Winterwood (4 page)

I knew they'd probably locate her too, the woman from the coach. That was all that was really necessary, I felt.

I didn't return to London. I caught a bus and headed for Wales. To Holyhead and the Rosslare ferry with nothing in my bag
but a few bits of clothes, along with everything I'd collected about Ned Strange from the mountain.

I rented a bedsit in Portobello, on the south side of Dublin city, beside the canal, pragmatically — thankfully — using a
false name, just in case things began to turn awkward. In the nights I'd stagger home from the pub and telephone these random
numbers, rambling incomprehensibly about
The Snowman,
hanging up after hearing the voice of some confused and near-distraught housewife. It was stupid. I'm aware of that. But when
you're wounded by betrayal, every single sinew in your body is stretched tight.

It's like at any moment you expect to detonate.

That was how I was feeling when, quite out of the blue, one day I picked up a copy of the
Sunday Independent
and found myself staring at a shockingly familiar face. It was Ned Strange. His photograph covered half the front page. I
would be perturbed, to say the least, by what I was about to read. He had hanged himself, apparently, in the shower of Arbour
Hill prison, while incarcerated there for the sexual abuse and murder of a young boy. I remembered the name and the minute
I read it I went cold all over, and remembered the heart-warming words:

—I'm the bestest friend of Ned.

It was the little boy with the freckles who'd helped him feed his chickens:
Michael Gallagher!

The subsequent account made me physically ill. To the extent that, when I had read the last sentence, I experienced this sense
of some awful burden being lifted. As though the air all about me suddenly smelt sweeter. Just for having finished the thing.
An irrational impulse impelled me to telephone Catherine, who was living in Rathfarnham now, to tell her about the horrific
article. It was as though I felt it might elevate me in her eyes.

I became embarrassed then when I reflected on that thought, just standing blankly there on the landing, abstractedly clutching
the Bakelite receiver.

I had a few drinks that Sunday, then went back to the bedsit when my money ran out. I'll never forget that day as long as
I live. All I remember is standing there on the landing sensing instantly that something was wrong. The sodden smell began
filling up my nostrils - the familiar choking odour of Olson's book
The Heart's Enchantment.
I dropped the keys and froze to the marrow when I heard his voice, the softest of whispers. I turned then and saw him, his
heavy frame suffused with a pallid spectral light, standing there smoking in the embrasure of the window, staring blankly
out across the city. He lowered the cigarette slowly and faced me, his lip curling with unmistakable disdain.

—You were going to phone her, weren't you? he sneered.

Then he did the oddest thing: smiled in a warm and affectionate way, as he opened his hand, revealing a small bar of chocolate.
He extended his hand, offering it to me.

—I always like to bring a bar, he whispered mockingly, snapping off a square. Pushing it between his lips as he said:

—You've made a big mistake, Redmond. You just don't realise yet how big.

A few pieces of silver tinfoil fluttered to the floor as he drew in his breath and sucked his teeth in a parody of regret.

—It really is lovely, Redmond. You ought to have had some. You will though, you will one day.

I couldn't bear it. I wanted him to go. I was even prepared to abjectly plead:

—Please, Ned!

But when I looked again, he was gone and it was as though he had never been there. There was nothing but the curtain, blowing
ever so gently.

Just wavering there in the gentle night breeze, as the last faint wisps of the smoke wafted out into the moonlight, breaking
up somewhere across the night city sky.

Whenever I'm walking by the canal, I'll often think of that night and just how debilitating, how emotionally draining it had
been. It had affected me so deeply, not just for days afterwards but weeks, as I reproached myself constantly for my humiliating
lack of resolve. The words 'Please, Ned!' returned to plague me - despite the fact that the occurrence was nothing more than
a manifestation of my internal difficulties. I vowed never to return to that bedsit. I left without giving any notification,
abandoning most of my possessions, apart from my 'folklore' papers regarding Ned.

I was fortunate enough to find a cheap place in a gentlemen's hostel, some miles away, across the river in Drumcondra. I know
it seems rash but I never regretted it. It allowed me some space and some time in which to think. In retrospect, I think it
was wise. Essential, even. There was nothing else I could realistically have done.

It's nothing to worry about, I'd persuade myself, such irrational perceptions are common, even predictable, in times of emotional
turmoil. I'd persuade myself: It's just a symptom.

I couldn't afford for it to be anything else.

My lodgings as it turned out were streets ahead of the place in Portobello - bright and airy and, in fact, considerably cheaper.
It was inconceivable to me that my previously highly strung state could possibly persist in surroundings which were so unthreatening
and congenial and suited to my needs. That was how it, unquestionably, seemed. At last, I felt, I'd made a worthwhile decision.

Which is why, some nights later, I could have cried when I awoke with a start. The smell was in the room again - the very
same damp and sickening smell. He raised the stogie slowly to his lips, standing there watching me at the end of the bed.

—Red, he whispered, I've come to ask you something. Do you remember that song I was playing the very first day you came? To
Slievenageeha, I mean?

—Yes, I said.

—Did it mean anything to you?

I didn't understand. I shook my head. I could feel the cold sweat beginning to spread right across my body.

—No, I replied.

—No, he mimicked, quite bitterly.

He breathed in, then out.

—Do you even remember then what it was?

I had to confess I didn't. I couldn't think straight. I was overcome with trepidation.

—No, I repeated, almost shamefully.

His voice began to rise out of the still and silent gloom, as he delivered the song in the style of 'high lonesome'. It sounded
hopelessly plangent, desperately lonely.

Here we both lie in the shade of the trees My partner for ever just him and me How long will we lie here O Lord who can tell?
Till the winter snow whitens the high hills of hell.

He remained silent for a long time afterwards. Then he said:

—Does it still mean nothing then, Redmond? Well, does it?

He shifted a little, sliding his hand deep into his pocket.

—I want to lie beside you, Redmond, he said.

He moved across the floor, edging closer to the bed.

—Would you like some chocolate, Redmond? Here, go on - have a bar.

He forced himself on me - there was nothing I could do. Had his way that awful night, flashing his incisors as he pressed
the chocolate into my hand.

—There's a good boy, he said. Eat your chocolate for Uncle Ned.

The tinfoil pieces drifted to the floor as tears of shame came coursing down my cheeks.

Afterwards, he made it clear that it hadn't cost him a thought. He casually brushed the sweat from his forehead, buttoning
his trousers with the wet stogie dangling from his lips.

—That will give you something to think about, my friend. And don't get ideas about reporting it to anyone. They'll only think
it's your imagination. They'll say you're telling tales. Fanciful yarns like you'd hear on the mountain. So don't waste your
time. Let's keep it between us just you and me.

His eyes danced with roguish black mischief as he said:

—Here, this might help you. Prepare you for what is going to happen.

He threw something on to the table and was gone without a sound. I climbed, trembling, from the bed. It was an old box camera
photograph: a faded image of a little boy, standing in a hayfield on a sunny day, with the black cutout of the mountain rising
in the distance, crested by tall pines. He was smiling from ear to ear - a shock of red curls hanging down over his face.
I flipped it in my hand and tried not to shiver as I read the words:

—For Little Red, the loveliest boy.

I found myself staring into my own eyes. It had been taken in the mountains many years before, when I was little more than
eight years of age. My Uncle Florian's handwriting was barely legible now, after all the time that had passed. I couldn't
wrench my gaze away. The damaged innocence and hope in those eyes reminded me of nothing so much as the expression of Michael
Gallagher, the boy who'd trusted and treasured Ned Strange as a friend, only to find himself rewarded in the most horrific
way imaginable — sexually assaulted, then brutally murdered. I found myself wishing I had never known Ned Strange. Had never
gone near him, or had anything to do with him.

I didn't leave that room for days. I just kept waiting —knowing that sooner or later he'd return.

He didn't. All you could hear was the window rattling, and the sound of murmuring voices downstairs.

I carried the photograph everywhere with me now. I kept expecting to turn a corner and find him waiting, patiently raising
the stogie to his lips. As he looked at me without flinching, stroking his beard with that chilling, teasing patience.

—Something dreadful is going to happen, Redmond, something really and truly dreadful. And when it happens, believe me, you'll
know.

The streets were cluttered with stilt-walkers and jugglers some protest to do with political prisoners. Drums pounded and
bugles blared and an enormous papier mache green and yellow caterpillar went curving past me, making its way in the direction
of Mount Street.

At times, I'd find myself sitting in some cafe or half-empty pub, when, all of a sudden, a sensation of the deepest
alarm
would grip me, as though about to usher in an event of potentially deadly significance. To be classified into perpetuity as:
the disappearance of the photographl

A self-evidently illogical notion which, routinely, would manifest itself as folly when, almost numb with fear, I'd reach
inside my pocket and locate it there within its folds, where it had been since morning, safe and secure.

I cannot begin to describe the immensity of the relief triumph, even, which coursed through my body on such testing occasions.

I began, however, to fear that such impressions — erroneous though they might be — would soon begin to extend to all sorts
of other areas. That I might, eventually, have to learn the whole world anew: so unfamiliar might things soon become. And
there appeared to be no resources available to me to draw on to counter it. Adrift in a land of exaggerated hypotheses, I'd
lean over the toilet bowl and get sick once more. Repeating like some meaningless mantra:

—I call myself Dominic Tiernan now but my name is actually Redmond Hatch. I'm Redmond Hatch and I live in Drumcondra. Drumcondra
is in Dublin. I used to be married and I used to have a daughter. My daughter's name was Imogen and my wife's name was Catherine.
Catherine and Imogen live in Dublin. They live in Dublin in Ireland in Europe. The road they live on is Ballyroan Road, Rathfarnham.
I had found that out by calling up her sister and pretending she'd won a travel competition. It was devious, I know, something
which might be expected from the likes of Ned Strange. But I had to do
somethingl

I had to do
something!.

I couldn't believe it the first time I went out to Ballyroan, especially when I saw the little orchard out the back. I waited
to see if Immy would come out. She didn't. I took a taxi to Rathmines and sat for hours in the Sunset Grill, trying to eat
a Knickerbocker Glory. I couldn't. Then I went up to Cowper Road. It was awful, standing there looking in foolishly through
the window — thinking of Catherine reading by the fire, listening to John Martyn as she serenely turned each page.

When we went to London first, Catherine and me, the life we lived was a kind of fairy tale, really. With your firstborn it's
always different. You'll always hear people saying that. I can't comment, however, because - well, I'm never going to know
about that now, am I?

No, I'll never know as we never got to have a second child. We had often talked about having a son. We had even extensively
discussed his name. Owen he was going to be called. If he had ever managed to get born, that is. She said that things had
changed between us. That my moods had altered with my lack of success. That she considered it somewhat risky — bringing a
child into a situation that was unstable. Both financially and emotionally, she said. Giving me that look, which had become
so familiar. Which once had said:

—I love you.

But now said:

—Now I'm not so sure.

But Christmas 1987, I remember as being really extra-special. Catherine had never looked more beautiful. In the rise of her
bloom, as Ned had once remarked about Annamarie Gordon, when he'd told the story about her and him by the river. Where the
two of them had gone on that precious day of
The Heart's Enchantment.

Some of the things he said could really fool you - win you over and have you at his mercy.

—
The Heart's Enchantment,
he would say, abstractedly, that unique day of the heart's enchantment when I looked in her eyes and she looked in mine. When
we knew we were going to be together for ever.

In the early days of marriage, it's like simple things, they've got this power to fill your entire heart full of love. After
the initial debacle with the
North London Chronicle,
Catherine could so easily have grumbled and moaned, and made things really very difficult indeed. But never - not once did
I ever hear that woman complain. On special occasions, in Victoria Wine, they'd give her champagne or cigars as a perk.