On Bone Bridge Read online

  I also developed a series of nervous ticks which began with throat-clearing and moved through compulsive humming, hand-flapping, squinting and crossing my eyes. No sooner would I overcome one habit than another took its place. It culminated in a bout of sleepwalking, the most spectacular of which was the night I let myself out of the house and walked in my pyjamas and bare feet as far as the end of the estate. Mr O’Toole from two doors down was coming home from working late in the glue factory and when he saw me in my pyjamas he took me home. I had no memory then or ever of having spoken to him but Mr O’Toole told my father that when he asked me where I was off to in the middle of the night I told him: “I’m going to the Surly for hazelnuts.”

  My father carried me upstairs and put me back in my bed and my mother slept next to me that night. In the morning she took me to see the doctor. I remember having to stay in the waiting room while my mother went in alone first to talk to the doctor. Then I was called in and the doctor was very gentle and kind to me and he examined me and assured her that I had come to no physical damage. Nightmares and sleepwalking, he said, were not unusual under the circumstances and I knew then that my mother had told him about Alexander Duff. When he told my mother, in my hearing, that if the problem continued it might be a good idea for me to see somebody else, I instinctively knew that he was not talking about just another doctor. It would, I felt certain, be someone who would ask me questions about what had happened that day on Bone Bridge. My dread of that happening was so intense that I remember going to sleep that night willing myself not to sleepwalk or wake up screaming and, whether as a result of willpower or chance, the sleep-walking was never repeated. My nightmares too lost some of their intensity, taking the form of mere bad dreams which I made sure disturbed nobody but myself.

  I was allowed to go back to school after a fortnight, but neither Violet-May nor Rosemary-June put in an appearance then or at any point that term. I was, of course, a focus of curiosity and there was some staring and whispering at first, but only Ken Fitzgerald actually dared ask me what had happened and immediately Dolores and Mandy Nugent with one voice told him to shut up and leave me alone. Mandy went even further and kicked him in both shins. After that, the subject was never mentioned again, not in school, not at home, not anywhere, and although I did not forget that it had happened I thought about it less and less until my memories of that day blurred and faded like an aging snapshot fallen to the bottom of a box of photographs, lost under the weight of fresher happier memories. Just one of many old forgotten things.

  And then, after the Christmas holidays, Violet-May and Rosemary-June still did not come back to school and the next news of the Duffs was that Robbie had run away from boarding school. We heard that he had been found in Kerry and had only agreed to go home again on condition that he be allowed to leave boarding school. It was not so very long after that we heard the news that the Duffs had let the house and moved away to England. For a while the house was empty and then a Swedish family rented it and lived in it for four years before eventually buying it from the Duffs.

  “They’ll play at being squires for a while,” said my father, “but no doubt they’ll get bored.” But in fact they lived in the house for eight years before they sold up and went back to Sweden.

  Chapter 13

  During the summer of 1990 everybody in the entire country went a little bit crazy. “Put ’Em under Pressure” was number one in the charts. The kids in our estate sported giant blow-up green hammers and almost every house had a tricolour hanging from a window. Some had them in every window and they billowed green, white and gold in the breeze. But while it seemed that every other living soul was fixated on Italia 90 I was swotting for my Leaving Certificate exam. My head was crammed with a jumble of historical dates, mathematical formulae and quotes from WB Yeats and Silas Marner. I remember waking one night in a sweat reciting aloud like a mantra the major themes from Othello, “Jealousy, Revenge, Power, Good vs Evil, Appearance vs Reality ...”

  I also remember spending hours drawing up a complex colour-coded study timetable which I stuck to my bedroom wall over my desk and which my father beheld with seemingly genuine awe in his eyes. I was disgusted when it failed to similarly impress my mother whose only comment on seeing it was, “In the time it took you to do that you could have been doing the real thing”. She never said it in so many words but she managed to impress upon me her belief that the Leaving Certificate was desperately important, and that upon its results hung any future hopes of success and indeed happiness.

  On the morning of my first exam she got up early to make a pot of porridge. She made it with milk and took care to ensure that it was entirely smooth and lump-free which was the only way I could ever abide it. Even so I turned up my nose at it and told her the smell of it made me sick and without a word she disposed of it in the outside bin and made me eat a bowl of cornflakes and two slices of toast.

  My first exam was an Irish paper and I remember comforting myself that never again in all of my life would I need to think about that hideous woman, Peig Sayers. That same evening my father insisted I take time off from studying and sit with him and my mother to watch Ireland play England. I did it, if only to please him, but when eight minutes into the game England scored, his agony infected me and when Kevin Sheedy eventually equalised, I roared as loudly as he did. Two weeks later, when Ireland played Romania, and with all but two of my exams behind me, I did not need to be coaxed to sit down with my parents to watch the match. When Packie Bonner saved the penalty, over the sounds of our own roars we could hear the roars from the Nugents on one side and Taylors on the other. And when David O’Leary stepped forward to take the penalty for Ireland, my father did what he rarely did, he cursed.

  And then there was silence in our sitting room while O’Leary took what seemed liked forever to place the ball.

  “The nation holds its breath,” said the commentator and I realised that I had in fact stopped breathing.

  But then O’Leary took his shot and we were through to the quarter final and my father and I leapt to our feet and jigged around the sitting room for joy. My father reached out an arm then and beckoned my mother to join us and she got up, smiling a little sheepishly, and let herself be pulled into our embrace. For a while we danced together as a threesome and then without anyone saying anything, without even looking at one another, we moved as though we were one body for the hall and the front door. And as the door opened on the bright night we saw that everyone had done the same, because almost all the doors to all the houses were open and people were flooding into the street. And everybody was singing the same song and I joined in too, yelling at the top of my voice the endless choruses of ‘Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé!’.

  Long after we had gone inside, the cars continued to honk in the road outside. And somehow that feeling seemed to carry on after the match, like something had changed, like we had changed, so that when a week or so later Ireland lost to Italy in Rome, it did not seem to matter very much at all. I remember watching as the final whistle blew and Jack Charlton did a lap of the stadium carrying an Irish flag. Hearing the roar of the Irish crowd, I remember thinking that we could not have cheered any louder if we had won, and in a way it felt like we had won. That was the 30th of June and, proud as I was for Ireland, by then Robbie Duff had come back into my life and left it again and my world had shifted on its axis.

  I was walking up Old Road on my way home from school and feeling very sorry for myself. As I approached the gate to what I still thought of as the Duffs’ house, a silver car passed me, slowed and indicated to turn. I watched as it turned in and stopped before the Duffs’ gates, which were always shut now. As I drew level with the car I glanced toward it. The driver’s window was partially open and the person behind the wheel, who had been staring straight ahead, turned suddenly and looked straight at me. He had dark-blonde hair and brown eyes and I knew him straight away.

  Without being aware I was doing it, I said his name aloud: “Robbie Duff.
”

  I saw him frown a little, then his eyes narrowed and I knew he did not have a clue who I was.

  “It’s Kay,” I said, “Kay Kelly.”

  “Kay Kelly,” he repeated still frowning and then he was smiling and opening the car door and getting out. “No way, not little Kay Kelly!”

  And then he was standing in front of me and smiling down at me. He was taller than I remembered but not so thin, and he was older of course, but in every other way he was the Robbie Duff I remembered.

  “Look at you,” he was saying, “practically all grown up.”

  I was not thrilled at the use of the word practically and I wished with all my heart that I had not been wearing my school uniform, but I was too happy at seeing him again to care much about anything else. I tried hard to be cool and not to say something stupid or childish but in any event the butterflies in my stomach rendered me so speechless that all I could do was smile at him.

  “So how are you doing, Kay?” said Robbie. “What are you up to these days?”

  “Oh, you know,” I waved my hand vaguely as though a myriad projects required my attention.

  “Still at school, I see,” said Robbie.

  “Actually no, I’m finished school. I’m starting university soon, or at least I think I am, if I don’t fail the rotten exam I did today.”

  “Ouch! What was it?”

  “Double Dutch,” I said ruefully, “otherwise known as chemistry. I hate science.”

  “So what do you like?” said Robbie

  “Words,” I said.

  Robbie nodded. “Of course,” he said. “The little playwright.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You remember that?” I said eagerly.

  He was no longer smiling and I had a sudden memory of him walking into the Duffs’ dining room, his dead dog in his arms. Of course he remembered it. I stared at him in dismay, then looked away and mentally kicked myself.

  “Well, at least you won’t need chemistry for that,” said Robbie. “So what will you study in college?”

  “I don’t know if I want to go to college,” I said. “Did you go to college?”

  “I did,” said Robbie. “I studied ancient history and archaeology. Actually I’ve just finished my degree.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Keep on studying archaeology and get some practice in.”

  “How did you know?” I asked. “How did you know you wanted to be an archaeologist and not anything else?”

  Robbie put his head to one side as he considered, “Well, I’ve always known I love history and I want to travel. And I care about the past. No, I more than care about it, I’m curious about it, about the people who lived in it and how they lived. So archaeology seemed like an obvious choice.” He smiled at me. “I suppose that makes me sound like an awful nerd.”

  I shook my head. “I think it sounds really exciting.”

  “Most of it isn’t exciting at all – most of it is about being patient and waiting for things to reveal themselves to you, give up their mysteries if you like, in their own good time.”

  “I’m not very patient,” I said.

  Robbie smiled. “Aren’t you, Kay?” He shook his head a little then. “Little Kay Kelly, fancy running into you here!”

  “So why are you here anyway?” I was wishing he wouldn’t keep calling me little Kay Kelly.

  “If you mean why I am back in Ireland, just for a bit of a holiday. I’ve been staying with a guy I went to school with. As for why I’m right here, I don’t know really. I suppose I just took a notion today to take a stroll down Memory Lane.”

  He turned and looked at the gate and the driveway beyond it and I followed his gaze.

  “Are you going to go in?” I said. “The Swedes would probably let you look around, you know, if you told them you used to live here.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Robbie quickly. “It’s not my home anymore.”

  “But you wish it still was,” I said and, although he didn’t reply, the look in Robbie’s eyes made me certain I was right. “I would too. I mean if it was me. If this was my house, I’d never want to live anywhere else.”

  “I didn’t want to live anywhere else,” said Robbie. “But as it happened nobody asked my opinion on that.”

  The way he said it didn’t sound sad or angry, it just sounded flat, as though it had been something that made him feel helpless, which I supposed it had.

  “Maybe someday you can buy it back,” I said. I was serious though I half expected him to laugh at me, but when I looked at him his face was stern.

  “I intend to,” he said.

  I was glad because the Duff house without the Duffs just didn’t make sense.

  But then he did laugh at me. “No need to look so serious,” he said.

  And then because I sensed he wanted me to, I changed the subject. “How long have you been back?”

  “Almost a week. I’m going back tomorrow then I’m off to Greece for the summer.”

  “It’s well for some,” I said brightly to counteract the pang I had just suffered.

  “It’s not a holiday,” said Robbie. “I’m heading out to an excavation as a student volunteer. There’s a crowd of us going.”

  Girls, I was thinking, I bet there’s a bunch of girls in the crowd, and I had a vision of him, suntanned, his golden hair dulled by the Greek dust, surrounded by tanned girls in skimpy tops and very short shorts.

  “It sounds like a holiday to me,” I said more glumly than I had intended.

  “Well, don’t be too jealous,” said Robbie and he gave me a wry little smile and I was horrified, convinced for a moment that he had read my mind. “There’ll be plenty of hard work and it’s not much fun slaving away in the dirt with the sun beating down on top of you. But I’m looking forward to getting some experience and a chance to dig.” He stared at me again and shook his head as though in disbelief. “So you’ve finished school?”

  I nodded.

  And then he said it again, “Little Kay Kelly – it’s hard to believe.”

  “Why are you calling me that?” I blurted out. “Little Kay Kelly? I’m five foot five and a half – that’s not particularly little.”

  Robbie stopped smiling. “No,” he said, looking perfectly serious. “I don’t suppose it is really. I’m sorry, Kay, you’re perfectly right – it’s a long time since you’ve been Little Kay. Forgive me, it’s just the way I’ve always thought of you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, and I silently, joyfully, hugged the idea that he had thought of me at all.

  “So anyway, how are your parents?” said Robbie. “Both keeping well, I hope?”

  “My mother is very well,” I said. “My father’s heart isn’t very strong but he’s doing OK.”

  “Good – it’s good that he’s doing OK,” said Robbie.

  And then I asked the question I both wanted but did not want to ask. “How is Violet-May?”

  “She’s very well, running rings around everyone same as always. She says she wants to be an actress and is intent on going to some school for the performing arts. You can imagine how that’s going down with Mother. But, knowing Violet-May, she’ll get her own way.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She probably will.” Once again my thoughts went back to the day of the birthday concert and Violet-May standing on the makeshift stage in the second garage, her face beatific as she took bow after bow to the sound of the cheering audience. “And Rosemary-June and your mother and father, how are they doing?”

  “Rosemary-June is Rosemary-June,” said Robbie. “And the folks – the folks are doing OK, I suppose.”

  Then we were quiet for a moment and I felt certain that both of us were thinking of Alexander. I scrabbled about in my mind for something to lighten the tone.

  “Robbie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you really run away from boarding school?”

  “Now how on earth could you know about that?”


  “I don’t know, I suppose I just heard. So it’s true?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Robbie. “I hitched a lift to Kerry – it took me seven lifts to get there. I ended up in Kenmare.” His face widened in a genuine smile. “You know, I haven’t thought about that in a very long time.” Suddenly he glanced down at his watch. “I’d better get going. Can I drop you home, Kay?”

  “OK,” I said, “but only if you have time.” I knew I sounded as if I didn’t care either way whether he dropped me home or not, but inside the butterflies were doing a céilí at the thought of climbing into his car and sitting next to him.

  We got into the car and he waited while I wrestled with the seat belt.

  “I’m assuming the address hasn’t changed?” he asked.

  “It hasn’t changed,” I said.

  “Not like you,” said Robbie. “Here, let me help you with that.”