Set in Stone

by Catherine Dunne

  He slows as they come to the last roundabout, waits for the only car – a clapped-out Mini – to make its careful exit. Pixie is shouting to him. He can hear her excitement as he slows down.

  ‘Go faster, Danny, just for a minute! This is cool!’

  Danny has no intention of going any faster. He is being Reliable. A couple of hundred yards more, then back towards home. He turns his head, so that she can hear him. ‘You just hold tight, Miss Speed-Freak. Leave the driving up to me. And Happy Birthday!’ He puts the bike into gear and begins to move forward, the Mini puttering away in front of him.

  He has no chance. The Merc comes at him out of nowhere. It careens onto the roundabout, then off it again, silver-flashing, glinting, blinding in the sunlight. And Danny’s thoughts hurtle in the split second that’s left: of course it’s going to stop Christ what’s happening fuck it’s not stopping Jesus.

  He jams on the brakes, but the Merc slams into them, just catching the motorbike’s front wheel. All Danny is aware of is impact. A sledgehammer, gut-churning blow to the chest. He feels winded as never before: all the breath seems to leave his body and, instead, he is filled with a desperate instinct to hold on, to keep control, to keep upright. He struggles with every bone, every muscle, every sinew against the reeling force of the impact, transformed into a human wall. The bike skids backwards across the hot road, keeling over like a yacht in full sail.

  When he rights himself, a thousand years later, a horrified knot of people has gathered around something crumpled and bloody, lying in the middle of the road. For a moment, Danny is puzzled: ‘Did I hit a dog?’ and turns to make sure Emma is okay. Then he realizes that she is no longer holding onto him, that her face is no longer pressed against his shirt.

  And it’s as though somebody switches the sound back on. Suddenly, there is noise, commotion. A woman’s voice keeps screaming, over and over again: ‘Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!’ He wishes she would stop. She’s hurting the inside of his head.

  People scatter to their houses. Danny watches as some emerge with blankets, pillows, all the useless accompaniments of tragedy.

  Jesus, has he hit someone? Or is it someone from the Merc, catapulted onto the road? Dimly, he can see the Merc, out of the corner of his eye. It has stopped just off the roundabout, right beside where it hit him. He has already seen its doors opening suddenly and two figures darting up the road. A man detaches himself from the group of people nearby, and shouts: ‘Oi, you! Stop right there!’ He gives chase. Danny is aware of all of it, but aware only in the way you are aware of the background music to a movie. You know it’s there, but it serves to highlight the real action, the stuff that’s happening on screen.

  And what is happening now is that little mound in the middle of the road. It keeps growing until it fills the entire screen, despite its smallness. A great pool of red seeps outwards. There is something eerily familiar about the small hand that curls towards him from under a pink blanket. The fingers are open, as though they have just now let go of something. Danny limps towards the hand, fear, sickness, terror all fighting for space inside his chest and he realizes that the howl that he hears somewhere outside of himself is him. He finally sees that the crumpled form that lies unmoving, just in front of him now, is his little sister.

  People are holding him back, their mouths opening and closing in what he presumes are words. She is lying there, little Pixie, with her head rolled to one side. Just like the cat on the railway track, he remembers. Broken. A sob escapes him. His head fills with noise, the scene swims before him. He vomits his guts up, while someone holds onto him, making some sort of reassuring sounds.

  Then the ambulance arrives and soon after there’s the hospital. The grave face of the doctor. The nurses. All of them. And when his mother arrives, flinging back doors, she fights all round her like a madwoman. A lioness in search of her cub.

  He’s in a cubicle, curtains drawn almost all the way around the bed. But he can still see her. And he knows her voice, would recognize it anywhere. The curtain is wrenched aside and she stands there, just looking at him. A nurse hurries over.

  ‘Please,’ she says, ‘you can’t be in here. You need to wait outside. We need to attend to this man’s injuries.’

  He wishes his mother would go. He can see by her eyes that she doesn’t believe it, any of it. Somewhere, she clings to hope, that this is a mistake, this is someone else’s daughter – anybody else’s daughter except hers.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Danny says. ‘This is my mother.’

  The nurse looks from one to the other. ‘All right, then. But let me bring you somewhere more private,’ she says. ‘And you’ll have to come back to have that leg attended to.’

  Danny nods. He slides off the bed and manages to walk, a kind of half-drag, half-hop motion. But his mother doesn’t even ask him how he is, or how badly his leg is injured.

  The starched nurse shows them to the poky relatives’ room. Danny hates her professional sympathy. He hates all of them. All that white, unfelt empathy.

  ‘Danny,’ his mother says as the nurse closes the door. Her eyes are begging him. ‘Is it true?’ He knows by looking at her that she will sacrifice any child – maybe even her own sons – to make sure that this is not, that this cannot be, her baby. There is nothing he can say. Then she sags and weeps, she and Danny together.

  ‘How could you?’ Her voice is hoarse, pleading now, as though she really wants an explanation, a route towards forgiveness. But Danny knows that really, she is looking for someone to blame.

  Some of the numbness is beginning to wear off. His leg is starting to hurt like hell. He wants, desperately, to remake the story, to change the ending. But he’s not able to. ‘It isn’t my fault,’ he says, weeping, unable to stop the tears. ‘I promise I did nothing wrong. I was going really slowly, really carefully, and then this guy in a Merc just shot off the roundabout and – ’

  ‘Danny,’ she says, pulling back from him, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘I left her in your care. I told you I was relying on you. It was only for a couple of hours. What were you thinking? You didn’t even have a helmet for her.’

  He can see that she is struggling to understand something. That her daughter is never coming back. ‘She kept begging me for a spin, she wouldn’t leave it alone. She kept going on and on about it being her birthday.’ Danny wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘And anyway, there would be no helmet small enough for her.’

  His mother’s eyes widen. He can see the rage coming, has seen it before, although not like this. Never as bad as this. She comes at him, taking him by surprise, pushing him off balance. Her fists are up, and now she’s pounding on his chest, shrieking. ‘She’s a child! A ten-year-old child! What have you done to my baby? What have you done?’

  Danny tries to ward her off. But she’s strong and his leg and shoulder are hurting him. She still hasn’t even asked him how he is. And his knee has started to bleed again.

  Suddenly, the door slams open, crashing against the wall with a splintering of wood. Danny’s father rushes in, his eyes wild, his face askew, as though someone has assembled bits of it in the wrong order. Danny is aware of two bulky, blue presences behind him, grappling with shoulders, arms. But Danny’s father is more than a match for them. Their ‘Sir! Sir!’, their ‘Take it easy, now,’ has no effect on him. He and Danny share the same build, the same blunt strength.

  He flings all of that strength at Danny now, his tears rasping. ‘You’re not my son!’ he sobs. He lifts one arm, but that is a mistake. It gives the two security men something to hold on to. Both of them grab at the raised fist and force it back down to his side. Then he crumbles, as if he, too, has been winded by the impact. All of the fight has gone out of him.

  ‘Mary, Mary,’ he wails. ‘Our baby, our baby.’

  Danny’s mother goes to him then, and takes him in her arms. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she says to Danny, over her husband’s shoulder.

  He waits, no
t knowing what else to do. His parents hold each other, oblivious to his presence. After a moment or two, the security men nod to each other and withdraw. They close the door gently behind them.

  Then Danny’s father wipes his eyes, his sobbing stilled for now. He looks at Danny. His gaze is steady although Danny can see he’s having trouble controlling his chin. It keeps trembling off in the wrong direction, creasing, pulling both sides of his father’s mouth downwards.

  ‘Tell me why you did it. Just that. Nothing else. Tell me why you did it.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ Danny begins.

  His father slams his fist on the low wooden table, making the artificial flower arrangement leap in the air and then roll, sadly, onto its side. Even the air feels shocked.

  ‘I said, tell me why you did it.’ The tone is even, but Danny can feel all the rage that lurks underneath that surface.

  ‘She kept begging me for a spin,’ he says. His tone is flat, now. He senses defeat. ‘I didn’t know how to say no.’

  ‘You didn’t know how to say no,’ his father repeats, nodding. Danny has seen him do stuff like this before. It’s as though he’s considering the wisdom of the statement. Then he locks eyes with his son’s. ‘But you’ve known how to say “no” to us often enough, haven’t you? About important things, necessary things. And you couldn’t keep a little child safe for an afternoon, because you couldn’t say “no”?’

  He pauses, and the silence is fearful. Then:

  ‘I could never trust you. I knew that, years back. You’ve never known what it is to give your word and keep it, Danny.’ He stops, pretending to think things through, pretending that this speech is not one he prepared ages ago. It’s as though he has been waiting for the opportunity to make it. There’s no stopping him.

  ‘And then when things go wrong, you just blame somebody else. Usually Robert, sometimes me, sometimes your mother. But never you, never Danny. Danny always means well, Danny’s intentions are good – if I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times.’

  Danny tries to speak, but his father raises his hand. He’s always doing that, not letting Danny speak.

  ‘Your mother was a fool to trust you. But she’ll suffer for that now. We all will. For the rest of our lives . . .’ His mother begins to weep again, convulsing.

  His father looks at him and Danny can see pure hatred in those eyes. ‘You’ve broken this family. Is that what you wanted? Is it?’

  At that moment, someone knocks on the door, softly. The three of them turn as yet another nurse opens the door. She looks at Danny’s parents. Danny can see Robert’s face, white and frightened, just above her left shoulder. ‘Mr and Mrs Graham?’ she says. ‘Would you like to come with me? You can see your daughter now.’

  For a second, Danny’s heart leaps. Is she alive?

  Robert comes into the room now and pushes his way past Danny without even a word. He walks right into his parents’ arms and the three of them hold onto each other, sobbing. Danny can see by the way his parents begin to droop as they leave the room that there is no hope. This is the last time they will ever see Emma.

  Danny’s father stops as he passes. He turns and looks at his son. His hands are menacing. ‘Don’t even think of coming with us. You’re not worthy to see her. Not welcome. We’ll never forgive you for this. I mean it. Never.’

  The three of them leave the room. Robert won’t even look in Danny’s direction. The nurse takes their mother’s arm, Robert puts his around his father’s shoulders.

  Danny knows now that there is no chance. Once his father says ‘We will never forgive you,’ Danny knows that it’s over. Not ‘I’, but ‘we’. In that one small word, Danny understands how everything is to be. His mother has been exonerated. Emma has been exonerated. Robert is the perfect son. The fault for everything, once again, is all Danny’s. He is to be the scapegoat, forever pushed beyond the ‘we’. His intentions no longer matter: only the outcome, over which he’s had no control. A pair of joy riders on a bright July afternoon. Who would have thought it?

  He tries not to see the blank, blanketed mound in the middle of the road. It keeps flashing back and forth in front of his eyes. Poor little Pixie. And he has a stab of sorrow. They won’t even let him see his little sister one last time. He feels aggrieved. It’s not fair. He makes up in his head all the things he’ll say to his father for treating him like this. He hobbles back out to the ward. He can’t keep bleeding all over the place. The nurse from earlier sees him and hurries over.

  ‘In here,’ she says, flicking back the curtain of the cubicle. He eases himself onto the edge of the bed, but it seems to swim away from him. Next thing he knows, his head is being forced down towards his knees. Gradually, the cubicle rights itself, his blood stops roaring in his ears.

  ‘Better?’ she asks.

  He nods. She’s young. Pretty. He wonders if . . . But no. Another time, maybe. Not now. She does a good job of stitching up his leg. The bandages feel secure, give him a bit of support. When she’s finished, he doesn’t know where to go, what to do with himself. The nurse tells him to take care and then goes off about her business. He feels dismissed. So he goes back to the Relatives’ Room, opening the door cautiously. His father’s coat is still there, his mother’s hasty cardigan. They’ll have to come back for them. When they do, his father looks surprised to see him sitting there. His mother seems older somehow, her face raw. She leans against his father, who leans against Robert. He seems to be propping both of them up. And still, not one of the three of them even asks about his leg.

  ‘I want you to leave the house,’ his father is saying. ‘Go this evening, now, otherwise I won’t be responsible for what I’ll do to you.’ And he turns away, gathering his weeping wife in his arms.

  Without actually remembering how he gets there, Danny arrives at the house and lets himself in. He packs his holdall from the gym with a few clothes, a toothbrush, his aftershave. He’ll have to come back for the rest of his stuff. They’ll have to let him do that.

  They say he’s had a miraculous escape. One leg very badly bruised, but nothing broken, just some small bones chipped. Painful enough, but nothing that needs plaster. Some ligaments are damaged. His shoulder is painful. But it’s nothing that won’t heal in time.

  He lets himself out the front door, slamming it behind him. Leaving all of them behind. Fuck them. He doesn’t need them, any of them. His barman’s apprenticeship is nearly over, he can work anywhere he chooses. And the tips are great. Danny’s found out how easy it is to be charming to people he doesn’t know. All it takes is a little effort, and faces light up. Women, in particular. They laugh easily at his jokes, appraise him with their keen eyes.

  Nothing that won’t heal in time? he thinks.

  He’ll see about that.

  8

  IT WAS FIVE DAYS before Robert came home. Five endless days that saw Lynda become increasingly anxious.

  ‘No, things aren’t good, Lynda, I’m not going to lie to you,’ he’d said when he phoned her the evening following his departure. ‘The business stuff is complicated and frustrating and there are no easy answers.’

  Lynda knew of old that there was no point in asking Robert for detail. As far as he was concerned, a phone was for the imparting of information: quickly, succinctly and impatiently.

  ‘I’ve a few prospects around South Wicklow that I’m going to follow up once we’re finished here. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way home.’

  When she heard his key in the lock at lunchtime, Lynda felt her heart begin to speed up, her breath begin to catch at the back of her throat. He came straight into her studio, looking as though he hadn’t slept since he left. She ran to him, putting her arms around him. ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said. ‘You look exhausted.’

  He kissed her distractedly. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘It’s bad, but I’ll tell you all the details tonight. Right now, I have to shower and go straight back into town.’ He gave her a q
uick hug. ‘I’ve booked a table for us in The Merman tonight. For eight o’clock. Will you bring the Jeep? I’ve back-to-back meetings today and I haven’t the time to scramble for parking spaces.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Do you want a lift now?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ve a taxi booked. I’ll see you at eight.’

  Now they faced each other across the candlelit table.

  ‘So,’ said Lynda. ‘What’s the news? How did the meeting with the money-men go?’

  ‘Badly.’ Robert’s tone was blunt. ‘The last few months have been crazy,’ he said. He paused while the waiter refilled his glass. ‘It’s been crazy for everybody in the business.’ He shook his head. ‘But I really believed that we could trade our way out of it. When it all started two years ago, we weren’t overextended – at least, not to the extent that some of the guys were.’ He sipped at his wine.

  Lynda had to curb her impatience.

  ‘At first, I thought it was just us – you know, a bit more competition around than there used to be. And then there was a bit of a slowdown in the market when nobody knew what was going on with Stamp Duty. That sort of thing. We’ve seen the ups and down before, over the years. We’re all old enough to remember the eighties.’ He stopped, trying to smile at her. ‘Things come and go. But there’s always been a market for the sort of high-end builds that we do. That’s always been our niche.’ He poured himself more wine, his eyes distracted. It was as if he was talking to himself.

  But I’m listening, Lynda thought. And what I’m hearing is frightening me.

  ‘Generally, market blips in the past didn’t affect us. We pulled through the first dip fine, a year ago, and we might have pulled through this one, too – until the global meltdown happened. Banks that were pushing funds at us eighteen months ago won’t look at us now. I can’t even get an appointment. Everyone is suddenly very busy and very nervous – even the guys I’ve dealt with for over twenty years, who know I’m solid. Nothing’s working. I had my last stab at it today.’ He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘And so – we have to let most of the crew go.’