by Robert Power
She places a small package on the table and then stands up to leave.
‘Here’s a number where you can reach me.’ She puts a note down next to the package. ‘See you soon, God willing. Enjoy the beach.’
I watch her leave the room. Two men get up from a nearby table and follow her out.
I open the parcel. Inside are three things. One is a photo of Caitlin, handcuffed and exhausted-looking, her face sore and bruised. The second is a small dictaphone machine. I imagine the type of message it contains. The last is a smaller envelope. Inside is about two grams of what appear to be very good quality cocaine. With a strong sense of guilt I realize it is the sight of the cocaine that elicits the strongest response in me. My palms sweat; there is a tingle in the back of my throat. My nose twitches and I involuntarily make sniffing sounds.
‘Whatever happens you needn’t take a drink or a drug,’ the voices echo through my head.
The tables are beginning to fill. There is a break in the session and an orderly queue forms at the tea and coffee counter. Tupperware lids are clicked open, lovingly prepared sandwiches laid at tables for family consumption. I suddenly need fresh air. I make my way out of the building and into the glaring sunshine of the Brighton promenade, the package clasped tightly in my hand.
Back in the hotel suite, I look at the whiskey in the mini bar and settle for the peanuts and a mineral water. I lie on the bed and look at the photo of Caitlin. There is something resigned in the face staring back at me. It’s a tired and weary face, for sure, but not scared.
So this is why she was so elusive over the last couple of months. Her move to Brighton made more sense now, even though she was always changing places, never settling down. I remember how when we were children in Australia she went to stay for good with Uncle Declan and Aunty May, down the coast along from Lorne. In the year before that, when I was nearly eleven and she nearly nine, she had spent weekends and the whole summer holiday with them. She would come back to Melbourne with stories of how wonderful it was there, about cakes and boat trips and walks along the creek down to the beach. And then one day my parents told me she wouldn’t be coming back. That’s how things were done in our house. I sometimes got to visit her on holidays, though I begged to go more often. I remember when I first visited. I was put on a bus to be collected at the terminal. I was looking down from the window as the bus pulled into the garage and there she was waiting for me. Uncle Declan had his hand on her shoulder and she was in a bright floral frock. I must have been about twelve, but I recall little of the visit, except that the very thought of it fills me with a melancholy. I remember a ride on the back of Uncle Declan’s motorbike, a dead cat in the alley beside the house, and pouring my Aunt May’s porridge down the toilet. And calmness. I can still feel the calmness of their house.
It wasn’t until years later, when we were both grown up, that it all came out: the big family secret. I had been back in Melbourne for a conference at Monash University to describe the phase-one trials of an early prototype of the one-use syringe. I arranged a weekend down at Ocean Grove to see Tommo. Caitlin was planning her big Europe trip, so she came with me. During the day we sat amongst the tea trees with Tommo in his garden. We walked on the beach, swam in the surf and ate prawns and chicken cooked on the four-burner barbeque Tommo had inherited from the local footy team. Then on the Sunday morning Aunty May arrived on the bus from Marshall Station. I can see her now, walking along the gravel of the Esplanade, her pink scarf tied around her head, her bag heavy with tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden. Caitlin gives her the biggest hug, embracing the woman who reshaped her childhood. I envy the easy bond between them, maybe even feel a bit jealous that it might take something of Caitlin away from me, but I’m happy for them both. Tommo brings out the tea and biscuits and we settle down in the garden to yarn away the afternoon. There’s something in the air, and it soon becomes apparent what it is. After a while the talk moves away from catch-up. Tommo looks over to Aunty May, takes a deep breath and then begins.
‘There’s something we need to tell you both. Your Aunty May and I have talked this over and feel the time is right. Both your father and mother and also Uncle Declan have passed away. God bless them all. So we feel we can tell you what needs to be said now.’
Aunty May nods in nervous agreement.
‘It’s about you, Caitlin, and how you ended up at Uncle Declan and Aunty May’s. Why your mother sent you away to live with them.’
Caitlin looks at me. I hold her hand like we used to do so often at home when we were little.
‘There’s no easy way to say this, Caitlin. So I’ll keep it as simple as I can. Okay?’
Caitlin nods and squeezes my hand.
‘Your father, Anthony’s father, was not your real father.’
Caitlin’s grip loosens and I put my arm around her shoulders. It feels like the air has been sucked away from the room.
‘That’s why your mother was forced to send you to stay with Aunty May.’
Caitlin stares at the empty space around us. I can almost hear her head whirring. Something huge has shifted between us all. We wait. It is Caitlin who breaks the silence.
‘Who was he?’ she says, measuring her words, her voice hollow.
‘He was a sailor. Your mother says she never even knew his name. She only met him one night, down by Port Melbourne. Then his ship sailed.’
‘And Dad? Where was he?’
‘He often took off in those days,’ says Aunty May. ‘Your mother never knew when he’d go or if he’d ever come back. It’s not good, but you can’t blame her. She had a tough life. But somehow they stayed together. Right to the end.’
‘So that’s how you came to be with Aunty May and Uncle Declan. Your mum was worried. Your father’s drinking was getting worse and she worried for you. It was the best thing to do.’
Caitlin begins to cry. In shock. In sadness. In anger. I hold her tight and we all let her find her way.
Later, she and I walk on the beach all the way to Point Lonsdale lighthouse, just like we’d done a hundred times. Funny how we could piece it all together, even after so much time. Somehow, our father’s outbursts and terrible words began to make some peculiar sense. Caitlin said she had some thinking to do, maybe she’d stay away a while, go walkabout and see where it might lead her. Maybe even stow away on a ship, and sail the seas until she found him, her sailor father. But to begin with, she decides to go home with Aunty May. After we see them off on the train, I sit once again with Tommo on the beach. The surf rolls in from the Bass Strait; the south wind whips up the cold air from Antarctica and the clouds rumble around the bay.
‘Never think he was all bad,’ says Tommo. ‘Your dad, I mean. Early on, after all the screaming and banging of heads, he said he would treat Caitlin like his own. But after drinking bouts he always returned to the same well of anger. Go through the same routine. We all worried for your mum, and Caitlin, as she grew older, that maybe he’d do something drastic, something he’d regret, something we’d all regret. Around the time when you were finishing primary school, it became clear Declan and May couldn’t have children of their own. You could say it was my idea in a way. I was the oldest brother. So I got Declan and your dad together one day. And I put an idea into their heads. I really did fear for Caitlin and I feared for your mum. I didn’t think there was any other way. He agonised over it, but I think he came to the right conclusion. He couldn’t control himself. It was best all around. Don’t be too hard on him or think too harshly of him. Remember, Anthony, he did what he could with what he got. And along with everything else he got the curse of the drink. It runs through our family like a poison.’
And Tommo looks at me, and I look at him, and he knows I know that he knows all about me.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘This is cold. Let’s get some hot chocolate.’
I stare up at the ceiling, no thought of myself, of medical science, of Mary Foster. Just Caitlin. I weep for my darling sister, with no one to pro
tect her.
This is where she is held: Caitlin Malloy, the young woman who wants to quit the war for love.
The room is square and windowless. To the right a toilet, no seat, and chain-pull flush. To the left, a pallet for a bed with blankets and pillow. Against the opposite wall, a table and chair. For eating, sitting, waiting, guessing. The noise she hears in the corner, flicking on and off, is the boiler to heat the house. It’s on a timer: early morning, early evening. Every day. Her only clock. The shuffles in the corridor are her guards changing shifts. Close the door to exit. A turn of the key, a twist of the bolt. Then only shuffling feet and the click of a boiler.
She: chained to a pipe running hot and cold. Her mouth sore and weeping from the gag and adhesive tape which is only taken off to eat, twice a day, after the boiler clicks, the guard’s hands firmly on her shoulders. The only words she ever hears are: ‘Eat, but don’t speak.’ Once she spoke. In the early days. There was a dulling thud to the back of her head, and then darkness. She woke, chained again, blood dried on her temple. She learns from this. The rules. The waiting game. The hostage to ill-fortune. Just jumbled thoughts and long, long sleeps. Her hibernation. No nightmares. This itself is nightmare enough.
Caitlin never had any problem being left alone, which, in the circumstances, is just as well. She remembers being a toddler and Anthony, a little boy but a big brother. He would hold her close. She cuddled up to him as he sang, ‘His hair was made of spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, his hair was made of spaghetti and his name was Aiken Drum.’
They grew up inseparable. Running away to the creek at the end of the street after school. Creating a home of their own in the bush, far removed from the house they returned to as dusk set in. Then, just before her eleventh birthday, she was taken away. Away from her mother, her father, and all that went between them. Away from her big brother: her very best friend. She had spent many weekends at her aunt and uncle’s house, but one afternoon, as the rain lashed against the kitchen window, her mother came and told her she was to stay for good. She remembered watching the sheets of water on the glass.
‘So I won’t be taking you home, today,’ said her mother. ‘You’ll be happy here, Aunty May and Uncle Declan love you so. Please, Caitlin. What I am doing is for the best.’
Caitlin turned away from the window and the rain to look at her mother. The streams of tears coursing down her mother’s face joined at the corners of her mouth like tiny oxbow lakes, to well and spill onto the sleeve of her blouse.
‘Your father, he thinks it’s for the best,’ she spluttered.
And then Uncle Declan and Aunty May came into the room, like extras from the wings. They smiled wide smiles of love. Her mother heaved and sobbed to the background sound of a branch whipping the windowpane.
Caitlin entered the life of a house where the occasional scream from downstairs was laughter. If furniture scraped against the floor it was for a purpose and not the soundtrack to her parent’s fighting. Caitlin grew strong and tall and independent. Like her brother and his science, she strived for a purpose and meaning to her life. In her teenage years it was battered pets and neglected ponies, then political injustice and the rights of the downtrodden. A couple of months after the Big Secret came out of the family closet, and with a healthy chunk of inheritance in her bank account from Uncle Declan’s will, she made the pilgrimage to Europe. First to London and college, where she met Padrig, the international trade unionist and political history student who took her to bed and told her all about Ireland and the centuries-old injustices. She was besotted with him: his passion, his commitment. He told her Ireland was her home, the Irish were her family, her people, her cause, with a lineage tying her to both the past and the present. It made her feel she finally belonged.
It was Padrig who encouraged her to join him at secret political meetings and who sowed the seed of action: direct action of bombs and guns, not just words and pamphlets, seminars and marches. It was with Padrig on a trip to Dublin, and the friends they met in the back room of a bar off O’Connell Street, that she committed to the cause, pledged her future to the struggle. Then, six months later, Padrig disappeared. The note he left was simple.
I love you, but I love my country even more. If you truly love me, follow my path.
Now, sitting in the half-light, chained to the waterpipe, Caitlin recalls her intensive training on capture. Disclose nothing. Comrades before yourself. Your life versus the lives of many. Think of Pearse, Collins, and the thousands who went before you. The irony that her captors were her erstwhile brothers-in-arms was not lost on Caitlin. She thought of all the books she had read on captives and hostages. The Man in the Iron Mask, doubly encased; Anatoly Marchenko’s My Testimony, in Stalin’s gulag, pacing the floor of his cell, imagining journeys across Europe and beyond, teaching himself to sleep standing upright with his eyes open to fool the guards. And then there were the two Colombian women, one a journalist, the other a lawyer’s wife, tied to a putrid bed for months on end, boys from the barrios of Cali looking over them, endless cigarettes, football and soap operas on the television, one shower a week, ill-fitting yellow tracksuits and one change of knickers to wear. The women described a cocktail of extreme anxiety and crashing boredom, peppered with sexual tension and fatigue. During training she’d been shown reports and videos of released hostages who talked of beatings and privations, psychological damage, squabbles, mind games, masking tape and blindfolded transportation in the boots of cars. One that stood out for Caitlin was a young volunteer worker, held hostage in a damp cellar, who created an underwater world from a small pool that had collected on the earthen floor. Minuscule creatures bred and flourished; tiny anemone-like plants appeared on a small stone. The hostage recounted dropping a scab from a wound on her arm into the water. The tentacles of the anemone embraced and consumed it like the offering from a god. It was the defining moment of her captivity, she said after being released.
Caitlin knows her experience will be unique, coloured by her own life and expectations, her own human fabric. She wonders what her defining moment might be. She shudders. It is the feeling she once heard described as the devil shaking your coffin. She suddenly feels alone and scared. From deep inside her comes a short gulp of fear. In spite of her inner strength, her inner resources, she has never felt so alone, so unprotected. She lies still for hours on end, turning inwards to the place she created as a little girl. She is able to accept the pain and confusion for no more than it is and allows herself to curl up into a ball on the cold, cold floor and disappear into the garden of her dreams.
The next morning is sunny. I am woken up by the squawk of the seagulls fighting over the rubbish bins at the back of the hotel. I turn over on the pillow to check the time on the radio clock.
An hour later I open my eyes again from a dream of a harbour wall creaking from the weight of the waves beyond. I force myself under the shower, rehearsing the phone call. The photo is on the bedside table next to the packet of cocaine that I left unopened, yet found impossible to flush down the toilet. Caitlin’s expression seems different: more pleading and entreating than resigned. I turn on the dictaphone once again and listen to the voice of my only sister.
‘I am reading this … I’m doing okay … The woman you will meet is for real … Do as she asks and I’ll come to no harm … Don’t try to contact the authorities … If you do, or if you refuse what she asks, then what she told you will happen to me. I have stopped reading now and they say I can speak a couple of words to you … What can I say? Another fine mess …?’
And then the tape clicks off.
I look again at photo and dial the number on Dr Foster’s card. The phone rings, but then I hang up. Another adage from the Friary floats to mind. ‘Put thought between impulse and action.’
Going back to London on the train, the sea reels away behind me across the horizon. The same church spire, the same curve of the hill. Two days ago, the scene was so peaceful. Now it looks ragged, the rain slanting down th
e window, dulling and distorting the view.
The train stops at Haywards Heath. On the platform opposite is a small boy, about eight years old. I can see him through the window, but he is looking straight ahead, standing still in the rain, his hair dripping wet, his school blazer soaked through. By his side is a brown leather suitcase. I try to catch his eye, but he just stares ahead, not moving from the spot where someone has left him. As the loudspeaker crackles an apology for our delay, a train pulls into the station, blocking my view of the boy. There is a hissing of engines and an opening and slamming of doors. The little boy settles down in his seat on the train. He looks out the window to where I sit in the train on the other track. There is a quiet sadness in his eyes as the train pulls away. I watch the carriages gathering speed, the rain and wind and sadness sucked down the tunnel between the two trains. On the empty platform is the suitcase. I look around, up and down, to see if there is a guard, a stationmaster, someone to tell. I bang on the window, but there is no one to hear. The train shudders and moves on, back towards London.
This evening the light is exquisite. The sky is a crazy mix of thick, black, rain-laden clouds, fluffy white cumulus, and broad swathes of blue. The emerald and lime greens of the trees and shrubs skirting the Ponds are exaggerated against the patchwork beauty of the sky. Its translucent light is a promise both of deluge and sunshine. Standing on the tip of the springboard, arms outstretched in praise of the healing waters, I spy the swans patrolling the perimeter. The cob eyes me suspiciously. As I prepare to dive the skies open up and the rains sweep across the surface of the pond like machine-gun fire. As if on cue I plunge into the water. In the depths, I can hear the muffled sound of the rain on the surface. I emerge into a world of water and air, rain, sunlight and vegetation. Hordes of mayflies circle above my head. A mallard swoops from above and then skis to a halt, a tiny tsunami exploding in its wake. There is a peculiar mist lingering on the surface of the pond and all the while the rain pummels down.