Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (124 page)

David swallowed over the tension in his throat, still unclear as to why the man had requested this meeting. Nevertheless, he followed and sat beside him, the branches of the tree providing enough shelter that the bench was relatively dry.

David waited for Casey to begin, knowing that polite conversational preambles were not a route to take with this man. He snuck a sideways glance. Being an expert in matters of grief, David noted all the signs in the man’s face.

“Ye know I don’t like yer relationship with my brother,” Casey said bluntly, eyes hard.

“Yes,” David replied dryly, “I’m aware of your feelings on the subject. But I—”

Casey held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear yer justifications; you an’ I both know how this whole tragedy got started, don’t we?”

David nodded tersely. Unfortunately, that was only too true. From the moment he had walked into the Two-Step pub that rainy night, events had careened out of control.

“Right now my only concern is my brother. He’s grievin’ badly an’ not thinkin’ straight. I’m afraid for him, an’ more afraid of what he might do in such a state.”

David saw that despite the hard façade, the man
was
afraid, he loved his brother and was terrified of what Pat might do to himself. It was a fear that had kept David awake well into the dawn every night since Sylvie’s death.

“And what do you want me to do?” David asked.

“Well, it seems that he respects yer opinion, an’ I think,” Casey swallowed as if there were something very bitter lodged in his throat, “I think maybe this is where ye can help him where others cannot.”

David could only fathom what it had taken for this man to come and ask his help. He could well imagine the pain it caused Casey to know he could not save his brother in this situation. Though David was hard pressed to see how
he
might be of any greater value.

“I should like for you to go and see him.” Casey cleared his throat and David realized he’d managed to discomfit a man that few had likely ever ruffled.

“I can do that,” David replied quietly, “though I doubt he’ll welcome my presence.”

“Maybe not, but I think, right now, what he thinks he wants or doesn’t want isn’t the point.”

“No, perhaps not. I’ll go then. I wanted to say goodbye anyway. I’m being sent home—best for all, I’m certain. I’ve become a bit of a liability for the government just at present.”

Casey nodded, expression unreadable.

David sighed, the bitter smell of hawthorn filling his senses. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

Casey stood, and David thought he would leave without so much as another word or backward glance, but he turned back, the curling leaves of the tree rippling in dark shadows across his face. “It changes nothing that I feel about ye, but I thank ye for this. I’ll always be in yer debt. Should ye need help someday,” he nodded brusquely, “ye’ll have only to ask.”

“My seeing him may make no difference,” David returned softly.

“It has to, yer my last hope.”

And that, thought David, was an indication of how truly desperate they’d all become.

DAVID HAD TO POUND ON THE DOOR for several long minutes before he heard even the slightest noise from within the small abode. Then he had to wait several more minutes before Pat unlocked and opened the door.

Pat’s shirt was rumpled and a rather heavy fug of whiskey hung about him. He stood there silent, as though he couldn’t fathom what David might be doing on his doorstep.

David stepped past him into the narrow entry. He removed his gloves and coat, the latter heavy with the rain that had fallen all bloody day, as though even the weather grieved the loss of the bright-haired girl who’d loved this man in front of him. Much as he himself did. That it was entirely possible that his love had cost this man his own was a fact that weighed heavily on his heart.

Pat shuffled to his right toward the small living room that fronted the narrow two-up, two-down he’d shared with Sylvie.

David took a deep breath, knowing his words would not be welcome, yet seeing no choice but to say them. “Pat you have to stop this, stop punishing yourself. You need sleep, you need food. Everyone is worried sick over you.”

Pat was shuffling restively around the small room, shins bumping into furniture every few seconds.

“Patrick, please stop for a minute—”

Pat whirled, despair contorting his features. “Jaysus, David, don’t ye see? We were actin’ like it was all a game, but both of us knew better. It’s inexcusable. It’s my fault that my wife is layin’ under—under,” he choked, the words beyond him.

“I know,” David responded quietly.

That brought Pat’s relentless pacing to a sudden halt. “Ye know, do ye? Did ye not come here to tell me how it’s not my fault, how it could have happened anytime, anywhere?”

David shook his head. “No, I think you realize by now, Patrick, that I can’t lie to you. You’re right, we acted like fools, acted like we could be young and not have to pay the consequences of that. We acted,” he took a deep breath, “like this was a normal country in a normal world. But it isn’t. We forgot that for a few minutes and now you’re having to pay the price, and I’m having to watch you pay it. But none of it changes the fact that Sylvie is laying six feet under a pile of dirt.”

Pat glared at him in disbelief for a moment, then his face crumpled. “Nice try, David, but the reverse psychology bit won’t work. It was my fault, plain an’ simple, that’s the fact of it.” Pat continued his aimless shuffle around the room, picking up small ornaments and putting them down without looking at them. The photos of Sylvie were clustered, shrine-like, on one small table.

“How old are you, Pat?” he asked softly.

Pat staggered slightly against the sofa, body gone beyond its limits and starting to fail him. “Ye know how old I am.”

“Yes, but do you?”

“I’m twenty-three,” he said crossly, continuing his pacing again, feet scuffing against the floor.

“That’s young, you have no idea how young that is.”

“Not young enough for what I’ve done.”

“Why? Are you Cassandra that you should be able to predict every disaster that might happen? Should you be able to see the ripple effect of every bloody thing you do?”

“Yes,” Pat yelled hoarsely. “Because I should have fucking known better! I fucking
did
know better and yet that never stopped me.”

“Come on, Patrick, nobody is clean in this little game. You always knew I wasn’t, but you were willing to risk my friendship for some reason. Was it the excitement, knowing you were part of something bigger than you, something you couldn’t control?”

Pat turned his head slowly, eyes suddenly focused with a terrible intensity. “What exactly are you saying?”

“That Sylvie knew what she was getting into when she chose you. She knew your history, who your family was, and what that meant in this fucked up country. She wasn’t completely innocent.”

“Don’t you dare,” Pat said, each word hard as a bullet. “Don’t you dare even imply that she was in any way at fault here.”

David swallowed over the thickness in his throat, he hated what he was doing and yet felt a small frisson of triumph at the anger that flared in the other man’s eyes. Anger meant Pat could still feel enough to care. Slender as that thread might be, it was enough to hang onto.

“Why not? She was a grown woman, and from all accounts an intelligent one. She moves in with a known Republican agitator during the worst spate of violence this country has ever seen and expects to live happily ever after? Come on Pat, no one is that naïve. She knew.”

Pat came at him in a rush, but David was ready for it, though the slamming of his back into the wall still winded him. The years of intensive training at the hand of British Special Forces wasn’t all for naught, however. David grabbed Pat’s arm and put him facedown on the floor within seconds. He held him there for a minute, feeling the strain in the man’s body, the heavy pounding of blood in his own ears. He relaxed a little, easing the tension he’d exerted, and Pat took his opening.

Even in the complete exhaustion of grief the man had the reflexes of a cat. David was on his knees before he knew what had happened, Pat’s hand like tensile steel on the back of his neck. Try as he might David couldn’t move his head, couldn’t avoid the black look that seemed to burn right through him and see all the darkest corners of his soul.

“You can have it,” Pat said, “what you’ve dreamed of,” a terrible smile formed on his lips. “It doesn’t matter to me anymore, why shouldn’t I at least give ye a moment of happiness?”

David closed his eyes, the one line of defense open to him at present. Still he was only inches from the man, unable to escape the intense heat of his skin and the scent that he’d memorized like some pathetic schoolboy.

He wasn’t prepared for what Pat did next. The shock of the man’s mouth on his own was so great he didn’t realize what was happening at first, couldn’t fathom that such a thing could happen.

David held the kiss for a moment, allowing himself a hint of what was being offered, an understanding of what timeless hours could be created within the force of such a passion. And knowing the passion would be built only on grief and bottomless pain, found the decency to push it away.

He sat back on his knees, breath coming in ragged gasps, blood thundering through his veins like an unstoppable tide. He ran a hand over his face, then looked down at the man prostrate on the floor.

Pat’s eyes were closed, mouth set in a grim line.

“Christ, David,” he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

David shook his head. “I’m not. You’re exhausted and grief-stricken, in the morning it’ll be as though it never happened.”

Pat shook his head, eyes open now. “No, it won’t be. We both know ye can’t erase such moments.”

David shrugged and then softly said, “If it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to erase it.”

Pat didn’t respond. He turned his head away and the long frame, so pale in the gathering dusk, began to shake. David merely put a hand on his shoulder, knowing that anything more would be a grave mistake.

“I’ve sinned,” Pat said dully, “an’ this is how I’m to pay for it. Yet it’s Sylvie who’s paid the greatest cost.”

“How very Catholic of you,” David responded dryly. “The only sin here was the one of trying to be human in a system that doesn’t allow for such weakness.”

“Now who’s bein’ naïve?” Pat asked, eyes still closed, though the trembling in his body had ceased and he lay very still as the ebb tide of fatigue finally caught him in its net.

“Even being born here doesn’t prepare one for this country,” David replied, feeling profoundly weary himself. He still had to return to base and pack up; he was to leave for London tonight. However he couldn’t, at present, find the words to tell this man he was leaving.

“Will ye—will ye just sit here with me for a bit?” Pat asked, startling David out of his thoughts. “I could try to stand but I don’t think my legs would hold me up right now.”

“I’ll sit here all night, if you need me to,” David replied.

They were silent for a long time. When the darkness came, David could feel it settle like a living thing, its touch soft upon his face. The rooms around them seemed to retreat, the furniture blurred into indefinable shapes. Beyond the walls, he could hear the sound of a mother calling her child home out of the night. If the child came at once all would be fine, but if he didn’t her voice would soon grow panicked, for like all mothers she knew that some children went out to play and never did return home.

In the dark, Pat spoke, voice hollowed out with grief and exhaustion.

“How,” he asked, “am I to live now?”

David paused, considered a lie, and then knew despite the necessity of it, he’d told the truth earlier. He could not lie to this man.

“However it is that lonely people make a life.”

THE HOUSE LAY STILL ABOUT HER, the only noise that of the water gently lapping at the edges of the big tub. The water was up to her throat, awash with lavender heads, spicily fragrant in the steam. But even the warm bath couldn’t erase the chill that went bone deep in her now. Despite the exhaustion of early pregnancy, she still lay awake much of every night, listening for a step on the stair that never came.

A week ago, she had cleaned Lawrence’s room, tidying away the jumble, washing the dirty clothes and placing them back in the drawers. She’d even made the bed, though she’d not had the heart to take the indent out of the pillow where his head had lain so recently. Then she had closed the door and not opened it since.

She stepped out of the bath, the gurgle of the escaping water the only noise in the great hush that surrounded her. The house felt like a fragile shell around her that would shatter at the slightest touch.

She looked in the steam smudged mirror and sighed. She felt like the survivor of a shipwreck, cast ashore on an abandoned island. She looked the part too, she thought, hair a wet tangle of black, face thin and white, eyes hollowed out with grief and exhaustion.

Yesterday she’d finally gone to the doctor and had confirmed that which she had already known. She was most definitely pregnant. The baby was due in early April, conceived, she was certain, on the night she and Casey had made love in the field, with the sound of Robin’s lament washing over them.

She toweled off, eyeing her body in the mirror. Her breasts were unmistakably those of a woman with child, warm and painfully tender, the traceries of blue vein like bruised rivers weaving through a snowy landscape. Her stomach was only beginning to round itself out, in promise of the fertile mound it would become.

She slid a flannel nightgown over her head, an ancient garment that was flecked with tiny blue forget-me-nots and was as soft and comforting as a child’s blanket. It clung to her bath warm skin as she padded downstairs to let Finbar in. The dog ambled in, his gait much less spritely than it had been only weeks before. He looked at her with mutely pleading eyes and she shook her head. He sighed as if in understanding, and walked dispiritedly over to the locked door of Lawrence’s room, whined and then curled up in front of it, the spot he’d slept in every night since the boy’s death. It seemed even her thoughts had become filled with those words—before, since, after—all the words that divided time and became a part of the vocabulary of loss.