by Elske Rahill
Her grandmother’s body, so heavy there under the covers, it could be putty all the way through. The arms lying on the sheet, the hands, the ears are all too dumb, like stage costumes up close, without the right light or the right set. Off stage and with no one there to play along, they are exposed for their composite parts – like nylon stitching, like cardboard corsets.
‘Well,’ says Valerie’s mum. The rouge is sitting frankly on her cheeks, like a snide joke. Her hands clutch the bedrail. ‘We might get her the last rites all the same… they say it helps people over all the same.’
*
There is a rap at the door but no one speaks. Then another timid rap and Sinéad reaches for the handle. A man dressed in an awkward navy suit enters in a dipping tip-toe. He says he is a Minister of the Eucharist. He apologises that there is no priest around.
‘That’s okay,’ says Aoife, ‘she wasn’t very religious… isn’t.’
The minister is long-necked with a carefully shaven gullet and glossy acne running down under his collar. He wears a lustrous blue tie. ‘Ah, the poor dear,’ he says. ‘So you think it’s the end, do you?’
‘We don’t know,’ Cara says.
He looks at Cara’s belly, where the baby is pressing down on her bladder, twisting a foot against her lungs.
‘Ah.’ The Minister of the Eucharist makes a circle in the air with two hands. ‘The great circle of life here in this room… isn’t that lovely?’
Aunt Aoife scoffs audibly. Valerie’s cheeks flush.
‘We don’t know,’ says Valerie. ‘Mum called the whole family because they thought… but we don’t know.’
‘So you’re all here with her. Well, isn’t that lovely now?’ The Minister of the Eucharist rolls his hands over one another.
‘Well – most of us,’ says Cara.
‘Where’s Freya?’ asks Valerie. ‘Is Eileen coming?’
‘Freya’s at work. I haven’t been able to reach her. I messaged…’
The minister cocks his head the way the nurse did, and sighs.
‘Ah the poor dear… Well, only The Lord God Our Father knows when he will receive us in his arms. I’ve given up guessing. For every one I get right, I get one wrong!’
Grandma exhales again, a big emptying from deep in her papery lungs. They wait for the next breath. The minister clasps his hands. ‘But it seems like it, doesn’t it?’
‘We’re okay now,’ says Aunt Sinéad. ‘I think we are okay now. We don’t need the Eucharist…’
‘Well, I can stay and just be with you so; there’s no pressure.’
The next breath comes, pulling audibly into Grandma.
The minister stays. He makes small talk about economic recovery and the weather, lifting the intimacy with his intrusion. But then the women stop responding. He sighs loudly.
‘So was she born in Dublin?’
‘Yes,’ says Aoife, ‘she grew up in Stoneybatter. But my father was an artist – Dennis Kearney, the painter?’
‘Oh yes. I know that name.’
‘And they spent some time in London and in Paris, too.’
‘Did they?’ Cara never heard about Paris.
‘Quite a life so.’
‘Yes.’
‘A full life so… Stoneybatter. What age is she now?’
‘Nearly eighty-six.’
‘My grandfather grew up in Stoneybatter. They had a lot of bother from the Black and Tans.’
‘I think Mammy missed all that.’
‘Terrible business… yip,’ he says, more a suck of breath than an utterance. ‘Ah dear. The poor old dear.’ And as he sighs again, he takes Grandma’s toe that is sticking out from under the sheets and wiggles it gently.
Cara glances at her cousin. Two little red poppies flower just under Valerie’s eyes. She is biting her lip hard to keep from laughing. Cara smiles at her, and they both begin to giggle like girls.
‘Valerie,’ says Aoife, ‘let’s go down to the canteen for a cup of tea…’
Valerie looks at her mother. A shaft of light cuts across Aunt Aoife’s face, catching the powder-thickened fur along her jaw.
‘Okay,’ says Valerie.
Aunt Sinéad looks up in alarm.
‘I’ll go with you…’
‘I’ll wait for the others then,’ Cara says.
Aunt Aoife ignores her and waves her phone. ‘I’ll text the others,’ she says, ‘and tell them where to find us…’ She picks up her handbag – a designer thing with a stiff handle and a clatter of flaps and zips – puts the phone carefully back in it and takes out her compact again. Just like Grandma, Aunt Aoife over-powders her nose, as though to blot it out of sight.
‘Sometimes,’ says the man, sleeking his tie with both hands, ‘you know they say sometimes that we need to let them go.’ Nobody responds. He sways back and forth on his heels.
63
SHAPELESS ACHE ONLY LIGHT and dark and sounds all a-jumble.
Things reveal themselves slowly, ringing clear like mystery unfolding but they are things she always knew; like Dinny’s dimples, or the comfort of her mother’s heavy housecoat at her cheek. Perching like restless butterflies; real for an instant and in a quiver gone. Her mother. Her mother’s rough reassuring hands. The straight nails.
Yes, that’s them; that’s Mammy’s hands. Dry, cracked hands and soft ones are real things, yes. The fullness of them there but passing now like smells.
A light silvery thimble.
A tadpole once with legs like a beautiful monster and a tin bucket with rust and a special clang.
The cigarette smoke of the woman giving birth in a bed beside, smoking and sweating and smiling as she introduced herself and Molly not afraid then but knowing the joy of the child that was to be delivered back to her from the grief in her own dark and bloody insides.
Yes.
Yes that happened. Yes. The whole moment is here. She has it; a whiff of them, the whole of it here and then not anymore.
The going is a feat impossible for going where and to what.
The stopping.
But it is painful, staying alive here pulling each breath in and letting it siphon out. It is a swollen and numbish thing and everywhere pain and an impossible effort like birth only she is the only one in it. An effort she cannot manage, to hold the things that are not anymore now, to hold here and not to stop but the stopping too is a feat that is heavy and sore and too new and there is nothing to distinguish the edges of herself for the pain is a blurring thing and the real things are passing over; such real and beautiful things without pictures.
Yes.
Yes that’s it. That’s it. That is a real thing the tadpole a real fat-bodied thing alive and real moving legs. Yes. Yes that happened. And the bucket. And the water.
A thimble to protect.
A charm, she can feel it in her mouth, the cool smooth pebble from the beach.
The painless space around her edges. A feeling like needing to vomit but without relief for it is needing to die.
Still more things to do and it is a joyish surprise too, and a disappointment to find with every breath that she has not stopped under the weight of it.
There is a man being pious. She can hear him, foolish. And a sister saying the Rosary, poor dear thing, such soft hands. Dinny must be laughing at them but Molly cannot feel irritation now or anger. Dinny should be kind for they mean well and she should tell him that she doesn’t mind. Let them at it; she doesn’t mind. ‘Let them to their comfort.’ She wants to see Dinny for it has been so long since she has seen his face shaven so beautifully and his smile with dimples and that fine neck but he will understand that it is all this effort just to catch the sounds; that it is too much to look and see. Just to understand and catch the sound of them all here; that is enough. He will understand. And then the girls laughing – such a happy thing their young chuckles, her lovely girls who are good girls after all. Stubborn foolish little things that can stamp their feet and be cruel and jealous but good girls really.
There are others too.
They are telling her all is well.
Go on, Grandma, all is well.
A face by the bed, white fizzing around it and the eyes huge, black, melting down her face and – it couldn’t be, could it? A gold crown and great pink wings rearing up over the shoulders. A clinking, jangling sound. The face comes close, so close to kiss her and it is too much effort.
The little one with the white hair.
The little boy.
Learning things Molly never could, all white and downy lovely little baby did your mammy not feed you? That’s the little one. All is well they are telling her.
Dinny?
She is not making the words, is she?
Dinny?
Is she speaking? Where is he, Dinny?
Oh Dinny, you will mind him, won’t you? For terrible things can happen no matter how beautiful he is, our baby, and no matter how we want him terrible things have happened in the world and can happen again. You will watch him and sieve the soup, Dinny?
Not a job for a man.
She cannot hear him now and she cannot make herself look. A sister with soft hands is murmuring prayers, ‘… blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb…’ Bless the fruit, yes. Kind old thing with soft hands and a trembling behind her voice, a simmering in her for a life not lived, blessing the fruit oh yes yes that’s it. Blessing the fruit for it can be a rotten thing too, needing to be dipped in vinegar and that is the thing to do is bless the fruit if you can. That is the loving thing. Thanks be to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth. Go on, Grandma, everything is okay now. Angel wings but very pink and tinselly a jingling jangling Christmas pony and cart.
Thanks be to God or the thing she knew when she prayed as a girl and felt the great pulse of the world with all the rot there is in it, and all the life that keeps coming on again and again from all the things that are burnt up and die and all the joy that comes again and again in spite of all the breaking, painful things there are, or out of them, like seedlings from the sore earth. All that is there.
The voices around her now in her little deathbed upstairs in her little house, the mothers muttering her on her way with the great love there is in them all, and the great sorrow. Another breath. Up here in her little deathbed. And down below her, down at the muck and the earth and stones and moving water, there are children playing by a stream. Three little girls and one of them only a baby, leaning in on the water like that and calling to her ‘Come and look, Mammy! Come and look!’ Oh her little boy is there too. What is it they are doing there by the water? Leaning too close. He is leaning in too close. They are making things sail – leaves and sticks and twine – and then shrieking with the miracle of weight and space and time as the things they make go spinning and twirling and sinking and bobbing and they are crying to her, ‘Come and look, Mammy, come and look!’ They need her to look, that’s all. They need her to look and see it there and say Oh yes and say Janey Mack and say I see you, I see you my darlings, I see you. There you are.
It is only a case of releasing it. It is only a case of allowing it, of trusting that thing she knew once. The great whoop of the world going on.
64
GRANDMA’S HAND GROWS A fraction heavier. Freya waits for a last breath. She waits with something like dread or excitement or fear. She waits, and she is not sure when she will know it hasn’t come. She puts two fingers to the too-weighty wrist. Jem looks at her as though it is up to her to decide whether it’s true. She winces a nod; yes. It has happened. The silence is terrible.
Full of purpose, full of air and colour and the bustle of the world outside this room, The Lily is at the door.
Startled, Jem moves to the other side of Freya, away from the strange lady with the glossy mane. Freya pulls him onto her lap, but she is not afraid of her mother. She suddenly remembers that she’s still in her fairy princess costume, and she wonders should she feel embarrassed. The Lily just nods at them both, a kind of resignation as she approaches the bed.
‘Hello, Mammy.’
Freya’s voice is stuck. It takes effort to speak. ‘I think…’ but her mother’s face snaps up, a quick silencing glare. In a little-girl voice she says, ‘It’s me, Mammy. It’s Lily. I’ve come…’
She bends and kisses Grandma’s head, then takes a step back: a look of confusion, and then anger, indignation. A little trickle of terror begins in Freya’s back. She hugs Jem, rocks him against her chest. But The Lily doesn’t shriek or reach for her. ‘She was waiting for me. She was waiting for her little Lily.’
Then she stands, looking down at Grandma, her hands dangling forlorn by her sides. Freya has never seen her so silent and still. She has never seen her face so lean.
A low, manly groan; long, steady, insistent; a sound like a night animal, a gravelly drain – it takes Freya a moment to realise it’s coming from Grandma. There is judder in her chest and something yellow foams from her mouth. Freya can’t move. She pulls Jem’s face into her neck and he allows it.
The Lily’s eyes are a little pink. She pulls some paper towelling from a dispenser and cleans up the bile with grim efficiency. Then she kisses Grandma’s forehead, touches her shoulder.
‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘Don’t people look so small when they are dead?’
Acknowledgements
My partner, Seán, has been tirelessly reading and editing this book for years. I can only say thank you – I know it is a better book for your irritating questions, tenacious criticisms, praise, suggestions and scrupulous readership, and for the courage and confidence you give me to go on and on, even during the times when I hate every word.
Thank you, Neil Belton, my publisher and editor, for your patience, encouragement and faith, for taking all my hesitations seriously and indulging my cold-feet moments. Christian Duck, Eleanor Rees, Florence Hare, Jessie Price – thank you for bearing with me and going above-and-beyond in last minute work and rework for this book!
Thank you, Lucy Luck, my agent, for the attention you have given this – not only for your advice, but for your uncompromising insistence on putting the book first and demanding that its needs are met.
About the author
ELSKE RAHILL grew up in Dublin and lives in Burgundy, France, with her partner and four children. She is the author of Between Dog and Wolf and the collection of short stories In White Ink, published by Head of Zeus and The Lilliput Press in 2017.
An Invitation from the Publisher
We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.
We will keep you up to date with our latest books, author blogs, special previews, tempting offers, chances to win signed editions and much more.
Get in touch: [email protected]
www.headofzeus.com
@headofzeus
@HoZ_Books
Head of Zeus Books