Let Them Lie, page 4
As for the rest, my brothers worked like slaves on the farm, were released only to attend school, at which they did well, and got scholarships to go to the secondary school in town. My other sisters E. and B. were an added irritation once they realised my existence might have some value for them. Then each day issued their commands and complaints, ‘Fetch me this, do that’. Cries of ‘You need to make sure you clean my shoes properly’ – ‘Make me some tea’ – ‘You’re spilling it everywhere!’. And so on and on. But C. was good to me. When she wasn’t too tired, she would read me stories from the Bible, one of the few books to make their way into the house.
Aoife stopped reading, her heart pounding, and questions skittered uncontrolled around her head. Those initials and other references were causing her disquiet. It was becoming apparent that this was written by someone in her father’s family. Was it a confession to some horrible crime? What the hell did it mean? She was curious to read on, but paradoxically reluctant to do so. The walls of the room pressed in on her, and she felt an urgent need for fresh air.
She pulled on her jacket, slipped the notebook into its inside pocket and hid the box under her bed. Whatever the notebook held, she didn’t want to be in her room when she read it.
Running downstairs, she shouted to her mother that she was going for a drive and would be back in an hour.
It was good to be out in the air, and she looked forward to her first glimpse of the expansive Atlantic Ocean.
CHAPTER 4
Aoife pulled up as close to the rocks as she could go, got out, drew her jacket around her and slammed the car door. Her eyes drank in the ocean’s expanse. It didn’t disappoint. Everything was too much: the booming waves, the flinty blueness of the sea, the explosion of white waves cascading over the solid black wall of rocks, and the cloying pungent odour of sea wrack. The wind pushed at her, clamouring like a satanic child demanding attention. Her senses were overwhelmed by gusts of sea-soaked wind which battered her nostrils so hard and fast that breathing was painful. It was beautiful and terrible, and she loved it. Then, taking a last gulp of the aggressive air, she sat down on the cold rocks.
Reaching into her pocket, she drew out the notebook. The cover was peeling slightly. As her fingers clenched it, she fought a compulsion to fling it from her. For a fanciful moment, it seemed an evil alien artefact. Maybe she should give in to her compulsion and rip its pages out unread and let the wind and sea take them. But she knew she had to read on like a tragic Pandora and release whatever was sealed within its pages.
Opening the notebook, she noticed a flower pressed between the pages. Age had discoloured it, but it was a foxglove. She held it between her fingers as she read.
Life on the farm was a relentless monotony of work, sleep, and work sleep. Mother wanted us to survive. She had ambitions for us – modest ones, to be sure. She wanted us educated, to grow up without having to depend on charity or patronage. Pride in family, and pride in self, was her code of honour. So, we worked and slept for eternity on that farm. She scrimped and saved so that we could go to school and learn the things that would move us forward in life, but never so far forward that we forgot who we were, and who got us to the place we arrived at.
Gratitude was bred – no, beat into our bones. We owed everything to her. Without her, we were nothing. Gratitude is a hard legacy to bear. Its interest rate is high and hard to meet. But we knew what she expected.
I watched them all leave, my brothers and sisters, each driven away by her harshness. Well brought up, polite, educated, but not too educated – a credit to her. But as each one departed, the more I felt the bleakness of my existence. They sent money home from the far-flung places they emigrated to – Canada and South Africa. The money came, but they never returned. Their dutiful letters detailing their work and living conditions revealed nothing of their triumphs, fear, and failures. But with each missive came the folded bank drafts. With every visit of the postman, she glowed with pride as she accepted the airmail letters. She took as her right the congratulations of neighbours on her achievement in rearing such fine upstanding children. This was the only pleasure she allowed herself.
I envied them their escape. I knew that the path she had mapped out for me was to be different. At first, she wanted me to become a priest, but she soon realised that I was poor material for the life of a man of God. Instead, I was to be her companion, to work the few miserable acres that Father had left us. I was to be her whipping boy, the scab she could pick over whenever she wished. It might have been different if she had liked me, or even approved of me, but I could see that I was a disappointment to her. I wasn’t clever like the others, or handsome. Instead, I took after my father’s people – small, dark, and poor-sighted. I felt she hated the very sight of me. But perhaps I confused impatience and contempt for hatred. To hate suggests some measure of respect.
So, I stayed on the farm, unfitted for anything else. I trudged through life. The locals thought me odd. No girl wanted to be alone with me – not because I was a danger, but because I was a poor specimen to be seen in the company of.
If she hadn’t enforced the wall of silence, I might have survived it. Looking back, I struggle to recall when it started and why. I must have transgressed and, instead of the strap, she employed a much more powerful weapon. I think she realised beating me was not affecting me anymore. I was sullen and unresisting, and this infuriated her as my passivity defeated her physical strength. It was then she changed tack. What age was I? I think about twelve.
One day I forgot to do some household chores or perhaps did them poorly and, to my surprise, she didn’t shout or strike me. Instead, she just ignored me. I asked her what was wrong, and she turned her back on me. She kept up her silence for days while I pleaded with her to speak. I begged forgiveness for my failings and asked her to punish me but to please talk to me. But she never relented. She put my meals on the table and every morning gave me my list of jobs, but never said a word. After a week, I was sick with despair. I started shouting at her and even threatened her unless she spoke. She just smiled and whispered that if ever I touched her or disobeyed her, she would have the authorities put me away in the mental hospital. Everyone thought I was odd anyway, so they would soon see how I was a danger to myself and others.
Of course, she relented for periods and spoke to me about everyday things, but anytime I displeased her the impenetrable walls of silence descended. These periods of silence became longer and longer and the periods of reprieve shorter, but I tried desperately to please her. She kept me from school during these times of punishment. Although I had no friends at school, at least there I had some company, some human interaction. My only solace was Toby, my collie dog. I whispered in his ear, and he licked and nuzzled me. But that too she removed from me. I arrived home from the fields for my dinner, only to see him driven off in the back of a neighbour’s estate car. ‘He’s old and useless,’ she replied grimly when I asked her why she had given him away. I wished she would give me away too, as I knew she believed that I too was useless. That was when my heart crumbled. She killed me at that moment when she took away the one thing that comforted me.
I hoped perhaps I could move away from her, and head to America like my sisters and brothers, but she put a stop to those ‘notions’. I daydreamed of going to New York to stay with C, but that weak shaft of hope ebbed away too. All my youth settled in a dark, clean house entombed in silence.
Sometimes I longed to strike her, imagined my fingers meeting in the scrawny folds of her neck and squeezing, but I feared her, God, damnation, and the fires of hell. Once when she goaded me with my uselessness, my lack of manliness, I raised my hand to strike her and she laughed, and instantly my rage quenched but resentment and hate simmered as a stew left too long on the cooker. From then on, I thought of her not as Mother but as ‘The Harpy’. Somehow it made her less connected to me and therefore easier to hate.
It was then I did the first ‘bad thing’. I was full of rage and choking hate that I needed to destroy. Afterwards, my skin crawled with the horror of it. It was too late then. I tried to block it out as if by refusing to think about it I might undo it. My mind still can’t dwell on that first time, and yet it showed me a path to peace, release from the walls of my prison. It was ugly, brutish, and it took too long before the struggle ended, and the last breath was expelled. I carried it in my tractor and buried it in the top field. I dug deep, terrified they would find it. And I swore on my father’s grave that it would never happen again. But it changed me, gave me peace, and I could survive the deafening silence now as I had the company of the dead. Over time, I got better at achieving peace, and miraculously at the right time a sacrificial lamb always appeared.
Her hands shaking, Aoife stopped heading. Was the writer describing killing an animal? And how could killing it bring peace? This was sounding sicker and sicker.
But as my hatred of her grew, I had to accept that the Harpy is the only one who truly sees me as I am. She sees the darkness beneath my skin, and that’s why she loathes me and won’t even look at me. But age and illness have weakened her, and she needs my help more and more. I am heartened by this new helplessness.
The Harpy died one summer night. I prepared her last supper, and she went to her bed and never woke again. My brothers and sisters came home. They looked prosperous and old. I was twenty-one. After the funeral, when the last neighbours had wrung our hands and muttered words of comfort, the brothers turned to me and asked what I wanted to do with the farm. It stunned me to be consulted. Nobody had ever asked my opinion before. M, the eldest, took me out to the back garden. He suggested I keep the farm going. He pointed out that the Clancys had land for sale as all the boys were set on emigrating and they needed some cash. Mother had been putting aside money they had sent her and had saved a sizable chunk, and he advised me to invest it in land now that it was cheap.
So, the following day I went through her papers. She had left me everything in her will, including her savings. I knew it wasn’t a message of love or acceptance from beyond the grave, just her desire to keep the land together, to prevent the others from selling. Of course, B howled about the unfairness of being disinherited, as she called it. She muttered about undue influence. But for once E came to my defence. ‘He worked the land – he’s entitled to it. We got education and freedom and he got all this,’ she said, gesturing to the house and fields. That shut B up except for her tortured sighs, and even that subsided when denied the oxygen of our attention.
My brothers and sisters left three days later. I took my brother’s advice and bought the farm next door. I didn’t know what else to do. Freedom grew slowly. I had to learn how to make decisions, and how to know what I wanted. Soon I realised I was tied to the farm as surely as if she were still alive. I didn’t know how to live outside it. And so, I stayed.
CHAPTER 5
The cramped handwriting hurt Aoife’s eyes. Rubbing them, she sat listening to the bluster and roar of the sea. Any lingering doubts she had about the author dissipated. It had to be someone who lived and worked on the farm, and the details implied it was someone with six siblings and that suggested her father. He inherited the farm from his mother, and the initials referred to in the text – C, E and B – could be her father’s sisters, Emma, Clarisse, and Baby. If indeed the writer of this was her father, then he was a sad and tortured soul. But what else was he?
The book lay on her lap. Her eyes still ached from the strain of trying to decipher the handwriting. She flicked through the pages and estimated that there were about fifty. Maybe it was just an outlet for a lonely man, allowing him an escape from the bleakness of his life. But her thoughts returned to the disturbing words she had read on the first page. What did he mean by leaving a record of his deeds and why would his love turn from him in horror – presumably that meant his wife, Agnes, her mother? Her guts twisted as she tried to reconcile the father she remembered with this scarily damaged writer. What was the ‘thing’ he buried? And did she really want to know?
Aoife replaced the pressed flower and closed the book.
She’d had enough. Her body was stiff and cramped. As she stood up on aching legs, her bum was numb from sitting on the cold rocks. Returning to her car, it was a relief to be out of the wind.
On the drive home, she forced herself to put the notebook out of her mind. It must be a work of fiction loosely based on reality. Maybe after the anniversary Mass, she could talk it over with Kate. But not now when the house was in uproar getting ready for guests.
She smiled in relief when she saw Kate’s little Golf parked beside the shed at the rear of the house.
She hurried inside. Her sister was washing lettuce at the sink. Aoife watched her from the doorway. With a shock, she noticed how thin Kate had got. She was thirty-four years old but looked older, her brown hair aggressively pushed aside by grey interlopers.
Turning from the sink, Kate smiled. She dried her hands on a tea towel and moved across the room to throw her arms around her sister’s shoulders, drawing her into a firm embrace.
As she hugged Kate, Aoife inhaled the clean smell of soap and antiseptic – a scent she always associated with her sister, a by-product of her work as a hospital nurse. It was so good to see her.
‘Aoife, you look gorge! Obviously, Connor is taking good care of you. I want to hear all your plans for the wedding. Is Sandy still going to be a flower girl? Have you decided on the dress?’ Kate pulled away, laughing.
‘Of course Sandy is my flower girl and, no, I still haven’t picked the dress. Maybe you could come up to Dublin with me and help me shop for it – what do you say?’
‘I say yes!’ Kate gestured towards the kettle. ‘Do you fancy a cuppa?’
‘Sure.’
Aoife noticed her mother had left out sandwiches in case her children got peckish. She nabbed one and ate it hungrily.
The two sisters sat companionably with steaming mugs of coffee.
‘Mam told me about poor old Nell. I’m sure Sam’s very upset. I can remember the wee pet following him about. Even though she was too old to be of much use on the farm, Sam took her everywhere with him.’
‘Yeah, it’s very sad, especially this weekend. Oh well, at least she didn’t suffer too long.’
‘Where did Sam bury her?’
‘In the back garden. The new lad, Karol, buried her. I didn’t think of getting Mam and Sam out to see her put under, but then perhaps I’m being sentimental.’
‘We were all fond of her.’
The sisters reminisced about Nell for a while, and then Aoife asked, ‘Where is Sandy? Didn’t she come down with you?’ Sandy was Aoife’s godchild, and she always felt a close bond with her.
‘Oh, she’s out in the front room with Mam, glued to her phone and moaning about the abysmal Wi-Fi. I swear she watches more TV than anyone I know and if she isn’t staring at the TV she’s attached to her iPod or tapping dementedly on her mobile phone to her legions of friends.’
Aoife laughed. ‘In other words, she’s a typical teenager. What about Colm? Is he here too?’ Before Kate had time to answer, Aoife’s chair was shoved from behind and she watched as her young nephew raced past her towards the door.
‘Hold up, young man, and say hello to your aunt!’
He stopped and shuffled his feet.
‘Sorry, Aoife, I didn’t see you.’ He gave her his peculiar side hug and stood staring awkwardly at her as he tried to think of something to say to the aunt he infrequently saw.
She grinned at him. ‘I hear you’re doing great things on the team. Nana told me she’s exhausted counting all the goals and points that you score.’
Colm squirmed and stared at his feet.
‘How about I come and see you play next time?’ Aoife asked.
‘I’m playing next Saturday. If you’re here you could watch with Mammy.’
‘I’ll do my best to come and cheer you on, Colm. Tell me this, do your mammy and daddy embarrass you with their screaming and cheering and giving out to the referee when you’re playing?’
Colm looked away and muttered, ‘Daddy doesn’t come, and Mammy can only come if she’s not working.’
Kate grimaced at her son. ‘You know that your dad tries to make the matches and perhaps he’ll be there on Saturday.’
Colm dropped his head, grunted, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and raced to the door.
Kate avoided Aoife’s eye and returned to the sink where she busied herself putting the lettuce leaves in the salad-spinner.
‘How is Kenny?’
‘Kenny is OK, but he’s worried about work. They’re laying off people at his firm and I think he’s afraid that he may be next on the hit list.’
Aoife got up and squeezed her sister’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. If the worst happens, will you manage?’
‘We’ll manage. My job is secure, thank God, but we have our mortgage to pay. Of course, things will be tight but we’ll get by. But I’m afraid that Kenny will find it hard to cope with unemployment. He’s forty-five, and I’m not sure if he will find it easy to get another job. What I’m really afraid of, I suppose, is that he’ll get depressed.’
Kate avoided Aoife’s gaze and looked away, her eyes tipping over with tears.
‘What is it, Kate? Talk to me. I know there’s something more upsetting you.’
Kate wiped her eyes and smiled weakly. ‘Kenny had a bad bout of depression about ten years ago. He was like a lost soul, he couldn’t function. For three weeks he just sat in his dressing gown and stared at the TV even when it wasn’t on. I got help for him, but for a year he was so low, almost broken. I’m worried that the same thing will happen if he loses his job.’
