Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  ‘Oh come now, you don’t look old enough.’

  I found myself blushing. After all I’d heard about Gill, after all I’d imagined him to be, my conversation with him couldn’t have been more pleasant. He was funny, obliging and self-deprecating. Draining his glass, he left it on a ledge beside him.

  ‘Now, what do you want me to sign? Though why you’d want my oul’ scrawl …’

  I scrabbled in my bag and took out my 1998 programme, dropping the bag in the process. Gill dipped and caught it before it hit the floor.

  ‘Oh my God, thanks so much, Mr Gill.’

  ‘It’s Jeremy,’ he said. ‘And it’s no bother. Did you never hear that I used to be a goalie?’

  ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘Oh yes. Parnell United. Under-12s.’

  I laughed, and Gill winked at me.

  ‘I don’t like to talk about it. I’m not the boastful type. So, what about that autograph of yours?’

  I had bought a new pen the day before, one with a rough grip, surmising that there was a better chance of DNA residue being left on such a surface. My hands shook as I tore at the packet and I was starting to feel foolish. He asked for my name again, took trouble with the spelling, and signed the front of the catalogue, as I’d asked.

  ‘Takes me back,’ he said, as he handed me the programme and pen. ‘Good days.’

  I took the pen from him and held it delicately by its end.

  ‘You enjoyed the festival in ’98?’ I asked.

  ‘Fantastic,’ he said, smiling broadly, but colder now. Though he remained standing beside me, he had moved on: my allotted five minutes of charm had come to an end.

  ‘You would have met Deirdre Carney. Such a pity about her,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ Gill said, smiling still but with an almost imperceptible movement in his eyes that led me to believe he knew exactly who I was talking about.

  ‘She died in January, but I figure you would have met her during the ’98 festival,’ I said. ‘She was on the youth jury. Championed your film. Look, here’s a photo.’

  I had the page marked. I flipped it open and held it in front of Gill.

  He inclined his head slightly.

  ‘I don’t remember meeting her. She was ill?’

  ‘Mentally ill for a long number of years. Since 1998, actually.’

  ‘I’m sad to hear that,’ Gill said without a pause. ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘Oh I didn’t know her. Just heard about her death and came across the photo when I took out the old programme in anticipation of your visit.’

  ‘I see,’ Gill said.

  I allowed Gill’s ‘I see’ to hang unanswered. His eyes bored into mine, and he kept smiling that perma-smile, but I was certain that he was scrutinising me to see if I had an agenda or if it had been an innocent remark.

  ‘I hope Finn’s being nice to you?’

  Alice Chambers was by my side. I didn’t know how long she’d been there, or how much she’d heard. Gill broke his gaze. He turned his body to her and it was as if I didn’t exist. He had a magnetic power and a way of turning his attention on and off that left me feeling as if I’d been dropped from a height.

  ‘Couldn’t be nicer,’ he said, his smile a fixed grin. ‘Showtime?’

  ‘Showtime,’ Alice said. ‘It’s this way.’

  With a look at me that could have meant anything, Alice made for a side door marked ‘Staff Only’ that I knew would take them down a descending warren of back stairs and corridors before they re-emerged eventually in the glare of the lights on the huge yawning blackness of the stage. Though I had a ticket for the screening, I’d never be able to sit through it: there was too much to think about. I’d go and watch the introduction, though. I dropped the pen into a fresh plastic bag and made my way down the main stairs to the lobby.

  The house lights were down as I slipped into the stalls. The theatre was packed and I waved away an usher with a torch, signalling that I was only staying five minutes. I had a ticket, so they couldn’t throw me out, but hopefully I’d get away with standing at the back. There was a stifled cheer and a half-hearted round of applause as Alice walked onstage: they weren’t here to see her.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest here this evening …’

  The audience erupted with laughter as first a leg, and then an arm, poked out from the wings; as Alice turned around to see what was happening, they were just as quickly withdrawn. After it had happened a second time, she realised what was going on, laughed and abandoned all attempts at speech-making.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Jeremy Gill.’

  Gill emerged to wild applause and a standing ovation. Hugging Alice as if they were old friends who hadn’t met for years, he took over the presentation, making a flawless, touching speech about how much Cork meant to him and how grateful he was, and would always be, to the city that was the first place to give him a prize, which had allowed him to be nominated for a short film Oscar and that although that shower over in Hollywood hadn’t taken much notice back then they’d seen the error of their ways later. More thunderous applause. Gill ran his hand through his hair and shook his head like he was in a shampoo ad. Without a flicker of nerves, he held the crowd captive and docile. Looking around, I was reminded of those photos of 1950s cinema audiences wearing 3D glasses.

  Alice quizzed Gill on his new film (getting its first showing in Ireland tonight and he couldn’t be happier that it was happening here and there’d be a Dublin premiere later, but the first showing in Ireland was here and that was really important to him). Throwing in the thing about Dublin was pure genius, appealing to the Cork/Dublin rivalry and superiority complex. I thought back to what Sarah-Jane had said, and on my own encounter with him, how he’d been with the ‘most boring woman in the world’, whoever she was: all chat to her until he’d had enough and walked away. Gill seemed to have the extraordinary ability to be whoever he needed to be in any given situation; and that tallied with what Aifric Sheehan and Colm O’Donnell had said: a groper, or a pervert, by their accounts – yet, according to Aifric, Deirdre had experienced a very different side of Gill.

  He handed back to Alice and she told the audience that they were going to show Jeremy’s prize-winning short Another Bad Day at the Office before his new feature. There was more applause and another ovation as Gill and Alice exited the stage. I stayed and watched the short film that I’d last seen on YouTube a few nights ago. Now that I knew, or thought I knew, about Gill, it was deeply disturbing.

  As the credits rolled, I left the dark theatre. Leaning against the wall at the bottom of the staircase outside the door to the stalls, I felt nauseous. I was thinking about Rhona Macbride, the short film’s teenage star. Seeing her talent and youth light up the big screen had crystallised my vague feelings and latent suspicions. What had he done to Deirdre? And what if it wasn’t just Deirdre? What if Gill had hurt Rhona too? And what if he hadn’t stopped with Rhona? What if he had never stopped?

  I walked out of the Opera House, on to Emmett Place, and turned left on to the quay. I crossed the road and walked west along the river to the Shandon footbridge. On the far side was the stepped path that led to Shandon steeple, the four-faced liar it was called, though I could never remember why. A raw north wind was blowing and the water was high and restless and choppy. And as I stood, gripping the handrail, above the spot where my sister had walked to her death, I felt bereft. More than that, I felt utterly powerless.

  16

  It took sleet to rouse me from my lonely vigil. I looked skyward and stuck out my tongue to taste the icy slush. How long had I been standing there? Ten minutes? Twenty? It was time to move. I turned away from the river. With each step I took, the bridge lit up beneath the handrails. Not magic, it was the architect’s joke. It made me smile, usually.

  I crossed the Coal Quay and passed the Bridewell Garda Station – which reminded me that I needed to call my friend Sadie O’Riordan to arrange a meeting. I h
ad the Carneys’ permission to talk to her now. But I couldn’t do any more on the case tonight. I had hit a wall. In the days before Sunday, at a time like this, I would have called Davy and we would have gone for something to eat or watched a film together and I’d have talked a little, never much, about what was bothering me. He had a way of listening that made everything seem okay again. But I was starting to see that my friendship with him was an unfair bargain. I called him when it suited me, avoided him when it didn’t.

  On North Main Street, I took shelter in Bradley’s doorway. I reached into my bag to check my phone. Still nothing from Davy, no contact from him since Sunday, though I had two text messages from my mother, one from Sadie and another from Alice, all asking me to call. I’d leave them till morning. Without thinking too much about it, I texted Davy, one word: ‘Sorry’.

  Aimlessly, I went into Bradley’s. I hadn’t had anything since the latte at lunchtime and, though I didn’t feel like it, I knew that I needed to eat. I wandered around, failing to decide on anything, eventually picking up a Gubbeen salami, one of the finger-thin skinny ones, a box of penne and six tomatoes. I had onions and garlic at home and a few ends of Parmesan. I could make some kind of a sauce out of what I had. Whether I’d eat it or not, I’d decide later. I grabbed a bag of West Cork mixed winter leaves before I went up to pay. Not exactly salad weather, but I wasn’t up to preparing vegetables. I glanced down the back of the shop. Bradley’s has the best range of premium drinks and craft beers in the city. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to get drunk, to forget everything for a while. Mostly, I was glad I didn’t know what I was missing. Maybe, like my birth mother, if I started I wouldn’t stop.

  Back home, I brought the groceries upstairs and left them on the kitchen worktop while I selected music to play. Though, feeling this lonely, it had to be wall-to-wall Gillian Welch. I’d start with Revival, its opening track ‘Orphan Girl’ never more apt, and work my way through. From the moment Dave Rawlings’s guitar started, I began to feel calmer. I took two onions and a head of garlic from the press and poured olive oil into a saucepan. And tried not to think about Davy and Deirdre and Jeremy Gill.

  Hearing a ping, I grabbed my handbag from the sofa where I’d thrown it.

  ‘What exactly are you sorry for?’ Davy’s message said.

  How about that I was sorry for using him? Sorry for being a bad friend? But I wasn’t going to say any of that by text.

  ‘We need to talk. If you’re still talking to me?’

  Pause.

  ‘Might be.’

  A sliver of light.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘Just out of meeting. Need food.’

  Pause.

  ‘Come here. Just home. Making pasta.’

  Pause.

  Pause.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Sure,’ I typed, though I wasn’t.

  ‘We can talk and eat,’ I added, and pressed send.

  Instant reply: ‘See you in 10.’

  I could get the sauce on before he arrived if I worked fast. I chopped the onions and put them on to soften while I crushed garlic and cut the salami into rounds. I put the garlic and the salami into the saucepan with the onions and turned down the heat, giving the fragrant mixture a quick stir. I roughly chopped the tomatoes and left them on the chopping board while I ran down to the yard to get rosemary. I had just broken off a couple of fronds when the doorbell rang. I went to the gate and opened it. Davy had been expecting to be buzzed in from upstairs and my sudden appearance surprised him, though he said nothing at first, then:

  ‘Hey, how’s it going?’

  ‘I was getting herbs,’ I said.

  I waved the rosemary at him in greeting.

  ‘I … I mean, hello, hiya, em, come in.’

  But Davy made no move and I wondered if he’d changed his mind.

  ‘It’s dark here in the lane,’ he said. ‘You should get one of those security lights. If I didn’t know where the door was, I’d have a hard time finding it.’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  That came out all wrong. It sounds like I didn’t want him to find me.

  Silence. Then Davy spoke.

  ‘What you said in the text. Well, I’m sorry too, you know. I shouldn’t’ve just gone off like that on Sunday.’

  The sleet had turned to drizzle and my white shirt was getting soaked as the two of us stood in the circle of light cast by the garden lamp. I felt the buzz between us. It was always there, that electricity, but it seemed stronger now.

  ‘I missed you,’ I said, after a time.

  I turned to walk into the house, afraid I’d said too much. And then I felt Davy’s hand on my shoulder and turned back to him. We were centimetres apart, and I looked up into his eyes, and he looked down at me. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss me.

  ‘I missed you too,’ he said instead.

  I could hardly breathe.

  ‘Now where’s me dinner, missus?’ he said.

  I laughed. And caught my breath.

  ‘Caveman,’ I said, heading for the stairs, Davy following along behind.

  ‘I try,’ he said.

  He was laughing too. It was going to be all right. But something had changed between us, though I didn’t yet know what, or how much.

  Upstairs, I threw the chopped tomatoes in on top of the salami-onion-garlic mix and stirred it all together. I used a mezzaluna to chop the rosemary spikes, and added them to the saucepan along with a little sea salt, a few twists of black pepper and a pinch of sugar. Then I put a pot of water on to boil and put some of the washed leaves into a wooden salad bowl.

  ‘Not long now,’ I said.

  ‘Smells great,’ Davy said. ‘You’re listening to Gillian. Things must be bad, so, are they?’

  ‘Yeah, kinda bad all right. Change the music if you want?’

  ‘Nah, Gillian’s good.’

  Spending time with me meant that Davy inevitably heard a lot of Americana and country music. He tried to like it, though he didn’t get rhinestones and dog songs and Tammy Wynette. And he definitely didn’t get Willie Nelson.

  Without a word, I handed cutlery and napkins to Davy and he brought them to the table, while I followed with glasses and a jug of water. I had positioned the table where it was likely to catch the best light for the longest amount of the day, on the south-west side of the living room. Oval and made of Irish oak, it had been hand-carved to fit the space by Jack Lehane, Sadie’s husband. A matching bench ran along the outer edge of the table, and in summer the windows behind the bench folded back giving access to a balcony, a metre-and-a-half-wide perforated steel ledge with a glass wall and a steel handrail, that circled the tower. On the room side of the table there were four wide oak stools, one at each end and two along the length. The table seated six. It was fully occupied once or twice a year.

  I went back to the kitchen area, a curved island of cupboards, worktop, sink, cooker and fridge. I put on the penne and made a dressing for the salad. The air in the room felt thick and heavy and the pasta was taking for ever. I walked to the far side of the island and looked south-east, towards Douglas and Rochestown and Monkstown and Cork Harbour and the open sea. After a time, I turned towards the stovetop again.

  ‘A watched pot …’ I said, breaking the silence.

  ‘It’ll cook. Anyway, it’s only twenty to ten. Imagine we’re in Seville or somewhere. We’d be eating early, if we were,’ Davy said.

  ‘Gracias. Though, hang on a second, it might be done, I think. Take the salad there and I’ll be over with the pasta.’

  The salami had added substance to the simple sauce. After a couple of bites, Davy said, ‘Tasty,’ like he meant it, and kept on eating. I ate too, more than I’d expected. The rain was heavier now and the drops hammered like warnings on the glass. We had hardly said a word to each other during dinner but I was the one who had asked Davy around, and I had said that we needed to talk. I got up from the table.

  ‘Thanks
for calling in, though, well, what I mean is that, like, now that you’re here I don’t know what to say.’

  I walked to the sofa and sat on the arm. Davy got up from the table and went to the far side of the room. Facing me, and backlit by the city, he had a golden aura. He was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt under an open blue and white checked shirt and his hair was still damp from the rain. And maybe sometime, or somewhere, I might have seen him looking better than he did right now, but if I had, I couldn’t remember.

  I got up and walked to where Davy Keenan was standing. I stood in front of him and put my hands in his hair, and pulled his mouth towards mine.

  17

  Davy wasn’t in my bed when I awoke at 6.30 in the morning. He had gone to work, probably. He often had early morning personal training sessions. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to wake me. Or maybe he regretted what had happened. Maybe I did too, though it hadn’t felt like a mistake at the time. Being with Davy had felt natural. And something else, something I couldn’t identify. I stretched myself full length, arms above my head, and let out a moan. How was I going to get any work done today?

  ‘Finally you’ve stopped snoring,’ Davy said.

  He was standing in the doorway. He had his phone in his hand and, though I couldn’t see his face, his body was lit by the phone’s glow. He was naked.

  ‘I don’t snore,’ I said, and threw a pillow at him. He sidestepped it easily.

  ‘Pathetic effort,’ he said. ‘Anyway, how do you know you don’t snore?’

  He jumped back into bed beside me.

  ‘So I’ve just cancelled my 6.30 and 7.30 clients but I have to teach a circuits class at 9.00. Can you think of anything we could do to pass the time?’

  ‘How about a game of Trivial Pursuit?’ I said.

  As we lingered at the table after breakfast, I explained, withholding names and all identifying information, that I was working on a case that involved a hurt being done to a young girl over ten years before.