Nothing is Black (7 page)

Once Rita had asked her what she liked most about Donegal, and Anna, remembering that evening, had replied, ‘I like the way everyone leaves the key of their house sticking in the front door.’

These thoughts and memories had tormented her tonight as she tossed in bed, longing for sleep to come. She’d been reminded of Lili by Nuala that afternoon, even before the young woman started to pour out her woes under the influence of the clear spirit Anna offered her. Like Lili, Nuala had strikingly beautiful hands. Both wore tinkling bracelets and rings set with precious stones which showed off to advantage their white fingers and perfectly manicured nails, Lili was a bank teller, and Anna had often noticed that women whose jobs involved counting out money tended to be vain about their hands.

Nuala told her something of why she was in Donegal: of her mother’s death, of how she had taken it for granted that she’d be there to help her with the baby, and how upset she’d been when it turned out so differently. Anna was shocked at the sudden, violent antipathy she felt for the young woman, founded as it was on nothing other than pure envy for the love there had been between Nuala and her mother. Why was she excluded from such a love? She struggled to hide her feelings: knowing they were unfair was little help, and she was afraid that she would go too far, that she would vent on a bewildered Nuala all the pent-up resentments
she felt towards Lili. With supreme effort she kept her counsel, and as a result spent the night drinking
whiskey
to insulate herself against the pain of her own memories.

WHEN CLAIRE ANSWERED THE PHONE
one morning and heard Kevin’s voice, she assumed he wanted to talk with Nuala. She wasn’t at home. It was a strange time for him to call, for they usually rang each other at prearranged times. Nuala would answer the phone when she expected that the call was for her, so it was the first time Claire and Kevin had spoken since Nuala’s arrival. ‘I think she’s out visiting a friend. She goes out most days.’

Claire was keen to cut the conversation at that, and promised to tell Nuala he had rung, but Kevin persisted. ‘How’s she getting on there?’ Gradually it dawned on Claire that Kevin had rung precisely because he guessed Nuala would not be at home. Claire didn’t want to talk about Nuala in her absence, and replied vaguely to his questions.

‘Oh, it’s hard to tell, I think things are going well.’

‘Is she happy there?’ he asked bluntly.

‘Well, she has no reason not to be,’ said Claire, nettled. ‘Why don’t you ask her yourself, Kevin? I told you, she’ll be back by tea time, you can talk to her then.’

‘Oh. Oh, all right, then.’ He sounded disconsolate, and she relented slightly, feeling sorry for him.

‘Look, there really isn’t much I can tell you. She’s
getting lots of fresh air and rest, and I take it that’s what she came here for. I just don’t feel it’s my place to give you a report on her, you ought to talk to her about this yourself. Listen, here’s an idea. Why don’t you come up to Donegal for the weekend? You can stay here, you’d be very welcome.’ But Kevin met this suggestion with little enthusiasm.

He didn’t want to tell Claire that he had already suggested to Nuala that he come and visit her, and he’d been hurt by how quickly she rejected that offer. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea at all,’ she’d said with a decisiveness which surprised him. Brooding on this had prompted him to ring Claire, to try to find out what the situation was, but she appeared not to want to tell him.

‘One last thing,’ he said, ‘does she ever talk about going home?’

‘Not really,’ said Claire, which she hoped was more gentle than saying ‘Never.’ Standing in her draughty hallway, she imagined Kevin, miserable in his elegant front room. They continued to talk in a desultory fashion, for she didn’t want to hurt him any more by bringing the conversation to an abrupt finish. As they talked, she began to feel glad that he hadn’t accepted her offer to come and stay, for she realized how nervous it would have made her. It was years since she’d seen him. Even hearing his voice the first time he had called up to ask if Nuala could stay had unsettled her more than she cared to admit. He sounded exactly the same as ever, but she knew that they had changed over the years, both of them, and not just in looks. She didn’t know how she would react to the memories meeting Kevin would draw up, and was relieved that such a meeting now was unlikely.

Two days later, Claire rang Kevin. It was eight o’clock in the morning. His voice was drowsy as he answered the phone. Nuala had remarked once that they were late risers, because of working every night in the restaurant.

‘Hi, Kevin, it’s me. Stay calm now, don’t worry.’ Even as she spoke, she knew he was in a panic, leaping from the bed, fully awake.

‘Claire, it’s about Nuala, I know, what’s wrong, tell me quickly, what’s happened?’

‘It’s nothing Kevin: well, I mean I hope it’s nothing serious. It’s just that – well, Nuala went out yesterday afternoon and she … she still hasn’t come back.’

Claire paused to give Kevin a moment to take this in. ‘I thought long and hard before I rang you, because it could all be completely innocent.’ She regretted these words as soon as she had spoken them: they so clearly cast Nuala in a guilty light. ‘I don’t want you to worry, Kevin. The crime rate round here is zero, so the chances of her having been abducted are a million to one.’

‘Couldn’t she have fallen off a cliff, or broken her leg while out walking?’

‘I … I … don’t think so. She wasn’t headed that way when she left the house.’ This was turning out to be even worse than she had thought it would be. She had dreaded all night making this phone call. She couldn’t bring herself to give Kevin a full picture of the situation.

After lunch, the previous day, Nuala had gone out for a walk. Claire, working in the studio, heard her leave the house. She looked out of the window and saw Nuala walk to the bottom of the lane, and then turn right, away from the cliffs and the sea. Claire supposed she was on her way to visit Anna, and these visits could be lengthy.
Occasionally they went into town together in Anna’s car, or sometimes she stayed there for meals. As Nuala usually did the cooking in Claire’s house, she always made a point of telling her if she was going to be out. So Claire, busy with her work, didn’t think much about Nuala’s absence.

Dinner time came, and Nuala had still not returned. Claire started to prepare a meal, thinking she would arrive before it was ready, but still there was no sign of her. Claire put Nuala’s dinner in the oven to keep warm, and sat down to eat her own meal. No, there was nothing else for it. She swore loudly, put a bowl over her dinner to keep it warm, and rang Anna.

It relieved Claire to some extent that Anna was not troubled by the situation which Claire presented to her. Yes, Nuala had called with her that afternoon. She had been in good spirits, ‘perhaps a little bit bored’, Anna said. (‘Bored!’ thought Claire. ‘I’ll give her bored when I get my hands on her!’) She had stayed for an hour or so, and when she left, she said that she was going to go up to Rita’s shop to buy some chocolate before going home.

‘Right, I’d best ring Rita, then,’ Claire said.

Anna was bemused. ‘Don’t you think you’re
overreacting
somewhat?’ she asked, but Claire was indignant at this. ‘Ring Rita, then,’ Anna said, ‘if it’ll make you feel better.’

Rita told her that Nuala had been in the shop at just the time Anna had mentioned. There had been another woman there too, a Miss Byrne, did Claire know her? She had said something about driving into town, and Rita had seen Nuala pay attention when she said this. She left the shop before Miss Byrne, but Rita noticed that
Nuala had waited outside and spoke to the other woman when she came out. For the first time ever, Claire was glad that Rita was so tremendously curious about other people.

‘Do you think she went into town with Miss Byrne?’

‘I think that more than probable,’ Rita said. Miss Byrne had been going to stay with her sister there who wasn’t well. After she had said goodbye to Rita, Claire tried to ring Miss Byrne, but, as she had expected, there was no reply. So, Claire deduced, Nuala had gone into town, probably on a sudden whim, thinking she could spend an hour or two there and then get a lift back with someone, not realizing that the cars that went out as far as where Claire lived were few enough during the day, but there were none at all after a certain time in the evening. So Nuala would be stuck in town.

There were two flaws to this theory. The first was that the logical succession to this would be that Nuala would phone to explain what had happened, and either tell Claire she would stay the night there, or ask that Claire come and fetch her. But she didn’t phone. The other flaw was that since her arrival, she had gone to town several times. Sometimes she went with Anna, sometimes she borrowed Claire’s car and went by herself to do
shopping
, or simply to have a change of scene. She’d always told Claire what she’d done when she got back, she wasn’t at all secretive about these visits: not that there was much there you could do that would merit
concealment
, Claire thought.

‘Maybe she just decided all of a sudden,’ Anna said that night when Claire phoned her again. ‘Maybe when she heard that Miss Byrne was going to town, she
decided to go too. I still think there’s no need to worry. You know, Claire,’ Anna went on, ‘Nuala is a grown woman, a married woman, she is free to go where she pleases. I told you I thought she was bored this
afternoon
. Perhaps she wanted a little adventure.’

‘Well, she’s picked a bloody odd place to have it,’ said Claire. Anna was evidently less well integrated than Claire had imagined, if she hadn’t grasped this basic point about rural Ireland: that it lacked the anonymity essential for ‘little adventures’.

‘I’m talking about something completely innocent,’ Anna persisted, who thought Claire was less worldly and sophisticated than she woud have given her credit for. ‘Nuala probably just wanted to be alone for a night, with no one knowing where she is, nor who she is.’ Anna urged Claire to put it out of her mind. ‘Get a good night’s sleep and I tell you, she’ll be home before lunch time tomorrow.’

It was beyond Claire’s power to sleep well that night, even though she reasoned with herself that Nuala was, as Anna had pointed out, a grown woman. Simply because Nuala was staying in her house didn’t make Claire responsible for her every move. But logic could not ease the thought that if Nuala did not turn up, Kevin would have to be told. She dreaded ringing him. Against the agonies of wondering what she would say to Kevin, she consoled herself by imagining what she would say to Nuala – no, what she would
do
to her – when she did finally reappear.

She got out of bed at six, and put off ringing Kevin until eight. She was afraid that if she waited until
mid-morning
he would have left the house, and she would
have been unable to track him down. He wanted to leave for Donegal at once, but she dismissed this, and told him she would call again in a couple of hours. Just before ten o’clock, Kevin rang her. Claire had no news for him. He told her he was setting out immediately, and this time she didn’t argue. He promised to stop every hour or so en route, to call her and see if there was any news. She gave up the idea of any serious work, and began to sort out materials in the studio simply to give her something with which to occupy herself.

It was just after eleven o’clock when she heard the front door being opened. Like most people locally, Claire left the key in her door when she was inside. She left the studio, and as she came downstairs she could see that Nuala was already in the hall, draping her damp raincoat over the bannisters. ‘Terrible weather,’ she remarked to Claire as she went up the hall and into the kitchen. Claire followed her, silently, staring at her with something between fascination and fury.

‘Like some tea?’ Nuala said, taking the kettle over to the sink to fill it. There was a long, sinister pause.

‘No, thanks, I’ve just had a cup,’ Claire eventually replied. The words in themselves were innocuous, but from the tone in which they were spoken, Nuala knew she was in deep trouble. She wondered how Claire was capable of putting such venom and threat into such a harmless phrase. Nuala sighed theatrically, put the kettle down and turned to Claire.

If Claire’s mental rehearsals for her conversation with Kevin had been of no help, the same was not true of her plans to confront Nuala. There was a little resistance at first, but it didn’t really take long to wear her down.
Nuala confessed to what Anna had predicted would be the scenario. Nuala had felt very restless the day before. She’d gone to buy chocolate and heard a woman in the shop say she was going into town. On impulse, Nuala asked to go with her. She hadn’t thought through what she would do there or how she would get back. After a while, she’d decided to stay the night, so she found a bed and breakfast place.

‘It was really horrible,’ she said, as though this somehow exonerated her. ‘You should have seen the room, it had an orange candlewick bedspread.’

‘Why didn’t you ring me?’

‘I tried,’ Nuala said. She and Claire both knew that this was a lie. ‘I did try, but I couldn’t get through.’ Claire wondered if it was worth the energy to argue with her about this, and decided it wasn’t. She still had a card to play.

Nuala felt pleased at getting away with such a lie. She didn’t intend to tell Claire everything about her trip to town. She didn’t tell her how she’d gone into the local chipper for her evening meal, and had eaten cod and chips off a formica table, while some children fed coins into a loud, flickering fruit machine. She’d looked at the clotted sauce bottles before her, and wondered what was it about her life, what choices had she made (or failed to make) that she had ended up getting her thrills by stealing ashtrays and sneaking off to spend the night alone in a dreary B&B, eating fish and chips doused in malt vinegar? She’d thought of Kevin. At that exact moment he would be in the restaurant, overseeing the serving of monkfish in dill sauce. What would Kevin think if he could see her? It wouldn’t be worse to him
than infidelity, but certainly a lot harder to understand. He would be able to see the point of her going with another man, even if it upset him, but her sitting in a chipper with a one and one and a tin of cherryade would be beyond his comprehension. But then of course, Nuala herself didn’t understand it.

‘So that’s all there was to it,’ she said to Claire, with as much innocence as she could muster. ‘It was nice too, for me just to have a little time completely by myself,’

‘But didn’t you ever think how worried I would be? Let alone Kevin …’

‘Kevin? You didn’t tell Kevin! Oh Claire! Oh God!’

Claire felt only slightly guilty about the stab of delight she felt on seeing Nuala’s utter dismay. ‘Of course I told Kevin,’ she said suavely. ‘How was I to know where you were? You could have fallen off a cliff. What was I to do? Wait three days until you were washed up on the strand and ring him then?’ Nuala and Claire both knew these were rhetorical questions. ‘I waited all night and when you still hadn’t shown up this morning, I phoned him.’ Claire paused, (cruelly, she knew,) for maximum effect, and then added lightly, ‘He’s on his way here now.’

Nuala put her head in her hands and moaned. Right on cue, the telephone rang. Even Claire felt sorry for Nuala at that point. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll deal with it.’ She went into the hall and picked up the receiver. Nuala stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at her nervously.

‘Hi, Kevin, Claire said. ‘Good news. Nuala’s back.’ Yes, she’s fine, as I said, it was nothing to get seriously worked up about.’ She’d been looking at Nuala until that moment, but dropped her gaze, and half turned aside,
speaking more softly. ‘Oh, I don’t remember, she said something about missing a bus or something, I haven’t really asked her yet.’ Claire listened for a moment, then said, ‘That would be difficult right now.’ She turned round and looked at Nuala again. ‘She’s in the bath.’ Claire listened again, and laughed. ‘No, I can’t, believe it or not I still have one of those phones that are fixed in one place, you have to come to it.’ She made some dismissive remarks: Kevin was evidently thanking her and apologizing for the worry.