Himself

by Jess Kidd

  Look around you. The dead are watching too.

  They rise through mouse-carved wall cavities and damp-blown stone. Through brittle flock paper and worn wooden floors. Through dust-dulled carpets and wide stone flags. They have been dead for a wing beat and for an age.

  At the foot of the bed leans a pale blacksmith, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his dead mind still ringing with the chime of the hammer. His hands close around long-gone tools and he’s pulling those easy shapes out of soft metal again.

  A grey lady stands by the head of the bed. She walks Rathmore House in her dead dreams. Hers is the face in the painting in the hallway, where the last reach of stairs turns past the stained-glass window. In life she planted shrubberies and instructed servants. She poured tea from bright teapots and took up sugar tongs with an enquiring look.

  As quiet in death as she was in life, she watches Mahony sleep.

  Long-departed cooks arrive, wiping their foreheads and fretting over lost platters and tough pastry. Perished gardeners drift by, trying to remember the right way to espalier a fruit tree. Housemaids collect in dark corners, their dead knees remembering the hard kiss of polished wood.

  Mahony is sleeping and the dead are gathering.

  As the night passes, deceased farmers appear with their hats in their hands and spectral sailors wash up from the moon-sparkling bay below to pad wetly across the floor.

  Towards dawn, thieves and saints, chieftains and beggars, clerics and tax collectors join the vigil.

  Pale children run about in the early morning light in dim-glowing smocks and short trousers that will guarantee cold legs for all eternity. Babies stagger and fall like fat comedians, or else crawl bawling through their unformed for ever.

  Be still. The dead are drawing in.

  They wring their hands apologetically. They wait for his eyes to open so that they can be seen.

  They only want to be seen.

  Chapter 4

  April 1976

  It doesn’t take her long to find him. When Mahony steps out into the morning with a hot cup of tea the dead girl is hopscotching along the veranda with her finger up her nose.

  ‘Will you play with me, Mister?’

  ‘I won’t. I’m drinking me tea.’

  She stands on one faint leg, dangling a little scuffed shoe, slap-slapping it up against her sole of her foot. ‘I’ll show you a secret.’

  Mahony’s hair is still wet from the water he’s thrown on his face, his eyes are swollen but he feels all right. Shauna is making breakfast; he sees her through the window lighting the range with a long match, stepping back in a well-rehearsed dance when a big brutal flame kicks up. He likes hearing the noises she makes as she moves about. She sets a heavy pan on the flame and wipes her hands on the arse pockets of her corduroy skirt. A twist of light-brown hair hangs down her back.

  The dead girl puts her pinched little face on one side and grins. ‘Ah, go on, Mister.’

  ‘All right, but not for long.’

  She tries to hold Mahony’s hand as they walk down the field towards the edge of the forest. She can’t of course, her fingers slip through his, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

  At the bottom of the field Mahony leans against the gate while the dead girl pulls faces at the horses huddled nearby. They ignore her and stand with their flanks twitching in the early sun. It won’t be long before the day’s heat sets their backs steaming.

  ‘Come into the trees, will ya? An’ see the secret thing?’

  Mahony searches his pockets for his cigarettes. ‘Tell me about it.’

  She thinks for a moment. ‘I saw the dead girl’s knuckles. I saw ’em in a maybush. The branches have grown all ways into them.’ She threads her dim fingers together.

  ‘What dead girl? You?’

  She looks at Mahony with horror and holds her hands up. ‘Not my knuckles, mine are here. I told you. The dead girl’s knuckles.’

  Mahony’s heart turns crossways. ‘Can you show me?’

  Her voice is very small. ‘I suppose so.’ She walks through the wall and down to the trees miming a great load on her back.

  The dead girl moves quickly through the forest. Mahony sees only glimpses of her. Sometimes the hem of a blue spectral cardigan, sometimes a faint little knee. Sometimes he just hears her: a laugh snapping back through the air like a sprung branch.

  Mahony ignores a suicide to the right of him, hanging from an oak tree like a twisted chrysalis. As Mahony passes, the dead man swings round and gurgles through his crushed windpipe; if he had words he would curse the lure of a good rope and a sound branch. Mahony keeps his eyes low and looks only for the little scuffed shoes, pale against loam and leaf litter, running deeper into the forest.

  Then, all at once, she slows down and starts to creep forwards, miming exaggerated tiptoes. Mahony follows her silently into a small clearing haunted by crows. Some are perched cawing on the carcass of a lightning-blasted tree. Some dance on the ground with their ragged skirts held behind them. As Mahony approaches, the birds wing it up into the sky and swear blackly down at him.

  Beyond the clearing is a river; he can see it through the trees. The dead girl runs towards it.

  Mahony walks along the bank, on a pathway of sorts, tripping over ridges of dried mud, hemmed in by undergrowth, searching for the dead girl. Around him is the rank smell of a world dominated by plants.

  Then he sees her, crouching by the side of the river, winding a strand of pale hair around her finger.

  ‘Maybe it’s Ida,’ she says.

  ‘Your name?’

  Ida smiles over her shoulder then looks back at the river.

  It has dried up in the hot weather. Shrinking back from its banks so that the mud flats at its edges are as noxious as bedsores, infected and fetid, cracked and oozing. Mahony sees that in places, at slow bends, behind fallen branches, the water is pooled and clotted with algae. The air is laced with midges.

  In the middle of the river there is a shadow of a dark bulk, a heaped mass under the surface. Mahony picks up a stone, feels its weight in his hand and throws it. The sound is unexpectedly loud, as surprising as a gunshot, the contact of rock on rock without water or silt to cushion it.

  Ida glares at him. ‘There’s a secret island under there. Don’t wake it.’ She lowers her voice. ‘If you wait until the river runs away you’ll see it.’

  Mahony finds another stone. ‘A low-tide island?’ He gets set to throw it, then thinks better of it.

  ‘But you have to wait and wait. Mammy says you’ll see it once in a lifetime if you’re lucky and twice if you’re blessed.’

  ‘Have you seen it, Ida?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She peers up at him through pale eyelashes. ‘You can walk on it. It’s longer than a fishing boat and as wide as a bus. In the sunshine it sparkles, all the little stones like wet jewels.’

  ‘You’ve walked on it, Ida?’

  ‘Jesus, are you thick or something?’ She sighs and looks up at the sky and continues in a flat bored voice. ‘If you ever see Denny’s Ait you’re not to go near it. Even if you think you can jump it or wade it. Even if it’s surrounded by less than a teaspoon of water. You’re to remember the Protestant who went digging for old bones on it. You’re to remember that when the tide changed, him and the island both drowned to death.’ She bites her lip. ‘Now his bones swim around and around it like long white fishes.’

  Mahony looks out at the water. In the back of his brain something moves, shifts, a brief sickening feeling, like a wakening. He jumps up and walks back along the bank, needing to keep moving. He heads back to the clearing knowing she’s right next to him, walking to heel like a puppy, still trying to hold his hand.

  She is smiling. It’s in no way a wholesome smile.

  Say it, Mahony. Fucking say it.

  ‘Where’s the dead girl, Ida? The one you brought me to see?’

  She stops smiling. ‘What dead girl? I don’t want to see no dead girl.’

  ‘Then why did you b
ring me here?’

  ‘To find my yo-yo. I lost it here and here and here.’ She turns around and around with her hands stretched out.

  Mahony rubs his eyes. ‘Please, Ida.’

  Ida puts her hands over her ears and drifts right out of sight.

  Mahony makes his way over whorls of tree roots and through moats of leaf mould knowing that he’s lost and knowing that he’s watched. The dead of the forest are rustling in the undergrowth and winding up the tree trunks, twittering on branches and nosing through the loam.

  Mahony feels them reach out to him as he passes.

  He’s almost relieved to catch sight of Ida sitting cross-legged on the ground up ahead, flickering very slightly.

  ‘I’m not your friend no more. Just so’s you know, Gobshite.’ She picks her nose and wipes her finger on the sole of her shoe. ‘I mean it. I’m not feckin’ talking to you no more. Never. Not ever. All right?’

  Ida is true to her word. By the time Mahony reaches the path to Rathmore House she hasn’t cursed him once. She turns away with narrowed eyes, holding a finger over her fading lips.

  Mrs Cauley is out in the garden when Mahony reaches the house, ensconced in a wheelchair with a lap tray on her legs. She is brandishing a sausage on the end of a fork in the direction of a greying priest who sits with a defeated sort of aspect on a garden chair at her feet.

  ‘I’ll hear no arguments. I do this for the church, Father.’

  ‘Mrs Cauley, you are most generous but I’m certain my superiors will want me to see the proposed script before you embark on another one of your productions.’

  Mrs Cauley puts the fork down. ‘Father Quinn, I cannot allow a collaboration. As an artist I must work alone.’ She takes a long sup from her teacup. The priest watches on with thinly disguised impatience.

  ‘But we must ensure that the production is suitable, Mrs Cauley, for it goes under the auspices of the church. Especially given the furore generated by your last production.’

  ‘A resounding success.’

  The priest throws her a sour look. ‘I was unaware that the Holy Family featured at all in West Side Story.’

  ‘It was but a meandering thought of mine.’

  ‘But a contentious portrayal none the less, especially in terms of the costuming.’

  ‘A loincloth is not to be sniffed at, Father.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand me, Mrs Cauley.’

  Mrs Cauley hands Father Quinn her teacup with a patient smile. ‘Father, the Son of God lived amongst us only briefly, but this much we know: as a man he had a fine physique and a splendid beard. That is well documented through holy statues and great works of art, is it not? And I think Tadhg made a valiant attempt once he got used to the safety pins. He may have been a big fat arse of a Jesus but you’d forgive him that for his superior singing voice.’

  ‘We received many complaints.’

  ‘And you sold a fair few tickets too. They came from far and wide,’ says Mrs Cauley, smiling slyly now, ‘especially after that article in the Western People.’

  ‘All I ask is for the play to be suitable.’

  ‘It is a travesty to require a play to be merely suitable.’ Mrs Cauley takes up her fork coquettishly with her head to one side. ‘If people choose to misinterpret my work what can I do?’

  Father Quinn frowns. ‘If I could only advise a more appropriate theme, Mrs Cauley, one that steers clear of—’

  ‘Sadly, you can’t. My creative juices only flow freely in the dark. My mind is like a mushroom: if you shine the light of the one true church on it, well then, inspiration may not spore at all.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Cauley, at the very least you must consult me once you have the final draft ready. Otherwise the Bishop himself—’

  ‘Ah now, look who it is, Father.’ Mrs Cauley stretches her hand out to Mahony.

  Mahony grins. ‘Mrs Cauley, you are a picture.’

  She has dispensed with her wig and is sporting a silk turban and a tweed coat. On her feet, over her bed socks, she wears a pair of strappy gold sandals. Mrs Cauley’s dead admirer must have found somewhere to hang his hat, for he’s skulking bareheaded in the rhododendrons. He ignores Mahony and continues to stare at the priest with an expression of concentrated contempt.

  Mrs Cauley gestures gracefully at a vacant deckchair. ‘Come and join us, Mahony. I’m afraid I’ve almost consumed your breakfast. Shauna held it as long as she could but one couldn’t waste a lovely fry. I ate it alfresco to make full use of the weather.’

  The priest raises his arse a little bit from the garden chair in welcome as Mahony sits down.

  ‘Will you take a drop of tea with us? She’s at least left me a pot.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Allow me, Mrs Cauley.’ Father Quinn pours the tea with an air of spiteful servitude.

  ‘Thank you, Father. Mahony is from Dublin, where he is a man of the world.’

  ‘I can see that,’ says Father Quinn, fixing Mahony with a hostile glare.

  Of course Father Eugene Quinn has suffered the sort of misfortune that Mahony cannot possibly understand. Poor Eugene was brought up by respectable parents, in a respectable family, in a respectable town but, even so, the odds were stacked against him. He was unwelcome at birth, unpopular at school and disliked at the seminary. For Eugene had been afflicted with a face that inspired a strong and instinctive mistrust, or at the very least a nagging sort of doubt. Even his own mother had difficulty taking to him, so much so that she often neglected to bring him home. Little Eugene’s forgotten pram was a familiar sight outside the butcher’s, the baker’s or the grocer’s shop.

  As he grew, the hapless Eugene retained about himself the appearance of a weasel or some such insidious creature, for his eyes could never be still and his top lip would always be damp, and his smile was never really genuine. For, after all, he had precious little to smile about.

  His father thought long and hard about how he could propel Eugene into the world and as far away from home as possible. He decided that Eugene must join the priesthood, a position guaranteed to come with a good supply of unquestioning trust. For Eugene’s father knew that Eugene’s looks would work against him in any other business. Even the filthy wouldn’t buy a cake of soap off his son.

  So Father Quinn would readily swap places with Mahony, whoever the hell he is, just to have a face like that. A face that women can love on sight and men will smile upon. Mahony has the right tone in his voice and the right words to go with it. Mahony has a hand that people want to shake and a back they want to pat.

  ‘How are you finding the village, Mahony?’ Father Quinn smiles crocodilian through gritted teeth.

  Mahony lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag. ‘Ah, I haven’t seen anything much yet.’

  Mrs Cauley turns to the priest. ‘But he’ll be having a good poke around the village. Mahony is interested in even the smallest particles of village life; he has a very enquiring mind.’

  The priest frowns. ‘What is it you do, Mahony?’

  Mrs Cauley interrupts. ‘Why he’s a tonic, just look at him! Do you know, Father, he’s already raised my old heart right out of my chest and stoked up the embers? I’ll not be the only girl in Mulderrig to fall for him now, will I? God help us in the face of Mahony’s natural attributes.’

  Mahony laughs and blows smoke out into the sky.

  Father Quinn grips the handle of his teacup and appears to be fighting a fierce internal battle. Mrs Cauley turns to him. ‘Father, will you ensure that the novenas are said for me?’ She leans forward and pushes a small brown envelope into his hand.

  ‘Certainly, Mrs Cauley.’

  ‘Goodbye so, give my regards to Annie Farelly on your way down. You’ll be calling?’

  ‘Certainly, Mrs Cauley.’

  Father Quinn pokes the envelope down inside his pocket with trembling fingers. Mahony makes out a firm clench on the priest’s jaw.

  Mrs Cauley calmly takes a sip of her tea. ‘Well, send her up
to me then, and inform her to bring a corner of her fruit loaf with her. For isn’t the woman sainted for visiting the infirm? I may be having one of my naps, which, wouldn’t you know it, is often the way when she visits. In which case you can tell her not to trouble a sick old lady but to leave the cake on the kitchen table.’

  Mrs Cauley gives the priest a vacuous smile. ‘God bless you and keep you, Father, for visiting me all the way up here. It always lifts me.’

  Father Quinn nods to both of them and, being dismissed, is on his way with a seething heart. The dead man follows him down to the gate, gesturing at the priest’s departing figure, before turning back across the lawn. Mahony notices that the dead man has no shoes on. Instead he carries them strung together over his shoulder, his dead feet milk-white and luminous against the grass.

  Mrs Cauley shakes her head. ‘When God was giving out charm that fecker was last in line.’

  Mahony takes the tray from her lap unbidden and finishes the sausage.

  ‘So, now we’ll have the chat for ourselves, Mahony. And I’ll start by asking you what you are doing here in Mulderrig.’

  He takes a corner of cold toast and swirls up egg yolk. ‘I’m on holiday.’

  ‘And that’s a crock of bollocks.’

  Mahony shrugs and mops the plate.

  Mrs Cauley smiles at him. ‘I recognise your type, honeybee. You’ve had it tough, haven’t you? You’ve been eating leftovers all your life?’

  ‘I’m grand.’

  ‘That you are. But when are you going to trust me? I trust you.’

  Mahony glances up at her and, without expecting to, sees that she has the same kind of honesty that he does. The twisted kind: when something gets so wronged it gets righted.

  She smiles. ‘I can’t vouch for anyone else in this town, for they’re mostly a shower of shites, but I can tell you that I’m upright where it matters. So now, Mahony, I’ll ask again: what are you doing here?’

  Fuck it, he thinks, he has to start somewhere.

  Mahony licks his fingers, takes his wallet out of his back pocket and a folded envelope out of his wallet. He hands it to her. ‘That was left alongside me twenty-six years ago at St Anthony’s Orphanage in Dublin.’