White Lies (12 page)

‘What're you doin' here?'

‘I'm waiting for someone,' I said. ‘A child abuser. I'm going to give him a taste of his own medicine.'

He sauntered towards me. I could see him better now. His eyelids were half-closed, he wasn't wearing his Rugby Club tie and the buttons of his shirt were open, Mick Moran style.

‘You believe that white-headed eejit, do you?'

My fist sank into his beer belly and he keeled over. I kicked him with my good leg until he was flat out on the ground. I gave him one last shot with my bad leg and didn't care about the pain.

‘Get up, Snipe. I thought you were supposed to be the hard rugby player.'

He groaned and shuddered uncontrollably. Then he stopped moving.

‘Snipe?'

I circled around him, sure he was playing a trick to catch me off my guard. I reached down and twisted his arm behind his back. There was no trick. He was out cold. His breath came in short, wheezy gasps. From the corner of his mouth, a little trail of blood glistened. I didn't know what dying looked like, but I was sure this was it. I panicked and started to run, gripping the wall to hold myself steady.

There'd be no way out of this one if the guards caught me. I had to get out of town, some way or other. I got this lunatic notion of hopping on one of those trains that run through the town at night, down to Cork or up to Dublin. But if I did succeed in reaching either place, I'd need money to get on the boat to England. And I knew where I could lay my hands on some money. It was all madness, but it kept me going.

I had to wait to let a few people pass up the street before I emerged from the alleyway and crossed over to our house. The stairs might as well have been Mount Everest, they took so long to climb. I eased open the door to Jimmy's room. There was just about enough light from the street outside for me to see he was lying facing the window – and to see the big Mexican sombrero on top of the ward robe.

I had it in my hands when Jimmy stirred and his head turned sharply. He was wide awake. When he saw the sombrero, he looked away again.

‘I'm in trouble, Jimmy,' I said, my voice high, not my own, as I stuffed the wad of notes into my pocket. ‘I'll send the money back to you.'

He said nothing. He just raised a hand to his mouth, took out his false teeth and dropped them in the glass of water on the bedside table. The water slowly turned red.I scrambled backwards from the room, knowing I was lost, lost forever, and truly sorry that I'd dragged Jimmy down with me. I trundled heavily down the stairs and opened the front door and stood there.

How many times had I wished I'd never have to come back to this house again? I remembered Mam. Had she been thinking what I was thinking now, when she left that last time? That you can't leave fear behind you. That it tags along wherever you go. Maybe that was why she never wrote. I closed out the door behind me – softly.

The railway station was five minutes away if you had two good legs to carry you. It took me twenty minutes. I waited in the shadows for a train I wasn't even sure would stop here.

The tracks leading into the station brought nothing but a raw breeze. I took shelter in a phone booth under the arch of the metal footbridge. After a while, I lifted the receiver and was surprised to find there was a line. When I fished the loose change from my pocket I felt that for once in my life I'd got lucky, but I didn't believe it would last. The dock on the opposite platform said half past twelve. I dialled the first three digits of Nance's number and stopped. It made no sense to drag Nance into this. I'd never stopped loving her and I couldn't let myself hurt her any more than I already had.

Then I thought I could do one last decent thing before I escaped or was caught. Snipe was dying up there in a lane in De Valera Park. He was a bum but no one deserved what I'd done to him. I'd ring for help. So I rang Dr. Corbett, right?

No, I rang the would-be medical student, Red Cross expert and girlfriend-snatcher himself. I rang Seanie Moran.

NANCE

‘It's nearly seven o'clock, Nance,' Tom said accusingly when I came in by the kitchen door. ‘We were worried about you, we thought …'

He was sitting at the kitchen table. There was no sign that they'd been eating. This time I hadn't told them where I was going and had made no excuses.

I filled the kettle, bracing myself for the questions I had to ask. Sitting down opposite Tom, I listened to the breathy wail of the boiling water. The memory of that scene with OD brought with it only a dull aching. I felt no emotion. I felt nothing could hurt me more than I was hurt already.

‘We've had a phone call,' he said quietly. ‘From Heather Kelly.'

I was wrong about the hurt. Betrayal doesn't get any easier to bear.

‘She had no right to do that,' I said.

‘Maybe not. But she did it for your sake … and for ours.'

I needed to dish out some pain too.

‘You dumped her, didn't you?'

‘I suppose you could say that,' he admitted, his head bowed. ‘So you found a photo of Chris?'

‘Yeah, and I had to hear his name from a stranger. Why did she leave the photo there for me to find like that?'

‘Nance, I didn't even know she still had it until this afternoon. After Heather rang.'

I was shaken by the way he spoke of the photo, as if it was a secret May had kept from him. ‘May's in a pretty bad way,' he said.

‘What about me? How do you think I feel?'

‘I know, I know … but May is … very disturbed … very …'

I'd never seen him look so utterly defeated.
I'm the one who's been kept in the dark for years
, I thought angrily.

‘You're trying to make me feel guilty,' I said. ‘You're the ones, you and May, who lied to me.'

Tom sank further down into his chair. Drained of colour, he looked so old it seemed strangely odd that he was wearing a light blue tracksuit.

‘If you could just understand, Nance,' he pleaded. ‘How young, how naïve we were. I was twenty-three; May was barely twenty-one. We had no plan, no idea how we'd tell you the whole story. We should have … prepared you when you were younger, but … we could never bring ourselves to spoil your childhood.'

‘I know all that. I know you didn't mean any harm.'

He brightened a little at that. His smile was grateful.

‘Everything we've done has been for your happiness, Nance. We got it badly wrong, but you must believe that.'

‘I do,' I said. ‘If you just tell me who my mother was, you can pretend I didn't even ask, that I told you everything was all right. I know she's dead and I'm not going to go looking for her family or anything like that. Maybe when I'm older. I have my family, you and May … Was it that American woman in the photo?'

‘No,' he said. ‘Those damn junkies, they destroyed …'

He buried his head in his hands and his anguish was terrible to see. I eased around the table, afraid but wanting to know who they'd destroyed. I rested my arm on his shoulder as much for my own comfort as for his. It almost seemed like my touch drew the truth from him. But not the truth I expected.

‘May is your mother, Nance,' he whispered. ‘Your natural mother. Go to her. Please.'

I didn't. I couldn't. Instead, I went to my room and asked myself, over and over again, why she couldn't admit to being my mother. I felt a dread as terrible as my constant nightmare and found myself trying to put American ac cents on those raised voices I'd so often heard in that dark dream. The accents didn't really fit; but those Americans, I knew, held the key to the mystery of my past.

I heard Tom come quietly up the stairs. He tried both our doors, mine and May's. They were both locked. He stayed outside on the landing for a long time. I didn't hear him go down, but after a while I was aware that he was gone.

The house was an empty church full of the echoes of nothing. Was it shame, I asked myself? Was that what it came down to? Shame for her half-caste child – me? Was I, after all, someone's ‘mistake', not Heather's as I'd thought, but May's? Or was the shame about something else? Something to do with those American junkies, those drug addicts? Had May been involved in all that stuff? It didn't seem possible.

Then the strangest thing happened. I said to myself,
The phone is going to ring
– and it did. I had no idea who it might be, but it didn't matter; I had to get to it first and speak to someone, anyone. Not about my shocking discovery but about anything, something ordinary that could make me believe that life could be normal again in some way.

Only when I reached the phone did it occur to me how late it must be. Tom hadn't appeared and I guessed he'd gone out to escape this place. I wondered if this was Heather Kelly ringing to find out if things had worked out. I let the phone ring a bit longer, hoping it would just stop – the feeling of wanting to talk had gone. The longer it went on, the more urgent the ringing seemed to get. I picked up the phone.

‘Nance, it's me. Seanie.'

His voice was quiet, even but insistent. The last thing I needed was complications and I was just about to say so.

‘Nance, I got a call from OD. He's at the railway station. He thinks he might have killed Snipe.'

The first foolish thought I had was that OD hadn't rung me. Then the word ‘killed' hit me. I wanted to scream ‘No!'

‘Will you come to the station with me?' he asked.

OD had always been so near the edge, I shouldn't have been so shocked. Had I pushed him over the edge with that slap in the face? Please, I thought, don't let it be my fault. Please, don't let it be true that Snipe is dead.

‘Look, Nance, I have to go. Every second counts. Are you coming or not?'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘Yeah. I'll come.'

The line went dead. I put the phone down. I grabbed a coat and scarf. I went out the back door so May wouldn't hear the front door close. If it even mattered to her any more. I'd almost turned the corner into the drive when I saw Tom lying on one of the white plastic garden chairs out in the middle of the back lawn. I moved across the wet grass towards him.

In spite of the cold, he'd fallen asleep. I supposed that he hadn't slept for such a long time that the weight of tired ness had brought him down. I slipped off my coat and placed it lightly over him. When I turned to take a last look at him, I saw that it was May's coat I'd put on without knowing. Her scarf too. I left the scarf on. I needed it.

Back in the house, I got myself another jacket, one of my own cord ones. When I reached the front gate, Seanie was pulling up in the Morris Minor. All I could think of to say was, ‘Why did he ring you, Seanie?'

‘I don't know, Nance,' he said. ‘I can't figure it out. But he sounded bad, really bad. I just hope he's still … he's still there when we …'

I knew what he was saying and I thought angrily, it would be just like OD to act the dumb martyr and wait for the train on the tracks and not think what that might do to the rest of us.

It didn't take long for us to reach the railway station. I can't say I was afraid, at least not for myself. I was too numb.

OD sat stiffly upright on a bench at the station platform, like a blind man who's got day and night confused and waits for a train that will never come. I was sure he hadn't seen us through his trance, but when we got to within a few feet of him, I knew that his eyes had followed us all the way down the platform. He lowered them then.

Of the three of us only Seanie could think clearly enough to speak.

‘Where's Snipe?' he asked OD.

‘In the alley opposite our house.'

‘Come on then, we'd better hurry,' Seanie said. OD still hadn't looked up from the brick-paved platform.

‘You go,' OD said. ‘I'm waiting for the train.' Seeing that old melodramatic self-pity in him again, I exploded.

‘You've never faced up to anything in your life, OD,' I snapped. ‘Why start now? Come on, Seanie.'

But Seanie wasn't following orders. He took hold of OD's arm and lifted him from the bench. OD stared at him and I waited for a fight to break out.

‘I can't walk,' OD said helplessly. ‘My knee's gone.'

‘You got as far as here, OD,' Seanie told him. “You can walk to the car.'

Seanie turned away and went past me. OD followed him, dragging his bad leg like a punishment. I followed OD and we piled into the Morris Minor – OD in the back, on his own.

As Seanie drove us to De Valera Park, OD told us calmly, with no hint of justifying his savagery, why he'd beaten up Snipe. If Seanie and I had been his trial jury, OD would have got off. Even as I thought this, I knew it meant I was accepting something I never imagined I could accept. That violence isn't always unjustifiable. It was a frightening and dangerous conclusion and OD himself couldn't agree with it.

‘It was wrong, full stop,' he said. ‘And it gets worse … what I did to Jimmy.'

I thought nothing he could say would shock me, until he told us about stealing Jimmy's money and about that awful bloom of red in the glass of water. The jury was out again on OD.

We got to the entrance of the alleyway. As Seanie opened the driver's door, OD said to me, not seeming to care that Seanie could hear, ‘You'll hate me now. You'll always hate me once you've seen what I did.'

Seanie helped OD out of the car and we passed from the yellow light of the street to the near-darkness of the alleyway.

‘Give him a hand, Nance,' Seanie said. ‘I'll go up ahead.'

I put my arm around OD's waist and felt him trembling. How many times had we stood in that alleyway, holding each other? How could we ever have imagined as we kissed that it would come to this?

‘He's behind Donovans',' OD called in a stifled whisper after Seanie.

I knew Donovans' back wall because we'd often had a laugh over the message sprayed in pink lettering there. ‘Jim Donovan is a dennsser, Sined Larry Donovan.' It didn't seem very funny any more.

Seanie moved forward beyond the turn in the alley and OD faltered so that I had to make a greater effort to hold on to him. It was already a big effort because somehow I felt it wasn't OD I was holding.

Seanie was back in seconds flat.

‘He's not there,' he said.

‘Are you sure?'

OD pulled away from me and stared in disbelief along the alleyway.

‘They've already found him, the guards,' he cried. ‘What do I do now?'

‘If they found him and he was … if it was serious, the place would be cordoned off,' Seanie said. ‘He must have made it home. Or someone else found him.'

‘Beano!' OD and I said at the same time.

All at once the tautness in OD, the clenched fists, the grinding jaws, relaxed. He looked like the OD I preferred to remember, the one I imagined had gone forever: easy in himself, that cool trace of smiling optimism back in place.

‘I'm going over to Snipe's to see if he's all right,' he said. ‘Then I'm giving myself up. It's what I have to do, isn't it, Nance? Isn't it, Seanie?'

‘Yeah,' Seanie agreed. ‘But I don't have the right to say.'

‘You didn't, Seanie, but you do now,' OD said. ‘Will you do me one last favour? Bring me to the barracks after I talk to Beano?'

‘Sure.'

We helped him across the street and down towards Snipe's house. My arm was still around his waist and he felt warmer, softer. When I had to let him go at the gate, I thought I was going to fold up. I thought of Jimmy and saved myself.

‘What about Jimmy?' I asked.

‘Jimmy's better off without me,' OD answered. ‘Will you help him get his trumpet, Nance? Make sure he gets it, won't you?'

‘Course I will,' I said, though it was clear to me that if OD was sent to prison, there would be no trumpet. Jimmy was never buying the trumpet for himself. He was doing it for OD, to prove there was a way back no matter how far you'd fallen.

‘That letter you sent me,' OD said. ‘You never told me what you had to sort out. Not that I had the cop-on to ask. Did you sort it out?'

‘Not yet,' I had to admit. But he had enough to feel bad about, why burden him with more? ‘We'll talk about it … later.'

He leaned against the pier of the gate to get the weight off his leg and drew me towards him slowly, afraid I'd resist.

‘I hope there's time to talk,' he said and kissed my forehead lightly.

I noticed a light come on behind closed curtains in an upstairs room of the house. I was certain it was Snipe's shadow I saw move across behind it, but I didn't say anything about it. I didn't want to raise OD's hopes. The monster in him still haunted me and I couldn't respond to his kiss. I knew he understood. He smiled sadly. He looked from me to Seanie and back again.

‘Nance, you two should … you'd be good for each other.'

‘Don't be daft, OD,' Seanie said. ‘She never stopped going out with you.'

He wasn't angry. He was like the old Seanie we knew from school, stating facts in a detached, unemotional way.

‘Tell him, Nance,' he went on. ‘You know it's true. And that's fine with me because …'

OD was looking bewildered – looking like I felt.

‘I can't … after everything you did for me,' I said. ‘I know you wanted to go out with me and I threw it all back in your face.'

OD was like a spectator at a tennis match. He turned to Seanie.

‘I never wanted to go out with you, Nance,' Seanie said. ‘I tried to explain it once but …'

Two words from Seanie, more like a sigh of relief, and we were left breathless.

‘I'm gay.'

He smiled. I thought he was going to laugh.

‘I never told anyone before.'

‘But you play football … you're …' OD stammered.

‘I wouldn't be the first queer to play football, OD.'