The Closet of Savage Mementos

by Nuala Ní Chonchúir

  ‘The newspaper is doing a feature on the Scottish Highlands. I’ve got the gig for the photos.’

  ‘You’re going back to work already?’ Verity leans across the table and starts to pick hairs from my jacket, but I push her hand away. ‘When I was newly married women didn’t run away from their children the way they do now.’

  ‘It’s one small job. I’ll see how it goes.’

  ‘Scotland. It might be nice to go back.’ She eyeballs me. ‘Will it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The package is heavy. Inside the brown paper there is a white box. I snip the tape holding the lid down with my nail scissors and take out the bubble-wrapped object inside. As I undo the plastic wrapping, I realise what it is and my gut liquefies. I stumble backwards and sit on the bed; I lift it out of the bubble-wrap, then hold it up to look at it through the light from the window. It is the plumbago egg. My insides start to fizz and pop and I barely make the bathroom where diarrhoea jets from me like water. I hold the paperweight and sit on the toilet, hugging it to my chest. I lift it to my lips and kiss the cold glass.

  Cormac picks up the plumbago egg from my dressing table.

  ‘That’s gorgeous. Where did it come from?’ He holds it to his face and wraps his two hands around it. ‘God, it’s lovely – it looks like there’s a jelly fish swimming in it.’

  ‘It was in the package that arrived the other day.’

  ‘Oh? Who sent it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Cormac puts down the paperweight. ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’ He sits on the end of the bed.

  ‘Well, I do know. Someone from Scotland sent it.’

  ‘Is it to do with the article for the newspaper?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s it.’

  The television hums. I am watching the royal wedding from my bed; Cormac has provided tea, toast and orange juice, and Nessa sleeps obligingly between our two pillows. The camera settles on the queen; throughout the ceremony she can barely muster a smile, certainly not a genuine one. For once I identify with the woman; for once I feel I am much like her: a bag of misery.

  ‘I wish I was going with you,’ Cormac says, easing himself onto the bed so as not to wake the baby. ‘I’d love to see the Highlands.’

  ‘It’s work; I won’t have time to do anything fun.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Next time, OK?’

  Cormac lifts my fingers to his lips and kisses them. ‘It reminds me of our wedding,’ he says, indicating the TV. We sit hand in hand watching the gorgeous young bride, looking outrageously relaxed, as she steps into her new life.

  Nessa is offended by the bottle. She wraps her tongue and lips around the silicone teat and tries to suck it into shape but it doesn’t work; she wails in frustration. Cormac rocks her and I perch opposite him, at the kitchen table, watching.

  ‘Maybe I should put her to the breast.’

  ‘Give her a chance; she’ll get there.’ He croons into Nessa’s face and rubs her cheek with his pinkie. He drips some of the milk into her sobbing mouth and she falters, stops. He eases the bottle between her lips again and she suckles, grunting and stop-starting to let us know she is not pleased, but she feeds on. ‘Now,’ Cormac says, smiling at me. ‘Off you go.’

  I have been expressing for weeks, building up a store of milk for my few days away, and today I am going back to the office for the first time. Only for a couple of hours, to discuss the Scotland piece with the editor of the travel section; to see what she wants. I, naturally, have some ideas of my own.

  The fridge shivers as if it is trying to shake off something. I flutter a bit, wondering if I should stay at home with Nessa. I am so used to being manacled to the house and the baby that I don’t like leaving. I don’t want to leave.

  ‘You’ll be OK?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re grand. Look at her – she’s guzzling.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’ I watch Nessa’s eyes rolling back in her head like they do when she is feeding from my breast and I can’t help feeling a little betrayed. I slip my arms into my jacket and kiss them both: Cormac on the head, Nessa on her cheek. ‘See you later,’ I say, and pull the front door gently behind me.

  At my desk, I take the slip of paper that came with the paperweight from my purse. It is a small piece torn from something bigger; the blue-inked digits are clearly a phone number. I google it but nothing comes up. I google the area code and get back a list of musical names: Auchterarder, Blackford, Comrie, Crieff, Dunning, Madderty, Muthill, St Fillans.

  I say them aloud, tasting each one in turn, ‘Auchterarder. Blackford. Comrie. Crieff. Dunning. Madderty. Muthill. St Fillans.’

  To my ears, Madderty and Muthill sound made up. I type the names into the search engine one at a time and read about each town. All of them are in Perthshire. Auchterarder is the ‘Lang Toon’ because of its mile-and-a-half-long high street; its website is bordered with thistleheads, making it look quaint, like a site that was fashioned before websites existed. Comrie, I find out, lies directly on the Highland Line. St Fillans is a tiny village on a loch. I pour over the images of Dunning, where a saint once killed a dragon, and imagine Malachy learning all about the legend as a boy at school. There is a bowling green there and low mountains fence in the village; a lot of the photographs are of huge snowfall on streets, on cars, on mountains.

  So Malachy lives in Perthshire. Somewhere in Perthshire. I toy with the telephone number, then put it back into my purse.

  Chapter Eight

  I take out the envelope containing the pictures of Malachy. I flick through the photographs of my bump to get to the one where I am holding him. It is not a great picture, the angle is skewed and the midwife didn’t zoom in, so we are far away on the bed. Malachy is a little yellow bundle, tilted towards the camera. I look at the ones I took of him myself: his face is a bunched up red, bruised from the forceps and pickled from being so long inside me. His hair is black and plastered to his head in little streaks; I can remember the smell of him.

  I look at the one of us together again: I am in a navy striped nightie and underneath the blanket, out of sight, it is patched with blossoms of blood. My hand is a mess of wires where an antibiotic drips into me to bring down a high temperature. I am so young in the photograph, a bit fat-faced, and my eyes are wary and exhausted.

  Even though I think of him every day, at some point I stopped believing the story that these photographs tell: that I gave birth to a baby boy once. That I have a real, live, grown-up son. I slip the pictures back into the envelope and put it into the bottom of my jewellery box. I stand over Nessa in her Moses basket; she is awake, twisting her head and sucking her fingers.

  ‘Hello, baba,’ I say, ‘hello, my gorgeous girl.’

  Nessa smiles, a shy quirk of her mouth that ends in a gaping, gummy grin. She coos. I lift her out of the basket, which she is getting too big for now, and lie onto my bed and put her to my breast. The very smell of her is addictive: the heat of new skin and slightly unclean hair.

  Margaret came to see me one last time in Glasgow. I was back in my bedsit off the Great Western Road, resting after the birth, and feeling curiously calm. I put on clothes for her visit, shedding the nightdress that was like a comfort blanket, the one I had given birth in. I put on blusher and lipstick to brighten me up. I didn’t want her to think that I had been defeated. The air in the bedsit was stale, I knew. It was an autumnal April, blowy and cold and wet. I kept the window closed because I needed to trap all the heat that I could in the cocoon of my room. I knew the place smelt of mildew because I caught a whiff of it every time I opened the door after being outside. But it also held other smells: the chips I had eaten the night before; the human smell of my sheets and, possibly, the tang of the blood that still seeped from me. I had sprayed deodorant around before she came, but it wouldn’t have made much
of a difference, I was sure.

  Margaret brought me Gordon and Charlie’s love, and a bag of presents: dream rings from the bakery on Shore Street in Kinlochbrack; a statue of an angel made of soapstone; bubble bath; a bunch of white tulips; and a card with ‘It’s a boy!’ written on it.

  ‘I wasn’t sure about the card but, one way or another, you’re a mum now.’

  ‘Thank you, Margaret.’

  I stuck the tulips into a pint glass from the kitchenette and placed them on the mantelpiece above the boarded-up fireplace. Margaret told me news from Kinlochbrack. Sam had left the Strathcorry Inn suddenly and no one knew where she had gone, but there were rumours about stolen money and a bruising row with Struan. One of the fish farms in the bay had been sabotaged and all the salmon smolts were lost. Gordon had organised a pub quiz in The Windhorse and Struan’s team won.

  She glanced at me when she mentioned Struan, but I didn’t ask anything about him.

  ‘What weight was the baby?’

  ‘Ten pounds, four and a half ounces.’

  ‘My goodness! A bonny lad.’ She combed her fingers through the fringe of her scarf. ‘And the birth?’

  ‘Forceps.’

  ‘Ouch. You poor pet. Did you name him?’

  ‘I called him Malachy. Malachy Dónal.’

  ‘And how are you doing?’

  I yawned. ‘I’m OK.’

  Margaret stayed for another hour or so and, when she was leaving, she hugged me tight, then held me away from her. ‘Stay in touch, Lillis. Promise?’

  I nodded and when I heard the front door close behind her, I went to my window and watched her walk down the road away from me, knowing I would probably never see her again.

  Glasgow sang me to sleep during my last two weeks there: the police sirens and endless traffic became my lullaby. Though I was hollow and listless, somehow I slept not just at night but during the day too. These were heavy sleeps, ripe with dreams that I couldn’t pin down when I woke; dreams that dragged off me through each morning though they were formless. By the time I left I was ready to go home; I couldn’t wait to put the Irish Sea between me and Malachy, so that it would all be properly done, with no possibility of going back.

  After feeding Nessa, I stand at my open bedroom window and watch a swallow loop and belly-flop, glide and flip above the toilet-brush trees that edge the green opposite our house. The swallow flies excitedly, as if taking part in a game. Soon another swallow starts the same ritual and the two birds sail past each other, up, around and over, before stopping on a telephone wire, their tails twitching. Then they are off again, too restless to sit for long. The evening is hot but still there is the smell of turf smoke; some people cannot give up the comfort of the fireplace, even in high summer.

  Cormac comes home from work and, after dinner, I watch him read his paper on the sofa – this is when I desire him most, when he is a small bit out of reach. He folds the newspaper, lifts Nessa onto his lap and gazes at her. She stares back at him, her face serious.

  ‘How was she today? Were you good for Mammy?’

  ‘Babies can only be good; it’s all they know.’

  ‘I mean did she cry much?’

  ‘She was an angel.’

  ‘Good girl, Nessa. Are you Daddy’s girl? Are you? Are you my angel?’

  Cormac has a ragù lipstick from dinner; I point to my own mouth and rub. He looks at me quizzically, so I take one of Nessa’s wipes and clean around his lips.

  ‘Now, all nice and fresh.’ I kiss him, long and deep, and he pulls me onto the sofa beside him.

  ‘I love you, Mrs Spain.’

  ‘And I love you, Cormac.’

  We sit, the three of us, late into the evening, letting the room grow dark around us, listening to one neighbour’s lawnmower, and smelling the charred meat of the other neighbour’s barbeque. Nessa falls asleep in Cormac’s arms so we go up to our room and place her in the Moses basket. Then, for the first time in months, we undress each other and make love. His body is like home to me, an extension of myself. Cormac falls asleep first and I lie against his chest, listening to the babumph of his heart, feeling the sweat dry into our skin.

  Chapter Nine

  We go to Galway for my birthday, shooting down the motorway’s treacle-smooth surface, passing the Eddie Stobart trucks and the camper vans with identikit couples perched up the front, staring ahead. It is a grey midsummer’s day, wet and drab, but I am in high spirits, for the first time in ages, it feels.

  ‘I’m having wine tonight, nothing can stop me,’ I say, and Cormac glances at me in the rear-view and smiles.

  ‘You can have champagne if you want.’

  ‘I’ll pump and dump. Nessa can have some of the milk from the cooler bag. Can’t you, Ness? Hey?’

  I lean forward to talk to her; she is strapped into her baby seat in the front, content as a miniature Buddha. She lifts her head to peer around the side of the chair at Cormac.

  ‘Hello, Missus,’ he says, ‘hello, Pooch.’

  Nessa smiles and flops her head back; she grabs at her feet and makes coodling noises. The fields on either side of the road are filthy with buttercups, and shorn lambs shadow their mothers across the grass. I watch calves gambolling around the legs of static cattle, as if they are playing a game of chasing. A brown calf stops to suckle a black cow and his friend runs on, kicking his heels. Young animals, in all their happy vulnerability, always remind me of babies. The further west we go, the more burgundy bogland straddles the motorway; the bogs stretch to the horizon and are rimmed now and then with conifers. I see the word ‘LOVE’ painted in huge red letters on the strut of a bridge and, as we pass, I silently applaud the optimism of the graffiti artist.

  We are going to stay with Anthony and India, and I am looking forward to the sound of the sea at their front door. We will talk about my father’s retirement and how he fills his days with walks, food, reading and little else. We will talk about their sons: Tim’s life as an oboe player in a London orchestra; Alex’s as an accountant in New York. India will sigh because her children choose to live so far away. Anthony will rant about the latest inaccurate research on seaweed that he has read in some magazine or on the Internet. He will expect me to understand and share his rage over a minor mistake. Seaweed is all; he won’t have it messed with. I will play along.

  Cormac pulls off the motorway at Ballinasloe so we can eat. He brings Nessa into a hotel to change her nappy and I wait outside. The town is quiet and many of the shops are vacant, their windows whited-out. I watch a young mother push a buggy with a lumpen three-year-old in it; the child is swilling on a bottle of fizzy orange and her fringe is cut that little bit too short. Cormac steps out of the hotel and we cross the road to the café my family always used to stop at when Anthony and Verity brought us to Galway on holidays. It is on the square and the same people are in it, drinking pint glasses of milk and eating big Irish dinners at noon: spuds, beef and turnip; slabs of gammon topped with pineapple; generous shepherd’s pies.

  ‘It even smells the same,’ I say to Cormac, as we take our seats, ‘like a farmer’s kitchen.’ I inspect the glass cabinet of cakes. ‘Me and Robin were always allowed to have black forest gâteau here – the pinnacle of luxury.’

  Three staff separately try to take our order before we have decided what we want. The café is under renovation and it is cold. At intervals, the sound of hammering is as noisy as set dancers thumping across the floor. A framed GAA shirt in bumblebee colours is the only decoration on the walls. People know each other here; they shout greetings across the room. An old woman limps towards the exit, gripping each table she passes; a younger woman comes behind her, saying, ‘Are you OK, Mammy? Can you manage?’

  ‘You can fuckin’ bury me before I’ll use a stick,’ the elderly woman says to me. The daughter rolls her eyes and grins.

 
We eat BLTs and, under a shawl, I feed Nessa. Her arm, the only visible part of her, pokes upwards every so often in a victory salute. When she is finished feeding, I lift the shawl off her face and she smiles like someone returned after a long trip. Cormac flicks through a discarded copy of The Star and I watch a waitress carefully fold cutlery into paper napkins. The woman behind the counter hands a chocolate bun to every child in the place, just as she did when I was a kid. It makes me wonder when Nessa will be deemed big enough to accept her free treat.

  ‘Would you like something nice with your tea?’ the waiter asks, when he clears our plates.

  ‘Oh, I might have a dessert, yes.’

  ‘Sure why wouldn’t you?’ he says, petting Nessa’s cheek as if she is his own and going to get menus for us.

  I look around at the well-filled women and men, stuffed behind their tables, eating alone and in pairs. I feel, suddenly, like I am making the slow trip back to myself and I grab Cormac’s hand across the table and kiss it.

  ‘I love you, babe,’ he says, something he does aloud, unabashed and often.

  ‘I love you too.’

  The waiter brings me an oblong doughnut, bulky with piped cream and topped with a slick of red.

  ‘Wow,’ Cormac says, ‘it’s like someone cut their finger and dripped blood onto the cake.’

  ‘Mmm, let me at it.’

  Cormac has a coffee slice with tan icing. We gobble our way through the cakes, marvelling with stuffed mouths at how good they taste.

  ‘So retro,’ he says, picking gluey pastry from his teeth.

  ‘I’ll be Bessie Bunter after this.’

  ‘It’s your birthday, Lil – anything goes.’

  When we step outside the café the sun is shining; Cormac carries Nessa and we stroll across the square to explore a tat and toy shop. Cormac shoves a white sun hat with a floral ribbon onto my head, then goes to the till to pay for it. The owner of the shop is from Dublin too and Cormac flirts with her in that unconscious, low-key way he has, asking what part she is from and how long she has lived in Ballinasloe. The woman tickles Nessa and grins at Cormac; I step in to claim my place with them.