She didn’t know why she did it but she found herself responding to his kiss, even though her stomach churned as though she had eaten something revolting like half cooked onions or the slimy fat on a piece of beef floating in an insipid Irish stew. Her heart and stomach wanted to push him away but something stopped her, even though she knew that what she was doing was wrong, very wrong and that the consequences of not acting now could be serious.
She looked again at Peter and swallowed and said nothing. Her heart burnt with the desire to explain. It thumped wildly. Maybe it was a different kind of a mistake compared to going out with Cedric the one that she was going to make now – but it was definitely a mistake not to be honest with Peter. She ached to hold his hand and tell him everything, yet she stayed still and silent. If she told Peter, she knew that would take away this nausea which churned within. She wanted to tell him that last night when Cedric drove her home after work, he had kissed her again. She wanted to explain to him that she felt drugged, incapable of resisting whatever he would do. She had let him continue kissing and caressing her even though her soul quivered in her body and pleaded for her do something. Instead of pushing Cedric away, she had gone even limper in his arms. Then she had noticed a curious sensation that her body responded to his kiss, not her soul. Her body had enjoyed it, some primal urge that was not hers had stirred within her, urging her to procreate. An instinct stronger than the gentle beat of her heart, or the quivering whisper of her soul.
Jenny sighed and rolled a cherry around the plate with her fingers. Why couldn’t she tell Peter? If she said nothing, maybe after Wednesday when she returned to nursing, she could imagine that what had happened with Cedric had never happened at all. She could return to a state of innocence. She would never need to see him again – never need to think about him again.
“That’s the first time that I’ve seen you look serious.” Peter stared into Jenny’s green eyes which looked back at him with a glazed stare. “Are you OK?” He waved a hand in front of her eyes.
Jenny laughed and pointed to the counter. “More coffee please with lots of milk and one of those German biscuits you recommended.”
“What a good idea.” Peter removed his parka jacket and hung it on the back of the wooden chair. “We’re not in any rush.”
“No we’re definitely not.” Jenny removed her navy coat and also hung it on the back of her chair.
chapter 10
Sunday 9th January 1972
Eileen sang ‘I’ll Tell Me Ma’ as she cleaned the kitchen after Sunday lunch. She looked forward to sitting down and watching Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour a little later in ‘The Road to Bali’. Now she was enjoying the peace and quiet with time to tidy up and to think back to yesterday. Peter was out with his rugby friends taking a train to Bangor. Cedric was having lunch with Jenny somewhere along the Coast Road. He had mentioned going to Carrickfergus. She was glad about Jenny appearing into his life. She could already see the seeds of change sprouting in him. He seemed less sour, opinionated, and arrogant. He normally scowled over breakfast and argued with Peter but this morning, he had wrapped a present for Jenny and ignored Peter rather than start his normal aggressive banter. It was good to see him thinking of someone else, turning away from self-obsession to explore Jenny’s world.
William had taken Bouncer to the Vet for an emergency check-up – even though Eileen thought that Bouncer had recovered remarkably well from his ordeal on Wednesday. William, however, insisted that he was a little quiet and was demonstrating new concerning behaviours. It was true that he had untypically peed on the sitting room carpet rather than miaowing to be allowed outside. He had started to howl, long soulful cries which he repeated all night for no apparent reason. He had taken to hiding behind the sofa when anyone walked into the sitting room. Eileen didn’t consider any of these behaviours to warrant the category of ‘emergency’ and the need for a visit to the vet on a Sunday. But she thought, if it put William’s mind at ease, better to do that than a visit to the Black Beetle.
Eileen remembered with a thrill of pleasure that she and Lily had both sold their paintings. Not only had red dots being placed on both paintings to indicate that they were not available for other hopeful buyers, but they had even received the money – twenty five pounds each. She would have been quite happy to give the painting away for free but it was exciting to sell your first painting. It felt like a stranger looking into her soul, liking what he saw and paying her to reveal a little more. There were many more paintings where that one had come from and so she felt the future full of possibilities for her art.
“I think Van Gogh only sold one painting in his life. He sold it to his brother who bought it because he knew he had no money.” She joked with Peter the night before.
“You’ve a whole lot more upstairs in the attic. You may get them out and shake the dust off them, apart from that scary one which I would leave well hidden.” Peter shook a finger to emphasise “Don’t do it.”
“Which is the scary one?” Eileen laughed.
“The one with the woman holding the baby with that Devil looking over her shoulder. She looks terrified about what is going to happen next.”
“That’s a painting of me holding Cedric when he was a baby.” Eileen playfully hit Peter over the head.
“Who or what is the big black shadow on your right then?” Peter raised his hands in the air.
“I painted what I painted and only afterwards saw this shadowy shape. It could be a ‘Protector’. I wouldn’t deliberately paint someone evil.” Eileen went quiet.
“I’m telling you, it looks as though you are protecting the baby from the Evil One.” Peter yawned.
“Stop it.” Eileen twiddled with her hair, sighed deeply and sipped on her tea.
After cleaning the kitchen floor and washing the windows first with vinegar in water and then polishing them with Saturday’s newspaper, Eileen enthusiastically took a step ladder up to the attic, to select paintings which might sell in the next exhibition. She thought about how she could paint over the ones she didn’t like and create a more textured looked like Lily did with her oils.
She found the step ladder and struggled up the stairs to the landing. Leaning the step ladder against the flowery iris wallpaper, she slowly climbed the wooden rungs until it was possible with both hands to slip the cover to one side allowing access into the attic. She took another two steps up the ladder and then grabbed the two wooden handles which Cedric had made on the inside to allow for easier access to the storage space. She pulled herself forward, awkwardly raised one knee and with another pull she was there, kneeling for the first time in the attic. The only people who had been in the attic before were William and Cedric. Peter and Eileen were ordered to leave any items which they wanted to be stored in the attic, on the landing. William and Cedric made sure that they were removed from sight within hours.
Eileen reached forward to lean on the arm of a sofa which sat on the right, covered with a white cotton cloth. It was difficult to see what else was there. She should have brought a torch. She looked down at her legs – her tights had two long ladders stretching from the knee and whizzing down as she looked towards the toes of her shoes. She should have worn trousers. It was starting to look like an ill thought out plan. She remembered that Cedric and William used to shout at each other to stand on the wooden beams and not the plaster floor. She edged forward, sliding her right foot along a beam followed by her left foot. She could make out the shape of the paintings at the very back of the roof space but it was clear that there was no way that she could lift them all the way back and balance on the beams. There was even less likelihood that she could get them down the step ladder. She would need Cedric or William to help.
However, now that she had made the effort to get into the attic, she was curious to investigate what was there. There was an old dresser to her left. Didn’t that belong to William’s mother? Even with the little light which entered from the landing, she could see dark go
lden wood, streaked and circled with black. There were four drawers each with amazingly bright brass handles. Who had been polishing them? Didn’t William or Cedric have better ways to spend an afternoon than polishing the handles of a dresser which never would see the light of day?
It was easy enough to step across the beams, holding onto the roof to balance, it was like sliding across rocks in a river to navigate a gentle current swirling around her feet. It took only four steps before she could rest her hands on top of the dresser. She opened the first drawer holding both handles. It stuck on the runners. So she had to close it again and then even more gently tug it open. She looked in. It was empty. She put her hand in and felt towards the back of the drawer. There was nothing. She slid it shut and this time it didn’t catch and clunked close.
She moved to the second drawer which opened easily. Almost too easily, or perhaps she had pulled too strongly. It nearly landed on the floor but she caught it before it left the runners and eased it slightly back. She coughed, noticing that her movements were stirring up a small cloud of dust. She bent to peer into the drawer. It wasn’t empty. There was a rectangular shape about a foot long by six inches side and six inches deep, covered with a white silk cloth. It was definitely silk. Eileen felt the smoothness of it slip between her fingers. Was it one of her scarves? She pulled it free from what she could now see was a wooden box. It was one of her scarves – a white silk headscarf which she thought she had lost years ago. Her mother had bought it for her in the year before she died. Eileen had looked for it when she moved after marrying William and couldn’t find it anywhere. She brought it to her nose and smelt it, pressing it against her face. Her mother’s hands had touched it. She had never washed it – she couldn’t wash it – it would have been like washing away the scent of her mother. She breathed in and tried to remember the smell of her mother. Maybe she only imagined it but it seemed as though she could smell a floral sweetness, a musky warmth that was her mother’s smell.
Still holding the scarf in her hand, she lifted the wooden box. It had two brass hinges on the back which were also shining and a brass metal clasp on the front which she pulled to one side, opening the box. By now her eyes were accustomed to the darkness and so she could see the contents. They were rings – what seemed to be mostly wedding rings tagged with a fine piece of white cotton thread and a small white label the size of a fingernail. She lifted one out – it had the name – only a first name in tiny letters – James, September 1941. Eileen counted the rings on the palm of her hand. There were fourteen in total – three with dates in the 1940s, four with dates in the 1950s, four in the 1960s and one in the 1970s – January 1972 with the name Michael.
Eileen dropped Michael’s ring back into the box with the others. They made a dull thud rather than a tinkle as they hit the red velvet lining the bottom of the box. She slammed it shut, fastened the catch, wrapped the box up again in the white silk scarf and pushed the drawer closed with unnecessary force. She turned back towards the light which was shining upwards from the landing. The way back seemed more difficult. She felt dizzy and wobbled on the beams. Her hands no longer felt that the roof above supported her, neither did the beams below. She knew that she must not, at all costs fall. She needed to avoid putting her foot through the ceiling.
Eileen descended the wooden ladder, gripping the sides and then sat on the landing floor with her head in her hands. A few miles away in Ardoyne, Ciaran McCann sat beside the open coffin of Clara who was to be buried the next day. Party-like noise drifted in from the kitchen where Conor and Frances were eating ham sandwiches made for them by their Aunt Mary. Ciaran listened to Conor laughing. There was a sense of reality in Conor’s laughter – an awareness that life would continue without Clara. This gave him a sense of comfort. There was still hope for Conor and Frances. Maybe there would be more hope for them if he was out of the way. Not for the first time in his life Ciaran wished that he had never been born. He felt like a pinball hurtling through life with someone else pulling the lever, bashing him against unpredictable circumstances, hurtling him to meet unexpected situations, propelled at speed into the next encounter.
He heard a guitar playing ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’ accompanied by a tin whistle. He smiled to himself – it had to be Sean and Danny. There was more laughter from Conor. He heard voices joining in singing the words. It could have been Clara’s birthday party rather than her wake. The notes from the tin whistle silenced his thoughts for a few seconds. He looked again at Clara in her coffin. She wore her school uniform – a white blouse, blue and yellow striped tie, a pleated navy skirt and a blazer. He pulled his chair closer to the coffin and touched her forehead. It was cold, hard, and waxy like an uncooked potato. Her eyes were closed and the undertaker had rubbed tan make up on her face and light pink lipstick on her lips. Clara had never worn make up before. Her face wasn’t recognisable to him – not in the way he wanted it to be. He could see her features – her straight nose, fine arched eyebrows, long blonde eyelashes, lips all of these were in the correct places like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. There was a small rogue black hair growing above her upper lip which he remembered wanting to remove with tweezers but didn’t say to Clara. It should have been her mother Dana who would say that kind of thing but she had left them five years ago. She had run away with a married policeman and was living somewhere in the North of England. In that moment the one small black hair symbolised everything that was Clara – everything that made her different. For Ciaran the reality of Clara had become this one small curved black hair above her lip, only half an inch long.
He had wanted Clara to look beautiful in death so that people would say that she looked as if she had gone straight to Heaven. She didn’t look beautiful in the coffin. Her blonde hair fell back on the white satin pillow like a wig. Her face was pulled in like an old woman sucking in her cheeks. Her lips were held in a straight line never to curve again into a smile. The bullet wound was lower down in her chest hidden by the white blouse. He imagined how it would be, probably the size of a coin in the centre of her chest with bruising all around it in circles like Saturn.
He could hear Frances now singing to Sean on the guitar in the room next door. She sang a ‘Song for Ireland’:
“Living on your western shore, saw summer sunsets, asked for more. I stood by your Atlantic Sea and sang a song for Ireland.”
Her voice was strong and gentle. It filled the room with an ephemeral softness. Frances’s voice strengthened with the last verse.
“Dreaming in the night
I saw a land where no man had to fight,
Walking in your dawn,
I saw you crying in the morning light,
Lying where the falcons fly,
They twist and turn all in your air blue sky.
I stood by your Atlantic Sea and sang a song for Ireland.”
Ciaran held Clara’s hand and wished that he would hear three loud knocks at the front door and that he would be bundled into a Saracen tank, pretending to struggle on the way down the hallway but really wanting to be taken away, interned in H-Block as so as he wouldn’t have to look into the eyes of Conor and Frances when they discovered who killed their sister. They would discover eventually.
As Frances finished her song, there were three gentle knocks at the front door. Ciaran dropped Clara’s hand, wondering if he had created this reality. Like King Midas whose touch turned everything to gold, maybe Ciaran had made this real by thinking about it. The army had come for him and he was ready to go. His time had come. The kids would be better off without him. He had filled their heads with a pack of lies. His sister Mary had more sense. She would make sure that they were well taken care of.
Sean tapped gently on the door of the bedroom. “Tom Martin has called to have a few words with you. Are you OK to see him?”
chapter 11
Monday 10th January 1972
Rose didn’t go to school on Monday. The night before, Tom had asked if she wanted to go to Clara’s funeral
and she shook her head. He looked at her in a mystified way but didn’t pursue the matter. He removed his glasses and wiped them clean with his cotton handkerchief in the way he did when he was confused. Lily held Rose’s face within her hands and gave her a big kiss.
“You don’t need to go to the funeral. Try to get a good night’s sleep.”
Rose held Lily tight, squeezing her, pressing her cheek against Lily’s soft skin. She kissed her before letting her go and giving Tom a kiss, feeling his stubble against her lips. Kissing Tom on the cheek before going to bed always sent ripples of pleasure throughout her body – small jolts of liquid electricity. Kissing Lily’s soft cheek was different. With Lily the kiss brought stillness and peace – like contact with a fragile petal whose beauty was empty of fear, empty of the churning and stirring of emotion.
“Good night. Sleep well.” Rose closed the sitting room door behind her and heard Tom and Lily murmuring together as she climbed the stairs to the bedroom. There were no rioters outside on the Crumlin Road. The house was filled with an uncommon quiet which gave Rose the feeling that the very walls were watching her as she climbed the stairs – watching her with love.
Next morning, before getting out of bed, she opened the bedside table drawer and searched for the white envelope from Matt. She read his letter once more. She pulled on her navy skirt, white blouse, blue and yellow striped tie, pullover, and blazer with the Convent of Mercy emblem – a cross with the word ‘Mercy’ and the motto, ‘Truth in our hearts’. She read the letter twice. She didn’t say a word to Tom and Lily over breakfast about what she was going to do. Instead she put on her navy raincoat, closed the front door as normal and walked quickly up the road to a different bus stop where she joined the queue waiting for the number 57 bus headed for the City Centre.
Eden Burning Page 20