Second Sight

by Aoife Clifford

‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Mary Young,’ answers Amy. ‘She’s always there.’

  Reversing the name in my head, I try picturing Mary as a child but it’s almost impossible.

  ‘Shouldn’t she be inside?’

  ‘It isn’t a prison,’ Amy says.

  ‘What if she wanders off?’

  ‘She hasn’t yet. Just sits there patiently, waiting for her grandson to come.’

  ‘Does he visit often?’

  There’s a pause before she answers, ‘Died years ago.’

  My smile disappears. ‘That’s awful, the poor thing.’

  Other visitors walk past Mary. One woman stops to chat to her but Mary just shakes her head, her mouth a firm refusal.

  ‘Let me take that,’ and I grab Amy’s large square doctor’s bag from the back seat before she can.

  ‘My own personal porter,’ she says. ‘I could get used to this.’

  Mary watches us as we walk up the path. The skin around her eyes has a reddish tinge, which, combined with her lack of eyelashes, gives a tortoise-like quality to her gaze.

  ‘Morning, Mary,’ calls Amy.

  I nod, trying to look friendly.

  ‘Travis will be here soon,’ Mary tells me. Her teeth are coffee-brown, her gums dark, but there are remnants of a beautiful smile.

  ‘That’s nice,’ I say, but I keep on walking.

  A notice by the door has a code printed on it. Amy punches it into a keypad on the wall. The first automatic door slides open. Another code is punched in and then the next door opens. Warm air comes rushing out, smelling of disinfectant.

  Amy takes her bag. ‘Sign in the visitor’s book and Laurelle will give you directions to your dad’s room.’ She points out the lady sitting behind the counter, middle-aged with frizzy hair pulled back into a ponytail. Laurelle is already gesturing to me with a pen.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Amy says. ‘I know it isn’t easy but you’ll be glad you’ve done it.’

  ‘As long as you’re sure,’ I grumble half-heartedly at her back as she moves down the corridor, in full doctor mode now. She calls out cheerfully to some inhabitants shuffling past as she navigates her way through walkers and is gone.

  My father’s asleep in his chair when I walk in. Pale hair, slumped body, sitting by a floor-to-ceiling window, a pillow behind his head. I stand in the doorway and for one fleeting moment it could be twenty years ago, with him asleep in his favourite brown leatherette chair, his work files all around him. The image disappears so quickly it’s like I passed a reflection in a car window. He is tilted back and the streaming sun from the large window catches him full in the face. Nothing moves, except for his blinking eyes. His hair has gone completely white.

  I drag his wheelchair backwards into the shade.

  There is a hospital bed, a small table with tissues, and a vinyl visitor’s chair with a slightly ripped seat that is pushed up against the wall next to a small television. I pull out the chair and sit down. Its legs leave indents in the lino. The room is stuffy and completely impersonal, as though my father won’t be here long enough to bother making it cosy. It was Gavin’s idea to move him home to Kinsale. I had half-heartedly argued for him to stay in the city, nearer to me, but he and Tess were already preparing to transfer back to town to look after him, so I was outvoted. The night before he was moved I said goodbye for what I thought would be forever. Tess had made it clear my help wasn’t required.

  ‘Hello, Dad, it’s me, Eliza.’ I tell him.

  His eyes, no longer moving, have an unfocused quality, as if he’s daydreaming. I think of stories where people communicate only with their eyelids.

  ‘Dad, blink if you can hear me.’

  Nothing.

  My gaze travels over his body, taking in the pyjamas, a mismatched button, a smear of something on his collar, until I slowly return to his face. It is so recognisable and yet he is a gentle ruin of his former self. Always a quiet man, now he is silent. His face has healed so in a strange way he seems less fragile, but more collapsed as well. He is both thinner and flabbier since the accident, as though what has disappeared was internal, the structure that made him an upright man. When I was a child I thought my father was the most important man in Kinsale, the boss cop who took care of the town. Part of me still wants to think that, even though our adult relationship has been remote, reduced to obligations and contact on birthdays and Christmas.

  His tongue comes out, slow and sluggish, and wets his lips. There is dried spittle at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Do you want some water?’

  A metal jug has some dusty glasses next to it. I wipe them out with some tissues from my handbag, pour the water and then hold a glass to his mouth. He swallows, a rivulet running down the side of his chin. Another tissue mops it up. One of his hands starts to shake but then stops. My father was always clean-shaven, never even dabbling in the typical policeman’s moustache. Now his jaw is covered in moth-eaten silver bristles.

  I try to find some words to say, to talk to the parts of him that remain, but they sound forced, like I’m talking to a small child.

  ‘Hi there.’ There is a baby-faced man in the doorway, tall, with shaggy blond hair and thick eyebrows, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and dark trousers. He has an official badge above his shirt pocket and a white trolley full of supplies.

  ‘Amy said you were here. Thought I’d say g’day. I’m Ryan, the clinical nurse on this morning.’

  ‘My father was left in the sun. He was thirsty and blinking.’ It is my best law partner’s voice, the one designed to make junior solicitors tremble.

  He seems unperturbed and comes into the room, bending down next to Dad.

  ‘It’s been crazy. Cadee called in sick, probably to be expected under the circumstances.’ He looks as if this is understandable. ‘We tried calling in extras but no-one was available until after lunch.’

  He starts examining Dad, checking his arms and feet.

  ‘How are you, Mick? Comfortable?’

  No response.

  ‘Can he hear us?’ I ask.

  ‘Research suggests hearing and touch are the last senses to disappear, so I always assume that they can.’

  His gentle movements and professional manner, much more natural with my father than I had been, puts me in my place.

  ‘He needs shaving.’

  ‘Electric razor will be in one of the drawers by his bedside,’ he says, standing up. ‘You can take him to the garden after that. It’s supposed to rain this afternoon so he might not get out otherwise.’

  He heads off after saying goodbye to my father and passing on a message from Amy telling me to meet her by the car in an hour.

  There is hardly anything in the drawers. I take out a comb from the top one. The razor is next to a bible in the second. My father has never expressed an interest in God as far as I know, so it seems unlikely that the bible belongs to him. His eyelids are closed. I might disturb him. Perhaps he needs to sleep – but I can’t leave those bristles alone.

  ‘I’m going to shave you.’

  The words are swallowed by the room as if no-one else is in it. When I turn the razor on it makes an angry buzz, like a blowfly trapped against glass, vibrating in my hand. Standing over him, the jitteriness is transferred from it to me. This feels all wrong. I gingerly put my fingers up to his face, barely touching as if he might give me an electric shock. His eyelids flicker.

  ‘Don’t worry. This won’t hurt, I promise.’

  His skin is elephant-baggy and I hold it taut with one hand, pushing the razor against him, slowly moving it upward from jaw to cheek. I try to catch each bristle, explaining to him all the time what I am doing, telling him to keep still, as if he can feel it and knows what is happening.

  He doesn’t move a muscle.

  It’s a relief to switch the razor off. I’ve done a bad job but it gives me enough confidence to pick up the comb. His hair needs cutting, it falls well past his collar, but that can wait for another day.r />
  There is still time to fill before Amy finishes, so I decide to wheel him out to the garden. Although the chair moves easily across the floor, what remains of him is surprisingly heavy. The vanished part, the bit that made him my father, weighed so little.

  ‘Make sure you return him to his room when you’re done,’ a passing care attendant says, like he’s a piece of equipment that needs to be put away. The implication annoys me.

  The garden is a sunny courtyard with more bricks than plants. I push the wheelchair along the ramp towards the tiled path, past flowerbeds with pruned-back rosebushes and irises and a large herb garden buzzing with bees. A sun-faded timber outdoor setting sits in the middle with a torn green garden umbrella in the centre. High-pitched chirps travel from the furthest corner of the courtyard, where there is an aviary, sheet metal for a wall on one side, wire mesh on the others. Birds sit on cut-off branches that have been trussed to the walls. Inside it, an old man, stooped and white-haired, is putting down some pine chips. I push my father closer. A slight breeze picks up and his eyes open, like a baby responding to the world.

  ‘Look at the birds.’ It is like I’m the parent now.

  At the sound of my voice, the man in the cage turns. It’s Jim Keaveney, the person who ended up with dessert all over him courtesy of my waitressing. When I was growing up he used to run the town pet shop, specialising in aviaries.

  The birds don’t seem bothered by his presence, flapping, preening, pecking, flying back and forth so fast they are blurs. Jim reaches up and, as quick as a snake, he has hold of one. There is a little feathery head poking out the top of his large bricklayer’s fist, the quivering tip of a tail protruding from the bottom.

  ‘See her,’ and he holds it out towards us. His voice is deep and gruff. ‘A little beauty this one, just like her mother.’ The bird lies there terrified, struggling to move her wings. He holds her so tightly that I want to tell him to stop, that he’s hurting her, but then he opens his hand and she shoots out of reach.

  He shuffles to the side of the enclosure and unlocks an internal wire-screen door, walks through, then opens up the next door and comes through that.

  ‘So they can’t escape.’

  It reminds me of the entrance out the front.

  ‘Do the residents look after the birds?’

  ‘The finches. Not the bigger ones. Only I take care of those.’ He points to a smaller cage that I hadn’t noticed. A bedraggled galah is inside, its white and pink head tucked under a dove-grey wing. ‘Minimise human contact so once it’s strong enough I can take it back to the bush.’

  The bird’s head emerges, as though it knows we are talking about it.

  ‘Worth a fortune that bird is,’ he says. ‘Treat them like kings in Asia and the Middle East.’

  ‘Do you still have your shop?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Retired now, but I still do a bit of maintenance here, gardening as well.’

  ‘And all these birds are yours?’

  I’m only trying to make conversation, but Jim stares beakily at me, an uncanny echo of the galah behind him. It’s the combination of a sharp long nose and a flap of hair that falls forward onto his face.

  ‘Got a licence.’ He raises his voice. ‘It’s all legal.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. You might not remember me, Mr Keaveney, but I’m . . .’

  ‘I know who you are,’ and he gestures at Dad. ‘Mick Carmody’s youngest. Ruined my best suit once. Not likely to forget that.’

  I try to remember who paid for the dry-cleaning.

  He shakes his grizzled head at me before leaving.

  When Dad is safely back in his room, I kneel by his wheelchair and look at his face. ‘I’ve got a meeting to go to. I’m really busy at work.’ A stab of guilt hits me for abandoning him when he’s so helpless, but he should understand. He was always too busy to come and see me at boarding school and then university. Maybe that’s why I chose a career that meant I would be too busy to see him.

  He doesn’t open his eyes.

  ‘Bye, Dad.’

  I almost want to tell him I love him, but they are words we have never spoken.

  We are not that sort of family.

  • • •

  ‘And here’s where the problem began,’ Rob says, pointing to the telegraph pole next to where I have parked my car. We are on Old Castle Road beside a set of iron gates, the paint peeling off in large caramelised burnt flakes. A dull metal chain and padlock grimly holds them together. Behind the gates, the driveway is a fault line running through the dried yellow grass, leading up to the distant mansion, an imposing building of granite and turrets.

  The Castle.

  Rob, tall and crumpled with flyaway hair under a battered bushman’s hat, is looking in the opposite direction, his large hand shading his eyes from the hot sun. The new telegraph pole is honey-coloured, not yet turned grey from the elements.

  I stare up at the replacement pole. ‘You’re quite certain?’ I ask him. Pools of sweat are collecting under my arms. I’m keen to get back to my air-conditioned car. ‘The police investigation into Tony Bayless went for months.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It was the conductor breaking that caused the fire. It came into contact with the ground and arced, igniting the vegetation. That’s what I’ll be putting in my report.’

  Rob Eslake is an engineer who knows more about electricity cables than anyone else in the country – which was why I made sure we hired him before our opponents did. Whatever he says will be accepted by the court. He continues, talking about Aeolian vibrations, ignition temperatures, low-voltage conductors and ageing electricity assets but I’m more interested in testing his opinion by asking him the questions that my client will ask me.

  ‘But surely what broke the conductor was the high winds, and the entire countryside was a tinderbox – both factors outside Colcart Power’s control. You can’t blame them for climate change.’

  ‘You planning on joining Mother Nature as a defendant?’ He smiles. ‘Two strands of that conductor were already broken before the fire, due to metal fatigue. I’ve got more modelling and testing to do, but my educated guess at this stage is that lack of maintenance was a significant factor. I’ll have to put that in the report as well.’

  Rob’s a kindly, patient professor type crossed with a bushman. There’s no bluster to him, which is why he’s so effective in the witness box. The fact that he has mentioned his report twice now is not an accident.

  ‘What’s going on, Rob? You could have told me all this over the phone.’

  ‘I wanted to see you in person because last week I got a letter.’ He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a piece of paper and passes it to me. ‘It was sent to my home, not work.’

  It’s succinct. If you took it seriously you’d call it a death threat.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ he says. ‘Have you had them too?’

  ‘A couple,’ I admit. Actually, it was three.

  ‘Did you report them?’

  I read the threat again. ‘No,’ I tell him eventually.

  ‘It’s related to the case.’ He points to Colcart, which has been misspelt. ‘The person sounds unhinged.’

  I feel a sudden gush of panic. What if he wants to leave this matter?

  ‘Is this what you wanted to talk about? Are you looking to withdraw?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he answers. ‘I don’t want you to think this type of threat affected my judgement. I wanted to meet here to show you exactly how it happened, so you understand that I am basing my findings on the science and nothing else. But I also wanted to discuss whether we should take it to the police.’

  ‘Police?’ and already my mind races to see what implications that might have for the case. Should we inform the judge? ‘This probably happens all the time,’ I say, unsure if it does or not.

  ‘Never to me,’ he says.

  If I complain, it might seem that the death threats have affected me. That I’m not tough enough. Certainly, my s
enior partner would think so.

  ‘It will be fine,’ I tell him, my mind made up. ‘We can’t allow ourselves to get distracted – that’s exactly what the writer is hoping for.’

  ‘All right,’ he says, but he’s not convinced.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I say. ‘I’ll take a picture of yours and compare it to the ones I received. If any more turn up I will take it further.’

  Rob nods his head like that’s been settled. ‘You’re probably right,’ he says. ‘Ex-Kinsale girl, you know these people better than I do.’

  We shake hands goodbye.

  Driving through the landscape, I try to trace the path of the fire. The pine forest was wiped out and, while two years have been enough time for grass to grow on the nearby farms, the green contrasts with the blackened trunks of the few trees still standing. The cattle and sheep of my childhood are missing. I think about the attack on Paul Keenan and Amy’s description of her patients. When I was a teenager I thought Kinsale would never change. Now it feels as if everything about it is different.

  5

  A couple of days later I’m back in my glass cube of an office in the city, playing catch-up, when Rob leaves a message to say his report will arrive by the end of the following week. It reminds me of my promise to compare his threatening letter with mine and I get them out of my desk drawer.

  To my untrained eye they could be the work of the same nutter. There are similar spelling mistakes and a common theme: stop working for Colcart or else. They feel ridiculous, like hoaxes rather than genuine. I had been taken aback when the first one arrived in the mail addressed ‘personal and confidential’, but ended up dismissing it as the collateral damage of running a high-profile case. I barely looked at the second one. But threatening an expert witness seems more serious. It isn’t public knowledge that Rob Eslake is working for us, which suggests this isn’t your garden-variety crackpot. Before I get too lost in conspiracy theories, my phone makes the kind of sound that reminds me I’m supposed to be somewhere else. I pick up the carrier bag with the green hat in it and grab my briefcase as well, for camouflage.

  ‘If anyone asks, I’m at a client meeting.’