The Swan Lake

by Lisa Ryan

  Chapter Forty-seven

  At midnight, Jamie climbs out of the window and disappears into the darkness. He has hidden away in his room since Sinead’s death, refusing to come downstairs, ignoring the meals that Siobhan leaves on a tray outside his locked door. He emerged only for the funeral, standing with head bowed, set apart from his family and the large group of friends. On the day of her death he took the scissors and cut off all his hair, not caring that blood flowed where the scissors bit into his scalp. His parents only saw this when he came downstairs, weak from grief and lack of food, on the morning of the funeral. He pushed them both away forcefully, staring at them with empty eyes, when they approached him.

  John and Siobhan are at a loss to know how to help him. Their own grief is multiplied by fears for their son’s sanity. Nothing that is said to the mute barriers of his bedroom door has convinced him that he is not to blame; that it was a tragic accident. Instead of drawing closer, united in their sadness, a chasm cracks and widens, separating each of them from the others. The days are spent in miserable silence, broken up by meals that are poked at and left uneaten. The compost heap grows, and rats bring their cousins to dine on the rich pickings swelled by death. Their numbers grow daily until even Sebastian the cat avoids them.

  Where Jamie has vanished to, no one can tell. A search party is sent out when John, frightened by the empty silence, forces the lock on the bedroom door and finds his son has gone. The police are called. Siobhan, distraught, refuses to leave the house in case he should come home. Astarte and Flynn take turns to be with her, striving to fill the void with desultory talk that leads nowhere. A week passes, then another. John and Siobhan skate around each other, the ground beneath them cracking like thin ice. They are walled off by grief and worry, snarling at each other over trivia. At night they lie far apart, clinging to the edges of their marriage bed, pretending to sleep.

  It is Eden who finds him, ragged and scrawny, new growth sticking out in tufts from his brutalised scalp. Unable to rest, Eden has come to sit by the lake and light a candle for Sinead, and he approaches quietly out of respect for the dead.

  Jamie has been leading a half-life, curled up under trees and hedgerows, creeping further into the shadows when human voices draw near. He is thin and gaunt, with dark bruised circles beneath his eyes. He stands knee-deep in the water, gazing at the dawn mist that seems to hold the shape of a young girl within it. Jamie has starved himself for so long that he can no longer tell reality from mirage, but he sees the girl curl her finger in the way he knows so well, and he can do nothing but follow. His legs trembling with weakness, he moves towards her and disappears beneath the water.

  With a shout, Eden kicks off his trainers and runs, ploughing into the water where he saw Jamie go down. His fingers touch flesh, and grasp tightly, dragging the boy to the surface. Jamie coughs and splutters, resisting rescue, and Eden fights with him until suddenly Jamie goes limp, and can be towed to the shore.

  Gasping for breath, Eden drags him onto the grass. Jamie lies prone, his face turned away. ‘You foolish boy!’ Eden roars, ‘You do not sacrifice your life! A death cannot cancel out a death!’ He pulls Jamie around to look at him. The boy’s eyes are filled with tears and Eden, his fear and anger receding, holds him close, making wordless sounds of sympathy. Jamie’s body shudders with weeping as he clings to Eden.

  When the sobs subside, Eden holds Jamie by the shoulders and looks at him. ‘’Tis terrible for you, I know, but that was no way to deal with your sorrow, Jamie. Sinead would not want that fate for you. Let me take you home. Your parents are frantic with worry.’

  Jamie shakes his head, the whites of his eyes showing. ‘No! I cannot go back there. They will look at me and see a murderer!’

  ‘Oh, Jamie, you could not be more wrong on this. No one blames you but yourself. It was a tragic accident, and now you must live, and allow her to live through your memory of her.’

  ‘I will not go home,’ Jamie says stubbornly. Suddenly he is racked with sobs. ‘You don’t understand! No-one understands!’

  Eden stares at him. ‘Jamie, I understand better than you think. You see this scar on my forehead?’ he moves his hair back to show Jamie. ‘I got that in a motorbike accident when I was your age, speeding away from a gang who were threatening to beat me up. My girlfriend was on the back of the bike. She died.’

  Shocked, Jamie stares at the scar. ‘Eden, I cannot go home.’

  ‘Then you will come back with me, and stay at Tallymede. I’ll call your parents to tell them you are safe.’ He helps Jamie to his feet, supporting him when he staggers, and takes his arm to lead the way back to warmth and shelter. Jamie’s resistance has fled. Stonily, he follows.

  Mairie watches the clock tick by, each second one less to endure. She leaves her door unlocked. Should the spectre of Death come to call, she means to be ready and waiting with a welcome, arms crossed over her chest beside the range. She observes the rudiments of living; eating bread and cheese when her stomach growls too loudly to be ignored, drinking tea with a small splash of whiskey to keep the cold in her bones at bay, smoking the illicit herbs among her tomato plants when her arthritis gnaws at her like a hungry rat, forcing herself to go to her bed at night with a cup of water infused with chamomile. Sinead’s voice has joined with the others, and Mairie lies awake, listening; waiting for the moment when the spirits of the departed will come to lead her away from the heavy burden of her body.

  At the funeral Seamus had come to stand close to her. She only noticed his presence when he quietly spoke words of sympathy into her ear, and she had no energy to reply. She simply nodded and he laid a hand briefly on her arm before walking away, his steps heavy. She has found flowers on her doorstep several times, and has wearily thrown them into the compost. She knows that he has been watching her; she sees him outside his cottage sometimes, shielding his eyes with his hand as he looks in her direction, but her old spirit for battle has left her and she ignores him.

  Astarte visits her daily, holding her hand gently while Mairie sits dry-eyed, recounting each detail of Sinead’s short life over and over again, as though that will bring her back. Astarte sits quietly, listening. She does not tell Mairie that each morning, when the mists lift from the lake, she sees the shape of a girl floating within them. It makes her hair stand on end. At night she dreams that Sinead stands at the foot of her bed, clothed in light, smiling. If she could pluck up the courage to confide this to Mairie, she would find that the experience is shared.

  July passes. The weekly gatherings are a thing of the past, almost forgotten in the pall that hangs over the community. Jamie has refused to see his parents, who feel the loss deeply. Eden leaves him to heal in his own time, making sure that he is available whenever Jamie feels able to talk. Eden understands the power of grief. Sometimes his fingers stray to the scar on his forehead, and his heart feels as if it will crack open in his chest. Old wounds can be easily reopened, he knows, and Jamie’s healing will be slow. Eden is grateful for Linda’s presence. She has moved into the house with him, and curls around him at night, her presence a balm.

  At Lughnasadh, the first day of August, Siobhan comes to Eden’s door bearing loaves of bread, and begs to see her son. Eden, sad at her obvious suffering, invites her inside and knocks on Jamie’s door. ‘Your mother is desperate to speak with you,’ he says gently. ‘Do not be cruel to her. None of your pain is her doing.’

  Jamie sets his jaw and moves back inside the room. Eden steps forward and seizes him by the shoulders. ‘You will go and speak with her this time! She has been denied comfort for too long, and I insist on this.’ His eyes bore deep into Jamie’s, and his tone brooks no argument. Sullenly Jamie follows him downstairs.

  In the living room, Siobhan, shoulders drooping, stares out of the window. She wheels around when she hears footsteps, and crosses the carpet at speed. ‘Oh, Jamie, we have missed you so!’ Her voice breaks, and tears slip down her face as she puts her arms around his rigid frame, clinging to h
im.

  Slowly Jamie’s arms rise and fold around her. He bends his head to rest on hers, closing his eyes to shutter his own tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mutters. ‘I’m not ready to come home yet.’

  Eden quietly leaves the room, hoping that at least Jamie will give hope to Siobhan. It distresses him to see her sorrow, and he decides that he will give the boy one more week before insisting that he returns to his parents. Linda is in the kitchen and he kisses her tenderly, holding her tight against him. ‘I am so glad to have you in my life,’ he whispers, nuzzling her soft cheek.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Astarte closes the door to keep the animals outside, and washes muddy streaks from the kitchen floor. She pours a cup of coffee and flops down on the sofa with a heavy sigh, looking around at the home she has created from an empty shell, wondering where the pleasure she took in it has gone. For the first time in her life she has roots and a group of trusted friends, but since Sinead’s death the soul seems to have flown from the place. The community, divided instead of united by grief, has been sucked into a vortex of depression.

  Last night one of her hens did not return to the coop. When Astarte went out into the dusk, searching, all she found was a scattering of feathers beneath the blackthorn. It upset her terribly. Flynn, when she phoned him this morning, thought the assailant was a fox or pine marten.

  Sinead’s ghost seems to haunt the place; a gentle, benevolent presence, but still unsettling. Mairie has begun to rally, to the point of sending Seamus packing with a flare-up of her old spirit when the poor man, feeling that the warfare between them would only add to her sorrow, knocked on her door with a cake as a peace offering. Astarte found it touching; even more so that he crept back later and left the cake on Mairie’s doorstep, even though Mairie threw it straight onto the compost heap to join the decayed flowers.

  The relationship between John and Siobhan has been struggling for survival. The easy affection and frequent jesting has been noticeably lacking, and Jamie, although he works hard at the studios, is quiet and withdrawn. We need something to lift us up, Astarte thinks, watching the cold November mist as it rolls in. But a gathering would be pointless. It would feel more like a wake.

  Eden and Linda, though, are happy. They are working long hours, but still manage to exude an infectious enthusiasm that makes them a joy to be with. Astarte wishes that she could somehow bottle it and put it in the drinking water. The studio is a great success, its profile generously raised by Liam O’Hara, who had the good grace to not only congratulate Eden on his relationship with Linda, but to also publicly extol the importance of Eden’s work for the Irish music industry.

  As for Ryan, his drinking has not lessened, but he has a fire to warm himself by, thanks to Flynn, and Astarte and Siobhan ensure that his refrigerator and larder are never empty. The reason for his problems is still known only to Astarte, and he speaks of it only when he is at his most morose. Lately a friendship has developed between Ryan and Gerard, one of the men living on Rainbow and Leaf’s land. He was once a whiskey-drinker like Ryan, but is now firmly teetotal. Gerard seems a decent sort to Astarte; a garrulous man much given to dropping in at Ryan’s house with bundles of sage and sweetgrass to keep the energy clear. Ryan says he likes the smell.

  Of Rainbow and Leaf, she sees little. They come across each other in the market, where her parents run a stall of organic produce and wholefoods. When they meet it is cordial enough, but the sign remains on Astarte’s gate, and to her relief they do not visit her.

  Musing on the changes over the past year, and wondering what is to come, Astarte falls asleep, her head slowly slipping down to rest on the arm of the sofa. She wakes an hour later to the sound of Sirius barking. Pulling herself upright, she rubs her eyes and rises to her feet. Her muscles are stiff and aching, and she stretches and throws a log onto the dying fire. When she opens the door to let Sirius in, she jumps as a tall figure looms out of the darkness. Flynn steps into the light, calling a greeting, and she sighs with relief. He follows the animals indoors, noting the shining floor, carefully wiping his feet on the mat even though Sirius and Daisy have already left tracks of muddy prints across it. Astarte smiles.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ she says ruefully, looking at the mess already on the floor.

  Flynn holds out a bottle of wine, and she takes it gratefully and goes to open it. She drinks less these days, and forgets to buy extra bottles for the arrival of unexpected guests. There have been few visitors over the past months.

  ‘I thought you might like a game of chess.’ Flynn wiggles his eyebrows at her, and she laughs. She just can’t help being competitive when she plays, and he is always delighted on the infrequent occasions when he wins.

  ‘Are you in the mood to be thrashed, then?’ she asks, winking at him.

  Flynn grins broadly. ‘To be sure, Astarte, I had no idea you were planning a new career. I only suggested a game of chess.’

  Laughing, she aims a kick at him, which he dodges easily.

  They drink the wine and study the board, glancing at each other each time they move a piece, talking little. When Astarte triumphantly shouts, ‘Checkmate! I’m the champion!’ Flynn leans back and throws up his arms.

  ‘I surrender. You’re too tough for me. You have the killer instinct.’

  Astarte regards him seriously. ‘Do you think I’m uptight?’ she asks.

  He runs a hand through his hair, moving aside the locks that fall over his eyes. ‘No, of course I don’t. You can be fierce, but I wouldn’t say you’re uptight.’ He smiles cheekily. ‘Though actually, now you come to mention it, you did give that impression the first time I met you.’

  ‘That’s because I thought you were a predator, about to swallow me with your staring eyes,’ Astarte demonstrates, over exaggerating, ‘and your innuendos.’

  A flush stains Flynn’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean to. Anyway, why did you ask the question?’

  Astarte shrugs. ‘I just wondered. It was something that Mairie said, back in the summer. It stuck in my mind, and I’ve been thinking about it.’ She gives a short laugh. ‘Never mind. But talking of predators, which of course I don’t count you among now, is there any way I can deter foxes? I couldn’t bear to lose any more chickens.’

  He rubs his chin, eyes narrowed, pretending to be deep in thought. ‘There is one solution that’s said to be the best.’

  ‘Really?’ She looks at him eagerly.

  ‘Yes, foxes are put off by human urine. All you have to do is drink plenty of water – although of course, wine will do – and squat all the way around the boundary. That should keep them out. The nettles may provide some discomfort, but take plenty of bay leaves, and don’t sit down for a while afterwards.’

  Astarte reaches across to the bread rolls on the counter, and throws one at him. It bounces off his temple, and Sirius leaps forwards to snatch the extra snack from the floor.

  ‘Jaysus,’ Flynn says, rubbing the side of his head, ‘’tis a good thing your rolls are lighter than they used to be, or else you’d be taking me to hospital with head injuries.’

  Astarte stands outside the cottage, watching Flynn’s car move slowly down the drive. The night smells fresh and clean, and stars sparkle brightly above her. As the car disappears around the corner she turns to go indoors and shrieks as someone grabs her from behind. Swiftly she kicks her heels backwards. They connect with flesh and she hears a muffled grunt. But no matter how hard she struggles she cannot get free of the arms that are locked around her neck like a vice, cutting off her breath. He holds her against him as she begins to slip down into unconsciousness.

  Suddenly her assailant’s grip loosens as Flynn’s voice rings out, and she drops to the ground, choking and gasping. ‘What the fock is going on here?’ Flynn leaps forward, fists flying, knocking her attacker backwards, and Astarte squints up to identify him through vision hazed with dots and stars. It is Ned Connelly, fighting back hard but no match for the younger man. Flynn knocks Ned to the gro
und where he lies, winded. Flynn stands over him, fists still held in position.

  ‘The Old School and the Garda will hear of this, you bullying bastard, and the men that you’re so proud to be associated with will be using their own disciplinary measures on you. Attacking innocent women is the action of a coward, and you will have cause to regret this.’

  Turning his back on Ned, Flynn moves towards Astarte to lift her up, but she croaks as she sees Ned rise up behind him. Swiftly Flynn turns and punches Ned hard on the jaw, knocking him down again. Ned lies dazed for a moment before crawling to his feet. He glares at them both.

  ‘You’re not worth the fight. Not you, or you,’ he points at each in turn, ‘And I’ll waste no more of my time on you.’ He spits on the ground and stumbles off, weaving slightly. Astarte throws her arms around Flynn.

  ‘I thought you’d gone!’

  Flynn looks down at her, his expression still grim. ‘I saw him lurking in the shadows as I was driving off, so I parked the car round the corner and ran back. Let me see you inside. I don’t think he’ll dare to bother you again, Astarte, especially when I’ve put the word out about this, but I’ll stay in your living room tonight, just to be sure.’

  Astarte reassures him that she’ll be fine alone, and that she’ll lock the door. She watches from her window as he walks down the drive and looks carefully to see whether Ned has come back, but there is no sign of him. ‘What a hero,’ she whispers to Sirius.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Mairie sits quietly on her chair by the range, with Blackfoot curled on the floor. With each passing day she feels her age more. Day after day she broods on the past, on the losses she has endured and the bitter thoughts of what might have been. Somehow it takes all of her strength to rise from her bed each morning, instead of lying and listening to the voices of the dead.