Fog Heart (28 page)

‘Bye bye Mummy bye bye bye bye Daddy bye bye – oh no oh no don't go don't leave me again – you don't want a baby you don't want a bay uh bee – love me like the angels honey – Franny love me love me love me please – first it was Mummy then Daddy then a then a then a then a – what are you doing! – eat my Ian Myra my Myra eat my Ian Myra eat it – muh muh muh Mother Father Sister Brother come back – to me to me meet me in the kelpie's flow and your name shall be lost for ever more ever more ever more lost lost lost in the kelpie's flow meet me in the kelpie's flow your name shall be lost for ever more ever Moher Moher Moher muh muh Mother Mother don't go – corbies cliffs sea me in the sea—'

Oona came to a sudden halt for a few seconds, although her body continued to rocket within itself. Carrie realized that she felt cold, and she glanced up briefly. The room was murky, full of what she first thought had to be smoke – either from the many candles, or a fire somewhere in the house. But then she noticed that it felt cool and damp on her skin, as if a raincloud or fog had drifted in through an open window. It was dark outside, rain still pouring down, driven by the wind. She saw that the windows were steamed up, covered with a fog of condensation.

Carrie felt as if she were drowning.

*   *   *

Charley relit his cigar.

‘See me by the sea me in the sea the little bastard get hers now oh no oh no see them run they run they run catch her push her down oh no oh no oh yes oh yes when you slam down the rock do you feel it in your heart do you feel it feel it feel it oh yes catch her push her pick a rock a chunk of brick cement concrete stone a rock in the back of the head oh no the angels love me now like oh yes oh God the sea by the sea by the see me love me now don't go don't leave me now don't go don't go muh muh muh Mary Rose Mam by the sea the kelpie strikes take me take me with you this time see them run they run they run take me don't go don't—'

The words died abruptly. Oona seemed to be tottering as she sat there on her heels. A terrible whine came from her, and her face was contorted with pain. So much blood. It was terrible to watch something like this, Charley thought, terrible too that you can hardly bring yourself to look away from it. Whatever she may be saying about any of us, she is killing herself by inches. She writes these mad moments in her own blood. Oona had something of the deranged poet about her, slowly eviscerating herself to find an impossible truth.

But was there such truth? Was there anything?

He was still wondering what Oona had meant when she told him that he might have to do something for her. What?

Charley had no idea. About any of it. All he knew for sure was that he wanted another drink. Then he noticed that his hands and face were damp. There was a mist in the room. Now the other three looked from Oona to the heavy stone basin in the centre of the table. The surface of the water seemed to glitter and flash, as if it were glowing with pale green fire. The mist was thicker over the basin, like a small cloud gathering to itself.

Then everything broke up madly.

Oona's whine grew harsher and louder, turned into a fearful wail. She clawed at the bloodstained front of her dress, popped a button and clawed at her skin. The others turned back to her, and Charley stepped closer. He caught a glimpse of Roz, her body tense, looking as if she were about to stand up from her seat on the far side of the room.

Jan and the Spence woman both had tears in their eyes again, but neither moved or attempted to touch Oona, who seemed to be losing herself in an unravelling frenzy – about to explode. The Englishman, Charley noticed, had a fine speckling of blood on his face – he'd caught some spray, and didn't know it yet.

Oona's keening soon became physically unbearable. It rasped your skin, lanced into your ears, your brain, and raced like acid down the inside of your spine.

Oona pushed herself up, so that she was kneeling straight as a schoolgirl at prayer. Roz was on her feet, moving. But before she could get there, Oona gave a paralysing scream. Charley felt stunned by the depth and force of it. She sounded as if she were trying to find certain words, but couldn't – and that only made it so much worse, somehow.

A second later, chaos and panic.

‘Oona? Are you—'

‘Honey, don't—'

Oona dived forward and slammed her forehead against the thick rim of the stone basin with a splintering crunch. Blood flew off to the sides and blossomed like red ink in the water. The basin was so solid and heavy that it barely moved. The water did slosh around in it a little, sparkling coldly.

‘Oh, God!'

‘Oona!'

‘Jesus,' Charley muttered.

Roz got there just as the Spence woman was trying to put her arms around Oona, and the two of them grappled with her. Jan sat still, with a dazed look on her face.

‘Help me with her.'

‘Have you got her? Easy there.'

Oona slid off the table and onto the floor, face up. Blood gushed from the torn flesh, drenching her face and flooding over her lips. There was an ugly sucking noise, as Oona drew it in with each gasping breath, but then the blood came right back out of her in a choking foam.

Charley stepped back out of the way. He discovered that he was shaking and shivering uncontrollably.

*   *   *

Oliver backed away and stood near O'Donnell, but not so close that he had to speak to him. He lit a cigarette and watched the women trying to help Oona. You do know me, he thought. You know what I learned from the incident at Ballapul.

That I like it.

So don't cheat me now.

20

Carrie insisted that they wait for news about Oona in the emergency room at St Raphael's Hospital. Oliver had driven them there, and then wanted to leave for New York, but Carrie refused to go until she heard something. The O'Donnells had decided not to trail along to the hospital, and went home.

Oona was still unconscious when they arrived, her skin pale and cool. Carrie was terrified for her. But at least the heavy bleeding was under control. Roz had quickly wrapped ice cubes in a towel, and she pressed it firmly to Oona's forehead in the back seat of the car.

‘I'm going to tell them that she slipped on the wet path and hit her head on the stone step,' Roz said, as they pulled into the entrance. ‘You can imagine what it'd be like if I told them what she was really doing.'

Carrie nodded. It was a small lie but it didn't change the nature of the injury, so she would have no problem going along with it if anyone questioned her. The ER was not too frantic and they soon took Oona in for treatment. Carrie and Oliver remained in the lounge while Roz was busy with the paperwork.

‘Do you know what she was saying during the session?' Oliver asked her, his tone almost too casual. ‘Oona.'

‘What?'

‘There were some lines from Morrissey songs, twisted around and broken up,' he told her. ‘The Sex Pistols, I'm pretty sure. O'Donnell heard parts that were apparently lifted whole from some book by Sir Walter Scott.'

Carrie couldn't be bothered to respond to that, and a little while later Oliver stepped outside to have a cigarette. As if it would make any serious difference where certain words and phrases might have originated – they essentially came from Oona, and she would use whatever language she required to convey the meaning of the visions and voices she received.

This terrible incident showed how unbearable the process was for her. Carrie could only imagine how awful it must have been for her to be driven to such violence against herself. For a while further sessions were obviously out of the question.

Before Oliver came back inside, Carrie scribbled off a cheque for a thousand dollars. She didn't know if that was too much or too little, but it was something. She slipped it to Roz, who appeared a few minutes later with a preliminary report. Oona was conscious, but still groggy. She had a bone contusion but no fracture in her skull. It was probably not a serious concussion, but she might have to stay overnight.

‘You're not going to be able to visit her, regardless,' Roz said. ‘The fewer people she sees now, the better. I'll take her home in a taxi as soon as they let me and I'll try to give you a ring tomorrow. You might as well go along now, you still have a fair drive ahead of you.'

*   *   *

It was not a pleasant one. Carrie still didn't know what to think. Oliver occasionally cursed the storm and road conditions, but otherwise he said nothing. Carrie was riding with a man she no longer knew as well as she thought she had. Eight years was a long time, in many ways. But it was not enough. A veil of doubt hung between them now.

Carrie wasn't entirely ready to believe that her husband had murdered anybody, assuming that to be a correct understanding of what she'd heard. Oona had warned her about taking things too literally. Oliver wasn't a violent person: he had never lifted a finger against her and she had seen him walk away from potential bar fights.

But the killings with which Oliver had been associated in today's session matched in several ways the scene she had experienced in his office. Carrie had discussed it in some detail with Oona but that didn't disqualify it – Oona had mentioned Ballapul in their first session.

Carrie had heard her father's voice again, saying something about how he used to be a sweet boy. The words were Oona's, but the voice was authentic, and Carrie felt certain that it referred to Oliver.
Something went wrong.
That was a message of warning, surely. But was it to Oliver, or about him?

It could relate to the future, or the past. It could refer to danger on one of his trips abroad. That danger might not even be physical: it could be a business setback. There had been an obvious reference to Marthe Frenssen and Munich. Oliver had high hopes for their project.

There was another reason that the mention of Marthe bothered Carrie. When your husband is thousands of miles from home with a young single woman, you're inevitably going to wonder. Perhaps that was what her father was warning her about. Oliver spoke to Marthe on the phone every week – to save him more trips to Germany, he explained. Marthe was some kind of a genius, brilliant yet temperamental, ambitious and driven, but an insecure person inside. He had to treat her like a hothouse plant. So he said.

Carrie had no control over what Oliver might do while he was in Munich with Marthe. She knew that it was pointless to torture herself with speculation. If her marriage was going to collapse, she would find out in due course.

And how did that relate to the foreign voice, the killings, which also seemed to involve Oliver? There had to be more to the complete message, much more. It was so frustrating. Carrie felt she had learned much in two sessions, but the essence of it still eluded her. One more session might be enough – but for the time being that was not possible.

When they got back to the apartment, Oliver had a couple of sandwiches and Carrie made a pot of tea for herself. She should have been hungry but wasn't. After he had eaten, Oliver poked around upstairs and in his office for a few minutes, then joined her again in the nook. He had a tumbler of Scotch with a single ice cube floating in it, and he lit a cigarette.

‘Well?'

‘Well what?'

‘Did you have the breakthrough you were hoping for?'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘There's so much to think about. I haven't really begun to sort it all out. I was still thinking about poor Oona.'

‘That's understandable.'

‘What do you make of it?' she asked.

‘I don't know,' Oliver told her. ‘It's all a bit beyond me, frankly. I mean, you hear Oona say things that seem to relate to you or me or the O'Donnells, but how are we supposed to make any sense of it? It's not as if she's saying, Beware of the tall man who wants you to invest in Malayan tin mines, or something.'

‘No, it isn't.'

A moment later, Oliver hesitantly said, ‘Carrie.'

‘Yes?'

‘There is one thing that I feel I should mention, coming out of today's session.'

‘What?' Carrie felt a twinge of anxiety.

‘Shortly before we met, when I was starting to bring clothes into Britain, I spent rather a lot of money to fly out to Bangkok and investigate Thai silk. It was a mistake. The silk is lovely but expensive, and the marketing is tricky. Anyhow. On the way back to London my flight stopped in Bombay, and I decided to take advantage of that and see a bit of the city. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things. I stayed for two days and then flew on to London. But while I was there I got into a minor argument with my guide, the chap I hired to drive me around. He wanted to take me to Chik Pavan or Ballapul, which were a couple of famous, or I should say infamous, red-light compounds in Bombay. As far as I'm concerned, that's an easy way to lose your wallet or catch something nasty, and I'd already passed on the same sort of thing in Bangkok. But we did exchange sharp words about it – you see, they would pay him a commission and he didn't want to do without it. Anyhow, I thought it might help if you knew.'

‘That's it?' Carrie said, after a long pause.

‘That's it,' Oliver confirmed. ‘God only knows how Oona was able to conjure up Ballapul and Chik Pavan, with my name, but she did, and she even caught some of the anger in our argument. What it all means, I don't know. It was a trivial matter.'

‘You just had an argument.'

‘Yes, that's all it was.'

‘Well. Thanks for telling me.'

‘Perhaps you can make something of it.'

‘No, I have no idea,' Carrie said. ‘I did wonder about it, when she mentioned you, but the other names meant nothing to me. At least you've cleared up that part of it.'

‘Only a little, I'm afraid.'

Oliver smiled and shrugged. He went off to stare at the TV or his stamps, something. Carrie felt a headache coming on. She felt as if her brain were being flooded with fear and sadness, as if everything was now in grave doubt. You have just gone through the worst minute of your life since the day you learned that your father was dead.