by Siobhan Dowd
A chat with Mrs Duggan a week later almost convinced her. She'd come to pick up Trix and Jimmy of a Saturday, after they'd been to play. Mrs Duggan was slumped in a chair, her feet on a stool. She told Shell to sit down by her.
'I'm not a well woman, Shell,' she said. 'Trix and Jimmy are getting too much for me these days.'
'I'm sorry, Mrs Duggan. What's wrong with you?'
Mrs Duggan gave a strange smile that was not a smile. 'I'm expecting again. A baby. That's why I'm so tired and sick. Usually a woman gets sick in the first ten weeks or so. Then it goes. But I'm much more far gone, and still as sick as ever.' She grimaced and shuffled on her seat.
'You're pregnant, Mrs Duggan?'
She nodded. 'For my sins. I am.' She sighed.
They sat in silence. Shell looked around the kitchen. It wasn't as clean as usual, and Shell realized there'd been no home-made tarts made in ages. Then she looked at Mrs Duggan's belly and realized it was vast. Why had she not noticed before?
'Dr Fallon's told me to rest up to keep the blood pressure down, Shell. I've to ask you not to bring Trix and Jimmy over for now. They're too much on top of my two. Just at present.'
Shell nodded. 'They're terrible for the fighting,' she suggested.
Mrs Duggan gave a limp smile. Her eyes shut, as if she might nod off.
'Mrs Duggan?' Shell asked. 'Can I ask you something?'
'What, Shell?'
'When you're expecting. How can you tell?'
'Don't they teach you biology at school these days?'
Shell shrugged. 'Sort of.'
'I'll tell you how I know, Shell. Every time, without fail, within days, I go right off smoked salmon. Usually it's my favourite treat. We have it Christmas and Easter, or with guests. Jack gets it oak-smoked, from the fisheries the other side of town. But when I'm expecting, the mere thought of the shrivelled pink flesh makes my palms sweat. The smell makes me gag.' She laughed, and tousled Shell's hair. 'It's a sure-fire test. Put a scrap of smoked salmon under my nose and I'll know right off.'
She shut her eyes again, smiling.
Shell stood up. 'Bye now, Mrs Duggan,' she said.
'Bye, Shell. Sorry about Trix and Jimmy.'
'Never worry, Mrs Duggan. They're back to school tomorrow, anyhow.'
She put Mrs Duggan's theory to the test the next day after leaving Trix and Jimmy off at school. She'd stolen some coins from her dad's spare pants and headed into town, where she bought the smallest packet of smoked salmon she could find. She cut open the packet as soon as she got home and smelled it. Then she lay a pink ribbon on a cut of bread and butter and munched on it.
She cut another slice and munched on some more. Then some more until the whole pack was gone. She'd never enjoyed a snack so much.
She threw away the wrapping at the bottom of the rubbish and washed her hands so nobody would smell it off her. Then she sat back on her dad's armchair and breathed out long and hard. She heard Bridie laughing in her head: Told you so. You're no more pregnant than Mother Teresa. She saw the calendar, stuck still on May, and got up and turned the pages four months on to September. There was a picture of Jesus on the mountain, feeding the masses with the loaves and fishes. She rehung it and sat back with a smile, hugging herself. The thin needle of fear threaded its way deep into the back of her thoughts again, like an earthworm disappearing into the soil.
Twenty-three
The next day was Thursday. She'd been due back at school for the autumn term two days ago, but instead she mitched off again to meet Declan at the top of Duggans' field. A shock awaited her. The barley had been cut. The field was empty and open, exposed to view all round. Of Declan there was no sign.
She sat by the edge of the copse and waited. A half-hour passed. She picked a Michaelmas daisy and pulled out its petals. She scratched her kneecaps with the long grass ends. She wished she'd brought her body book to while away the time. Just as she thought he wasn't coming, she heard a car hooting from the road. She ran back over the back field to the gate. Declan was inside his dad's new French hatchback.
'Hop in, my lady,' he said, flourishing an arm.
She stared. 'Didn't know you drove,' she said.
'I've the provisional licence this past month,' he said. 'I've been out in it loads of times.'
'Your dad-does he know?'
'Hop in, or I'll drive off without you.' He reached over and opened the passenger door.
She grinned and got in. The seats were of soft grey cloth, the bonnet gleamed navy. It was as pristine and clean as Father Rose's had been jumbled and jaded. Declan pressed a switch to lower the windows and zoomed off. The wind whipped up her hair and coursed past her face. She scrunched up her eyes into the sun. She felt his hand squeeze the top of her knee. Her heart surged. They shot round the bends as if their lives depended on it.
He drove the back roads to Goat Island, the rocky peninsula where sheep grazed. He went down a narrow track to its hidden beach: a strip of colourful shingle, giving way in the middle to fine, pale sand. At the far end, boulders sprawled, fronting a tumbledown cliff.
The cocklers had been and gone. The schools were back. The place was deserted.
'Fancy a dip?' Declan said, changing where he sat. He'd his pants off already.
'Not me,' said Shell. ''S cold.'
'Go on. Just 'cos it's September, doesn't mean it's frozen.'
Shell shivered. 'I've no costume.'
'Go in starkers, then. There's nobody about.'
'I'll put my toe in.'
Declan laughed. He clouted her with his T-shirt, and ran straight from the car to the surf. She watched him striding in through the shallows, going 'Hoo-ha-ha-hoo' as the breakers slapped up against him. She clapped as he took a nose-dive.
Suddenly something flip-flopped inside her. Like a leaf falling from a tree. Or a guitar chord hovering after it's been strummed. She grabbed her belly.
What the hell was that?
Declan's head bobbed up. 'C'm in, Shell. It's gorgeous.'
She couldn't breathe. Something was twitching under her hands. God Almighty. What's happening?
She tore off her clothes and ran down to the sea, naked. She screamed as the cold water banged up against her and plunged headlong into a wave.
Her scalp stung. Her jaw was like ice. She could feel nothing.
Declan had her by the ankles and was dragging her in further. She splashed her arms as hard as she could. Anything so as not to think. The numbness spread from head to toe.
They had a seaweed fight. Then a game of Float-the-waves. But soon they got cold. They came out and dried off on Declan's towel. Shell shivered back into her clothes. They walked over to the cliff and crawled into a cave through a crack only the locals knew of. Haggerty's Hellhole, it was called. He pinched her behind as she led the way on all fours. She yelped.
'You're like a ewe on heat,' he said.
'You're like a bull with its horns stuck, Declan.'
'Stuck where?'
'Dunno. In a gate. No, a thornbush.'
He pinched her again.
There were four lager tins and cigarette butts left from the last occupants.
'Haven't been here in years,' she said, standing up in the silent dimness. 'I remember Mam showing it to me when I was little.'
'We boys used to bring victims in here for torturing,' Declan recalled. 'Girls. D'you remember?'
'No. You never caught me. I was always too fast for you.'
'You still are.'
'Give over. You're the fast one.' She shivered. 'What did you do to them when you got them in here? The girls you did catch?'
'Not much. We tied them up and left them to the mercy of the waves. We called it "the Abattoir".'
'The Abattoir? What's that?'
'You know. A butcher's place. Where they slaughter the animals.'
Shell's stomach heaved at the thought of dead meat hanging from hooks. 'Ugh.'
'Now it's where all the girls go to fornicate. Didn't you know?'
Shell shook her head. Did you take Bridie here, so? she couldn't help wondering. She pushed away the stray thought and peered around. 'Ugh. It's smaller than I remember. Colder. Mam said it was beautiful. A place the wind and water made over a thousand years or more. She'd sing her songs in here.'
Shell sat down. Seaweed squelched, the black pockets popping under her. She folded her arms around her knees and began to sing the one her mam'd liked, about the blacksmith who writes a letter and makes a promise, then marries someone else. The notes flew around the walls, colliding with each other in lovely clashes.
Midway through the third verse, Declan stopped her, kissing her hard on the mouth.
Before she could say a word, he was at it again, going for broke, flat out, his head down under her chin. She shut her eyes tight, the notes of the rest of her song still fizzing in her ears. Then she was back in the laundromat, where she'd taken the clothes earlier. She was watching them sloshing back and forth, jumping and flopping in the foam. Next, she was the sparrowhawk, beating its wings high above the field, poised in the blue soup of sky. As it plunged down, it turned into the fluffy-collared homing bird, flying across the Irish Sea, darting in and out of the spray in the wake of a returning ferry. Anything not to think about the strange twitching she'd felt inside her on the strand. I was imagining it. The sea mumbled outside, distant, uneasy. A drop of water from the ceiling kept kataplunking on a shelf of rock above her ear. A yawning nothingness seeped into her. She opened her eyes.
Declan's curls were pressed in below her shoulder, and beyond were the ridges of the encrusted wall. Mam, why did you have to go and die? Muffled and mysterious, she heard a toll of a far-off bell. The Coolbar church, ringing out the midday Angelus. One, two, three. Pray for us, o Holy Mother of God. What would Dad say if he saw her now? The bell sounds rolled away with the wind and drifted back again. Six, seven, eight. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. She remembered Mam's record player, its needle bouncing across the black ridges of the old LPs, crackling with the golden voice of John McCormack, Ireland's legendary tenor. 'Will ye bury me on the mountain, with my face to God's rising sun.' Eleven, twelve. A sudden heart-catching climax, the swift pure cry, her mam singing along, soaring to the high note, peeling the spuds, hand-washing the woollens, turning to smile at Shell as she wiped her hands.
Declan's knuckle dug into her back. The record player and records had all gone. Dad sold them soon after she'd died. 'Hoo-ha-ha-hoo,' Declan yelped, as if another sharp wave had slapped up against him. He rolled off her, panting softly.
She didn't move.
'Pass me a fag, Shell,' he said after a while.
She passed one over and waited as he lit and smoked it. He offered her a drag, but she'd gone off them. He squeezed her wet hair as he puffed.
'Know what, Shell?' he said, more to the cave ceiling than to her.
'What?'
'This cave. Haggerty's Hellhole. It really is a hellhole. Like the whole of Ireland.'
'Is it?'
'It is. The Black Hole of Calcutta's nothing to it. A load of shite. Only worse.' He stubbed out the fag, then lit another. 'All Ireland's a black hole. A great big bloody black hole. D'you wanna hear my latest poem?' Before she could reply, he started:
'Put Munster in the dumpster
Feed Connaught to the dog
Tie Leinster up in Limericks
And flush it down the bog.'
He spat out the words at the walls, so they rebounded back on themselves. 'What d'you think?'
''S not bad. What about Ulster?'
'Ulster's an ulcer, of course. Perforated. 'S not part of Ireland, thanks be to God. The Brits are welcome.'
Shell giggled. 'They'd shoot you in Derry, Declan, for saying that.'
'More fool them.'
'As Ireland goes, Coolbar's not bad,' Shell suggested, thinking of the copse, the fold of slope, the wild things all around.
'Coolbar's pathetic. The worst of the lot. My family moved in twenty years ago from the other side of Castlerock, but as far as the neighbours are concerned we're still blow-ins.'
On the phrase 'blow-ins' an eerie gust of wind hissed through the cave, making her shiver. 'Let's get out of here,' she said.
Declan nodded. 'OK.'
They scrambled into their clothes. It was a relief to get back out onto the beach. The sun had gone in, the waves were closer to the shore. She looked out to sea and sniffed the air. A sheep baa-ed behind her. She turned and spotted it, caught halfway up the cliff on an outcrop of rock. How had it ever got there? She imagined it stranded for all time or jumping off in desperation to the rocks below.
'C'mon,' Declan said, pulling her by the arm.
He drove her back as far as the cross above the village, saying little. She sang the rest of the blacksmith song as they passed over the rough country roads, but his eyes stayed on the road ahead, staring at the tarmac broken into two halves by grass growing up the middle.
'You'd best get out now,' he said, stopping.
She nodded. 'OK. Bye then, Declan.' She opened the door and started to climb out.
'Bye, Shell.' He caught her wrist. 'Shell--' he said.
'What?'
He wriggled his hand round so that they were palm to palm. Then his fingers interlocked with hers.
Shell's heart missed a beat. He'd never done that before.
'What?' she said, smiling.
'You're--' He stopped.
She waited.
She felt him squeeze her hand.
'What?'
'You're top of the class,' he said.
Shell thought of her dismal marks at school, her failed examinations. She grinned. 'Don't be daft,' she said. 'You're the one with all the points.' Everyone knew Declan had got enough points in the Leaving Cert. to go to college twice over. He'd won a place to study the law at university, but he'd said he wasn't going, whatever his family wanted. Shell didn't understand his objection. She thought he'd make a good lawyer with his quick tongue and eye for the main chance.
'OK. You're not top of the class. You're...' He considered. 'You're in a class of your own.'
She smiled. He still had her gripped by the hand. She leaned back into the car and pecked him on the cheek.
'Tarala,' she said.
'Toodletits,' he said.
'See you Thursday?'
He looked away from her and through the windscreen, withdrawing his hand. His lips flattened.
'Thursday, is it? Declan?'
He started the engine. 'S'pose. P'raps.'
'In the field? Or down Goat Island?'
'Dunno.' He let down the handbrake. 'Wherever.' The car rolled forward. 'Over the hills and far away, Shell.'
'Bye so. Till then.'
He nodded, then shrugged. He pulled out and drove on. She saw him look in the rear-view mirror as he started down the hill, into the fold of slope. He waved. 'S'long, Shell. Au revoir,' he called back through the open window. The words hung in the hedges after him, then burst like bubbles as the navy hatchback glittered one last time and vanished round a bend. The last she saw of him was his dark curly-top, slightly off to one side, like a pigeon considering its next move.
She shook her head and smiled. As daft as two left feet. Another movement, a murmur, fluttered inside her: like a moth this time, stirring out of its chrysalis, soft and hesitant. She grabbed herself, staring blindly down the empty road.
She knew then.
Doyle's A-Z or no. Amenorrhoea it was not.
She'd a baby growing inside her.
She turned off and went up the hill, passing into the back field without knowing where she trod. One foot after the other, she went around like a robot for the rest of the day. Her brain turned inward, onto the thing moving around in her middle.
The following evening, Jimmy brought home news from the younger Ronan boy, Seamus, who was in his class at school. Mr and Mrs Ronan were hopping mad. They'd got up that morning to find a note scrawled from Declan o
n the kitchen table. He was off to America, he said, leaving his family and college place behind him. His friend Jerry Conlan had a job lined up in Manhattan, he said, where he could earn a hundred dollars a day straight off, so no one was to worry about him. In the PS he'd written a final rhyme:
Back soon-
When it snows in June.
Twenty-four
On Monday she went back to school in her winter uniform. The pleated skirt was tight, where last spring it had been baggy. Her shirt fitted, but only because it had been two sizes too big before. She fastened the top half of her cardigan buttons and left the bottom ones undone. She'd a notion it made her skinnier like that.
Out on the playground nobody came over to her. Bridie Quinn was nowhere to be seen. Declan was thousands of miles away.
She sat behind the hut. She shut her eyes, to see where her mind would take her. Declan, walking up to her through the early ground mist on Duggans' field. Father Rose, making a bridge for her with his arm, saying 'There but for the grace of God, Shell...'
'Shell.' She looked up. It was Theresa Sheehy, the girl Bridie had gone off with last term.
'What is it?'
'You've got fat.'
'Have not.'
'Have too. A stone at least.'
'Well. So what?'
'You should go on the banana diet. 'S great. You lose five pounds in five days.'
'What do you eat?'
'Bananas.'