One by One in the Darkness

by Deirdre Madden

  For now when she lay longing for sleep, a different image unrolled inexorably in her mind, repeated constantly, like a loop of film but sharper than that, more vivid, and running at just a fraction of a second slower than normal time, which gave it the heavy feel of a nightmare.

  But this was no dream: she saw her father sitting at Lucy’s kitchen table, drinking tea out of a blue mug. She could smell the smoke of his cigarette, even smell the familiar tweed of his jacket. He was talking through to Lucy, who was working out in the back scullery: she’d been doing the dishes when he arrived, and he told her to carry on with what she was about. He glanced up at the clock and said, ‘I wonder what’s keeping Brian that he’s not home yet,’ and Lucy replied, ‘There’s a car pulled up outside now, but it’s not Brian’s, by the sound of it.’ And as soon as she spoke these words he heard her scream, as two men burst into the back scullery, and knocked her to the ground as they pushed past her; and then Helen’s father saw them himself as they came into the kitchen, two men in parkas with the hoods pulled up, Halloween masks on their faces. He saw the guns, too, and he knew what they were going to do to him. The sound of a chair scraping back on the tiles, ‘Ah no, Christ Jesus no,’ and then they shot him at point-blank range, blowing half his head away. As they ran out of the house, one of them punched the air and whooped, because it had been so easy.

  And at this point, in an abrupt reversal of the gentle descent of her childhood, Helen’s vision swung violently away, and now she was aware of the cold light of dead stars; the graceless immensity of a dark universe. Now her image of her father’s death was infinitely small, infinitely tender: the searing grief came from the tension between that smallness and the enormity of infinite time and space. No pity, no forgiveness, no justification: maybe if she could have conceived of a consciousness where every unique horror in the history of humanity was known and grieved for, it would have given her some comfort. Sometimes she felt that all she had was her grief, a grief she could scarcely bear.

  In the solid stone house, the silence was uncanny.

  One by one in the darkness, the sisters slept.

  About the Author

  Deirdre Madden is from Toomebridge, Co. Antrim. Her novels include The Birds of the Innocent Wood, Nothing is Black and One by One in the Darkness, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her most recent novel is Authenticity. She teaches at Trinity College Dublin and is a member of the Irish arts academy Aosdána.

  By the Same Author

  HIDDEN SYMPTOMS

  THE BIRDS OF THE INNOCENT WOOD

  REMEMBERING LIGHT AND STONE

  NOTHING IS BLACK

  AUTHENTICITY

  MOLLY FOX’S BRITHDAY

  for children

  SNAKES’ ELBOWS

  THANKS FOR TELLING ME, EMILY

  Copyright

  First published in 1996

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2009

  All rights reserved

  © Deirdre Madden, 1996

  The right of Deirdre Madden to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–25456–9 [epub edition]