Taken Away (19 page)

‘Mister?' I asked quietly. ‘Do you know what's wrong with Dom?'

The old man's eyes widened. He seemed to be considering taking a risk. His fingers worked the brim of his hat.

‘Can you help him?' I whispered. I could feel Dom in the background straining to hear, longing to just cross the last band of sunlight and stand with us. ‘
Mister
,' I insisted, ‘can you help him?'

Then Ma's voice intruded, snapping us from our whispered communion.

‘
Excuse
me?' she said. ‘Can I
help
you?'

It was her special ‘back away from my children' voice. Extremely polite. Extremely cold. A sharp blade of warning cutting across the evening shadows. I groaned inwardly at her tone. We were fifteen years old, and she still thought we were stupid enough to take sweets from a stranger. She was standing at the arch of the back garden wall, Dee peeping out from behind her legs.

The old man's eyes met mine for a moment, and I tried with all my might to pour a message into that brief communication.
She hasn't a clue. For God's sake, don't give us away.
He frowned thoughtfully at me for a fraction of a second, then he turned and gave Ma a smile. It was a radiant smile, a genuine kind of smile that, when aimed at you, said that you were the best thing that had happened all day, that you'd made him happy just by being there.

It gave me a jolt, this wonderful smile. It belted me across the chest like a bang from an electric fence. I knew this man. I knew him very well. I knew his smile, and his dancing eyes. I knew his cheeky, delighted spark of life; the way he embraced friendship and cherished it; the way he never stopped caring.

Who the hell was he?

‘I'm James Hueston,' he said. ‘You're Missus Finnerty?' His voice raised to a question as he extended his hand across the garden wall. ‘I told your husband I might call around to thank your boys for fishing me from the sea.'

She melted instantly, her whole posture softening, her face opening like a flower. God help us, but my ma was an unpredictable woman.

‘Mister
Hueston
! Oh, come on in, please! I've just made tea.' She advanced on us. Dee trailed behind, her fingers jammed into her mouth, firmly attached by one clutching fist to Ma's loose slacks.

Instead of shaking James Hueston by the hand, Ma grasped his wrist and, in one of her impulsive gestures of affection, pulled him forward to kiss his old cheek across the garden wall.

‘Oh goodness,' he chuckled, pleased, and touched his cheek where she'd left a tiny ice-pink SWALK. But when she began to usher him into the garden, he hesitated at the gate and glanced nervously up the side passage, which led to the old biddies' house. ‘Uh,' he said. ‘Well, I'm not sure I should come in, missus. I really just came to . . . '

‘Mister Hueston. I went out and bought an Oxford Lunch in case you called. You're not escaping without a slice.' She shooed and herded and clucked 'til he was crossing the garden and passing into the shade of the house.

Dom had been staring at him this whole time, and when they came level with each other, James Hueston paused and stuck his hand out again. ‘So this is the other one,' he said. ‘Hero number two.'

‘This is Dominick,' Ma said. ‘I assume Patrick already introduced himself?' She looked back over the old man's shoulder and jerked her chin at me.
Get over here!

Dom grabbed the old man's hand and James Hueston gasped and clenched his teeth against the pain of contact. An unexpected clot of raincloud suddenly covered the sunset. The garden was plunged into chilly gloom. The old man let out a low whine of discomfort, but Dom didn't seem to notice and just kept holding on, his face a twist of emotion.

Ma looked at James Hueston in concern. ‘Are you alright?' she asked.

‘Just . . . hah.' He gently extricated himself from Dom's icy grip. ‘Just a touch of rheumatism,' he lied.

He patted Dom's arm, nodding reassuringly and holding eye contact for a moment. Then he allowed Ma to lead him through the arch and under the apple trees.

I came up behind my brother and put my hand between his shoulderblades. Cold snapped up through the fabric of his jumper. My already damaged fingertips sang out; I felt the blood in my wrist slow to a crawl. Still, I kept my hand there, hoping that Dom, wherever he was, would feel my presence.

The wind picked up, sending little ghost-devils of sand skittering past us. All the gold had drained from the air now, and it was cold, rapidly falling into twilight. Dom's back was a mass of trembling tension. ‘I know that man,' he said.

‘We saved him yesterday. You and I –
Dom
– Dom and I. He was trying to drown himself.'

He jerked under my hand, and his shoulders hunched. His head half turned, almost to look at me, then snapped back again to where the old man had followed Ma out of sight.

‘He tried to . . . ? Oh but Lorry, that's a terrible sin.'

Those words coming from Dom's mouth made me snatch my hand from his back, as I was once again slapped with the fact that this was no longer my brother. Dom would never have spoken of sin, except to disparage the idea of it. I hated these moments of clarity. They swallowed me. They stole my breath and my heartbeat from me.

‘You've made a mistake,' he ground out. ‘James Hueston would never do that. He'd never . . . ' His voice was a harsh rasp again, and he was getting a broke-backed hunch to him that alarmed me. I leant around to look into his face.

‘Dom?'

‘I feel so strange, Lorry,' he whispered. ‘My mind feels strange. Like the parts of a magnet that don't want to touch . . . being pushed . . . together . . . '

He groaned, doubling over, and I tried to catch him before he fell down. Small whiffs of vapour rose from my fingers like smoke from a soldering iron. My hands screamed. There was no way I could hold onto him. I let go, and he staggered away from me, heading for the little stone bench that sat under the first apple tree. I bounced about on the balls of my feet, hissing with the pain, my burnt hands shoved under my armpits, my teeth gouging my bottom lip.

Dom managed to sit on the bench and slump back against the trunk of the tree. He released a gasping little sigh and went completely still. Except for the hectic glitter of his eyes, he looked just like a corpse.

‘Hold on,' I cried, stumbling towards him. ‘Hold on.'

I fell to my knees on bitterly cold sand. Ignoring the pain in my hands, I fished another green pill from my pocket and held it to his lips. His eyes met mine. His lips stayed shut, and I realised he was afraid of me. Of course he was; we were complete strangers, thrown together against our will in the worst of conditions. ‘I have no idea if this is okay,' I whispered. ‘I don't know what I'm doing with these. They're not sweets. They might . . . I don't know what they might do.'

We looked at each other for a moment; then he parted his lips slightly and let me slip the pill into his mouth.

‘Can you swallow?'

He shut his eyes and I saw his throat working in jerky, convulsive movements.

I knelt beside him, my knees soaking up the damp.
Where are you, Ma?
I thought.
Why isn't Dad here? Why are we alone?
I watched Dom, his face blank, his eyes closed as he waited for the pill to work.
Ma
, I thought.
What if this were me? Would you see it then? Would you? If something came tomorrow and pushed me aside and stole my face . . . would you notice? Or would you fail me as miserably as you've failed . . .
I bit back on that thought. I bit viciously back and shut it down.

‘I'm sorry.' His voice startled me, the dry whisper of it in the coalescing shadows. ‘I'm sorry that I stole your brother.'

I tried not to let my throat close over at that. I just ground my teeth together and nodded.

‘I didn't mean it. If I could . . . '

‘How do you feel now?' I said harshly.

Before he could answer me, a long shadow cut the warm rectangle of light thrown through the kitchen door, and Dee stepped around the hydrangea bushes. She was ridiculously tiny and solemn, standing there looking at us. She didn't take her eyes from Dom. ‘Mammy said come in.'

I stood, putting myself between them. ‘Alright, Dee. We're coming.'

She maintained her solemn examination of our brother for a moment, lifted her eyes to me, then stepped back behind the bushes. Her shadow shrank and bobbed as she ran inside.

‘Come on,' I said, ‘we need to go back in.'

‘Buy me a minute,' he whispered – an odd expression, but I knew what he meant.

I nodded to him. ‘Don't be long,' I said and went ahead of him.

THE KITCHEN WAS
warm with the smell of tea, the lingering scent of dinner and turf-smoke from the sitting-room fire. Ma had sat James Hueston at the kitchen table and was busy setting out the tea stuff, biscuits, the Oxford Lunch and an ashtray should the old man want a smoke. He sat taking in the shabby surroundings, a strange, rueful look on his face.

As I came through the door, Ma was putting the cosy onto the teapot. ‘You've spent a long time in England, haven't you, Mr Hueston?'

James looked down at his hands, smiling a bit. ‘Oh aye,' he said. ‘Quite a bit of time.' His accent registered with me then. He spoke just like my ma's brother, Gary, who'd left home at seventeen to join the RAF and only ever returned for weddings and for funerals. James had the same warm, rounded burr to his voice.

The radio was playing low in the corner, waiting for the news to come on. Ma was listening for updates on the bus strike, I guess, hoping it would be called off. At that moment, Cat Stevens' gentle voice was telling us that if he ever lost his eyes he'd not have to cry no more. I couldn't bear to sit down, so I went and leant against the Aga, its latent heat a drowsy comfort against the small of my back.

‘Where's your brother?' Ma asked me.

‘We left the gate open. He's gone to shut it.'

It seemed an eternity, but no one else seemed to notice, and finally there he was: Dom-and-not-Dom, staggering up to the door. I tried not to stare as he stood there swaying slightly on the threshold, but I sussed him out from the corner of my eye. He didn't look normal, not by any stretch of the imagination, but at this stage I figured Dom's head would have to be off and tucked under his arm for my ma to notice anything out of the ordinary. He lingered a moment, the stormy twilight a turbulent grey behind him. I thought perhaps he was considering going back outside. Then, out of nowhere, a violent wind ripped through the garden behind him. It raised a flurry of sand, flinging it through the open door, and Dom lurched the rest of the way into the room with it, jerking forward as if he'd been given a shove in the back. We all jumped as the door was ripped from his hand, and slammed shut against the wind.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Ma laughed.

‘Wow,' she said, pushing her windblown hair back off her face. ‘That was some entrance, Dom!'

She twinkled a smile at James Hueston, and he grinned uncertainly at her, his attention drifting to my brother. Dom staggered back a little, his eyes on the firmly closed door. He inadvertently brushed Dee's shoulder, and she squealed and scuttled away as if afraid that he'd touch her again. James Hueston's eyes followed her as she ran around the table, and narrowed when she flung her arms around my waist and buried herself in the folds of my jumper. She turned her head a little so that she could watch Dom out of the corner of her eye.

Bad man,' she whined. ‘

‘Don't be such a weed, Dee,' I murmured, but I pushed her behind me slightly so that I was between her and Dom. Neither of us could take our eyes from him. He was staring fixedly at the door.

Ma crouched by Dee. ‘Oh, puddy!' she said. ‘Don't start that again.' She ruffled Dee's hair. ‘It's just the wind, okay? There's no bad man.'

Dee attached herself like a little suckered creature to Ma's neck. Ma hoisted her into her arms. She raised her head to find James Hueston watching her and gave a tired little roll of her eyes. ‘Dee's been having bad dreams since we got here. It would appear that there's a bad man out to get us all.'

‘Bom,' said Dee, her voice muffled in Ma's shoulder. ‘Bad man gots Bom.'

Dom looked round sharply and we traded a wide-eyed glance.

Ma shook her head and tutted. ‘You're a silly sausage,' she cooed, rubbing Dee's back as she carried her across the room. Dee twined her little hands in the heavy locks of Ma's hair and, when Ma finally got herself seated, curled up on her lap. ‘Me not sausage,' she said, but her heart wasn't in it and her thumb soon crept into her mouth. She wasn't going to be awake for much longer.

Ma kissed the top of her head. ‘You'd better sleep tonight,' she murmured fondly, ‘or I'll throw you in the bin.'