Torn Away Read online

  Declan gasped as all the wind was knocked out of him. “I wasn’t ready!” he choked.

  Joe jumped up, and stood back, grinning. “Best man is two falls. First fall goes to me.” He crouched, waiting for Declan to rise.

  Declan got up slowly, resting on one knee until he was breathing normally. Then he advanced cautiously, arms ready. They met. Declan tried to get a grip on Joe, but his fingers slid uselessly off his adversary’s dark skin and hard-muscled body. Joe had no trouble, however, gripping Declan’s shirt and pulling him off balance.

  “Wait!” yelled Declan. “I want to take off my shirt.”

  Joe stood back, grinning. Declan wriggled out of his shirt and threw it to the ground, not taking his eyes off Joe, prepared should he rush again and try to take him by surprise. But Joe waited until Declan was crouching and ready, his bare skin pale and gleaming.

  They met and grappled. Declan tried to get Joe off balance, but Joe was too quick on his feet, shifting and wriggling, and using his strong grip and muscular arms to force Declan down. They fell together, wrapped around each other, pulling and pushing, grunting like a pair of wild animals. Joe tried a pin, but Declan arched his back, and kicking out at the sky with his legs, managed to pull himself clear. He spun about immediately, and threw himself at Joe’s dark shoulders, twisting himself, coming up on his knees behind Joe with a sweaty, sliding half nelson. But he couldn’t hold it. Joe’s neck muscles strained, his arms and shoulders bulged. Declan fell back with a gasp, and Joe was on him, and they rolled about in the grass for a while, each trying to gain the advantage, until they were at the very edge of the lake, Declan on his back, too exhausted to hold Joe off. He could see a pair of mallards upside-down as Joe pinned him for the second time. “You win!” he gasped.

  Joe stood back, gasping for breath, his torso soaked with sweat.

  Declan rose unsteadily to his feet. “You’re the powerful wrestler, Joe, right enough.” He grinned, and reached for his shirt.

  “Good fight,” said Joe happily as he dressed.

  The mallards, a duck and a drake, clambered from the lake and stood watching the two boys in astonishment.

  “We’d better get to school,” said Declan.

  The shrill, piercing whistle of a redwing came fluting up from the thicket as they started back. At the end of October, Ana told him he had put on some weight. “You look healthier,” she said one afternoon as they strolled home from school. “More relaxed.”

  Declan frowned and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

  “But you need to smile. And laugh. Leah says you’re not so stuck-up the way you used to be.”

  “I was never stuck-up,” Declan declared hotly. “And as for smiling and laughing, I leave that to those who have reason to.”

  “She thinks you’re cute.”

  “Where I come from cute means cunning. Like a fox.”

  “She means lovable.”

  “Is that right now? And what did you tell her?”

  “Me?” Ana shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh, I just told her to keep her eyes off my big brother.”

  Declan almost smiled.

  The month of the Canada Goose was a good month for sunshine. The trees were changing color and there was a hint of fall in the air as Declan and Ana set off for school each morning.

  Although Declan had earned a grudging respect from the other kids at school, he knew they did not like him. He could read it in their too polite faces, but he did not care: they were no countrymen of his. Joe was different, of course. Declan’s friendship with the Indian boy was growing stronger each day.

  Nor did most of the teachers take to him, Declan noticed. Though his natural curiosity led him to read most of the required texts, he handed in no work. He didn’t care what they thought of him.

  Mr. Hemsley, however, who taught Social Studies and who was young and cheerful, tried to encourage him. “Your test scores are very good, Declan, especially in the free response questions. I admire a student with opinions of his own.” He smiled. “Try to keep an open mind, though, and try to understand other points of view, okay?”

  Miss Oliver, the elderly English teacher, wanted to know why he had handed in no essays. “You cannot hope to pass the course on test marks alone,” she said. “You’re an intelligent boy; why do you take no part in the class discussions?”

  “I’ve nothing to say,” lied Declan, not revealing the real reason, which was that participation spelled acceptance, and he had no intention of accepting any part of this alien country. That would be falling for his aunt and uncle’s trap; he wasn’t that much of a fool.

  The weather stayed warm right into November, month of the loon, and then was suddenly, sharply cold. Otter Harbour blazed an autumn bronze, and the huge old maples on the main street flared crimson against the sea and the sky and the dark embrace of the forest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Keep the books, Joe, you earned them.”

  “I wouldn’t have got a Second in the Juniors without you, Declan.”

  “Sure, you would, Joe. You’re a born scientist. I only did what you told me. If you’d had a half decent partner, you would have walked away with a First.”

  “Wrestle you for them!”

  “There’s the bus. See you tomorrow, Joe.”

  It is midnight and the wind and the ocean are restless and he too is restless in his bed, unable to sleep.

  He remembers.

  It is Thursday, April 16th. The day before Good Friday. Their last day.

  He sees them clearly in his memory, recalls their faces on that fateful morning, their expressions, their gestures, and he searches now for some sign in their faces and voices of their doom. But there is none.

  Mairead is excited, of course, because today is her birthday, and she is trying on her new white wool sweater, a gift from her mother. It is 7:45 in the morning and the three of them are in the kitchen where they eat. Mary Doyle is cooking breakfast and a man on Radio Ulster is singing, “Have I told you lately that I love you?” He sings it “luurv.”

  Mairead is happy. She tells her ma that she luurvs her sweater—it fits perfectly, and she luurvs her ma, and she luurvs her big brother, and she thanks Declan again for the beautiful notebook that is large and heavy and has blank, creamy pages, enough for a whole year, and which is just perfect because Mairead loves to write, and someday, she always tells them, she will be a famous poet like William Butler Yeats.

  She admired the notebook in Marks and Spencer some weeks earlier. “It would make a perfect diary too,” she said. Declan checked the price and made a quick calculation; he would be able to afford it if he was careful with his pocket money. It had a picture on the cover of a beautiful Victorian lady seated at a desk, writing. “It’s so elegant,” Mairead said, as she stroked its cover with her fingers.

  She is a skinny kid with long, long legs, who walks daintily with her back straight; she has brown hair and lively blue eyes. She takes after her ma. Declan is supposed to take after his da. The new sweater helps fill her out a little and looks good on her. “Take it off while you eat your breakfast,” says their ma, so she peels it off carefully over her head and suddenly she’s skinny again in a faded pink T-shirt that says Make Love Not War. She folds the sweater neatly and carries it into the living room and places it on the back of the sofa for later.

  Breakfast is fried eggs and refried boiled potatoes from last night’s dinner and toast and marmalade with hot milky tea. Mairead likes tea whenever her ma lets her have it, but mostly she drinks milk. Declan is old enough to choose whatever he wants. He is reading a science fiction book while he eats his breakfast.

  Their ma opens the kitchen window and throws out a handful of crumbs for the birds. Then she sits down with her tea and toast. She takes Declan’s book away from him. “Manners at the table, Declan. I swear to heaven you’ll be reading in your grave.”

  Declan, remembering, ransacks the memory, listens and watches his ma keenly. But despite “grave,” there is
no inkling of death in either her voice or her manner. She is relaxed and happy on her daughter’s birthday, looking forward to their outing in the city. She sips her tea, her elbow cupped in her hand, the hot teacup near her pale cheek, her blue eyes drowsy and fond.

  The initial excitement of her birthday gifts over, Mairead is now dreamy. She sips at her glass of milk and gazes over her mother’s head out the kitchen window at a pair of spring sparrows on the sandstone window ledge pecking jerkily at the breadcrumbs. Ten is an important birthday. She had three birthday cards, one each from Declan and her ma, and one from her friend Rosaleen.

  There is not a sign of doubt or foreboding on her dreamy young face, not a hint in her happiness that today is the day she must die.

  Declan, still remembering, sees himself finish his breakfast and get up from the table. He watches himself run up the stairs and brush his teeth, then grab his lunch off the kitchen table where his ma has left it for him, kiss his ma and Mairead hurriedly, unthinkingly, absent-mindedly, thinking only of Tim O’Malley waiting for him, ready for school, unaware that this is the last time he will ever see his ma and Mairead alive.

  Several hours later he is summoned to the headmaster’s study, and the headmaster is nodding at him. His old, serious face, the creases around his mouth as he speaks the words. The policeman is standing beside the headmaster’s desk. Help? Who can help? Death is a scythe that cuts you down.

  He walks home. The house is empty. Everything is tidy and in its place, just the way they left it before they went off on their birthday jaunt. His eyes search for a message, a note, some final word scribbled by his ma, but there is nothing. The kitchen counter is neat: the toaster with its bright daisy-yellow cover, the teapot with its blue wool cap, cleaned and rinsed, the brown plastic dishrack emptied of its knives and forks and plates. There are still a few crumbs left outside the window from the sparrows.

  He sits on the old sofabed in the living room and stares at his ma’s pictures of Pope John XXIII and the Sacred Heart hanging on the wall, Jesus with his long, sad, suffering face, left hand pointing to his burning heart, a prayer in the lower margin: “Come to Me, all ye who are heavily burdened and I will give you rest.”

  Mrs. O’Malley from next door comes in. “Are you there, Declan, love?” And when she sees him sitting there, his school bag still clutched in his hand, she says, “Oh sweet Jesus—they killed your ma and the child!” And starts crying and sits beside him and clutches him to her shoulder, weeping hot tears into his hair.

  Father Coughlan, the parish priest is next. He tiptoes into the house and makes the sign of the cross and takes Declan’s hands into his own. “God be with you, boy, in your time of trouble.” And he blesses him and tells him he must be strong and does he wish for him to send Mrs. Moloney from the rectory to stay in the house with him for a week or so while he telephones his uncle, Matthew Doyle, in Canada? Declan is staring at the Sacred Heart. He shakes his head. He will be all right; Mrs. O’Malley will be coming in.

  When he gets rid of everyone, he locks the door and climbs the stairs. He opens his ma’s bedroom door and stands there, just looking. On the wall over the bed is another Sacred Heart picture. Suffering. The room is very empty. Then he goes to Mairead’s room which is his own room also, divided in two by a curtain strung up on a pair of wall hooks—the house, like all the others in the row, has only two bedrooms. The diary he gave her for her birthday is on the hurriedlymade bed. There is a pair of soiled white socks on the floor beside the bed. Her green blazer, part of her school uniform, hangs on the back of a chair. He picks up the diary and stares at the Victorian lady on the cover.

  He goes to his own side of the room and lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling, the diary clasped in his hand, and he waits in the silence. He is waiting for them to come home, rattling and laughing through the door downstairs, tired and happy after their day in the city, waiting for them to dismiss this empty, tomb-like silence.

  But they don’t come.

  The funeral is on Monday. The IRA with their black berets and dark glasses make a political thing of it. The police are there in full force. The Brits too, in their armored six-wheeled Saracens. If they try anything, there will be a riot for sure. Schools are closed. All the victims. All the mourners. Hundreds attend. The coffins closed.

  It is the last he ever sees of his ma and his sister, two dark wooden boxes, one of them small, on the shoulders of the IRA pallbearers. He watches, his face pale in the cold spring sun. The pain he feels is unbearable, but he wants to guard it and nourish it so it will grow, and when it has grown powerful enough it will explode.

  He watches the coffins being lowered into the consecrated ground.

  He doesn’t cry.

  The Brits don’t try anything. There is no riot. Not this time.

  After the funeral he holds it in for two days at the O’Malleys’. All day and night and the next day. Then the next night, he climbs through the window into his own empty house and sits on his ma’s bed and weeps, weeps until he thinks it will kill him.

  He stops remembering.

  The wind keens in from the black Canadian sea and rattles his window. He pushes himself up out of bed and looks out at the dark night and the turbulent sea.

  He remembers again that picture of his mother’s—the Sacred Heart, that sad suffering Jesus face on the wall.

  It looks a lot like his Uncle Matthew.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Matthew sat in the garage, cleaning a rifle.

  “Looks like an antique,” said Declan. “Did you bring it with you when you ran away from Ireland?” He watched Matthew carefully as he said this. Always, no matter how much he tried to needle his uncle, Matthew never got angry. Now, however, Declan was delighted to see a rictus of irritation jerk at his uncle’s mouth.

  Matthew paused to collect himself. Then he looked up. “It’s a First World War rifle,” he said evenly. “Ross 303. Made here in Canada.”

  Declan watched him. The man was a coward; why else would he put up with Declan’s taunts and insults?

  “You ever fire a rifle?” said Matthew.

  “No.”

  “You like to try?”

  “Maybe.” He’d love to fire a rifle, but he wasn’t about to let his uncle know that.

  Matthew closed one eye and peered down the inside of the rifle barrel. “No time like the present.” He got up. Declan followed him out along the cliff and down over the rocks to the beach where his uncle set up a soda pop can on a rock. He loaded the rifle, pushing in five cartridges at the top, and handed it to Declan.

  The rifle was heavier than it looked. Declan lifted it to his shoulder, closed one eye and sighted along the barrel. He pulled the trigger and was surprised at the punch it gave his shoulder as the gun exploded.

  “I missed.” He was annoyed with himself. He wanted to show his uncle he could do it.

  “Pull the stock hard in to your shoulder.

  When you’re ready to fire, take a good breath, let it out, and squeeze the trigger. Squeeze, don’t pull—like this.” He showed him. “Try again.”

  The second shot struck the rock underneath the target.

  “Squeeze gently. Take your time.”

  Declan rested his cheek on the polished stock and took careful aim. The third shot nicked the edge of the can and sent it spinning and rattling from its perch. Declan’s blood tingled with the power of the rifle; his heart swelled. How he would love to have in his sights the dirty Prods who’d killed his family!

  Matthew propped the target back up.

  Declan’s fourth shot blew the can away. He thought his heart would burst.

  “You’ll do,” said his uncle.

  When Kate discovered that Matthew had been teaching Declan how to shoot, she was very angry. She was so angry that she forgot Declan was there. Hands on hips, eyes blazing, she said to her husband, “Is this why we brought the boy all the way from the madness of Northern Ireland? To teach him gun shooting? Is that it?”
She thrust out her jaw.

  “Now, Juno,” said Matthew, trying to calm her down, “the gun puts meat on the table . . . “

  “Don’t Juno me, you peacock! I’d rather starve than eat meat gunned down by any child of mine! I never thought I’d see the day that Matthew Doyle would be putting a gun in the hands of a child!”

  “ . . . after all, Kate, a man must learn to survive in this . . .”

  “Man is it? And him only . . .”

  “He’ll soon be a man, isn’t that the truth, Declan?”

  But Declan had already gone, creeping up the stairs to his room, a smile on his face, leaving his uncle to survive Kate’s wrath on his own.

  They set off before dawn, driving the truck up the narrow mountain road in the darkness.

  After an hour they parked and set off on foot in the gray light. Matthew carried the rifle and binoculars, Declan the water and food in a small pack on his back.

  The woods were cold and deep.

  The higher they climbed, the colder it became. “Deer like the rocky ridges below the summit,” said Matthew. “The snow forces them down to the lower slopes. Once we’re up above the tree line, we can track them back down.”

  Declan had never hunted before, except for Brits, he thought, grinning to himself, and he would never admit it to his uncle how much he was enjoying the gradual climb through the thin pines and mountain alder, and the huckleberry and salal bush. He breathed deeply, pulling the cold clear air into his lungs, exulting in the strength of his legs.

  They emerged from the forest and scrub and rested on the ridge, drinking from their water bottles. The sky behind them was pink. Declan looked out over the seemingly endless forest at the dark sea half a mile below.

  Matthew pointed down. “Otter Harbour.”

  Declan stared. From up here the village was tiny. Ana and Thomas and Kate were shrunk to invisibility.

  His uncle searched the forest throughhis binoculars for signs of deer. Declan watched an eagle soaring overhead, its feathered pinions outspread, white head pinked by the dawn.