Skin Deep

by Liz Nugent

  Nobody minded Cormac’s tales, because weren’t they only stories that never harmed anyone? The winters were long and cruel and often the islanders would be bored and restless and looking for a diversion and Cormac could always be relied upon to tell a tale with a bit of colour to it. Cormac loved the attention and his stories began to grow rougher. When a sheep went missing, Cormac would say he’d seen who had taken it, and point the finger at some poor divil, who was taken away, tied up and stoned by the villagers, all the while protesting his innocence.

  The islanders got great sport out of this because there was nothing they liked more than the excitement of pegging stones at bandits and robbers. And people probably knew the stories weren’t true, but they didn’t care until Cormac’s finger pointed at them.

  On the night of a full moon, the tide finally turned against him. Cormac was saying savage things about a woman who’d put a curse on her sick husband. Cormac said he’d seen her whispering the curse to the stars, and the islanders brought her down to the harbour and tied her to the sea wall when the tide was coming in. She would have drowned only that her husband rose from his sickbed and crawled on his hands and knees over the rough stones to beg for her mercy. The islanders relented when they saw the real love between the woman and her husband as they were reunited. They clung to each other, both half-dead.

  The islanders began to regret their vengeful ways, but they needed one last spectacle. So they rounded on Cormac and marched him up to the cliff and forced him to walk off it on to the rocks and raging seas below. Daddy said there were no rough lies ever told on the island after that. ‘A lie is a dangerous thing,’ Daddy said.

  10

  The next day, a Sunday, I slept late, and opened the curtains to see Harry sitting on the wall outside. He waved and gave me a thumbs up. I raced downstairs and burst into the kitchen.

  ‘You didn’t tell Harry, did you? He’s outside. What did you tell him?’ I asked.

  ‘We have to sort this out,’ said Uncle Alan.

  My heart dropped. I had wanted to be the one to tell Harry, and I had thought there would still be time to sleep with him and make him believe the baby was his.

  ‘You told him! Does he know how pregnant I am?’

  Uncle Alan and Aunt Moira exchanged a look and didn’t reply. Uncle Alan went to the door and let him in.

  Harry came down the hall and took my hand. ‘There you are, thank God, are you OK? Did the doctor tell them it was a mistake? What kind of eejits are they in that hospital? It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Come in, Harry, we have to talk to you.’ Aunt Moira was gruff.

  Harry squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘it’ll blow over. It’s a storm in a teacup.’

  When we got inside, Uncle Alan coldly informed us that Harry’s parents were on their way.

  ‘Ah Mr Walsh, there’s no need to involve my parents …’

  Uncle Alan ignored him and went into the kitchen and closed the door. Harry turned to me with what he thought were soothing whispered words.

  ‘God, I don’t know why they’re making such a big deal. We’ll look back at this and laugh one day. You’re not pregnant. You couldn’t be, it’s all a stupid mistake!’ He was so certain of my fidelity, and of my innocence.

  Aunt Moira suggested that we go into the sitting room and wait for Harry’s parents. It was freezing in there because it was a room rarely used except for when we had visitors. Harry attempted to embrace me, but Aunt Moira said sharply, ‘Don’t touch her.’

  Harry was irritated. ‘You’re all scaremongering here. Why don’t you ask Delia what she has to say for herself?’

  ‘There is no point in continuing to lie about it, Harry,’ said Aunt Moira.

  Harry grabbed my hand. ‘It was one time,’ he said defiantly, and I could see how brave he was, ‘just last week, and we were careful. I persuaded her,’ he lied. ‘There’s no need to treat her like some kind of slut.’

  ‘Then why is she three months pregnant?’ asked Aunt Moira at the same time as the doorbell rang. She got up to answer it and I heard Uncle Alan coming out of the kitchen.

  Harry looked at me. ‘You’re not …’

  ‘I … I am,’ I said, the first words I had been able to utter to him. He let go of my hand then and walked to the window and stood with his back to me. But I could see his face reflected in the dim winter morning light, and there was nothing there but confusion. He did not ask me anything, but his hands gripped the window ledge. I did not know what to say, so said nothing.

  Harry’s mum and dad entered the room. The air crackled with tension and hostility.

  Mrs Russell was annoyed about being summoned. ‘We’re going to Mass at twelve, so I hope this isn’t going to take long.’

  Mr Russell knew, I think, that something serious had happened. ‘Hush now, Elizabeth, let’s find out what is going on. Harry?’

  Harry stayed exactly where he was, facing the window. I felt absolutely wretched. I wanted to run away as far as I could and never see any of these people ever again, but Aunt Moira was standing between me and the door.

  Aunt Moira offered to make tea, but nobody was in the mood for niceties. Uncle Alan cleared his throat then and glared at Mr Russell. ‘It turns out that Delia is over three months pregnant.’

  Harry’s father whipped around at me. ‘What? In the name of God, how could she be so stupid!’

  Uncle Alan was immediately livid at him. ‘Well, she didn’t get pregnant on her own!’

  ‘Harry!’

  Everyone else was staring at Harry. Uncle Alan said, ‘What have you to say, young man?’

  He turned slowly to face us. ‘I’m not the father.’

  A kind of a mist washed over me then, and it seemed like I separated myself from my body and flew under the door and across the quay, out past Clew Bay, and maybe for a moment or two I was a seagull, wheeling around in the air, weightless, dependent on the elements as I glided between the islands and made for Inishcrann, but the noise brought me back. Uncle Alan had punched Harry. Mrs Russell was screaming and Aunt Moira was crying. Harry’s Dad was shouting and holding Uncle Alan by the throat. Harry was slumped in the corner, nursing the side of his jaw, staring straight at me.

  ‘Tell them,’ he said, ‘tell them it wasn’t me.’

  I had never seen his eyes as lifeless and cold. And now, everybody turned to look at me. ‘It wasn’t Harry,’ I said.

  Harry looked up and with a glimmer of desperation and shame asked, ‘Were you raped? Is that it? Did some bastard attack you?’

  It would have been so easy to say yes. Possibly everything could have been resolved. I was good at lying. Why couldn’t I lie at this crucial moment? Probably because I didn’t want to be the victim. Instead I shook my head. Aunt Moira let out a sob and buried her face in her hands. Harry stared at me and I knew that he was searching for the truth in my eyes. I knew that he was close to guessing it.

  Mrs Russell stood up. ‘How you bring up your own niece is no business of ours, Alan Walsh, but I will thank you to keep her away from my son in future.’

  ‘She’s not our niece. We adopted her.’ Uncle Alan muttered the words.

  ‘What?’ Harry was so upset and confused. I had never told him the truth. He didn’t even know my real surname.

  ‘She’s no relation at all. We took her in when she was ten years old after her family died in a fire. We did our best for her. We’re as shocked as you are.’

  Harry pushed back his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘You told me Alan was your father’s cousin.’

  I couldn’t reply. There was no point in telling them it was what I’d been told to say.

  ‘Who is the father of the baby, then?’ asked Harry’s mother.

  All eyes turned to me again. I couldn’t say the name. I simply couldn’t say it.

  ‘Peter!’ Harry spat his brother’s name in a growl, and I closed my eyes.

  It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room, and again I w
as floating above and beyond the house while chaos reigned in the real world. I know that Harry left, followed by his mother, slamming both doors behind them. Moira also left the room, in convulsions of tears.

  I was sent to my room while the arguing continued behind the sitting-room door, but instead I went up and collected the still-packed suitcase and then crept quietly down the stairs and out the front door.

  Three hours later, I stepped off the bus and into the past. I hadn’t been in Cregannagh village since the day I’d been shipped off to the orphanage in Galway. I looked up the street to where the Millers’ house stood. I wondered if Clara was Dr Clara now, and the old envy crept into my bones again. My nerves were jangling, and I felt weak and tired. I composed myself, assured myself that I didn’t need looking after. That I’d soon be meeting my kith, if not my kin. I walked down to the harbour wall.

  11

  Owen the ferryman did not recognize me as I boarded. I was the only passenger. It was not a good sign for the island. When I was a child, the ferry always carried at least two or three tourists along with the cargo necessary for island life. The rumour had always been that Mayo County Council was angling to get the less populated islands evacuated. They cost too much in subsidies to run, and they were largely lawless with no police presence and one doctor between four islands fifty miles apart from each other, and inaccessible for large parts of the winter. Councillors would show up from time to time with bribes to entice us to the mainland. I remembered the fuss on Inishcrann when threats were made that the primary school was unsustainable. As it was, the secondary students all went to the mainland at the age of twelve, only returning to the island for holidays. Most stayed away after they finished school. The island population was dying off. Any whiff of discord or scandal on the islands gave the council ammunition against us. On Inishcor, twenty years previously, a man had died of appendicitis because the sea was too rough and the ferry couldn’t take him to the mainland for surgery. His death was the end for that island. The eighteen remaining inhabitants were forcibly evicted.

  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be recognized. I pulled the hood of my anorak up to protect me from the biting wind. I could feel the temperature drop as the island came into sight, and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but as we approached I looked at the long stone at the crown of the hill where the mythical oak tree had been, and in that peculiar half-light, with the low sun shining on it, it seemed to grow branches. Daddy’s old stories were always vivid in my mind.

  We closed in on the quay. I saw a few figures on the wall, but they were all covered up in coats and anoraks, and I could not make out any face I knew. I took my suitcase and walked up the gangway, and as Owen took my hand he looked at my face for the first time, and immediately whitened. He dropped my hand as if it burned him, and I stumbled as I put my foot on to the quay, crashing the sharp edge of my suitcase against my shin. I looked back at him but he turned away. He recognized me. But why that reaction?

  I walked along the narrow path leading past the small scatter of buildings, among which sat Biddy Farrelly’s pub. I wondered if she was still alive. I recalled Tom the Crow saying he would never leave the island while his mother was alive. After ten minutes, I stashed my suitcase under the plastic lid of the old well where I used to hide schoolbooks to drive Spots McGrath wild. I struck out for the western side of the island along the path that I remembered as well as if it had been printed on my skin. I passed some English hikers on the way. They stopped, wanting to engage me in conversation. ‘There’s bugger all out there, love,’ one of them said, indicating over his shoulder. I ignored them and walked on. The path was overgrown in places, and I chose a stick to beat back brambles where it narrowed. I dodged along walls and into fields, my homing instinct never wavering until I reached the end of the island. There, under a glowering sky as wide as beyond imagining, nestled among steel-grey rock and tufts of colour-drained reeds, stood the back wall of my house.

  I ran now, as the path opened out, because there was nothing to impede me. Nothing grew here. It was stunningly beautiful in its barren way. No picture I’d seen in a book or on the television could match this. I filled up my soul with this view and felt hopeful and happy. As I got closer to the house, I stopped dead in my tracks. Half of it was missing. Of course, I knew about the fire, but I didn’t think fire could destroy stone. I was not deluded, I had not come back to live in this house. I knew that it would be destroyed inside, but I’d thought the structure at least would be intact. With no timber to hold the place together, it had naturally collapsed upon itself. I picked my way through the broken doorway into what used to be our home and half of the dresser was still there, blackened, and a few springs from a mattress. There were pieces of fabric snagged on stones, and under the scorch marks I recognized the sunny yellow curtains my mother had made. I could see the colour vividly, though it was not there. There was nothing of my father or my brothers, nothing to say they had ever existed.

  I had forgotten the depth of the cold. After half an hour in that most desolate of places, my bones were shaking and my teeth were chattering. It was early November.

  I tramped back the way I had come. As I neared the harbour again, I thought about my plans, or lack of them. I was sure I’d get used to the cold again, but the life, the life here was lonely. The population of the island was less than seventy when I’d left eight years ago, surely less now, and in winter there were very few tourists.

  I wondered if any of the children I had known at McGrath’s school had come back to the island. Danny, Fergal and Malachy had been older than me and would have left the school in Cregannagh years before. But this was my natural community. I was old enough now to have lost my childlike notion of being their queen, but surely someone would take me in and teach me how to be something. The population was ageing so much that someone must want a strong, young girl, especially one that would give the island new life. I hoped Mary Scurvy would remember me. She could give me a job in her guest house in the summer, now that I had experience in the hotel, and maybe Tom the Crow would let me mend nets for him since I used to help Daddy with that, or if Biddy Farrelly was still alive, wouldn’t she need someone to run the bar and grocery for her? Wasn’t there an Italian woman who’d set up a pottery? Harry’s mother had pointed out an article about her to me in the Mayo News. There was bound to be a role for me here.

  I pushed open the door of the bar and walked in. I was, of course, a lot taller than the nine-year-old who had last entered these premises for a Sunday orange squash with my daddy, while he sipped his pint of stout, but it seemed so small to me now. The bar can’t have been more than six feet from the door. The same four stools lined the bar and Duggan was sitting on one of them, the same as I recalled from eight years ago, his head hanging below his shoulders. The English hikers I had passed earlier sat on the bench seat at the only table. They looked up briefly mid-conversation but didn’t interrupt their flow. ‘I said to John, didn’t I, John? I said it’s the coldest place I’ve ever been in my life. Didn’t I say that, John?’

  John skulled his pint and ignored his wife.

  ‘That’s the best Guinness I’ve ever had. Another one, Nige?’

  Nige nodded and checked his watch. ‘What time did you say the ferry was?’

  There was nobody behind the bar, and I waited because I remembered that even though the bell was there for service, Biddy Farrelly took an automatic dislike to anyone that used it, though she made an exception for tourists. She put great store in the virtue of patience. John got up and rang the bell, and by the sound of the shuffle from the room beyond, I knew Biddy Farrelly was still alive. She emerged then from the darkness, looking only slightly more wizened than I remembered. She did not look in my direction. I let John order his pints and sit down again, before I spoke to her.

  ‘Biddy, it’s me, Delia.’ I smiled at her.

  Her rheumy eyes opened a little wider momentarily. ‘I know ’tis you. What do you want?’

&nb
sp; I was taken aback by her lack of welcome. She had always been a stern woman, but kind too.

  ‘I’ve come home,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be looking for a place to li—’ The words dried on my tongue as she turned her back to me and unnecessarily began to move bottles on the shelf behind her.

  ‘I heard you have a suitcase with you. Well, you’ll not be staying. You may leave the island this very day. You’ll get no welcome here,’ she said without turning around. I was astonished.

  ‘What? But why?’

  The English table had stopped talking and were agog.

  ‘You may not have lit the flame, but you destroyed them all and nobody here will ever forget it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She spun around faster than her ancient bones should have allowed and spat words at me.

  ‘Are you going to claim you were a child, that you didn’t know what you were doing? There’s innocent and there’s guilty, and then there’s malice. And there was always malice in you. Don’t think we don’t know it. We watched you from a baby. Now, get yourself out of my bar and down to the pier and wait for the four o’clock ferry.’

  She slammed her hands down on the bar and tears came to my eyes.

  ‘I don’t understand? Biddy!’

  She looked over to the English tourists. ‘Get out!’

  They meekly rose and left as obediently as children, John trying to force the pint down his gullet as he put his coat on. The door slammed behind them and swung open again like a carousel.

  ‘Owen says she’s back!’ said the voice of Mary Scurvy before she saw me, and in the door behind her came Nora Duggan, the wife of the man passed out on the bar stool beside us. The two of them stared at me.

  Mary spoke first. ‘What are you doing back here, child?’

  Nora said more gently, ‘Hello, Delia. It’s been a while. You’re all grown up now, I see.’

  I dug my fingers into the bar and ignored them. I addressed Biddy Farrelly. ‘Why am I not welcome? This is my home.’