The Scattering (2 page)

‘Terence O'Hanlon?' the tall garda asked. Angel could smell cigarette smoke off the man's breath.

‘That's me,' Angel replied.

‘Can I come in?' Angel hesitated. He'd heard stories about people calling to remote homesteads under all sorts of pretexts, then looked out and saw the squad car. He asked the garda in, shut the door behind him and dropped the latch. Jess came out of the room, slowly tying her hair. He watched the garda staring wide-eyed at Jess' long white hair flashing around the low-lit room.

‘I'm sorry to have bothered you both,' the garda said.

‘No. It's fine. What's the problem?' Angel asked. The garda seemed nervous.

‘Terrible storm forecast,' the garda said.

‘I heard.'

‘Messing it up terrible these days, aren't they, the weather people?'

‘They are.' Angel laughed, thinking of his poor day with the poles.

‘What can I do for you, Officer?'

‘Patrick is fine.'

‘Patrick. What can I do for you?'

‘Please. Sit down,' Jess said, and gestured to the garda, who took Angel's chair by the fire.

‘Look, I just have to ask you both not to go far, at least not out of the local area, if you don't mind. For the next couple of days anyway.'

‘Why? What's going on?' Jess asked, alarmed. The garda seemed put out and wiped his mouth with his hand which, Angel observed, was as wide and thick as a brick.

‘I suppose you'll know soon enough, but a body was found this evening up there in the bog. The other side of the ring fort.'

‘A body?' said Jess.

‘Aye. A woman. A dead one,' the garda replied.

‘Who is it?' Angel asked.

‘Your neighbour, actually. Margaret Murphy. Lives, or lived, I should say, up in the blue house. These are hard times now and people do crazy things. We need to make enquiries all around. Who knows what goes through a person's mind these days, huh? The figures are up.'

‘The figures?' Jess enquired.

‘Suicide,' the garda said. ‘We have a mink problem as you know in these parts. But it is my belief she must have been dead already for them to have done that to her.' Angel sat Jess down into a chair.

‘Did you know herself and Jack Murphy?'

‘Only in passing,' Angel replied.

‘Fresh over from England, Mr O'Hanlon, are you?'

‘Well, yes and no. We've been here since last spring.'

‘Keep yourselves to yourselves do you?'

‘Mostly, yes.'

‘I seemed to recall word of a fella with the look of yourself come to the old O'Hanlon place from London.'

‘That would be me then,' Angel replied, curtly.

‘Right. Well, I'll not keep you both tonight.' The garda stood up, nodded, and went to lift the latch of the door. Angel quickly aided his release out onto the porch.

‘Is that it?' Angel asked.

‘That's it. I'll call in tomorrow and we'll catch up then.'

‘Patrick…' Angel called out before the garda had reached the hedge.

‘I saw her you know. Margaret. Today. Out on the road.'

‘What time would that have been?'

‘Four, five hours ago.'

‘She was probably on her way up. 'Tis a pity you didn't catch her first, huh?'

‘Then you're sure it's…'

‘She has previous. That's all you need know. Just keep to the village for the weekend now till the forensics are done. Goodnight now.'

When he returned to the house, Jess was curled up in bed. Angel quietly closed the bedroom door and went into the kitchen. He stood with his back to the fire and began to consider the day: nothing had gone right from the start of it. Maybe the whole project had been a mistake and they would have been as well to have sold the property when he'd inherited it. But they'd had this mad idea of a life in the country. Maybe it was he and Jess; maybe they were just wrong in the place, like the Swedish mink. Why had he not called out to Margaret when he saw her in the road? She was alone, and not shouting her usual venom at Jack. He should have guessed something was amiss.

He went out with his big stick to the side field. He walked along the lane-way to the edge of the land, passed the desolate-looking black field, all darkly ploughed and waiting to be sown, the tall grasses on the rim of it kissing in the crosswinds. He looked over towards Henry's and saw a flashing light from a television screen spill onto their flat dark lawn. He looked up at the black pines and turned to face the long width of emptiness over the ravine down to the river. In the water he saw his reflection and the transillumination of his eyes; they glowed. He took a gulp of the sleet-laden air and thought of poor gormless Jack who had now lost his wife. It racked him. He thought of Jess, and of all the precious time he'd missed with her this past year. The wall can wait a while, he told the land, and turned and walked quickly towards the house.

The Badminton Court

The window of my room faces a tall hedge and an ancient oak, home to a kestrel and her two chicks. Beyond Redwood are hills, the edge of a winding silver lake. As I observe its gleam curl around the estate, I know instantly that I do not have to cross the lake to find what I need, that happiness is a small question, easily answered.

Summer. The smell of cut grass, the faint odour of plimsoles. Throughout the house the unmistakable bouquet of hemp. Fourteen acres of manicured gardens and lawns. The sky an azure spell. Clouds that are bird-shaped: an eagle, doves, buzzards. There is a palpable sense of waiting on the badminton court below, a silence soon to be punctured by bat whacks, whistling shuttlecocks and the swish of serge skirts.

I look down at the court, the sun scalding the lawn, the bullfinches gathering in the gods of the low, long hedge to watch the morning game. I know I'll be here for a while. Then music: Saint-Saëns, Joy Division. I know what she wants. I hear the front door slam. I go to the games room and change into the maroon-coloured gown. I am here to play. I am here to help her forget. I am here to help her die.

This is Redwood House, Suffolk. Constable country. Miranda is seventeen. She is thin with shorn blonde hair, and is altogether the most disarmingly honest person I have ever met. Reveals to everyone precisely what her illness is, gives them diagnosis
and
prognosis. Brain tumour. Malignant. Grade four. Three to six months. I am used to a more guarded (though perhaps ‘duplicit' is a better word) environment. My father's cagey manoeuvres, his dubious schemes, his admired business acumen. My presence is itself the settlement of his debts to Miranda's father.

Apart from Frances and me, she is alone at Redwood. Her father is off on some protracted business trip; her mother, never discussed, is, I think, barely known to her. The herbal preparations, the meals, the thrice-weekly trips to the clinic, are left to Frances.

Further to the south of Redwood there is another property, with a small boathouse: South Lodge. Lavender hedgerows, saxifrage-covered rocks, an assortment of mangy cats and kittens. This is Inshaw's place. From this land he watches us. When we play he pretends he is out gathering mushrooms or repairing the corrugated roof of the boathouse. Sometimes I see his dark, deliquescent eyes follow the shuttlecock back and forth over the net. He is a presence in the game; triangulates it. She tells me to ignore him.

I have become, within weeks, father and mother to her. Father, mother and more.

Dinner. Frances has prepared salmon and marinated tuna and Miranda wants to teach me how to use chopsticks. She rises, comes towards me. The sick smell of her as she bends over my shoulder; death is in her breath. I have forgotten she is so ill. It is easy to do: that lightness of spirit, precision of play. She drops her head on my hair. Your beautiful hair, she says, your long, dark beautiful hair. I am aware of her bones against my own tumescence and curves. She comes away, stands before me, androgynous and stark, and for a moment it seems as if each of us has been called up from the depths of the other's consciousness. We go on like this. The days are endless, summer does not turn. Only I notice the chicks are bigger in the oak, and that Inshaw has finally repaired his roof and is sailing his boat, or I would hardly register the passing of time at all.

I bump into Inshaw in the village. I am surprised. Nice man, shy. We discuss Miranda. Poor Miranda. It isn't fair. It isn't right. He says he will look out for her when I leave at the end of September. I realise I do not want to leave, not ever. I think of my first night and the thoughts I'd had of escape, of secret instant escape onto the tall hedge; I consider how fortunate it was I did not give in to those thoughts. The encounter with Inshaw has startled me. The sudden reality of the situation, a splint of cold glass in my skull.

She says little at breakfast. The evening before she had been on fire. Rapid, erratic thoughts, unfinished sentences, sentences that unravelled, ending in lacunae, gibberish. She had been rude, her inhibitors obstructed by that thing, growing, multiplying inside her. Tumour talk, Frances calls it. She has some toast, a thimble of marmalade, tea. I know she wants a game because she is dressed in the maroon gown. Worn when badminton was played as formally as tennis or cricket, the serge gowns are almost a hundred years old. They belonged to her grandmother. Miranda had found them soot-soaked in the cellar, later began to wear one as protection from the sun. Long-sleeved, cuffed, mandarin-collared, they are oriental in design. Frances says they make us seem like twins. Miranda leaves the house and I go to the games room to change. She has left a sprig of something, eglantine, by my washed and ironed gown on the bench. The sight of it horrifies me.

Our last game. Her play is at half-speed. Her co-ordination off. She is all over the place, drops the shuttlecock. It is tragic to watch. She observes the weakness in her own swing. Summons all her strength and it is poor. Flails about with the racket, pretends there is something wrong with it, but her racket is fine. Essays an awkward thrust and teeters. She is being milked by that thing. It is unspeakable. Eventually she gets a whack. The shuttlecock is not so much launched as massaged by the catgut. She continues, laughs it off, but she cannot get the shuttlecock to cross the net. The sky is a bowl of darkest mussel-blue. Then rain. She runs inside. I hear music: Joy Division, ‘Dead Souls'. The curtains are drawn. I smell burning herbs, cannabis. She is in pain. I know what I must do. I walk to Inshaw's. He offers to sail the boat for me but I assure him I am a seasoned navigator. It is untrue. My upbringing proves fruitful for something: Inshaw lends me his boat for the day.

Miranda and I sail on the silver lake. The day turns bright and humid; a heron wades through the dark-green mud of the bank, water lilies spin with the current. The motor is off and I oar through syrupy, calm conditions till we come to the bend, continuing through a wider willow-lined stretch, still on the estate. Here the wild flowers are in bloom, the eglantine, meadowsweet, great burnet. Low clouds of red admirals skim the side of the boat, their fat gravid centres covered in wet fur. In fields I see bales of hay, barley being harvested. Her face has tilted to one side. Her freckled, yellowing face is beginning to develop a pronounced drop, with drooped jowls, and she drools when she speaks. In her eyes some recognition of what is happening to her. I will always be convinced by that look. I try to tip the boat. It is a struggle. The boat shudders, takes a while to capsize. She screams, splashes about. I swim towards her, hold her, our bodies small and snug in the water. My plan is to swim back once she has gone under, but I can't leave. She clings to me, accepting and placid.

Twenty-four hours later I wash up against a bank. I am alive, and later wake up in hospital. Miranda floats to an island in the river, into a swan's nest. She is so white two diving teams fail to spot her wound around the reeds and tall red crocus.

Twenty-two summers pass. The world is a changed place.

Redwood belongs now to Inshaw. He grants me a walk through the estate whenever I come here. Around the mile or so of angular hedges, the ancient oak and badminton court, where, sometimes, I think I hear the wind fluting through plastic.

Once he asked if I was happy. Before I had the chance to reply, he said his own life had been good and prosperous, but hardly happy. Mine was the same, I said. What is happiness? he asked, as if I knew any better than he. I pondered on this. For me, I said, happiness is two girls playing badminton under an azure sky with clouds that are bird-shaped. Those summers were best, he replied, when I used to watch you play. It occurred to me then, that for nearly a quarter of a century we had both been sustained by a few intoxicating memories squirrelled from our youth. I told him it was high time we lived a little. He agreed and told me then of his plans to flatten the court. I remember that as I walked towards my car, parked beside the silver lake, I had the distinct and certain feeling I was being watched.

1975

As the light weakened, Mr McCourt pulled open the velour drapes and lit the vanilla-scented candle. He had just said goodbye to his youngest daughter, and watched as she crossed the road to catch the airport bus. His children had been coming and going for a long time, perhaps twenty years, but he'd never gotten used to it, and ‘goodbye' had become increasingly difficult.