Tattletale

by Sarah J. Naughton

  ‘What if she starts to cry?’

  ‘She won’t be hungry yet awhile. You’re safe for a bit.’

  And then she’s gone, and it feels to me as if there’s only me and this tiny girl in the whole world.

  I pull back the blanket from the downy cheek. Her eyes are open a sliver so I hold my hand up to shield them from the light above the bed. They open a little wider, then a little wider, until I’m looking into a pair of huge eyes, as dark and glistening as pools of tar.

  ‘Well, hello,’ I murmur. ‘I guess this is a first for both of us.’

  She starts to wriggle and whicker like a pony. Afraid she’s about to cry, I loosen the swaddling to give her a little more freedom of movement. A tiny arm shoots out, pink and skinny, the fingers splayed. I raise my forefinger and touch it to the little palm and the fingers close around it.

  The grasp is so tight. Never let me go.

  When she falls asleep in my arms it feels – and though I want to, I cannot find a better phrase than one of my father’s – like a blessing.

  I raise her up until she’s resting on my chest so that I can hear the high breaths. Damp strands of black hair are plastered to her forehead, as if she has exerted herself forcing her way out into the world.

  When I feel myself slipping into drowsiness, I lay her in the cot, tucking the waffle blanket underneath her. We all sleep.

  The entrance of the nurse wakes me.

  Mira is awake now too. She lies there staring at the ceiling, as the nurse quietly checks her blood pressure.

  ‘Can you manage a little breakfast?’ the nurse says to her.

  There are slivers of morning light through the blinds. I glance at my watch: 10.15.

  ‘A cup of tea, please,’ she says meekly.

  The nurse turns to me. ‘And one for you?’

  I thank her. My mouth is furry from yesterday’s drinking.

  The baby starts to squawk. An impressively assertive noise for such a tiny creature, and the nurse lifts her from the cot and places her in Mira’s arms. As she looks down at her daughter, tears roll down Mira’s cheeks.

  The nurse tugs back her gown and pushes the baby to her breast. The little hand appears, batting at the air, and then it settles, comfortable against her neck, and the breaths become muffled. I feel a pang of envy.

  The nurse beams. ‘There. You’re a natural.’

  ‘Did he come?’ Mira asks me when the nurse has left the room.

  I shake my head and wait for her to crumple, but she doesn’t. ‘He wanted a boy. He will not like her.’

  ‘More fool him. She’s perfect. What will you do?’

  ‘I will take her back to Tirana. We will be feminists together and all the men will fear us.’

  They must hear my laugh halfway down the corridor. Mira laughs too, and with her ruffled crop, her flushed cheeks and bright eyes, I no longer see the faded, downtrodden, oppressed Muslim wife, but a strong and beautiful young woman.

  Then her face becomes serious.

  ‘I lied to you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then you must know why. It was weakness and cowardice. I hope you can forgive it.’

  I think of Daniel. ‘We’re all cowards sometimes.’

  ‘Let me tell you the truth. And this time I will swear it on Flori’s life.’ She looks down at the baby. ‘That is my mother’s name.’ Then she looks up at me. ‘Before the scream, before that terrible sound of your brother striking the concrete, before Jody crying, I heard voices.’

  I breathe slowly, in and out, trying to calm myself.

  ‘One of them is Jody. She sounds afraid. The other is a man’s voice. Not Abe’s. I cannot hear the words because of your brother’s music. There are bumps and rustling sounds and I begin to think that Jody is struggling with someone. I go into the hall then, and pick up the baseball bat Loran keeps by the door in case of trouble.’

  I try and picture her, eight months pregnant, armed and ready to fight off Jody’s attacker. She is certainly brave.

  ‘There is a big bang and Jody screams your brother’s name, and then he comes out. The music is louder now and I cannot hear what they are saying. There is a little light from Abe’s flat, so I look out of the spyhole.’

  As she looks down at Flori’s head I hold my breath. This is it. This is the moment I will find out the truth. The rumbling traffic outside makes the windowpane rattle, like the chatter of teeth.

  ‘What did you see, Mira?’

  She looks up at me. ‘I see Loran.’

  I blink at her, trying to make sense of her words. ‘This was at the time of the accident? Eight in the evening?’

  She nods miserably. ‘I watch them struggling, just black shapes in the dark. I see your brother bent backwards over the ban­isters – I can tell him by his build – and I hear Loran grunt as he pushes him, and then there is only one of them. There is a sound. A thud. Jody screams.’

  She squeezes her eyes shut. ‘Loran pushed Abe. And then he ran away.’

  She turns her head away from me. The baby stops nursing and moves its head away from her breast, gazing up at her mother with those impenetrable dark eyes.

  I take my phone out of my bag. ‘He can’t have done. Look.’

  Logging in to my iCloud account I bring up the fuzzy black-and-white video of the railway arches, and fast-forward. Men go in and out of the metal door at high speed. The scene darkens as the clock in the corner of the screen ticks by, and then brightens again as the street lights come on. When a bald man cycles up and dismounts I stop fast-forwarding. He is folding his bike up when the door opens and Loran steps out onto the concrete. The two men pause to talk.

  ‘Look at the clock.’

  I close up on it. Mira reads out the date and time and then she frowns up at me. ‘They must have changed it.’

  ‘The guy gave it to me as soon as I asked for it. He had no time to doctor it.’

  Back in full-screen mode the man on the bike walks into the gym and Loran moves away, out of picture, in the direction of the pub. I fast-forward to eight thirty, nine, ten o’clock when Loran finally emerges from the pub. Then I stop the video.

  She raises a hand to her face and the tube from the catheter coming out of it starts to tremble.

  ‘Did you see his face, Mira? Could it have been someone else?’

  ‘He had his back to me but I knew him by his build.’

  ‘Lots of men are built like that. Why assume it was Loran?’

  ‘Because otherwise Jody would have had to let him into the building, and why would she if it was a stranger? And I did not hear the buzzer, which is very loud.’

  I don’t know the answer to this. ‘What was he wearing?’ I hazard.

  Her eyes drift away from mine. ‘It is true I do not recognise the writing on the back of his sweatshirt. It is something something RFC. I thought he had borrowed it.’

  We sit in silence but for the rattling of the window and small rustles from the baby. I’m not sure how to put what I’m about to say.

  ‘Mira, what motive did you think Loran had to hurt Abe?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. I wonder if he is jealous because your brother liked me.’

  Even as she speaks I know she doesn’t believe it. That she doesn’t expect me to believe it. I don’t think that what I am about to tell her will come as a shock.

  ‘Mira. Loran and my brother were in love. Loran’s gay.’

  She stares at me.

  ‘You understand? Gay. Homosexual. He loves other men.’

  The swaddling blanket rustles as Mira’s chest rises and falls. The baby watches her face.

  Then she nods.

  She looks down at the baby and then up at the ceiling, and then starts to cry, quietly first, then building and finally breaking into a sob.

  I reach forward and take her fragile hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

  But when she looks up at me she’s smiling through her tears. ‘No, no, no. I’m happy. There is a reason wh
y he cannot love me.’

  ‘You need to tell the police what you saw.’

  She nods, wiping her eyes. ‘And Jody. You must get her to speak to them. She must know this man. This man who killed Abe.’

  My lip twists automatically. ‘Who’s going to pay any attention to what Jody says?’

  But before she can answer me the nurse comes back in. I turn around to smile at her. Only she and I know that, aside from the medical staff, I was the first person in the world to hold Flori. I am amazed to find it means something to me.

  But she doesn’t return my smile. ‘Miss Mackenzie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They need you down at ICU. You need to get there quickly if you want to—’

  But I’m already out of the door.

  Jody is hunched, foetal position, on the chair beside the bed. Wrenching sobs shake her whole body, as if an invisible giant is punching her again and again.

  I feel no anger towards her. I feel nothing. It is if I am watching action unfold on a screen: action which I have walked in on halfway through, before I’ve had the chance to care about the characters.

  The nurses move around the bed. Above the rustling of the clothes and sheets I can hear Abe’s breathing. They have taken the ventilator away. It sounds as if he is choking.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be doing something?’

  ‘It’s too late for that, I’m afraid.’ Dr Bonville is standing next to me by the bed. ‘Abe is dying. Sit down, Mags. It can take a while for a person to pass.’

  ‘So, do something! Is it because I agreed to the DNR? I take it back. I want you to save him!’

  ‘His system is shutting down. There’s nothing we can do – and it was nothing to do with the DNR. Don’t blame yourself.’

  I sit and the foam seat cushion gives a heavy sigh.

  ‘His system was irreversibly compromised by the accident. He was never one of those patients that would linger for years. Better this way, I think. Don’t you?’

  The nurses move away and I see that all the monitors have been switched off. One by one they slip away through the blue curtains, but Bonville stays.

  Minutes pass. Abe’s rattling breaths become more and more spaced out and Jody is now crying quietly.

  And then his breathing stops.

  My eyes are fixed on his face, watching for the moment of death, to see if something tangible will leave his body. I realise then, in the cocoon of those blue curtains, that however far and fast I ran from our father’s creed, I never quite left it behind.

  I am watching for Abe’s soul.

  The sudden choked gurgle makes me cry out and Dr Bonville lays a hand on my shoulder. ‘Not yet.’

  I don’t know how long it takes, but it’s exhausting listening to those last agonised breaths. The light strengthens and shadows pass across the bed. The morning rush-hour traffic begins. Engines are revved bad-temperedly, horns are sounded.

  My mind drifts back to Eilean Donan. I wonder if we were both thinking the same thing as we stood on that parapet. Is it worth struggling on?

  It was, Abe. For you at least. You, of the two of us, made something worthwhile of your life. You were loved, and you gave love. Whatever I used to think, I am sure now that this is all that matters.

  I realise that several minutes have passed since Abe last breathed. I glance up at Dr Bonville, who has stood sentinel behind me all this time.

  He steps forward and takes Abe’s wrist. A minute passes, then he raises his head. ‘He’s gone.’

  When I was nine I borrowed Peter Pan from the school library and would read it, hidden under the covers, listening for my father’s footsteps on the stairs. I remember so much of that forbidden book, with all its blasphemous magic.

  As I gaze at the body on the bed I think of Peter, flown off into the night, leaving just his shadow, tethered with lines and tubes. I stand up and begin to pull them out, one by one – pushing back the bandages, peeling off the tape – and Bonville does not try to stop me.

  Finally I can see my brother clearly. He looks like a boy asleep.

  I taught you to fight and to fly, Peter says to Wendy. What more could there be?

  And yet without me you learned so much more, Abe. You learned to care for people. That, I have never learned. And now you are not here to teach me.

  I don’t want to see death take hold of him. I don’t want to see his lips go slack or his skin turn grey, the eyelids peel back to reveal eyes as dull as pond water. And yet I cannot tear my gaze from my brother’s face.

  A flash of memory … Abe asleep on the sofa when he should be reading his Bible. Me leaning over him, a delicious sense of anticipation blooming in my chest as I realise I have something I can tell on him for. I will be rewarded. Daddy will be happy with me. So happy he will let me beat Abe myself. I have come to enjoy my brother’s tears and pleas for me to stop because they mean that my star is in the ascendant. My fingers itch to feel the slippery length of leather, the chill of the buckle that will leave such precise half-moon bruises.

  I lean over and kiss Abe’s lips. They are warm and soft, but no breath tickles my cheek.

  I’ve lived in America too long to place any store by I love yous, but I wish I’d had time to say that I’m sorry. For all that I did to him. For leaving him alone there. To tell him that it wasn’t fear of our father that made me leave, but fear of myself, of what I had become.

  I think of the last, meagre words we shared. Words on flimsy Christmas cards, hastily inscribed, destined to arrive late and unlooked for.

  From Abe. From Mags.

  But perhaps, after all, they said all we needed to.

  I know. I understand. I forgive.

  Ah … I have to go.

  When I’ve moved away Jody falls on his body and howls. I watch her for a moment, transfixed. This liar. This fantasist. God, how she loved him.

  I travel back to St Jerome’s in a daze, and as I let myself into the flat I can barely remember how I got there.

  Somewhere in the depths of my subconscious I must have always believed we would be reconciled one day. Now I am gripped with a wild panic. He is gone and I must imprint all that remains of him onto my mind before the darkness takes him away from me forever.

  I pull open drawers, looking for photographs, mementoes, anything that will let me glimpse the real him, even just for a moment.

  In the bedroom I become Jody, riffling through his wardrobe, trying to catch a fleeting scent of him.

  I upend the box in search of letters or email print-outs, something that will let me hear his voice again in my mind.

  A Christmas card falls out.

  On the front is a picture of the Eiffel Tower wearing a Father Christmas hat. It takes me a moment to realise that it is not the real thing, only the mini one from the Las Vegas Strip, and another to realise it was I who sent the card.

  I sit down on the bed and open it.

  Seasons Greetings from Sin City!

  I can barely remember scrawling my name at the bottom, but it is clear that it was done with little care, knocked out from duty, a year late because his had only reached my desk that February.

  From Mags.

  I close it and run my fingers across the embossed image. Then suddenly I remember Abe’s card. A snow-covered castle on an iced-over lake, a trail of ducks padding across the ice towards the distant horizon.

  You and I stood on that parapet, wondering whether to drown ourselves. Whether life would ever be bearable.

  But we didn’t need to go under. We could walk across the water to freedom. I suppose you never meant it as a metaphor, just a reminder of that time, that single time, when we were truly brother and sister. And contained within that, the hope that we could be again.

  The cards we sent were more than the flimsy paper they were printed on and the trite sentiment within.

  They were a covenant. A promise we made to one another to forget the past, to do right by one another in future.

  I know then what I h
ave to do. I start packing my case.

  The lady’s expression is so hostile the girl wishes she didn’t have to sit next to her. Her eyes flash with the light from the fluorescent strips above the table, as if there are torches shining out from behind the black irises.

  ‘Let’s just get this over with, shall we?’ Her voice is dangerous.

  The policeman stacks his papers on the table, as if he’s not really interested. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt and his arms are thick and shapeless as sausages. Gingery hairs sprout from the freckles. Ignoring the lady he looks up at the girl. His orangey brown eyes match his hair.

  ‘Before we begin, I need to confirm with you that you understand the significance of an official caution and you have given informed consent to receive it.’

  ‘The Goddards gave consent on her behalf and they’re hardly disinterested parties. I should have been called way before this.’

  The policeman turns on her. ‘Firstly, they were her legal guardians up to today.’

  Were? The girl stares at him.

  ‘And secondly …’ Just for a moment he is the hissing, spitting bully who terrified her into saying she was lying – into thinking it too. ‘You’re lucky we decided to offer it at all. She could have gone to prison, you do know that?’

  ‘Oh shut up, Kellan. You know as well as I do that a jury would never have convicted her. The case would have been thrown out and you’d have been wiping egg off your face until next year. I’ve named you personally in my complaint to the IPCC.’

  He smiles drily. ‘And your complaint will be fully investigated. Now, if we could get back to the job in hand?’ His amber eyes click back to her. ‘Do you understand the proceedings up to this point?’

  She’s supposed to agree with this so she nods.

  ‘Good. I’m cautioning you for wasting police time and making false allegations. These are very serious crimes. You do understand that?’

  She nods.

  ‘This caution will appear on any CRB certificate applied for, for a period of two years, and will then remain on your criminal record and may be used as evidence in a court of law should you commit another offence.’

  ‘Another offence?’ the lady explodes. The girl wishes she would just be quiet. She just wants it over and done with so that she can go home.