by Susan Stairs
I twisted my head around a bit. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Ye know, if he did somethin’ bad?’
‘Like what?’
He pulled softly on the brakes and stopped at Bridie’s gate. ‘I dunno. Anythin’ bad.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘I know my dad. He wouldn’t do anything bad.’
‘Ye sure?’
I slid down off the bike. ‘’Course I am.’
‘So . . . what would ye say if I told ye I knew he’d done somethin’ bad?’
My heart bounced in my chest, slipping and sliding about like the ones in the silver trays in Boylan’s window. ‘I . . . I don’t believe you.’
‘All right, Ruth?’ It was Dad. At our gate with Kev in his arms. He looked over and smiled. ‘Dinner’s nearly ready.’
Shayne leaned in to me and laughed. ‘I was only messin’!’ he whispered. ‘Ye should see the look on yer face!’
‘I knew you were only joking,’ I said as I walked towards the house.
He followed me up the drive, still wheeling his bike. ‘Really? Ye didn’t look that sure to me.’
He was right. Much as I didn’t want to believe him, there was something behind what he’d said. I could sense it.
Mam came flip-flopping out to the door in Dad’s slippers, a tea towel in her hand. ‘Where are the others?’ she wanted to know. ‘I’m after doing a huge pot of mash. There’s enough to feed an army!’
Shayne’s face lit up. ‘Mash!’ he said. ‘Me favourite.’
They exchanged a glance and I knew what was coming next. Only someone completely heartless could’ve ignored him.
‘Your . . . your mammy’s away, isn’t she?’ Mam asked, smoothing down the front of her apron. ‘Come on in, then. You can have a bit of decent food for a change.’
None of us said anything about what had happened in the graveyard. But we knew it was more than a little funny that only an hour since Shayne had shouted the F word in front of Father Feely, he was sitting at our table asking Mel to pass the tomato sauce. Dad was far less chatty than usual. I got the feeling he wasn’t happy that Shayne was there. He only opened his mouth to fork food into it or to tell us off over things he normally ignored. He asked Mel three times to stop talking with his mouth full, told Sandra to stop daydreaming and eat up, and even asked me to take my elbows off the table and said my hair was in my food even though it clearly wasn’t. Mam said nothing but I could tell she thought Dad was going over the top. He was definitely a bit edgy, and kept glancing at Shayne as if he was afraid of him. Would you forgive yer da anythin’? I couldn’t get the words out of my head.
There was silence for a while, and I picked through the bones in my piece of fish, hoping for a distraction of some sort so that Mam wouldn’t realize I wasn’t actually eating it. Kev was almost a year old now and full of mischief, especially at mealtimes. He banged his spoon on the tray of his highchair and sent a lump of mash flying through the air. We all laughed, except Dad who wagged his finger and told him he was a bold boy. Kev just smiled and did it again. This time, a dollop of tomato sauce hit the wall with a splat, leaving behind a dripping splodge of red. I imagined the man in the tree had been shot and that blood was oozing out of the wallpaper. Dad was about to give out but Mam got in first. ‘It’ll wipe off,’ she said. ‘No damage done.’
A few more minutes of silence followed. Then, the doorbell rang. Dad jumped in his seat, slamming his knife and fork down on the table, in anger as much as in fright. Mam said it must be Mrs Shine, collecting the church money, and asked me to run out with the envelope. I was more than happy to leave the table, knowing my fish would be cold by the time I came back, giving me an excellent excuse not to eat it. Mrs Shine always kept me at the door for ages. Apparently I was the same age as her beloved niece, Nuala – a fact, it appeared, she found fascinating and she was forever asking me questions so she could compare the two of us. I opened the door, ready to be bombarded. But instead of Mrs Shine’s anxious eyes, I saw the pale, rigid lips of Mr O’Dea and, beside him, the flushed and flabby face of Father Feely.
‘We see young Lawless’s bike in the driveway,’ Father Feely said, all breathless, like he’d just climbed a mountain. ‘We take it he’s here?’
ELEVEN
We’d no choice then but to tell Mam and Dad what had happened. According to the others, Father Feely had insisted on bringing David home after Shayne and I left the graveyard. They said he’d run off – Father Feely could run? – to get his Morris Minor, so that the ‘injured child’ wouldn’t have to walk ‘all the way’ to Hillcourt Rise. David had been allowed to sit in the front and had given them his queen’s wave as the car choked and spluttered down the road. (Father Feely’s driving was well known around Kilgessin – Bridie said he’d destroyed the engines of three cars in the last ten years.) Passing the O’Deas’ house on their way home, the others had seen the Morris Minor parked in the drive and Father Feely looking out the front room window, wiping his blotchy face with a handkerchief.
Dad said there was no point in all of us traipsing over to the O’Deas’. ‘If Eamon O’Dea wants Shayne to apologize, then I suppose I’ll have to go over with him,’ he said, with more than a trace of annoyance in his voice. ‘But there’s no point in everyone’s evening being ruined. You lot stay here and finish your tea.’
‘But Dad,’ I said, ‘we’re all witnesses.’
‘She’s right, Mick,’ Mam said. ‘At least let’s give the lad a fair chance. From what they’ve told us, it wasn’t exactly black and white.’
Dad grumbled. ‘I suppose so.’
Father Feely and Mr O’Dea hadn’t got into any discussions at our door. They’d simply told Dad what had happened to David and said they wanted ‘young Lawless’ to go over and explain himself. Then they left, saying, ‘We’ll be waiting for you’, not ‘We’ll be waiting for him’, which made Dad feel like he’d no choice but to go as well. Shayne said he didn’t mind going on his own, but Mam insisted he should have an adult with him. ‘Sure wouldn’t your mammy go with you if she was here?’ she said, but I knew full well she didn’t believe that for a second.
Dad, Shayne and Mel led the way across the green. Sandra and I walked behind. The grass on the green had been mown earlier and our toes kicked up sprays of cuttings as we walked. Geraldine came to her door with Fiona in her arms as we passed. She stood there, her face scrubbed as pink as the shirt she was wearing, not even trying to pretend she was being anything other than nosy. She said something over her shoulder, then Tracey came running out and sat on the wall to watch.
News of our convoy spread rapidly, and within seconds Nora Vaughan had joined Geraldine on the doorstep. Tracey was summoned to take Fiona and she slid off the wall reluctantly, a look of defeat in her eyes. Sandra nudged me as she walked up her drive – Tracey’s skirt was caught in her pants, exposing her upper thigh. It was nearly as thin as my arm and the flesh – what there was of it – had a sort of blue tinge. I watched her take Fiona and noticed how Geraldine’s shirt wasn’t quite as baggy as it should have been.
‘I bet Tracey’s mam’s having another baby,’ I said to Sandra.
‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘Tracey said that after Fiona was born, her mam swore she wasn’t ever having another one.’
It was Tina who answered the door. She didn’t say a word, just stared at us with her big grey eyes, then went into the front room to get her father. He kept us waiting for ages as if we were kids selling raffle tickets and we’d disturbed him in the middle of watching the news. When he finally came out, he was clearly surprised to see all five of us. ‘In you come,’ he said, after taking his pipe out of his mouth. His cheeks were sunken – from all the pipe-sucking, I imagined – and he had deep lines at the sides of his seawater eyes. He didn’t appear to have any eyelashes, and his crinkly ginger hair looked like lengths of unravelled washing line plastered flat across his head. He wore a shirt with little beige and blue squares, a yellow tweed tie, and an army-gre
en cardigan with leather buttons and elbow patches.
We followed him into their front room, where David sat in a chestnut-brown leather armchair beside the fireplace, holding a strip of bacon against his cheek. Father Feely stood with his back to the window, his hands flat against the swelling mound of his stomach. He was leaning towards David, speaking in his droning, Sunday mass voice, but as soon as we walked in to the room he stopped short, straightened himself up and cleared his throat.
‘Children, children,’ he said, smiling and walking towards us with his arms outstretched. He touched Sandra’s shoulder, ruffled Mel’s hair and gave me a wink. He patted Dad’s arm. ‘Michael. Mick,’ he said, as if he wasn’t sure what to call him. ‘Good of you to bring the lad over.’ He went in close and whispered, ‘I know the mammy’s gone away. Somewhere foreign, I believe. Glad to know yourself and Rose are there for the lad.’ Dad opened his mouth to say something but Father Feely turned away, beaming at Shayne and almost shouting. ‘And Shayne! Good lad. How are we now? Anxious to get this over and done with, eh?’ He winked again and his smile grew even larger, making his cheeks bunch up under his eyes like juicy plums.
Mr O’Dea stood beside David, one hand resting along the back of the armchair and the other holding his pipe, which he puffed on every now and then, filling the room with a sweet smell like the vanilla essence Bridie spooned into her cake mixtures.
Father Feely clapped his hands, making me jump. ‘Now! Where will we start, Eamon?’ David made a moaning sound and rubbed the rasher over the side of his face.
‘With an apology,’ Mr O’Dea said, his teeth clenched down on his pipe. ‘An unreserved apology.’
‘Shouldn’t we get both sides of the story first?’ Dad asked, his eyes fitting from Father Feely to Mr O’Dea. ‘That’s why I brought them all over. They did witness what took place, after all.’
‘Children, I think it’s safe to say,’ said Mr O’Dea, ‘make the most unreliable witnesses. David has told me what happened.’
‘But is David not a child himself?’ asked Dad.
Mr O’Dea scowled. ‘Violence speaks for itself, Mr Lamb. Take a look at my son’s face.’
‘And don’t forget, I was a witness to the incident too, Michael. Mick,’ Father Feely said. ‘I saw what I saw. Young Lawless landing a punch to David’s cheek and using profanities I never thought I’d hear in a sacred burial ground.’
‘But do you not think we should hear what went on before that?’ Dad said. ‘Wouldn’t that be the Christian thing to do? Hear all sides?’
Father Feely scratched his nose. He walked over to the fireplace and took a silver-framed photograph from the mantelpiece. It was a picture of David, aged about three, dressed in a sailor suit and sitting stiffly on a big wooden chest. ‘You’re correct, of course,’ he said, looking at the photograph. ‘We should always endeavour to get to the . . . truth of things.’
Sandra said that, really, Valerie, Tracey and the twins should tell their sides of the story too, but Mr O’Dea said we’d had quite enough witnesses to contend with already and, besides, he didn’t want the twins involved any more than was necessary in the ‘whole affair’, as he called it. Tina had disappeared after she’d opened the door and Linda was nowhere to be seen.
While the others recounted what had happened, I looked around the room. It had a sort of dull, museum feel, as if nothing had been shifted in years, and the air was fuzzy with dust. Most of the contents were made out of things that had once been alive: two leather armchairs and a matching couch with buttons pressed deep into its back; a zebra-skin pouffe with star patterns made from what looked like tiny white bones stitched into its sides; and in the middle of the dark, wooden floor – so shiny it was like you were walking on glass – was a long-haired sheepskin rug.
David’s piano stood near the window. I walked across the room and stood beside it. Its lid was closed and the wood was polished to a high gleam, like the floor. On the top, faded dried flowers were arranged in a fan shape in a big pink seashell. And beside it, under a round-topped glass case, was a stuffed, open-beaked, yellow-eyed blackbird.
‘And would that be how you remember things happening?’ Father Feely was droning. ‘Hmm?’
‘Ruth,’ Dad said. ‘Father Feely’s talking to you. Is there anything you want to add? Or have the others covered everything?’
The others had covered everything all right, but they might as well have been talking to the sheepskin rug. Eamon and Father Feely said nothing when Mel and Sandra explained what David had said about Liz. They simply chose to ignore it. It wasn’t fair. David couldn’t be allowed to get away with everything. I ran my palm along the smooth coldness of the piano and lifted the lid.
‘Well . . . there is one thing,’ I said, fingering the ivory keys. ‘David didn’t break his wrist by accident. He flung himself from the tree on purpose. To get out of taking part in the piano competition.’
David jumped up out of the armchair and flung the rasher to the floor, where it landed with a splat. ‘I did not!’ he said. ‘Don’t listen to her! She’s lying! Why would I do that?’ He stood before his father, his face as clear and angelic as it was in the sailor suit picture, except for the purple bruise on his right cheek. ‘You know I wouldn’t do something like that! I’d been looking forward to that competition for so long. I’d practised for months! I was expecting to do really well. I was sure of a placing. I—’
‘What in the name of God is going on?’ It was Mrs O’Dea. She breezed in from the hall, her heels clicking across the wooden floor. She bent down to pick up the piece of bacon and Father Feely told her what I’d said. ‘And you expect me to believe that piece of utter nonsense?’ she said, laying the rasher carefully on the desk beside the door. She went over to the window and, although it was still bright outside, she drew the gold velvet curtains, fussing with the ends of them, pulling them in and out until she was satisfied with the way they sat on the floor. ‘Well?’ she said, widening her small, dark eyes and breathing loudly through her long, thin nose. Her black backcombed hair sat stiffly around her head like the brim of a witch’s hat and when she leaned down to turn on a lamp, the bulb, through its green satin shade, gave her skin a scary, emerald hue. She looked a lot more like the Wicked Witch of the West than Liz Lawless did.
‘How can you say such a thing?’ Father Feely asked me. ‘David had a terrible fall. A truly terrible fall. He could’ve been killed! Why would anyone in their right mind do something like that on purpose, child? Hmm?’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Mr O’Dea said. ‘Absolutely ridiculous.’ He turned to me. ‘And would you mind not touching the piano keys, please? We’ve only just had it tuned.’
Dad looked tired and angry. ‘What’s all this about, Ruth?’
‘Father Feely said we should always try and get to the truth of things,’ I said.
Mrs O’Dea folded her arms. ‘Well, young lady, from where I’m standing it looks like you came up with a very successful way of diverting attention from the real culprit. I’ve never heard such rubbish in all my life.’
‘Well, I don’t see why Shayne should get all the blame!’ I said.
Dad turned to Sandra and Mel. ‘Is Ruth telling the truth here?’ he asked. Mel had taken a sudden interest in a glass paperweight with a butterfly inside it and pretended not to hear Dad’s question. When Dad asked again, he gave him a wide-eyed look and shrugged like he’d no idea what he was talking about. Sandra fiddled with the buttons on her blouse. ‘I don’t know, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure. I . . . I did hear something about David doing it on purpose but I . . . I don’t know . . .’
‘This is unbelievable,’ Mr O’Dea said. ‘You people. You’re hardly living in Hillcourt Rise a wet weekend and you’re causing all this trouble. There was never anything like this before you arrived.’
‘Now, hang on a minute,’ Dad said. ‘That’s a bit unfair.’
‘It certainly is!’ said Mrs O’Dea. ‘It’s very unfair. Our child has been
accused of being a liar. Look at his face! Destroyed! We were expecting an apology and all we’ve got is . . . is . . . abuse!’
‘Look, let’s all calm down,’ Father Feely said with a false smile. ‘We haven’t heard a word from young Lawless here, have we?’ He slapped a fat hand on Shayne’s shoulder. ‘What have you got to say about all this, lad?’ Shayne stood very still. His face had turned pale. The skin under his eyes was white, almost glowing, and his lips were a dark purplish-blue. His forehead looked clammy and he swayed a little on his feet. ‘Lad? Are you all right?’ Father Feely gripped his shoulder tighter.
‘I . . . I . . . don’t feel well,’ Shayne mumbled.
‘Sit down, lad, sit down.’
Shayne took a few careful steps forward and lowered himself down onto the zebra-skin pouffe.
‘Well, that’s very convenient, isn’t it?’ Mrs O’Dea said. ‘Feeling ill all of a sudden.’
‘Now, now, Mona,’ said Father Feely. ‘It’s hardly the lad’s fault.’
Mrs O’Dea raised her eyes. ‘This is a complete waste of time. I don’t know why we bothered getting him over here in the first place. And surely you’re not taken in with this . . . this . . . act?’
Father Feely shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. ‘Well I . . . surely you can . . . can we not . . . Hmm?’ He fixed his eyes on David. ‘You fell out of the tree, is that right, lad? That was the truth you told me, wasn’t it? About trying to be closer to the Lord so he might hear your prayers?’
David blinked then gave Father Feely a hard, unflinching stare. ‘The truth is . . .’ He glanced at Shayne, who was bent over, clutching his stomach. ‘The truth is . . . that I fell, Father, like I said.’
The words were barely out of his mouth when Shayne gave a low moan, lurched forward and vomited all over the sheepskin rug. A bitter smell immediately rose up in the air and we all stood staring at what he’d produced. Dad went over and crouched down beside him.
‘Oh, that’s right,’ Mrs O’Dea said through her tears, her voice thin and high. ‘That says it all.’ She put her hand down the front of her dress and pulled out a handkerchief, dabbing at her eyes then holding it under her nose. ‘Easily known whose side you’re on,’ she whined.