Himself

by Jess Kidd

  He has a clutch of molars; they glow in his hand like baby grubs.

  He has fingernails, delicate veneers of pink shell.

  He has a handful of smooth white knuckles, like the counters in a children’s game.

  He has a rope of black hair, as fluid as waterweed.

  He has a skull that crumbles like a forest log, with chambers filled by the scurrying of a million insects. Listen.

  He has the long-lost blackberry kernel of a heart.

  But Tom says he will keep that.

  Chapter 13

  April 1976

  In the first light of morning, with the air from the open window cold on his bare arms, Mahony leans over to his bedside table for his cigarettes. He has the picture of Orla propped up against the lamp so that he can study her face.

  Does he look like her? He does.

  He recognises the half-smile that plays on her lips and the shape of her nose and chin. She is dark like him; that much he can see. And she is young, too young; he can see that too, a kid really. She stands in a doorway offering up the bundle in her arms with an expression of shy pride; at least that’s how Mahony reads it.

  She strikes a pose in her too-big shoes, one foot turned out and pointed; her shoes are ridiculous, heavy lace-ups, which accentuate the frailty of her ankles. They could make him cry, those thin little ankles, if he let them.

  He has always believed two things: that his mother was dead and that he had known her. In order to feel her loss he must have known her presence. And he does feel her loss, he always has.

  Which is why he has been searching for her all his life: because he had loved her and because he had lost her.

  He’d searched but she’d never answered.

  Mahony takes a fag from the packet and lies back with it unlit between his lips, remembering right back to the start of it all, where his memories first began: St Anthony’s.

  By the age of four he knew the lie of every loose floorboard and squeaking hinge.

  By the age of five he knew which corridors were patrolled and which handles were tried.

  By the age of seven he was an expert on the enemy. So they moved him on.

  Mahony lights his cigarette and inhales as a memory weighs in: himself standing on a chair with a blanket caped around his shoulders. At that time he’d fancied himself a Roman general taking leave of his legion.

  ‘Hear this,’ he’d whispered in parting to the younger ones. ‘This could save your life.

  ‘Nuns move fast and make no noise and they have eyes in the back of their habits: the eyes of the invisible saints that ride around on their backs.

  ‘Nuns wear itchy knickers so they don’t fall asleep at Mass, so when they look asleep they’re not; they still have their eyes open looking at you.

  ‘They have a lot of help on their side; there’s a patron saint for everything – you name it, bicycles, owls and lost things (yeah, I can fecking name them: Madonna del Ghisallo, St Francis and St Anthony).

  ‘The soft nuns wear socks inside their sandals. They won’t beat the shite out of you but if you make them cry the hard nuns will beat the shite out of you for them.

  ‘Don’t look a nun in the eye for any more than two seconds. They’ll say you’re being bold and you will get the shite beaten out of you.

  ‘You can get onto the roof by climbing out of the dorm window and crawling along the ledge. Up there you can see the whole of the city.

  ‘No nun has ever been known to check the roof but that doesn’t make it safe from the patrol of the roof saint who reports back to the Mother Superior (yeah, I can fecking name him: St Florian, the patron saint of chimneys).

  ‘A holy relic is a dry bit of old finger off a saint. This is what the nuns carry in their waist pouches. They rub their relics if they want to put a saint onto you. Then you’re truly banjaxed.

  ‘All the dinners come with cabbage.

  ‘There are rubber sheets on the mattresses so the beds creak like ships in the night.

  ‘The Church and the State are paying for the mistakes of your woeful mammies, who are feckless sluts.

  ‘The Church and the State are paying for the mistakes of your useless daddies, who are feckless buckos.

  ‘Avoid Sister Veronica as you would avoid death itself. The boys who have crossed her are hacked to pieces in a freezer in the basement. They’re labelled up as pork joints.’

  General Mahony twitched his cape. ‘The rules for the priests you ask?

  ‘They catch a beetle, yeah, a devil’s coach horse, and they screw it into the head of their cane. This gives them speed and skill in their work. But if a priest breaks the cane over your arse then the beetle’s soul will escape to take vengeance. This is the only way you have of killing a priest: make them break their stick by beating the shite out of you. If this happens it might take twenty years for the beetle to work on the priest, or he might fall dead there and then. There’s no way of telling.

  ‘Don’t admit to anything in confession; they’ll use it against you. Cross your fingers behind your back and then cross your hands. Then there’s a chance that you might not go to hell, but only if it’s not a mortaller. If you lie about a mortaller you’re as good as burning in your shoes. But after all you can only be sent to hell once.

  ‘And remember: although priests move slower than nuns they can see around corners.’

  But there were no rules for the dead.

  Mahony knew that from the first, when the recently deceased Sister Mary Margaret appeared to him on the first-floor landing.

  There he was, sitting at the top of the stairs in a warm square of light from the hall window. He’d just been thinking on her. He’d been thinking on her lying under the soil.

  Thinking about Sister Mary Margaret being dead was something that had taken up a lot of Mahony’s time since she’d died. He’d wonder if they’d buried her with her teeth in or if they’d given them to another nun. If so, would they get her smile? He’d wonder if she could hear the weather inside the box. And was she cold down there in the soil? He didn’t like to think of her being cold.

  Mahony was thinking these thoughts, that day on the landing, when something rolled along the floor and stopped beside him. It was small and round and elderberry dark, as intricate as a walnut, with curved ridges and valleys. He was so fascinated that he forgot to be scared when he looked up to see Sister Mary Margaret drifting three foot above him. He could see the scuffs on the wall through her. He could see the light fittings through her. He could even see dust motes through her, still turning.

  Sister Mary Margaret reached forward and picked up the dark fruit. She held it cupped and covered in her hands. Then she pitched it hard, like a fast bowler, through the closed window. Mahony jumped up, ran to the window and saw it turn through the air, up, up, up. Then it was gone and he was alone again, with his nose steaming a misty butterfly on the glass.

  Mahony told Martin Doyle that he’d seen Sister Mary Margaret bowling her cancer out of the window and Martin Doyle went off, like a bollock, and told the nuns. Sister Veronica came down on Mahony like judgement and trailed him before the priest. Father McCluskey confirmed that there was a severe want in the boy that couldn’t be rectified and gave him a sound hiding.

  Mahony didn’t mention the subject again, although the dead had become frequent visitors. Sometimes they just howled or sobbed by him. Sometimes they stayed a while, like old Mother Whorley, the cleaner with the lungs, who’d haunt the dormitory nightly, wheezing stories about dance halls and game girls. Or Mr Mullins, who fretted about the refectory for a lost key, knew all about birds’ eggs and had died of pernicious gout.

  But that’s history, thinks Mahony, as he heaves his arse out of the bed, gives his balls a good scratch and lights his second cigarette of the day.

  Mrs Cauley is breakfasting on the veranda with a coat over her nightdress and a silk scarf wrapped around her head. She looks a little tired today.

  ‘Who did you say Johnnie was?’ says Mah
ony.

  ‘I didn’t. Johnnie is Johnnie. That’s all you need to know, kiddo.’

  ‘Well, your man is down there lying on the path.’

  ‘I know. I saw you step over him.’

  Johnnie rolls over onto one elbow and blows Mahony a kiss, then lies back down to stare up at the clouds with his hands dipping through the paving stones. Mahony notices the dim caverns of his cheeks.

  ‘What did he die of?’

  ‘It wasn’t good.’

  Johnnie’s foot twitches slightly in remembrance but otherwise he is still. A robin lands and hops through his left knee.

  Mrs Cauley nods at the teapot and Mahony pours them both a cup.

  ‘So, Sherlock, we’ve a missing girl, no body, a rake of motives and not one reliable witness.’

  Mahony pulls up a chair. ‘I was thinking on Tom Bogey.’

  Mrs Cauley nods. ‘A nice easy suspect, creeping about the forest, wearing necklaces of milk teeth and dreaming of sabre-toothed children traps.’

  Mahony shrugs; it all sounds a bit obvious when she says it. ‘Well, he’s a suspect, isn’t he?’

  ‘Like every man between the ages of fourteen and dead on the day Orla left town.’

  Johnnie stands up and saunters over to the flowerbed.

  Mrs Cauley smiles foxily. ‘Why don’t you bring Shauna up to the forest with you? She can show you where to find Tom. It’ll give me a bit of peace from all her prodding and poking and bloody cleaning. Get her out from under me feet.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be without her.’

  ‘Don’t tell her that.’ She looks at him. ‘Shauna is soft on you. But of course you already know that.’

  Mahony grins. ‘And?’

  ‘Don’t lead her astray. She’s a sweet girl, Mahony.’

  ‘And you trust me to take her into the forest?’

  ‘I do.’ Mrs Cauley stretches. ‘While I stay here and have a quiet day with me squirrels.’

  ‘And a game of cards with Bridget Doosey?’

  ‘The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,’ she says slyly.

  Mahony smiles and on impulse kisses Mrs Cauley on her cheek. ‘You’re a rare beauty, Mrs Cauley. Better looking than Dr Watson even.’

  She is delighted. ‘Ah, go on with you.’

  Johnnie glowers at Mahony from the hydrangeas.

  Shauna changes her clothes three times. She eventually puts on one of Mammy’s good dresses, a navy shift dress that’s too big for her, so she pulls it in at her waist with a cream plastic belt and puts on her good cream shoes with the heels. The rushing makes her feel hot and the clothes make her feel awkward. Shauna has a sense that she’s unravelling as she walks out along the veranda.

  Mahony jumps up out of his chair. ‘Here she is.’

  Shauna attempts a smile. ‘Will I need a wrap?’

  ‘For the forest?’

  ‘Is that where we’re going?’

  Mrs Cauley looks up from the racing pages. ‘Mahony needs a bit of help finding Tom Bogey; I told him you’d be delighted to show him the way.’

  Shauna scowls across at her. ‘Did you now? Is that what you meant when you said Mahony wanted to bring me out for a bit of a run?’

  Mahony puts down his jacket. ‘Ah, Shauna, if you can’t spare the time – it’s a bit of a long shot—’

  ‘Ah no, that’s fine, Mahony,’ says Shauna, wishing she could go back in and change, but then she’d look an even bigger gobshite. What was she thinking? That Mahony wanted to bring her down into town on his arm and perch her up on a stool in Kerrigan’s?

  He smiles at her; his eyes are kind. ‘Will you be all right in those shoes?’

  ‘These are grand shoes. Just the thing for walking.’

  ‘Like a cat on scissors,’ says Mrs Cauley under her breath.

  Shauna throws the old lady a withering look.

  On the way to the forest Shauna tries to remember the stern talks she has had with herself. There is one theme: a romance with Mahony would only ever end badly. For having a man like Mahony would be like wearing slingbacks in a cowshed. Mahony is a luxury that she can’t afford and doesn’t need.

  Mahony is not for her.

  She will write it out a thousand times and chant it in her sleep.

  The man she marries will paint window frames and round up chickens, grow turnips and poison rats, fix plumbing and plaster walls. When she thinks of Mahony stumbling around in overalls, broken by her nagging, hunched by duty, she could cry. He’d be a wild thing domesticated, his tomcattery shattered, his wicked grin the grimace of a yoked man.

  Or else there he’d be at the doorway with his bag packed, turning up the collar on his leather jacket. There she’d be crying after him, tears falling on her big-again belly, the house falling around her ears, the dark-eyed twins in her arms bawling and Mrs Cauley roaring for a toasted teacake.

  Mahony is not for her.

  But still he’s in her head when she’s washing up the dinner plates, or filing Mrs Cauley’s corns, or taking Daddy out his tea. Her senses search for him night and day, in the sound of closing doors and creaking floorboards, in the striking of a match and the pipes filling the cistern. She’s put him out like a cat a million times but like a cat he has a habit of slinking back and curling up in the warm corners of her mind.

  Now he’s walking beside her; she glances across at him and there he is. With his dark eyes and his forearms brown against the white of his rolled-up sleeves. And a glimpse of hair through his half-open shirt and the way his shoulders fill the shirt.

  He looks back at her with a smile on his lips. He’s telling her stories about Dublin. She doesn’t hear a word; she’s listening to the sound beyond his words, to the thrilling low notes and the rough music in his voice. She can’t help herself.

  They find Tom’s camp where Shauna thought it would be, in a thickly wooded area of the forest. At the centre is a caravan, bricks wedged behind its wheels. All around is the equipment for some sort of life: a chipped Formica table stacked with pots and dishes and covered with plastic sheeting, and a gas burner on a wooden workbench. The caravan door is propped open and a curtain hangs in the doorway.

  ‘Come on.’ Mahony takes Shauna’s hand and they walk forward. There is no one inside; they know that even without looking, for the objects have the look of a beaten dog waiting for its owner.

  ‘Stand here and keep watch.’

  ‘Ah no, Mahony, don’t go in. It wouldn’t be fair on him.’

  Mahony climbs through the curtain.

  Inside the caravan there’s a powerful smell of damp. When Mahony’s eyes adjust he makes out piles of hoarded rubbish. Thick fans of flattened crisp packets, sour chains of milk-bottle tops, piles of crushed tin cans and empty bottles. A single mattress with no sheet or blanket lies in the corner.

  Shauna calls in to him. ‘Mahony, please, let’s go, I don’t have a good feeling about this.’

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Tom could be anywhere, she thinks, watching. She shudders.

  Up on the roof of the caravan, as prone as a bathing lizard, Tom observes the light on Shauna’s hair. He’s almost close enough to see the pale hairs rise on her forearms and the curve of her turning cheek, her freckled clavicle.

  Mahony sees that there’s a kind of system in place: shelves have been built from floor to ceiling to hold the delicate bones of small mammals, lost buttons and carefully folded sweet wrappers. Hundreds of brass hooks stud the ceiling from which shredded orange nets and old tights hang. Mahony picks up a jar containing long rancid strands of grey hair.

  ‘Mahony, please, I want to go.’

  Mahony puts the jar back; he’ll come alone next time.

  As he turns to leave, something catches his eye.

  A yellow yo-yo tucked on a high shelf just above the door, between a lead soldier and the handle of a skipping rope.

  Mahony lights a fag and says nothing. Shauna knows she’s annoyed him and she could kick herself, really bloody hard.


  ‘Do you want to go back and wait for him?’

  ‘No, we’ll just go home.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it just didn’t seem right for us to be there.’

  He keeps his hand in his pocket rolling something around and around. Shauna turns her mind apart for something to say and finds nothing. So she reaches out and touches his arm.

  It’s so easy. Here’s his mouth on hers. One touch to unlock him and now he’s bending to kiss her. His spit tastes of cigarettes, stale and thrilling; his hand presses strongly into the small of her back. If her legs give way he’s got her.

  He pushes his tongue into her mouth until she pulls away just a little.

  It’s so easy. A groan and a word and he’s walking her up against a tree. She wonders how many girls he’s been with. She sees that it’s a well-rehearsed dance for him. He expects her to step alongside; she doesn’t need to know how – he’ll lead. He pushes his hand up her dress with his eyes at close range, half-closed and unseeing.

  He’s moving against her. She’s up against the tree, his lips are on her neck, he’s opening buttons, calling her ‘Baby, ah baby’, with his Dublin accent hard and low. She hardly knows what to think, only that her face is scarlet. Mahony pulls away and Shauna opens her eyes to find him staring straight ahead.

  Ida has wandered out through a tree and is standing with her arms folded and her face blank.

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ Mahony says.

  Ida sticks her pale fingers in her mouth and mock-gags as she skips past them.

  And Shauna stands there with her mother’s good dress all up around her waist and her knickers round her knees in the middle of the forest.

  Chapter 14

  April 1976

  It is raining in Mulderrig. The heatwave has stretched, exhaled and picked itself up off the town all in one afternoon. And the rain has returned.

  At first it fell lightly, uncertainly, as if it were testing itself, on the curious noses of cats and cows turned upwards to see if this news of rain was really true.

  But the trees knew, and so did the bees, for they know all things.

  Soon the rain grew confident, pattering on cobbles, bouncing along the tractor tracks carved in the hard-baked ground. Then, heavy and certain in its benediction, the rain began to fall steadily, blissfully, unlocking the smell of the ground.