Bog Child

by Siobhan Dowd

  Nineteen

  He limped his way down the main street pavement, passing Finicule’s Bar just as Uncle Tally drew up in the van.

  ‘Hey, Unk.’

  Uncle Tally switched the engine off. There was a frown of concentration on his face.

  ‘Unk?’

  ‘Fergus! What’s new?’ Uncle Tally got out and slammed the door of the van.

  ‘Nothing, Unk. I’ve been running and twisted my ankle.’

  ‘Not badly?’

  ‘No. Just a sprain. Unk?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you busy?’

  ‘Me? Busy? What would I be busy at?’

  ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘Talk away.’

  ‘Not here.’ Fergus jerked his head. ‘Indoors?’

  Uncle Tally looked taken aback. ‘My room’s a tip.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Give me a minute to clear the fag-ends off the bed, will you?’

  Fergus laughed. ‘OK.’

  He rested his stick against the pub wall while Uncle Tally opened the side door to the bar. There was a narrow flight of stairs straight up to his bed-sit. He ran up ahead of Fergus, and a minute later reemerged, switching on the stairwell light.

  ‘It’s a bit more decent now.’

  It was ages since Fergus had been at Uncle Tally’s place. He limped up the stairs and into the room. Within, the curtains were still drawn. Uncle Tally went to open them. The place smelled musty, but there was a pleasant smell muddled up with it. Fergus sniffed. It reminded him of Christmas.

  ‘Smells nice in here,’ he said, puzzled.

  ‘Must be the aftershave,’ Uncle Tally joked. Fergus saw a bottle of Old Spice by the sink and chortled. With the curtains now parted, light toppled into the room. There were cardboard boxes stacked against the wall, an overflowing ashtray and no lampshade on the overhead light. The purple blanket on the bed was all in a heap.

  ‘More decent, you say, Unk?’

  ‘You should have seen it before,’ Uncle Tally said. ‘Have a seat on the bed.’ As he lifted a cardboard box out of Fergus’s way, the top flapped open, revealing the contents.

  ‘Cigarettes!’ Fergus said. ‘Stacks of them.’

  Uncle Tally looked sheepish. ‘Your man Harry and myself. We’ve been flogging fags over the border. With the Irish punt the way it is, there’s a pretty difference in the price. Everyone’s at it.’

  Fergus grinned. ‘You’re over your duty-free limit, Unk.’

  ‘Well. The dole wouldn’t make a rat fat.’

  ‘What if the army stopped you?’

  Uncle Tally shrugged. ‘They’ve bigger fish to fry.’

  Yeah. Me. Fergus plonked down on the bed.

  ‘What did you want to talk about?’

  Fergus thought of the squaddie, Owain, the brown packets, and Michael Rafters. He longed to tell Uncle Tally the whole lot. But he’d been sworn to secrecy. He bit his lip. ‘It’s Joe, Unk.’

  ‘Oh. Joe.’ Uncle Tally moved another box from the armchair by the window and sat down.

  ‘You and he were great friends. Weren’t you? It was he who called you Unk when he was a wee one. And then it stuck.’

  Uncle Tally shrugged. ‘So it did. Unk the Monk. I don’t think.’

  Fergus grinned. ‘I remember you taking us fishing. And the time we all developed the black-and-white photos of the fair in Roscillin.’

  ‘We used the old coal shed below for a dark room. They were a bit streaky, as I recall.’

  Fergus laughed. ‘Every Saturday we’d play football in the park. You never let us win.’

  ‘That would’ve been patronizing you.’

  ‘And in the summer we’d drive over to Bundoran strand,’ Fergus said. ‘Remember the time you saved Joey’s life?’

  ‘I only scooped him back when he’d gone out a bit too far.’

  ‘I remember. The current was strong.’

  Uncle Tally waved a hand as if to dismiss it.

  ‘Saturdays were the best bit of our week, Unk.’

  ‘I was only taking you out from under your mam’s feet. On the weekends when your da had to work.’

  ‘Joe and myself were always fighting. But somehow, when we were with you, we never did.’

  ‘No. You were good lads. Mostly.’

  Fergus stared at the boxes. His ankle throbbed still. He leaned over and took off his trainer, then his sock.

  ‘That looks sore,’ said Uncle Tally. He went to the sink, got a flannel under the cold tap and squeezed it out. ‘Take this, Ferg.’

  Fergus draped the flannel over his ankle. ‘So, Unk.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why d’you never go to see Joe?’

  Uncle Tally sat back down on the armchair, silent.

  ‘What do you think of the hunger strike, Unk?’

  ‘God, Fergus. What am I supposed to say? You know me. I try not to get involved.’

  ‘Da’s all for it. He’s like a recruitment advert for the Provos the way he goes on.’

  ‘Your da was always a die-hard.’

  ‘But my mam, Unk.’

  Uncle Tally tutted. ‘She’s looking shook all right.’

  ‘Mam says I’m not to visit Joe. But, Unk, you could visit him. He might listen to you.’

  ‘Listen to me?’

  ‘If you told him to eat again. He might listen.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘He’d a mighty opinion of you. Always.’

  ‘I’d like to help, Fergus. But would they even let me in? I’m not immediate family.’

  ‘They might. It’s worth a try.’

  ‘I’d go like a shot if I could help. But there’s nothing I could say would sway Joe.’

  ‘But even if you just went in and said nothing. It might make him think.’

  Uncle Tally stood up and opened the sash window. He stared down at the street. The primary school bell was being rung amidst the sound of young children at play. ‘There’s something I must tell you, Fergus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Joe and I had a falling out.’

  ‘A falling out? You never.’

  Uncle Tally nodded. ‘It’s why I haven’t been over to see him.’

  ‘But he’s on hunger strike now, Unk. He’s weak. Dying, maybe.’

  Uncle Tally’s head dropped into his hands. ‘Don’t I know it.’

  ‘Surely whatever falling out you had wasn’t that bad?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Was it about the Provos, Unk? Did you disagree about him joining up?’

  Uncle Tally shook his head. ‘That was none of my business. You know I never get involved.’

  ‘So what was it about?’

  Uncle Tally looked up. ‘D’you really want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was about a girl.’

  ‘A girl? Not that lassie from Newry? Cindy?’

  Uncle Tally said nothing. Fergus recalled Joe saying she was history now.

  ‘Did you steal her off him, Unk? Did you?’

  Uncle Tally reached over to the open cardboard box and took out a pack of cigarettes. He removed the wrapping and popped a fag in his mouth, then offered one to Fergus.

  ‘No thanks.’

  Uncle Tally lit his own and breathed out the smoke. ‘It’s water under the bridge, Fergus. Go on, have one. Have a whole packet.’

  Fergus sighed. He took a packet but didn’t open it. ‘So you won’t go in and see him?’

  ‘No. I’d only make things worse.’

  ‘He didn’t seem that fussed about Cindy when I saw him last.’

  ‘Maybe not. But he’s not fussed about me, either, let me tell you.’

  Fergus took the flannel from his ankle. ‘I’d best be going. The ankle feels better.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Fergus.’

  Fergus folded the flannel and put it over the side of the sink. He hobbled to the door. ‘Are you still seeing her?’

  ‘Who?’

  �
��Cindy, of course.’

  Uncle Tally tapped a long finger of ash into the sink. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘So it’s not serious? Not like it was with–Noreen, was it?’

  ‘No. It’s not like it was with Noreen.’ Uncle Tally smiled.

  Fergus opened the door. ‘I’ll let myself out.’

  ‘Mind how you go. And, Fergus?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just get through those exams. Don’t worry about anything else. Just the exams. D’you hear?’

  Fergus bit his lip. Easier said than done. ‘I hear you, Unk. You sound just like Mam.’

  ‘When are they over?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Come in for a pint then, tomorrow night. On me.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And will we do some more driving lessons?’

  ‘As many as you like. You should apply for the test.’

  Fergus nodded. ‘I will. I’ve the application form ready.’

  ‘And, Fergus–if you do get in to visit Joe again, don’t say a word about our chat, will you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just give him my–my greetings.’

  ‘Your greetings. OK.’ With a hand on each banister, Fergus swung himself down the narrow stairs. ‘S’long, Unk,’ he called at the door below.

  As he came out onto Drumleash’s main street, the school bell clanged a final time. The uproarious sound of the pupils, Theresa and Cath among them somewhere, retreated into the building. He remembered what Sands had said before he died: Our revenge will be in the laughter of our children. Fergus picked up his stick, wishing he was back at their age, in that simple, ordered time, filing between the small, intimate classes. Greetings? The word was quaintly formal, redolent of birthday cards from great-aunts or postcards from watering places. He was exhausted, he realized. He tried his weight on the injured foot and winced. He shuffled along through the village, sweating under the morning’s heat, and turned with relief into the close and home.

  Twenty

  At home, Mam was cross about the ankle. ‘The running’s becoming an obsession, Fergus.’

  ‘It keeps me fit.’

  ‘Cripples you, more like.’

  ‘It’s the only thing keeps me sane.’ He thought of the packets. ‘Or halfway sane.’

  Mam raised her eyes to heaven and ran him a bath. Afterwards she bandaged the ankle up tight for him. Then he helped her get the twin room ready for the Dublin ladies. He turned the mattresses over and did the hospital corners with the sheets. Together they had scrambled eggs on toast for dinner. Then Mam said she was off to a meeting with the priest who served as chaplain at Long Kesh. He was a man in the know, she said, a man who wanted to help.

  It was Fergus’s turn to raise his eyes to heaven. ‘It’s beyond the power of prayer,’ he said.

  Mam’s face looked worse than the Pietà. He wished he could bite back his words. ‘Nothing’s beyond prayer, Fergus,’ she said, her eyes filling. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, Mam. Of course. There’s always hope.’

  ‘And, Fergus?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not a word to the guests.’

  ‘No, Mam.’

  After she’d driven off, Fergus sneaked into the front garden with the scissors and snipped an orange rose that was coming into bloom. He rooted out a Belleek vase nobody ever used from the dresser in the front room. It had a cream-coloured glaze with hokey green shamrocks sprinkled on the front. He filled it with water and put the rose in. Then he added a spoon of caster sugar, because he’d heard somewhere that cut flowers thrived this way. He put the orange, cream and green creation on the bedside table between the twin beds.

  The Renault drew up just as he finished. He stood at the front door and watched Felicity’s trim figure hop out. She moved around to the boot, getting out the luggage, while Cora emerged on the passenger side. She was dressed in a mustard coat that looked like a blanket. The sun beat down on it like a jealous rival. Her hair was cut short like a boy’s, making her face seem larger, more definite.

  ‘Hello there, Fergus,’ Felicity said.

  ‘H’lo,’ Fergus replied.

  Cora said nothing. She just shrugged and looked up at the sky as if to say the whole world was on the road to ruin. She caught Fergus’s eye and winked.

  ‘We’ve the room ready for you,’ he said. There was a wobble to his voice. He pretended to cough, holding the door open.

  ‘We’ll just dump our things inside and go,’ said Felicity. ‘Mel is waiting for us. Do you want to come too, Fergus?’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Let me take those.’ He darted forward before they could protest and took the two holdalls. They were heavier than they looked and his ankle rankled as he hobbled with them back into the house. Felicity and Cora followed him down the hallway.

  ‘It’s very patriotic in here,’ Felicity said in the twin room. She nodded towards the vase. He realized it was the colours of the Irish flag.

  ‘Oh, that. It was a notion of my mam’s.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ said Cora. She picked up the vase and smelled the rose. ‘From the garden?’

  Fergus nodded. She replaced the vase and wriggled out of her mustard coat, flinging it down on the coverlet. Under it, she was wearing a black sweater and khaki trousers. The style was military but made her look very girlish. She flopped on the bed, yawning.

  ‘Cora!’ Felicity scolded. ‘I told you to eat that sandwich. Now look. You’re fit to wilt.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m fine.’ She bounced back up like Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout.

  Felicity sighed. ‘Let’s crack on. They’re expecting us in Roscillin.’

  They got back in the car. Felicity insisted Fergus sit in front as navigator. Cora sat behind him, her heels drawn up onto the edge of the back seat, her hands clasped around her knees. As they drove to the head of the lough and up onto the main road, Felicity admired the sunshine, the swans with their new cygnets, and the unusual sight of two people on a tandem, pedalling downhill at such a pace it was hard to overtake them.

  ‘You’d never think there was anything wrong here in the North,’ Felicity said. ‘Would you?’

  Fergus looked out at the green tunnel of trees ahead and the idyllic roadside flowers. ‘No.’

  ‘With the hunger strike and all, the news would have you believe the whole place was at its own throat.’

  Fergus swallowed. Maybe it is.

  ‘They teach history like that,’ Felicity said. ‘Battle after battle–as if there was no ordinary living in between.’

  Then she asked him about his exams, his family and whether he had summer plans. He answered with half his brain. The other half was aware only of Cora, behind him, saying nothing, her knees pressed up into the back of his seat. She was quiet, but alive to the power of ten. She reminded him of the laws of electromagnetism:

  F = qv x B

  where F, force, was Cora, and q the charged particles in his body and v the rate at which they were being sucked backwards towards her. B was the inside of the Renault, a moving magnetic field, with the sun dappling, the air rushing and Felicity chatting and the white lines of the road flicking past, like heartbeats.

  ‘Turn right here,’ he said, just in time.

  They pulled up at the low-slung white shed with the corrugated iron roof that was Roscillin’s abattoir, the place where the resurrected bog child lay waiting.

  Twenty-one

  Mel’s truncated body had been laid out on a wheeled trestle before they arrived. Experts had cleaned her down. They stared in silence in their surgeon’s gowns, donning latex gloves. She looked different indoors, hunched, almost ungainly. She was less an organic part of the earth, more a ghoulish murder victim. Her brown skin was wrinkled, as if she’d died of old age. The shift was a rag, torn at the back so that her spine and buttocks were revealed. Her face slumped onto the plastic sheeting that covered the trestle, les
s peaceful than it had seemed up on the mountain. The bangle on her wrist had been removed. Her short arms were plump. One hand lay relaxed, open; the other was clenched into a fist. The rope around her neck was revealed as deftly made, precision-coiled by a craftsman.

  ‘We’ve established two things for sure,’ Felicity said.

  ‘What?’ asked Fergus.

  ‘The bangle she was wearing is consistent with an Iron-Age date. Late BC or early AD, the expert says.’

  ‘So she did live around the time of Christ?’

  ‘So it would seem. We’ve sent off samples of the body tissue for radiocarbon-dating for a more accurate date. We should get results in six weeks.’

  ‘What’s the other thing?’

  Felicity pointed to the girl’s lower abdomen. It was a shrivelled mass of cloth and flesh, but there was no sign of a male organ. ‘Definitely a girl.’

  ‘Poor Mel,’ said Fergus. ‘She looks so sad.’

  ‘We’d all look sad if we’d been buried that long,’ Cora said.

  ‘Other bog people have been found hanged like this.’ Felicity traced the loop around Mel’s neck. ‘If you believe the historians, a cult prevailed across much of northern Europe from the Bronze Age through to the Iron Age, surrounding a goddess called Nerthus.’

  ‘Nerthus?’ asked Fergus. ‘Who was she?’

  ‘Mother Earth, if you like. Tacitus describes rituals surrounding her in his Germania. She’s always depicted wearing a neck-ring or torque. Archaeologists think the instances of hanged bog people connect with this. The noose could be a symbol–the threshold between life and death.’

  Cora put a hand to her own throat. ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Another interesting pattern with bog people,’ Felicity continued, ‘is the contents of their stomachs. They all seem to have died in the winter.’

  ‘The winter? How can you tell?’

  ‘There’s no summer fruit in there, only grain. It’s as if they were given a frugal meal, a kind of porridge, of last year’s grain before being sacrificed. Perhaps to protect next year’s crop.’

  ‘Didn’t they eat meat?’

  ‘They must have. But we’ve never found any in the stomachs of those who were hanged like this. But who knows what Mel’s stomach will tell us? Maybe she’ll be different.’

  ‘You’re going to look in there?’