by Gemma Whelan
“Why on earth would he do that? He knows we don’t agree on much. He knew . . . ”
“And that’s why he wrote that in the will. He wanted the two of you to make up, to see eye to eye, come to an agreement.”
“But, but . . . if we can’t . . . we obviously want different things.” Fiona’s frustration was rising with the fear in the pit of her stomach.
“It mattered to him.” Frank sounded infuriatingly calm and collected. “And that’s why he asked me to help. To be a mediator in a way. To help you to work it out.”
Fiona tried to keep her voice even. “Mediator? In what way? How can you do anything if Declan and I can’t agree?”
“Well, you see, your father gave me the power to cast the deciding vote, if you like, in the case of a disagreement. It’s not what he wants, but if there isn’t a way to work it out, whoever I side with—having spent good time, mind you, listening to both sides—whoever I side with will get their choice.”
Fiona fought the urge to stand up and scream.
“What did Declan say when you told him?” Her voice came out small and squeaky. Childlike. “He must have been furious.”
“Oh, I didn’t say a word to Declan yet. It’s our little secret, Fiona.”
The word sent a maelstrom of emotion swirling through her head and entire body. She wanted to say—how can it be a secret? What’s secret about it? He’ll find out tomorrow when the will is read.
“Our secret is that I will be on your side. I can put the pressure on to sell all and divide it between you. I can break the tie if the two of you can’t agree.” Frank paused and looked at her. “You’ll be free.”
Fiona was wrenched with a confused mix of emotions. Frank was backing her up to buy her silence on a topic she couldn’t speak of anyway, his childhood abuse of her. He was the only one she had ever spoken to about her hesitation in getting Orla out of the hide-out during the storm. She felt bound to him, locked in that exchange of secrets, and he knew he could count on her paralysis. She had made “him” nice in the novel. He who had stolen her childhood was offering her freedom. And she would take it, because she needed more than anything to get out and leave it all behind. Tabula rasa. A clean slate. She gulped down the rest of her whiskey, welcoming the punishing heat in her throat and the temporary sense of distance it afforded her.
Fiona recalled the long nights after Orla’s death, the lonely nights when she cried herself to sleep under the blankets. She shed no tears, her ducts were sealed, but it was crying all the same, a dry, soundless crying from despair and loss. Her parents told her Orla had gone to heaven and was happy. She tried to imagine her in the presence of God, little baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Downstairs, she could hear the grown-ups talking. She couldn’t hear their words, but she could register the tones of their voices and the cadence of their talk. Mam spoke softly and brokenly and her voice lilted with a slight sibilance; Dad’s voice was low and sad and tried to be strong; Uncle Frank’s was a bit higher than Dad’s, shaky and halting. Uncle Frank visited a lot now, every Friday and Saturday night and often during the week as well. He would bring a fresh loaf or two of bread and his smell of the bakery. Fiona had noticed another smell when he bent to kiss her cheek. It was sharp and pungent and unpleasant. It was the same smell Dad had sometimes if he went out to the pub on the weekend, which he now did less and less. He didn’t have the heart for socialization and music any more. Now, they sat down in the parlor, with the fire lit to keep away the autumn chill—and cups of tea, and whiskey for the men, to keep away the inner chill. They were a shattered group with a magnetic pull towards each other for a comfort that was beyond their grasp.
Fiona remembered the visits of the adults to kiss the children goodnight. Sometimes one or both of their parents would come up, sometimes Uncle Frank. They would go in to Declan in his room at the top of the landing, and then they’d come through the other door into the next landing, past her parents’ empty room and into hers. After lights out they usually closed over the outer landing door so the light wouldn’t keep her awake. Fiona preferred it to be left slightly ajar as she liked to hear the rise and fall of the droning voices, sometimes the television sounds. Noises helped to hold back the cold empty silence.
Her parents’ goodnight kisses had become more automatic and robotic since Orla’s death. They still leaned over, brushed against her cheek and pulled up the clothes to her neck if she had fallen half-asleep. Sometimes one of them turned out the light and the other would check on her when they came upstairs for bed. Uncle Frank started to do that, come in to say goodnight if he came upstairs to use the bathroom. He’d bend down and kiss her cheek, and she’d smell the bakery smell and sometimes that other smell she came to associate with the yellow whiskey. When Fiona had confided in Frank her guilt over her part in Orla’s death, all he had said was “Hush, hush. It wasn’t your fault, little one.” Fiona knew it was, but was grateful that she had been able to share the secret, grateful that he still loved her in spite of her sin. He’d often whisper something soft like “Goodnight, little Fiona, sleep with the angels.” Sometimes, he too would adjust the covers so she would be warm, and then he would leave the room and cross back down to the bathroom. A little later she’d hear the flush and his footsteps going back downstairs to join her parents.
The night his breath went into her mouth she thought it must have slipped over from her cheek by accident. He whispered “Goodnight, my little one” as he leaned over in the half-dark. Then, his mouth was over hers, and it was hard to breathe. She was afraid to move. His breath was heavy and strong, and then she felt his hand go down to pull up the sheets, but it went under the blankets and her nightdress and Fiona froze and stared at the sliver of the moon as it peeked through the almost fully drawn curtains. His beard and face were in the way, but she could see around the blur of the hairs, and she studied the shape of the moon intently. It was hardly there. Like a thin sliver of an arc—suspended. And for an interminable moment the fingers fumbled and his breath grew harsh and urgent and he breathed out abruptly and pulled back with a start. She could feel his stare though she did not look. All her attention was on the moon. Just as suddenly as the onslaught began he was her kind uncle again and pulled the covers up gently around her neck and whispered, “It will be our secret, Fioneena. We will keep each other’s secrets.” And he touched her cheek and left. Closed over the door, visited the bathroom, flushed, and went back down the stairs.
It was the first of many visits.
EYE OF THE STORM
Excerpt from a novel by Fiona Clarke
“Which of you wrecked the bike and left it stuck out in the ditch?” Dad took another gulp of soup. “Sheila? Conor? It had to be one or the other of you. I saw it out there just before I came in.”
The two of us glared at each other as if each expected the other one to speak. Naturally, I was waiting for Conor to own up as I had just seen him flying around on it ten minutes before.
“Sheila did it.”
I was gob-smacked at this bare-faced lie and jumped in to defend myself, but Dad cut me off.
“Don’t lie, Sheila. You need to own up to what you do.”
I continued to protest but Dad wasn’t listening, had decided little sweet-faced, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth Conor was telling the truth.
“I don’t want to hear any excuses. You need to learn the value of things, of property. That bike was bought for both of you with money earned from the sweat of my brow and you won’t be getting another.”
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. The succulent lamb, one that Dad had reared himself, fresh turnips and parsnips, flowery new potatoes with lashing of runny butter. All spoiled for me. Through the mouthfuls, I thought sadly of the poor old bike lying in the ditch out back. And I thought of Conor’s lying mouth that I’d give anything to wash out with carbolic soap. My stomach knotted up and I couldn’t finish my strawberry jelly and ice cream. Mam caught me moving my spoon around and told me to clear my pl
ate, and then Dad threw in the starving babies in Africa. So out of guilt and obedience, I scraped my dish clean and felt even sicker.
I found Conor out in the barn about an hour later. There he was, happy as Larry, lying flat on his stomach in the straw with all his metal toy soldiers lined up on slabs of wood, ready for battle. He was simulating noises for his warriors and so didn’t hear me come in and creep quietly up behind him. I dropped to the ground and started thumping him on his back as hard as I could. “Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar!” I shouted, getting more vehement with every thump. He just started laughing, made a few maneuvers with his soldiers and then pushed me away so that I fell over sideways onto the straw.
“I’m not a liar,” he said, nonchalantly, “because people always believe me.”
“That’s because you’re pretty and won a baby contest with your lovely red curls and innocent face!” I knew this would get a rise out of him. He was fierce embarrassed about the baby contest he won when he was six months old.
“Don’t you call me pretty.” He snarled. “Boys aren’t pretty!”
I picked myself up and brushed off the stalks from my shoulders.
“Pretty! Pretty! Pretty!” I teased. “Pretty Conor, pretty Conor!”
That did it. He sprung up and roughly grabbed my arm. “Take it back,” he ordered. “Say you’re sorry and take it back. Just ‘cause YOU’re ugly!”
I felt a stinging behind my eyes but forced myself to not cry. I knew I wasn’t pretty. I knew that.
“Sticks and stones . . . ” I started, but he twisted my arm even harder. “ . . . may break my bones . . . Ouch, let go, you’re hurting me!” I tried to disengage my arm but he had a solid grip.
“Not ‘til you say you’re sorry, Ugly Face! Say it!” He gave my arm another fierce twist, and I honest to God thought it was going to snap. Still, I held out. “But words can never . . . ouch!”
“Go on,” he goaded. “Say it, say you’re sorry!”
A further unmerciful twist, and I couldn’t take it any more. I thought my very shoulder would pop out of its socket. “All right, all right, I’m sorry,” I squealed. “Let me go!”
He released me, and I reclaimed my arm, all red and sore and twisted. I jumped up and headed for the door, holding onto my aching limb. At the barn door I turned and threw a parting shot back at him.
“You’re a liar and a bully, Conor Flaherty, and I hate you! I’ll hate you forever!”
He just chuckled and went back to his lazy afternoon soldiers.
CHAPTER THREE
TIME PAST
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”
T.S. ELIOT—Burnt Norton
The night of her father’s wake, after Frank had left and Declan gone up to bed, Fiona tarried in the kitchen. She heard Declan’s footsteps fade as he ascended the staircase and stepped onto the landing. Every inch of this house was familiar and intimate, each sound resonant of both tender and terrible encounters. And Mam, Dad and Orla seemed palpably close.
The deep silence which descended when Declan closed his bedroom door reminded Fiona of Good Fridays when she and her mother polished the silver cutlery. They, like many Catholics, observed three hours of silence between twelve noon and three o’clock, the time that Jesus hung on the cross. They sat side by side at this very table and slowly and methodically burnished the silver with a soft cloth and silver polish. It was one of her favorite moments in the whole year. Time slowed down. The mantle clock ticked. The cloths swished. Fiona and her Mam’s breathing were barely audible. From time to time, they caught each other’s eye and smiled. The tines of the forks were challenging, but the most difficult were the egg spoons. Something about the sulfur that turned the spoons greenish. The gentle motion back and forth was soothing in its rhythm. It was a magic time for Fiona when she could love her mother completely without ever exchanging a word. Just a sweet, serene, shared silence.
Fiona took the whiskey glass she had refilled, lifted the big latch on the yard door and stepped out into the night. There was nothing like it. This cool fresh air and the clear night sky. Having lived in New York City for ten years, she had almost forgotten how crystal clear a night sky could be, how startlingly brilliant the moon and stars, how profound the silence.
Fiona walked through the yard, crunching the gravel on the path, aware of every sound and of the feel of the soil under her feet—her family’s land. Soon she stood by the huge oak tree at the top of the cornfield, and by the light of the moon she saw that the structure of the tree-house was still intact. Nature had carved it—a rounded womb-like chamber—out of the giant trunk. It was a perfect hide-away, and as a child, Fiona saw the possibilities. She had built an elaborate camouflage system of leaves and twigs and branches, casually placed against the opening as if by chance and nature. She had hauled crates and apple boxes and used burlap sacks to line the inside, making it into a cozy secret home. She knew somehow that this was the place. The place to make her private domain. The place to escape from the pain of her mother’s absence when she went away to the sanatorium. The place to cradle Orla.
The adult Fiona was still able to squeeze inside. She sipped her whiskey and recalled Orla waiting for her to come home from school, her curly golden hair like a halo round her luminous face, the big brown eyes waiting and hoping for further adventures. They were far enough away from the house that it felt like a real hide-away, yet near enough to hear Dad if he called them or practiced the violin. The day of the storm it felt as if they were trapped in a separate universe, the distance to the house impossible to cover. At that moment, as if cued by her recall of that past storm, the heavens opened. The rain began to pound without warning on the earth, the lightning illuminated the interior of the treehouse and the thunder rumbled like the growling of the gods. Crouched inside the ancient bark, Fiona felt nine years old again, hearing the same sounds and staring at the vision of her sister encircled by light. She remembered with a sharp stab of pain. Like a birth pang, it seemed to come from deep inside her, ripped away with an unmerciful fierceness from that secret place where she had tried to bury it all and make it disappear.
Fiona and Declan watched Frank and the pallbearers as they moved their father into the handsome mahogany coffin. Since the conversation with Frank the night before, Fiona’s head had been in a swim as she anticipated the inevitable showdown at the reading of the will. They lifted their father off the bed, laid him down in the satin-lined box, waited respectfully until Fiona and Declan gave a signal, and then closed the lid. It was eerily reminiscent of their mother’s removal not so long ago. It was all happening so fast, a last glimpse, and then gone. She wondered if Declan remembered Orla leaving the bedroom next door in her tiny white coffin, so small it seemed like a toy.
She relived the two earlier journeys as they traveled through the house and down the stairs to the waiting hearse. Fiona felt a momentary stab of pity for her uncle who sat in the seat in front of Declan and herself. He was staring out the window looking desolate, lost in thought. No doubt he, too, was reliving the series of deaths more than twenty-five years ago which had wiped out his small family and his hopes for the future. As their father’s hearse wound its way around the familiar roadways, a sharp drizzle began to fall.
After the memorial mass, the pallbearers mounted the coffin on their shoulders, steadied it and marched to the graveside. Declan, Nellie’s husband Ignatius, and Frank were in the vanguard. As Fiona stood facing the black hole that was her father’s grave, she could see her sister’s tombstone with the inscription: “In Loving Memory of our daughter Orla. Died September 7th, 1963, aged 4 years.” And her mother’s: “For my loving wife, Anna. Died February 20th, 1988.” She caught a glimpse of her Aunt Rita’s grave and that of the little baby buried with her, and she became aware that Frank was making an effort not to turn towards it. Fiona was afraid to let herself cry in public for fear of unleashing the
floodgates. The neighbors huddled against the lashing rain. The priest droned on as he recited his incantations, and the mourners echoed back his blessings in response—“everlasting peace,” “in the bosom of Our Savior.” Fiona watched the pallbearers lower her father’s coffin on ropes into the gaping hole. She shuddered at the sight of the black earth as it moved in mesmeric slow motion, separated out like strands of dark cloying hair and landed with a thump on the wood below. The mourners drifted over to the family, shook hands, whispered soft words and began to filter away from the graveside. A small hilly mound of fresh brown earth rose up, leaving only traces in memory of the man below.
They were seated formally around the heavily polished oak table. Mr. Stanley, the family lawyer, Frank, Declan and Fiona. Declan was fuming. Fiona tried hard to act surprised and puzzled. Frank was poker-faced. Declan glared at Mr. Stanley as if the unwelcome clause was his fault.
“Well, can we agree to disagree?” he was grasping at straws. “What if Fiona and I decided that it’s okay for me to buy her out so that I can keep the family home?”
Stanley shook his head. “I’m afraid not. It’s stated clearly that you both have to reach consensus on whether to keep the house and land, or to sell. And the house must remain in both of your names until such time as one of you dies, or you mutually agree to sell it. Your father wasn’t concerned with your holding on to the property, merely that you attain agreement regarding the outcome.”
Fiona tried hard to look neutral as she knew what was coming.
“And,” Stanley continued, “if there’s a failure to reach an agreement, Mr. Francis Clarke is designated to act as intermediary in an attempt to negotiate an understanding.”
Declan was flabbergasted. Fiona could see that he was struggling to maintain his composure. He now turned his ire on Frank.