Theo felt guilty. Christ, he shouldn’t have put this on her. He owed her everything and here he was, causing her more headaches.
“He’s called Gerrity. You might have seen his name in the papers. He’s never been done for anything but he’s sailed pretty close to the wind a few times. Been linked to some rough behaviour but they never get him and they never will. He’s too smart, too sure of himself but that’s not a weakness like it is for some people. Makes him more untouchable, like some kinda bandy-legged Al Capone.”
He was trying to make her laugh, trying to take the sting out of what he now realised sounded more damning than he’d originally thought. Should he get out of Dublin, like Neville? Surely, it’d all die down after a while? It wasn’t like he was the only one selling Gerrity’s product. Young Tommy, Ronan, they’d all be raring to take his place. And he didn’t want to leave Cara now. She was the only thing keeping him tethered, away from all that white space above his head where he’d drift forever if he lost contact with the ground.
“So what’s your plan now? You can’t hang out here with me all your days,” Cath said. “Why don’t you move? Go to another town? You could even go and spend some time with Sheila and Jim. They said they haven’t seen you in yonks.”
Theo nearly groaned out loud. He loved Cath but he didn’t want her to start trying to save him again. Nobody should be saved more than once or they’d collapse under the weight of it. But she wasn’t done yet.
“I didn’t traipse through the mud there in Tanzania and risk my career and do all that endless paperwork, so you could just end up the same as every other good-for-nothing loser in Dublin.”
She was leaning over the table now, her blue eyes riveted on his, her mouth tight with disapproval. So, all that quiet before had been her working herself up to this, he thought. Still, he knew he had it coming.
“You are one of the lucky ones, you eejit. One of the kids who made it out of the village, and I know, I know,” her voice fell now, “how awful that sounds after everything you went through but you got a chance to move on. Theo, you are the only good thing I can be sure and certain I did during twenty long years as an aid worker. Don’t you let me down now.”
Theo met her glare full on.
“I don’t want to let you down but I don’t owe you any more, Cath. This is my life. Yeah alright, it’s the life you gave me but then the deal was just to fit in. So I have and I am who I am now. Wasn’t that what ye all wanted?”
Even as he pushed out the words, Theo wondered where they were coming from. And there was also a voice whispering in his head: ‘It’s not the whole truth, Theo. You can’t just lay this on everyone else. You looked for these bad men. They didn’t come looking for you.’ Fair enough, but Cath didn’t need to know all that. Cath just needed to know that she couldn’t save him again and that it wasn’t her job to try any longer.
“I’ve done what I could, what I thought you all wanted me to do. I tried to forget where I came from. I tried to forget it all: the mud, the birds screeching over the bodies, the smell. I tried to forget who I am. But you know what, Cath, maybe you saved the wrong child. Why didn’t you pick one whose father wasn’t one of the killers? That boy or girl might’ve made a better fist of this than me. Maybe I didn’t deserve to be saved. Did you ever think of that? Maybe what my father did was so bad, I can’t be good and I don’t deserve this life. Maybe, I’m just like him. Maybe I’m just a weak fucker underneath. Maybe that’s our problem here. You took me to a new world, Cath, but I have another world, another past, and another fucking fate stuck inside me, and it doesn’t matter how far I run, I can’t get away from it. I will always be my father’s son.”
He was almost shouting now. Cath put down her cup and placed her hand over his.
“What are you talking about, Theo? You told me you thought your whole family had been killed? What are you going on about?”
He’d gone too far, but again, it was too late now to go back.
“I didn’t tell you at first because I didn’t remember. I wasn’t able to figure it out, what I’d seen. Nothing made sense. I’d no home, no family, I was running through the bush, eating bugs or roots, and then hiding in the mud with the others. I was scared and I’d no idea what had happened. I’d no idea why they were killing us all. No child could ever understand that. I don’t even understand it now. And then when you found me, you remember, Cath? I didn’t say anything for weeks.”
She nodded.
“You just followed me around, quiet as a mouse. I kept trying to leave you in the… What did they call it? Oh yeah, ‘child-friendly space’. Terrible name. Like there were any child-friendly spaces in that place then. But you wouldn’t stay. I’d turn around at some point and you’d be there, squatting, looking at me. I remember the first day you put your hand in mine,” she said, rubbing his fingers.
“So, okay. Tell me exactly what you remember now.”
He owed her that, at least.
“I’ve only remembered bit by bit and I don’t have the full story yet, but I’ve enough. We’d been walking for hours, then we were in a ditch. I remember that because I couldn’t understand why my father would crouch down in a ditch. When you’re a kid, your father’s the boss, right? So I didn’t understand. And then, the next bits are very… broken. There were lights and shouting. Maybe someone came and found us. I think I was still in the ditch. I must’ve been because I couldn’t see everything. But I saw Shema – I told you about him, the Tutsi who worked for us – he was looking at me, scared out of his wits. And then I saw my father and he had a machete in his hands and it was raised up, against the light, like this. I couldn’t see his face, I just saw his shape, and the machete in his hand, and then… well, when I close my eyes even to this day,” and he closed his eyes now, “I see Shema’s face again, and I know, I know Cath, that he’s begging me to save him but I can’t do anything. And then I’m alone.”
He opened his eyes again.
“I never saw any of them again. I must’ve run away so I don’t know what happened. I was scared. Maybe my father killed Shema to save us because the others, whoever they were, would’ve known he was a Tutsi and killed him anyway. Maybe he thought that if he killed Shema, they’d let the rest of us go, even my mother, even though she was a Tutsi too. We all had our papers with us, except my mother because hers would’ve been a death sentence. The tribe you were from was written on your ID card. Ubwoko, that’s what it was called.”
The word came from nowhere. It shocked him, ringing through his head. Ubwoko. Reducing individuals to a collective. The first step towards wiping people out. He pushed the word back under all the other words he had buried deep in his mind.
“The killers would’ve known that my mother was a Tutsi just by looking at her. Once, they stopped us, there was never really any way out for her. Can you imagine what that does to your soul, to know you have to die just because of your race? They say a lot of people just accepted it all, like it was too big to fight. A lot of people didn’t even run, they just waited to be killed. Maybe my father realised he could do nothing except save himself.”
He stopped. He felt absolutely wrecked. He could hear the traffic outside, a plane heading into Dublin airport overhead.
Cath walked to the back window, came back and sat down. Her eyes were too bright. He tried not to notice.
“Still having the nightmares?” she said.
He nodded.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could wave a wand and make it all go away. You know, I can still see here,” and she took his face between her hands, “the little boy who looked up just as we were driving past that day. God, but it was muddy. D’ye remember? I don’t know what made me look out the window at that moment and see you but I did. And maybe it was arrogant of me to think I could take you out of there – I’ve been called a ‘white saviour’ time and again, God knows, and not in a good way – but I’m still glad I did. And I hope to God you are too.” She said the last bit in a softer voice.
“Of course, I am,” he whispered.
Without Cath, he would most likely have died, from hunger or cholera or just neglect. But survival wasn’t really a noun. It was a verb. You had to keep doing it.
“I’m not going to pretend I know what you’re feeling, Theo. That’d be insulting. But I’m trying my best. I do get that you are confused and, sure, that’s normal for lads your age, I think.”
She had the grace to laugh. She came round to his side of the table and put her hands on his shoulders.
“I do think though that you need to know for sure what happened. It’s no use thinking you know, you need to really know. And okay, you were too young to maybe even understand what you were seeing that day. God knows, even a grown-up wouldn’t necessarily have understood. I didn’t and I didn’t understand what I saw in Kenya either but we’re not going to go into that now. What I’m trying to say is there’ll be records. They’ve had all these trials now in those gacaca courts. Have you heard about them?”
Theo nodded. “Gacaca,” he said. “The soft grass. Yeah, I’ve heard of those.”
He didn’t tell her he’d tried to watch a film on YouTube showing the gacacas at work but he couldn’t. The language, the voices, the sounds in the background and the people, in all their realness: it was too much. It spun him around so fast, he didn’t know where he was. He’d had to shut the computer down, slamming it closed on the faces that were made up of bits of his own face, and his mother’s face, and Clément’s, and his father’s, and Shema’s.
“I’ve a friend who’s been working with one of the international groups monitoring the courts. He’s still in Kigali helping the government to archive the testimonies. Let me get in touch with him, see what he says. We couldn’t find any record of your family at the time but maybe there’ll be new information now. If nothing else, we could try to fill in the blanks. Like you said, there might’ve been a reason. Do you want me to do that, Theo? Do you think that’ll help at all?”
Why not? He nodded.
“And maybe you’d want to consider going back one day, just for a visit, like. They say that can help, going back to go forward.” She paused, picked up the cups and headed to the sink. “It’s just an idea.”
“I don’t know about that, Cath. But you’re right. I need to do something. I’m not saying going back is the answer, but I’ll think about it. Okay?”
He meant it but he knew too that the shrinks weren’t always right: going back could just mean going back. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time.
“Damn, sorry Cath, I’ve got to make tracks. I’m meeting Ca… a friend out at Sutton. Going for a walk.”
“A lady friend?” Cath said, smiling now.
She was probably relieved to get shot of him after all that.
“Is it still that Nigerian girl, what was her name? Sheila told me. Was it Pretty?”
“Precious. No, she left me. She found the drugs in the flat and walked straight out. Did me a favour actually. Made me think. The problem is I haven’t been doing enough of that for a while, Cath.”
“Look, don’t be too hard on yourself,” she said. “You’ve done well so far. Others would’ve crumbled but look at you. You’re smart, you’ve got talents – alright, some of them are not quite legal, but anyway. For God’s sake, you’re only twenty-two. So you’ve hit a bad patch. We all messed up. We didn’t think there were different stages to this game. Now, you’ve got to pick yourself up and move on. It’s the only way, Theo.”
As he shut the door behind him, Theo thought she might have a point. But then again, no matter how far he moved on, he’d still be carrying all of this around in his head. There was no escaping those demons.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cara was waiting on the road outside Saint Fintan’s Church, her hair live-wired by the wind that was whipping the waves up like egg whites in a bowl. Every time Theo saw her, he was newly surprised and ashamed again at how plain and meek he’d thought her when they first met. Just goes to show, he thought. Sometimes it’s just because you don’t look properly.
She’d gone home since leaving his flat and was now wearing a pair of black jeans and a short-sleeved black jumper. She was carrying a denim jacket over her arm. She looked like a song.
“I was beginning to think I was just a one-night stand,” she said.
“What d’you mean?” he said, putting his arm round her shoulders and leading her across the road.
“Well, ye were late so I figured you weren’t interested any more since ye’d got me into bed.”
She was smiling and blushing and so very bloody dathúil. He stopped, pulled her to him and kissed her. In that long moment of contact, he felt like a future was possible. Even for him.
“Sorry, I got chatting to Cath and I sort of lost track of the time.”
They walked along a path that ran just above the grassy dunes edging the mud-and-sand of the bay. The tide was out and seagulls pimpled the sheened sand-water between them and the sea. The grey mound of North Bull Island curved on the horizon.
“This is a gorgeous place,” Cara breathed. “I’d love to have grown up around here. Did ye come down to the beach much when you were small?”
“Jim and I came a lot, mostly on Sunday afternoons. I remember the first time, I was so green. I mean I’d seen the sea before. From the plane when Cath took me from Rwanda, and then on the flight over here from Paris. But I’d never been close to it. I was scared out of my wits by the sound. It must’ve been spring because it wasn’t long after I got here. I remember standing just over there, you see that bend in the road there, and putting my hands over my ears. Jim was cracking up, he thought it was hilarious. I was terrified of everything then. It was all so… weird. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. The other thing that was freaking me out was the salt, the taste of it on my lips. I thought I was going mad.”
Cara giggled.
“Don’t you start!” he said, pulling her closer.
“Must be nuts to be inside yer head,” she said after a while.
“How d’you mean?”
“You’re always between two worlds. Like the seagulls out there. You’re not really in the water and not really on the sand. Like, you’re here but in yer head, you’re there too. How’d’ye manage that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really think of it like that. I mean, it’s just I was there and now I’m here. It’s the same for everyone. Like, you were small and now you’re big. I bet you can’t believe how things were then, compared to now. It’s the same idea. You know what they say, ‘the past is a different country’. Just in my case, it really is a different country as well. I’m the same person now, well mostly. I just talk different, I wear different clothes I suppose, and I eat different food but I’m still the sum of all those parts. We’re all just molecules coming together – bits of memory, experiences, things you saw, things you did. Any kid would react the same way, seeing the sea for the first time. It’s just it happened to me later and so I remember it and I was shaken up by everything anyways, so it was a bit more… extreme.”
“I dunno, Theo. I think you’re amazing, how ye have these two stories coming together inside you and you managing so well to balance it all out.”
“Come up here. I want to show you something.”
He steered her off the beach and back onto the road.
They walked in silence for a while, huffing against the stiff wind. Leaves swirled around their feet. Autumn was already letting everyone know it was waiting in the wings. The world was always reminding you that the present was almost past, he thought. But that wasn’t entirely true either. Leaves fell, were trodden on and died but then there were more leaves in the spring. Time circled back on itself, taking you with it even when you thought you were living a linear life. We’re all just fooling ourselves, Theo thought.
“To be honest, I don’t think I’m managing that well, Cara.”
She looked confused but then he saw
her cotton on, catching the thread of his thought so it pulled them together. He loved the dance of her face. He could watch it all day. It was like the sea changing colour as the clouds scudded above: grey, blue, then white, then grey again. But underneath, the sea was still the sea.
“I feel like I’ve come to some kinda crossroads. It’s like I fell asleep after my Junior Cert and I’ve been sleepwalking since then. Maybe it was delayed PTSD.”
“What’s that then?” she said.
“Post traumatic stress disorder. You know, soldiers get it. It’s like nightmares and anxiety and panic attacks and that kind of thing, caused by what they’ve seen.”
“And ye think ye have that?”
“Not really, maybe just a touch. Somewhere along the line, I lost my way. It’s like I haven’t given a shit about anything for years, well except for making money from drugs, and Precious I suppose, but all that’s gone now.”
He felt her stiffen through her shoulders.
“S’alright. You don’t need to worry. I’m not on the rebound. Precious and me were not really going anywhere. She was always going to go home, and whatever I am here, I’d be something else entirely in Nigeria. And I’ve too many bloody identities already.”
They’d reached the cemetery now.
“You’ve taken me to a graveyard? Are ye messin’?”
“I told you I wanted to show you something. Trust me.”
At the gate, a lady in an orange rain jacket was selling flowers. They dithered over the boxes of cellophaned bouquets with Cara pointing out that it might be easier for her to help him choose if she knew who they were visiting. In the end, he bought a bunch of yellow carnations. They passed through the gates.
“So you don’t know who’s buried here then?” he asked her as he led her straight down one of the gravel paths.
“Isn’t Haughey here?” she said. “I think I remember me da saying something about him being buried here. Ye know, he loved him, says Ireland was only great when he was Taoiseach.”
“There’s many would not agree,” Theo said. “But yeah, you’re right. He’s here. Even the Great Houdini couldn’t escape the grim reaper. But it’s not him I’ve brought you to see. Come on. It’s this way.”
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