The Stolen Child

by Lisa Carey

  Brigid helps Rose put the children to bed while Emer does the washing up. Austin sits with his dirty socks up on the table, right in Emer’s way.

  “I don’t think she’s the full shilling,” Clodagh says, when Brigid carries a sleeping toddler into the bedroom.

  “Oh, give it a rest, Mammy,” Emer says.

  “You can’t say a word against Brigid,” Austin laughs. “Not to Emer, anyways. She’s besotted.” Emer whacks at his feet with the dishcloth, then turns to hide her blush. Austin chuckles and moves over to the fire to light his pipe.

  Brigid stays late and by the time she is ready to leave, Niall has fallen asleep with the older girls in the loft bed.

  “Leave the child here, Emer,” Rose says. “He’s too big to carry anymore.”

  Emer stiffens and hopes that Brigid, across the room, is pausing her breath in the same anticipation.

  “Would you walk Brigid home?” Rose says. “I’m knackered as it is. Go and help her with the chores we stole her from.”

  Austin looks up at Emer for a second, with something other than his usual polite sweep of eyes. He knows, she thinks, he can sense what she and Brigid are about to do. But then his eyes pass over her and fix onto his wife and that familiar grin creeps up. He has plans of his own. Funny that his smiles still hurt her, even though she is looking forward to someone else’s mouth.

  Emer and Brigid leave together. It is September and the sun goes down earlier every day. Soon enough the darkness will be far longer than the light. But the breeze is mild, and the stars and moon are unclothed and the road to Brigid’s house appears lit up from within. Emer imagines she can hear within their footsteps an echo of anticipation, the thud and shuffle of lust. This is how Austin and Rose once felt, back when they had to walk to secret places where they could touch each other. Emer recognizes the feeling though she is still alarmed at whom it is attached to.

  “It’s all right,” Brigid croons, when Emer starts to tremble, overwhelmed by the ache that grows fathomless as Brigid slowly removes her clothes.

  It is all too much this time. Her mouth is so large, her kisses huge and wet and gaping, as if they want to swallow her, her hands are hot and skidding off Emer in their eagerness, gripping occasionally as if they are grabbing her back from a fall.

  “I’ve not done this,” Emer says softly, when they are fully naked for the first time, side by side on the hearth bed, bodies glowing and soft and mirrored, one an older version, just beginning to release itself in places, by the light of the turf fire.

  “Not with anyone else. No one touches me. Even when they do . . . It’s difficult to explain.”

  “You don’t need to,” Brigid says, rolling on top of her. Emer can barely keep up with what is happening. It’s like a new body being born under Brigid’s demanding hands.

  After it is finished and the fired-up patches that Brigid ignited slowly throb and go out, she grows cold and searches for the blanket by their feet.

  “I thought you were married,” Emer says suddenly.

  Brigid laughs. “I was.”

  “But you’ve done this before.”

  “Yes, Emer.”

  “With women, I mean.”

  “I loved my husband. But I had this with women as well. A long time ago.”

  “It’s a sin, sure,” Emer says.

  “So they tell me.”

  “Will you leave us now?” Emer says, letting this new fear rush forward, fear that swells with the same urgency as her desire. “Now that I’ve shown you the well?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Which man will you get?” Emer whispers. “To give you the baby?”

  And Brigid kisses her in a way that feels almost angry, but Emer wants this so much that she can’t stop to question what emotion is behind it. This time, Emer pushes Brigid onto her back. She does not pause and wonder what to do, she has spent enough time imagining it. She is astonished at Brigid’s reactions. Delighted that her hands, her mouth and her body can be so skillful, can pull such violent pleasure out of someone else. Pleasure instead of disgust.

  She stays too long; dawn has already come and gone by the time she half hurries away from Brigid’s house. She goes the high road, avoiding the quay and the men readying the currachs for Mass. But then she comes across Austin and his dog driving a group of sheep to a virgin field. Before she can help it, she blushes so quick and hard it seems audible, like a gasp in the still, mist-thick air. Austin has the same blue eyes as Niall, and he locks them on her now. He glances quickly down, raking his eyes over her, then back to her face. Emer thinks he can see everything she just did, and his gaze feels both like a violation and a compliment.

  “Out for a stroll, Emer?” Austin cocks his head and winks at her.

  She walks the rest of the way home burning with anger and embarrassment, furious at being seen, at being ridiculed, but mostly bewildered that Austin’s eyes have the power to undo her still.

  The next week, Emer allows Niall to start school. She had planned to keep him home another year, though at six he is a year older than most in the infants’ class. His cousins walk him there in the morning and Emer picks him up in time for dinner. It is the longest she has ever been without him. She walks straight up the road and pulls Brigid’s curtains in the middle of mild September mornings.

  Sometimes she even leaves in the nighttime, when Patch is off on the mainland, Niall sleeping sweetly in her bed. It is like tearing something as she leaves him there, runs over the brackish grass and stone and arrives, breathless, only to have Brigid take her breath even more. Brigid is always happy to see her, and after they make love her gaze cools into gratitude, something that never happened with Patch, who, back when they had relations, finished with a grunt and a shudder as if he’d just done something distasteful. Even with Brigid, though, there is a catch that reminds her who she is. There is an element of torture in it all, an arm thrown over her face, a twisted expression, a clenching of the mouth and eyes that so reminds her of when she inserts pain and doubt into people that sometimes she wonders if it is all a form of the same thing. If pain and pleasure are so closely linked that just the slightest turning can change it. There is violence in love, more than she’d imagined there would be.

  She runs home on these nights, terror in her throat, ripping through the damp air as if it is trying to stop her, barging into the house to fall next to Niall and hold him close, kissing his face, pausing at his lips to make certain he is still breathing. Still himself. To see that she has not abandoned everything just to feel something that, to be honest, by the time she arrives home, has faded into disbelief.

  There are moments with Brigid—not having to do with lust but afterward, lying in the bracken watching the clouds move, or walking without touching along the cliff edge, Niall and the pig and Brigid’s dog bounding ahead of them—where Emer has a foreign feeling. Cupfuls of time where she feels no anxiety or anger or ugliness or regret. Where nothing swarms or seizes within her and all she is aware of is a still, liquid feeling of joy. It is not the same as the joy Niall lends to her, which allows her to forget herself and delight in him; this happiness originates inside her. The first time it happens she is jolted, as though from an invisible hand, then smiles as wide as the sky before them.

  “Will you look at that,” Emer murmurs, and Niall squints at her suspiciously. His mother is not prone to admiring nature.

  Everything looks sharper now, the changing colors of moss and heather, the deep, autumn sun that feels warmer because of the chill in the air, and she imagines this is how the island looks to Brigid, looks to anyone who feels this way, like a paradise.

  This new bliss of Emer’s is so dense she manages to keep it for whole minutes, long dark nights, entire soft days, before she feels the sharp intrusion of fear, the coiling premonition of regret. Such elation, she thinks, must be what other people feel—her sister, her son, Brigid, a group of married nuns—they must grow accustomed to it, and she imagines it is ju
st as easy to be stolen by joy as by misery.

  She takes Brigid’s hand on impulse; usually they try not to touch in front of Niall. Brigid stops walking and turns to face her, pulling her hand in to hide it behind the flap of her jacket, and pressing it promisingly against her warm thigh. Since their mouths can’t meet, they lock eyes. Emer thinks she can see Brigid’s pupil pulse in the exact rhythm of her own aroused heart.

  “Anam cara,” Emer whispers, before she can stop herself.

  And though Brigid smiles, and squeezes her palm, something trips in her gaze, the pupil misses a beat, and she looks away, toward Niall and the pets. Emer convinces herself that it is only prudence that makes Brigid not echo this name.

  Chapter 13

  Fairy Music

  September 1959

  There is a fair amount of back and forth, but in the end, they all decide to go over to Mass without Emer. When she wakes to bright weather, Emer is so sure she is going that the consequences don’t register when she feels the heat on Niall’s forehead. His face is flushed, and when he opens his eyes they are wet and foggy.

  “Oh,” she says, confused. “Are you ill?” Niall looks at her without much interest.

  “I’m only tired,” he says and turns around and falls back to sleep.

  She is so disappointed at the realization—he will have to stay in bed, she will have to stay with him, she will not be going over for a day of music and food and summer visitors—that she forgets to be worried about him being ill. She doesn’t even think of it for the next while, during all the debate of who will go and who will stay. Her mother is determined to go and see her cousins back from Liverpool staying at the hotel, and so struggles into her black dress and shawl and sits stubbornly by the door with her cane, refusing to discuss any other option. Patch has an appointment with a man from the mainland about the sheep and does not suggest changing it. Rose, of course, offers to stay. Emer gets irritable then.

  “Do you think I can’t take care of the one child?” she snaps at her sister, who is all dressed for Mass but has come down to check on her.

  “I do, of course,” Rose says, tidying the table rather than holding the blade of Emer’s gaze. “I thought you’d want the company.”

  “Fierce company you’ll be,” Emer scoffs, “with those two hanging off you and your face falling over missing your trip to the shops.”

  “You’re in a bad twist today,” Rose says casually, though Emer can tell she is hurt.

  “Go on, then, and stop the fuss. I’m grand as I am. Bring us a packet of crisps.”

  Emer turns around, blinking away the burning in her eyes. This is Brigid’s first trip to Muruch. Rose and the other wives convinced her to go. Now Emer will miss it.

  Of course as soon as Rose leaves, insulted but keeping her smile up, Emer wishes she had stayed. Now her beautiful sister will be with Brigid instead of her.

  She watches from the front stoop as they load the currachs. The whole island is going, it is one of those days where no one fears the water. Brigid is at the quay, well turned-out in a colorful skirt and blouse. Emer watches Patch lower her, then Rose and the girls, down into the boat. She has a brief, fierce hope that Brigid will ask Patch where she is, and decide to stay behind. But Rose says something that makes Brigid throw her head back and laugh, and Emer turns into her house, closing the door on them all.

  It isn’t until the day is half gone that she realizes Austin is still there. She goes out the back door to dump the dishwater and sees him walking the fields to the southeast. He holds a spade up in greeting, then stoops to the weeds. Just the sight of his long body and that shock of hair, dark as bottled ink and down to his collar, is enough to fluster her and she forgets what she meant to do next and goes to check on Niall instead. He is feeling better and able to sit up in bed for toast and tea.

  When she goes out to hang the washing, the sky has darkened, and she can feel the wind picking up. The sea between the two islands is choppy now, gray and menacing when this morning it was as blue and smooth as the sky. It has happened before, going over to Mass in calm waters and having to stay with their cousins overnight when the weather turns. As a child, Emer loved those emergency holidays, all the girls jumbled together in the hearth bed, pretending to sleep while they snuck glimpses of the adults’ smiling faces by the light of the fire. It was completely the opposite of being stuck on their island; there they were stranded in civilization. Once they stayed for five whole days and Emer cried the morning they’d woken to sun and agreeable sea.

  By the time Austin calls in to her, the rain is lashing sideways, the wind so loud in the hedges that she can’t tell the difference between the battered branches and the roar of the sea.

  “Howaya keeping, Austin,” Emer says, not looking at him, stepping aside for him to duck in through the door. He smells of rain and wind and sheep, of wet clothing and work, he smells so like her own husband that if she doesn’t look straight at him, she won’t know the difference. Except when he speaks.

  “That wind would skin a fairy,” he says happily, and Emer almost laughs. He removes his hat and shakes the water from his collar. “They won’t be back tonight, sure. The sea’s walled them over.”

  “You’ll be wanting your tea, then,” Emer says, moving around the room without looking at him. She sees out of the corner of her eye, teeth flash; he’s smiling at her.

  “I can feed myself, Emer,” he says. “I only came to check on you. How’s himself?”

  “I expect he’ll be well over it tomorrow,” Emer says.

  “Grand, so,” Austin says, still standing, beginning to turn awkward as even easygoing people do around Emer.

  “You might as well eat,” Emer says. “If you’re going to stand there all evening.” Austin pauses, he would clearly prefer to leave. As if Rose is behind him whispering a request, he takes off his woolen jacket, hangs it on his brother’s hook and sits in his brother’s chair.

  They eat potatoes with butter and cabbage and mackerel and wash it all down with milky tea. Emer sneaks a few looks at Austin as he hunches over his plate, his cheeks are smooth from a recent shave, which means he planned to go over to Mass and changed his mind.

  “Rose asked you to stay behind,” she realizes aloud.

  “It’s no bother.” Austin smiles. She looks away. He is handsome enough with a straight face but when he smiles it is something else altogether. His smile is like a boy’s, nothing held back, quick and full and mischievous and it still does something terrible to Emer.

  “You’ll miss the session,” she says, clearing the plates to avoid another smile. Austin is usually asked to sing after Mass, he often comes back hoarse on a Sunday night from granting all the requests. Everyone on Muruch loves his singing, and often he’ll sing with his father, who has the same deep voice. Every summer there is some visitor from Dublin or Canada who wants to arrange a tour, but it never happens. Emer knows from Rose that Austin never follows through on contacting them.

  “Sure Rose is expecting the album any day now,” Emer jokes.

  “Don’t be holding your breath,” Austin says. “I’m only a fisherman.”

  “’Tis better than being a fisherman’s wife,” Emer scoffs.

  Austin snaps to attention. “Do you not think Rose is happy enough?”

  “I’d say Rose is delighted,” Emer says. Austin actually blushes.

  “Arrah. Pardon,” he says, realizing.

  “Not a bother,” she says. She pours more tea.

  “Patch,” he begins, then he runs out.

  “Patch is Patch,” Emer says. “We’ll leave it, so.” Austin nods.

  Silence stretches between them. She puts the kettle on for tea.

  “Niall’s a comfort to you, sure,” Austin says.

  “He is.”

  “It’s a pity,” he starts. She stops him.

  “That’s enough of that now. I’ll not be pitied about being unable for more. I’m not Rose, I don’t want a houseful. I like a bit of quiet to
think.”

  Austin looks at her oddly. This is the longest string of sentences she has ever said to him.

  “This island’s not quiet enough for you?” he says.

  Niall comes stumbling into the kitchen, hair tufted up in the back, rubbing his eyes.

  “Howaya, Austin,” he says pleasantly, then climbs straight into his mother’s lap without request or invitation. He still does this; Rose usually puts a stop to children in her lap after the next set is born. Emer had hoped he would always do it, but she’s realized lately that he has to hunch to fit in the space between her lap and chin. Soon enough it will be like having a man in her lap. She didn’t realize how soon she would miss it, the smallness of him.

  “Bad dose, eh, Niall?” Austin says.

  “Aye,” Niall sighs, snuggling closer to Emer.

  “I’ve the cure outside,” Austin winks. He goes to the door, opens it and picks up a jug of poitín he has left on the stoop. He struggles to close the door again on the wind.

  “You’re a terrible man altogether,” Emer says. Niall smiles.

  “A little scailtin and you’ll be in the fields come morning.”

  “May I, Mammy?” Niall wiggles around on her lap, excited.

  “If you must,” she says. She’s never given Niall the spirit-laden punch that children are fed for colds and flu. She has an idea, which contradicts everyone else’s, that the alcohol is not good for him. But she doesn’t want Austin to leave, so she heats a bit of milk on the coals, pours a little of the strong, clear liquid into it, dabs a spoonful of butter and stirs the sugar in. A squeeze from the last of the lemon she has on the dresser, wondering if Rose will be able to get her another.

  “Make the old ones a spot as well,” Austin says. She pours hot water into two mugs of poitín, adds sugar to hers and slices the leftover lemon rind with her knife into two slivers. Austin makes a fuss out of clinking his mug against the boy’s, as if they are in the pub. Niall’s eyes widen at his first sip.