and into the hills; when to turn again and then again, until at last he reaches the lonely car park in the shadow of the sea wall, there in the middle of these flatlands.

And of course nobody there.

No-one here. A bird calls in the distance, a high, piercing cry which echoes in the clear, cooling air; and the hum of the machinery in the pumping station; the glint of still water held back by the sea wall; the rush of a swan’s wings overhead. Again he pulls his sleeves over his treacherous hands and then – with effort; the girl’s body seems strangely less light now, more than a lead weight – gathers it together, half-lifting and half-pulling it from the van, and then lugging, carrying it along the straight track towards the water’s edge. A lead weight; and better simply to deposit his load into the water and leave, to get out of there as quickly as possible.

At length, then, he comes to the water’s edge. Until this moment, he tells himself that this has been an accident, a moment of anger gone wrong: nothing – so he has told himself in the course of his short drive across country – he could have done about it, not really. Until this moment.

For now, as he reaches the water, he feels a movement, a beat of life. A flicker of an eyelid.

*

A silence of excruciating moments in the dark confessional; the priest’s shape motionless behind the grille. At last: ‘And then what?’

Except that this time the priest knew what happened next: it had been all over the news at the time. No wonder, therefore, that Robert had a strong impression, the strongest, that now the priest really, truly, didn’t want to hear another word.

Well, too bad for him.

And in fact, the description took very few words, very little time: a few sentences to set out how he put her down on the shingle by the water, on her back, and then pushed her into the water, holding her legs on the grass, watching her head dip below the surface. No struggle: the girl was still almost concussed; her arms hardly moved, hardly worked; before long, it was over and done, at which point he gave her another push, her whole body slipping into the water with barely a ripple. The description of a drowning, accomplished quickly and quietly, as the sun set behind the ruinous silhouette of Inch Castle on the far side of the water.

*

There is nothing for it. He has to do this. He’s in too deep. In too deep, is what Robert actually thinks, not considering the, in the circumstances, inappropriate turn of phrase. ‘In too deep,’ he thinks: he has to press on, he has to close his eyes and carry, carry on. Sure, hasn’t he, already hasn’t he, done enough to get into – well, something, into serious trouble? Into prison or something? That’s just by injuring this child, who’s probably going to die anyway. Then hasn’t he made it worse? – hugely, unimaginably worse? – by bundling her into his car, thinking she’s dead already? – and then haring across the countryside with her right there in the boot? And all with the intention of heaving her into the water. In the distance, a swan honks, another answers.

And so he stands looking at the water, breathing the cold air; and he knows that, at this moment, when it comes down to it, it makes sense to do this. It makes sense to finish the job he had started – what, forty minutes ago? An hour ago? It actually makes sense to do this, to heave her into the water and then get the hell out of there. He’d thought she was dead: if he hadn’t thought this, he would have brought her to hospital, or called for help, or something. Now it’s too late, for all concerned.

He watches as her face slides below the surface of the water. He keeps a firm hold of her legs. She doesn’t move, much: only the fingers of one hand open slowly and then slowly close; and her dark hair fans out around her head like a cloud. And then, when he is quite sure, quite safe, he gives her legs a push and her body slides neatly into the water; and there is an end to it. The swan calls again, a flat, grunting honk that travels across the surface of the water; and now he is pounding along the path to the car park and he is in the car again and the car is on the main road, and he is home.

Margaret tuts, on his return. ‘We’ll be late. Seven o’clock, we said.’

He has a bath and dresses again, and they are ready to go. They will dine off the fat of the land, he knows: his mother-in-law, with all the list of faults, is a handy cook. He is starving.

The following morning, he discovered the name of the child. Christine.

*

‘What have you done since, son?’ the priest asked, shadowy in the shadowy confessional.

To buy a moment, Robert said, ‘What do you mean, Father?’

The priest merely repeated himself. ‘What have you done since?’

Silence in the church now. Yes: the last sinners must’ve become fed up with kicking their toes against pew legs, must have gone home.

Robert said, ‘I haven’t done anything.’

Which was a form of truth. How could he account for the slow close-down of his mind in the month since? He moved through the days easily enough, he even transacted business, did his job, ate and drank and got on with things. He threatened his wife with an impossible future. But in the middle of all this, his mind had begun closing down.

‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘And now, the mother.’

And now, the mother. He hadn’t done anything: and now he had another death on his conscience.

The priest stirred, sat upright. The seal of the confessional was absolute, he murmured through the grille, that was understood: but with the sacrament came acknowledgement and restitution. Something else must now happen, before absolution was possible.

‘Can you absolve me now?’ But Robert knew the answer to that one already, even before he saw the priest’s head shake slowly in the darkness.

‘In time, son, I hope. I trust, in time. But first –’

But first. Yes.

But first, he had to step out of the confessional and listen as the door behind him closed with a smooth click, its insides by no means buoyed up with sins forgiven and absolution gained.

No, that wasn’t it. First he had to wind up this particular session.

‘Oh my God,’ he began, murmuring in the close darkness, ‘I am heartily sorry for having offended you –’ Then he stopped: the priest was moving, wriggling, shifting behind his damn grille, holding out the palm of his hand.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘No act of contrition yet.’ Robert sat still: surely every Confession ended with an act of contrition? – and he remembered learning this old-fashioned one, laboriously and long ago now.
Because you are the chief good and worthy of all love, and everything that is sinful is displeasing unto you.
Where had he found that from? – it really had been years since his last Confession.
I am resolved with the help of Thy holy grace never more to offend you, and to amend my life. Amen.
He knew all the words, was the point, and he wanted to finish the thing properly.

But no.

‘Not yet,’ the priest repeated, a little less stern now. ‘Later. When you have done what is necessary.’ Then this can be wound up, he seemed to say. No point gabbling an act of contrition in advance of all that. Wind it all up, and then we’ll see. He still seemed stern, but not especially shaken – or rather, he had recovered his clerical poise rather rapidly, which just went to show that he probably did hear some incredible stuff sitting there in the confessional. It was probably all in a day’s work for him.

Then Robert left, his business unfinished behind him, and the confessional door clicked and he was at the back of the church and through the double doors.

What had just happened?

In a way, nothing had happened. History was rushing on, and this morning’s news meant that it would reach its conclusion sooner than expected. And he remained in control, for now. As for absolution: that would never come, and he knew that too.

The door to the ward opened – and Sarah was glad enough of it: conversation was sparse, laboured; Patrick was in no mood for chitter-chatter. His eyes were closed, his grunted answers insufficient to keep any conversation rolling along. And Sarah was insufficient herself: she was insufficient to the situation. I should just go, she thought – and was about to act, to grasp her pink scarf, the handles of her bag, when the door opened and Margaret walked in.

Patrick opened his eyes, saw her.

‘Oh good,’ Patrick said. ‘Today just gets better and better,’ and he closed his eyes again.

Margaret came further into the room.

‘Quite the crowd,’ Patrick said. ‘I’m blessed.’

‘Don’t start up, Patrick,’ Margaret said.

Now he opened his eyes again.

‘No intention of starting up,’ he said. ‘This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to lie here and leave you both to it.’

Which he did. He closed his eyes. The two women looked at the window, at the flowers, at the man in the bed. A silence fell.

They had made their beds.

*

The Guildhall was utterly dark. The blackout meant that no lights shone behind its four-faced clock, no lights gleamed from its long windows; and the great oak doors were closed and locked. As she waited for the bus in the deep winter gloom, Sarah looked up at the building, a deeper black against the darkness, and closed her eyes.

She had got up very early. Anthony would be at her quarters very early: she was due in the mess hall; she must be well ahead of everyone. She got up in the deep winter darkness and made her way downhill and back into the city. The first bus departed and the sun eventually rose to show a world glittering white with frost.

She was going home. No, not home: she was going to the only place that she could think of, that might receive her – in spite of everything. There were no other choices, now.

And what happened next? – she knew: she had plenty of time, in the years that followed, to put the story together. She was gone – but not without leaving a trace. She was gone, and had left nothing behind: but it needed no intelligence agent to work out where she was bound. There was only one place where she might now go: home; and Anthony would follow her there, therefore, driving out of Derry and north along the road that hugged the western shore of Lough Foyle.

Later – years later, and over and over again – in her mind’s eye, she traced the journey. The tide was well out, exposing the seaweed-laced mud flats: a freezing morning; but just the same there were lone figures out on the mud, bending, digging into the cold, salty mud for cockles. She had seen them from the windows of the bus; most likely they had still been there when he followed a couple of hours later. Yes: he had driven north along the shore of the flat, shining lough, the skies seeming to enlarge as he drove north, and now the town came into view for the first time, with its white buildings and slate roofs climbing up from the sea, its little pier flanked by a rocky foreshore, its green waterside park, its handful of large, handsome Victorian houses hidden in the trees beyond.

She saw it all through his eyes. She had plenty of time.

*

Anthony parked his jeep in the square, got out, took his bearings. Of course he was accustomed to being an object of attention in Derry: in spite of the swarms in the streets of service personnel from every corner of the world, the townsfolk there were unsparing in their glances, their up-and-down scrutiny of everyone in a uniform. In this little seaside town, however, the watch seemed redoubled: whereas in Derry, the raking look was delivered in passing, in a well-practiced instant, in this town people seemed to dissect him in long stare after long stare.

No wonder she had got the hell out of the place.

He stopped one such staring person: an older woman, dark-clad and not, it seemed, willing to stop for anything. ‘I’m looking for the McLaughlin house,’ he said hurriedly, before she was past him and away.