Читать книгу The Country of Our Dreams - Mary O'Connell - Страница 12

‘Get in the car.’ Their father’s voice was urgent, a low growl, in the tone that meant he would brook no opposition. ‘Get in the car – damn you.’

A hot dark evening, shrill with the sounds of the bush. Cicadas ticking like clocks, the deep drumbeat of frogs hunkered down in the last damp patch in the rocky bed of the creek.

All around them the synaesthesia of the bush, the sound of heat. A land singing and humming with heat. Everything tinder dry. Breezes like a hot breath, wafting through the white barked gums. The world around them waiting, even calling for fire. Moths and other, darker winged insects flying around the car’s inside light. Their father’s strangely lit face – yellow down one side, one dark eye looming at them as he pushed them down the back seat, into hiding. ‘Get down you bastards’ he swore. “Don’t let yourselves be seen.’

The boys were a tangle of limbs in the car’s awkward back. Vianney had his right cheek and ear stuck painfully under Lolly’s arm, with Xavier behind, stuck somehow between his legs. Xavier was giggling from the tension. There was a cracking sound from their father’s hand, and Xavier went limp. Taking it very seriously now.

They heard their father get in the front seat. The car slumped underneath his weight, the door shut quietly at the same time as the yellow light went out. Silence, deadly, just the hard breathing of their father, and his muttering. ‘That woman.’ It was his name for their mother.

In time to come, pondering his father’s lost voice, Vianney wondered if any of it had ever been said with humour. A humour inaudible to young straining ears. ‘You are too hard on them,’ their mother sometimes protested. But Sean Ryan’s toughness was what they believed in. They had worshipped their father.

In later years Xavier and Vianney had often used the phrase amongst themselves when speaking of Kate. That woman. A guilty pleasure, a secret outburst of the sons, against her formidable powers. But Lolly, now under the thumb of Claudia, felt uncomfortable about it, and Hilary laughed and said the phrase made her think of Monica Lewinsky.

But the way his father had used the phrase that night, it was no joke. It was rage. Implacable.

With the brakes released, the old car started rolling quietly down the stony drive, away from the farmhouse. Then their father turned the ignition key and for once, as if it too was frightened of him, the car started up without protest. It rattled over the cattle grid and soon they were out on the metal road, bumping along. The boys’ curled bodies shook up and down in the back, seemingly half a beat behind the car’s own rhythms, like mis-matched dance partners. The tension in the car, the father’s fierce mood, his low angry muttering in Irish, kept even Xavier silent.

Finally they hit the tarsealed road, and the bone shattering rocking ceased. Now the car sped up, and bands of yellow light streaked through the car. They were on the old highway. To where?

They were travelling a long time, it seemed, before Vianney risked a look. He elbowed Lolly as he lifted himself up to peer out of the car’s left side window. Lolly gave him a fierce protesting look but kept his silence. The car was pouring through the night, the world outside all a blur. Roadside earthen banks flashed unrecognisably past. He didn’t know where they were.

The car lurched suddenly to the right, as Sean made a swift turn across the main road. Vianney crashed back down painfully and Xavier let out a yelp.

‘Shut up you cunt.’ Sean’s voice was vicious.

Vianney saw Lolly’s eyes widen at the evil word. Clearly it was not time yet to joke with their father.

Vianney let Lolly put his arms around him; it was some form of buffering against the wildly rocking car. Their father seemed to have driven onto another bone-shattering dirt road without once slowing down. Xavier was beginning to whimper now; Vianney tried to reach him to bring him into their crooked embrace.

It was all a blur from then on – his trying to reach and comfort Xavier, lying somewhere down between his legs – the car bucking and protesting, their father’s wild furious curses, and then the inevitable. A horrific sound of metal screeching like a banshee and the car shooting off the road as it rolled.

‘Jesus Mary and fucking Joseph.’

Those were the last words they ever heard their father say.