Bog Child

by Siobhan Dowd

  ‘Bye, Joe,’ Mam managed. The guard ushered them out, with Mam looking back over her shoulder.

  ‘And him a reed at the best of times,’ she moaned.

  Fergus shook his head. Joe was a reed no more: like he’d said himself earlier, he’d put on weight in jail and that might stand him in good stead now. But Mam was weeping, quietly. Fergus steered her down the bleak corridors and through the gated doorways. When they got back outside, with the last door closed behind them, Fergus made a sound like a horse blowing out through its muzzle.

  ‘Jesus. It’s like Alice in Bloody Wonderland in there.’

  Mam held him by the crook of the elbow as if she was sixty, not forty. ‘Take me home, Fergus.’

  He helped her into the passenger seat of the car. He fixed the mirror and reversed out, concentrating hard. Then he drove back the way they’d come. Miles, villages and houses rolled by and the Troubles were everywhere, in the barricaded police stations, the hunch of people’s shoulders on the pavements, and even in the ragged shards of light. Mam said nothing the entire journey, not even when Fergus speeded up to seventy-five miles an hour on a long straight strip of A-road. She sat staring out of the window at the evening sky, kneading her fingertips with her thumbs, as if she was preparing another rhubarb tart.

  Twelve

  That night, in bed, the mountain called to him. He had a sparrowhawk’s view, zooming in on the grasses and the gorse, the wind-stunted trees, the lichen-covered rocks. And there was the cut, with the tarpaulin over it, billowing in the breeze. And the child under it, waiting. And the JCB silent.

  He heard a cough from the spare twin room, then a creak. Either Cora or Felicity had turned over in their sleep. He imagined their faces on the pillows, Cora’s forehead in the crook of her elbow, Felicity on her back in her maroon silk, her straight firm nose pointing upwards, her eyelids still.

  Then he was back in the prison, mouthing better arguments, and Joe was listening, reaching out through the glass, which dissolved at a touch. ‘Joe, come off that weary strike,’ he whispered. The memories of the years flew at him like cards in a deck: Joe showing him how to rake up cut grass, then shaking the implement up at the sky like a hellish imp’s pronged fork and chasing Fergus around the house.

  In the middle of the night

  In the middle of the night I call your name

  Oh Yoko!

  Joe carol-singing with Dafters and himself, the three reprobates, shaking the collecting tins for the St Vincent de Paul Society like maracas and their songs coming out like white balloons in cartoons, getting dirtier with every doorbell. We three kings of buggered-up Eire, selling condoms, tuppence a pair… Joe boogying with Mam in the drawing room on Christmas Day to the fast bit of Bohemian Rhapsody, Mam’s favourite pop song.

  In the middle of a shave

  In the middle of a shave I call your name

  Joe with the razor, giving Fergus his first-ever shave, and their laughing like crazed orang-utans. Joe on the football field, going for broke, and the whole school cheering him as the ball went home to the corner of the net like a kiss.

  In the middle of a cloud

  In the middle of a cloud I call your name

  And the police coming for him on that winter’s night, with Da hollering like a shot elephant and Mam gripping the back of the chair and Joe at the door, saying nothing, just taking off his watch and giving it to Fergus, saying, ‘Mind it for me, Ferg. Keep it safe,’ and then holding out his hands for the cuffs, smiling.

  Oh Yoko! The memory cards flew off and away like scared birds. The name Yoko turned to Joey and then Fergus slept.

  In the middle of a dream, Rur. In the middle of a dream I call your name.

  Thirteen

  ‘Today is the day,’ Felicity said. ‘Exhumation.’

  The girls had gone to school and Da to work. Mam had the fry going. Fergus was helping. His head was pounding from the bad night, but he smiled as if nothing was wrong when the guests appeared for breakfast. Cora said she only wanted an egg, but Felicity wanted the works–beans, potato cake, egg, bacon, sausage.

  ‘My school friends in Roscillin are coming over to help,’ Fergus said. ‘You should see Padraig. He’s six foot five, and built like a truck, with a Mohican on him.’

  ‘We’ll need every one of you.’

  ‘Have you ever shifted something like this before?’

  ‘Never. But Professor Taylor’s arriving down from Queen’s University, and the police pathologist. Between us all we should get her up in one piece. And the army’s helping.’

  ‘The army?’

  ‘They’re coming in a truck. They built a crate for her.’

  Mam came in with the plates. Her face was white, the top button of her jeans undone. ‘Fetch the sauce, Fergus.’

  She put the plate of food down by Felicity. Fergus got the brown sauce and ketchup from the press. Mam reappeared carrying an eggcup with a brown egg popping out. She put it on Cora’s side plate and vanished, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘Sit down, Fergus,’ Felicity coaxed.

  He sat down. ‘I don’t want to intrude.’

  ‘You’re not intruding. Tell me, have you any theories?’

  ‘Theories?’

  ‘About Mel. She’s your girl, after all.’

  ‘Some girl. A bit leathery round the edges.’

  Cora giggled, cracking open her egg. ‘My theory is that she was a royal child. And buried there as a mark of honour when she died of measles. Or something simple like that.’

  ‘Did they have measles back then?’ Fergus asked.

  Felicity speared a sausage. She munched thoughtfully. ‘The Greek writer Thucydides might have been describing measles when he referred to a plague hitting Athens in the fifth century BC. I suppose Mel might have caught measles from traders coming up from the south. Maybe.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s as simple as measles,’ Fergus said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You said there was an Iron-Age ritual of sacrifice. And she’s lying strangely, like she fell or was dumped.’

  ‘Don’t forget the bangle,’ Cora said.

  Felicity nodded. ‘There is that.’

  ‘Maybe she was sacrificed to the pagan gods because the crops were failing. And a child with jewellery on her was a valuable sacrifice.’

  Felicity offered Fergus some toast and he took it.

  ‘Like kidnappers. They go for children to get the most ransom, don’t they?’

  ‘Interesting,’ Felicity said. ‘But my guess is, they didn’t have much notion of childhood. She was old enough to work, so she was a person. You were either a baby or a worker, with nothing in between.’

  ‘Not much fun to be young.’

  ‘It probably wasn’t.’

  Cora put her spoon down. ‘We’ve no evidence of how she died.’

  ‘No,’ Felicity agreed. ‘We must see what the post-mortem brings. Finish your egg, Cora.’

  Cora picked up the spoon again. She took out a dainty bit of white. ‘I think Mel was like any child. Long-haired. Laughing. Naughty. I see her running around the mountains and going for boat rides on the lough, just like kids today. What d’you think, Fergus?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m sure her life had its joys.’ He took another segment of toast and munched. ‘Sometimes it’s like she’s alive still. At night, I’ve been dreaming of her. It’s as if she’s trying to tell me all about herself. As a warning or something.’

  ‘The curse of the mummy’s tomb…’ Cora rolled her eyes and flicked her fingers. ‘Wooo-hooo.’

  Fergus laughed.

  Felicity leaned over to pour tea into her cup. ‘Fergus is right. That’s what history is. A warning. For all of us. Only mostly, we don’t listen.’ She downed her tea in one. ‘Now hurry on, Cora, so we can make strides. I don’t want Professor Taylor getting his oar in before us.’

  Fourteen

  Fergus tried to persuade Mam to come up the mountain with them, but she was in no humour
for it.

  ‘The last thing I want to see is a dead child,’ she said over the washing-up. ‘And just you say nothing about Joey to anyone. D’you hear, Fergus?’

  Fergus promised. He joined Felicity and Cora in the Renault and they set off. The ride around the lough was jaunty. Two swans swooped down, setting off a trail of water disturbance. Cora wound down the front passenger window and air rushed in, biting, exhilarating. The feeble strip-lights and smell of Long Kesh seemed a bad dream from another world.

  The army checkpoint was empty.

  ‘I think half Drumleash is coming,’ Felicity said as they joined a procession of cars turning off up the bog road.

  Sure enough, cars were parked yards back along the bridleway. They’d to walk the last stretch. A crowd milled about the peat workings, with a mix of Gardai and RUC men keeping order. Sunshine blazed down on the gorse. The peace of the place was gone. There were cameras, movement, laughter, like a pantomime in a church.

  Felicity went straight over to where a grey-haired man with a grizzly beard was talking to an RUC officer. Cora and Fergus lingered by the silent JCB.

  ‘You know, I’ve just realized,’ Cora said, shading her eyes. ‘Mel was buried with her head to the east. Like the song.’

  ‘The song?’

  ‘You know. The old John McCormack: Will ye bury me on the mountain, With my face to God’s rising sun.’

  She had a light, trilling voice but when she got to ‘sun’, she stopped and flushed.

  ‘Go on,’ Fergus urged. ‘I don’t know it.’

  ‘I can’t remember any more.’

  ‘It’s pretty.’

  ‘Sentimental, more like.’ Cora twisted the end of her baggy jumper round her finger. ‘Quite a turn-out.’

  ‘I wonder if the fact that she’s facing east meant something.’

  ‘You’d have to ask Mam. That’s Professor Taylor she’s talking to. He’s top of the field. After Mam, that is. D’you know what they call her in Dublin?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Iron Lady. They leave out the “Age”.’

  Fergus chortled. ‘She’s a much nicer iron lady than Thatcher over.’

  ‘Dunno. Mam’s tougher than she seems.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Yep. She grounded me for six months last year.’

  ‘What for?’

  Cora bit a lip. ‘You won’t laugh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I posed in a Warner bra. For a lingerie ad.’

  Fergus stared. ‘You never!’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘For a magazine?’

  ‘A poster. My friend Laura put me onto the photography people. Only they never used it.’

  He couldn’t help staring at her front. There wasn’t much to it going by the way the sweater skimmed straight downwards. He flushed up, then laughed.

  Cora elbowed him in the ribs. ‘You said you wouldn’t laugh.’

  Fergus gulped. ‘Did they pay you?’

  ‘Thirty punts.’

  ‘Jay-sus. Would they take me on, d’you know?’

  Cora clouted him, laughing too. She elbowed him and he elbowed her back and they laughed like goons. Then he froze. He saw Michael Rafters waving over to him from across the gorse. We need to know, Fergus. By tomorrow.

  ‘Shush,’ Cora said, stopping laughing too. ‘There’s Mam coming over, with the professor.’

  Felicity drew up, beaming. ‘Professor Taylor, Fergus. He wants to meet the discoverer.’

  Fergus felt like Christopher Columbus the way the professor kept shaking his hand in congratulation, while Michael Rafters’ eyes needled into him, like a blade in his back. ‘Cora and I were wondering,’ he blurted. ‘Her head is towards the east. Does that mean anything?’

  Professor Taylor considered. ‘The Danish finds were every which way,’ he said. ‘But here in Ireland, we’ve little to go on.’

  ‘We’d better get organized,’ Felicity said. ‘Talking of Denmark, we don’t want another disaster on our hands like what happened there.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’ Fergus asked.

  ‘When they lifted out the Tollund man, thirty-odd years ago, they planked him up into a box where he lay. And the ground being too soft for a crane, they’d to hoist it by manpower alone. One of the helpers had a heart attack and died. The bog claimed a life for a life, so they said. The villagers were petrified.’

  Fergus shivered. ‘The curse of the mummy’s tomb. Like Cora said.’

  ‘We’ve a simpler system here today. The army are supplying some tin sheeting for us to use. We’re going to slip that under her and lift her out that way. Since her legs have already gone, there is less to remove–although we’ll be sifting all around the area in case there’s anything buried with her.’

  ‘More jewellery?’

  ‘Maybe a comb or some beads. Who knows? Anything at all would be a godsend. It would help us to date her. Give us a context.’

  As Felicity spoke, a soft-topped Bedford truck drew right up on the track: the army. Four soldiers jumped down. One of them was Owain, the fallen Pentecostalist. He lounged in his fatigues, a bit apart from the others. The officer in charge came up towards them.

  ‘Professor Taylor?’ he enquired politely. He’d the same clipped English you heard in war movies, an accent of quiet, self-appointed leadership: The empire’s safe in our hands.

  Fergus drifted over to a quiet rock before Owain could have a chance to talk to him. He hoped Michael Rafters wouldn’t follow. As he leaned up against a rock, he couldn’t help catching Owain nodding at him, half smiling. Fergus bit his lip, unsure if he should respond. Then he nodded back, the merest tilt of his head, hoping nobody noticed. Seconds later, it was just as he thought. Michael Rafters was on to him.

  ‘Have you decided, Fergus?’

  Fergus looked at the bog grass beneath his boot. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’ll do it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said I’ve decided.’

  ‘What have you decided?’

  Fergus dropped his voice. ‘Michael, when you join the Provos, is it official?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘In the old days, when you joined, you read an oath. There was a chain of command. You were a soldier. Is it like that now?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘So Joe is under orders?’

  Michael considered, leaning back against the rock next to Fergus. ‘To a degree.’

  ‘What does that mean, to a degree?’

  ‘He’s in prison, isn’t he? Can our orders reach him there?’

  ‘He’s allowed visits. Mam and I saw him yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Fergus. That must have been tough.’

  There was a movement of the people towards the tarpaulin. Cameras began flashing.

  ‘Michael, I don’t want to join you. I’m leaving for Aberdeen when the summer’s over. Whatever my results. If I can’t go to college, I’ll dig the roads. But I will do this thing for you, if—’

  ‘That’s great. It’s just a bit of couriering, between now and the end of June.’

  ‘If.’

  ‘OK, OK. If what?’

  ‘If whoever the man is who gives the orders tells Joe to stop.’

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘His hunger strike, of course.’

  ‘His hunger strike?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Michael whistled softly. ‘He was never ordered onto it in the first place. It was his own choice, Fergus.’

  ‘He’s a soldier, right?’

  ‘Absolutely. That’s the whole point of the strike. We are an army fighting another army. He’s a prisoner of war.’

  ‘And a soldier obeys orders, right?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘I know what you’re driving at, but—’

  The word seemed to float off into the sky. After a moment he put his hand on Fergus’s arm.

  ‘I will talk to the man you mean. I will put the word through. But I can’t promise
the result you want.’

  ‘But you promise to try?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Fergus! We’re waiting for you at the cut.’ Cora ran over and yanked him off the rock. Fergus looked back over his shoulder. Michael nodded. ‘Good man, Fergus. Go for it.’ He slouched back and yawned, taking out a fag. ‘We’ll talk more tomorrow.’

  Fergus ground his upper front teeth hard into his lower lip and turned away. ‘Now I’ve done it.’

  ‘Done what?’ said Cora.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Mam wants you at Mel’s head. Over here.’

  Five minutes later, a group of eight strong men, including Fergus, had formed a semicircle around the tarpaulin. They watched as Felicity and Professor Taylor directed two soldiers slicing the tin sheet through the cut, well beneath what you could see of the buried child.

  It was as if the child was on the cusp of a second coming.

  The bearers gathered round and started to lift. It was awkward, like getting the first slice out of a cake.

  ‘Careful. Her hand jogged,’ someone said.

  ‘There’s a strand of hair. Reddish brown.’

  ‘The colour’s probably down to the tanning of the bog.’

  ‘Dunno. Looks auburn to me. And thickish.’

  ‘OK. In position. After three, gently, lift.’

  ‘Padraig. Get in there on the middle section. Fergus and you, there, lad. To the top.’

  ‘One, two, three…’

  Fergus found himself next to Owain. The two breathed in and hoisted. He was aware of the fine sandy hairs on Owain’s arm brushing against his.

  ‘Hey there,’ said Owain.

  ‘Hey,’ Fergus grunted.

  ‘Bit gruesome, huh?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Like Dawn of the Dead.’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘The movie with all the zombies in the shopping mall.’

  Fergus’s cheeks glowed hot. ‘Oh. Yeah. That.’

  The group began to carry the tin sheet with its ancient remains and mounds of peat across the uneven ground.

  ‘Watch out,’ the professor called. ‘A great clump’s fallen away from the top.’