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

by Joseph Éamon Cummins

  ‘You’re Tony.’ She extended her hand. ‘Len’s been telling me so much about you I feel I already know you. Nothing’s wrong?’

  ‘No, no. Just like to talk to you, few minutes. Won’t keep you.’

  ‘I can do with a break.’ She flipped on a lamp that spread a narrow pool of warm light. ‘Pull up a chair. I wondered when we might meet. I hope you won’t mind me confessing something right off: Len described you as handsome; I guess I didn’t expect it to be quite so true.’

  A smile hid his surprise at what he was already discovering. ‘You and Lenny, you’ve stayed in touch through the years?’

  ‘No. Now we do. All the time. Some weeks we’re on the phone twice, three times, blabbering for hours; you know women. We’re a couple of crazies. Always were.’

  ‘You went to college together here in Dublin. Lots of fun?’

  ‘A world of fun. UCD, just down the road. I was the slow one, Len was the genius. Many’s the exam she pulled me through. Best years of my life.’ She paused dreamily, then continued with a more serious bearing. ‘Len told me she told you everything, the whole story. I’m glad she did. So you know how close we were. Until one day, it all ended. She headed off for the Big Apple and I came here, and that was that: finito.’

  He searched for words to respond to her obvious glumness, then gestured to an array of wall plaques. ‘You won all these? And you got married?’

  ‘No and No.’ She twisted the ring on her marriage finger. ‘Friendship. From Len. Doesn’t fit any other finger. Some of the awards are mine; majority are shared with others.’

  ‘You guys kept in touch when Lenny went abroad?’

  ‘Not a screed. 1980 to 1990, nothing. Like Moses in the wilderness. At Easter four and-a-half years ago we found each other again. She dropped in, literally, out of the blue. Half-hour later she’s gone again, bound for the Middle East, a whirlwind visit if ever there was one. Next time I lay eyes on her – a year later, in summer – she’s banging at my door in the middle of the night.

  ‘I know she told you about Aidan, I encouraged her to do that, the unconscionable tragedies in Baghdad. Charles had her flown home two months after the shelter disaster. The embassy hadn’t been able to reach him before then. Anyway, that night, from the airport, she made straight for my apartment. Found my address in a directory, she told me. I almost died; she was skin and bone. I tried to get her to eat, make her comfortable. What a task. Her nightmares were horrific, night after night, really frightened me. First it was Aidan; she’d scream at him, words I couldn’t make out, except his name. Then it was Mama, Mama, come down time after time. I never understood what that was about. Down from heaven to help her, I suppose, in her grief. She’d shoot upright in the bed, eyes bulging, then floods of tears, non-stop. That went on for weeks. In the end I got help for her, after a number of false starts. And things improved, slowly.

  ‘Aidan’s death, particularly the way it happened, was a hair’s breadth from killing her. It took over her mind. She’d keep describing the scene to me like it was still happening inside her: the noise, the cement ceiling dropping down on them, people being crushed. Balls of flame whizzing around, burning people to cinders in seconds. I listened each time, hundreds of times, and I realised one thing: I will never comprehend what she went through. Never. No one could, unless they’d been there.’

  ‘You did everything you could do. She needed your friendship and you gave her that.’

  ‘The second week, I succeeded in getting her to a psychiatrist, someone I know over in Baggot Street. Managed to get her to agree she needed help, treatment of some kind.’ She pressed two fingers to her lips, fell silent for moments. ‘Len told me she was up-front with you about all this, that you know the whole story.’

  ‘I still want to hear whatever you can tell me, anything that will help.’

  ‘I hope you won’t take offense at my asking this: You do love this tender woman as much as she loves you?’

  Tony nodded. ‘I want to do everything I can to make sure she gets completely over what happened. Just like you do. Everything.’

  ‘Because she’s the loveliest person I’ve known in my life. Another tragedy could destroy her. You do recognise that?’

  ‘Like I said, Emer, I want exactly what you want, for Lenny to be happy and stay happy, and be well. That’s what I want.’

  ‘We’re kindred souls so, you and me.’ She left her chair, moved wordlessly to the coffee machine. After initial fumbling she held up the coffee pot; he declined. And there, at the dark end of the suite, her crimped hair obscuring her face, she stayed leaning against the counter, hands cradling a mug.

  He walked to her.

  ‘We were both just seventeen. When we met. Kids, but we didn’t know that then. I needed a flatmate, she needed a place to live, we talked for five minutes, an hour later she moved in. A few months after that I got a fright, the first of many. We were sitting together on a sofa, and it was like she fell into a trance. Not ordinary daydreaming, I mean like a deep hypnotic trance. Then a second time, and a third, within weeks.’

  Emer spoke as though re-living the incidents of her story.

  ‘She’s taking drugs, I thought, on the sly, like others at the time. I hassled her; I threatened to report her. She swore she wasn’t. And she wasn’t. Stupid me. Then the following year, things changed; she’d stare at her hands or her feet, push them out in front of her like she was trying to figure out who they belonged to, like they were someone else’s. Gave me the chills.

  ‘All that time, she was wonderfully talented. Her passion was fine-art photography. Bill Brandt, Weston, Cartier-Bresson. Diane Arbus, Tony Ray Jones, Robert Frank; I remember all their names, though I’m not a photography buff at all, just that she never stopped talking about them. Then things got even worse; she’d develop a roll of film in the darkroom – she never let anyone breathe near her film – she’d look at the negatives and insist they weren’t hers, that somebody switched her film. Her short-term memory wasn’t recording, but only now and then; most of the time she was fine. The sheer irony of it is that she went to enormous difficulty in capturing every image; she’d wait hours for a moment, for the light to be just the way she wanted it. I’d insist to her that I watched her taking the shots, I was there, I helped her. That would cause trouble between us: fighting, shouting, and more worry; and that’s how it went. In between all that we shared everything, everything, had so much fun.

  ‘It took from 1976 to 1979 before I could convince her to talk to a doctor. She was twenty then; we were in third year. I went along with her; that was the deal we agreed. She told the psychotherapist she had forgotten most of her childhood, remembered just bits and pieces here and there. I had always suspected she was fibbing about that, ashamed of her family. Once again, stupid me. She was telling the truth. Most of her early life up to when she was a young teenager was blurred or gone.’

  ‘Why? How could that – I mean, what could cause something like that? Did they say?’

  ‘Couple of doctors said it looked like panic disorder, probably caused by trauma. But where was the trauma? There was no trauma. Her mother died when Lenny was five, which was heart-breaking, of course, but young children get over tragedies like that. Charles was away on business overseas most of the time. Leo Reffo and his wife Peggy – I met them both – sort of adopted her for a few years, and from all I’ve seen and heard they cared for her like she was their own child. Uncle Leo and Aunt Peg, she called them; I remember it so fondly, meeting them. There’s a couple of old photos that still make me cry: Leo with her on a big black plough horse, and one of him swinging her around on the bog. She told me that the few memories she still has are from that period, of being especially happy; so I keep reminding her of those good times. She remembers sitting in a field, knitting daisies into a chain to give to Leo as a gift, and him wearing it around his neck.’

  Emer became silent again. In the low hum of the room Tony re-sank his mind into the puzzle he was slowl
y piecing together, and the terrible complexity of seemingly simple lives.

  ‘And you’re still the best of friends, after all this time, how about that,’ he said. ‘You’re both really lucky.’

  A wry smile swept into her face. ‘You know something: she has never permitted me go up to Claire Abbey to see her. But I think now I know why. What she always needed was someone to love her, who was just hers, not to be shared with anyone else. Even today, when she feels something is amiss she rings me, asks can she come down. Sorry, Tony, am I going on too much? Just tell me to shut up.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You asked what the problem is. In January of this year, six months or so after she came home, I found her a new psychiatrist, a lovely gentleman on Sandymount Avenue, close to where I live. I go with her, still. We’ve talked to him together a number of times. He’s warm, and he has so – ’

  ‘Did he say what’s wrong? If it will, if she’ll . . .’

  ‘No guarantees; that’s all any of them will say. This new man stressed that the way to overcome this is not all at once, but one specific stage at a time. He’s the only one who’d venture a diagnosis. It’s a mouthful, I know it by heart because I’ve researched it so much: atypical dissociative disorder with systematised amnesia and depersonalisation symptoms.’

  ‘What does that mean? Did he say what causes it, how to cure it?’

  ‘He’s convinced something very troubling happened to her, probably when she was very young, and she suppressed whatever it was. She asked Leo if she almost drowned or got attacked or knocked down or anything like that. There was nothing he could tell her. She did get bounced around: different homes, different schools, after her mother died, but she was always well loved and well looked after, as far as we know. No abuse of any kind, which they told us can cause similar symptoms. Anyway, be that as it may, this doctor has her on a new drug combination. Thank God all is going very well; he says it’s time now to start psychotherapy. She’s one hundred percent better than six months ago and all the dosages have been reduced. There’s just one problem – ’

  ‘She goes off the medication.’

  ‘You know about these things?’

  ‘Volunteer work. Did she say anything to you about Killadoon Cliffs.’

  ‘Killadoon, I know. What about it?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, just that we, you know, we went up there, onto the head, saw the views.’

  ‘That’s fabulous! I’m thrilled. She’s waited so long to feel able to do that. The day she could go back up there, she told me, she’d know her problems were over. She told you the same, no doubt. Well done.’

  Tony nodded, tried to look pleased.

  ‘See, Tony, Len is a bit like a street fighter; I felt that from our earliest days together. She’s brave, and that’s an understatement; she takes things on, is so resilient. She can beat this thing, no question. You can imagine how desperately she wants to be fully well for you. When she feels good for a few weeks, she believes she has it conquered and goes off the tablets. But she’s certainly at the final hurdle. And I’ll always be here for her, she knows that in her heart, whatever she needs, day or night. And now she has you, strong and masculine. How lucky can a girl be!’

  Her awkward smile faded; she looked into Tony’s eyes. ‘I say this knowing her better than anyone alive. You, you’re her cure, the final piece of the jigsaw. I know that.’

  He pulled his mind back inside himself, pulled it far, far back. ‘I could’ve done with a friend like you. Often in my life.’ He listened to the replay of his words and was reminded that he had not surrendered to circumstance.

  ‘We make our own worlds, they say,’ Emer sighed. ‘I could get lost in yesterdays. I try hard not to. Today is it. Not yesterdays, not tomorrows. And you have Len.’ She fumbled at her wallet, handed him a photo. ‘Len and me. At twenty. Kicking up our heels. You can have it.’

  ‘Hey, you were cute. I mean you still are, you look great.’

  ‘Be everything for her. Never let her forget I’m here, even if she doesn’t visit.’

  ‘She’d always want to see you; always, you know that.’ He savoured the whiff of joy his words brought out of her. ‘Know anything at all about Aidan?’

  ‘Just that he worshipped her. I met him in 1990, the time she came to see me before flying to Baghdad. I was dumbfounded, it seemed mad; they’d known each other one week. Seven days! When I got her on her own she told me he had saved her life, in Manhattan; that’s how she put it, and that’s all I was told at the time. Looking back now, it seems that was his calling, saving lives. A year after that, when she came to me from the Gulf War, I heard the full story, about how they met, how he appeared from nowhere, plucked her out of danger, and how wonderful things were for the next year in Iraq. The whole story seemed surreal.

  ‘Then he was killed, God rest him, and that ended that. I wept when she told me how it happened. Couldn’t stop. She tried to get off the stretcher carrying her away so she could die holding him. In the fire and destruction. I just kept crying, I wanted to turn back time, get them both out of there before the bombs, make them not explode, give all those poor people back their lives. But I couldn’t do that, could I. All I could do was love her, care for her, hold her close to me. I became a surrogate Aidan.’

  Tony grasped both her hands. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard.’ Her face pressed to his chest, their embrace soundless but for her distress. She then drew back, pulled a tissue from her sleeve.

  ‘You seem depressed, Tony. Stop. Don’t be. Nothing but silly jealousy on my part. It’s plain she loves you.’

  ‘She does. I know.’

  ‘Leo’s the only one left who might be helpful about the past. But tread carefully. He loves her every bit as much as you and I do, and he doesn’t take well to strangers bothering her. Which I admire him for. What do men want with gorgeous women except to use them then ditch them when something sexier comes along.’ All at once Emer’s look was one of having spoken too transparently. ‘I don’t mean all men; I’m sorry. Not you, definitely not, not at all.’

  They leaned back separately against the counter, the blue of her room over them both.

  ‘Emer, I’m understanding things better now; thanks for filling me in. What about Boxer Dunne?’

  ‘His job is to look out for Len, when he’s told to. Otherwise, labourer.’

  ‘Charles’ minder for his daughter.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s Leo who calls the shots there.’

  ‘But why Leo? I can’t figure that. He’s so – ’

  Her frown scolded him. ‘Smart man like you?’

  His thoughts wandered out beyond the windowless room, to what he had known before today and what he had just learned. Then his face opened up. ‘You mean, you mean Leo, Leo is, Lenny is – ’

  ‘That’s in strict confidence. Because I know you have Len’s best interest at heart.’

  ‘I should have guessed. By Leo’s first wife, cute girl, short red hair. I saw her picture.’

  ‘Róisín Doyle. She and Leo were in love, I heard, but for whatever reason never married. Róisín took ill later. Leukaemia. And tragically she died. Len was five; she has no memory of her mother. Talk about bad luck.’

  Tony pieced together this fuller story in which, as far as he could tell, there were no sinister forces. Except one, Aidan Harper, who could one day rob him of his future, plunge him back into the hell out of which he had risen. He had to find him. Not someday. This day. Starting right now.

  ‘I’ll get going,’ he said.

  ‘Where do you go from here?’

  ‘Oh, one or two little tasks in the city. For Lenny.’

  She followed him to the door. ‘I won’t be losing Len, as a friend? Couldn’t fathom that, her not being part of my life.’

  ‘Not at all. No, you won’t. We both owe you a whole lot.’

  ‘You’ll bloom, you two. You’re both so strong, and brave; I can see that,’ she said with ef
fort. ‘I hope you decide to live in Dublin. If you do, come talk to me about work. I heard you’re a sports writer?’

  ‘Not really. Not there yet. Emer, don’t say you saw me, for now. To anyone. No one at all. Please?’

  ‘Not a word; don’t worry. She deserves the best, Tony. Always give her that.’

  ‘I will. No fear.’

  * * *

  After he left, Emer’s emotions churned in his mind. Was this the other world, he asked, the one he’d dreamed of belonging to? People loving the damaged, the illegitimate, the long dead, even those lost in their own nowheres. People pleading on behalf of others as if for themselves, and expecting that he too was like them, was one of them. Was this what fate had dispossessed him of, this culture of kindness? And if that were so, how big a price had he still to pay to earn it?

  The words they had used burned deeper in his thoughts: a decent man, one had said, over and over; a man with power to make the living and the dead happy, said another; a man brave and strong; a man who could love; who could bring healing. But could he? Could he achieve what Leo had said was almost impossible? He wasn’t God.

  As he crossed the glassed-in atrium the eleven-year-old boy ghosted again. And the plain-faced, pony-tailed receptionist was smiling still. But no, no to all these seductions, he swore. No to the kind smiles and warm hearts, no to his growing sense of home. Not time yet for any of this. Deal first with the biggest threat, Aidan Harper. Then give Lenny back her life. Take back his own. Make it permanent. Make certain.

  He pressed into a Dublin spitting drizzle at him.

  18

  Saturday Morning, Dublin City Centre

  It was a fresh day bereft of vapour and sun. The early autumn breeze blowing down the quays put a chill in the air that hiked up urgency in the narrow streets.

  Kate and Lenny, at Lenny’s urging, had strolled amid the southside’s Georgian architecture. They followed the grey perimeter of Trinity College then along Grafton Street and into a boutique where Lenny purchased small gift items.