Free Shade by Neil Jordan

at her eyelid.
    “Didn’t kill Nina,” says George. “I killed Hester.”
    “Oh Jesus,” says Janie and walks away.
    “Hester?” asks the doctor. “Who’s Hester?”
    They are being led to a conclusion and maybe George, with some defensive, fractured intuition, is leading them to it. Dr. Hannon enquires about Hester, Buttsy Flanagan about Isobel Shawcross, George smokes one cigarette to its end and holds his hand out mutely for another. They walk back from the river as the light fades and a consensus is emerging from the interstices of their conversation, from what Janie can remember of their childhood narrative, from the dementia of her grief and her unwillingness to penetrate it.
    And the conclusion when arrived at is, like all conclusions, the most convenient.. That he lowered the body into the water with all the care of deranged affection, that the tide, which would have been high then, would have carried it past the ruins of the shellfish plant, past the limestone tower at the old breakwater out to sea. And besides convenience, there is a mystery to this conclusion, there is a pleasing poetry to it, the body never found, the lapping waters of an infinite, open grave, the sense that, whatever the warp-spasm that came over George, he deposited Nina, Boinn, Hester, in the arms of the river, in the body of the ocean she loved with some warped version of the same emotion.
    So there would be, conveniently, no body to be dealt with, no visit from the State Coroner, no grave to be dug; and the sentence, when it came to be passed in Drogheda District Court, would be one of guilty but insane. There would not be even the inconvenience of a change of residence for George: the ward in St Ita’s would become his prison, and out of his barred window he could look towards the same insane sea.
    On the grassed-over cover of the rusting manhole of the old septic tank, they gather and drink coffee from a policeman’s flask. He spices his cup with whiskey, raises the metal hip-flask towards Janie with an enquiring eye. She nods.
    “A bird,” Buttsy Flanagan informs her, “never flew on one wing.”
    “Hester,” says Dr. Hannon, “was your . . .”
    “Nina’s doll. Nina’s ghost. Whatever Nina wanted her to be.”
    “Her familiar.”
    “Yes,” says Janie, “she became familiar all right.”
    “And Boinn?” says Buttsy.
    “Get a guide-book of the locality,” says Janie. “You’ll come across her.”
    “A legend,” says Dr. Hannon.
    “Again,” says Janie, “Nina’s. And I think I’m going to cry now.”
    The rusting cover of the manhole reads Twyfords Adamant and Janie’s heel scrapes over it as she turns away and weeps.

11
    H ESTERTHE PESTER . Her inanimate eyes seemed to know it all that afternoon, seemed able to decipher Dan’s whispers, when he entered and conferred with her mother, seemed able to interpret her mother’s gasp when she held her mouth and turned away. “My God,” her mother said out loud, then, “Nina,” and she took her and wrapped her arms around her as Dan led her two new friends towards the front door. She would remember that holding, those arms stroking her hair, the comfort of being comforted, in years to come, when no comfort was forthcoming. She would remember the sound of her father’s feet, the sight of him as the door burst open and the two of them held her, together. She would wonder what it would take to recreate that, the three of them wrapped around each other-—the death of another governess, perhaps. She felt privileged by death that evening, as her mother and her father let her play with Hester till the sun went down, watched her with moist, attentive eyes, before accompanying her up to her room, to sleep.
    Sleep, of course, was late in coming, for Nina if not for Hester. She lay there, thinking of cause and effect. She had wished her governess gone and now her governess was gone. She looked at the moon through the half-drawn curtains at the window, and wished