The Marble Collector Part 5

I purse my lips, my cheeks still a little pink with embarra.s.sment for the accusation, no matter how politely I tried to put it.

'Well there's one other thing. Apart from wanting to find them, it would help to know who brought them to you. Mum and I packed up everything from the apartment and we never saw these boxes before.'

He frowns, genuinely confused. 'Is that so? You didn't have help? Movers or family members?'

I shake my head. 'It was just the two of us.'

He takes his time thinking about it. 'I'm not sure if you know how I came to store your dad's things.'

'Mum said that you kindly offered. I didn't have the s.p.a.ce for them and she ... well, she's obviously moved on.'

'The thing is, I didn't kindly offer,' he says politely, a twinkle in the blue eyes that glow from his big moon face. 'Your mother hasn't been entirely honest with you, but I'm going to be, particularly as you have come here with these ... concerns, and rightly so, as the boxes were in my possession for the past year.'

I squirm in my chair, embarra.s.sed now, when before I was determined.

'Your uncles, Fergus's brothers, expressed dissatisfaction with Gina keeping your dad's things. They felt that the boxes weren't safe in Gina's hands, given her feelings towards your dad. But Gina was suspicious of why they wanted the boxes, as they and Fergus weren't close in her opinion, and so we all came to the arrangement that the boxes would be kept safe by a third party. Both parties were satisfied that I was neutral enough to be trusted with them. It's not the usual thing for me to do, but I was fond of Fergus and so I did. Unfortunately my personal circ.u.mstances have changed and I no longer have the s.p.a.ce to store his things.'

I nod along quickly, trying to kill my earlier embarra.s.sment and surprised that Mum didn't share this with me. Did she think he wouldn't tell me? I was oblivious to all of this family drama while setting up Dad in the rehab. I was just focused on him getting better, going from the hospital to his apartment, to work, taking care of the kids, completely exhausted, like a walking zombie. I took photos of Dad's furniture and sold it all online, delivering couches across the city, meeting people on George's Street at five a.m. to hand over a coffee table. I think of the days it took to sort the items to keep from the items to sell, seeing how my dad lived, his private things, all of it so simple really, apart from the sickening stashes of chocolate bars, the disturbing collection of DVDs that you never want to imagine your dad watching, but no grand revelations. No sign of any person other than my father in the whole place.

I went through every room, every cupboard, every drawer and I sold every single one of those cupboards that wasn't stuck to the floor or wall. Of all the boxes I taped shut, I never came across these marbles. Somebody else packed them, and sent them to Mickey's home, and if it wasn't me or Mum, then who?

'I don't know how else I can help you, Sabrina.'

Me neither.

'My only thought is that they weren't in the boxes before they were delivered to me, but of course if it was just you and your mam who packed everything up then I don't know what to think.'

But it's glaringly obvious. He's being polite, but if it wasn't me then it had to have been Mum, who has already lied to me about why the boxes ended up with Mickey in the first place.

So many secrets, so many things I didn't know. What else don't I know?

I see Hamish again when I'm nineteen years old. It's the last thing I would have expected: to get on a plane and leave Ireland for the first time in my adult life, since arriving on a boat when I was five, for this reason.

Ma receives a visit from a garda, who received a phone call from the Irish emba.s.sy to say that Fergus Boggs has been found dead in London, and that somebody needs to go and identify the body.

'London? But Fergus is here!'

Ma shouts and yells the house down, everybody runs to her, everybody that doesn't run to her runs looking for me. I'm sitting in the pub having a pint and playing Bounce About when I should be at work in Mattie's butcher shop with the other lads. I've just started and they have me doing the worst jobs, like washing away guts, which when hungover on the first week sent me racing to the toilet to vomit. It doesn't make me queasy now, just bored, and I find a few pints at lunchtime gets me through it in the afternoons. I'm more interested in the kind of meat that Mattie's buying, I'd like to get into that side of things, sourcing better kinds of meat, it's something I want to talk to him about, but I know he won't listen until I do at least a year of stinking, stenching time in the back.

Angus finds me at the pub and grabs me, tells me to say nothing, he doesn't want to hear it, and drags me down the road to the house. I think I'm in trouble for stepping out of the shop for a pint when I should have been having a sandwich in the backyard. Duncan meets us at the front door, which is wide open. Mammy is holding court in the living room, surrounded by worried women, tea and scones. Three-year-old Joe is on her knee, bouncing up and down, big eyes worried and scared by Ma's hysterics. Everyone parts for me like I'm the prodigy child she's always wished for. She looks at me coming towards her like I'm an angel, with so much tenderness and love, I'm s.h.i.tting myself and don't know what the f.u.c.k is going on.

She puts Joe down and stands up. He clings to her leg. Ma reaches out to my face, her hands hot from the gallons of tea, her skin rough from a lifetime of cleaning and scorching. Her face is softer than I've ever seen it, her eyes piercing blue. I suppose I've seen it when she looks at her babies, when I caught her when I was younger when she didn't know anyone was looking as she breastfed, as her eyes and the baby's connected to each other like they were having a silent conversation. I just never remember her looking at me like this.

'My son,' she says tenderly, flooded with relief. 'You're alive.'

Which brings a sudden sn.i.g.g.e.r out of me because I have no idea where this is coming from, all I know is I was dragged out of the pub for this nonsensical drama. Mrs Lynch tuts and I want to deck her because this spurs Ma on.

Ma's look of serenity fades and she slaps me hard across the face. I mustn't look sorry enough because she does it again.

'Okay, Ma,' Angus says, pulling me away. 'He didn't know. He didn't know.'

'I didn't know what?'

'A garda called by-'

Ma is helped to her seat, the grieving queen bee.

'He said that Fergus Boggs was found dead. In London,' Angus says. He slaps me hard on the shoulder, squeezes me, 'But you're not dead, you're grand. Aren't ya?'

I can't reply, my heart is hammering. I know it then, I just know it. Hamish. No one else would have picked my name and he wouldn't have picked anybody else's name either. It was always me. Me and him. Him and me. Even if we didn't know it at the time, I know it the moment I think he's dead, feel his loss now more than when he upped and left.

'Lighten up, everybody, will you?' Duncan says and the women relax, get the joke, suddenly see the funny side in what has happened.

But Ma doesn't laugh. And I don't laugh. Our eyes meet. We both know.

I fly over on my first flight. Windy conditions and we bounce about the place, my mind completely off Hamish as I hang on for dear life and think about what a strange fate it would be, me dying going over to see if a fella who called himself me is dead.

Mrs Smith's son Seamus is living in London and it's been arranged that I can stay with him for a few nights. I don't know what Seamus told his ma about his new life but I don't imagine it's this. Sharing one damp Victorian room with six other lads isn't my idea of making it big in London, so I stay out as late as I can on the first night to avoid having to sleep on that floor. I avoid the Irish bar they all tell me to go to in case I'm forced to join up, and instead, after asking around in an English accent, I find a place called the Bricklayer's Arms that advertises marble games. But first I walk the streets for hours knowing that every minute that pa.s.ses is a minute closer to seeing Hamish, and sometimes I want the time to slow down, and other times speed up.

I strike up a game of marbles with some locals, just a game of Bounce About, like I'd been doing earlier, as if I was picking up where I left off. I can't believe it's the same day and I'm in a different country waiting to identify the body of someone claiming to be me, feeling like a different person.

The game is for two to four players but three of us play until the third guy vomits on himself and then falls asleep in the corner with his own p.i.s.s leaking down his leg. It's just me and a fella named George then, who calls me Paddy like he doesn't know it's an insult. It's okay because I beat him hands down. It doesn't involve huge skill you throw marbles, not shoot them. The medium-sized marbles are called bouncers; the first player throws his forward, the second player tries to hit it, and so on. It's about as much as he can handle, he's had so much to drink. If a bouncer is. .h.i.t, the owner pays the thrower one marble, but you can't take the bouncer, which is a problem because George's bouncer is the only marble I'm interested in. Bouncers get away with murder that way.

It's a Czechoslovakian bullet-mould marble, it has a frosty finish to it. George tells me something about an acid bath. I ask him if I can buy it and he says no, but he gives it to me instead. I've told him about why I'm here and who I think I'm going to see and he feels sorry for me, says he had to view a body once that had been chopped up into bits and I wonder if it was an official identification at all, or something to do with his lifestyle. I even wonder if he was the one who had to chop it up into bits. His story doesn't scare me off, though, oddly, the gift of the marble does make me feel a little better. I pocket the bullet and after getting lost for almost two hours, fall into Seamus Smith's s.h.i.thole bedsit at four a.m., stepping over bodies to reach my s.p.a.ce, one guy going at himself till all hours thinking n.o.body can hear him.

Four hours later I'm at the morgue looking at Hamish's dead naked body on a slab. The coroner just shows me his face but I pull the sheet down more. Hamish has a birthmark on his belly b.u.t.ton shaped like Australia; nothing really like Australia, but then that would have ruined the joke. 'Want to see down under?' I hear Hamish say to the girls, so clearly, like his lips could have moved. I smile, remembering him, everything good about him and the coroner looks at me, angry, like I'm smiling because I'm glad he's dead.

'I was just thinking of something funny he used to say,' I explain.

Then he looks at me like he doesn't care, he's just here for the scientific part, not the emotional bit.

I feel the Czech bullet-mould in my pocket.

'Was he shot?' I ask. I always thought if Hamish was going to go before old age, that's what he'd prefer. Like a cowboy, he loved those films.

'No. Do you see a bullet hole?' he asks, like he's defending himself, like I'm accusing him of missing the evidence.

'No.'

'Well then.'

'What happened to him?'

'The police will tell you.' He covers Hamish's face again. I haven't seen Hamish for four years but I'll never know how much he changed in that time because he was so bloated and bruised I could barely recognise him. I know it's him all right, but I couldn't begin to tell what he looked like as an older Hamish. They think he'd been in the water for two days, probably more, because his body floated to the surface, and decomposition had begun. The police officer that I talk to afterwards says something about the skin on his foot falling off like a sock, but that's when I tune out. The part I remember more than anything else is that n.o.body had reported him missing.

Fergus Boggs was drunk. He had drunk far too much when he bothered the two bouncers of Orbit nightclub on Sat.u.r.day night. When they turned him away they say he got aggressive. I have no reason not to believe them, it sounds like any of the Boggs boys so far, even little Joe has a meltdown when you tell him no, lying on his stomach and kicking his shoes off regardless where we are. As the youngest, Ma rarely tells him no. One bouncer got so frustrated with Fergus that he told him he'd let him in the side door so the boss wouldn't see him get in so drunk, and without paying. Instead he took him to the dark alley and beat the lights out of him. With a broken nose and a broken rib, Fergus Boggs stumbled along until he tripped, fell into a river and drowned. He was twenty-five.

Seamus Smith is waiting for me when I come out of the morgue. He's smoking a cigarette and looking shifty, his hands shoved into tiny pockets in a leather jacket.

'Is it him?' he asks.

'Yeah.'

'f.u.c.k.'

He takes out a packet of cigarettes and hands me one. I appreciate him bringing me to the pub from there because I don't remember anything from the cigarette onwards. The next day me and Hamish get the boat together for the second time as I bring him home.

The police officer wasn't pressing charges against the bouncer who 'bounced him about a little' because the police agreed Fergus was being a nuisance and the bouncer didn't mean to kill him, it was Fergus's inebriation that led to his drowning. Bouncers get away with murder that way.

When I opened the box of marbles, I opened up a can of worms.

I don't know if I sensed it when I looked at them, when I held them in my hands and my eyes scanned the inventory, but I knew it when I saw the way Dad's face changed as soon as he set eyes on the bloodies. And it's confirmed even further by learning of the messiness my family created simply by the decision of where to store boxes. I don't know what to do next. It's the moon, I've too many thoughts, can't process them all at once. Breathe.

Once outside Mickey's office I call Mum, fuming inside.

'How's Miss Marble getting on?' She laughs at her own joke. 'Did you see Mickey Flanagan yet?' I hear the anxiety in her voice and I wonder if she's afraid of me discovering her lie.

'Which of Dad's brothers didn't want you to store the boxes?' I ask.

She sighs. 'Mickey told you. Oh, love, I didn't want him to tell you.'

'I appreciate that, Mum, but if I'm going to find these marbles, I need the truth?'

'You're really going to look for these missing marbles? Sabrina, love, is everything okay? With you and Aidan? Are you still going to counselling?'

'Yes, we're fine,' I say, as if on autopilot. I should never have mentioned the counselling to Mum, now she thinks everything I say and do is a result of our couple counselling, which I'm going to for Aidan's sake. I'd be perfectly content not to bother. But I've been saying that a lot lately without really thinking about it. Are we fine? I change the subject back. 'Tell me what happened with the boxes and Dad's brothers.'

She sighs, knowing she has no choice but to address it, and as she speaks I hear the anger. Not at me but at him, at the situation last year. 'Angus called me, but it was really all of them that had the problem. They'd heard we'd been around at Fergus's apartment. They didn't want me with his belongings. They were fine with you having them, but I told them you had no s.p.a.ce. You know the rest.'

I try to picture Angus. I was never particularly close to my uncles and aunts, I never saw them much because Dad didn't. While growing up I saw them at the odd family event but we never stayed long, Dad was always uptight, somebody would always say something to annoy him and we'd leave early. Mum never protested, she hated his family events too, somebody would always end up in a fight, a drunken cousin flipping over a table of drinks in a fight with a girlfriend, or sisters-in-law who couldn't keep their sharp tongues to themselves. There was always drama at a BoggsDoyle event and we rarely went. We spent most of the time popping in, or as Dad would say, 'Let's show our faces.' That's all he ever wanted to do with his family, show his face. Perhaps that's all he did with us too, because who is this man I'm learning about?

Angus is the oldest of the brothers, a butcher, so not the one with a van. I think Duncan has the van, but that's not to say they weren't all in on it. It's been a long time since I've seen them all. I haven't been dragged to a family do since I was eighteen, and I didn't invite them to my wedding. Aidan and I had a small one in Spain with twenty guests.

Do I really want to visit Angus to ask him what happened last year? Why didn't you want my mum to store Dad's things? Did you want them for yourself so you could steal Dad's marbles? What a ridiculous line of questioning. And do I really blame the brothers for not wanting Mum to keep their brother's things? They were absolutely right and I only see that now. At any moment Mum could have decided to throw them on a bonfire, fuelled by wine and a bitter memory of something Dad did to her to make her life a misery, even though she's now happily remarried.

'Did you know about him having a marble collection?' I ask her again, firmly. 'Did you pack them away in his apartment?'

'Not at all. I told you that yesterday.'

There is enough annoyance and hurt in her voice for me to believe her.

'And if I had come across them when we were packing them up, I would have thrown them straight in the skip,' she says defiantly. 'A grown man with marbles, honestly.'

I believe her, but it makes me wonder what she came across in the apartment that I didn't, that she considered not worth keeping. Maybe she wasn't the right person to help me out at the time. And why am I only thinking of all this now? Guilt is eating away at me. I was busy, I was stressed, I was worried. I should have handled it all better. Perhaps I should have invited his brothers to join us, see if there was anything they'd like, from his past. Perhaps that's why they were angry with Mum, I didn't include them in anything. I just took over, thinking I knew everything there was to know about him.

'Mum, have you remembered what your marble fight with Dad was about?' I refuse to let that one go. I know she was holding out on me and I need to know as much as I can right now. No more secrets.

'Oh, I can barely remember now ...' She goes quiet for a moment and I think that's the end of her answer, when she suddenly continues. 'We were on our honeymoon, that much I remember. He went wandering off on his own, like he always did, no explanation, then came back after spending months' worth of our savings on some ridiculous marble.'

I slide the inventory out of the folder as I'm driving, keeping a close eye on the road. I cast my eyes over the list.

'Was it a heart?'

'I can't remember the design.' She goes quiet. 'Actually, yes, I think it was. It drove me insane that he would spend all of our money on it. We spent three days in Venice unable to eat a thing, I remember sharing a can of c.o.ke one day because we hadn't the money for anything else. Silly eejit,' she says softly. 'But that was your father all over. By the way, how did you know it was a heart?'

'Oh. I just ... guessed.'

I run my finger over Dad's handwriting: 'Heart damaged. Condition: collectable. Venice '79.'

So it wasn't Mum who packed up the marbles, or took from them. I think I've established she would have wanted nothing to do with them.

Access. I have to think who had access to the boxes. It wasn't Mickey, it wasn't his family. There's no way of me ever really knowing that for sure, but I have to trust him. Access. Contacting the delivery company from last year seems a long shot: Excuse me, did you ever happen to steal some items you were delivering last year? Maybe Mickey is wrong about the marbles not being in the box when they arrived at his house. Maybe they were taken yesterday, and yesterday's delivery driver isn't a long shot.

'Can I help you, Sabrina?' Amy asks gently as I walk back into the waiting room.

I try to compose myself. The moon made me do it. 'I received a delivery from Mickey yesterday, from his home to my dad's hospital, and I was trying to figure out who delivered it. Do you know anything about it?'

'Know about it? I spent an entire weekend in that garage, unpaid, arranging deliveries. Not my job, but tell that to Mickey.'

My heart leaps a little, feeling a bit of hope. 'Were the boxes sealed before you sent them?' I ask lightly, not wanting to offend her.

'Oh G.o.d,' she groaned. 'Yes they were and they were very carefully stored, I can tell you that, but don't tell me something was broken, or missing.'

'Well, yes, actually something was missing.'

'Oh, Looper.'

'Pardon?'

'Sorry, it's Looper. The delivery guy. To explain, yes absolutely the boxes were sealed when I got to them, and I was under strict orders not to open them either. Mickey wouldn't want me seeing in his stuff yours weren't the only ones in there, by the way. There was a bunch of stuff that had to go. Old furniture, clothes, all in storage that hadn't been touched in years, covered in dust. Anyway, I used Looper to deliver them, Mickey's nephew. He's had so many complaints, but I have no choice but to use him. Mickey's trying to help out family, you know how it is. It's between you and him, I'm afraid, I can't get involved, but I can give you his contact details.'

'Yes please,' I say happily, feeling that perhaps all is not lost. I'm getting places.

'Do you know your way around here?' she asks, handing the address over reluctantly.

'No but I have satnav.'

Amy bites her lip. 'Satnav won't even know where you're going,' she says. 'It's pretty remote.'

'It's okay, I have time,' I say, moving towards the door. For the first time in I don't know how long, I feel a surge of excitement.

'Just be careful, he's not really a people person, and particularly on a day like today ' she gestures towards the sky 'days like today are made for people like him,' she adds before I close the door.

I drive to the address Amy has provided, and I look up at the sun and wonder if there's anything in what Amy said. Is today the day we're doomed? Or is today the day I've finally lost it myself, going on a hunt for some lost marbles that I've no real proof ever really existed in the first place. Just a handwritten inventory from I don't know how many years ago. About to approach a man named Looper in the middle of nowhere and accuse him of stealing.

After driving up and down a few random streets, satnav giving up almost as soon as I pa.s.s the town limits, much as Amy warned, I find the right place. Looper, a concerning name in itself, lives in a small bungalow, a Seventies-style build, which has been badly maintained and looks completely run-down. The front yard is covered in car parts, tyres, engines, car hoods, random items strewn about the place. There's a white van on the front drive, beneath it a pair of legs stick out wearing filthy stone-washed jeans and workman's boots. A nearby radio blares AC/DC. I pull up outside the front gate and can't get any further as it's heavily padlocked with a sign saying 'No Trespa.s.sing guard dogs on duty', alongside a picture of two snarling dogs.

I get out of the car and stand at the gate wondering if I have finally lost it.