by Siobhan Dowd
‘What?’
‘Did you kill my father?’
My jaw hung open. ‘No. Of course not,’ I whispered. ‘I thought—’
The spoon of gruel hung motionless. Rur peered at me.
‘You thought I killed my father?’
I nodded over the steaming mess. ‘Didn’t you?’
Rur stared beyond me, bewildered. ‘You’re doing this for me, aren’t you?’
‘This place, Rur. It needs you. It doesn’t need me.’ I declined the last spoonful. ‘It’s over.’
‘This is wrong, Mel, all wrong.’ He put the spoon back in the bowl. ‘I didn’t kill him, Mel. I left him that night by the lough, flat out, drunk. But later I went back. Somebody had smashed a rock on his head. And I saw footprints, Mel. Footprints in the sand. Little ones. Like yours. That’s when I pushed Da’s body into the lough, hoping people would call it an accident.’
Then the truth dawned. ‘Brennor,’ I gasped. If you see Boss Shaughn on the other side, Mel. Tell him not to put a curse on me, his murderer.
‘Brennor?’ said Rur. ‘Then he should pay, not you.’
He got up as if to call out for the guards. The bowl fell to the ground. I put my bound hands to his knees to stop him.
‘No, Rur. I beg you. Leave things as they are.’
‘How can I? How can I let you die, Mel?’
‘If Brennor dies, my mother will too. And the people who hate me will not be assuaged. My time has come, Rur.’
Rur knelt down again, shaking his head. He got out his knife from his belt and cut through the rope around my wrists. ‘There, Mel. Now you are free. I can distract the guards while you run away from here, away from all this hate.’
I chafed my wrists and pushed Mam’s bangle further up my arm. I smiled and shook my head. ‘No, Rur. If I escape, somebody else will be made to pay the price.’
Rur stood still, then moaned. ‘What can we do, Mel?’ he whispered, kneeling beside my throne of straw.
‘Don’t let them hang me alive. I can’t stand the thought of the rope tightening around my neck.’
Rur touched my neck, his eyes large with pity. ‘Oh, Mel.’
‘Stab me first, Rur, with your knife. As the sun comes up, in the back, fast and clean.’
Then Rur lifted me off my straw throne and held me hard to his heart. I put a hand to his strong, stout neck and stroked the place where the hairline ended. This is the best that life can bring, I thought. The best that life can bring, and the worst.
‘Rur,’ I said, tugging on a strand of his fine brown hair. ‘Let me go to my grave with a part of you.’
He put me down and cut off a lock, and twisted it into a knot. He put it into my freed hand and my fingers curled fast around it.
The front door slammed. Fergus could hear the sounds of Felicity and Cora chatting in the twin room next door. He leaped out of bed, confused. The world tilted. He’d to steady himself by gripping the bedpost. Joe, on a drip-feed. Mam gone to see him. Da gone out to work. And Cora, flying away to Michigan.
He got out of bed, flung off his pyjamas and put on his jeans. The running sweatshirt with the puma had holes under the arms. It hadn’t been washed in a week. He kicked it under the bed and found a white T-shirt in a drawer with a faded picture of Che Guevara on it. He put that on instead and padded out to the kitchen.
In the fridge, he found the bacon, sausages and eggs. What did Mam do? Did she start with the sausages or the bacon? In a lifetime of fries, he’d never noticed. He lined the food up on the chopping board.
Theresa appeared at the door in her nightie. ‘You’re supposed to prick ’em.’
‘What?’
‘The sausages, stupid.’
‘Oh.’ He got a fork and stabbed at them. Then he looked up.
‘You put them in first,’ Theresa said, yawning. ‘Then the bacon. Then the eggs.’
‘Lay up the table for the guests, will you?’
The sausages hissed and spat as he cooked. Felicity put her head round the kitchen door. ‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘Everything’s under control.’
‘Great. Call if you need me.’
Felicity disappeared. A sausage made a sound like a hiccup. He put the bacon in. Immediately it turned a paler pink. The rind crinkled. Theresa came in from laying the table. ‘You’re supposed to turn them, dummy. With this.’ She got out the fish slice.
‘I know. Stop bossing me around.’ He shook the pan. Cath came in and watched as if the best programme ever was on TV.
‘I’m starved,’ she said.
‘Have some cornflakes.’
‘The packet’s nearly empty.’
He remembered the three bowls he’d had yesterday. ‘Have a cut of bread.’ He flipped the bacon over. ‘I’ve got news for you two.’
‘What?’ asked Theresa.
‘Joe. He’s on the mend.’
Cath grinned. ‘Told you, Theresa.’ She stuck her tongue out at her sister. ‘Theresa said he’d be dead in a week. I said he wouldn’t. I did a novena like Mam told me and it worked.’
Fergus grinned, turning the sausages. Fat spat.
‘What d’you mean, he’s on the mend?’ Theresa said. ‘He’s starving to death, isn’t he?’
‘The doctors are feeding him, T. On a drip.’
‘D’you mean like they did the suffragettes?’
Fergus stared over the frying pan. ‘The suffragettes?’
‘Yeah. Mrs Tracey at school says these posh English ladies chained themselves to railings to get the vote for women. Then they got arrested. Then in prison they went on hunger strike. Then the mean guards force-fed them so they couldn’t die, however much they wanted to, and become holy martyrs. Is it like that with Joe?’
‘Kind of. Only Joe’s asleep while they’re doing it. He doesn’t know he’s being fed.’
Theresa’s eyes screwed up as she thought about it. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? If he doesn’t know, then he hasn’t given in?’
‘Yes. Pass me the eggs, Cath.’
He cracked first one egg, then another on the edge of the pan like he’d seen Mam do countless times. The eggs plopped into the hot fat and sizzled up. By some intervention of the patron saint of cooking, the yolks didn’t break. ‘Now scoot,’ he said. ‘While I serve the guests.’
He got up the fries using plates from Mam’s best dinner service, the one that was only ever used on Christmas Day. He brought them through to the dining room to where the Dublin ladies were waiting.
‘A man of many talents,’ Felicity said.
Cora sniffed her plate. ‘Not bad, Fergus,’ she approved, picking up her fork. She pronounced Fergus in the old way, with the ‘r’ rolling out to him across the room. Her face was pale and sleepy, her hair rumpled, her eyes dusky. Her cutlery swooped down on the food. She yawned. ‘I could eat a pony.’
Fergus sat down opposite. ‘Can I come in with you again today?’
‘Of course,’ Felicity said. ‘If you don’t mind making your own way home again?’
‘No.’
On the final ride in the green Renault, Cora again sat in the back, exclaiming at everything they saw: the swans, the boats, the flatness of the mountain top, now that it was visible. Felicity was silent. When they drew up at the Roscillin Arms Hotel, she switched off the engine.
‘I’m nervous,’ she said.
Fergus stared. ‘Nervous? You?’
Felicity shrugged. ‘A lot rides on this. It’s like the final sprint in a kind of archaeology Olympics.’
‘You’ll be fine.’ He turned and nodded at Cora. ‘You won your case when you showed us Cora’s picture of Mel.’
In the meeting room, however, the arguments about the fate of the bog child meandered for two hours before her final destination started to veer southwards. Professor Taylor’s nostrils flared and twitched. Felicity sat poised and quiet, a Dubliner with a mission. Fergus stared out of the peaceful open window, forearm-to-forearm with Cora, drifting. Sometimes
he was with Mam next to Joe, watching the lines on the hospital monitoring machine. Then he was back in AD 80, imagining Mel’s last hours. The best that life can bring, Fergus, and the worst. Then Cora nudged him and the thought of parting was like being told to tear off his skin.
‘Let’s have a last walk in the park,’ she whispered to him.
They left the hotel and wandered down the high street. They passed the second-hand TV shop, where all twelve screens showed Margaret Thatcher giving a speech somewhere, and went down the alleyway. The graffiti’d slogans–BRITS OUT and the joke about Bobby Sands’s phone number in the afterlife–had been removed. The wall was empty and white, waiting for the next can of spray.
In the park, a lunch-time brass band played jaunty airs in the stand. Women with prams and buggies lingered under the shade of the withered plane trees. Young people lolled on the grass. The players had a quick-step going, with a toe-tapping pulse. The volume surged to a triumphant conclusion, followed by scattered applause. Next the band played that same stately tune Owain had rendered on his trombone, the one that reminded Fergus of the sliced-bread advert. He scoured the players, remembering that Owain had said he’d agreed to play that day. But Owain’s pale, intent face wasn’t there. The uniforms of the Ulster Defence Regiment glittered in the afternoon sunshine. Cymbals clashed, trumpets shone, but there was no trombone. They finished the piece differently than Owain had.
‘They’re sitting ducks,’ he muttered to Cora.
‘Sitting ducks? Who?’
‘The band players. They’re all UDR fellows. An IRA target.’
‘I don’t get all these initials,’ Cora said.
‘Can’t say I blame you.’ He’d a sudden vision of the bandstand blowing up in their faces. Linking her arm with his, he propelled her towards the café where they’d sat before. They bought drinks and made for a sweep of late hydrangeas over on the far side of the park, where nobody was about. The grass was fresh-mown. They sat down.
‘Felicity told me you’re off to Michigan,’ Fergus said.
Cora nodded. ‘Yes. They’re making me go.’ She drank her Tango off and lay down on the grass. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’
‘OK. What shall we talk about?’
Cora scrunched up her face, thinking. ‘D’you remember the giggling game?’
‘What?’
‘You know. Everyone lies with a head on somebody else’s stomach. It makes a staircase of people all over the lawn. And somebody starts giggling and it spreads up and down, all over.’
‘Yeah, I remember. Kids’ stuff. Anyway, you can’t play it with two.’
‘Who says?’ Cora patted her stomach. ‘Go on.’
He lay down with his head on her stomach. A snatch of the Radetzky March drifted over to him. ‘Didi-dum, didi-dum, didi-dum-dum-dum,’ he crooned. Cora’s belly became a restless ocean as he hummed. His head was a listing boat. He started giggling.
‘You’re out of key,’ Cora laughed. He felt her fingers in his long hair. ‘You know who you look like with your hair like that?’
‘Something out of Planet of the Apes?’
‘No. Georgie Best.’
He rolled over and kissed her. Bits of grass were everywhere, on their clothes, in their hair, between their lips.
‘Hey. It’s my turn,’ she said.
‘Your turn?’
‘To lie on your stomach.’
He let her head lie on his belly, and through the hydrangea blooms he watched a cumulus cloud growing overhead. ‘Did you know we can make clouds rain?’ he murmured.
‘Hey?’
‘We can fly through them on aeroplanes, trailing silver nitrate. And hey presto, raindrops start falling.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘It’s called cloud-seeding.’
‘It doesn’t sound right, interfering with nature like that.’
Fergus drummed his fingers on her scalp, like rain.
‘Is that supposed to make me laugh, Fergus?’
‘No.’ Fergus thought of the plane carrying Cora away from him. He saw the boundless Atlantic, the sky arching over it, the trail of the jet, the storm systems growing and dissipating. Then he saw the bloated heads of the hydrangeas, their colour going to brown. He pinched the tops of Cora’s ears. ‘OK. What d’you call a tractor that isn’t really a tractor?’ he said.
Cora groaned, but started giggling. ‘Dunno. What?’
Fergus’s own belly started shifting. ‘A contractor.’ Suddenly a handful of loose grass was flung on his face and Cora’s head was butting his ribs like a goat. ‘Ouch. Christ, Cora. What am I going to do without you?’
Cora sat up and brushed off the grass. Then she stood, absently plucking at the withered petals on the hydrangeas. He rose too, a numbness growing inside him at her silence.
Just as he started to say, Forget I said that, she said, ‘Write maybe?’
She strolled back across the park and out onto the road, smoothing down her jeans as she went. Smiling, he followed her, oblivious to the band’s raucous finale, the merry rum-pa-pas of the trumpets and the first spots of rain. Michael Rafters’ sparkling blue Triumph zoomed down the high street but he did not notice. Nor did he take in the television screens in the TV shop, flickering with pictures of a blown-up army vehicle. All Fergus could see were a thousand airmail letters, flying west and east, leaving trails of silver nitrate across the sky.
When they got back to the hotel car park, Felicity was waiting for them with a stiff brown folder in her hand.
‘We won,’ she said. ‘Mel is coming down to Dublin.’ She handed the folder to Cora. Cora peeped inside briefly, then handed it on to Fergus, with her old mocking smile. ‘It’s for you.’
‘For me? What’s in it?’
‘Open it and see.’
He opened the folder and there before him was Cora’s charcoaled original of the living, laughing Mel.
‘For me?’ he whispered, ghosting a fingertip over the tresses of her hair. ‘Really for me?’
Forty-five
Fergus waved the green Renault on its way down the high street. He saw it circle the mini-roundabout by the police station and gave a last salute as it went up over the brow of the hill. Then it vanished.
For a long time he stood on one of the wooden bridges behind the hotel, staring at the waving weeds in the little stream. When it started to rain, he put the folder inside his Che Guevara T-shirt and made a dash for the nearby chip shop. He found a fifty-pence piece in his pocket and bought some chips, dowsed them with vinegar, wolfed them down. His lips stung and his fingers tasted of salt. The shower passed.
The bus came right away, and when it set him down in Drumleash, he walked up the main street towards home. He passed Finicule’s and smelled its familiar scent of wood-grain and beer. He popped in to find Uncle Tally sprawled on a chair, reading the paper. The ancient wireless over the fag machine blared out the local Republican show. Irish words merged with Irish reels.
‘Hi there, Unk.’
‘Hi, Fergus. Will I pour you a Guinness?’
‘OK. A glass, only.’
Tally poured them both a half-pint. Fergus drained the beer nearly in one go. ‘Unk?’
‘What?’
‘The bog child’s going south. To Dublin. And as for Joe, we’re bringing him back from the grave.’
‘What on earth d’you mean?’
‘The doctors are feeding him while he’s unconscious. Through a drip. It’s our decision.’
There was a long silence.
‘Aren’t you glad? He won’t die, Unk. He’ll live.’
Uncle Tally’s face was inscrutable. He looked at a spot over Fergus’s shoulder, at something that lay beyond. ‘Glad,’ he said tonelessly. Then, ‘No wonder your da didn’t call in as he promised. I thought maybe something had happened to Joe. But I didn’t expect this.’
Fergus frowned, puzzled. ‘But—’
‘Fergus?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t
forget the driving test. Tomorrow afternoon.’
Fergus slapped his forehead. ‘Christ. I had forgotten.’
‘I’ll be round tomorrow afternoon, two sharp?’
‘OK.’
‘Don’t be nervous. After the A levels, it’s nothing. We’ll go over the manoeuvres beforehand, the three-point turns.’
‘Right.’
‘It’ll be a breeze.’
The voices on the radio were laughing, the afternoon light in the bar grew golden. Fergus yawned.
‘Want another, Fergus?’
‘No. I’d better get back to see if there’s news of Joe.’
‘Mind how you go, Fergus.’
‘Goodbye, Unk.’
Uncle Tally began pouring another glass for himself from behind the old wooden bar. ‘Goodbye.’
Walking up the close, Fergus saw the family Austin back in the driveway: Mam was home. The dahlias in the front were brilliant after the rain shower. He let himself in, noticing some mail on the doormat. Mam hadn’t seen it: she must have come in round the back. He picked up the envelopes and walked through the kitchen into the garden beyond, and there she was, drinking tea in her flowery dressing gown and suede slippers, looking quietly out towards the mountain. He felt as if he was made of a thousand and one beads in a kaleidoscope, tilting round, dropping into a brand-new pattern every five minutes with every encounter.
‘How’s Joey doing, Mam?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Fergus. There you are. He’s turned a corner. A definite corner,’ she said. Her voice wobbled. He saw what she saw–the anaemic hospital light, the white of the sheets, the wires and tubes and little bleeps.
He stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder. ‘Will he be all right? Will he recover?’
Mam’s hand found his. ‘It’s too early to say. We’ve to wait and see. That’s what the doctors say.’
Fifty-two days of fasting. He remembered what he’d read back at the start, courtesy of a gleeful Republican commentator in the Roscillin Star:
For the first three days, the body uses up the glucose in the body. Then it uses up the body-fat. After three weeks, it runs out of body-fat. After that the body literally starts to eat itself.
Joe. Is there no end to the consequences?