by Jess Kidd
Once upon a time Sister Mary Margaret had answered a loud knocking at the door of the orphanage. It was very early one morning, before the city was awake. All the pigeons had their heads tucked under their wings and all the rats were curled up tight behind the dustbins. All the cars and lorries were asleep in their garages and depots, and all the trains slumbered on their tracks at Connolly Station. All the boats bobbed gently in the harbour, dreaming of the high seas, and all the bicycles slept leaning along the fences. Even the angels were asleep at the foot of the O’Connell Monument, fluttering their wings as they dreamt, quite forgetting to hold still and pretend to be statues.
The whole wide city was asleep when Sister Mary Margaret opened the door of the orphanage.
And there, on the steps, was a baby.
Of all the things in the world!
A baby in a basket, with a quilt of leaves and a pillow of rose petals.
A baby in a basket, just like Moses!
The baby had looked up at Sister Mary Margaret with two bright eyes and smiled at her. And she had smiled right back.
Mahony clung on to the bar. He couldn’t light a fag or pick up his pint, he couldn’t move, the sweat was pouring off him. He closed his eyes and right there in his memory he found Sister Mary Margaret, as she was the last time he saw her.
He was not even seven. At first he had held back from climbing up, for fear that he would break her. But Sister Mary Margaret had smiled down at him, so he scaled the arctic landscape of the bed. Without that smile he wouldn’t have known her.
Sister Mary Margaret had a cancer the size of a man’s head in her stomach and was as good as dead under the ground. That’s what they had told him but he’d come to see for himself.
He sat next to Sister Mary Margaret and let her wipe his nose with her handkerchief although he was too old for it. It took her hours because she kept falling asleep. He had wished to God that he wasn’t trailing great lanes of snot. But Mahony always had a cold from the fact that the tops of his fingers were often blue and his socks were never quite dry.
She had looked at him with her shrunken face on one side and he’d looked back at the ridge of her eye bone.
‘A letter was left with you,’ she whispered. ‘Sister Veronica took it.’
But then Sister Dymphna appeared and gave him a fierce slap and marched him out of the sanatorium.
Mahony wiped his eyes and glanced around the bar; the drinkers were sculling through their own thoughts and the barman had gone to change a barrel. He was safe.
He looked at the envelope in his hand.
For when the child is grown.
A good solid schoolteacherly hand, slanted in all the right places.
On the back of the envelope was a seal of sorts. A tiny medal of wax stamped with the shape of some old coin or other. He liked that: Sister Veronica had kept it back from him but she hadn’t opened it.
Mahony broke the seal.
Mahony will tell you to his dying day that the arse fell out of the barstool just after he opened that envelope. Then the barstool fell through the floor and the whole world turned itself about.
But then, when Mahony looked around himself, everything was exactly the same. The same smeared mirrors over the same dirty seats. The same sad bastards falling into their glasses and the same smell crawling out of the gents.
Inside the envelope was a photograph of a girl with a half-smile holding a blurred bundle, high and awkwardly, like found treasure. Mahony turned it over and the good solid schoolteacherly hand dealt him a left hook.
Your name is Francis Sweeney. Your mammy was Orla Sweeney. You are from Mulderrig, Co. Mayo. This is a picture of yourself and her. For your information she was the curse of the town, so they took her from you. They all lie, so watch yourself, and know that your mammy loved you.
His mammy had loved him. Past tense. Mammy was past tense.
They took her from him. Where did they take her?
Mahony turned over the photograph and studied her face. God, she looked young. He would have put her as his sister rather. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
And his name was Francis. He’d keep that to himself.
Mahony lit a fag and turned to the drinker next to him. ‘Paddy, have you been to Mayo?’
‘I haven’t,’ Paddy said, without lifting his chin from his chest.
Mahony frowned. ‘Jim, what’s in Mayo?’
Jim put down the tea towel. ‘I’m fucked if I know. Why?’
‘I’m going to take a trip there, see how the land lies.’
‘Grand so.’
Mahony stood unsteadily and picked up his lighter. ‘I’m going. I am, Jim. Fuck it. What have I got to keep me here?’ He included the bar with a wave of his fag. ‘Nothin’ – name one thing.’
‘Parole,’ said Paddy to his navel.
Mahony takes a taste of his pint and watches as Jack Brophy rolls a cigarette, deftly, with one hand. A hand as strong as a tree root, brown and calloused with big square cracked nails and deep gouged old scars. Mahony watches Jack and feels his brain slow a little. He breathes in tobacco, good soil, driving rain, calm sun and fresh air off the broad back of the quiet man.
Still. He’ll tell Jack nothing of what happened last Thursday.
Mahony smiles. ‘The truth is I’ve come here to get away from it all.’
A collie noses out from behind the bar.
When it turns its head Mahony sees that it only has one good eye, the other rests messily on the dog’s cheek. Its ribs are caved in, leaving a dark sticky ditch. A dog that broken would have to be dead, and of course it is, fuck it.
Mahony sucks air in through his teeth and looks away.
The dead dog turns to lick Jack’s hand, which trails down holding his cigarette, but its muzzle goes straight through and the dog, finding no response, folds itself up at the foot of his master’s bar stool and rests the good side of its face on its faint paws.
Mahony studies his pint. ‘All I really want,’ he says, ‘is a bit of peace and quiet.’
Sometimes a man is in no way honest.
‘Aye,’ says Jack. The word is little more than an exhalation of air. ‘So that’s it?’
Mahony feels no malice. He could tell them, ask them; he could start right here.
The two men look at him.
Mahony picks up his pint. ‘That’s my story. I have no other.’
Chapter 2
April 1976
By the third pint it’s decided. Tadhg will bring Mahony up to Rathmore House to see Shauna Burke about the room, for he has a box of strawberries for the Widow Farelly that will go over if left until tomorrow. He hopes to be rewarded with a little kiss on the cheek or a squeeze of the hand. But he’s by no means certain of that; so far the Widow Farelly has kept her gentler feelings well hidden. But then Tadhg knew that a decent woman would be slower to court: the higher the mind the trickier the knickers.
They walk out the back of the bar and jostle through a corridor lined with boxes of crisps, Mahony because of his rucksack and Tadhg because of his girth. At the back door Tadhg hands Mahony a half bottle of whiskey to break the ice with Mrs Cauley. For the dark-eyed fella is growing on him, despite the fact that he’s almost certainly a gobshite.
Tadhg’s car, a vehicle with its own notions of when to stop and start, is rusting out the back. Nothing grows here but empty bottles and broken crates. Tadhg tries the ignition, his top lip sweating with the effort of wedging himself in the driver’s seat. The engine turns over consumptively then dies.
‘Ah no.’
Mahony gets out of the car and aims his cigarette into the corner of the courtyard. He reaches into the back seat and pulls out his rucksack.
‘Open the bonnet a minute, Tadhg.’
Tadhg puts his hand down to feel for the lever but can’t reach it because his gut’s in the way. He gets out of the car and leaning on the open door tries to squat, minding he doesn’t shit himself or rip the arse out of his go
od cream trousers. By the time he’s found the lever Mahony has the bonnet propped open and is walking round the car wiping his hands on an old bit of rag.
‘Try it again now, Tadhg.’
Tadhg lowers himself back into the seat and starts the engine. Perfect. He gives it a rev to make sure.
‘She didn’t even sound like that when I bought her new. Wha’ are you, some sort of magician?’
Mahony laughs and throws his rucksack in the car; there’s a metallic clunk as it hits the backseat. He gets into the car, ignoring the expression on Tadhg’s face.
‘You’ve a bagful there.’
‘Ah, I always bring a few tools with me.’
‘Do you now?’
‘You never know when you might need them.’
‘I can see that – what did you say you do in Dublin?’
‘I didn’t.’ Mahony grins. ‘I buy old wrecks and sell them on. Cars, vans, you name it. Do them up. Respray even. That sort of thing.’
Tadhg looks almost convinced. ‘I’ve a sky-blue 1956 Eldorado there in the garage, all done up to the nines like a mistress waiting on a night out. I’ve never been without a good car in my life, but she’s one of the prettiest. Would you like to take a look at her some time?’
‘I would.’
‘I don’t drive her much, for the roads around here would bollox her entirely, but we could go for a spin around the block and watch the skirt swoon over us.’
‘Count me in.’ Mahony taps the dashboard. ‘We’ll be off now, will we? While she’s purring?’
Tadhg nods and coasts the car out towards the side road, relaxing a little as he turns the corner. ‘Now, with the radio working we’d have a bit of the old rock and roll driving about the place.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
The dead are nowhere to be seen as Tadhg drives through the village, but the living have had their tea and are starting to show their faces. Tadhg drives slowly; he has the punnet of strawberries wedged between his great thighs and he doesn’t want them bruised. He tells Mahony that he would do anything for the love of a good woman such as Annie Farelly.
Mahony sees some young ones standing on a corner gassing; they turn and watch as Tadhg drives by. When Mahony leans out the window to blow them a kiss they laugh and push each other.
It’s just fun, he tells Tadhg. Mahony doesn’t want a girl. He never has, not even close. He’s happier alone – that’s the way it’s always been. He’ll freewheel for ever. He’ll never have a woman and a rake of kids hanging off him, holding him down.
They drive out past old stone-walled fields and whitewashed houses. Sheets and shirts jackknife on lines in the yards, catching the breeze coming up stronger now from the sea below.
Tadhg squints ahead at the dry rutted road and tells Mahony that Mulderrig is a picture of heaven, framed by the most ancient of forests. Didn’t St Patrick himself admire Mulderrig’s trees whilst chasing troublesome snakes about the place? And didn’t he bless this forest as he lashed through the undergrowth?
But then Mulderrig’s trees have always been under some strange spirit of protection. A matchless treasure in a hoard of bogs and lakes and mountains.
Down all the long centuries of change this little forest has prevailed, unharmed by settlers and undeterred by soil, or weather, or situation.
And the trees still hold strong. Their canopies drinking every soft grey sky and their roots spreading down deep in the dark, nuzzling clutches of old bones and fingering lost coins. They throw their branches up in wild dances whenever a storm comes in off the bay. And the wind howls right through them, to where the forest ends and the open land begins and the mountains rise up. This is the place where, on better days, the sun and clouds play out their endless moving shadow shows.
From the bowels of the mountains comes the River Shand. Born twisting, it weaves through stone and land and forest down towards town, where it flows out to meet the estuary. In some places the river is banked and forded, in others wild and forgotten. In most places it’s cold and tidal. In all places it’s a law unto itself. For the Shand is a river of unpredictable bends and treacherous undertows, of unfathomable depths and unreasonable habits, of cursed bridges and vengeful willows. Of Denny’s Ait: a sunken island, named for a drowned man, studded with gemstones, seen only at low tide, and then only rarely.
Now there’s a fork in the road. To the left is the narrow boreen that winds up to Rathmore House, just wide enough for a car. But Tadhg turns right onto a long gravel drive bordered by dour regiments of heathers.
‘Would you look at that bungalow Annie Farelly had built for herself. Isn’t it the bee’s bollox, Mahony?’
‘It’s deadly, Tadhg.’
Rendered in grey and brutal in design, the widow’s bungalow is entirely foreboding. At either side of the studded oak doorway, petulant stone horses sneer down flared nostrils. There’s more than a suggestion of battlements around the dormer windows and a thickly planted hedge surrounds the entire building.
‘It could pass as the gingerbread house. Magical, eh? And her net curtains – the fierce white of them. She’s a wonderfully house-proud woman.’
Tadhg hooks the punnet over one fat finger and grins apologetically. ‘I’d bring you in with me and introduce you—’
‘Ah no, Tadhg, you go. I’ll sit here and have a smoke for meself.’
‘You wouldn’t mind? I doubt if I’ll get a squeeze anyways.’
‘No, go on. Fill your boots. I’m grand here.’
‘Right so, I’ll just pop in for a minute.’
‘Take your time,’ Mahony smiles.
Tadhg hauls his big arse as politely as he can to the front door, where he stops, licks his hand and slicks down the front of his hair.
The door opens immediately and an astringent-looking woman comes out onto the doorstep. There’s a brief exchange, with Tadhg shifting on his feet like a schoolboy as she peers over at the car. She shakes her head and trots out onto the drive. With each step her head hinges forwards from her upholstered body and her mouth chews silent curses.
She steams to a halt and stands, aiming eye-daggers in through the car window. She takes in Mahony’s long hair, the holes in his trousers and the dirt under his fingernails.
‘This is a decent village. We don’t want any filthy dirty hippies here.’
Mahony takes in the immaculate rows of nodding pin curls and the blue eyes as joyless as a Monday morning. He smiles. ‘I scrub up all right.’
In a fight between them he would put his money on her. For the legs that emerge from the bottom of her plaid skirt are stout and muscled and there’s a decent curve to her bicep. A nurse’s fob watch is pinned to her strapping chest and at her hip she carries a set of keys on a loop like a jailer.
The Widow Farelly narrows her eyes. ‘I doubt that. I know your sort. With your drugs and your loose behaviour – well, you can move on. We keep a close watch here. We deal with troublemakers in this town.’
‘I bet you do. I bet you nip them right in the bud.’
Tadhg stands helpless on the path with his strawberries forgotten and his shoulders sloping. Dim faces have started to gather at the empty windows of the bungalow, quietly watching. Patient dead old faces that press apologetically through the windowpanes. Mahony resolutely ignores them.
‘You live alone in there?’
‘I do,’ she frowns. ‘What of it?’
Mahony shakes his head.
Annie Farelly leans in the window and points her finger at Mahony. ‘Move on, bucko, or you’ll regret it.’
She hurls him a look that could stop a strong heart and walks back to the house. Tadhg follows her in the door, his head bent and all hope of a quick feel destroyed.
Mahony sparks up a fag and puts it in the corner of his mouth while he unscrews the front of the radio. A little fair-haired girl skips zigzag down the drive and stops outside the car door.
‘Hello, Mister.’
‘Hello.’
‘Will you play hide and seek?’
The child stands with her hands on her hips and takes turns pointing first one foot then another. Mahony is only just aware of the motion: point, change, point, change.
‘Ah no, not now.’
Mahony takes the cigarette out of his mouth and puts it on the dash while he bites the plastic off a wire.
‘Oh, pur-leeze. The forest is just over there.’
Something in her voice, at once disturbing and familiar, makes Mahony look up.
And there she is.
A little round face and a broad smile showing the gap where her front teeth used to be. She stabs her tongue tip through the gap.
‘Close your eyes and count to ten,’ she whispers, ‘then come and find me.’
When she turns away Mahony sees that the back of her head just isn’t there.
Mahony’s hands are shaking as he puts the radio down on the passenger seat with all the wires and shit hanging out the back of it. He’s not prepared for this. Not now. Five fucking minutes he’s been here, keeping his shite together, keeping his fucking cool, and then this.
He hasn’t seen them like this in years.
He rubs his forehead. When did he start looking out for them again? When he hitched a ride out of Dublin? Or when he rode a truck through Longford and slept rough in Castlerea? Or was it when he boarded the bus to Mulderrig? Or the moment he got off and walked across the square?
He didn’t see this coming.
He didn’t see her coming.
A dead kid with a stoved-in head and a sweet little smile.
And it won’t just be that one, oh no, she’ll bring all her little dead friends.
She’s there, up ahead by the trees, all fucking dead. She runs away a bit then stops to turn around, ballerina style, on the pale toe of one scuffed shoe.
‘I had a yo-yo but I losted it.’
Mock pout, toe stab, she pirouettes back to Mahony and whispers dramatically. ‘I think the forest stole it. It steals everything pretty.’
Her face is perfect; from the front it’s fine, pale only. But it’s not good from behind. No, it’s not good. Her head is destroyed, oddly flattened on the left side with a mulberry seam running alongside. Inside the seam there’s a dark glistening, a sickening sort of softness. Around this deep rift is a halo of fine pale hair, matted with dull blood.