by Shane Dunphy
the next I’ll have the young queen’s child.
Ha, glad am I that no one knew
that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.’
From Rumpelstiltskin by
the Brothers Grimm
14
Beth was gazing into the fridge disconsolately. I noticed that, though the door was open, the light was not on, and the sour smell of turned milk was seeping into the kitchen.
‘Problem?’ I asked as I spooned coffee into one of the cafetières.
‘I think it is obvious that the fridge is on the fritz,’ Beth said testily.
‘Nice alliteration,’ I said.
She ignored my remark, and continued to stare into the bowels of the damaged appliance.
‘We only got this a year ago. It should not have packed up already.’
‘So call the store. It must be still under guarantee.’
Beth seemed to think that by staring at the rapidly decomposing foods in the refrigerator that a means to repair the mechanism might come to her.
‘We didn’t buy it in a store.’
‘Well that was silly,’ I said.
‘As you well know, we operate on a shoestring. Almost everything here is second-hand.’ She closed the door at last. ‘I’d better see what Tristan thinks. He’s handy with gadgets.’
Ten minutes later Tristan, Beth and several of the clients were standing gazing into the open fridge. My own DIY abilities, though developing rapidly, did not extend to any level of mechanical engineering, so I stayed back, smiling quietly at them all.
‘Well?’ Beth asked Tristan. ‘What do you think?’
‘Yes,’ Tristan said thoughtfully. ‘It certainly appears to be broken.’
I could not stifle a laugh.
‘I know that, Tristan,’ Beth snapped. ‘Can you fix it?’
Tristan closed the door.
‘I’ll get my tools and see.’
While Tristan went off, Beth began to unload the spoiled foodstuffs.
‘We’d better pull this away from the wall,’ she said. ‘It might be nothing more than the plug needs rewiring.’
I grabbed one corner, and she grabbed the other, but the appliance simply would not budge.
‘Try and get it low down,’ I said. ‘Maybe one of the corners is caught on a piece of lino or something.’
Changing our grip seemed to make no difference. Tristan returned, and added his efforts, but to no avail. The fridge was tottering over dangerously, but the base remained solidly in place.
‘It’s hardly fastened to the floor with bolts or something,’ I said, sweating and out of breath. ‘Even if it’s not, the damn thing weighs a ton!’
‘I help, Tristan?’
Dominic had appeared at the door. The other members of the group had become bored and were engaged in craft.
‘I don’t think you can do much here, Dominic,’ I said. ‘We need a truck or something to drag this baby loose.’
‘I do it,’ Dominic said cheerfully, and before any of us could stop him, he had crossed the floor in two steps, crouched low, stuck his fingers under the fridge and heaved.
Tristan and I moved simultaneously. As it had done before, the structure lurched forwards – the rear of the base seemed to be loose, while the front was definitely anchored on something – and if we had not been there, it would have fallen on top of Dominic.
‘Let go, Dom,’ I grunted. ‘This is not going to work.’
As I said this, there was a loud tearing sound, and the entire body of the fridge slid towards us, the rear legs thudding back down onto the floor as the weight was redistributed.
‘I did it!’ Dominic giggled, continuing to pull until the whole thing was out in the middle of the kitchen.
‘Dominic, you are a horse of a man,’ Beth said.
I looked at the space which the fridge had occupied. A large chunk of linoleum and part of a floorboard had been ripped away. Tristan and I would have needed a crowbar to have moved it. Dominic simply stood up, brushed himself down and, still giggling, went back out to the group.
15
I ran into Leroy, Dominic’s father, in the supermarket the Saturday after my first full week at Drumlin. He was a friendly, smiling man, and surprisingly short for someone who had produced a giant for a son. Dominic had inherited his height from his mother, Leroy informed me.
‘He’s a remarkable young man,’ I said. We had stopped in the fruit and veg section. It was a busy afternoon and shoppers milled about us.
‘Ah, he’s a lovely young lad,’ Leroy agreed. ‘There’s not a bad bone in him. He gets mixed up sometimes and makes mistakes, but he’s so sweet-natured… I worry about him sometimes, though.’
‘Why?’ I asked. It might seem like a stupid question, but I knew there were so many different reasons to worry about a child like Dominic, I couldn’t even begin to guess what Leroy’s particular concerns were.
‘Dominic assumes everyone is good and will treat him fairly,’ Leroy said. ‘He’s lucky in that we’ve always made sure he’s around people who care about him and want to do right by him. When he’s out, he doesn’t look any different to anyone else, so he doesn’t have people calling him the kind of names someone like Max has to constantly put up with. He takes everyone at face value.’
‘And an awful lot of people can’t be taken at face value,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Leroy said. ‘How do you explain duplicity to someone who has no concept of such a thing?’
I had no answer to that.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you can.’
Leroy smiled sadly, and picked up an apple from a tray of them to our left.
‘He was always a special little boy,’ he said. ‘Even before.’
‘Before the seizure that…’
Leroy nodded. ‘My wife likes to say that Dominic was a normal child then, but he wasn’t. There was always something a little bit different about him. Nothing major, nothing you could generally put your finger on, but it was there.’
I shook my head. ‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ Leroy said.
‘Try.’
‘When he was three years old,’ Leroy said, ‘Dominic went missing. He had never done that before. He was actually afraid of the road and the traffic, so we never bothered to get a padlock for the front gate. We were really surprised, and, as I’m sure you can imagine, horrified, when we discovered he wasn’t in the back garden where he’d been playing. We searched everywhere we could think of, but finally, in panic, we called the gardaí.’
‘You must have been beside yourselves,’ I said.
‘We were. The police conducted a thorough search and failed to find the child. Three hours had passed by now, and we were starting to think the worst – that someone might have snatched him. The word had spread by then, and the neighbours had gotten together and organized a search party. Would you believe, it was a ten-year-old boy from across the road who finally found him.’
‘Where was he?’
‘Perched on a branch of a tree in the back garden, fast asleep. He had apparently been there all afternoon. It was a favourite spot of his, but no one had thought to look. He told me later that he had watched us all coming and going, had seen the police, had heard us talking about the fact that he was gone and we couldn’t find him, but had stayed exactly where he was.’
‘Probably thought it was all a game,’ I said.
Leroy smiled and patted me on the shoulder.
‘I don’t know of any other three-year-old who could keep a game of hide-and-seek up for three hours.’
As I watched him walk off through the crowd, I realized that I didn’t know of such a child either. I also pondered, as I continued with my own grocery shopping, that the story Leroy had just told me indicated more than just a rose-tinted world view. It also pointed to a steely determination and a sense of self-sufficiency which Dominic’s sweet exterior hid very well indeed.
16
/> The house seemed to nestle into the side of the mountain like a child seeking comfort from a huge, misshapen mother. If I had not known otherwise, I would have thought it derelict. What had probably once been a garden could be seen out front, now completely overgrown with heather and furze. The pathway had bracken growing through the paving stones, and the roof was so sunken in the centre I feared it might cave in. Tristan rolled down the car window and peered out. A light rain was beginning to fall.
‘I think this has to be the place,’ he said.
‘Must be.’
‘Come along then. Let’s see what we can find.’
It was early afternoon. That morning, Tristan had called me into his office.
‘This is Aisling Cowman,’ he said, introducing me to an elderly woman with the bluest blue-rinse hair I had ever seen. ‘She wishes to seek our assistance with a friend of hers.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ I said.
‘I want you to make Lonnie come to the centre here,’ she said.
‘Lonnie is your friend?’ I asked.
‘He is the son of Peggy Whitmore, who was a dear friend to me for many years. I did not learn that Lonnie even existed until after Peggy’s death. I am sorry to say that she probably did not treat the lad well.’
‘You didn’t know she had a son?’ I said. ‘I thought this woman was your best friend.’
‘She was. I met her when we both worked for the post and telegraph company in Dublin. We were room-mates. Then, when their father died, she returned to her home to live with her sister, and I lost touch with her for a few years, but when I came back here myself, we re-established contact. I visited her many times, and she came over to my home for dinner; we went shopping together and even on holiday on occasion. During all those years, she never once mentioned that she had a son.’
‘How’d you find out, then?’
‘Peggy and her sister lived in a big house on the Dublin road. I always thought it was too large for their needs, but they came from a wealthy family, and status was important to them. From what we can gather, Peggy had a heart attack one night, and when her sister found her, the shock killed her, too. They were discovered several days later by a man who used to do a few odds and ends about the garden for them. It was him who also found Lonnie. The poor boy was half-starved at that stage.’
‘Where was he?’ Tristan asked.
‘They had made some room for him in the attic of the house. That’s where he lived.’
‘And he never went out?’
‘From what I can gather, he never left those rooms at all. I think they were ashamed of him, so they kept him hidden.’
Tristan nodded. ‘And he is physically disabled, you say?’
The old woman sighed. ‘He’s a midget.’
‘He suffers from dwarfism?’ I said, partly to correct her, and also to be clear. ‘He’s not just short?’
‘No. He’s built differently. He has a hunched back, and kind of bowed legs, and his arms are very long. He’s strong, though. But sure, he’s afraid of everything. He’s scared of his own shadow.’
‘And he still lives in the family home?’ Tristan asked.
‘No. They left him a cottage the family owned. It’s on the other side of the mountain. He lives there. I bring him his meals, and make sure he’s all right. I’ve tried getting him to go out, but he’ll have none of it. Then someone told me about this place, so I thought I’d see if you might be able to help him. He’s a lovely boy – well, he’s not a boy at all, I just tend to think of him like that. He doesn’t know what age he is, but he must be more than forty. Can you do something for him?’
‘Give us directions,’ Tristan said, ‘and we’ll see what we can do.’
Aisling rifled through her cavernous handbag. ‘I drew ye a map,’ she said.
We sat and looked at the cottage, which was like something from a dark fairytale.
‘I cannot fucking believe those old biddies would lock a child away because he was disabled,’ I said. ‘I mean, you hear about things like that in old stories from the history books – kings and queens walling up princes who were born with deformities and would be seen as a slur on the royal lineage – but I didn’t think it happened in reality.’
‘There is a long history in Ireland of such things,’ Tristan said. ‘People often see a disabled child as a punishment from God. Some men feel it is a slur on their virility – how could I be a real man if I can’t sire a healthy child. Look at Irish folklore and the legends of changelings – creatures left behind by the fairies. That old tale was used as a way of getting rid of countless children with disabilities. The accepted wisdom was that you had to let the changeling know you were on to it, and it would then have to leave your house. You scalded it with hot water, put it on hot coals, beat it with a blackthorn stick, held it under water and drowned it. These children were tortured to death, and it was all seen as perfectly reasonable conduct.’
‘This is the twenty-first century, Tristan. We’re supposed to have evolved.’
‘People don’t really change. The stories become more scientific and the excuses more convoluted, but the fears are just the same.’
The front door was made of dark varnished wood, which was cracked and peeling. Tristan knocked. There was no response, just the sound of the wind whistling through the ancient oak trees that grew about the little house. Somewhere on the mountain I heard a lark singing. Tristan knocked again. Still nothing.
‘I had hoped we wouldn’t have to do this,’ he said, taking a key Aisling Cowman had given us from his pocket.
‘If he’s jumpy, we’re going to scare the living daylights out of him,’ I said.
‘There’s no hope for it; we’re going to have to go in,’ Tristan said.
He slotted the key into the rusty lock, and turned it.
The smell that came out of the dark hallway was of rotten food, dust and sweat. Inside, I could see woodchip wallpaper with lots of religious paraphernalia hanging over it. The passage seemed to end in a T-junction, and there was an open doorway at the end, facing us.
‘Lonnie, my name is Tristan Fowler, and this is my colleague, Shane Dunphy. Your friend Aisling asked us to come and have a chat with you.’
Still no response.
‘D’you think he popped out for a drink?’ I suggested.
‘He’s supposed to be agoraphobic,’ Tristan said, ‘so I think it unlikely.’
We moved slowly down the hallway. The door at the end opened onto a living room, which was in complete darkness, except for a television, which was switched to horse racing, providing the only source of light. I stepped inside. The furniture consisted of a coffee table, on which sat several plates with semi-congealed food upon them, some of which supported a healthy crop of green mould; a threadbare couch and two uncomfortable-looking armchairs. The mantelpiece was loaded with more religious trinkets: a plastic dome with an elaborate statuette of the Blessed Virgin, complete with a crown so tall it would have caused a spinal injury if she were a real person, several crucifixes and many of those laminated cards with portraits of saints on one side and prayers on the other. I went over to open the curtains to allow some light in when I heard a gurgling snarl, and something landed on my back.
‘What the fuck!’ I said, but the rest of my words were cut off as I felt hands closing about my windpipe.
Instinctively, I dropped to my knees on the carpet amidst all the dust-devils and some old tabloid newspapers, and tried to throw my assailant over my head. This only resulted in one hand letting go of my neck (its fellow simply tightened even more) and the other grasping my hair. I managed to get my own fingers under those about my throat and pried them loose when a cry brought everything to a standstill: ‘Stop this at once! Let him go immediately!’
I heard steps coming up rapidly behind me, and then the weight was gone and I was taking deep breaths of the stale air. I heaved myself up onto one of the armchairs and came face to face with my opponent, who was glaring at
me venomously.
‘You can’t come in here,’ he croaked. ‘This is my house.’
Lonnie was probably just under four feet tall, most of which was made up of a long, muscular torso. His legs were short and bowed, but looked strong. He had broad shoulders, one of which had a large hump, which rose almost above his right ear. His hair was long, curly and dark, greying at the tips. He had a heavy brow and a roman nose, and his eyes were deep-set and powerfully intelligent.
‘You come in here, I’ll fight you,’ he said again, raising his fists. He would have come at me again, if Tristan hadn’t shouted.
‘Mr Whitmore, we were asked to come and speak with you, and given the key because Aisling did not believe you would let us in when we knocked. As it happens, she was right. Now please do not attack Shane again, or I shall have to restrain you.’
Lonnie moved back, and hopped up on the couch. He was still not happy, and fidgeted as he waited to hear what Tristan had to say. When the sales pitch for Drumlin was finished, the little man grunted. ‘Okay. You talked, I listened. You go now.’
‘I’d like you to come and see the unit,’ Tristan said. ‘I think you might just enjoy yourself.’
‘No. Not going. This is my house. I’m happy here.’
‘Aren’t you lonely?’ I asked, coming back to myself a little.
‘You shut up,’ Lonnie shot back at me.
‘No, I won’t,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t rude to you, and I don’t see why you feel you can be rude to me.’
‘I’ll punch you on your big fat nose,’ Lonnie said, quite matter-of-factly. ‘How would you like that?’
I wasn’t sure what to say. I’m not small, and can hold my own in most physical situations, but I did not doubt for one second that this tiny, angry person would make good on his threat.
‘That is quite enough,’ Tristan said sharply. ‘Now, one thing you will learn, Lonnie, is that I do not tolerate that type of behaviour. In Drumlin, you treat others with courtesy, or you are not welcome. I do not believe you think violence is appropriate. I would like to see you acting accordingly.’