Winterwood

  —I'll get my bag, I heard her say, but only for a little while for mammy might give out - OK?

  I couldn't believe I was holding my daughter's hand. My heart beat with pride as she rested her head upon my shoulder.

  All I wanted was to ease anonymously out of Ballyroan Road and then get properly into our stories, maybe even Zippy out of Rainbow would get a mention. We were bound for winterwood, obviously - but I wasn't in a position to tell her that yet.

  Not, at least, until she'd had her Ribena.

  I had saved up to buy the car. Not that it cost much, a few hundred is all. Although, even for that money, I could have tried to get myself a better model than an Escort for it cut out not once but fucking twice on the motorway.

  For which reason, our journey to winterwood, you'd have to say, was both good and bad. Good and bad in equal measure. But, to be honest, mostly good, at least once we managed to get over our difficulties. Some aspects of which unsettle me even yet. For it turned out that she hadn't been watching My Little Pony at all — that was just for babies, she told me. What she'd, in fact, been watching was something called Sweet Valley High. I knew nothing about that and it made me feel depressingly inadequate. Which resulted in my becoming, I have to say, somewhat agitated. Requesting her, far earlier than I'd anticipated, to open the bottle and consume its contents.

  —Drink the Ribena, pet! I said drink the Ribena! just as I turned off the M50 intersection, not far from the pines and Rohan's Confectionery.

  To tell you the truth, I would have given anything if both parts, of the journey I mean, could have been equally good. But I'm sufficiently objective enough to know that at no point was that ever likely to happen. Sooner or later, I knew, some small thing was going to go wrong. Maybe if hadn't been so preoccupied with thinking about Ned, and the more conciliatory attitude I'd been adopting towards him of late. To the extent, even, of almost forgetting what had happened between the two of us that terrible night. Which I know must sound strange. But there was something in me that kept persisting that we really ought to try and see the good inside people. Try to understand what it is that makes them act in the way they do.

  And the more I thought like that, the more I felt that I had to accept that poor old Ned - he'd seen his share of suffering too.

  A simple glance at the papers could tell you that.

  Certainly in the tabloids he had been treated excessively harshly. Heartlessly tried and summarily convicted, really. It was hard, if you were in any way reasonable, not to reflect on how difficult it must have been for him - to be portrayed as though he were some kind of demon. His resentment, then, I would find myself thinking, being justified, really, if only to some small degree. I could feel myself gradually beginning to understand why he might feel the need to 'return', as it were. In order that his spirit might at last find some kind of ease. To use the opportunity, maybe, to give his side of the story. Simply to state his case.

  I mean, there could be no doubt about it. There was no way on earth anyone could argue that he had been given a fair trial. He had been hounded from pillar to post by journalists and clergy (who didn't have an awful lot to be proud of themselves, in that regard, and whose self-righteousness, really, beggared belief) long before the case had even come to court.

  Then, when it did, it being a complete waste of time. For no one had been prepared to listen to him for a second. And I knew what feelings like that could be like. For my story too had been dismissed out of hand, when Catherine and I were in court, I mean. It was hard, obviously, for jury members and the ordinary readers of newspapers to accept that an elderly man's friendship with a little boy — especially someone as sweet and innocent-looking as Michael Gallagher - had become so intense as to take him over completely. But there was plenty of evidence to suggest that that was indeed what had happened.

  Pretty much, in fact, as it had in my own case. As regards my friendship with Imogen, I mean. Except that in our case you obviously couldn't call it 'friendship'. You could only call it love, the bond that existed between my daughter Immy and I. And if that's idealisation — well then, so be it.

  I'm sorry, Catherine, but I can't help it, I found myself thinking, you shouldn't have given me an angel from heaven. Whom I love so much, with a love of the purest and rarest kind.

  But the more I kept thinking about it, the clearer it became that everything was slowly but surely beginning to right itself. I found myself consumed by a new sense of purpose. And I also found myself hoping that by the simple fact of extending some humanity towards poor old Ned, offering the unfortunate wretch some small degree of genuine understanding, that I myself had played some worthwhile role in this new and most welcome world of equanimity. Some small part, however insignificant.

  Maybe in his own way, that was all Ned had been looking for that unfortunate night in the hostel. Maybe that was the reason he had manifested himself to me and me alone. Hoping that I - I guess as an old friend - would be prepared to say:

  —Yes, I understand, Ned. I genuinely do. I've been listening intently and finally I understand. I know you're not a bad man. I know it because, Ned, I've been there. I've been through the mill as well.

  Deep down inside, the more I thought about it the more I became convinced that that was indeed what he'd wanted. Needed, in fact. But this at the time I'd been too emotionally vulnerable myself to understand. I hadn't, to be frank, understood the man at all. But now I did. I had lent him the sympathetic ear he needed, and that was all the man required. As soon as that consideration occurred to me, an all-engulfing wave of optimism swept over me as the Escort shot past yet another housing estate.

  I had this feeling that everything was coming good. Righting itself bit by bit.

  —Thanks, I heard Ned whisper — his voice as clear as day now — and I found myself grinning from ear to ear.

  It was kind of beautiful, in a way. The world now seemed utterly transformed and I was so enraptured by developments that I didn't speak for ten whole minutes. Then I said:

  —Are you all right in the back there, Immy?

  I could see she was. The Ribena at last had begun to work.

  —Thank heaven for that, I said, a little edgily. My daughter smiled sleepily and her little arm flopped down.

  I sighed and drummed out a little tune on the wheel the theme tune from Rainbow, as a matter of fact. My eyes were shining in the mirror, my copper-red curls hanging down over my forehead. It was hard to believe, I said to myself, that it all should work out like this. It was also strange thinking that I wouldn't be seeing Ned again. Now that his spirit, at long last, was at rest. Now he no longer had anything to worry him. Now that, at last, he'd been finally understood. I considered it a small and private personal triumph, and vowed to share it with Catherine when I eventually saw her.

  As I somehow knew in my heart I was going to.

  It had taken me quite by surprise on that winterwood journey the sheer volume of what Imogen remembered, babbling away as her eyelids, at last, began to droop. For instance, as soon as I mentioned Zippy out of Rainbow, her big eyes shone with this magic glow of recognition. I could see how much she valued it — just being able to have these conversations again.

  —Sweet Valley High, I said, that's a load of rubbish. We can't be bothered with that, can we, Immy? It's Zippy and Bungle we want, like old times.

  It was like no time had passed since Kilburn at all. As we drove by the grim-looking industrial parks, making our way to our winterwood home, I laughed when I thought of her bringing up the 'afraid' things after she'd taken her first drop of Ribena.

  —Here we come, Kimono! I remember laughing. Kimono, darling, and Pinkie Pie! Magic Castle, here we come!

  Mid-Nineties

  Four: Snakes Crawl at Night

  BILL CLINTON ARRIVED IN Ireland to help sort out the problems in Ulster. I saw him on the television but didn't take much notice. Don't bother with politics at all these days. Hard as it might be to believe, I'm still too busy t
hinking about the man I once knew as Ned Strange succumbing, as I so often do, to a certain nagging regret that I didn't listen more carefully to his stories when I had the chance. But also, far more importantly, attending to the advice and wisdom which he'd - as I realise now - been doing his best to pass on to me. It's still hard not to see him sitting there, astride the rocking chair, the stogie lolling lazily between his lips, saying:

  —There's not much changes in this life, the way I see it. Things now is the same as a thousand year ago. My woman left me as many's a woman has done on her man. She strayed from the conjugal bower, Redmond, and I tell you, partner, I was drunk for a week. One whole week I tumbled about this valley and I didn't even know my name. I wouldn't have known my name if you'd asked me. I daresay I'm not the first and I know I'll not be the last. The way it is —you're given a glimpse of the heart's enchantment and just as you're getting to like it, you look up one day and there it's gone, for ever, burnt up like ashes. Not too many has answers about things like that — how to stop it happenin' or to make the pain go away. High up or low down, regal prince or low-bred mongrel, that's a puzzler as has got no solution. That's what you call the human condition, Redmond, the never-ending quiz show of what happens between a man and a woman.

  It's hard for me to forgive myself now, for not having credited him with a little more intelligence. Now that a lot of time has passed, and a lot of water has indeed flowed under the bridge, I'm able to see just how completely and utterly misguided I was — if not, more accurately, just how plain wrong.

  Maybe if I had exhibited a little more empathy then, and shown a little more respect for his experience, instead of patronisingly excavating it and turning it into what amounted, really, to journalistic whimsy, the poor man's life mightn't have ended the way it did. Hanging cold and alone in a prison shower cubicle.

  It truly was a deeply depressing thought.

  But that doesn't, and never will, take away from the fact that, in our time, the pair of us had enjoyed some terrific conversations. A substantial proportion of which I'll treasure for ever. And I know that he had liked some of my articles too. He told me. In particular, 'Children's Games in Old God's Time', which I'd illustrated with a few drawings of my own. Which he considered 'truly excellent', I was told.

  —Then, of course, your Uncle Florian was a dab hand at the drawing, as I recall, a bit of a maestro — when he wasn't dancing hornpipes, isn't that right? When he wasn't being The Twinkletoe Kid!

  He could be strikingly articulate, Ned, when he wanted. Extremely sophisticated in his own way. But I seemed to find it difficult to bring myself to acknowledge that. As though I was the only mountain native privileged enough to be considered 'intelligent'. Certainly he was more so than some ordinary old hillbilly who'd never left the valley in his life. Another story he told me that I have to say was quite charming was the one about the day he planted the rose with Annamarie.

  —That flower was for her, he said, the first rose of summer that would bloom for Annamarie Gordon.

  He lifted down the fiddle and began to play a Tom Moore melody. Its soft lilting arpeggios lightly skimmed the kitchen's walls.

  —That would have been about the third or fourth time we went out walking together. Would you like to know what kind of dress she was wearing? A blue one it was, a lovely blue dress with a clasp in her hair. It was cornflower blue and it looked real good on account of it matching the dress. She looked like an angel dropped down from heaven so she did. I worshipped the ground she walked upon, Redmond. I'd give my life to have her back. I'd give my whole life for one more day with Annamarie, to be sitting here with her, my life's partner - as we, at that time, swore we would always be.

  It was sad to think of the two of them sitting there, conversing like that — telling one another, presumably, about the depth of their love. The depth of it, of course, and the inevitability of its endurance. Which is all you can think of when your heart is enchanted, when you're lying in the garden where you know roses will always grow, as far away from the black, void waste as can possibly be imagined.

  Where the word 'outlands' has never existed.

  One thing that cheers me, whenever I find myself looking back on it — and which I can take some pride in, I suppose —is the fact that I never forgot to bring him his cassette tapes, and that never failed to bring a smile to his face. Not to mention stimulating conversation, especially after a few copious mugs of you-know-what.

  He had an old Sanyo cassette recorder held together with twine and you could hear it playing from morning till night, one country and western tune following another. Tales of love affairs and deaths and disasters. There wasn't one of those songs he didn't know, as if each one represented a chapter from his life. He often insisted he'd been 'marked' in some way. From way back, he said.

  —It all started the day mama died. She got killed, you see, Redmond.

  —I didn't know your mother was in an accident, I replied, dutifully.

  —Two hundred and fifty bones bruk! he continued wildly. They say it was one of the worst smashes ever seen on the mountain. That's no lie I'm telling you now, Redmond. Because if you go up to the ravine where it happened, you'll see the rocks below are like razors. And that's where the poor unfortunate woman landed. Ah yes, life be's sad, there's no doubt about it. That's why I like these auld country boyos. Ned, they'll say, why are you always listening to them old-time tunes? All we can hear is keening and yowling. Not true, I say to them, Redmond, and you'll see this when you get a bit older - them tunes isn't telling any lies! If there's one thing them songs is peddling it's the truth. They're just painting them in colours that suits what it is they're saying. When my mother was in that wreck, Redmond, I didn't feel just like crying a bit. Oh, no. I cried enough to fill seven seas. Them hurts is big, son. Just like the songs say. They ain't telling no lies at all. It's just that in the old times you'd readily admit that your heart was bruk, and have no problem saying you found it hard to go on. Nowadays they's so busy keeping going that whenever they stop it'll hit twice as hard. But that's not my problem, Redmond. These modern folks — what they'll have to do is find new songs of their own. I'm staying put with my old country lilters. Them's the boys can see inside my head, although I have to admit that most times it's all a-tangle. Has been, in fact, since the day I first got born. Or, like I say, even before. He winked and snorted gruffly.

  —When my daddy fucked mama on that old feather bed!

  You could see his teeth flashing as he trawled for my reaction.

  —That's what I often used to think, Redmond. That maybe he raped Mama. Maybe Daddy went and raped old Mama. Maybe that's how Ned's got this feeling he's been marked.

  Then he said:

  —Haw hawl Sure I'm only kidding, Redmond. Rape be damned! My darling mammy never got raped. My loving daddy wasn't that kind of a man. He had better things to do than go around assaulting his own wife. Sure the auld bitch'd have given him her old pussy any time. Haw haw, Redmond! Any time he wanted — any time his tallywhacker wanted pleasure, my sweet mama would willingly part her two fat pins. No, Redmond, my mam and pap they was decent people. Sure they was! Wasn't they mountainers? But it just goes to show, it's hard to trust anybody. You wouldn't know who is trying to sucker you and who isn't. I mean — for all I know you might be trying to sucker me. Mightn't you, Redmond? I might think I'm doing it to you - but maybe it's me's being codded all along. Maybe you're stealing my stories for your own purposes? Couldn't it be? Sure it could! You wouldn't know who to trust on this mountain - we're renowned for that, aren't we, us country folks? And after all, you were reared right here, were you not? So it'd be in you. Mischief and double-dealing might just be in your blood too. Is it, Redmond? Are you at heart a manipulative twister? Tell me, Redmond, might you be — or are you - a snake?

  —Of course I'm not! How can you say such a thing? How can you even think of saying it?

  He looked at me and sniggered.

  —That's a good answer, Red
mond, he said. Why, I'd almost even believe you! You're a good one, Redmond. A chip off the old block. If your father was here he'd be mighty proud of you. Dang sure he would. As sure as Adam he ate the apple. As sure as Adam he ate the fucking apple!

  Sometimes, when he was sufficiently in his cups, he'd stumble across the floor and shove a Charley Pride tape into the machine. Charley sang 'Snakes Crawl at Night'. It was a tune that exerted a particular effect on Ned Strange. Once he grabbed his violin in a fury.

  —I'll smash this fucking fiddle in bits! he snapped. Do you hear me, Redmond? Do you fucking hear me? Do you hear me, Redmond Hatch, you cunt?

  On that particular occasion it was only with the greatest difficulty I succeeded in placating him. He threw his arms around me and began to weep. Then, out of nowhere, he started chuckling again. When I looked at him, his shoulders were rocking and I paled as I saw him grinning - literally from ear to ear.

  —Of course the whole fucking lot could be a pack of lies, Redmond. Maybe I don't give a fuck about these stupid country songs. Maybe it's like my stories about America. Maybe I didn't ever set foot beyond the mountain. That's a real possibility, isn't it, Redmond? That I might never, in fact, have travelled an inch further than them fucking pines there standing outside. I might only have been as far as the town, never further. How do you know but there never was a sweetheart either? That Annamarie Gordon never even existed? Why, us rascally mountain mongrels, you couldn't trust our oath!