Skin Paper Stone

by Máire T. Robinson

  The plants were notoriously difficult to maintain, but Alex had no problems with them. They thrived under his care in the little room beneath the lamps he had set up for them. Kavanagh wondered if Alex spoke to them about Bergman when he was on his own. Maybe they shared his passion for cinema and were growing taller and taller in the hopes of peeping out into the sitting room and viewing the films for themselves.

  ‘How’s the painting going?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Ah, it’s not. But I’m working on some tattoo designs. Gotta get some practice in before I head over to Thailand.’

  ‘Yeah? That’s cool, man.’

  ‘Man, I should have just stayed over there.’

  ‘You’ll get back there if it’s meant to be.’

  ‘If it’s meant to be? I wouldn’t have had you down as a fatalist, Alex.’

  Alex grinned. ‘Sure, what’s for you won’t pass ya. When God closes one door, he opens a window.’

  ‘Always opening windows, that fella. Letting all the heat out.’

  It was only much later, when the credits had rolled, the ashtray had been filled and Kavanagh was standing up to leave that Alex looked at him properly for the first time as he handed him the package of weed. ‘Jesus, man. What happened to your hand?’

  Chapter 7

  Jacqui Maloney stood manning the entrance to the dressing rooms. She absent-mindedly checked the number of items a teenage girl in the queue was holding before handing her the corresponding number tag and resuming her daydream about Pajo. She imagined him surprising her after work, waiting for her with a bunch of bright yellow flowers. Then he would bring her out to dinner, and in that candlelight, would lean in and whisper….

  A woman exiting the dressing rooms distracted her from her reverie. She let out a loud sigh as she walked towards Jacqui.

  ‘No joy, love?’ Jacqui reached to take the clothes back from the woman.

  The woman shook her head and tutted. ‘Why do they always look nicer on the hanger?’

  Jacqui smiled in recognition. ‘Tell me about it.’

  Jacqui knew from experience whether customers would buy the items they tried on or hand them back to her. She had gotten the job straight after she finished secondary school – same shit, different day. She had been working there the longest of the floor staff but had never been promoted to manager. Never expected it. Young ones who had started years after her now told her when to go on a break. She was passed over, and yet she had some sort of seniority because she knew everything, and she could explain to the new people in her slightly impatient way that these were not the right hangers and those shirts were folded all wrong. These fly-by-nights, college students, part-timers who never stuck it out for long – they were tourists here while she was a permanent resident.

  She rezipped and rebuttoned the items of clothing as she fixed them on the hangers ready to go back out on the shop floor. The world of the shop was different from the real world: under the fluorescent lights they sold aspirational dreams in Lycra, knock-offs of designer trends in polyester, the latest Milan fashions mass-produced in Mauritius. Jacqui spent her days stocking items that were all out of whack with the seasons: bikinis, flip-flops and beach bags for a summer she knew was never going to arrive. She was putting Christmas decorations on shelves before Hallowe’en had even passed.

  Jacqui tried to resume the daydream, but she felt stupid all of a sudden. She knew in her heart that the man she was imagining was not the real Pajo. This scenario she had concocted would never happen. That was okay, she told herself. There were different types of love, not just the soppy sort that you saw in films. She loved Pajo, and nobody could take that from her. The important thing in life was whom you loved, not who loved you back. She had decided this early on and had spent a lifetime perfecting the art of unrequited love. She beamed it, a one-way channel.

  Growing up, the person she loved the most was her father, although she had never met him. All she knew of him was the dismissive shake of her mother’s head when Jacqui asked questions about him. But Jacqui heard things through the thin walls at night when her mam and her Auntie Sharon sat up sometimes listening to music, drinking wine and smoking. She tried to piece it all together from the snippets that floated up with the cigarette smoke – stolen gifts to her hungry ears. Her mother was still young, and in the company of her sister she was younger still, laughing and gossiping and singing along with the radio as Jacqui listened, her ear pressed against the coldness of the wall.

  She knew that her father was somewhere in the city, and that her mother used to work with him before Jacqui was born. She had heard her mother saying something about his car and the leather seats. Jacqui would sit on the wall by the roundabout at the edge of the estate and study the passing cars. Maybe her father was driving one of them. Dreams of her father were elaborate and all-consuming. She became convinced that he was keeping an eye on her, some benevolent man who would reveal his presence when the time was right. One of these days he would pull up at the side of the road and call, ‘Jacqui!’ and she would sit in the front seat beside him with music playing. He might bring her into town to Griffin’s for tea and a chocolate eclair. Every birthday and Christmas she thought to herself, maybe this year.

  When she was 8, her mam started vomiting in the bathroom in the mornings even when she hadn’t been drinking the night before. Then she told Jacqui she was going to have a new brother or sister.

  ‘Does this mean my dad will visit?’

  Her mother shook her head. ‘I’ll explain when you’re older.’

  Jacqui cringed now whenever she looked back on the time she had spent trying to make her father appear through sheer will. She was so focused on this phantom parent who never materialised that she didn’t appreciate the parent she did have. Her mother was gone, and now it was too late.

  ‘Jacqui!’ She heard a familiar voice calling her from across the shop floor. She looked up with a start to see her younger brother making his way towards her. He was with some crusty guy, one of those straggly winos from Eyre Square. They were talking loudly and staggering about the place.

  ‘Hey, Jacqui, howya?’ He was standing in front of her, a dazed look on his face. She was so mortified she could barely look at him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed in an angry whisper.

  The security guard came over. ‘Is everything okay, Jacqui?’

  ‘Grand, it’s grand, Kev,’ she said. She could feel her cheeks burning.

  ‘S’grand!’ said Maloney, slurring his words. ‘Just having a chat with my sister. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’

  Jacqui looked around in embarrassment. Shoppers passing by were rubbernecking like they were passing a traffic accident.

  Jacqui looked at Kev, a look that said please don’t make this a bigger scene than it already is. He nodded, then backed away. ‘If you need me, just shout.’

  Jacqui waited for him to walk away. She grabbed her brother by the elbow and marched him over into the quietest corner she could find. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Well, we were passing, you know, and I hadn’t seen ya for a while, and …’.

  ‘I’m in work now.’

  ‘I know. It’s just that me and Grover…’.

  ‘Who the fuck is Grover?’

  ‘My friend over there.’ He nodded towards the man he’d arrived in with who was perusing a rack of women’s pyjamas. ‘He’s got six dogs!’

  ‘I don’t care how many dogs he’s got. What do you want?’

  ‘See, the thing is we’re a bit short of money and we kind of owe this guy …’.

  Jacqui shook her head. ‘I’m broke. Pay day’s not until tomorrow.’

  Maloney’s face fell. ‘Even like a few quid would help, like …’.

  Jacqui reached into her pocket and handed
him a €20 note. ‘This is the last time. I mean it.’

  ‘Thanks, sis. I’ll pay you back,’ said Maloney. ‘Here, Grover!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s go, yeah?’

  Chapter 8

  There was something reassuring about returning to education in September. I must be institutionalised, Stevie thought to herself as she put her books, pencil case and notebook into her shoulder bag. She had enjoyed going shopping for them during the week, but then she was the type of person who could spend hours in stationery shops mooning over diaries and fondling envelopes; the type of person who got a giddy thrill from picking out a stapler. Although she hadn’t always enjoyed her school years, there was something reassuring about the routine of it.

  After graduating from her history degree in Trinity College, she had struggled. Her Indiana Jones fantasies of unearthing artefacts in exotic locales were soon put to rest. Archaeological digs meant crouching in mud and dirt, shivering in ditches, pipe-smoking in drizzle. Her frame was slight and she felt the cold easily. Her muscles would ache from the brute strength required to heave dirt and rocks and wheel trundling wheelbarrows. Besides which, this type of work was sporadic at best, and hardly a reliable stream of income. There seemed few options post graduation other than to train to become a teacher, as Orlaith, Caitríona and several other people from her class had done. Stevie tried to visualise it, but it was an image that refused to appear. Others in her class had gone off travelling to Australia or the States, but that wasn’t an option for Stevie.

  She spent a few years office-temping, manning reception desks, battling with switchboards and dutifully shuffling bits of paper as a desk-monkey in a succession of businesses. This was during the boom years when companies had money to burn and thought nothing of bringing in temporary staff at exorbitant rates. There was always some task that the staff either didn’t want to do or didn’t have time to do themselves. It was usually menial in nature: inputting data, filing, or preparing batches of letters or FedEx parcels. Stevie didn’t mind this type of work. In fact, the less taxing, the better. Once she got a handle on what she was doing, she fell into a rhythm where she could do the work but let her thoughts drift completely free. She re-watched historical documentaries in her mind. She stretched herself to recall facts she had memorised for college exams, important dates and discoveries. Sometimes she had conversations with characters from the past in her mind’s eye. Druids would confide in her their visions. Monks in their round towers would confess to her their fears of attack as they toiled with ink over vellum pages. She could have gone on like that quite happily, an oracle to lost worlds in the midst of temples of modernity where deals were done and gods of prosperity worshipped.

  Then, over the years, the jobs changed. From six-month contracts in multinational bastions of glass and light in Dublin’s financial district, she was offered a day here or there in one of the business parks on the outskirts of the city, in places like Sandyford or Bluebell. Whereas before the work had been consistent, sometimes with a few different jobs to choose from, gaps began to grow between assignments of a week, two, sometimes more. Then the gaps between assignments started to get longer. Things were changing. She realised the full extent of this shift when she had a two-week assignment in Bray in a computer company and the workers were threatening to strike: a large part of the company was being relocated to Hyderabad in India. Every day the news was filled with stories of multinationals shutting down their Irish bases. It was around this time that Stevie decided to actively pursue going back to college for her Ph.D., an idea she had been toying with on and off for years. Maybe academia was the way to go after all.

  Today was an induction session at the university for all new Ph.D. candidates. Her supervisor, Dr Bodkin, had asked her and the other medieval history students to arrive early so that they could meet each other before the session. Stevie had only been to the university once before, for her initial meeting with Dr Bodkin. She walked over the narrow Salmon Weir Bridge. The footpath was full of other students heading in the direction of the university. Cyclists and cars flew past in a steady stream. In the River Corrib below, a fisherman in waterproof trousers waded, casting his reel into the fast-flowing current that sparkled with dappled light. The bells of the imposing green-roofed cathedral rang out as Stevie passed. In the canal, three swans floated by, a startling splash of white against the dark background of the water. A group of canoeists in wetsuits were gathered at the edge, about to enter.

  Stevie turned right and walked down the path to the university. Across the playing fields, she looked towards the quadrangle, a beautiful building at the front of the campus, all stone and creeping ivy. She had been impressed by its imposing structure the first time she had visited. The rest of the buildings on campus were somewhat less impressive, a hodgepodge of architecture that had been built at various stages over the years with seemingly little thought to any kind of overall stylistic coherence. So it was that Soviet-bloc-style towers made unlikely neighbours with Portakabins and the odd two-storey building that looked like it had been transplanted from some suburban housing estate.

  Inside the main concourse, Stevie stood in line for tea from the ground-floor kiosk. The smell of burnt cheese wafted through the line. It seemed the students travelled in packs for safety and all dressed the same. The boys wore hoodies and jeans or tracksuit bottoms. The girls wore hoodies, short skirts, thick black tights and Ugg boots. Stevie was conscious of the noise her high heels made on the tiled floor. She had wanted to make a good impression, so had erred on the side of caution and worn her office temping wardrobe of trousers, high heels and a blouse instead of her usual day-to-day clothing, which generally consisted of some variation of black jeans, converse, a white top and a black cashmere sweater. She realised she was probably overdressed and began to feel slightly ridiculous, like she was playing the part of a secretary in a trashy TV show. Some of the first year students looked so young and fresh-faced with expectant eyes. Stevie realised it was ten years since she had been in their position. A whole decade since she had started her undergraduate degree, just before her nineteenth birthday, and here she was, 29 years old, about to embark on another three years of study in a new city where she hardly knew anyone.

  The history department was in one of the two tower blocks. Stevie travelled up to the top floor in the creaking lift. A large, draughty window overlooked the grey cement courtyard below, dominated by a bright yellow modern sculpture, an eyesore of tangled metal, like some piece of debris washed up on a beach. Stevie looked at the people below, milling about, bathing their faces in sunlight, or sitting on benches reading, smoking or chatting. Beyond the campus, rows of grey houses stretched out into the distance.

  She knocked on Dr Bodkin’s office. The door swung open and a middle-aged blonde woman in tortoise-shell glasses beamed at her.

  ‘Stevie! Lovely to see you again.’

  ‘You too,’ smiled Stevie. In their previous meeting, Dr Bodkin had shown such enthusiasm for her subject, and for Stevie’s proposed research, that at times she had literally rubbed her hands together gleefully. She had that quality that Stevie knew to be rare in academics: knowledgeable without being an insufferable know-it-all.

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ said Dr Bodkin, shaking Stevie’s hand. ‘The troops are here. Let me introduce you.’

  She ushered Stevie into the office that she would be sharing with the other Ph.D. candidates, where they each had a locker and shared use of some computers and a printer. The room was bright, with a view of traffic whizzing over the Quincentennial Bridge and the River Corrib below, snaking off beyond the horizon.

  ‘Stevie, I’d like you to meet Adrienne. Adrienne is researching poetry and the bardic tradition.’

  ‘Hi, Adrienne. Nice to meet you. That sounds really interesting.’

  ‘Thanks,’ mumbled Adrienne, looking at a spot on the floor and fiddling with the sleeve of an oversized purple cardigan that
swamped her tiny frame. She had a pale face, dark hair, and squinty eyes framed by her most prominent feature: two thick caterpillar eyebrows that looked like they were plotting a way to crawl towards each other and meet in the middle of her forehead.

  ‘I’m Gavin,’ came the booming voice of a stocky man who was bulging out of a T-shirt that was printed with the words: ‘Historians Do It For Posterity!’ He had blonde hair, but his patchy beard was red, causing a visual disconnect. He looked like one of those paintings you might see in an Anglo-Irish ‘big’ house – a moneyed, buffoonish expression that betrayed years of inbreeding and a penchant for blood sports. He held out a sweaty paw for Stevie to shake. ‘I’m researching medieval weaponry.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Gavin. I’m Stevie.’

  ‘I asked you to come here a bit early today so that you’d have a chance to meet each other and talk about your research,’ said Dr Bodkin. ‘Pretty soon you’ll all be so busy with your own modules and studies that you may not see each other from week to week, so it’s nice to touch base now before things get too hectic.’

  ‘Are you the girl who is researching sheela-na-gigs?’ Gavin asked.

  Stevie nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’

  ‘Yes, they are rather interesting, aren’t they?’ he bellowed. ‘Mysterious objects. Do you subscribe to the notion of the Romanesque theory?’

  Dr Bodkin caught Stevie’s eye and smiled. Something told her it was going to be a long day.

  Chapter 9

  Finn looked out the window of Dúch. The street outside was quiet. There was still no sign of Kavanagh. When Kavanagh had approached him and said he wanted to learn how to become a tattoo artist, Finn had agreed to take him on as an apprentice. He had shown Finn a few drawings and they weren’t half bad, and he had warmed to Kavanagh straight away, seen something of himself in the fellow floundering art school graduate who was trying to find his way. But now he was beginning to have his doubts.