She wiped tears from her face. Her breath was heavy. Her heart was a slow machine, rusted. She looked again at the ground, at the broken flowers in their jars, at the earth which held the two corpses.
‘Oh, Mum, I don’t know, I really don’t know. But that’s why Dad committed suicide. Because... I’m not even sure if he knew about Patterson. Probably not. So all the guilt was on him. But now all the guilt is on Patterson, you see. And though I love Sandy with all my might, still I can’t help feeling sometimes that part of him belongs to someone else, someone I hate. Oh, Jesus, help me. You see now, Mum, don’t you? And I couldn’t tell Andy. If only I could tell Andy. Tom had nothing to do with it, you see. Nothing at all. He was mystified when he found out. He thought it might have been one of his friends. Oh, Jesus, how can I talk to you again, Mum? How can I make you listen? I’m sorry. But it wasn’t my fault, Mum. It wasn’t my fault.’
She breathed deeply, her face to the cast-iron sky. Rain was falling somewhere, and soon would fall here again. She walked quickly from the cemetery, her coat around her like a rough skin. A car had stopped at the gates, but it was not Andy. There were to be no miracles. It was the minister. He walked around the car towards her. She was elsewhere, but he could not see it.
‘Miss... Mrs Miller, eh, I was just coming to see you. I didn’t catch you at your house so I...’
‘Go away, will you? Just leave me alone!’ She began to run downhill. She did not know where she was going, but she knew that it had to be somewhere lonely and somewhere uninvolved. In the end, she ran towards the flooded park.
Robbie was blind drunk. That much Sandy knew by just looking at him. The young man was slumped against the outside wall of the mansion. He cradled a near-empty bottle of vodka in his arms and sang to it as if it were his baby sister.
‘Oh ho,’ he said as the boy approached. ‘It’s Sandy, is it? Will you sit down here and have a drink with me, Sandy?’ He waved the bottle in Sandy’s general direction. ‘You will have a drink, won’t you? I’m hellish lonely these evenings. You stopped coming to see us. What’s wrong?’
Sandy crouched in front of him. With one hand he steadied himself on the ground, while the other hand stayed in his pocket, where the roll of notes lurked.
‘Listen, Robbie,’ he began, staring at the bleary slits of the young gypsy’s eyes, watching the eyes themselves glisten and roll and pull themselves into focus, ‘I want to speak to you about Rian.’
‘About Rian? Ha! That little bitch? Don’t let’s speak about her, Alexander. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Here.’ He motioned towards Sandy with the bottle. Sandy took it from him and gulped down the vodka. It burned in his throat, but made him feel better.
‘Tea,’ he continued, ‘about Rian. I’ve got some money together, Robbie, and I want to...’ Robbie’s head rolled.
‘Money,’ he said, ‘money, is it? Oh yes,’ he rubbed at his chin and a little wise old man’s face came over him, ‘the money. Rian told me about that. You’re supposed to be getting together some money. What for again? Oh yes, to buy her from me. Ha! That’s a good one! Buy Rian! As if she could be bought. She can be bought, mind you, but not like that. No, not like that at all.’ It was as if he were talking to himself. His eyes stared at the gathering dusk, seeking answers to unspoken questions, then were dragged towards the ground by the weight of the alcohol. ‘No, Sandy, you can’t buy Rian. It was a trick. She told me all about it. Told me to keep quiet. But you’re me pal, aren’t you? I’ll tell you. It was her idea, Sandy. Nothing to do with me.’ He shook his head vigorously, but his eyes fixed themselves on the sky. ‘Rain. Any minute. Anyone can see that. More fucking rain. It’s damp in that house. Why does nobody ever come to fix the roof? The tarpaulin’s all torn or worn away or something. The ceiling is rotten. Not fit to live in. Not fit. Ah, but Sandy me boy, she was taking you for a ride. Not her usual ride, but a ride all the same.’ He laughed at the gods. ‘It was the sound of drunken jubilation. It would be forgotten by morning. Taking you for a ride, my son. She wanted me to grab the money, then neither of us would have anything to do with you afterwards. We’d board up the windows proper, or disappear, and never see you again. What could you do, eh?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing. Unless you were prepared to tell people that you had been planning to buy yourself a gyppo girl, and who’d have sympathy for you then, eh? No-fucking-body. Not in this town, Sandy. So you’d be up the creek, right? Without a paddle, right? But never fear. Your old pal has told you. He’s saved your fucking neck, so sit and have a drink with him. Sit yourself down.’
He patted the ground beside him. The grass was sodden. Sandy could feel it underhand. His heart was racing. He understood now, and he believed. It had been stupid all along not to. Robbie, Aunt Kitty, his own mother — they had known, they had instinctively known the rottenness that was core deep, for they had lived through it themselves in many manifestations. Yet she had been loving towards him, gentle, fragile. Could it possibly have been merely a game, a charade for her own benefit? Robbie was speaking again.
‘You’re awful quiet, Sandy. Did you fall for it then? Did you really save up all your pennies? So have others before you. You’re not alone. Have you come here to give all your pennies to Robbie? Do us a favour and go get another bottle instead. Keep the change. You can have the bitch for free, but I doubt if you’ll be able to take her.’ He grew less animated. ‘She makes good money sometimes, and when she does she gives me some for a little drink. To keep me quiet, I suppose, and so I’ll look after her and protect her from the big wide world out there. But I’ll let you into a secret, Sandy. I’d look after her anyway, without the bribes and the booze. She’s my sister, you see, and I’ve been looking after her since I was a kid.’ He waved his arms in an uncertain sweep. ‘How much did you bring, Sandy? Fifty pounds? She said you’d manage fifty, said you had some nice things in your house. Myself, I said I doubted whether you’d get more than thirty or thirty-five, but she was adamant that you’d manage fifty for her. She said you were that much in love.’
‘Shut up!’ The final syllable racketed around the garden and in Sandy’s ears. ‘Shut the fuck up!’
Robbie put his hands comically over his ears, grimacing, letting the bottle slip to the grass. Sandy remembered that he was only a few years younger than the gypsy. He reached out and slapped Robbie with his free hand. The feeling was shocking, but satisfying too, as if he had done something really wicked against authority: dropping litter or shitting in the playground. He touched his stinging palm with his fingertips. Robbie rubbed at the spot of red on his grey cheek. He was not going to retaliate. Sandy wondered if this were the same strong, cocky person whom he had encountered in a shadowed room only a few months previously. It was like watching a cancer victim growing old too quickly. It was like watching his grandmother as she had wept herself towards death.
‘Where is she?’ he asked. His voice was firm like a film actor’s. Robbie shook his head. He was studying Sandy’s feet now.
‘Could be two or three places,’ he said, still drunk but trying not to be. ‘Could be down by the river in the park, but it’s flooded, isn’t it? Sometimes she takes them to the back of the swimming pool. Other times it’s behind the Miners’ Institute.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s no use, though. What could you do? Nothing. Better leave her alone, Sandy. You’ll only hurt yourself. I don’t want my pal hurting himself. Stay here. Come on, we’ll finish this bottle and get another. Nothing’s to blame really. Just, well, everything. This fucking town. This fucking country. Anything you want to blame.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Stay here, Sandy. It’s getting cold. We can go inside, if I can get up the bloody pipe. You can wait for her inside. Look, look,’ he put his hands out, palms upward, like a slouching Buddha, ‘look, Sandy, it’s beginning to rain again.’