The Little Red Chairs (17 page)

Dara kneels, listens, then eases her onto her coat and what he would remember ever afterwards of that grim night was the warmth of the coat in which he cradled her, and carried her out and into the back of the car. Neither he nor Tyrone exchanged a single word on that long drive. Tyrone had to drive so slow because with every jolt, she seemed to dismember.

*

Coming back. Broken but not dead. The days, or was it weeks, in the hospital are a blur, being hefted on and off trolleys, hearing voices of doctors and nurses talking to one another, in muffled tones. What had they seen. What had they to do to her, to piece her back together. She would never know. She only knew what happened on the mountain and she pushed it away each time, like pushing a heavy door.

A nurse is singing while combing her hair, in preparation for the important visitors, the VIPs as she calls them.

Now Eileen O’Grady,

A real Irish lady,

I’m longing to call you my own.

I’ll not be contented

’Til she has consented

To be Mrs Barney Malone.

It is a small ward with the vases of flowers squeezed onto the ledge that fronts the television.

The nurse is reeling off the next stage of her recovery, the rehabilitation process, learn to cope again and regain control of herself and her body. Staff are there for her, to give care and counselling. Words. Words. There is a place inside her that no care and no counsellor can reach. But she still smiles the grateful smile of the obligated.

‘Who’s coming?’ she asks, nervous.

‘The guards, the doctor, the pathologist, the house surgeon who examined you on admission, the gang.’

A baby is not mentioned. It never would be, not by them and not by her either, a sinful clot that had been disposed of. On the windowsill there are some ‘Get Well’ cards. The Book Club have sent cut-outs of hearts in gold and silver cardboard and Peggy has knitted her a woollen doll. The head was a tangle of mad wool sprouts and the body ended just below the navel, a stump really that she held for courage.

Dante and the boys had sent a message –
Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

‘What will they want?’ she asked the nurse.

‘The oral evidence … what happened to you out on the mountain.’

‘I can’t tell them that.’

‘You must tell them … you must … for the law to do its duty.’

‘I don’t have the … vocabulary.’

‘Then you’ll have to find the vocabulary.’

‘They butchered me …’ she said and gave a little insane laugh.

‘Fidelma,’ and now the voice is stern, ‘are you or aren’t you going to co-operate?’

‘Will my husband be with them?’

‘Poor man … What he’s been through … Walking around in a daze … His pyjamas on under his trousers, not knowing whether it’s day or night …’

‘Do you hate me nurse?’

‘I pray for you,’ the nurse replied.

They were coming in, a phalanx of men in suits or white coats, the inquisitors, Jack among them. He had a teeny plaster on his chin, where he had cut himself shaving. They surrounded the bed, saying how good it was to see her sitting up and the house doctor read her thermometer off the hanging chart.

‘Might I have a few moments alone with my husband?’ she asked tentatively and they filed out like recruits.

Once alone, he half fell in over her, his face inches above hers, the hammer of his heart thudding on hers as a slew of obscenities came from him. Words so ugly that she could not believe it was him speaking and she cowered under the covers. It would have been better if he had struck her, it would have been better still if she had died, because he now would be weeping and gnashing on a grave, mourning her.

‘I won’t come home,’ she said.

‘Oh yes, you will come home,’ he said, the mad blue glitter in his eyes, nailing her.

‘I’ll go away …’

‘On what … On what …’ he was shouting now and those who had retreated in deference hurried in. The nurse, in a display of false cheer, asked was it not time for their morning coffee.

‘Morning coffee my arse,’ Jack said and the house doctor grabbed him by his lapels, took him to one side and spoke to him and then led him outside where he still ranted.

The others stood around the bed in judgement.

She knew what they were thinking, a decent man, a pillar of the community, a faithful husband, dragged down into the mire.

*

‘Now missus, nothing is a problem and you know that.’ Dara has come, to take her over to Sligo on an errand. He leads her warily down the corridor, into the lift and out to the car park, which is packed. Her whole body feels as if it will fall apart. At first she is silent in the car, listening or pretending to listen to Enya, which he has put in the CD player, thinking she will find it soothing. All of a sudden she is remembering something she had forgotten to remember – one of the rats at her earlobe. He stops the car and lights a cigarette, then makes sure that all the doors are locked. He says if she wants to talk, talk. She says that talking only makes it worse. This is the same journey as she made in the bus, not that long ago and yet every bit of the landscape is altered. The trees are still the same trees, but she senses menace in them. At the sight of the sheep grazing she suddenly recalls the sheep that got mashed when Tyrone’s car lurched down into a hollow and the bleating of the flock, as they ran away.

He drops her on the bridge in Sligo. She will be waiting in
that same spot in half an hour. She walks as if something is going to drop out of her. She dreads the very presence of other people. All of a sudden she comes to a stop, then looks around. Yes, it was just there by the museum that she and he met once, by chance and went inside to see the exhibition.
Mingling hands and mingling glances
. In glass cabinets, on display, there were some of Yeats’s poems, in his own hand, the brown ink rusted with time and the paper curled at the edges. The room was empty, just them and a dozy girl who took the tickets. He asked her to read one of the poems, to do it, especially for him.

Come away, O human child

To the waters and the wild,

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Further up the street, she tripped, but caught herself on a pole that held up part of the awning of a shop. She was in two minds to go back to the bridge, but Dara would not be there, he would be driving around, until it was time to collect her. People sat at an outside cafe in the corner, tables all squeezed together, gales of laughter, a group peeling off their T-shirts, thrills, rowdiness, the froth yellowing on the tumblers of Guinness and waitresses managing three plates on one arm. There was a smell of fries and cakes and drink.

The sales were on. The shop she wanted was in an arcade and a beautiful young boy stood near the entrance, playing the bohrain, the sound sweet and tremulous:
She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.
He played beautifully and she stood
to listen. He wore a white beret at an angle and had a shy, winning smile. She threw coins into his mug and he stopped playing for an instant and held his breath, in courtly gratitude.

From a rack of coats, she chose a heavy black one with a wide box collar and a double row of black buttons down the front. It cost everything she had. She put it on straight away, having come from the hospital just in a cardigan. In the long mirror she was talking to herself and the shop assistant, recognising the strangeness, made no mention of the peculiarity of putting on a heavy coat on such a scorching day.

On the way back she asked Dara if they could go to Cloonoila for a quick visit, as there was something private she needed to do.

She walked up one street, past the feed factory, the baker’s, the first pub and the post office, then past her own empty shop with leaflets and circulars scattered on the bare floor. Crossing the road, she passed the row of houses with lace curtains on the downstairs windows and walked slowly along the second street, where there was a butcher’s, the second pub and the crèche. Through the open window, she could hear the sounds of children, singing in the classroom, filling her with a lost longing. She moved like a somnambulist, her hands out in front of her, like a blind person feeling the way. No one cast a stone and there was no peeping from behind curtains, but she knew that news of her appearance would quickly circulate. Were anyone to speak to her, she had an answer at her fingertips –
I have been unwell but I am on the mend now … And thank you.

Why was she walking there. It was something to do with the new coat, that had replaced the other, the bloodied coat.

It was a kind of atonement and a kind of defiance. It was also a farewell. She would not be walking those streets again.

PART TWO

South London

First a tube and then an overground train and after that a walk of about twenty minutes along a busy road, to Jasmeen’s flat, somewhere in south London.

The tall flats were on three sides, with a rectangle of grass in front and beyond a little gate that opened onto a busy road. The higher floors of the flats had white balconies that stood starkly in the oncoming night. Jasmeen, her future landlady, went first and Fidelma followed, not knowing what she would find. There were a few grey squirrels on the grass, nibbling on the husks of the chestnuts that had fallen from the one massive tree.

‘I want to be near trees, or even one tree,’ were the words she blurted out during her interview. It was with a charity organisation in a small complex of single-storey houses, not far from Victoria Station. There were many people waiting, all silent except for one man with a black patch over his eye, talking ceaselessly – ‘Me Sierra Leone, war war war,
guerre guerre guerre
, we want to believe it don’t happen, that is how we get by, we try to escape, we come here, we shout at persons that jump the queue before us, and live rough. My cousin he move back, he hate it here, he say come for a holiday and I go for one month and after one week I am edgy. I paint a wall, dig up weeds, play ball with kids in the street and make small vegetable garden for my auntie. I come back to this city, where I know no one and do my hating alone.’

Intermittently, her name was called. Different people had interviewed her, asking the same questions again and again – Why was she homeless. Where had she slept the previous seven nights. Why did she leave Ireland. What was her relationship with her estranged husband. Had she been in trouble with the police. Had she slept on the street. How long did she intend to stay. How much money had she in her possession? Eventually, she was taken to see Jasmeen in a room next to the refectory and there was a smell of fried bacon and eggs, as homeless people were given their breakfast. Jasmeen’s role, as she explained, was to find accommodation for homeless families with children and then to visit them regularly, to make sure that they adapted and to find schools for the children. Unfortunately, as Fidelma was single, she did not fit into that remit, so sadly she was unable to help her.

She came out of there totally dejected and walked aimlessly around. It was restaurants and shops and more restaurants and more shops, with scantily clad mannequins, sickly looking in that neon light. Eventually, she came on a side path that led to a cathedral, where she sat near the back and tried to pray. The soft light through the stained glass gave the nave a warmth and in the side aisles, rows of candles flickered in wayward joyousness. Above, in the gallery, someone practised on an organ and the same notes were struck again and again, corresponding to the same thoughts in her head, where to go next, where to sleep that night. By chance, three or four hours later, still wandering, still walking without any destination in mind, she bumped into Jasmeen, who was leaving work at four thirty and seeing her so lost, invited her home.

The flat was on the ground floor and the hallway poorly lit. There was a puddle at the bottom of the stairs, dog pee or water
spilt. From the elevator, a woman’s taped voice that seemed to belong to a different, more exclusive milieu kept saying, ‘Going up. Going up.’ There was an exercise bike just outside the door, laden with clothes and boxes and behind it, a tall plant that looked as if it had withered.

Inside they went first to the sitting room, where there was a huge television set and framed photographs of Jasmeen and of her daughters in different outfits and one of her older daughter in cap and gown, the day she had got her degree. Then she was shown the bedroom. It was the younger daughter’s room and there were clothes everywhere, clothes in boxes, clothes on hangers, CDs on the radiator and on the dressing table, glittery bracelets, make-up in jars, a teddy bear and birthday cards with the sign of Scorpio. The bed had a buttoned pale green velvet headboard and she lay face down, shutting her mind to everything, telling herself to be grateful for this small respite. Under the pillow was a weeny teddy bear and for some reason, the sight of it moved her to tears. Everything would be better once she knew the routine, when the bathroom was free to be used, where to store her things, likewise the routine of the kitchen and when she might be allowed to cook. Suddenly there was a tap on the door as, since it was her first evening, she was invited to share a meal. Jasmeen said it was the custom in her country to offer hospitality when a visitor came.