Only We Know (36 page)

‘I was afraid,’ she said,
sitting down on the bed now, knowing it couldn’t be avoided any longer.

‘Of what?’

Her brow furrowed with consternation, and I
saw her struggle, for a moment, with her thoughts.

‘I felt so strongly about you. Even
then, I knew you’d had something to do with Cora’s death. And to know this
thing about you – that you were there when Cora was killed – it was so huge, so
difficult to fathom. And I didn’t want to believe it – I really
didn’t,’ she said. ‘I knew it was true but I persuaded myself that it
didn’t matter. That what happened was in the past – that you were only a boy then,
too young to know or be motivated by any real malice.’ She steadied herself.
‘I told myself it had happened so long ago – before I was even born – that
what’s done is done. I made a decision that I was going to try not to let the past
get between us.’

I nodded and
remained standing, but inside I was starting to collapse.

‘It’s late,’ she said
then. ‘I’d better go.’

I watched her get to her feet, pull her bag
to her and zip it closed. Something in me rose against her leaving and I had to stop
myself barricading the door, refusing to let her go. But I knew she had moved on and I
couldn’t blame her.

She leaned in and kissed me briefly on the
cheek – not the mouth – and it seemed dismissive, somehow final. Then she passed me, and
before she reached the stairs, she stopped at the piano, touched the lid.
‘It’s closed,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you playing?’

‘No.’

‘But why not?’

How to explain it? That my hands no longer
worked – that I no longer trusted them? That since they had been the conduit of the
memory in the river that day, they had seemed filled with brackish water, lifeless.
Sometimes I caught myself looking down at them as if they were not my own. The hands
that had taken the life of a young girl.

But I didn’t say any of that to
Lauren, although I think somehow she understood.

‘Take care of yourself, Nick,’
she said, then descended the stairs and left.

Karl finishes his coffee and places the cup
on the table:

‘Let’s go out tonight,’ he
says, looking at his watch. ‘I have to go now, but I’ll stop by at, say,
seven thirty. It’ll be good to get out.’

It’s not a question and, despite my
reluctance, I know he’ll insist.

‘Goodbye, my
friend,’ I say.

He grins at me. ‘See you
later.’

It was Karl who finally tracked Murphy down
to a small hospice outside the city, during those first weeks when I was barely holding
it together.

‘How did you find him?’ I asked
Karl.

‘Persistence,’ he replied.

I took down the address from Karl, fired up
the motorbike and drove to where the graffiti spreads like wildfire.

‘Father,’ I said, entering the
small yellow-tinted, acrid-smelling ward.

He was lying on a narrow bed, his head
propped on a pillow, a thin white sheet covering his shrunken, skeletal frame. His eyes
were half open, sunk deep into his skull. ‘Nick,’ he said. ‘Nick, you
came.’

‘You didn’t make it easy,’
I said, sitting down on the wicker chair next to the bed.

‘I’m so sorry, Nick. I
didn’t want to cause anyone any more trouble.’

‘No trouble, Father.’

‘There’s not long for me now,
Nick,’ he said, in a frail whisper.

‘I want to thank you,’ I
said.

Instead of answering, he waved a hand.

‘You saved my life, Father. By the
river. I thought he was going to pull the trigger.’

‘I think you called me an iconoclast
once.’

‘But not an arms-carrying
one.’

He smiled faintly. ‘Funny the things
you do. Things you
never expect of yourself.
Perhaps God has a sense of humour after all.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘It was something a friend gave me
after the office was broken into one time. A small pistol for security reasons. For
show, really. I never kept the thing loaded,’ he said, breathing heavily.
‘I’m not even sure why I took it with me to the Masai Mara. But that day
something told me I should.’

‘You had no idea you would have to use
it?’

‘No,’ he croaked.

I remembered his hand trembling, the pistol
wavering as he took aim and told Mack to put his own gun down.

‘My fear was that I would have to pull
the trigger …’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘It was enough to have the gun,’
he said, looking past me. ‘It turned him away.’

‘Enough to scare him, yes,’ I
said. ‘It was a brave thing to do, Father.’

‘Call me Jim.’

‘I’m very grateful,
Jim.’

My mind turned again to that day, and the
moment when Mack looked at Murphy, the pistol held tightly in his shaking hand, the slow
spread of a smile crossing Mack’s face – the sight of a priest with a gun
ridiculous to him. He gave a hollow laugh, and realized, perhaps, that he could never
exact his revenge, because I was not Sally. I was just a substitute – a poor one at that
– and killing me would not satisfy his desire for justice. He lowered the shotgun and
turned away from us, the rain coming down heavily, hitting the trees and the surface of
the river, pelting the land and all who stood there. I saw the defeated slump in his
shoulders, the fight gone out of him. One
last look back at us, water streaming over his face, before he disappeared into the
trees. I never saw him again.

Murphy coughed and reached for a glass of
water.

‘Let me,’ I said. I picked up
the glass and offered it to his parched lips. He sipped a little water, some of which
dribbled onto his chin.

I took a napkin from his bedside table and
wiped his mouth gently. He breathed in deeply and sank further into the bed.

‘I don’t have much
energy,’ he said.

I took his hand in mine and we sat there for
a time, neither of us saying anything, the ceiling fan turning in steady revolutions as
the traffic streamed by outside.

‘May I ask for your forgiveness,
Nicholas?’ he asked.

‘What for, Jim?’

‘For any pain I’ve caused you
over the years.’

I didn’t need to say anything.
Murphy’s eyes closed, and when he had fallen asleep, I left. It was later that
night when I got the call to say he had passed away.

Another funeral. This time in a cemetery
next to the hospice: me and Karl, dozens of locals from Kianda, clergy and aid workers
gathered with the hospice staff to say farewell to Father Murphy.

In the months that follow, life falls into
a pattern. I go to the office every day, sifting through documents, trying to understand
the accounting nightmare, negotiating with the banks, attempting to bring calm and order
to the situation. It does not come naturally to me, this line of business, but I can dig
my heels in and be diligent when I
have to,
and something deep within me is driving me to do this.

When I am alone in the office, and the
street outside has fallen quiet, I sometimes catch myself engrossed in these lists of
figures, and it comes as such a surprise to me, that I wonder what my father would make
of me now. Dad, the prudent accountant, and me, his renegade son. I can’t even
call myself a musician any more. The piano lid remains closed.

I find that, as the days go on, a sense of
nervous excitement builds within me in the hope that Lauren might call. And she does –
every so often. Our relationship has changed and there is a maturity to it, in the sense
that we are no longer wide-eyed innocents. But, still, I have to be realistic. Lauren is
back in America. A reconciliation is unlikely, and I wish her well, though I find it
hard to let go.

One day shortly before the start of the
rainy season, Julia rings. It’s been a long time since I heard her voice, but I
recognize it. The Dublin accent, the mellow tones.

‘It’s good to hear you,’ I
say.

‘And you.’ Her voice is quieter,
calmer than before, suggesting she has accepted Luke’s death and is in the process
of moving on. ‘I thought you’d like to know,’ she says, ‘that
the house – your parents’ home – is finally going to be demolished.’

‘Oh.’ The news takes me by
surprise.

‘The builder went bust, as you
know,’ she explains. ‘The bank has sold it on to another
developer.’

‘When?’

‘I understand that the sale has
already gone through and
planning permission
has been applied for. The word is that the bulldozers will be in before the
summer.’

‘I’ll have to come over,’
I say instinctively.

I hear her draw breath in surprise, and the
truth is, I’ve surprised myself.

‘Are you sure you want to?’ she
asks gently. ‘That house holds so many memories – good and bad.’

‘I think I need to, Julia.’

And so I make the arrangements, book the
flights, and find myself, once again, in the chill climate that is Dublin.

Everything is familiar. And everything is
different. I feel older returning. I know I am, but this time I feel much older. As if
my youth has passed me by. I may not be middle-aged, but my youth is gone. It’s
not just the lines about my eyes, or the way the clothes hang on my body, it’s the
slight stiffness that has grown into my joints, the weariness of my movements.

Before I go to the house, there is someone I
must meet.

At a café on Dawson Street, she is waiting
for me. I see her at the back, her chin resting on her hand, the ghost of a smile on her
face as she watches me negotiating tables and waiters wearing long linen aprons. When I
finally reach her, she gets to her feet and, without saying anything, I hold my arms
open for her and feel her come into my embrace. For a moment, I just hold her there, my
eyes closed, thinking: This is what it feels like to come home.

She pulls back to look at me.
‘Nick,’ she says happily.

‘It’s good to see you,
Kay.’

As I take my seat opposite, my eyes pass
over her and notice the changes. She seems stronger somehow, as if she’s been
working out, making herself fit. The shadows
under her eyes have faded and youth has come back to her
face. She’s cut her hair short, a cropped bob that skims the line of her jaw, and
its sharpness suits her, sitting well with the crisp white shirt she wears, the minimal
jewellery. I take in these changes, and wonder if there’s a new love in her life.
But I don’t ask.

Instead we talk about the house that’s
to be demolished, and when I skirt around her questions as to how I feel about it, she
takes the hint and backs off.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘I’m at Julia’s,’ I
say, and watch her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. ‘I know, I know, but what can I
say? She offered, and I’m broke after the flights, so …’ She laughs, and I
go on, serious now: ‘Besides, it felt like the right thing to do.’

‘And how is Julia?’

‘She’s okay. Still upset
obviously, but better than I expected.’

In fact, Julia has been something of a
revelation. She has surprised everyone with the way she has taken on Luke’s
business debts, tackling his arrears, battling tooth and nail against repossession.

‘So what about you?’ I ask.
‘What about your shining career?’

She rolls her eyes and looks down at her
cup. It’s coffee today – not a whiff of alcohol between us – and judging by
Katie’s fresh-faced appearance, my guess is that lately she’s cleaned up her
life. Not once in the hour we spend together does she duck outside for a smoke.

‘It’s fine,’ she says, and
heaves a dramatic sigh. Then, flashing me a smile, she says: ‘I’m working on
a – a little sideline.’

‘Oh?’

‘A book about
the financial crisis.’

‘Really?’

She shrugs, then grins. ‘Everyone else
is doing it. I figured I’d throw my hat into the ring.’

She says it casually, but I can tell that
she’s excited about her book, enlivened by it.

For the rest of the time, we talk around the
edges of what happened – I tell her about Murphy, about the work in Kianda, what
I’m doing now.

‘And Mackenzie?’ she asks.

‘There’s neither sight nor sound
of him. Perhaps he’s gone back to his own village.’

She considers what I have said, looks at me
with concern and says, ‘But aren’t you afraid he’ll come back and seek
you out?’

I think back to those fearful eyes, the
hesitant retreat of the man, his pride broken, his anger misdirected, his disappointment
evident in the way he carried himself away from us that day … how he skulked off into
the wilderness. And so I say, with little reservation: ‘No, I don’t think
Mackenzie will be coming back.’

It seems that neither of us can bring
ourselves to discuss what actually happened by the river. Nonetheless, an understanding
has crept into our conversation – the sense that we have forgiven each other, even if we
aren’t all the way to forgiving ourselves.

As the hour draws to a close, and Katie
looks at her watch, I realize I probably won’t see her again – not for a very long
time – and despite the joy I have felt in her company during this brief visit, or maybe
because of it, I can’t help the wave of sadness that surges over me as she
prepares to leave.

‘Have you
heard from Lauren?’ she asks.

It’s a question I’ve been
waiting for. Only the other day, Lauren had rung me and there was a nervous urgency to
her words. She wanted to know how I’d feel about her coming back to Nairobi. She
said where she was just didn’t seem like home. What did I think? Was it a crazy
idea?

I had tried to remain calm. I had tried not
to read too much into what she might have been suggesting. So what I told her was this:
‘I don’t think it’s a crazy idea, Lauren. Not at all.’

But I’m not ready to discuss the
possibility of a reconciliation between Lauren and me, not with Katie, not yet.

‘We’ve been in touch from time
to time,’ I say. ‘We’re still talking …’ I leave it at that and
my tone suggests, I think, that that’s as far as I want to go with it.