Can you keep a secret, p.10
Can You Keep A Secret?, page 10
‘I tried everything I could to keep this place going.’
There was a brief pause before Niall reacted, nodding his head in understanding.
‘Oh, I see. You’re pissed at me because I wouldn’t lend you the money?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Look, I explained to you at the time – it just wasn’t feasible. I couldn’t make the numbers work. For fuck’s sake! Marcus said the place was practically falling down!’
A dark look had come over Patrick’s face, a furious expression which he now directed at Marcus.
‘I never said that,’ Marcus protested.
‘You fucking did!’ Niall exclaimed.
‘Thanks a lot, mate,’ Patrick said to Marcus, coolness in his tone.
I reached out a hand to his arm, seeking to steady him. The situation was getting out of control. But he lifted his hand to his brow, shaking off my touch, and rubbed at a wrinkle of tiredness or stress, before taking his hand away and saying in a quiet voice:
‘This hasn’t been easy for me – coming to this decision, then having to break the news to you all. You say it doesn’t feel right, Hilary, well, just how do you think it feels for me? Marcus, you say the place is falling down, but when I went to you to ask for help with plans for this place, you shrugged me off because you were too busy. The same way you were all too busy. You talk about this house in wistful tones of nostalgia and longing, but none of you has even bothered to call down here – not once since my mother died. And I don’t blame you, Niall, for not investing in this place, but I do think you could have been a better friend. If any of you had taken the time to visit, even just once in a while, then you could at least have seen what I was going through, talked a bit about it, and then the idea of me selling the place mightn’t have come as such a shock.’
Hilary was the first to apologize. ‘I’m so sorry, Patrick. I’ve been wrapped up in myself – we all have.’
Marcus agreed. ‘And for the record, I think it’s a good thing you’re selling this place. Freeing yourself from the stress of it – I think it will be the making of you. And if I can help in any way—’
‘Thanks, Marcus.’
‘I’m an arse,’ Niall admitted self-pityingly. ‘Ignore everything I just said.’
‘I know you’re an arse, but you’re my arse,’ Patrick joked, and we all laughed, even Liv, who can’t have been aware that this was an old joke between the rest of us. ‘This is our last weekend here,’ Patrick went on, more serious now. ‘All of us together. Let’s not waste it feeling angry or disappointed.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Marcus said, and all of us clinked glasses and drank to that.
‘Dessert,’ Rachel announced, and went out to the scullery, returning with two tubs of Ben & Jerry’s.
‘What will you do?’ Liv enquired of Patrick as Rachel began scooping out the ice cream. ‘Will you stay in the area? Or travel, perhaps?’
‘I’d like to travel,’ he said. ‘Lindsey and I have talked about it, haven’t we? A six-month tour – South America, Asia. We could both do with a holiday. But Thornbury will always be home. And you know, I’m not selling off the entire estate.’
‘No?’
‘Only this house and the parklands surrounding it. The stables I will keep, along with the land to the west of the house that’s currently used for agriculture.’
‘So you’re going to be a farmer,’ Niall said, sounding unimpressed as he tucked into his dessert. It was evident that, despite admitting to being an arse, he was still bristling.
‘Why not? It’s an honest living.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I have some ideas I’d like to try out.’
Patrick proceeded to talk us through his plans for producing organic lamb, as well as his intention to plant several acres of wildflower meadows and establish an apiary.
‘It’s almost impossible to buy pure Irish honey,’ he told us, his voice taken with passion for his idea. ‘That stuff you buy in supermarkets is only packaged in Ireland, not produced. It all comes from Eastern Europe or South America.’
‘What about that Manuka honey?’ Liv asked.
‘That’s from New Zealand. And for all its health properties, you’d be better off consuming real Irish honey from Irish flowers, indigenous to this country.’
Patrick continued talking us through his notions of producing beeswax candles and other goods. He talked of converting the other stables into workshops, developing a cottage industry, providing some employment for the local people. I had heard it before and, even though it sounded fair-minded, even idyllic, my mind went to that stable and I had a sudden blinding flash, imagining blood spattered over the whitewashed wall, fragments of bone and other matter mingling with the straw on the stone ground. All of that had been washed away now, and yet I couldn’t help but feel that the place was contaminated by what had happened there, polluted, its poison lurking in the corners, waiting for a chance to grow. An unexpected feeling of nausea came over me. My eye was at me again, the feeling like it was swelling in the socket, as if someone had jammed their thumb into it. I put my hand to my face, pressing gently on the temple.
‘How much will it take to get this business off the ground?’ Niall asked, getting down to brass tacks.
‘I haven’t quite worked that out yet,’ Patrick admitted.
‘Still, seed funding’s not going to be a problem,’ Niall commented. ‘I imagine you’ll have a whack of cash after selling this place.’ He waved his fork in the air to indicate the house, the land that surrounded it.
‘Less than you’d imagine,’ Patrick said in a regretful tone. ‘After all the debts have been paid off, you’d be surprised at how little is left.’
‘I would be surprised. Come on. Seriously. How much are you getting for this place? Several million, I’m guessing. Right?’
‘I’d really rather not get into that,’ Patrick said, sounding uncomfortable. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘A tidy package should uncomplicate things, I would think,’ Niall said, putting his fork down and wiping his mouth with his napkin.
‘Look, why don’t you just drop it?’ Marcus interjected. ‘It’s clear he doesn’t want to discuss it.’
‘I was only asking,’ Niall said, his voice growing cold. ‘Just trying to make conversation.’
‘Well, don’t,’ Marcus said, coming to Patrick’s defence. ‘It’s vulgar to discuss money at the table.’
‘Come on, guys. Let’s be nice to each other, remember?’ Hilary said, trying to calm the situation, but Marcus ignored her.
‘And I never said anything to you about Thornbury falling down. Where do you get off spouting such bullshit?’
‘Not in so many words maybe—’
I had taken my hand away from my eye, and saw Patrick sitting back in his chair, staring hard at the table in front of him, a strange look coming over his face.
‘It’s so fucking like you,’ Marcus went on. ‘Prodding a man about how much he earns or what he made on the sale of his house. Unless he volunteers the information, you don’t go there.’
‘Christ, a lesson in etiquette from you …’
Patrick tried to placate the two:
‘I didn’t ask you all here so we could argue about the past. Nor do I want to talk about money. I asked you here because of how close we once were. We shared something in this house – all of us – and I wanted you to be here with me for one last weekend before I let this place go. So could we please just stop bickering and actually enjoy ourselves.’
But it was too late for that. The bickering had become something else. It had been simmering between the two men from almost the moment we had arrived.
‘I am enjoying myself,’ Niall said, his words laced with sarcasm. ‘I’m having an excellent time.’
Then, under his breath, Marcus uttered the word ‘Prick.’
There was a sudden rush of air and movement as Niall lunged across the table, toppling candles and sending glasses crashing, grabbing for Marcus.
We all jumped to our feet, each of us pulling at one man or the other, trying to separate them as they clawed at each other, struggling to gain some kind of purchase in a desperate scramble to thrash the daylights out of their opponent. Everyone was shouting. I suppose, in all, it only lasted two or three minutes, until Liv, assisted by Patrick, managed to pull Niall back. She continued holding on to his arm, even after the two men had been broken apart. And it was in this pause that the real damage happened.
The table was ruined. A couple of glasses had smashed, a jug had toppled over spilling flowers across the tabletop, two of the candles had been snuffed out. Hilary had come forward and begun mopping up the spilt wine and water, while Rachel and I were picking slivers of glass from the table and putting them on to a plate. The French doors remained open but a breeze had picked up now, causing a curtain to billow. The awareness of it was bothering me somewhat, jarring as it did with the pulse in my eye. I was turning to look at it when the blow came.
Throughout the meal, I had been sitting with Niall to my right. He was still standing at this point, Liv holding on to his arms and remonstrating with him, while he attempted to extricate himself from her grip. At the moment of my turning, he must have snapped, violently wrenching his arm free of her grasp, the recoil sending his elbow straight at my face. Instantly, I went down.
I can’t say for how long I was out. But I do remember a narrow hissing sound coming into my ears, like the noise of something deflating. And then the pain abruptly announced itself, throbbing and vital, waves of it like some kind of convulsion. I could hear their voices now, Patrick’s rising above all the others, shouting, ‘Give her room! For God’s sake, stand back!’ A faintness of light as I tried to open my eyes, and then someone’s arms beneath me, hauling me to my feet. I clutched at the table for support, muttering the insane protestation that I was fine, really.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ I heard someone ask. Patrick’s hand went around my waist, and I felt my arm being placed around his shoulder, my weight leaning into his body.
‘Out of the way,’ he said, steering me towards the open doors, and it was only when we were outside in the coolness of the kitchen garden, away from the others, that the fear came rushing in.
‘My eye. Oh God,’ I said, feeling the pain coming at me, the thrum of it alongside the doctor’s warning: no undue pressure, no hard impacts, under no circumstances. The pain wormed through my eye to my brain and I felt the damage seeping out.
‘Hang on,’ Patrick said, and I felt his body holding me up as he steered me towards a bench. ‘It’s okay, Lins. I’ve got you.’
12
1991
Rachel and I are studying in her bedroom. There will be exams all next week before we break for Hallowe’en. She has plans to visit cousins in the south of England. I will go home and help out in the pub. INXS plays on the new stereo – a present from her parents for her sixteenth birthday. Above her bed hangs a new poster of Michael Hutchence. Rachel thinks he’s a god.
I sit cross-legged on the window seat, my history notes spread next to me. Rachel is lying on her front on the bed, smoking, her legs, crossed at the ankles, swinging lazily back and forth.
‘God, this is tedious,’ she says, flipping the page of her textbook. ‘What’s the difference between the Federal Republic and the Weimar Republic?’
‘Hilary would know,’ I remark carelessly.
Hilary had not come to Thornbury this time. I’d rather give it a miss were her words. Rachel had hardly reacted. ‘Suit yourself,’ was all the response she gave.
‘Pity she’s not here,’ I say, testing. When Rachel doesn’t reply, I add: ‘I wonder why she didn’t come.’
‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ she says, disinterested.
A low fire putters in the grate. Our socks hang from the mantle above, still damp from the shoot this morning. Shortly after seven we had gathered on the lawn, all four of us still bleary with sleep. Me and Rachel. Patrick and Marcus. The mist hanging thick over the grass and the trees beyond.
Rachel has been quiet all weekend, moody. The shoot had lifted her spirits. For a brief while afterwards, she remained cheerful and upbeat. The fresh morning air, the thrill of stalking the land while everything around us was still waking. She shot a rabbit. Marcus did, too. Patrick’s attempts were unsuccessful, and I didn’t fire my gun once.
We had all returned, tousled, happy, full of talk of our shoot. In stockinged feet, we padded about the kitchen, searching out food, before sitting at the table, drinking mugs of tea while reliving the experience, talking back through the woods and trees, the early haze over the lake, the sudden rush of a drake stretching its wings in the rushes. I had watched the way Rachel’s eyes had widened when telling of the flash of a rabbit’s tail, the snap of the barrel slotting into place and the jolt of the gun against her shoulder as the first shot rang out. All the while, out in the pantry, the pat-pat-pat of blood hitting paper as their kill dripped from scullery hooks.
‘Perhaps we should take a break,’ I suggest now.
Sitting at the window, the panes of glass cloudy and dripping with condensation, I feel the heaviness in the air between us.
She doesn’t look up from her textbook, stubs out her cigarette in the shell ashtray.
‘And do what?’
‘Go for a walk, maybe? We could see if the boys want to come.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘I bet you’d go if Niall were here.’
I say this softly and I mean it kindly. But her eyes flash at me with sudden anger.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t you?’
Niall is spending the weekend with his new girlfriend. Her name is Thea. He met her at a party in Blackrock. She goes to Alexandra College, and her parents have a massive house on Shrewsbury Road. Niall was quite specific about that.
‘You’re not yourself. You seem down. And I just thought …’
‘You thought I was mourning the loss of Niall? Please. I’m not that desperate.’
‘I know you like him,’ I try tentatively.
‘He amuses me, that’s all.’
She pushes herself up off the bed, goes to the bureau where she has left a magazine.
‘The Waterboys are playing McGonagle’s next month. Any interest in going?’
I drain the last of my coffee. It’s cold against the back of my throat.
‘We’d never get permission.’
‘We’ll just say we’re going home for the weekend.’
‘Where would we stay?’
‘A hostel. Patrick’s done it loads of times. How else do you think he got to see The Pixies?’
She flicks quickly through the pages of the magazine, as though searching for something she cannot find.
‘Anyway,’ she continues, returning to our previous conversation, ‘I have my eye on someone else.’
I look up. ‘Who?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’ I cannot keep the sting of hurt from my voice.
‘It’s too soon,’ she answers loftily. ‘But I will say this: he’s not an infant like Niall. I’m done with playing nursemaid to children.’ She puts down the magazine, stretches and yawns. She picks up a loop earring and slots it into her earlobe. I watch her carefully as she examines her reflection in the mirror, tucks her hair behind her ear. ‘I need someone older. More mature. Someone I can learn from.’
‘Learn what?’
She rolls her eyes angrily. ‘Sex, of course. Duh!”
‘Oh, go on – tell me. I promise I won’t tell.’ Still she won’t budge, so I say: ‘I’d tell you.’
‘Really? Tell me, then – who do you fancy?’
Patrick’s face flits across my mind and I look down at my notes, studying them.
‘Not Patrick?’ she says. Her ability to read my thoughts is uncanny. Or perhaps my interest has been obvious to all.
Rachel is laughing now, clapping her hands with delight. ‘Oh, Lins – no! You can’t, you just can’t!’
‘I don’t really,’ I protest, embarrassed at her reaction.
‘You do! I can see it. Holy shit – you’re lusting after my big brother.’
‘I’m not lusting! I just think he’s nice, that’s all.’
‘He’s nice all right. Perfectly nice and perfectly dull. And I say that with a lifetime’s experience of him. No, no. You’re far too interesting for my boring older brother. We shall have to find you someone with more spark, more sex appeal.’
‘Like your mystery man.’
She returns to her bed, picking up a vial of purple nail polish on the way. The chemical smell of it enters the air, and she smiles to herself as she dabs at her nails with the little brush, a private, inward kind of smile, as if she’s remembering a joke I’m not in on.
‘You won’t tell Patrick, will you?’ I ask.
She blows on her nails. ‘Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.’
‘I’m going to make some more coffee,’ I say carelessly, taking my cup and hers. I let the door swing shut behind me.
The house feels different now that the weather has changed. Autumn has come on suddenly, and I can feel it in the draughty coolness of the landing. All the doors are closed. I get the feeling that everyone has retreated to their various corners. Small creaks and groans accompany me as I take my time descending the sweeping staircase in my bare feet. Even on a dull day like this, the chandelier shines with majesty. Through the bevelled glass of the windows that flank the front door I see the gardener – Henry – astride the lawnmower, cutting the grass that sweeps down to the line of trees along the avenue.
The noise of the mower fades as I move past the hall, back towards the kitchens. I feel a little down. Remembering Rachel’s laughter, the gleefully incredulous look on her face as she said: ‘Not Patrick?’ All right for her, I think bitterly, and not for the first time I envy her her confidence. Niall is not the only guy she has wrapped around her little finger. She and I are best friends – a fact firmly established over the past year since we’ve been thrown together at school. I spend more of my home leave at Thornbury than I do with my own family. And yet, at times like this, I feel the wide gulf in experience and understanding between us. Apart from a few shifts at school discos, and one awful occasion at a rugby-club disco where I endured groping and fumbling under my T-shirt at the hands of some spotty fifth-year from Terenure College, I have nothing to bridge the gap between us in terms of our sexual experience. At times, I worry she’ll leave me behind.
