I dream of floating in the water, an air sack drifting out towards the teeming shoals, and wake too soon. There is no peace here. She takes away my bed sheets while they’re still warm with my impression, gathers all my measurements: feet to arse to tit to shoulder blades; width of neck, waist and wrist.
We won’t speak of the time before, adding sugar to my tea. It’s better here.
Proprietress. I upturn my teacup, slowly, smiling as she looks on. You are too kind.
Quiet frowns. Is this despair? Up to her room and the pounding begins. She might come through the ceiling one day. Hammer on, fists and tongs. Once the mould is ready for me, when I am fit for it all, when I match the edges exactly, I will leave for good. A fall into eiderdown, a gentle bounce, and then down again. This is the only way out.
Biographical Notes
CATHERINE DUNNE is the author of four acclaimed novels: In the Beginning, shortlisted for the Italian Booksellers’ Prize; A Name for Himself, shortlisted for the Kerry Fiction Prize; The Walled Garden and Another Kind of Life. She has also contributed to four anthologies: A Second Skin, Irish Girls about Town, Travelling Light and Moments. Her most recent book, An Unconsidered People, is a work of non-fiction that explores the lives of Irish immigrants in London in the 1950s. Her fifth novel, Something Like Love, will be published in June 2006. She lives in Dublin.
CHRISTINE DWYER HICKEY is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Twice winner of the Listowel Writers’ Week short story competition, she was also a prize-winner in the Observer/Penguin short story competition. Her trilogy, The Dancer, The Gambler and The Gatemaker, has received wide critical acclaim, and The Dancer was shortlisted for the Listowel Writers’ Week ‘Book of the Year’. Christine has also written a screenplay for the film No Better Man, starring Niall Tóibín. Her fourth novel, Tatty, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Hughes & Hughes/Irish Independent Irish Novel of the Year 2005. Honorary Secretary of Irish PEN, she lives in Palmerstown in Dublin with her family.
ELAINE GARVEY is a graduate of the M.Phil. in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin.
VONA GROARKE was born in Co. Longford in 1964, and grew up on a farm outside Athlone. She has published three collections of poetry: Shale (Gallery, 1994); Other People’s Houses (Gallery, 1999); and Flight (Gallery, 2002), which was awarded the Michael Hartnett Prize in 2003. A fourth, Juniper Street, will appear from Gallery Books and also from Wake Forest University Press in 2006. She now lives in North Carolina where she is Poet in Residence at Wake Forest University.
ANNE HAVERTY was born in Tipperary in 1959. Her novels are One Day as a Tiger, awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize, The Far Side of a Kiss and The Free and Easy (all published by Chatto & Windus). Her poetry collection The Beauty of the Moon (Chatto & Windus, 1999) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She has also published a biography, Constance Markievicz (Rivers Oram Press/Pandora, 1988), and is one of the writers featured in Ladies Night at Finbarr’s Hotel (Harcourt, 2000). She lives in Dublin.
CLAIRE KEEGAN was born in 1968 and raised on a small farm in Wexford. She studied English Literature and Political Science in New Orleans. One of Ireland’s most widely acclaimed new writers, she has won many story awards, including the 2000 Rooney Award for her debut story collection, Antarctica, published in 1999 in Britain by Faber & Faber and in the US by Atlantic Monthly Press.
JUDY KRAVIS has recently published stories in The Dublin Review and poetry in Metre and the Salzburg Poetry Review. She has collaborated on many works with artist Peter Morgan, including Lives Less Ordinary: Thirty-Two Irish Portraits, Tea with Marcel Proust and When the Bells Go Down: A Portrait of Cork City Fire Brigade. Their two most recent books are Revealing Angelica and The Beach Huts of Port Man’ech. Judy Kravis teaches French literature and looks after a large garden in Co. Cork.
MOLLY MCCLOSKEY was born in Philadelphia in 1964. She moved to Sligo in 1989 and won the George A. Birmingham Short Story Award in 1991 and in 1994, and the RTE Francis MacManus Award in 1995. Her first story collection, Solomon’s Seal, was published by Phoenix House in 1997, and her novella The Beautiful Changes, with four other stories, was published by the Lilliput Press in 2002. Her debut novel Protection was published by Penguin in 2005.
EITHNE MCGUINNESS is currently attending the M.Phil. in Creative Writing at the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin. Plays include ‘Typhoid Mary’ and ‘Limbo’, both produced for the Dublin Fringe Festival. ‘Typhoid Mary’ was shortlisted for the P. J. O’Connor Awards and broadcast on RTE Radio. As an actor, Eithne played Sr Clementine in The Magdalene Sisters and Gracie Tracey on Glenroe. She has worked with many theatre companies in Ireland, including the Abbey Theatre, Passion Machine and Calypso.
JUDITH MOK was born in the artists’ colony of Bergen in the Netherlands. She studied singing at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and at 21 became a professional soprano. She has performed worldwide and has produced numerous recordings. She has published three collections of poetry and two novels in Dutch, and writes regularly for the Sunday Independent. She is currently touring with her one-woman show based on the life of Molly Bloom. Her first novel in English, Gael, is published this year. She lives in Dublin.
REBECCA O’CONNOR was born in Wexford in 1975. Her poetry has been published in The Guardian, Reactions 5 and Poetry Review. She was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer prize for ‘Best new poet of 2003’, and was shortlisted for the New Writing Ventures Poetry Award 2005. Poems was published by the Wordsworth Trust in 2005, where she was a writer-in-residence. She currently lives in London.
MARY O’DONNELL is the author of three novels – The Light-Makers, Virgin and the Boy and The Elysium Testament – and a collection of short stories, Strong Pagans and Other Stories. She has also published four collections of poetry. She is an experienced teacher and workshop facilitator, and has taught writing in prison, schools and on the faculty of the University of Iowa’s Irish Studies Program at Trinity College Dublin. She is a member of Aosdána.
JULIA O’FAOLAIN was born in London in 1932. Her works include the short story collections We Might See Sights! and Other Stories (Faber & Faber, 1968); Man in the Cellar (Faber & Faber, 1974); and Daughters of Passion (Penguin, 1982). Her novels include Godded and Codded (Faber & Faber, 1970); Women in the Wall (Faber & Faber, 1975); No Country for Young Men (Allen Lane, 1980); The Obedient Wife (Allen Lane, 1982); The Irish Signorina (Viking, 1984); and The Judas Cloth (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992). She has edited, alongside her husband Lauro Martines, Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians (Temple Smith, 1973). As Julia Martines she has translated Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati (Little Brown, 1968). She is a member of Aosdána.
CAITRIONA O’REILLY was born in Dublin in 1973. She studied at Trinity College Dublin, where she wrote a doctoral thesis on American literature. Her poems, reviews and critical essays have appeared in many magazines. Her first collection of poetry, The Nowhere Birds, was published in 1999 and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. She currently lives in Dublin.
CHERRY SMYTH is a Northern Irish writer living in London. She is author of Queer Notions (Scarlet Press) and Damn Fine Art by New Lesbian Artists (Cassell). Her fiction was included in The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing in 2000. She wrote the screenplay for the short film Salvage, which was broadcast in Ireland. Her debut poetry collection When the Lights Go Up was published by Lagan Press in 2001. As Writer in Residence at HMP Bullwood Hall, she edited an anthology of women prisoners’ writing called A Strong Voice in a Small Space (Cherry Picking Press), which won the Raymond Williams Community Publishing Award in 2003. Several poems appear in Breaking the Skin (Black Mountain Press) and the Apples and Snakes 21st Anniversary Anthology, Velocity. Her poetry also appears in The North, Poetry Ireland Review and The Shop. A pamphlet, The Future of Something Delicate was published by Smith/Doorst
op in 2005 and a second collection is forthcoming in 2006. She teaches at the University of Greenwich.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-84659-003-0
eISBN: 978-1-84659-159-4
copyright © Rebecca O’Connor, 2006
This ebook edition published 2012
Copyright for individual stories rests with the authors
This edition published 2006 by Telegram Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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