by Rebecca Wait
It had been the fact that his back was to her, Malcolm thought. This was what had allowed her, at last, to get it out.
Cautiously, he turned. “Oh yes?”
“It’s about Tommy.”
And now Malcolm found himself on the defensive. His reaction surprised him. His instinct, immediately, was to close this conversation down. He could not, of course. And he had no idea what Fiona might say, so why the urgent need to shield Tommy? For all he knew, she was about to invite Tommy to work in the shop with her.
He got stiffly to his feet and went to sit in his usual chair, opposite the sofa where Fiona was sitting. “What’s up, Fiona?”
She grew awkward again under his gaze. “It’s rather a difficult thing to express to you. I wouldn’t say anything if I didn’t feel I had to. You understand that, Malcolm?”
Get it out, he thought. He refused to help her.
Faced with his silence, Fiona turned her mug anxiously in her hands. She said, “You know I’m saying this only as your friend, Malcolm. We’ve known each other a long time.”
“Aye.”
“Well . . . it’s this, really. There’s been some concern among some of us.”
“Concern?” Malcolm said, keeping his voice neutral.
“About Tommy. About his visit here. About his . . . behaviour.”
“What behaviour?” Malcolm said.
“No one’s denying he’s had a terrible time,” Fiona said, her words coming more eagerly now. “No one should have to go through what he went through. And it’s not surprising, really, after everything, if he’s a wee bit . . .”
Malcolm felt a strong urge to speak, but forced himself not to.
“Unstable,” Fiona finished at last.
“Unstable in what way?” Malcolm said coldly. “I’ve seen no evidence of it.”
“You saw how he was the other night. At our house. You saw how angry he was, Malcolm. You can’t pretend you didn’t see it.”
“No, I saw it,” Malcolm said. “And I wasn’t surprised. Of course he’s angry.” He was surprised at how angry he felt himself. “He’ll be angry his whole life. That’s something he has to live with.”
“And then there was his behaviour last night,” Fiona said.
This threw Malcolm off balance. “What do you mean?”
“You know he was out walking, very late?”
“I don’t think there’s anything particularly alarming in that, Fiona,” Malcolm said, attempting to lighten his tone. “I sometimes do it myself.”
“We met him, Gavin and I,” Fiona said. “He was very aggressive. We only offered him a lift.”
“Maybe he didn’t want a lift.”
“Well, yes, he made that quite clear. He swore at me, Malcolm!”
“O.K.,” Malcolm said. “Well, O.K. I’m very sorry, Fiona. That’s not on. Of course it isn’t. I apologize for his bad manners. I’ll speak to him. It won’t happen again.”
“It was more than bad manners,” Fiona said. “He frightened me.” When Malcolm didn’t reply, she added, “There’s something not right about him. I’m sorry to say this to you, Malcolm, I really am. But you know it’s true. He’s come back here for no other reason than to punish us.”
“Fiona, come on now,” Malcolm said. “That’s surely a bit far-fetched.”
“It isn’t!” she said, her voice rising in indignation. “Gavin agrees with me.”
Does he now? Malcolm thought. He doubted it.
“We’re afraid of what Tommy might do,” Fiona said. “And honestly, Malcolm, the most important thing is that it isn’t good for him, being here. It surely isn’t. We all want what’s best for him. That’s the main thing. And here he is, drifting about, remembering things, upsetting himself—”
“Upsetting you,” Malcolm said.
“I can see you don’t like hearing this,” Fiona said. “And I do understand. Truly I do. He’s your nephew, after all. But we think it would be best for everyone if Tommy’s visit came to an end soon. I’m sure you want what’s best for him, just like the rest of us.”
“I do want what’s best for him,” Malcolm said. He was silent for a few moments. Then he got to his feet. “Thank you for your visit, Fiona. Tommy will stay with me for as long as he likes. He’s going nowhere.”
“I was speaking as your friend,” Fiona said, standing up uncertainly. She put her half-drunk tea down on the side table. “I hope you know that I only want to help.”
“Tommy will stay here as long as he likes,” Malcolm repeated. “This is his home.”
“Well, I’ve said my piece,” Fiona said, going past him into the hall. “I spoke out of concern for you, and for Tommy. I hope you’ll remember that, Malcolm.”
“Aye.” He opened the front door for her. “Take care, Fiona.”
She looked at him for a moment more, then gave a small shake of her head and stepped outside. Malcolm closed the door behind her. He waited a minute or so until he heard the sound of her car engine starting up, then went through to the kitchen, frowning to himself.
He found Tommy sitting at the table, his hands clasped in front of him. It gave Malcolm quite a start.
“How long have you been down here?” he said.
“A while,” Tommy said, looking at his hands where they lay on the tabletop.
“How much did you hear?”
“All of it, I think. All the parts that concerned me, anyway.”
Malcolm sighed and took a seat opposite him. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“Are you going to tell me she means well?”
“No.”
“I’ll go,” Tommy said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, isn’t it? The ferry will be here again. I’ll be gone first thing. I was going to go anyway.”
“No you weren’t,” Malcolm said. “And I don’t want you to.”
“Yeah, you said that,” Tommy said. “I heard. But you don’t mean it.”
“I do. You’ll always have a home here.”
He was astonished when Tommy put his head in his hands and started to cry.
4
Fiona managed to hold back the tears until she’d got the car going, and even then she only let a few escape her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. She’d always had a lot of self-control and she didn’t allow any noise to escape her, didn’t allow her face to crumple up pathetically, until she turned the bend in the road and Malcolm’s cottage was out of sight. She was embarrassed at herself, at the high-pitched sounds coming from her mouth, but at least there was nobody to witness it.
She was crying because she was so angry, she thought. Malcolm had no right. Anyone could see Tommy’s presence was doing no good here, just causing everyone—most of all himself—a lot of upset. All Fiona wanted was to help. But people never wanted her help. They threw it back in her face.
And what had Katrina been asking for except to be helped, except to be saved from herself? Why else would she have confided in Fiona of all people, not in Heather, to whom she was so much closer by then?
Fiona sped up, taking the narrow road much faster than usual, anxious to put space between herself and Malcolm’s cottage. But in driving home, she was also driving back to the track she’d once shared with Katrina and John, the house in which they had died. They had tainted everything. “Blood all over the walls,” Greg Brown had said, shaking in Fiona’s living room that day. Fiona hadn’t really believed it, not then. Thought there must have been some terrible mistake.
But even now, could you really say, really say with certainty, that Fiona had been wrong? What do any of us do in the end except what we believe is right at the time, without having all of the information, without knowing how things will turn out? We leap into the darkness with our only protection our idea of what is right, and who can ask more of us than that? We do our best, Fiona thought. I have always done my best.<
br />
And Katrina had put her in an impossible position.
Fiona took the bend sharply, turning west along the northern loop of the road. No one coming the other way, fortunately; she wasn’t sure she could have stopped in time.
There had been that strange moment of ecstasy when Katrina had first begun to speak, the sense of their old intimacy restored, and Fiona had leaned forward and said, “You know, you can tell me anything.” It was only when she thought about it properly afterwards that Fiona had begun to feel the first stirrings of dismay. Wasn’t it odd for Katrina to have cut her off for years and then to suddenly waltz into her house and sit there sipping tea and dropping bombshells? Fiona had thought Katrina would come by again, but she did not. If she had, if she had come by just one more time to confide in Fiona, then perhaps things might have been different.
I am being used, Fiona had thought—just as she always had been. Picked up and put down and picked up and put down again. It was not fair. Katrina had always done what was best for herself, never with any concern for others, and now here she was again, her selfishness directed towards her own husband this time, and her own children whom she planned on taking so far away. “He can’t know,” Katrina had said. She had said, “I’m afraid of him.”
A man like John!
“I need your help,” Katrina had said. “Just to get on to the ferry.”
Fiona, unutterably shocked, had said, “O.K.”
Reaching the track to her house, she turned the car abruptly. Then she was speeding past that awful place—how could the Dougdales manage to live there?—and towards the safety of her own driveway. She pulled up, but remained where she was, unwilling to unbuckle her seatbelt and go inside until she was sure she was composed.
She had thought about Katrina’s request endlessly, painfully, for a week afterwards. But Katrina acted as if nothing had happened between them, speaking so casually, so distantly, to Fiona in the shop a few days later. She did not come by again. And, “Forget about what I said before,” she had told Fiona quickly, when they were alone for a moment outside church the following week. Fiona hadn’t even had a chance to reply before Heather came up and Katrina turned away to greet her, leaving Fiona standing by herself.
She did not like to feel she had been used.
In the gathering darkness, Fiona took a packet of tissues from her bag to wipe her face. It was lucky she wore no make-up—there was no mascara to run. You’d have to look closely at her to know she’d been crying, and Gavin never looked closely. Finally, she undid her seatbelt and reached out to open the door.
Gavin glanced up only briefly from his crossword book when she came into the living room. As Fiona had expected, he did not notice her red eyes. She had thought herself completely calm now, but when Gavin asked, “Nice afternoon?” she found, to her consternation, that the tears started up again.
“It was fine,” she said.
And of course even Gavin could hardly miss the quake in her voice. He looked up properly and said, “Are you all right, hen?”
Fiona burst into tears. She could only stand there and cry like a distraught child and when the words came, they were in a jumble.
“He shouldn’t have come back here,” she said. “It isn’t fair on any of us. Haven’t we been through enough, having that horrible thing happen right here, right on our doorstep?”
She was surprised when Gavin got up and put his arms around her clumsily. “There now, Fi,” he said, patting her back. “It’s all right.” But after a pause, he ruined it by adding, “You must remember that however hard it is for us, it’s much harder for Tommy.”
“So why is he here then?” she almost screamed, her voice muffled against his chest. “He’s doing nobody any good, just making us all remember.” She was aware of the tears all over her face, smearing Gavin’s shirt, and wondered if she was having some kind of breakdown.
“Calm down, hen,” Gavin said.
“But it isn’t fair to blame us!” she said. “You remember what he was like when he came round. And last night! He blames us, but it isn’t fair. Nobody could have known what John was going to do. He seemed so normal. And three weeks—it was three weeks after!”
She felt Gavin’s breath catch, and then he pulled slowly away from her and held her at arms’ length, looking into her face. “What do you mean, three weeks?” He was silent for a few moments, then spoke again. “Fiona,” he said, and she would wonder later what unerring instinct made him say it. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” she said. “I did nothing. Why would you ask me that?”
He looked at her steadily. “I don’t know.”
“What would I have done?” she said. “I did nothing.”
He shook his head and stepped away from her. “You’re not yourself.”
“How could I be, with all this upset going on? The sooner Tommy Baird leaves us in peace, the better.”
She watched as her husband sighed and turned from her, picked up his crossword book and sat back down in the armchair. He said, “Go and have a rest, Fi. I think you’re overtired.”
The nerve of the man. But she knew she would get nothing more from him now.
Anyway, she thought, going into the kitchen to put the kettle on, it had been nothing. A cup of tea would see her right. There had been a gap of three weeks—that said it all, really. What kind of man would wait three weeks? And after all, she thought, pouring the boiling water into the mug, he had been so calm, had thanked her politely and told her she’d done the right thing. If the rest of it had been because of Fiona, it would have happened immediately, not three weeks later. She had done what she believed was right, she reminded herself. She had tried to act in everyone’s best interests. Children needed stability. And John had deserved to know what Katrina was planning. A man had a right to his wife. A man had a right to his children.
Fiona caught her reflection in the silver kettle. Her face was puffy and red, and she turned quickly away. It wasn’t as though there was anyone around to notice, but all the same, she didn’t like seeing herself so ugly.
5
Difficult to say which of them was more embarrassed by Tommy’s crying. Malcolm had sat rigidly where he was for a few moments while Tommy wept, before getting awkwardly to his feet and going to stand beside him.
“There now,” he said, tentatively touching his shoulder. “It’s all right.” Emboldened when Tommy didn’t shake him off, he left his hand where it was and said again, “It’s all right.”
Tommy soon wiped his face and tried to get his breath under control. “Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be.”
“My dad was always furious if me or Nicky cried,” Tommy said after a while.
“Mine was the same.” The old bastard, he thought. He went back to his seat and waited to see if Tommy would say anything else.
Tommy rubbed his eyes and breathed out slowly. He said, “It’s been a rough few days.”
“I know.”
Tommy wiped his hand over his face again. He said, “I’ve been meaning to say I’m sorry.” He didn’t look at Malcolm. “I shouldn’t have kept away all those years.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does. It wasn’t fair on you and Heather.”
“Fairness doesn’t come into it.”
Tommy shook his head. Eventually, he said, “I’m not sure what to do.”
Malcolm knew the feeling. “Don’t do anything,” he said. “Just get some rest. Shall we cook something later? We could make a pie.” We could make a pie? What was wrong with him?
But Tommy didn’t seem to think it was a stupid suggestion. He nodded slowly. “O.K.”
The next day, they walked together towards Craigmore. Malcolm’s idea was to keep Tommy moving, keep his distress at bay, tire him out so he might at least get some proper sleep. Tommy had come downstair
s that morning looking as if he hadn’t so much as closed his eyes all night. Malcolm was worried he would make himself ill.
“Come on,” he said after they’d finished breakfast. “Let’s get some fresh air. We’ll go north and look for seals.”
Tommy didn’t argue. Like a child, he went obediently to put on his boots and waterproof.
Malcolm had thought that once he was outside whatever was weighing so heavily on Tommy might ease a little, but still Tommy seemed preoccupied and miserable as they tramped along the northern loop of the road. Tommy kept his hands in his pockets and his head down, looking only at the pot-holed tarmac in front of him and scarcely replying to Malcolm’s comments on the landscape. Malcolm didn’t know how to help him.
It was not until an hour later when they were finally up on the cliffs and passing the ruined chapel that Tommy said, “There’s something I want to tell you.”
Malcolm made to pause, but Tommy didn’t slow his pace, and didn’t look round. Malcolm realized then that Tommy needed this walk, needed the weather and the wide expanse of sea before them, needed to be side by side and not facing Malcolm, in order to get these words out, whatever they were. So he merely said, “Oh?” and didn’t look at Tommy.
“It’s something about the night it happened,” Tommy said. His words had a slightly flat, mechanical sound to them, as though he was forcing them out one by one, at some cost to himself.
“Right,” Malcolm said. “O.K.”
When Tommy sped up to walk a few paces ahead, Malcolm didn’t try to catch him up, just increased his own pace enough that Tommy wouldn’t have to raise his voice to be heard above the wind on the cliffs.
“I’ve never told anyone,” Tommy said. “Not told anyone my whole life.”
Christ, Malcolm thought. But all he wanted now was to lessen Tommy’s burden, so if he could take part of it himself he would gladly do it. Hand it over, he thought.