Only We Know (33 page)

‘You shouldn’t have sent those
birds,’ Murphy goes on. ‘It was not what I wanted.’

‘Oh, I know.’ Sarcasm makes his
voice heavy. ‘You were happy to sit in your little room, feeding your anger with
whiskey and thinking of all the wrongs done to you. Luke, the boss-man, doesn’t
trust you with his money. Your woman left you because she loves her boys more than she
loves you. Please,’ he says, his dry lips cracking into a grin of disgust,
‘you talk about pain but you don’t know what it is. None of you
do.’

Eyes flashing around at all of us.

‘So I do what you are too yellow to
do. I send those birds. Put them in a package and send them. Pictures of
drownings too. I send them a message, make
them scared. Dead birds don’t sing. Taste a little of what Mackenzie has gone
through.’

‘You took care to cover your
tracks,’ I say, and he turns at the sound of challenge in my voice. ‘The
English stamps.’

‘I couldn’t make it too easy for
you, could I?’ There is a hint of humour in his eyes, as if some part of him is
enjoying this. ‘So I sent the package to my friend in England. He found your
address and sent it on.’

Throughout this exchange, Nick’s face
has kept his eyes fixed on the river. But now he turns back and I see that his
expression has changed. All this information is coming at him too quickly. Confusion
slips away to be replaced by horror. He addresses Murphy. ‘You and my
mother?’

‘Yes, Nick. I loved her,’ Murphy
says simply. ‘I loved her with all of my heart. And she loved me.’

‘No,’ he says, shaking his
head.

But Murphy goes on: ‘She was going to
leave your father. We were going to be together, but then …’ He lets out a
sigh.

‘But then it happened,’ I say,
finishing his sentence for him. ‘Did you really think she would go with you? That
she would choose you over her own children?’

He offers me the weakest of smiles. ‘A
foolish dream. That’s all.’

I can feel Nick looking at me, and when I
turn to him, his face has darkened, something twisting inside him.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘You knew about them?’ he asks.
‘You knew about him and my mother?’

‘Your mother!’ Mackenzie
exclaims. ‘Don’t talk to us
about your mother!’ The way he says the word makes it
sound like an obscenity.

Nick is not listening to him. Instead, he is
staring hard at me, an unspoken accusation of betrayal, an accusation that confuses
me.

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘We all
did. Even you.’

‘What?’ he says, as he reels
backwards.

‘You don’t remember?’

‘What are you talking
about?’

‘When we were here before as kids?
What Luke told you in the tent that night? You really don’t remember?’

I know the answer from the blankness of his
expression. He could be a small boy again, the way he stands with that dazed look on his
face.

‘When we were coming down here the
first time,’ I begin, ‘all those years ago, don’t you remember how
sulky Luke was? So quiet and withdrawn?’

That’s the first thing I remember of
it: Luke’s sourness in the van during that long, difficult journey. For three
days, he kept it up, staring glassy-eyed out of the window during the safari, refusing
to react at the sighting of lions, elephants or hippos.

‘It drove your parents crazy. All
through those days we spent here, he didn’t speak to your mother – he would hardly
even look at her. Your father lost the plot with him one day. You really don’t
remember?’

He is staring at me wide-eyed, utterly
bewildered. I can feel Mackenzie’s growing impatience. He holds the gun in two
hands now. Still I go on.

‘On the last night, we were in our
tent, the three of us, supposed to be asleep, but really we were eavesdropping,
spying on the adults. They had gathered
around the campfire. Your father had a guitar and he took it out, began playing some
fast-tempo folksong, lots of yelping and rude lyrics. Your mother got up and began to
dance.’

I remember it so clearly, the sway of Sally
Yates’s hips, the curving line of her body caught in the light of the campfire,
the glow of her cheeks and the private look that came over her face as if she were
dancing for herself alone and not for anyone else’s pleasure. I was mesmerized. I
must have said something then, some breathy and admiring comment, something foolish,
because Luke snorted. ‘Her?’ he said, his lip pulled back in a sneer.
‘She’s a slut.’

That word hit me like a slap to the face. To
hear him say it about his own mother. But before I could react, Nick had sprung upon his
brother, sitting on his chest, catching Luke’s neck in the vice-like grip of his
knees. ‘Take it back!’ he shouted. ‘Take it back, or I’ll kill
you!’

They scuffled for a few minutes, pulling and
kicking and screaming at each other, until their dad came into the tent and dragged them
apart. Two mutinous boys, refusing to say what they’d been fighting about.

When he had gone, the three of us got into
our sleeping bags. I turned my face away and tried to sleep. But in the quiet of the
dark, I heard Luke whispering to his brother, and even though I couldn’t hear the
words, I knew what he was saying. I had seen Sally Yates with the man in her bedroom. I
fell asleep that night to the sounds of the crickets clicking in the dark and of a small
boy weeping.

‘You really can’t
remember?’ I ask Nick, but he’s moving backwards, his hand going up to his
head, and I can’t tell if
this is
because the memory is leaking back to him, or if he is reeling from the blow to his
head.

‘Nick,’ Murphy says, and goes
towards him, but Nick shakes his head violently.

‘Stay away from me,’ he says,
his voice low, but the threat is within it.

‘I’m sorry, Nick. I truly am.
That’s what this day is about. It’s about atonement. I’ve paid for my
sins for a lifetime now,’ he says, his voice cracking.

As Murphy moves towards him, Nick takes a
step forward and strikes him cleanly in the jaw with his right fist. Murphy reels
backwards, stumbling over the rocks, loses his footing, then slips and falls into the
water, his face white with shock.

Nick is breathing heavily, for all the world
as if he’s going to wade into the river just to strike him again. But he
doesn’t.

A noise behind us, the switching sound of a
bullet sliding into the chamber. I turn to see Mackenzie, the butt of the gun hard
against his shoulder, one eye closed, the other staring down the barrel of the gun.
Lauren holds her hands to her mouth. Nick straightens slowly, raising his hands in
surrender. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Please don’t shoot.’

Mackenzie says nothing, just stares at
him.

My heart is beating hard now. This is when
it starts, I think. Everything stills in this moment. A tremor in Nick’s hands,
his fear palpable.

‘What do you want from me?’ he
asks then.

A simple answer: ‘Your
confession.’

The gun is held in place, ready to fire.

‘It was a game,’ Nick stammers.
‘It was just a game. A stupid game that went wrong.’

He pauses, waits for
some reaction, and Mack’s voice, cool and dry: ‘More.’

‘Okay. Okay,’ Nick says, his
voice quivering, something wild in his eyes. ‘Four of us in the water – two teams.
Whichever team stayed under longer was the winner. We played for ages – until my lungs
hurt and there was a pain in my head, like my skull was too tight. I wanted to stop, but
Luke wouldn’t have it. He had to win, you see. He always had to win.’

A hush has come over the trees and the
water. Murphy glances at me, sees the pain in my face. I am straining towards Nick,
every fibre of my being fixed on the words coming out of his mouth.

‘I was so tired. I wanted to stop, but
Luke …’ He trails off, and I can tell he is back there on that day, the trees
closing in around him.

‘More!’ Mack commands, his voice
snapping Nick out of it.

When he continues he sounds rattled and
scared. He is telling us now how the teams were paired up – Nick with the younger
sister, Amy, Luke with Cora – and I am on the riverbank, the others waist deep in the
water, hands gripped tightly, that wild intake of breath before the sudden plunge. I
think of those pairings, and something jars. I look closely at Nick.

‘I told him I’d had enough, that
I wanted to go back to the camp. “One more go,” he said, “just one
more, and then we’re quits.”’

Lauren has her arms crossed, listening
intently to the words spoken about Cora – the sister she never knew. And as he tells the
story, Nick’s voice grows more forceful. He
is propelled by something inside him to keep going to the
end.

‘That time – that last time – when I
came up for air, I could see her hand waving. Cora’s hand. She was still under. He
was holding her down. He always had to win, you see?’

His voice breaks, and I feel a great sadness
coming over us, pouring down through the trees, emerging from the murky waters of the
river.

It’s not just sadness I feel, but a
growing frustration – it builds within me, frustration that is fast becoming a kind of
anger.

‘He held her down and I did
nothing,’ he says again. ‘I was so tired, and I didn’t realize … I
watched my brother as he killed that girl and I did nothing, and for that, I am truly
and profoundly –’

‘No!’ I shout. The word
ricochets off the trees.

My hand is covering my mouth, but it’s
too late. They are all looking at me now as I feel the words swelling inside me.

‘I need to do this, Katie,’ Nick
tells me. ‘I have to make this right.’

‘No, Nick! Just stop! Christ, would
you just stop? All these years, all this time, and still you persist with this?’ I
put my hands to my head, feel the pain there, made worse by Nick’s stare, blank
and infuriating.

‘I’m telling the truth,’
he says.

‘No!’ I say again, lower, more
serious, my hands in fists by my sides. ‘Oh, God, you don’t know, do you?
You really don’t remember.’

Nick stops. Murphy raises his head and looks
at the sky, sees the clouds scudding high above us. Lauren and
Mackenzie, both watchful and still. And she is here too:
Cora. Her ghostly presence high in the trees above, waiting.

‘Luke was with Amy,’ I say.

Lauren looks at me sharply.

‘I was sitting on the bank,’ I
go on. ‘I sat there and watched. I saw you, Nick. You were with Cora.’

‘No,’ he says quietly, and there
is a tug of resistance, an understandable reluctance to face the stark, cold truth.

‘Luke didn’t kill that girl. He
didn’t hold her under. It was you, Nick,’ I say softly. ‘It was
you.’

I want it to stop. All of it. The wave of
words coming at me, followed by another and another, an endless series of crashing
waves, filling my ears with their bass roar.

Katie opens her mouth and they come tumbling
out at me –
it was you, it was you, it was you
– and I want it only to
stop.

‘All these years, you’ve
persisted with this version of events,’ she says. ‘And I, like a fool, went
along with it because I cared for you, Nick. At some level I understood that this was
what you needed to do to cope. But now I see how wrong that was. A massive
mistake.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I
ask her, bewildered and afraid.

She’s talking now of a time when we
were students, some rare occasion when we spoke of what we had done that summer, and how
startled she was by the account I’d given, the shock it had triggered within
her.

‘You’re not a bad person, Nick.
You have a good heart, I know. But you were a child. And you were so upset that day. I
suppose I’ve blamed Luke, and your mother, and him,’ she says, glancing at
Murphy, but I can’t bring myself to look at him, or the others. Instead I stand
stock still, hardly blinking, waiting for the terrible pressure in my head to ease.

‘But the truth is we’re all to
blame for what happened
that day,’
Katie says, her hands held out, talking to me, but to Lauren too, wanting to share
something with her of what happened to her half-sister.

‘But, Nick, it wasn’t an
accident. It wasn’t part of the game. It was your anger that did it. An anger she
tapped into, not knowing how raw you were, how shocked to the bone over what Luke had
told you. She didn’t know it. She was an innocent. It was frightening to watch and
frightening to remember, but you have to try, Nicky – you have to try to remember –
because the anger that came out of you that day, it killed a little girl.’

I have a strange feeling of vertigo, as if
the world is tilting, as if I’m back in the water, my footing unsure as the
riverbed sways and pulls away from underneath me. I need to anchor myself, find a way of
rooting my thoughts, saving myself from this dizzying doubt. Instinctively, I look to
Murphy.

He stands at the edge of things, thin,
withered, shoulders slumped in weariness or defeat. Mack, beside him, is a panther
waiting to pounce, the shot-gun an extension of his arm, while Lauren looks at me with
pity in her eyes. All four of them, expectant.

I try to remember, but it’s so dark in
the river, the water murky with the mud stirred up by our presence in it. Hidden rocks
slippery beneath my feet. The shock of movement, the feathery brush of something against
my ankle – a fish or some water-borne creature nipping at my heels.

I can see Luke standing with his hands on
his hips, shoulders squared, his desire to win pulsing through the water. And that girl
– her square face pale under the trees,
a
spray of freckles on her upper arms, hair in bunches that made her seem younger than she
was, her nose wrinkling as she grinned – mischief in her laughing look, mischief that
masked the vacancy in her understanding.

Still it’s all so unclear. Was she
standing beside Luke? The grin she gave me – her stuttering laugh. I remember it with a
sudden push of irritation.