When Damien pulled up in front of the house, he shut off the engine, removed his key from the ignition, and turned in the seat to face her.
“Look at me,” he said.
She kept her face hidden.
He seized her wrist, pulled her hand away, and said, “Look at me.”
She raised her head and saw him staring back, dark rings beneath his glistening red eyes. His shoulders rose and fell with each furious breath. His voice trembled with his rage.
“This stops now,” he said. “Whatever this is, whatever is going on in that fucked-up mind of yours, it’s over. You’ve humiliated me in front of my father, in front of my mother, my whole family, and anyone else who hears you ran off with a fucking spark.”
“I didn’t run—”
“Shut up,” Damien said. “You don’t say a word unless I tell you to. You understand?”
She did not answer.
“I’m angry,” he said. “I was angry last night. I shouldn’t have hit you, but I was angry. And I’m sorry. But I won’t be made to look a cunt in front of my family. We’ll get through this. I’ll get you a counsellor or a therapist or whatever you need to help you get your head straight, but we’ll get through it. This time next year, the house will be all done up, we’ll maybe a have a kid. We’ll be a family. But this . . .”
Sara recoiled as he jabbed his finger against her head.
“You have to get this sorted. And that wee shit Tony Rossi won’t be coming anywhere near you or this house ever again.”
“Is he dead?” Sara asked, her voice no more than a papery whisper. “Did Francie kill him?”
Damien looked straight-ahead, through the windscreen to the fledgling lawn and the trees. “My da never killed anyone,” he said. “Anyone who says he did is a fucking liar.”
“Tony’s a good man,” Sara said. “A decent man. He didn’t do any—”
Damien snatched a handful of her hair and pulled her close, his nose almost touching hers. “Shut your fucking mouth,” he said, the words forced through his teeth.
She felt his breath and spittle on her lips. Then he released her hair and sat back, slowly shaking his head as if he were dealing with a dim-witted child.
“There must have been witnesses,” she said. “The houses all around. Someone must have seen.”
“An estate like that?” Damien said. “No. Nobody there talks to the cops. No one saw anything. They never see anything.”
She wept once more and he sat quiet for a time, as if indulging her. Then he opened the driver’s door and climbed out. He came around to the passenger side and reached in for her, his hands hard but gentle.
“Come on,” he said, easing her out of the car. “When we get inside, you go and clean yourself up. You stink.”
She stood, her arms at her sides, her gaze on the gravel beneath her feet, while he unlocked the front door. He took her by the arm and guided her inside, the gloom of the hall closing around her. Two words appeared in her mind, shocking her.
I’m home, she thought.
They barely spoke as afternoon turned to evening, as dusk swallowed the last of the day’s light. Once Sara had showered and changed her clothes, she searched the kitchen cupboards for something to dress the wound the car door had left on her shin. She eventually found an open first aid kit among the tools in the extension, and she taped gauze over the cut. That done, she went upstairs to their bed and tunnelled beneath the duvet, hiding there.
She listened to Damien wander the hall and the rooms, the landing, upstairs and downstairs, out into the extension, and back into the original structure of the house. His expensive shoes clicking on stone floors and bare wooden stairs, his phone beeping and chirping, text messages coming and going. He had taken her phone as soon as they entered the house, and she imagined him trawling through her call lists and text messages. Not that he’d find anything.
At one point, he knocked on the door, as if she could refuse him entry.
“Do you want anything to eat?” he asked.
Sara pushed back the duvet, faced the window, away from him. The darkness surprised her, and she supposed she must have slept at some point.
“No,” she said, even though it was a lie. She would not take food from his hand.
He left her, closing the door over, and she listened as he rattled through the kitchen cupboards searching for food and utensils. He bellowed a string of curses when something clattered to the floor. Eventually, she smelled something burning, followed by more curses and a stretch of silence.
A deeper darkness took her for some time, her slumber haunted by broken dreams of broken children between walls and beneath floors, until she jerked awake with the image of a girl wading through a river, scarlet ribbons spilling from her belly.
As the bedroom reassembled around her, as the world found its axis, she felt Damien’s chest against her back, his arm wrapped around hers.
“You’re awake,” he said.
She closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quiet like a creeping thief. “About what happened last night. About what happened today. All of it. Things are going to get better. I promise. Maybe I’ll get some counselling too. My da was in prison for half of my childhood. That must’ve left some marks on me. If you grew up where I did, you’d understand. We sorted things out with our fists. That’s just the way it was. But I can change. I swear to God, it’ll get better.”
Sara didn’t have the will to argue, to throw his lies back at him, so she lay still and silent within his embrace. As time passed, his breathing steadied and deepened, eventually turning into a grating snore.
Go, she thought. Get out now.
She eased out from beneath the weight of his arm, slipping the duvet away from her body, and lowered her feet to the floor. She stood and looked down at him. He still wore his jacket. It crossed her mind to reach inside the pocket, looking for the phone he’d taken from her earlier, but she couldn’t risk it. Instead, she took quiet steps around the bed, towards the open door, and the darkness beyond. As she reached the threshold, Damien’s phone trilled and jerked him awake. He cried out and shot upright on the bed, his wide eyes darting around the room. Sara froze, watching him over her shoulder.
“You stay there,” he said, his voice hoarse. He reached into his pocket, removed the phone, checked the screen as he straightened. “Fuck,” he said, then cleared his throat as he brought the phone to his ear. “Yeah? What’s happening?”
He listened for a moment, then got to his feet. He pushed past Sara, heading for the stairs. She followed him down, her bare feet padding on the steps.
“Fuck,” he said. “So is he going to . . . ?”
Sara stopped halfway down the stairs, her legs unable to support her as her mind completed the sentence with the worst imaginable words. She slumped onto a step, holding the banister to save her from falling.
“Fuck,” Damien said. “Yeah, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. We’ll figure something out . . . Yeah . . . Not at the house, no. Where?”
He listened as he turned to Sara, but he was unable to meet her eyes.
“All right. Twenty minutes. See you there.”
He hung up, stared at his phone for a moment.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Did he die?” Sara asked.
Damien didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Don’t even think about leaving this house. The windows are all locked, and I’ll lock this door when I go. Best thing you can do is go back to bed. Get some sleep. It’ll be better in the morning.”
He turned his key in the front door, closed it behind him, locked it. She listened to the car’s engine cough into life, then recede into the distance until the silent darkness of the house swallowed her.
Sara remained on the step for immeasurable time, her shoulder and head resting against the baniste
r. She might have dozed for a while, she must have, because a dream crept into her waking.
In that dream, she saw a small boy, ragged clothes and bare feet, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. But she didn’t see him. Not really. He was no more than a folding of shadows, an impression of a boy, a confluence of light and darkness.
But yet, he was there, in the doorway at the foot of the stairs, looking up at her.
I’m awake, she thought. I’m not dreaming.
Still, he stared.
Sara’s breath froze in her chest.
This shadow-boy, this small disturbance of light, stepped into the kitchen, his eyes never leaving hers until he was out of sight.
Sara stood and followed.
35: Joy
Joy waited with the others, each at the foot of her own bed, to be allowed upstairs to prepare breakfast for the men. Mary’s chest still rattled with coughing fits, but she was almost back to the girl Joy knew. Noreen stood with her arms wrapped around herself, nails pulling at the sleeves of her dress.
“What are you going to say to him today?” Noreen asked.
Joy kept her silence.
“What are you going to do? I know you’re working on him. And if I can see it, so can Ivan and Tam. They won’t let you away with it. They’ll—”
“Shut up,” Joy said.
“They’ll put a stop to it. You wait and see. Just keep me out of it.”
“I said, shut your mouth.”
Before either of them could speak again, the door at the top of the stairs opened, Ivan’s stout silhouette blocking the light.
“Come on,” he called down to them.
Noreen went first, looking back over her shoulder at Joy, a warning in her eyes. Joy followed, taking Mary by the hand. Upstairs, they set about their appointed tasks. Mary cleared out the ashes from the stove first, then Joy got it alight, Noreen heating water in the kettle and fetching eggs from the larder.
When the men had been fed, and had finished their mugs of tea, George sat back in his chair and scratched at his chin.
“I need a shave,” he said, standing. As he went to the door to the hall, he spoke to Joy. “Bring me up some hot water.”
Joy filled a pot at the sink and brought it to the stove. Noreen came to her side, went to whisper something, but Joy stepped away. Ivan watched from the table as he filled his pipe. He said nothing. When Joy left the kitchen a few minutes later, holding the pot of steaming water, she felt both their gazes on her back.
She found George in his bedroom, standing at the dressing table below the window, a bar of soap, a towel, his shaving brush and his razor set out in a row. He grunted what might have been a thank you as she set the pot in front of him. She should have left him then, but instead she stepped back and watched as he took the soap in one hand, the shaving brush in the other, and began to create a thick lather with the water. He brushed the lather onto his face, working the bristles into his stubble, bending over so he could see himself in the mirror. Then he took the razor and scraped at his cheek, turning his face in the light.
“Here,” Joy said, taking the wooden chair from the corner and setting it behind him. “Sit yourself.”
He did as she said, and she took the razor from his hand. She placed a finger under his chin and tilted his head back. The bare skin left behind by the blade was clean and pink like a baby’s.
“You know, I used to have a sister,” George said.
The surprise of his speaking, and what he said, made Joy pause the blade mid-stroke. “Did you?”
“Aye,” he said, his eyes distant. “She was a couple of years older than Tam. She was an awful nice girl.”
“What was her name?”
“Eva,” he said.
“What happened to her?”
“She ran away. At least, that’s what Da told us. It wasn’t long after our mother died. A few weeks, maybe. We came down to breakfast and she wasn’t there. Da told us she’d run off in the night. She was an awful nice girl.”
Joy said nothing, continuing to scrape the blade across his skin. She sensed he had more to tell her, but it was some time before George spoke again.
“There’s a place for sale.”
“Oh, aye? Where?”
“Waringstown. It’s not half the size of this place. But it’s big enough. Good fields. Good grazing. There’s a milking shed and all. I could raise cows for dairy instead of beef. It’s harder work, but still.”
“Can you afford it?” she asked.
“Aye. Well, I haven’t got the money myself. Da puts all our money away for us, me and Tam’s. I’ll have to ask him for it.”
Joy pulled the blade down from his jawline, feeling the resistance of the coarse hairs on his throat. “Can you not just take it?”
“It’s Da’s bank account. He’d have to take the money out and give it to me.”
“What if he says no?”
“He can’t,” George said, his voice thinning with uncertainty. “It’s my money. He’s just been saving it up for me.”
“Aye,” Joy said. She rinsed the blade in the water then brought it back to his throat. “It’s your money. He can’t keep it from you. Sure, that would be like stealing it from you. He wouldn’t steal money from his own son, would he?”
“No. No, he wouldn’t. Not my da. That doesn’t matter yet, anyway. I have to make an offer on the place and see if they’ll accept it. No point talking about getting the money till I’ve made a deal.”
“When are you going to do that?”
“Today,” he said, as if the decision had been made in that moment. “I’ll take the car and go and see about it today. The estate agent’s in Portadown. I’ll go over and see them today. Aye, that’s what I’ll do.”
“That’s a good idea,” Joy said, “but, here.”
“What?”
“Maybe don’t say to your da or your brother about it just yet. No point in saying anything till you’ve got a deal, is there?”
“Aye, I think you’re right,” he said. “I’ll say nothing. Not yet, anyway.”
“Aye,” she said. “Not yet.”
As she drew the blade down his rounded cheek, he reached up and took her wrist. The blade left bright red beads on his skin.
“Listen,” he said, “if it works out. If I can make a deal and I get it all sorted.”
“Aye?”
“You’ll come with me, won’t you? You and the child?”
“Aye,” Joy said, smiling, her voice gentle. “We’ll come with you.”
Joy ironed his good Sunday shirt for him, and his tie, and she brushed the hairs and dandruff from his suit jacket. Ivan watched from the kitchen table as she did so, drawing on his pipe, the smoke billowing around him. Noreen watched too, flitting between her tasks. When the clothes were presentable, Joy brought them upstairs to George, and she helped him dress, making sure the shirt was properly tucked in, his tie straight, his jacket smooth. Then she polished his good shoes at the kitchen table, a decent pair of brown leather brogues. Ivan remained watchful, shrouded in pipe smoke.
When George came downstairs, his sock soles padding on the floor, his father eyed him up and down.
“What’s all this?” Ivan asked.
“Nothing,” George said, his cheeks turning a brighter pink. “I’m just heading out for a wee while. I’ve a few messages to do.”
“What messages?”
George fingered the seams of his trousers. “Just some messages. I’ll be heading to Portadown, so I’ll take the car.”
“Will you, now?” Ivan sat back in his chair, his eyes narrowing. “What if I need the car?”
“Do you?” George asked, alarm on his face.
“No, not that I know of. Have you got your work done?”
“I’ll be back by one. I’ll get everything done th
is afternoon, don’t worry.”
“You’d better. Tam’s got enough to do without having your share.”
George’s voice hardened, his shoulders rising. “I’ll get it done, I said.”
“Aye, well, just see you do.”
George sat down, and Joy knelt at his feet, slipped his shoes on, tied the laces. He stood and flexed his hands, shuffled his feet.
“I’m away, then,” he said.
“Righto,” Ivan said.
George stood for another moment, shifting his balance onto his toes then back onto his heels, then he headed to the front door. Joy remained on her knees as she listened to the key in the lock, the door opening and closing, locking again.
She looked up from the floor and saw Ivan staring back at her.
“Have you work to do down there?” he asked, smoke puffing between his lips.
Joy shook her head and got to her feet. She gathered up the shoe polish and brush and brought them to the cupboard, suppressing a smile as she did so.
36: Mary
I didn’t know for why at the time, but Mummy Joy was all of a flutter that morning. Like she’d got lighter somehow, like her feet weren’t touching the floor. Not Mummy Noreen, though. She had a face on her, scowling at the rest of us like we were up to divilment.
When Daddy George came back from wherever he’d been, I was peeling carrots at the sink. He came into the kitchen, undoing his tie. I wondered why he was wearing his good Sunday clothes when it wasn’t a Sunday. I supposed at the time he’d maybe gone to church by his own self, without the other Daddies.
Says Daddy Ivan, Well, did you get your messages done?
Aye, says Daddy George, and he said no more even though anyone could see he was busting with something to tell.
Daddy Tam came in from the yard then, and he telt me to get him a bowl of water for to wash his hands. He smelled of the cattle, and of sweat, but also that sour-and-sweet smell. What Mummy Noreen telt me was the smell of drink.
He looked at Daddy George and he laughed. I couldn’t mind a time I’d ever heard him laugh before, and the sound of it put the fear in me, so I went back to the sink and the peeling.
The House of Ashes Page 20