by Laura Elliot
‘The truth, Beth.’
‘It is the truth. Honest.’
‘Then why do you have the saddest pair of eyes I’ve ever seen on a young girl’s face?’ She took out her photographs of Anaskeagh and handed them to Beth. The familiar farm, the O’Donovan children with their big bones and cheeky grins. Sara was included in some of the photographs. How tall and leggy she looked, playing Hamlet in the school play. She was dressed as the Blessed Virgin in a Lourdes tableaux, which was performed in the Star of the Sea assembly hall. Her eyes stared past the adoring crowd at her feet. Another photograph showed her dancing at the Anaskeagh Feis, ringlets bobbing as she did her reels and jigs. Beth handed the photographs back without a word. The older woman held her close when she began to sob.
‘Come home, honeybun. Your mother misses you.’ She sighed when Beth shook her head. ‘Young people… Why do they always hurt the ones who love them most?’
‘Mum doesn’t love me so I can’t hurt her.’
‘Of course she loves―’
‘No, she doesn’t. Not the way you love Jess. Anyway, I don’t want to leave Dad. He pretends he’s all right but he keeps losing weight and he doesn’t have the breath to play his tin whistle any more.’
Catherine frowned when Beth told her about the hospital tests. The questions she asked added to Beth’s uneasiness but it was difficult to think dark thoughts when Jess was around.
She laid out her new clothes on the bed and giggled, holding up a thick pair of knickers with elasticated legs. Beth snatched them from her and waved them over her head.
‘Black knickers! This looks like a serious mortal sin, Sister Mary Wham! Shame on you.’
‘Black everything,’ sighed Jess. She fitted on one of her dresses and admired herself in the mirror.
‘You look more like the bride of Dracula than the bride of Christ,’ declared Beth. ‘And your boobs have disappeared.’ She prodded her friend’s chest. ‘Is this a miracle of the flesh – or just bad tailoring?’
‘Oh shut up and be serious for a minute.’ Jess’s eyes were solemn, accusing Beth of making fun of her. ‘You think this is all one big joke, don’t you?’
‘Of course I don’t, Jess.’ But it was difficult to understand this all-embracing need her friend described. It transcended the loneliness she must feel at leaving her family, of never falling in love or having babies of her own. A life that had become so alien to Beth she was afraid it would separate them. They would no longer be able to talk and laugh and simply be happy being together. ‘It’s just… Oh, I don’t know… Do you still hear His voice calling you?’
‘Just my own voice,’ Jess replied quietly. ‘That was all I ever heard. And it always told me the same thing. My life belongs to Christ. I can’t see myself living any other way.’
Beth felt like crying because her friend spoke and looked like a stranger, pale and stalky under the voluminous black folds. This was actually going to happen. She was going to become a bride of Christ. Even the words sounded crazy. What would it be like to experience the kind of love Jess described? Consuming, adoring, safe.
On their final night in Oldport they went to a local pub called The Fiddler’s Nest to hear Celtic Reign playing. Peter Wallace joined them, pulling his chair close to Jess and flirting with her. Her vocation was a crime against mankind, he declared. She was too earthy, too vibrant to be incarcerated behind high walls. Saints were all mystery and soul. Jess was all heart and curves. She enjoyed him, giggling into a gin and orange and getting quite tipsy.
All heads turned when Marina McKeever entered. She had returned to the tomb of the living dead for a short visit. She wore a flouncy skirt and a cropped top that showed off her tanned midriff. She no longer wore falsies in her bra or any bra at all, for that matter.
The photographs she showed Jess and Beth had been cut from a trade magazine for medical aids. She had modelled an acne face wash, a surgical shoe for fallen arches and tablets for indigestion. Her ambition was to do an advertisement for chocolate.
‘Subliminal sexual desire,’ she said. ‘It’s what everything’s about these days, darlings.’
She giggled in disbelief and tossed her shaggy hair at Peter when she heard about the cat paintings. ‘Oh – you’re such a pseud, darling. But you can show me your silly etching any time you’re in London.’
Beth envied Marina. She envied the way she clicked her fingers at sex, laughing and batting her false eyelashes at all the men in the pub. Beth wondered how it would feel to do it on a bale of blue velvet material – or on a sighing bed in the darkness of a London flat. Her stomach heaved at the image that came into her mind. She pressed her hand against her mouth and slowly the choking feeling went away. Love was red dresses and swirling music. A rainbow of dreams.
She wanted to tell Jess about the terror of those moments when the atmosphere in the Sweat Pit changed, grew quiet, expectant. The deepening breath of the young man beside her, knowing he was going to put his hands on her skin and how the horror would swoop through her chest. It didn’t matter where it happened – the back seat of a cinema, the shelter of the sand dunes, the dark shadows in the back of a car.
‘You’re a raving lunatic,’ Billy Brennan from dispatch had yelled after his one and only date with her. When he parked his car on Pier’s Point, the sloping estuary jetty, and forced his hand inside her blouse Beth had released the handbrake. His frantic efforts to stop the car entering the water had been successful, but only just.
‘You could have fucking drowned me.’ He was unable to stop shaking as he drove her back to Main Strand Street.
‘So I could.’ Beth laughed her terror away. ‘Imagine what a loss that would be to humanity.’
In the office the young women knotted scarves around their necks to cover love bites, slyly showing them off to their closest friends. Over coffee breaks and lulls in typing, Beth listened to their conversations, hoping to find a clue, something to reassure her that her fears were normal.
There had been others besides Billy Brennan. Men from Della Designs or those who danced with her in the Sweat Pit. But when Stewart took her for a ride on his new motorbike it should have been different.
Stewart had changed from the painfully shy boy she had known when she first came to Oldport. His slouching, lanky frame had filled out and his powerful hands no longer looked too big and awkward for his body. He was not handsome in an obvious way like Peter Wallace, with his honey skin and luminous eyes, but she liked how his strong square face came to life when he laughed.
‘Since when did you join the Hell’s Angels?’ she asked when he arrived home one Saturday in leather and parked a motorbike outside the house.
‘I’ve been saving for this for years.’ His excitement was palpable as he stood beside the gleaming bike. ‘What do you think?’
‘A Harley Davidson – it’s fantastic.’
‘Want a ride?’
‘What are we waiting for?’
He placed the helmet over her head and steadied her on the pillion.
She allowed herself to feel the speed, the roar of the engine throbbing beneath her, his body shielding her from the wind that rushed past, singing in her ears. She held tightly to his waist as they left Oldport and headed towards Skerries. Black suited him, she decided, unsure whether it was the novelty of the motorbike or the image of him, dark and vaguely threatening in his biker boots and jacket, that lifted her spirits. Impulsively, she tightened her grip, hugging him closer.
‘Like it?’ he shouted.
‘Love it,’ she shouted back.
He pressed her hands briefly and she felt a sudden shiver along her arms, as if his touch triggered some dormant emotion, rushing it free in the exhilaration of the moment.
The house was empty when they returned. Connie and Barry had gone to the cinema and would not be home until late.
She sat on the sofa with Stewart, mugs steaming on the coffee table, sharing a plate of biscuits and reminiscing about the first night they met.
>
‘I can still picture you when you came into the house. As if you wanted to cut us in half with your eyes.’ He smiled, speaking so low she could hardly hear him. ‘God, you were terrifying, standing there in that skimpy coat with the rain running out of your hair. I think that was when I fell in love with you. Or maybe it was five minutes later when you smiled and I realised you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen… You must know how I feel, Beth. You must.’
She glanced down at her hands as they began to tremble, a faint vibration that she tried to control, tightening them into fists as he leaned towards her. He held her shoulders, his eyes warming her, drawing her to him. A waiting space opened between them, questions asked and answered in the silence. He slid his arms around her waist. She felt the hard contour of the sofa underneath her, the ridge at the edge pressing into the back of her knees.
‘I’m crazy about you.’ He muttered the words into her neck, his breath warm on her skin. She heard again the shyness in his voice. The effort it took to say what he needed to say. He kissed her, softly at first, then pressing more firmly, moving, searching for some response and she heard a moan deep in his throat, terrifying her with its force. Her breath shortened, catching dry.
‘No! Leave me alone – leave me alone.’ She pushed him away and sprang to her feet. Only when she saw the scratches on his face did she realise she had torn his skin.
‘I’m sorry, Stewart… I’m terribly sorry… I can’t stand it… You mustn’t… Mustn’t…’ She gripped the arm of the sofa, willing the horror away.
For an instant he seemed dazed by her reaction. He tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out. Abruptly, he stood up. ‘I thought – ah, forget it. I’ve been a fool.’ He grabbed his jacket and slung it over his shoulders. She could smell the new leather, hear the faint creak it made when he walked up the hall and out the front door.
Stewart should have been different. He was not Billy Brennan or the other faceless young men with whom she sought oblivion from the haunting past. Stewart was her friend. His passion should not threaten her. But his hard cold strength overwhelmed her, crushing her into nothing.
Chapter 10
At first Celtic Reign played quietly, afraid their music would intrude too harshly into the world the sick man had created within himself. Crowded together in Connie’s sitting room, the musicians filled their glasses with whiskey or snapped the tops off Guinness bottles. This small room with its glass ornaments and dried flowers in the window was the ‘showing-off room’, used only when visitors arrived. Cigarettes were lit, smoke spiralling upwards. Barry coughed and muffled the sound into his fist. The session was Connie’s idea. At first he was irritable when she suggested it. He feared the musicians were humouring him. He didn’t want them to see him like this – a sickly, dried-up shadow. She assured him they needed this time with him. They wanted to participate. She did not say ‘in your dying’, but the words hung there and Beth felt this understanding flow swift as a current between the two of them.
Before the musicians arrived, Connie eased him from their bed, exchanging his crumpled pyjamas for a pair of jeans and a shirt with neon flowers, a gaudy pattern that only succeeded in emphasising his wasted body. She seated him in the armchair so that his friends wouldn’t notice how slowly he moved. Beth trimmed his beard. Like his hair it had grown sparse over the past few months and was cut into shape with a few snips.
As the glasses emptied the tempo of the music quickened, carrying its own momentum. Soon the musicians were lost in the notes and Barry became one with them, his eyes bright as he jigged his foot. For a short while he played the spoons. His hands were skeletal, the spoons rapping off his skinny knees. The sound reminded Beth of rattling bones. He called on her to dance. She was seized by a familiar embarrassment, reverting to the panic of a small child asked to perform in front of adults. She had not danced since that Christmas at Cherry Vale. Something painful caught in her memory and was released in the same instant. A sensation so familiar she hardly noticed it.
The fiddle player, Annie Loughrey, ran the bow over her fiddle, shouting, ‘How about a reel, Beth? We’ll go easy on you.’
Beth took off her shoes, but her feet still felt heavy, clumsy because she hadn’t danced for so long. When the musicians yelled and stamped she was carried away by their enthusiasm. She was aware of Stewart watching her, his shoulder propped against the wall, a glass of beer in his hand. She moved to the increasing tempo, arms stiff by her sides, hair flying. Her legs kicked out, her shirt swirled. His eyes told her he liked what he saw before he looked away. Peter did not look away. When she finished dancing he swung her around and kissed her cheek.
Soon afterwards her father’s shoulders slumped. The animation left his face. Connie moved swiftly towards him but he insisted on one more tune.
‘Play “Carrickfergus”, Annie. No one can stroke that tune the way you can.’
‘It would draw tears from a stone,’ agreed Blake Dolan, bending his head dolefully over his bodhrán.
Annie began to play. The young girl had long delicate fingers. The notes rose, a thin quavering lament. The thoughts of each person in the room seemed to fuse, achingly aware of the wasted man sitting so still in their midst.
Soon afterwards, the musicians left to play in The Fiddler’s Nest, hearty in their farewells, not admitting that this was the last goodbye. Barry, equally anxious to keep up the pretence, joked them from the room.
‘Cheer up, me darlin’. I’ve seen him looking worse on many a morning after a hard session in the Nest,’ the bodhrán player joked with Beth at the front door. He patted the back of her head, as if he was already offering his condolences. Peter also said goodbye. He had a painting to finish before morning.
When Connie came downstairs after settling Barry for the night she poured a glass of whiskey and drank it neat, tilting her head back. Under the light Beth noticed grey roots fading into her black hair.
‘You’re going to collapse before this is over if you don’t watch yourself,’ Beth warned. ‘Daddy should be back in hospital.’
‘You know how he feels about hospitals,’ replied Connie. ‘Anyway, what can they do for him except prolong his agony? He wants to die here and as long as I can look after him I’ll be with him.’
‘Connie… Does he realise… Does he talk to you about it?’
‘We’ve talked about it, yes.’ Connie’s voice was slightly slurred. Lipstick stained the glass, a bruised kiss clouding the rim.
‘Then why won’t he talk to me?’ demanded Beth. Her eyes scalded with unshed tears but her father had not given her permission to cry. He always spoke to her about cheerful things and what he would do as soon as he recovered, meaningless plans that made her ashamed when their time together was so short. ‘He keeps pretending he’s going to get better.’
‘He hasn’t the words to tell you what he’s feeling. It’s different with me. We have no history, no regrets.’
Beth reached forward and squeezed her hand. ‘Celtic Reign coming here was a terrific idea. I hope he’s carried away on a stream of music.’
The older woman poured another drink, sipping it slowly this time. ‘Sara should be here. I can’t understand why your mother’s being so stubborn. She’s breaking his heart.’
Stewart came into the room. He took the empty glass from her and placed it on the table. ‘You should try and get some sleep, Ma, while you have the chance.’
Connie’s footsteps dragged wearily as she mounted the stairs and entered the bedroom where Barry dozed uneasily. It seemed so unfair, Beth thought – all that wasted time with Marjory and only a few short years with the woman he loved. An unforgivable love in the eyes of so many people, selfish in the demands it had made on their families, yet Beth didn’t resent the brief happiness they’d known.
‘I’m going for a walk.’ Stewart took his leather jacket from a hook on the door. He glanced at the empty bottles, the overflowing ashtrays and stale sandwiches. ‘I need some fresh air b
efore I tackle this lot. Want to come?’
Beth’s head throbbed from the stuffy heat in the room. She linked her arm in his as they turned without hesitation towards the estuary road. A light burned from one window in Havenstone. Peter’s studio. He sometimes slept on the floor when he was working and everything was flowing in the right direction. An animal in his lair, she thought, comfortable where he dropped, stretched out on an old mattress he kept propped against the wall. Moonlight touching the half-finished canvases as he drifted off to sleep.
At Pier’s Point a heron, caught in the glow of moonlight, lifted its wings and glided into the darkness.
‘I had a dream about flying last night,’ she said. ‘I woke up thinking that that’s the way it must be when you die – flying into the sky and everything down below becoming dimmer and dimmer until you’re all alone in the dark.’
‘Maybe you’re flying through the dark to get to the light,’ said Stewart.
‘That sounds like something Jess would say.’
‘How is she?’
‘On her knees chanting litanies, I should imagine.’
Jess still wrote every week. Serene letters brimming with descriptions of silent meals, needlecraft, woodwork sessions, basketball practice, prayer vigils, meditation and contemplation. Sometimes, in the early hours when she was in the church praying, she felt herself lifted high on a wave of bliss so powerful it made her tremble in case it was ever taken away from her.
‘I touch the core of my being,’ she wrote. ‘And God is there waiting for me to arrive.’
Beth believed this was magic-mushroom stuff. Smoke some grass and see the Lord. Or a state of mind brought about by overwork. Jess’s daily work schedule read like the itinerary of a Siberian gulag.
In her last letter Beth wrote back: ‘It must be wonderful to know yourself so well that when you feel the touch of happiness you can claim it as your right.’
Reading over what she had written she was puzzled by the meaning in her own words. She left them there, knowing Jess would understand.