by Lee Moan
He sat down at the table opposite her, and she pushed a large scotch in his direction. “I took the liberty of getting you a drink,” she said. “Scotch and soda. That’s right isn’t it?”
“That’s fine,” he said, taking a sip. Had he disclosed his alcoholic preference during the workshop? He couldn’t remember doing so. Perhaps the publishers had this vital information on file at the office. Whatever, the girl had certainly done her homework. “What happened to the others?” he asked, glancing around.
Subconsciously, Sam noted her body language. The fierce eye contact she had maintained during the workshop faltered and she looked up to her left. He couldn’t remember if that meant she was about to lie, or if she just wasn’t sure.
“Oh, Pauline and Gavin had to make headway. They’d just heard that traffic was going to get bad and they wanted to get a head start. Long drive and all that. And as for the two Johns, well, I don’t know where they’ve got to. Maybe they couldn’t afford it, felt embarrassed. You know how poor, struggling writers are.” She let out a high-pitched giggle, which was infectious in its way, and not unattractive. In fact, seeing her alone in this setting, he was beginning to think she wasn’t a bad-looking young woman.
But was she lying? If he accepted that she was, what did that actually mean? That she had somehow driven the other group members away, just so that she could have him all to herself? Wasn’t that absurd, and just the least bit paranoid?
“So,” she said, leaning across the table and gazing into his eyes. “It’s just you and little old me. What shall we talk about?”
He drank four scotch and sodas that night. Kelly had six Black Russians. Their conversation, which Sam had prayed would dry up within the hour, ran to topics as diverse as the Great American Novel (“Oh, God, I LOVE American prose,” she’d gushed at one point) to the poetry of Keats and Shelley. He’d only drunk so much because her company had actually been scintillating. After his fourth drink, his face had gone numb, just as it always did, and he’d barely noticed how the last time she came back from the bar, she sat next to him, bumping her hip against his as she fought for more purchase on the comfy seat. Despite his drunken stupor, he remembered laughing with her about something, some awful joke she’d told which wasn’t funny at all, but oh, you had to be there. They were laughing, laughing like silly kids, and he knew he shouldn’t have let himself get like this, this drunk, but it was so nice to have female company.
That was when she stopped laughing, leaned in close, her wet lips touching his ear, and said: “I want you.”
The laugh died in his throat. He could only stare down at his glass, grinning stupidly.
“I want to go upstairs with you.” Her hot breath on the side of his face, that sweet perfume. “I’ll do anything you want.”
He remembered being afraid to look her in the face, as if she held some gorgon-like power, that looking into her eyes would somehow turn him to stone or some other lifeless material. But when he finally did, his head rolling stiffly on his neck, he’d found just a pretty face, a pouting mouth, a pair of lustful eyes. He didn’t care to see or know what lay underneath.
“I’m a happily married man,” he’d whispered. “Why would I want to do something like that?”
“No one ever needs to know,” she had responded, dropping her eyes demurely, an act which caused the secret lustful beast in his chest to lurch up in excitement. She was reeling him in with every trick in the book.
No one ever needs to know . . .
8
“Daddy, why couldn’t we tell Mummy where we’re going?”
His daughter’s question cut through the reverie like an electric knife. They were sitting in the cab of the Land Rover Discovery, both of them lost in different parts of the horizon as it drifted by. The water was incredibly calm, the crossing as smooth as it had ever been. He’d still taken a couple of Sea Legs capsules before they boarded the ferry. His fear of the water had never left him, even after a year on the island. Becky, however, had never needed seasickness pills. He envied her for that.
“What, sweetheart?” he said, turning down the volume on the CD player.
“Why do we have to keep this a secret from Mummy?” she said.
They’d sat in the living room waiting for Rachel to leave the house. When she’d closed the front door behind her, the two of them had run over to the window, following her figure as she walked the short distance into town. Once out of sight, they had wordlessly climbed into the Discovery and headed for the port. This was the question he’d been dreading since Rachel’s exit. He did not want to start lying to his daughter, too.
“Well, honey, it’s a little complicated. You see, Daddy has to meet someone in Oban. A woman.”
He saw the candle of horror appear in Becky’s eyes. As much as a six year-old could understand the dark deeds of adults, Becky seemed to be putting together two numbers which gave her a result she didn’t like at all.
“What woman?” she said.
“She’s from the publishers.”
“The people who make your books?”
“Yeah,” he said, momentarily enchanted with her description.
“What does she want to see you about?”
“Just boring business stuff, I expect.”
Becky’s usually open expression took on a guarded edge. “Why do you have to go to the mainland? Why can’t she come to the island?”
Sam felt himself slipping deeper into that quagmire. “Sweetheart, I’ll tell you more about it after, okay?”
She nodded sullenly. “Grown-up stuff?” she said.
“Yeah, grown-up stuff,” he agreed, grateful that she had let him off the hook. For now, anyway. He would have to come clean later on – but right now he just needed to get through this morning. After today, he vowed, he would no longer have to lie to the two people he loved most in the world.
9
It’s over.
Those two words had been haunting Rachel’s subconscious for as long as she could remember, at least in recent memory anyway. She knew deep down what that simple phrase referred to, and she knew why it was dogging her mind, but a large part of her refused to accept those words into the forefront of her thoughts. In doing that, she believed, she would be committing a form of emotional euthanasia on something that was already close to death; and in some perverse way, that larger part of her, the medically-minded side of her brain, could not allow herself to perform that merciful, terminating act. For her, the Hippocratic Oath extended further than just her everyday professional duties.
As she approached the Garrett house along the winding path above Henna Hill, she purposefully pushed those bleak thoughts to the furthest corner of her mind. Cynthia Garrett was only days away from death; she did not need a gloomy nurse to see her through the valley of darkness.
Before she could reach the doorbell, the front door flew open and the face of Cameron Gray, Cynthia’s sleep-in carer, filled the frame.
“Have you heard?” he asked in a strained whisper.
Rachel didn’t have to ask what her colleague was referring to. She nodded.
Cameron pulled the door behind him and huddled up close to Rachel.
“I haven’t told Cynthia he’s coming yet. I felt it might be best left as a surprise. You know what I mean? In case things changed, you know?”
“It’s all right,” Rachel said. “I’ll tell her.” They deftly switched positions in the doorway. “How is she?”
Cameron shrugged. “Distant. But then she usually is in the mornings. Listen, do you want me to stay? For the visit, I mean?”
Rachel shook her head, patted Cameron’s arm. “No, I’ll be fine.”
“It’s a lot to take on, Rach. I’m more than happy to stick around.”
“Cameron, I’ll be fine. The prison service said he wouldn’t be arriving until late afternoon anyway. You get on home to that girlfriend of yours.”
She knew that Cameron would have stayed if she’d asked; he was that sor
t of guy – but she also saw the relief on his face that she'd declined his offer.
“Okay,” Cameron said. “I won’t pretend that Sally’s enjoying all these nights alone. If I have to do this much longer she might start looking elsewhere, know what I mean?” He smiled brightly, but there was a shade of concern beneath it which Rachel knew all too well. “I’ll see you tomorrow, hopefully.”
Cameron turned away from the door, swinging his night bag over his shoulder. He stopped halfway down the path and turned back. “Rachel, she’s been pretty bad these last couple of days. Do you think she’ll last long enough to see him?”
Rachel thought for a moment. “To be honest, Cameron, I think it’s the one thing she’s holding on for.”
10
Entering the old woman’s bedroom was like walking into a death chamber. The combined smell—vomit, urine and something else, something black—never seemed to leave the house. Cynthia Garrett had clean sheets every day, a bed bath every morning and was toileted with a bedpan as and when it was necessary; she and Cameron cleaned the working parts of the house day and night with a religious zeal, and yet still the house reeked of death. The smell of it, the feel of it, hung over the Garrett house like a shroud.
Cynthia was asleep as Rachel approached the side of her bed. No, not asleep. That was too pleasant a term. Cynthia lolled in a twitching, restless state that never seemed to stop for more than a few minutes. Her eyes rolled back and forth beneath her purple eyelids. Her mouth, wrinkled and wet at the edges, drooped open and a low moaning sound escaped into the dense air. If she did dream, Rachel wondered, what terrible dreams they must be.
Rachel knew only the bare facts about the Garretts and her son’s infamous crimes. Benjamin Garrett had grown up here in this house, an only child whose father had died in a suitably grim fashion. On his son’s tenth birthday, Jock Garrett put a Remington rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The blast blew most of his brains out through the top of his skull. The rest of his head was burnt to ashes in the still, silent aftermath, as Garrett’s whisky-soaked head caught fire from the flash of the muzzle. Jock Garrett did this knowing that his son, a happy, excited boy rushing back from school on his birthday, would be the first one home. That gruesome discovery alone must have been enough to turn the boy’s world into a nightmare kaleidoscope. God alone knew what other factors were involved in Ben Garrett’s inexorable decline into rape and murder.
No one had ever believed Cynthia Garrett to be the perfect mother, but for the next ten years she did the job of raising her son as best she could. Ben was in and out of trouble with the law in his late teens, but nothing more terrible than speeding and drunken and disorderly behaviour; nothing a lot of normal young men hadn’t gotten up to at one time or other. In his early twenties Ben Garrett started working in Inverness as a shipbuilder, blending into the thousands who came and worked the shipyards year after year. He brought money home to his ailing mother (she had early onset breast cancer in her fifties and although she beat off the first attacks, the cancers kept coming back until now, in her sixtieth year she was riddled with breast, lung and pancreatic cancers), and to all intents and purposes appeared to be the perfect son. Then, in the bitter winter of 1998, they found the first island girl, raped, unconscious, barely alive, and Ben Garrett’s reign of terror began . . .
“Who's that?”
The old woman had snapped awake, her eyes darting around the dimly lit room.
“It’s all right, Cynthia,” Rachel said. “It’s Rachel.”
Cynthia glared up at her through red, rheumy eyes. She let out a harsh, hacking cough and her face screwed up into a web of tight lines. “Dear God, I thought it was him. My boy.”
She began to cough again, deeper and longer this time, the coughs turning into painful prolonged retching. Rachel grabbed a kidney bowl from the store beside the bed and held it underneath the old woman’s chin. Thick yellow-brown mucus flew from between her lips into the cardboard plate. Rachel fought back the surge of nausea she always felt when someone was vomiting; it was something she had never grown used to as a nurse, but it was something she had at least managed to control.
“God have mercy,” Cynthia Garrett cried when the attack had passed. Her head collapsed back into the pillow, her cheeks and forehead gleaming with sweat. Rachel sat down on the edge of the bed and placed a cool flannel against Cynthia’s brow.
“Hello, Cynthia,” Rachel said, trying to sound bright and humorous. “How are you today?”
Cynthia closed her eyes, her head shaking back and forth in a despairing way. “Can’t do this much longer. So tired. So bloody tired.”
Rachel felt like an idiot for trying to brighten the woman’s mood. The cancer had a chokehold of the woman’s soul. There could be no reason for laughter in her life. Not now, maybe not ever.
Cynthia’s eyes snapped open suddenly and she turned her head so that she was looking directly up at the ceiling. “What day is it?” she asked urgently.
“Sunday,” Rachel answered. “The fifteenth.”
Her eyes settled on Rachel’s, staring, wild with excitement. “Sunday? Have you heard anything about Ben? Is he coming? Have they let him come to see his old mum?”
Rachel looked away, folding the flannel in different shapes while her internal judge tried to decide what to tell her. When she looked back, when she saw the desperation in the old woman’s eyes, she decided she deserved the truth.
“The prison service called late last night. Ben’s been granted a day release on compassionate grounds. He should be here sometime this afternoon.”
Cynthia Garrett pushed her head back, chin raised high, eyes tight shut, and a solitary tear squeezed from the corner. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Lord!” she sighed. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I knew you wouldn’t let an old woman die alone in her bed without seeing her son one last time.”
Rachel stared at the old woman, unable to hide her personal and private contempt for her rose-tinted view of her son. Cynthia’s eyes snapped open suddenly, catching Rachel’s judgmental frown. Her smile faded.
Rachel stood up quickly and crossed the room, chastising herself for letting her guard drop so carelessly. She’d been a nurse all her adult life, and she was anything if not professional. Perhaps her mind was on other things lately. She was fumbling with the care pack on the dresser when the old woman’s voice cut through the dead air.
“You think he’s a monster, don’t you?”
Rachel froze, her shoulders tensed. She didn’t turn to face her, speaking over her shoulder. “If you’re talking about your son, Cynthia, it’s not my job to think anything of him. It’s my job to care for you.”
“Oh, please. You’re going to be rolling my eyes shut any day now, so at least do me the service of being honest with me. I don’t need a professional nurse right now, I need a human being.”
Rachel turned around slowly, meeting Cynthia’s gaze. “A mother should love her son, no matter what. No one could blame you for that.”
“Aye,” Cynthia said, “you’re right, my love.” Her eyes flashed, her face filled with animation for the first time in days. “That’s a powerful love. Mighty powerful. A love that knows no boundaries. I could forgive him anything. Anything.”
Rachel stepped back towards the bed, placing a clean towel on the top of the sheets. “Then you’re a better woman than I am,” she said. “I don’t have a very forgiving nature.”
“Why not?”
Rachel stopped what she was doing, a bitter memory running through the theatre of her mind. She shook her head, focusing on the present again. “I had judgemental parents,” she said. “I suppose I get it from them.”
“Forgiveness is key, my love. That’s what Ben needs right now. Not being locked away in some prison for the rest of his life. No one is born evil. No one. Certainly not my boy.”
Try telling that to the parents of those girls, Rachel thought. But she held back, recognising she was in danger of crossing a clear
boundary here between nurse and patient.
“He took after his father, unfortunately,” Cynthia said in a slow, wistful drone. “Jock was a devil. He had a black streak in him. Slept with every woman on the island. And he knocked me about. Oh, yes. The week after our wedding he knocked my front teeth out. When Ben came along, he started taking it out on the boy. At least Jock had the decency to blow his brains out before he did too much damage. But I forgave him, my Jock. Even after all, I forgave him the affairs and the beatings. That’s the way it is in our family.”
Rachel started preparing the woman’s medicine. “Like I said, Cynthia, you’re a better woman than I am. I don’t think I have that kind of forgiveness in me.”
The old woman stared at her for a long time. “I hope to God that you never have to find out.”
11
When Sam stepped into the lobby of the Station Hotel, he spotted her immediately. She was sitting at a table near the bar in a chair which faced the entrance. Her eyes lit up on seeing him, as if they were two great friends, lovers, reuniting after some tragic parting. Her smile was like a knife turning slowly in his gut.
Sam turned away from her and crouched down to Becky’s eye-level. “Now, sweetheart, I need you to do something for me. I want you to sit over there, by the window. Daddy’s just going to talk to Kel- Miss Burnett, and then I’ll be right over. I promise I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Becky pouted. “Why can’t I sit with you?”
“I told you, honey,” he whispered, “grown-up stuff. So, please, will you sit there for me?”
Becky looked down at her scuffed pink sandals, nodding solemnly as if she were making a great sacrifice. As far as Sam was concerned, she was.
“Do you want me to get you a drink?” he asked, but she shook her head.
He watched her walk slowly over to the window table and flop down on the leather bench seat, resting her forehead against the frosted glass. Cursing himself once more, he turned and went to face the enemy.