The Boy That Never Was (18 page)

‘What happened?’

She bit her lip and looked down at the place mat she had begun fiddling with.

‘Mum?’

Cold plunged through to the pit of my stomach.

‘He told your father … he said to tell you that he was sorry. That whatever else happens, he wanted you to know that.’

I turned from her then and ran out into the hall. Her car keys were hanging by the door, and I snatched them as I walked past.

‘Robin, don’t do this …’

‘I’m not going to do anything,’ I said, trying to sound calm, trying to sound like a woman who was in control of things, although we were well past that now. ‘Please, don’t worry.’

That was the last thing I said to her as I headed out the door.

I drove in a daze, feeling light-headed and dizzy. The snow hurt my eyes. There was a hole in my stomach, and my head was blurry from lack of sleep. I drew the car up in front of our house. There was no sign of the van. I stared at the front door from behind the steering wheel. What waited for me inside?

The first thing I noticed was the cold. The fire had gone out, and the heating had been off since the previous evening, and the last of the warmth seeped away as I closed the door behind myself. I kept my coat on as I pushed the kitchen door open and saw saucepans piled up by the sink, upturned glasses on the draining board. The light had been left on all night, and its sibilant hum echoed and bounced off the cold, hard surfaces.

In the dining room, things were exactly as we had left them. There were bowls of half-eaten trifle, glasses of wine waiting to be drunk, cold coffee in espresso cups, cream turning sour in the jug, napkins bunched and left lying on the table. A fork rested on the side of a plate as if whoever had been sitting there had just popped out of the room for a minute.

I took each room in turn, and with every door I opened, I felt myself holding my breath, not knowing what I would find, fearing the worst. When the last room had been checked, I came back to the dining room, feeling myself grow calm again. For a moment, I stood there, taking it all in, trying to feel relief, or at least some resolve – the push
of determination to clear up this mess, to get on with things, to sort myself out.

Instead, I sat down on one of the dining-room chairs and listened to the house around me. The tickings and creakings. Dust drifted through the air. This house was old, and full of memories. I listened hard and tried to be still, straining to feel some trace of the past, of the people who had once occupied these rooms, of my grandmother and grandfather, some whispery echo of their voices. The air smelled empty. Harry had not been home. I wondered where he was. He seemed entirely remote from me now, cut off, falling through his own crazy universe.

His laptop was on the table, right where he had left it. Looking at it now, I recalled the vigour and spark of his actions the day before, how excited he had seemed as he’d scanned through those grainy images, how triumphant his response on finding the right one, and how hurt and off ended and indignant he had become when I’d refused to see what he saw, when I’d denied what seemed so blatantly obvious to him. Casually, half-heartedly, I reached for the laptop and drew it towards me. I turned it on and waited for it to hum to life. The DVD popped out of the drive and I pushed it back in and waited for it to reload. Absently, more out of a half-formed curiosity than anything else, I began to flick through it, trying to summon from memory where he had paused, what part of this recording held his fascination. I fiddled with it for a few minutes, telling myself that I was crazy, that I was as bad as Harry, and yet I felt myself getting sucked in.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough to grow cold. Long enough for the battery to run out. I got up and turned on the heat. I made myself a mug of tea. I looked at the dishes stacked by the sink and told myself to get
cracking on them. But instead, I found the cord for the laptop, plugged it in and kept looking.

I don’t know why I did that. Some need to understand, I suppose. Some need to connect with Harry, to find a reason to explain his behaviour. Maybe I was grasping at straws in some pathetic bid to prove to myself that he was not crazy, that there could be a simple explanation to all this. But in my heart, I knew I was fooling myself.

The DVD was long and mind-numbingly boring. I skipped through it, fast-forwarding and pausing. I wondered how much of this Harry had sat through – all of it? A picture formed of him in my head, huddled in the cold concrete space of his studio, his eyes growing red and squinty with fatigue as he scanned through these images, watchful of the door in case I made an appearance, furtively seeking the boy, whoever he was, who had so captured his imagination. The thought depressed me enough to want to stop looking.

But just before I gave up, I found the image. A boy of about eight or nine, walking hand in hand with a woman, presumably his mother, both of them stopping and getting into a car. The image was grainy, and when I paused it to examine the boy closely, I found it impossible to see any real likeness, so poor was the quality. It was a blanked-out face. It could have been anyone.

I sat back and folded my arms. I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers into the sockets. The house was warmer now, and I thought I would go upstairs and sleep.

But when I opened my eyes and again saw that image, something came to me. Something I had not considered before. I sat forward suddenly. I looked at the boy. I looked at the woman. There was a question in my head, the possibility of something so remote. My stomach gave an answering lurch, and immediately I got to my feet.

I half-ran to the kitchen. My heart was pounding now, blood thundering in my ears. The number was in my phone, and once I had pulled it from my handbag, I scrolled hurriedly through the address book until I found it. My hands shook as I dialled and waited for a response.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me. It’s Robin.’

A pause. A hesitation.

‘Robin. Are you okay?’

‘I’m sorry for calling you like this – out of the blue. But …’

‘What is it?’

‘I’m … Listen, I want to ask you something.’

‘Okay?’

‘When we met, the other day, you said you’d been in Ireland for a while. How long?’

Again the hesitation.

‘A few weeks,’ he said slowly. ‘We came just before Halloween –’

‘Do you remember the march? The protest against the austerity measures in the budget? It was back at the end of November.’

‘Sure. I remember it.’

‘You weren’t, by any chance, at that march, were you?’

Sweat had formed on my upper lip, and I tasted the saltiness of it now as I waited for his answer.

‘No.’

I closed my eyes. Breathed out a sigh.

‘That is, I wasn’t at the march,’ he said, as if to clarify. ‘But I was in town that day. Eva was visiting her mom at the hospital. I went to pick her up.’

Tightness clenched around my heart.

‘Oh, no.’

‘Why? What is it?’

‘Harry,’ I said. ‘Harry was there. He saw her. He saw her with a boy.’

I heard his breath draw in quickly.

‘Fuck.’

‘The boy’s age, the likeness … He’s jumped to a conclusion. I need to see you,’ I said then. ‘Tell me where you are.’

‘Robin, just hang on …’

‘This can’t wait. I need to get to you before Harry does. Now please, tell me where you are.’

A porch light threw the man’s shadow on to the gravel before me. I could hear a lighter unlatch and fire. Then I heard the crackling hush of a cigarette as it burned and was inhaled.

Crouching to one side of the car, I stayed as still as I could, a stinging pain starting in my thigh muscle. With one hand, I reached down and felt the rip in my jeans and the smarting pain of a flesh wound. My hand came away wet with blood. It must have happened when I jumped the fence. Wincing, I tried to keep the wound clear of the ground. The effort of staying still was exhausting; every inch of me strained toward this man, this stranger, exhaling a solitary plume of smoke into the night sky. Someone must have called out to him from within the house, for he turned and answered, ‘Just getting the fireworks from the car.’

Fuck, I thought, panicking as I heard the car door creak open. Without thinking, I threw myself on to the snow and rolled underneath the car. I held my breath. Staring up at the shadowy undercarriage, I strained to hear the voice again. It had a familiar ring – a self-assured tone, the accent a curious mixture of places. I knew the voice, or it was recognizable to me at least, but I couldn’t place it. I thought of Cozimo and what he had said.
Very unlikely. But not impossible.
In a way, his words had carried me here.

A woman came to the porch. I could make out her outline only. It resembled that of the woman I had seen on O’Connell Street. ‘Find them, Dave?’ she asked.

‘Got them. It’s freezing out here. Go back inside.’ The man’s voice again; I knew it. But from where?

The creak of springs above me, and then his feet on the gravel beside me. Brown hiking boots. I let out a silent breath and held it again, as if I were underwater. I tried not to move a muscle.

The light from the porch went as far as the car, but beneath it I remained in shadow. I let out another silent breath and inhaled the dank smell of rust and oil.

‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked.

‘Gimme one sec,’ she said, disappearing into the house, and panic rose up inside me while the man leaned against the car, his feet crossed at the ankles, waiting.

A wave of nausea came over me. What was I going to do when he started the car? I opened my eyes to see if there was anything on the undercarriage that I could hang on to if the car did move. There wasn’t. The exhaust was old and rusty. Maybe I could just lie still and pray the fucker wouldn’t drive over me.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. Maybe I should just step out and confront them right now? But I hadn’t formulated a plan. Before I did anything, I wanted to see Dillon. I didn’t know whether I was going to take him or talk to him or what. I needed to think, but there was no time. The man, Dave, who was he? I’d known Daves, and at some time, I knew that voice, but no, I couldn’t be sure. He had sat down into the driver’s seat and was turning the key in the ignition. I closed my eyes and braced myself.

But then, as the engine hummed above me, I felt the undercarriage lift again, and saw the man’s feet emerge. I watched those feet walk away through the snow, back to the house. I didn’t watch for long. No sooner were his feet out of the range of my vision than I shuffled out from
beneath the car and hid among the fir trees that lined the driveway.

Crouching beneath the dense boughs, I let out a sigh of relief. Still no sign of Dillon, but at least I had not been seen. I waited for my breathing to slow, trying to collect myself. My mind was all over the place. I reached into my pocket. Thank fuck I had remembered to stash the flask of whiskey. Left pocket: whiskey. Right pocket: gun.

The silence was interrupted by the chirruping of my phone. The damn thing nearly gave me a heart attack. I fumbled to silence it and saw the caller ID. Spencer. Shit! One way or another, he seemed determined to get me killed. I peeked out through the bushes, but there was no sign of either the man or the woman. Then my phone lit up with a text.

‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

Rich, coming from him. But that thought died as I watched the front door open again. The man stood in the doorway, smoking another cigarette. He had a hood pulled over his head, so I couldn’t make out his features. His shoulders seemed square within his jacket, and he held his body tensely, like a boxer. He finished his cigarette, tossed the butt aside, walked to the car, its engine still running, and sat into the driver’s seat. The woman locked the front door, hurried down the steps and operated the gate. There was no sign of the boy. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or crushed.

I waited until the red taillights had disappeared down the blackened driveway. I gave it a couple of minutes more, just to be sure they were not returning. At first, when I went to move, nothing happened. I thought I had been paralysed. I tried to move again, and this time I managed to slowly crawl from the undergrowth. I was stiff and aching. I stood up carefully. The cold felt like it had seeped into my bones. I
took one step and then another. Gradually, sensation returned to my legs. Then I crossed to the house. All the lights were out. I was enveloped in the thick black cloth of darkness you find only deep in the countryside. There was no sound of a television and no voices.

I walked around the house. It was a small, ivy-clad cottage, with maybe two or three bedrooms. I tried peeking through the windows, but all the curtains were pulled. I saw nothing but the pale moonlit outline of my own frightened face.

My feet crunched on the gravel. The gravel yielded and carried me around the cottage. I thought about getting in, wandering about, tiptoeing through someone else’s life. I went to the back door and reached for the handle, and the door creaked open. For a moment I stood stock-still. There was no movement from within the house. I stepped in and felt for a light switch and found one, then flipped it. There was nothing unusual about the kitchen – other than the fact that it looked like a couple had been in the middle of dinner and had left suddenly. Plates with half-finished food lay on the wooden kitchen table. A bottle of wine stood uncorked. Chairs were pulled out.

In a room adjoining the kitchen, a number of canvases leaned against the wall. The first paintings I inspected were bright, garish abstract things. I flicked through the work, which seemed to be a catalogue of fads and fashions in contemporary art. There was nothing real or original in there – that is, until I stumbled upon a large canvas. My breath quickened when I saw it because the thing was, it was one of mine.

I remembered making this painting like I had painted it only yesterday, in fresh and running watercolours, confident, strident strokes full of the vibrant, pulsating light of Tangier. But more important than the context was the subject: it was the first painting I had ever done of Dillon. He must have
been only six months old. I had no memory of selling this painting, no recollection of parting with it, and as I contemplated how it had arrived here, at this most unexpected place, something moved within my chest, the shifting of my understanding, and it came to me at once who Dave was.

We had never known him by his first name, if what he went by back then was indeed his name at all. But the low intonation, the self-satisfied inflection – it all spoke of one person. I knew then that it was Garrick, the American in Tangier, the miracle man, the man with a Christmas tree in the desert, the poet, the painter, the dilettante, and that he was living in Ireland, with this woman and Dillon. I felt suddenly weak. My stomach heaved. I was weary, worn and exhausted. I remembered again the photo in Cozimo’s flat: me, Robin, Cozimo, Simo, Garrick and Raul. Cozimo saying,
There were things I knew which perhaps I should have told you.

I walked about the house, a dread fear rising within me. Down the hallway I went, tripping into one room and then another. I was a reckless visitor, an intruder really, a shivering man in search of his son. And after all these years, down one dead end and then another, moving through back streets, through alleyways and lanes, through tears, prevarications, bitter arguments, hospital appointments and Christmas dinners, here we were; here I was, walking through a stranger’s house at night.

It did not seem the kind of house Garrick would live in; it had none of his style. Besides: what was he doing in Ireland in the first place?

The last room I came to, at the end of the corridor, was Dillon’s. I just knew it. It was a small, rectangular room. There was no furniture but for a small single bed and a chair in the corner. Some books lay beside the bed. On the floor a box of toys was turned over, and clothes were scattered on
the chair. I walked into the room and felt a strange quiver run through my body. I was overcome with exhaustion.

I climbed into the bed and covered myself with the Spider-Man duvet.

The bedroom was flooded with an otherworldly moonlight. I took the gun from my pocket and placed its cold steel beneath my shirt, on my chest. How cold, how comforting. More comforting than I would have imagined. I felt it sink into my skin. I felt it imprint itself, tattooing itself into my being. It was heavy, and with the rising and falling of my chest it seemed to almost become a part of me.

I felt myself drifting. Instead, I took a long drink of whiskey, let it course through my veins. It didn’t give me the energy I wanted. It sent me in the other direction. It sent me to sleep, the deep stone of the gun weighing on my heart. Before I dropped off to sleep, I made one last call to Cozimo. Was he my last friend? The last friend I had in the world? How I missed him then. The phone seemed to ring more slowly than it might have in real time. This didn’t seem to be real time. This was something else.

A woman answered. ‘Yes?’

‘Cozimo?’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Harry for Coz.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘When will he be back?’

‘He …’

‘Who is this? Is this Maya?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want to speak to my friend.’

But I knew it before she even said it. I knew it from the pause on the line – that tiny silence, the blood in my ears rushing in to fill the space.

‘Harry, I’m sorry. Cozimo is gone.’

I couldn’t speak, pushed to the very edge of something dark and consuming.

‘He passed earlier tonight.’

I’m not sure what else she said or what I said. The darkness thickened. My mind was fading or breaking apart, like a meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere. Or something, I don’t know. It was all coming apart, reaching an ending. With Cozimo gone, I felt the last vestiges of my happiness in Tangier trickle away. I had never been more estranged from what I thought was my life. Cozimo, dear friend, how could you take your leave of me now?

Outside, the stars shone bright, brighter in the countryside than the city. The silence of the night had a texture to it. I could touch it. I could sink into it. My arms and legs felt like dead weight, and they brought me down gently, gradually, like heavy anchors to the bottom of a dream-sleep sea.

It was strange, though. I knew my son was here. Or did I? I had not seen him. I had no idea what to do. I may have pretended not to have expected this moment, this time, this day, but there was something in me, from day one, from before I had even met Robin, my beloved Robin, something from before that suggested yes, he is here, alive, waiting, ready for me, always.

I sank my head into his pillow and inhaled. I dreamed of Garrick painting my portrait.
Keep still
, he is telling me.
Keep still. Now hold it.
I am caught by his gaze, caught in it, held there, suspended, paralysed like some wild animal in a cage – and then I am a panther pacing. Keep still, he warns. At one moment, he is raising the paintbrush; at another, he is pointing a gun. Will he fire? And then suddenly, it is Spencer who is aiming the gun at me, painting me, and then as quickly it is Dillon, ablaze. He has a deep and serious voice.
Not his voice; it’s the voice of a thwarted older man. It is Jim’s voice. And there is Cozimo holding his two hands to me, intoning the words ‘It’s so good to see you.’ The dream spins and whirrs and takes me deeper into the dark and questioning caverns of my mind or some other place I cannot even name.

I emerge, still in sleep, at some other place, some other time. Tangier, of course. Our old bedroom. The curtains are blowing in the breeze. The sky is a burnished blue. The buildings are chipped and flaking, falling apart. The sun loves me here, but the afternoon is not for walking. The afternoon in Tangier can be bedtime. With Robin. Robin, my love. In my arms again. Then. When we made love, I closed my eyes. Open them, she said to me. Brave, brazen Robin. Look into my eyes. Open them. And I did and I would lose myself there. Into the deep oval greyness of her mysterious eyes. And we would move this way and that, shadowing each other, knowing where and how, as if we were following directions, but it was intuitive, it was natural, and then I would move deeper inside her and she would hold me in her gaze, and bite me and twist and turn, and we moved like that, as if we knew every move there was, and still she held me in her gaze, but I could not hold hers, and before our lovemaking ended I would close my eyes and travel, it seemed into another galaxy, travelling at speed through space and time, and Robin would grip me tighter and release me and let out the sigh that said both pleasure but disappointment too, because I had not managed to keep my eyes open. And she would drape her arms over me and chastise me.
You didn’t keep them open
, she would say, gulping for air, laughing, inhaling the entire world. That’s how it felt back then, but for that one time, the night we made Dillon.

Outside there was rain. I remember the coolness it brought with it, a temporary coolness. That night, I knew we had
done something, made something, someone. In those years, we seemed to have all the time in the world to make love. And after Dillon, in Ireland, it had gone, all that sensuousness, all that passion. My dream avoided the dullness of Dublin and tunnelled through to its own Tangier heart, the hot and heavy days when our mouths sought each other out and our tongues were insatiable. It was the kind of intimacy that felt like nourishment. And in the afternoon, lazily out of bed, we drank mint tea, and later in the evening, we left the city for where the roads were lined with trees and sunflowers.