I Saw You

by Julie Parsons

  McLoughlin clicked on her face and her name appeared.

  ‘Rosie Atkinson’, the caption said. Poppy still used the family name, he noticed. It marked her out in a world where women invariably took their husband’s name on marriage. He began to click randomly on the faces in the photograph and each was identified. Here was Ben Roxby, and next to him a pretty girl with straight fair hair. ‘Gillian Kearon’ was the name that appeared. And next to her another girl, her hair as blonde as any Scandinavian pop singer. She was Sophie Fitzgerald and in brackets the title (Hon.). The Honourable Sophie Fitzgerald. McLoughlin sat back in his chair. He’d heard of her. She was a regular in the gossip columns. Come to think of it, he was certain he’d seen a few photos of her this afternoon as he’d been flicking through the magazines in Dr Simpson’s waiting room. In the winner’s enclosure at the Curragh. Holding the bridle of a horse as beautiful as she was. He scanned across the picture from left to right, reading the names aloud. Not a Murphy or a Lynch or a Kelly anywhere to be seen. And just one name in the Irish language: de Paor, Dominic. He was distinctive-looking. Taller than the other boys. Broad shoulders. A jutting nose and crisp black hair. He wasn’t much like his father. He must have got his height and build from his mother, McLoughlin thought. He tried to remember what he knew about her. Mentally ill, unstable, in and out of hospital. He must ask Janet Heffernan more.

  He finished examining the photograph. He had recognized a few other names. The son of an oil-rich sheikh with a stud farm in Kildare. The daughters of the French ambassador and the sons of the few remnants of the Irish aristocracy who still had their seats in the House of Lords. He wondered about Mark Porter’s background. If he owned that house in Fitzwilliam Square he was doing all right. He wondered about the problem with his growth. He must remember to ask Johnny Harris about it. About the drugs he was taking.

  He pressed the print button and waited for the photograph to slide out. The reproduction wasn’t that good but it was good enough. He turned back to the screen. He was impressed by the quality of the website. A lot of thought and attention to detail had gone into its design. Each year included a letter from the headmaster. He began to read. It was dull enough. Rugby matches played and won, hockey matches played and won. A cultural trip to London, a skiing trip to Val d’Isère for the senior classes after Christmas. Scholarships awarded by Oxford and Cambridge. And then a more sober note crept into the jolly narrative.

  Unfortunately one of our most popular pupils, Mark Porter, had a serious accident when he fell from the top landing in the school Residence. His injuries were extensive, but we are delighted that he has made a full recovery. It has reminded us that the safety and well-being of all our pupils is paramount.

  The letter was signed ‘Anthony Watson, PhD (Oxon), Headmaster.’

  He clicked on the next year. Again the school photograph. He scanned the faces. This time Marina’s was missing. What was it Poppy had said? Marina was expelled. Rosie wasn’t. Neither was any of the others. They were all in the same places. So there it was. Marina got the boot. The others were disciplined. He moved on to the past pupils’ association. There was the usual invitation to join, dialogue box for username, password. Links to Engagements, Marriages and Births and the In Memoriam section. He clicked on to it and scrolled through the list. And saw someone he recognized. Benjamin Samuel Roxby 1970–2004. He clicked on the name. There was a recent photograph. He looked neat and tidy, with close-cropped hair and dark-rimmed glasses. Young for his age. Still had the schoolboy look. There were several short appreciations. One was written by Dominic de Paor. McLoughlin began to read out loud.

  ‘It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of my old friend Ben Roxby. We shared a dorm at school for five years. Ben was funny, clever and a great spin bowler. He was the kind of person who always downplayed his talents. I never realized when I watched him struggling with his algebra that he would pioneer the development of one of the search engines that has made the Internet such a useful tool. I remember him more for the games of poker we used to play when he and our other close friends came to stay at the Lake House during those wonderful summers of our teenage years. Ben’s problem was he could never keep a straight face. Not a great asset in poker, but it made him terrific fun. When I heard that he had fallen from the roof of his beautiful house I was very surprised. Fixing loose slates after a storm wouldn’t have seemed his kind of thing. But looking after his family was. I know that the well-being of Annabel, Josh and Sam was uppermost in his mind always. My boundless sympathy goes out to them.’

  So, Ben Roxby was dead too. A fall from a roof. A tragic accident. That made three of them. Seemed a high rate of attrition for such a small group. Statistically unlikely, he thought.

  He got up from the desk and walked back into the kitchen. He opened the glass doors and stepped out on to the terrace. The air was fresh, almost cold. Above him the Plough dug a great furrow across the sky. He sat down on the bench, leaned back and gazed up at it. Soon, he hoped, he would be out at sea. Nights spent in the wheelhouse. Silence all around, apart from the rush of the water beneath the hull and the thrum of the wind in the sails. And nothing to see in the darkness but the stars. Paul Brady was a good skipper. He could sail by the stars if need be. He would teach McLoughlin how to do it. He remembered Brady telling him once about sailing in the Hobart–Fremantle race. And how at night he had realized he didn’t know the names of any of the stars and constellations. All so different in the southern hemisphere, he had said. Bloody confusing. And McLoughlin had a sudden image of Margaret Mitchell, standing in the dark of an Antipodean night, her eyes raised to the sky. She would be looking for her daughter, he thought, like a grieving mother from a Greek myth. Trying to find her child in the heavens. Trying to find where Zeus had placed her.

  Johnny Harris could get hold of Ben Roxby’s official cause of death. There would have been an inquest. A sudden and unexplained death. He’d have access to the evidence given. He might even have done the post-mortem. McLoughlin would call him first thing. Now he stood and stretched. He was tired. He walked back inside and closed the doors behind him. And remembered the look on Mark Porter’s face earlier that evening. I should have thrown him out of Marina’s house, he thought. Why didn’t I? Was I frightened by him? Have I become an ever bigger coward now I’m older? Now I don’t have the muscle of the guards behind me?

  He moved through the house to his bedroom. He picked up his trousers from the floor and felt in his pocket for Marina’s black pants. He didn’t know what to do with them now. He lifted the lid to the linen basket. He would put them in with his next wash, then return them to her bedroom. Put them back in their place. I should have confronted Mark Porter, he thought. But I didn’t. And it wasn’t cowardice. That wasn’t the reason. It was the savage pain in Porter’s face. He looked so helpless, so pathetic. It would have been rubbing his nose in it. Still, he’d better get on to Sally in the morning. Tell her to get the locks changed.

  He yawned deeply and got into bed. He closed his eyes. Think of nice things, his mother always used to say. Think of nice things and boredom will bring sleep quickly. He smiled as he remembered her. He must go and see her soon. Bring her flowers. He had seen shafts of delphinium in the local florist. She used to grow them. She’d love to see them again. He rolled over on his stomach. He thought of nice things and, as she had predicted, sleep came quickly.

  SIXTEEN

  The delphiniums were the colour of the deep sea. He bought five spikes and watched as the florist tied them with raffia. ‘For someone special?’ she asked, with a smile.

  ‘My mother, actually.’ He tapped his credit card against his wallet.

  ‘How lovely. And it’s not even Mother’s Day.’ She ran the back of her scissors along the strip of raffia. He watched it curl up into a mass of ringlets. ‘Now, how’s that?’

  His mother didn’t speak as he laid the bouquet on her chest of drawers. She smiled and her face creased into a mass of wrinkles.<
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  ‘Do you remember, Ma, the way you used to force me out into the garden at night to hunt slugs and snails? You used to chuck them into a bucket and pour salt over them. Do you remember the sound? The hiss? But you didn’t care, did you, Ma? You’d do anything to protect your bloody delphiniums.’ He sat down beside her and took her hand. The joints and knuckles were swollen and ugly, but the skin was still soft and smooth. He lifted her hand and held it against his cheek, then kissed it.

  ‘Thanks,’ she whispered. ‘Get a vase quick. They’ll die without the water.’

  They sat in companionable silence. She lay back against the pillows and stared at the flowers. He flicked through the newspaper and turned to the Sudoku. He worked his way through the easy one. It fell into place. Some days it was like that. The pattern revealed itself without any difficulty. Other times he was beating his head against a brick wall. He put in the final number and sighed with pleasure.

  ‘Today your son is a very clever boy,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm,’ she scowled, ‘makes a change. Don’t remember sums being your strong point in school. Although,’ she reached out and tapped the paper, ‘not exactly applied maths, that stuff, is it?’

  Funny the way she could always get to him. He gritted his teeth and reminded himself of her age and infirmity. Time passed slowly. Cups of tea and chocolate biscuits were brought by one of the Filipina nurses. She was a dainty little thing with hair like polished jet. She admired the flowers and giggled when he complimented her on the careful way she handled them as she put them into a tall glass vase.

  ‘She’s nice,’ he said, as she closed the door quietly. His mother sighed, opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times. She reminded him of one of those ancient tortoises that live on the Galapagos islands.

  ‘Nice, they’re all nice. But dull, very dull.’ She sipped her tea, holding the cup carefully with both hands. ‘Tell me something interesting, Michael. I’m so bored. You must be bored now you’ve retired. Who’d have thought I’d live to have a son of your age? What are you doing with yourself, these days?’

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘I got a phone call from an old friend.’

  She listened as he told her Marina’s story, a smile brightening her face. Then she sighed with satisfaction and leaned back. ‘A bully, you say. How interesting. And she was pretty too. That’s an unusual combination. You’d wonder why she did it. Usually pretty girls have to do nothing except exist.’ Her voice had taken on an edge of bitterness. She shifted awkwardly in the bed and he reached over to take her cup from her hands.

  ‘Is that right, Ma? You’re speaking from first-hand experience? Miss Loreto Convent circa 1935?’ He shouldn’t have said it but her taunt about the maths had left a little scar.

  ‘Shut up, Michael, for God’s sake.’ For a moment he expected a slap. ‘For your information I was very pretty. I could have had any of the local boys. But the only one I wanted was your father and there was a little bitch after him too. And, now I come to think of it, she had something of your Marina about her. A devious creature. Small, like a doll. Big smile, big eyes and a nasty, cruel streak. A boy who lived near us had one of those terrible birthmarks all over his face. A big purply thing. Ugly, very ugly. We used to avoid him. Cross the road if he came near. But she – Annie was her name – she pretended to like him. She had him eating out of her hand. Following her around like a stray dog. Then one day she turned on him. In front of us all. I remember what it was like. It was terrible to see. Taught me a lesson about cruelty, that’s for sure.’ There was silence in the room. He could hear the clatter of teacups and a trolley with a squeaky wheel moving away from them down the corridor.

  ‘And what did Da think?’

  ‘He never looked at her again. He waited for me after school one day and walked me home.’ she smiled. ‘Innocent times. A week of walking me home and we were practically engaged.’ She pointed to the chest of drawers. ‘Open that for me, will you? Get out the photos. I still miss him so much. I want to have a look at him.’

  He sat close beside her and turned the stiff pages. She lingered over each small black-and-white photograph. Each was a trigger for her memories. Places, occasions, people. He sat back and listened. He had heard the stories many times before. But he was conscious, as he listened to the breath struggling from her chest, that he might not hear them too often again. After a while she fell silent. Her head lolled to one side, her eyes closed. He took the album from between her hands. He kissed her cheek. ‘’Bye, Ma,’ he whispered. ‘Love you.’

  His phone rang as he hurried down the steps from the nursing-home.

  ‘Johnny, what do you have for me?’

  Roxby had died from internal bleeding. He had also fractured his skull, broken both legs and smashed his pelvis. ‘He was most likely dead from the moment he hit the ground.’ Johnny’s tone was matter-of-fact. ‘I have the file here. Time of death was given as between eight p.m. on the twelfth of May 2004 and one a.m. on the thirteenth of May 2004. He wasn’t found until the next morning. That’s why time of death is a bit vague. But the ambulance was called at ten oh-eight on the thirteenth of May. Arrived at ten forty.’

  ‘Did you do the PM?’ McLoughlin stood at the bottom of the steps. He moved aside to allow one of the nurses to pass. She smiled and he smiled back.

  ‘Yeah, I did. I remember it, actually. I vaguely knew the family. Went to the same school as one of his uncles.’

  McLoughlin fumbled in his pocket for his keys. ‘Was it an accident?’

  ‘Well, the verdict was accidental death. He certainly died from the fall, but there was a bit of talk about the circumstances.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He unlocked the car and sat in the driver’s seat. It was hot and stuffy inside. He propped the door open with his foot.

  ‘Yeah. Gossip, really. But the facts were that there was a violent thunderstorm that day. Roxby had been in Dublin. Came home to discover a leak in the roof. He had, apparently, some kind of a row with his wife and she insisted he fix it. She then, so the guards on the scene said, took the kids and went off to her mother’s house, which was about five miles away. She spent the night there and it was when she came back in the morning that she found Roxby dead on the front drive.’

  McLoughlin’s shirt was sticking to his back. ‘So they had words. He went up on to the roof. It had been raining so it was slippery. And he fell. What were the words about?’

  ‘Well,’ Harris’s voice took on a confiding tone, ‘I did hear unofficially, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘You mean the gay network?’ McLoughlin smiled at his reflection in the windscreen.

  ‘Unofficially is the word I’m using. It sounds more official, if you get me.’ He laughed. ‘Anyway, I did hear that the wife, the very lovely Annabel, suspected he was having an affair with someone in Dublin and that was why she was so angry.’

  ‘But it wasn’t suicide? Any suggestion that he took his own life?’

  ‘No evidence of that. But it was reckless behaviour. The Roxbys’ house isn’t any old country house. It’s a bloody Gothic castle, built by a very rich ancestor in the mid-nineteenth century. It has turrets and mansard roofs and all manner of gables. Why he went up there on his own, as it was beginning to get dark, is a bit of a mystery.’

  McLoughlin drove along the M50. The traffic was light today. He pulled into the outer lane and the speedometer hit 120 k.p.h. He was tempted. He’d never pushed the car as fast as it could go. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and watched the needle: 125, 130, 135. The road curved imperceptibly. His hands were slipping on the steering-wheel. He could feel the tarmacadam surface. It vibrated through his feet, his legs, up into his groin. Just one last push. The needle crept towards 140 k.p.h., then he eased back, slowly, slowly, slowly, until he was below 120 again. And just in time. The turn-off that would bring him up into the lower reaches of the Dublin mountains was coming up. He indicated, moved into the inside lane and slowed again. He pressed the button on the control panel a
nd the window slid down. He gulped fresh air. Cold sweat dripped down his back. He peeled himself off the seat uncomfortably. He was getting too old to play the boy-racer.

  Ahead was a signpost. The road had narrowed. There were high banks on either side and pine trees pressing close. It was cool and much darker. He took a sharp turn to the right and saw ahead a white-painted gate and a discreet sign among the trees. He clanked across a cattle grid, slowed and stopped. He got out of the car. The drive wound ahead of him. On either side the trees gave way to lush pastures, bounded by white-painted fences. A group of horses were grazing together in one corner and in the other cows and their calves lay in the sunshine. McLoughlin stood still and listened. The silence was broken only by the cooing of wood-pigeons and the faint breeze through the trees. He got back into the car and drove slowly forward towards the large white house that was just visible up ahead.

  The school was a large square house, probably early nineteenth century. From the front it looked untouched, but as he walked around towards the back, he could see that a huge unsightly extension had been tacked on. A typical example of 1980s architecture, he thought. PVC windows, ugly pebbledash and a nasty flat roof. But beyond again was a vista of formal gardens with a fountain, tennis courts and playing-fields. And at the edge of the beech woodland that bounded the view on one side he could see a small cottage-style house with its own front garden. An old Land Rover was pulled into the drive.