Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

by Ruth Gilligan

  So maybe, she realises, a hint of disgust; maybe she has always just loved to prove a point.

  Thirty minutes later his mouth had tasted of wine and the green-top milk she had grabbed from the corner shop, the one with the prices scrawled out on neon stars, a confectionery disco. But it tasted good, the sweet, oddly wholesome tang as Noah padded his lips against hers. Though there was no tongue – not even a bit – it didn’t seem to be the English Way.

  Title? Ms.

  Last Name? Creedon.

  First Name? Aisling.

  ‘And how would one pronounce that?’ The perpetual question.

  Well, it’s ‘Ais’ like rash/smash/lashed out.

  And ‘ling’ like ring/cling/Aer Ling-us, but they were too pricey for a last-minute flight hence the Ryanair Inquisition; the onslaught of questions, she supposes, a bit like last night.

  He was on top of her next, surprisingly light, gentle yet urgent too. The sofa corner was rougher with her, jutting into her nape – no cushions yet, no softness to the place at all, because really, where was the bother when it was only ever her up there, alone?

  Baggage? Oh the irony.

  Travel Insurance? Don’t Cover Me.

  SMS confirmation?

  But no, he hasn’t called. Hasn’t even sent a text. Just made his demands then drove away without a hint of remorse – the nerve of him she cannot actually believe. Though she supposes it just shows that they were always doomed; always the same roadblock lurking up ahead and no real way round.

  He had knelt down then, skidding the storage boxes out of the way; trailed callous-tipped fingers up her thighs and down her skirt then peeled off her pants – red lace, too obvious – but she didn’t care about that now, only hooked her heels around his shoulders and let her head roll drunkenly back, a damp grey crack in the ceiling and then stars.

  Card number? Yes.

  Verified by Visa? Yes.

  Security Check and are you sure you’re sure? Of course! And anyway, even if she wasn’t, there has been no sign of an apology; no plea for ­forgiveness, so it seems the decision has been made either way.

  Yes?

  I—

  Yes?

  I—

  Yes!

  Afterwards, they lay sprawled amongst the boxes, two bodies fallen from the sky.

  ‘Did you ever make a fort when you were a kid?’

  ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’

  ‘Cowboys and Indians?’

  ‘Protestants and Catholics.’

  ‘Ha! You Irish and your conflict.’

  ‘Like you lot can talk.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your Troubles.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘What, again?’

  She can’t even see the laptop any more, blinded by her rage at this memory that seems to have hocked itself up from nowhere. She feels a tingle between her legs, still the same itchy twenty denier from last night. She hasn’t yet managed to change.

  He was the first person she had let in here to the flat. Before him it was only the Skype faces distorted and delayed across the Irish Sea, or her brother all the way from Australia, a smear up onto her screen. She pictures the conversations like badly dubbed television, the words and the lips out of sync with each other. Or like drunken encounters, slurred and confused – lazy sentiments repeated over and over again:

  ‘I’m doing grand, thanks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m grand.’

  Shouting it so many times until she almost believed.

  She had been marooned in that sea of cardboard for three months by the time Noah waded in to join her. She just hadn’t found the time slash energy slash incentive to unpack, to make roots.

  If anything, she had found the impermanence of it oddly comforting.

  The boxes themselves had come smuggled in the boot of a friend’s car – Aileen, a girl from school who, along with one thousand other Emerald Isle deserters per week, had taken the boat across the sea to find herself a brand new, Crunch-free beginning.

  You could swim it if you were desperate enough, and God knows some of them were.

  Aileen and her freckles were moving in with four other girls down in Clapham where the rest of the London-Irish seemed to have converged, familiar faces swarming the High Street; all the regional newspapers for sale in the stands by the Tube. The Limerick Leader. The Roscommon Herald. A special shelf in the local Sainsbury’s that stocked the soda bread they needed to survive.

  And can I pay for that in Euro please, boy?

  Aisling had managed a total of two weeks down there – a single fortnight on the girls’ moulting couch, before she had sprinted North to the overpriced Islington attic dive, up where the air was stranger but clearer, trying to figure out where exactly the line lay between community and claustrophobia; the cosiness of a home away from home and the terrifying sense that she had taken this leap and traded countries for… for what?

  For this?

  She prints off her boarding pass and folds it quickly like a secret. She reclaims her body from the little black dress, breaking the zip she yanks so hard.

  After a shower she takes the dusty carry-on from under her bed and chucks in a few essentials. Toothbrush. Charger. A pair of runners, as if she will have the energy to jog, or even the incentive now.

  She drags the case down the hallway, lame with one wheel broken. She checks her phone, but still there is nothing, only his face as a screensaver which she changes to black, a symbolism that only takes a click. She throws on her coat and her scarf and stamps towards the door, the tuft of the welcome mat bald from two years of comings and goings; of drunken stumbles and tiptoe kisses with no tongue and, as it turns out, no bloody point.

  HOME SWEET HOME.

  She stomps her foot on the ‘SWEET’ with all the rage she can muster; rage for everything he was asking, but also just for how easily he gave up – more pathetic than anything else. Only, for some reason the conviction doesn’t seem to take, faltering a bit as another memory rises up from the mat, the home so sweet they had to write it twice.

  It was Noah who bought it for her, a few weeks after their meeting amongst the boxes. There had been a series of them since, a curious ritual building up – maybe even something like an intimacy – though surely it was too soon to tell. But eventually he had declared war on the chaos of her apartment and kidnapped her into his Audi S7, up the North Circular Road (‘we have one of these in Dublin too, you know?’) to the blue and yellow kingdom of Ikea.

  They spent hours trudging through the gaudy maze, the fully furnished rooms like theatre sets – a version of reality that could or could not be.

  ‘How about a BORGSJÖÖ?’

  ‘A HUSVIK?’

  ‘A BROMÖLLA?’

  ‘A KVART?’

  ‘Sounds like something you’d have to apologise for.’

  Awkward jokes to compensate for the domestic sort-of-bliss.

  Until it was time for the reassuringly unromantic meatball lunch, the pile of grey-brown tumours submerged in the grey-brown gravy mulch.

  ‘So what,’ she said as she sat down with her tray, ‘you’d rather go hungry than eat here?’ As defiant as she was embarrassed that he had refused lunch, leaving her to queue while he found a table.

  ‘No,’ he smiled. ‘I usually love reconstituted balls. It’s just that I… I’m fasting.’ He looked at her searchingly, to see if she understood. ‘Today is Yom Kippur.’

  She panicked, mid-bite, then defaulted to another joke. ‘A YOM KIPPÜR? What’s that, some kind of light fitting?’

  He looked down at her tray.

  Her mouth hummed with the fuzz of meat fat.

  ‘It’s a festival,’ he said eventually, tucking back a curled sideburn that wasn’t even there. ‘The Day of Atonement. More for my p
arents’ sake than my own, but basically it means no eating for twenty-five hours. In fact, technically no having fun at all.’

  She glanced around the canteen. ‘Noah, you should have…’ She suddenly felt so out of place. ‘There is no way I would have dragged you here if I— ’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He smiled. ‘In fact, if anything it actually works out, given Ikea is pretty much my idea of punishment.’ He had looked at her then, hungry and smirking, a dust of her blusher on the chest of his shirt like she could see the pink of his heart. And out of nowhere he had leaned across the table and kissed her, tongue and all, sliding it against the gravy slick of hers.

  Afterwards, he had driven her back and helped her lug all the stuff up to her home sweet home. ‘I’m sorry – I would stay and assemble it for you,’ he said. ‘But I promised I would break the fast with my family.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I keep telling you I don’t need you.’

  Only, she never actually got round to putting the flat packs together that evening. Instead she spent hours on the Internet reading up on the history of the Day of Atonement – the thousands-of-years rituals, still alive – ignoring the grumbles in her gut as she skipped dinner, the meatballs enough to keep it going until morning when she woke amongst more boxes than ever before as if they had been breeding through the night.

  She steps out onto the landing now and shuts the door, slamming it in the face of that loved-up version of herself, the one she still can’t believe she let herself become. She trundles down the three flights of stairs, her case bouncing behind like a ton-weight shadow, to the communal entrance hall with its confetti of post. She kicks the letters, vicious with them; flicks up the laminated skid of a pizza leaflet. And then by the door she kicks something solid too, something that might just be real.

  She looks down, expecting it to be a phonebook. There always seems to be a new edition, another list of the numbers and names of all the bodies clogging this heifer of a city – the one where she had finally felt she belonged, but which she now needs, so furiously, to flee.

  His handwriting, though, is too distinct. Too Oxford sharp. The letters of her name etched deep as scars.

  The year after Ikea, 2012, she had been much better prepared for the festival, probably even more clued-in this time than him.

  ‘You know you’re not allowed to wear perfume?’

  ‘Leather shoes?’

  ‘That ten days ago on Rosh Hashanah you were supposed to cast off all your sins by throwing a load of breadcrumbs into “a body of moving water with live fish”? Bit of a bizarre one that, if you ask me – like feeding the ducks but much crueller – making them ingest all your fuck-ups. Like that rumour when you were a kid that feeding rice to pigeons would make them explode.’

  He had tried to shut her up by seducing her in her now-beautified snug of a living room, but:

  ‘Oh no you don’t.’

  ‘Oh sorry,’ he said. ‘Are you— ’

  ‘No, it’s you, you eejit. It’s Yom Kippur.’ She said it slowly, loving the repeated pout of the last syllable on her lips – the secret language she was starting to learn.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And… no sex.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know, I know. You’re probably feeling vulnerable after dwelling on all your sins, but you’re not allowed, mister. Not today.’

  His eyes had waited, then flashed the colour of someone else’s. ‘Bloody hell, Aisling, what are you playing at?’

  As he exploded in anger she had thought of that pigeon again; of feathers falling out of the sky. Before she had lashed back in spades, resenting the implication – his hunger versus her indignation – one of their most fundamental fights yet.

  Though nothing, of course, compared to this.

  She stands in the hallway, staring down at the book-shaped lump. She knows she can’t just leave it out here in the open. And there is no time to trek back up to her flat – Jesus, at this rate she will miss the plane altogether; will just have to hide in the airport for the holi­days instead, relishing the no-man’s-land of it. Like taking the Tube to the end of the line and then back again, and then back again, just because she has nothing better to do in this city, no one else who will stand so close and too much pride to ask.

  Until a stranger said hello. The same stranger, she tells herself, that must have returned; must have stood on her doorstep and posted the package, the bruise on his forehead blooming up and the choice placed back in her hands.

  Outside, the ice air crystallises the wet of her ponytail. The extra bulge in the front pocket unbalances the case. She feels it veering, tripping over cracks, the whole thing so close to toppling entirely.

  Stansted Airport is a purgatory. A punishment. She ghostwalks her way between Royal Baby-emblazoned teapots and the reek of All-Day Breakfasts. She doesn’t meet any eyes. But as she goes, she leaves a Hansel and Gretel trail behind her – biting her nails and spitting them to the floor – just on the off-chance somebody might be following after all.

  With the weight of the book in the overhead locker she is sure they won’t make it off the ground. But then they do. They rise.

  She looks out the window, the wings skimming the upward air; a plane so light it could be made out of paper. In the seat in front, a head falls and re-falls into sleep. Across the aisle a woman peels an orange for her son, the rind giving off a white spray of dust. To her right a man breathes heavily, attempting the Scrabble puzzle in his newspaper. And despite herself, Aisling spots that it is not just any paper, it is hers. A pathetic coup, she knows, but lately she cannot help it – as if she were the owner or even the editor of the thing, not just some young aspirational tucked down in the desk affectionately known as ‘the morgue’.

  They once sat by the Hampstead Heath pond eating fish and chips when she noticed her cod was wrapped in a page of it.

  ‘Just imagine when it is your Current Affairs articles they serve batter on,’ Noah had teased. ‘That’s when you’ll know you’ve really made it.’

  ‘Or imagine you had to eat chips off your lover’s obituary?’

  ‘Clag up their life with ketchup.’

  ‘A bloody death.’

  She closes her eyes. Cruising at eighteen thousand feet yet still it finds her, the banter that is only theirs. She breathes in the vinegar and salt. The back of her throat is dry.

  But then she smells oranges instead. She opens her eyes; the young boy plops segment after segment straight onto his tongue. She retraces the hefty outline of her neighbour, the gold chain dang­ling the stub of a cross. He isn’t wearing a wedding ring, she notices; his nails are oddly white. And against everything else she forces her mind to try to piece the snippets together; to take a guess at his story – her default distraction – because where some people picture strangers naked, Aisling Creedon (temporary obituarist) pictures them dead, remembered in peace.

  FATHER OF THREE WHO PUT MALE MANICURES ON THE MAP.

  PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY WHO OPENED GOD-FRIENDLY BURGER CHAIN.

  It always starts with the bullish opening paragraph, to set the tone, announce the facts, before the languid, three-paragraph arc from beginning to tragic but undoubtedly noble end, converting the mess of a thing we call life into one perfectly logical narrative. Half a page, maybe a picture; copy on the editor’s desk by three for tweaks and typesetting and off to print before a pint round the corner to toast the day’s deceased.

  Of course, there is nothing remarkable about the process, this much at least she knows. Because we do it to ourselves all the time – turn our lives into a story – anything to try to keep the chaos of the self in check. Like:

  Once upon a time there was an emigrant flying home for Christmas because that was part of who she was, and she wasn’t going to change for anyone, no matter the kick of doubt.

  Or:


  Once upon a time there was an emigrant flying home for Christmas because she had to tell her family that her other half had invited her to do something she had secretly been—

  ‘Drinks or snacks? Any drinks or snacks?’ The air hostess brings her back with a jerk, startling both versions away. She overpays for a cup of metallic-tasting tea; winces it down in hot, hasty gulps.

  So they cruise, barely a bump in the sky. After a while the pilot comes on to say hello, chatty like he is just bored up there, lonely for some company.

  But the further they go the more Aisling can feel the reality of the decision looming over, no matter how many distractions she tries out for size. Because she knows that soon, something will have to die, her future or her past – her old self or her new.

  #RIP.

  One of the most popular hashtags on Twitter this year, she read – the digital way to grieve. A bit like the new website back home. RIP.ie. Updated every day to list the recently departed. Though for the older generation death is still done by analogue – little tales at the back of The Irish Times. Births, Marriages & Deaths. The whole life cycle bundled together on a single page so that every morning people like her parents can read it over breakfast, always recognising at least one of the names-in-lights.

  ‘And you know,’ he told her once, ‘the JC does the same.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Jewish Chronicle. We call it Bingo in our house – if you know one name from each category. A baby, a bride and a body.’

  A voice that just won’t go mute.

  She finds the window again, surprised by the clarity of the view. The sea below looks as if it isn’t moving, set solid like you could just walk the rest of the way. Apparently the Rail and Sail do a decent deal on the crossing – the train from London up to Holyhead and then the ferry over the ocean; a fully stocked bar so that by the time you are back in Mammy’s arms you can barely speak let alone wish her a Happy Christmas; blame the toss of the tide for your vomit, which she strangely enjoys cleaning up, needed again at last.