Set in Stone

by Catherine Dunne

  ‘Jon? Are you all right?’

  He turned, his face blank. His eyes seemed shuttered, as though he wasn’t seeing her. He opened his mouth to reply, but no words formed. The absence of expression lasted only for an instant, was gone so quickly that Lynda wondered whether she had imagined it.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ He nodded towards the kitchen window. ‘I just thought I saw something move at the end of your neighbour’s garden – just in front of that high wall.’

  ‘Really?’ Lynda was alarmed. Ken and Iris often worked late. And even though so many things had changed over the years, she still kept an eye on the house for them. Had done so ever since they’d moved in. She’d take in deliveries, gather post off the porch floor, look after lights and curtains when they weren’t there. She peered into the garden now, but was unable to see anything, only her own and Jon’s reflection in the steamy kitchen window.

  Then he pointed, his forearm gloved in bubbles. ‘Look – it’s just a cat.’

  Lynda followed the direction of his arm, and froze. There, in the crook of his elbow, was a patch of blue and purple and yellow skin. It was livid, ugly, some of the veins prominent. She flinched. She couldn’t help herself. She had a vivid flash of imagination: a grainy, black and white photograph of Jon sitting in the half-light somewhere, his arm strapped, forcing veins to the surface as he injected. She stopped, horrified at herself.

  What on earth was wrong with her?

  Jon caught her looking at him. At first his expression was puzzled. Perhaps he had spoken to her and she hadn’t heard? With an effort, she pulled herself back. And he was laughing.

  ‘Lynda? Are you okay? I had blood tests three days ago – and I bruise very easily.’ He rubbed his hand over the inflamed skin. ‘I’ve suffered from anaemia, ever since I was a kid. What did you think – that I was some sort of a junkie?’

  Ciarán was back beside them, now, frowning.

  Lynda was acutely aware of his presence. She shook her head. ‘Of course not,’ she said. Her tone had just the right amount of dismissal. ‘Don’t be daft. I was just concerned at the size of the bruise, that’s all. It looks very painful. Would you like some Arnica?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Jon said. ‘Don’t worry. It looks loads worse than it is. It was hurting on Friday, but it’s fine again now.’ He continued rinsing the glasses and placing them, very carefully, on the drainer. He had turned his back to her. Lynda felt as though she had just been dismissed.

  ‘Are you sure?’ She could hear herself talking, just for the sake of it.

  ‘Nah, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  ‘Stop fussing, Mum.’ Ciarán was right at her shoulder. She could feel his breath against her cheek.

  ‘Well, let me know if you change your mind, Jon,’ she said. ‘Now I’ll leave the two of you to finish up here. I’m going to see if Robert needs any help.’

  She left the kitchen. As she closed the door behind her, there was a gust of raucous laughter. It sounded like a joke shared at someone else’s expense. Don’t be silly, she told herself. It’s just two young guys having a laugh.

  But instead of going into Robert’s office, Lynda changed her mind and went upstairs. A bath, she thought. Something to clear away the day.

  On the way, she stepped into Katie’s room. She liked spending time here, looking around at all the remnants of her daughter’s childhood. It was as though the years had stayed still . . . dolls, teddies, posters, even books that had survived babyhood. Katie had always been the orderly one, the careful one. This was a space that was very different from the chaos of Ciarán’s bedroom. A space he had always guarded jealously. Even now, he locked his door each day before he left the house. Lynda left clean sheets and pillowcases outside his room every ten days or so. He’d change the bed and deliver the linen to the basket in the utility room. She now accepted the arrangement without comment.

  It hadn’t always been like that, of course.

  ‘What are you doin’?’ he’d shouted at her, one afternoon the previous summer, when he’d returned home to find Lynda standing on a chair at his window. The suddenness of his arrival had made her jump. She’d almost lost her balance.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ciarán, don’t do that! I’m taking down your curtains to wash them. I could have fallen and broken my neck.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he’d said. His voice was cold, remote. ‘Get down and I’ll do it.’ Lynda had obeyed. She’d said nothing, but his reaction had made her suspicious. Frightened and suspicious. What was he hiding here? What did he not want her to see?

  When she’d spoken to Robert about it later, he’d groaned. ‘Lynda, he’s eighteen. What do you expect?’

  She hadn’t understood. ‘What do you mean?’

  Robert had closed the kitchen door. ‘He’s probably got porn stashed away there. Maybe even a bit of dope. Are you going to jeopardize an entire relationship by discovering whatever it is that he might be trying to hide?’

  ‘What relationship?’ she had countered, stung. ‘That’s exactly the point, Robert – what relationship is there to jeopardize? He’s become a stranger. An angry, bitter stranger.’ And she’d burst into tears.

  Robert had sat down beside her at the table and taken both her hands in his. ‘Sweetheart, he’s not a boy any more. He’s finished school, he’s on his way to university, probably has a girlfriend we don’t know about. His life is full of secrets right now. It has to be. That’s how he gets to be independent.’

  She’d opened her mouth to speak, but Robert had held up one hand. ‘You took him by surprise. Yeah, sure he was angry. Probably felt you had invaded his privacy.’

  ‘But—’

  To her surprise, Robert had kissed her, silencing her. ‘Katie is not the template, Lynda,’ he’d said. ‘Lads are different. You and Katie will probably talk dresses and lipstick until you’re ninety. Boys don’t do that. Remember the first time I brought you home here, to my parents?’

  Lynda had nodded.

  ‘Remember the way Emma asked could she be your bridesmaid? And how my mother talked about stuff between her and my dad that would’ve made his hair stand on end, had he known about it?’

  Lynda had nodded again, smiling now.

  ‘You females are just more open. Give Ciarán time. But remember, he’s different. He may not want to share everything with you. In fact,’ and here he’d grinned, ‘I hope he doesn’t. I’d have serious worries about him if he did. Telling everything to his ma!’

  But there was still something about Ciarán’s withdrawal that made Lynda suspicious. And his recent rages, never far below the surface. What if these rages were coke-fuelled, or ecstasy-induced? The stuff seemed to be everywhere these days, part of a lifestyle and culture that she didn’t even pretend to understand. And the talk shows had been full recently of young people addicted to something called ‘skunk’. She’d listened to the stories of parents at their wits’ end; to tales of teenagers’ personalities changing overnight; to stories of verbal and physical abuse. So many families on the brink. Lynda had needed to know, needed to find out for herself what Ciarán was so desperate to hide.

  Shortly after the incident of the curtains, she’d called a locksmith to the house. ‘My son has lost the key, and we don’t have another.’ She’d made light of it as she showed the man to Ciarán’s door. He’d muttered something about all teenagers being careless, all teenagers being the same. Hungry, useless creatures. Within moments he had handed her a duplicate from his box of tricks. Lynda was surprised at how easy it had been.

  ‘These keys are standard internal ones,’ he told her. ‘If you’d known the serial number, you could have bought it at any supermarket hardware. Or from a builder. No big deal.’

  But she hadn’t known it – and it is a big deal, she’d thought. It’s a big deal to me, breaking into my own son’s room. She’d thanked him and paid him and he’d left. She’d run back up the stairs after she’d locked the front door securely behind him. Just in case. />
  Once inside, she’d begun her search – although she hadn’t known what she was looking for. She had decided not to care about porn, or the odd bit of dope, or any of the other things that Robert had said Ciarán might be hiding. What she was really looking for was the source of his anger. Perhaps I shouldn’t be looking here, she’d thought, suddenly, in the middle of her careful turning over of the mattress, her methodical leafing through books. Maybe that’s to be found elsewhere. Maybe with me. Or with Robert. Or with Robert and me: parents from hell. She’d cried then, and left the room as she’d found it, locking the door behind her.

  Locking the stable door, she’d thought, even as she left.

  She’d never told Robert about that. It had seemed such a grubby thing to do. But a grubbiness born of desperation. She’d discovered nothing, except that perhaps she didn’t like herself very much for doing it.

  Katie’s room, on the other hand, was open, trusting. A bit like Katie herself. Lynda stood up now and smoothed the bed where she’d been sitting. She looked at the gaily coloured bedspread, embroidered by Katie herself, with all the fierce concentration of an eleven-year-old. Lynda remembered the day she’d finished it. Her small face had glowed with pride.

  And then the other memory that came with it. That same evening, nine-year-old Ciarán had burst into the living room, his face flushed, his eyes bright.

  ‘Mum! Mum!’ he’d shouted. ‘Uncle Danny’s on the phone! He’s sending me a Scalextric for my birthday next week!’

  By the time Lynda reached the phone, Danny had hung up. There had been tears and tantrums as Robert had told his son, sharply, that he could forget about that promise: his Uncle Danny was not a man to be trusted. That’s just how things were.

  And Katie’s face, crestfallen. Her thunder stolen by Ciarán. By Danny. She’d been sitting on the floor, her finished bedspread laid out in front of her, waiting patiently for her parents’ praise. Instead, Lynda had rushed from the room and Robert and Ciarán had become locked in an angry argument that was going nowhere. Lynda had tried to make it up to her afterwards, but Katie had refused to be consoled.

  Memory, sharp as salt. Katie, folding up her bedspread, stealing from the room.

  And Danny, as usual, tainting all before him.

  ‘Well?’ asked Lynda, when Robert joined her later. She sat on the bed, putting her rings away safely. ‘What did you think of Jon?’

  ‘Very charming,’ said Robert. He sat down on the opposite side of the bed, his back to her. There was a pause. ‘But he’s a bit effeminate, isn’t he?’ Another pause. Lynda could guess what was coming next. ‘Do you think he might be gay?’ He turned to look at her.

  ‘Would it really matter?’ Lynda countered. ‘Would it matter to us if Ciarán was gay?’ She spoke quietly, with just enough emphasis on the ‘us’.

  Robert slid into bed and pulled the duvet up to his chin. He looked uncomfortable. ‘Life’s tough enough. Without that, as well.’ He hesitated. ‘Besides, I’m pretty sure Ciarán isn’t. And I’m not saying anything about the other lad, either, except that I didn’t know whether he was a boy or a girl when I was introduced. Did you?’ Now his tone was challenging.

  ‘It did take me a moment,’ Lynda admitted as she slipped in beside him. ‘But then I forgot about it once he started to talk. What I saw was someone who made Ciarán look happy again.’ There was no response. She moved closer to Robert as he put one arm around her shoulders. ‘For what it’s worth,’ she went on, ‘I think they’re just friends, good friends. They’re easy together. There was a lot of clowning about in the kitchen after you left.’ There was still no answer. Lynda could feel her irritation growing. This was not the time to mention her reaction to Jon’s bruised arm. Robert believed her imagination to be overactive enough as it was. She tried again. ‘And Jon’s an intelligent lad. Didn’t you think so?’

  Robert reached over to turn off his bedside light. ‘Hard to judge, from the little I saw. But he looks intelligent enough. And you seem to be impressed.’ He sounded amused.

  ‘I don’t think Ciarán has fitted in at all at UCD,’ Lynda said, after a moment. ‘He started off well enough, but he seems to have gone back into his shell. Jon is the only person I’ve seen him relate to in a very long time. If that’s impressed, then yeah, I’m impressed.’

  Robert didn’t answer at once. Lynda could feel him thinking about it.

  ‘Mmm. Well, this lad’s no shrinking violet, anyway.’

  ‘Didn’t you like him?’ Lynda was curious.

  ‘Yeah, I liked him well enough. There’s something familiar about him, though – something I can’t put my finger on. I feel as if I’ve seen his face before.’

  ‘Well, you probably have. He seems to do a lot of modelling. Reading between the lines, I’d say that his parents have split up and I get the feeling that he more or less supports himself.’

  ‘Does he indeed.’ Robert sounded interested. ‘I didn’t catch that. I was probably a bit preoccupied over dinner. But that speaks volumes.’

  That was Robert’s seal of approval: that Jon was someone who didn’t cadge off others. It was a bone of contention between himself and Ciarán. But Ciarán had dug his heels in. No minimum-wage job for him in shitty conditions; no way.

  ‘Well,’ Robert said now, rolling over to kiss Lynda goodnight. ‘You never know. He might even be a good influence on our reprobate.’ He yawned. ‘I’m done in. Sleep well.’

  Lynda smiled. Seemed like the entire evening had been full of echoes. ‘Goodnight, love.’

  Lynda remembered Jon’s excitement as he’d looked at her drawings. His body language as he’d helped with the meal. She’d make sure he felt welcome. He’d be good for Ciarán.

  Just as she drifted off, she remembered the letter from Danny. She’d forgotten to ask Robert for details about why he had been so upset this morning. The arrival of Jon had put all thoughts of Danny to one side so she had more than one reason to be grateful for his arrival.

  Danny would just have to wait.

  And maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with him at all. Robert had said it was nothing – just more of the same old, same old. Perhaps she should leave it to him.

  Yes, she thought, fitting herself around the curve of Robert’s back. She’d leave the worrying to him.

  The watcher has begun to wonder about the predictability of ordinary people’s routines. If they know they’re being observed, do they behave differently? Do the unremarkable comings and goings of a household become more significant, more loaded, in the knowledge that someone else is looking on? He finds these to be interesting questions; and he has plenty of time to think about them just now. He’s considered them in the past too, during what he likes to think of as his official working life.

  Back then, you had two distinct groups under surveillance. Each of them guilty. The guiltier they were, the more ordinary they tried to be. Their patterns of behaviour were studiedly ordinary: too mundane, too unchanging. There was never the surprise caller to the front door, the unexpected domestic crisis, the bin forgotten on collection day. All was precisely as it should be – which really meant that all was as it shouldn’t be. All was surface, like tinted glass – built to obscure whatever might lie beneath.

  And then there was the other lot. Brazen, tough, streetwise. Dropping their trousers or giving the finger to whoever might be watching. Come and get me, they sneered. This is our world. Enter at your peril.

  Scumbags, the lot of them. Although, in many ways, the watcher understood where they were coming from. What you saw was what you got. They swaggered, radiating that particular kind of power that always comes with danger. They were invincible, the Tony Sopranos of Dublin’s suburbs. It had a certain dark attraction, their view of life. He’d watch them show, over and over, that they saw no need to hide the business they did. Because in their world, the rules were different. The only wrong was getting caught.

  Lately, though, he’s been wondering about all of that. About crime, and w
hat it really means. He no longer feels able to explain what it is any more, or maybe, what it has become. Somehow, the definition keeps getting murkier, keeps slipping away from him. It seems to him that things were a lot simpler, back in the day. You knew who your enemy was, then: there wasn’t so much blurring of the boundaries.

  Like in the Westerns. White hats for the good guys, black for the bad. He liked knowing where he stood: who to root for, who to hate. Now, though, he can’t see much difference between the ‘criminal classes’ and their refuse sacks stuffed full of cash, and the collar-and-tie brigades that rip off a whole country. It’s all about scale, really. A difference of degree, as his old boss used to say, not of kind. The watcher likes that. It helps to make some sense of what he’s feeling these days. Bankers/burglars. Consultants/conmen. No difference. Except that they used to catch some of the burglars back then; punish them. Most of the time, anyhow.

  The watcher reaches the front of the house now and begins to move more quickly. He’s left his rucksack and his postman’s bag hidden around the back, in his usual spot behind the high wall of the garden. He’s covered them in leaves and branches and stuff. It’s easier to move fast and keep low without them. This will only take a few minutes and the porch light won’t come on, Wide Boy has assured him of that. Even if it does, he’ll be gone, sharpish, the deed done.

  He steps carefully across the gravel driveway of number nineteen and kneels at the back of the Jeep. It’s been parked just right for him: back wheels facing towards the road. Sometimes, you get lucky. He unscrews the dust caps and puts them into his pocket. Then he inserts the tip of his screwdriver into the valve, pressing it downwards, and waits for the satisfying whoosh of air. Disabled, not damaged, Wide Boy has said. At least not this time. He treated it as a bit of a joke, which – in the scale of the things that he seems to have planned – the watcher supposes it is.