Dennis sat down at the table opposite her and lowered his voice to sound more compassionate. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about your family, Patty? What happened back there that made you run away to the other side of the world? You know I’d have understood if you’d told me. I wouldn’t have judged you or anybody else for that matter’.
‘Oh Dennis would you stop being so bloody reasonable!’
‘Why? I want to know what you’ve been keeping from me all these years and more importantly I want to know why?’
‘You have no idea! You have no idea what happened to compromise my very soul in those days’.
‘Well then tell me! Tell me and perhaps we can move on from this’.
‘Perhaps?’ It was the first time she’d felt frightened since the police constables had appeared and she’d thought at first then that it must be one of their kids who’d been in an accident or something. Her heart had been in her mouth and she certainly hadn’t expected what they had come to tell her.
‘I didn’t mean it that way’ he entreated. ‘Just tell me the truth, Patty’.
‘The truth? The truth hasn’t always been very welcome in my life’.
‘Well isn’t it time that changed? I mean, you’ve got a whole family over there who could’ve been part of our family down here and I’m at a loss to know what could’ve been so bad that you prevented that from happening’.
For Patricia this was like the dead calling. Her brother Padraig was calling out to her from beyond the grave and she could almost hear him urging her to come clean finally and tell the truth. But why did she have to? Why couldn’t it all have just been left where it was? Maybe her luck had simply run out. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore what the consequences would be. She’d lived the charmed life of the suburban lower middle class Australian housewife for all these years and perhaps the natural laws of justice meant that one day it would all have to be reckoned with.
‘You really think it’ll be that easy?’ she asked. She was still struggling to work out how they could’ve known where she was.
‘I know it won’t be easy but you have to tell me, Patty’ said Dennis. ‘Apart from anything else I’m your husband and I’ve never kept anything from you. I think I’ve got a right to know’.
‘Alright’ said Patricia. ‘But not here. Let’s drive down to Geelong and that little hotel we stayed at before. We’ll go out to the winery that’s near there and I promise I’ll tell you everything’.
The journey down to one of the most southerly parts of the state of Victoria took longer than usual on account that neither Dennis nor Patricia spoke very much to each other. It felt like the whole of the world was between them and neither of them could find the words to break out of the impasse. Then they got to Geelong and headed west along the Princes Highway to the winery at Mt. Duneed where they’d had a couple of very special times over the years. They could check into the hotel at Waurn Ponds later. Once they were there Patricia wanted to just stand at the beginnings of the estate as it rolled across the countryside in front of them and hope that the beauty of the landscape would help to soften the blows she was about to inflict on her poor, sweet Dennis. What the hell was she doing? The man who’d been beside her, loved her, adored her, given her three beautiful children, a home, a life, a family, the man who’d never given her even a moment’s doubt, the man who’d trusted her in return and been there for her every step of the way was about to learn that the woman he’d done all of that for wasn’t the woman he thought she was. How the hell was she going to do this? How the hell was she going to turn the world of this wonderful man right on its head?
She was leaning back against the bonnet of the car taking in the view when Dennis came up beside her. He’d stayed sitting in the car for a few minutes after Patricia had got out. He’d just wanted to give her a bit of space. He thought that might be the right thing to do. But he was scared. He got the feeling that everything about their life together was about to come crashing down around them. He’d never seen Patricia look so haunted. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t the Patricia he knew and he loved.
‘Patty? Come on now. Talk to me’.
‘When I was growing up there were some pretty ugly scenes in our house’ Patricia began, staring out into the distance at nothing in particular. ‘My father was a very violent man. He used to take it out on my brothers with his belt. My sisters and I caught the back of his hand no end of times. We all had to do what we could to survive. It got easier as my brothers got older and were able to stand up to my Dad and prevent him lashing out at them or at my mother’.
‘He used to hit your mother?’
‘Oh yes’ said Patricia. ‘My mother could never go out to work and have a life. He saw to that. He saw to that by giving her enough bruises she had to hide herself away a lot of the time. We had to do the shopping for Mammy whilst the signs of his handy work healed. I hated him, Dennis. I absolutely hated him’.
‘I’m not surprised’.
‘I hated him with such a passion that I arranged one night to have him killed’.
Dennis recoiled. He hadn’t quite been expecting that. ‘What did you say?’
‘I took advantage of all the men around me who dealt in a different kind of violence and I got them to kill my father’ Patricia revealed. ‘I’m not sorry for it, Dennis. My father deserved it. He broke my mother’s heart on so many occasions that in the end it just couldn’t heal any more. My father came out of the pub one night and the group of guys who I’d got together were waiting for him. They gave him the beating he’d never recover from and because it was Northern Ireland nobody said a word. As far as the police were concerned it was just one less Catholic to worry about. They didn’t care a damn about us. They thought we were scum. And if we’d turned on one of our own then so bloody be it. They weren’t going to concern themselves. My father had no real friends to speak of. Nobody was there to defend him or stand up for him’.
‘Well from what you’ve said he didn’t deserve for anyone to be there for him’.
‘No, he didn’t, he didn’t deserve it. I was glad when they came and told us he was dead. I jumped for flaming joy. We were all free, especially Mammy’.
Patricia felt a strange kind of elation. This had been the first time she’d ever told anyone about what she’d done to her father, except for Padraig, and though she’d been dreading ever having to it hadn’t actually felt all that bad. The only thing about it was that it was only the tip of the iceberg. There was so much more to tell and she didn’t know if she could manage unburdening herself of the rest.
‘Patricia, how did you meet the kind of guys who’d do that to your Dad?’
‘For God’s sake, Dennis, I was a working class Catholic girl. We all knew guys of that kind, especially those of us who were going out with a member of the IRA’.
‘Excuse me? Say that again?’
‘His name was Fergal’ said Patricia, ignoring the sense of horror in her husband’s voice. ‘He was on the IRA Army Council. The British were after him for years but he was always able to outwit them. Not that it was hard. Most of the upper levels of the British Army were upper class private school British establishment pricks who wouldn’t know a sense of justice from a sense of smell. I sometimes used to feel sorry for the ordinary foot soldiers who it seemed to me were like lambs to the slaughter. Don’t get me wrong, they were the enemy and I viewed them as such and I can still remember every one of the petty humiliations they dealt out to us on the streets almost every single day’.
‘What happened to Fergal?’
‘He got an OBE’.
‘A what?’
‘One between the ears’ Patricia explained, calmly. ‘A bullet in the back of the head. The IRA accused him of having passed on information to the British and they executed him over the border in the Republic somewhere. That’s when I knew I had to get out. Sooner or later they’d have tried to put something down to me. Guilt by association and all that and I wouldn’t have had Fergal there to protect me’.
‘Dare I ask if you loved Fergal?’
‘I thought I did’ she answered before looking up at him. ‘Until I met you and realised just what real love was’.
‘Do you really mean that?’ Dennis questioned. He was struggling to feel reassured by his wife’s declaration.
‘Don’t start doubting me now, Dennis, please’.
‘Or was I just a rebound job?’
‘No!’ she answered emphatically. ‘Dennis, I married you for all the right reasons and you’ve got to believe that’.
‘Well I don’t know, Patricia’ said Dennis, gravely. ‘You tell me you were the girlfriend of someone who organized the death of innocent people’.
‘It wasn’t like that, Dennis!’
‘He was a terrorist, Patricia!’
Patricia slapped Dennis’s face and immediately regretted it. The look in his eyes broke her heart.
‘Dennis, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, I didn’t mean that’.
‘Get in the car’
Dennis drove them the short distance to the hotel where they booked in for the night. They were shown up to their room and then Dennis said he was going for a walk to get his head together and he’d see her later.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ asked Patricia anxiously. Denis had never given her the silent treatment before and if she could turn back the clock and stop herself from having slapped him she so would. How on earth was she ever going to get this back? How was she going to convince him that although she’d never forget Fergal he’d never been the King of her heart like Dennis was.
‘No’ said Dennis. ‘I want to be by myself’.
‘Dennis, please, you’ve got to let me explain’.
‘I don’t have to let you do anything’ Dennis replied without looking at her. ‘I’ve never been that kind of husband. We’ve always been a partnership. Or so I thought’.
‘But we still are!’ she insisted. ‘Nothing about what’s happened today need change anything about us unless we let it. Dennis, please!’
‘I need some time on my own, Patty. I’ll see you later’.
A couple of hours later when Dennis had walked round the local neighbourhood which was mainly to do with highways and open countryside, he got back to the hotel and found Patricia in the bar making what looked like light work of a bottle of shiraz.
‘You think that’s going to solve all this?’ said Dennis, gesturing to the bottle which was on a small table in front of her.
‘I don’t care whether it does or not’ said Patricia. ‘But it’s helping me right now especially when you look at me like that’.
‘I’ll get another glass’ said Dennis. It was getting on for eight o’clock and he was getting pretty hungry. But dinner would have to wait. There were more answers he needed and when he came back from the bar with a glass he poured himself some of the wine and gulped some down. It tasted good but there wasn’t much left. He ordered another bottle.
‘Getting stuck in for the night?’ said Patricia. ‘Or do you just want to block it all out?’
‘Patricia, how did they know where to find you?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know’.
‘So it is true that you’ve never had any contact with your family since you left Ireland?’
‘Yes, Dennis. I swear to you that’s true’.
Dennis wondered if she was still lying to him. ‘But the police constable said they’d been contacted by your sister Josephine?’
‘I know’.
‘So how did she know?’
‘I don’t know, Dennis, I really don’t know’.
‘And what would they think was so special to you about Padraig’s death? I mean, I presume there’ve been other deaths in the family the last forty years? Like your mother for instance? Why didn’t they let you know about any of those? Why did they wait till now, Patty? That would seem to be the most significant thing we need to know. I mean, do you have any idea?’
‘Can we take this back to the room, please? I don’t want to discuss it in the bar here’.
‘Did you ring any of the kids?’ asked Patricia once they were back in room 26 on the second floor of this very modern three-storey hotel. She slumped down in the IKEA style dark blue armchair and glanced out of the window. It was still fairly light. The countryside seemed to go on for infinity. That’s what she’d fallen in love with about Australia. It was a vast, open space where people could get lost and never have to return to the source of their pain. It was so different from her days back in West Belfast where nobody could make a move without the whole bloody neighbourhood knowing about it. A shiver went down her spine. She suddenly felt vulnerable. Was someone out there watching her? Is that how they’d managed to track her down? Had they always known where she was and had just been waiting for their chance to reach out and get her?
‘No, I didn’t ring any of the kids’ said Dennis almost exasperatedly. ‘Why would I do that? We’ve got to work it out between ourselves first. Or rather you’ve got to tell me the truth’.
‘Don’t you think I’ve done that already?’
‘No I don’t’ said Dennis who sat down on the end of the bed.
‘Thanks’ said Patricia who sounded more confident then even she thought she had a right to be. ‘Glad to hear you haven’t lost your faith in me’.
‘Oh for crying out loud, Patty, I don’t blame you for what you did with regard to your father because it sounds like he didn’t deserve any mercy. But you’ve also admitted to having been in a relationship with a terrorist and that’s knocked me for bloody six. I don’t fully understand the cause because I’m not Irish and I didn’t have to live through what you had to. I accept that. But you’re lucky I’m still here to be honest’.