Eggshells

by Caitriona Lally

  I’m not kind at all; I’m glad I got to unpack my things in a strange room, but I don’t want to stay over. Mrs. Drysdale looks at me and sniffs in Penelope’s direction.

  “Elaine’s in one of her moods.”

  “Who’s Elaine?” I ask.

  Penelope’s head jerks from her mother to me.

  “Pay no heed to my mother, Elaine’s my middle name, she just doesn’t like to call me Penelope. Isn’t that right, Mother?”

  Penelope’s teeth are almost bared at the old woman, she looks like she could make a leap and a snarl and a lunge for her throat. Mrs. Drysdale spits red fury; if her eyes could froth they would. The heat in the room seems to have been turned up to the highest setting, and I begin to sweat.

  “I’m going to pack my bag,” I say, and I run to the bedroom.

  I snatch my clothes from the wardrobe and stuff them into my suitcase. Then I tiptoe through the hall and out the front door, before realising that I’ve forgotten my shells. I don’t want to go back inside, so I crawl around the house and poke my head up outside the kitchen window. Penelope and her mother are standing with their backs to me. I reach in to grab the shells and pottery and catch fragments of shouted sentences, but I throw them right back and keep only my sea hoard. I creep back to the car and sit on my suitcase holding the dog whelk to my ear, the ear not facing the sea, so I have the real sea in one ear and the shell-hiss in the other. I root in my suitcase for the food stash—travelling without backup snacks is like getting into a coffin without dying first—and eat two packets of cheese-and-onion crisps. I’m breathing out through my nose in loud sniffs to appreciate the violent aftertaste when Penelope comes out of the cottage carrying her bag. Her mouth is set in the same tortoise line as her mother’s.

  “Hello, Vivian.”

  “Hello, Penelope.”

  She unlocks the car, and I put my suitcase in the back seat and get into the passenger seat. When Penelope gets in, the car sinks and I bounce—oh—in my seat and bash my head—ow—off the ceiling. She slams the door and the car shakes, nervous of her bad mood. She tries to start the car, but she’s holding the key like a knife and digging furiously into the ignition, so it takes a while. Then she turns the car around quickly and I’m slammed—oof—into the passenger window. Penelope sits hunched forward in the seat, her fingers white and clawed around the steering wheel. She drives fast so fast I close my eyes, because if I’m going to be slammed into something else I want it to be a surprise. The car makes a sudden swerve and we come to a stop. I open my eyes. We’re parked on the side of a road and Penelope’s head is bent over the steering wheel. She’s had an accident, I think, this is what people look like when they’re freshly dead, but she starts sobbing and gulping, oh no. I pat her back and stare straight ahead.

  “Viv, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about, please just drive.”

  My hands start to sweat and shake; Penelope’s shaking is contagious.

  “I shouldn’t have pretended my name was—”

  “It’s fine,” I say, “everything’s fine.”

  I put the whelk against my right ear and Penelope keeps talking, which spoils things. Why do people insist on giving explanations that make everything more complicated? I squeeze the shell against my ear and block out the words, needless tanks of words that sound better in a muffled hiss outside the shell. From here, I can choose the syllables I like and let the rest trickle down my face. When her words slow to a dribble and sobs take their place, I put the shell in my lap and pat her back again. My hand is trembling so hard, I only need to rest it against her back and it goes pat pat pat all on its own.

  “Let’s go,” I say brightly because that’s how leaders sound when they’re motivating their charges.

  “Let’s go!”

  “Vivian, you’re a true friend, thank you. I’ve never told anyone what I’ve just told you. And to forgive me for pretending—”

  “It’s fine!” I shout, and I smile so hard my cheeks don’t know what to do with themselves. I turn the radio almost the whole way up, and we drive back to the city in the crescendo of a power ballad.

  16

  WHEN I WAKE the next morning, my dream is so close, I can smell the overripe fruit at the edge of it. It’s a recurring dream about a bowl of fruit that’s on the verge of rotting. When the bowl appears, I realise I ignored it for weeks and now it’s too late. There’s no story in this dream, just a thick dark sense that I’ve wasted things, and this sense lingers in my stomach when I wake, like a kick wrapped in spinach. I get out of bed, jump on the spot, throw my hands over my head, and roar “Ararararararara!” Then I slap my head until the dream has faded and my head can only think of the pain. The church bell chimes nine times—but “chime” is the wrong word for this bell’s sound. “Chime” sounds thin and tinkly—this is more of a “chowm” or a “choym.” I close my eyes and scrabble in the wardrobe until my fingers land on a jumper that feels like today. I pull it out. It’s a green glittery cardigan of my great-aunt’s that makes me look like an overdressed Christmas tree.

  I rush my breakfast because I’m fed up of eating breakfast with spoons and dinner with forks and washing cutlery that just gets dirty again. I put my bag over my shoulder—I was going to say “sling” my bag over my shoulder but that makes me think of an injured soldier—I’ll stick with “put.” I walk to the supermarket and make for the fruit section. My dream has reminded me that I should eat more fruit. The Pink Lady apples are the colour of rhubarb-and-custard sweets. I believe I have enough green foods in my life, I should eat more pink. I turn the apples over in my hand, seeking out the most bruised fruit because nobody else wants them, like nobody wanted me on their team in PE class in school. I walk to the far side of the supermarket to the party section and gather armfuls of paper plates and plastic cups and cutlery. I bring them to the checkout and lay them on the conveyor belt but, oh no, it’s the girl who thinks I have boy twins in wheelchairs alone at home. She picks up the apples and scans them.

  “Have you got a club card?” she asks.

  “It’s okay,” I say, “they’re being minded by a childminder. I pay her to push them round in their wheelchairs, and if they need to eat or go to the toilet, she’ll help them, they’re alright.”

  I say my words at a rush, I say them like they’re paining my mouth and I need to get them out. The girl blinks at me like she has just come out of the cinema into the sunlight.

  “What?”

  I realise, oh no, it’s a different girl.

  “No,” I say, “I don’t have a club card, my great-aunt warned me about the satellites.”

  “The satellites?”

  “Yeah, the satellite beams read your supermarket preferences and the government takes the information and uses it against you.”

  “Oh, right, yeah. Do you need a bag?”

  “No, thanks,” I say.

  I pack the apples and plastic things quickly into my bag, take my change and run out of the shop. My feet turn town-ward so I follow them, heading for Berkeley Road and then Eccles Street, where nurses and doctors spill out of the hospital. I used to think I’d like to be a nurse, but my hands are graceless clods, and needles and scalpels require steadiness. Also, people don’t respond well to my words, and the right words are important for a nurse. A woman with a small child sits next to a parking meter asking for money in a voice like an old song. I walk on to the private hospital and go inside. There are people waiting in a line near the entrance and I join them; it might be for something nice. When I reach the top, I realise it’s a queue for the toilets. I don’t need to go, but I’ve come this far, so I go inside and wash my hands without looking at the mirror.

  I head for the canteen because I like canteens. I like the routine of it, the pile of damp trays, the helping myself. I like the drinking water spout, the metal tubs of hot food, the rows of yoghurt, the heaps of pastries, the bowls of fruit, the piles of chocolate bars at the till. I e
specially like the tub of baked beans, all orange and smug like best bean-friends. My biggest achievement so far has been adding the final piece to a baked-bean jigsaw. It might still be in the hoardroom if the mice haven’t mistaken it for a real plate of beans.

  I take a tray from the pile and look at the hot food but I don’t know what anything is. I peer at the menu board behind the counter, but I’m not wearing my glasses and the chalked words are white fuzz. The queue presses forward, and I don’t know what to eat, I don’t know how to ask what the food is, what animals it comes from, what the sauce words mean. My heart thuds and my ears seem to have a pulse of their own: thuh thoink thuh thoink. When I’m next, I step out of the queue and make for the fridge. I pile cartons of yoghurt—all three flavours—orange juice, apple juice, an apple, an orange, some pastries, a packet of nutty looking biscuits and two chocolate bars onto my tray. While the man rings up the total, I open my purse. There are a few coins wrapped in a supermarket receipt and a ragged, Sellotaped €5 note. I rummage around in the bottom of my bag, but all I come up with is fluff and a couple of raisins. I wait for the final sum like it’s a court ruling.

  “That’s €12.46, please.”

  I hold my money in my outstretched palms.

  “That’s all I have.”

  The man stares at the coins and fluff.

  “If you don’t have enough, you can put some of it back.”

  I look at my tray. The green apple and the orange orange and the purple and gold chocolate bars look so perfect on the off-white tray that I can’t separate them.

  “I won’t take any of them,” I say, “but I just need to draw them so I’ll remember them in this exact position.”

  I take my notebook and pencil out of my bag and draw a big rectangle, for the tray. Then I sketch the food and drink. I’m not so good at drawing, so I label each item, just to be sure.

  “Have you got any colouring pencils?” I ask the man.

  He shakes his head slowly.

  “Crayons, even? Although it’s harder to stay inside the lines with them.”

  “No.”

  The silence after the “no” is still and full, as if the air has been let out of the man’s lungs and he’s waiting for me to leave before he can draw breath again.

  “No matter. I’ll colour it in at home,” I say, then I turn and walk very quickly out of the canteen and out of the hospital. At the traffic lights on Dorset Street, I push the pedestrian lights button again and again and again. Across the road, the clock in the tower of St. George’s Church tells the wrong time. Sometimes I feel that if I could walk around Dublin and set all the clocks to the right time, the world would be in the right order. When the green man appears, I cross the road and walk through the flats onto North Frederick Street. I head for the Garden of Remembrance and walk the length of the water feature and up the steps to the Children of Lir statue. Their heads droop and their arms dangle; if they walked, they would walk like zombies. I toss in some coins and circle the statue three times, then I walk back down the steps and sit on a wooden bench among the pigeons and lunch-eaters. I empty all the gold and copper coins from my purse onto my knees, and run them through my fingers like a fairytale miser. It seems strange that if I don’t have enough of these small discs, I can’t have all the food on my tray, when there is no real connection between the two. A wiry man dressed all in blue lopes over to me. There’s a layer of grease on his face, as if he had slathered it in butter. I rub a finger across my own forehead and it comes away shiny; maybe he’s thinking the same thing about me.

  “Have you got forty cents for a hostel, love?”

  “A hundred years ago, you’d have asked me for a farthing,” I say, “although that would only get you a piece of bread. Maybe it’d be better to ask for a ha’penny. That’d get you two sweet biscuits.”

  “What?”

  He shifts from foot to foot and looks at the money on my lap.

  “In the museum, there was a list of the values of old Irish currency,” I say. “A florin would get you a pair of moleskin leggings, or a crown would get you three waistcoats—which would you rather?”

  “Eh, I never really thought about it.”

  “I’d say go with the three waistcoats—you could swap two of them for a pair of moleskin leggings; then you’d have a full outfit.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  He pulls his jacket forward and hunches his shoulders. Then he scratches his head, glances around quickly.

  “I didn’t think the old punt would lie down so easy,” I say. “I spent a year multiplying euro prices by 0.8 in my head to keep my sense of the punt, in case it came back.”

  “Yeah, yeah, listen, can you spare some of that change for a hostel?”

  He points at the hoard on my knees, which looks like Ebenezer Scrooge’s counting house. I scoop up a fistful of coins and put it in his hand.

  “God bless you, love.”

  He makes some kind of blessing gesture as if he was a track-suited butter-faced priest and walks away quickly.

  I put the remaining coins back in my purse and walk south to the Chester Beatty Library to look at pictures of magical things. A fifteenth-century encyclopaedia shows drawings of mermen with monkish tonsures, a mermaid with nipple-less breasts and a spiny fish with the head of a bear and the teeth of a dog. The seventeenth-century Persian book Collection of Things Strange and Rare shows a creature that will appear on the Day of Judgement. It has the spotted body of a leopard, the shorn head of a human and antlers. I envy students of those eras who were taught these things as fact, I think I would have more in common with people who are hundreds of years dead than with people who are alive now. I move on to a nineteenth-century Iranian barber-surgeon toolkit. It contains a set of beautifully symmetrical drug scales that I would like to give to the next drug dealer I see, because ugly things should be done beautifully if they are to be done at all.

  The Middle Eastern paintings have magical-sounding titles, full of apostrophes and “I”s and “Z”s and “Q”s; I could win Scrabble outright if I used only Arabic words, and if I had people to play Scrabble with. The names of the different Islamic scripts dance on my tongue when I say them aloud and spring off the page when I write them in my notebook: “Sini, Sudani, Maghribi, Nasta’liq, Thulth, Muhaqqaq, Naskh, Kufic and Ghubar.”

  I like that the makers of Arabic didn’t insist upon a “U” after a “Q”: “Muhaqqaq” looks fearless, undaunted, unencumbered by “U”s. The Ghubar script is tiny, with letters no bigger than specks—the caption says it means “dust” in Arabic. I would like to learn this secret script and send a message in Ghubar from a bottle in a Middle Eastern sea.

  A caption says that paintbrushes were made from the hair of squirrels or goats, the inside of a calf’s ear, or hair from the throats of two-month old white kittens. How did the paintbrush-makers know that black kittens just wouldn’t do, or that three-month old kittens were past their primes? I write the names of the components of Islamic calligraphy ink and paint pigment in my notebook; they might be the words of an incantation, or the ingredients of a magic potion: “Lampblack, Gum Arabic, Saffron Water, Myrtle Leaf Water, Rosewater, Narcissus Liquor, Pulverized Pearl, Gold, Cinnabar, Lapis Lazuli, Ochre, Orpiment, Indigo, Silver, Red Lead, Malachite and Vitriol.”

  If vitriol was used in ink today, I could blame it for any malice that came from my pen.

  A Japanese print called “The Lucky Dreams” contains images of Mount Fuji, a hawk and eggplants. The text says that if you dream of any of these items on the night of New Year’s Day, good luck will follow. January is a long way off. I’ll try to dream of all three tonight because I need three times as much luck as good luck. I need the mightiest luck in the world.

  Upstairs, I read about the dance of the whirling dervishes, which is, according to the caption, the circling of the spiritual around the material world. I don’t know what that means: the word “spiritual” makes my skin weep because it seems to say so much but really says so
little. The text continues: “The upward pointing right hand and the downward pointing left hand symbolise the passing of knowledge from one world to another.”

  The whirling dervish dance could transfer the knowledge of how to return from my original world to this one. I hurry down two flights of stairs to the ladies’ toilets. There’s nobody here. I can’t cover the mirrors so I close my eyes, raise my right hand, and point my left hand down. I stretch each index finger out like God in the Sistine Chapel painting or ET’s glowing finger. Then I swivel myself around and around, my arms taut in a diagonal line. I spin faster and faster until I don’t know if I’m spinning or standing so I open my eyes. I’m still moving; the row of toilets swirls into my vision, then the mirror: no, no, not the mirror. I turn from my reflection and plant both feet on the ground. My body has stopped but my head’s still awhirl. I look up. Nothing has changed; the doors and tiles are still red, the toilets are still toilets, I’m still me. I reverse the dance by switching the position of my arms, close my eyes and twirl faster and faster, using my right foot as an anchor and tapping the ground with my left. I feel I’m about to lift off somewhere, some place that’s not here, when I hear a rustle and a shuffle and a “What in the name of Christ?”

  I open my eyes and bring my spin to a stop. The toilets swim back into focus. A woman with grey hair and a face like wet cement stands at the door, staring. Behind her, a tourist in a bright pink jacket points her camera at me. I don’t think I could begin to find the sentences that would explain my dance to this audience; years of words would need to be spoken and none of us has the time. I blink to steady my eyeballs and walk past the women to the door. The tourist is filming my exit so I point my nose in the air and give a queen’s wave: a small tilt of my upright hand as if I’m waiting for a mitten to drop from the ceiling. When I get outside the toilets, I walk quickly, so quickly that my feet lift clear of the ground; if I was an Olympic race-walker, I’d be disqualified. I leave the museum at a rush and head for Dame Lane, where I slow to an amble. There are green-framed windows in cages and an orange letter box on the wall with a sticker saying: “Rob a Bank Today.” I don’t know where to get a gun and I’m sure I should have principles against such things, but if I robbed big, I could leave €50 notes in cardigan pockets in every charity shop in town. When I reach South Great George’s Street, I think of other streets that have north-south pairings: North/South Great George’s Street, North/South Circular Road, North/South Frederick Street, North/South King Street, North/South Earl Street. These street-namers seem to have been influenced by the unimaginative bird-namers, when they really should have paid more heed to the moth-and-butterfly-namers. I wonder how many city-centre meetings started with empty chairs because of the omission of a north or a south in the address. Meetings, I think. Meetings. What actually happens in a meeting? I wonder if I could call one, and with whom. I could serve bottled water and coffee from a plunger. I could write an agenda and take minutes and propose things, but I probably couldn’t second anything if I was on my own.