Black Lake (2 page)

After the move, the family had lived off a cold roast for days. Her brother had been angry at the chunks of meat that appeared everywhere, in sandwiches, in gravy, or simply, unashamedly cold, with potatoes and carrots, night after night. Now the girl regretted laughing at him when he’d taken a bite and run to the bin to spit it out. He’d opened the desolate fridge and stared into it for a while, as if better food might magically appear if he just stood there long enough. She should have found him something else to eat.

One day, as the snow drifted across the windowpanes, the mother flipped through “Rivers” until she got to “Glaciers.”

“I’ve done that,” the girl said gently, careful to say “I” instead of “we.”

“But you didn’t do it properly, did you?”

The girl looked at her, confused.

“You were too busy swimming this morning, isn’t that right? You traced your drawing from the book instead of doing what I asked you to do. Your
younger
brother”—she held up the picture he’d done at the time, which must have been tucked into the pages of the textbook—“did it properly.”

The mother was replaying something that had happened almost half a year earlier, the morning after they’d moved out of the big house.

That evening, when the father came to the door, the girl wanted to tell him that she couldn’t stay up in the ballroom much longer, that she was ready, now, to go back to school. Perhaps he heard something in her voice, because for the first time he asked if she was all right. What could she say other than yes, forcing herself to sound as if she meant it, as she looked up at her mother standing right there beside her?

One freezing morning, the mother stopped getting out of bed. She turned away, cocooning the duvet more tightly around them, when they heard the housekeeper leave the hot water outside the door.

The girl had become used to the modulation of the father’s knocks, usually a soft tap designed not to upset the mother, but sometimes more urgent if he wanted to ask her a question. On this day, when they hadn’t eaten their breakfast, then their lunch, he tried calling through the door, first the mother’s name, then the girl’s. The girl wanted to respond but didn’t believe her voice would reach; she felt weak, as if her mother was passing her lethargy on as they lay there. His knocks were loud and firm. One, then another, then again and again. The girl went to the door.

“Enough,” was all he said.

Yes,
the girl thought,
enough.

“Can she come to the door?” he asked.

The girl went over to the mother’s form, curled like a question mark under the quilt.

“Dad says, ‘Enough.’”

The mother stirred. “What?”

The girl repeated the word.

A hum came from the mother, a low hum, like some of the boys in the girl’s class did to annoy the teacher, but then the mother’s hum turned into something else, something louder, which turned into a sob, and then another and another, until she was gulping in great lungfuls of breath.

The girl ran to the door.

“What’s that?”

“It’s Mum.”

She didn’t wait for his answer but went to the bed and curled herself around her mother’s back to try to make her stop.

At first, the girl thought he had done what she expected him to do, which was to take away their uneaten lunch, as he had their untouched breakfast. Some minutes passed before she heard the first crash, a crash that sent her knees suddenly into the mother’s back so that she shot forwards, her body straightening, her head jerking from the pillow. Someone, it must have been the father—although it seemed impossible to the girl that he was capable of it—was breaking the crockery from their uneaten meal off the door. She could decipher the sharp smash of china and the dull thud of food—an apple, perhaps; then liquid: milk, coffee, soup. And then a more shocking noise, someone crying. A someone she knew was him.

When he had gone, she remained in bed with the mother, long past the point it gave the girl any comfort. It dawned on her that they had been playing a sort of game, a game that had been designed by the mother, yes, but a game that the father had agreed to play, too. That afternoon it became clear that he didn’t want to play anymore but didn’t know how to stop.

The following morning, the girl managed to get her mother as far as the windows. They watched the wind whip up the waves around the island. The snow had gone, as if it was determined to leave in time for Christmas, as if it was needed elsewhere. The lawn underneath looked damp and sickly.

Someone new came to the door. It was the girl’s grandmother, from the city. The mother rose slowly at the sound of her own mother’s voice. She approached the door on unsteady legs, and though the girl tried to hear, she couldn’t catch everything that the older woman whispered. The mother came back to bed. It was the first time the girl’s grandparents had visited since the tourists came, and the girl wondered where they would sleep. There was no space in the cottage for them. Would an exception be made—would they sleep in the house below, in a show bed, under a show bedspread, even though it all belonged to the government now? She imagined her grandparents in their pajamas, returning from the bathroom, having to step over the blue velvet ropes that kept the visitors to one side of the room.

That evening, they ate for the first time in two days and the girl understood it was the bargain that had been struck between her mother and her grandmother. There were tiny envelopes next to their dinner plates, each neatly labeled with their names. The mother opened both. “Vitamins,” she muttered under her breath, and handed the girl’s to her.

“Why?”

“Your grandmother’s very health-conscious.”

The girl tried to swallow it with her milk but it was too big and it got caught in her throat. For a moment, she struggled for air. The mother put her hand under the girl’s mouth and clapped her on the back, hard. The girl spat out the pill.

“Jee-sus,” the mother said.

“I’m sorry, Mum.”

She looked her daughter in the eyes, more intently than she’d done in months, and said, “Oh, darling, I didn’t mean you. I meant I was angry with
my
mum.”

That the girl’s grown-up mother could be angry with her more grown-up mother was a revelation.

When it became obvious that the mother wasn’t going to come down on her own and that the father didn’t have it in him to do what he should, someone—one of the government people, perhaps—phoned the police.

There were so many feet on the stairs that morning that the girl wondered if it was a special winter tour group. When they approached the door to the ballroom, the mother picked up the girl’s hand and hid it in her own.

“The guards are here.” The father barely got the words out before a soft local voice called through the door.

“I need to speak to”—the guard paused to confirm the girl’s name—“Katherine, please, Mrs. Campbell.”

The mother sat completely still, her eyes willing the girl to do the same. The girl could feel the heavy weight of the guards’ presence; surely the mother would have to give in now?

“I’m obliged to tell you that what you’re doing is against the law.” It was a man now, harder-voiced.

The mother was still, listening, her head tilted back in defiance.

“I’m all right,” the girl called out.

No one answered.

“Am I to understand that it is not your intention to come out, Mrs. Campbell?” he said.

The mother gripped the girl’s hand more tightly.

For a while, there was silence outside the door again. The father went to his study to have a last look for a second key; even as he did this he would have known he was stalling. There had only ever been one. It had been in his safe, a safe he thought his wife hadn’t known about. When he finally returned to announce that his search had been fruitless, he was very grateful that the house was closed for the winter—that there were no tourists to witness what happened next.

This is the girl’s last memory of her mother before she was taken back to Dublin to get better:

They haven’t moved from the bed. The mother has her arms around the girl, covering her ears, muffling the sound of the others’ approach. A drill outside, five short bursts, screws falling to the floor. And a sixth, longer this time, the old hinges unwilling to break. The girl wonders if the house is protecting them.

Then a terrible sound, the sound of a crowbar forcing the door open, a deep groan in the wood, and a whoosh of fresh air. The first face the girl sees belongs to the female guard. It contorts in disgust at the stale smell of the room. The others enter slowly. The mother is lifted from the bed by the father. The girl is amazed that he can carry her so easily in his arms, her knees hooked over his elbow, her head resting on his shoulder. The girl takes her grandmother’s hand and the guards move in silently behind, touching no one, bringing up the rear. It’s as if the whole thing had been choreographed, as if they’d learnt their roles in advance.

Down the never-finished ballroom stairs, the wood rough and splintery; down the main staircase, carpeted now by the government in a lush green; past the stain where the tapestry of the hunt used to hang; and into the hall, the darkest room at Dulough, where the housekeeper and her husband are waiting. Mrs. Connolly opens the front door and Marianne is carried outside, into the watery winter light.

The Spring Before

Philip

Dulough
faced the Atlantic in the west and backed onto the Poison Glen in the east. It lived by the winds. In the dark, Philip could hear them straining at the windowpanes, trying to force their way in. It was easy to imagine the crash of glass, the furniture tipped over, his clothes whirling about the room like dancing ghosts. He would have slept with the light on if he could, but his father said that it was too expensive.

Fifteen doors opened onto the landing: Philip’s, the bathroom, the loo, the upstairs drawing room, his father’s study, and nine other bedrooms. His parents’ was the biggest, his the smallest. Seven went unused; though there was furniture in each, the beds hadn’t been slept in for a long time. His father kept them closed to preserve the heat. When Philip did sneak in, the air was different from that of the lived-in rooms—unbreathed, damp. A final door led to the third floor, but he and his sister weren’t allowed up there.

Dulough was a castle, even though it had been built hundreds of years after people stopped building real castles. The house’s turrets shot up into the wet sky and a faded pink rose sprawled over the front door. Philip said that the rose looked like the house’s mustache. When the blinds in the upstairs rooms were down, the house did have a sleepy, human look about it.

To the west, a waterlogged lawn ran from the front door to the top of the cliffs, which dropped away to the sea. A tall island, not far from the shore, housed a church and the remains of Philip’s ancestors; at low tide it could be reached by foot. The lawn was bordered by rhododendrons, the only plant to thrive at Dulough, the only one that needed to be culled each year so as not to swallow up the rest. A kitchen garden had been planted behind the house and beyond that a formal garden. The creation of Philip’s mother, a relative newcomer to Donegal, it was a perfect rectangle, with tightly clipped hedges, a paved floor, and a statue dead center. To the east were the hills. They were steep and tall and dark, with ragged grass, and boulders left at precarious angles by a retreating glacier thousands of years earlier. There were waterfalls, too, which began invisibly at the top of the valley and became streams that made fissures in the earth before suddenly disappearing underground again. The red deer lived in the hills, high up in summer but coming down, close to the house, in winter. Though he always watched, Philip could go for weeks without seeing them.

A deep lake bordered the avenue that ran for two miles from the main road, branching off first at the servants’ entrance and ending at the front door of the big house. And it was along this avenue that the moving men from Donegal Town came that morning in early April.

“Are we taking yourself as well?”

Philip opened his eyes. They stood, their hands already clasped under the iron bed, as if they really would take him with them. The shock of having two strange men in his room made him forget what he had been dreaming about. He hadn’t forgotten what day it was, though; they were going to move from the big house to the cottage that had been built for them down by the lake, next door to the Connollys. He sat up, but he didn’t want them watching him get out of bed. He was in his pajamas. They wore overalls streaked with dirt. The one who’d spoken to him wore a royal blue fisherman’s cap the same color as the overalls. The men were older than his father; they had deep lines in their faces. Like valleys, Philip thought. He imagined tiny glaciers settling into their skin, the ice cracking and expanding. They had been doing glaciated valleys in geography. That was what he had been dreaming about: ice and—

“Up you get there,” the man in the cap said. “There’s a good lad.”

Philip pushed the covers back as the men stared down at his striped pajamas. The man with the deeper wrinkles, the one who hadn’t said anything, stood aside for Philip to reach his feet to the floor and put on his slippers. By the time he stood up, they had the bed lifted in the air. Philip made for the door, tying his dressing gown tightly around him as he went. At the threshold, he stopped and turned back to the men, wondering what he should say to them. “Thank you” was what came out, but he was fairly sure it wasn’t the right thing.