Masters of the House (15 page)

But it would clearly take time. Later, toward one, when his mother asked him to stay for Sunday dinner, he began shuffling again and declined.

“But there's plenty for all,” Auntie Connie said. “Annie bought in a lovely, big joint.”

“We were going to have it cold on Monday,” said Annie. “But we'd be happy if you stayed. There's some sausages we can have tomorrow.”

“No, I'll not stop. There's a lot needs doing at home before I go back on the rigs. Good-bye for now.”

And he shot off.

After dinner the young ones went outside again, and the other three could talk. It was necessary to decide how to organise the house and who was to sleep where.

“It's a mercy it's a good, big house with four bedrooms,” said Mrs O'Keefe.

“Aunt Lucy inherited it from her parents,” said Matthew, who remembered her best. “Dad was her nearest relative, and she and Mum were very close.”

“It's a blessing your dad's settled himself in the smallest bedroom, too.”

“He wouldn't go into the big one, not after Mum's death.”

“Is that right? It would be upsetting, of course. Well, what if I have the big one, and Jamie's little bed in there with me? Then Matthew and Gregory can have the second and Annie the third.”

Matthew opened his mouth to protest, but she said, “A growing girl of Annie's age needs a room to herself. I'd stay downstairs, only there really has to be a quiet room where you can do your homework. We'll try and wean the young ones from too much television, but there's no way we can stop them making a bit of noise.”

Matthew and Annie thought it over and then nodded. The arrangement was the best they could come to in the circumstances. Mrs O'Keefe stood up.

“I'll fetch your father's tray. I'm trying to get him used to me before the doctor comes tomorrow.”

The doctor's visit was something of a nightmare to Matthew. When they talked it over in 1993, he said to Annie, sitting in the big armchair he had gradually grown into as the man of the house, “I didn't take in a thing at school that day. I was sure I was going to be blamed. I was sure he was going to say Dad was like that because we didn't get help for him.”

“Even if he'd thought that, he'd never have said it,” said Annie. “He's a kind man, is Dr Maclennan. He's always been good to us. Like coming this morning without being called in. There's not many doctors make home calls at all these days unless they're on call for emergencies.”

“He has a lot of respect for Auntie Connie.”

“Of course he does. Everybody does.”

“You don't think it's true now, do you?”

“About Dad? No, I think Dad had been going quietly mad over the last few months of Mum's life. If anyone drove him mad it was Carmen O'Keefe.”

“I hope you're right. It's . . . not something that's easy to live with.”

Annie was going to say something soothing, but at that
moment Jamie put his head round the door and said he was going to make a pot of tea; and because they both felt they'd rather lost touch with him in the last few years, they went out to the kitchen to help him. He went about putting the kettle on and fetching cups and saucers from the cupboard with the grace of a natural but not fanatical athlete. Jamie, they all believed, was going to get somewhere in life. He was also very lovable because he cared so much for other people, and he was particularly protective of Auntie Connie. He had just taken a lot of good GCSEs and was the school sprint and hurdling champion. Annie felt that they could at least have a small part of the credit for his turning out so well.

 • • • 

That day in the summer of ‘79, Matthew came back from school with trepidation in his heart. He hoped that the doctor had been and gone, but he found Auntie Connie waiting anxiously in the kitchen, standing against the sink, unable to settle.

“I took him up there and introduced him,” she said, “though for all the response I got, I could have saved my breath. Then I left them to it. He'll not learn anything awkward from your poor Da'.”

Matthew's instinct was to make himself scarce when Dr Maclennan came down, but he forced himself to face things through.

“Well, I'm no psychiatrist,” the doctor said, “but he looks pretty far gone to me. I can get nothing to the purpose out of him. How long has he been like this?”

“It started sometime after Mum's death,” said Matthew—a prepared formula he was rather proud of.

Dr Maclennan frowned.

“That was—when?—January, wasn't it? My wife was at the funeral, and she said your father looked pretty cut up.”

“Dad always hated funerals. After that he started . . . sort of sliding down. Some days he was better, some worse; and it was difficult to put your finger on anything and say, ‘Now we really have to do something.'”

“I see. . . . Well, I'm very glad that someone has called me in now. Which doesn't make it any easier to decide what to do. Of course, I'll have to get him to a psychiatrist. Will he go willingly, do you think?”

“I don't think so,” said Mrs O'Keefe. “I tried to get him into the fresh air this morning—just take a walk in the garden. It can't be healthy shut up there twenty-four hours a day. But there was no way I could get him outside. The man seemed almost frightened.”

“I suppose that's understandable if he's been in there a fair while. I think I can get a psychiatrist to come here to him if I stress the seriousness and urgency of the case. But if he says he needs to be committed, then committed he'll have to be. . . . You say you'll be here to take care of the children, Mrs O'Keefe?”

“Oh yes, for as long as needs be.”

“Right, then we'll take it from there. I suppose it would be better for them if their father was out of the house?”

“No, it wouldn't,” said Matthew sturdily. “We're quite used to him being up there. He's our father.”

It was for Matthew a sort of reconciliation and an absolution for Dermot.

“What do you feel?” the doctor asked Mrs O'Keefe.

“Oh, he's no problem as far as I'm concerned. The only question is what's best for him.”

“Well, I'll pass that on to the psychiatrist. But it's quite
possible he'll want to take him into an institution, at least for a while.”

When he had gone, Matthew felt glad he had spoken up for his father and for his right to stay in his own home. It seemed as if it restored a balance, righted a wrong, especially as the house would undoubtedly have been more relaxed and comfortable without his presence there. When Annie got back from school, she agreed that to have had their father shunted off to an institution would have been a hateful thing to do.

Inevitably, the fact of Dermot Heenan's condition started to get around the Catholic community, or the St Joseph's part of it. Matthew and Annie discovered that Auntie Connie had been right, and Greg had already let drop some hints about his state, though his teachers had been slow to pick them up. Now the fact that he was in need of psychiatric help spread fast among people who were distrustful of psychiatrists and a little scared of madness. Matthew and Annie got used to looks of sympathy.

One day, later in the week of the doctor's visit, Peter Leary watched for Matthew from the window of Mr Patel's minimarket and signed himself off from policing duty as he approached.

“I hear your dad's had a nervous breakdown,” he said.

It wasn't the subtlest of approaches, but Matthew didn't take it amiss because he regarded Peter as a person of good will.

“That's right.”

“People are saying he's been like that for months—pretty much since your mum died.”

“Well, yes, he has.”

“And you've been covering up for him all this time?”

“Sort of.”

“Wow! That must have taken some doing.”

Matthew looked down at the pavement modestly.

“We weren't exactly covering up. We were afraid of being taken into care and split up.”

“But it was brilliant never to let slip anything. . . . Have you heard where she is?”

“Where who is?”

“Carmen O'Keefe, you berk.”

Matthew tried, vainly of course, to suppress a blush. The question had caught him off guard because he knew very well where Carmen O'Keefe was. Luckily, Peter Leary's eyes were on some lad playing with a football on the grass verge some way ahead.

“No, I don't know any more than anyone else.”

“She's her mother-in-law, isn't she, the woman who's looking after you?”

“Yes. She doesn't know anything, though. But she doesn't think she's in Leeds anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“Because Carmen is an outdoor person, always out and around, not sticking at home tied to the kitchen sink. Mrs O'Keefe thinks someone would have seen her.”

“I suppose that makes sense. . . . Has she told you what happened on the day she disappeared?”

“No, I haven't even asked.”

“It'd be worth knowing if there was a big row and what it was about.”

“I suppose so. . . . But it's not an easy subject to bring up, not with Dad upstairs.”

“Does she not want to talk about her?”

“Oh, she'll talk about her. Says she was a woman with no morals, that kind of thing, and that everyone's better off without her, especially her Rob. But I don't think she'd be happy if I started asking questions.”

“Maybe not.”

“Like I was blaming her or suspecting her or something.”

“I suppose we should all just be glad that she's gone. . . .” The boy thought. “That's a point, isn't it? You say she might get the idea you suspected her. She just might have been done in, mightn't she? A woman like that . . .”

Matthew's heart thumped.

“The police don't think so. They went to the police as soon as she went missing.”

“And they think she's just run off with a man?”

“Yes.” Matthew collected his thoughts. “You say ‘a woman like that,' but a woman like that's more likely to run off with someone than get herself murdered.”

“I suppose so. My turning. Keep in touch.”

And with a raise of the hand, he went off. Matthew went on, troubled. For the first time the question of murder had been raised. He thought he'd coped with it all right, but it was there now between them.

And there was another thing. He had resolved, whenever the subject of Carmen O'Keefe came up, to talk of her in the present tense. Yet somehow he always made the odd slip into the past tense. Usually it could be justified, as speaking of someone who used to be among them but was no longer. But what if, sometime, he used the past tense about her and it
couldn't
be justified in that way? He wished he could transform the memories of that dreadful night, when they'd buried her, into nothing worse than a bad dream and think of her as everyone else did, flaunting a new fur coat or diamonds, on the arm of a rich, new fancy man in Birmingham, Glasgow or Manchester.

The problem was that the more questions he asked about her, the more the possibility of murder insinuated itself into people's minds.

T
HE PSYCHIATRIST DIDN'T COME
till nearly a fortnight later, when the children were in their last week of school. Mrs O'Keefe had very much hoped that he would come when they were not in the house, and her wish was granted. He first talked the case over with her for a few minutes, and she retailed the slightly sanitised version which she had previously served up for Dr. Maclennan. This emphasized—indeed misrepresented—the slowness of Dermot Heenan's descent to the state he was now in, as a way of explaining the children's slowness of action. The man—in his forties, a slovenly dresser with tired eyes and a little beard—listened, nodded noncommittally, then let her take him upstairs. When he saw Dermot he turned and gave Auntie Connie a nod of dismissal, so she was forced to go down and wait for him in the kitchen.

He was up there for three-quarters of an hour, and Auntie Connie was at a loss as to what he could be getting out of the
poor soul he was dealing with in all that time. She had never had more than barely comprehensible mumblings of self-accusation from him. When the psychiatrist finally came down, he used a lot of long terms she had never met with before and then tried hard to put them simply for her. He said he thought the children must have exaggerated the slowness of the progression of the man's illness. She was glad, though, that he didn't say this in any accusing way.

“I expect it frightened them,” he said, “and they didn't want to face up to it. They were alone here with him, you said?”

“They were, I'm sad to say. Everyone thought he was all right—the fine, healthy, straightforward soul that he was!”

“I've seen all too many healthy and straightforward people in states even worse than his,” commented the psychiatrist.

“Sure, you must see many a sad sight,” said Mrs O'Keefe, a phrase she often used with doctors and nurses, and no less sincerely meant for that.

The rest of what he said was told, suitably censored, to the older children when they came home.

“He says he needs to have him into a . . . psychiatric clinic for a few weeks, maybe a month, to do a number of tests and try a few treatments,” she said, in her comfortable, Irish countrywoman's voice. “I've emphasized that his home is here, and he'll always be properly cared for in his own place as long as that's what's best for him and what he wants. The psychiatrist says we're to prepare him for the move and for the treatment, though how we're to do that the good Lord only knows.”

What she had omitted from her account was the psychiatrist's regrets that he had not been called earlier and his feelings that it might now be too late to help the man upstairs. Matthew and Annie therefore felt fairly hopeful; and when they
took food to the bedroom or helped to wash their father and keep him generally presentable, they kept saying encouraging things about getting help for him and about his going somewhere for treatment that would make him right again.