Patrick Flanery - Absolution

‘More or less,’ I say. ‘But you don’t know the whole story. They were making it up. At that point I hadn’t even been to see my aunt.’

‘We’ll come to that. For now, what is important is what I remember of that day. I asked them why they had brought you to me, of all people in the world. Timothy spoke again. He explained that because you were with my daughter, they thought perhaps I might be some relation of yours. “At first,” said Timothy, “we actually thought Sam was Laura’s son, but she told us that wasn’t so. But maybe a cousin, we thought, a nephew or cousin. And since she’d asked us to bring these papers to you when we could, we thought maybe you’d know what to do with Sam.” I looked at you, sternly I think now, and knew that you were no relation of mine. You were not the son of my son, not the child of my cousins or my cousins’ children. You stared so blankly at me, Sam, with those dead eyes that I see even now in moments when your mind is elsewhere, and when you think no one is looking. There were bruises on your gangly arms. Your hair was long, fraying at the ends, and even though it was obvious that you’d just been washed, you looked like someone who had been filthy for a long time before that, like a tramp, or a stray. Dusty and ashen.’

‘Do you remember what you said next?’

‘Yes. And I have regretted it since. It is but one in the long catalogue of my regrets. I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know this boy. He is not one of my relatives. Do you know me, child?” You shook your head, holding tightly, so tightly to Lionel’s hand. And Timothy asked, as if he couldn’t believe my cold-heartedness, “He isn’t one of your family? You have no obligation?” ’

‘And you said, “I’m afraid he isn’t. I don’t. He’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know him. I can’t explain how he came to be with my daughter. Child, can you tell us how you came to be with my daughter?” That’s what you said.’

‘I don’t remember the words quite in that way,’ Clare says, touching my arm, ‘but never mind. Our versions are close enough. And you, when I asked you that hard question, you only shook your head. You had nothing to say. Tell me now, if you can. Tell me what you know.’

I can’t let the challenge pass. I did have things to say, and I still do. So I tell Clare the truth about what happened, about my idealistic parents, their friendship with Laura, their deaths, their memorial service, seeing Clare and her husband there, the promise he made, the promise Laura herself made, that if I ever needed anything, all I had to do was to come ask. As I tell her all of this, Clare’s face drops, scrambles in confusion, becomes a wet red grid.

‘You can’t be Peter and Ilse’s son? You can’t. Oh God,’ she cries, ignoring my hand and turning away from me. She finds a bench and collapses on it. ‘I didn’t realize. I thought you were just a stray of my daughter’s. I felt badly enough about that , you see. And now. Oh God!’ she shouts. A man across the street turns to see if something is the matter, but Clare is oblivious. ‘I didn’t understand that you were important. But how could I? There were two boys in my memory — the filthy boy at the door with the men, and the clean-scrubbed boy at the funeral, Peter and Ilse’s child. I always wondered what happened to the boy at the funeral, but I paid so little attention to my husband’s life. A dead student was a tragedy, but — I never thought. I was so consumed in my own life and work. I should have remembered your face but perhaps — is it possible I didn’t see you properly at the funeral?’

‘It is possible. I saw you, but I don’t remember if you saw me.’

‘You must understand that my husband’s life was my husband’s. I played the faculty spouse when I had to, but I paid no attention to details. I had my own career, my own students. What’s more, there were many things about my husband’s life — I mean to say, we did not have an uncomplicated marriage. There was a great deal I tried quite hard to ignore, to not know about. But—’ Her fingers search her face and after a moment she turns to look at me in a way she hasn’t before. ‘I should have seen it long ago. Of course you’re Ilse’s child,’ she says, leaning over and kissing my cheek. ‘I never even told my husband about you and the men. You must believe that — you must understand, he didn’t know you’d ever come. It isn’t his fault. You see I knew what Laura must have done and I was so furious with her. All I wanted was to hear from her, but directly from her. And to receive those notebooks and her letter made me so panicked, so very angry. I had to believe that she really might still be alive, and to be faced with you, this responsibility that she had shouldered, it somehow compounded my anger. But this is awful. You knew her, didn’t you? You must have known her for years.’

I think of all I might now say, how I could, in one way, write the end of Laura’s story for Clare. But it’s not for me to do. I know that the end I could provide would only be the beginning of another volume, the reading of which Clare might not survive. Instead, I tell her that Laura appeared like a saviour when I most needed one.

‘How do you mean? A saviour, what, in the way I imagined?’

‘Not quite.’

I replay the scene of that day in my head, the remote site where Bernard and I stopped, the falling light, the fury that had broken out inside me as I looked at him there, tight with his own kind of wrath, asleep on the ground with a magazine covering his face. I see my hand turn the key, feel the click of the ignition. My father had put me on the seat in front of him a few times, so I knew how to move the gearshift, how to put my foot on the clutch, to shift the balance from the clutch to the accelerator. The idea was to give Bernard a fright, or perhaps just to drive away. I could say that the accelerator stuck. I could say that the truck went faster than I expected it would and I lost control. I could say that my foot didn’t find the brake in time. But now, as I play back the scene, a different version begins to piece itself together.

Bernard is asleep on the ground and I have been left alone in the cab of the truck. As with all the versions I remember I’m almost delirious from dehydration. But in this version, Bernard is still alive when Laura arrives. She comes stealing out of the bush, sees Bernard, and runs in a crouch to the truck. In this version she understands everything. She’s been searching for me, tracking me down, trying to save me from the man on the ground. She climbs over me to the driver’s side and tells me to be quiet and close my eyes. I put my hand on the gearshift but she removes it, puts it down on the seat. I hear the key turn in the ignition; she depresses the clutch, puts the truck into gear, and accelerates. The bump is the same, and the crunch that comes after. We reverse and stop, we go forward again. With each repetition there’s less resistance. The smell of Laura comes back to me, a smell like myself. I realize, in this moment with Clare, that I finally know the truth of that night. We did it together, Laura and I.

Across the street a parade of children in winter school uniforms moves past, teachers at either end keeping them in line. A boy steps out to look at a poster on the wall of a building and with a single word one of the teachers shouts him back into place. That it could be so simple, to know where to step, how to walk, to be told when one has fallen out of line, to be reminded when one has erred and told how to correct oneself. I can see that it’s cost the boy something to obey. He wants to run back to the poster, he wants to cross the street to a shop, he does not want to go where all of his classmates are going. Clare is watching him, too.