Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  ‘You don’t miss anything, do you, Dad?’

  ‘Fishermen’s eyes can see further than most people’s,’ he smiled, turning back to her again. He lit one of the strong Sweet Afton cigarettes that were strictly forbidden by his doctor.

  Tara, who’d never smoked, still felt a surge of pleasure as the woody scent of the tobacco mingled with the tang of the salt breeze. The combination of smells evoked a myriad of childhood memories.

  John Ross took a long sip of his tea. ‘That’s a grand cup,’ he said with genuine appreciation. ‘So strong you could float a donkey shoe on top. Just be careful, love,’ he said without changing his tone.

  ‘Careful?’ Tara looked at him in puzzlement. A yacht tender passed by, its little outboard engine clattering noisily.

  ‘The Kennedy family have had a lot of problems over the years,’ said John. ‘It’s not Ann’s fault, Lord knows. The woman is almost a saint. But that husband of hers was an animal. No one could have blamed her for what she did.’

  ‘Did? What did she do?’

  John stubbed out his half-finished cigarette on the edge of a steel bucket, sending an avalanche of sparks down the metal surface. ‘It doesn’t matter, love. What’s done is done. That isn’t what I wanted to tell you about. All I’m saying is that Fergal and his brother, young Manus, had a rough childhood. It probably left them scarred for life.’

  ‘Fergal hated his father,’ said Tara. ‘But he never talks about Manus at all.’

  She looked out to sea. The sun had become an enormous disc of fiery copper, suspended inches above the liquid horizon. In a few moments it would sink, almost hissing, into the ocean.

  Up on the harbour wall, two little girls were fishing, their outlines silhouetted against a backdrop of pure orange.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me that he never talks about him,’ said her father. ‘Manus left home seven or eight years ago, in circumstances that were strange, to say the least.’

  Tara wrinkled her brow as she tried to remember the stocky youth with the acne-scarred face and the dense mass of curly brown hair. He had reminded her of pictures of the younger Beethoven.

  ‘Yes, I remember now,’ she said. ‘He got a job on a salmon farm in Scotland, or something.’

  ‘That was the story,’ he said with sudden gravity. ‘The truth is different. Only a few of us know that truth, and we’ve kept it quiet for Ann’s sake. I think you should know, too. But I know I can rely on your discretion, Tupps.’

  Tupps. Short for Tuppence, his childhood nickname for her. Tara felt a glow at the private term of endearment. ‘You know you can, Dad.’

  John rubbed his hands. It was growing colder with the dusk. He put on an oiled-wool fisherman’s jumper and a battered denim cap.

  ‘Lord knows I don’t stand in judgement on anyone,’ he said at last. ‘But Ann’s husband was the most brutish man I’ve ever known. He beat her and he beat his children. He enjoyed it. We all tried to stop him – Dr Maguire, the parish priest, even Sergeant Flynn down at the garda station – but he didn’t care about any of us. Once it became so bad that I called out the social workers all the way from Ennis, but the children swore they’d fallen off their bikes or something and Ann, God bless her, was too terrified to testify against her husband.’

  ‘Then she was part of the problem, I suppose,’ said Tara.

  ‘That’s something she’s had to live with ever since. And over the past five years, she’s worked harder than anyone to try to stop other women falling into the same trap. But don’t you sit in judgement on Ann, either,’ warned her father. ‘Things were different in those days. It was practically impossible to get the authorities to interfere in family matters, unless something drastic was done.’

  ‘I’m not judging Ann, Dad. She’s the one who’s helped to change the old system.’

  John Ross nodded. ‘Anyway, Martin was allowed to get on with raising his family as he saw fit,’ he said. ‘Until one night, one terrible night in January seven years ago, it seemed that Manus just couldn’t take any more.’

  Tara shivered, only partially because of the cold breeze.

  ‘I suppose he would have been in his late teens at the time,’ John continued. ‘But he must have decided that was the last beating he’d take from Martin Kennedy. After it was over, he waited until his father had gone to sleep, and he went out to the cowshed where the cattle were peacefully bedded down for the night. He poured paraffin all over the hay, jammed all the doors closed, threw in a match and watched it go up.’

  Tara stared open-mouthed. ‘But I remember that fire. Something like two dozen cattle died. You told me it was an accident.’

  ‘Yes, I did, love. But it was no accident. I’ll never forget it so long as I live, Tara – the cries of the beasts and the burning flesh.’

  ‘What happened to Manus?’

  ‘He lay low in the woods for a while, living rough. A couple of days later a woman out in Sixmilebridge came home to find a strange, bedraggled man in her kitchen, wolfing down lumps of bread like some wild animal. The police caught him soon after that. He gave his name as Manus Kennedy.’

  ‘I never heard any of this before,’ Tara protested. ‘Did it make the papers?’

  ‘It didn’t even make it to trial. The judge ordered a psychiatrist to have a look at him, and the psychiatrist diagnosed that he was…oh, I can’t remember the phrase he used. But the end result was, he was put in some sort of a nursing home out in the midlands. Martin and Ann signed the papers authorising his treatment, and everyone agreed the fire had been accidental. It was all kept very quiet around here.’

  He stood and began organising the boat in readiness for the fishing trip at first light.

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ Tara protested, her journalistic scepticism aroused. ‘How do we know that the fire wasn’t really an accident? How do we know Manus had anything to do with it?’

  ‘Because Fergal caught him in the act. He tried to stop him. They actually fought each other outside the cowshed, with the flames leppin’ up around them. It was all Fergal could do to stop Manus setting fire to the farmhouse as well. I know, because Fergal told his mother and Ann told me.’

  ‘And what happened to Manus? Is he still in the hospital?’

  Her father stacked up the fish boxes and put the gutting-knives back into their sheaths. ‘He was discharged in January. He was supposed to live in a sheltered dwelling for a while, but he disappeared and hasn’t been seen since. Some people said he emigrated to America and that he’s working on the building sites in Boston. Others say they’ve spotted him living rough around these parts. Nobody knows for sure. Well, maybe Ann knows, but she’s never said.’

  Tara was intrigued by these revelations. It was a story more fitting to a Steinbeck novel or a Greek tragedy than to a sleepy little fishing port in County Clare.

  ‘I know why you’re telling me all this, Dad,’ she said after a moment. ‘You’re warning me that anger and violence could run in the Kennedy family’s blood. But those two brothers are totally different, even in their appearance. They’re chalk and cheese.’

  John Ross stared at her for a long while. Then he busied himself by positioning a barrel of seawater to one side of the deck. As the tide went out, it would act as ballast, encouraging the boat to settle against the harbour wall.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe not. Just watch yourself, that’s all. And remember, not a word of this to anyone. Not even to Steve McNamara. He knows nothing about it – he was transferred to Claremoon Harbour years after the fire.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tara nodded. ‘Oh, incidentally, there’s one way you might get to know Fergal a little better. He says he’d be keen to give you a hand with the boat. Says he got a taste for sea angling in Vancouver, and he might get a chance to put a line over the side.’

  John Ross sighed. ‘I could certainly do with some help now that young Colm has taken the big jumbo to San Francisco. And you’re right, it might give me a chance to get to know Fergal again af
ter all these years. Tell him to come along on the first of June. But I can’t guarantee he’ll have any free time for sea-angling.’

  Tara knew exactly what he meant. The first of June was a special day on her father’s calendar. It was the start of the salmon season, two months of hectic make-or-break for those inshore fishermen lucky enough to have a licence.

  ‘That time of year again?’ she said. ‘Now it’s my turn to warn you to be careful.’

  She looked pointedly to the stern of the boat, where his tangle-nets lay ready for ‘shooting’, or letting out into the sea. It could be a dangerous business, because once the nets gained momentum under the weight of their huge anchor-stone, they were virtually unstoppable. One young lad’s arm had been literally wrenched from its socket after his wristwatch became entangled in the flying meshes of a tangle-net.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tupps. I know you’re concerned about my health.’ He held up his left hand to display a missing forefinger. ‘But I can’t afford to lose another one of these. Sure how would I be able to smoke?’

  Tara shook her head in mock-despair. She constantly worried about her father’s safety at sea. John Ross was an experienced skipper, but he was out in all weathers, from early February until late October, and danger was always present. Fish was one of the few remaining supermarket foods that Homo sapiens still went out to hunt.

  ‘I give up,’ she smiled. ‘Let’s go home.’

  John Ross locked up the cabin and checked the boat’s mooring ropes. Together, they walked the few hundred yards to her father’s house.

  ‘Good night, Dad,’ said Tara as she headed up the hill towards her own cottage.

  He squeezed her hand. ‘Take care, love.’

  It was now almost dark. Around the port and high up on the hillside, dozens of lights flickered on and Claremoon Harbour settled gently into night.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I’VE FINISHED with sex, thank God,’ said Melanie O’Driscoll. ‘I’ve moved on to child abuse.’

  ‘And after that?’ asked Tara.

  ‘Oh, then I’ll be doing masturbation – not too much of that – and then there’s birth control. Oh, and somewhere along the line, I have to get in some sexually transmitted diseases.’

  It was just a small coffee shop and there was no such thing as a private conversation. At the next table, an elderly man cleared his throat disapprovingly, folded up his copy of The Irish Catholic, and left.

  ‘Better keep your voice down a bit, Mel,’ warned Tara with a grin. She sipped her coffee and shook her head in admiration. ‘It must take a lot of self-discipline to write a book. How many chapters are there altogether?’

  ‘Well, I’m trying to cover every subject from abortion to zits, with every topic from sex to unplanned pregnancy in between, and make it all understandable to teenagers. I suppose a dozen chapters in all. It’s the title that’s the problem. The publishers are suggesting The SUSS Survival Guide but I’m not keen on that. Still, I’d better get the damn thing written first.’

  ‘Hang in, there. I’m sure it will be a huge success.’

  Melanie nodded her thanks. ‘And what have you been up to for the past two months, while I’ve been slaving away over a hot word processor?’

  ‘Oh…nothing so productive. Desperately trying to get sponsorship and advertising for the Clare Electronic News. Covering the town commissioners’ meetings and the courts. Going out with Fergal Kennedy.’

  Melanie looked at Tara in astonishment. ‘Fergal Kennedy? Get away out of that, with you. You’re not serious.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be serious?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Tara. Tell me you won the Lotto. Tell me you’ve been shortlisted for the first Irish moon mission. But don’t tell me you’re going out with Fergal Kennedy.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Why shouldn’t I? Mel, this is very offensive. Stop it. I’m going to take offence. I mean it.’

  Melanie ham-acted a heart attack and collapsed over the formica table of the coffee bar. In spite of her irritation, Tara couldn’t help smiling. Infuriating as she was, Mel was her best friend and, besides, she was so compulsively entertaining that it was impossible to stay angry with her for long.

  ‘Heart. Heart. Pink tablets. Resuscitation. Oh…too late.’

  ‘Oh, open your eyes and sit up, Melanie. For God’s sake. Everybody’s staring.’

  The mop of Titian-red hair on the table remained still, then gradually rose. The eyelids slowly opened to reveal green, mischievous eyes.

  ‘It’s all been a dream,’ Mel intoned. ‘A terrible nightmare. I dreamed you said you were Fergal Kennedy’s girlfriend. I’m glad it was just a figment of my fevered imagination. I’ll never touch the magic mushrooms again, doc.’

  Tara ignored her and studied the street outside the café. Bright sunshine battling through showers. Flashes of colour against the grey, as shoppers dashed across the street in multicoloured windcheaters and golfing umbrellas.

  Melanie touched her arm. ‘Sorry, Tara. You took me by surprise, that’s all. You’ve always said you’d do anything to help Ann Kennedy, but I’d no idea that included dating her appalling son. How long has this been going on?’

  Tara tugged irritably at the plastic top on the UHT milk container and poured the contents into her coffee. She hated UHT milk. ‘A few weeks. But don’t worry. It’s nothing serious.’

  ‘Not serious. Oh no-oh.’ Melanie stirred her coffee and hummed the first few bars of 10CC’s “I’m Not In Love”.

  ‘I thought I could confide in you,’ said Tara. ‘Obviously I was mistaken.’

  There was a sudden chill. Mel defused it by the simple device of sticking out her tongue at her friend. She’d learned over the years that it was the best way to deal with Tara’s moodiness.

  Tara glared at her and then burst into laughter. ‘Mel, stop fooling around, would you? I’m in a dilemma and I need a bit of advice. I’m very fond of Fergal’ – she frowned – ‘I think I’m getting really involved with him, actually. And he seems even more serious about me.’

  Melanie shook her head mockingly. ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to have any more long-term relationships after the great Chris Calder catastrophe. What was your firm resolution? Ah yes. Three dates and they’re out.’

  ‘Yes, I did say that, didn’t I.’

  ‘So now you’re in exactly the same position as you were with Chris. It’s just that you’ve swapped a good-looking, intelligent, rich barrister for an unemployed artist with a personality disorder. Just remind me again why that’s an improvement in your situation.’

  ‘What do you mean, personality disorder?’ Tara demanded.

  Melanie said nothing.

  ‘You know what I need?’ Tara said thoughtfully. ‘I need to get myself a friend. Ever heard of that term? You know, one of those people who takes my side in these matters. Any idea where I could find one at short notice?’

  Melanie transformed herself from jester to counsellor in two seconds flat. For counsellor was exactly what she was in everyday life. At the age of only twenty-nine, she was the most sought-after psychotherapist in Galway city. Perhaps, Tara thought for the thousandth time, her off-duty levity was really a reaction to a life spent listening to other people’s problems.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Get on the couch. But remember, I’m like Lucy in Peanuts – I charge five cents per session.’

  Tara smiled, recalling the Peanuts cartoons in which Lucy Van Pelt offers counselling to the eternally-bewildered Charlie Brown under a sign that says ‘Psychiatric help, 5c.’

  ‘I can’t quite make up my mind how I feel towards Fergal,’ she confessed. ‘He has a touch of the outlaw about him, and that’s what I love about the man. He’s impulsive and unpredictable and he doesn’t give a stuff what anybody thinks. And he makes me laugh. You know, I’d almost forgotten that dating could be fun, not just a matter of solemn duty – meeting the right people and being seen in the right places.’

  ‘In other words, Fergal’s an
antimatter version of Chris Calder. He’s everything that Chris isn’t.’

  ‘I suppose so. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that.’ Tara rolled an empty sugar sachet into a tight cylinder and stared at it. ‘But you’re making it sound negative. It’s not. It’s more like…oh, like a release after a long term in confinement. Or that wonderful feeling you have when you get healthy again after a bad dose of ’flu. But is that enough, Mel?’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  ‘Enough to build a long-term relationship on.’

  Melanie sighed. ‘I can’t see inside your head, Tara, although I suppose it’s my job to. All I know is that most of us create our relationships slowly, building on a gradually growing love and respect. And in the best relationships, these feelings evolve and grow and change in pace with the growth and change of the individuals. You want my advice? Enjoy the fun part. But take your time. Don’t be rushed into anything.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ The bill arrived and Tara reached for her purse.

  ‘No – this one is on me.’ Mel paid the waitress. ‘But for God’s sake, put it in perspective, Tara. You’ve been going out together for how long? A few weeks? It’s hardly time for either of you to be thinking of long-term commitments at this stage. Don’t let him pressurise you if you don’t feel like it. Let it grow.’

  Tara nodded. ‘You’re right, of course, Mel. As always.’

  ‘Of course I am. Slow down, enjoy. Now…my five cents, please.’

  Tara tossed her five pence. ‘Just one more thing. Why did you react so negatively when I mentioned Fergal?’

  ‘Because he’s a geek,’ replied Mel candidly. ‘Sorry, but that’s a highly technical term that we Freudian psychotherapists use.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tara was serious now.

  Mel shrugged. ‘Okay, he was a bully. He made life a misery for me and my sister on our way to school. I was delighted when he left the village.’ She grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, Tara, I just didn’t like him. That’s all. I suppose that blows my chances of becoming bridesmaid?’