One by One in the Darkness (15 page)

Although the school the sisters had attended as small children and where Sally now taught was less than a mile from their home, it was a mile in the direction of nothing in particular. As a result, Cate had not had occassion even to pass it for many years, and she had not been inside the building since her time as a pupil there. But when Sally talked about her job, Cate would always say how much she would like to see the school again sometime, and on the day after she came back from having stayed with Helen, Sally suggested that they borrow a set of keys from the school caretaker, and satisfy Cate’s nostalgia.

But as they drove there, Sally was annoyed with Cate, and for a foolish reason: Cate was in a good mood. Given that Sally’s motive in suggesting the visit had had precisely that end – to distract Cate and to cheer her up – Sally could see that there was no logic to her own reaction. In spite of that, she couldn’t help feeling resentful. Because she lived away from home, Cate had been spared the pain and emotional labour of helping their mother through her bereavement. And now here was Cate, home with a fresh dose of trouble, and again it fell to Sally to ease the burden: to placate their mother, to plead Cate’s case, to defuse, as far as she could, all tension and anger, and prevent rows. She glanced at Cate, who was sitting beside her. Sally knew she would never be able to broach the subject. The long years of trying to please everyone had taken their toll. Concealing her true feelings if she knew they might cause pain or displeasure to those around her and saying the things she thought people wanted to hear had become so natural to her that she now found it impossible to do otherwise. As if to prove the point, Cate suddenly said, ‘I’ll never forget how good you’ve been to me this week, never,’ and Sally found herself replying automatically, ‘Oh, don’t mention it. That’s what sisters are for.’

They pulled up in front of the school gates and Sally said,
‘Now you have to promise me that you won’t go on about how small everything looks.’

But Cate promised nothing of the sort, and even before they went inside she was exclaiming about how the wall around the playground must have been lowered, because she could see over it so easily now, and she couldn’t believe that the only reason for this was that she had grown so tall. As Sally struggled with the keys Cate went over to the window and, cupping her hands against the glass, she peered in.

‘Oh, this is strange,’ she cried, ‘this is giving me goosebumps, it looks exactly the same as I remember it. God, I think I even remember that wall chart, the one with the rainbow on it. Do you think that’s possible?’

‘I doubt it,’ Sally said drily, as she finally managed to open the door. ‘We may not be great about updating the visual aids, but we’re not
that
bad either!’

‘It even smells the same,’ Cate said, as she stepped inside.

‘And the tiles, I remember the tiles now, but if you’d asked me the colour of the floor, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It must feel so odd to you, to be working here.’

‘Not in the least,’ Sally said. ‘I’m used to being here. It would feel far stranger if they closed the place, which they talk about doing often enough. I hardly ever think about the past. Maybe that’s something I missed out on by not going away.’

They were standing in the hallway beside a row of low hooks, above each of which was a piece of paper with a name written on it. ‘I had a tartan shoe-bag, yours was dark green with white spots, and Helen’s was a sort of floral print. I think Granny made them for us. Why do I remember that? Why do some of those things stay in your mind so clearly and others don’t?’ Cate bent down and read the names of some of the children from the paper labels.

‘Patrick Larkin. Is that Willy Larkin’s son?’

‘You wouldn’t need to ask that if you saw him,’ Sally said, ‘for I don’t think I ever saw a child that looked as like his da. You’d maybe ask me if we kept the same kids stashed away for twenty years, never mind the wall charts. Come in here, and I’ll show you the room where I teach. I don’t really like it when it looks like this,’ she went on, nodding at the rows of tables on
top of which were stacked all the chairs. ‘You don’t really get the full picture without the children. It looks bare, too, without the plants and the goldfish.’

‘What do you do with them over the summer?’

‘Mammy looks after the plants, and one of the children takes the fish home: we draw lots to see who it’ll be. By September, it’s usually the same story: the fish is dead, and the plants are so big that they won’t fit on the window-sills any more. The wee fella who was minding the goldfish last year swore the one he brought back was the one he’d taken home but if it was, it had had a traumatic couple of months, for it had shrunk by a good two inches.’

Cate laughed. She was wandering around the room now looking at everything: the trays of wax crayons and the crates of wooden bricks; the paintings of skewed mothers and fathers lolling outside vivid, pointed houses with trees like lollipops; the list of words for colours written up in the colours themselves. Sally was glad that she hadn’t said anything resentful, for it would only have caused bad feeling. Moreover, it might have given the impression that she wasn’t pleased Cate was going to have a baby, and that wasn’t the case at all. It was the circumstances of the pregnancy that caused problems for their mother, and therefore problems for the family. As far as Sally herself was concerned, the only thing that mattered was that Cate felt good about it, and she strongly suspected that she was hiding her delight for the time being: as Sally was herself. She truly was thrilled that there would be a baby in the family, and she felt sure that their mother would in time come round to the idea too. It was just getting her to that point that was delicate, and that was the key issue at the moment. Looking at Cate now, Sally noticed that she was wiping her eyes, and she decided it would be best not to ignore this.

‘Ah, don’t go getting all broody on me. Wait a few years and you’ll see all this in a different light. You’ll have more than your fair share of Play Doh pressed into your carpets and Lego down the back of your sofa, believe you me. You’ll be longing for a bit of intelligent adult conversation, never mind a bit of peace and quiet.’ Fortunately, Sally had hit the right note with her lightly teasing tone. Too mocking, and Cate would have dissolved into
floods of tears; too soft and sentimental, and she would have done exactly the same. As it was, she laughed again, wiped her eyes again, and there were no more tears.

She turned to look at Sally, who was perched now on her teacher’s chair, her hands sunk deep in her pockets. She was still so small, Sally, with her fine bones and her delicate face, and the way she wore her straight, toffee-coloured hair pulled back and tied in a ribbon emphasised her childlike appearance. But there was something about her that undercut this impression: something about her brow, the set of her mouth, that made her look like a child who had seen more than she ought to have done, a child who knew too much. Cate had never noticed this in her before, and she wondered when the change had come about. Sometimes she realised that she probably didn’t know Sally as well as she knew Helen. She had assumed that her younger sister had a less complex personality than was actually the case, and Cate had therefore wrongly taken for granted what Sally’s thoughts and feelings on certain matters would be. She was ashamed of this, looking at Sally now, who was sitting with her legs crossed, swinging her right shoe loosely from her toes.

‘Do you ever regret that you stayed at home, Sally? That you never went away?’

The shoe fell to the floor, clattering loudly on the boards.

‘I used to,’ she said, ‘a long time ago; and then it passed and I was glad to be here, and now, well, now it’s different again. It’s funny. All I ever wanted to do when I was growing up was to be a teacher and get a job here.’ She paused, and pursed her lips. She didn’t know how to explain to Cate that perhaps that wasn’t the truth. Maybe she had only become a teacher to please her mother, and to be like her. She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I left college and they offered me this post. The very day I started working, I felt trapped. I wanted out.’

‘I never knew that.’ Cate said.

‘You never asked me, did you? In any case, I kept it well hidden. I gave Mammy a hint of it one night, said something to her about wasn’t there a proverb about anyone being able to have whatever they wanted in this world, on condition that it wouldn’t bring them the happiness they expected. She picked up at once what I was getting at: “You’re not trying to tell me
…” she said, and I could see there was anger there, that I’d never be able to explain it to her. So I backed off at once, told her I was happy, I was grand, and that was an end to it. But I still felt restless for a good few years after that. And then I got used to it. You can get used to anything, can’t you? That’s what people say. Maybe it’s true.’

‘But why didn’t you go?’ Cate said. ‘I know Mammy and Daddy wouldn’t have minded in the long run.’

‘Are you really sure of that? I’m not convinced that you’re right. Who knows? Anyway, I knew that if I went away, I’d never be able to come back. I wouldn’t have been
allowed
back, for one thing. This was a permanent post, and I discreetly looked into the possibility of my getting leave, maybe just for a year, but no. And I always knew that I would want to come back, so I had a straight choice: go away and stay away, or stay put. So here I am.’

‘How could you be so sure that you would want to come back? Maybe you’d have enjoyed life more elsewhere, and wanted to stay away?’

Sally laughed. ‘I was afraid of that. I was afraid that I would make strong links in some other place, but not strong enough, so that I’d feel discontented wherever I was. When I was over visiting you in those days, I used to think how great it would be to live there, but there was another side too. I felt loyal to home. I hated it when people said horrible things about Northern Ireland. Once, when I was in London I met a man, and he asked me where I was from. When I told him he said, “Oh well, you can’t help that,” and his friend laughed. I was so angry. I thought if I lived there, that was the sort of thing I’d have to put up with, and I wasn’t prepared to stand for it. But it passed, anyway, and I did settle down at home.’ She paused. ‘It was all right, until Daddy died.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Now, I want out again. If it wasn’t for Mammy, I’d leave tomorrow. I can’t stand being in Northern Ireland. All that guff about it being a great wee place, and the people being so friendly. I feel ashamed for having gone along with all that; other people were being killed the way Daddy was, and I was one of the ones saying, “There’s more to Northern Ireland than shooting and bombing.” Anyway, I hinted to Mammy again, very gently, that I’d like to go away, but she
wouldn’t hear tell of it. She needs me now. And maybe I need her too.’

Sally was aware of the tremendous emotional dependency expressed in these final understated remarks. It was as much as she would admit to Cate; and Cate would expect no more. They rarely spoke of how their mother had taken possession of Sally so quickly and so completely. She would, of course, have denied it, but the last thing their mother ever wanted for Sally was for her to be autonomous and independent. It suited her perfectly to have her youngest daughter as a companion, whose will and whose nature she had formed to fit with her own needs. So completely had this been achieved that when Sally felt she lacked privacy in her life, or that her mother was selfish in her behaviour towards her, these thoughts were immediately joined by a searing guilt for allowing herself to entertain such ideas.

‘But it’s not just Mammy,’ she quickly added. ‘I remember being on holiday in Italy once, and loving it there until I saw this two-day-old English newspaper in a kiosk, with a report on the front page about a car bomb having exploded in Belfast. All at once, I wanted to be there. I felt guilty for not being at home, not that it would have made the slightest bit of difference. I mean, apart from the odd holiday I’ve been here right through the Troubles, and it hasn’t made a blind bit of difference to anything. There hasn’t been so much as a shot less fired because of me, but it would have made a difference if I hadn’t been here, it would have made a difference to
me
. I can’t explain it any better than that.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Cate said, ‘I know what you mean.’ She remembered many such moments similar to the one Sally had described. One in particular had always remained vivid in her mind. It had been an evening in winter, and she had been working in the kitchen, slicing up beef in thin strips to make a stir-fry. The news was on the radio, and she’d only been half-listening to it, until they started to report on a man who had been found shot in South Armagh the previous night. They were interviewing the local priest who had been called out to anoint the man’s body where it lay, in a secluded lane. Cate stopped chopping and put the knife down, as she listened to the soft, hesitant voice describing the rain and wind of the dark night, the long wet grass in
which the body lay, how he had gone afterwards to break the news to the man’s widow; and his soft voice, his sorrow, were compulsive and terrible. It entered Cate’s mind like some gentle, awful thing from a dream, seeping from the radio into the bright, warm kitchen where she stood, looking now in revulsion at the cut, heaped meat on the bloodstained wooden board. She didn’t know why, but she wanted then to be home.

‘I often think,’ Sally said, ‘about that remark, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” I don’t know if I believe that.’

‘Are you still in the SDLP?’ Cate asked, and Sally laughed out loud.

‘Oh that makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it? Sally Quinn’s got her wee SDLP card, so we can all rest easy in our beds, we can all sit back and wait for peace to break out. Yes, I’m still a member, for what that’s worth. I only ever joined because Mark, the headmaster in this school, asked me to, and it would have been embarrassing to refuse. I suppose I’m not being quite honest in saying that. I do support their principles, with a few reservations; but they’re as good as you’re going to get. And I know that there are lots of people who support Sinn Fein in a similar vein. The parents of a lot of the children in this school, for example. The SDLP’s too middle class for them to feel comfortable with it, they don’t feel it can truly speak for them. Lots of them would have much stronger Republican sentiments than I do, but that doesn’t mean that they’re completely comfortable with everything Sinn Fein says or does. They know at least that the root of all the trouble here is a political problem, and I give them credit for that. It’s more than some of the politicians in this country will admit.’