I worshipped sky.
I pictured, tame sky, violent sky, blue sky, turquoise sky, yet always a sky without the sun. The sun was an infringement, a light source that had to remain hidden, discrete, something to itself. And from sky I had to make explanations, discover correspondences.
It was a moment of revelation and inspiration.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my thoughts, but I recognised I was undertaking a challenge. I was thinking about my narrow world, searching for meaning, even if it was only a dictionary of pictograms.
One day when prayers were over I took Abby by the hand and led her to her favourite place. She had taken to secreting herself in the mine by that time, but to my mind her element was still air and water. On the coast I saw her, a dolphin, a mermaid, a bird, her body limber and unconstrained, one with its choices, wind or wave, and I wanted to say I too had access to a portion of that magic, that worship I had always known she was engaged in, those looks she impressed upon the horizon, as if she saw through it and beyond it and somehow encircled a reality that came back and contained it. She had a sense of devotion as subtle and intense as that. I knew why she was enthralled, yet at the same time shy of the plate of Sir Galahad and the Grail.
I stood close to the water’s edge, the white foaming surf stopping just short of my feet, making arcs across the damp, coal blackened sands.
I signed.
God is sky.
Everything that is so big, bigger than me, that I don’t understand or need to understand, is sky.
Sky is, tip to tip, and round, and up and down, and everywhere: is God.
Grace began to sulk and say she didn’t understand the game.
Abby threw Poppy through the air, gifting her with it, with sky, though the fall was painful and sent Grace scurrying after her, despite being at the stage of saying she was just a doll and wasn’t it time Abby started to grow up: but then, nothing was just anything to Abby, because she had the ability to see possibility, the other side, the life that went on unbidden but vigorous behind everything. She knew sky before I signed it. She had dwelt there which was more than I would ever be able to achieve. She had dwelt in all the corners of our segregated existence, discovering its secret passages, its points of access.
Wind is fabric, pinafore, sheets, hung from a break in sky, a hole in sky. The sheet holds the body, her, me, flapping at our ears, the sheets of sky.
Rain is finger-tips, tapping the stem of a flower.
Spindrift is muslin, a bandage.
Time is a wax crayon, a purple line on white paper, never at the edge.
Life is a moth.
Death is a smile.
Birth is a scream.
Grace objected. She said it was a silly kid’s game. Still, when I took Abby’s hand and we began to dance around, trying to make shapes of ourselves, she joined in and she was the first to laugh, throwing out a question with her exquisite, quizzical face – what did it all mean? I didn’t answer: Abby just hummed her name. So we simply danced on, signing that we were witches round a pot, though why we should have thought such a thing I don’t know, and then we all broke into skittish laughter, though all we heard was a certain percentage of joy.
Laughter is a waterfall landing in a bowl of rock, intensely white, never taking final shape.
We were witches because we were special sisters and nobody liked that, and made out that such sisters were odd, but such sisters owe each other and don’t forget, which is a special kind of magic, a spell.
*
I went back to see Martha. It had been raining hard, not finger-tips on a flower stem, but arrowheads, weapons, and the yard was stinking, a quagmire of mud and bird shit. I stepped lightly across it, cursing the filth splashing onto my extravagant, multi-coloured shoes, dulling the impression of lime-green and yellow, the impression of aquarium water, but grateful the sole and heel were ridiculously high. – I am sure my effervescent hairdresser would have approved unreservedly of such a fashionable choice. The shoes were certainly not lost on the matriarch who, when she answered my knock, peered at them with a scarcely concealed grin and a look that suggested I hadn’t really thought that one through, which somehow left me feeling at a disadvantage. Funny that Wellingtons or hiking boots would have rendered me far more comfortable under her gaze, but then I of all people should know of the semiotic advantages and disadvantages of life.
‘‘Oh, it’s you,’’ she said, finally looking me in the face, as if she hadn’t immediately recognised me. ‘‘I expected you’d have been long gone.’’
‘‘Expected or hoped?’’
‘‘You’re nothing to me, why would I be bothered?’’
‘‘I was Abby’s friend, more than friend, closer.’’
‘‘Of course you were, you’re one of her kind.’’
‘‘Does it not amount to anything?’’
The trace of a smile crossed her face, but she suppressed it, opting instead to treat me to a vague, inquiring look, suggestive of the fact that she really was in the dark. She began again, her tone confidential, even to a point sympathetic. ‘‘Look, what are you after, what do you want from me?’’
‘‘Can I come in?’’
‘‘No, not this time.’’
‘‘Are you busy?’’
‘‘I don’t choose to have you, not this time, not with those filthy shoes.’’
Involuntarily I looked down at her feet. She was wearing battered, mud stained brogues, which presumably had once been tan but were now more or less bleached of colour. She burst out laughing. I began to object, but quickly corrected myself, having no real sense of what I was complaining about.
In my mind I recognised I had made a mistake coming back to her so soon after rain. Her yard was her defence, its stinking pools her barricades. She had lived in the midst of this stink all of her life, claiming it as a world to itself – swine and poultry, breeding, feeding, fattening, selling and killing. A simple, unsentimental existence devoid of any subtlety of thought. Except intolerance.
‘‘I guess, I just need to know why you hate her,’’ I asked.
She looked mildly sickened by the question. The corners of her mouth turned downwards, but only momentarily. She said: ‘‘You know, you talk funnier now than you used to, and you were always a bit bothered her way.’’
‘‘I’ve never had any trouble with speech.’’
‘‘Is that a fact, well, from where I’m standing it sounds a load of gobbledegook, and that’s more or less how I recall you.’’
‘‘No, that isn’t right.’’
‘‘Are you telling me, or asking me, because believe me, you can’t tell me, can’t tell me a damn thing. Now are you through pestering me, or do I have to send for your mother?’’
‘‘I’m not a child.’’
‘‘And what’s that to me? Go on, get out of it, or I’ll get your mother, what use she might be.’’
‘‘Just tell me, hating her, why?’’
‘‘Because she spoke funny, just like you, will that do you?’’
‘‘So you did hate her?’’
She hesitated for just a few seconds and then, forcefully enunciating each syllable, declared: ‘‘I lavished her with affection.’’
‘‘But she let you down?’’ She flashed me a questioning look. ‘‘By not listening.’’ She scowled and gave the impression that she might actually lash out at me for being so impertinent. ‘‘But she did listen,’’ I went on. ‘‘She heard everything, all you had to tell her, your secrets.’’
‘‘Don’t be clever with me, or I’ll cross this threshold and show you.’’
‘‘The way you showed her?’’
‘‘Don’t think I’m too old either.’’
‘‘I don’t, not for a second. I mean it, though. You didn’t see what a talent she had. You missed it, missed it completely.’’
‘‘She was an idiot, born an imbecile, God help her, though listening to you I’m not so sure she was as bad as
you.’’
‘‘And how bad was your Aunt Hilda?’’
She eyed me blankly for a moment, evidently struggling with the contrary desires to hit me, slam the door in my face or find out what I had discovered. Eventually she uttered: ‘‘I called her auntie, not aunt. Who says aunt round here? You’ve heard it all wrong again.’’
‘‘Auntie Hilda, Auntie.’’
She smiled: ‘‘You’ve heard it all wrong, I said, all wrong.’’
‘‘Is that why you hated her, because it was in the family and you just couldn’t stomach that?’’
‘‘Don’t be stupid, it was that filthy family!’’
‘‘The Shaughnessys.’’
‘‘I told him not to marry her.’’
‘‘But you hated the Shaughnessys long before that. Why?’’
She glared at me briefly, then all of her anger seemed suddenly to evaporate away, and with a final triumphant look she closed the door on me, saying: ‘‘I really must talk to your mother.’’
I stood in the filth of her yard, moving my beautifully tasteless multi-coloured shoes through the sludge and slurry and laughed.
Hate had to be as powerful as love. I had been given the injunction.
*
Mrs Gunn’s persistent trials and torments were tedious. I suppose we had a sneaking awareness that we were on the list of those things that made her life so unbearable; and yet, at times her persistence to educate us smacked of enthusiasm, albeit one coloured by her limitless capacity to see obstacles at every turn. For weeks on end she would try to fill us with language, barking sound after sound at us as if we were vessels just needing an adequate supply of something to achieve the brim. At the culmination of one particularly protracted effort she produced her liquids and then her solids.
Having ensured that we were in working order, our hearing aids switched on and functioning, followed by a short speech and introductory prayer, she placed her liquids on the table – her features worsened by the expression of pleasure – a sequence of five bottles produced from a basket she had brought with a striped linen tea-towel covering.
As she placed each bottle down she announced a vowel, uncharacteristically for her opening her mouth wide and articulating her lips, allowing her expression to register something other than disappointment, though as to what those new gestures meant we couldn’t begin to comprehend.
A,e,i,o,u, soft vowels, formed with ferocity.
She then repeated the display with small packets of grease-proof paper, also laying each one down with an accompanying soft vowel.
Once she had her bottles and packets ready she began. She pronounced a hard a over and over, and made us in turn sip from the first bottle, repeating ah, ah, ah directly into each of our faces as we took it, calling as loud as her natural reserve would allow.
The bottle was filled with malt vinegar. As we screwed up our faces she called: vin-e-gar, ah, ah!
She picked up the third bottle.
Milk, ilk, i, i, i.
Soup, tomato soup, toe-m-ah-toe soup, upe, u, u, u.
Oxo, oh, ox-oh, oh.
Tea, eeh, eeh.
She made long screeching eehs, as if imitating an old door grinding on its hinges. I felt Abby stiffen with excitement beside me. As she took the cold liquid onto her lips she began to shiver – though whether she heard her name or merely recognised its shape, I don’t know. The cold, tarry tea dribbled along her lips and then trickled down her chin. She began to lap with her tongue, all around her lips and chin, making them shiny with spittle, eager to drink in her name.
Mrs Gunn carried on as if she were completely unaware of the excitement she was stimulating. She opened the grease-proof packages and proceeded to go through the same process, offering us in turn a morsel of each.
Spam, am, am, ah, ah.
Pickle, pick-ul, ick, i, i, i.
Cheese, ease, eeh, eeh, eeh.
Abby took the morsel eagerly onto her tongue and began to chomp on it with an open mouth, spitting it everywhere, her saliva turning pink with it. At the same time as she munched she began to recite the syllable, her mouth opening and closing with the regularity of a bellows. Mrs Gunn nodded in approval, strangely indifferent to the mess Abby was creating and then joined in, making a chorus of Abby’s name. As Abby grew ever louder Mrs Gunn kept on nodding her approval and repeating her, in fact, responded to her like for like. Yes, she nodded, her name, her name on her lips, in her mouth. Yes, her name. E, e, e.
Suddenly Abby pushed back her chair and stood up, calling her name as loudly as she could, though with momentary catches in her throat which sounded like laughter of sorts. Mrs Gunn demanded that she sit back down and started calling her a little savage, but it was too late. Abby had been nourished on her own name and didn’t know how to deal with that except through ecstasy. She set off skipping around the room, flailing her arms through the air, twisting her head and body, a motion that was so musical it looked as if she were turning in saline water, but not drowning, dancing.
Mrs Gunn kept on demanding that she return to her seat, but it was impossible. She was in a different element, transported by her name, her reality constructed from far more beautiful material than we had at our disposal. For a time she was an aquatic creature, a mermaid set free, and it didn’t matter that she was incontinent, the urine rushing down her leg, leaving a tell-tale path of her dance. It was the liberty a mermaid possessed.
In the end Mrs Gunn could take no more and angrily stomped from the room banging the door behind her.
If Grace and I had had more sense we would have supervised Abby’s dance, guided her to her preferred element, though what we would have done if she had insisted on giving herself to the waves I can’t begin to imagine. Certainly the Reading Rooms were not the right place for her. When Mrs Gunn returned with Harold we recognised that we had let her down. He beat her all around the rooms, beating the dancing out of her, beating the thrill of it out of her, beating her until she returned to an element we all shared, but what he couldn’t do was beat her name out of her. After that she was always in tea and cheese in a funny, mysterious way.
Once upon a time I only ever ate a red cheese called simply red cheese, and only ever drank Co-op 99 tea, but nowadays I partake of all sorts, cheeses made from cow’s, ewe’s and goat’s milk, and one in particular, which I find very mystifying, tinged with the flavour of coffee, and I drink teas flavoured with bergamot, lemon, cranberry, raspberry and elderflower, nevertheless every time I eat cheese or drink tea, no matter how exotic or mundane, I think of Abby and the dance that could not halt, no amount of shouting from Mrs Gunn, and her name that could not be dismissed, no amount of beating from Harold.
Her beauty is so everyday.
Chapter Thirteen
It was shortly after this affair that we were transferred to the village school. Whether it was as a direct consequence I am not sure. Certainly it was also the time when Seamus was taking a much closer interest in Grace’s education, and had become convinced she should be tried in an ordinary school, in which he was fully supported by the school-inspector. I don’t think he ever believed she could aspire to the full revelation of God, but he evidently accepted that she could acquire something. Mrs Gunn kept on for a few weeks after the dance, but made no reference to liquid or solid, only the Holy Ghost, keeping to what she felt was the safe ground of prayer, and then without warning we were transferred.
The village school consisted of one class. On the first morning we were greeted with silence. There should have been something reassuring about that, the sensitivity not to attempt to speak knowing that the three awkward sisters might not be able to hear, but we knew immediately that there was no such intent. It was as if we had intruded on an illegal game, all eyes angry and alert. Even the teacher, whom we had been told was called Mr Miller, had the same expression, with the additional hint of impatience or bewilderment, perhaps both. – The school-inspector had collected us and dropped us at the yard gate and, not botheri
ng to come in himself, simply told us that Mr Miller knew we were coming.
Mr Miller waved his hand, indicating that we find a seat, and continued writing numbers on the blackboard. We didn’t move. We didn’t know what to do with Abby. Grace took her hand. Abby hummed her name. I tapped her on the arm, eager to stop her glee, her appreciation of Grace’s worry. I looked around the room, hoping the other kids would make a space for us, three seats together, a small segregated group. Of course they recognised our reluctance and relished our discomfort.
Eventually Mr Miller shouted at us to stop dawdling, sit down and stop wrecking his class. I took Abby’s other hand and led her to a desk in the second row. Her hum grew in volume, though remained just a musical vibration. The desks were close together but separate, nevertheless the boy beside Abby, who was probably two years younger, snatched up his book and screwed up his face as she sat down. As I looked around for a place for myself he moaned to the teacher that Abby was dribbling. A shudder of revulsion ran through the class. Mr Miller turned from the board again and demanded that Grace and I sit; he had had just about enough of our disruption. We took two desks at the back, Grace in the centre, whilst I was on the end, beneath a recessed window. As in the Reading Rooms the windows were high in the walls, only allowing for light, and that partial, but not vision. Having settled myself I looked towards Abby. The boy beside her was staring at me. His flat face had a glimmering, avid expression. We exchanged ruthless looks, each determined to outdo the other. That tiny battle was brought to an end when Mr Miller smashed a chipped, yellow, twelve inch wooden ruler against his desk, obviously the sign for attention, causing the boy to spin back into place, and commanded us to get on with it. Having given his instruction he sat down.
The other kids began to write. I wanted to see what Grace was doing, but was too nervous to look along the row. Abby was rocking very gently, soothing herself. I looked past her towards Mr Miller, uncertain whether I should speak up or not. He simply gazed into space, distracted. His face was lean, the skin tough, coloured dull crimson, with small purple veins around his nostrils, his hair swept back in an oiled quiff. He looked bored and listless. I was scared of doing nothing, but scared of him, scared of that face, of that expression, too scared to speak.
My Name is E Page 19