Patrick Flanery - Absolution

‘Did she say what she was afraid of?’

‘It was obvious that she believed in what she was doing, but that she was having second thoughts and was worried about her own safety. She said she was being selfish but she needed to get out. So she asked me for help. What she wanted was a loan, to start over somewhere else. That’s what she asked me to give her. She spent two hours that evening asking in about a hundred different ways, promising me that nothing bad would happen if I helped her, that I would pay no price. In the end, I didn’t believe her story. I thought she was lying. I thought she wanted the money for other things.’

‘For her associates.’

‘Yes. I thought it was a ruse. And I didn’t want to be involved in any of that. I was keeping my hands clean. I was afraid that if I gave her anything, and if something happened and the money could be traced back to me, then that would be the end of my career and the end of my chances to get out. So I refused to help. And what was so horrible about the whole thing was that she acted like it was the very answer she’d been expecting. She tried to change my mind even though I think she knew it was impossible. I was so stubborn. When she disappeared I realized that I’d made the wrong decision. She’d never given me any reason to disbelieve her. She was the most truthful person I’ve ever known. Who was I to think she would deceive me?’

He covered his eyes with his left hand and his mouth with the right. It was no longer apparent to Clare what she should do or how she should behave, if it would be wrong to cross the room and hold her son, or if that was the very thing he wanted. They sat in silence for ten minutes and then he removed his hands from his face and looked at her. As he was about to speak the intercom at the front gate buzzed.

‘If this is my neighbour I shall phone the police to charge him with harassment. Yes?’ Clare barked, pushing the intercom button as the screen flickered into an image of the driveway. ‘Oh God what do you want?’

‘Mrs Wald? It’s Donald Thacker again.’

‘I can see that.’

‘I know that something is wrong there. I know you’re being held hostage. If your attackers can hear me, then they should know that I have a gun and that I’ve phoned the police. The police are on their way and everything is going to be fine.’

‘Mr Thacker, you have made a fool of yourself. There is no one here but my son.’

The little black-and-white image of Donald Thacker looked stunned, and then Clare could hear the police sirens and the different pitch of her own security company’s sirens. It took a further half hour to sort out the confusion. Clare consented to the police and security company undertaking a search of the house to be certain there were no intruders hiding in wait until the authorities had left. The police were not amused and warned Mr Thacker he could be charged with wasting police time.

‘Truly, I thought there was something amiss,’ he said, blustering the night with his hands. ‘I thought I was being a good neighbour and a good citizen.’

Thacker looked so pitiful and frightened that Clare asked the police not to charge him and finally everyone left except Thacker himself.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but your lights are almost never on at night, and I thought you were alone.’

‘Thank you for your concern,’ Clare said, shaking his hand as cordially as she could. ‘We must go to bed now. My son has an early morning.’

Clare clicked Thacker in and out of her gate and went back inside to find Mark almost in the same position as before the interruption.

‘Will you forgive me?’ he asked.

‘For Laura? Oh, Mark, no. I cannot do that. It is not for me to forgive or to judge. You did what you felt you had to do. If you wish forgiveness, you must ask Laura for forgiveness. I am not Laura,’ she said, realizing that she was angrier with her son than she had ever been before. Not only was Clare the wrong person from whom to ask forgiveness, she also lacked the capacity to forgive what Mark had done.

‘But Laura is dead.’

‘Even still,’ she cried, trying to make her face immobile where it convulsed into spasm. ‘That shouldn’t prevent us from asking Laura to forgive our failures against her.’

‘And if she had asked you for money?’

‘She did not ask me. But yes, if she had asked me, I would have given it. I wouldn’t have thought twice, just as I would give it if you asked. But my relationship with each of you is — was — different from your relationship with each other. I cannot say that you did the wrong thing. You believed you were doing what you had to do at the time. You regret it now. You wish my forgiveness, but from my perspective there is nothing to forgive. I don’t hold you accountable for Laura’s actions, for what she did, and what became of her, whatever that might have been. She was only accountable to herself. I could have been a different kind of mother to her, and that might have changed everything. We cannot say that one moment or series of moments determined what Laura became. She was an adult. She made her own decisions. I think we dishonour her by assuming we could have changed her mind so easily.’

It was not yet light the next morning and there was already breaking news of another commuter bus being fired on by masked gunmen. Six passengers were reported dead, dozens injured. Nurses striking over a pay deal were barricading hospital entrances so that patients and ambulances and even the doctors themselves could not enter. Hospital workers were toyi-toying in operating theatres, dancing in protest around anaesthetized patients. Injured people were dying on the pavements outside. A woman gave birth in a car park. Abandoned by ward nurses, mental patients rioted for food. The military had been called in to restore order and provide emergency medical assistance, but they were also threatening to strike. Meanwhile, the Health Minister had been indicted for siphoning millions into an offshore account. Clare turned off the television, went to shower and dress, and had the coffee made by the time Mark emerged from his bedroom.

‘I’ve been called back home, Mother. I’m afraid I have to leave this morning.’

‘I would say it has been nice to see you but I fear it hasn’t been nice for you. It hasn’t been entirely nice for me, but that’s not what I mean. I am glad you came and I hope you will come to stay again soon. I shall promise not to burden you with further confessions. It is clear that the only answer to my problem is one I must find myself. Short of the dead granting me forgiveness, I have little hope of absolution, and thus of being freed from these memories.’

‘There’s one thing I don’t think I understand,’ Mark said, sweeping his tie over his shoulder as he sat down to his coffee. ‘The wig. Do you truly believe that Uncle Stephan’s relatives are the ones who broke into the old house?’

‘If not his relatives then his friends or associates, or even people hired by them.’

‘But what does it mean, if that’s what actually happened?’

‘I took it as a warning — that they knew the role I had played, and they knew that justice had not been done, so far as my involvement was concerned. Perhaps it was not their plan. After all, Marie and her little handgun interrupted them. Perhaps they had other spoils in mind than symbolic ones.’

‘Or they were nothing more than ordinary thieves who were interrupted and took the first thing to hand as they fled the house.’

‘But then why return the wig to the monument? Your version does not make sense if you think about its return — it requires that they would have been knowledgeable thieves, thieves with a sense of remorse about what they had taken, who returned it to a place where I might find it, but not to the house itself.’