He Is Mine and I Have No Other Page 9

  I was working on the stage scenery and was sick to the back teeth of seeing them snogging backstage. They weren’t exactly discreet – they didn’t care who saw them. Every opportunity they got, her in her ballet skirt, him in his green tights. They’d gone all the way, apparently. The whole school seemed to know about it.

  She was becoming like all the other girls – enveloped in a thick fog of fag smoke, cheap talk and soap operas. Not light as air like I was with knowing I had found the love of my life. Not made up of glass splinters reflecting the light, like I was. I’d no need to daydream anymore, even. I could will myself into a trance-like state where I embodied Leon. I took on his form, and he mine.

  One of the days, after rehearsal, Mar was there outside the school with her actor-friends, smoking away. I didn’t look over at them – they were from the year above, most of those girls, and they hadn’t said two words to me since we’d started rehearsals except to tell me if I’d done something wrong or to boss me about. I could feel all of them looking at me, though. I made my eyes go all yolky round the edges so all I could see was the door to the school ahead of me.

  ‘How’s your Addams Family freak?’ one called after me, the others humming the theme tune.

  Shrieks of laughter followed me down the pale green corridor, with its white and dark-blue tiles and eggy smells from the science labs. The laughter sounded further away than it really was. I could do that special thing with my hearing as well, so that everything went fuzzy round the edges, like I was sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool. Only afterwards I’d get a high-pitched ringing in them, which I couldn’t make go away. It carried on for most of that day.

  The girls were up on the desks in the classroom, with their skirts rolled up round their thighs, their blouses tied in knots round their waists, swaggering up and down a makeshift catwalk.

  ‘Get up here, you,’ someone shouted at me. ‘It’s a slag competition!’ and she pulled her skirt a little further up, snaking her hips.

  I turned round, flung up my skirt and flashed my well-covered backside, which rose whoops from the girls. It was easier to do that than nothing. Josephine was sitting crimsonly at the front of the room – her and some of the quieter girls – pretending to look for something in her bag by her feet. Then Mar came in behind me, jumped up on one of the desks and started to undress, very slowly. The girls roared with laughter and excitement, and started shouting. ‘Get your kit off! Show us your tits! Strip! Strip! Strip!’

  Mr Davis walked in. ‘What’s gotten into you, Marjorie Halpern?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Mar said, climbing down off the desk and buttoning up her blouse slowly and seductively, biting her lower lip as she did so, and all the time looking him right in the eye, which gave all the other girls time to get back to their seats.

  He blushed. ‘Enough of this nonsense now.’

  The room smelled of something strange.

  Outside later, Mar came at me with a bag of white flour. It caught me hard on the shoulder blade and burst all over my clothes. I wasn’t supposed to get upset, it was supposed to be for laughs, all the girls were doing it, what was wrong with me. But I couldn’t stop myself from crying.

  I slumped onto the footpath. Mar sat down beside me.

  ‘I’m sorry. Christ. Since when did you get so touchy?’

  She wasn’t helping.

  ‘Look, Lane, I’m sorry, okay? But you’ve been acting really weird lately.’

  ‘Yeah, well, my dog just died.’

  ‘Blue? Why didn’t you say?’

  Her telling me that she’d had at least three cats killed on the road wasn’t any use. You couldn’t compare Blue with some mangy old cats from off her farm.

  ‘What were those girls on about earlier?’ I sniffed.

  ‘Oh, they were just trying to be funny. About Leon. You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know.’

  ‘You know. About his father.’

  ‘No!’ I shouted, snot bubbling from my nose. ‘What are you talking about?’

  A man had killed his wife. Years ago. When we were kids. Remember? A man had killed his wife. And the man was home. He wasn’t locked up. He was home, looking after his son. It was all over the papers. And it was all people talked about for years. And didn’t I remember? Didn’t I know? I must have known. She thought I knew. And all the girls at school thought I knew. And they were all laughing at me. He lived with his psycho father. And wouldn’t my parents have talked about it? Someone should have told me. She should have told me. He should have. Why was I the only one? Killed her one night. It was all over the papers.

  I slapped her hard in the face.

  ‘You’re sick,’ was all she said, before getting up and walking off and leaving me there alone.

  I puked behind the shed, wiped my mouth on my sleeve, and went to biology class.

  Sylvia sneered at me as I went to sit down in the only free seat left, next to her, and Mar elbowed her in the ribs and whispered at her to keep her gob shut.

  ‘Are you okay, Lani?’ the teacher asked.

  ‘I’m fine, Miss,’ I said, resenting her for drawing attention to me.

  ‘Right. Well, today we’re talking about photosynthesis.’ She tapped her chalk on the blackboard.

  I was having to gulp really hard to stop the tears from coming, but I couldn’t stop them.

  I ran from the class.

  No one came after me.

  I found Leon’s father’s number in the phone book. Stephen Brady, his name was. I knew Leon was still at school, but I wanted to hear his father’s voice. The phone rang for a long time. I was just about to put it down when he answered. He spoke very quietly, almost inaudibly.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, could I speak to Leon please?’ My voice was shaking a little.

  He hesitated, inhaled deeply, said something indecipherable under his breath.

  ‘That boy isn’t here. I don’t know where he is. He never is—’

  ‘He never is?’

  ‘He’s outside, I think. He’s gone somewhere.’

  ‘Can you tell him I called?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll tell him.’

  I waited for him to ask who I was, but he didn’t.

  ‘I’m Lani.’

  ‘Does he know who you are?’

  ‘Yes, he does. My name’s Lani Devine.’

  He hung up.

  I tried to call Leon’s school, but no one answered.

  I tried to write to him, but I just ended up writing his name over and over again until the paper was scratched through.

  The last day before the holidays we were ushered to confession in the old convent part of the school. There was a special room there that smelled of cabbage and incense and old carpet. As usual I told the priest it was two months since my last confession, that I had not loved God, etcetera, and then asked him if it was okay to love someone who had committed a mortal sin.

  ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself,’ he answered.

  ‘But what if thy neighbour’s a murdering—’ I stopped myself.

  ‘He who casts the first stone . . .’ he went on.

  He wasn’t listening.

  He said mass after that, and we all filed up for communion. He placed the wafer on my tongue, then his hand on my forehead, very slowly, as if I was the chosen one or something. At the end of mass we sang ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ out of tune.

  The girls were acting all stupid backstage that night. It was like they didn’t see me when they looked at me. Some of them even smiled. But it wasn’t at me. More like their reflection in my eyes.

  Mr Breslin was running around like a blue-arsed fly. ‘Where in God’s name is my Peter Pan?’

  I was having to do some of the make-up because the girls were too nervous. It was hard to make them stay still while I plastered their faces with gloopy stage paint. Mar was fidgeting up and down on the spot, like she was warming up before a race. Eoin swaggered in late, looking all cool.

  ‘Hi,
Lani,’ he said, speaking to me for the first time. ‘Leon’s here.’

  I felt sick to my stomach. I peered out at the audience. Leon was sitting two rows behind my parents.

  The whole time I was standing behind the curtains, opening and closing them for different scenes, I watched him. He didn’t look any different, now I knew. He didn’t look anything, except maybe a little amused. It occurred to me that maybe he was just as cold and calculating as his father.

  He came backstage afterwards, clapped Eoin on the back, told him he looked like a right ponce in his girlie tights, and the two of them laughed. I’d never seen him like that before. Then he walked over to me.

  I didn’t move.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he said. ‘It’s only me. Have you got stage fright?’

  ‘I don’t want you anywhere near me,’ I said, my throat going all tight.

  He didn’t say anything. He just turned and walked away, with everyone there watching.

  I had no idea that was what would come out of my mouth. It was like someone else had spoken.

  I couldn’t sleep that night.

  The next day I went to the library in town after school and found the story in the local newspaper archive, 27 December 1983:

  TRAGIC DEATH OF WOMAN IN CROGHER

  A young woman from Crogher has died from multiple stab wounds, leaving her family devastated and a community in shock. She was rushed to the General Hospital late on Christmas Day. It is believed that her husband alerted the Gardaí. She was declared dead upon arrival. The Gardaí do not wish to comment at this stage, pending further investigation.

  There was another account in the same paper a week later, along with a picture of a blue-eyed, blonde-haired beauty queen – that’s what she looked like. She was younger in the picture than she would have been when she was killed, maybe twenty only. She was smiling.

  HUSBAND HELD OVER WIFE’S DEATH

  Stephen Brady has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of his wife, Hermione Brady, late on Christmas Day. Stephen and Hermione Brady had been married for eight years, and had one child together. People in the community are shocked. One man commented: ‘Stephen Brady was a sound man. I never heard a bad word said against him, and I worked with him for many years.’ Mr Brady has worked at the bank in Crogher for over twenty years. He met his wife when she first moved there from England, and they married shortly afterwards.

  Teachers and neighbours alike were unanimous in their praise of the family. Of their son, one teacher commented, ‘He’s a happy, bright boy.’ ‘There was never a bother on him,’ another said. According to one neighbour, Mrs Brady was ‘a lovely, cheerful girl’.

  Mr Brady is said to have given himself up to the Gardaí on the same night. He is currently being held in the county station.

  I don’t know how long I stayed staring at those articles, and at that picture. Her, smiling. She had a small mouth, I remember thinking, small teeth. And a high forehead and expressive eyes, as if there was nothing she could possibly have to hide. I searched for a likeness to Leon. It was there – in that certain way her head was tilted, the flare of the nostrils – subtle as anything, but it was there. I folded the papers away, put them back on the shelf and walked quickly out of the library.

  I went straight up to the graveyard that evening, and to Hermione’s grave. It was freezing cold – too cold to hang around for long – but I was there long enough to say some kind of prayer for her, and to tell her I would look after Leon. Then I went home and wrote a note to him. ‘I love you,’ is what it said, ‘and I’m sorry.’

  That night I dreamt I was in a dirty bed. The sheets and pillowcases were a greyish-yellow, and thrown over them was an oil sheet, like I’d had as a child. I didn’t have any clothes on and it was cold. A large man, larger than I’d ever seen in real life, crawled into the bed beside me. He was very familiar. I knew him: I’m not sure how, it might have been the smell of him. He pushed me down into the bed – down, down.

  It went on for a long time, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. When he was gone I floated up off the bed. I was floating, looking down, and I could see blood on the sheets. My stomach hurt. I woke early in the morning with cramp.

  Aisling, 11

  I eat the chickens’ food sometimes. I’m always starving. Worse than all the other girls. Denise says it’s because I grow so quick. I’m only eleven but I’m taller than her, and she is twelve. I grow out of my dresses really fast but I have to wear them anyway with the sleeves biting into my armpits. It’s hard to breathe sometimes they get so tight. I bring tea up to Peter in the garden sometimes and he gives me a tomato, or a handful of raspberries if they’re ripe. Sometimes even a carrot. Carrots can make you see in the dark if you eat enough of them. When no one is looking I go to where they put the scraps for the chickens and I pick out the best bits. Carrot and turnip skins are the best. But sometimes I’ll have potato peelings as well, if there is nothing else. I scrape the dirt off them and keep them for the night and eat them in bed. If it’s a nice taste, like carrot or turnip, I’ll suck on it for a while before I eat it.

  Denise thinks I don’t know what’s going on with her and Mother Assumpta but I do. I’m not thick. Denise says I am too quiet but I’m not. I just don’t want to get in trouble. I like it when it’s the nuns’ retreat and we have to be quiet for a whole three days before Christmas. All you can hear is the babies crying because you can’t make them quiet like you can the bigger girls.

  I am in charge of the toilets for the small girls. I have to make sure they don’t make any mess. If they do I get in trouble so I am very strict with them.

  Denise doesn’t remember her parents but I remember mine. My mammy was the prettiest woman I ever seen. She had blue eyes and blonde hair and she used to make me cakes all the time. I don’t know what happened her.

  There is this townie girl who brings in rhubarb and sugar to school and gives it to me and some of the other girls. I think her mother must be like mine. We don’t show the teacher or we would get in trouble. We sneak it outside in the yard when the girls are playing hoop.

  I get a pain in my tummy sometimes when I eat the potato skins but not the rhubarb. It is delicious. And sometimes I get a pain that goes all the way from my tummy to my neck. It is because I am growing too fast. I am being stretched. It feels like there is a big hole in the middle that is always empty.

  We had Mary and Paddy over for drinks that Christmas Eve, as we always did. Mam made mulled wine and laid the mince pies out on paper doilies on china plates. Mam wasn’t feeling too well so they had to go home early. I stayed up watching telly with Gran. She fell asleep with her wine glass tilted in her hand.

  Christmas morning I was up early so I could help get the dinner ready. Dad lit a fire in the front room with damp mossy logs that hissed in the grate. The house smelled of hot fruit and pine needles. We brought Mam breakfast in bed.

  It was Dad’s birthday, but he never liked any fuss, so it was no different that year from any other. We just gave him a card and a silk tie, same as he always got. He opened it sitting on the bed while Mam picked at her food.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. ‘Thanks, Lani,’ he said, stretching over to me on the other side of the bed and kissing me too.

  By early afternoon everyone was sat in front of the television in paper hats. We’d been to half-eleven mass, visited the Reillys for drinks, exchanged gifts by the tree in the front room, and eaten our overcooked roast turkey. Its skin was chewier than it should have been, and the dark meat around the legs tore from the bones in strips. We didn’t go in for all the frills that year, what with Mam being under the weather.

  I crept out the back door, put some holly on Blue’s grave and headed up to the cemetery. I was sure Leon would be there. I wanted to see him more than anything.

  I walked to the top of the graveyard and, minding not to tear my clothes, climbed through a small hole in the white
thorn hedge that Blue used to use and crouched down. It was bitterly cold and starting to sleet. The field was empty, which I was glad of: cows frightened me when they got too close.

  I could see clear enough through the tangle of weed and thorn.

  I didn’t ever doubt that he would come just then, just as I wanted him to. I waited long enough that my knees were starting to ache and my hands and wrists were hurting from the cold, when I heard the familiar crunch of car wheels on the gravel in the car park. But it wasn’t Leon. My ears were stinging. The car pulled away and I was out through the hole in the hedge and about to ramble down the path, just to stretch my limbs for a minute, when I heard another car sweeping over the stones. I scrambled back to the ditch, ducking so I wouldn’t be seen, and scraped through again, ripping tiny slivers of skin on the thorns. It barely hurt, my hands were that numb, but I could see little threads of blood along my thumb on one hand, and from thumb to wrist on the other.

  It was sleeting heavily then. I didn’t have a hat or a hood, but I couldn’t leave.

  It was them, Leon and his father. They walked to the grave. His father’s body seemed to cave in on itself, and Leon put one arm under his to support him. He had an umbrella in his other hand, which he held more over the father than himself. Leon looked up suddenly, in my direction, and my foot slipped as I ducked a little further, though I knew there was no way he could see me. Maybe he expected to. He was taller than his father, broader across the shoulders. He looked strong beside him, more handsome than I remembered, with his face beaded in water and wisps of hair sticking to his skin. I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to let go of that wicked old man and come to me. I didn’t like that man touching him.

  The hem of my coat was smeared with mud, and my hair was soaked right through. Water was seeping into the collar of my blouse and down my back. I skulked along the hedgerow to the back of the Reillys’ garden, and Mrs Sheridan’s beside them, and turned down the tractor trail that led to the road, opposite our house. I’m still not sure what I was going to do. I might have thought that I could walk around and meet them just as they were coming away from the grave. And then what, I don’t know. My shoes squelched in the pocked grass. Mrs Sheridan stood in her kitchen looking out through a little porthole she’d rubbed in the steamed window. She was probably saving the scraps of her leftover Christmas dinner in Tupperware boxes for the next day. Mam’s pudding would be in the microwave. I didn’t know whether to wave or not. I chose to walk on, pretending I hadn’t seen her.