‘I was blind-sided by it all,’ she sighed, ‘I was bowled over … seduced. And above and beyond that, I really don’t want the whole “tragic” angle to eclipse … well … “the work”.’
In a toss-up – a fair gamble – Kimberly would always – always – have opted for death over pity. Poor Kimberly. So defiant. So flawed. So proud. So …
Scared? Was it fear that kept them quiet?
Superstition?
Loyalty?
What was it? What was the indelible hold Bran Cleary had over them all: strange, little Orla, crazy Kalinda, the countless others? Witchcraft? Voodoo? Charm? Art?!
‘Okay, Kim,’ (yet another international call at completely the wrong time of day. Kim isn’t – wasn’t – ever happy unless a conversation was charged at peak rates. It was her last great extravagance. ‘Keeps you on your toes, Frankie-boy,’ she’d laugh, ‘keeps you sharp!’) ‘so who else, then? Eh?’ I demanded. ‘Who else can be trusted? Any suggestions, Oh Wise One?’
‘I do have somebody in mind,’ Kim confided, and then, with typical unreasonableness – balls-out, that was my Kim – suggested Franklin D. Huff. Yes. Me. Franklin D., no less: currently occupying the not-especially-coveted role of Jilted Lover. Betrayed Friend. Fall-Guy. Stooge.
There were weeks of heated negotiations. ‘You seriously feel you can trust me with this?’ I was astonished – touched – horrified! Trust me? I could barely trust myself! Wasn’t I the last person to be trusted? The most angry? The most cynical? The most dark? The most wounded? ‘That’s precisely why, Franklin,’ she’d chuckled (I always loved her laugh), ‘and because – when push comes to shove – you’re a born professional.’
This was not a commission I was eager to accept. Quite the opposite. This was the story I’d been running away from – at high speed – for twelve, long years. Several others (some reputable, others less so) had been pitilessly tossed against the jagged rocks of this sorry tale and left horribly becalmed. There were just way too many angles. The narrative was dangerously overloaded. How to gain access? There was the mysterious death of Bran Cleary while on remand, for starters, after a bomb (the second bomb he’d been ‘unwittingly’ connected with) planted – or being stored? Transported? – in the boot of his car went off. All the dodgy political stuff. There was the curious disappearance of crazy Kalinda, aka ‘Lonely’ Allaway, his wife (the fame-hungry vengeful Australian shepherdess). And Orla? Poor, sweet Orla Nor Cleary – their daughter? The tiny-armed girl visionary? Where even to start with that particular hornets’ nest?
‘Simply go back to Mulberry,’ Kim sighed (with typical clarity), making it sound like the simplest undertaking in the whole world, ‘and just inhale the atmosphere. You missed out the first time around. Aren’t you intrigued to have a little snoop about? Apparently they’ve kept the cottage exactly as it was – like a kind of shrine. They do short- and medium-term rentals. They’re very picky about tenants, though, so keep your head down. Be discreet. Why not invite Lara along for the ride? Build some bridges. Make it into a little holiday! I’ll cover all expenses from the advance. Try and reach out to the people who were there – on the periphery, in the background. Knit. Walk. Relax. Breathe. It doesn’t have to be the final word or anything, just a … I don’t know … a cut and paste job – a kind of collage, a human collage.’
‘But none of them will talk!’ I argued.
‘Several of them already have,’ she corrected me. And she was perfectly right. Several had.
Of course what I didn’t tell Kimberly was that we actually needed way more than that. To raise any kind of worthwhile sum on the photos I’d had to make a series of strategic promises to the publisher – moral compromises, of sorts – which Kimberly (as yet) had no inkling of. They wanted to smash the whole Bran Cleary cover-up wide open. They wanted a hatchet job on Kalinda. And Orla? That all-too-familiar ‘victim of circumstance’ schtick writ large: the ever-popular ‘vulnerable minor led astray by the wicked Catholic machinations of Father Hugh Tierney’ angle.
Why did they want these things, exactly? Oh … They wanted them because, well, I’d promised them. I’d offered them all up on a platter. Kim’d thank me for it in the long term, I was certain. Once I’d exonerated her – and, by extension, myself – once the royalties started rolling in. She said it herself: I was a consummate professional (a professional what, though?! Cuckold? Fool? Dupe?).
Let’s face it – this was the story dear, old Kimberly (dead Kimberly) was too close to tell: the awful truth. Although how to gain access to it, first-hand? Kim was right: several people had spoken out publicly, yes, but only the small players – the bit parts – and never candidly. Father Tierney had become a Benedictine monk and entered a monastery. He was virtually a non-starter. Father Paul Lynch (of Rye, now retired) had proven curiously gnomic and diffident. Seems they’d all contracted the disease Kim herself had fallen prey to.
Although Carla Hahn, Kim had confided, was definitely the one to watch out for. She’d been the family’s nanny and cleaner during their time in Pett Level and had later inherited the house. ‘She was very quiet, rarely spoke. I don’t know why, but I always thought of her as “the other camera”. She had this strangely unsettling watchful quality about her. Engaged but unengaged. Hardly uttered a word to me the whole week I was there. Smiled a lot. A strange girl, very tight – tender – with the child, training to be a nurse.’
Carla was the key, Kim maintained, the ‘inside-outsider’.
So I came. I waited. I made connections with the other witnesses. Lara left; there’d always been … well … fault-lines. I drank heavily for a few weeks. Just the atmosphere of this place – the house. This awful feeling of … the simplicity, the roaring quiet, the certainty. An unbearable itchiness. In my head. In my soul. As if the place, the sea, the furniture, the entire house were all slowly rejecting me. Developing a gradual intolerance. I know it sounds …
Or was that just …?
Then the phone call – the garbled message. Kimberly Couzens was dead. Dead! Something to do with a botched tooth extraction. Kimberly Couzens was dead.
I left the cottage in my suit and dress shoes. I was empty, flat (remember?) and I was paradoxically Day-Glo; blank and cynical, yet strobing with emotion. Urgh! I was neither. I was both. I was confused. I was walking away from my feelings and I was running straight into them. It wasn’t … I wasn’t … I … I dunno.
I staggered down on to the beach. I just put one foot in front of the other. I tried not to think. I tried desperately to process the news. I could, but I couldn’t.
Of course we had never been formally divorced, Kim and I. It was one of the many things Lara couldn’t forgive me for. Yes, I petitioned for divorce: 23rd December 1972. She was still in Ireland. In hospital. The date is singed into my brain with a cattle iron – the day of the Managua earthquake. Even my hurt, my outrage at Kim’s devastating betrayal couldn’t be allowed to take centre stage, couldn’t bask, bleeding, in the limelight. Nope. God went and killed 2,000 people, in one stroke, and I – by necessity – was left feeling petty and pitiful.
It was tough. I was wounded (I was wounded! What a joke!). But her burns were so bad that I couldn’t follow through with it. We were a team. Above and beyond everything else, Kim and I were a team. I was the ears, she was the eyes. Funny to think of it that way now. The ears stopped working a long time ago. They waxed up. They froze. They ceased functioning. Why? I have so many reasons, each one so tiny and humble and insignificant; each one merely an ant – or a black, darting termite – but collected together? An infestation. A great hill. An immovable mountain.
And the eyes? After the ‘accident’, they thought they could save at least one of them