He knew the gorse-patched hedges, the fields and the faltering stone walls over which he had come. Here the ground was covered with blackberry bushes dying back before the winter. To the east the lights of Rossaboe were hidden behind the drumlins of these outer edges of the Burren. He grasped his stick tighter and slashed at the brambles while he skirted crumbling sections of wall. He used the stick to steady himself while he stepped through a gap in one wall, over the jumble of rocks mossed over and half-buried under the wild grasses.
He stopped again and stared at the lights of the cottage. Not a breath of air, he thought. He was warm now and he undid the top button of his jacket. The strangeness of the still air and what he was about startled him. Is this what a ghost feels, he wondered. He stood listening, but he heard only the swish of his own blood in his ears, the muffled throbs of his heart. He peered out into the darkness toward the sea but he saw nothing until he turned toward the Galway side of the bay. Far off and slowly came the sweeping beam of a lighthouse. The water shimmered briefly as the light revolved and left the water dark again. My place, he thought, my fields. His mind felt clear now, the way it hadn’t felt for years. Had he been asleep these years? The drugs and the routines of prison life had put his mind somewhere beyond reach. Once he recalled watching his own body as three warders hit it. They had even tried to make him do it to himself when he was released: Keep the routines, keep your head down, keep track of the medication. Stay in touch with the social worker. They had made him his own jailer. But no more.
He turned the walking stick around in his palm and swung it at a bramble. The noise of its slash reminded him of a whip. It pleased him. He struck again and again, stopping only when the fear pierced his euphoria. That fear rushed into his mind more often too now, and it left him shaking. He knew the risk he was taking. If they found out… But even if they came for him, that couldn’t be worse than the torture of not being able to remember, of having something just out of reach. He was certain that something was there, and that remembering would help him reverse the flow of his life since that night.
He had tried to write down more for Crossan as the ideas and pictures came into his mind. Sometimes he had been too excited by the explosions of half-formed images and feelings that had crashed around him. When he looked at what he had written later, he knew that he couldn’t show it to Crossan. He couldn’t afford to risk turning Crossan off. He had even begun to remember her voice, longer bits of the conversations they’d had. When the voices had first started coming back to him, he had been terrified. He had thought of going back on the pills or going to the social worker and telling him, but after a few nights he had become used to them. After all, the voices were his own-and hers. Their clarity stunned him. Her accent, the expressions she had used, slang and curses they used in Canada, her mocking tone when she slagged him. He had always believed that his agony would be over someday, that he could get back what had been hidden from him, that he could regain the shore of whatever he had been swimming in, floundering in, all these years.
There were other voices too. Those ones had brought back the stabs of fear. Hearing those voices before had brought him trouble, paralysis, agony. Some days he wouldn’t leave the house for fear he’d hear the voices and have nowhere to run and lock the door. They’ll take everything, one of the voices said. They’re afraid of you. They want to put you away again. Dimly he understood that if everything was coming back to him there’d be good and bad, so he might as well get used to it. There was no going back on it. Everything comes around again. This time they’d not get him.
A faint memory rushed up to him then-faces of adults chastising him, warning him as though he were a child. Him screaming and hitting out with all his limbs, trying to bite at the restraining arms alarmingly strong, the straps around him, tightening. He swung harder at the brambles and swore aloud to get back the feeling of hope.
“Bastards,” he hissed. “Fuckers! Robbed I was, and ruined!”
His eyes flooded with tears but he kept beating the grass and brambles. “Dirty fucking thieves and bastards, you took everything, my mind even! And you think you can plough away and take more anytime you want!”
He heard his own sobs then as though they were coming from someone else. He wondered if he had said the words aloud. That had happened a lot last night, he remembered, when he wasn’t sure whether he had just been thinking or really saying things to himself. Yesterday he had caught a glimpse of himself passing the mirror that hung over the sink. He had stood watching the face for several minutes. His face had felt numb and his cheeks twitched while he stared at the mirror. There’s a piece of me, a huge piece of me, missing these years, he had heard a voice say. The face in the mirror had puzzled him at first, but then he had begun to laugh. The laugh had lasted for only a few moments before despair seized him.
He picked his way along the wall toward the cottage. And I won’t listen to him if he tries to tell me that he didn’t notice. Or that he can’t speak English or something. I won’t have any of that fucking bullshit off him, I won’t. Seen him too often with that stupid smile on his face, clapping away to the music and blathering away in that German accent. Bastard. He stopped and again considered going back to the house and waiting for the morning. He could be in Crossan’s office first thing. Then maybe even get Minogue to do something about this too. Yes, maybe he should have gone straight over to Minogue and just started talking last night in the pub instead of waiting around in the street and having those three bastards start a row with him. After all, Minogue had stared at him in the pub, recognised him. Crossan must have passed the stuff along after all. Talk to Crossan in the morning, see what had happened with Minogue, see what he would do now.
Have a look at the car first, he decided. Make certain. There’d be some sign on the car. He winced as he remembered the sound of the car hitting Shep. A shriek of tyres, a yelp and the thump which had propelled him out of the chair and onto the road in his stockinged feet. At first he couldn’t see more than the tail lights of the car because the driver was still standing on the brake pedal. He had shouted and run toward the car, a hundred yards distant, but the brake lights went out, and the other lights too, as the car sped off. He had almost tripped over Shep in the roadway. She was still breathing but her head was at a wrong angle to her body. Her body shuddered and a faint whine escaped the shattered mouth. He thought he saw Shep’s eyes roll slowly into her head, but the low rasp of breathing continued while the dog waited for death.
He had stood up from his knees, the night wild and terrifying around him. He ran back a few paces toward the house but changed his mind and ran back to the dog. She was still breathing but there was a low squealing sound that seemed to come from near her. She was trying to move her head. His pants were stuck to his knees with blood. He had felt his own body turn to water and he wailed in anguish when he realised what he must do. He ran to the shed and grasped the spade. He couldn’t find the flashlight. Out on the road again, the clammy, cold tar underfoot seemed to hold his feet fast as he stood over the dog, too stricken to move. He aimed for the neck and, with a great shout, brought the spade down. Two blows had been enough and he threw the spade down the road before falling to the pavement himself, slapping his hands on the road while he howled.
He shivered and took a deep breath. The curtains were drawn, but muted light still caught the metal on the car parked by the side of the cottage. He wiped his eyes and walked in a roundabout route past the shrubs and the fallow vegetable garden. Did these people have a dog? How the hell could they have a dog and they doing what they did last night? The car bonnet was wedged under a forsythia growing by a side gate to the cottage. He kept out of the dull glow of light from the windows and moved around the car. D for Germany sticker next to the BMW badge on the boot-lid. Fucking people. Thought they owned the world. Their city money.