Listen to me, bud,’ he said. ‘You’re never too big to hug your ‘old man.’
Later, in a phone call to Ma, Dad would mention the mysterious burns on the palms of his hands. He thought maybe one of the bleach barrels at work had sprung a leak; it was the only explanation he could come up with. No, he couldn’t remember exactly when he got them, but they hurt like blazes.
I helped carry his bag to the car, Dom trailing behind. It was beautiful outside, the air tinted a clear pink, scented with the outgoing tide. The sandy garden was cold under the bruised shadow of the house, but the car was still in sunshine. It threw the mellow gold of the late-evening sun back at us from a dozen gleaming points and radiated a day’s worth of heat up from its metal body. I leant against it, soaking it up.
Dom stayed in the shadows, his face glimmering in the oncoming dusk. We watched as Dad put his things in the boot of the car.
‘I’ll be back Friday, bud, okay?’
I nodded.
He waved at Dom. ‘See you, son.’ Dom lifted his chin in goodbye. Dad’s hand lingered in the air, hurt finally showing through his amusement. ‘Well, okay then,’ he said.
He tousled my hair and got into the car. I stood back as the engine coughed to life. He pulled out into the lane, his indicator tick-tocking. Then he was gone, and I was alone.
It felt like a hundred years since Dom and I had pimp-walked down the strand, singing and swatting at each other with sticks. A million years. A lifetime. But it had been yesterday. Yesterday morning, I’d had a brother. I’d had a best friend. He’d been fun. He’d been interesting: my slow-burn, articulate counterweight. Now I was lopsided, a boat with one paddle, rowing frantically and spinning in a slow, maddening circle around the space that should have been him.
‘This was a beautiful garden once.’
I turned, glaring at him over the warm stones of the low wall. I couldn’t care less about his bloody garden. He gave me his speculative look and stepped uncertainly from the shadows. The light obviously bothered him, because he immediately shaded his eyes. He tried to stand, as I had done, facing into the evening sun. But instead of comfort it seemed to cause him only pain, and he gasped and stepped back into the shade, his hand clamped over his eyes.
‘Are you alright?’ I asked, grudgingly.
He nodded, his hand still over his face, his teeth gritted. Eventually the pain seemed to subside and he opened his eyes, cupping his cheek in his hand and looking blankly into middle distance.
‘We’ve lost our brothers, haven’t we?’ he murmured.
My heart constricted as I realised we’d been thinking the exact same thing. ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ll get them back.’
He raised his eyes to mine, and the smile he gave me was so sad and so kind that I almost liked him. That was such a betrayal of Dom that I scowled. ‘What made you think I was Lorry?’ I asked.
He shook his head, looking me up and down, as if trying to figure it out himself. ‘We’re twins, too. Lorry and I. Maybe that’s why?’
He gestured down at himself, then at me, as if to remind me that Dom and I were twins. As if I could somehow have forgotten. He looked straight at me with Dom’s clear brown eyes. ‘I feel so lost without him,’ he said.
Twins? Lorry and Francis were twins!
I was trying to process this wacked-out information while he kept talking, quietly working things out in his head. ‘In the grey, it all made sense. I was alone, searching for so long. And then – then there was suddenly a feeling, a feeling of loneliness and pain and confusion – it was like a sound in the grey. I was able to follow it, and when I did, I found this boy. He knew me. He talked to me. I thought I’d found Lorry. Do you understand? Do you know how that felt? I’d found Lorry – at last.’ His face brightened for a moment, remembering this joy. Then his hands fell to his sides, the happiness gone. ‘Then the man came. And he was so angry. He’s always angry, but now he was furious. He shouted at us. In the garden.’
‘I told you, that was me.’
‘No . . . well, yes . . .I don’t know. I think you were there . . . but he was there, too. And he was angry. He frightened Lorry.’
‘Dom,’ I corrected automatically, ‘he frightened Dom.’ But my thoughts were miles away. I was remembering the phantom soldier and wondering – was he still here? Did he still want Francis? If so, would he hurt Dom to get to him? I looked over Dom’s shoulder, past the apples trees, into the deep shade of the undergrowth. Despite the heat of the sun, the hair on my arms prickled up. I laid my hands on the warm stones of the wall just to feel something real.
‘Dom?’ I said, my eyes on the shadows behind him. ‘Why don’t you come over here, come and stand by me?’
But he was still trying to explain that night, his eyes distant. The shadow of the house was like a purple stain at his feet, and he seemed to float against it, a thing detached. ‘I woke up,’ he whispered, ‘perfect and whole again. Part of the world again. But nothing was simple anymore.’ He looked back at the house. ‘Nothing made sense.’
He seemed to tune me out for a while, as he examined the house. His eyes roamed the sky-reflective windows, the rust-coloured bricks, the ivy-covered apple trees. I did the same, and tried to imagine the changes seven decades would wreak upon a home.
‘Do you know who May Conyngham is?’ he murmured.
I shook my head, my throat dry.
‘She’s my little sister.’ He looked back at me suddenly. ‘Imagine that. Imagine waking up tomorrow, and that wee girl you’re so fond of is suddenly an old woman, and the frilly wee sprat that was her best friend is assumed to be your grandmother.’
I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine Dee aged ten, let alone in her late seventies. It was beyond me.
‘I have my own grandmother, you know.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘She’s a rotten-tempered old harridan, actually, gives my eldest sister Jenny an appalling time. In the grey, I’d forgotten all this – my sisters, my mother.’ His smile died as quickly as it had flickered into life. ‘Oh! My poor mother! How must she feel? She dotes on us.’ He raised his eyes to me, horrified. ‘How can I have forgotten all this? It was so simple in the grey. Everything else faded out, and there was just me, and I was looking for Lorry, then that damned man was chasing me, and that’s all there was! That’s all!’
‘Did he murder you?’ I asked. ‘That man – the soldier? Did he kill you and Lorry? Is that why he haunts you?’
Dom shook his head, his expression helpless. ‘I don’t remember,’ he whispered. The house at his back was eating up the light. His face had become a shimmering blob, his eyes dark, tragic smudges under the hanging fringe of his hair. He looked as though he were being eaten by shadows; as if the evening were sucking the last of his energy from him. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that we really should do something. Just do something. Anything. I just wanted to be free of this endless claustrophobic mess.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I said.
His eyes snapped up in surprise, and I could see my own desire reflected in his face.
‘Let’s walk to the headland,’ I said, leaning towards him over the wall.
Yes. The sea – the pounding immensity of it; the wild air of the strand. We’d walk the legs off ourselves, run the entire length of the strand and climb the weed-encrusted boulders at the far end of the beach. We’d keep going ’til we were as far from here as possible. We’d drop unseen into a hidden cove and yell ourselves hoarse against the roar of the surf. Just for the sheer release of it. Just because we could.
‘Come on!’ I said. ‘We can walk the strand. Go to Red Island.’
He wanted to. He wanted to so badly. But he remained on the shadowy side of the garden, his hands opening and closing, his face desperate. He hadn’t the strength or the courage to cross back into the sun.
I couldn’t stand the thought that we wouldn’t go – that we’d just go back into that house. That we’d just sit there. ‘We can climb the rocks!’ I cried. ‘We can skip
stones!’ Dom loved to skip stones, but he wasn’t good at it, not like me. The thought of Dom pushed me into anger. ‘Come on!’ I yelled. ‘Come on!’ I slammed my fists down on the wall, hurting them against the stones. ‘Let’s go! Let’s get moving!’
He began an apologetic gesture but then froze, startled. His eyes slid left of me, and I knew immediately that someone was behind me.
I spun to find a very old man standing there. It wasn’t hard to recognise him – though he looked quite different to our first encounter. His extremely pale eyes would always give him away.
It was the auld fella we’d pulled from the sea.
He wasn’t drunk this time, though he was faintly scented with whiskey. His bright cloud of hair was Brylcreemed down behind his ears and parted neatly on the left. Carefully washed, his face and hands were pink, his cheeks clean-shaven. He had a farmer’s flat cap clenched in his two hands, and he was regarding Dom with a stunned expression on his face.
‘How long have you been standing there?’ I said.
The old man didn’t take his eyes from Dom. ‘What the divil?’ he said and made to move around me, heading in through the garden gate, his eyes never leaving my brother.
‘Hey!’ I put my hand up – had to actually place it on his chest before he finally noticed that I was trying to stop him getting in. I pushed him gently but firmly back a step. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’
He finally seemed to register my presence, and the expression in his pale-blue eyes had my heart skipping a beat. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with your brother?’ he said.
Dom and I traded a surprised look. ‘What do you think is wrong with him?’ I whispered.
The old man seemed to check himself at that, and he cleared his throat, frowning. His eyes slid to the right. I think he’d spoken without thinking and was regretting his question. ‘Well . . . ’ He stood a little straighter, retreating behind himself. ‘Well,’ he repeated. ‘He looks a bit pale, doesn’t he?’
‘Mister?’ I asked quietly. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with Dom?’
The old man’s eyes widened. He seemed to be considering taking a risk. His fingers worked the brim of his hat.
‘Can you help him?’ I whispered. I could feel Dom in the background straining to hear, longing to just cross the last band of sunlight and stand with us. ‘Mister,’ I insisted, ‘can you help him?’
Then Ma’s voice intruded, snapping us from our whispered communion.
‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
It was her special ‘back away from my children’ voice. Extremely polite. Extremely cold. A sharp blade of warning cutting across the evening shadows. I groaned inwardly at her tone. We were fifteen years old, and she still thought we were stupid enough to take sweets from a stranger. She was standing at the arch of the back garden wall, Dee peeping out from behind her legs.
The old man’s eyes met mine for a moment, and I tried with all my might to pour a message into that brief communication. She hasn’t a clue. For God’s sake, don’t give us away. He frowned thoughtfully at me for a fraction of a second, then he turned and gave Ma a smile. It was a radiant smile, a genuine kind of smile that, when aimed at you, said that you were the best thing that had happened all day, that you’d made him happy just by being there.
It gave me a jolt, this wonderful smile. It belted me across the chest like a bang from an electric fence. I knew this man. I knew him very well. I knew his smile, and his dancing eyes. I knew his cheeky, delighted spark of life; the way he embraced friendship and cherished it; the way he never stopped caring.
Who the hell was he?
‘I’m James Hueston,’ he said. ‘You’re Missus Finnerty?’ His voice raised to a question as he extended his hand across the garden wall. ‘I told your husband I might call around to thank your boys for fishing me from the sea.’
She melted instantly, her whole posture softening, her face opening like a flower. God help us, but my ma was an unpredictable woman.
‘Mister Hueston! Oh, come on in, please! I’ve just made tea.’ She advanced on us. Dee trailed behind, her fingers jammed into her mouth, firmly attached by one clutching fist to Ma’s loose slacks.
Instead of shaking James Hueston by the hand, Ma grasped his wrist and, in one of her impulsive gestures of affection, pulled him forward to kiss his old cheek across the garden wall.
‘Oh goodness,’ he chuckled, pleased, and touched his cheek where she’d left a tiny ice-pink SWALK. But when she began to usher him into the garden, he hesitated at the gate and glanced nervously up the side passage, which led to the old biddies’ house. ‘Uh,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m not sure I should come in, missus. I really just came to . . . ’
‘Mister Hueston. I went out and bought an Oxford Lunch in case you called. You’re not escaping without a slice.’ She shooed and herded and clucked ’til he was crossing the garden and passing into the shade of the house.
Dom had been staring at him this whole time, and when they came level with each other, James Hueston paused and stuck his hand out again. ‘So this is the other one,’ he said. ‘Hero number two.’
‘This is Dominick,’ Ma said. ‘I assume Patrick already introduced himself?’ She looked back over the old man’s shoulder and jerked her chin at me. Get over here!
Dom grabbed the old man’s hand and James Hueston gasped and clenched his teeth against the pain of contact. An unexpected clot of raincloud suddenly covered the sunset. The garden was plunged into chilly gloom. The old man let out a low whine of discomfort, but Dom didn’t seem to notice and just kept holding on, his face a twist of emotion.
Ma looked at James Hueston in concern. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked.
‘Just . . . hah.’ He gently extricated himself from Dom’s icy grip. ‘Just a touch of rheumatism,’ he lied.
He patted Dom’s arm, nodding reassuringly and holding eye contact for a moment. Then he allowed Ma to lead him through the arch and under the apple trees.
I came up behind my brother and put my hand between his shoulderblades. Cold snapped up through the fabric of his jumper. My already damaged fingertips sang out; I felt the blood in my wrist slow to a crawl. Still, I kept my hand there, hoping that Dom, wherever he was, would feel my presence.
The wind picked up, sending little ghost-devils of sand skittering past us. All the gold had drained from the air now, and it was cold, rapidly falling into twilight. Dom’s back was a mass of trembling tension. ‘I know that man,’ he said.
‘We saved him yesterday. You and I – Dom – Dom and I. He was trying to drown himself.’
He jerked under my hand, and his shoulders hunched. His head half turned, almost to look at me, then snapped back again to where the old man had followed Ma out of sight.
‘He tried to . . . ? Oh but Lorry, that’s a terrible sin.’
Those words coming from Dom’s mouth made me snatch my hand from his back, as I was once again slapped with the fact that this was no longer my brother. Dom would never have spoken of sin, except to disparage the idea of it. I hated these moments of clarity. They swallowed me. They stole my breath and my heartbeat from me.
‘You’ve made a mistake,’ he ground out. ‘James Hueston would never do that. He’d never . . . ’ His voice was a harsh rasp again, and he was getting a broke-backed hunch to him that alarmed me. I leant around to look into his face.
‘Dom?’
‘I feel so strange, Lorry,’ he whispered. ‘My mind feels strange. Like the parts of a magnet that don’t want to touch . . . being pushed . . . together . . . ’
He groaned, doubling over, and I tried to catch him before he fell down. Small whiffs of vapour rose from my fingers like smoke from a soldering iron. My hands screamed. There was no way I could hold onto him. I let go, and he staggered away from me, heading for the little stone bench that sat under the first apple tree. I bounced about on the balls of my feet, hissing with the pain, my burnt hands shoved under my armpits, my teeth gouging m
y bottom lip.
Dom managed to sit on the bench and slump back against the trunk of the tree. He released a gasping little sigh and went completely still. Except for the hectic glitter of his eyes, he looked just like a corpse.
‘Hold on,’ I cried, stumbling towards him. ‘Hold on.’
I fell to my knees on bitterly cold sand. Ignoring the pain in my hands, I fished another green pill from my pocket and held it to his lips. His eyes met mine. His lips stayed shut, and I realised he was afraid of me. Of course he was; we were complete strangers, thrown together against our will in the worst of conditions. ‘I have no idea if this is okay,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing with these. They’re not sweets. They might . . . I don’t know what they might do.’
We looked at each other for a moment; then he parted his lips slightly and let me slip the pill into his mouth.
‘Can you swallow?’
He shut his eyes and I saw his throat working in jerky, convulsive movements.
I knelt beside him, my knees soaking up the damp. Where are you, Ma? I thought. Why isn’t Dad here? Why are we alone? I watched Dom, his face blank, his eyes closed as he waited for the pill to work. Ma, I thought. What if this were me? Would you see it then? Would you? If something came tomorrow and pushed me aside and stole my face . . . would you notice? Or would you fail me as miserably as you’ve failed . . . I bit back on that thought. I bit viciously back and shut it down.
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice startled me, the dry whisper of it in the coalescing shadows. ‘I’m sorry that I stole your brother.’
I tried not to let my throat close over at that. I just ground my teeth together and nodded.
‘I didn’t mean it. If I could . . . ’
‘How do you feel now?’ I said harshly.
Before he could answer me, a long shadow cut the warm rectangle of light thrown through the kitchen door, and Dee stepped around the hydrangea bushes. She was ridiculously tiny and solemn, standing there looking at us. She didn’t take her eyes from Dom. ‘Mammy said come in.’
Taken Away Page 13