Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (122 page)

“Oh God,” she breathed, the band of grief in her throat winding itself a little tighter, snarling its barbed points through her vocal chords. “Jamie, eventually one of them would have gotten in that car, or if she’d waited a few more minutes to start the ignition, the both of them would have died. It didn’t matter where they were going, because they were never going to get there.”

Jamie didn’t answer, but the hand that held her own gripped a little harder.

A throat cleared itself and they looked up, startled. David Kendall stood before them, worry writ large across his face. His fair hair was rumpled, eyes bleak with fear. Traceries of bruises still stained his skin, and there was a scar near his hairline that hadn’t been there a few short weeks ago.

“Is he hurt?”

Pamela extended a hand to him and squeezed his fingers. “Not seriously no, but Sylvie—”

“I know, I heard at the barracks.”

“It’s perhaps a little risky for you to be here,” Jamie said, and Pamela turned at the tone. He was exchanging an odd look with David that seemed full of unspoken disapproval. David’s face flushed red.

“I had to know if he was alright.”

Jamie nodded, but she could still sense that something wasn’t right. He seemed angry.

“I suppose,” he said, relenting a little, “Pat could use all the friends he has right now.”

“I’ll take you in if you’d like to see him,” Pamela offered. “He’s with the doctors right now, but we can go back in a few more minutes.”

David shook his head, hazel eyes sliding away from her own. “No, I won’t bother him just now, I’ll wait until... I’ll just wait,” he finished helplessly. He looked at Pamela again. “Would it be alright if I called you, to check on his progress?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, “I’ll be in touch, and if there’s any change you’ll let me know?”

“I’ll make sure you know right away, if you leave me a number where you can be reached.” He scribbled a number on the back of a scrap of paper that she found in her pocket for him. Jamie remained silent throughout this exchange, though his disapproval was palpable in the air.

“You weren’t exactly friendly,” she said, as David disappeared down the long corridor. “He has a right to worry.”

“I just think you need to keep your distance, he’s British Army, and not regular channel Army either, if you take my meaning. I don’t want to be here visiting you, or worse still burying you.”

“You’re not saying that Pat’s friendship with David had anything to do with the bomb, are you?”

Jamie sighed. “No, but look at it realistically, Pamela, befriending a British soldier isn’t looked upon kindly in this city, in fact it’s tantamount to suicide. I don’t know what possessed him.”

“They were meant to be friends, for whatever reason. Sometimes people are just fated that way. Even in Belfast.”

“In Belfast,” Jamie said, “your friends can get you killed.”

She looked at him sharply. “You just said you didn’t think he had anything to do with Sylvie being killed.”

Jamie rubbed his eyes, the vertical crease like a cut on his forehead. “I don’t know, Pamela, you throw a pebble in a pond five months past, and the damn wave can sweep you from the shore today. That’s how this country works.”

“No one can look down the road every time they as much as say hello to someone. Casey couldn’t have known, when he was a teenager, how his friendship with Robin would end.” She realized the mistake of the words the instant they left her tongue.

“Indeed,” Jamie said quietly, “and just how
did
that friendship end?”

“In death.”

“By Casey’s hand?”

“No,” she said, “Robin wanted that, but Casey found he couldn’t and so Robin did it himself.”

“More’s the pity,” Jamie said. His face was still, but a flicker of something very much like hatred stirred in his eyes.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because in the future, I think Casey may regret not killing the man by his own hand. Some wounds don’t heal well unless cauterized first.”

“Jamie, you’re scaring me.”

“Don’t listen to me, I’m rambling.”

With the tremor of panic had come another swift and engulfing wave of nausea. She bent down, attempting to put her head between her knees. The direct result of this was to make the room swing wildly as a pendulum in front of her.

“You need to lie down,” Jamie said briskly. She could see he was glad to have even the smallest of tasks to occupy him, however briefly, and so did not have the heart to tell him that she didn’t think she could possibly rest.

To her surprise, however, once an empty room was located and she lay down on the clean, starchy sheets, exhaustion overtook her. It was only a few minutes before she felt herself drifting, like an autumn leaf borne down through dark and chill winter air.

“Jamie.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“You won’t be,” he replied softly.

SHE AWOKE SOMETIME IN THE WEE HOURS. The lights were off and the door partially shut.

“Jamie?”

“Right here,” he said.

“How’s Pat?”

“He’s resting now; they gave him a mild sedative and are monitoring him closely. How are you feeling?”

“Alright,” she said, “the nausea is gone for now.”

She sat up. Jamie stood by the window, his reflection pale against the glass. His hair was rumpled, shirt half untucked, eyes red-rimmed. It was the first time she’d seen him thus. Defeat and grief had altered the line of him, so that he seemed both terribly young and old at the same time.

The noises of the hospital were distant, as though a layer of cotton lay between them and the world out there where the swiftly padding feet of nurses were ever bent on errands of mercy. Where alarms cried and ambulances—wailing—came and went.

She heard Jamie mumur to himself an old poem about the fevered gods of war, taking both maiden and king, without regard to their station. She knew he spoke not for the sake of her ears, but more to his own grief and to the events his mind was trying to make some sort of sense of.

“Do you think that’s what took Sylvie’s’ life, war?”

“Yes. To paraphrase a countrywoman of yours—the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time with the wrong enemy, and yet, nevertheless, a war.”

“I wish it would end,” she said, “I can’t make sense of any of it anymore. But I’m not sure anyone here would be comfortable with peace, or know how to make a life without constant pain.”

“Who would we Irish be, without our unending little war, what would we have left to make us feel special?” His tone was bitter and weary, that of a man who has tried and failed times beyond counting.

“I wish we’d never come back. I feel somehow if we hadn’t Sylvie would still be alive.”

“I wish you hadn’t either,” Jamie said, “but not for the same reasons. Things would have spiraled out of control for Pat and Sylvie regardless, but for your own sake, I wish you’d stayed away. Though I suppose such a wish makes me a dreadful hypocrite.”

“Why?”

“Because I rather made certain that you married the one man who would always come back to this country, didn’t I? This damnable, demon-haunted land. This is the country of my heart, and yet I don’t see how I can continue to live here.”

She understood his meaning, for it
was
a demon-haunted country, laden with spirits—those of failure, those of war and bloodshed and all that they left behind. And then there were the ghosts that were more personal—people you’d known in passing, and those you believed you would know forever. Last, there were the ghosts of one’s own heart—the lost children, the never forgotten lover, the husband who could not forgive you.

“There are ghosts everywhere, Jamie.”

“Yes, but only some do we call our own.”

“And what are we to do with all those ghosts?”

He turned from the window, eyes a heavy glass green.

“We take them with us.”

ON EITHER SIDE OF PAT, Pamela and Jamie stood, two sentries guarding against an invisible enemy, backbones stiff against the rain. She could feel it running down her spine where it had leaked inside her collar. Pat seemed oblivious to it, face immobile, dark eyes blank as if he’d drawn into a far place inside from which he’d no wish to emerge. Shock? She didn’t know. Pat wasn’t an easy read at the best of times and since Sylvie’s death he’d said very little, only gone about doing what needed doing with a fierce determination that told her he was holding onto his sanity through sheer dogged will power.

Jamie, as always, exuded a calm dignity, though she knew his show of strength was purely for Pat’s sake. This had devastated him in a way few would suspect.

She wondered with a part of her mind that seemed to exist separately if Casey had received word, if he knew by newspaper or television what had happened to Sylvie. He musn’t know or he’d be here, and that meant either he wasn’t reading papers or watching the television, or that he’d left the country entirely.

David Kendall stood to her left, blond hair combed smoothly in place, glancing at Pat now and again, though never enough to appear unseemly. He was hopelessly British, but exemplified all that was right with England and had displayed a courage of tempered steel in daring to come today. It was possible, the political climate being what it was, that he was risking his very life by being here. She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow and he gave her a quick smile of gratitude.

Father Jim, now saying the
Rite of Committal
, was bareheaded, brown hair flying wild in the wind, voice ringing through the rain like a deep, clear bell.

Wherefore my heart is glad, and my spirit rejoiceth;
my flesh also shall rest in hope.
Thou shalt show me the path of life;
in thy presence is the fullness of joy,
and at thy right hand there is pleasure for evermore.

She could not quite believe that Sylvie wouldn’t slip up any minute, squeezing in beside Pat, flyaway blonde hair tamed by the rain, apologizing breathlessly for her tardiness. She bit hard on the inside of her cheek; she would not cry, Pat needed her strength, not her tears. She closed her eyes for a minute, taking a breath to calm the grief that was clawing its way relentlessly up the back of her throat. And felt Casey’s presence there as surely as if he’d touched her. Her eyes snapped open and certain enough, there he was, a dark, windswept figure in a navy overcoat, face thinner than it had been three weeks ago, eyes as dark as she’d ever known them.

She had to bite back a cry of welcome, even through grief and the dull miasma of shock, everything in her pulled toward him. He was looking at her steadily, face unreadable, though there was no hint of the softness his expression habitually wore around her.

She flinched as the first clod of earth hit Sylvie’s coffin, breaking the gaze Casey had locked her in, feeling as though someone had stabbed her repeatedly in the area of her heart. Father Jim was speaking.

“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our sister Sylvie; and we commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make his face to shine upon her and be gracious unto her, the Lord lift up his countenance upon her and give her peace. Amen.”

Pat stood, mud still clinging to his hand, and Father Jim began the closing words.

“The Lord be with you.”

Like the good Catholic children they all were, they responded with the all too familiar words, “And with thy spirit.”

Father Jim bowed his head, a tremor in the strong bulge of his Adam’s apple.

“Let us pray.” Together they all prayed the final communal words that would be spoken over Sylvie.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.

Suddenly she became aware David had laid his hand over hers, and that Father Jim was speaking the words that would dismiss the mourners.

“
The God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant: Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight; through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.”

People were moving away from the grave. Pat was nodding mechanically as mourners filed past and offered their last words of comfort.

She turned to Pat, painfully aware of Casey at her back. She squeezed Pat’s hand, and was rewarded by a small flicker of his mouth. His hand, however, was slack and unresponsive. She left the graveside and David, offering her his arm, walked her to the edge of the path that ran up toward to cemetery gate.

Father Jim’s words of comfort for Pat floated toward her, mixed with rain and the scent of hothouse flowers.