Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

by Ruth Gilligan

  And sometimes, when he woke and they were well into the night, he would ask if he could stay; would place his hand on her waist and let his breath get a little louder. ‘Please?’

  Of course, there was a part of her that wanted to say yes. Yes! No clue about love, but maybe… And anyway, babies she did know, so how about one of her own? A set of roots down into Irish soil and would that be the end of it then? The belonging at last and not another word?

  But every time, she would shake her head. And Harry would nod his to say it was all right, he understood. A conservative woman. A woman of her faith. When actually it was something else that told her to hold back and ignore the swarming feeling in her stomach; to trap the bees beneath an upturned jar and wait, patiently, until they had buzzed themselves to death.

  Until finally, it was Closing Night, and the end and the beginning came as one.

  The show had had an impossibly good run. Youth’s the Season…? by Mary Manning, one of the nation’s finest female playwrights, debuting here at The Gate Theatre. They had had a full house each night, a gush of reviews; Micheál Mac Liammóir the star, but the rest of the cast had earned notable mentions too, which Ruth read to Harry whenever he felt jealous – an actor’s prerogative. And yet, still he had refused to let her actually come and see him perform; had made her promise to wait until the very last night when the thing had fully grown into itself. ‘I promise, Ruthie, it’ll be the climax of the whole run.’

  And, somewhere in there too, the climax of their relationship.

  On the day itself she was nothing but nerves; struggled with a pair of twins that insisted on coming out intertwined so that one of them was nearly choked blue by the other’s umbilical cord. But eventually she untangled them – felt almost cruel in the separation – then flew into a dress, across the car park, into her seat just in time for the lights to dim and the curtain to whoosh to the rafters.

  It was only then that she realised it was her first time in a theatre for twenty years. Exactly. She glanced at the man in the seat next to her, just in case someone else had managed to sneak his way in, the reflection of the electric spotlights like magic across his ­bottle-thick specs.

  The play itself was genius. Hysterical. A group of dandies drinking gin and making camp with cravats. And through it all, hovering behind the farce, was Harry. ‘Horace Egosmith’. The protagonist’s doppelganger and, strangest of all, a mute.

  What about a woman who falls for a man who cannot speak? Could she still marry him?

  For the whole play an old idea of her father’s tugged at her mind.

  Or would she stop speaking too – form a code of touches and blinks that only they could understand?

  And really, isn’t that what we all do with love?

  By the end the ovation was like torrential rain, the after-party stuffed fat with well-wishers. Another round! Another round! But with his voice back, it seemed Harry had something important to say, so he grabbed Ruth’s hand and led her down the stairs out into the vicious freeze of the night, only a few feet from where they had first crossed paths and lives.

  She looked across the car park to the hospital. She reminded herself to put the twins on her list when she got home tonight; to try to tangle two stories into one.

  ‘Ruthie, there is… I need to ask you something.’

  The white mist of their breaths met in the middle. Above, an Irish flag flaunted its freedom, slapping the wind with a motion both brutal and proud.

  Harry told her that she didn’t have to answer now, but that he wanted to ask her as soon as possible, to give her some time to consider. Ruth listened in silence, shivering, even if her body was already beginning to warm. Of course, she had allowed herself to imagine this moment, or at least, to think her way through it. She was still no good at conjuring fantasies out of thin air – no, that gift had never come. But Harry was right – there was a lot to consider. Like where they would live? Whether she would invite Mame? Whether he would have to buy a bigger ring to fit over the jut in her knuckle, the deformity covered at last? And then there was also the fact of her losing her job – the thing that had come to define her in recent years. In fact, the first time she had really known how definition felt.

  The Midwife.

  The Deliverer.

  The Rotunda Storyteller.

  Though there had always been the niggle that the mothers, for all their gratitude, tended to move on; to forget about her tales and the singsong of her voice whereas Harry would always need her. Sure, who else would listen to him? Reassure him? Read out his reviews and his volumes of masterpieces? Even if they did make her gut pang for another man she once knew, one she certainly had loved. Then of course there was also the chance of a brand new little person – it wasn’t too late, she had seen older women come in – so how about her very own fidget of flesh, a legacy that belonged here and only here? Except, she wondered then if botched eyes were genetic; if it could be traced all the way back to the very beginning where things first went mangled and wrong?

  ‘Ruthie, it’s the play.’

  Above them, the flag flapped another flap, this time a little too high.

  ‘It has just been – God, it’s so bloody exciting – it has just been announced that Youth’s the Season…? is off touring. England. And Manning, well, she wants me to go too. To play Egosmith. Can you believe it?’

  Behind the flag the sky wore diamonds, a sparkle on black like a widow’s throat.

  Ruth stared at Harry, his face pasted with the orange make-up that made his pores look fat like same-shade freckles. ‘This is it, Ruthie! Our chance to get out! Everyone in Little Jerusalem is talking about leaving – God knows we’re not welcome here any more, especially after your attack. So come on, what do you say?’

  Even through the shock, the first thing she noticed was how familiar the words sounded, just the same as her mother’s pitch nearly five years ago:

  Come on, Ruthie, it is time to go.

  But Mame, this is my home.

  Home? Do not be stupid, my girl – you do not even know the meaning of the word.

  But—

  No matter how many stories you learn about it.

  ‘Ruthie, what are you thinking?’

  The last lash had smarted the cruellest of all.

  ‘Ruthie, come on, talk to me.’

  And yet her answer now, she barely recognised.

  ‘Ruth— ’

  ‘You know Oisín didn’t actually stay there forever?’ Her question went loud across the blackness, over to a taxi where they saw a silhouette with a tiny white bundle in its arms; a beautiful opening scene.

  ‘Oisín,’ Ruth repeated. ‘In Tír na nÓg. He stayed for what he thought was three years but which actually, back in the real world, had been three hundred.’ She spoke quietly and calmly, as if over a half of Guinness, instead of out in the midnight shiver poised on the brink of everything. ‘Until one day he realised that he was homesick. Can you believe it? Living in Paradise but pining for Ireland still.’

  Above them in the bar a savage punch line went off. The laughter echoed down across the tarmac.

  ‘So Niamh gave him her horse,’ she pushed on, remembering as she went. ‘And told him that he could pay a visit home if he wanted, but that as soon as his foot so much as touched the ground he would be barred from coming back to Tír na nÓg forever, and that the weight of all those years would bear down upon him and he would wither like an old man, and die.’

  ‘Ruth, what the hell are you talking about?’

  But Ruth couldn’t stop now that she had found her groove – the second half of the story – the version that was never usually told. ‘But he chose to go anyway; went looking for his family and the Fianna and eventually found his old home, ruined. A pile of bricks, smashed to smithereens. Next he came across some men who were building a road in Elphin, County Roscommon, ha
ve you ever heard of it, Harry? And there were a full three hundred of them trying to lift a giant rock out of the way, but Oisín just trotted over and moved the stone aside with one hand, just like that. Only then his girth broke and he fell from the horse and touched the ground...’

  ‘Ruthie, this is ridiculous. Can we please go back inside?’

  ‘…and transformed into an ancient man. Then lay down and closed his eyes. And smiled.’ By now she realised she couldn’t even hear Harry’s words; his furious, frustrated shouts. Something about ‘pathetic’; about ‘priorities’. Things she had suspected before, but had decided not to see. So instead she saw only the image of that curled-up old man, his flesh loose and saggy with three hundred years of wrinkles. Like he had just been out swimming in the Atlantic Ocean for a very long time, his body pruned and washed up on the shore.

  And she smiled.

  July

  Ever since her visit, Ima’s ultimatum hadn’t left my skull.

  August.

  Israel.

  Shem?

  It followed me around the House, making it impossible to concentrate on anything else, only dither somewhere between terror and disbelief – back and forth like a fiddler’s elbow. Because surely there was no way she actually meant it? I mean, it was one thing to bow down to Abba on the matter of checking me in here – letting him play out his experiment for a couple of months – but this, this was something different. This was everything.

  Shem, he wants us to go without you.

  No, it was pure bollocks, even by his standards – surely she could see that. Only, despite my father’s bullying ways, there had always been a strange sense of loyalty off my mother for him; a sort of unquestioning obedience that didn’t make sense. Of course, by now I could recognise it was probably just a product of her guilt – trying to make up for what she had done. But every so often I got the oddest feeling like, actually, Abba already knew about her secret, and was just using it against her; like they were in the whole sordid cover-up together.

  Either way, the deadline had been set, the countdown smothering closer and closer like the day’s breathless heat. Because July had turned out to be a belter, the weather gone beastly hot, a hum off the House you wouldn’t believe – the sourness of sweat and fed up. Apparently it was the warmest July since records began; since some poor fecker just sat there and measured the temperature, year in year out; wrote it down in his jotter, a handful of degrees either way – a man after my own gombeen heart.

  So the days lost whatever purpose they might have once had, the heat grinding everything to a halt. No use in going outside unless you wanted to fry; no more football to catch on the radio – the Brazilians had lifted the trophy for the very first time thanks to some savage young lad named Pelé; even Scrabble seemed to lack any appeal – sure I had hammered every one of them at least three times by now. So the only decent thing left of the hotchpotch routine was the knowledge that I would be out in the corridor again tonight, scrawling away, the air a little cooler if nothing else.

  Because now that I hadn’t actually left – hadn’t been rescued after all – Alf had wanted to carry on with the telling of his story. I was happy enough to comply, partly out of guilt that I had been so ready to ditch him, but mostly just for distraction – at this stage I would take whatever I could get.

  He had come to the morning after the Clanbrassil Street bomb, the whole neighbourhood still frantic on the shock of what had happened. Alf told me he’d been sick three times, his gut flinging itself from the highest height. So then the following day, in a fit of rage (and something probably already approaching grief), he had decided to take matters into his own hands and sign up to the army; to go and get his own back the bloodiest way he knew how.

  ‘Of course, the locals considered me a traitor altogether,’ he recalled. ‘Joining on with the Brits? Ha! Talk about a kick in the face! But sure, they had always insisted us Jewies were incapable of being loyal to a nation, so I suppose I was only proving them… proving them…’ He stopped then, the sentence slipping out of his grip like soap. He glared into the shadows as if someone had come and nicked it straight off him. ‘Tip of me bloody… Arra, what was I trying… The War!’ he groused. ‘I went off to the War!’ Lashing the prodigal memory down the corridor, though the echo wasn’t quite so convincing: ‘Me bloody mind, Shmendrick…’ he sighed. ‘It’s… it’s a bloody shambles.’

  But despite the hiccups in his head – a couple more of them each night – still his conviction remained strong; still resolute as he recounted how his younger self had packed his bags and stood up for what he believed. ‘Oh yes, I was going over to Europe for revenge, Shmendrick, to slit some German throats and bleed them dry.’

  And he was vicious with the telling of it now, the bitterness still simmering just below the surface, so that the more I wrote, the harder I leaned against the jotter, trying somehow to do his words justice; a scatter of !!!s down the margins to nail the sentences in place.

  I looked at the little black marks; tiny bullets for Nazi skulls.

  And I didn’t know if it was the force of his convictions that was contagious, a plague rising up through the swelter of the air, but after a while I started to wonder if maybe this was exactly what I needed myself – a kick in the face and a boot up the pyjama-clad arse. Because it was all well and good feeling thrown by Ima’s ultimatum – pissing my pants in disbelief – but why not actually do something about it before it was too late? Why not take matters into my own, clammy hands?

  I wiped them on my thighs, left then right then left then right then left. I blew up and down each one to dry the bones.

  Alf told me how he had gone to England first – two months on a training camp where he stayed awake on watch and did drills in the snow, sicking blood and shitting bile, the two dripping into one. Then he told me how he had boarded a ship to Europe with a pack on his back and a rifle he shot as soon as he landed, firing round after round until he lost his legs in the process, all the time thinking of nothing but that night, that love.

  That loss.

  So no, I realised I had to cop myself on now. Because if my mother was planning to board a ship of her own, then I was bloody well boarding it too – the long and the fucking short. Yes, I had been happy to give up my voice for her, to give up my friends and my normal­ity. Maybe even, to give up my chance at love. But if it was going to mean giving her up too, then surely it had gone too far – surely something had to be done. I just needed to figure out what the fuck that something was going to be.

  That night I stomped back to bed as hard as tiptoes would allow. I hid the jotter away, same as ever. But this time I held onto the pen; took it with me to bed. In my hand it felt snug and tight, the butt of it hard like I imagined a gun.

  I barely slept, the noise of the War still loud in my head, so that by morning I was knackered – a buzz next to my ear that wouldn’t go away.

  And the following night, my body refused sleep again. A bit like a protest, a hunger striker sealing his lips, even though I was desperate for a snooze. But then the next night I was wide awake too, thoughts going like the clappers, and I realised that I would be like this now until I found an antidote; an escape route out of this place. No rest for the wicked or for gobshites without a plan, only insomnia and exhaustion and skin turned grey like gone-off milk until finally the week was dead and buried and I was due for my session with Doctor Lally, my head spinning circles I could barely see as I contorted myself down onto the back-office stool.

  ‘So lad, you’ll be glad to hear I’ve a few new ones for you today…’ Across the room Lally paced back and forth, babbling his usual bab, though the space was so tight he could only take a few steps each way before he had to turn around again.

  As he moved he spouted all his latest batch of suggestions, a plethora if nothing else. Because even now, months on, he still managed to come up with an infinite do
se of ideas; a never-ending list of elaborate schemes for how to make me better again. As if, of course, he had any clue what he was actually dealing with.

  ‘Have you considered a séance, like?’

  ‘A vigil, maybe?’

  ‘Or what about an exorcism? Unless, of course, the Jews don’t…’ he trailed off, a pause in his pacing; a rare moment of hesitation.

  ‘Or if all else fails, lad,’ he barrelled on, ‘we could look into getting you a tongue transplant?’

  Mostly I tried to ignore what he said, but I felt my lips tighten now into one another, a subconscious twitch as if the suggestion might be real. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have put it past him.

  I closed my eyes. I felt pure rotten. I needed to lie down.

  ‘Or have… have you heard about Gleann na nGealt?’

  As I opened my eyes my head still spun, seeing three Lallies instead of one. But after a while I felt it slowing. He waited as if he could tell. He smiled.

  And for the first time all week – or maybe all month – I think I smiled too.

  He explained, very slowly, that Gleann na nGealt – the Valley of the Mad – was some kind of lake down in County Kerry, famous like for being in possession of special ‘healing powers’.

  ‘Think of it, lad, as a sort of… Irish Lourdes.’

  Lally told me that the legend had existed for as long as he could remember, people flocking from far and wide, all certain that redemption lurked in the depths of that murky watering hole. So now the nuns had taken advantage and turned it into an annual Montague House event – charged through the absolute snoz to hire a dinky coach so as to schlep the spastics South, all on the hope of finding a scummy, summer miracle.