Between Silences
By Dave Butler
Listen to a reading of Between Silences by Dave Butler:
She lay shivering on the rough boards. Burnt smell of sawn wood. Sun-warmed creosote. Somewhere amongst the reeds, the glissade of landing waterfowl. A rapid squabble.
She squinted upward. The self-same cloud backlit and ponderous that had snagged the sun still hoarded it, a coin in a miser’s pocket. Across the lake brindled cows looked on, impassive
Twice a day in flip-flops and beach-robe she made the descent, regardless of the sky. To push a slow breaststroke into sunlit wavelets; or when wind chased puckered shadows; or while the surface bristled with susurrate rain. She shut her eyes, watched scribbles drift latterly. To lose track of clock and calendar, here, between yawning silences. Weeks eliding into months. She’d got here with the gorse bright as egg-yolk. Now the wild fuchsia spilling over dry-stone walls were festooned with enamel pendants. Back up at the guesthouse, the hydrangea were a startling baby-blue that brought back childhood visits. Their globes, when she’d arrived, were washed-out teabags she’d deadheaded with a secateurs she found atop a mummified gardening-glove. A grand-aunt’s hand.
Torrid, was Auntie Maudie’s pronouncement. An old woman in yellow bed-jacket, shrunk into a bedside chair in a Nursing Home. Live-eyed yet. Poor Alice, you’ve had a torrid time of it. For months on end, that was the very word Alice had lived there. Opprobrium, brooding like a teenager. Whispers. The clipped accent. She hadn’t belonged, never would have. In the interrogation room, that same clipped accent. Sux. Tin. At one time Murray would smile when she’d tease him over it. The pair of inquisitors like one of those couples-not-couples who host TV breakfast shows. The policewoman taking the initiative, unsmiling.
A shiver overtook her. The headlong, insomniac flight home the very day her passport was returned. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the media scrum in Arrivals. At first she’d failed to connect the barrage of cameras with her homecoming, was bemused to hear her first-name bandied about: Alice, over here, Alice! The sucker-punch wasn’t long coming. It hurried her through them, eyes to the floor.
So it had made the papers here, too. She’d been naïve to imagine otherwise. Murray had been an All Black before she’d met him, before torn ligaments put a stop to his gallop. Over there that was royalty. Throughout the North Island trial by media was inevitable. Once he’d gone public. But what, precisely, had he…? How she’d pleaded, Christ’s sake Murray don’t leave me alone with…? A deeper spasm seized her. She didn’t want to think. Mustn’t. She pivoted onto elbows. Eyes dazzled, narrowed. Now the barest hem of cloud held the sun captive. The lake, tannin-opaque, sheened as though newly polished.
She levered herself fully upright. Hands on hips she stretched once to either side, gripped her ankles, straightened. Then she took three rapid strides and plunged.
Before she saw it instinct halted her. Perhaps she’d heard the slow rumble over the gravel drive. Momentarily, she imagined the black SUV portended the impossible - Murray Graham had somehow traversed the twelve thousand miles. Tracked her, even to the wilds of Mayo. It was absurd, but that didn’t prevent the gut-wrench, the drying saliva. She’d fallen out of practice with people, long before the present choreography in surgical-masks.
Like as not it was a stray guest. Though that made not the blindest sense with the whole country in suspended animation. Cautiously, fretfully she advanced, stopped once she’d laid a palm against the ancient yew. From under here she could see there was no-one in the driver’s seat. Yellow reg. Northern. But neither was there anyone around the front of the guesthouse. She wished now she’d hit upon a better stratagem than to conceal the keys beneath the hydrangea whenever she’d go down to the lake. Hallo! she called, swallowing sandpaper. Anybody there? With the main road empty, there was no longer its incessant tinnitus to muffle sound. A tic, tic from the vehicle. A swallow’s psychotic shriek as it careened under the eaves. The distant derision of crows. The French windows glared.
If it was a passer-by, where were they? In all the weeks she’d been here there hadn’t been a single caller. Not even the postman. Her grand-aunt had been in the Nursing Home for going on two years by all accounts. She tried to bring to focus a glint stabbing from under the blue hydrangea. The keys with their bottle-opener fob? If so, the building was sanctuary still. She looked about her, hesitant to abandon the dark yew, though out of the sun her swimsuit clung cold. Was anyone waiting? Watching. Tic, tic, went the cooling engine.
You’re being fucking stupid Alice. She scarcely voiced the words. Resolute, she set out nimbly for the front steps. The moment the glitter resolved itself into the key-fob she swept it up, opened the hall-door, pushed it shut behind; the slide and click, the flap’s slap and drag over flag and step. Leaning back into its heft, she allowed the keys spill onto the glass coffee-table. She closed her eyes, inhaled methodically.
A thump startled her eyes open. From the storeroom? The kitchen?
Something had altered. Some quality of the light. There was a strangeness, nothing quite matching the dimensions of memory. You’re being fucking stupid today she whispered, or thought - she still hadn’t let out the breath. A kettle’s rumble ruptured the silence. The abrupt slide of a drawer. Cutlery being rifled, no attempt to conceal the clamour. Across the frosted glass of the kitchen door, a shadow rippled.
One hand instinctively went to her throat to clutch the beach-robe. Behind her, the other groped, blind, for the door-knob. Her eyes darted about the flagged interior for anything that might serve for a weapon. By the hat-stand a golf umbrella. A bamboo walking-cane. As her hand eased the door-knob around she felt the absurdity of being in flip-flops. Then, impossibly, the knob was turning with a will of its own. There was a mechanical clunk, just before the door slammed into her back. The impetus bundled her forwards. She stumbled, a flip-flop sliding on the flags. As she struggled to right herself, a figure emerged from the kitchen.
She huddled to one corner of the sofa. The older man, fists in pockets, continued to stare out the French windows. The other stared down at her. Inquisitive more than aggressive. From where she sat he might have been seven feet tall. She was conscious her fingers were still agitating the neck of the beach-robe. Of one flip-flop dangling. Her other foot was cradled naked beneath her thigh. Her swimsuit was dank now, reptilian. I simply don’t see how that can be true, Alice. A smile that wasn’t a smile. That had no mirth in it.
Maybe a week before lockdown? she tried once more. Maudie explained to me how she was hoping to open the place up again. In time for the new season, like.
No, he shook his head, disappointed, a gesture he attempted to share with the man by the window. Stockier, silent. She’d noticed him taking in the blister-pack of anti-depressants. I don’t see how that can be true, either. Why not? Because this place is tied up in a government Fair Deal scheme is why not. That’s what pays her bills there, Alice. See, it can’t be a going concern, it’s against the rules.
She considered this. And yet the old woman had asked her to put the guesthouse in order. Bit by bit. At her own pace. And that was the phrase that had unlocked it, made the whole thing possible. Small tasks. Achievable tasks. Like deadheading the hydrangea. Anything more might loom large as a cliff-face paralysing the will. Maudie had never been married, nor shown any interest by all accounts. Brusque. Childless. The maiden-aunt, Alice’s father dubbed her with his corrosive flippancy. All the same she’d understood.
You don’t believe me, why don’t you ask her yourself? This time the men exchanged a significant glance, though Alice couldn’t ascertain quite what it meant.
Without turning, the other angled his pate toward her. Oiled hair receding above a forehead of chevrons. Tell us this, how long is it you were stuck in Limbo away over in Auckland? Nordy accent. Her answer was unmediated, as though to hesitate would imply she were fabricating. Five months. While a file was prepared for the Crown Prosecutor. Then, too, we had to wait for the Coroner’s report. Which, trumped the shorter man, was inconclusive. She swallowed. She had to remain calmly factual. After which they returned the passport. Even as she spoke her mind was running the treadmill. Don’t leave me on my own with Amy. Please, Murray! Not that she’d imagined for a minute she could actually harm the child. But for months beforehand she’d been buffeted by emotions. The static of anxiety. Whelming sadness. Then, after the caesarean, it was as though someone had kicked the plug. All energy, sapped. All confidence. Every task monstrous. A lack of any feeling beyond dull exasperation at the interloper. Its insatiable neediness.
They were waiting for her to go on. The case was dropped, she shrugged. Insufficient evidence to proceed to court. For those five months, smiled the taller man, you abandoned your job at the hospital. Why was that? She saw again the stares and whispers once Murray had gone public. How much of it had been in her head? I was only ever an agency nurse.
And here? interpolated the Ulsterman. I’m sorry? And, he pronounced, here?
Look, I don’t know what you guys want. She made to rise, her hand tightening the neck of the beach-robe. I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing here. The tall man’s face blossomed into surprise. Aware of her bare foot she furiously kicked away the remaining flip-flop which slapped pathetically against the mantelpiece and dropped. If you’ve any problem, go ask my Auntie Maudie. And how can we do that, Alice? Aye, concurred the balding man, who was examining minutely a porcelain cat, how do we go about that, he looked at her, if you don’t mind me asking? She stared into the empty maw of the fireplace. Nursing Homes had become No-Go areas, even to closest relatives. You could phone them?
We could, nodded the tall man, only what would be the point? Maud Conlon died a week Tuesday. She scrutinised him, to read what was behind the mask of his smile. No public funeral of course, he added, if that’s what’s bothering you.
She stood at the French windows, forehead pressed to the glass, to its haptic cooling. The garden filling with dusk. Flowers leached to greyscale. A solitary blackbird erupted through the shrubbery threading bubbles of alarm. And an old house is never entirely quiet. It constantly recalibrates. It was as well, because she dreaded the absence of sound. The baby-monitor’s accusatory static. By the time she’d roused herself and gone to the nursery, the infant had been blue-lipped, waxen to the touch.
Dusk was inhabiting the interior, too. But she’d no wish to turn on a light. Sometimes it was enough to live. Over fifteen months she’d come to understand the enclosed orders, their vows of silence. If it weren’t for the erratic anguish. The voices.
Alice was so unused to speaking aloud that the mobile intimidated like a dangerous animal. She’d practiced her query beforehand, tentative as an immigrant using a foreign language. No, Maud Conlon hadn’t passed, why did she imagine…? Who is this, please? I see. Your aunt has had shortness of breath, but that might be any number of things. Yes of course you’ll be informed, if.
This wouldn’t last. At any time, the pandemic might come to an end. A vaccine be found. The virus infiltrate the Nursing Home. Probate would run its course. Was she ready to go back into the world? To face the big tasks?
There was sore need of agency nurses.
She looked across to the grey tent of the yew where earlier she’d stood. Gazing on vacancy. The gravel was undisturbed. The SUV might never have been there.
Dave Butler is an Irish novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet and actor. He is the author of five novels, two volumes of collected prose, four volumes of poetry and two works of non-fiction. Jabberwock, his latest novel, published under pen-name Dara Kavanagh, is available from Dedalus Books.
To learn more about David and his work, visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Butler_(author)