Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

Sandra stared into the fire and breathed out slowly.

“Damaged…‘damaged’ is a good word. Jessica’s mother died of ovarian cancer when she was six. She was an only child. Her father was a not terribly successful actor, and the heavy drinking that usually goes along with the theater got much worse after his wife’s death. And Jessica looked after him. Made his breakfast, ironed his clothes, made sure he was on time for rehearsals. She was his little wife. Her periods started early, when she was about eleven; at twelve, she’d reached full sexual maturity. At least, her body had. And her father noticed. And Jessica noticed him noticing, and began to use makeup, and to dress so he’d go on noticing. And one night when he lumbered in from the pub after whatever play he was in, or wasn’t in, drunk again, she was waiting for him in the marital bed…his patient little wife, all ready for love…and he tried to resist, but, as with the drink and the failure, he didn’t try hard enough.”

Her voice had thickened with emotion; now it faltered. The fire crackled and hissed. I stood dead still, as if moving might break the spell, as if we were at a séance, and Sandra was communing with the departed. She glanced quickly over her shoulder at me, and I saw her eyes were glistening. There was nothing I could say, and before I had a chance to think of something, she turned back to the fire and continued.

“She told me all about it one night, early in the marriage. She’d had a row with Shane-over sex, how she wanted it more than he did, or how he had accused her of cheating with her leading man: young love, high drama, and she arrived up here and we drank brandy, and she told me all about it. How it lasted eighteen months or so, until she was fourteen. By then she had started sleeping around-older boys at school, a couple of her friends’ fathers. And her own father had fallen apart under the strain, the shame of it all. Spent time in mental hospital. And drying out, though as soon as he’d get out, the drinking would start again. Whiskey, at the end. And Jessica running wild now, expelled from school, and no one to care for her-there was an aunt, on her mother’s side, in Clontarf, but she didn’t want to know. And the father died, pancreatitis, I think, or maybe liver, a drink death anyway, and Jessica was left, sixteen, all alone, desperate, afraid. Taken into foster care, ran away, one, two, three families. And finally the social worker in charge of her case, despairing, took a flier, had the inspired idea of encouraging her to act. She got in touch with some of Jessica’s father’s former colleagues, the employable ones, and they were all stricken with guilt and ‘there but for the grace go I’ sentimentality and they got her some walk-ons and a few auditions and she turned out to be a natural. I suppose you could say the theater saved Jessica’s life.”

Sandra turned and faced me, and I could see the glow of the fire in her red hair and the pity in her green eyes.

“But those eighteen months, Ed…herself and her father, and Jessica just twelve, thirteen years old…alone in the house, her father’s little wife…I don’t think she ever moved on from there. From what Shane said-and I know she’s been unfaithful to him throughout their marriage-she doesn’t much enjoy sex, but she likes the power it gives her.”

“And Emily…” I said.

“And Emily,” she said. “Her mother’s daughter. Emily and Jonathan. Shane didn’t know, and Jessica didn’t know, but I knew, I think I’ve always known. Is that what Jonny was so excited about, that I might find out?”

I nodded.

“The weird thing is-the awful thing, maybe-I never felt it was wrong. I mean, kids are going to do it, thirteen, fourteen, you can try and delay, but by sixteen most of them are having sex, and as a parent what are you going to do? Tell them not to? Or pretend they aren’t? I mean, it’s good, isn’t it? If you do it right? And if they experiment together, if it’s not an older person taking advantage of them.”

“I think some people might feel a little uneasy at their being cousins.”

“It’s not brother and sister. It’s not an incestuous relationship. The taboo about cousins marrying, reproducing, is based on the fear that they’ll keep doing it, and that the children of extended families of married cousins will marry each other. Then you have a problem.”

“I doubt if your brother would be so sanguine.”

“I don’t know that I’m sanguine about it either, Ed. I’m just saying I never felt it was wrong. Maybe that says as much about me as it does about anyone else. I mean, Jonny’s been in therapy since shortly after Rock’s death. And Emily-this is something else her father doesn’t know-Emily has been seeing the same therapist for years too. She came to me, I set it up for her. So…and no, I don’t believe there should be a stigma attached to it, but I’m old-fashioned enough to wish our kids didn’t need it. So sanguine isn’t close to how I feel.”

“When I spoke to Jessica Howard, she said it was your idea that Emily do medicine. She suggested that you were anxious one of the children be the keeper of the Howard flame. That that burden came to rest upon Emily.”

A flash of rage creased her brow and stained her cheeks like wine spilled on white linen.

“It was not a burden, that’s so typical of the way Jessica twists everything, Emily wanted to do medicine, wants to still, she…”

Sandra caught herself, and gave a rueful little laugh, and twisted her mouth in acknowledgment of her flash of temper.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Loy. Sisters-in-law. Jessica is…not always the easiest person to get along with. I’m sure it is difficult to marry into a family like ours. But her own insecurities, her need to be the center of attention, haven’t helped matters. She wouldn’t even come to my mother’s funeral this year. Said they’d never got along, and to pretend otherwise just because she was dead was hypocrisy. Never mind that it was her husband’s mother, the self-obsessed fucking egotism…”

“Did Emily go to the funeral?”

“Of course. She and her granny were close. But look, I don’t…I didn’t really want to get into all this…I don’t necessarily believe that’s at the root of Emily’s issues…”

“I think family is central,” I said. “She seems very angry at the Howards. That there’s some great tradition, some grand example she’s expected to live up to. She wishes you’d just all leave her alone.”

Sandra nodded.

“She’s nineteen, just started at college, a new life. Maybe that’s as it should be. Jonny’s gone the other way, he talks about the Howards like we’re an empire on the march, superior beings all. Probably healthier at that age to want your family on the sidelines. Make your own name.”

I was relieved at what she said. It didn’t mean the blackmailer had gone away. But it suggested that the source of Emily’s troubles was not as grave as it might have been.

We stood in silence for a moment. The fire, reflected in the black glass of the wall, seemed to wash the room in its red glow; logs spat and hissed in the grate. Sandra smiled, and this time I smiled back. She came close to me; I could feel her breath on my face, her wood spice scent, her sudden need. I swallowed, and took a step back, and put my hand in my jacket pocket, and fingered the mass card that had been left beneath my windscreen wiper outside Shane Howard’s surgery, and played a hunch.

“All right then, Sandra,” I said. “Do you remember someone called Stephen Casey?”

I must really have fallen for Sandra Howard. Because when she looked at me, and looked away and as quickly back, and said, “Who?” and then, when I had repeated the name and she, having given herself time, having made a thinking face and taken a thinking walk, shook her head emphatically and said “No,” not only did I realize instantly that she was lying, I was surprised.