by Jess Kidd
Róisín colours.
‘You can live with Noel’s psoriasis and his drinking and his old mammy in the guest room if you’ve the kind of love you two share. Can’t you, dear?’
Róisín flares into tears and flees, dropping the kind of look on Mrs Cauley that could almost make a body feel guilty.
Alone in her library, Mrs Cauley takes out the play script and opens it. Her name is marked inside the cover: Property of Merle Cauley.
She was still Merle in those days.
Green-grey branches bleed from her name. They spread out across the page. Mrs Cauley touches them, traces their path. She imagines Orla, pencil in hand, dreaming. Lying on her stomach, kicking up her heels. Or sitting curled up in some quiet corner, biting her lip, absorbed, her hand moving across the paper.
Mrs Cauley turns over the page, following the branches as they weave through the words of the text, becoming darker, denser, more convoluted. They twist and writhe, weave and twine. Soon the words are hidden, obliterated, by the growing branches.
They reach downwards to form trunks and roots; they reach upwards to break apart into showers of leaves and stars. Here, a fat orange sun rises above autumn leaves. There, a winter storm cloud is caught between a tree’s twiggy fingers.
Mrs Cauley turns the page and animals begin to appear in Orla’s forest. A thin red fox noses delicately from one corner and a murder of flapping crows fly by, patterned deep blue and charcoal. Mrs Cauley turns the page and a hare with protruding eyes hops shyly through the undergrowth where giant black beetles swarm with great antlers.
Owls appear, moon-faced and sinister amongst the branches, in a forest shaded with heavy lines so that Mrs Cauley understands that it is night. The owls gaze down upon a crop of strange heads that sprout from tree trunks, or hang from branches, mild-eyed and pale, with blunt noses and unformed mouths and tiny starry hands.
Mrs Cauley turns the page, going deeper into the forest. A satyr-like creature grins up at her from behind a tree, with hairy haunches and a pointed chin. A swarm of bullet-headed bees pass by, with sleek plush bodies and fine gauze wings. One stares out at her with blue human eyes. Mrs Cauley turns over quickly.
On the final page there is a clearing in the forest, and a stage.
An audience has gathered. All the inhabitants of Orla’s forest are here: the fox and the satyr, the hare and the moon-faced owls. The bees are seated, with their wings folded neatly along their backs, and the mild-eyed heads bob gently in the orchestra pit. The trees at the edges of the clearing lean in a little, as if they are listening politely. Their branches are crowded with attentive crows.
The stage has red curtains and is swagged by a garland of flowers and fruit, the likes of which Mrs Cauley has never seen in nature. She holds up the script and looks closely. Each fruit is an eye: green, brown, blue. They nestle amongst the foliage, some frilled with lashes, some narrowed, some closed.
At the side of the stage lies a baby, swaddled in rose petals on a bed of ivy. At the centre of the stage stands a girl with open arms, a red curve of a smile and a halo of black hair.
Mrs Cauley wipes her face on the bed sheet. What could she have given this girl, after all? Stage lights and sequins, props and costumes, gloss and sparkle. She thinks back to the woman she was then, when Orla met her. Her sparkle a little faded, her gloss a little tarnished.
Running west, away from Dublin, the sea had stopped her. She had wavered for a while, then drifted along up the coast until she had somehow got stuck.
At first she had missed what she had left behind with a grief that threatened to unwind her. Some days she’d put on her brightest lipstick, pack her case and drag it back into the hall. She would sit there for hours, dry-eyed and rigid, between her past and her future. She felt them both, one on either side of her, whispering in her ear. Some days she even found out timetables, settled her bills, said heartfelt goodbyes.
But it was all an act; she could never go back.
She would never leave Mulderrig. But Orla . . .
She closes her eyes and sees Orla still, stepping off a bus, a boat, a train, into some new city, with her brutal eyes and her startling smile, with her brand-new baby and her second-hand coat. It is springtime, morning, and the weather is kind. And Orla has time to set the world on fire.
Chapter 29
May 1976
Out on the coast road Róisín sees Mahony ahead of her. She hasn’t the breath to call out to him. But then he’s turning, looking behind him, waiting for her. He’s heard her chain click or her wheels on the road. Before she knows it, to spite Mrs Cauley, and despite herself, Róisín is off the bike and up against him.
They leave her bike against a hedge and walk on together, hardly realising they’re holding hands or that a fine soft rain has begun to fall.
By the time they reach Orla’s cottage the clouds have begun to turn inland and the sky is growing clear again. The sun picks out the gable, lighting each wet stone.
The cottage is small and low set. Bordered on one side by open fields and on all others by the hem of the forest, which skirts around the back of the house and looks to be sidling nearer yearly. The roof has long caved in and a young ash tree grows up through the middle of the house. The front door stands ajar, held open to the weather by a lush clump of weeds.
The sunlight follows them inside and Mahony sees how it illuminates the rich patterns of mould and damp, moss and lichen that cover the walls. The burnt leg of a chair is propped in the fireplace, the mantelpiece is swagged with ivy and the hearth is littered with matted feathers.
Mahony could walk from one end of his mother’s house, his house, to the other in ten steps.
To the left of him there’s a windowless room that smells like a cave. The roof is still intact and a sturdy lock is rusted on the door. At the other end of the cottage there is a smaller room with a hole in the wall, where the breeze from an empty window stirs the leaves around the floor.
They sit together in the middle room on Mahony’s jacket. Róisín draws up her knees for something to hold. Their hips are touching and sometimes their arms and shoulders touch too.
They don’t speak about loss, although it is there with them in the broken room. There’s no mention of pain, but that’s present too. Róisín wears the frown she shares with her daughter. Mahony regards her with his mother’s eyes. They see the dead written on each other’s faces. They don’t mean to, but they do. Even now, drawn together in the stillness, they are not quite alone.
Mahony looks at her hand in his; she’s waiting for an answer.
‘So they want to get rid of me out of the town?’ he says.
Róisín nods.
‘Do you think they’ll manage?’
She studies him closely and shakes her head.
Mahony kisses her.
The sun slants through the roof and onto their faces. They lie together with the smell of wet stone and earth all around them and the sea birds calling out and the wind playing over the blasted cottage.
Róisín has her hand curled on his chest. He puts his fingers in the well she makes with hers and they stay like that until she sits up and pulls her dress round her.
With this action she lets the world back in. The grief they had put out of their minds returns and insinuates itself between them. Pity will follow, and regret: here they are, pawing at the door.
Mahony drives them away; he concentrates on plotting the curve of Róisín’s spine, the shape of each stacked vertebra and the freckle just under her shoulder blade. But then he sees how frail she is, how naked, her skin pale, her shoulders narrow. She is shivering in the breeze up off the sea. He wills her to get dressed, but she just sits there with her arms around her knees. Perhaps she is listening. If you listen you can hear the waves crash and fall in Mahony’s cottage.
Mahony stands at the doorway. She’ll go alone, she says; she has her bike. He looks around him like a man waking up. The dead have amassed; they circle the cottage at a polite dis
tance. They stand silently, eyes lowered, their caps in their hands, as if they are paying their respects.
Róisín opens the gate and for a moment Mahony sees her framed against the coast road, captured by the setting sun, her hair coming down around her shoulders. He waits for her to turn and wave but she doesn’t.
Mahony walks alone in the garden, finding things in the long grass. There are jam jars and hinges, bent spoons and pram wheels, a rusted bath of brown rainwater and a spent pitchfork. His inheritance.
He fills the jam jars with water and kicks through the brambles to the early roses that climb up the side of the cottage. They bow and dip in the breeze off the sea, confused by the clement weather, some budding, some already blown. He takes out his knife and cuts the thorny stems. Mahony puts roses in each room before he leaves. So that if his mother returns there will be light in the darkest corners of their shattered home. The dead nod and watch. Several smile, but not unkindly.
Chapter 30
May 1976
Shauna stands surrounded by towering mounds of laundry, reading the list she has found in the pocket of Mahony’s trousers.
She reads: Men from Mulderrig (between the ages of 15 and 80) and its Environs with the Use of a Vehicle During the Summer of 1949.
Jack Brophy
Eddie Callaghan
Pat Conway
Cathal Doyle (deceased)
Desmond Burke
Gerry Heeher
Pat Keenan (deceased)
Tadhg Kerrigan
Dr Maurice McNulty
Jimmy Nylon
She bites her lip and reads it over again, Desmond Burke, and her heart beats in time with the twin tub on a spin cycle.
Chapter 31
May 1976
‘Father Quinn is here to visit you, Mrs Cauley.’
Mrs Cauley purses her lips. ‘And he’s about as welcome as the clap.’
Father Quinn emerges into the clearing, stepping over piles of books. ‘If another time would be more convenient, Mrs Cauley?’
Mrs Cauley waves him towards a footstool.
‘I’ll leave you to it, Father,’ says Shauna, fixing Mrs Cauley with a look.
The priest sits down. The stool is uncomfortably low for a tall man. With his long legs folded awkwardly the priest has the air of a malevolent cricket.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Mrs Cauley.’
‘As much as I revel in your visits let’s make this snappy, I’ve a Dubonnet and a bed bath on the agenda this afternoon.’
‘It won’t take long, Mrs Cauley, I can assure you.’
Mrs Cauley feels a predictive itch starting up under her wig, a sure sign that this interview is unlikely to go her way. This notion is confirmed by one glance at the priest, for he is radiating smugness.
Father Quinn rests his long hands on his elevated knees. ‘It’s about Mahony.’
The itch goes mad. Mrs Cauley reaches for a cocktail stirrer. ‘What about him?’
‘I have made some enquiries.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I’ve traced him to a variety of institutions. I have it on authority from one Father McNamara that the records from St Anthony’s Orphanage alone show a history of criminal tendencies and profound instability.’
Mrs Cauley puts down the stirrer. ‘Mahony had a difficult childhood. One must expect fluctuations in the development of a person of character.’
‘Mahony then went on to commit a succession of offences and serve a number of custodial sentences.’
She waves her hand. ‘Who cares?’
‘A succession of offences, Mrs Cauley: disorderly conduct in a public place, affray—’
‘Boyish high spirits, Father.’
‘Then there’s accessory to automobile theft, resisting arrest and offending public decency.’
Father Quinn watches as Mrs Cauley’s lips draw a questionable curve. ‘Father, haven’t all God’s children sinned? I know I have. I’ve sinned long and hard and in a multitude of different ways. Like me, Mahony is reformed.’
The priest looks at Mrs Cauley through his knees. ‘You don’t quite understand, Mrs Cauley. By being here Mahony is breaking his current bail terms for aggravated assault.’
‘Aggravated assault?’
‘With a portable electric fire,’ says the priest triumphantly.
The itch goes mad.
The priest folds his hands together piously. ‘You see, Mahony is a wanted man.’
‘And I suppose you’ve told Jack Brophy all of this?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What do you want, Quinn?’
Father Quinn smiles. It’s his biggest yet.
Mahony looks out across the veranda. Across the lawn Johnnie is stalking one of the dead housemaids. Even in death she is ruffled, her hair coming down from under her cap and a chamber pot in each hand. Mahony taps on the windowpane and shakes his head. Johnnie stops, peers back at him and hastily fastens his trousers. He flitters up to the roof of the woodshed and sits pulling at the side of his moustache with a mutinous expression.
‘Low-down dirty fucker,’ says Mahony.
‘It’s a quality I always look for in my priests,’ murmurs Mrs Cauley and drains her glass. She’s finished with the Dubonnet and started on the gin and grapefruit. It suits her sour mood. ‘Maybe I’ve underestimated Quinn.’
‘Well, he has all the dirt on me now.’ He smiles grimly. ‘I was arrested for fighting over this one at a wedding.’
‘Angry boyfriend?’
‘Angry bridegroom, best man and two uncles on the bride’s side. It was self-defence, but the guards made sure it didn’t come out that way.’
‘I’m sorry, kiddo.’
‘How much time will Quinn give us?’
‘Three days, then he’ll call in the guards.’
Mahony exhales. ‘Then we don’t stand a chance of finding her, do we?’
Mrs Cauley speaks softly. ‘You don’t know that. We could be on the verge of a breakthrough. Have you spoken to Mary Lavelle? Teasie’s been coming up to the house every day asking for you. There may be something in that.’
‘And what about the play?’
Mrs Cauley shrugs. ‘We’ll survive. Half the village know your lines.’
‘And I’m not to return?’
‘And you’re not to return.’
Mahony nods. ‘Well, we’d better get on with it then.’
Chapter 32
May 1976
Róisín waits in the forest. She looks tired, her hair unpinned, her beauty a little blurred. He’s over an hour late but he just grins and bends down to kiss her.
He throws his jacket on the ground and has her lie down on it. He kneels in front of her and unbuttons his shirt. His body is very white and his hair is very dark. It runs in a line from his stomach to his chest. Here he smells of sweat, there he smells of smoke, or peat, or the sea. She looks at the light through the leaves as he moves above her.
He lights a cigarette for her and she smokes it. He says she is quite the professional now and she thinks about blowing a smoke ring as he pulls on his trousers.
She will tell him now.
That she’ll come away with him. That she’ll give up everything for him: husband, house, even her children. She’ll leave the dishes in the sink and the school shirts soaking and the burnt pan on the hob. She’ll abandon the rugs that need beating and the beds that need making.
She will follow him anywhere. Dublin. London.
They’ll rent a room and stay inside it for weeks. Wearing the skin off each other. Kissing each other raw.
After a while she’ll get a job in a café and smoke drugs and throw away her bras and go out dancing. They’ll fight and make up again and she’ll sleep in his arms every night and wake to him every morning.
He stands up and lights a fag for himself and with it in his mouth he walks over to a tree and starts to piss.
‘I’m going to leave Noel for you,’ she says.
Mahony almost
dies. She can see it on his face. He even stops pissing.
Before he can speak she’s pushing things into her bag, finding her shoes.
‘Róisín . . .’
He’s on the ground next to her. He knows better than to try to hold her. He lays a hand on her arm, cautiously, as if petting a stranger’s dog, as if she might bare her teeth. He speaks low, calm; he tells her that it wouldn’t be right, that it wouldn’t be fair.
She waves her hand at his jacket on the ground. ‘And this is right, this is fair?’
‘It’s not that I don’t want you . . .’
She needs the whole sentence, so she finishes it for him.
‘But there’s someone else.’
Three, four heartbeats and the words she has put before him, unpicked, hang heavy. His face is stricken, his eyes bitterly kind, he takes his hand away from her arm.
Five, six heartbeats and she’s on her feet, she’s running through the forest knowing he won’t follow her.
Chapter 33
May 1976
Teasie has had the tray set ready for a long time. There’s dust on the teaspoons and an ossified moth in the sugar bowl. She shows her guest into the parlour and turns to the complicated task of handing round the tea with her nerves entirely shredded. She hopes to God he doesn’t want sugar, for her hands are shaking too much to work the little tongs.
Mrs Lavelle sits silent in the corner. The room is as dirty and joyless as Mrs Lavelle herself, wearing her customary black, speckled with alluvial drifts of dandruff.
Teasie holds out a heap of soft biscuits to Mahony. Mahony smiles up at her and she almost drops the plate.
He has eyes like black sloe berries and eyelashes like a girl. His jacket smells of leather and smoke, sweat and hair oil; she knows this because she held it to her face when she hung it up in the hallway. Mahony balances his cup on his knee and asks Mrs Lavelle how she’s keeping. He keeps his voice loud and bright.