Authors: Karen Perry
‘Listen, Katie,’ he says, his
voice lowered. ‘What happened yesterday … We were all appalled, repulsed by the
thought of some sicko trying to squeeze a few quid from us for pictures of a corpse. But
you … you were white as a sheet. And while the rest of us were discussing it, you bolted
from the room, hardly stopping to pick up your bag. Eddie at the door said he’d
never seen anyone take off out of there and across into Mother Kelly’s as
fast.’ He pauses. ‘But, they were just pictures, Katie. And not the worst
you’ve seen. You’re a tough cookie. Why did they upset you so
much?’
I couldn’t tell him. It would mean
peeling away all the layers until we got to the one dark place I didn’t ever want
to shine a light on. ‘Listen, Reilly,’ I say. ‘I appreciate your
concern, really I do. But I’m fine. Honestly.’
He looks at me in that considering way of
his. ‘There’s something else,’ he says. ‘Luke Yates.’
The way he says it makes the words dry up
inside me. I see the hesitation on his face and it sends a jolt of alarm right through
me.
‘What?’ I
ask.
‘You haven’t heard.’ A
statement, not a question.
‘Tell me.’ My heart is
pounding.
‘I’m sorry to do this,
Katie,’ he says softly, ‘but Luke Yates is dead.’
The cufflinks, slightly tarnished, sit on a
bed of cushioned black velvet in a matching black box. They’re old, but the box is
new and this makes me think of Julia. My guess is that it was she who packed them so
carefully for their journey, even though the gift is supposedly from Luke. Had it been
up to him, I’m sure my brother would have slipped them into an envelope, sealed
and addressed it, then hoped for the best. I hold them up to the light, my hand shaking
a little. I see my father’s initials engraved in an elegant script on the flat
gold discs and remember an evening on the veranda at the house in Lavington: Dad – just
home from work – sitting with Mum, loosening his tie and taking off his cufflinks, the
clinking sound they make against the hard surface of the table as the screen-door opens
and Jamil brings the drinks.
The memory slips away, blotted out by the
sounds from the streets. Outside, the city is raucous. Car horns blare. I can hear the
whine of a scooter, and the crash of something heavy spilling onto the ground. Nairobi
is at full throttle, vibrating with life and urgency. But in this room, just for a
moment, the world seems to be holding its breath.
The package arrived yesterday, a padded
envelope containing the box and a note:
Wear these on
your big day, Nico. And be happy. Your brother, Luke.
Today is my wedding day.
The door opens. It’s Murphy. He brings
with him a gust of energy.
‘Well, now,’ he says, clapping
his large hands together and rubbing them briskly. ‘How are we set?’
‘Good,’ I say, trying to steady
myself.
‘Here, let me do that.’ Before I
can protest, he takes the box from my hands. ‘Show me your cuffs.’
He fixes the cufflinks in place, his fingers
firm yet gentle despite their size, his brow gathering in a frown of concentration. I
can’t help thinking that it should be my father here, steadying me. But Dad is
long dead.
‘Not nervous, are you?’ Murphy
glances at me with his small, shrewd eyes.
‘No,’ I say, though I’ve
felt uneasy since I read Luke’s note.
‘Good. You’ve nothing to be
nervous about. You have your whole life ahead of you.’
He clasps my shoulder, holds it for a
moment. I can sense his restless energy. He takes my jacket from the chair-back and
holds it up for me to slide into.
‘We’re in plenty of time, so
there’s no panic,’ he says.
Beyond the window, Nairobi’s skyline
is swathed in mild sunlight. I nod.
‘The weather is good,’ Murphy
says. He means well. And while I’m ready for this day, something is nipping at
me.
Murphy has known me long enough to realize
when
something’s up, but before he can
say anything, we hear whistling from the hall. It’s Karl. He flings open the door.
‘Hello! Hello!’ In his hand, the box that contains the rings.
‘You remembered them,’ I say
drily.
He grins and shakes the box next to his ear.
‘Would I forget? Come on.’ He closes the door behind him. Karl is small,
slight and fair. His hair is cropped close to the skull. Already the energy in the room
has changed. It fizzes with his presence. This morning, he is wearing a blue suit that
fits neatly, a skinny black tie, and Vans on his feet. His pork-pie hat sits far back on
his head. He’s clearly made an effort – he looks like he’s even shaved. No
sooner has he closed the door than he’s fishing for smokes in his pocket. As he
pops one between his lips, Murphy comes forward to protest.
‘None of that now,’ he chides.
‘Can’t have the groom turning up stinking of smoke.’
Karl pretends to be offended, but he does as
he’s told, not questioning the priest’s authority, not cowed by it
either.
‘Hey, Father Murphy,’ he says,
his eyes shooting to Murphy’s hairline. ‘I see you’ve been to my
barber.’
Murphy laughs. He had until recently sported
a head of greying but still thick unruly hair that he never seemed able to keep neat. It
was a shock to see him with stubble. It drew attention to his cheekbones, giving him a
puritanical air.
‘Well, now,’ Murphy says.
‘Your parents would be very proud of you today, Nick, making this commitment. I
know it’s difficult for you not to have them here.’
My phone rings. Murphy
seems a little embarrassed at his show of emotion. He reaches for the phone on the
table, but instead of handing it to me, he answers it.
‘Murphy here,’ he says jovially.
‘Ah, hello.’
I look at him expectantly, waiting for him
to hand me the phone. ‘Yes, he’s here …’
He glances in my direction and turns, his
shoulders hunched. Something in his demeanour suggests he is put out by whatever he is
hearing. He grunts. I wait for him to turn, but instead he raises a finger and leaves
the room.
‘What’s that all about?’ I
say to Karl.
He shrugs. ‘Wedding arrangements, no
doubt. He doesn’t want you worrying about anything. You know Murphy, he’d
rather shoulder the whole mountain.’
‘Show me the rings,’ I say, to
dispel the unease left in Murphy’s wake.
Taking them from the box, I weigh them in my
hand. ‘Heavier than I remembered.’
‘They’ll weigh you down,’
Karl jokes. ‘Come on, let’s have a smoke while Murphy’s not
here.’ He opens the window, lights a cigarette and passes it to me.
‘We’ll spray you with air freshener or something.’
Side by side, we lean against the
windowsill, sharing the cigarette like a couple of truant schoolboys.
‘Keep the speech short, Nick, right? I
mean, as best man, I’d like to be able to say my piece, and I know what
you’re like, hogging all the air-time. People don’t like speeches that
ramble.’
I drag on the cigarette and smile. The truth
is I’m the quiet one. Even as a child, I hung back, preferring others to do the
talking for me. There was always Luke who
had
plenty to say – enough for both of us. When I was eight I didn’t speak for a whole
year. It was like something had stuck inside me. Post-traumatic stress disorder, I
suppose you’d call it. Back then, we didn’t call it anything. My parents,
for reasons of their own, chose not to have it closely investigated. They preferred to
wait it out. I drew a lot of pictures and listened to a good deal of music. I spent
hours at the piano. It took Luke to bring me back to the world of the speaking.
‘It’s my birthday,’ he said, one morning, standing in the doorway to
my bedroom.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said
hoarsely, forgetting myself, the words making a croaking sound in my throat. Luke ran to
tell Mum and Dad I had spoken and that was the end of my self-imposed silence.
Now I prefer to let my music do the talking
for me. And even though I’m not one for words, when I’m at the piano and
Karl has his sax, what passes between us is the most soulful discussion I can
imagine.
When Murphy gets back, he says nothing about
the call, but seems perturbed. He hands me the phone.
‘Who was it?’
‘Nothing to worry about right
now,’ Murphy says, straining to sound upbeat. He waves his hand about.
‘Boys, boys, boys. Really! Do you have to smoke?’
‘Nothing to worry about?’ I
ask.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ he
says, checking his watch. ‘Right, put that out, Karl. Time to go.’
Karl makes some comment about the condemned
man, gives me a friendly thump on the back and ducks out after Murphy.
Before I follow them,
I glance at my phone to see who has called, but under ‘incoming calls’,
nothing is listed.
A few nights ago, I’d called my
brother. When he answered, I could hear the noise of a party in the background. Almost
immediately, I felt like hanging up.
‘There’s something I wanted to
tell you,’ I said, hearing him step away from the clamour. ‘Luke, I’m
getting married.’
There was a pause. Luke coughed.
‘That’s great news, Nick. Congratulations!’ Even though he tried to
sound happy for me, he couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘When’s the big
day?’
‘Next week …’
‘Next week? Well, now,’ he said.
I had taken him off guard. ‘And the lucky girl?’
‘Her name’s Lauren.’
I gave him some details, although it was
difficult because she was lying next to me, listening to every word. I thought that by
telling him about her I would break the spell. There was a nagging fear that Luke might
say something that would shed a drop of poison into the one thing I held dear. That he
might have balked at my marrying her after we’d been together such a short time –
that he might even caution me against it. When Lauren and I are together, the love
between us seems ancient and solid, but while I was talking to Luke, it felt fragile and
bare.
‘It would be nice to meet her some
day,’ Luke said. He sounded agitated. ‘And the wedding – it’s in
Nairobi, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You know I
won’t make it. Not at such short notice.’ The noise of voices and music grew
in the background. He must have been making his way back closer to where the party was,
keeping an eye on it.
‘It sounds like you’re
celebrating yourself,’ I said.
‘A little shindig here. Nothing to top
a wedding.’
My brother could be the life and soul of the
party, and there had been many times when I’d heard his school pals laugh at his
jokes when they came back to our house after school. Their playful banter was not for
me, though – as the younger brother I was excluded, watching from a distance or
overhearing what he shared with an inner circle that had not included me since
we’d left Nairobi.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘We didn’t decide to get married until a few days ago. It’s kind of a
spontaneous thing.’
Whatever script I had planned was faltering.
My words petered out.
‘Spontaneous,’ Luke repeated. I
imagined him shaking his head.
‘No invitations, nothing like
that,’ I said. It wasn’t supposed to be a party. It was just me and Lauren,
and a couple of friends, simple and low-key. None of Lauren’s family was coming
over either. She’d made the call to them and received the kind of stunned response
she’d expected. But we’d kept our promise to one another: create as little
fuss as possible. I wanted our marriage to be an intimate affair, not like Luke and
Julia’s society wedding, which had made the Sunday supplements and glossy
magazines, but once Karl had got wind of our plans, he had told others. Before we knew
it, a party had been planned, with a venue, a band and a guest list. I told myself that
Luke wouldn’t have
come anyway, but in
the brief pause in our conversation, I imagined what he would have said of it afterwards
if he had.
‘It’s the principle of the
thing,’ I could hear him saying to Julia.
Why hadn’t I sent him an invitation?
Because his presence would stir up too much? Or because he might have felt obliged to
come even though he might not have wanted to return to Nairobi?
The truth is, I didn’t want him
intruding into my world, into a reality I had made for myself, into something that had
nothing to do with him.
‘I never saw you as the marrying type,
Nick, but I do hope you and your bride-to-be have a lovely day,’ he said, and
sounded like he meant it, which only made things worse. I wondered what he meant by
‘not the marrying type’.
‘I’ll be thinking of you.
It’s …’ He hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I want the best for you,
Nick. I always have.’
I felt a lump in my throat. I wanted to say
‘thank you’, to say ‘sorry’, but what I said was ‘Murphy
will do the honours.’
‘Murphy? Your wedding, Mum’s
funeral … What would we do without him?’
The sarcasm was there, but I chose to ignore
it. Luke slurred his next words: ‘You left so quickly after the funeral
…’
‘You know me, Luke. Not one for
goodbyes.’
‘I suppose not,’ he said.
The party was louder now as he moved closer
to it, and
further, it seemed, from me. I
could hardly make out what he said next: ‘I suppose there’s never a right
time to say goodbye.’
He thanked me for calling, offered his
congratulations again, and said something about meeting up in the not-too-distant
future, but it was all a blur, words running into each other as a seam of panic
threatened to open inside me. I mumbled goodbye, put the phone down on the bedside table
and turned to Lauren. She pulled me to her, but said nothing.
Club Iguana looks bereft in daylight,
decrepit and forlorn. It is a small space, already filling with an expectant murmur:
friends of Lauren’s from the university, friends of mine from the music scene.
There is the clinking of bottles and glasses. A barbecue begins to smoke. Smiling faces
greet us. Murphy leads me into the growing mêlée where people clap me on the back and
embrace me. Despite my awkwardness, I’m moved by how happy people are for us.