Joseph made his way to me. He held out his hand. “Safe trip, Kipepeo girl.”
I took his hand with confusion. “I’m coming back, Joseph.”
“I should hope so,” he said, and placed his other hand on my head. “When you get back I shall tell you what a Kipepeo girl is.” He smiled.
“Liar,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“Right, let’s go,” Helena said, throwing a lime green pashmina over her shoulders.
We set off in the direction of the woods, Helena leading the way. At the edge of the woods a young woman appeared, looking dazed and confused as she gazed around the village.
“Welcome,” Helena said to her.
“Welcome,” Bobby said happily.
She looked with confusion from their faces to mine. “Welcome,” I said and smiled, pointing her toward the registry office.
The routes Helena chose were cleared and well-traveled trails. The atmosphere reminded me of the first few days I had spent alone in these woods, wondering where I was. The scent of pine was rich, mixed with moss, bark, and damp leaves. There was the foul smell of rotting leaves mixed with the sweet floral scents of the wildflowers. Mosquitoes hovered in small areas, darting in circular motions together. Red squirrels bounced from branch to branch, and occasionally Bobby stopped to pick up an item of interest in our path. We couldn’t walk fast enough, as far as I was concerned. Yesterday I had thought the prospect of finding Jenny-May an impossibility; today I was going back the way I had come, to actually see her.
Grace Burns had explained that Jenny-May had arrived in the village with an elderly Frenchman, who had been living deep in the woods for years. She had knocked on his door seeking help when she had first arrived all those years ago. Seldom in the forty years he had lived Here had he ventured to the village, but twenty-four years ago he arrived at the registry office with the ten-year-old girl named Jenny-May Butler, who insisted on him being her guardian—the only person she trusted. Despite his desire for solitude, he agreed to care for her, choosing to remain in his home in the woods but making sure Jenny-May went back and forth to school every day and formed and maintained friendships. She became fluent in French, choosing to speak it when in the village, which meant that few of the Irish community were aware of her true roots. Jenny-May cared for her guardian until his dying day, fifteen years ago, and she decided to remain in the home he made hers, outside of the village, rarely venturing to the village herself.
After twenty minutes, we passed the clearing where I had met Helena and she insisted on stopping for a break. She drank from the canteen of water she had carried with her and passed it to Bobby and me. I didn’t feel the heat or the thirst on this hot day, though. My mind was focused on Jenny-May. I wanted to keep moving, keep walking until we reached her. After that, I had no idea what would happen.
“God, I’ve never seen you like this before,” Bobby said, staring at me oddly. “It’s as though you’ve ants in your pants.”
“She’s always like that.” Helena closed her eyes and fanned her perspiring face.
I paced up and down beside Helena and Bobby, hopping around, kicking leaves, and trying desperately to channel the adrenaline that was rushing through me. Feeling more anxious with every second they spent with me, they finally felt under pressure to move again, which I was glad of, but felt guilty about.
The next part of the journey was farther than Helena had thought. We walked for another thirty minutes before seeing a small wooden cabin in a clearing in the distance. Smoke was puffing from the chimney, following the direction of the tall pines until it overtook them, going where they couldn’t go, up and out in the cloudless sky.
We stopped walking as soon as we saw the cabin in the distance. Helena was red in the face and tired, and I felt more guilty for bringing her on such a journey on this hot day. Bobby was looking at the cabin rather disappointedly, probably hoping for something far more luxurious than this. I, on the other hand, was more pumped up than ever. The sight of the humble home before me took my breath away. It was the home of a girl who had always boasted about wanting so much more, yet, to me, the sight of it was a dream, a perfect pretty little picture. Just like Jenny-May.
Tall pines stood protectively on two sides of the house. In front there was a little garden amid the large clearing with small bushes, pretty flowers, and what looked from afar to be a vegetable patch or herb garden. Mosquitoes and flies, when hit by the sun, looked like symbiotic creatures circling in the air, pockets of them scattered throughout the area. Streams of sunlight shone down through the trees, spotlighting center stage.
“Oh, look,” Helena said, handing the water to Bobby as the front door of the cabin opened, and out of it came a little girl with white-blond hair. Her laughter echoed around the clearing and was carried over to us on the warm breeze. My hand went to my mouth. I must have made a sound, though I didn’t hear it, because Bobby and Helena immediately looked to me. Tears welled in my eyes, as I watched the little girl, no older than five, exactly like the little girl I began my first day of school with. Then a female voice called from the house and my heart thudded.
“Daisy!”
Then a male voice: “Daisy!”
Little Daisy ran around the front garden, giggling and twirling, her lemon dress floating around her on the wind. Then from the front door, a man stepped out and began to chase her. Her giggling turned to screams of delight. He made terrifying noises behind her, teasing how he was going to catch her, which made her scream with laughter even more. Finally he caught her and spun her around in the air while she screamed “More, more, more!” He stopped when both were out of breath and he carried her in his arms back toward the house. Just outside the door he stopped and turned around slowly to look straight at us.
He called into the house. We heard the female voice again, but not her words. He stood there looking directly at us.
“Can I help you?” he called, holding his hand to his forehead to shield the sun from his eyes.
Helena and Bobby looked to me. I stared at the man and the child in his arms, speechless.
“Well, yes, thank you. We’re looking for Jenny-May Butler,” Helena called politely. “I’m not sure if we’re at the right place.”
I had no doubt we were at the right place.
“Who is looking for her?” he asked politely. “I’m sorry, I can’t see you from here.” He began to take a few steps forward.
“Sandy Shortt is here for her,” Helena called.
Immediately a figure appeared at the door.
I heard my large intake of breath.
Long blond hair, slim and pretty. The same but older. My age. The child in her was gone. She wore a loose-fitting white cotton dress and was barefoot. She held in her hand a tea cloth, which fell to the floor when she held her hand to her forehead to block out the sunlight, and her eyes fell upon me.
“Sandy?” Her voice was older but the same. It quivered and was uncertain, displaying fear and joy all at the same time.
“Jenny-May,” I called back, hearing exactly the same tone in my voice.
Then I heard her cry as she slowly started to walk toward me and I heard myself cry as I took steps toward her. And I saw her arms reaching out and felt mine do the same. The distance between us grew smaller, the idea of her being before me becoming more real. Her sobs were loud; mine too, I was sure. We cried like children as we walked toward one another, studying faces, hair, bodies, and remembering, good things and bad. And then we were within each other’s grasp and we fell into each other. Crying and hugging, moving to look at each other’s face, wiping tears from each other’s cheek, and then holding on again. Never wanting to let go.
51
Jack,” Garda Graham Turner said with surprise, “what are you doing back here? We won’t have results back from forensics for another few days, and I promise you we’ll contact you with the news.”
Time had got to Donal’s body before them, and had spared it no mercy. He had yet to be
officially identified, though Jack and his family knew in their hearts it was Donal. Fresh and decaying flowers were found on the site that Alan had visited each week of the year. He had confessed his true story to police the previous night but had refused to give the names of the gang involved. Over the next few months he would stand trial, and Jack was glad his own mother wasn’t around to see the man she helped raise take part of the blame for the murder of her baby.
After discussing the night’s events with his family, it was the early hours of the morning before Jack returned to Foynes. The town was still celebrating the festival with all the energy of its opening hours. He ignored the sounds of music and singing, and went into the bedroom to find Gloria lying asleep in bed. He sat beside her on the bed and watched her, her long black lashes resting on the tops of her rosy cheeks. Her mouth was slightly open, soft sounds of her breath causing her white chest to heave gently up and down. It was that hypnotic sound and sight that compelled him to do what he hadn’t done for a year. He reached out to her, placed his hand on her shoulder, and gently woke her from her slumber, finally inviting her into his world. When they had talked all night about the past year and all he had learned in the past week, he finally felt tired and joined her in her sleep at last.
“I’m not here about Donal,” Jack explained, sitting down in the station on Sunday evening. “We need to find Sandy Shortt.”
“Jack.” Graham rubbed his eyes wearily. His desk and the surrounding desks were covered in paperwork, and phones rang all around him. “We’ve been through this.”
“Not in enough detail. Now listen to me. Maybe Sandy got in touch with Alan and he panicked. You never know. Maybe they arranged to meet and he got nervous she was getting close to the truth and maybe he did something. I don’t know what. I’m not even talking about murder. I know Alan’s not capable of that but—” He paused. “Actually,” he said, his pupils dilated with anger, “maybe he did. Maybe he got desperate and—”
“He didn’t,” Graham interrupted. “I’ve been through it over and over again with him. He doesn’t know anything about her, he had never even heard of her. He had no clue about what I was talking about. All he knew was what you told him, that some unknown woman was helping you find Donal. That’s all.” He looked Jack in the eyes and softened his tone. “Please, Jack, give up on this.”
“Give up? Like everyone told me to when I was looking for Donal?”
Graham shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
“Alan was Donal’s best friend and he lied about what happened to him for one year. He’s in enough trouble already. Do you think he’s going to bother telling us about what he could have done to some woman he cares nothing about? Was I not right about Alan the first time?” Jack raised his voice.
Graham was silent for a long time, biting down on his already nonexistent nail as he quickly made a decision. “OK, OK.” He closed his tired eyes and focused. “We’ll start searching the site where her car was left.”
52
I have thought about that moment with Jenny-May long and hard for many hours, days, and nights but I have no words for the time that we spent together that day. It was far too big for words. It was more important than words; it had more meaning than just words.
We stole away from the cabin, leaving Bobby, Helena, Daisy, and Jenny-May’s husband, Luc, to chat among themselves. We had a lot to say to each other. To explain our conversations would not do the moment justice because we talked about nothing. To explain how I felt, watching an older version of the pretty photo embedded in my memory come alive, would fall short of the enormity of my delight. Delight not good enough a word. Relief, joy, pure ecstasy still not even close.
I filled her in on local people she once knew who were doing things of no interest to anybody but her. She told me about her family, her life, all that she had done since I had seen her. I told her of mine. Not once did we speak about her treatment of me. Does that seem odd? It didn’t then. It wasn’t important. Not once did we mention where we both were. Does that seem odd too? Perhaps, but that wasn’t important either. It wasn’t about then, or where, it was just about now. This moment, today. We didn’t notice the hours go by, we barely saw the sunset and the moonrise. We didn’t feel the heat leave our skin and the evening breeze cooling it. We felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing but the stories, sounds, and visions of our own minds, which we filled each other with. It is nothing to others but so much to me.
But it is perhaps enough to say that a part of me was set free that night, as I sensed was the case for Jenny-May. We never said it to each other, of course. But we both knew.
53
Helena had to get back to the village for the dress rehearsal, and so while they said their good-byes, Jenny-May and I put our heads together and looked up to the camera in my hand and smiled. I took the photo and slid it into my shirt pocket. Jenny-May turned down her invitation to see the play, preferring to stay home with her family. We said we would meet again but we made no arrangements. Not out of any bad feeling between us, but because I felt it had all been said, or not said but understood, and she probably did too. To know she was there was enough, and for her to know I was around probably was too. Sometimes that’s all people ever really need. Just to know.
We borrowed a flashlight from Jenny-May, as the sun was hiding behind the tree, leaving us bathed in blue light. Helena led the way back to the village. Eventually I could see the lights in the distance. Feeling dizzy with happiness, I took the photos from my pocket to study them once more while walking. I retrieved two and felt around for the third. It was gone.
“Oh, no,” I moaned, and stopped walking, immediately looking to the ground.
“What’s wrong?” Bobby stopped walking and called to Helena to stop.
“The photograph of me and Jenny-May is gone.” I started to walk back the way we had come.
“Hold on, Sandy.” Bobby followed me, looking at the ground. “We’ve been walking for almost an hour now. It could be anywhere. We really have to get back to the Community Hall for the play; we’re late as it is. You can take another photo with her tomorrow when it’s bright.”
“No, I can’t,” I whinged, straining my eyes to see the ground in the evening light.
Helena, who so far hadn’t said a word, stepped forward. “You dropped it?”
That made me stop and look up at her. Her face was serious, her tone grave.
“I assume so. I doubt it leaped out and ran away on its own.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I definitely dropped it. My pocket is open, see?” I showed them the shallow breast pocket. “Why don’t you two just go on ahead and I’ll look around here for a little while.”
They looked unsure.
“We’re less than five minutes away. I can see the pathway back, we’re so close.” I smiled. “Honestly, I’ll be OK. I have to find this photo and then I’ll go straight to the Community Hall to see the play. I promise.”
Helena was looking at me oddly, obviously torn between helping me and helping the cast prepare for their dress rehearsal.
“I’m not leaving you on your own,” Bobby said.
“Here, Sandy, you take this flashlight. Bobby and I will be able to see our way from here. I know it’s important for you to find it.” She handed over the flashlight and I thought I saw tears in her eyes.
“Helena, stop worrying!” I laughed. “I’ll be OK.”
“I know you will, sweetheart.” She leaned over and, taking me by surprise, planted a quick kiss on my cheek and gave me a quick, tight hug. “Be careful.”
Bobby smiled at me over Helena’s shoulder. “She’s not going to die, you know, Helena.”
Helena slapped him playfully over the head. “Come on with me. I need you to bring all the costumes over from the shop ASAP, Bobby! You promised I’d have them yesterday!”
“Well, that was before David Copperfield here was called to the Community Hall!” he defended himself
playfully.
Helena glared at him.
“OK, OK!” He backed away from her. “Hope you find it, Sandy.” He winked at me before following Helena back down the path. I heard them nagging and teasing one another for a while until the sounds of their voices disappeared and they entered the village.
I turned around and immediately started scanning the ground. I could pretty much remember the way we had come. It seemed to be one main pathway. Very rarely did we come across a choice of others, and so with my eyes peeled to the ground, I made my way back deeper into the forest.
Helena and Bobby rushed around backstage, fixing costumes, last-minute broken zippers and tears, going over lines with nervous cast members, and giving final pep talks to a panicked crew. Helena hurried out to her seat in the auditorium beside Joseph before the performance began and finally relaxed for the first time in the last hour.
“Is Sandy not with you?” Joseph asked, looking around.
“No,” Helena said, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at her husband. “She stayed behind in the forest.”
Joseph took his wife’s hand and whispered, “Along the Kenyan coast where I come from, there is a forest called the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest.”
“Yes, you’ve talked about it,” Helena acknowledged.
“There, there are kipepeo girls, butterfly farmers who help keep the forest preserved.”
Helena looked up at him, finally learning the meaning of the nickname. He smiled. “They are known as guardians of the forest.”
“She stayed in the forest to find a photograph of her and Jenny-May. She thinks she dropped it.” Helena’s eyes began to fill and Joseph squeezed her hand.
The curtains on stage parted.
At times I thought I saw the white of the photograph glowing in the moonlight and I would wander off the track to search among the weeds and undergrowth, chasing small birds and creatures away with my flashlight. After half an hour I was sure I should have reached the first clearing by now. I shone the flashlight all around me, looking for something familiar, but it was just trees, trees, and more trees. But then again I had been walking far more slowly and so it would take me longer to get there. I decided to keep walking in the same direction. It was black now, and around me owls hooted and creatures moved in their natural habitat, startled to find me where I didn’t belong. I didn’t plan on being there much longer. I shivered, the cool evening now turning to cold. I shone the flashlight straight ahead, deciding that I’d dropped the photograph closer to Jenny-May’s house than I thought.