Selected Stories

They slid into a thin stream of traffic on the motorway, Mr Leeson not accelerating much. He said:

‘I have to tell you what it was with Milton before we get home.’

‘Was it the Provos? Was Milton involved in some way?’

‘Don’t call them the Provos, Hazel. Don’t give them any kind of title. They’re not worthy of a title.’

‘You have to call them something.’

‘It wasn’t them. There was no reason why it should have been.’

Hazel, who had only been told that her brother had died violently – shot by intruders when he was alone in the house – heard how Milton had insisted he’d received a supernatural visitation from a woman. She heard how he had believed the woman was the ghost of a Catholic saint, how he had gone to the priest for information, how he had begun street-corner preaching.

‘He said things people didn’t like?’ she suggested, ignoring the more incredible aspect of this information.

‘We had to keep him in. I kept him by me when we worked, Garfield wouldn’t address him.’

‘You kept him in?’

‘Poor Milton was away in the head, Hazel. He’d be all right for a while, maybe for weeks, longer even. Then suddenly he’d start about the woman in the orchard. He wanted to travel the six counties preaching about her. He told me that. He wanted to stand up in every town he came to and tell his tale. He brought poor Dudgeon McDavie into it.’

‘What d’you mean, you kept him in?’

‘We sometimes had to lock his bedroom door. Milton didn’t know what he was doing, girl. We had to get rid of his bicycle, but even so he’d have walked. A couple of times on a Saturday he set off to walk, and myself and Herbert had to get him back.’

‘My God!’

‘You can’t put stuff like that in a letter. You can’t blame anyone for not writing that down for you. Your mother didn’t want to. “What’ve you said to Hazel?” I asked her one time and she said, “Nothing,” so we left it.’

‘Milton went mad and no one told me?’

‘Poor Milton did, Hazel.’

Hazel endeavoured to order the confusion of her thoughts. Pictures formed: of the key turned in the bedroom door; of the household as it had apparently become, her parents’ two remaining children a double burden – Stewart’s mongol blankness, Milton’s gibberish. ‘Milton’s been shot,’ she had said to her husband after the telephone call, shocked that Milton had apparently become involved, as Garfield was, drawn into it no doubt by Garfield. Ever since, that assumption had remained.

They left the motorway, bypassed Craigavon, then again made their way on smaller roads. This is home, Hazel found herself reflecting in that familiar landscape, the reminder seeming alien among thoughts that were less tranquil. Yet in spite of the reason for her visit, in spite of the upsetting muddle of facts she’d been presented with on this journey, she wanted to indulge the moment, to close her eyes and let herself believe that it was a pleasure of some kind to be back where she belonged. Soon they would come to Drumfin, then Anderson’s Crossroads. They would pass the Cuchulainn Inn, and turn before reaching the village. Everything would be familiar then, every house and cottage, trees and gateways, her father’s orchards.

‘Take it easy with your mother,’ he said. ‘She cries a lot.’

‘Who was it shot Milton?’

‘There’s no one has claimed who it was. The main concern’s your mother.’

Hazel didn’t say anything, but when her father began to speak again she interrupted him.

‘What about the police?’

‘Finmoth’s keeping an open mind.’

The car passed the Kissanes’ house, pink and respectable, delphiniums in its small front garden. Next came the ruined cowshed in the middle of Malone’s field, three of its stone walls standing, the fourth tumbled down, its disintegrating roof mellow with rust. Then came the orchards, and the tarred gate through which you could see the stream, steeply below.

Her father turned the car into the yard of the farmhouse. One of the dogs barked, scampering back and forth, wagging his tail as he always did when the car returned.

‘Well, there we are.’ With an effort Mr Leeson endeavoured to extend a welcome. ‘You’d recognize the old place still!’

In the kitchen her mother embraced her. Her mother had a shrunken look; a hollowness about her eyes, and shallow cheeks that exposed the shape of bones beneath the flesh. A hand grasped at one of Hazel’s and clutched it tightly, as if in a plea for protection. Mr Leeson carried Hazel’s suitcase upstairs.

‘Sit down.’ With her free hand Hazel pulled a chair out from the table and gently eased her mother toward it. Her brother grinned across the kitchen at her.

‘Oh, Stewart!’

She kissed him, hugging his awkward body. Pimples disfigured his big forehead, his spiky short hair tore uncomfortably at her cheek.

‘We should have seen,’ Mrs Leeson whispered. ‘We should have known.’

‘You couldn’t. Of course you couldn’t.’

‘He had a dream or something. That’s all he was on about.’