One by One in the Darkness (10 page)

Beside the graduation photograph, which sat on top of a bookcase, there was another, much smaller picture: a framed black-and-white snapshot showing the three sisters when they were children, sitting on the back step of the house, eating sliders. Cate, smiling, took it in her hands and sat down on the sofa to study it in detail. Charlie Quinn’s daughters. Anyone could easily have recognised each of them from their adult selves, the similarity was almost comic.

The first year Cate had been in London, a colleague had remarked to her in mid December that she would be spending Christmas with her parents, and that her sister would be there too.

‘Not that it matters much to me,’ the woman added, ‘we’re not very close to each other.’

‘When did you last hear from her?’ Cate had asked, and the woman had frowned and thought for a moment.

‘I don’t think we’ve been in touch at all since a New Year’s Eve party last year, now I come to think of it.’ Cate was so amazed by this she hadn’t known what to say. It was just around this time that she’d changed the spelling of her name, and the family didn’t like it: Helen was being particularly prickly and difficult, but no matter how awkward it was between them the idea of their not being in touch for a whole year, and it being such a matter-of-fact thing, struck her as impossible. She could see that the other woman had noticed her reaction, even though Cate still made no comment.

‘It’s no big deal, you know,’ her colleague said. ‘We have nothing in common with each other.’

But this only mystified Cate further. What did she have ‘in common’ with Sally and Helen, except that they were sisters? Surely that was the whole point of family. It was to change strangers into friends that you needed some kind of shared interests, beliefs or aspirations, but with your sisters, what you had ‘in common’ was each other. Looking back on this now, years later, she was even a bit ashamed to realise how much she’d taken her own family for granted, how unremarkable she’d found the tremendous warmth and love in which she had grown up. She’d always known that childhood was important, and to catch a glimpse into the unhappiness of other people’s lives had shocked and unsettled her.

She replaced the photograph on top of the bookcase and went into the kitchen, little knowing that Helen had cleaned it since the weekend, and that what she found so untidy was a significant improvement on what had gone before. Out of the few things available there, she prepared something for herself to eat. There was some bread and cream crackers, but the bread was hard, and the crackers were soft; so she had a cup of instant soup and an apple. She washed up her cup and spoon afterwards, and cleaned around the stove and sink too, thinking vaguely that this might make Helen even a little bit more kindly disposed to her: Cate knew that she needed all the help she could muster.

When she had finished in the kitchen, she made herself a pot of tea and took it back into the other room, where she settled
down on the sofa to read. An hour or so later, having tired of her book, she rummaged through Helen’s video collection, and decided to watch
The Third Man
. When it was over, she had something more to eat. Had it not been for the rain which was now steadily falling, she would have gone for a walk; but instead she sat down on the sofa again, and picked up her book. Immediately, an irresistible sleepiness came over her. She took off her shoes, put a cushion under her head, and within moments she was in a deep sleep, from which she was awoken some hours later by the sound of the phone ringing.

‘It’s me.’ When Cate’s family called each other up on the phone, they never identified themselves by any other means than this phrase, and the recipient of the call was never confused or baffled, for even a moment, as to which member of the family was speaking to them. ‘Oh, hello, Helen.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, fine, great,’ Cate lied, for she had been hauled out of a dream about the man whose child she was expecting, and felt disoriented now to be listening all of a sudden to Helen talking about what time she expected to be home. She would stop off and get pizzas to save them having to cook and would that be all right, and did she want a Four Seasons or a Pepperoni, and Cate was saying yes, yes, whatever you want, whatever you think best. And then suddenly the conversation was over, and she was sitting there holding a buzzing receiver, and trying not to cry.

The dream had been horrible. She had never dreamt about him before, she even thought about him far less often than she would ever have believed likely in such circumstances. She had, however, dreamt frequently about the child, and that wasn’t pleasant either: always the same, of going into a nursery and seeing a cot at the far side of the room, with the child sitting in it, in a straight-backed, rather adult posture. When Cate approached it, the child would turn and look at her in a somewhat sceptical way, which always made Cate feel glad that it was too small to be able to talk, because it looked as if it would have plenty to say if it could.

In this new dream, the child’s father had looked pretty sceptical too. They were sitting together in a restaurant to which they
had often gone, but which she would never have considered for a moment as a suitable venue for breaking the news to him. But it appeared that that was what she had just done, and he was reacting as she had feared he might, without ever really thinking that he would. In her dream he was surpassing her worst imaginings, denouncing her loudly, so that everyone could hear. The whole place fell silent, the sound of conversation and the clatter of cutlery dying away, and although people pretended not to listen she knew that everyone was agog. How could they fail to hear his loud accusations of selfishness and deceit, and what would they make of her own failure to argue against this? She couldn’t find a word to say in her own defence, although as soon as she awoke, it was all she could do not to start blurting out excuses and explanations to her sister.

Not that she’d needed to explain herself, up until yesterday, for in reality he had been kind to her, and had offered her all the help and support she wanted, which was none; she only intended to go on with her life without him, and she wondered afterwards why she had told him at all, why she had risked trouble. The only reason that she could dredge up was that it wouldn’t have been either fair or decent to keep him ignorant of the situation, and that had been of enormous importance to her, to be able to tell herself that she was acting with fairness, and decency. But now, in the aftermath of her dream, she was no longer so sure about this.

There were two clear points which Cate could not reconcile. One was that she would never admit she had deliberately set out to get pregnant; she’d have sworn that by all she held dear. The other was that when she received the results of her pregnancy test, she’d felt a rush of pure delight. And she’d never have admitted that to anyone, either.

What had happened? Was it just because of the age she had reached? She didn’t think so; nor did she like to. She didn’t like to make a connection between this and her father’s death, but everything was different now because of that. Even while her life had appeared to go on much as before, to her it was utterly changed, in ways she would never have expected. Her initial reactions had surprised her. The grief and anger she felt she could understand, but she couldn’t explain why, on returning to
London, she’d flung herself back into life there as if her own life depended on it. One of the first things she did after the funeral was to arrange to have her apartment redecorated in pale colours which gave a greater sense of light and space. She sometimes bought more flowers than she had vases for; she became seriously interested in food and invited people round to dinner more often than ever before. She bought herself some new clothes which, even by her own extravagant standards, were outrageously expensive. But when she was with her friends she could sometimes see that they weren’t at ease with her the way she was, that there was something about all this which didn’t add up. So sometimes she went alone at nights amongst strangers, and she watched the crowds surge in the West End, she craved noise and brightness and colour.

And yet, for all of that, her life had gone sour. The grief was always there. It was as if for years she’d been walking on a tightrope, but had been so skilled and gifted that she hadn’t even known she was doing it. Now she had suddenly swayed, had looked down and seen that she might well fall, and fall a long, long way. Worse, people wouldn’t care, it would be little more than a curious spectacle to them; and some people would be quite happy even to shake the rope.

There’d been a coolness and reserve with some of her colleagues after the funeral, and it was something more than the English being less comfortable with the bereaved than the Irish were. What they were thinking only dawned on her slowly, and it was so horrible that she shrank away, afraid of having to confront it until she was forced to do so; and of course it wasn’t long before that happened.

One day, about three weeks after she returned to work, a journalist who had often done freelance work for the magazine in the past had called in to discuss a supplement which had been commissioned in Cate’s absence. As she looked through the initial work he’d brought along she remarked, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t in on this from the start, but I was in Ireland,’ and she didn’t know why she added, ‘My father died.’

‘Yes, I know,’ the man replied. ‘I read about it in the papers.’

Cate lifted her head from the material she had been glancing through and stared hard at the man, but he stared back coldly
at her, and did not speak. ‘He thinks my father was a terrorist,’ she said to herself. ‘He thinks that he brought his fate upon himself; that he deserves the death he got.’

Afterwards, she couldn’t remember how she’d brought the exchange between them to a close. She remembered sitting at her desk leafing through the pages he’d left with her, not seeing them, and wondering if your heart could literally turn to iron in your chest, for she felt like that was what was happening to her. She didn’t think she could contain her anger, she surprised herself at how calmly she was able to say to a colleague who came into the room, ‘We’ll go through with this project because it was commissioned when I was away, but I don’t want to use him again in future. The quality of his work has gone down; we need fresh talent for the magazine.’ But when her colleague protested (as well she might have done, Cate knew, for there was absolutely nothing wrong with the man’s work), it was then that her temper broke.

‘Did you hear me?’ she said, banging the desk with her fist. ‘I’m in charge of this department. What I say goes, and I say that he won’t work for us again. Is that clear? Is it?’

She could see how the other woman was shaking with fright as she left the room after this unexpected outburst and Cate’s own hands were trembling as, sitting alone now, she covered her eyes. She knew that she was in the wrong. Later, she might apologise to the other woman, but she wouldn’t go back on her word about the journalist. So she was being unfair: well, life was unfair and if he didn’t know that, it was time he found out. Yet even as she recognised and nursed her own meanness of spirit, she was appalled by it. Her anger this afternoon came from the same source that had caused Sally, gentle, good-hearted Sally, to say words Cate could never have imagined coming from her: ‘I hate those people, and I hope somebody kills them.’

When she left the office at the end of that day, she felt inexplicably weary. Usually, she would unthinkingly join the rushing river of commuters which had shocked and disturbed her when she had first arrived in London, but which was so much a part of the city that it now seemed barely worthy of mention. Having become a part of that phenomenon herself, she had been mildly surprised at the strength of Sally’s reaction when she visited her:
‘When they say “rush hour” here, they really do mean it, don’t they?’

But on this particular evening, Cate felt as though she had just arrived in the city, and was unable to cope with it. On Hungerford Bridge, people jostled her and impatiently pushed her out of the way. The tracks sparked blue as a packed train pulled slowly out of Charing Cross. She could see the faces and bodies of people pressed up against the glass of the windows, like bottled fruit. The rumbling weight and proximity of the passing train unnerved her. Abruptly, Cate pulled herself out of the flood of people, into one of the recessed areas of the bridge, where she leaned against the railings and looked down at the green water sliding past. Then she raised her eyes to take in the huge, glittering city: the festoons of white lights swaying along the South Bank, the dark winter sky, the dome of St Paul’s and the lit, clustered buildings all around it: the whole unstoppable engine of the city itself.

In her apartment, there was a vase of stiff, thornless yellow roses. Before leaving for work that morning she had gently inclined one of the flowers towards her, and stared into the heart of it, into the dense arcs of pure colour. Had there ever been another such rose? Yes indeed: she remembered the fat, soft yellow roses her grandmother had grown, and which still grew: Brian would bring them to Cate’s mother in slack bouquets, the stems sheathed in tinfoil. The roses would grow and fade and grow again; the tree would force out leaves and then buds and then roses, no matter who lived or died, no matter who saw the blossom, or cared for it’s existence. And the city before her, she now realised, was as fragile as the roses, constantly renewing itself, but a finite thing, an illusion. And although she could not remember making any conscious decision there, later, when she thought about why she wanted to have children she would always remember that evening when she stood upon the bridge; and how, on returning to her apartment she found upon the table scattered yellow petals. The only explanation she would ever be able to give was this: ‘I wanted something real.’

She turned and looked at the clock. In no time at all now, Helen would be back.

Now all the newspapers from London and Dublin, as well as those from Belfast, were full of articles about what was happening in Northern Ireland. On television, there were reports of marches which ended in violence; of bomb attacks on water and power installations; and endless political wrangling. The children knew all this was important because of the attention given to it not just by their parents, but by almost all the adults they knew; who spent hours talking about what was happening, what might happen, and what ought to happen. The sisters quickly learnt not to interrupt any of these discussions, nor to make a noise while the news was on the radio or television; but they were still too young to understand fully what was happening. There was tremendous delight and excitement at home when Bernadette Devlin was elected to Westminster; but Helen’s, Kate’s and Sally’s lives were still more completely focused on such matters as a spelling test at school, or a trip to the dentist’s, or the prospect of an outing to the cinema in Magherafelt or Ballymena. They discovered in April that year that their cat Tigger was going to have kittens, and they happily watched her swell over the weeks until she was like a furry torpedo waddling around the back yard. They petted her and prepared a new bed for her; pleaded with their mother for the cat to be given extra food and milk; speculated on how many kittens she might have, and what names they would give to them.

But then Lord O’Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, resigned on the very day Tigger produced her brood, ‘and bloody well spoiled everything’, as Kate said that night. She’d rushed into the house to announce the news about the cat, only to be hushed by her parents, who were staring at each other with incredulity and anger as they listened to a well-bred voice speaking on the radio.

‘He was the best of a bad lot,’ their father said at the end of
the broadcast, ‘and if that’s what he thinks of us, you can just imagine how the rest of them see us. What is it, sweetheart?’

‘Tigger had her babies,’ Kate said, ‘six of them,’ and she didn’t know why her mother laughed ironically at this, nor why she said, ‘That’s three more than I had!’

Things degenerated quickly over the following months, and came to a crisis that summer. For a time, the reports they saw on television were still at odds with the world around them. They watched images of policemen in Derry, in full riot gear, battle against people throwing stones and petrol bombs. Deny was little more than an hour away by car, but it wasn’t a city they ever visited, unlike their cousins: Aunt Lucy had a sister there, and Johnny, Declan and Una used to be taken to see her. They watched the black-and-white pictures while their parents fretted, and then they stepped out of the house again into the light of an August evening, where the swallows swooped and dipped in jagged flight around the back yard; where cattle ambled through the long grass; and where the honeysuckle bloomed by the green gate.

But then the rioting spread to Belfast, and trouble broke into their world. On a television news report they recognised the street where their mother’s friend Miss Regan lived, whose house they visited every Christmas. At the end of the street was a burnt-out car, and the reporter said that many people in that part of the city had been forced to flee their homes. Their father urged their mother to phone Miss Regan and tell her she could come to stay with them if she wanted, until things calmed down, and when she couldn’t get any response, they worried until late that afternoon, when Miss Regan rang them. She told them she had gone to stay with her sister in Newry, ‘although who knows if I’ll ever be able to go back to my own house,’ she said, ‘or if I’ll have a house to go back to. It’s like a war, Emily.’

Emily tried to comfort her by saying what a good thing it was that the British government had decided to send troops to Northern Ireland. The people who lived in the areas where the trouble took place over the summer were relieved and thought that they would be protected now from further harm. Emily and Charlie also thought it was a good thing, but Uncle Brian disagreed. ‘It would have been better if our own had been able
to look after us,’ he said. ‘Dublin has let us down badly. Lynch’ll live to regret his empty promises.’

‘But if the Irish army were to get involved, we’ll have all-out civil war,’ his brother protested, and Brian shrugged.

‘It looks like we’re going to have it anyway,’ he said.

The British troops were first in Derry, then Belfast, and then all over the north. It was strange at first to see their heavily armoured vehicles on the quiet country roads. Helicopters would land in the fields near the house, their blades beating flat the grass and startling the cattle where they grazed. ‘I suppose we’ll get used to it,’ Charlie said, to which Brian replied, ‘Well, you shouldn’t. They ought not to be here, and don’t you forget it.’

Brian was not alone in his growing militancy. By the end of the year, the attitude of most of the people they knew towards the soldiers had soured considerably. Charlie wouldn’t be drawn on this, and protested mildly that they’d done him no harm. His contact with the army was mostly confined to brief exchanges at security checkpoints, until the day the military actually came to call on them at home.

They were all at table in the kitchen one Saturday in the middle of the day, when Kate, who was facing the window, suddenly said, ‘Daddy, there’s a soldier in the back yard; no, more than one, look!’ At that moment, someone knocked on the back door. ‘You all stay here,’ their father said, as he went to answer it. They sat, hushed, trying to hear what was being said, and when their father came back into the room, there were two soldiers with him.

‘These men want to ask us a few questions,’ he said to Emily.

‘We’ll go into the front room, then,’ she said, seeing the soldiers glance at the remains of the meal on the table.

The room into which they all now went was dark, formal and seldom used. Emily and the children perched stiffly on the armchairs and sofa, Charlie stood with his back to the cold hearth, and the younger of the two soldiers, who was carrying a long gun, moved over towards the china cabinet. Through the small, deep windows, they could see the shadow of another soldier standing by the front door, and yet another was hunkered down beside the tree. Taking out a notebook and pen the soldier who was obviously in charge explained politely that their regiment,
which he named, was new to the area, and they needed to have some information on people living locally. He said that their help and co-operation would be appreciated.

‘I’ll start with you, Sir, if I may. Your name?’

‘Charles Quinn.’

‘Can you spell that for me, please?’

The soldier went on to ask his middle names, his occupation and date of birth. ‘And now you, Madam.’

‘Emily Mary Quinn,’

‘Maiden name?’

She looked surprised at this, but she answered.

‘Date of birth?’

She flashed a glance at the children, then looked at her fingernails and mumbled something.

‘I’m sorry, Madam?’ She repeated what she had said, loud enough to be audible this time, but in sullen tones.

‘And now these young ladies,’ he said, smiling at the sisters. They saw their parents look at each other, puzzled and slightly alarmed. Their father shrugged and coughed. ‘Well, that’s Helen,’ he said before Helen herself could speak, ‘and she was born on the tenth of January 1959.’ When the soldier had full details of everyone in the house, down to and including Sally, he asked if anyone else lived with them, or stayed in the house frequently. He wanted to know how many outbuildings there were on the farm, and whether or not they had a dog.

‘I suppose you want to know the dog’s name too,’ Sally said, and the soldier, looking up sharply from his notebook, stared hard at her. ‘He – he’s called Brandy,’ she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

‘Is he now?’ the soldier said, smiling. ‘And is he a good dog?’ Sally nodded.

‘I have a dog at home in England,’ he said, pleasantly, as he put away his notebook and pen. ‘He’s called Muffin. He’s a Labrador.’

‘I don’t know what Brandy is,’ Charlie said. ‘I think he’s a bit of everything,’ and he and the soldier pretended to laugh. Then the soldier thanked them, and Charlie showed the two men to the door.

And as soon as it was over, they could hardly believe it had
happened. They watched from the window as the soldiers walked away out from the shadow of the house and into the bright sun, fanning midges from their faces. As soon as they were out of sight it was as if they had imagined this strange thing, that two soldiers, one in full battle dress and with a gun, the other with an accent they could barely understand, had come into their front room and asked them all sorts of odd, personal questions, and then gone away again.

‘In under Christ, what was all that in aid of?’ Emily said when Charlie came back into the room.

‘Damned if I know,’ he replied. ‘Did you notice the one over by the china cabinet, the face of him? He was no more than a child; I’m sure his ma isn’t getting a wink of sleep with him over here. I’m glad I was civil to them,’ he went on, digging into his pocket for his cigarettes and matches. ‘There’s no harm in being civil.’

It was a phrase he repeated that evening to his brother, on whom the soldier had also called.

‘You should have told them hell roast all,’ Brian insisted. ‘You’re too bloody soft, Charlie, that’s your trouble. Believe you me, they can find out all they want to know about you without ever asking you, or you telling them anything.’

‘I think Brian’s right,’ Emily said. ‘What call have they to be asking the likes of me, in my own house, what age I am and what my name was before I was married?’

‘It was the bit about the dog got me,’ Charlie said. ‘What odds is it to them if I have a dog?’ Brian rolled his eyes.

‘They want to know that.’ he said, ‘so that when they’re snooping around your five outbuildings in the middle of the night, they’ll know what the likelihood is of there being a dog about that’ll sink it’s teeth in their arses. Christ, Charlie, did you come down in the last shower, or what?’

‘Well, I’m sure there’s plenty of them no more want to be here than we want to have them here,’ he said.

About a week after that, Kate and her father were in McGovern’s shop when a soldier came in, wanting to buy cigarettes.

‘I’m afraid I can’t serve you,’ Mrs McGovern said.

‘Any reason for that?’

‘You know as well as I do,’ she replied. The man shrugged, and left the shop again.

‘I’m sorry about that, Charlie, but what am I to do?’ she said, lifting down a jar of Clove Rock and starting to weigh it out. ‘I don’t want to antagonise the army, but by the same token, there’s men in this country and if they thought I was serving soldiers they wouldn’t leave me with one stone on top of the other of either house or shop.’

‘You needn’t be apologising to me,’ he said, ‘I know the way you’re fixed.’

‘It’s not fair of them to come and ask me, so it’s not,’ she went on. ‘They know fine well the sort of area this is, and they’re only doing it to see what I say.’

In due course the soldiers stopped coming to the houses to ask for information, and they stopped attempting to buy things in the local shops. Stories began to circulate about young men: friends of friends, or the sons of people they knew; driving home from dances late at night and being stopped at checkpoints and beaten up for no apparent reason. In broad daylight Charlie would be stopped at a road block a few hundred yards from his house, and asked his name and occupation. They would look at his driving licence and make him open the boot of the car. They would ask him where he was coming from: ‘That grey house there, beyond the tree,’; and where he was going: ‘Up to the shop, to buy a newspaper.’ When he came back, less than five minutes later, the same soldier would stop him and, poker faced, ask him exactly the same questions again, as if he had never seen him before, and would again make him open the boot of the car. When this happened to him time and again, even Charlie’s legendary patience broke, and he began to feel sullen and resentful towards the security forces.

That spring, Granny Kate fell and broke her arm. She made light of it; and the whole family was amused when she appeared at Mass on Sunday with the arm tied up in a sling made from a silk scarf which toned in perfectly with the suit she was wearing. ‘Just because I’ve hurt myself doesn’t mean I have to stop being elegant, does it?’ she said. School ended for the summer, and they enjoyed the laziness of long, empty days; while always
aware that things were still getting worse in the society around them.

Then, one morning in August, so early that they were all still in bed, the telephone rang. It woke Helen and she crept to the door of the bedroom to hear what was being said. It was evidently Granny Kate, and she was upset about something, because their father kept trying to calm and soothe her. ‘I’ll be over now, as soon as ever I can,’ Helen heard him say. Then she stood very still as he came up the stairs again and passed the door behind which she was standing. She strained her ears to hear what he said to their mother when he went back to the bedroom.

‘That was Mammy. The soldiers came this morning and took away Peter and Brian. They’re all in a state about it; I said I’d go over to them immediately.’

‘Can I come too?’ Helen was at the door of her parents’ room now. ‘Please?’ Her father started to protest, but for once it was Emily who argued in her favour. ‘Take her with you. If the soldiers stop you on the road, there might be less of a chance of them giving you trouble if you have Helen there.’

‘You’re more optimistic than I am, if you think that.’ he replied, but he told Helen to go and get dressed as fast as she could.

It was still dark when they left the house, with the faintest tinge of light on the eastern horizon. When they arrived at Brian’s and Lucy’s place, her father called out, ‘It’s only me,’ when he knocked on the door. Lucy let them in through the back scullery and into the kitchen. The place was in uproar. All of the children were out of bed, and all of them were crying. Lucy was red eyed too. Only Granny Kate, tightly wrapped in a pale-blue dressing gown, seemed to have retained any sense of calm, and that was tempered with anger.