Only We Know (8 page)

She raises my hand to her mouth, places a
kiss on my palm. ‘He’s going to be okay,’ she says.

I shrug, unsure how to answer. ‘I hope
so,’ I say.

‘We’re together, that’s
all that matters,’ she says. ‘Everything will be fine.’

Part of me wants to believe her. Part of me
almost does. But the way she says it, earnest and sincere, makes her seem so hopelessly
young. My twenty-three-year-old bride
is still
brimming with youthful optimism because she hasn’t lived long enough for something
to shake her confidence in the world.

The plane lands to ripples of applause. We
disembark, collect our luggage and find our way through the airport to the taxi
rank.

In the taxi, Lauren talks to the garrulous
driver while, through the window, I watch the city slide by: the mangy pubs, the
foul-smelling butchers, the convenience stores and fast-food joints of my memory. There
are new sights too: Polish grocers, the halal shop and Asian markets. Dublin has changed
in a short time, even if the crooked curve of houses are the same. The hymn the city
hums goes something like ‘Dirty Old Town’. The streets have a familiar
meanness; like an aunt’s kiss, they say, ‘Welcome back.’ The winding
roads and church spires say, ‘We knew you’d be back.’ And so, I
suppose, did I.

We make it to the coast road and I ask the
driver to pull over at the top of the hill. We pay the fare and the taxi takes off.

‘Where’s the house?’
Lauren asks.

When I point towards the bottom where grand
houses cluster near the shore, she looks at me, a question in her eyes.

‘I didn’t feel well,’ I
say. ‘Needed some air.’

We begin to walk. The road is steep. On one
side of the road, houses are dotted along the hill; on the other, the land falls away to
a magnificent stretch of coast. On this sunny morning, the sweep of Dublin Bay sparkles,
its beauty calling out to me in a way that I find painful.

I remember Dad bringing us out here some
Sundays, to
the beach in Killiney, Luke
hanging back to talk to him about the latest rugby results as I ran ahead. There was
something about the coast Dad loved in autumn. Maybe it was the air or the light or just
the lonely pleasure of walking with no real destination in mind. Either way, I wanted to
collect shells and stones on those walks. Dad said something about hearing the ocean
when you held a shell to your ear. ‘And when you hold the right one – you can hear
the waves crashing far off.’

I spent years trying to find the right shell
to hear those waves. Luke, on the other hand, kept talking to Dad about tactics and
transfers. ‘What do you think of …?’ was his insistent refrain. By then, it
seemed he paid me hardly any heed at all – vying as he was for all of Dad’s
attention.

On the way home from those windy walks, Dad
bought us ice-cream at Teddy’s in Dún Laoghaire. ‘Don’t tell your
mother,’ he’d say, even though she never came on those walks and rarely
asked about them. But, still, it was a secret we shared, and it was a bearable one. Some
of the happiest moments of our life after Africa involved standing dumbly on the pier
licking ice-cream, shivering, glad to be around Dad as he hummed old show-tunes to
himself.

I doubt he could have foreseen Luke living
here, Luke going missing. Or me here waiting to hear any news of a brother who is by now
a stranger to me.

Lauren walks on ahead. I can tell from the
way she holds herself that she’s breathing in the sea air gratefully after all
those hours on the plane. At the same time she’s trying to calm herself for the
situation she finds herself in. As we
near the
foot of the hill, where my brother has his home, Lauren slows, then stops, her attention
snagged on something below. I come up behind her.

The beach, pebbled and craggy, is lapped by
the blue-green sea. Three men in luminous yellow jackets walk along it, the intervals
between them wide and evenly spaced, their pace deliberately slow and measured.

Lauren puts out her hand to steady me. She
doesn’t say anything – she doesn’t need to. On this bright morning, we stand
watching the guards conduct their search, sweeping the beach for the presence of a
body.

Julia is standing in the doorway as if she
has been waiting all morning. ‘Nick,’ she says, coming forward with her arms
outstretched. I step into her embrace. She feels so small and insubstantial against me,
as if she is made of air. We hold onto each other for a moment and I feel the heave of
her body as she gulps back tears. When we pull away I notice the dark shadows beneath
her eyes, the kind that no amount of make-up can hide.

‘Why is it that you and I only ever
see each other on sad occasions, Nick?’ she asks, holding both of my hands in
hers. Her smile, for all its bravery, is thin and pained. She is barely holding herself
together.

Lauren is beside me. I make the
introductions and the two women embrace as if they’ve known each other for years.
We follow Julia into the house; a man wearing an earpiece carries our luggage. When she
instructs him to put our suitcases into the spare room, I find myself awkwardly
stammering that we have our own accommodation.

‘What?’ she says, pausing on the
step. ‘Why aren’t you staying here?’

‘I’m
sorry, Julia. We just thought it would be better … We didn’t want to be under your
feet.’

‘But you wouldn’t be.’

‘And we’re only a short
taxi-ride away, if you need us to come out here quickly.’

She bites her lip, her eyes searching my
face, and I can see the fight going on inside her head. My cheeks burn with shame.

‘Of course,’ she says.
‘Whatever you want.’

I can’t help but feel that already
I’ve let her down. Julia leads us through the hallway into the expansive living
area. I glance around at the high ceiling, the wide, cool space. I remember this house
from my mother’s funeral. Today it feels even bigger, more cavernous, than it did
then: an echo chamber of domestically troubled conversations. If it ever had a soul,
it’s gone. There’s no warmth, and the welcome we have received is a
frightened one.

My sister-in-law directs us to the cluster
of sofas and asks if we want tea or coffee; even under such testing circumstances, she
remains the perfect hostess.

‘Julia,’ Lauren says, laying a
hand on her arm, ‘sit down. You must be exhausted.’

Julia turns to me and in her movement there
is the suggestion of defiance and despair. ‘Please,’ Lauren says, her tone
gentle but insistent. ‘Let me make the tea. I’m sure I can find my way
around your kitchen. You two should talk.’

Julia smiles, then sits on the sofa. I sit a
short distance from her while my wife leaves us alone.

‘She’s lovely, Nick.
You’re a lucky man.’

‘How are you holding up?’ I
reach across to her.

Instantly she
crumbles, her defences falling away at my touch. ‘Oh, God, Nick,’ she says,
‘what’s happened to him?’

For a moment, I sit there, my hand resting
on her shoulder, a tremor of fear in my fingers. She leans her head back and opens her
eyes. ‘I just keep expecting the door to open and him to walk in.’ She wipes
the corners of her eyes with her fingers. ‘It’s been three days.’

Three days, I think. What good can come of
this? ‘What do the guards say?’

‘They have a tape,’ she says.
‘A security camera at the end of the road caught him staggering down the street,
disoriented, holding a hand to his head. Then he gets into a car. Now they’re
looking for it and the driver.’

‘A taxi?’ I say.

‘They’re asking so many
questions,’ she says, ‘about the business, money, Luke’s behaviour. I
hardly know what to tell them.’

‘When I spoke to him on the phone the
other night, he sounded a little downbeat.’

She glances at me. ‘Things
haven’t been right with him for a while, Nick. Your mother’s death hit him
hard.’

‘I know,’ I say, my voice almost
a whisper.

‘He’s been very up and down
these past few months.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Mood swings. Erratic
behaviour.’

‘Like?’

‘Well, like that outburst on national
television,’ she says. ‘It seemed to come from nowhere. And there’s
been speculation that it was all calculated, all part of some grand plan to kick-start a
political career, but if it was, then I
never
knew about it. I mean, Luke never expressed any desire to go into politics. Even the
charity, which everyone points to as an example of his social conscience, even that
didn’t have much to do with Luke. It was always Sally’s project. Luke just
provided her with a steer. And when she died and the directorship passed to him, it was
a burden, a nuisance, not some kind of vocation.’

‘What about your man out there?’
I ask, inclining my head. ‘Who’s he?’

‘Gary?’ she asks.
‘That’s more of it. He was Luke’s idea. This paranoia he had that we
needed security, protection. I said to him: “Protection from what? What is it
we’re supposed to be afraid of?” But he wouldn’t tell me. He just
became evasive and moody whenever I pushed him on the subject.’

‘How long has he been here?’

‘Not long. We took him on shortly
after the
Late Late Show
appearance. God knows what I’ll do with him now.
Just him and me in this house – it creeps me out. Are you sure you won’t
stay?’

She’s pleading, which almost makes me
give in. I offer a smile to take the sting out of it.

A hush then, nothing but the far-off sounds
of industry in the kitchen. Then: ‘Did you see the guards out there?’ she
asks quietly. I nod, thinking of the yellow jackets, the deliberate spread of them
moving over the beach.

Julia is twisting a hankie between her
hands. Something drops inside me – with it a shiver of unwanted nostalgia. I want, more
than anything, to get away from this house – this mausoleum – the widow on the couch,
but then the door opens: Lauren is there with a tray. Setting it on the
table, she begins passing around cups and saucers and I
welcome the distraction, seizing my chance. ‘Would you mind if I took a look at
the study?’ I ask.

‘All right,’ Julia agrees,
getting to her feet, but I stop her, telling her I remember where it is.

I leave them, the two women, the clink of
their teacups and their soft conspiratorial whispers echoing behind me.

When I open the door to his study, I feel as
if I’m trespassing. I pause on the threshold, unsure and nervous. The air smells
sterile, as if the place has been scrubbed with an industrial cleaner, all traces of a
struggle erased.

I step into the room, allow the door to
close behind me and, in the quiet dimness, I take it all in: the books, the golf clubs
in the corner. The desk occupying the centre was once my father’s – solid and
mahogany, a stern piece. The armchairs that cluster around the fireplace came from my
parents’ house too, along with the oil painting above the hearth. In fact,
it’s as if this one room has taken on the life, the charm, the personality that
once persisted in our home in the Wicklow hills, a house that has been sold, abandoned,
and is now overrun with weeds and dust. All that remains of it seems to be here in this
room, so utterly out of place in the rest of this house.

At first glance, everything appears normal.
Untouched. But a closer look reveals disturbances. The wall behind the desk is blank
where it had once been filled with framed photographs. In a cabinet is an assortment of
awards – slabs of Perspex engraved with words I haven’t the heart to read; chips
have appeared in a couple, a great fissure passing through another that speaks of an
episode of violence. A chair that had once sat by the desk has been
moved. I peer down at the floor, the heavy pile of the
carpet, and see the mark made by the rub of a soaked cloth. It was here that the blood
must have been.

On the desk lie reams of papers, files
neatly stacked. The room is cluttered, claustrophobic with work, but more than that I
feel something else: a presence.

I remember him here, the day of Mum’s
funeral, sitting behind the desk, a tumbler of whiskey in his hands, watching as I stood
by the fireplace. From beyond the door came the low hum of voices, the house crowded
with mourners. We had escaped for a few moments, and it was to be the only time in that
whole long day that we were alone.

‘So, Nick … what are you going to do
now?’

I felt a familiar nudge of irritation.
‘What do you mean?’

‘With yourself. With your life,’
he said.

Already he was assuming the parental role.
But that wasn’t the only reason for my irritation. Asking me these questions, as
if what I was doing was not real – as if playing music was a pastime, not a career; a
hobby instead of a vocation.

‘Head back to Nairobi, I
suppose,’ I said. I was reverting to a moody teenager, but I couldn’t
stop.

He seemed to sigh, as if I had disappointed
him. He stared at me for a minute, tipped his whiskey down his throat and set the
tumbler firmly on the desk. ‘I think you should know that there’s no money
in the will,’ he said.

I was shocked by the crassness of his
statement.

‘She’s left it all to the
charity. Every penny of it.’

‘I don’t care about the money,
Luke,’ I said, in a low voice.

He caught my eye, my tone, and gave a quick
smile.
‘Yeah, I know. Did you know
she’s made me the sole director?’

‘Oh?’

‘Fucking poisoned chalice.’

‘I thought you’d relish the
opportunity.’

‘Oh, please. I don’t have the
time. It was fine for Mum – she liked nothing better than flitting off to Nairobi to
inspect a new water-pump or whatever. Where am I going to find the time for
that?’

‘Employ someone,’ I said.
‘Have Murphy do it. He’s already involved.’

Something changed in his face then. He grew
quiet, swinging his chair slowly from side to side. ‘He laid it on a bit thick
today, don’t you think? All that talk about Mum and Dad. And did you see him out
there just now?’ he continued, gesturing to the room beyond. ‘Sitting in a
corner getting quietly sozzled, as if he’s about to burst into tears.’