Creatures of the Earth (39 page)

‘We're old school friends. We know one another too well,' she said.

‘That's not knowing,' he smiled but did not press her further.

He appeared no longer to be seeing any of the women he had been linked with. Most weekends he spent alone about the town, unheard of before, weekends when she, as often as not, found the bungalow empty and locked, and they could not avoid running into one another.

‘I'm not free,' she said to him bluntly when they had coffee together in the hotel one Saturday. She had come back into the town after finding the house deserted, the car gone.

‘How not free? You live alone.'

‘I don't even feel safe to be seen with you here over coffee in daylight.'

‘Why?'

‘Talk. Rumour. You know how little it needs to be fed.'

‘Such scruples do not seem to bother your husband.'

‘That's his business,' she told him sharply. ‘He has charge of the children.'

‘You are worried about losing the children?'

‘I think of nothing else.'

She asked him as a favour to stay behind when she left. She wanted to be seen leaving alone. He agreed readily, ordered fresh coffee and was soon joined by two men from the bar who wanted to discuss a property deal.

One of the few liberties she was allowed with the children was to take them to Mass. One Sunday came when she found the children gone and the house locked. Always the same excuse was used – when any excuse was offered – that the children were taken with him on his rounds of the tourist houses for their own safety. She became very upset and decided to walk all the way to the lake to talk to Maggie before going back to the solicitor to see if there was any way she could obtain more regular fixed access. Every week there was some new twist or difficulty. She was afraid that soon she would not get to see her children at all, Jim and Kate and young Maggie, all brought up in the same air and world, and all so different. As she walked outside the town with these images and anxieties moving through her mind, sometimes with the charm of their individual faces and endearing gestures before her, and then again turning away from her with the woodiness of placards or a picket line, a car drew in ahead of her. Before she recognized the car or driver she knew it was Jerome Callaghan.

‘I was just passing,' he said when he saw her reluctance to enter the car.

‘I don't want to avoid you but I can't afford to be seen with you either.'

‘I'm offering a lift. That's all,' he said.

‘It's too dangerous.' He saw she was not herself, excited and troubled.

‘I'm just going that way,' he said.

‘An hour ago I called to the house and it was shut; the children gone again. I'm not free. Sometimes I think I'm worse off now than before I got the job in the mart.'

‘You are free as far as I'm concerned.'

‘I'm aware of that.' She smiled. ‘I'm still not free as far as I'm concerned.'

‘And I'm ready to help you in any way I can – and even wait.'

At the lake gate he stopped the car, and as she was about to shut the door, she said, ‘If you'd like to come in to meet my mother, you are welcome.'

‘Maggie and I have known each other for years.'

‘We'll have to drive, then. The car would be seen by too many at the gate.'

When the car crossed the hill and was going down to the house under the tall trees, he eased it to a stop, letting the engine run.

‘What's going to happen to us?' he asked.

‘I don't see how someone like you would want to get involved in my situation.'

‘I love you.'

In spite of his rational or common-sense self, he'd been drawn into the town in the early morning because of nothing but her presence in the rooms above the hairdresser's. He had this obsessional desire to see her, if only with her children at Mass. He'd watched her leave the rooms and walk to the bungalow on the outskirts of the town. From a safe distance he'd observed her attempts to enter the locked house. When he saw her walk out of the town in the direction of the lake, he guessed where she was going.

‘You are only making things bad for yourself. Even if I wanted to help, there is nothing I can do. You see how I am. It is as if I've already had my life.'

‘What's going to happen?'

‘I don't know but I know it can't go on like this. On Achill it was this bad, but in a different way, and I knew then it couldn't go on. I knew something had to happen. What happened was the last thing I wanted or wished, but it did happen. I have the same feeling that something is about to happen now that will change everything. It has to happen.'

‘Tell me one thing. It is all I ask. If you were free, would you be interested at all?'

‘Yes. But what use is that?'

‘It's use to me. I know you well enough to know you would not say it for the sake of saying. Even I feel something has to happen. I hope to God it can set us free.'

She thought of kissing him lightly but then drew back. She had not even that right. He drove to the house. In the house he had tea with the two women and chatted agreeably with Maggie before leaving them alone after a half-hour.

If they had kissed when the car was stopped under the trees that went down to the house, if they had even lain bone to bone in the empty night above Main Street in the solace and healing that flesh can bring to hurt desire, they would not have gone halfway to satisfy all the rife rumour implied they did with one another: ‘Old Ireland is coming along at a great rate. There was a time you lay on the bed you made, but now it's all just the same as a change of oil or tyres. The Harkins have split. Harkin has a German woman and scores of others when he feels like rising. The heart, my dear, may be wobbly but it appears everything is healthy enough in other departments. The wife, I hear, hasn't let any grass grow either. She works at the mart and is seen with Jerome Callaghan, who, they say, can tip a cat on the way out through a skylight. Yes, my dear, old Ireland is certainly coming along.' None of those who discoursed so freely above supermarket trolleys or bar counters, or just standing or sitting about, could trace their words to any source, but it did not lessen the authority with which they spoke. I even heard things quoted that I was supposed to have said of which I had never spoken a word.

At the height of these rumours, Harkin came all the way round the lake to see me. I was in the house when I heard the beat of a heavy diesel. I listened for it to go past the gate, but the sound stopped. After a while, a low tapping came on the front door. A small boy stood outside. I failed to recognize him.

‘Daddy wants to see you.'

‘Who's Daddy?'

‘Guard Harkin.'

‘What does he want?' It was too late now to try to make any amends to the boy. If he had been with Kate or Maggie, I'd have known him and given him coins or chocolate or cake or apples.

‘He said he wants to see you.'

Harkin sat beside the wheel of the blue Mercedes outside the gate in the shade of the alders. His door was thrown open. The two girls sat in the back. He had put on a great deal of weight since his playing days. His features had coarsened. I assumed he did not get out of the car because of his heart condition.

‘What kind of fish are in the lake?' he demanded though he already knew. He had helped to net the lake.

‘Pike, eel, perch …'

‘Is there much?'

‘Not any more. They say the tourists netted the lake.'

‘The foreigners are blamed for everything nowadays.'

‘I wouldn't know.'

‘Of course you wouldn't know but you'd talk.'

‘The boy said you wanted to see me. Is there something you want?'

‘I just wanted to get a look at you,' he said and shut the car door. I watched him back the Mercedes away from the gate and turn down to the lake, the children grave and silent in the back.

Maggie told me Jerome Callaghan came alone a few times to the house during those months. She also said there was never truth in the rumours flying around about him and Kate. He liked Kate and wished to help her, but that was all there ever was to it. Maggie was right and wasn't right.

One evening Kate left the children early because the German woman was making her presence felt in the house. She was walking back towards Main Street when Callaghan's car drew up. He wanted to take her to see his unfinished house.

‘It's too dark for us to be seen, and it's normal for the car to be driving there.'

The night was dark. She had to imagine the woods on either side, the lake in darkness below the house, the mountains at the back. When the front light came on, she saw a small concrete mixer, a barrow and wooden planks scattered about on what could have been intended as a long lawn. A paint-splattered table stood in the centre of the large living room with some wooden chairs. All the other rooms were empty and held hollow echoes.

‘It came cheap on the market, another man's misfortune, but I've never been able to let it go. I know they laugh: “Callaghan's built a big cage without first finding a bird.”'

Kate went with him from room to room, looking with curiosity at everything but without speaking. As they prepared to leave, she said, ‘It could be a fine house. A rich man's house.'

‘Maybe some day,' he said, and she was glad he did not complete the wish. Without touching or speaking, they had drawn very close, as if they were two single people setting out on a journey from which they could return together. On the outskirts of the town she asked him to stop the car so that she could walk in to the first street light alone but before she left the car she kissed him firmly on the lips. ‘I know it's dangerous and I can promise nothing.'

The silent, almost unbearable strain in the evenings with Harkin and the children changed without warning. He became alarmingly friendly. He must have heard some rumour about Callaghan and Kate. The German woman disappeared from the house. His voice could not have been more conciliatory when he spoke to her for the first time in months.

‘We want to forget everything, Kate. We'll start all over again, as if nothing happened.'

She could find no words. She was grateful for the noise of a passing car. ‘It's too sudden,' she said. ‘I don't know what to say.'

‘We want you to think about it anyhow. The children want that as well.' Later he asked, ‘Have you thought about it, Kate?'

‘For the children I'd do anything, but I don't see how we …' Mercifully she was able to leave the rest unsaid.

‘Will you think about it? We all want to get back to square one. All the children as much as myself.'

Harkin and the children were there every time she called that week. The friendliness increased. Her nervousness grew intense. She had to force herself to go to the house.

‘Will you be coming back to the house at the end of the week, Mammy?' young Kate asked as they were playing draughts together before their bedtime. She'd been playing badly, and the girls were beating her easily.

‘I don't think so, love.'

‘Daddy said we'd all be happy again,' little Kate added.

‘I know,' she said.

She told Jerome Callaghan about the new pressure she had come under to return to the marriage, the way the whole weather of the house had turned.

‘What will you do?'

‘I can't go back. I know everything is about to change. That is all I know.'

‘Do you think you should go to the house at all?'

‘I have no choice. I have no other way to see the children.'

The next day Maggie came into town, and they spent a long time talking. They agreed to go together the following week to see a young solicitor Jerome Callaghan had recommended, no matter what happened. When Kate went to see the children that evening, it was Callaghan who drove Maggie out to the lake. Kate was sick at work the next day but couldn't be persuaded to go home. In the evening Jerome Callaghan insisted on driving her to her rooms, and she allowed him to come with her into the house in full view of the busy evening street. She seemed to be past caring; but when he offered to drive her to the bungalow after they had tea together she responded fiercely. ‘You must be out of your mind.'

‘In that case, I'm waiting here, and if you're not back before eleven I'm coming to look for you.'

‘I'll be back before eleven,' she said.

As soon as she entered the house, she saw the strain in Harkin's friendliness.

‘Well, have you made up your mind?'

She was calmer now. She said it was impossible. She felt the stone-faced silence return. Only by shutting everything out and going from moment to small moment with the children was she able to get through the long evening which suddenly started to race as the time to leave drew near.

The two girls were reserved as she kissed them goodnight. She was afraid the boy would cling to her so she lifted him high in the air. Beforehand she had been eating currants nervously from a glass jar on the sideboard and she lifted him awkwardly because the currants were still in her hand and she did not want them to scatter.

‘I want you to know that if you leave tonight you'll never set foot in this house again.'

She bowed her head. ‘I'll have to take that risk.' As she turned her back she heard a sharp click but did not turn to see him lift the gun. One hand was reaching for the door when she fell, the other closed tight. When it was opened, it held a fistful of small black currants.

Jerome Callaghan sat waiting without moving in the one chair. Not until after ten did he begin to grow anxious. At half past ten he moved to the window. Several times he went to leave, then held back, but once the hand of his watch moved past eleven, he ran down the stairs and drove to Harkin's house. A Garda car already blocked the entrance to the short road. There were other police cars in the street. The guard and Callaghan knew one another well.