Harry stared at the house for a long time, then at the river. Its waters moved slowly, swirling, cool and inviting. Or inviting to most. A grassy bank with a few reeds; deep green water, and just here, a pebbly bottom; and somewhere down there, lodged in the slime-slick pebbles where it had lain for most of Harry’s years –
A ring. A man’s ring. A cat’s-eye stone set in thick gold. Harry staggered at the river’s edge. He deliberately flopped down to save himself from falling. The sun shone on him but he was cold. The blue sky reeled, became the grey, liquid flurry of slushy water.
He was under the water, trying to fight his way up through a hole in the ice.
Then the face seen through the ice, its trembling jelly lips turning up at their corners in a grimace – or a smile! The hands coming down into the water, holding him under and on one of them that ring. The cat’s-eye ring, on the second finger of the right hand! And Harry tearing at those hands, clawing at them, ripping the strong flesh in his frenzy. The gold ring coming loose, spiralling down past him into the murk and the icy deeps. Blood from the torn hands turning the swirling water red – red against the black of Harry’s dying.
No, not his dying, hers! His mother’s!
Waterlogged, he/she sank; and the current dragging them along under the ice, turning and tumbling them; and who’ll look after Harry now? Poor little Harry . . .
The nightmare receded, its rush and gurgle diminishing in his mind, leaving him gasping for air where he clawed at the grassy bank. Then he curled on his side and was violently ill. This was it; it was here. This was where it had happened. This was where she had died. Where she had been murdered. Right here!
But –
Where was she now?
Harry allowed his feet to lead him, following the course of the river downstream. Where the channel narrowed a little, he crossed a small wooden bridge and continued on down the bank. Garden hedges came down close to the river’s edge here, so that he walked a narrow, often overgrown path between fences on the one hand and reeds and water on the other. And in a little while he came to a place where the bank had been worn away, forming an over-hanging bite not ten feet across. Above the still water in the pool, the path ended where the fence leaned dangerously riverward, but Harry knew he need look no further. This was where she lay.
Anyone watching him from the bank opposite would have seen the beginning of a strange thing then. Harry sat down with his feet dangling over the shallow, muddy pool, put his chin in his hands, stared deep into the water. And minutes later, if anyone had been closer, he would have been witness to something stranger still: tears from this young man’s staring, unblinking eyes which dripped from the tip of his nose in a steady stream to add their substance to the river’s.
And for the first time in his adult life Harry Keogh met his mother, talked to her ‘face to face’, and was able to verify the terrible things his dreams and her restless messages had caused him to more than suspect for so many years. And while they talked he cried – tears of sadness, and some of gladness at first; then of remorse and frustration, that he’d had to wait so long for this day; then of white anger as things began to make more sense to him. Finally he told her what he intended to do.
Upon which the wondering observer, had there been one, would have seen the strangest thing of all. For when Mary Keogh knew her son’s plans she became even more afraid for him and voiced her fears, and she made Harry promise that he would do nothing rash. He couldn’t deny her pleading, answered with a nod of his head. She didn’t believe him, cried out after him as he stood up and moved away. And for a moment – the merest second – it seemed the bottom of the pool shuddered, shaking the water and sending ripples coursing outward from its centre. Then the pool was still again.