The Last Crossing

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘Is Karen still about?’ he asked, a little wary at the warmth of Kelly’s greeting. Kelly’s sense of their rapprochement seemingly more genuine than Tony’s own.

  ‘She’s up the stairs. She wasn’t feeling great–’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tony said, turning to leave.

  ‘Wait! I’d leave her, mate.’

  Tony looked askance at him. ‘I’ll go on up, thanks,’ he said. ‘She’s expecting me.’

  ‘Just looking out for you,’ Kelly said, his hands raised in surrender.

  Tony squeezed his way up the stairs, past several assembled couples that had taken position there, though they barely noticed his passing.

  There were four doors at the top of the stairs, three closed, one slightly ajar to reveal what Tony assumed to be a small toilet, judging by the noise of someone urinating in there. He knocked and opened the first door where a couple, partially clothed for the moment, lay in an embrace on the bed. The couple in the second room had progressed further, her bent over the bed, him standing, trousers at his ankles, behind her. He turned and grinned at Tony without stopping.

  ‘Fuck off!” she shouted as she saw the cause of her partner’s distraction.

  Tony muttered his apologies as he closed the door, moving to the third, knocking and pushing it open.

  The third bedroom was empty. For a second, Tony assumed that Kelly had been mistaken, or that perhaps Karen had given up waiting and left. Just then, the door of the first bedroom opened and the drunken couple emerged. He had his trousers still half unbuttoned while he tried to tuck in his shirt, she, head lowered, was rebuttoned her own shirt the wrong way, so that it gaped in the middle, showing her bra beneath.

  ‘Karen?’ Tony asked.

  She looked up at him, her face a blear of make-up, her eyes unfocused as she squinted slightly at him.

  ‘Tony?’ she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ‘Tony?’ she repeated.

  He raised his head. They were back in the car now and on their way again. He was almost surprised to see she was older, her features hardened a little with age. Yet he still felt the pain of her betrayal as something visceral, as if it had happened a moment earlier.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Absurdly, he wondered if she’d just shared in his reverie of that night, if she felt any guilt, remorse at what had happened.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, more petulantly than he’d intended, earning a brief frown from Karen before she motioned towards where Barr sat.

  ‘I was asking you, are you OK to stay over and go back tomorrow?’

  ‘I have my bag,’ Tony said. When the idea had been first discussed, they’d planned to go over and back in one day, returning on the last crossing of the evening. However, Barr had called back a few days later to suggest that they each bring an overnight bag, in case they found relocating Kelly’s resting place more difficult than they thought; the woodland was likely to have changed significantly since they’d last been there. As a result, Tony had packed for a night away. Now, though, he just wanted to go home.

  He realised, too, that the fluttering in his stomach was intensifying as they got closer to the wood. His anticipation of the trip had centred almost exclusively on seeing Karen again, how she might have changed, whether she remembered him. And, in his more private moments, whether they might rekindle that which they’d once shared. As he’d packed the overnight bag – Ann’s bag – he’d felt guilty when he realised he was packing his most slimming nightclothes: black T-shirt and shorts. Now, he felt more embarrassment at his vanity than disloyalty to his dead wife.

  ‘I’ve a funeral in the morning,’ he said.

  ‘A funeral? Whose?’ Duggan asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tony admitted.

  ‘You’re going to a funeral of someone you don’t know?’

  ‘It’s not like that; I’m a sacristan in the local church.’

  ‘You found God,’ Duggan said, as if this confirmed a suspicion he’d long harboured.

  ‘Not quite,’ Tony said, blushing at his feeling that he needed to deny the comment, as if it had been something accusatory. He wasn’t ashamed of his faith, even as he was aware that, increasingly, people saw it as something old-fashioned. Even in school, staff had scoffed at his continued attendance at Mass, had questioned how he could continue to believe in something they considered so ridiculous. He’d smiled, nodded his head in acknowledgement of their derision, felt no compulsion to defend his choices. The truth was, Ann had been the religious one. Even when they’d first met, she’d been going to First Friday Masses, confessions, the whole bit. She’d even managed to convince him to go to Lough Derg with her; their first trip away together.

  Lough Derg was a lake a few miles across the border in the Republic. At its centre lay Station Island, home to St Patrick’s Purgatory, Europe’s oldest place of pilgrimage. Tony and Ann had gone together for the three-day retreat. He’d only gone because she wanted to, but found the place, in spite of his scepticism, strangely peaceful. He trod the stations, concentric circles of rocks on which the pilgrims walked in bare feet while reciting the rosary, thinking of Martin Kelly and his final journey into the woodland. Yet, when it came time for confession, as he had done before and so many times since, Tony could not bring himself to confess what they had done. As a result, when they sat on the boat returning back to the mainland on the final day, he felt still a sort of gnawing guilt that would not ease. And he realised now, with a mild shock, that Karen was right. What he hoped to find with Martin Kelly’s grave was forgiveness.

  “My wife was pretty religious,’ he said, glancing at Karen to see if she was reacting, but she did not look at him, her face turned towards the scenery sliding past. ‘I got involved in the church with her. Then when she got sick, we became more involved.’

  ‘Did it help her?’ Duggan asked.

  Tony ignored the snide nature of the comment. ‘It did,’ he said. ‘She found comfort in it.’

  ‘She still died though,’ Duggan said.

  ‘Hugh!’ Karen turned on him now. ‘That’s enough.’

  Duggan chuckled. ‘I’m only saying.’

  ‘She still died,’ Tony agreed. ‘And what about you, Hugh?’

  ‘I’m not religious,’ Duggan laughed, shaking his head. ‘Not in years.’

  ‘I mean, are you dying?’

  Duggan’s expression set as he turned and glanced coldly at Tony, a humourless smirk tautening his lips. ‘You’re getting brave,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve no reason not to be,’ Tony said. He’d grown tired of Duggan’s presumption of authority. ‘As you’ve said so many times before, we’re all in this together. I’m guessing you’re not well.’

  ‘We’re all dying,’ Duggan said. ‘Isn’t that the idea: life is the ultimate terminal disease? What killed your missus?’

  ‘Cancer.’

  ‘Breast?’

  ‘Brain.’

  He’d not spoken the words so baldly before and wondered why he was doing so now. When she was first diagnosed, after weeks of headaches, forgetting keys, stumbling over words, they’d been hopeful, ready to fight it. She’d even talked about doing Lough Derg again, as if bargaining with God. But the seizures that followed prevented that.

  The first had been after a concert in the Guildhall, a local musical society. Again, it had been Ann’s choice; she’d loved the old musicals: Oklahoma, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific.

  They’d been passing the bank when two kids had slid by them on skateboards, the rattling of the wheels on stone echoing off the city walls to their left. The noise had caused Tony to start and he assumed the sudden movement from Ann to his right-hand side was the same. But then she hit the ground.

  Initially, he thought one of the youths had struck her, but there was no blood; not until she began to writhe, as if her body were surging with current, her head striking off the brickwork beneath it. Then the blood began to seep, haloing her skull, badging her hair.

&nbs
p; Tony had knelt beside her, his hands holding hers, his jacket hastily placed beneath her head, shouting for someone to call an ambulance, his own phone useless in his jacket pocket as he tried to control the seizure.

  He’d sat in the ambulance with her, her hands in his, telling her it would be OK, that they’d be home soon. She couldn’t remember the event afterwards. She could recall only the first song of the concert and nothing thereafter until the ambulance ride.

  ‘I’m going to wash that man…’ she sang, sleepily, lying on the stretcher. He placed his hand to the side of her face, marked her with her own blood from his fingers in so doing.

  The doctor told them, the following week, that the trip to Lough Derg was impractical. There was no guarantee that she wouldn’t take more seizures (indeed, she did with increasing frequency) and walking on jagged stones was not the ideal situation for her under such circumstances.

  Instead, she’d listed other plans, places she wanted to revisit. Fahan beach, Griannan fort, Inch Island. They’d done all three in one day, Tony driving from one location to the next. In Fahan they sat in the car, the winter chill outside too much for Ann to bear. She watched the tide, listened to the gentle breathing of the earth with each wave that washed the beach clear, wept for all she would miss.

  ‘That’s a tough one,’ Duggan admitted, drawing Tony once more to the present.

  ‘She was a tough one,’ Tony said. ‘She refused treatment in the end.’

  Karen’s look caught him off guard, a mixture of sympathy and regret, he thought.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was told she was going to die either way. Treatment might give her another month or two but with no quality of life.’

  She’d slipped quietly away in the hospice, her passing ultimately a relief after the horrendous final days she’d endured.

  ‘Brave woman,’ Karen said.

  ‘So, what about you?’ Tony asked, the question directed at Duggan, but the man had turned from him and whether he hadn’t heard, or pretended not to, no answer was forthcoming. Tony looked out the window, prepared to let his refusal to answer slide. If he was dying, he wasn’t quite ready to deal with it yet. That was OK.

  ‘How much longer?’ Karen asked.

  Barr’s shoulders dropped as he answered, and Tony realised the youth had been holding himself tensed since they left the service station. His relief at the innocuous nature of the question was clear. ‘About twenty minutes to the car park,’ Barr said. ‘We take the next exit, I think.’

  ‘We approached it from the other side,’ Duggan said. ‘Coming from Glasgow.’

  ‘It might have changed,’ Barr said, unnecessarily.

  ‘Some things won’t have done,’ Duggan said. ‘I’m guessing he’ll still be in the ground. Those that go in tend not to come back out.’

  He glanced at Tony, who searched for the insult in the comment and struggled to find it. Did he mean himself? Ann? Tony?

  Tony looked across at Karen who looked from Duggan to him and shook her head.

  ‘Your wife,’ she said softly enough that Duggan might not catch it. ‘I am sorry.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Karen said, the following morning. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  She’d arrived at his flat at 9.30am, just as he was getting ready to go into school. Despite being a Saturday morning, the school was holding an Open Day for prospective pupils and staff were expected to be there.

  ‘Well, it was hardly mine,’ Tony said. He stood in the living area, shirt and tie on, but stripped to his underwear while he pressed his trousers.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ Karen protested, moving towards him.

  ‘You didn’t even try phoning last night,’ Tony complained, as if this was the cause of greatest offense.

  ‘I was out of it. I don’t remember anything after the first half hour or so.’

  ‘You must have been putting the wine away something manic.’

  ‘I’d two glasses, max,’ she protested. ‘You have to believe me.’

  Tony looked at her, her expression pained. Her face was freshly scrubbed, free of make-up, though her eyes looked bruised with the previous night’s mascara, which had not been fully removed.

  ‘How can I believe you? I saw the two of you lying on the bed. He had his trousers undone.’ After a pause, he articulated his greatest fear, one which had riven him to the core all through a sleepless night. ‘Did you fuck him?’

  ‘Fuck him?’

  ‘Would you prefer “making love”?’ Tony spat.

  ‘Do you really need to ask?’

  ‘Obviously I do.’

  Karen looked at him a moment, searchingly. ‘No. I don’t think I fucked him.’

  ‘You don’t think? Who was he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You what?’ he turned from her, incredulous, angry.

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you. I had a drink, waiting for you in the kitchen. I was talking with Kelly who’d been in selling in the back room. I don’t know what happened then. I vaguely remember wakening in the room and some guy on top of me, his tongue down my throat. I pushed him off and told him I was already with someone. We got up and came out of the room and that’s where I met you.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that.’

  Karen straightened. ‘I don’t care whether you believe it or not,’ she said. ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Being drunk doesn’t change your personality,’ Tony said, annoyed at himself, even as he spoke, for his priggishness, yet unable to back down. ‘It just brings out the worst elements of what’s already there.’

  ‘I wasn’t drunk,’ Karen said. ‘Or if I was, they must have had really strong wine. I’ve the headache from hell today.’

  ‘Is that looking for sympathy?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ she said. ‘I’m really, really sorry. But I didn’t do it on purpose.’

  ‘I hate it when I accidentally fall into bed with someone,’ Tony replied, pettily. He finished pressing his trousers and pulled them on, buttoning them up in front of her. She watched him, exasperated, and finally stood.

  ‘I thought you’d trust me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t cheat on you. I don’t know what happened last night, but it wasn’t me who did that. Anyone who knows me well enough would know that to be true.’

  ‘Maybe that person isn’t me, then,’ Tony said.

  ‘I’m beginning to think that,’ Karen said.

  He watched her walk out the door, desperately searching for something to say that would both stop her leaving and express just how deeply he was hurt. In the end, he could only manage, ‘That’s fine. Walk away.’

  But she was already gone.

  He endured the Open Day morning, despite the foulness of his mood. He stood with three of his colleagues while one group of parents after another processed past, regarding them as one might animals in a zoo, some smiling or nodding in acknowledgement, some averting their gaze so as not to make eye contact. Or so it seemed to him. There was a hiatus between twelve and one to allow staff and those pupils who had volunteered to come along and help an opportunity to get some lunch.

  Tony followed the rest of his department to the canteen, where sandwiches and tea had been provided. The teachers sat together at two tables near the top of the room, nearest the food, and watched the line of students file past to get some lunch.

  ‘Would you send a bairn out dressed like tha’on?’ one of the technology teachers commented.

  Tony followed her gaze to where she had indicated with an incline of her head and saw Alice standing in the queue. She’d stretched a little across the term, and her father had made allowance for such a change by unstitching the hem of her skirt. While it sat now across her thighs, the line from the previous fold was still evident, as were the dangling of threads from the frayed edge of the hem, which had once been hidden. Her jumper, which she’d
pulled down over her hands, carried marks of green paint on the elbow and red splotches further up the sleeve.

  ‘She’d hardly a walking advertisement for coming here, is she?’

  Alice, mistaking the attentions of the faces ranged against her, lifted a timid hand and waved at Tony. ‘Hello, sir,’ she mouthed, and smiled brightly.

  ‘You’ve a fan,’ the tech teacher said.

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Tony said. ‘Give her a break. She gets a hard enough time from the kids.’

  ‘You’d think her mother would dress her right,’ someone commented.

  ‘Her mother’s dead,’ Tony said.

  The afternoon session was the quieter of the two. Tony’s anger had hardened now, moving beyond his indignation from this morning to a more settled resentment for what Karen had done and her failure to admit it.

  ‘What books do you do?’ one parent in the final group asked. She’d already spent several minutes scanning the display of texts they had set up on the tables which ran the gamut of Literature, both English and Scottish.

  ‘All of these,’ he said, nodding to the display.

  ‘Anything else?’

  Tony frowned. There were, after all, almost thirty books on the table, many of which, truth be told, would not be seen again until this time the following year when the school would spruce itself up and put on its finest display for the next prospective cohort.