Beneath the Earth

by John Boyne

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Maybe when I start school.’

  ‘Do you watch it?’

  ‘On the telly.’

  ‘Sure come up some Saturday morning to the school and watch one of our matches. Half past eleven till just before one. Lots of lads your age do. Bring us an orange for afterwards,’ he added, laughing, before running across the road without even a goodbye and leaving me on the banks of the Tolka River, alone and delirious. I wanted him to take more care on the roads than my poor cousin had.

  Saturday morning came and my aunt said I was to stay at home until she and my uncle were back from the shops, as there was a delivery that they were waiting on.

  ‘Can they not leave it next door?’ I asked, and she turned, annoyed by my refusal to help, and said that she didn’t want to go bothering the neighbours.

  ‘I don’t ask much of you,’ she snapped. ‘What use are you anyway if you won’t do one simple thing after we’ve given you a home and food and a bed to sleep in?’

  Eleven o’clock came and no sign of the man from An Post. Eleven thirty. Twelve. I could feel my stomach turning in convulsions and once, in a fit of dramatics, I convinced myself that I was going to be sick with anxiety and hung my head over the toilet bowl. I went outside and stared anxiously up and down the street in search of the van. I marched around the house, cursing all those who worked for the postal service, and banged my fist off the bedroom wall until I thought it might bruise. Finally, at twelve thirty the doorbell rang, the parcel arrived and it needed no signature at all despite what my aunt had said and I threw it on the kitchen table in a fury, grabbing the freshest-looking orange I could find from the fruit bowl, and ran through the streets towards the school where the brother of the Mangan girl played his rugby.

  I was afraid that the match would be over by the time I got there but no, a crowd of a hundred people or more were gathered on the sidelines on all four sides of the pitch, a sea of blue and white for one team and green and gold for the other. They were cheering the lads on and I looked out for Mangan, whose back bore the number nine, and followed him with my eyes.

  A girl was standing next to me with two boys and I listened in to their conversation.

  ‘That’s what I heard anyway.’

  ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘It is! It happened at the party last Friday.’

  ‘I heard he was into your one from St Anne’s.’

  ‘It was her was into him.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  The girl turned and looked down at me and asked me what I thought I was doing, and I blushed and made my way down the field, watching as the ball was thrown from player to player, scrums were formed, lines were drawn, throw-ins were made and tries were scored. I saw the brother of the Mangan girl take the gumshield from his mouth during a break in play and watched the way his upper lip contorted as he released it, his tongue extending for a moment before diving back inside. A line of saliva ran like a wire from his mouth to the lump of plastic in his hand and only when he turned his head to the left and spat on the ground did it disappear and I felt a groaning somewhere deep inside me. He raised his shirt a little to scratch his belly and a fine trail of dark fuzz made its way beneath his navel to within his shorts; his hand followed it in for a moment as he adjusted himself. When the whistle was blown, he threw the gumshield back in his mouth and turned to run in my direction with a grace that belied his bulk, his eyes watching at every moment as the ball made its way above the heads of twenty boys and he reached both hands up, leapt in the air, dragged it into the pit of his stomach before hoisting it back with his right hand and throwing it further down the field to some shadow whose catch I did not even turn to see.

  Soon, the game ended and there was cheering on the pitch. I gathered that Mangan’s team had won but it had been a close thing and a good-tempered game, for the colours intermingled and there was a clasping of fists and quick hugs, hands to the back of each other’s heads.

  I dared to call his name as he trotted off the pitch with one of his friends, and he turned to look at me, uncertain at first before a moment of recognition made him smile.

  ‘You made it,’ he said, tousling my hair as if I was a child before running on, running past me, running away, turning to his companion and laughing about something as they disappeared back towards the changing rooms and out of my sight. I stood there as the spectators started to disperse, hoping that he might come out again. He had told me to bring him an orange and I had done so, but I hadn’t given it to him. He hadn’t even noticed it in my hand. Finally, a group of them emerged, an excitement of boys, pink-faced and wet-haired, talking and laughing loudly, sports bags slung over their shoulders, drinking cans of Coke and devouring bars of chocolate in one or two bites. Mangan among them, at their very centre.

  I waited until they were all gone and walked slowly down the driveway, making my way back towards North Richmond Street, where I had no desire to be, the orange still in my hand. I was a boy uncertain where he was going, abandoned and left wandering in a part of the city that was unfamiliar to me, a place that would take me years to understand and negotiate.

  That part of me that would be driven by desire and loneliness had awoken and was planning cruelties and anguish that I could not yet imagine.

  Beneath the Earth

  It was no easy task to dig the child’s grave. The ground down here grows firm in the wintertime, the loam forming a solid shell above the subsoil and bedrock that pack together like hibernating animals in fear of a seasonal predator. When I was a boy, I took an interest in the land and wanted to grow peppers and sweet potatoes in the small corner of the farm that had been designated as my own but my father said the earth wasn’t for wasting and I should plant crops that could put up a fight against the unremitting cold. Cabbage, he said. Leeks. Broccoli. All manner of green vegetables that I hated.

  You said this was my land, I told him. To plant whatever I wanted.

  Cabbage, he repeated. Leeks. Broccoli. Maybe a little spinach if you want to try something different.

  I pressed my foot down on the shoulder of the spade, forcing the blade into the obstinate soil, and knew that I had a job of work ahead of me. Circling the burial ground, the desiccated trees formed a tribal boundary, their stripped branches rustling in the breeze as they whispered tales of the crime they were witnessing.

  My father was long dead, of course, and the land was mine now. I could do with it what I liked. I could bury whatever I pleased inside it.

  Much further away, a corner of the north field housed the grave where I had buried my wife two years before. Flynn, the priest, refused to consecrate the ground at first, saying that Niamh should be laid to rest in the church cemetery beside her family, but I told him that I was her family, that Emer was her family, and that we wanted her nearby.

  Do you not think you isolated her enough during her lifetime, he asked me, without abandoning her to such a solitary resting place?

  What’s that now, I asked, stepping closer to him, but he didn’t dare repeat the slur. I have reason to believe that Niamh sought his counsel over the years, speaking to him of matters that were private between us, a brazen act on her part that no man could excuse.

  I went to the bishop on that occasion, an older man who had been a friend of my father’s, and told him what I wanted.

  It’s a most unusual request, he said.

  If it’s a matter of money …

  This has nothing to do with money, he told me, picking a scrap of something green from between his teeth and examining it before flicking it to the floor. We don’t sell favours in this diocese. On another subject entirely, however, you may have seen the sign outside requesting contributions for the renovation of the episcopal house. I wonder whether you might be able to help us out with that?

  I wrote him a cheque there and then.

  The next day, Flynn came over with a scowl on his face and drizzled holy oil over the plot of land I had designated for the girl he
tried to persuade away from me. He said a prayer at each of the four corners before standing in the centre for his final supplication while I stood nearby and smoked a cigarette, never taking my eyes off him. When she was buried later that week, he shook the incense over her coffin and speckled the wood with holy water before giving the signal for her to be lowered down. He offered not a word of condolence to me but I gave him his envelope anyway and of course he took it.

  I helped fill in the ground with the excavated earth. To be honest, I was glad to be rid of her for she had been little use to me as a wife and her looks were long gone.

  I had no reason to pay attention to Emer until after her mother died. Before that, she was little more than a silent, long-haired creature with a room upstairs and a habit of staring at me as if I was an ogre. Whenever Niamh did something to provoke me and needed to be disciplined, the child would run off in tears, a racket I could not abide, for her sobs would catch in her throat and make her sound like a chicken whose neck was being wrung. There were times when I thought she was a bit simple, for she almost never spoke to me, but Niamh said no, she was just frightened, nothing more.

  Sure what has she got to be frightened of, I asked. If she behaves herself, she has nothing to worry about. Neither of you do.

  I hadn’t wanted a daughter; I knew men with daughters and they seemed to be of little use to anyone. A son was what I needed, a hard-working, obedient son, like my own father had, who would toughen up at his founder’s fists. I felt irritated when she was born. And humiliated. For a time, I told no one.

  Worse news was to come when the doctor, a young lad, new to the parish, said that Niamh could have no more children, that after giving birth her womb had had to be removed.

  And why is that, I asked, feeling a knot forming in the pit of my stomach, for I did not like the idea of another man investigating my wife’s anatomy; it was bad enough that he had been there for the birth.

  I couldn’t control the bleeding from the uterus, he told me.

  You couldn’t, could you not, I said, nodding slowly.

  No, typically the womb will contract post-partum and unfortunately, in your wife’s case, it was rather stubborn. I had no choice but to perform the necessary procedure. She would have died if I hadn’t.

  Is that right, I said, looking him in the eye, and I could hear the low growl I was making through my nostrils, like a goaded bull getting ready to charge.

  At first I tried not to blame Niamh for her failings but it wasn’t easy. I was still a young man and it was unthinkable to me that my entire family would consist of an infertile woman and a silent daughter who was neither pretty nor intelligent. I wanted to set her aside but the scandal would have cost me. My produce would have been blacklisted at every market fair in the province. And so the years passed, fourteen of them, and only when Niamh was planted in the ground did it occur to me that I might find another woman to give me what I needed.

  I tried courting again but there was talk in the town that I had been unkind to my wife, that I had treated her poorly, and because of this the girls kept their distance. The gossips said that I hit her whenever the mood took me and that whatever spirit Niamh had once enjoyed had been beaten out of her by my fists. They said worse things too and when the sergeant came to call I told him to undertake his investigations and let me know the outcome. I have nothing to fear from you, I told him.

  It’s unclear how she died, he said.

  Is it now, I replied.

  We have concerns about your daughter, he told me.

  Do you now, I said.

  There was one girl, her name was Shannon, like the river, and I thought of her often, for she was a fine thing. I followed her one day down by the stream when she was walking her dog and she spun around and glared at me, her hands on her hips, doing everything she could to look strong but the expression on her face told me that she was fearful.

  That’s a grand dog you have there, I told her, and the mutt cocked his leg against a tree in defiance of me.

  I’d say you’re proud of yourself, are you, she shouted at me. The way you treated that poor girl.

  You don’t know a thing about it, you tramp, I replied.

  We all know what you’re like, she said. You’re not just pig ugly but you’re cruel. And if you take another step towards me I’ll set the dog on you.

  I laughed. Sure what was he, only a little spaniel. But still, I left her alone when I might have just taken her right there up against one of the trees and not a jury in the land would have convicted me for it.

  Her father and brother knocked on my door later that night and issued threats. They said I was to leave Shannon alone. They said if I came within spitting distance of her again, they would burst my head open. The brother grabbed me by the shirt and made ready to hit me, only stopping when he saw Emer standing at the door of the kitchen in her nightdress, her hands pressed to either side of her face, her feet bare against the stone floor.

  You’ve been warned, said the brother, pointing a finger in my face.

  Word of this incident spread fast and not one of the women in town would look at me afterwards. It seemed that I could forget about courting.

  I knew Luke Hartigan’s father when he was a boy. We went to school together, where both Daniel and I were persecuted by the older lads. In my case the harassment took place because I’d been trained never to speak unless I was spoken to, a rule that left me shy and awkward around my classmates. Daniel, on the other hand, was despised because his father was a drunk and his mother was pure lazy. It didn’t help that he almost never took a bath and smelled so bad that no one would sit next to him in class. Even the teacher wouldn’t come near his seat. He moved away when he was about sixteen and I never thought about him again until he returned years later, tall, clean and good-looking. He had money to burn then and took over the dairy farm that had once belonged to his parents, running a herd of about eighty cattle, and even though every sinner in town knew how to milk a cow, he brought in machines to do a man’s job.

  Once, as I sat at the bar in Donovan’s, I heard him explaining to a shower of fawning sycophants how they worked.

  They operate by way of a vacuum, he was saying, waving his hands in the air in a manner that made me want to hit him a slap. The cups massage the milk from the teat but the pressure keeps the claw attached to the animal. It’s far more cost- and time-effective than traditional methods.

  Is it now, I asked, looking down in his direction and sniffing the air. Was there a stench of milk off him or was I imagining it?

  Yes, studies confirm it. And your farm, he said. Might I ask what crops you plant?

  Whatever I want, I told him. It’s my land. I’ll put whatever I want into it.

  I wondered whether he had forgotten that we sat in the same classroom together thirty years before or whether he was pretending not to recognize me. Was there no trace left in my face of the boy I used to be? I paid for my drink and left without another word.

  Daniel Hartigan didn’t just come back with money; he came back with a wife too. An English girl. Very tall and very beautiful but given to dressing like a tart. She had a pair of legs on her and showed them off in such a way that proved her husband had no control over her.

  You know your husband used to stink, I told her one afternoon when I found myself standing next to her at a market fair. She was examining some peaches for ripeness, picking them up to see how deeply the green had turned to yellow, her fingers squeezing the flesh of each one before discarding it again. She turned to look at me, startled, a colour coming into her cheeks that resembled the velvet red of the stall.

  I beg your pardon, she said, her gaze resting on my teeth. She seemed fascinated by them in a way that unsettled me. I have teeth like any other man. There’s nothing untoward about them.

  Your husband, I repeated. I went to school with him. He used to stink the place out. He had no friends. The smell was like a mixture of stale eggs, dead bodies and piss. That’s what you
’re curling up to when you crawl into bed with him at night.

  She opened her mouth but said nothing, letting out a bark of a laugh instead before shaking her head and walking away, as if I was something contemptible, a creature whose conversation wasn’t worthy of her time. That’s the problem with the English. They think they’re better than all of us. Even the women.

  Anyway, my point is that I knew Luke Hartigan’s father from way back. And knowing that the boy was the same age as Emer, I should have taken steps to keep him away from her. A time machine, that’s what I need.

  Before she died, Niamh made sure that Emer knew what a daughter was for. She showed her how to prepare my breakfast and cook my dinner. She trained her to iron my shirts the way I liked them and impressed upon her how important cleanliness around the house was to me. When my wife was gone, planted in the north field, I was grateful that Emer knew how to take over her chores, for otherwise I would have been forced to hire some girl from the village and I don’t like strangers in my house.

  In every other way, nothing much changed. She kept to her room when I was at home and almost never spoke about what she had seen on the night her mother died. Only once did she dare to open her mouth about it and I made sure that she would never make that mistake again. All in all, she was a good girl, quiet and respectful, and seemed to prefer her own company to mine, which suited me perfectly well.

  Which is why it came as a surprise when I saw her standing outside the church one afternoon with Flynn, the priest, and the Hartigan boy, the three of them chattering away like a company of grey parrots. I saw the way Luke was looking at my daughter, and the pair of them only fourteen years old, and knew the thoughts that were going through his mind. When Flynn bid them goodbye and walked off in the direction of the presbytery, I held my ground and watched as they continued to talk, Emer laughing over some nonsense the boy said, Luke doing his best to ingratiate himself with her. He lifted a hand and dared to remove the pink flower from an oleander tree that had fallen into her hair and when he held it out to her, she took it, smiling, while he shifted from one foot to the other in his awkwardness. A moment later she leaned forward, whispered something in his ear, and whatever it was made him blush. She turned then and walked away, taking in the scent of the flower as she disappeared out of sight. The boy watched her go before giving a little jump in the street, his face beaming. Whatever she’d said, she had left him with hope.