Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  Tara glanced at Andres, but he was leaning forward, staring intensely at the artist’s face.

  ‘That’s when it all went wrong,’ said de Blaca at last. ‘She told me to leave the house, to go away and never come back. She was furious, but also very, very frightened.’

  He grabbed the empty Badoit bottle and tossed it angrily into the lower branches of the cedar tree. It rebounded and shattered against a stone.

  ‘I think it was her fear that did it to me. I would like to say it was love, or lust, or desire, but it wasn’t. It was her fear I found exciting. It was the sense that I had total power over her, that she was frightened and that I alone was the source of her terror. I kicked in the bedroom door as though it were made of cardboard. She stared at me, frozen like some small stricken creature. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled away the gown so hard that it ripped apart. Then I forced her on to the bed.’

  He stopped and looked up, his eyes filled with naked anguish.

  ‘My God,’ said Andres slowly. ‘You raped her.’

  The artist nodded, his breathing laboured and asthmatic. When he finally spoke, his voice was no more than a whisper. ‘Yes. May God forgive me, but that is the truth.’

  ‘So there never was a love affair,’ said Tara. ‘All those rumours throughout the years…they were all lies.’

  ‘I never claimed there was an affair. Yes, I loved her with a passion I have never known before or since. As God is my judge, I still love her. But Ann Kennedy never, ever, not for one moment, forgave me.’

  ‘I wonder why,’ said Tara, not bothering to hide her contempt.

  De Blaca wasn’t listening. ‘So I left the country after that episode. I abandoned my stuff at her house and ran all the way to my studio in the village. I packed a few things, grabbed a bus and fled to Dublin. I ended up in Liverpool, and then in Paris. For the next two years, I waited for the arrest warrant that never came.’

  ‘It never came,’ said Tara, ‘because she didn’t tell anyone. Not even her husband.’

  ‘But why on earth not?’ Andres exploded. ‘She was the victim of an appalling attack. Surely rape was a crime in those days, even in rural Ireland?’

  ‘It was a crime,’ said Tara, ‘but it was a different era, when women were held responsible for what their attackers did. She would have been asked why she was alone in the house, undressed, with another man while her husband was absent. The police would have come to what they felt was the obvious conclusion.’

  Tara turned to de Blaca. ‘Ann was an intelligent woman. She realised all this. So she quietly picked up the pieces of her life and carried on as best she could. She was strong. But she didn’t reckon on one problem.’

  De Blaca couldn’t meet her eyes. He looked away.

  ‘Ann became pregnant as a result of the rape, didn’t she?’

  De Blaca silently nodded.

  ‘And you had the nerve to send the new baby a present when it was born. A sculpture of a sheela-na-gig…a naked woman in an obscene pose.’ Tara couldn’t mask her incredulity at the tastelessness of the gift.

  ‘You obviously don’t realise the symbolism of the sheela-na-gig in history.’ De Blaca was on more secure ground now, and regained some of his previous patronising tone. ‘It was not an expression of carnality. It was the exact opposite – repentance for carnality, repentance on both our parts. That was the spirit in which I sent it. An act of atonement. I wrote an accompanying letter explaining all this. It was also,’ his voice assumed a note of pride, ‘my very first sculpture.’

  Tara was about to reply in no uncertain terms, but Andres laid a restraining hand on her arm and gestured to her to drop the subject.

  ‘I take it she didn’t answer your letter,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you simply put this shameful little episode behind you and forgot all about it.’

  ‘Forgot it?’ De Blaca’s voice was a howl of distress. His fists clenched. ‘I would give everything I possess, everything, if only I could forget it. Ever since that day, I have been living through hell.’

  He was staring bleakly into the intertwined branches of the cedar tree, but looking at his eyes, Tara knew that he was really watching the twisting, writhing souls of the damned. She had never seen a human face so bereft of all hope.

  ‘I ruined the life of a beautiful, kind woman,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘The only woman I have ever loved. Ever since then I have ached for her. It is like an open wound that will never heal.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Tara, more sharply this time. ‘You didn’t ruin Ann Kennedy’s life. She didn’t give you that power. You had the physical strength to abuse her, but she did not allow her life to be ruined. She overcame the trauma. She pervaded.’

  If de Blaca heard her words, he didn’t show it. He lapsed into silence.

  Andres cleared his throat. ‘There is just one more question I’d like to ask,’ he said. ‘It’s a very important question. In fact, it’s the reason we have come here today.’

  De Blaca drained his glass and glared at them both with undiluted hatred.

  ‘Enough questions,’ he said. ‘You have learned the truth about me, something that no other person outside a confessional box has ever known. You have stripped me bare. Haven’t you had enough? Go now.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Please.’ His voice had dropped to a whimper. ‘Just go. No more questions. Now that Ann has gone, there are only two people I need answer to. One is my creator, and the other is the human being who I, in turn, helped to create that dreadful morning. My son.’ His hand shook as it tried to pour out another glass of water. ‘My only child. Manus.’

  They rose wordlessly and left the house, leaving de Blaca alone with his immeasurable anguish, in the cedar-scented shade of the beautiful garden that had become his own personal Gethsemane.

  ‘He mustn’t be told,’ Tara said firmly. ‘He must never, ever be told.’

  She fiddled aimlessly with the quiche on her plate. All around her, waiters and waitresses in colourful and elaborate folk-costumes from the Alsace area of France bustled back and forth, attending to the needs of the restaurant clientele with loud and good-humoured efficiency. But most of this carefully-arranged spectacle was lost on Tara.

  ‘Who?’ asked Andres.

  ‘Well, I was thinking mainly of poor Fergal,’ she said, setting down her empty fork. ‘But it wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Manus is already disturbed enough without being told he’s the child of rape. Perhaps that’s the reason he’s disturbed in the first place, I don’t know. Maybe it’s responsible for his violent tendencies.’

  Andres didn’t respond. ‘And Fergal?’ he asked.

  Tara gave an irritable shrug. ‘It means a lot to him to believe that he’s the son of Michael de Blaca. It’s why he wanted to become an artist. It’s the only thing that matters in his life. I’d be worried about the effect the truth might have on him. Especially at a time like this.’

  Andres sipped thoughtfully at his glass of Alsace wine. ‘I agree,’ he said at last. ‘It can do no good. It can only do incalculable harm.’

  ‘He must never be told,’ insisted Tara. She felt edgy and tense. Her wrist had started to hurt once again, sending regular spasms of pain up through her arm. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I promise.’

  Tara looked at him for a moment, then picked up her knife and fork and cut another minuscule portion of the quiche. It was the genuine article, cooked to perfection, and in any other circumstances she would have found it irresistible.

  ‘Why did you bring us to Paris, Andres?’ she asked at last.

  ‘To discover the truth. I knew Fergal could not be Michael de Blaca’s son, despite all his protestations. The dates are all wrong. De Blaca created his first sculpture twenty-seven years ago, not twenty-nine. By the time the rape took place, Fergal was already more than a year old.’

  ‘Not everyone is an expert on the life of Michael de Blaca.’

&nbs
p; ‘Fergal certainly was not. And I find that surprising.’ Andres studied the wallpaper pensively. ‘Perhaps he did not want to look too hard. Perhaps he did not want to run the risk of reality destroying a myth that he had carefully nurtured since his adolescence.’

  He glanced back at her, and his eyes widened with concern. ‘Tara. You’re crying.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Andres. I’m just upset and…furious, to tell you the truth. That bloody hypocrite de Blaca, with his communion wafers and his fine talk about art and passion, and beneath all of it he’s no better than Zip-Down Seanie.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind. Just somebody who attacked me outside a pub the other day.’

  ‘Someone else attacked you? Have you told the police?’

  ‘Yes. It’s not important.’ She tried to relax, compose herself. ‘How’s your meal?’

  Andres helped himself to another forkful of his own dish, another Alsatian speciality featuring tender pieces of lamb marinaded in milk. ‘It’s good. Really good. It’s always good here. That’s why I come here. That’s why I brought you here. Listen’ – now it was his turn to be irritated – ‘you don’t have to punish yourself, Tara. There is nothing you can do to alter the past. The only way we can honour Ann now – apart from respecting her obvious wish to keep this shameful matter secret – is to do whatever we can to bring her killer to justice.’

  Tara set down her knife and fork together and pushed her plate aside. ‘How can you understand? You’re a man. Men understand nothing about what rape means to women. It’s fear, pure and simple. Whether it happens physically or not, the threat is always there. It’s the way men exercise power over women. It’s always been that way.’

  ‘Tara.’ Andres was quiet but firm. ‘You will have no argument from me about the evil of rape. But all men are not potential rapists. That is an extreme position and it is not helpful to anyone.’

  ‘You heard him. His attack on Ann had nothing to do with desire. It was power. He was excited because he had power over her.’

  Her voice had unintentionally risen. A couple at a nearby table had stopped talking to each other and were turning their heads curiously, drawn more by the tone of her voice than by her words.

  ‘L’addition, s’il vous plait, madame.’ Andres, his face expressionless, had caught the eye of a waitress and was calling for the bill.

  ‘D’accord, monsieur.’ The motherly-looking waitress smiled, then looked concerned when she spotted Tara’s tense, pale face and her almost-untouched meal. ‘Madame est malade?’

  ‘Non, non, merci. Seulement un peu fatiguée.’

  The waitress had reached her own conclusion. She was tight-lipped with disapproval as she accepted payment from Andres, and she gave Tara a look which, in any language, means: Don’t worry, love, he’s not worth it.

  It was still warm and sunny as they walked out into the busy Place de la Republique and hailed a taxi to take them back to the airport.

  ‘Just what was the point of this trip anyway, Andres?’ asked Tara after they had sat for ten minutes in silence while their taxi battled its way past the Boulevard Périphérique and out towards the northern suburbs of Paris. ‘We’ve learned a sordid secret from the past. We’ve learned that Manus is the child of rape and that the only thing that keeps Fergal going from day to day is…just a stupid illusion. But essentially it changes nothing as far as our main objective is concerned. We’re still at square one. We’ve achieved absolutely nothing.’

  Andres shrugged and looked out the taxi window at the roadside cafés and Tabacs. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. This is just another piece of the jigsaw, Tara. We cannot judge anything until we find the gap in the puzzle that only this piece will fit. Then, and then only, can we decide how important it is.’

  They didn’t speak again until they reached Charles de Gaulle airport.

  The Aer Lingus jet seemed to hang in the air over the damp green plains of Leinster, stationary and weightless as an airborne rock by Magritte. Just a slight downwards tip of the wing, and Tara could see the magnificent Wicklow Mountains, then the Hill of Howth, then the Liffey and Dublin Bay, all fading from colour to black-and-white in the encroaching dusk.

  A little closer to earth and she could distinguish the individual lights of the fishing boats and ferries off the coast. Then – and she was always amazed at how rapidly this happened – suddenly the fields of north County Dublin were rushing up towards her, and then the fields turned into concrete, and they were swooping down on the runway at Dublin Airport.

  Night was falling quickly as they made their way to the airport taxi rank, tired and ready for sleep after their five am start. It had been a long day. Tara wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a solid eight hours of total, wipe-out sleep.

  By the time they reached the apartment, she was totally exhausted, and when she told Andres she didn’t feel like coffee or a nightcap, he seemed to agree.

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ said Tara as she passed him on her way to the bathroom.

  He stopped her. ‘Tara…’

  ‘Yes, Andres?’ She was so tired that she could hardly keep him in focus.

  He seemed to be gazing into her eyes. So much so that she wondered whether they were obviously bloodshot or something.

  ‘There’s something I’d really like to say to you. Something important. Can we sit down…?’

  But she’d reached her threshold of exhaustion, and she was in no mood to listen to any of his new theories on the Kennedy case – especially theories about the loathsome Michael de Blaca. ‘Can it wait until tomorrow, Andres?’ she pleaded. ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t keep my eyes open any longer.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He seemed disappointed.

  ‘And thank you for the trip to Paris,’ she yawned. ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he nodded.

  It was later, as she was drifting off to sleep, that his last word echoed in her head like some discordant note. Perhaps? Perhaps? What the hell did he mean, perhaps?

  She tried to figure it out, but within seconds her thoughts were swamped in a dark and blessed tidal wave of oblivion.

  Chapter Seventeen

  SOMEWHERE IN the apartment, a radio came on. It was tuned to the RTÉ news. The words forced themselves through Tara’s warm, comfortable cocoon of sleep and into her consciousness. First item, another political corruption scandal. Second item, an old couple beaten up in their lonely home in some rural boreen for the five hundred pounds they’d saved up for their retirement and had kept hidden in a teapot. Third item, a priest given a suspended sentence for a sexual assault on a young girl entrusted to his care.

  Welcome back to holy Ireland, she thought.

  She listened for the morning-movement sounds of the man who had switched on the radio. The hiss of a shower, perhaps, or the muted roar of an electric kettle, or the welcoming pop of a toaster. But there was only silence.

  After a while – she was in no hurry – she slipped into the luxurious dressing-gown and emerged, yawning, into the bright golden sunshine of the living-room. The curtains had been pulled open to reveal the panoramic view of the bay, Dalkey Island, Killiney Hill and, mistily in the southern distance, the cross-topped crag of Bray Head.

  The radio was sitting on the table by the window. It had been set on auto-alarm.

  Switching it off, Tara glanced down the corridor towards the bedrooms. The door of Andres’s room had been left wide open to reveal a freshly-made bed and an empty room bright with sun. The bathroom, too, was obviously deserted.

  Perhaps Andres has popped out to buy a paper or get more milk for coffee, thought Tara dozily as she wandered towards the kitchen.

  Coffee. Now that sounds like a very interesting word.

  She located the electric kettle, filled it with water, and switched it on.

  And that’s when she saw the note.

  So much for pooling resources. So much for working together. So much for bloody co-operation.

  Tara�
��s unsteady hand hacked the toast into fragments as she tried to spread ice-cold butter from the fridge. She felt letdown, cheated, as though someone had offered her a comfortable chair and then snatched it away from under her at the last minute.

  Why had Andres offered to help her if he was just going to disappear?

  Why give support and then withdraw it just when she needed it most? Just when she was at her lowest ebb?

  She topped the toast unevenly with dollops of lime marmalade, grabbed her cup of lukewarm coffee and flopped down miserably on the nearest armchair.

  You idiot, she told herself. You bloody cretin. When will you ever learn?

  It had been just another story to him. Just another headline, just another emotive colour article in some international magazine, just another bid to win a Pulitzer. He’d got the information he wanted from her, and now he’d gone on to the next story. He was no more concerned about justice than Gerry Gellick was concerned about ethics. The two men were exactly the same, she realised. They just used different tactics to the same end.

  She uncrumpled the screwed-up note and reread it for the tenth time.

  ‘Tara – I trust you slept well. Please help yourself to breakfast. I have to go abroad on a matter of great urgency. I am uncertain as to the date of my return.

  ‘I strongly advice you not to return to Claremoon Harbour, at least for a week or so. You are most welcome to remain in my apartment for that period.’

  There followed two paragraphs of terse, practical instructions on how to set the alarm system and operate the central heating. Then, finally: ‘Be strong, Tara. Andres Talimann.’

  And you go to hell, too, Andres, she thought.

  Be strong. Looks like I’ll have to be.

  As her anger subsided, she began to feel the nagging pangs of self-doubt. Her behaviour yesterday, viewed in hindsight, had bordered on rudeness. She had been testy, moody, downright churlish, and the constant pain from her sprained wrist was no excuse. She’d been angry about Claremoon Harbour, angry about Bernietown and Ballymahon, angry about de Blaca, angry at the world. And she’d taken her anger out on him.