Only We Know (31 page)

Murphy continues, lost in his own private
reverie: ‘I was very lonely after Sally … after your family left. I wrote to
her.’

‘You did?’

‘She never replied.’

‘You wrote to me too.’

‘I did.’ He turns to smile at me
again, but it soon vanishes. ‘You never wrote back,’ he says sadly.

‘My dad thought it
inappropriate,’ I say, remembering him holding a letter I had received from
Murphy, reading it, and bringing it to Mum to see. I heard them arguing – the actual
words are forgotten, but the tone was sharp and unforgiving.

‘No more letters,’ Dad said then
to me. ‘Not from him.’

I couldn’t think why he was so furious
at the time, but it’s obvious to me now. He didn’t want Murphy dredging up
the past. He wanted to leave in Africa the things that had happened there.

One of the lions is
scraping at the driver’s door. Then it swipes the car with such force that it
shakes. For a moment, I think it’s going to topple over.

Murphy, woken from his daze, shouts:
‘Mack! Get us out of here.’

Mack guns the engine and we speed off, the
wheels spinning dust in our wake.

I look out at the passing landscape: more
dust, more grassland, a herd of wildebeest scattering from the speed and noise the car
is making. A red hot-air balloon rises in the distance, but I don’t know where we
are, don’t know where Mack is bringing us. I wish I was in the balloon, for the
landscape and sky to swallow me. At the same time, I want to say how sorry I am to this
man, to make it up to him – which I know is an impossible task. I don’t know how
to help him, how to offer recompense. What can I give him that could in any way atone
for what has happened?

‘Where are we going, Jim?’

‘Down to the river.’

Not the river. Not again. Once the river
rose to meet us and we ran to it – now all I want to do is run from it.

‘What about Katie?’

‘She’s with Lauren.’

‘Lauren?’

‘Nick. There’s something I must
tell you about Lauren …’

I listen as he says the words, as he tears
apart her past, the past I had understood her to have, and recreates a new one that is
more shocking than I could ever have imagined.

‘There’s something you
don’t know about her,’ he falters,
but he steels himself to go on. ‘Her mother lived out
here once, before Lauren was born. She was married to another man, who was not
Lauren’s father, but he was the father to the girl …’

There’s something weirdly recognizable
about what he is saying, but also something so frightening that it’s as if I am
being dragged down under the riptide of truth.

‘… who drowned,’ he says
finally.

I flinch – just the sound of the word makes
me crazy. I have spent my whole life trying to outrun the past, trying to outplay its
ragtime rhythms, to swallow its white noise, and here it is again, spilling from the
mouth of Murphy.

I’m like a man who has fallen from
that hot-air balloon, a man who is rushing towards the earth without a parachute.

‘She never told me …’ I say, and
before Murphy can answer Mack swerves the car violently out of the way of a wild dog
sauntering down the road. I am thrown across the back seat.

This time Murphy speaks to his driver in
English: ‘Careful, Mackenzie, please.’

I sit up again, and even though this news of
who Lauren really is will turn my world upside-down, what goes through my mind is my
dad, speeding through the Wicklow hills, past the Featherbeds and through the Sally Gap,
his own ending just up the road ahead of him. Did he see it coming? In that last moment,
as the car swerved around the corner, did he try to control it, to steer it out of
danger? Or did he fly into Death’s waiting arms, eager to embrace it after all
that life had done to him? Was he crying as the car hit the wall, or did he let out a
great sigh of
relief that it was all over?
Did he think of us, of me and Luke, of what we had done?

I hope he didn’t. And I hope he
didn’t think of Mum and the whispered arguments he’d had with her, arguments
I’d overheard more than once late at night. An argument that seemed to pivot on
one thing: who to believe? Me or Luke?

‘He says he didn’t do it,’
Mum said about me.

Murphy turns back to me. ‘You know,
I’ve thought about her, Cora, down through the years. She’s always been with
me in a way, passing in and out of my thoughts, like a ghostly figure. Her death touched
so many lives, Nick, and we’ve all been hurt by what happened. Now at last
there’s a chance to commemorate her passing and find, if we can, some healing in
that commemoration. This is my last chance to make things right, Nick. I’m an old
man. That is why we need this, you and I … and Mackenzie. We have all suffered. And I
don’t want to do this in a church or a chapel. You know I lost all faith in the
structures of religion, its buildings and outhouses. For me, God resides out here, in
the air, in the soil, among the people and the beasts of the savannah and its rivers.
Here’s a real chance to heal for all of us.

‘It will also be a chance to remember
the girl who drowned there,’ Murphy continues, ‘to commemorate the passing
of a life. No one’s assigning any blame, Nick, but saying some prayers for one
taken so prematurely would be an act of kindness, don’t you think? There’s
nothing wrong with that, surely. And it will certainly mean a great deal to Lauren … and
to Mackenzie.’

Mack is driving faster now, blowing smoke
more
furiously and nodding in exaggerated
agreement. ‘Prayers,’ he says aloud, and coughs harshly – or is it a volley
of scornful laughter?

‘Jim, this is crazy,’ I say, and
yet part of me, the part that lived under the shadow of my parents’ doubt, almost
aches for a ceremony like this – even if it scares me to my core. And if it can, even in
the smallest way, act as an apology to Mack, well, I’ll go where Murphy wants me
to go and say the prayers he wants me to say and beg, on Luke’s behalf,
forgiveness from Mack, and from Lauren too.

‘My days are numbered, Nick. I’m
very sick. I don’t have long and I need a day of reckoning – before I meet my
Maker. We all do. Today is that day.’

Murphy is dying. I see him in a different
way. His strength and vigour have diminished, almost without my noticing. He is a pale
shadow of his former self. It’s difficult to see him in this new light, and I feel
his words threatening to break me down again, to obliterate my composure, but still
something in me fights against what is happening. ‘It was a game that went wrong.
An accident …’ I say, but there’s no time to discuss it, because the car has
puttered to a jerky stop.

We are here.

As Murphy climbs out, he says:
‘Don’t be afraid. This is all for the best.’

Mackenzie glances into the rear-view mirror,
his face swathed in smoke, but he says nothing, just smiles disdainfully and follows
Murphy.

In the clearing, there is a hut – a poor
wooden box, lonely and forlorn out here on its own amid the sprawling grasslands.

Now that we have
stopped, there is no breeze rifling through the car to keep me cool. There’s a
rumble in the distance. The weather is changing.

I look out at the long grass, the trees, and
the forlorn hut ahead of us.

Here I am again.

The river is not far from us and the sky is
a brilliant burning blue. My hands are shaking and I’m too scared to move. I can
see from where I’m sitting the door of the hut opening. I watch as Lauren steps
outside, and feel the shock of strangeness between us. Everything has changed.

A mangy black mongrel weaves its way out
from behind the hut to see what’s going on and sits down to watch. Its tongue
lolls over its tarry lips; flies circle its head. Time seems to stand still. A wind is
picking up. Overhead a flurry of bee-eaters passes.

I imagine my mother running towards us on
that day. I see the limp body of the girl in Luke’s arms. I hear him counting
again.

‘Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two
…’

A terrible ache spreads about my temples.
Something I have been holding in threatens to burst its banks. There’s an awful
pain in my chest and I’m short of breath.

I imagine Mackenzie sitting in a cell,
weeping into his hands, before being dragged out by the police to be interrogated,
threatened, beaten.

Above us there is a loud crack of thunder.
The wind picks up. I want to ask Lauren why she kept this secret from me. Both of us
felt a need to keep something of ourselves apart from the other. I had seen it as an
expression of love and trust, but now I see it as something else – I see it as a
mistake, a terrible mistake. I’m
struck dumb at the vast chasm opening between us, and the tinnitus in my ears swells,
like a tide coming in.

I’m scared, unsure exactly of what is
going on. There’s another wild crack in the sky. My hand is on the door handle,
but I can’t bring myself to use it. Lauren raises her arms in appeal.

Before I can do anything, the car door is
flung open.

Mackenzie stands broad and menacing before
me. There’s a shot-gun in his hands and he’s pointing it at me. ‘Get
out,’ he growls. ‘Now!’

So this is how it happens.

There are three of them, two standing
alongside the car, the one with the gun screaming at a third who remains inside. I look
at the gunman, feel my legs buckle, air escaping my lungs in short bursts of fear.
It’s him. Jesus, it’s him. I can’t see the person in the car, but I
know it’s Nick. Soon enough the gunman reaches in and hauls him out, a handful of
Nick’s shirt caught in his grip. For a moment, Nick just stands there, stunned,
hands out by his sides. Murphy is saying something I can’t hear – his voice is too
low and I’m too far away – but I can tell from his gesture, his hands pushing down
the air in front of him, that he is trying to placate the gunman. The air around us
crackles with danger. Even without the gun, I’d feel it. It’s coming over me
again, that wash of pain, the crack against my skull, a searing blackness, almost as
vivid in memory under this hot sun as it was in the pitch darkness of the previous
night. My assailant, the man who attacked me: I know it’s him.

Lauren takes a step forward, her eyes fixed
on the tableau by the car. I can feel her hesitation. Nick hasn’t looked at her –
not once – and there’s something very deliberate about that. I can tell she feels
it too.

It’s so hot. Too hot to think.
Standing in this baking field, paralysed by indecision and fear, I feel the scald of the
sun, think about the shade of the trees by the river.
The bank of grey clouds approaches from the west, slanting
rain visible in the distance, a rumble of thunder disturbing the air.

Murphy is by the gunman’s side now,
plucking at his sleeve – an ineffectual gesture, easily shrugged off. The three stand
there, locked in a tense negotiation. We wait, Lauren and I, nothing but the hush of
grass around us, the passing shadow of a bird high in the sky. The plains around us
stretch for miles – all that empty space, the rolling silence, the shimmering heat.
Nowhere to run.

Movement then. It happens swiftly. A raised
hand, the black shape of the gun, the butt brought down heavily and the sickening crunch
of impact. A shout, then Nick staggers backwards, holding his face.

Lauren streaks past me, terror in her
flight. I can’t move, the fear inside me solidifying. Up ahead, I can see Nick on
one knee – a strange genuflection, his hands on his face – the gunman taking a tentative
step towards him before Murphy grabs him back, barks something at him. By the time my
legs start working, Lauren is peeling Nick’s hands away from his face to reveal a
mash of gore, blood blooming on his T-shirt, a livid red flower burning through pale
cotton.

‘What are you thinking?’ Murphy
is shouting at the gunman. ‘This is not what we agreed! Not at all!’

But the gunman is oblivious, staring down at
Nick, nostrils flared, breathing heavily.

I know who my assailant is now. Of course I
do. Memory lashes like a whip, the scent of it ripping through me, the tang of sweat,
acrid smoke from roll-up cigarettes, my mother’s whispered frustration,
I do
wish he wouldn’t smoke those vile things
. Our driver.

Lauren presses a
corner of her T-shirt to Nick’s face in a bid to staunch the bleeding, and for a
moment Nick remains still, silently bearing his wife’s ministrations. There is
something vulnerable about him that cuts through my fear to a softer place. It lasts
until he gets to his feet, pushing her away – a brush-off that is dismissive and curt.
She reels back from it.

He knows about her, then.

The hurt is in her face as she says his name
and goes towards him, but he holds up his hand in warning, and she shifts from one foot
to the other, racked with indecision.

Something of her restlessness takes hold of
me. The dryness of the land, the sense that, for all you can see of the fields and
plains, most of the life here is hidden, skulking in the undergrowth, camouflaged and
waiting, but I can’t stand the waiting any longer. The shadow I have been living
under since the morning Reilly told me Luke was missing – how long ago that seems – now
I feel crushed by the weight of it, dried out by fatigue and sick of it hanging over me.
I think of Reilly’s words of warning, ‘Father Murphy? I’m not sure
about him, Katie,’ and turn towards the priest. ‘What are we doing here,
Murphy? What is it that you want?’

‘Quiet!’ the driver barks, and I
feel my face grow hot. His eyes burn with fury and shift between me and the others,
deep-set eyes that try to observe everything. Impossible to slip past.

Ignoring me, Murphy faces Nick, eyes
narrowed as he assesses the injury, murmuring, ‘You’ll be all right,
son,’ but his frown betrays his anxiety. As he reaches up to clasp Nick’s
shoulder, the old man’s hand shakes. He is visibly
trembling. Nick’s face is pale and there’s a
greyish tinge to his skin.