by Carol Coffey
For the rest of the journey she talked shyly about the books she had read, books of poetry, adventure and travel. He wanted to ask her why her father dominated her so when her sisters were living full lives outside of his control but, as he watched his cousin’s face light up when she spoke of the Irish writers she grew up reading, he became mesmerised by her enthusiasm for something he also shared a passion for. Brendan told her of the days he spent as a lonely child, losing himself in Twain and Stevenson and how on Fridays after school he was usually the only child waiting on the main street in the rain for the mobile library to drive through his tiny village, hoping to find a book that would while away the lonely weekend that stretched out before him. He astounded himself by telling her that throughout his boyhood he lived in the comfort of the imaginary, but stopped short of disclosing that he did not entirely grow out of his obsession with stories of improbable worlds and fanciful places.
Brendan enjoyed the conversation so much that he was surprised when she stopped dead at the very spot he usually left her and was disappointed that their conversation was now over. He had never told anyone about his lonely childhood before and felt lighter for having shared his misery with another person. He stared after his cousin as she walked on alone in the direction of the homeless shelter.
When Brendanarrived at the house, Frank was waiting for him to accompany him to an appointment at the hospital. The heart attack he’d had two years previously had revealed a serious heart defect and, with the heart surgery he’d had and his hip replacement, he could no longer drive and even had to retire slightly earlier than he would have liked. Frank moaned about how Brendan’s lack of a driving licence meant he would have to leave his car in the driveway and fork out for taxis.
Brendan helped Frank into the back seat of the cab and sat beside him.
“Drink driving!” Frank snorted as the driver looked at them through his rear-viewmirror. “Goddamn stupid behaviour! I’d expect that from a teenager – but you! Thirty-five years old! Goddamn idiot!” He was shouting by this time but was unaware of it. The new hearing aid Coleen had bought him was sitting in its packaging in the living room where, as he loudly announced one evening, it would stay.
Brendan remained silent and ignored the comments about his lack of maturity. Coleen, who did not drive, had sensibly made an excuse that she had a friend calling over to see her so couldn’t accompany her husband. Brendan wondered how his aunt had stayed married to his grumpy uncle but deep down he knew that they were happy together and that Coleen had learnt how to manage her cantankerous husband over their long marriage.
As they made their way to the hospital on the outskirts of town, they passed a small Hispanic restaurant on the corner where two dishevelled men stood, drinking beer.
“Bloody wasters!” Frank said a little too loudly.“No good nor ever will be.”
Brendan cringed and hoped the men, who had not looked up, had not heard his uncle through the open car window. He wondered how a cop, who would have spent his years working with the entire Dover population, a high proportion of which were Hispanics, could be racist.
“Uncle Frank!” he said, immediately regretting his involuntarily outburst. He pressed his back into the leather car seat and ran his finger over his mole nervously.
Frank studied his nephew’s expression of discomfort and looked Brendan up and down. His eyes fixed on the tattoo on his upper right arm. The huge tattoo had two skulls engulfed in flames inside an intricate Celtic knot. He shook his head disapprovingly at Brendan. “My own blood,” was all he said as the taxi turned slowly into the hospital grounds.
Within days of their conversation about books, Brendan found Eileen would talk for the entire journey to the shelter, mostly about books that she’d enjoyed or those she had yet to read. Brendan found himself walking slower now in her company as he relished their short time together each day. He had never had any siblings and, while he’d never thought about this very much, he was now enjoying the company of his cousin.
The cousins were becoming closer but they instinctively knew to keep this from Frank who would only trust Brendan to walk Eileen each day if he was sure she would not get around him. One evening over dinner, when Frank complained about the infiltration of academics into the White House and how what they really needed waspoliticians who’d put their shoulders to the wheel and get the job done, an exchange occurred between the cousins, a secret smile which they hoped he would not notice.
As Brendan walked Eileen the following morning, their conversation on modern poetry slowed as they approached Oak Street.
“I guess you’re wondering why I won’t let you walk me the whole way?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly and startling Brendan.
He shook his head and was about to say no when she put up her tiny hand to stop him.
“It’s okay. I know it’s strange,” she said.
She looked at her shoes and exhaled, trying to find the right words to explain her strange behaviour.
“It’s because it’s mine. It’s the only thing I’ve got that is mine alone. Do you understand?”
Brendan didn’t answer. He had no idea what it was like to be Eileen and didn’t want to pretend that he did. He looked down at her in her oversized coat and her new bagwhose contents were, as usual, weighing down heavily on her narrow shoulder. Every morning since her books had fallen onto the main street, he offered to carry her bag but she always refused.
He waited, expecting her to say more.
“Each morning before I go to the shelter, I help mother around her house. When my sisters visit, I look after their children, cook for their husbands. Nothing is mine except these few hours a day when I am just Eileen Dalton, volunteer. I like to keep it . . . to keep it away from there, from them. Do you know what I mean?”
Brendan nodded. He understood, or at least he was trying to.
He cleared his throat. There was something else about his cousin that until recently he had no interest in knowing.
“Why . . . why does Frank stop you from living your life as you want? I mean . . . Orla said . . . I heard something happened in college. Do you . . . want to talk about it?”
Brendan looked at his cousin who had turned bright red.
She bit down on her lip and tried to stop her chin from trembling. “That was a long time ago . . . Orla shouldn’t have . . .”
Brendan stopped walking and faced Eileen. His cousin looked as though she was going to cry.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Forget I said anything. I didn’t mean to . . .”
Eileen pulled her heavy bag up higher onto her shoulder and folded her arms around her body, but made no response.
As they walked on he lured her back into their conversation about literature and, while she brightened some, Brendan could see in her eyes that he had aroused painful memories.
When she slowed her pace as they arrived at their separation point, she looked up at him with her shy expression and bit down on her lip.
“You can walk me a bit further if you like.”
Brendan tried not to show his surprise and just kept walking, commenting on their surroundings as they went.
From fifty yards back, Eileen stopped and pointedat a large white clapboard house on the opposite side of the road.
“That’s the Domus Shelter.” Then she added nervously, “You can leave me here now.”
Brendangazedat what he thought was the most beautiful house he had ever seen. He walked towards the house, ignoring his cousin’s pleas for him to leave.
“That’s close enough!” Eileen said but he couldn’t hear her and crossed the road for a better look.
Standing at the steep verge that led up to the lawn, Brendan stared, mesmerised by the beauty of the old house. It was not the worn-down, official-looking building he had expected. The three-storey white clapboard house was surrounded by a small white picket fence and stood on a large site that swept steeply up from the road. Five wooden steps with a white wooden rai
ling on either side led to a pretty whiteveranda that wrapped around the house, running down both sides. In the garden to the left, awooden swing rocked gently in the wind. Two huge bay windows were partly shaded by two mature oak trees that stood in the middle of the expansive garden. Upstairs, three dormer windows were evenly spaced. The third floor – the attic presumably – had only one window, a round one that sat neatly in the middle of the red tiled roof.
Brendan stood open-mouthed as he took in the house and its magnificent grounds.
“It’s beautiful!” he said to Eileen who stood stone-faced beside him. He looked to the right of the house and saw a row of apple trees that ran right through to the back of the site. Beneath them stood a tall white man and a small, overweight black woman.
Brendan looked at his cousin, waiting for her to tell him who the two people were.
“That’s Alice Turner, the manager,” Eileen offered quickly. She looked at her feet and swallowed.
Brendan looked from the woman to the man who was walking around the trees with a clipboard in his hands. He was studying the apple blossoms and writing notes furiously as the manager walked slowly behind him. What Brendan noticed most about the man was his clothes. Over a white collarless shirt, he wore an old-fashioned sleeveless jumper with beige and orange diamond shapes down its front, and dark brown trousers tucked into a pair of boots that from a distance looked like wellies. The strange man looked like he had jumped right out of the 1940’s. His haircut also caught Brendan’s attention – he had a shock of foppish blond hair, cut neatly around the ears. He was wearing rimless glasses.
“Who is that?” Brendan asked, fascinated by the unusual man.
“That’s John Doe,” she replied although she kept her eyes to the ground.
“John Doe? Like a – like an unidentified corpse?”
He started to laugh but stopped when his cousin raised her small face to look at the man. He suddenly sensed that she was upset and didn’t want to hurt her anymore than he had already done today.
He removed the smile from his face and adopted a more serious tone. “I mean . . . seriously . . . that’s the man’s name?” he asked.
An expression of sadness washed over his cousin’s pale face.
“Nobody knows who he is. He likes to be called Jonathan,” she replied, raising herself on her toes and rocking her body forward, as though to reach out to the man.
There was something in her expression that Brendan couldn’t quite read.
He was startled when he heard the man suddenly call Eileen’s name loudly. She smiled anxiously towards Brendan. He could see John Doe squinting through his glasses and grinning at his cousin like a Cheshire cat. Brendan looked from Eileen to John and suddenly realised that this man was probably the reason she came here each day. He would also bet that John Doe waited at that exact spot each morning, which was the reason she didn’t want anyone walking her the whole way. He opened his mouth but the words would not come out as he intended them to.
“Is he . . . are you . . . ?”
Brendan changed his mind about asking her about her relationship with the man when she began to blush. He had probed too much today and it was none of his business anyway.
He was both amused and intrigued by the man’s identity or lack thereof.
“Can’t he tell someone who he is?” he asked, realising how stupid his question was as soon as he’d said it.
“He doesn’t know . . . for sure. Well, he thinks . . . it’s . . . it’s a long story,” she replied, looking away from John and returning her gaze to her feet to hide the redness that had flamed up her neck and rested on her cheeks.
Eileen walked up the drive and across the lawn to where the pair stood smiling at her in welcome.
Brendan took one more look at the man who was now pointing at the trees and involving Eileen in his conversation with Alice.
“How can someone not know who they are?” he asked himself aloud as he walked away.
Chapter 4
Two days after Brendan had walked Eileen all the way to the shelter, he found himself at the picket fence of the house in the evening, waiting for her to finish. He had stopped at their usual spot but, when she did not appear, he walked down to the house and waited for her to come out. At ten past six there was still no sign of her. He wondered if he should knock at the door but was afraid that she would be annoyed with him for intruding on what she had said was her place.
He worried that something had happened to her and felt guilty that what concerned him more was what his uncle would say to him if it had.
At half six he could not wait any longer and found himself walking up the driveway and tapping nervously on the door. No one answered and he was about to knock harder when he heard a voice behind him. It reminded him of the voices he had heard when he saw Gone with the Windin the local picture house as a child. It sounded like a Southern accent. Melodious, old-fashioned, a voice from the past.
“There’s a bell on the side. It rings loud in the kitchen so they’ll hear you,” the voice said.
Brendan turned to find John Doe standing behind him. He looked into his pale blue eyes and noticed that close up John looked older than he imagined he would be. His blond hair was slightly greying at the temples and deep lines, accentuated by his broad smile, ran from his eyes to his hairline in even rows. On the right side of his face, a long narrow scar ran from above his ear for about three inches into his hairline. Brendan could see how the cut had been unevenly sewn and caused his hair to grow in an odd, bunched-up way around the injury. He briefly wondered if John had had a brain injury. He had read an article on it once where people woke from such injuries with no memory of who they were. Before Brendan could reply, the smile on John’s face faded and was replaced by an expression of utter fear.
Johnjumped backwards, falling down the wooden steps and into a small bush at the side of the porch. He sat up quickly and tried to push himself backwards with his hands as though to move further away from Brendan.
“¿Cómo . . . cómo me encontró? No dije nada. Lo juro. De verdad. No me haga daño.”
Brendan moved forward to try to help John up but he shrank back and continued to whimper in what sounded like Spanish.
Brendan put his hand down to John to help him up. His heart was thumping loudly at the man’s behaviour but, when John began to emit a loud scream, he backed off and ran up the steps, pressing the bell frantically and banging on the door. No one answered so he ran to one of the bay windows, banging on its large pane of glass and shouting for someone to come. Two passers-by stopped and watched, one of whom began to take a mobile phone from his pocket, presumably to phone the police, forcing Brendan to return to the man to try to calm him down. He reached forward and tried to grab his hand to get him to his feet.
“Look, man. Cool it!” Brendan said. “I’m just here to pick someone up. You’ve got me mistaken for someone else.”
But John continued shouting and whimpering in Spanish.
Brendan didn’t speak the language but it sounded as if he was pleading for his life. Brendan had raised his hands to the onlookers to assure them he wasn’t hurting John when the door opened and Alice, the manager, stood staring at the scene before her.
“What did you do to him?” she asked. She roared into the house, “Eileen, ring the police!” which brought his cousin running down the long hallway.
Eileen stood open-mouthed while Brendan tried to tell her what happened.
“This is Brendan?” Alice askedincredulously. She looked closely at Brendan and began to nod slowly as she tried to get John, who was still whimpering in Spanish, off the ground.
She stood him up and took his face gently in her large, fat hands.“John, this man is not going to hurt you. This man is here for Eileen. Okay?”
Alice’s words seemed to alarm John even more and he began to wave his hands, shouting again in Spanish.
“Va a hacerle daño a Eileen. Va a herir a mi amada para hacerme pagar.”
/> Eileen went to him and visibly shook as she smoothed his hair down. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“It’s okay, love,” she said, but he did not calm down and continued to shout.
“Get Pilar,” Alice ordered and Eileen hurried away, disappearing down the long hallway and out of view.
Within seconds a pretty Latina arrived at thedoor. Despite the furore, Brendan instantly noticed how beautiful she was and the gentle aura that emanated from her. She was small, about Eileen’s height, with dark, shiny, waist-length hair, tied loosely back. She had deep brown eyes and dark brown skin that shone in the spring evening light. She gently placed her forearms over John’s and spoke to him in Spanish. Brendan could hear Eileen’s name in the sentence, which alarmed him. He wondered if it was a good idea for his cousin to have feelings for this man who was obviously disturbed. He looked at the Hispanic woman, hoping she’d translate.
“He thinks you have come to hurt Eileen, to punish him,” she said.
She spoke again to John and he looked at Brendan sideways, as though he was still not convinced. He seemed to calm a little then and Pilar led him into the house. Alice followed close behind, leaving Eileen and Brendan at the doorstep.
Sweat had begun to run like a torrent down Brendan’s back and had formed in large beads on his forehead. He had never met anyone like this man before and the incident had shaken him.Eileen’s eyes settled onto her cousin’s face. He knew she was worried now that he would tell her father about why she came here each day. Brendan looked away from her painful gaze, wondering what he should do.
“Come in,” she said quietly.
Brendan followed his cousin inside. He glanced quickly into the two large bay-windowed rooms on either side of the impressive hallway and noticed that they were empty. A large wooden staircase stood in the centre of the hallway, the steps of which looked like they were made of marble. Despite the incident, Brendan took a few steps forward and touched them, the stone-cold feel on his finger tips confirming his suspicions. He touched the intricate railings of the stairway, impressed by the workmanship. Eileen veered to the right of thestairwell and he followed her down a smaller hallwaywhich led towards the back of the house. He glanced quickly into therooms they passedand saw that each was sparsely furnished with an old single bed and battered bedside locker.