Torn Away (3 page)

Declan made no reply.

“Goodbye, Mr. Doyle,” said Raghavji. “Goodbye, Declan.”

Matthew Doyle nodded his big head and, without looking around at the boy, said, “Follow me.”

Declan stumbled after him.

They walked out of the airport terminal and across the parking lot in the soft September rain.

If Tim O'Malley was right—that Canadians were rich—then Matthew Doyle must be the only exception, thought Declan, for in the hundreds of late-model cars in the airport parking lot, the 1962 Ford truck stood out like a dinosaur.

Matthew started the ancient motor with the gearstick in neutral and the truck shuddered to life. It seemed to Declan that his uncle leaned an ear toward whatever it was the engine was trying to tell him, and
after a few seconds, apparently satisfied, he stopped listening and reached across Declan and pulled open the glove compartment from which he took a roll of mints. He held the roll out to Declan. “Mint?”

Declan tried to shake his head but the effort was too much for him. He sat in a collapsed silence.

Matthew took one for himself and tossed the roll onto the dash where it joined a mess of pens, string, coins and faded yellow-and-blue parking violation tickets.

His uncle persuaded the gearstick into reverse, backed the truck out of the slot, and they were soon on the road with the Ford engine singing a sad requiem all the way to the city of Vancouver. The only windscreen wiper that worked was Matthew's, which did not bother Declan, for he was not interested in the journey anyway.

The truck rattled over the Lions Gate Bridge into West Vancouver and onto the Upper Levels Highway. Declan looked down at Howe Sound, gloomy and pensive in the mist and rain. “You don't live in Vancouver then?”

Matthew shook his head and pointed up ahead.

Declan looked and saw nothing but the narrow mountain highway and sheer rocky walls. “You live in a cave in the rocks?” he said sarcastically.

“Otter Harbour,” said Matthew.

His uncle was no great talker.

The rain stopped. The sky brightened. Horseshoe Bay was high mountains and mists, and ferryboats huge as liners. He wanted to ask his uncle if they were waiting to board one of the towering ferryboats, but as soon as he thought of the question he forgot it. Ten minutes later they boarded, not one of the big ships, but a very ordinary little ferry. His uncle switched off the engine and they sat in the truck with the windows rolled down as the ferry chugged out of the bay.

Matthew pointed a finger and spoke his sixth word. “Eagle,” he said.

Declan watched the eagle, forcing his eyes to focus. He had never seen an eagle before, only on TV. It circled slowly over the hills. Declan could not take his eyes off it. Such freedom! To fly so high and swoop and glide in the streets of silent air!

The ferry landed at a place called Langdale, and away they drove again along
a winding country road in a journey that seemed must go on forever. Declan was reminded of a place he had read about at school, a place that was all mountains and mists and magic, that was lost in the shadows of time. It was called Shangri-La, he remembered. But that was only in a book. Besides, this place was not really like Shangri-La. If it were, he would feel happy, and he felt awful.

“Won't be long now,” said Matthew.

Declan said nothing, but kept his eyes to the front, staring straight ahead; he did not care how long it took, it was all the same to him. Two could play at the game of silence.

School.

There was a time when he had liked school—he had enjoyed history, especially Irish history with its brave stories of Ireland's heroes and patriots—but he had stopped going there after . . . after the bomb.

He had joined Brendan Fogarty's gang instead. None of them went to school. Brendan, sixteen, was the oldest. At eleven, Kevin Payne was the youngest. The Holy Terrors. Their number varied between seven and ten members, depending on whether the school inspector or the police managed to
catch some of them and force them back to school for a while.

Rebels with a cause, that was the Holy Terrors.

The way Brendan Fogarty explained it was this: “In the North of Ireland it's a war between them and us, between the Brits—the English—and the Catholics. The British soldiers are supposed to be in Ireland keeping the peace between us and the Protestants. Which is fine, except the way it works out is the Brits are on the side of the Protestants. And it's us, the Catholics, who get the house-to-house searches at three o'clock in the morning, battering down our doors and pulling us from our beds and destroying everything they can put their filthy hands on while they pretend they're searching for a gun or a bomb.”

Kevin Payne, as young as he was, said, “The English have no right in Ireland! Let them go back to their own country!”

“That's the good lad,” said Brendan.

So they became rebels with a cause, and the grim, narrow streets in the Falls Road and Shankill areas with their dirty, crumbling nineteenth century houses, became their
jungle and their battleground. They threw stones at British soldiers; they hurled gasoline bombs at the British Land Rovers and armored cars under the cover of night; they helped the young men, all unemployed, make nail bombs. They became young terrorists.

And as well as their British enemies, they also had the Irish Protestant militants and the Ulster Police, who were mostly Protestants, after them. And if that wasn't enough, their own IRA, the Provisional branch of the Irish Republican Army—or Provos, as they were called—might take it into their heads to kneecap them for the mischief they got up to. Kneecapping meant you were crippled for life. Not that they had ever shot the knees or ankles of a child (ankles were a more popular target nowadays because of the greater pain and disability), but you could never tell—they seldom hesitated to impose their own brand of law and order among their own, even if it was the milder punishment of having a heavy concrete block dropped on your arm or leg until the limb snapped. Life was brutish and cruel.

His uncle drove on.

How many miles were behind him to
be retraced? Declan wondered. How would he ever find his way back? The farther they drove, the more impossible seemed his escape.

The road began to wind through a great forest; there were trees everywhere Declan looked, evergreens, he knew that much, but what kind they were he did not know and did not care. He felt tired and . . . lost. The dark, brooding forest seemed to him a secret, unknown world, impenetrable and dark, and he was filled with the terrible numbness of despair.

They emerged from the forest into the brightness of sea and sky, but he closed his eyes and saw very little of it.

The road now twisted around coves and bays. Purple-gray rocks, jagged and dark, thrust themselves into the shining sea, but he merely glimpsed it. He sat with his eyes half closed, exhausted. It was as though all the past weeks he had been fuelled by a special kind of hatred that had pumped up his muscles and his sinews to a constant, explosive pitch, and only now had he let go, only now had his strength collapsed. He felt totally worn out. His head ached from the
thioridizine; it felt like his brain was being crushed. His tongue was dry and swollen. He cared about nothing. He thought he would like to die.

Now that the rain had stopped, Matthew leaned over and opened Declan's window six inches. After a while, the fresh air began to revive him, and by the time they were near their destination, Declan felt a little better.

Otter Harbour was more than a harbor, it was an entire village. There was Sawchuk's General Store, a service station, a couple of churches, a hotel, a post office, and a liquor store. There was a telephone booth outside the general store. A man waved at the truck
as they went by. Matthew waved back.

The house was not far past the Catholic church of Our Lady of Sorrows. Matthew turned into a gravel driveway, stopped, switched off the engine and set the handbrake.

Although the effects of the drug had worn off, Declan felt exhausted. He was sleepily aware that the truck had finally stopped, and that there was a girl about his own age or a little younger standing at the back door with a young boy.

He climbed out of the truck and followed his uncle to the back of the house. By now, other people had come out to greet them. A tall slim woman, wiping her hands on her apron, walked down the wooden steps and threw her arms around him and pressed him to her breast. She had a blue smudge on her jaw, and smelled faintly of acrylic paint.

“Ah! It's wonderful you're here, Declan. I'm your Aunt Kate, but call me Kate.”

Declan stood, looking at her, his face expressionless. She had dark hair and blue eyes and a creased, smiling face, and wore a white shirt and dark skirt. She stood tall, with her shoulders back and her chin high, looking at him.

“Stand and let me take a look at you. Ah! It's the feeding up you need, you're as thin as a church mouse. Isn't it terrible starved the boy is, Matthew?”

His uncle stood, his long arms dangling at his sides. “Terrible starved, right enough.”

“This is Ana,” said Kate. The girl stood, waiting. All Declan noticed was that she wore a huge pair of sunglasses.

“Hi,” she said, smiling.

Declan said nothing.

“And this is Thomas.” Kate pushed the boy forward.

Thomas's way of welcoming Declan was to slap him several times lightly on the arm. He welcomed Declan like a puppy. “Hi, Declan,” he said in the voice of a five-year-old, though his age must have been nearer nine or ten, for he was heavy and almost as tall as Declan. He had brown eyes and hair and wore jeans and a white T-shirt with something written on it.

Declan stared at Thomas.

“Have ye no bag?” said Kate.

Declan did not answer.

“Ah! Then come on in. There's dinner ready, and then you can rest. You must be
destroyed for the want of sleep. It's the long journey, so it is.”

Kate led the way back in to the house. Declan heard her say to his uncle in a low voice, “Is it just tired he is? Or is there something wrong with the boy?”

“They had to tranquilize him,” explained Matthew.

So that was why he felt so terrible! Declan felt a stir of anger.

“Is that the truth?” said Kate. “And the only clothes he has are the ones on his back?”

The girl, Ana, showed him where to wash, and then took him up the high stairs to a room in the top of the house. “You can have this room,” she said, “or you can take the room at the back, one floor down, same floor as me. Kate says it's whichever one you like.”

The room was small with a sloped attic ceiling and had a window that looked out over the dark rocks and the ocean. The bed had an old-fashioned iron frame, and was covered with a blue eiderdown quilt. He fell onto it. He still wore his tattered sneakers. He felt Ana touch him on the shoulder. He did not move. He felt her slip off his shoes and dimly saw her place them together by the chest of
drawers. He closed his eyes.

He did not get up for dinner, but slept right through.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, he was visited by his nightmare, and awoke, crying out when the bomb exploded.

And Kate Doyle was suddenly there, her arms around his shoulders, clasping him tight, and crooning. “Ah! Hush now, everything is all right, it's all right, so it is.”

But he pushed her away, wild, possessed by the devils of fear and frenzy. “Leave me alone!” And threw himself around and pulled the covers up over his head until she had gone away.

The wild ocean crashed on the jagged rocks, and from somewhere up on the hill came the lonely hoot of an owl.

Declan had slept the afternoon and the night away. Before six o'clock on Sunday morning, he swung his feet onto the floor and sat on the edge of his bed, looking around the small room. Chest of drawers, painted white; small bedside table, varnished brown, with a gooseneck lamp; hardwood floor; blue rug at the end of the bed; wallpaper, yellow with some kind of a white latticework design; two seascape pictures on the wall; a narrow door on the wall opposite the window. He stood
and walked over to the door and opened it: a closet, empty, with a shelf and clothes hangers. He closed the door.

Where was the bathroom? He went out onto the landing. The house was quiet. He padded down the stairs in his socks to the next landing. Which door? He tried one: a child's bedroom with Superman wallpaper. He found the bathroom on his second try. He went in and locked the door. The room was big with bright lights and giant mirrors, not like a Belfast bathroom at all. He stared at the oddly-shaped elliptical pink sink, the toilet bowl with its padded seat, and the unfamiliar bottles of shampoo and jars of God-knows-what. He ran the bath and stripped off his clothes. He had never seen himself so naked and illuminated. He climbed into the pink tub and soaked himself for half an hour. He dried himself on the biggest towel he had ever seen, wrapped it around himself, grabbed his clothes and hurried back upstairs to his room, where he put on the Jockey shorts and the loose white sweatshirt and thick work socks he found neatly folded on the top of his chest of drawers. His Aunt Kate must have left them for him while he was in the bathroom. He stepped into his old jeans.

He went downstairs and stood on the bottom step.

His aunt and uncle were in the kitchen, Kate working around the stove, Matthew sitting in a rattan easy-chair, reading a book. The room was big and bright, a combined kitchen-family room, with a round wooden table and six chairs. Beside his uncle's rattan chair was a small varnished table, its top crowded with a black telephone, a mug full of pens and pencils and several magazines and books, and its lower shelf filled with two thick phone books, one on top of the other. The walls were papered in the same kind of paper as in Declan's room—yellow and white.

Declan looked to the right. Opposite the kitchen there was a living room, also big—every room in this house was big. His aunt and uncle had not yet seen him. Declan walked into the living room. There was a wide stone fireplace flanked by two high book-shelves full of books and binders; an upright piano was set against the wall; there was a TV, a long brown sofa, old and worn, two matching chairs, two unmatched chairs—one a high-backed dark red velvet wing chair and the other a black-painted wooden rocker—
and cushions of many shapes and colors. On the floor there was an Indian carpet. A long coffee table made of what looked to Declan like a giant tree knot which had been polished and varnished sat in front of the sofa. There were many paintings on the walls of trees and mountains, beach and sky, rocks and driftwood, ocean storms, all painted in a—what was it called, impressionistic?— style.