Inch Levels

by Neil Hegarty

  *

  A silence of excruciating moments in the dark confessional; the priest’s shape motionless behind the grille. At last: ‘And then what?’

  Except that this time the priest knew what happened next: it had been all over the news at the time. No wonder, therefore, that Robert had a strong impression, the strongest, that now the priest really, truly, didn’t want to hear another word.

  Well, too bad for him.

  And in fact, the description took very few words, very little time: a few sentences to set out how he put her down on the shingle by the water, on her back, and then pushed her into the water, holding her legs on the grass, watching her head dip below the surface. No struggle: the girl was still almost concussed; her arms hardly moved, hardly worked; before long, it was over and done, at which point he gave her another push, her whole body slipping into the water with barely a ripple. The description of a drowning, accomplished quickly and quietly, as the sun set behind the ruinous silhouette of Inch Castle on the far side of the water.

  *

  There is nothing for it. He has to do this. He’s in too deep. In too deep, is what Robert actually thinks, not considering the, in the circumstances, inappropriate turn of phrase. ‘In too deep,’ he thinks: he has to press on, he has to close his eyes and carry, carry on. Sure, hasn’t he, already hasn’t he, done enough to get into – well, something, into serious trouble? Into prison or something? That’s just by injuring this child, who’s probably going to die anyway. Then hasn’t he made it worse? – hugely, unimaginably worse? – by bundling her into his car, thinking she’s dead already? – and then haring across the countryside with her right there in the boot? And all with the intention of heaving her into the water. In the distance, a swan honks, another answers.

  And so he stands looking at the water, breathing the cold air; and he knows that, at this moment, when it comes down to it, it makes sense to do this. It makes sense to finish the job he had started – what, forty minutes ago? An hour ago? It actually makes sense to do this, to heave her into the water and then get the hell out of there. He’d thought she was dead: if he hadn’t thought this, he would have brought her to hospital, or called for help, or something. Now it’s too late, for all concerned.

  He watches as her face slides below the surface of the water. He keeps a firm hold of her legs. She doesn’t move, much: only the fingers of one hand open slowly and then slowly close; and her dark hair fans out around her head like a cloud. And then, when he is quite sure, quite safe, he gives her legs a push and her body slides neatly into the water; and there is an end to it. The swan calls again, a flat, grunting honk that travels across the surface of the water; and now he is pounding along the path to the car park and he is in the car again and the car is on the main road, and he is home.

  Margaret tuts, on his return. ‘We’ll be late. Seven o’clock, we said.’

  He has a bath and dresses again, and they are ready to go. They will dine off the fat of the land, he knows: his mother-in-law, with all the list of faults, is a handy cook. He is starving.

  The following morning, he discovered the name of the child. Christine.

  *

  ‘What have you done since, son?’ the priest asked, shadowy in the shadowy confessional.

  To buy a moment, Robert said, ‘What do you mean, Father?’

  The priest merely repeated himself. ‘What have you done since?’

  Silence in the church now. Yes: the last sinners must’ve become fed up with kicking their toes against pew legs, must have gone home.

  Robert said, ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  Which was a form of truth. How could he account for the slow close-down of his mind in the month since? He moved through the days easily enough, he even transacted business, did his job, ate and drank and got on with things. He threatened his wife with an impossible future. But in the middle of all this, his mind had begun closing down.

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘And now, the mother.’

  And now, the mother. He hadn’t done anything: and now he had another death on his conscience.

  The priest stirred, sat upright. The seal of the confessional was absolute, he murmured through the grille, that was understood: but with the sacrament came acknowledgement and restitution. Something else must now happen, before absolution was possible.

  ‘Can you absolve me now?’ But Robert knew the answer to that one already, even before he saw the priest’s head shake slowly in the darkness.

  ‘In time, son, I hope. I trust, in time. But first –’

  But first. Yes.

  But first, he had to step out of the confessional and listen as the door behind him closed with a smooth click, its insides by no means buoyed up with sins forgiven and absolution gained.

  No, that wasn’t it. First he had to wind up this particular session.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he began, murmuring in the close darkness, ‘I am heartily sorry for having offended you –’ Then he stopped: the priest was moving, wriggling, shifting behind his damn grille, holding out the palm of his hand.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘No act of contrition yet.’ Robert sat still: surely every Confession ended with an act of contrition? – and he remembered learning this old-fashioned one, laboriously and long ago now. Because you are the chief good and worthy of all love, and everything that is sinful is displeasing unto you. Where had he found that from? – it really had been years since his last Confession. I am resolved with the help of Thy holy grace never more to offend you, and to amend my life. Amen. He knew all the words, was the point, and he wanted to finish the thing properly.

  But no.

  ‘Not yet,’ the priest repeated, a little less stern now. ‘Later. When you have done what is necessary.’ Then this can be wound up, he seemed to say. No point gabbling an act of contrition in advance of all that. Wind it all up, and then we’ll see. He still seemed stern, but not especially shaken – or rather, he had recovered his clerical poise rather rapidly, which just went to show that he probably did hear some incredible stuff sitting there in the confessional. It was probably all in a day’s work for him.

  Then Robert left, his business unfinished behind him, and the confessional door clicked and he was at the back of the church and through the double doors.

  What had just happened?

  In a way, nothing had happened. History was rushing on, and this morning’s news meant that it would reach its conclusion sooner than expected. And he remained in control, for now. As for absolution: that would never come, and he knew that too.

  13

  The door to the ward opened – and Sarah was glad enough of it: conversation was sparse, laboured; Patrick was in no mood for chitter-chatter. His eyes were closed, his grunted answers insufficient to keep any conversation rolling along. And Sarah was insufficient herself: she was insufficient to the situation. I should just go, she thought – and was about to act, to grasp her pink scarf, the handles of her bag, when the door opened and Margaret walked in.

  Patrick opened his eyes, saw her.

  ‘Oh good,’ Patrick said. ‘Today just gets better and better,’ and he closed his eyes again.

  Margaret came further into the room.

  ‘Quite the crowd,’ Patrick said. ‘I’m blessed.’

  ‘Don’t start up, Patrick,’ Margaret said.

  Now he opened his eyes again.

  ‘No intention of starting up,’ he said. ‘This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to lie here and leave you both to it.’

  Which he did. He closed his eyes. The two women looked at the window, at the flowers, at the man in the bed. A silence fell.

  They had made their beds.

  *

  The Guildhall was utterly dark. The blackout meant that no lights shone behind its four-faced clock, no lights gleamed from its long windows; and the great oak doors were closed and locked. As she waited for the bus in the deep winter gloom, Sarah looked up at the building, a deeper black a
gainst the darkness, and closed her eyes.

  She had got up very early. Anthony would be at her quarters very early: she was due in the mess hall; she must be well ahead of everyone. She got up in the deep winter darkness and made her way downhill and back into the city. The first bus departed and the sun eventually rose to show a world glittering white with frost.

  She was going home. No, not home: she was going to the only place that she could think of, that might receive her – in spite of everything. There were no other choices, now.

  And what happened next? – she knew: she had plenty of time, in the years that followed, to put the story together. She was gone – but not without leaving a trace. She was gone, and had left nothing behind: but it needed no intelligence agent to work out where she was bound. There was only one place where she might now go: home; and Anthony would follow her there, therefore, driving out of Derry and north along the road that hugged the western shore of Lough Foyle.

  Later – years later, and over and over again – in her mind’s eye, she traced the journey. The tide was well out, exposing the seaweed-laced mud flats: a freezing morning; but just the same there were lone figures out on the mud, bending, digging into the cold, salty mud for cockles. She had seen them from the windows of the bus; most likely they had still been there when he followed a couple of hours later. Yes: he had driven north along the shore of the flat, shining lough, the skies seeming to enlarge as he drove north, and now the town came into view for the first time, with its white buildings and slate roofs climbing up from the sea, its little pier flanked by a rocky foreshore, its green waterside park, its handful of large, handsome Victorian houses hidden in the trees beyond.

  She saw it all through his eyes. She had plenty of time.

  *

  Anthony parked his jeep in the square, got out, took his bearings. Of course he was accustomed to being an object of attention in Derry: in spite of the swarms in the streets of service personnel from every corner of the world, the townsfolk there were unsparing in their glances, their up-and-down scrutiny of everyone in a uniform. In this little seaside town, however, the watch seemed redoubled: whereas in Derry, the raking look was delivered in passing, in a well-practiced instant, in this town people seemed to dissect him in long stare after long stare.

  No wonder she had got the hell out of the place.

  He stopped one such staring person: an older woman, dark-clad and not, it seemed, willing to stop for anything. ‘I’m looking for the McLaughlin house,’ he said hurriedly, before she was past him and away.

  She turned. ‘Now which McLaughlin would that be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He wanted to avoid her name, if possible: but she was prising the information from him simply by standing there. ‘They have a farm.’

  ‘Farm,’ she repeated, slowing, turning, taking him in, noting the fresh wound on his cheek. Their breath smoked in the air. ‘Sarah, is it?’

  ‘Sarah, yes, that’s right.’

  ‘I thought that’s what it was.’ She directed him through the town: a half-mile or so, then left at a pair of white-washed gateposts. A long lane and then the house at the end of it. ‘If she’s there. She was away, is what I heard.’

  ‘I think she’s back,’ Anthony told her.

  ‘Who knows?’ the woman said. ‘Who knows? – with that one.’ Then she was gone.

  The white-washed gateposts were easily found, and the long lane running downhill between dense hawthorn hedges – and the house too, white-washed too and low, with a densely smoking chimney; and fields beyond, furred with frost. The deeply shadowed yard was overlaid with frost too: and while the whitewash was fresh and the door painted a bright glossy green, the whole place felt sad. It was not merely his imagination that, rushing ahead of itself, made it so – but rather the air, he thought, and the situation, the tell-tale rushes growing in the fields. Yes, sad, and lonely, and that – as his mother back in Winnipeg liked to say, with a brisk rasp together of her hands – really was that.

  He stood for a few moments in the tidy yard, feeling the sadness, snuffing the turf smoke that rose in the icy air, and then the back door opened and a young woman emerged, lugging a bucket of laundry. She was well enough dressed, short and a little too stout, a slightly crossed eye – but sweet of face as she turned and saw him and a hoarse voice when she spoke.

  ‘She’s inside.’

  No explanation of his presence seemed necessary.

  ‘Do you want her?’

  He returned her slight smile, and, now seeming emboldened, she stepped from the doorway and into the yard.

  ‘She should go with you, I think,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid that she won’t.’

  This confused him. ‘Do you mean you know she won’t?’ Now she was frowning slightly. ‘Or do you mean –’

  ‘I’m afraid she won’t,’ the girl said again. ‘I mean, I’m afraid she won’t, is what I mean.’ The slightest emphasis on the afraid; clearer now.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can maybe persuade her.’

  But she shook her head. ‘I’m afraid she won’t.’ And looking at her more closely, he could see that this was the literal truth, that this stout, odd-looking girl was afraid. ‘But go in,’ she added and pointed at the door. ‘Go in, and try.’ He flashed what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and moved towards the door. On the step, he glanced back. She hadn’t moved, though now she was plucking the skin on her arm. There were tears standing in her eyes.

  He pushed the door and went inside.

  *

  Cassie’s underarms were clammy. She stood on the step, feeling their dampness, feeling beads of sweat run coldly down her arms, smelling her smell. A smell of fear: she was frightened, had been frightened since the frosty early morning when Sarah came home again. And Sarah was frightened too, and not able to talk. I can’t talk to you, Cassie, she said, so don’t talk to me. But I don’t want to talk to her, Cassie thought: I didn’t want to talk to her then, this morning, and I don’t want to talk to her now. Leave me alone, Sarah said to me. Just leave me alone. And I wanted to say, leave me alone too. I don’t want you here now.

  Not now. Cassie brushed the tears from her eyes, and then fell again to kneading the skin on her arm. The back door closed behind him, shutting her out here in the frozen yard. He might, she thought: he might take her away, I want him to take her away. I’m afraid he won’t; I’m afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t. In her insides, deep in her belly, a deep animal howl was building; a terrible knot of pain and fear growing. And another knot in her throat, taking her breath, taking her voice, painfully lodged there in her gullet. Help me, she thought, I want someone to help me. But nobody was there to help – and she even looked around the yard, a distracted look, a miserable look – only this man, she thought, and he is too late and not strong enough. Not enough.

  The scene earlier this morning: it was terrifying. Earlier this morning, the sun barely up behind bare trees and a white frost on the grass, when Sarah walked through the yard and into the house: distressed, defeated. And Brendan went – berserk. Cassie backed into the corner, upsetting the turf scuttle, the poker: a clatter that was fearful, but that was not even attended to. Too many other things going on to think about an overturned turf scuttle: bellows and shoves and the copper bowl dislodged from the dresser onto the flags; the flash of Brendan’s belt; and screams that gave way, eventually, to tears.

  And now, this man in an army jeep, arriving too late.

  Help me, Cassie, she said. Help me. That was afterwards. Brendan was first, she thought; and the copper bowl, with a bruise now on its lip. I know who brought the bowl here to the house in the first place, as a bride, years ago, years before I ever arrived. And now it’s damaged: and I have to do something with it before Brendan comes back and sees it again. But I have to do something with it, I have to, but I don’t know how.

  The back door was closed and the yard was quiet, except for a hen or two, and the rooster waving his wattles; and Cassie stood in
the middle of it, in tears once more. They were talking, inside, but she knew it was too late.

  *

  It was too late. Surely Anthony felt it, in the air; and surely he saw it, in the red marks on her wrist where had father had held her. Sarah caught her reflection in the dim, spotted looking glass on the wall: it was set, it was frozen, there was no expression at all. Even in the midst of this – of the thick, congealed air in the room, dense as porridge – surely he noticed this: how the muscles in her face hardly moved. Shuttered, a sealed window.

  But no. He could hardly see her at all. The room, with its dresser, a wooden table and chairs, a smoking fire at one end – was only dimly lit. There were too few windows in this house, there were patches of darkness in every room – and so perhaps it was too dim to see her face, to see anything. Perhaps we should go outside, she thought, into the sunshine – and she felt startled at this faint thought, this pulse of hope.

  Perhaps he could see her face, perhaps he could see the change in her expression – for the first thing he said was, ‘Can I see around?’ Not a demand for an explanation, not a note of complaint. Perhaps he thought there were rooms in this house where you could actually see the hand in front of your face.

  Sarah said, ‘No.’

  ‘Let me see around.’

  ‘There isn’t anything to see,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to show you anyway.’

  He said, ‘So that was Cassie I met outside.’

  ‘Yes,’ and there was a pause.

  ‘I don’t know what happened last night,’ he said at last. Now he dragged a chair across the flagged floor – a fearful clatter, and her eyes flickered to the window – and sat down. He sat there, solidly. Not going anywhere.

  ‘Where’s your father?’

  ‘At the barns.’ Sarah remained standing: she had scarcely moved a muscle since he arrived, except to glance towards the window now and again. Then, after the silence had continued for a few more reverberating moments, she spoke.

  ‘You’d better go. He’ll be back.’