The Story of Before (34 page)

His bike lay on the driveway, mud packed into the ridges of its tyres. I looked up at the front of the house, at the gaping black squares of the windows, the peeling paintwork, and the cold,
damp emptiness that seemed to ooze from every brick. The side-passage door had swollen in the rain and it shuddered out of its wooden frame when I shouldered it, slapping back against the wall when
it gave way. Fingering the knobbled surface of the pebbledash, I remembered the way I’d felt when he told me about The Kiss. The way it had seemed so . . . so right and so . . . real. So
true. How could that have been? What had made me so sure? It was like I’d closed my eyes and just accepted I was blind.

The tap in the kitchen was flowing, rushing onto the pile of dirty dishes and splashing over the worktop in a fan of sprinkled drops. I reached in and turned it off, seeing sodden butts floating
in an overflowing bowl. I watched them for a moment, the way they whirled around in circles, bobbing about like tiny swollen bodies in a flood. My world was getting smaller now, shrinking down.
Shrivelling. Soon it would disappear. There’d be nothing of it left. I’d have to make a new one, build it up, grab at things that had no meaning, things I wouldn’t recognize from
any place or time. Everything made sense to me, and nothing did. I walked out of the room, across the carpet of roses, and began to climb the stairs.
One, two, three . . .

I reached the landing and looked up at the steps that led to his room. Only then did I get scared. I knew they’d all be close behind me, but I couldn’t let them be the ones. This was
my task. No one else could do it. Not Mam. Or Dad. Or the others. Not David or the sergeant or Father Feely. It wasn’t their job. I had to be the first.

That was how it was meant to be.

It seeped out from the room, through the gap under the door and down to reach me as I climbed. Silence. Thick and cloudy and dead. Far too much of it. It settled around me like a cloak and, for
the last few steps, I almost allowed it to weigh me down. It would’ve been so easy to just lie there and wait for them to find me. But I dragged myself on and stood outside his room, pressing
my face to his door.

When I pushed down on the handle and slipped inside, I entered the place of endings. This room at the top of his house, looking out over the green and beyond to the mountains, was as far as I
could go.

I’d never escape.

This was where I’d be stuck for the rest of my life. No place on earth would hold me as close, however far I travelled. I’d always be there. Always. Nothing would ever change
that.

I wanted to know so many things. A hundred whats. A thousand whys. But I didn’t know what to believe any more. Had I made my own path, or had I followed one laid out for me? Was every
twist and fork already on the map? Every bump and bend?

Or did the corners only exist because I turned them?

The stench of secrets. The hidden smell of happenings. I walked across the floor and stood under the window, looking up to the sky. Whatever was written in the stars had been read. The words
were a story. My story.

The only one I would ever tell.

I’m not sure why I lifted the lid. I suppose it just seemed logical at the time. I remember sitting down on his bed for a moment and trying to figure out what I
would’ve done if I were him. Because I know the truth now, I’m not sure if I recall exactly what went through my head. The real gets mixed up with the imagined. I think I realized that
there wasn’t anywhere else, no other place he would’ve used. And I know I was certain that the answer was there, in his room. I was sure of it.

I tried to be him. I conjured myself into his clothes, under his skin, replaced my bones with his. I lay down on the bed, the smell of him sneaking into me, the shape of his body accepting the
sinking weight of my own. This was what it was like. This was the place.

This was the only place.

I got up and flicked the switch by the door. The weak yellow bulb in the ceiling smeared the whole place with a misty, dreamy glow. It showed up cloudy, softened versions of what I knew to be
there. The grubby bedclothes, the threadbare rug, the chipped and hacked-at headboard. And the huge monstrosity of his radiogram, the bulk of it dwarfing everything else in the room. On top of the
side that held the turntable was the small, square photograph of him with his uncle Joe. Only now, uncle Joe’s face had been scribbled over in careful, detailed whirls, the lines so many and
so close that his features could barely be seen.

I thought about the way he’d shown me how Dad and Liz had ‘kissed’. Were his lies only lies because I believed them? And would I have been standing in his room now if I
hadn’t?

The rain drummed louder against the roof, the noise of it making me almost thankful I was there. Sheltered, safe, unseen. Some days now I want to remember it all; other days I want to forever
forget. But it seems cold and hard to deny the memory, to want to hide the truth of what I found.

How could I not want to remember Kev? Every minute of him.

In life. And in death.

He was so perfect, curled up as though asleep. Stored away, soft and silent under the lid of that great, wooden beast. I’ve lifted it a thousand times in my mind since, over and over,
hoping I’ll find nothing more than a stack of favourite records, a prized collection of familiar songs. Sweet tunes to sing along to, with words I think I know the meaning of. But once the
lines have been written, they can’t ever change. You know them by heart and think you understand them, until one day you find out they’re not what you thought they were at all.

I don’t think I screamed, or cried, or made any sound. For one beautiful second, the relief at having found him was stronger than the realization he was dead.

I knew he was.

But it couldn’t be the sort of dead I’d come to know, could it? Not the for ever and ever Uncle Frank sort of dead? This was Kev, not even two years old. His was surely a different
kind of dead. This was a line that could be re-written, couldn’t it? It had to have another meaning. It couldn’t be the end. Not really, truly, absolutely . . . The End.

I reached down and scooped him up in my arms. His clothes were damp. He was cold. Cold, cold, cold. And he was heavy; heavier than before.

Before.

Before was over.

I held him the way Dad had sometimes held me: laid across my outstretched arms, his head to my left, his feet to my right. I pulled him close to my chest and kissed his pale forehead. His flesh
was like stone. I swayed a little, back and forth, rocking him gently in my arms.

It wasn’t long before they came. Minutes, seconds maybe. A blur of sounds and motion. Of strokes and rushing air. Of arms and prayers and whispers. The smell of wet hair
and damp skin; the touch of soft palms and warm blankets. The silence. Then the screams.

Before they led me away, I saw Shayne.

His face like the moon at the window, hollow-eyed and silvery. His gaze unconnected to the world, as always. He stared at me from behind the glass – unblinking, blank, empty.

That’s how I remember him. That’s how I’ll always remember him.

He was sitting in the shadow of the chimney. Sergeant Pearce said he’d never seen anyone so at ease at such a height. Like a bird, he said. Like it was his home. He was
taken to the garda station straightaway. Dad tried to keep it all from us and, for a while, he succeeded. But we learned the truth in dribs and drabs, from half-heard conversations and snatched
sentences. He’d wheeled Kev to the churchyard, taking care to lock the gate. Then he’d lifted him, still sleeping soundly, from his pushchair. He’d held him with one arm, his
little head slumped over his shoulder, and stepped up easily onto the strong, low branches of the copper beech.

And when he’d climbed as high as he could go, far up inside the dark web of leaves and branches where he felt safe and sure . . . he let him fall.

That’s what he said.

It wasn’t an accident. He didn’t slip. There was no sudden stumble. He just . . . let him fall.

And when he picked him up from the ground, he heard me rattling at the gates, calling out Kev’s name. It had been that quick.

When I was gone, he took off home on his bike in the dark, carrying Kev’s lifeless body bundled up inside his jacket. He’d waited in the lane, watching me run across the green, only
speeding off when he was sure I’d reached our door. Mam and Dad, coming up the hill in the car with the bag of Easter eggs from Auntie Cissy, must’ve only missed him by seconds.

The doctor’s examination showed there were no broken bones in Kev’s body. Not one. Because he was asleep – a deep, deep sleep after all the crying that he’d done –
he’d been completely relaxed. But he’d fallen on his head and his brain had died and his insides had all been shaken up.

The one thing Dad did tell us was that his death had been instant and there was never any chance he could’ve been saved. I suppose he thought that might’ve made us feel better. But
it didn’t. Not at all.

Father Feely stayed with us into the early hours of Monday morning and convinced Mam and Dad to have the funeral as soon as possible. He said it was better for everyone concerned if the matter
was dealt with quickly. If these things drag on, he said, it only prolongs the tragedy. I doubt if Mam even heard what he was saying. Dad had woken her up when Kev had been found – against
Sergeant Pearce’s advice – and although she seemed sort of aware of what had happened, she was muzzy and confused and she didn’t really understand.

Dad went along with Father Feely and a Mass of the Holy Angels was arranged for the Tuesday morning. Before he left, Father Feely gathered us around in the sitting room to say some prayers for
Kev. Mam sat on the couch and stared into the deadened fireplace, her hands like withered lilies in her lap. Mel, Sandra and I knelt on the carpet and cried silently as we listened. At one point,
Dad looked over at us with a sort of panic in his eyes like he’d no idea where he was or who any of us were. Then he bowed his head and started to shiver so bad we could hear his teeth
chatter.

Kev was taken straight from the doctor’s to the funeral home. We never saw him again. We didn’t get time to accept he was dead. We should’ve had time to hold him, to stroke his
cheeks and tell him how much we loved him and maybe save a lock of his jet-black hair.

Father Feely was wrong; it wasn’t better that way.

The church was packed for the funeral. Liz stayed away. I suppose it wouldn’t have been right for her to go. Almost everyone else from Hillcourt Rise was there. It was clear they were all
upset, but they mostly kept their distance from us after it was over. None of them really knew what to say. Bridie stood beside me for a moment on the steps of the church, dabbing her eyes with a
lacy handkerchief, and I got the feeling she hoped I might collapse into her arms. But I turned my face away. I was glad we’d become distant.

Paddy and Clem shook Dad’s hand. Nora and Geraldine made sympathetic faces. They meant well, I suppose, but none of it seemed real to me. I think they all knew we’d be gone soon
enough and there was no point in wasting too much energy trying to be supportive. Our arrival had upset the way things had been run in Hillcourt Rise, and the sooner we were gone, the sooner
everything could get back to normal. We should never have expected we were going to slot ourselves into the tightly knit grouping that had existed for years before we came. Eamon and Mona hovered
at the edge of the crowd with David and the twins. They looked over but came no closer, and were gone before we drove away.

Mam didn’t want Kev buried in Kilgessin graveyard. Apart from it being the place where he disappeared, there was nobody there, she said, to look after him. She wanted him
in Wicklow, where her own mother and father were buried, so, after the funeral, we made our way there. Once through the city, we drove past Bray and Greystones and on down twisty, green tunnels of
winding country roads, where the spring sun flashed through the trees and the hedgerows were splashed with clumps of yellow primroses.

I went in Uncle Con’s car, with Trevor and Auntie Cissy. Trevor sat beside me in the back and had a pocketful of cough drops he kept insisting on offering me. I said ‘no
thanks’ every time but it didn’t stop him asking.

Mam clung to Dad in the graveyard. She could barely stand up. Sandra and I held hands and Uncle Con kept his arm around Mel. Auntie Cissy walked on her own, ahead of everyone else, like she was
showing us what to do. I suppose because it was only six months since she’d buried her husband, she felt she knew more about grief than the rest of us. We had to wait a while for Father
Feely. He apologized for being late, saying his car wasn’t up to the ‘narrow boreens’.

None of the neighbours made it down for the burial. I thought maybe Bridie might’ve asked Father Feely for a lift, but he arrived alone. Not that I really cared if she was there, but it
would’ve been nice if she’d made the effort. I heard Father Feely telling Dad later on that nobody from the estate came because they assumed we only wanted family and they didn’t
want to intrude. Dad said that was just an excuse and if they’d really wanted to make it down, they would have, and it wasn’t as if Wicklow was the other side of the world.