A Swift Pure Cry

by Siobhan Dowd

  Dad stayed home. Perhaps he'd done with the city and the lipsticked mistress. Shell didn't care. She went into town. She managed to steal a bangle for Trix's wrist from Meehans', then a pair of bright yellow and green football socks for Jimmy. The man serving was only a stone's throw away, chatting to somebody, and she didn't care if she was caught. Finally she stole a sheet of wrapping paper, pale blue with embossed silver angels, blaring trumpets. When she got home, she wrapped up the presents and hid them under her bed. She found the body book there, collecting dust, and the pink dress of Mam's neatly folded. She took the body book out and put it in the rubbish bin. She didn't care any more if anyone found it.

  School ended. The final run-up to Christmas started. Mrs Duggan came home from hospital with a baby boy. He'd a hole in his heart, they said, but he would live. Jimmy and Trix were mad to go and see him, but Shell didn't want to know. On Christmas Eve she gave into their pleadings and let them go. She stayed behind to cook the dinner.

  While they were gone, a knock came at the door. She and Dad had just sat down to eat. Dad humphed, but got up to see who it was.

  He returned to the kitchen with Sergeant Liskard from the garda station in town behind him.

  Shell froze. The socks and bangle. How did they find me out? How?

  The sergeant stood at the window. The tip of his boot drew squiggles on the kitchen floor. He'd a frown on his face.

  'So, Tom. What's new?' Dad said. 'Are you collecting for Christmas, or what is it?'

  ''S not that,' the sergeant said. He sucked in his lips then blew out. 'We've found a baby, Joe.'

  'A baby?'

  The sergeant nodded. 'A baby.'

  Shell stared. Her hand went to her throat without her knowing. She'd been out in the field as usual that morning. The stones were in a ring where they'd been placed. Nothing had been disturbed.

  'A baby?' she whispered.

  The sergeant nodded. 'Over on Goat Island. On the strand.'

  'On the strand?' Shell said.

  'In the cave up there. You know the place?'

  Shell nodded.

  'The baby was left in there.'

  'In the cave?'

  'Mrs Duggan's small lad is doing fine. I've just checked,' the sergeant said.

  They stood in the small kitchen, waiting for what came next. The world dropped away from beneath Shell's feet.

  'A baby,' she repeated.

  'Yes,' the sergeant said. 'And the baby's...dead.'

  The word was a dagger. It hurt so that the tears came. The little fingers and pursed blue lips. The thundering silence of the cry that never came. 'Dead,' she sobbed. 'Dead? '

  ''Fraid so.'

  Dad's hand fastened on her arm. 'Get a grip on yourself, Shell.'

  'I've got no choice, Joe,' the sergeant continued. 'I'm sorry. I'm acting under orders. I'm instructed to bring the two of you in for questioning.'

  Shell looked at Dad. He was looking beyond her, staring at the piano, transfixed, as if somebody or something was coming straight at him. He shook his head and started. 'What's that you said, Tom?'

  'You've to come with me.'

  'Where to?'

  'To the station, Joe, for questioning. I'm sorry.'

  'Right so. I'll get the coats.'

  Shell shook, her knees like jelly. Dead. Dad put a coat around her shoulder. His hand was on the small of her back, propelling her to the door. His thumb and fingers dug in hard. Dead. His voice was in her ear, the syllables spitting fast and hushed.

  'Don't you say anything, Shell, understand? Don't-you-say-a-word.'

  She nodded and couldn't stop nodding. Dead. She was still nodding as Dad led her to the back of the sergeant's car and got in the other side. Her fingers clasped and unclasped each other. She didn't bother to wipe the tears. The Coolbar fields floated away, hedgerows trammelled on either side. She didn't know where they were taking her. The only thing she could hear was the word dead clanging in her brain, over and over like an Angelus bell.

  Thirty-three

  Don't say a word.

  They'd left her in a room, waiting.

  Outside, a naked tree tapped the windowpane. The rain was incessant. Don't you say a word.

  She'd said nothing. The questions had rolled around her ears, loud then soft, like waves. She was underwater. The sound kept breaking up. The woman with the spiky hair had gone away. Before going, she'd spoken, in between passing her the tissues. Whatever it was she'd said, Shell didn't hear. The baby on the strand. The baby in the cave. The baby in the field. Dead, all dead. Don't say anything.

  They'd taken Dad away, to another room.

  She stood up and walked to the window to watch the dancing branches. The chimneys and aerials of Castlerock sprouted below her, dropping down in tiers to a murky sea. She hugged herself, gripping her elbows, thinking of the box lined with cotton wool. She began to sing.

  'Now the holly bears a berry

  As red as any blood...'

  The doctor they'd warned her about interrupted her. He hurried in, breathless, balding on top, with flushed cheeks. He asked her things in rapid fire. She nodded yes or no, or shrugged for 'don't know'. Then he examined her from top to toe.

  He left ten minutes later, saying that was all and nothing more.

  They came to move her to a different room. They took her down an echoing stairwell, along a corridor, through a door, the last on the left. This room was smaller, with peeling yellow paint. The window was frosted over. You couldn't see out.

  The spiky-haired lady came in. She said her name was Sergeant Cochran, and coaxed Shell into a chair on one side of the table, while she sat on the other. There was a third chair beside her, vacant. They waited.

  'You can tell me, Michelle,' she said, breaking the silence. 'You can tell me about it. If you want.'

  Shell looked up. Is it me she's talking to?

  'Yes, Michelle. You can trust me.'

  Don't say a word. Shell tried to speak, but the words were like stones, stuck in her gullet. She shook her head. No good.

  'Silence then?'

  Shell nodded. Silence.

  'It is your right.' The spiky woman smiled. The word 'right' seemed to stay like an upturned card on the table, staring up at the two of them. Minutes passed.

  The door opened. A man came in. He stopped short, hand on handle. She could hear his tongue click against his teeth, tut-tipper-tup.

  'This her?' he drawled. Shell stared. He was looking away to the side as if he'd a squint, or she'd a face too awful to look at. He was grey-suited with a shirt of immaculate white. There was a restlessness to him, as if the room were too small to contain him. His hair was sandy and straight, oiled back. His straggling eyebrows were the only untidy bit of him.

  'Yes, sir,' the woman said, sitting upright. 'This is Michelle. Michelle Talent.'

  'I've just done the father. They're typing his statement up now.'

  Sergeant Cochran nodded. 'She's only sixteen, you know.'

  'And the medical report?'

  'It's been done.'

  'I know that. But was it conclusive?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Good. We're nearly through, so.'

  The woman shrugged.

  He strode into the room and dumped a buff file on the table, right on the place where Shell's imaginary card with the word 'right' had lain. He sat down and pattered his fingertips on the top. 'Grand,' he said. 'Let's get cracking. Tape on.'

  The woman reached up to a shelf and started a recorder. Shell heard the soft hiss as it wound from one spool to another. The man leaned back in his chair and waited. Then he cleared his throat and spoke a time, a date, a place. Then his name, Superintendent Garda Dermot Molloy. He pattered his fingertips again.

  'Your name, now,' he said. 'Can you confirm it? Just for the tape?'

  Shell lifted her gaze to his. His eyes were like razor blades. She looked away, nodded.

  'Can you say that louder?'

  She pulled at the fluff on her old j
umper.

  'Sorry? Didn't catch.'

  His words were in her head, hunting around, prising out her thoughts.

  'I'm Michelle,' she whispered. 'Like you said.'

  'Good.' He got something from his pocket: a packet of cigarettes. He tapped it on the file then opened it.

  'Mind if I smoke, Michelle?'

  She shook her head.

  'Perhaps you'd like one too?' He offered her the packet, jostling the fags around. 'I was younger than you when I started. Molloy's the name, Michelle. Just call me Molloy.'

  She looked at him again. He was smiling. Or at least, the corners of his lips were turned up. The skin around his eyes was hard and flat.

  She shook her head. No. Not from you.

  'You've had a baby, haven't you, Michelle?'

  She started. The word 'baby' seemed odd coming from him, robbed of its small, sweet grace. She swallowed and looked at her lap.

  Molloy tapped the file. 'It's in here. In note form. Your father's told us everything.'

  Dad? Everything? So he's known all along? She thought of him over the past weeks, staring at her, then at the floor, frowning, acting as if in a dream.

  'His statement's being typed up as we speak,' Molloy continued. 'Know what it will be then, Michelle?'

  She shook her head.

  'It will be fact. Provable, undeniable fact.' He lit his cigarette and exhaled, blowing three wavering rings across the table. They hung between them and rose, breaking up as they swelled out. 'Facts are funny things, Michelle,' he mused. 'There's gossip, rumour, suspicion. Then there's fact. Facts are the business we're in here. We're the gardai and we're here to get the facts. If people lie to us-or don't tell us the facts-know what happens?'

  'No,' she whispered.

  'They go to jail, Michelle.'

  'Jail?'

  'Jail. Without fail. Pass me the ashtray, Cochran.'

  The woman reached up to the shelf and brought down a tin ashtray crammed with dog-ends. Molloy tapped away some ash.

  'So, tell me, Michelle. Just say yes. Or nod. You did have a baby, didn't you?'

  Shell nodded. Her eyes filled. She struggled to squeeze the tears back, but they wouldn't go.

  'Miss Talent nods,' Molloy intoned to the tape. 'A babby,' he said, as if trying out the finer possibilities of the word. The Bs collided, rough and harsh. 'A babby that you didn't want. Isn't that so?'

  He might as well have pulled a knife. Didn't. Want. Two stab wounds below her ribs. Shell thought of how she'd wanted amenorrhoea instead. Then of how she'd planned to get the boat over for the abortion. Then of the black plastic bin-liner, the white-grey cord, the gunk, with Jimmy washing it away, so that under it appeared the glass-blue eyes and button nose, the minute hands and veins.

  She shook her head.

  'Miss Talent shakes her head. So you agree: you didn't want it?'

  She shook her head again. She started rocking on her chair. The air in the room pressed on her lungs like lead. The rocking grew harder. The tracery of veins, the smooth, cool scalp, hairless and helpless.

  'Say it, Michelle. Say it. You didn't want it, did you?'

  The smoke was in her face. The words seeped into her skull, mocking her. She rocked, shuddering. The tape spool hissed.

  'All you have to do is say it. Then we'll leave you be.'

  She closed her eyes. She was St Peter at the Tribunal. The cock was about to crow. He was on the verge of denying Jesus. If the cock would only crow before she spoke, she'd pass the trial. The prediction wouldn't come true. SAY IT, SAY IT. Don't say a word, Shell. Molloy's words and Dad's, fighting in close combat. She panted, her hands pressed to her eardrums. It was worse than childbirth.

  'Say it, Miss Talent. You'll feel better for it. They always do.'

  She opened her eyes. The competing voices screamed in her head but she disobeyed them. She spoke. Not the words the man wanted. Her own. The words nearly killed her, breaking her apart, but she said them. 'I loved my baby,' she sobbed. 'I loved her. Loved her.'

  The words crashed about the room, like toppling chairs. She was head down, arms splayed on the table. The file was prised from under her. The tape was turned off.

  Somewhere in another world, a door closed.

  Thirty-four

  Later.

  Molloy and Cochran were talking in whispers.

  She'd been in the field by the ring of stones. Now she was back in the room with the window of frosted glass. She could hear rain gusting against it and the man and woman by the door, muttering. She did not raise her head from the table. They didn't realize she could hear.

  She listened.

  'She's confused, sir.'

  'No. I think I know her game, Cochran.'

  'What?'

  'She wanted a girl. That's what she wanted.'

  'You mean--?'

  'She's in denial. It came out a boy and she couldn't face it.'

  'But--'

  'So she kills it. I knew it. All along.' Molloy's voice, low, staccato.

  'Knew what, sir?'

  'That she's the one. The father's lying.'

  'Lying?'

  'Lying to protect her. I can always tell.'

  It's me they're talking about.

  Shell raised her head. The man and woman looked up towards her.

  'Michelle,' the woman said. 'Can I get you something? A cup of tea? Water?'

  'No,' she said.

  'Do you want to see your father?'

  'No.' Her voice sounded loud in the tiny room. The last person she wanted to see was Dad. 'No,' she repeated, softer. 'I'm all right.'

  'Good.'

  'I want to make a statement.' She nodded towards the woman.

  'You do?'

  'Yes. I want to make a statement to you.'

  The man's nostrils twitched; his lips flickered from Shell to the woman. He looked at his watch. 'I'll give you twenty minutes. I want this wrapped up by the day's end.'

  He left the room, closing the door behind him.

  'Are you sure you're ready to talk, Michelle?' Sergeant Cochran said.

  'Yes.'

  'Will it be the truth?'

  Shell nodded. 'The truth.'

  Sergeant Cochran put the tape back on. She stated the names, the dates and the times.

  The ghost-hiss filled the room.

  The wind chased itself around the outer walls.

  Shell began to speak.

  She started with the body book, how she'd stolen it from the mobile library. The sentences came, one after another, as if she were reading a script that she'd learned by heart. The words were dull and quiet, with no gloss to them. It might have been another time, another place, another person: somebody else's story. She only cried when she got to the bit about Jimmy cutting the grey-white cord. She remembered now what the body book had said: you were supposed to clamp it in two places and cut it in between. Jimmy hadn't done that. She'd forgotten to tell him. Is that what went wrong? Is that why the baby died? Or was she dead already? She finished with the ring of stones in the back field.

  Sergeant Cochran didn't interrupt. After Shell stopped, the ghost-hiss came back into the room along with the moans of the wind.

  'I've just a couple more questions, Michelle,' Sergeant Cochran said after a spell. 'Can you answer them, do you think?'

  Shell nodded.

  'Where was your father in all this?'

  'He was in Cork. As far as I know.'

  'In Cork?'

  'He goes in during the week to do the collections.'

  'Collections?'

  'For charity.'

  'I see.' The woman looked nonplussed. She didn't see. 'You mean he wasn't there?'

  'No, miss. He wasn't there. I didn't tell him. It was just me, Jimmy and Trix. The three of us.'

  'And you buried the baby in the field?'

  'Yes. In the middle of the field. The field behind the house.'

  'So how did it end up in the cave, Shell? The cave down on Goat Island?'

&
nbsp; Shell looked up. 'The cave?' she said.

  'That's right. You said you knew the place?'

  Shell nodded. Haggerty's Hellhole. The Abattoir. She shivered. We'd tie them up and leave them there to the mercy of the waves.

  'How did it get there? Did you put it there?'

  'No. As far as I know, the baby's still in the field. Unless--'

  'Unless what?'

  Shell's voice dropped. 'Unless somebody dug it up. And put the stones back. And the earth. Just as they were.' She felt the table lurching, the knots in the wooden surface swinging around. She shut her eyes and swallowed. But who would want to do that? She shook her head and opened her eyes. Not Jimmy. Not Trix. No.

  'So that's your story?'

  Shell nodded.

  'One last question, Michelle.' The woman clasped her hands on the table and leaned forward. 'Who was the baby's father?'

  A vice closed on Shell's throat. Declan was drinking in the night bars of Manhattan. He was chasing the break of day down with the pints. You're in a class of your own, Shell, he said, his eyes laughing. The barley stalk went swish-swish over her belly, then he was face-down in a cowpat. Sergeant Cochran was waiting. It was none of her business.

  'Nobody,' she replied.

  'Nobody?'

  Shell shook her head.

  'That's not possible, Shell. There are no virgin births these days. Not so far as I'm aware.'

  'Nobody important, so.'

  'Is that all you've to say?'

  Shell nodded. 'Yes.'

  Sergeant Cochran sighed. She switched off the tape. She sat back, casting her hand over the machine. 'Is this the truth, Michelle?'

  'The truth?' Shell smiled, remembering one of Mam's songs from the carol book: