Chapter 61
Chapter Sixty-One
I picked up my phone, but it felt strange texting Niall when I was in the same country as him. So instead, I pulled on my coat and put on my boots and made my way up the New Line to his house.
Niall had made a quick exit from my welcome-home party, if that’s what you’d call it. When I say, a quick exit, I mean I saw him when I got there and then I didn’t see him again. I didn’t even see him leave, but I suppose that was what he had wanted. To slip out unnoticed.
I passed the phone box – it wasn’t working anymore but people left things inside, like old books and bric-a-brac, and plant pots, and Maggie Ryan’s discreet conversations cards. There was an honesty box, but I wasn’t sure if anyone ever bought anything from it because every time I passed there seemed to be more stuff inside than before.
I thought of Maggie Ryan’s cards, whether or not she sat by her phone all day waiting for it to ring, if she had two phones (she must have done, surely?) and if she answered it with a sultry voice or her own? And what happened if she answered it and a woman was on the other end? Would she still do it then? Have phone sex with a woman?
When I reached Niall’s house, I saw it straight away. It stuck out sandwiched between the overgrown hedge and wild garden – a new gate, painted ocean blue – and a butterfly fluttered in my tummy instead of my head.
Niall’s porch door was open so I walked in and tapped on the inside door.
‘Hello? Niall?’ I called out, not too loudly because it felt a little intrusive to be there uninvited. Perhaps because Niall had always come to the porch door and I’d never actually been inside (not since I used to break in, anyway). The thought of Una drunk in Niall’s house jumped into my head, of them kissing in his kitchen, and whether or not it was as passionate as she said it was.
I thought about if Niall had got an erection, because that often happened if someone was pressed up against a man in a passionate embrace. Una hadn’t said he had but that didn’t mean he hadn’t. Maybe they’d done more than just kiss? Maybe she had felt it or held it in her hand for a bit? Maybe she just hadn’t told me?
The first time I had ever touched a penis was when I lost my virginity. Before the sex, which happened on a bathroom floor, I’d put my hand down the boy’s trousers, because that was what I assumed I was meant to do, and I’d jiggled it around a few times in the hope that he would like it. The actual sex wasn’t as awkward as when I did that. It hadn’t hurt like I’d expected it to. I didn’t bleed everywhere, like Una had said I would when I lost my virginity.
There was no reply, but I knew Niall must have been in because he’d not have left his house unlocked; he was far too sensible to do that.
‘Helloooo?’ I said the same time I stepped inside.
Una was right. It wasn’t dark. It wasn’t dingy or cold or damp like it had been all those years ago. There was a mahogany dresser in the hallway, not something I would have expected Niall to have at all, although I didn’t really know what I would have expected Niall to have.
I could see the large fireplace with exposed stone in the front room. It was the same fireplace that was there before, but the stonework around it wasn’t soot-stained like it used to be. There were two brown leather sofas with throws on and a sheepskin rug that dominated the room, in a good way, and olive-green floor-length curtains that went with the ivy-green windows. And in that moment, I couldn’t imagine them ocean blue anymore. I’d go as far as saying I didn’t want to. I quite liked the green.
In the middle of the dresser were two tiny, china figurines of gnomes holding garden gear. One with a wheelbarrow, balanced so perfectly on its side like it was actually steering. The other had a garden rake in one hand and a mini china dog next to its feet. They looked as though they’d been hand-painted – had Niall painted them?
I reached forwards to pick the wheelbarrow gnome up but as I did so I knocked the dog over (it wasn’t attached like I’d first thought), which toppled into the gnome with the rake and it fell to the stone floor with a smash. There was no saving him. I stared at the little fragments of china scattered across Niall’s hallway.
Just as quickly, I dropped down to my knees and started to scoop what I could up, even though I knew it was pointless because I’d never get it all with my bare hands. I heard the creak of floorboards above my head and Niall, with only a bath towel around his waist, appeared.
I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of Niall with next to nothing on (Una was right, he was far more toned than I realised underneath those woolly jumpers), or the fact that I’d just broken something clearly sentimental. But I jumped up so fast, I misjudged the end of the mahogany dresser and hit my head so hard, I fell back down to my knees again.
‘Pearl!’ Niall was down the stairs and by my side before I had a chance to recover myself. ‘Are you OK? Let me help you up.’
He reached his arm around my waist, taking my weight as he did so. And that would have been fine had it not meant that his hand was no longer holding his towel in place. It dropped to the floor silently but somehow made my ears thud.
In that moment, I wished I’d just not let myself in like a normal person (who did that, who just walked into someone else’s house uninvited?) because when I looked up, there it was, in my face, so close to my mouth my breath must have tickled it.
Niall’s penis.
It was one of those moments when I should have turned away or pretended I hadn’t seen it, or just apologised and run off, but I didn’t, did I. No. I knelt there with my mouth open, staring straight at it.
I sized it up in those small, fast seconds. I think I even tilted my head. I thought about how it was the perfect size – not turbo like Jack’s. I could get it into my arse and I’d probably be OK with it. I could suck it. Fuck it – what? Jesus. What? I didn’t want to suck it or have it in my arse. But those were the thoughts that went through my head, the ones that I said lingered because of my OCD, instead of just passing through and disappearing.
Just as quickly, my eyes darted to Niall, who looked as mortified as me, if not more. He grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist, with his hand firmly clasped around it. I stood up next to him, but he couldn’t quite look me in the eyes.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he said.
‘I, I … um, sorry. I came to say thank you.’
‘What for?’ I could see little beads of sweat as they began to form on his forehead.
‘For the woodlice box.’ I tried to sound as normal as possible to spare him, and me, the embarrassment, but there was no getting away from the fact that I had just seen Niall O’Callaghan’s penis.
‘For God’s sake,’ Niall said an octave higher. ‘You could have texted.’
‘I just thought I’d pop by.’
‘And let yourself in?’
‘The door was open and I called out but you didn’t hear me,’ I said like it was perfectly OK to just walk into someone else’s house without them inviting you in.
I followed Niall’s gaze to the broken gnome.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘I can get you another one.’
‘They were my dad’s,’ Niall said flatly.
‘I’m so sorry, Niall,’ I blurted.
‘Don’t be.’
‘But they were your dad’s?’
‘I never wanted them, anyway, my mum brought them over and left them here.’
‘Won’t your mum be upset?’
‘She probably won’t even notice.’ Niall said it with a tone that I couldn’t quite place, like he was irritated all of a sudden, but not about the gnomes, about something else.
‘I really am sorry, Niall,’ I said gently this time because it felt like I was saying sorry for more than just the broken gnomes.
I thought he would say something, but he didn’t so I continued. ‘I’m not here just to say thank you, Niall,’ I said more assertively. ‘Will you tell me what happened at the shop?’
Niall turned towards his kitchen.
‘Do you want a cup of tea then?’ he said, composing himself, and I followed behind him staring at his muscly shoulders. ‘And a Rich Tea?’ he broke into my thoughts before I could work out what it was that I was feeling about his shoulders.
‘Go on then,’ I said.
I sat down at Niall’s kitchen table. The room was bigger, and brighter, than I remembered. The walls were a soft cream, with oak-lined counter tops to match the thick oak table, with bold and colourful artwork on one wall that took me by surprise. I didn’t know Niall was into art. There was nothing beige about it. Nothing beige about any of it, including Niall.
I waited for him to make the tea, the only sound the tick of the clock coming from the front room that seemed to accentuate the silence around us. He placed my mug down, and with a plate of Rich Tea biscuits between us, Niall sat down too.
‘Do you remember when we used to walk home from school together?’ Niall asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said.
‘And sometimes you’d come and wait in the shop until your mum picked you up because she didn’t want you walking down the New Line on your own?’
I nodded.
‘Do you remember sometimes my mum would be home and sometimes she wouldn’t?’
‘Yes.’
‘And sometimes no one would be home?’ he continued.
‘Yes, I remember all of that. What about it?’ I said impatiently.
‘Do you remember when we went downstairs to the shop to steal some biscuits because you were hungry?’
‘Not this again – why is this so important, Niall?’
‘But you remember that, don’t you?’
‘Stealing biscuits? Yes, vaguely. I told you this before.’
‘And when we got down there, we heard the shop door open?’
‘Hold on, how old were we?’
‘We were eight.’
‘We were eight? That’s a long time ago to remember such specific details – how do you remember this stuff?’
‘Because of what we saw.’
‘What do you mean, Niall? What did we see?’
‘My dad.’
‘We saw Mr O’Callaghan?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’ I stared at Niall blankly.
‘We saw my dad and he ran into the shop, laughing.’ Niall paused to check I was listening. ‘He had his video camera.’
‘And?’
‘And. God, I don’t think I can say this. I’m sorry, Pearl.’
‘Just say it, Niall. It’s doing my head in. I want to know.’
‘We were crouched down behind the counter because we didn’t want him to see us stealing the biscuits. He was always so strict about me taking stuff from the shop without paying.’
I stayed silent.
‘And then she came in right after him, giggling her head off.’
‘Who? Mrs O’Callaghan?’
‘No. Maggie Ryan.’
‘Maggie Ryan?’ I repeated.
‘And then he pulled his dick out and she started … you know…’
‘Jesus.’ I did know.
‘He was filming it.’ Niall shook his head as if he was trying to shake out the memory. ‘I pushed you into the cupboard under the counter and shut the door because I didn’t want you to see them – but you did, only for a second but you saw them.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Do you remember?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t think so.’
I tried to visualise Mr O’Callaghan’s penis in Maggie O’Ryan’s mouth, but all I could see was Niall’s. I thought about what Niall was telling me. I thought about Mr O’Callaghan, about all the times I’d seen his penis in my head, all the times I’d seen it in my mouth, all the other penises, Maggie Ryan (bloody Maggie Ryan!), the cupboard, my fear of small spaces, of dying. Mr O’Callaghan filming it all.
‘The video camera,’ I said. ‘It was stolen from the shop remember! That prisoner who broke in? The one who hacked the government? He might have watched it? Do high-end criminals blackmail village shop owners? Aren’t you worried who else might have seen it?’ My questions spilled out of my mouth in horror and shock and disbelief at what Niall was telling me.
Niall shook his head.
‘No one has seen it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because no one stole it.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked confused.
‘There was no break-in,’ Niall said. ‘It was all me.’
‘What?’ I said dumbfounded.
‘I couldn’t stand the thought of my mum finding it or of him watching it back. I was so angry, I smashed the house up and they thought we’d been broken into.’
‘Oh my God,’ I gasped. ‘What did you do with the camera?’
‘I threw it into the river. But I’ve not been able to get it out of my head ever since. That’s why when he died, I didn’t feel sad, I felt relieved.’
‘Wow.’ I was flabbergasted. ‘So there was no break-in? No escaped convict?’
‘Not that broke into the shop, no,’ Niall said. ‘But it was great timing.’ He laughed inappropriately.
‘So, did you take all of that alcohol? Oh my God, did you drink it? You were only eight...’
‘No. I threw it away. I knew it would piss my dad off because he liked his spirits.’
‘Wow,’ I said again, still in a state of shock and, quite frankly, disbelief. ‘Did he know you … we, saw him?’
Niall shook his head again.
‘Did you make me count to ten and tell me to shut my eyes?’
‘Yes. And you started to cry because you were scared and wanted to come out, but I wouldn’t let you. I held the door shut. I didn’t want you to see it. It’s why you had that flashback in the glowworm cave.’
‘Jesus, Niall,’ I gasped as my brain caught up with his words. ‘You’ve known about this the entire time? It’s been years, you could have told me, why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
My head felt heavy with the weight of what he was saying as my own memories galloped to the front of my mind in one go. I desperately tried to think back to when my OCD started – could it have been when I was eight? Could Mr O’Callaghan and Maggie Ryan be the reason I had OCD?
I don’t know! I don’t bloody know! I can’t remember. I can’t remember if it was that or something else, or if it was just in me, like Mairéad said it was – a part of my brain that was just wired differently. Or was it trauma? There was always that possibility. Could Mr O’Callaghan’s penis have traumatised me? Was that, and being locked in a cupboard and not being able to get out, the reason for my crazy behaviour the last nineteen years?
‘I wanted to tell you,’ Niall interrupted my thoughts. ‘I wanted to, lots of times, but you seemed so vulnerable. You started doing weird stuff. Like after school, you started counting your steps from off the bus to the shop. You knew it all – how many steps there were, how many trees there were down the New Line until your house, how many potholes. And then the checking, the woodlice, the sanitising, the praying, your bathroom window…’
My mouth was open, but I couldn’t speak.
‘And I couldn’t say anything while my dad was still alive.’ Niall continued. ‘I didn’t know how you’d react, who you’d tell. If you’d told your parents, they would have confronted my dad and it would have broken my mum all over again. I had to protect her.’
‘What do you mean, all over again ?’
‘They were having an affair,’ Niall kept his eyes from mine. ‘I knew about it before we saw them that day – and my mum knew too. It destroyed her. Do you remember when she went away after the break-in?’
I thought back.
‘To that retreat in Kilkenny?’ I asked. I only remembered because my mum had told me Mrs O’Callaghan needed to relax and the shop shut for a week, which we all found strange given Mr O’Callaghan was still there – but now it made sense. He didn’t want people asking questions. He didn’t want anyone finding out what he’d been up to.
‘Yes, only it wasn’t a retreat,’ Niall said. ‘It was because she’d had a breakdown. She found out about their affair, she saw them kissing one night, outside the shop when he thought she’d gone to bed. I’d hear them arguing about it every night. It destroyed her.’
‘Jesus, Niall.’ My anger subsided when I thought about Mrs O’Callaghan’s heartbreak, of Niall being just a boy and keeping it all in. ‘Why did she stay with him?’
‘I don’t know, for me, maybe? And she loved him, she wanted to forgive him, and he promised her that it had stopped––’
‘But it hadn’t.’ I finished Niall’s sentence for him because I could see the pain behind his eyes.
We were both silent for a moment. It wasn’t an awkward silence; it didn’t need filling. Niall was doing his thinking and I was doing mine.
But the only thing I could think of was that maybe Mr O’Callaghan’s penis had been hard when he died, because maybe Mrs O’Callaghan had strangled him after all?