“Look Rob…” She waved a hand. “He’s my brother, you know.”
“So?”
“Well, we understand each other in a way. We’re very similar. I remember you used to say that, when we were growing up. You used to say that it was no use asking my opinion on anything because it was always the same as Neil’s.”
“Neil was always your hero. But that was when we were children. Even when we were teenagers Neil chose the films we’d go to see, even where we’d sit. And you always backed him.”
Gemma was scoring the table cloth with the prongs of the fork. She smiled at a thought.
“In primary school I used to drag you up to people and tell them you were the person my brother was going to marry. We were just children but maybe Neil started to believe it himself. Maybe that’s when his obsession started.”
“Some bride. Dirty knees and two front teeth missing.”
“Only in P2,” Gemma corrected. “Your teeth were perfect after that.”
“No, they weren’t. Don’t you remember the classy brace? My teeth were going their own sweet way until my father …”
She stopped. Until her father had seen a possible flaw in his princess and had personally taken her to a private orthodontist. Long drives to the dental clinic. Long, long drives. Robyn’s hand trembled slightly where it lay beside her glass. Gemma spoke softly, misunderstanding.
“I know you must miss him terribly. He was a really good man.” She squeezed Robyn’s fingers. “But life goes on. He wouldn’t have wanted to go on the way he was.” She paused. “And he wouldn’t have wanted you to take so long to get over his death. He would want you to be happy.”
“Would he?”
“Of course he would! Don’t be so daft.”
Beside them, a young couple were shown to their table. Robyn watched them. The girl was wearing a large diamond on her engagement finger. She said something and laughed. The man pretended to disapprove and then kissed the tip of his finger and placed it on the end of her nose. She bit his finger lightly and then they settled to their menus, discussing and pointing.
Gemma pushed her plate. “Let’s give up on these and go for dessert. I’ve just seen something so wicked passing by it could have horns and a tail.”
Gemma got her wicked dessert, but became thoughtful again. Robyn watched her fork chasing a cherry through a swathe of fresh cream. Finally she skewered it and looked up.
“I think,” she said, “that Neil’s trying to help you. He’s worried, because of… what you did before.”
“Did he say that?”
“Sort of. Look…” She was picking her words carefully. This was so unusual that Robyn was almost amused. “We know you had a bad time as a teenager. You were unlucky in the way the hormones hit you. We all want to get you past that once and for all.” Gemma looked sideways at her. “Because it still hangs about, doesn’t it? The blues?”
“I’m fine. I don’t need anybody to worry about me.”
“Yes, you do.” Gemma’s fork was suspended momentarily. “I don’t suppose you could at least think of Neil as more than a friend?”
“You sound like my mother.”
“Yes, well.” Suddenly she became impatient. “For God’s sake, Rob! You’ve never been anyone else’s.”
“Can’t I just belong to myself?”
Gemma looked momentarily puzzled, then tossed her head. “Oh, you know what I mean. Remember that holiday in Scotland just after our A levels? Louise and Tanya and you and me? Our first major break for freedom?”
“I remember the posh hotel we stayed in. We could afford just one night. Waiters in kilts and private chalets in the grounds. Then it was back to B and Bs. What about it?”
“We got chatted up in the hotel bar.”
“Oh yes. That was when Tanya disappeared for the night and never would tell us where she’d been.”
Gemma tapped her nose. “Or what she’d been doing.”
“Anyway?”
Gemma thrust a finger at Robyn. “You disappeared to your room. Half the bar was lusting after you and you took an early night!”
Their coffee arrived.
“What was wrong with that? I was probably tired.”
Gemma rolled her eyes. “Oh Rob, you’re such a serious case! There was a bar full of talent, we were young, free and single and –” she paused for effect – “you wouldn’t even have a bit of a lark.”
Robyn cradled her coffee cup. “How’s the White Knight?”
Gemma blinked at the sudden change of subject. “He’s fine, great, in fact.”
“How would you feel if you discovered Jack had lied about you?”
“I’d be…” Gemma tailed off. She took a gulp of coffee. Like a cat licking its paw after a fall, thought Robyn. She watched as Gemma’s mind changed tack.
“Hey, let’s stop being so heavy!” Gemma giggled. ‘My poor brother. He’s just a man.”
“Maybe that’s his trouble.” Robyn pushed back her chair. “My brother, right or wrong,” she said, crumpling her napkin.
At the taxi rank Gemma got out a compact and redid her lipstick. She snapped it shut.
“So. Are we OK?”
Robyn put a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks, Gem. You really mean well. I know you do. But I just need to be left alone.”
There was one message on her answer phone. She listened to Neil’s first three words and then pressed delete. After wedging the chair behind her door, she lay awake for a long time, looking into the dark.
8
THE BOTANIC GARDENS, an oasis of green parkland between the Ulster Museum and the Victorian grandeur of Queen’s University, were close enough for Robyn to escape into them occasionally. She knew every corner as a student swotting on its lawns and benches.
But this morning it tasted different. As Robyn walked past the ice cream seller with his cart and under the arch of the wrought iron gateway into the Gardens, she knew she had all summer to enjoy this, at any time of the day she chose.
She walked between the trees along the pathway to the great glass bulk of the Palm House. This sunny July afternoon the population of the park was a cross-section of the city. There were families playing, children squealing, toddlers crying, teenagers loitering, older people strolling or feeding the pigeons.
Robyn found an empty bench by the large roundabout of flowers opposite the door of the Palm House. She had brought Heaney’s Beowulf with her but it lay unread in her lap. She loved flowers and they were everywhere, from the beds of pink begonias to the urns at each side of the entrance to the Palm House. Ivy trailed gracefully from the planters and, as they had for decades, the old double doors squeaked every time they were opened.
She had made a decision. She was not going back home this summer. She was going to have one summer away from the memories, the places, the people. It was her Elastoplast, the temporary fix David Shaw had spoken of. She didn’t know what the cure was. But this was a ‘getting by’.
A young man with a ponytail sauntered past, his arm draped around a thin blonde girl in jeans and a skin-tight T-shirt. He whispered in her ear and she giggled. Everywhere Robyn looked she saw couples: happy couples, laughing couples, besotted couples.
Had she the courage to keep on getting by? She certainly had the opportunity. The few people who cared about her seemed to see a way for her so clearly. They meant well. They really did. They would not, could not, understand. How could they, when it was impossible to explain?
She looked at a mother and father who had spread out a rug on the grass. They were obviously enjoying the first steps of their little boy. He was running unsteadily between them, from one pair of arms to the other. Robyn smiled as he bumped down on his round bottom and chuckled.
But the few who said they cared about her knew only some of it. They didn’t know it all. They wanted her to settle into safety, have children. They didn’t know that the very thought made her sick.
Deep down, the anger still squatted, an impassable boul
der. Crouching, invisible, silent, potent. Deep frozen, covered in smiles, disguised in excellence.
She decided to walk across the grass towards the Museum.
Two things happened at once. A frisbee flew past her ear and something soft but heavy collided with her legs. Steadying herself, she looked down into the one good eye of a yellow Labrador, who bounced on happily and tumbled onto the frisbee in a heap of paws and ears.
A voice that she knew was quick to apologise. “Sorry. He’s got only one eye and he doesn’t always judge things right.”
She waited while he came up to her. He looked fresh, bright in denims and a short sleeved checked shirt.
“It’s OK,” she said. “What happened to his eye?”
The dog had dropped the frisbee on the ground and was panting hopefully beside it. David picked it up and spun it away again before answering.
“We don’t know. He was abandoned as a pup in a cardboard box on our doorstep one night. The vet tidied up the eye, but the sight was messed up for good.”
The dog came back and held up the frisbee again. Robyn bent to pat him. “What’s his name?”
“Manna.”
“Manna? What sort of a name’s that?”
“It’s the stuff the Children of Israel were given to eat in the desert. You know – manna.”
“I’ve heard of that manna. But a dog’s name?”
“They found manna on the ground and nobody knew what it was. Same as him.” He nodded at the dog.
“Ah! I see. Very apt then.”
They stood for a moment. Robyn waited for him to move on but he seemed reluctant. He looked over her head and asked: “So. How are you? Now?”
She started walking again, back across the grass the way she had come. She should not have let down her guard that night. She reached the path and discovered he was still beside her. She tried to sound dismissive.
“I’m fine.”
“Good.”
She glanced up at him and caught his eye. His sudden smile turned a key. A calm settled on her as he fitted his steps to hers and stubbornly stayed with her.
“I’m trying the Elastoplast idea,” she said.
“Is it working?”
“It’s only just been applied.”
David threw the frisbee. A cluster of pigeons scattered and gathered again. One pigeon seemed to bob more than the others as it walked, hobbling on one foot. The other leg ended in a stump.
Robyn nodded at it. “I wonder what happened to that one.”
“No-one can warn the pigeons.”
She looked at him questioningly. He explained.
“I heard an ambulance driver once. He was retired and talking about his work in Belfast in the ’70s.” They had walked on a few paces before he continued. “One day he was called to a street where a bomb had turned a shop full of people into a pile of rubble. He was digging with his bare hands. He lifted a pile of bricks and there was a pigeon, covered in dust and plaster. Its head was a bloody pulp.” He paused again. “The man said it was weird. He was looking for pieces of people and still he could get upset that a three minute warning is no good to a pigeon.”
She was silent. There was nothing to say to that. Then tentatively, she asked, “Did your family lose anyone in the Troubles?”
He shook his head. “No. Yours?”
“No relatives. Some friends.”
“Anybody close?”
“No, but…” Thoughts were flowing. “Sometimes I feel as if I’m hurtling through space and there’s a meteor shower all around me. I’m flying along with these rocks and boulders whooshing past. And I think: one of these is going to hit me soon. It has to.”
She had never said that to anyone before. When she sneaked a look, he was nodding slowly as he walked. He had a quietness about him, she noticed, turning things over, taking his time. It was rare, the knowledge that you don’t always have to say something.
They would reach the gates soon. She sat on a bench. With a moment’s hesitation, he sat also. Manna settled at his feet. David tapped the book that she set down beside her.
“I bet I know who gave you that. He doesn’t do English, right?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
There was a silence. The calmness had not left Robyn. Then he said: “You’re popular, you know.”
“Is this another piece of Elastoplast?”
He grinned. “Why not?”
“OK. But tell me why somebody like me is popular? Hard to believe.”
“Who’s ‘somebody like me’?” She didn’t answer that, although he waited, watching her. Then he said: “You care. You care about what you’re teaching. And you care about who you’re teaching.” He rubbed the dog’s side with his foot. “It shows.”
“I… get by, I suppose.”
“Chloe told me about you doing Fire and Ice with her class.”
“Robert Frost.”
“Great poem. It hisses and spits.”
On the grass opposite, a father was stooping to hold his wriggling toddler while he wiped the remains of an orange lollipop from her cheek.
“That’s a great description,” said Robyn. “You should steal it and use it in your exam.”
He smiled. “OK.”
A group of girls in their early teens came along the path, bunched in gossip. One, with a beaded red strand in her hair and a nose stud, nudged the girl beside her. The group slowed to study David. His gaze skidded across them unseeing. Elbows on knees, he pulled at the Labrador’s ears absently. He was still gnawing at some thought. Then:
“I think ice is good after fire. It stops the burns hurting. It’s like an anaesthetic.” He gestured with one palm upwards, “But it has to hurt again.”
“Not if we stay in the ice. Remember the last lines?”
He sat up then and turned towards her. “But you can’t heal while you’re frozen. You have to let yourself hurt again.”
Where did the ‘you’ come from? She looked around, the calmness sucking away like the sea before a tidal wave. All of a sudden, she was amazed that she was having this conversation, in this place and with this person. The tidal wave crashed in and made her sharp.
“How would you know? You should get a bit of experience before you start handing out the medicine.”
He bent his head. Sinews rippled along his forearms as his fists clenched. A cloud passed and the sun danced across the waves of his hair. It needed cut, she noticed. Dark tufts just grazed the collar of his shirt. His deep set eyes were in shadow as he stood. The dog bounced round him, overjoyed.
“Indeed. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.” He turned and walked quickly towards the park gates.
Damn! Damn! Damn! She hit the bench in a fury at herself. Why did she do that? Why did she spoil it? She stood abruptly and took two steps after him.
“David!”
At first she thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he slowed for a few paces before turning, planting his feet apart in a posture like a challenge. She searched for words, his puzzled anger palpable across the space.
“I suppose your dog…” She swallowed. “Manna. I suppose you take him for a walk every morning?”
Pigeons fussed along the path between them. A skateboarder chopped through and they flapped and scolded in annoyance. She waited.
Finally he said: “Most days.”
Then he turned his back and walked away.
Sweat sprang out on Angus Fraser’s temples. Easy does it. He moved the mouse carefully. Click that. Select that. OK.
A breath stopping moment and then a photograph filled the screen. Ah! lovely. He had caught her in mid step, the full gypsy skirt – reds, greens, blues – brushing her calves as she walked.
Click. Even from the rhododendron bank, he had captured her, three-quarter face, head and shoulders. She was looking to her right, at the big Shaw guy who had appeared out of nowhere. God help him. She would chew him up and spit him out when she had finished with him. Except she wouldn’t risk her barely started
career by doing something so stupid.
He magnified the left side of her face. The camera had caught the porcelain cheek, the soft jut of the high cheekbone, the exquisite quality of her dark hair. He had never seen hair like it. He touched the screen with the back of his fingers, stroking down the image of the long strands. This was beautiful; heavy, shining like a mirror.
He had taken some more distant shots of her sitting alone after the big guy and the dog had gone. Just as he considered approaching, she had shouldered her bag and walked away briskly. He had decided to let her go – for now.
The Shaw household was quiet. David lay on the sofa in the den, his extra length ending in bare feet draped over the padded arm. The TV remote lay on his stomach and he jabbed it fitfully, channel hopping. He was alone in the house. His mother had been called to the hospital and his father was at a church leaders’ meeting.
There had been a minor scene earlier. David appreciated the fact that the scenes in this house rarely went beyond minor. He knew from the stories his friends told that his own home environment was a comparatively peaceful one. While his relationship with his father could be uneasy, he had nevertheless been brought up with a combination of logic and reason, where points of view, including his own, were respected. They could be hotly debated, and often were. But they were always respected. He was fortunate in where he had been placed on this earth. He felt very far from deserving it.
He swung his feet to the floor. His mother had not wanted his father to go out tonight.
“You know you must ease up on your commitments, Vincent,” she had scolded as she folded a pile of towels, clean from the dryer. “And I want you to go for a check-up.” She was petite, her movements quick and precise.
“Elizabeth, stop fussing,” her husband replied impatiently. “You prodded that stethoscope of yours over me and that’s enough. I’m married to a check-up.”
“No, you are not. I’m not a cardiologist.” She waved a hand in his direction. “You’re an economist – do I ask you about ancient monuments just because they come under the Civil Service too?”
He tried to pacify her. “I’m as fit as a fiddle. Honest!”
Healer of My Heart Page 6