K is for…Kangaroo

As soon as they were gone, I raced into the house. On the coat stand, Rosaleen’s apron had been messily strewn across the top in her effort to hurry outside. I grabbed it and dug my hand into the pocket.

‘Tamara, what are you doing?’ Weseley was close behind me. ‘Maybe I should make you a cup of tea or something, to calm you dow‑What the hell is that?’

He was referring to the container of pills I held up in my hand.

‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’ I gave him the pills. ‘I caught Rosaleen putting them in Mum’s breakfast.’

‘What? Whoa, Tamara,’ Weseley said. ‘She was putting pills in her food?’

‘I saw her opening them and emptying the powder stuff into the cereal and then mixing it around. She doesn’t know I saw her.’

‘Well maybe they’re prescription pills.’

‘You think? Let’s see, shall we? Despite the fact Rosaleen likes to pretend that I know nothing of my own mother’s medical history, I do know that her name isn’t…’ I read the label of the container, ‘Helen Reilly.’

‘That’s Rosaleen’s mother. Let me see them.’ He took them from me. ‘They’re sleeping pills.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It says it on the label. Oxazepam. That’s a sleeping pill. She’s putting these in your mum’s food?’

I swallowed, tears sprung in my eyes.

‘Are you sure you saw her do this?’

‘Yes I’m sure. And Mum hasn’t stopped sleeping since we arrived. Non‑stop.’

‘Does your mum usually take them? Is Rosaleen just trying to help her, maybe?’

‘Weseley, Mum is so drugged she can barely remember her own name. This is not helping her. It’s almost like Rosaleen’s trying to make her worse. This is making her worse.’

‘We have to tell somebody.’

The relief at hearing ‘we’ came like a tidal wave.

‘I have to tell my dad. He’ll have to tell somebody, okay?’

‘Okay.’

I felt relieved then that I was no longer alone. I sat on the stairs while he phoned his dad to tell him.

‘Well?’ I jumped up as soon as he’d hung up.

‘They were in the room with him so he couldn’t comment on it. He just said he’d take care of it. We’ll just have to keep these safe in the meantime.’

‘Right.’ I took a deep breath. What will be, will be. ‘So will you help me get Arthur’s toolbox, please?’

‘What do you need that for?’ he asked, completely baffled now.

‘To break open the lock on the garage.’

‘What?’

‘Just…’ I searched for the words, ‘help me, please. We don’t have much time and I’ll explain everything later. But for now can you please, please help me? They’re rarely out of the house. This is my only opportunity.’

He thought about it in a long silence, turned the container of pills around in his hand while thinking. ‘Okay.’

While Weseley ran into the workshed beside the house, I paced the garden, hoping they wouldn’t return before I’d had a chance to have a good look round. I stopped pacing to peer at the bungalow, wanting to see if the glass that shone directly into my bedroom was still there. It was gone. But something on the garden wall caught my attention. A box. I moved closer.

‘Weseley.’

He immediately heard the warning in my voice and turned round, following where my finger was pointing.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

I crossed the road and examined it. Weseley followed me. The package was covered in brown paper and my name was written on the front along with ‘Happy Birthday’.

I picked it up and looked around. There was nobody at the windows, behind the net curtains. I opened the brown paper to reveal a brown shoe box. I lifted the lid. Inside was the most beautiful glass mobile, a series of different‑sized tears mixed with hearts, joined together with wires through tiny holes. I lifted it up and raised it to the light. It sparkled against the sun and spun around in the breeze. I smiled and looked to the house to wave, to smile, to thank somebody.

Nothing.

‘What the hell…’ Weseley said, examining it.

‘It’s a gift. For me.’

‘I didn’t know it was your birthday.’ He took it and examined it.

‘Well, she did.’

‘Who? Rosaleen’s mother?’

‘No.’ I stared at the bungalow again. ‘The woman.’

He shook his head. ‘And I thought my life was weird. Who is she? My mam and dad didn’t think anybody other than Mrs Reilly lived there.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Let’s go in and meet her. To say thanks.’

‘You think I should?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘You were given a present‑it’s the perfect opportunity to go in there.’

I chewed on my lip and looked at the house.

‘Unless, of course, you’re afraid.’

That’s exactly what I was.

‘No, we’ve got more important things to do right now,’ I said. I crossed the road and hurried to the back garden, to the garage.

‘You know, Sister Ignatius has been going crazy trying to see you. You just ran off that day and you gave her a fright. You gave us both a fright.’

I glared at Weseley while he poked around in the toolbox for the correct tool to break the lock.

‘I heard about what happened. You okay?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it,’ I snapped. ‘Thank you,’ I added more gently.

‘Heard your boyfriend is in a bit of trouble.’

‘I said I don’t want to talk about it,’ I snapped. ‘And he’s not my boyfriend.’

He started laughing at that. ‘So you know just how I feel.’

Despite all that had gone on that morning, I smiled.

It didn’t take Weseley long to pick the lock. We were in and I was immediately faced with my old life, all of it piled up, out of order, the kitchen with the living room, my bedroom piled on top of the games room, the spare bedroom with the bathroom towels. It fit together as perfectly as the thoughts in my head. Leather couches, plasma TVs, ridiculous‑shaped furniture that seemed cheap and soulless now.

I was more interested in seeing what Rosaleen and Arthur had hiding in here. As Weseley threw the dustsheets off the far end of the garage I was highly unimpressed. Just more old furniture, destroyed by time, eaten away at by dust mites and smelling of mothballs. I don’t know what I’d been expecting‑a dead body or two, a money printer, boxes of guns and weaponry, a secret entrance to Rosaleen’s batcave. Anything else other than this mothball‑laden stinky furniture.

I made my way back to my belongings. Weseley soon followed, oohing and aahing at a few items as he rooted around in the boxes. Taking a break from his investigations of Arthur and Rosaleen’s hidden life, we sat on my once‑upon‑a‑time living‑room couch, looking through my photo album while Weseley laughed at the various stages of my adolescence.

‘Is that your dad?’

‘Yeah,’ I smiled, looking at his happy animated face, on the dancefloor at a friend’s wedding. He loved dancing. He was crap at it.

‘He’s so young.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What happened?’

I sighed.

‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

‘I don’t mind.’ I swallowed. ‘He just…borrowed so much money, he couldn’t pay it back. He was a developer, very successful. He had properties all over the world. We didn’t know but he was in big trouble. He’d started selling up everything to pay back the debts.’

‘He didn’t tell you there was a problem?’

I shook my head. ‘He was too proud. He would have felt he’d failed us.’ My eyes filled. ‘But I wouldn’t have cared, I really wouldn’t have.’ I was protesting too much. I could have imagined Dad trying to tell me he was selling off everything. Of course I would have cared‑I would have moaned and whinged. I wouldn’t have understood, I would just have been embarrassed about what everyone thought of us. I would have missed Marbella in the summer, Verbier for New Year. I would have shouted at him, called him everything under the sun and I would have stormed off to my bedroom and slammed the door. Greedy little pig that I was. But I wish he’d have given me the opportunity to understand. I wish he’d have sat me down and talked about it, and we could all have worked it out together. I’d live anywhere‑in one room, in the castle ruin right now‑if it meant we could all just be together.

‘I don’t care about losing anything now. I’d rather have him anyday,’ I sniffed. ‘We’ve lost everything now, including him. I mean, what was the point? When they repossessed the house, I think that was it for him.’ I studied him golfing with Mum, his face serious as he looked into the distance for his ball. ‘They could take everything but not that.’

I turned the page and we both laughed. Me, two front teeth missing as I hugged Mickey Mouse in Disney World.

‘Aren’t you…I don’t know…angry at him? If my dad did that, I’d…’ Weseley shook his head, unable to imagine it.

‘I was,’ I replied. ‘I was so angry at him for so long. But over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about what he must have been going through. Even in my lowest days I never could do what he did. He must have felt so much pressure, he must have been so miserable. He must have felt so trapped, must just not have wanted to be here so much. And…well, when he died they couldn’t take anything else. Mum and I were protected.’

‘You think he did it for you?’

‘I think he did it for a lot of reasons. For all the wrong reasons, but for him they were all right.’

‘Well, I think you’re very brave,’ Weseley said and I looked up at him and tried not to cry.

‘I don’t feel brave.’

‘You are,’ he said. Our eyes locked.

‘I’ve made the most stupid embarrassing mistakes,’ I whispered.

‘That’s okay. We all make mistakes,’ he smiled wryly.

‘Well, I don’t think I make as many as you,’ I added, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘You seem to make different mistakes with different people almost every night.’

He laughed. ‘Okay let’s see what Rosaleen’s hiding under here.’

Unable to take my eyes off the photo albums, I began another and found my baby photos. I got lost in another world and lost time. In the background I could hear Weseley commenting on things he was finding, but I ignored him. Instead I stared at my beautiful dad, happy and handsome, with Mum. Then there was a photo of my christening day. Just me and Mum. Me so tiny in her arms all that was visible beneath the white blanket was a little pink head.

‘Holy shit, Tamara, take a look at this.’

I ignored him, lost in the photo of me and Mum in the church. She was holding me in her arms, a big smile on her face. Whoever had taken the picture‑Dad, I assume‑had left their finger over the corner of the lens, blocking the priest’s face. Knowing Dad, it was probably on purpose. I rubbed his big white finger bright from the flash, and I laughed.

‘Tamara, look at all this stuff.’

The photograph captured half of the priest, Mum, me in her arms at the baptism bowl, another person cut off on the right‑hand side, thanks to the dodgy photo skills, but somebody’s hand was resting on the top of my head. A woman’s hand, I could tell from the ring on her finger. Probably Rosaleen, my godmother who never seemed to do what my friends’ godmothers did, which was just send cards at every occasion with money inside. No, my godmother wanted to spend time with me. Puke.

‘Tamara.’ Weseley grabbed me and I jumped. ‘Look at this.’ His eyes were wide. He took me by the hand and a tingle shot up my arm.

I shoved the christening photograph in my pocket and followed him.

Any funny feelings for him quickly evaporated. I looked around the section that Weseley had unveiled of its sheets.

‘What’s the big deal?’ I asked unimpressed. It was hardly as exciting as he was making it out to be. Old furniture as dated as anything I’d ever seen. Books, pokers, crockery, paintings all covered up, fabrics, rugs, fireplaces leaning up against the wall, all kinds of bric‑a‑brac.

‘What’s the big deal?’ His eyes were wide as he jumped about the place, picking things up, unveiling more oil paintings of evil‑looking children with collars up past their ear lobes, and fat unattractive ladies with big boobs, wide wrists and thin lips. ‘Look at all this, Tamara. Look, don’t you notice anything?’

He knocked down a rug and kicked it with his foot. It unrolled onto the dusty floor.

‘Weseley, don’t make a mess,’ I snapped. ‘We don’t have long before they get back.’

‘Tamara, open your eyes. Look at the initials.’

I studied the rug, a dusty‑looking thing that might belong on the wall as a tapestry instead of on the floor. It had Ks all over it.

‘And look at this.’ Weseley uncovered a box of china. It too had Ks stamped all over the plates, the teacups, the knives and forks. A dragon draped around a sword, climbing up from flames. Then I remembered the same emblem on the fireguard in the living room of the gatehouse.

‘K,’ I said dumbly. ‘I don’t get it. I don’t…’ I shook my head, looking around the garage, which at first had felt like rubbish and now seemed like a treasure chest.

‘K is for…’ Weseley said slowly as though I was a child, and looked at me, holding his breath.

‘Kangaroo,’ I said. ‘I don’t know, Weseley. I’m confused, I don’t‑’

‘Kilsaney,’ he said, and chills rushed through me.

‘What? But it can’t be,’ I looked around. ‘How could they have all this stuff?’

‘Well, they either stole it…’

‘That’s it!’ It all made sense to me. They were thieves‑not Arthur, but Rosaleen. I could believe that.

‘Or they’re storing it for the Kilsaneys,’ Weseley interrupted my thoughts. ‘Or…’ he grinned at me, eyebrows going up and down.

‘Or what.’

‘Or they are the Kilsaneys.’

I snorted, dismissing it immediately, then became distracted by a flash of red beneath a roll of carpet that Marcus had knocked over. ‘The photo album!’ I said, seeing the red album I’d found the week I’d arrived. ‘I knew I wasn’t imagining it.’

We sat down and looked through it, though probably getting dangerously close to the moment when Arthur and Rosaleen would return. There were black and white photographs of children, some sepia‑coloured.

‘Recognise any of them?’ Weseley asked.

I shook my head and he speeded up as he flicked through.

‘Hold on.’ One photo caught my eye. ‘Go back.’

There was a photograph of two children surrounded by trees. One little girl, and a little boy a few years older. They stood facing one another, holding hands, their foreheads touching. An image of Arthur and Mum’s bizarre greeting on our first day here flashed through my mind.

‘That’s Mum and Arthur,’ I said, smiling. ‘She must be only around five years old there.’

‘Look at Arthur. He wasn’t even handsome as a child,’ Weseley teased, squinting and studying it closer.

‘Ah, don’t be mean,’ I laughed. ‘Look at them. I’ve never seen Mum as a child.’

The next page there was a photograph of Mum, Arthur, Rosaleen and another boy.

I gasped.

‘Your Mum and Rosaleen knew each other as kids,’ Weseley said. ‘Did you know that?’

‘No.’ I was breathless, dizzy. ‘No way. Nobody ever mentioned it.’

‘Who’s the guy at the end?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Does your mum have another brother? He looks the oldest.’

‘No, she doesn’t. Not that she ever mentioned…’

Weseley slipped his hand underneath the plastic covering and pulled the photo from the paper.

‘Weseley!’

‘We’ve gone this far‑you want to know all this or not?’

I swallowed and nodded.

Weseley turned the photograph over.

It read: ‘Artie, Jen, Rose, Laurie. 1979’.

‘Laurie, apparently,’ Weseley said. ‘Ring any bells? Tamara, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Laurence Kilsaney RIP’ on the gravestone.

Arthur had called Rosaleen ‘Rose’ in the car on the way back from Dublin.

‘Laurie and Rose’ engraved on the apple tree.

‘He’s the man who died in the fire in the castle. Laurence Kilsaney. His name is on a grave in the Kilsaney graveyard.’

‘Oh.’

I stared at the photograph of the four of them, all smiling, the innocence on their face, everything ahead of them, a future of possiblities. Mum and Arthur were holding hands tightly, Laurence had his arm draped coolly around Rosaleen’s neck; it dangled limply across her chest. He stood on one leg, the other crossed it in a pose. He seemed confident, cocky even. His chin was lifted and he smiled at the camera with a grin as if he’d just shouted something at the photographer.

‘So, Mum, Arthur and Rosaleen hung around with a Kilsaney,’ I thought aloud. ‘I didn’t even know she lived here.’

‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she came here on holidays.’ Weseley continued flicking. All of the photographs were of the same four people, all at different ages, all huddled close together. Some pictures were of them on their own, some in couples, but most of them together. Mum was the youngest, Rosaleen and Arthur closer in age and Laurence the oldest, always with a great smile, a mischievous look in his eye. Even as a young girl Rosaleen had an older look, a hardness in her eye, a smile that never grew as large as the others’.

‘Look, there they all are in front of the gatehouse,’ Weseley pointed at the four of them sitting on the garden wall. Nothing much had changed apart from some of the garden trees, which were now big and full, but then had just been planted or were merely shrubs. But the gate, the wall, the house, everything was exactly the same.

‘There’s Mum in the living room. That’s the same fireplace.’ I studied the photo intently. ‘The bookcase is exactly the same. Look at the bedroom,’ I gasped. ‘That’s the one I’m in now. But I don’t understand. She lived here, she grew up here.’

‘You really didn’t know any of this?’

‘No.’ I shook my head, feeling a headache coming on. My brain was overloaded with so much information and not enough answers. ‘I mean, I knew she lived in the country but…I remember when we visited Arthur and Rosaleen when I was young, my granddad was always here. My grandma died when my mum was young. I thought he was just visiting Arthur and Rosaleen too but…my God, what’s going on? Why did they all lie?’

‘They didn’t really lie though, did they?’ Weseley tried to soften the blow. ‘They just didn’t tell you they lived here. That’s not exactly the most exciting secret in the world.’

‘And they didn’t tell me that they’d known Rosaleen practically all their lives, that they lived in the gatehouse and they once knew the Kilsaneys. It’s not a big deal, but it is if you keep it a secret. But why did they hide it? What else are they keeping from me?’

Weseley looked away from me then, continued flicking through the photo album as if to find my answers. ‘Hey, if your granddad lived in the gatehouse, that made him the groundskeeper here. He had Arthur’s job.’

A startling image flashed through my mind, I was young, my granddad was down on his knees with his hands deep in muck. I remember the black beneath his fingernails, a worm in the soil wriggling around, Granddad grabbing it and dangling it near my face, me crying, and him laughing, and wrapping his arms around me. He always smelled of soil and grass. His fingernails were always black.

‘I wonder if there’s a photo of the woman.’ I flicked through the pages further.

‘What woman?’

‘The woman in the bungalow who makes the glass.’

We studied the following pages, my heart thudding so loudly in my chest, I thought I was going to keel over. I came across another photograph of Rosaleen and Laurence together. ‘Rose and Laurie, 1987’.

‘I think Rosaleen was in love with Laurence,’ I said, tracing their faces with my finger.

‘Uh‑oh,’ Weseley said, turning over a page. ‘But Laurence didn’t love Rosaleen.’

I looked at the next photograph, eyes wide. On the next page was a picture of Mum, as a teenager, beautiful, long blonde hair, big smile, perfect teeth. Laurence had his arms thrown around her, was kissing her cheek by the tree with the engraving.

I looked at the back of the photograph. ‘Jen and Laurie, 1989’.

‘They could have been just friends…’ Weseley said slowly.

‘Weseley, look at them.’

That’s all I had to say. The rest was plain to see. it was right there in front of us. They were in love.

I thought about what Mum had said to me when I’d returned from the rose garden the first day I’d met Sister Ignatius. I’d thought she hadn’t been speaking properly, I thought she was telling me that I was prettier than a rose. But what if she’d meant exactly what she’d said: ‘You’re prettier than Rose’?

And away from them, at the other edge of the photograph, Rosaleen sat on a tartan rug with a picnic basket beside her, staring coldly at the camera.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 608