Into the Night Sky

by Caroline Finnerty

  “I think the blue one would be nice with your purple ball gown.”

  “Yes, you’re right, Mummy. Good choice.”

  Celeste stares out through the window. They climb the hill running along the cliff, the sunlight flashing white on the surface of the water. They go through their gates and pull up outside the tower. They all go inside and climb the stairs to the kitchen. Celeste still hasn’t spoken to her.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Ella asks the girls.

  “Can I have a toasted brie sandwich?” Dot asks.

  “Sure.” She laughs. “I should have guessed that’s what you’d ask for. What do you want, Celeste?”

  No answer.

  “Celeste, I asked you a question.”

  “It’s all your fault!” she bursts out. “Everyone hates me.”

  “Did something happen in school today – is that what this is all about?”

  “Everyone was invited to Gilly’s birthday party – everyone except me, Mum.” Her voice breaks and she starts to cry.

  “Oh, love, I’m sorry.” She tries to put her arms around her daughter to calm her down. “Don’t worry, I’m . . . I’m . . . sure it was just a mistake.”

  “No, it wasn’t, it’s because of you! She doesn’t want me at her party because you’re my mother. It’s all your fault!”

  “Please, Celeste, I’ll talk to your teacher – we’ll sort it out – don’t worry.” She tries to hug her. “I bet her mum just forgot to send in yours.”

  “Get off me!” She pulls away from her. “You’re so embarrassing – all the other girls’ mums wear nice, trendy clothes and you just wear old jeans and jumpers with tatty runners and your hair is always messy. You never look nice!” She is now screaming, her eyes are watery with tears and her face is red.

  “Celeste, I –”

  “I hate you, Mum! I want Mrs Frawley back!”

  Ella stands and watches her daughter run down the stairs to her bedroom. She knows that Celeste is feeling angry and humiliated and she should probably go after her and draw her into a hug but she can’t bring herself to do it so instead she sits down at the table.

  “Mum?” It’s Dot this time.

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe Celeste is right – you do look a bit scruffy. Do you want me to give you a makeover? I can make you look just like a princess?”

  “Sounds good, Dotty.”

  “Okay, hang on until I get my equipment – you’ll be the prettiest mummy-princess in the whole wild world, just wait and see!”

  It is after nine o’clock when Dan comes in that evening. The children are already in bed. Ella serves him up a plate of reheated chilli and lets her weight sink into a chair beside him while he eats.

  His phone vibrates on the table. He picks it up and starts scrolling down through the message.

  “Celeste and I had a huge argument today – well, she fought with me.”

  “What’s happened now?” His eyes are still on his phone.

  “Well, apparently it’s Gilly’s birthday party and the whole class have been invited except her.”

  He places his phone back down on the table and looks up at her. “But I thought they were best friends? This has gone too far – that’s bullying. You’re going to have to do something about it!”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, talk to her mother and tell her that it’s not on and she should be ashamed of herself excluding an eight-year-old child like that!”

  “But it’ll just make it all worse if I have a go at her – she’ll really get her back up then!”

  “Well, you have to do something – it’s your fault that this is happening.”

  “Do you think I enjoy seeing my daughter going through this? I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this problem, Dan.”

  “Well, I’m just saying that everything was fine with Celeste until you started going around robbing shops!”

  “Well, thanks very much, Dan! Nice to see that our marriage is built on such a bedrock of support.”

  “I’m sorry, Ella. I’m just saying it the way it is.”

  “You mean the way Gilly’s mother sees it?”

  “What do you want me to say? You have to deal with it, Ella! Stop sitting around moping and thinking ‘poor me’! You need to nip this in the bud before the kids are affected any more. You got yourself into this mess, you’re going to have to get yourself out of it.”

  “Fuck you, Dan!”

  She grabs her handbag and takes the staircase two steps at a time until she is down the three flights. It is at times like this that this places feels exactly what the original stonemasons who built it had intended it to be: a defensive tower. Even she can appreciate the irony whenever she reads the story of Rapunzel for Dot at bedtime. She reaches the archway of the front door, opens it and slams it shut behind her. She gets into her jeep and drives quickly until she is at the electric gates. She waits for them to part for what seems like an age. She jerkily pulls off again and drives down the hill in the darkness.

  Everywhere is still; there is no moon out tonight, only the fuzzy sodium glow of the city across the bay. She pulls over, gets out and stands in the orangey darkness. Silent tears run down her face – she can taste their saltiness in her mouth. Car lights glide along on the road beneath her. In the distance she can see Dublin Port and the Ringsend chimney stacks. An airplane is coming in over the Irish Sea before angling on the diagonal in the direction of the airport. Cars whir past her on the road. Zum, zum, zum, they repeat.

  There are so many options – there is the water below – or the cars on the road beside her. There is a train station nearby. So many options. She could end all of this now but she knows she’d never have the bottle to do it. Instead she gets back into her jeep and drives.

  The red light of a mini-petrol-pump lights up on her dash. She drives for a while before she sees a petrol station in the distance. She indicates, pulls into the forecourt and fills up. Then she goes inside to pay. She walks up and down the aisles. She stops for a minute in front of the cleaning products and picks up a bottle of hand soap. She reads the back and then looks around. No one is watching her and in one quick, birdlike movement, she stuffs the bottle into her bag. Her heart is racing and she is waiting for someone to pounce but it doesn’t happen. Then she goes towards the fridge and picks up a litre of milk because she remembers that they are running low. Going up to the counter to pay, she hands the milk to the Indian guy behind the counter for him to scan.

  “Pump two as well, please.”

  He presses a button on his touch screen. “That’ll be €94.39 please.”

  She takes her wallet from underneath the hand soap and takes out her card to pay. She looks up amongst the shelves stocked with car-windscreen washes and blister packs of paracetamol and sees a grainy black-and-white CCTV monitor, which is fixed on the spot where she just was.

  “Anything else?” He is looking straight at her. His deep-brown eyes are looking directly into hers.

  She starts to panic. Is this a trick? If she says no will they say they saw her put the hand soap in her bag? “No, thank you,” she answers. Her heart is racing.

  “We have to ask that,” he whispers conspiratorially. “The manager makes us say it to all the customers to try and increase sales.”

  “Oh yeah, of course.” She laughs but it is a bit too high. “Are you on all night?”

  “Yes, I do seven to seven, so long night ahead.”

  “Oh no – well, I hope the time flies for you.”

  “Me too! Goodnight.”

  She stuffs her wallet back into her bag and, as she walks back towards her jeep, the adrenalin is like a drug coursing through her body, being pumped around by her racing heart.

  “Where did you go to last night?” he says as she gets out of bed the next morning. His fingers move up along his shirt, buttoning as he talks.

  She walks around him and goes into the bathroom. “Just leave it, Dan,” she says through gritte
d teeth before slamming the door closed on him.

  “You’re just angry because you know I’m right, Ella!” he shouts back at her through the wood. “That’s what this is all about – the truth hurts!”

  She hears him slamming the front door and hears the beep-beep of his car door unlocking before he starts making his way down the driveway.

  She sits on the side of the bathtub and cries. She keeps thinking about what she did in the petrol station last night and it makes her feel sick. She hates herself, hates what she is capable of. She hates the way she does it but what she hates even more is that she can’t stop herself. She feels powerless against these urges. It is disgusting, she is disgusting. What if she had been caught? She’s already in enough trouble without adding something like that into the mix. She gets into the shower and turns the water temperature up high so that her skin starts to pinken. She scrubs it with the loofah over and over again until it hurts. She wishes she could take off her own skin. Just peel it off like a snake and cast it aside.

  She steps out of the shower and puts on her dressing gown.

  Dot’s small head peeps around the door. “Mummy, what’s wrong? Why was Daddy shouting at you?” Her small face is creased with worry. “Why are you crying again?”

  “I’m not – I’m okay, Dot, love.” She wipes the tears away quickly with the back of her hand.

  “You cry too much, Mum. Is it because my room is messy again because I promise I’ll try really, really hard to keep it tidy so you won’t cry any more.”

  “Oh, Dot, love, no – it’s not that at all, I promise. It’s nothing to do with you. I’m just feeling a bit sad today, that’s all.”

  “But you’re always sad, Mum. Is it because Celeste doesn’t like you?”

  “Of course she likes me, Dot!”

  Dot shakes her head from side to side. “No, she doesn’t, Mum – she’s always telling me how much she hates you,” she says solemnly. “But it’s okay because I like you and I think Maisie does too but she can’t talk yet so I’m not really sure about her.”

  Ella can’t help but laugh at that. “Come here to me, you.” She pulls her in close and breathes in the scent of her hair and the warm skin of her neck. “How could I be sad when I’ve got you in my life, Dot Devlin?”

  “Let’s go upstairs and get some breakfast.”

  She knows that she needs to get herself together. She feels she is sinking further and further beneath her layer of felt – it is almost enveloping her completely.

  Chapter 27

  Today is a bad day. He always knew that today would be difficult but, now that it’s here, it’s bloody awful. It is acute and hits him from every direction. Every time he sees the date on an email or invoice or on the top right-hand corner of the computer screen, it is a reminder of everything that has gone so horribly wrong in the last year.

  He picks up the phone on the desk and dials her parents’ number in Germany. Sometimes he needs to feel closer to her and this is the only way he knows. These are her ties.

  It rings for a long time.

  He imagines the phone ringing around the wooden house nestled deep in the shadows of the Black Forest. He pictures her hurrying over the wooden floorboards with its colourful scatter rugs to answer it.

  “Hallo?” She sounds breathless.

  “Hallo, Bettina – it’s Conor.”

  “Ach, hallo, Conor. Wie gehts? Alles gut?”

  They have this half English/German exchange whenever he rings.

  “Ja, ja, und du?”

  “Oh ja, alles gut hier.”

  “And Rolf ist good auch?”

  “Ja, War ein bisschen krank letzte Woche, aber jetzt gehts ihm besser.”

  “Ah, gut. Wie ist das Wetter?”

  “Wir haben viel Schnee seit letzter Woche.”

  “Es ist sehr kalt hier aber keine Schnee.”

  It is their usual polite exchange about the difference in the weather between where he is in Ireland and she is in Germany. He wonders if she knows the significance of the date.

  “Wie gehts mit der Buchhandlung?”

  “Okay, aber ein bisschen ruhig.” She always asks him about the shop and he always says the same thing, that it’s a bit quiet. For once it would be nice to tell her that he is busy.

  “Diese Dinge brauchen Zeit. Hab Geduld.”

  That is exactly what Leni would have said, that he needs to give it time and to have patience. “Ja – du bist richtig,” he sighs because it is easier to agree but he is all out of patience.

  A customer comes in then. He watches her as she glances around at the shelves.

  “Komm doch mal nach Bayern auf Besuch.”

  She has been trying to get him to come over to stay with them for months now.

  “Ja, ich muss aber es ist sehr hart die Zeit bekommen.” He always blames it on being too busy but the truth is he can’t face going there without Leni. He knows there would be too many memories waiting to trip him up. “Also, ich geh besser. Ich habe einen Kunden.”

  “Na dann . . . bis später, Conor.”

  “Bis später, Grußen nach Ralf.”

  He hangs up and goes to help the customer who has come in. She is dressed in a suit and heels and he hopes she has come in from the offices down the street. He had asked to put posters up in their canteen the week before to advertise the shop.

  “I’m looking for a Valentine’s gift for my husband.” She seems embarrassed.

  He remembers the date and that means that next week is Valentine’s Day and yet his shop is devoid of red paper hearts on string and a window full of love notes like the other bookshops have.

  “I know it’s over-commercialised hype,” she adds quickly.

  “Well, sometimes it’s nice to make a special effort for one day, isn’t it?” He thinks for a minute before bringing her over to the non-fiction section and taking down a book of old-fashioned love letters. “These are really beautiful.”

  She looks at him uncertainly. “I’m not sure if he’s a love-letter kind of guy,” she says, laughing.

  “Really? They’re beautiful – have a read of some and see what you think.”

  He leaves her alone while she flicks through them. He bought the same book for Leni before and she had loved it. They had sat up in bed for hours together with her sitting in between his legs with her head resting back against his chest. She had read them out loud to him. Sometimes she would stop and turn around to ask him what a particular word meant. One after the other they had read them, mainly stories of people separated by war. Often old-fashioned and stoic expressions of love in a different era.

  “Why does no one write these any more? Everyone just sends emails or text messages nowadays,” she had said wistfully. “They don’t even go to the trouble of spelling the words properly any more – it’s all shorthand. It’s not right.”

  So he had written her love letters after that. Sometimes he would hide them in places around the house for her to find, or he would post them to her in work, sealed with wax. She had loved getting them. He wonders where they are now. Probably with the rest of her stuff that he still isn’t able to face sorting out.

  He looks back down at his paperwork. Last month’s sales figure is staring off the page at him. It is down again on the same time last year. He taps some figures into his calculator but the percentage drop is frightening and he almost wishes that he hadn’t.

  He looks back over to the customer who is now putting the book back up on the shelf. She gives him an apologetic half-smile and then walks quickly out the door.

  It’s hard not to take it personally, but on today of all days it gets to him. He moves away from the computer, picks up a book and fires it at the shelves. He watches as it flies along through the air as if weightless before careering against the shelves and plunging to the floor. It falls back on its spine with pages wavering between falling left and right. When he looks up he see the three lads are back and their three faces are pressed against the window, staring in at
him, laughing. But today he almost feels like laughing hysterically with them. He goes over and picks up the book again and unfolds the corner of the cover that got bent in the fall. He puts it in its rightful place back on the shelf.

  He rings Ella again and this time she answers.

  “I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Sorry I didn’t get to ring you back – the kids were a nightmare and by the time I sat down it just went out of my head.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine . . . I was just having a bad day . . .”

  “Would you mind if I called over? I don’t think I could face being on my own tonight.”

  “Sure, of course, Conor.”

  Even though it’s not yet five o’clock, it is already dark. It feels as though the long winter evenings have been here forever. He decides to close the shop early. There has been no one in the shop in the last two hours anyway. He takes the DART and then walks along the coast road in the darkness to Ella’s house. The lights in the arc of Dublin Bay twinkle in the distance. He eventually reaches the gate to the Martello tower. He presses the buzzer. It bleeps and he waits for it to be answered. After a few minutes, he presses it again and finally he hears her voice.