Skin Paper Stone

by Máire T. Robinson

  ‘But there’s options,’ he had told her. ‘So I don’t want you to worry. I’m sure that’s not something you’re thinking about right now anyway.’ She was only half listening at the time, looking out the window.

  Back at her seat, Stevie looked at the faces around the table, suddenly feeling at a complete remove from everyone. She realised she had never spent time with any of these people on her own. They had been her and Donal’s friends when she had lived in Dublin and now they were his friends, not hers.

  ‘I need to take off,’ she said. ‘Some relatives are in town. You know how it is. It was great seeing you all.’

  She said her goodbyes, doing the rounds of hugs, refusing to meet Donal’s eye as he looked at her.

  It was pouring as she walked towards O’Connell Street to hail a taxi home. The rain haloed the streetlights and melted the freeze, washing away the last of the snow. Stevie took out her phone and called Orlaith. The noise was loud on the other end.

  ‘Hey, are you out somewhere?’

  ‘Stevie? I can’t hear a fucking thing. I’ll just head outside.’

  The phone became muffled. Then she could hear the sound of Orlaith lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag. ‘Sorry, Stevie. I’m outside now. What were you saying?’

  ‘I just met up with Donal in The Welcome Inn. You were right. I’ve been holding onto a piece of juiceless orange.’

  ‘Hah?’ laughed Orlaith. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘I need to throw it away, it’s done. Remember you said … never mind. Look, I’ll give you a ring tomorrow, okay? I’m gonna head home now.’

  ‘Wait, you’re in town, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Come and meet me. We’re in Whelan’s.’

  ‘Thanks Orlaith, but I really feel like just going home.’

  ‘Fuck that. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your arse over here.’

  ‘Wow, such kindness and compassion.’

  ‘Shut your hole and jump in a cab.’

  ‘Okay, fine. I’m on my way.’

  Chapter 20

  The image had haunted Kavanagh that night, and he woke up early with it searing his brain. He searched under his bed for his long-abandoned art supplies and easel. His fingers tingled as he set them up. He drew back the curtains and morning light flooded the room. For good measure he opened the window and shivered in the fresh air, invigorated and primed. He couldn’t get started quickly enough, but then he took a closer look at his supplies. Everything was stuck together and looking the worse for wear. It was obvious that he hadn’t put his brushes or palette away properly whenever he had last used them. He tried to recall when that would have been, but couldn’t.

  Shaking his head, he looked at them sadly. ‘Rode and put away wet.’

  It didn’t matter now. He was long overdue some new supplies, but he would have to make do for this morning. Already he was making an inventory in his head of things he would get: sketch pads, paint brushes, paint, turps. Some of the tubes of paint were congealed at the lid making them impossible to open. He scraped at the hardened paint impatiently. Eventually they were open and he couldn’t mix the paint quickly enough.

  Then he was in it. It flowed – the fluid movement of the line drawing, the sketch taking shape, the ink, and the layers of paint. They had entered his consciousness, those stone figures Stevie was studying. Somehow or other they were like her: luring him in, yet simultaneously keeping him out, inviting him to understand, and then backing away before he had a chance to. It made a change from the tattoo imagery he had been working on, the clean black lines and bold inked colours. This was altogether more elusive. The sheela-na-gigs were emerging from the shadows – mysterious and primal, yet not sinister.

  ‘Kav!’ There was a knock on the door.

  ‘I’m busy,’ he called.

  He heard it again, Gary’s voice. ‘Kav! Are you not even out of bed yet? Ya lazy prick! Can I come in?’

  ‘I said I’m busy!’

  ‘Do you want anything from the shop?’

  ‘No!’ Kavanagh kept his eyes on the painting as the sound of retreating footsteps echoed in the hallway.

  It felt strange to be working in this way, like the painting was already there. He usually painted from his surroundings or from sketches or photographs. There was usually a degree of preparation, but he found that today he didn’t need it. He could see the figures in his mind’s eye. It was a leap into the dark, but he had no fear, only excitement. When he checked his watch he was surprised to see that hours had passed. It was thrilling to lose himself or to find himself lost, his hands covered in paint, the smell of turps and the feel of the brush in his hand. It all felt so right all of a sudden. He wondered why he hadn’t been doing it all along, why he had stopped. All those hours he had wasted when he could have been spending time doing this. It didn’t get any better: watching something evolve out of nothing, the lines, the shade, the paint taking shape. Always the terror of the blank canvas, but something came to life there, was born, once that leap of faith was taken, that first mark made.

  His phone rang. He grabbed it from where it was plugged into its charger and resting on the bedside locker. ‘Simon – Flanagan’s’ flashed up on the screen. Oh God, what could he want? He was probably ringing about the keys, or maybe just to make sure the place hadn’t spontaneously combusted in his absence. That reminded him, he would have to go back to the restaurant at some stage. He’d go later today. He and Alex had left it in a heap, but he had a few days to get the place tidied before it would be opening for business again. It would have to wait for now. He switched off his phone, leaving the smudge of a black fingerprint on the ‘off’ button. He threw the phone onto the bed and got back to his painting.

  *

  Kavanagh let himself into the restaurant. He was surprised to see that the lights were on. Had they left them on? No, he didn’t think so. As he stepped further into the kitchen, he heard muffled noises coming from the dining room. He stopped and stood still and tried to make out what he was hearing. Someone had broken in. He listened, holding his breath as his heart thumped in his chest. Straining to hear, he could just make out a lone voice mumbling and the sound of a chair being moved on the tiled floor. Adrenaline coursed through his body. He tiptoed over to the counter and grabbed a long-bladed knife from the magnetic strip on the wall. Some distant part of him was far away from this scene, already imagining the headlines in The Galway Advertiser: ‘Canny Kitchen Porter Foils Robbery!’ Simon would be so grateful he’d throw him a party. There would be champagne for him and all of the kitchen staff. They’d slap him on the back and finally speak to him in English. The catering would have to be brought in from outside. Lacklustre soup would not hold up to the occasion. They’d have those tiny sandwiches on gilded plates – miniscule squares of bread topped with slivers of salmon.

  ‘Oh, I’m not brave really. Just doing my duty,’ he would say to the onlookers as he accepted his award from the mayor. The image bolstered his confidence. It helped him to puff out his chest and creep around the corner into the dining room. It was dark. He could see the intruder silhouetted against the light coming in from the window. Fat fucker. Kavanagh grasped the knife in his hand tighter. The intruder was hunched over one of the tables. Kavanagh was suddenly unsure of himself. How did an intervening hero proceed in such a situation? Should he just run up and wave the knife about? Or stay where he was and yell something like ‘Stick’ em up, punk’? His legs ached from the tension in his muscles. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark room as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

  He cleared his throat – Ma hem hem – as though politely to announce his presence.

  The intruder spun around. ‘Who’s there?’

  Kavanagh brandished the knife. ‘Hold it, hold it!’ he shouted.

 
The look of fear on the intruder’s face evaporated into one of rage. ‘You!’ spat Simon Dudley-Tompkinson, looking up from the table he had been cleaning.

  ‘Simon, Jesus.’ Kavanagh lowered the knife and backed away. ‘I thought you weren’t back for another few days.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ Simon gestured at the mess. ‘I thought a bloody bomb had gone off in this place.’

  ‘Em, yeah, sorry about that. I was coming here to tidy up.’

  ‘I’ve cleaned most of it now. I’ve been calling you all morning.’

  ‘Em, yeah, I was kinda busy.’

  ‘Kinda busy. Looks like you were kinda busy drinking the bar dry and smoking in here. The ashtray was full of cigarette butts and God knows what else. Drugs and the whole lot.’

  Kavanagh felt a sudden desire to laugh. This whole encounter had a surreal feeling to it, heightened by the fact that he’d been painting all morning and this was the first proper conversation he’d had all day. He tried to suppress the grin from spreading across his face.

  ‘Do you think this is funny?’ Simon spluttered, his jowls wobbling in rage.

  ‘No, no …’. Kavanagh realised he was still gripping the knife in his hand. He placed it on the table. ‘At least now I don’t have to stab you.’

  ‘Stab me?’ Simon recoiled in horror.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean … see, I thought you were a burglar.’

  ‘I trusted you, Joe. Christ, I would have been better off leaving the key with one of the Polish lads.’

  ‘Why didn’t you then?’ said Kavanagh. Some old reflex was kicking in. He felt like he was at school again, playing out the old familiar scene of the authority figure versus the petulant teenager. ‘It’s not that bad. I said I’d clean it and I’ll replace the booze we drank.’

  ‘Just get out of here and leave the key I gave you.’

  Kavanagh took the key from his pocket and placed it on the table.

  Simon picked it up and put it in his pocket. ‘Count yourself lucky I’m not calling the Guards.’

  Chapter 21

  Stevie boarded the DART in Monkstown and looked out the window as the train travelled towards the city, taking in the familiar scenery of a trip she must have made thousands of times over the years: the expanse of beach at Sandymount, clouds reflected in the flat shiny surface of the pale brown sand, and the Poolbeg Towers standing guard in the distance, their red and white stripes on the horizon. She found herself looking forward to getting back to Galway and back to work. If she thought about everything she had to do in the next few months, she started to feel swamped and overwhelmed. There was the meeting with Dr Bodkin to discuss her progress. Then there was the research trip to the south of Ireland where many of the sheela-na-gigs were grouped, particularly in and around Tipperary. She would be living out of a suitcase for at least a couple of weeks. Then there was the dreaded question of why the sheela-na-gigs were there in the first place. Why were there so many in that area and not others? To attempt to get to the bottom of it would necessitate hours of poring over records, annals, and books, looking for any mention of the figures to try to piece together their history.

  She had discovered that the best approach to keeping her stress levels within the non-heart-attack-inducing range was the use of lists. Writing lists made her feel in control. The world was manageable if it was broken down into neat handwriting and underlined twice in blue ink. Then, with each task completed, she could strike a line through another item on the list. One thing at a time, she told herself. It had become her mantra.

  Thankfully, she could get to this sheela-na-gig easily, and afterwards she was heading back to Galway. She got off at Malahide station and walked towards the castle. The sheela-na-gig was built into the corner of a wall of an old abbey on the grounds. Stevie had seen an illustration of it in a book and had a rough idea of where it was located on the old building. The Malahide sheela-na-gig was the only one in situ in the Dublin area. There was another figure in Stepaside beside a holy well that at one time was believed to be a sheela-na-gig. It had been in dispute for a number of years, but was eventually ruled out as an example. Many sheela-na-gigs had been moved from their original locations to the National History Museum in Dublin. There, the sheela-na-gigs gave no hint of disappointment in their new dwellings: they leered down from their pristine plinths, shiny marble underfoot in the high-ceilinged museum, far from the wind-chilled walls and muck-strewn hills of their origin. Stevie realised that once she visited this sheela-na-gig in Malahide she could cross all of the Dublin sites off her list. She was already looking forward to striking her pen through that information.

  The car park was full and the grounds were busy with visitors and people out for walks. Two park rangers in high-viz vests stood on a hill and silently surveyed their kingdom. A gardener trimmed the hedges, the mechanical drone of the strimmer filling the air. Tourists in raincoats and young mothers with prams made their way into the visitor centre through two gateposts topped by loyal stone dogs. A plane loomed large in the skyline, flying low to touch down at Dublin Airport.

  The abbey stood behind a wall with a padlocked gate. It was missing its roof and stood in mossy grounds filled with old headstones, like crooked teeth in an old gaping mouth. Stevie shielded her eyes from the sun and looked at the gable end of the building where she had read that the sheela-na-gig was built into the wall. She ran her eyes up and down the area but couldn’t see anything. Then she noticed that one of the stones higher up was a different colour, a faded reddish sandstone instead of the grey granite of the rest of the wall. She aimed her camera upwards, zoomed in and took a picture. Looking at it in close-up on her camera screen, she could just about make out the figure. It was badly worn and a good deal more faded than the photos she had seen of it. This sheela-na-gig was definitely not something a passer-by would spot. Even if you knew exactly what you were looking for and where to look for it, it was still difficult to find. She wanted to get in and have a closer look.

  She headed for the castle. Unlike the abbey, it was beautifully maintained. A group of tourists stood to one side of the reception desk clutching maps and chatting to each other.

  ‘Hello,’ smiled the receptionist. ‘Are you here for the tour?’

  ‘Em, no. I’m actually a history student and I’m studying sheela-na-gigs. There’s one on the wall of the abbey. Is there any way I could go in to have a closer look at it?’

  ‘Oh, well we wouldn’t have a key for the gate ourselves. I can’t really say to jump over the wall because then you’d have everyone jumping over.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Stevie.

  ‘Dermot?’ she called to her colleague. ‘Who would be in charge of the gate for the abbey? Would that be the local council?’

  ‘The key for the abbey?’

  ‘Yes, this girl is interested in the graveyard. There’s some kind of statue in there.’

  ‘If you ask one of the rangers they might be able to open it for you.’

  ‘The rangers? Are those the guys in the vests?’ said Stevie.

  ‘Yes. They look like Guards.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I saw them on my way in. Great, thanks for your help.’

  She walked back along the path towards where she had seen the men on the hill, thinking how strange it was that she had come to spend her days like this, ogling old churches. This girl is interested in the graveyard. The two rangers were walking along the path in her direction.

  ‘Excuse me. I’m doing a bit of historical research and I’m interested in the old abbey here.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said one of the park rangers. ‘The figure on the wall is it?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘No problem. I can open the gate for you now.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a giant set of keys.

  ‘Oh brilliant, thank you.’ They began to walk together
toward the gate. ‘Do you get many people coming to look at it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the park ranger. ‘We’ve had people from all over the world coming to take photos of it. Of course, it’s become very faded in recent years.’

  ‘Yes, it’s hard to see all right. It’s a shame.’

  He opened the padlock for her and pulled back the bolt. ‘If you can just pull the bolt after you when you’re finished?’

  ‘No problem. Thanks so much.’

  The mossy ground felt bouncy under her feet. She could see the blue sky filled with small white clouds through the gap in the walls where the windows used to be, but were now long gone. In the distance, the hedge-strimmer hummed, birds chirped and flitted through trees and people chatted as they made their way into the visitor centre, but everything faded away as she approached the figure on the wall. She craned her neck and looked up at the sheela-na-gig as she zoomed in with her camera and took some photos. Even at this close range it was still hard to make out.

  As she walked back to the DART station, her phone rang. She took it out of her bag and was surprised to see Donal’s name displayed on the screen.

  ‘Hello, Donal?’

  ‘Stevie, hey. Is this a bad time?’

  ‘Eh, no. It’s grand. Is everything …’.

  ‘So how was your Christmas?’

  ‘Oh, yeah it was nice. Quiet enough, you know. Yourself?’

  ‘Yeah, same, same. I’m heading back to town today. Families are great in small doses.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. So …’.

  Stevie was thrown by the call. Something about it rang false, as though they had been having a casual chat and he was picking up where they had left off.