On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (27 page)

‘I don’t believe this,’ Tony said.

‘No one knew who he was. He had bad burns all over him, skull fractures, a crushed leg, and other injuries. The doctors put him into a coma for his own good. He said that when he was unconscious he felt she was with him. They re-set his leg a number of times, until they could do nothing more. They told him he’d probably not walk again. The letter said his head was healing and he was learning to walk. It went on that way. I didn’t give it to her, or any of his letters.’

‘Real fucking crazy shit, this. I can’t believe – ’

‘Peggy and me, we worried for so long that we’d never see her again, when she went to Iraq. A year later she came home. Not well.’ Leo’s words faded, then came back. ‘Sick or not, she was home with us. The photograph you were looking at, that’s Peggy and me the day we were married. Our prayers for children of our own never got answered. From the earliest days, Lenny was like she was our own. We’d lost her twice before, but then she was back home from the war. Peggy was two months dead then. I don’t know what she would’ve done: let Lenny go back to him, to war; be killed or tortured, lose her mind? That would be all three of them gone: Róisín, Peggy, Lenny. I couldn’t allow that. She had people here who’d love her, who’d make sure she got well. Cilla, Paddy, Eilis, Liam, and me, and others. Even the Doyle boys in England, Róisín’s brothers; they never came home but they wrote to her. And Charles too, he was sound enough; Lenny and him just never settled. I decided against war. I hid his letters. To save her. If she meant as much to you, you’d do no different.’

The air in the room throbbed, neither man spoke.

‘Maybe I wouldn’t,’ Tony said, eventually. ‘Wouldn’t do what you did.’

‘Three and a half years I’ve watched her get well. Said not a word about the letters to a soul. Except Róisín and Peggy.’

‘But they’re . . . they’re both – ’

‘Souls don’t die. You don’t talk to souls in America, do you? Maybe you should.’

‘Cilla deBurca, she’s a friend of Lenny’s, a good friend?’

‘Since the day Lenny came back to us.’

‘She knows all this, what you’ve told me?’

‘No one knows. I told you that. Just me and you, in this world.’

Tony’s hands pushed back through his hair. This place, these people, he thought, were stranger than he could ever have imagined. No one here was an individual; no one ever seemed to stand alone, not Cilla, not Paddy, not even Leo, none of them. All were like limbs of the same tree. What they meant could only be guessed at; so often their facts were made up, intended only to nurture how they felt or wanted others to feel. They obscured reality for reasons that were not obvious to an outsider. But he was beginning to understand them, their ways, things he must once have known. What Leo had just told him was true; he felt certain of that. Now he needed to stay focused, learn here what he could, then get out and make things right.

‘What else should I be told?’ He glared down at the older man. ‘Other letters you know about? How about mine, to Lenny, this past year?’

‘Are you up to the task in front of you?’ Leo asked.

‘I faced bigger.’

‘A young man’s boast.’

‘You know zip about me.’

‘I know this. If the Englishman is alive, and there’s cause to believe he is, you’ll never be sure of Lenny. The day he turns up, everything will change. You can handle that?’

‘Bullshit. You don’t know that. You can’t even – ’

‘Because . . . because, if you can’t, better for everyone that you find another woman, don’t trouble Lenny, or yourself, any further.’

Tony brooded, face and body tense. Leo’s words frightened him: lose this woman to a ghost? Live in fear of Aidan Harper? After making it this far, a woman who’d be his only for safe-keeping? He’d never live on the run, looking over his shoulder for a cripple. No way. He’d fix this, fix it for good, make it permanent.

‘Where is he at now?’ he asked matter-of-factly.

‘I read only one of his letters, the first one. To make the right decision. The other five, I didn’t open. He said he was hoping to set up a house for drug addicts. That was over three years ago.’

‘Drug addicts? In Baghdad?!’

‘Dublin.’

‘Dublin!? Dublin!? Where in Dublin?’

‘Didn’t say that. He was back in Ireland only days when he wrote it. Said he was looking at a situation.’

‘Those other letters, the later ones, where are they now? Must be an address on them.’

‘Not your property.’

Tony approached. ‘I want those letters.’

Leo rose up out of the chair, stood erect. ‘Nobody touches them.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? I need that address.’ Tony’s bearing caused not a flutter to show in Leo. ‘What if I told Lenny, about what you did; what would that do for you, huh?’

‘You could do that? And you love her?’

‘You used those letters to get what you wanted, to keep him away from her. It’s wrong for me to do the same? I care about her more than he ever could!’ He broke away, tried to subdue an old fury. He could see it now, see her abandoning him and their new life, for a dead man, the only person who could kill his dream. His glare re-locked on Leo.

‘Last time. I’m asking you. I want that address. Don’t give me any shit.’

‘Over my dead body.’ Leo squared his shoulders.

Neither spoke, just stared into each other’s eyes. Then Tony pulled out, turned aside.

He’d already fucked up half his life; this wasn’t his fight. But live or die, he vowed, nothing would take Lenny Quin from him. No one could want her as he wanted her, or love her as he would. Which meant one thing: Aidan Harper. Find him. Right now though, something else was going on that he hadn’t figured. What made Leo so intense, so unafraid to fight? He realised they were alike, him and Leo. Lenny owned a chunk of each of them; she was the brightest flame in both their hearts. Which left him nowhere. This man was too good to go up against, too loved by Lenny, and in his own right not a man to be pushed. No, the real target was Aidan Harper. Sort that out; deal with that. He was no good for Lenny, didn’t love enough to go after the woman he wanted. Left her to mourn because his letters didn’t get answered. Fuck-all guts. MacNeills were made of better stuff. Almost impossible, that’s what Leo had said, almost impossible. But not impossible. Not to him.

He broke out of his thoughts and from the doorway nodded back.

‘Wait!’ Leo followed after him. ‘Too much harm’s been done. Make no more.’

‘I’ll do what needs to be done.’

‘Then do it honourably. Make the living and the dead happy.’ Leo turned back in toward the hearth; his shaking hands reaching to Róisín.

17

RTÉ, Montrose, South Dublin

He pushed through the plate-glass doors of the glass façade and all at once came a flood of memories: the big marble-floored vestibule, funny trees growing inside instead of outside, the exuberance of his schoolmates.

He was eleven then, in fifth class at St Eoin’s. Mr White had brought all thirty-seven of them here to learn how television programmes were made. Any day off school was great, didn’t matter for what, but on that particular day he and his mates couldn’t wait to spot the man who read the news on the telly every night, who rumour had it had only one leg. But they never got to see him. Though they did see Bottler, who had his own show, and he shook his fist at them just because Micko asked him to tell them a joke. And Mr White said that Bottler had thumped a couple of smart-arse fellas the week before and would do the same to Micko and the rest of them if they didn’t behave. And then Micko got –

‘Hello.’ A woman’s voice punctured his reverie. ‘What can I do for you?’

On turning, he found a pony-tailed girl with a face plain and pale and pleasant, almost hidden behind the circular reception desk. ‘I’d like to see Emer,’ he said, trying to sound business-like.

‘Emer Gilligan, is it?’ He nodded. ‘Who will I tell her?’

‘Tony. Just say Tony.’

Seconds later, out loped a tall mini-skirted brunette with a puzzled smile. He apologised for the mix-up. No problem, she said, she was nipping outside for a fag and a bit of fresh air anyway. He held the door and followed her into the exterior breeziness.

‘From America, are you?’

‘Not anymore; I lived there. The Emer I’m looking for, I can’t remember her last name.’

‘O God, there’s millions of Emers here, four or five at least. RTÉ is a big place. What’s she look like?’

‘Thirty-five, thirty-six, from Dublin, not tall, wavy hair probably, and – ’

‘That’s Emer O’Hare you want, head of production.’

‘Big job?’

‘Big!’ The girl arched her eyebrows then stubbed her cigarette in the sand pot. ‘I better get back or she’ll be sending St Anthony after me. I’m in graphic design, if you need any more help; just tell them to ring me.’

Tony collected his thoughts, breathed in the chill Montrose air, then re-entered the building.

‘Hello, again,’ the pony-tailed pale-faced girl said with a smile.

‘Wrong Emer. It’s Emer O’Hare I need to speak to.’

The girl delivered the message and rested the receiver on her shoulder. ‘She’s in editing at the minute. What’s it in connection with?’

‘Tell her Lenny. Lenny Quin. I need to talk to her.’

The girl did as instructed. ‘That’s grand,’ she said. ‘If you walk to the end of the corridor then turn right, Suite 3 will be on your left; you can go ahead in.’

Outside the suite he paused, then knocked and pushed his head in. A voice beckoned him. The attractive woman swivelled out of the blue glare of a pair of TV monitors.

‘You’re Tony.’ She extended her hand. ‘Len’s been telling me so much about you I feel I already know you. Nothing’s wrong?’

‘No, no. Just like to talk to you, few minutes. Won’t keep you.’

‘I can do with a break.’ She flipped on a lamp that spread a narrow pool of warm light. ‘Pull up a chair. I wondered when we might meet. I hope you won’t mind me confessing something right off: Len described you as handsome; I guess I didn’t expect it to be quite so true.’

A smile hid his surprise at what he was already discovering. ‘You and Lenny, you’ve stayed in touch through the years?’

‘No. Now we do. All the time. Some weeks we’re on the phone twice, three times, blabbering for hours; you know women. We’re a couple of crazies. Always were.’

‘You went to college together here in Dublin. Lots of fun?’

‘A world of fun. UCD, just down the road. I was the slow one, Len was the genius. Many’s the exam she pulled me through. Best years of my life.’ She paused dreamily, then continued with a more serious bearing. ‘Len told me she told you everything, the whole story. I’m glad she did. So you know how close we were. Until one day, it all ended. She headed off for the Big Apple and I came here, and that was that: finito.’

He searched for words to respond to her obvious glumness, then gestured to an array of wall plaques. ‘You won all these? And you got married?’

‘No and No.’ She twisted the ring on her marriage finger. ‘Friendship. From Len. Doesn’t fit any other finger. Some of the awards are mine; majority are shared with others.’

‘You guys kept in touch when Lenny went abroad?’

‘Not a screed. 1980 to 1990, nothing. Like Moses in the wilderness. At Easter four and-a-half years ago we found each other again. She dropped in, literally, out of the blue. Half-hour later she’s gone again, bound for the Middle East, a whirlwind visit if ever there was one. Next time I lay eyes on her – a year later, in summer – she’s banging at my door in the middle of the night.

‘I know she told you about Aidan, I encouraged her to do that, the unconscionable tragedies in Baghdad. Charles had her flown home two months after the shelter disaster. The embassy hadn’t been able to reach him before then. Anyway, that night, from the airport, she made straight for my apartment. Found my address in a directory, she told me. I almost died; she was skin and bone. I tried to get her to eat, make her comfortable. What a task. Her nightmares were horrific, night after night, really frightened me. First it was Aidan; she’d scream at him, words I couldn’t make out, except his name. Then it was
Mama, Mama, come down
time after time. I never understood what that was about. Down from heaven to help her, I suppose, in her grief. She’d shoot upright in the bed, eyes bulging, then floods of tears, non-stop. That went on for weeks. In the end I got help for her, after a number of false starts. And things improved, slowly.

‘Aidan’s death, particularly the way it happened, was a hair’s breadth from killing her. It took over her mind. She’d keep describing the scene to me like it was still happening inside her: the noise, the cement ceiling dropping down on them, people being crushed. Balls of flame whizzing around, burning people to cinders in seconds. I listened each time, hundreds of times, and I realised one thing: I will never comprehend what she went through. Never. No one could, unless they’d been there.’

‘You did everything you could do. She needed your friendship and you gave her that.’

‘The second week, I succeeded in getting her to a psychiatrist, someone I know over in Baggot Street. Managed to get her to agree she needed help, treatment of some kind.’ She pressed two fingers to her lips, fell silent for moments. ‘Len told me she was up-front with you about all this, that you know the whole story.’

‘I still want to hear whatever you can tell me, anything that will help.’

‘I hope you won’t take offense at my asking this: You do love this tender woman as much as she loves you?’

Tony nodded. ‘I want to do everything I can to make sure she gets completely over what happened. Just like you do. Everything.’

‘Because she’s the loveliest person I’ve known in my life. Another tragedy could destroy her. You do recognise that?’

‘Like I said, Emer, I want exactly what you want, for Lenny to be happy and stay happy, and be well. That’s what I want.’

‘We’re kindred souls so, you and me.’ She left her chair, moved wordlessly to the coffee machine. After initial fumbling she held up the coffee pot; he declined. And there, at the dark end of the suite, her crimped hair obscuring her face, she stayed leaning against the counter, hands cradling a mug.