The Trout

by Peter Cunningham

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he read my book.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘He saw that he was wronged in the book. Ignored. He came looking for me.’

  ‘Yet it was my window he came to.’

  ‘I know.’

  Kay looks at me narrowly. ‘Do you recognise Terence from Larry’s composite?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is Terence Larry?’ Kay asks.

  This new possibility is making my head spin. ‘My memory of Terence is very faint—I think I met him only once or twice.’

  ‘Larry arrived here last fall.’

  ‘Yes, and my book came out a few months before that.’

  ‘You and he are around the same age,’ she says.

  ‘But Larry’s from Vancouver.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘Actually, he told Keith.’

  ‘And as far as anyone around here knows, you’re a retired teacher of English who’s lived his whole life in Toronto.’

  Once, at five in the morning, there was a beaver, right out there next to our gate: you see things for the first time and you wonder where they’ve been hiding all along.

  ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ve never discussed any of this before,’ Kay says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Alex, it’s most unlikely that you murdered someone. Aside from the fact that children don’t usually commit murder, if you had done so you would almost certainly have been caught. How old were you? Nine? Ten?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Seven! Come on, Alex! A seven-year-old murderer?’

  Her words should comfort me. ‘You’re right. And yet, whatever it is governs me—the guilt never leaves me. I’m—I don’t know what’s happening.’

  She is beside me. Her strong arms. Blood yaws in my ears.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘We’ve got to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Starting with Larry. Is Larry this boy from your childhood?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  I should tell her now about the letter with the fly hook, but the mere thought of it terrifies me.

  Kay says: ‘We came to Canada, so there’s no reason why Terence couldn’t have too. Joined the police. So if Larry is in fact Terence, that would explain why he appears to be obsessed with me, but in reality, he’s obsessed with you.’

  ‘He’s had plastic surgery.’

  ‘I haven’t missed that. But there is such a thing as coincidence. It’s very simple. We find out who Larry is. This is Canada—there are records, people are entitled to discover information.’

  The unfolding inevitability rolls over me. ‘Assuming he really was a Mountie, we’ll find nothing.’

  Kay sighs. ‘We could ask him. But if he’s taken so much trouble to cover his tracks, he could be dangerous.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘We need to be careful.’

  A late ferry lets out a warning blast and the lake carries the sound into Bayport.

  ‘There is someone who knows what happened,’ I say after some moments go by. ‘Who knows what became of Terence.’

  ‘Who?’

  I look at her steadily.

  ‘Alex…?’

  ‘He knows. Or at least he can give me names.’

  Kay shakes her head. ‘He won’t tell you.’

  ‘I have to try.’

  She is tight with concern. ‘After so much time.’

  ‘I should have done this years ago.’

  ‘It was you he hurt most.’

  It’s almost too much to contemplate. ‘He won’t speak to me on the phone…’

  Her kindness defines her, as it always has. ‘Alex…’

  ‘Tim will be here with you,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll be fine — it’s you I’m worried about.’

  ‘I’ll only be gone a few days.’

  Part Two

  Ireland

  Two Years Ago

  1

  The connecting plane from London cuts down through two thousand feet of cloud and emerges startlingly close to flooded farmland. A shuttle bus runs to the car rental depot. Ireland’s dampness penetrates far more than the sub-zero temperatures of Muskoka where the cold is so intense it makes me cough. Here, five minutes off the plane and I’m shivering.

  Heavy rain drenches the south-east motorway. So many years. Cars drive with sidelights on as tide-like water slicks over a highway I never knew existed. On either side, in pastures on which lakes have formed, cattle huddle. Occasionally, the cloud ceiling lifts and a shaft of sunlight picks out a stream, or a hill of gorse in bloom, the bright reflections instantly forgiving their crepuscular surroundings.

  A glare on the river is bad, since fish tend to hide under the banks. A murky day is better, but by far the best time to fish for trout is at nightfall.

  At two in the afternoon, my heart is clutched by the first sight of Waterford’s long quay with its important buildings. The same feeling grasped me, as a child, when we drove in from the country to do our Christmas shopping. If chance had not intervened, I might still be living here, within sight of the water.

  The day before, I called the nursing home from Canada and told them to inform the doctor that I was on the way.

  ‘Doctor Smyth? Oh, you mean Paddy.’

  He was never called by his first name; ‘Doctor’ was the only form of address used in three counties, except by me.

  As I drive past the Tower Hotel, I recall a tall man in a tuxedo, with slicked-back raven hair, who says the soup of the day is mushroom; but he must be long dead by now. The road out of the city, uphill past the college, is eerily familiar, yet utterly changed with swathes of new houses and shopping malls. A road roundabout has been laid down so that I have nearly passed the turn for Maypark Lane before I realise it. Ten minutes later, in the country, at a crossroads, crossing a tidy bridge over a tributary river, an entrance marked by laurels and rhododendron appears. The doctor had come here once in the old days, when the house was home to a landed family, and had treated the incumbent for gout, a service for which he was never paid, he once told me.

  2

  Trout tend to rise according to the stages being followed by hatching flies and aquatic organisms. If fish are bulging and darting in weeds and shallows but not breaking the surface, they are usually snatching at nymphs in mid-water. The next stage is when the fish start taking duns on the surface and the third stage is when they go for the spinners.

  The object of the fly fisherman is to use flies that mimic each of these stages.

  The waiting room is overheated. Every so often I receive a report from the management company into whose bank account I pay a sum each month. The last report I received spoke of ‘reduced mobility’. A large young woman in a white uniform hastens in and introduces herself as Mary.

  ‘Can we get you some tea?’

  ‘I’m just fine, thank you.’

  ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  Nurse Mary has a file out, and now, sitting opposite me, begins to go through it attentively. There is some purpose to her that is external to the file, as if the file is a prop. Is he dead? Imagine if he had died even as I was flying here. The dead take away such secrets with them. The nurse looks up.

  ‘Your father is well. He is fundamentally in excellent health for a man of ninety-one. We’ll be all lucky to be as good as Paddy, if we get that far.’

  ‘That’s good. He’s well.’

  ‘Yes, reads the papers, watches television.’

  ‘His mobility is reduced.’

  ‘No more than you’d expect. He sees the physio twice a week.’

  ‘So he can still walk?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he can still walk—but we walk with him.’

  ‘That’s kind.’

  ‘Paddy is a ve
ry kind man. He is our most long-standing resident.’

  What is this woman trying to tell me? Sadness colours the edges of her attitude, and I suddenly understand. Nurse Mary is sad, not for the doctor, but for me. She sighs.

  ‘Mr Smyth, I’m very sorry, but he doesn’t want to see you.’

  3

  When a fish refuses a fly, it can be either because the fly is the wrong size, or has been poorly presented, or because the fish has noticed something that has alerted him to danger.

  On most summer nights the doctor went down along the river with Father McVee, the new curate. The priest was tall and broad, with thick black hair and soaring eyebrows that reminded Mrs Tyrrell, our housekeeper, of Clark Gable, she once whispered to me, when the doctor was not listening.

  No other person can land such a blow on me; but, then, it has always been so. Nurse Mary’s wincing expression conveys her sympathy.

  ‘I did ring your Canadian number, but you’d left. I didn’t want to leave a message.’

  ‘He’s a very old man.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s not fit to make such a decision.’

  ‘Who knows what he’s thinking? But he has his rights too. We can’t force him.’

  He has rights but he also has responsibilities.

  ‘I want you to give him something.’ From my pocket I take out my book. ‘I wrote this. He would like it, I think.’

  ‘Oh!’ The nurse becomes temporarily unbalanced by this unexpected development. ‘You’re a writer.’

  ‘I’ve written a book, yes.’

  ‘That’s wonderful. Sulphur by Alex Smyth. Is it a novel?’

  ‘Yes. It will have special meaning for my father. It’s about a father and son in Ireland. Their relationship.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness, I never thought you were a writer.’ Her eyes are suddenly a nest of clichés. ‘I’m sorry, but are you famous?’

  ‘Not at all, but I’d be most grateful if you could give him the book. I’ll stay here.’

  As she leaves the room, looking back over her shoulder, I go to the table by the window where she has put down her file.

  Dr Patrick Smyth, Saint Anne’s.

  Next of Kin: Alex Smyth,

  Bayport, Lake Muskoka,

  Ontario, Canada.

  I open it and thumb through daily charts of medical jargon and records of bowel movements. Blood type and medication regime. Diet. Exercise and physiotherapy. My telephone number.

  I expected his first refusal, since no other course was likely, given the last time. But throughout my childhood the doctor had prided the written word above all else, and urged me to do the same. Now I have written a book. Outside, a slow soft rain slants over the green garden. White seats stand out forlornly. I am ever sucked back to this climate, to this region and its people.

  ‘Mr Smyth?’

  She is shaking her head, because she doesn’t want me to be hurt a second time.

  ‘I’m very sorry, but Paddy says No.’

  Without warning, my legs give. I’m on one knee.

  ‘Mr Smyth, are you all right?’

  ‘I’ll be okay.’

  ‘Just take it easy for a minute.’

  I can’t see properly. ‘I am… his only child.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’ll soon be dead.’

  ‘I told him he was being silly,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. There is nothing more I can do.’

  4

  The book is on the floor between my feet. The only review I really crave is the one I’m never going to get. I want him to be as caught up in the reading as I was in the writing; but therein lies the flaw. I wrote the book not to tell the truth but to please him.

  ‘Mr Smyth,’ she gently touches my shoulder, ‘you mustn’t blame yourself.’

  On my feet. ‘I’d like you to have this.’

  ‘Oh, are you serious?’

  ‘Of course. Would you like me to sign it?’

  She becomes happily flustered again, fumbling out a pen and spelling out her surname. Signing the title page, I add the date, hand her the book and leave the room.

  ‘Mr Smyth!’

  With the heel of my hand I ram into green double doors to my right.

  ‘Mr Smyth, that’s not the way out!’

  The air in the corridor is stiff with floor wax. Elderly women in pink dressing gowns gape. At the end of the hallway there is a sign: SAINT ANNE’S.

  The doctor was slightly built and spry. He wore collar and tie, tweed waistcoat with jacket and matching plus-fours — trousers gathered below the knee, the lower leg clad in a ribbed green stocking — the feet in stout brown brogues. A small, silky moustache ran across his top lip, like a caterpillar.

  Sometimes, when he had to leave the car in order to open the gate to a farm, he would spring from nowhere into my vision, thumbs in his ears, his hands spread out to make horns.

  Mooooooaaaaaugh!

  I loved these impromptu displays of affection, for they swept away my doubts about the doctor and burnished the love that always lay waiting within me. I had come to accept that closeness was a difficulty for him. Unlike the fathers of other boys, he no longer had a wife, and men without wives were different. Mrs Tyrrell, when the doctor was not looking, liked to catch me and kiss me, but she was not my mother, and I knew, and so did Mrs Tyrrell, that because of this the doctor did not approve of such displays of affection.

  5

  Behind me, the nurse’s voice is calling, then fading. Gaudy yellow and orange panels spring out along the corridor, like the inside of a colour-box. My feet resound on the diamond-patterned linoleum. Each room is called after a saint; Saint Anne’s is at the end of the corridor.

  He is in an armchair by the window, his back to the door, reading a newspaper. This amazes me: that having just judged the thousands of days in which we loved and respected one another as nothing, the doctor can turn to something as banal as a daily newspaper. Clamped behind each of his large hairy ears, like leeches, are flesh coloured hearing aids. I move forward, into his line of vision.

  ‘There is something I have to ask you.’

  He looks up and the paper sinks into his lap. So many years have gone by and now it is as if the man I remember has not so much changed as faded. Dressed in a jacket and trousers that I recognize, he wears a blue shirt, slightly frayed at the collar. No tie though. Without the tie, the open neck of the shirt allows sight of his pale, stringy gullet. Large, horn-rimmed spectacles greatly magnify his pupils. He beholds me coldly and moistens his lips.

  ‘I need some information,’ I say. ‘It’s important.’

  He tries to speak, but cannot find the words, for he has not expected this intrusion and could never believe that his instructions would be ignored.

  ‘I bear you nothing but goodwill,’ I say. ‘I am glad you are so well.’

  The doctor straightens himself in his chair.

  ‘Have you come to shame your father? Again?’

  Mottled brown spots mark his face and the backs of his hands.

  ‘You have a great-grandson. His name is Tim. He will be eight this year.’

  A huge urge seizes me to relate the details of Tim’s dyslexia, for at my core I believe that of all the doctors in the world, only this old man can fully understand my grandson’s condition.

  ‘I think he looks like my mother,’ I say instead.

  The doctor stares with such astonishment, as if the dead have suddenly appeared, that I want to wrap him in my arms. But he cries out, ‘I want him to leave! Nurse! Nurse!’

  He attempts to resume his reading, I see with bewildered resentment, although a shake is evident in the spotted hands.

  ‘A name, Dad. From the nineteen fifties. It was a farmyard in the South Riding, all grass—even the way in was a field. Religious iconography everywhere. A husband and wife—the wife was your patient. They had a nephew, about my age. His name was Terence. Something happened. Something bad. Where did Terence go? What was their name?
’

  The doctor appears not to hear, then his shoulders rise in the merest shrug of unknowing, or indifference, and he peers at his newspaper as if suddenly absorbed by its contents. My hand sweeps the paper away.

  ‘Fuck you! I’ll never see you again, but tell me what I want to know or I’ll pray you’ll have a hard death.’

  Cherries of colour light up his cheeks.

  ‘How dare you come back here! After the shame you brought on me?’

  ‘You hate me because I succeeded where you failed. I wanted your love, but you are only capable of loving yourself.’

  The old man’s lips curl into a sneer. ‘And is that what you put in your… book?’

  Trembling, I turn away. ‘You will never know.’

  At the door to the room, I look back for one last sight of the head I once accepted as being at the centre of my universe.

  The doctor says, ‘Flannery.’

  6

  Mrs Tyrrell cooked, cleaned, set the fires and for six days a week acted as conductor of the doctor’s semaphore. Doctor Smyth’s practice stretched north to Clonmel, south and west into County Waterford, east into County Kilkenny. He had once worked out that all these little lanes, side roads and boreens that straddled three county boundaries, when added up amounted to an area of two thousand square miles.

  A system had begun in my mother’s time whereby, if a patient needed attention in Grangemockler but the doctor was on his way from Clonmel to Carrick, a telephone call to the drapery on the corner in Kilsheelin would result in a white flag being placed in the window. The doctor would halt for the flag, telephone home and be diverted to Grangemockler. Since my mother’s death, the scheme had evolved into an arrangement involving houses in the three counties. The doctor had even put a map up on the wall so that Mrs Tyrrell, using small coloured pins, could track his daily movements, but she said she knew where he was in her head.