by Siobhan Dowd
No curse days could she remember.
In the heat of the evening, she listened to the house. Flies buzzed around the flypaper. The far cries of Jimmy and Trix came in from the back field. The clock on the sill ticked. She wished the old Bridie, knowing and pert, could materialize at her side to whisk away her worries. You're romancing, she imagined Bridie saying. You're no more up the spout than Mother Teresa.
She looked over to the holy calendar on the wall. It was open in May because nobody had remembered to turn the pages since. Our Lady of Lourdes was in the grotto with stars forming a coronet floating over her head, and arms reaching forward, lovingly. Drapes of blue robe spilled from her, around the rocks. St Bernadette was kneeling off to the side, in a peasant dress of green and red. A spring of water bubbled up by her side.
Mam had wanted to go to Lourdes for a cure. Dad had not allowed it.
She leaped up from the chair at the sound of a car pulling up outside. A door slammed. She heard Dad saying, 'Thank you, Father.' She stole a look through the window and saw Father Carroll wave and pull out onto the Coolbar road.
Her father stood on the path a second, dressed in his best suit. He'd unwrapped it some months back from the polythene and put it on for his city trips. The jacket hung open now; the shirt was two days old. He was looking at Trix and Jimmy, running across the top of the back field, heading for the copse, perhaps trying to get away from him. She saw her dad's shoulders sag, his head droop. Father Carroll's car vanished around the turn.
'Shell,' he called. She could tell he wasn't in good humour. But he wasn't drunk either.
She switched on an electric ring to warm the pan.
Nineteen
With Dad back, they'd to get up and do the stones again. The morning was the first of autumn. A dew was on the grass, a smell of vitality in the yard. The cairn was taller than Shell and wider than the length of Trix.
Trix and Jimmy went ahead of her while Shell put the cereal and jam back in the press. She wiped over the plastic cover on the table while her father jangled change in his pocket, impatient.
'Get a move on,' he said.
She rinsed off the crumbs from the sponge.
She pushed the chairs back in under the table.
She opened the window to air the room.
He tutted.
'Dad,' she said, hanging the tea cloth over the back of one of the dining chairs. 'There are no more stones to pick up.'
The room went quiet. She could see his lips pucker, his brows come down.
'We've picked up every last stone in that back field.'
'Check over it, then. Inch by inch.'
'But why, Dad? 'S too late to plough it this year. Unless you've a plan to sell it?'
He blew out through his nose and got up. She saw his palm flatten, as if to strike. He raised it, walked forward, then stopped. She did not move.
His hand dropped back to his side. He breathed out, hard and long. 'Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't. But get out of the house, Shell. Scram.'
She shrugged and left.
When she got out, she saw Trix and Jimmy over by the cairn. Jimmy had his arms up, aeroplane-wise, Trix was hopscotching. Instead of joining them, she tiptoed around to the front of the house and crouched by the window she'd deliberately left open.
She could hear him moving around. A piece of furniture-a chair?-was being dragged across the floor. She brought her eyes up level to the sill and peered through.
It was the armchair he'd moved. He'd brought it forward, so as to clear the space in front of the piano. Then she saw him rummaging under the keyboard. He eased off the panel of wood above the pedals. She'd forgotten it came apart like that. It hadn't been done since well before Mam died, when the piano tuner last called over. She ducked again when Dad stood upright, lifting the panel away. She came up for another peek; he'd rested it by the table and was crouched again by the piano. He retrieved from the inside a bottle of whiskey and a big old tea caddy she hadn't seen in ages and brought them over to the table. He sat down with it, his back to her. She couldn't see what he was doing, but she saw him take little frequent nods of the head, as if he were counting. And she saw him taking a few gulps of whiskey straight from the bottle.
She scooted back around to the back field, half smiling.
Dad. Hunting them out so he could booze in secret at eight in the morning. Dad. A man on the social who didn't dare put his dishonest earnings from charity collecting into a bank account.
Later that day, when he'd gone off out for his Wednesday session, she opened the piano herself after Trix and Jimmy were in bed.
She found the caddy. There were two bottles of whiskey along with it, one half empty. She unscrewed the cap on the open bottle and smelled it. It was like lemon and sugar at once. She remembered Father Rose's bottle of bitter lemon and smiled. Then she opened the caddy. It was chock-a-block with paper money. She counted it.
There was a fortune. Hundreds and hundreds of notes, and no coins at all.
She measured out a small tot of the whiskey and knocked it back. Her stomach turned. The burning fluid nearly came back up her throat. What, she wondered, was the attraction? It didn't taste sweet. It didn't fizz. It was luke-warm then mad-hot. It tasted of burned hay. She coughed and her stomach tossed again. For a second she thought she'd be sick. She quickly put the bottle back in the piano. She wasn't touching that stuff again.
She turned to the caddy. She itched to take the money, or some of it. She imagined herself with Bridie in the lingerie section of Meehans' stores, trying on the wafting gowns and lacy tops and buying them all, instead of having to steal them. Then the two of them were down the amusement arcade over in Castlerock, flinging in coin after coin with oceans of coins spilling out around their feet. Then they were on the boat to England, on the run, with a sea wind in their hair, as free as the wheeling gulls.
She sighed. He'd probably counted it down to the last single note. And Bridie wasn't even talking to her. She put the lid on the caddy again and replaced it. As quietly as she could, she put the piano back together again.
Twenty
The mobile library came to town on a Friday afternoon.
Shell had never used it before, but she'd often noticed it drawn up by the parkland at the head of the pier on her way home from school. She was doing the messages as usual and trudging back to the bus stop when she saw it again. It was a great white van, with green writing on the side and light aluminium steps going up to it.
On a whim she climbed inside.
There was a woman within, sorting around shelves of books. She was hardly larger than Jimmy with short dark hair, and she wore a baggy white boiler suit. She'd a radio playing the latest hit in the background which she was humming along to. It was the beat of another place.
'H'lo,' she said without turning round.
Shell stopped on the top step, not daring to go further.
The librarian peered over her shoulder. She'd a narrow chin and brown eyes, with a crease of laughter around them, a little like Mam's had been. 'Come in and look around, if you want to,' she offered.
'Can I?'
'You can.' She broke out into the words of the pop song and jiggled her hips: 'No need to ask, he's a smooth operator, smooth operator...' She trailed off and shrugged as Shell still lingered at the door. 'I don't bite.'
'I thought you had to be old,' Shell said.
'Old?'
Shell nodded. 'To come in here.'
The librarian smiled. 'Why so?'
'I've only ever seen old folk step in. Grey heads.'
'We have all kinds of heads coming in here. Grey. White. Red. Black. Thick. Hot.'
Shell laughed. 'What's that song they're playing?'
'It's just out in England. It's about a guy who breaks hearts all across America.'
''S not bad.'
'Come on inside,' the librarian urged. 'I'll show you what we've got.'
Shell stepped in. The librarian pointed out picture books, stor
y books, nature books and how things were divided up in sections. One side was fiction, she said, the other non-fiction. 'The only thing we don't do in the van,' she said, 'is poetry. You've to come into the branch for that. D'you like poetry?'
'No,' said Shell. 'Only songs.'
'Songs are poetry, aren't they?'
Shell shrugged. 'Dunno.' She thought of all her mother's old songs about broken hearts and missed chances. 'Coast to coast, LA to Chicago...' went the woman's voice on the radio. 'Some, maybe.'
'Was there anything in particular you were after?'
Shell swallowed. 'No. Nothing.'
'But you'd like a browse?'
Shell nodded.
The librarian smiled. 'You browse away. I'm off down the pier for a quick fag. You can hold the fort for me, can't you?'
Shell nodded again and watched the librarian move away, down the steps and out along the pier. The tide was in. She seemed so dainty against the great bounding blue that Shell wondered how her feet ever reached down to the pedals of the van. The song on the radio died away to be replaced by chatter.
She turned to the books. Through the radio din, she could hear Mam's voice talking in her head. It's a blessing of nature, Shell. She went to the nature section. She'd noticed a book of trees and shrubs. She put her finger out and ran over the titles. Whales and other Sea Mammals...Fungi and Lichens of Our Land...Ireland Goes Wild...Brucellosis: Prevention and Treatment. Then she found something closer. Doyle's A-Z of the Human Body. It was thick and large, too awkward, surely, to drop into her shopping. She looked nervously down the pier. The librarian was at the far end. Her heart pounded. The radio crackled.
She started turning the pages. Illnesses and body parts darted out at her. Ataxia. Carotid artery. Glandular fever. Shingles. Thyroid. She flipped back to the beginning, looking for the contents. Instead, she found herself back in the As. She read a couple of entries. They had nothing to do with her. Her eyes glazed over, and she was reading without knowing what it was she read. Amenorrhoea: An abnormal lack of the menses in women... What the hell did that mean? She slapped it shut, closed her eyes. She breathed out long and hard through her lips. She opened it again at the back index and hunted under 'P'.
The word 'Pregnancy' was there. A long entry. Pages 368-404.
She turned to page 368 and began to read.
She'd just turned to page 369 when she remembered where she was. She darted a quick look down the pier. The librarian was walking back. She'd be here any minute. She withdrew into the back of the van and tried to tear out the pages. They were too tough and too many. Her hands shook. Panicking, she stuffed the book to the bottom of her shopping, flanking it with tins and cartons. She rearranged the books on the shelf to hide the gap the vast tome had left behind. She grabbed another book from nearby and plunged her head into it just as the steps rattled.
'H'lo again,' the librarian said. 'Found anything?'
Shell looked up. Her cheekbones were on fire, her throat hoarse. 'Um,' she said. 'This.' Another song started up on the radio, a shrill man's voice. Shell couldn't make out the words.
'What is it?'
Shell looked at the book herself. An Affectionate History of Pigeon Carriers.
The librarian looked at it, then looked at Shell. She guffawed. 'I'd never've taken you for a pigeon-fancier,' she said, turning off the radio in mid-song.
Shell blinked in the silence. She shrugged her shoulders and put the book back.
'You can have it out, if you want,' the librarian offered.
'I've no ticket.'
'You can join today. All I need is your address and date of birth.'
'I've no time. The ice cream's melting. In the shopping.' There was no ice cream in the shopping, but the librarian wasn't to know. 'I've to get it home.'
'Another time maybe?' the librarian said.
Shell nodded. She picked up the shopping and shuffled out of the door. 'Bye now.' She started down the steps.
'Can I help you with that? You've quite a load there.'
''S fine. I can manage.'
'Bye, then.'
She could feel the librarian's eyes boring into her back as she walked away. 'Hey, there. Before you go.'
She'd only gone a few paces. She froze, then turned. 'What?'
'Pigeons are great. My small cousin Timmy keeps them.'
Shell stared. The librarian nodded. 'When he went over to England last year, he brought his best homing bird with him. In a cage, with the cloth over. A white and grey fellow, swanky out, with a fluffy collar. And when the boat pulls in on the other side, Timmy lets him off. At the harbour in Fishguard. Hundreds of miles away. And d'you know what?'
Shell looked at the librarian's smiling eyes, her heart hammering in her ribs. 'What?'
'When they got back from holiday a week later, guess who was waiting on the eave of their roof?' The librarian nodded even though Shell didn't say anything. 'You guessed right. Your man. That same fluffy-collared homing bird.'
Shell managed a smile.
'D'you want to know the name of that bird of Timmy's?' the librarian asked.
Shell shrugged. 'What?'
'Boomerang.'
Shell managed a polite titter.
'Now, that's what I'd call poetry,' the librarian said.
Twenty-one
Shell lugged the shopping onto the bus. It set her down at the top of the village. The sun shone hard on the red berries on the browning trees and on the parting of her hair. She felt sweat on her back as she walked. Her palms ached from the way the handles on the laden shopping bag dug into them.
She walked through the village in the midday lull. The priests' house had no cars outside it. The dogs from Stack's pub were sunning themselves on the pavement. McGraths' was shut for lunch, with the venetian blind down. She was just about to turn off before the bridge into the fields, when she heard a strange spurting and rumbling from round the bend. It was like a plane in the cinema, when the engine keeps cutting in and out and you know the pilot's in big trouble. She stopped. She knew that sound by now.
Father Rose's purple car jerked over the bridge. The engine failed just as he saw her and the car stopped dead.
He sat with his hands on the wheel, staring down the length of the bonnet, expressionless. The side window was open and she could see his sideburns, fuzzy and rough, and his mouth, closed and tight.
He hadn't said so much as a hello to her in months. The most she got from him these days was a polite, distant nod.
She'd sat through any number of his Masses. But the spark had gone out of them. Something had shifted, gone slack. He read the words in that same even tone but the pictures had evaporated from his sentences. His eyes were fixed, always, on some distant place as he spoke. It wasn't heaven and it wasn't here: it was somewhere in between, a limbo.
She walked towards him. 'Father Rose?' she said. 'Is the car dead?'
He didn't answer, but slowly turned his head to her. 'Hello, Shell,' he said. His lips went up at the corners a fraction. He nodded. 'Not so much dead as resting. The engine's overheated. It will go again soon.'
'She's being bold again, is she? Jezebel?'
He half laughed, half grunted. 'I've a good mind to flog her,' he said. He tapped the steering wheel. 'You've a lot of shopping there, Shell.'
She hugged the bag to herself and felt her cheeks grow hot. It was as if everybody could see through the plastic to the big book that lurked within. 'Only the usual amount,' she muttered.
'I'd give you a lift home-only...' He raised his hands off the steering wheel and flopped them down on it again.
She knew what he meant. It wasn't the resting car. It was as if they could both still hear the echo of Father Carroll's voice whirling around the church sanctuary last Spy Wednesday. We've no cause to be driving around with unaccompanied females, Gabriel.
'Don't worry,' Shell said. 'I can manage fine.'
'S'long then, Shell.'
'S'long, Father.' She turned into the field
.
'And Shell?'
She looked back.
He was looking at her in that old way, the eyes hitting straight into hers like meteorites. She felt as if her sins, Declan, the book, the kissing and everything else were emblazoned on her forehead. She was more naked than she'd ever been in Duggans' field.
She couldn't hold his gaze and shifted her eyes off over his shoulder, biting her lip.
'What?' she managed.
'God bless.'
She nodded. The two simple words went to the heart of her, finding a home deep inside. She flushed, and turned to hide the smile his kindness brought to her face. She nodded at him and walked on up the hill.
Halfway up she heard the choke of his engine, burbling, dying, then starting again. She paused as the sound of his car carried on its way through the village, growing smaller, then dying away in the distance. She put down the bag. God bless. His voice was like smoke rising inside her, curling its way along her limbs, up to her head. She stared up to the copse. The trees were turning. The sun shone quiet and gold on their tops. She sat down on the track. The last grasshoppers sang. A sparrowhawk fluttered motionless overhead. In her mind she was up there with him, floating, looking down from a great height on the mundanities of the world.
Twenty-two
Over the next days, Shell spent many hours in the copse reading Doyle's A-Z of the Human Body. She kept the book in a plastic bag and hid it under some stones at the edge of the cairn. She took it out in the quiet times of day and read it on the fallen log, close to some timber shavings. That way, if anyone came along suddenly, she could plunge it into the shavings as a temporary hiding place. But nobody ever came. She read all the entries she could find to do with having babies. She looked at the pictures of foetuses, bulging in bellies like young salmon-trout. Then they grew noses and eyes and fists and fingers and slouched backwards, like a map of Ireland. She'd look at the pictures and look at her belly. She couldn't believe any such creature was growing inside her. Her belly was tougher than usual, less spongy. But apart from that it wasn't sticking out in the way the pictures made out. She found the entry again on amenorrhoea. She learned that sometimes the curse didn't come for other reasons. That's what I have, she decided. I've a small dose of amenorrhoea.