Fortnightly Fiction | What Happened at the Clarkes’

It wouldn’t have happened if Miranda had allowed me to book us into a hotel as I’d wanted. She was twenty-two and still unable to extricate herself from the shadow of her parents’ pious beliefs. In truth, Miranda had flouted those beliefs months before when she’d persuaded me to sleep with her.

Miranda. Sweet, petulant Miranda. I first spotted her, or I should say she spotted me, when we both signed up for a creative writing class at a lit fest. She was a budding short story writer; I, a would-be poet who seduced her, she claimed, with words. There’d been a mix-up between the festival organisers and the course facilitator – my work had got lost in transit. I was explaining that I’d been told to send the work directly to the university where the facilitator worked when a girl interjected with a sudden “yeah, yeah, yeah” from across the room.

Miranda. Seated directly opposite me, fedora perched on the back of her head, long blonde hair framing her face, she twirled her pen and met my look of annoyance with a wide smile that disarmed me. Over coffee at the break, she asked what my mystery manuscript had been about. She was clever, Miranda, but totally unpretentious. The bohemian look she wore was her – not some arty guise designed for notice. It was only in the company of her parents that Miranda reverted to a somewhat more toned-down version of herself. As though she didn’t want to sully the pristine image they had of her.

They were well-off, the Clarkes. Not mega-rich, but they had a nice house on a couple of acres in County Wicklow. We’d been going out about four months when Miranda announced that her parents were throwing a bash for her grandmother’s seventieth. There was to be a marquee, live music, her brother, Kris, was coming home from London for the weekend. It would be an ideal time to meet the family.

I imagined Miranda would be delighted at my suggestion of booking into a Spa Hotel. But she said her parents had invited us to stay for the weekend; that it would be an insult to refuse. And so it was settled.

Saturday came. Miranda picked me up at midday in her little red Beatle and we headed out the N11. She was excited, said she’d had a text from Kris who’d got in from London the night before. Miranda got that look about her when she talked about Kris, the same look she got when she talked about books, or music – or anything that impressed her. Her face blazed with enthusiasm.

Kris was an actor, she said. He’d once played Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the local papers had raved about it. The previous year he’d gone to London to audition for movies – he’d got a few walk-on parts, but she was sure it wouldn’t be long before he was cast in a more significant role. Kris, she said, had presence.

I watched Miranda as she talked, hands gripping the wheel, cheeks tinged pink from the wind that rocketed through the open windows. The Glen of the Downs flashed past as her words infused the air with inexorable vigour. She laughed when a sudden gust caught her fedora and propelled it onto the back seat – and her hair, suddenly freed, danced round her in abandon. That’s the image I retain of Miranda. Even after all that happened.

Miranda’s mood was still buoyant as we turned into the long gravel drive that led to her parents’ house. Two other cars were parked outside, a black Mercedes and a sleek silver Coupé. Miranda switched off the ignition and turned towards me, hand on my leg.

‘I should’ve mentioned, you’ll have to share Kris’s room. My parents are a bit, you know, old-fashioned.’

‘No worries, that’s okay.’ I smiled, not altogether surprised by Miranda’s revelation. In those days my parents would have been reticent if I’d brought a girl home to stay.

She leaned in and nibbled my bottom lip – then my top, her hand straying from my knee. ‘Of course that doesn’t mean we can’t get up to anything. There’ll be plenty of distractions with the party.’ Miranda’s hot breath fanned my ear. She nuzzled my neck, then sat upright with a “now’s the moment” look. ‘Come on, they’ll be around the back.’

She led me through an archway between the house and the garage. At the end of a magnificent lawn surrounded by trees, a marquee was being erected. Two men were busy rolling up the entrance door and securing it. As we crossed the lawn a woman emerged from the house. She raised a hand and smiled – and I knew before Miranda told me that it was her mother.

‘You must be Liam. Miranda’s told us all about you. Of course, I don’t believe the half of it. She’s a terrible fantasist.’ Miranda’s mother winked and led us into a long, cool kitchen where she’d prepared a cold lunch for us. Miranda had coloured slightly; I wasn’t sure if it was from her mother’s remark or the anticipation of seeing her brother.

‘Where’s Kris?’ Miranda asked, crossing to the window and looking towards the marquee. Her mother busied herself removing cellophane from the dishes of salad. ‘Knowing Kris, he’s wherever the work isn’t,’ she said. Miranda went out to the hall and shouted up the stairs for her brother.

‘So Liam, I hear you met Miranda at a writing class. What do you write, stories?’

‘Poetry mostly, though I’m trying to get into writing short stories. Not sure I have a talent for it yet, not like Miranda.’

‘Miranda has quite the fertile imagination. I can’t say I ever really got it myself. I suppose it’s all that reading. It’s always seemed such a waste of time to me. Kris is the same, except with him it’s films. I thought he’d grow out of it…’

‘Grow out of what?’

We turned to see a tall, young man in the doorway – hands dug deep in khaki trousers. Everything about Kris was dark – hair, skin, even his countenance. But his eyes were an almost transparent green. I guessed it was Miranda’s description of his playing Brick that had made me think he’d be blonde like her. But the person in the doorway was much more a brooding Heathcliff than a Paul Newman.

‘Play-acting,’ his mother said. ‘You’ll tire of it some day.’

Kris entered the room. ‘Nothing wrong with a little fantasy, is there?’ He extended his hand. ‘Liam, I take it?’ I shook the hand he offered, noticing how my skin looked almost translucent next to his. Just then Miranda returned – “Why Master Clarke, I do declare,’ she said, her accent every bit the Southern belle. She tipped her fedora and grinned. When she put her arms round her brother’s neck, he embraced her, lifting her clear with one arm. Their mother looked at me and shook her head.  Blood surged, setting my cheeks aflame.

‘Liam, you may as well put your stuff in Kris’s room,’ Miranda said, taking the hat from her head and placing it on her brother’s. She took me by the arm and followed Kris up the stairs.

Kris’s room had wall-to-wall DVDs. Many of them were dramas; several versions of Shakespeare’s comedies, along with a whole collection of Tennessee Williams’ plays. I didn’t think he’d grow out of his tendency towards make-believe any time soon. Miranda flung herself on her brother’s bed, the only one in the room, I noted, as I looked for a place to put my bag.

‘Any auditions lately?’ Miranda asked.

‘A few, nothing worth talking about.’ Kris picked up a dart and flung it at a board, narrowly missing a bull’s eye. ‘What time’s the party kicking off?’

‘We said eight. So Dad’ll be bringing Nana Lena across before that. Are you going to give us a performance? Wait till you hear Kris sing,’ she said, turning to me. Miranda’s admiration of her brother was not lacking foundation. Kris had more talent than anyone I’d met.

By eight, the guests had started to arrive. Miranda introduced me to cousins, and to her grandmother, who at 70, reminded me of a still glamorous Sophia Loren. The former actress took my hands in hers and kissed my cheek. ‘You didn’t say how handsome he was, Mira.’ Miranda stretched to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. ‘Lena charms all the men.’ My face burned for a second time, and when I looked beyond Miranda, Kris raised an eyebrow and smiled. It was evident that Nana Lena was a major influence on both her grandchildren.

Miranda flitted all evening between the guests, a sprite in a flame-coloured dress, blonde hair curled to her shoulders in the absence of the fedora. When darkness came we walked the garden. Coloured lights had been strung along the path, lending the grounds a carnivalesque atmosphere. Miranda, hand through my arm, talked about her mother and her turbulent relationship with Nana Lena.

‘Mom didn’t like us spending too much time around her, but we were just mad about her.’ She smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ve seen that. Lena was always exotic. Not like a grandmother, maybe more a fairy grandmother. Kris and me were convinced she could do magic. It kills Mom that we both took after her. She’d like us to be bankers or solicitors or something, not arty layabouts as she likes to say.’

Miranda sat on a swing seat just in view of the marquee, and I sat next to her. She leaned in and kissed me. ‘Mom has her reasons. Lena wasn’t your conventional mother. She was always off somewhere, following some whim or other, and Mom and her brothers were left very much to themselves. Granddad was an engineer in the Air Corps. He was crazy about Lena – and he was strict with the kids where Lena wasn’t, but I think Mom appreciated that. It showed he cared. I don’t remember Granddad, he died not long after I was born.’

Miranda stopped. Voices and laughter drifted from the marquee amplified in the still night air. She nuzzled my shoulder. We sat like that for a time, until the twang of a guitar sounded in the darkness and sparked Miranda into motion. ‘Sounds like the band’s warming up, let’s go inside.’ She stood, took my hands and attempted to pull me to my feet. I resisted and she pushed against my hands and grinned. ‘What’s the matter Massah, don’t ya wanna dance?’

I kissed the fingers of her right hand. ‘I think I’ll just sit a while.’

She looked at me and then in a sing-song voice said, ‘do I feel the muse a-coming?’ I nodded, and she brushed my lips with hers. ‘Right-o, I’ll see you inside.’

I watched Miranda cross the lawn, and heard her laughter as she stopped to talk to a group by the entrance. The band had started, a jazzy number that drifted from the confines of the tent and stole into the night. I breathed deep and tried to still a feeling of unease that had begun to claw at my insides, but it refused to be mollified. It had started back at the house – a stirring of a kind that I’d denied once, a year before I’d met Miranda. But the unacknowledged has a way of returning.

Slowly, I made my way towards the marquee. One of Miranda’s cousins raised her wine glass, ‘You’re just in time to hear Kris play.’ I entered, the girl close behind me, and scanned the tent for Miranda. She was in deep conversation with a guy who had tattoos wound the length of each arm. He looked rapt by whatever story Miranda was telling. But then most people were. Her words drew people in.

On the stage, Kris was adjusting a guitar, Miranda’s fedora on his head. He played with the tuning pegs before plucking a few strings. The sound reverberated in my skull, or maybe it was the wine I’d drunk too quickly. I wasn’t accustomed then to anything stronger than the occasional beer. Kris said something into the mic, which I didn’t quite catch, and Miranda’s tattooed friend took his place behind the drum-kit. Miranda, having lost her audience, came over. ‘Was wondering where you were. I thought you’d gone to scribble down whatever the muse brought.’

I shook my head. ‘To be honest, I’ve an awful headache.’

‘Wait till you hear Kris. He’s brilliant.’ She was staring at the stage, a glass in her hand. I wasn’t sure she’d even heard me.

Kris was brilliant. Miranda was right about that. His voice, powerful yet restrained, resonated, transfixing us both. He sang ‘Georgia on my Mind’ – one of her grandmother’s favourites, Miranda told me, and we watched as one of the men took Lena’s hand and brought her onto the dance floor. Miranda nudged me, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ I smiled, eyes fixed on the stage, and gulped the last of my wine.

The evening moved on, the knot unwinding with each refill of my glass. The musicians finished, but the singing didn’t stop. A guitar was passed round and various family members were called on to sing. Others weren’t, but sang anyway. Kris had had as much to drink as the rest of us, it seemed. He’d lost the brooding look and entertained us with impersonations so good that he had Miranda wiping her eyes, eyeliner smudged down her cheeks.

In the early hours, we said goodbye to the last of the clan. Nana Lena had long since retired, as had Miranda’s parents, and some of the younger cousins had pitched tents in the Clarke’s yard. Shouts and muffled laughter came from within as we passed; the three of us with arms flung drunkenly round each other.

‘Liam, you didn’t sing tonight,’ Kris said.

‘I don’t know the words of anything, just a few half songs.’

He stumbled and tightened his arm round my neck almost bringing the three of us down. ‘What do you like?’

‘I don’t know, a lot of old stuff, Bowie, The Stones, The Doors.’

‘Okay, you’ve got to know this one. Everyone knows this one.’ He started singing “You know that it would be untrue, you know that I would be a liar…” Miranda and I joined in, but she didn’t know the second verse and Kris and I kept going. He pointed his free hand at me, his face close to mine as we negotiated the lyrics. He placed the fedora on my head. Miranda had begun dancing, lifting the ends of her flame-coloured dress and flipping it from side to side, flamenco-style. Her hair fell in her eyes as she swayed across the lawn a few steps in front of us. She turned and put a finger to her lips as we neared the house.

‘Ssh, we’ll wake the conformists.’

‘The what?’

Kris grinned. ‘That’s what she calls the folks, we have to curb it a bit around them…especially with mum. She already thinks we’re too much like Lena.’

Miranda stopped at the door, smoothened her dress mock-respectably. Kris still had his arm around my shoulder.

Miranda led the way upstairs. In the landing she stopped to kiss us both goodnight. She reached up, arms round my neck and kissed me lightly on the lips. Then she did the same with her brother. She winked, put her finger to her lips again and went into her room while I followed Kris to his.

In darkness, I heard him shut the door behind us. He knocked against the bedside locker and the lamp rocked back and forth until he stilled it and brought the room to life. I sat on the edge of the bed to take off my shoes.

‘That was some party.’ Kris stretched, pulled his T-shirt over his head and threw it in a corner. I laughed and nodded, self-conscious now we were alone. I looked away as he unbuckled his jeans and stepped out of them.

‘Miranda’s great. She was so excited about seeing you. It was all she talked about the last few days.’

Kris smiled, and I tried to ignore his eyes on me as, awkwardly, I undressed. ‘That kid would do anything for me,’ he said. He climbed beneath the covers, pulled his pillow down and lay with one arm crooked under his head.

‘You ever tried acting, Liam?’

‘No, never.’ I stared at the ceiling, avoiding his eyes. ‘But I really admire people who do. I’d never be able to remember the lines…’

‘It’s not so hard. You just become someone else…think their thoughts, be as they are.’

He’d left the light on. I turned away from him, away from the heat of his body. The knot had wound itself round my gut again, and I felt too sober.

‘I suppose it’s not too different from writing, Liam, getting inside other people’s minds, being something you’re not.’

I heard him remove his hand from under his head, then felt it on my shoulder, on the back of my neck. I tensed, and in protest turned slightly towards him.

‘Ssh, relax,’ he said. ‘It’s easy.’

He was saying things close to my ear when I heard the door being eased open. A shaft of dim light crept into the darkened room and fell across our bodies. Either he didn’t see or chose to ignore it, but Kris continued to move against me, hands on my shoulders, as I turned my head slightly to the side and heard rather than saw the door close again. ‘Miranda.’ ‘Ssh.’ He hushed her name on my lips – and I knew why it was that I’d been brought to this place. Why Miranda had turned down my offer of the hotel in the Wicklow hills. After that night, I vowed never to see either of the Clarkes again.

 

Featured illustration by Aisling O’ Reilly.