Only We Know (22 page)

He took the rap, and was grounded for
months. Dad was furious. The car was repaired. But when Luke came home six months later,
drunk from a night out with friends after finishing their mock exams, Dad went ballistic
– only for Luke to point to me, as I came down the stairs to see what had happened, and
say: ‘It was him, him, he did it … He smashed the car. It was him, it was him
…’

Luke was distraught,
his face wretched with tears. Dad had to coax him to a kitchen chair, where he cried
into Dad’s sleeve, both of them looking at me – the words still echoing:
it
was him, it was him.

It was another example of how we were
gradually growing apart, a process that had started when we returned to Ireland.
We’d been home only a few weeks when my father told me that from then on Luke and
I would sleep in separate rooms.

‘You’re getting older,’ he
said. ‘The house has enough bedrooms, and with more homework in the new school
year, Luke will need his own desk and the quiet to study.’

I didn’t say anything – I
couldn’t – though I felt the words jostling inside me, pushing upwards as if they
might suddenly burst out and break the silence that had me trapped.

‘We’re not in Africa any more,
Nicholas. We need new habits, new routines. And one of them is that you and Luke are to
have separate bedrooms.’

He sounded as if he was reading from a
script, or that he was a robot, talking to me as if he didn’t know me, that I
wasn’t his son, that I wasn’t Nick.

‘And,’ he said, ‘we
thought it better if you went to different schools as well. You both have … Well, you
have different needs.’

Maybe he saw my unspoken fear and confusion.
Or maybe he, too, had begun to adjust to our altered state, and was starting to read my
silences and the thoughts that might lie inside me. So he sat down on my bed and spoke
softly, his brow furrowed with tenderness, as if he hated saying this, but knew it was
for the best.

‘You must
understand,’ he said, his voice dropping low, a new urgency spilling into it.
‘I’m trying to protect you.’

That was when I started to cry. I knew he
was trying to make everything right – trying to shield us from whatever dangers lay
around and within us. But that didn’t stop me wanting everything to be like it had
been before. As he turned the light out, in my
new
room, he said, like the old
Dad might have, ‘Don’t worry, champ, it won’t be so bad. You’ll
be okay.’

We never talked about Africa again. It was
never mentioned or alluded to in passing. Neither were the Walshes up for discussion. It
was as if my parents tried deliberately to erase the time we had spent in Africa from
our lives – which only forced it further into my unconscious. As time passed and I would
try to remember what had happened in the days and months we spent there, the memory was
never the same, but came back to me ever so slightly altered.

Maybe that’s why the place seems so
unfamiliar to me now.

Murphy breaks off. The low tones of the
prayer fade into silence. After a time, he says: ‘Please take some moments to
remember Luke to yourselves and pray for his soul.’ He dips his head and we do the
same. I don’t know whether I feel relieved or desolate that it’s nearly
over.

Murphy takes the lid off the urn, sinks his
hand into the ashes and lets them run through his fingers. ‘Ashes to ashes,’
he murmurs, ‘dust to dust.’

He steps to Julia, her face streaked with
pain and grief, and as she releases a stream of ash onto the gentle breeze,
she whispers some private message, then
starts to cry and her mother goes forward to comfort her.

It’s my turn. Murphy holds out the
urn. I put my hand into it and feel the sandy grit between my fingers, its surprising
coolness.

‘Goodbye, Luke.’ I toss it into
the air.

I can think of nothing else to say. Nothing
that would do my brother’s life justice. Julia is weeping quietly now.

There’s still ash left in the urn. I
dip my hand in again and this time feel the hardness of what must be the nub of an
uncremated tooth or bone.

Then I fling the last of my brother into the
wilderness.

The group of mourners breaks up and moves
falteringly away from the river. The great Masai Mara is shrouded in darkness now. You
can hear the nocturnal animals rousing themselves. There are rustlings in the
undergrowth, and the great chain of sound the crickets make begins to spin in one loop
after another. They pick up the song the birds of the Masai Mara sing. Its verses are
the same and its chorus too:
Who cut the knot? Who cut the knot?

I stop and turn back to the place where we
have scattered the remains. In the darkening light it seems too stark, too bare, too
open to the elements. Fear rises in me again and the memories come flooding back:
I’m five years old and standing on tiptoe in our parents’ bathroom, watching
wide-eyed as Luke smears shaving foam over his jaw, then reaches for our father’s
razor; or we’re sitting side by side in front of the fire on a Saturday night, our
hair still wet from our bath, eating sandwiches while watching
The Muppet Show
;
or I’m running to keep up while Luke charges
ahead through a field of grass, a stitch starting in my side
as his whoops and calls and wild laughter ring out; or it’s our first day at the
International School in Nairobi, I’m sick with nerves, and Luke’s saying to
me, in his older-brother voice, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got your back, or
I’m standing on Killiney beach on a cold grey day, looking out to sea, when a
white streak rips past me, Luke shouting with delight as he flings himself naked into
the waves. I feel it all rising inside me, as if I’m brimming over with these
memories of him as a small boy, before it happened, before it all changed, and with it
comes the sense that, in scattering him to the wind, these memories of him are all
taking flight – memories so precious to me now, because despite all that has happened,
despite what he did back then, he was my brother and I loved him.

‘I don’t want to leave him
here,’ I say, my voice cracking. I can feel the answering squeeze of
Lauren’s hand in mine. It is supposed to be a source of comfort, but it’s
not. Instead it triggers in me something fearful and alive.

I’m fighting what has happened,
railing against it. And yet, if anything, the fear grows. I can feel it as definitely as
my fingers find the line of melody in any of the late-night gin-joints I’ve played
in, in any of the waywardly tuned piano keys I have pressed – a fear so real and so
familiar it feels like a recurring nightmare. Like
déjà vu
. I shake with that
fear, look out into the darkness and it’s there: the past stalking me like a
late-night predator – stealthily, hungrily – coming towards me.

‘Come on,’ Lauren says, pulling
me to her and sensing my unease. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Funny the things you let slip when
you’ve a few drinks inside you.

I’ve been to several funerals in my
time, and at each and every one, no matter how tragic or shocking the loss, there always
comes a moment afterwards when people have had a couple of drinks and the cold grief of
the graveside seems to have been dispelled somewhat by talk, reminiscence, the closeness
of the relatives and friends who remain, the bond that you feel in the aftermath, a
moment when it seems okay, that the grief will be bearable, that life goes on.
It’s like a held breath that is now released. A relaxation that creeps in around
the mourners.

I’m sitting alone in the lounge,
cradling a drink in my hands. Scattered around the room are various groupings of
mourners, as well as other guests at this luxury safari lodge. Outside, the dusk is
gathering over the savannah, night creatures sending out their chatter and calls, their
twilight song. Behind me, a conversation is happening. Julia and the priest are sitting
together and he is talking to her in steady tones, much as he did with me yesterday when
we were in Nairobi and I was a blathering mess. Julia is more held together, but I have
seen a slump come over her in the last hour – tiredness or defeat, I can’t be sure
which. The slightest of slurs in Murphy’s speech gives him away, and he’s
speaking a little too loudly, taking on the dull,
lecturing tone that older men sometimes employ when
they’ve had one too many and rediscover the importance of their own thoughts and
experience.

‘It was the right thing to do,
Julia.’

‘I know, Father.’

‘The right thing. And Luke was always
one for doing the right thing. For setting things straight.’

‘Unfinished business.’

‘Exactly. My point exactly, Julia. It
was unfinished business. He wanted to return to make things right. And I knew it,’
he tells her now. ‘I knew it the moment Sally told me they were
leaving.’

I sit up a little in my seat.

‘I knew that it was not right. For the
boys, for their future. To run away like that. It felt like … like leaving a frayed end
flying in the wind.’

‘They were only children,’ Julia
says.

Her words are a douse of cold water. She
knows.

‘Only children,’ he repeats.
‘I said to Sally that it was a mistake. And to Ken. The night they were leaving I
told him. I said: “You’re only going to make them feel guilty if you take
them away like this.”’ A deadening sigh. ‘Didn’t listen.
Didn’t want to know.’

‘They were scared. It was
natural.’

‘But
I
knew.
I
knew
it wasn’t over. Some things are too big to run from. Some things draw you back. It
could have been different for them, Julia. For those boys. It could have been different
…’

His words drift into a melancholy silence.
But I don’t feel melancholy. I feel alert, more awake and present than I have done
in weeks.

A shadow moves in
the doorway. I see it, and Murphy does too, because he gets to his feet, an awkward,
lumbering movement, and I hear him tell Julia that someone’s waiting for him,
someone he must speak to. I watch him walk towards the door, an old man, tired, drunk,
with a myriad private griefs and troubles.

So he did know. He knew all along. Yet he
lied to me about it, and I can’t figure out why.

My eyes follow him across the room until he
has gone and all that remains of him is the suspicion he has aroused within me.

True to his word, Reilly calls. It’s
late. I sit on the steps to the terrace, the phone pressed to my ear. Light thrown from
the hotel reaches across the gravelled drive to the lawn. Beyond that, the contours of
the trees and bushes become blurred, the gloom turning to darkness. Reilly’s voice
sounds distant, a hush of air between us, like a third party listening.

‘How was it?’ he asks gently,
and I tell him about the gathering by the riverbank, the sun setting, the scattering of
the ashes. I tell him how, afterwards, we had come back to the hotel for a meal that was
silent and subdued, as if we were all laid low with exhaustion and spent emotion.

I’ve left the others in the lounge,
huddled in groups around low tables, the noise growing as the night comes on and the
alcohol does its thing. Nick is at the piano, bent over the keys, slow blues numbers
played with a soft hand an undercurrent to all the talk that surrounds him. He
doesn’t lift his head, his attention on the music, and it crosses my mind that
he’s hiding behind it, playing one
tune after another as a means of protecting himself, keeping
everyone at bay. And I am out here, talking to Reilly, the low chatter of nocturnal
insects rising up from the garden and the plains beyond.

‘Well, it’s over now,’ he
says, and I say, yes, it is.

Straight away, he catches it. ‘What is
it, Katie? You sound strange.’

‘I don’t know. I just expected
to feel different, once it was done.’

‘How so?’

‘Like I would feel some kind of an
ending. Relief, I suppose.’

The air still holds the heaviness of the
day’s heat. It’s there in every indrawn breath. Somewhere out in the
darkness, Luke has returned to the earth.

‘You need to sleep,’ Reilly
suggests. ‘Perhaps in the morning you’ll feel that relief.’

‘Perhaps …’

But I know it isn’t true. For years
now I have been living my life as though what happened to me in Africa was over – a
closed book. Our secret is out there now. There are others who know. Julia. Murphy. Who
else? But also I know that I can no longer look away, that no matter how long I wait,
it’s not going to pass. I knew it from the moment I stood in the glow of the red
sunset, watching Nick open his hand to release his brother onto the breeze.

‘Remember the bird I was
sent?’

‘Of course.’

‘I think whoever sent it is
here.’

I can sense him stiffening, his attention
pricked, and I tell him about the anonymous post slipped under the door
of my hotel room in Nairobi. Pictures of drownings. All
those limbs plastered with wet clothes, chalky-white skin, hair like weed. I leave out
the part about Cora.

‘Jesus,’ he breathes, and I can
picture him sitting there, one hand squeezing his temples. ‘Did you bring them to
the police?’

‘No.’

‘Katie! For God’s sake, this
isn’t a joke!’

‘It’s not that I think
it’s a joke. I am taking it seriously. But I just don’t think that’s
the right avenue to go down. I want to find out myself –’

‘How? What exactly are you planning on
doing?’

I pause, take a breath. The truth is I
don’t have a plan. The truth is that this thing requires something other than
logic or reason. I need to feel my way through it, trust my instincts to lead me to the
truth. I close my eyes, hear Murphy’s voice in my head:
Let him go, girl.
Feel the clawing of suspicion, of something close to dislike.

‘The charity,’ I say to Reilly
now, opening my eyes. ‘ALIVE. Have you had a chance to do some digging?’