When she stopped, long shadows appeared in front of me. I turned around. Two figures stood next to the circle. The sun made it hard to see who they were. They were covered in dust. One looked like the grey lady; the other wore grey trousers and a blue shirt. He was tall, with silver hair. Like Matthew. My mouth fell open; I forgot to breathe.
“Aren’t you going to say something? Or have they turned you into a complete imbecile?”
The words punched me in the stomach, harder than the ball. Matthew was here. And he was cross with me. It was too much. My chest became tight. I tried to speak, but could only make gulping sounds. His blue shirt became hazy as my eyes filled with tears. He picked me up and pressed me close to his chest. I clamped my arms around his neck and buried my face into his shoulder.
“Come on, Astrid. We’re going home.”
He began to take big, jouncing strides. Tears poured out of me in a loud gush.
“Dr Johnson, you can’t do this,” the grey lady said. “She still has another month of lessons.”
Matthew’s head whipped around.
“I think you’ve done enough.”
He kept walking, away from the yard. I looked up. We were in the carpark at the front of the building. At the car, he set me down with a jerk.
“Get in,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He opened the back door and strapped me into the car seat. The straps were very tight and bit into my stomach. I wanted to tell him, but he was gone.
When he came back, he was carrying my suitcase. It thumped as he put it into the boot. He got into the front seat and the car shot forward. It squealed. Every time we turned a corner, my stomach jumped up and down. The only sound in the car was my sobs. I couldn’t stop them; I couldn’t be a Viking any more. Maybe that was why he wasn’t talking to me.
When we stopped, we were at the Dublin house, parked at the end of the path that separated our house from the bigger one. Matthew undid my straps; they left sore spots on my skin. As I climbed out of the car, hot liquid streamed down my legs and into my socks. A sour smell reached my nostrils. Matthew always said that only babies and animals soiled themselves. He didn’t say anything; he was busy taking my suitcase out of the car. But the dark stain on my blue dress gave me away. I ran through the gate and plopped onto the grass, my whole body shaking with sobs. The hedge that surrounded the house gave me shelter. Matthew came over and stood in front of me, his breath coming out in little gasps.
“Please don’t be cross,” I said, gulping.
“I’m sorry, Astrid. I’m so sorry.”
His voice was full of cracks, like the voice on the telephone. He dropped onto the grass and knelt in front of me. When I stood up, I was almost the same height as him. This time when he pulled me towards him, his hands were gentle. He held me tight, not caring about my soiled dress or the sour smell. I buried my head in his chest. After a long time, we broke apart. There was a dark stain on his shirt, like the one on my dress. He wiped my face with his handkerchief. It smelt of dust and pine. I breathed in the smell of him.
“All right then,” he said. “Let’s go inside and sort you out.”
His voice no longer cracked or sounded cross. It was his old voice.
I fought off sleep as I waited for Matthew to come in and say goodnight. He was taking a long time. We were still in Dublin, because Matthew had business to do, but we were going back to Wexford the next day. The light in the room was soft and yellow. Dark furniture kept watch over me. The pipes gurgled. They gurgled a lot; Matthew said it was because they were old.
The Viking book was on my lap. When Matthew came in, I held it out to him.
“Do you know,” he said in a slow voice. “That was your mother’s favourite book when she was young. Why such a gentle soul was held in thrall to such a bloodthirsty people, I will never know.”
I sat up with a jolt, the sleep banished from my eyes. Matthew sat on the bed beside me and put his arm around me. I leaned closer to him. There was an object in his other hand, a square brown parcel. He thrust it at me. I didn’t pay any attention to it; his words were squeezing all the other thoughts out of my head.
“Are you going to open that or not?” he asked, his voice speeding up again.
I balanced the parcel on my knees. The brown paper was rough and there were bumps around the edges. My finger found a small hole in a corner at the top and burrowed through it. The paper came away to reveal a picture of a woman in a wooden frame. I held the picture up and tried to touch her face, but it was covered with cool glass. The woman smiled at me. She had two dark circles for eyes. Her hair was the colour of the conkers I picked in autumn. She wore a square black hat on her head and a black gown. There was a piece of rolled-up paper in her lap. Her mouth went up at the edges.
“That’s your mother,” said Matthew. “Mary Johnson.”
She didn’t look like any of the women in Valhalla. Blood rushed through my ears. Matthew’s heart thumped, so hard I felt it through my clothes.
“You look like her,” Matthew said.
“No I don’t. I’m the wrong colour.”
“That’s just a genetic quirk.”
I decided not to ask him what a genetic quirk was. He took my hand in his and moved it around the edge of my face. Then he moved it around the outline of the woman’s face. The shape he made was the same. The shape of an egg.
“You see? The same face.”
Matthew sounded pleased, so I was pleased too, but I was more interested in the book. I moved the picture to the side.
“Aren’t you going to read me a story?”
“Not tonight. Tonight I want to tell you a different story. One I should have told you a long time ago.”
His voice slowed down again, like a toy with its battery running down.
“Is it about my mother?”
“Yes.”
He picked up the picture and looked at it.
“Such a beautiful woman. A gentle spirit. This was taken on her graduation from university. I didn’t meet her until long after that. My father died, you see; it was quite sudden. So I obtained leave from the research project in Africa and came home to settle his estate. I intended to stay only a short while.”
He rubbed his eyes and adjusted his glasses.
“A few weeks after my return, a friend of my father’s asked me to dinner. I don’t care much for social fripperies, but I went nonetheless. And she was there. Sitting on a swing seat at the bottom of the garden. She moved her hands when she talked. Her fingers were long and slender. Like yours.”
I tried to keep up with his words, to fit them together in my mind.
“I decided not to return to Africa. She accepted my offer of marriage. The house in Wexford, it was hers. After a while, you came along. We weren’t expecting you, but there you were.”
He opened the Viking book at the front, where the curly writing was.
“She chose your name. Let me show you.”
He brought the book close to me and I followed the movement of his finger.
“That’s her name when she was a girl.”
His finger moved to the right.
“And that’s your name.”
I examined each of the curly letters.
“It doesn’t look like my name.”
“She wrote it in runic letters. You’ve seen them in the illustrations. Viking letters. Your name means beautiful, fair goddess in Old Norse. She told me that that was how she saw you in her dreams. I told her she was being fanciful. But then you were born and her prediction was true.”
“She knew who I was?”
“Yes. She held you. Said your name. And then she was gone. I couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t do anything. I wanted her to have you at home. I thought I could keep her safe.”
He didn
’t say anything else, for a long time. His breath rattled; it was trapped at the back of his throat. The corners of his mouth turned down.
“Maybe she’ll come back from Valhalla for a visit.”
“No, Astrid. People don’t come back from Valhalla.”
He took another breath. It whistled past my ear.
“Did you go on a quest to find her?”
I thought of my own quest, on the long, dark road.
“You could say that.”
“I thought you had a fever.”
“It started that way. I had malaria, a fever that comes from Africa. It went away, but I still wasn’t well.”
“Did you have a cold?”
“No. Nothing like that. Some illnesses don’t have names. I was just very tired. And sad.”
“About my mother.”
“Yes.”
As he talked, I traced the outline of the woman’s face, but I couldn’t make her real. Matthew’s words blocked her out. He was here again. That was all that mattered.
“You won’t go away again, will you?”
Matthew placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him. His grip was tight, but I didn’t wriggle.
“Astrid, I promise you. I will never leave you again. No more wretched schools. It’ll just be the two of us from now on.”
He let go of my shoulders and looked down.
“My absence was longer than intended.”
“But you’re back now.”
I touched his face. There were drops of water on his bristles.
“Why is your face wet?”
“Just moisture. It’s a hot night.”
I leaned over and perched the picture on my locker, on top of the Viking book. My eyes were heavy now. I let them close.
I barged through the crowd towards the carousel, to an accompaniment of tuts and clicking tongues. It took me a moment to realise that my bag was sailing past me. I loped forward and grabbed it. My legs wobbled and I almost crashed into the guy next to me, but I managed to right myself and the crowd parted, like the Red Sea.
The Cabbage Patch Kids stood in a huddle, their huge suitcases in front of them. Cliona and Kim’s heads were close together, as usual. The voices of the Greek Chorus foghorned in my direction, proclaiming their need for ‘an honest-to-Jaysus cup of tea.’ Johno’s arms were wrapped around Mia. I didn’t stop. I pushed on, past the ache in my chest. It was best this way, a quick, clean exit, no phoney goodbyes.
There was a knot of people at the partition. None of them looked familiar. I didn’t know what I expected. I made for the coach park, my gaze directed at the ground, my legs weighed down.
The wind bit into my face as I left the building. Cold damp air settled into my bones. Sunlight beamed at an obtuse angle through the low clouds, filling the sky with a strange greenish-yellow light. A suitable colour for exile. Sigur Ros swirled through my head; the windscreen wiper thud of Takk filled the empty spaces inside me.
I buried my chin in the collar of my overcoat and fished in the pockets for my hat. I tried to scan the poles next to each of the bus shelters for the Aircoach sign. A tan leather jacket flashed past me, then vanished. It looked like one of Jazz’s favourites. I shook myself. Jackets like that were commonplace. A hiss alerted me to the arrival of a bus. I looked up and saw a familiar blur of blue. People appeared from nowhere, surging towards it. I pushed through them, eager to be cocooned in its warmth. As I reached the queue, I saw the leather jacket again. It was coming towards me. A butterfly touch landed on my sleeve. Takk swelled to its climax, a thundering chorus filled with hope and yearning. My feet carried me away from the queue, the butterfly touch propelled me towards the bus shelter. My legs threatened to collapse from under me. I grabbed the pole which held the timetable. My hand made a fist around it, white on grey.
“Hey,” he said.
His hand was still on my sleeve. He scuffed the ground.
“What are you doing here?” I managed to croak.
“Well, you know, since I didn’t bring you.”
He shifted from foot to foot.
“I’m amazed you dragged yourself out of bed after the club.”
I kept my voice steady, trying to mask the hope that flickered in my chest.
“I didn’t do it last night. Called in sick.”
In three years, he had never missed a set.
“Guess I was DJing for both of us then.”
He took a step back.
“You were DJing?”
I nodded; a blush rose on my cheeks.
“For the Cabbage Patch Kids?”
“No way. A real gig, local Austrians and everything.”
I reached out to give him a playful shove. He trapped my hand and placed it on his chest. His heart thumped through the solid wall of bone and muscle.
“How was the trip?”
“You could say it was interesting.”
He laughed, his wonderful, resonant laugh. When his laughter faded, it left a silence that fizzed with electricity.
“That text you sent.”
“Listen, I was strung out. There was this guy and I blew it and—”
“There’s just one problem with it.”
“What’s that?”
“You know those Greek women. What do you call them? The ones that inspire people.”
“Muses.”
“Yeah. You’re my muse.”
Words welled up, but I was unable to squeeze them past the obstruction in my throat.
“I can’t do it without you. Guess I kind of want you to get in the way. And that thing about people laying bets on the albino chick? It wasn’t true.”
“Well, that’s a relief. They’d never afford me,” I laughed.
He didn’t smile back. Instead, he let go of my hand and touched my face, his fingers tracing the curve of my cheek, Brailling it into his memory. My skin tingled as his fingers moved across it. They moved towards my hair and pushed the rogue strands behind my ear. There was no need to hide now, no need to face away from one another. In the distance, the coach revved up to take off.
“You look tired,” he said.
“Didn’t sleep last night,” I muttered.
“Too high from DJing?”
“Not as such. I was thinking.”
I took a sudden interest in my shoes.
“What were you thinking about?”
His voice was gentle. I moved closer to him.
“I was thinking that you get in my way too. That...”
The blockage was still in my throat. I swallowed it down.
“There’ve been lots of guys. But there’s only ever been one you.”
My voice wobbled. The last vestiges of the ice fortress were crumbling.
“Let’s go home,” he said, grabbing my hand.
A smile crept across my lips.
“There’s something we should do first.”
I leaned forward and eased my tongue into the salt marsh depths of his mouth, until my mouth became enmeshed with his. His arms enveloped me. Everything else disappeared. I let myself unfurl.
Acknowledgments
To my family, who put up with my crazy ways.
To my publishers, Book Republic, who give a wonderful platform to new authors.
To the tutors who have guided me on my writerly journey: Jim Boylan, Catherine Dunne, Anthony Glavin, John McKenna. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Suzanne Power. Without her faith in me, this novel would not have been possible.
To Declan Meade of The Stinging Fly for his considered opinion.
To the writers who supported me during those nights drafty classrooms, especially Mary O’Gorman and Michael Flynn.
To Dan Ruan
e and Kenno, who guided me through the world of beats.
To Suzanne Dalton and Ulla Quayle, who shared their experiences of schools for the blind, which were far more pleasant places than the ‘pink cage’ Astrid experienced.
To Patricia Galvin, who gave me information about malaria facilities in Ireland in the 1980s.
And to Norman, who told me that there are some for whom the garment would fit perfectly. How right you were.
PUBLISHED BY MAVERICK HOUSE PUBLISHERS.
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Copyright for text © 2011 Derbhile Dromey.
Copyright for typesetting, editing, layout, design © Maverick House. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
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E-book edition ISBN: 978-1-907221-20-0 June 2011.
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