All Our Yesterdays (14 page)

Conn knew he looked much the same as he had twenty-six years ago in Merrion Square. He hadn’t gained weight. His hair was graying, but his face was unlined. He knew she wouldn’t appear until she had arranged herself. He waited. He wondered how he would feel if someone brought Gus home to him this way. He shook his head in the empty room. He knew that he would feel very little. He was a good kid, too bad he couldn’t matter more. Too bad anything couldn’t matter more. Too bad the possibility of anything mattering had been harrowed from his soul by Hadley Winslow.

He heard the door open behind him.

He took in a long breath as if to fill his descending emptiness with air.

He turned.

Beautiful.

She was in white. Her hair was blonder than he remembered, almost platinum, and pulled back from her face. Her eyes were very big, her mouth was wide. Time had marked her, without diminishing her. There were tiny crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, and a barely visible hint of amusement around the
corners of her mouth. She closed the door behind her and stood where she had entered. She held his card in her hand.

They stared at each other.

She said, “Hello.”

“Hello.”

“It is you,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “That Conn Sheridan.”

“It’s a long time.”

“Twenty-six years.”

“I don’t know how I feel,” Hadley said.

Conn waited.

“You’re a policeman now,” she said.

Conn nodded.

“You’re here about my son.”

“Yes.”

She walked across the room as if it were about to buckle. She sat on the arm of one of the big leather chairs. She gestured toward the leather couch.

“Will you sit down?” she said.

“No,” Conn said.

“Why are you here?” she said.

“What did your son tell you?”

“He said there was a policeman who wanted to talk to me alone.”

Her lower lip was still soft looking. Her breasts seemed as firm as they had been before he went to prison. The line of her thigh, as she sat on the arm of the chair, was as graceful and firm as it had been before he expunged it from his memory in Kilmainham Jail.

“He’s killed a little girl,” Conn said quietly.

Hadley shook her head.

Conn waited, his hands still in his pockets.

“No,” she said.

Conn was still.

“He could not,” Hadley said. “He didn’t. No. He would not do that.”

Conn waited.

Hadley stood suddenly, and seemed for a moment to lose her balance. She put a hand on the chair back to steady herself; then she walked to the fireplace and put both hands on the high mantel and leaned her forehead against it and stared into the cold opening.

Conn took Maureen Burns’s underpants from his coat pocket and unfolded them and put them on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“She had been sexually assaulted. Her underpants were missing. I found them under the mattress in your son’s room at the college.”

“That proves nothing,” Hadley said. Her gaze still fixed on the clean, empty firebox.

“He confessed,” Conn said.

“No,” she said. She turned from the mantel to stare at Conn. “I will not let you do this. I swear to God I will not let you.”

She put a hand on the mantel and steadied herself. Then suddenly her legs seemed to give out and she sank to her knees on the thick Persian rug. She made no sound. But tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

Conn waited. She cried silently. Then she looked at him.

“Will you help me?” she said.

Conn walked across the room and helped her to stand. He took her arm as they walked to a chair. He
helped her to sit. Then, with his foot, he hooked a green leather hassock over in front of the chair and sat on it facing her. “Probably,” he said.

“T
his can’t be a complete surprise,” Conn said.

“How can you possibly say that?”

“I been a cop most of the time since I saw you last,” Conn said. “Guy does something like this, he’s been off center for a long time.”

“My son is a fine young man,” Hadley said.

“Except that he shot a female child after he fucked her.”

Hadley leaned back a little and pressed her arms down firmly on the arms of the chair. Her face was pale and she was breathing audibly through her nose.

“Is this your revenge?” she said. “After twenty-six years to get your revenge on me through my son?”

Conn didn’t speak. He sat silently on the hassock, his forearms on his thighs, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. He looked steadily at Hadley. He felt as if everything were unspooling very slowly, as if he and Hadley were suspended somehow in a viscous crystalline fluid. Tears came slowly to Hadley’s eyes and began again to move quietly down her face. She leaned forward and put her hand on both of his.

“Conn,” she said, “you have to help me.”

He nodded.

“You’re right, of course,” she said. She seemed to have wrenched herself back into control. “Even as a boy he had an unhealthy interest in little girls. His father caught him playing doctor once, and was livid. I
think if I hadn’t intervened he might have beaten him severely.”

Conn nodded, his eyes on her face.

“That why you got him the clubhouse in Weston?”

“Anything,” Hadley said. “Anything to distract him. It was a constant fear. He didn’t like other little boys. He liked to play with little girls and we never dared leave them alone.”

“When was the first one?” Conn said.

“He was ten,” Hadley said. “With a three-year-old girl.”

“Parents know?”

Hadley shook her head.

“I don’t know if she ever told them anything. We never heard from them. She was the daughter of a Charles Street shopkeeper. I don’t think she even knew Tommy’s name.”

“How’d your husband feel about that?” Conn said.

“I never told him,” Hadley said. “There were other times. I always managed to cover up.”

“Ever talk to a doctor?”

“I couldn’t tell anyone,” Hadley said.

Conn felt the weight of her hand on his, felt the force of her eyes, smelled her perfume, looked at the curve of her thigh beneath the sheer white dress. Hadley’s voice dropped slightly. It was husky, almost hoarse.

“I’ve lived with this alone,” she said. “Until now.”

“So your husband doesn’t know?”

“No.”

“So nobody knows but you, me, and the kid?”

“I had to protect him,” Hadley said.

“From his father?”

“From everyone,” Hadley said.

“And how will you protect him from me?”

Hadley didn’t speak for a moment. Her eyes were on Conn’s face, moving, examining him as if looking for an opening. She took her hand from on top of his and leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.

“I will find a way,” she said.

Conn stood and walked to the window and stood looking out with his hands in his hip pockets.

“So how come you turned me in?” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Twenty-six years ago,” Conn said, looking out the window at the placid life moving by on Mt. Vernon Street. “How come you turned me in to the British?”

“Oh, God.”

Conn kept his face to the window.

“I was twenty,” she said. “I had done what I was supposed to do two years earlier. I married the man I was supposed to marry. Older than I was, solid, stable, successful. Old money, good family. I was a virgin.”

“So was Maureen Burns,” Conn said.

“Who … oh … the little girl?”

“Un-huh.”

Hadley steadied herself in her chair. Conn’s back was very straight as he stared out the window.

“My wedding night,” Hadley said, “was not the stuff of dreams. Thomas is a forceful man, but not”—she paused, looking for words—“Thomas is not a passionate man.”

“And he didn’t grow more passionate with time,” Conn said.

“No.”

“So you rounded up a few passionate Irishmen to fill the void.”

“Not a few,” Hadley said. “You.”

The sun had moved westward as the afternoon progressed, and now, as Hadley looked at him, he was a dark outline against the bright window. He turned slowly and faced her. His hands in his hip pockets caused his coat to pull back. His revolver showed at his belt.

“But it got out of hand,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You were after a little poon tang, I was after forever.”

“There’s no need to be coarse, Conn. You meant a great deal to me. I would have been your mistress all our lives had you let me.”

“But you wouldn’t leave your husband.”

“I couldn’t. I wasn’t bred to dash round the world with a—a gunman. Look at you, you’re still a gunman.”

“So you couldn’t tell me that instead of calling the peelers?”

“I did tell you that, Conn. I told you that in the park, by the canal. You wouldn’t hear me.”

Conn nodded slowly. He had no need to think back. He had lived that time in the continuing present since it happened.

“And you wouldn’t go away. When I looked out and saw you there, in front of my home, in Merrion Square, my heart nearly stopped. If my husband had ever seen you …”

“Thomas is a dangerous man, is he?”

“Rigid, Conn. And harsh. He thinks things are all certain. It would have ruined everything if he’d seen you. You were so fierce. I had to make you leave. I was
never prepared for the intensity. You wouldn’t leave. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Did you know they were going to hang me?”

“I didn’t know what would happen. I couldn’t think about it. Conn, I was twenty.”

“And your kid’s eighteen and a pervert,” Conn said.

Hadley put her face in her hands.

“You better think about it,” Conn said.

“S
o who was my replacement?” Conn said.

“Replacement? I”—She shook her head. The declining sun had now edged into the room and it made her hair seem bright—“I couldn’t. Not after you. There’s never been anyone after you.”

“Un-huh.”

“You think I’m a whore. I’ve been a good wife and mother, Conn. I have been loyal to my husband. I love my son.”

Conn, silhouetted darkly against the window, took his hands from his pockets and clapped silently. She looked away, into the cold fireplace. Her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else. It was almost as if she were alone.

“Are you married, Conn?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love your wife?”

“No.”

“Did you ever?”

“No.”

“Why
did you
marry?”

“I knocked her up.”

“So you have children?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a good father?”

“Probably not. I try.”

“How many children?”

“One son.”

“Tommy’s age?”

“Four years younger.”

“You love him.”

Conn was silent for a moment and the question lingered in the sunny room.

“As best I can,” Conn said.

He could feel her in the room. She pulsed out energy that only he could feel,
like a dog with a silent whistle
. It surprised him. He thought he had gone far enough inside. But here it was, the shock of her energy pulsing in him.
April is the cruelest month
. He felt something almost like amusement that he was remembering scraps of poetry.
Maybe I should buy a mandolin
. He moved away from the window and stood by the fireplace with his arms folded. The bright sunlight was on her face as she leaned forward. He was motionless by the fireplace, his soul clenched like a fist against the surge of feeling.

“There has not been a day,” Hadley said softly, “that I have not thought of you, Conn.”

Conn remained intensely motionless.

“You have thought of me,” Hadley said. It was not a question.

Conn nodded.

“With anger,” Hadley said, “certainly.”

Conn nodded again.

“But perhaps with something else?”

“Perhaps.”

Conn’s voice was raspy.

“Things come around, don’t they?” Hadley said. “I betrayed you long ago, and now, years later, and in another country, you may have your revenge.”

“I can’t leave that kid walking around loose,” Conn said. “He’ll do it again.”

“There are doctors,” Hadley said. “There’s a sanitarium in Switzerland.”

“Been preparing for the moment,” Conn said.

“I’ve known he’s not right,” Hadley said.

“What about Maureen Burns?” Conn said.

“I—I’m sorry about the little girl. I truly am. But it is too late to help her. I can’t think about her. I have to help my son.”

“Actually,” Conn said, his voice still hoarse, “you have to get me to help your son.”

“If you will let him go, I will send him to the clinic in Switzerland. He will never harm anyone again.”

“The cure rate is not good for perverts,” Conn said.

“He will be out of harm’s way,” Hadley said.

“And your husband,” Conn said. “What will you tell him?”

“He loves me,” Hadley said. “I can get him to do what I want.”

Conn didn’t speak for a while. The silence explored the room slowly and filled it the way water rises in a bucket.

“It’s my case. I could bury it,” Conn said. “You swear the kid was here that night. I believe you. I write the report. I don’t mention the underpants. Or the confession. Or the gun. Or the playhouse in Weston. The report gets filed. It’s done.”

“Will you do that?” Hadley said. Her voice was hushed.

Conn didn’t answer. Hadley got up from her chair and stood in front of him. She put her hands on his shoulders. Her face was upturned and close to his.
Her lips seemed glistening. He could feel the involuntary contraction of his muscles, when she touched him.

“Will you?” she said. Her face was so close to his that her lips brushed his as she spoke.

“Better clean that gun,” Conn said. “The old man sees it, he’ll know it’s been fired.”

She nodded.

“You will,” she said.

Conn knew he wasn’t trembling. He knew he was as still as a boulder. But he felt as if he were trembling violently. He kept his arms folded, not touching her. She moved her hands down along his arms and unfolded them and pressed herself inside them, and pressed her mouth on his and put her arms around his waist. She moved against him so that the whole resilient sleek length of her insisted upon him. And he broke. The passion so silently contained for twenty-six years engulfed him and he held her hard against him and kissed her blindly.