Second Hand Jane (14 page)

The bitterness
was etched into Owen’s features. “I never fathomed the point of it
all. Where did it get any of us?” He shook his head. “Live and let
live, I say, but things were different then and like Da said, it
wasn’t as straightforward or simple as that—feelings ran too deep
for too long for there ever to be an easy answer. Still do, if you
scratch beneath the surface. It never seemed to touch us, though,
not here. Da down at the pub, rolling out his stories of marches
gone by or putting on his orange colours and heading up for the
parade was the closest we came to being involved with any of it. I
saw them once, though.”

“Who?” Jess
asked quietly.

“They were UDA
men.”

Even with her
limited knowledge of the different Loyalist fighting factions, she
knew this stood for the Ulster Defence Association, Ulster being
the northerly province of Ireland.

“I was ten at
the time, cutting through the paddocks, taking a shortcut on me way
home from school when six of them crashed through the hedgerow,
wearing balaclavas and carrying guns. I dropped down and lay flat
in the grass, me head this close to a cow pat.” He held his hands
up to demonstrate the distance. “The last one spotted me and he
stared right at me, two slits for eyeholes in the balaclava, before
raising his finger to his mouth. He didn’t need to tell me to keep
quiet; I was too shit-scared to do anything but lay there. I didn’t
move until it was dark and I never told a soul about it until years
later.”

It must have
been terrifying for a young boy, Jess thought, contemplating what
she had just heard and trying to understand what it would have been
like to have been raised in the heat of those troubled times. It
wasn’t the Ireland she knew and loved, though she guessed it was
still there—that resentment and anger. All you would have to do to
find it would be as Owen had just said—to scratch lightly at the
surface where it simmered away, threatening to boil over again. The
flags she’d seen flapping on the wind declaring where the occupants
of each house’s loyalties lay had brought that home to her
today.

The Troubles
were something for which there was no real solution and so there
was no real point in her sitting here now in 2012 questioning why
it was they had affected the people who called Glenariff Farm home
in such a brutal, firsthand way. She was sure it was something Owen
and his parents had asked themselves a thousand times.

“What was she
like?” she asked, deciding to move past the images of a violent
past, wanting to get to know the girl Amy had been.

“She was me
sister. A right royal pain in the ass most of the time.” He smiled
at that and Jess thought about her own right royal pain in the bum
of a little sister. Yes, Kelly bugged the hell out of her growing
up—still did, for that matter—but she would never want to be
without her.

“She could make
us all laugh, though she had a right ole sense of humour when she
wasn’t being a moody mare. I don’t have that much experience of
teenage girls but I’m guessing Amy was pretty typical. Her room was
covered in posters—you know, your man with the white spiky
hair—Billy something or other.”

“Idol,” Jess
supplied helpfully.

“That’s him,
and your pretty boys Duran Duran—her room was plastered in
them.”

“When I was
sixteen, I loved Nirvana. It broke my heart when Kurt topped
himself. Funny how your tastes change, isn’t it? Nowadays, if I
were to meet him, I would probably tell him to go and give his hair
a bloody good wash!”

Owen looked
nonplussed at this titbit of information she’d just shared, so Jess
decided to get back on track. “What games did Amy like playing when
she was younger?”

“Dress-ups—she
was mad on dressing up and putting on shows for us all. She’d have
us in bits with some of the stuff she’d come out with. She loved
ballet, too, though I don’t know if she was any good at it. I heard
Ma tell Da once that she was like an elephant in tights clomping
round the stage.” He smiled at the memory before adding, “She liked
to read right from when she was a wee dot, so I’m guessing she
would have loved that Snow White book of hers. I remembered what
happened to it.”

“What?”

“We had a
village fete and Amy had a stall. I can’t remember what she was
saving up for but she would have sold it there.”

“And now I’ve
got it,” Jess said, pulling it from her bag.

Owen reached
out and took it from her, opening the cover and staring with a
lowered gaze at the inscription his own hand had written all those
years ago.

“I remember Ma
standing over me, making sure I wrote that out neatly.”

“It’s a pretty
good effort for a little fellow, and I’d like you to have it
back.”

“Ah, no, it’s
only a book sure.”

“Maybe but it
belonged to Amy first. You were the one who gave it to her, so it
should be here with you. I think that’s what she would have
wanted.” As she uttered the words, Jess felt something. It was as
though the atmosphere in the room had changed. There was a frisson
in the air that hadn’t been there a moment before. It was like an
electrical current of sorts and Jess felt her skin prickle with
goose bumps. She glanced at Owen but he was still intent on the
book, seemingly oblivious of the subtle change in the room’s tone.
She shook away the impression that Amy had just joined them. Surely
it was no more than her fanciful imagination at work as per usual
and as she did so, the ambience settled once more.

The silence
that pervaded the room apart from the crackling of the fire wasn’t
an uncomfortable one and Jess drank her tea, imagining a
dark-haired little girl who had once danced in front of that same
fire dressed as a fairy or in tights and a leotard practising her
ballet.

“She had a cat
called Tiptoes,” Owen offered up after a bit.

“
Ha! I have that book—
Tiptoes the Mischievous
Kitten
. It’s a Ladybird
one, too, but it’s older than that one.” She indicated her head to
the book Owen now held in his hands.

“Well, there
you go; maybe our Amy had it, too, and that’s where she got the
moggy’s name from. It was a stray who just decided to move in on
us. Ma didn’t want anyting to do with it, saying it probably had
fleas and that it would give her worms but Amy wouldn’t stop
feeding it. It’d wait at the gate for her to come home from school,
more faithful than any dog. I reckon it pined away after she died,
just like Ma did.”

Grief had a
roll-on effect, Jess realised.

“It wasn’t just
our family who suffered. There was poor Evie and their gang of
pals, too. What kid of sixteen should have to deal with something
like that? Those girls should have been allowed to carry on,
playing their music and dreaming about boys, not dealing with the
shite that happened. Evie told me years later that she couldn’t
come to terms with the guilt she felt at having escaped the bomb.
She reckoned that no matter how many times people said it wasn’t
her fault, she could never bring herself to believe them.”

“Survivor’s
guilt.”

“Aye. That day
played out in her head constantly, along with the ‘what if’ game.
You know—what if they’d never gone to that dance in Banbridge? What
if she hadn’t been so keen to join Amy on that trip to Lisburn?
What if she had put her foot down and refused to go with her? What
if she’d told our folks about what Amy was planning on doing? It
would send you mad going down that road.”

“Where is she
now?”

“She got
married young but it didn’t last—my guess is too much baggage.”

Jess wondered
whether that was the same reason Owen’s own marriage had broken
up.

“She met an
Australian backpacking his way around the country and the last I
heard, she immigrated with him to Australia. I hope she got her
fresh start.”

They sat in
silence as Jess mulled over what Owen had just said. He was right,
she thought, picturing herself at sweet sixteen. She might have
thought she knew it all but underneath the makeup and attitude, she
had still been a child trying to come to terms with the fact that
she would soon be a grownup. She had been in no way emotionally
equipped to deal with the death of a pet goldfish, let alone her
best friend. Life was not fair, she mused. Some people got to
breeze through it, never encountering anything more than the death
of elderly parents—the natural course of life—while others had to
cope with horrendous trials like the death of a child, a sister,
and a friend.

“Did she enjoy
school?” Jess decided to change the subject and was rewarded by
Owen’s lightened expression.

“Aye, when she
was younger, she did. Not so much the high school; she was too busy
messing about. She loved to draw. I remember seeing her sitting at
the kitchen table, doodling away for hours. Dress designing, she
called it. If she wasn’t drawing, she had her nose in a book. She
was a dreamer, Amy—no good with the practical stuff like maths. Da
was always threatening to take her record player off her if she
didn’t start applying herself.”

“My Mum and Dad
used to say the same thing, except with me they always threatened
to snap my Guns N’ Roses record in half. It made no difference,
though; I still got lost at fractions.” Jess thought for a moment.
“Amy obviously liked music but was she musical?”

Owen gave a
short laugh. “I don’t know if it was the music she liked or if it
was that Simon Le Bon fellow and his tight trousers but no, she
wasn’t musical—not unless you count the god-awful racket she used
to make with a recorder. She had lessons once a week. It is my firm
belief that whoever invented the recorder deserves to be locked in
a room for twenty-four hours with a child practising it. Even when
the bloody thing is played well, it still sounds awful.”

“My niece is
learning the recorder and sometimes when she is practising, my
sister puts her on the phone for me to listen to. I agree—it is
terrible.”

“What did you
do to your sister to deserve that then?”

“Oh, I don’t
know—moved to Ireland and made myself unavailable for regular
babysitting services.”

She almost
didn’t hear Owen when he said, “She used to give me and me mates a
hard time because we were annoying little sods, always spying on
her and her pals. She’d tell us to piss off and leave them alone
but sometimes when it was just me and her, we’d talk. Talk properly
like. She asked me once what I made of the violence—I mean, like I
said, we were kind of isolated from it growing up here but it was
there all the same and you were always aware of the undercurrent.
There were places you couldn’t go and things you wouldn’t say too
loudly. Amy hated it; she said she couldn’t understand why
everybody just couldn’t get along.”

Jess was
beginning to form a mental picture of Amy as a creative child with
a wilful personality who, if she had had the chance to grow up,
might have gone on to do something really fabulous with her life.
She had just got caught up in something she couldn’t understand and
something that had nothing to do with her at all.

“Where is it
you come from then? Your accent’s not strong enough to be an
Australian’s so I am guessing that you must hail from New Zealand?”
It was Owen’s turn to abruptly change the subject.

“Well done!
Most Irish assume I am from Aussie. I once had a chap ask me if I’d
ever bumped into Kylie at home or if I used to take my holidays in
Summer Bay.”

Owen laughed
and Jess felt inordinately pleased with herself.

“I always
fancied New Zealand but it’s too far to go unless you go for a
decent spell and these days it’s not so easy to just up and go,
what with the farm.”

“No, I guess
not and especially not when you’ve got young Wilbur out there to
bring up.” Jess caught sight of the old carriage clock ticking away
on the mantel. The day had flown! It was four thirty already and
she would have to be making tracks if she was going to make it to
Ballymcguinness for the bus at five. The return journey back to
Dublin was not one she was relishing the thought of.

She gathered
her things and followed Owen out to the Land Rover, scurrying past
Jemima, who gave her a sly hiss.

Owen turned the
key in the ignition and instead of the engine roaring into life as
it had done earlier, absolutely nothing happened. He tried again
and again and again, finally slamming his hands on the steering
wheel and announcing, “Bugger, it’ll be the starter motor gone.
It’s been grumbling for a while.”

“Er, should I
get a taxi then?” Even as she said it, Jess knew it was a pointless
statement. Ballymcguinness was the size of a postage stamp; the
village would not stretch to a taxi service.

“Tell you
what—I’ll ring old Joe over on the farm next door to see if he can
give you a lift down to the station.”

Jess dug her
phone out of her bag and checked the time; it was marching on.
“Here, you can use this.”

Sadly, old Joe
wasn’t home, Owen informed her a minute later. Apparently he had
left a message on his answerphone to say he had headed down to the
bachelor festival at Lisdoonvarna. That gave Jess pause for
thought. She had been down to the tourist spa town’s festival with
Nora a few years earlier in the vague hope of meeting a wealthy
land owner. Ye gods, some of the sights that had staggered out of
the wild west of County Clare in the search of a wife had just
about been enough to make the girls head for the hills themselves.
The dance they had attended had seen them both visiting
chiropodists on their return to civilisation—Dublin.

“Well, you
can’t walk into town; it’s too far. And by the time I can tee up a
ride for you, the bus will be long gone anyway.”