On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland

by Joseph Éamon Cummins

  ‘Let him finish his sup of tea, man.’

  ‘He’s nearly late the way it is. No good all this yak about the past; we have to go.’ Paddy steered Tony through the door; a minute later the taxi beeped twice as Eilis waved from the yard.

  * * *

  Leo Reffo moved impassively, austere, waist-coated, arms protruding from roughly-rolled sleeves. He led Tony to a white-walled room with a small square window and said he’d return momentarily.

  Tony’s searching stopped at a photograph of Lenny, a portrait, black-and-white, and out-of-place, he thought, in what felt like a museum. Opposite, a photo of a bride and groom hung alone. And from the mantle beamed the joyful face of a thin young woman. There was much to learn here, he thought, but the urgency of the occasion did not permit. And he still didn’t know what to expect from his host. He sat on the edge of a chair and pondered how he might begin this odd confederation of his own making.

  Leo returned, stood before the fireplace.

  ‘Thanks for – ’

  ‘First thing you can do is hold your thanks,’ Leo said. ‘I’ll spell it out so you’re clear. Fellas that want to sniff around here for what they can take, I’ve seen off a few. There’s any number of women around Westport, and half-a-million in Dublin. Y’understand me?’

  Tony stared back without malevolence, his mind turning. There was something to admire in this grey, angry man: directness for a start, and strength, traits he could relate to. But he was here with a mission, he reminded himself, not to admire the man.

  ‘You made your point,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll tell you where I – ’

  ‘What business do you have with me?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that.’ Tony’s voice hardened.

  ‘Fire ahead.’

  ‘I’m here, one, because Lenny doesn’t want me to contact her father. And, two, because she told me you and her are friends going back a long time. ‘

  ‘She told you to talk to me?’

  Tony’s face stilled; he said nothing.

  ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t be here. Maybe she’s not all that interested.’

  ‘Look, you’re screwing this up. She is interested, and I’m interested in her. Right now she’s on her way to visit my sister in Dublin.’

  ‘If it’s money you’re after, you’re on thin ice.’

  ‘What the . . . what is it with you?!’ Tony got to his feet, moved to the bride-and-groom photo. ‘Is this you? Is it?’

  Leo’s remained unmoved.

  ‘I can see it’s you. You loved someone once. This woman. I love Lenny. That’s the only reason I’m here. I need you to tell me some things – for her good, her happiness.’

  Leo walked to the net-curtained window. Then he turned, leaned over the tabletop. ‘What is it you want to know?’

  ‘Lenny goes off for days, away somewhere. Why? Is she having some kind of medical treatment. Do you know?’

  ‘Before I say more, hear me well. The girl’s suffered more than her rightful share. Hurt her or cross her and you’ll have more than you – ’

  ‘Why would I do that?! Tell me. Why would I hurt her? I told you why I came here. I want her to be well, and happy. Like you do. Haven’t you figured that out yet?’

  Leo slumped into a soft-chair, quiet, preoccupied. ‘When she finally made it home to us from Iraq our prayers were answered.’

  ‘She told me about that, and how you helped her recover.’

  ‘Has she spoken to you about anything else?’

  ‘Not much, not yet. But I know she will. I want to know.’

  ‘She can’t tell you about the early years. Too young. And she doesn’t remember.’ Leo straightened up in the chair. ‘My generation isn’t in charge any more. If you love her, like you say, and if she feels the same – ’

  ‘She does! There’s no if. None. We know each other for over a year. I know she told you; she must have told you.’

  ‘She didn’t. I heard.’

  A silence descended between them. Tony’s gaze found again the photo of the young woman with Lenny’s eyes, then Lenny’s portrait nearby. But he let the quiet continue.

  ‘You say you love her,’ Leo said. ‘Maybe you just think you do but you don’t know yet; maybe she’d be a bother to you – so what is it?’

  ‘It’s yes. Yes.’

  ‘Yes to what?’

  ‘Yes, I do know. I don’t think, I know. I love Lenny.’

  ‘You’ll not take her away again; y’understand that too?’

  ‘I’m not doing that. I don’t live anywhere else. This is home, for me. Here.’

  ‘I’ll tell you the little I know. She gets bothered sometimes, living in a small village. Likes to go to Dublin, places she was fond of once, when she was studying; she walks by the canal and goes to galleries, goes to Bull Island and Iveagh Gardens, all over. Always comes back the better for it.’

  ‘No. That’s not it.’ Tony shook his head. ‘There’s more to it. The pills she takes, what are they for?’

  ‘For war.’

  ‘War?’

  ‘Medicine for war.’

  ‘I want to understand. Tell me.’

  ‘To help with the pain of all she’s been through. That’s what. Might be a doctor in Dublin she sees. That’s just my suspicion.’

  ‘Somebody must know more. Would Paddy McCann know? He talks to her.’

  ‘Not things like that. And he’d not be one to break her trust.’

  ‘Somebody has to know the doctor’s name.’

  ‘Could be one. A wee girl, a pal from college. Emer, that’s all I remember, small Dublin lassie with a sense of humour. She was here once, fourteen years ago, 1980, just before Lenny took off for America. They were good friends, going to graduate together. Only friend I ever knew her to have.’

  ‘They stayed in touch?’

  ‘Possible, maybe not. Back then we all hoped the two of them would travel off together, to work for the summer. But the girl didn’t go, instead went to work in RTÉ Television. Might be there still. Or could have emigrated, like so many. She’d be in her mid-thirties now. More than that I don’t know.’

  ‘She could be anywhere in the world. Fourteen years, no last name. That’s almost impossible.’

  ‘Then that’s your task, isn’t it: the almost impossible. If you want what you say you want, enough.’

  ‘I told you where I stand. It doesn’t change my mind.’

  ‘In that case, prepare yourself to be shocked. When she was in New York she met an Englishman and from what I – ’

  ‘Aidan Harper. I know, I know all about that. Lenny told me. Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘She loved him, for a while, so what.

  ‘Does matter.’

  ‘Not to me. What happened to him, and Lenny, it’s sad, but it’s years ago, it’s gone. ‘

  ‘They came here. On their way to Baghdad. Bad trouble over there at the time. She was happy, different, like she was contented inside. She couldn’t wait to go with him. Then they flew off together, and the next – ’

  ‘I told you, I don’t need to know. None of that matters. I knew he was here; Lenny told me.’

  ‘If you’ll listen, I’m telling you what she didn’t tell you. What nobody could tell you. Not even Lenny.’

  ‘What? . . . What?’

  ‘The man’s alive.’

  Tony sprang to his feet. ‘Aidan Harper?!’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘That’s crazy. He was killed, in that shelter. Lenny saw it happen. Hundreds were killed.’

  ‘He wasn’t one of them.’

  ‘This is crazy stuff. Where do you get your information?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. Something I’m not proud of. After the bombs, she was here, re-living the hell day by day, every day; you could never imagine what she suffered. We were all afraid for her. Then four months after she got home two things happened: she started to pull out of it, and his first letter arrived to the Abbey. I s
aw his name on the back of the envelope. A dead man. I didn’t know what to do for the best. Right or not, I opened it. He had beaten death, he said, by holding onto a picture of her they found beside him. In all the months in hospital, the hope that kept him alive, he told her, was that picture, and seeing her again.’

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ Tony said.

  ‘No one knew who he was. He had bad burns all over him, skull fractures, a crushed leg, and other injuries. The doctors put him into a coma for his own good. He said that when he was unconscious he felt she was with him. They re-set his leg a number of times, until they could do nothing more. They told him he’d probably not walk again. The letter said his head was healing and he was learning to walk. It went on that way. I didn’t give it to her, or any of his letters.’

  ‘Real fucking crazy shit, this. I can’t believe – ’

  ‘Peggy and me, we worried for so long that we’d never see her again, when she went to Iraq. A year later she came home. Not well.’ Leo’s words faded, then came back. ‘Sick or not, she was home with us. The photograph you were looking at, that’s Peggy and me the day we were married. Our prayers for children of our own never got answered. From the earliest days, Lenny was like she was our own. We’d lost her twice before, but then she was back home from the war. Peggy was two months dead then. I don’t know what she would’ve done: let Lenny go back to him, to war; be killed or tortured, lose her mind? That would be all three of them gone: Róisín, Peggy, Lenny. I couldn’t allow that. She had people here who’d love her, who’d make sure she got well. Cilla, Paddy, Eilis, Liam, and me, and others. Even the Doyle boys in England, Róisín’s brothers; they never came home but they wrote to her. And Charles too, he was sound enough; Lenny and him just never settled. I decided against war. I hid his letters. To save her. If she meant as much to you, you’d do no different.’

  The air in the room throbbed, neither man spoke.

  ‘Maybe I wouldn’t,’ Tony said, eventually. ‘Wouldn’t do what you did.’

  ‘Three and a half years I’ve watched her get well. Said not a word about the letters to a soul. Except Róisín and Peggy.’

  ‘But they’re . . . they’re both – ’

  ‘Souls don’t die. You don’t talk to souls in America, do you? Maybe you should.’

  ‘Cilla deBurca, she’s a friend of Lenny’s, a good friend?’

  ‘Since the day Lenny came back to us.’

  ‘She knows all this, what you’ve told me?’

  ‘No one knows. I told you that. Just me and you, in this world.’

  Tony’s hands pushed back through his hair. This place, these people, he thought, were stranger than he could ever have imagined. No one here was an individual; no one ever seemed to stand alone, not Cilla, not Paddy, not even Leo, none of them. All were like limbs of the same tree. What they meant could only be guessed at; so often their facts were made up, intended only to nurture how they felt or wanted others to feel. They obscured reality for reasons that were not obvious to an outsider. But he was beginning to understand them, their ways, things he must once have known. What Leo had just told him was true; he felt certain of that. Now he needed to stay focused, learn here what he could, then get out and make things right.

  ‘What else should I be told?’ He glared down at the older man. ‘Other letters you know about? How about mine, to Lenny, this past year?’

  ‘Are you up to the task in front of you?’ Leo asked.

  ‘I faced bigger.’

  ‘A young man’s boast.’

  ‘You know zip about me.’

  ‘I know this. If the Englishman is alive, and there’s cause to believe he is, you’ll never be sure of Lenny. The day he turns up, everything will change. You can handle that?’

  ‘Bullshit. You don’t know that. You can’t even – ’

  ‘Because . . . because, if you can’t, better for everyone that you find another woman, don’t trouble Lenny, or yourself, any further.’

  Tony brooded, face and body tense. Leo’s words frightened him: lose this woman to a ghost? Live in fear of Aidan Harper? After making it this far, a woman who’d be his only for safe-keeping? He’d never live on the run, looking over his shoulder for a cripple. No way. He’d fix this, fix it for good, make it permanent.

  ‘Where is he at now?’ he asked matter-of-factly.

  ‘I read only one of his letters, the first one. To make the right decision. The other five, I didn’t open. He said he was hoping to set up a house for drug addicts. That was over three years ago.’

  ‘Drug addicts? In Baghdad?!’

  ‘Dublin.’

  ‘Dublin!? Dublin!? Where in Dublin?’

  ‘Didn’t say that. He was back in Ireland only days when he wrote it. Said he was looking at a situation.’

  ‘Those other letters, the later ones, where are they now? Must be an address on them.’

  ‘Not your property.’

  Tony approached. ‘I want those letters.’

  Leo rose up out of the chair, stood erect. ‘Nobody touches them.’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? I need that address.’ Tony’s bearing caused not a flutter to show in Leo. ‘What if I told Lenny, about what you did; what would that do for you, huh?’

  ‘You could do that? And you love her?’

  ‘You used those letters to get what you wanted, to keep him away from her. It’s wrong for me to do the same? I care about her more than he ever could!’ He broke away, tried to subdue an old fury. He could see it now, see her abandoning him and their new life, for a dead man, the only person who could kill his dream. His glare re-locked on Leo.

  ‘Last time. I’m asking you. I want that address. Don’t give me any shit.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’ Leo squared his shoulders.

  Neither spoke, just stared into each other’s eyes. Then Tony pulled out, turned aside.

  He’d already fucked up half his life; this wasn’t his fight. But live or die, he vowed, nothing would take Lenny Quin from him. No one could want her as he wanted her, or love her as he would. Which meant one thing: Aidan Harper. Find him. Right now though, something else was going on that he hadn’t figured. What made Leo so intense, so unafraid to fight? He realised they were alike, him and Leo. Lenny owned a chunk of each of them; she was the brightest flame in both their hearts. Which left him nowhere. This man was too good to go up against, too loved by Lenny, and in his own right not a man to be pushed. No, the real target was Aidan Harper. Sort that out; deal with that. He was no good for Lenny, didn’t love enough to go after the woman he wanted. Left her to mourn because his letters didn’t get answered. Fuck-all guts. MacNeills were made of better stuff. Almost impossible, that’s what Leo had said, almost impossible. But not impossible. Not to him.

  He broke out of his thoughts and from the doorway nodded back.

  ‘Wait!’ Leo followed after him. ‘Too much harm’s been done. Make no more.’

  ‘I’ll do what needs to be done.’

  ‘Then do it honourably. Make the living and the dead happy.’ Leo turned back in toward the hearth; his shaking hands reaching to Róisín.

  17

  RTÉ, Montrose, South Dublin

  He pushed through the plate-glass doors of the glass façade and all at once came a flood of memories: the big marble-floored vestibule, funny trees growing inside instead of outside, the exuberance of his schoolmates.

  He was eleven then, in fifth class at St Eoin’s. Mr White had brought all thirty-seven of them here to learn how television programmes were made. Any day off school was great, didn’t matter for what, but on that particular day he and his mates couldn’t wait to spot the man who read the news on the telly every night, who rumour had it had only one leg. But they never got to see him. Though they did see Bottler, who had his own show, and he shook his fist at them just because Micko asked him to tell them a joke. And Mr White said that Bottler had thumped a couple of smart-arse fellas the week before and would do the same to Micko and the re
st of them if they didn’t behave. And then Micko got –

  ‘Hello.’ A woman’s voice punctured his reverie. ‘What can I do for you?’

  On turning, he found a pony-tailed girl with a face plain and pale and pleasant, almost hidden behind the circular reception desk. ‘I’d like to see Emer,’ he said, trying to sound business-like.

  ‘Emer Gilligan, is it?’ He nodded. ‘Who will I tell her?’

  ‘Tony. Just say Tony.’

  Seconds later, out loped a tall mini-skirted brunette with a puzzled smile. He apologised for the mix-up. No problem, she said, she was nipping outside for a fag and a bit of fresh air anyway. He held the door and followed her into the exterior breeziness.

  ‘From America, are you?’

  ‘Not anymore; I lived there. The Emer I’m looking for, I can’t remember her last name.’

  ‘O God, there’s millions of Emers here, four or five at least. RTÉ is a big place. What’s she look like?’

  ‘Thirty-five, thirty-six, from Dublin, not tall, wavy hair probably, and – ’

  ‘That’s Emer O’Hare you want, head of production.’

  ‘Big job?’

  ‘Big!’ The girl arched her eyebrows then stubbed her cigarette in the sand pot. ‘I better get back or she’ll be sending St Anthony after me. I’m in graphic design, if you need any more help; just tell them to ring me.’

  Tony collected his thoughts, breathed in the chill Montrose air, then re-entered the building.

  ‘Hello, again,’ the pony-tailed pale-faced girl said with a smile.

  ‘Wrong Emer. It’s Emer O’Hare I need to speak to.’

  The girl delivered the message and rested the receiver on her shoulder. ‘She’s in editing at the minute. What’s it in connection with?’

  ‘Tell her Lenny. Lenny Quin. I need to talk to her.’

  The girl did as instructed. ‘That’s grand,’ she said. ‘If you walk to the end of the corridor then turn right, Suite 3 will be on your left; you can go ahead in.’

  Outside the suite he paused, then knocked and pushed his head in. A voice beckoned him. The attractive woman swivelled out of the blue glare of a pair of TV monitors.