The Story of Before

by Susan Stairs

  The rain drummed louder against the roof, the noise of it making me almost thankful I was there. Sheltered, safe, unseen. Some days now I want to remember it all; other days I want to forever forget. But it seems cold and hard to deny the memory, to want to hide the truth of what I found.

  How could I not want to remember Kev? Every minute of him.

  In life. And in death.

  He was so perfect, curled up as though asleep. Stored away, soft and silent under the lid of that great, wooden beast. I’ve lifted it a thousand times in my mind since, over and over, hoping I’ll find nothing more than a stack of favourite records, a prized collection of familiar songs. Sweet tunes to sing along to, with words I think I know the meaning of. But once the lines have been written, they can’t ever change. You know them by heart and think you understand them, until one day you find out they’re not what you thought they were at all.

  I don’t think I screamed, or cried, or made any sound. For one beautiful second, the relief at having found him was stronger than the realization he was dead.

  I knew he was.

  But it couldn’t be the sort of dead I’d come to know, could it? Not the for ever and ever Uncle Frank sort of dead? This was Kev, not even two years old. His was surely a different kind of dead. This was a line that could be re-written, couldn’t it? It had to have another meaning. It couldn’t be the end. Not really, truly, absolutely . . . The End.

  I reached down and scooped him up in my arms. His clothes were damp. He was cold. Cold, cold, cold. And he was heavy; heavier than before.

  Before.

  Before was over.

  I held him the way Dad had sometimes held me: laid across my outstretched arms, his head to my left, his feet to my right. I pulled him close to my chest and kissed his pale forehead. His flesh was like stone. I swayed a little, back and forth, rocking him gently in my arms.

  It wasn’t long before they came. Minutes, seconds maybe. A blur of sounds and motion. Of strokes and rushing air. Of arms and prayers and whispers. The smell of wet hair and damp skin; the touch of soft palms and warm blankets. The silence. Then the screams.

  Before they led me away, I saw Shayne.

  His face like the moon at the window, hollow-eyed and silvery. His gaze unconnected to the world, as always. He stared at me from behind the glass – unblinking, blank, empty.

  That’s how I remember him. That’s how I’ll always remember him.

  He was sitting in the shadow of the chimney. Sergeant Pearce said he’d never seen anyone so at ease at such a height. Like a bird, he said. Like it was his home. He was taken to the garda station straightaway. Dad tried to keep it all from us and, for a while, he succeeded. But we learned the truth in dribs and drabs, from half-heard conversations and snatched sentences. He’d wheeled Kev to the churchyard, taking care to lock the gate. Then he’d lifted him, still sleeping soundly, from his pushchair. He’d held him with one arm, his little head slumped over his shoulder, and stepped up easily onto the strong, low branches of the copper beech.

  And when he’d climbed as high as he could go, far up inside the dark web of leaves and branches where he felt safe and sure . . . he let him fall.

  That’s what he said.

  It wasn’t an accident. He didn’t slip. There was no sudden stumble. He just . . . let him fall.

  And when he picked him up from the ground, he heard me rattling at the gates, calling out Kev’s name. It had been that quick.

  When I was gone, he took off home on his bike in the dark, carrying Kev’s lifeless body bundled up inside his jacket. He’d waited in the lane, watching me run across the green, only speeding off when he was sure I’d reached our door. Mam and Dad, coming up the hill in the car with the bag of Easter eggs from Auntie Cissy, must’ve only missed him by seconds.

  The doctor’s examination showed there were no broken bones in Kev’s body. Not one. Because he was asleep – a deep, deep sleep after all the crying that he’d done – he’d been completely relaxed. But he’d fallen on his head and his brain had died and his insides had all been shaken up.

  The one thing Dad did tell us was that his death had been instant and there was never any chance he could’ve been saved. I suppose he thought that might’ve made us feel better. But it didn’t. Not at all.

  Father Feely stayed with us into the early hours of Monday morning and convinced Mam and Dad to have the funeral as soon as possible. He said it was better for everyone concerned if the matter was dealt with quickly. If these things drag on, he said, it only prolongs the tragedy. I doubt if Mam even heard what he was saying. Dad had woken her up when Kev had been found – against Sergeant Pearce’s advice – and although she seemed sort of aware of what had happened, she was muzzy and confused and she didn’t really understand.

  Dad went along with Father Feely and a Mass of the Holy Angels was arranged for the Tuesday morning. Before he left, Father Feely gathered us around in the sitting room to say some prayers for Kev. Mam sat on the couch and stared into the deadened fireplace, her hands like withered lilies in her lap. Mel, Sandra and I knelt on the carpet and cried silently as we listened. At one point, Dad looked over at us with a sort of panic in his eyes like he’d no idea where he was or who any of us were. Then he bowed his head and started to shiver so bad we could hear his teeth chatter.

  Kev was taken straight from the doctor’s to the funeral home. We never saw him again. We didn’t get time to accept he was dead. We should’ve had time to hold him, to stroke his cheeks and tell him how much we loved him and maybe save a lock of his jet-black hair.

  Father Feely was wrong; it wasn’t better that way.

  The church was packed for the funeral. Liz stayed away. I suppose it wouldn’t have been right for her to go. Almost everyone else from Hillcourt Rise was there. It was clear they were all upset, but they mostly kept their distance from us after it was over. None of them really knew what to say. Bridie stood beside me for a moment on the steps of the church, dabbing her eyes with a lacy handkerchief, and I got the feeling she hoped I might collapse into her arms. But I turned my face away. I was glad we’d become distant.

  Paddy and Clem shook Dad’s hand. Nora and Geraldine made sympathetic faces. They meant well, I suppose, but none of it seemed real to me. I think they all knew we’d be gone soon enough and there was no point in wasting too much energy trying to be supportive. Our arrival had upset the way things had been run in Hillcourt Rise, and the sooner we were gone, the sooner everything could get back to normal. We should never have expected we were going to slot ourselves into the tightly knit grouping that had existed for years before we came. Eamon and Mona hovered at the edge of the crowd with David and the twins. They looked over but came no closer, and were gone before we drove away.

  Mam didn’t want Kev buried in Kilgessin graveyard. Apart from it being the place where he disappeared, there was nobody there, she said, to look after him. She wanted him in Wicklow, where her own mother and father were buried, so, after the funeral, we made our way there. Once through the city, we drove past Bray and Greystones and on down twisty, green tunnels of winding country roads, where the spring sun flashed through the trees and the hedgerows were splashed with clumps of yellow primroses.

  I went in Uncle Con’s car, with Trevor and Auntie Cissy. Trevor sat beside me in the back and had a pocketful of cough drops he kept insisting on offering me. I said ‘no thanks’ every time but it didn’t stop him asking.

  Mam clung to Dad in the graveyard. She could barely stand up. Sandra and I held hands and Uncle Con kept his arm around Mel. Auntie Cissy walked on her own, ahead of everyone else, like she was showing us what to do. I suppose because it was only six months since she’d buried her husband, she felt she knew more about grief than the rest of us. We had to wait a while for Father Feely. He apologized for being late, saying his car wasn’t up to the ‘narrow boreens’.

  None of the neighbours made it down for the burial. I thought maybe Bridie might’ve asked Father Feely for
a lift, but he arrived alone. Not that I really cared if she was there, but it would’ve been nice if she’d made the effort. I heard Father Feely telling Dad later on that nobody from the estate came because they assumed we only wanted family and they didn’t want to intrude. Dad said that was just an excuse and if they’d really wanted to make it down, they would have, and it wasn’t as if Wicklow was the other side of the world.

  Mam managed to keep upright until Kev’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Then her knees kind of gave way and Dad had to grab her and stop her from falling into the grave. I think if he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have cared. She’d have let herself be buried alive. I won’t ever forget the sound she made. Not ever.

  The days that followed were the worst. Everything was turned upside down. Auntie Cissy offered to have the three of us and Dad wanted us to go. But Mam said she wouldn’t be able to bear the house without us. Even though she said that, she acted as if we weren’t there. She lived in some sort of in-between world and took to staying up for most of the night and sleeping in snatches during the day. I’d come into the kitchen and find her slumped with her head on the tray of Kev’s highchair and she’d spring up in fright when she heard me, her eyes wild with fear and her hair stuck to her head with sweat.

  At night, the lights were left on and all the doors were kept open, and we’d hear strange sobs and all sorts of shuffling and moaning. We’d come down in the morning to find plates of cold scrambled eggs and hard toast on the table that she’d made hours before. And in the evenings, she filled the bath with warm water and bubbles and sat on the lid of the toilet for ages, with a towel in her hands, just staring into space.

  On Easter Sunday, we broke our chocolate eggs into pieces and melted them in the fire. The thought of them made us feel sick. Even Sandra, who’d given up sweet things for Lent and had been looking forward to breaking her fast, wasn’t tempted. Mel seemed to take the greatest pleasure in the task, smashing his eggs with his fists and stamping on the boxes till they were flat. When Dad came in and saw what we were doing, all he said was to make sure we didn’t leave too much of a mess.

  We discovered later on that Shayne had been charged with Kev’s murder on the day of the funeral. Dad had cut the piece about it out of the Evening Press and kept it in his wallet. I found it when Mrs Shine called for the church dues the following Friday and he asked me to take the fifty pence myself because he was doing the washing up and his hands were wet. I didn’t think Mrs Shine should be calling at all. It didn’t feel right, and I said as much to Dad. But he said something about life going on and her only doing her job. She didn’t mention Kev; she probably hoped the pained expression on her face was enough. But seeing as it wasn’t any different to the one she usually wore, I couldn’t tell. She did ask how Mam was and went off on a ramble about some cousin of hers who’d lost a son in a farming accident, but I wasn’t in any mood for her and closed the door before she’d finished.

  I sat on the stairs after she’d gone and read the words on the small rectangle of newspaper. ‘Youth on Murder Charge’, it said. It didn’t give Shayne’s name, just called him ‘a fourteen-year-old youth’ and said he’d been ‘charged at a special sitting of Kilgessin court with the murder of twenty-one-month-old Kevin Lamb of forty-two Hillcourt Rise, Kilgessin, on Sunday last’. It said he was to be ‘remanded in custody to St Patrick’s Institution to appear before the District Court again on Thursday’. That was over a week before. I wondered what had happened. I folded the piece of paper up and put it back in Dad’s wallet. There was no use in asking him; I knew he wouldn’t tell.

  Father Feely called round the next evening and said we should try to get back to normal, that we’d feel a lot better if we followed our old routine of school and work and going to mass on Sunday. Dad told him it was good of him to call but, if he didn’t mind, we had our own way of doing things, thank you very much, and there wasn’t much point in us going to all the trouble of settling into our old routine when we weren’t going to be around very much longer anyway. That was the first time Dad had said anything about moving. Since I’d always had a feeling it was going to happen, it didn’t surprise me, but the others were shocked and Sandra started to cry. Father Feely got all red-faced and asked Dad if he was sure he was doing the right thing, would he not think about it for a while longer, and what about all the good friends and neighbours we’d be leaving behind? Dad got mad then and said not one person had asked how we were since we’d buried Kev. And none of these so-called ‘friends’ had come round to ask any of us out to play. Father Feely said not to be so hard on people, that it was a difficult time for everyone and no one really knew what to say, and maybe people thought we’d prefer to be left to grieve and didn’t want to intrude. But how could we stay after all that had happened, Dad wanted to know. It was because of Kev that we’d come here in the first place, he said. He’d been born the day we moved in, for God’s sake. We’d never even begin to get over it if we stayed. Father Feely said people were very sorry for what had happened, but no one could’ve foreseen such a terrible event, and if any of us had known things like the fact that the Lawless lad had been violent to his mother, then maybe some sort of action could’ve been taken sooner.

  ‘And what about David?’ Dad said, boiling up because he thought Father Feely was trying to make out he was in some way responsible. ‘Covering up the fact he was pushed out of that tree? Maybe if he’d said something back then, Lawless would’ve been locked up long ago.’

  Father Feely said we had to make exceptions for children; they couldn’t be expected to have the same sense as adults when it came to doing the right thing. ‘Shayne is a most unfortunate child,’ he said. ‘A most unfortunate child.’

  ‘What about my unfortunate child?’ Dad said. ‘That . . . monster might be getting locked up but my child is gone for ever.’

  ‘Maybe we’re all guilty in one way or another for not saying things we should have,’ Father Feely said, looking at me. ‘But life is a test and none of us know what the good Lord has in store for us. Isn’t that so? Hmm?’

  I think Dad might’ve taken a swipe at Father Feely if Mam hadn’t appeared. She sort of floated into the room in her nightdress, carrying the box of photographs from under her bed. She’d been crying again and she asked Dad why there didn’t seem to be any pictures of Kev. Dad put his arm around her and tried to explain that they wouldn’t be in the box, that any we had of Kev would be in the sideboard. But it was like she didn’t hear him and she put the box on the table and began pulling out handfuls of pictures, studying each one and tossing them to the floor. Father Feely coughed and shuffled around a bit before manoeuvring his stomach out the door and into the hall, saying it was time he left us in peace and maybe he’d see us at mass in the morning. We heard him droning at the front door with Dad for a few minutes while Mam continued flinging photos all over the place. Then she closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep. Sandra and I gathered them up and put them back, not pausing to look at any of them, not even for a second. It was as if they were pictures of some other family, with no relation to us at all.

  Dad came back in and Sandra asked him if was true that we were really moving house. He stood looking at her for a moment, like he was trying to figure out exactly how he should answer. Then Mam woke up with a jolt and opened her eyes wide. She saw the box of photos on the table and took it onto her lap, saying she must have a good look through and see if she could find any of Kev.

  ‘Yes, it’s true,’ Dad said. ‘I think it’s for the best.’

  That night, Sandra and I pushed our beds together but neither of us could get to sleep. We lay on our backs and held hands under the covers and, after a while, we both began to cry. Mel must’ve heard us as he crept into our room, asking if we were all right. He sat on the edge of my bed in the dark while we listened to Mam moving around downstairs in the kitchen.

  ‘Do you think Mam’s gone a bit . . . crazy?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Sa
ndra whispered. ‘She’s not crazy. She’s just . . . I don’t know . . . not herself, that’s all.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll get better?’

  ‘Of course she will. She still has us, hasn’t she?’

  Mel laid a hand on my foot. ‘What do you think, Ruth?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, wiping my tears with the sheet. ‘I think maybe she’ll get better. But she’ll never be the same as she was before.’

  ‘I suppose none of us will,’ Sandra said. ‘I mean . . . not really.’

  ‘I hate Shayne Lawless,’ Mel said. ‘He’s a fuckin’ bastard.’

  I could almost taste his words in the silence that followed.

  ‘What’s going to happen to him?’ Sandra eventually asked.

  I answered. ‘Locked up. That’s what Dad said to Father Feely.’

  ‘I hope that’s true,’ Mel said. ‘I hope we never have to look at his stinking face. Ever again.’

  He lay down across our beds, curling the end of the eiderdown around his body. Sandra and I moved our legs up to give him some room. The smell of burned toast found its way up from the kitchen and, after a few minutes, we heard Dad walking heavily down the stairs.

  ‘You were right, Ruth,’ Mel said, slipping in under the covers. ‘When you said something bad was going to happen. Remember? On New Year’s Eve, when we were looking out at the snow?’

  ‘Did you know it’d be this bad?’ Sandra asked. ‘Did you know it’d be . . . you know . . . about Kev?’

  ‘No! Of course I didn’t!’ I sat up. ‘It was just a feeling. Just some kind of . . . feeling. It wasn’t . . . I mean . . . I didn’t . . . I thought all kinds of things were happening. All sorts of bad things. But I was wrong about them. I was wrong.’

  ‘But you weren’t wrong! You said something bad was going to happen and it did.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mel agreed. ‘You really must be, you know . . . psychic.’