The Island Child

by Molly Aitken

  I wake when the dawn light brushes the fir trees on the other side of the lake, I fill the kettle from the stream for my tea and the mourning dove coos from a branch close by. Even when it’s raining and the other birds are silently sheltering, she still blasts out her sadness.

  * * *

  It’s cold at night here, even though it’s May, and I lie awake. I remember that year I wasn’t Joyce’s mother but just a body trudging about the house, never once combing her hair as she cried into a pillow, I never once sang her to sleep but she still came to me while I was curled up by the stove. In a faltering voice she asked me if I was awake. There was a rustle and a sigh as she sank down close to me and her long body wrapped against mine and I was able to sleep. When I woke she was gone, but it was easier to breathe.

  * * *

  I lost her and she was only four years old and every piece of the past fell away and I realised none of it mattered, because my hand was empty. I ran about the streets shouting her name, for some unknown reason looking up instead of down. I told myself, I will be a good mother. I will love her, every part of her. And when I did find her squatting by a black cat, her head to one side, everything, every piece of the past, rushed back again and I was whole, but broken.

  How quickly I ignored the promises I made myself while I searched for my child. When she left me standing on the porch six days ago, I didn’t run after her to say I was sorry for what I had done.

  * * *

  I came here to the lake to plan the end of my story, but I can’t stop thinking about the beginning and about Joyce.

  Spinners of Tales

  ‘Would you believe, I saw Aislinn naked on the shore?’

  I sat up straight, all my body straining towards Pegeen’s words. It was late in the afternoon and the rhythmic clack of the pedals had been lulling me to sleep where I was curled in the hearth nook but the hum of the wheels slowed. My heart bumped loud in my ears. No one spoke of Aislinn. I stayed still as a dead man, hoping they’d forgotten I was there. She was my forbidden fruit, the outsider, and like every child I wanted what was secret and denied.

  ‘When did you see her?’ Mam hissed.

  ‘Last night. Bold as anything.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  ‘I know what you’re meaning, Mary, but Liam wasn’t with me. He’d have fallen down dead to see such a sight as that.’

  Bridget snorted.

  A basket of wool concealed me from the three women. I was crouched, sticky in the warmth, by the hearth on the thin bed. I liked it when Mam had the neighbours over. She shouted at me less and I had not yet begun school, even though I was almost eight, so it was good to have faces and voices different from Mam’s.

  ‘Only a bad soul would be out when the little people are about,’ Pegeen said, sounding gleeful.

  ‘And what were you doing out, so?’ Bridget was quick, even though she was ancient, at least seventy. She was the one who told me Aislinn’s son was born in the big storm like me. It meant we were destined to be friends so I watched through the back window, waiting for my first sight of him.

  ‘Aislinn was standing there, nothing on her, calling down a storm on us,’ Pegeen continued. ‘You know she killed her husband with a storm. If anyone is a sea-fairy, it’s her.’

  ‘God protect us.’ That was Mam.

  ‘It’s only a story,’ Bridget murmured.

  ‘But it’s a true one,’ Pegeen said.

  On the island, what was true was loose; a truth was generally agreed by everyone to be a good story.

  I peered out the nook. Pegeen wore a fancy shawl that Mam was eyeing with the kind of fierceness I sometimes caught the men giving her scooped-out hips. There was a bleak hunger in those men’s eyes. It made me wish Mam had the salty hair and wind-hardened faces of the other island women.

  I stared hard at Bridget as the pile of wool like sea froth in her lap transformed into a smooth thread on the wheel, willing her to turn and see me. Last winter she had come only the odd time and never stayed long enough for me to soak up her gentle hands and rumbling voice. When I was small she had been with us most days as my birth had weakened Mam and, perched on Bridget’s knees, I was fed milk and stories about the little people. I would push my nose against her to catch the tangy smell of black bread nestled in the folds of her skirts and skin. In the nights when Bridget was gone Mam whispered to me that my badness made me hard to love, hissing prayers to make me good. It was all in English, just for me. The islanders all spoke Irish for everyday, for fishing and farming and the hearth, and English was just for the tourists, but I knew it in a personal way, the language of what was bad in me. It was only later I learned the good in English, how it could set me free.

  Once I heard Mam telling Bridget a voice of an angel told her I would die. She didn’t sound all that sad about it. My death was a holy excitement to her. The old woman laughed, but I knew Mam had faith in angels’ words.

  Pegeen sneezed and her wheel faltered.

  ‘I like Aislinn’s teas and medicinals,’ Bridget said. ‘She kept my Daithi with me last winter with her healing.’

  Mam had never once visited Aislinn. I would know. She always kept me with her.

  ‘I send Liam if we need a cure,’ Pegeen whispered.

  My legs were aching from being bunched up to balance my chin. The women were quiet again, their wheels whirring. Talk of the strange woman had seeped away as if she was a creature they only dreamed of. Everyone was like that about Aislinn and her boy. They were forgotten until they had to be remembered.

  I was about to climb down when I heard the creak of the door, a slight footfall and the smell of altar oil and rotten eel.

  I sank back onto the mattress, gritting my teeth as the straw stuffing creaked.

  ‘Afternoon.’ It was the priest.

  I held my breath. He set everyone jumpy.

  ‘We were just talking about Mrs Kilbride, Father,’ Pegeen said. ‘I saw her dancing like a pagan on the seashore last night.’

  There was a long pause. I tried not to move, even though my underarm was itchy.

  ‘I was thinking,’ the priest said – he was new to the island and got to thinking a lot. ‘We must bring Mrs Kilbride and her son to the church. You could talk to her, Mrs Coughlan. You two women have a lot in common. Both outsiders here with children the same age.’

  ‘I’m nothing like her, Father,’ Mam spat. He must have touched a private hurt in her because she usually would never be rude to a holy man.

  ‘Aislinn’s not a believer,’ Bridget said. ‘English,’ she added, as if this explained everything.

  ‘Didn’t you know she’s a heathen, Father?’ Pegeen asked. ‘And she’s bringing that boy up pagan too.’

  ‘You can’t blame a child for their parents’ sins. The boy’s an angel at heart.’

  Bridget believed it most, as she loved all children, but people were always saying Felim was an angel. Dad had told me that when God banished Satan, he threw out the bad angels too and they became the little people, the ones who lived in the sea and rocked the waves to swallow men’s souls. The ones who wandered the land and led us down their hidden paths with blinking lanterns. No one ever returned when a fairy touched them. I thought and thought on it but couldn’t get to knowing how he had become so precious the night we were born.

  ‘I’d not want Aislinn in our church, Father,’ Mam said. ‘She’s a bad influence.’

  ‘Aislinn’s a beauty,’ Bridget said.

  ‘Wouldn’t all the men’s mouths be hanging open,’ said Pegeen. ‘And not one of them would listen to a word of the Bible. But I’d not expect you to notice a woman in that way, Father.’

  ‘Well, now.’ He cleared his throat.

  I tried not to giggle.

  ‘You are a good Christian woman, Mary.’ The priest’s voice was always raspy when he talked to the men, like he was dying of the thirst, but when he said Mam’s name it came out gentle as a sigh. Maa-rryy. Maaarry. It was the same when he was readin
g in church and I was always near falling asleep. His words were so smooth and empty. ‘You could invite her in, Mar— Mrs Coughlan. Show her God’s love.’

  Pegeen snorted and coughed to cover it. She thought, like me, that Mam had very little love of her own to share around, God’s even less.

  I couldn’t see why they’d be wanting to force Aislinn and her boy to go to church too. They were the only people who were free on Sunday mornings.

  ‘Aislinn thinks church is a pain in the arse,’ I said and stood up on the bed, my head scraping the roof of the nook. ‘And so do I.’

  The spinning wheel treadles clattered to a halt.

  A beautiful freedom had come over my tongue and I wanted to run with it. I jumped over the basket of wool and stepped out of the spitting hearth – Mam never got the island way of keeping the fire low to save turf.

  I wouldn’t let myself look at Mam, although I felt her stare prickle across my cheeks. Pegeen and Father Finnegan looked at me like I was a fish that’d sprouted wings, but Bridget gave me a quick flash of her wondrous crooked smile and this made me bolder.

  ‘I know Aislinn doesn’t listen to God,’ I told them. ‘She’s a fairy so he threw her out.’ It didn’t matter that I’d never met her. I knew she felt like me. ‘She’s better things to be doing with herself than going to church anyway.’

  The priest pressed a manky square of cloth to his nose and I finally let my eyes rise to Mam. She was red-faced and her hands were clenched around a bobbin thick with string. The warmth in me began to seep away. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and stayed hidden. I should not have let her see me, not when the talk had been of God and the woman she hated.

  ‘Oona,’ Mam hissed. ‘Where did you hear such language?’

  ‘Dad.’

  She sucked in a breath. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and not let the neighbours know Dad didn’t believe in God.

  ‘Say you’re sorry to Father Finnegan,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ I couldn’t stop my mouth.

  ‘Oona!’ Mam’s black eyes were on me.

  ‘I’m so very sorry, Father.’ I put my hand over my mouth and stuck out my tongue the way Kieran did to Mam when her back was turned.

  Mam yanked me to her side, away from the priest as if I might soil him with my dirty words.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she said, her grip on my arm tightening. ‘I’ll see she’s punished.’

  ‘I pray for you that you do.’

  Father Finnegan went outside where he shook himself off in the rain, getting rid of the taint of me no doubt. Mam stared after him, a look of fear on her face like she was worried he was wondering whether to send her to hell because of my evil ways.

  ‘I’d like for you to go now,’ Mam told Pegeen and Bridget.

  Pegeen sniffed and gathered up her spools of wool and eyed me as she went out the front. The whole village would know by evening what I’d said. Bridget lifted her wheel, planted a peck on my forehead and left too.

  I was alone with Mam.

  I began edging towards the back door but in two strides she was across the room, grabbing my hand again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mammy, but does Aislinn really bring storms and kill men?’ The words fell from me before I could swallow them to save for a sunshine day.

  She dragged me towards the dresser and pushed me onto the floor. My knees smashed into the packed earth and I bit down the sobs scratching at my throat.

  ‘Don’t mention that woman’s name under my roof.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Pray, Oona.’

  On the dresser, Mary in her blue cloak with bone-white hands pressed together gazed above my head, silently judging me, and I judged her back. She never did anything, only had a son. She was nothing, not like the magical naked woman, Aislinn. And she wasn’t like me. I would never be like the Virgin.

  ‘Pray,’ Mam hissed. ‘Pray He’ll forgive your wickedness.’

  I looked up to heaven, at the sky through the window, and asked for another mam.

  The Little Window

  My knees were already purple in the firelight; the praying had worn through my flesh to the bones. While I’d kneeled for the rest of the afternoon, I begged Mary, in my mind, to make Mam forgive me for what I said to the priest and let me get up and have a scone. Mary ignored me. I tried God. He ignored me too. I thought about asking Mam herself, but as it had gone so bad with the other two, and they were holy, I couldn’t see Mam showing kindness.

  It was evening and Dad sat smoking in the nook, Mam outside taking down the washing, and me on the floor, determined to bruise my arse as well as my knees just so I could doubly pity myself. I chewed my lip, swallowing back the weeps threatening.

  ‘What’s that on your legs, girleen?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ I dropped my skirt and stood up.

  ‘Come here to me.’ He beckoned me with a scarred finger. I loved his hands. They were just like him: strength under the thick skin; gentleness in the cushioned palms; fire too in the quick fingers.

  I ran to him and climbed onto his lap. He smelled of pipe smoke and tar.

  ‘Mam had me praying.’

  ‘Did she?’ His voice hummed low and tuneful, but I still caught the slice of his anger in it. He fled religion the way Mam chased after it, more at home out in the sharp wind of the weather than in the dry and godly air of the church. It was a cause of constant silent sparks between them. One day, before I was born, they agreed to never talk about it with each other, although Mam talked plenty to the kitchen about God’s grace and Mary’s goodness. Dad would leave whenever she was wearing the ears off the walls, which was often, and I’d miss him then. He never took me because I was a girl so I was Mam’s.

  ‘How did it happen?’ he asked.

  ‘The praying, you mean?’

  ‘Aye, that.’

  I told him what Pegeen had been saying about Aislinn singing naked to the sea.

  ‘Well, you know you shouldn’t believe what that woman says.’

  I settled myself, legs up, head back against his shoulder.

  ‘How did Aislinn come to live with us on the island? Why did she not stay in England?’

  Everyone knew that tourists like Aislinn who’d stayed weren’t quite right. They didn’t know the island ways, like how you had to stop in on your neighbours in winter to check on them, or that you should throw the dirty feet-water out at night so the fairies wouldn’t break in.

  ‘Aislinn,’ Dad said slowly, like her name was an oyster he was chewing over. ‘Was there ever an English girl given an Irish name like Aislinn?’ He shook his head.

  ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘It was on Éag I first saw her.’

  A shudder went through me. Éag was the dead island where we took the drowned after the wake to bury them before night came. Clouds and fogs and rains and shafts of blinding sunlight kept Éag hidden but when Éag appeared there was sure to be a death. Éag was showing Aislinn’s husband the way to the shore, Kieran said, but Colm never made it. Kieran crowed with joy when I gasped and I didn’t think how he couldn’t have seen it because during that storm he was at Bridget’s hearth.

  ‘Not long before your brother Enda was born and Kieran was just below my knee, we were all over on Éag for a funeral. Aislinn was there to listen to the keener, she said, and I believe it, as a tourist likes to hear a funeral song, but people thought up all kinds of other reasons for her going. They said she was out fishing for a man and, well, there were a lot of whispers about her after. She had a queer kind of beauty that caught you like a spell and many of the men proposed to her right there at the funeral.’

  I laughed. ‘Did you ask her, Dad?’

  ‘No. I was already wed to your mam.’ There was a sadness in his eyes as he watched the fire. I understood. I’d be sad if I married Mam myself. ‘Aislinn chose Colm,’ he said. ‘But it’s good for her he drowned, even if it wasn’t so good for himself. Colm was a hard man to get to know or like, and Aisl
inn – well, everyone was suspicious of her. She laughed a lot and was awful enthusiastic about everything. You couldn’t walk into a house without hearing whispers about her. Although no one really had anything to go on, but Colm started to listen to them.’ He rubbed his forehead and I stayed quiet, letting him think. ‘Your mam was from the mainland, you know,’ he said. ‘And people didn’t trust her at first, but she worked hard to be like us. Aislinn never tried to fit in and it brought out the worst in Colm in the end. I once saw her with a black eye.’

  ‘Pegeen said Aislinn killed Colm.’

  ‘Ah, no. Sure how could she have? He rowed himself out into that storm. The sea does what it will. Aislinn had nothing to do with it. Aislinn’s—’

  ‘What’re you telling her?’ Mam was stood in the doorway, her black hair yanked back in a knot, pulling her face tight like skin over a drum.

  ‘Just a story,’ Dad said, as sweet as a sparrow, although anyone who knew Dad would know there was nothing birdlike about him. He was a water creature, slippery as anything. He was a seal.

  Mam crossed her arms and went back outside.

  Dad winked at me and put me back on the floor. It seemed like a good place to make a request. ‘Can I go to school after summer, Dad? I’m older than some of the children who already go.’

  ‘I’ll speak to your mam about it. Now, I’d better be getting to gutting the catch or you’ll go hungry.’

  He went out the front and I searched the bottom shelf for a bit of bread, but Mam had put all the food out of my reach. I knew he’d not say a word to her about school. Dad never rocked the boat of Mam’s kitchen but I wished he would. I wished he would take me down to the water with him but he laughed whenever I asked.

  My days were always the same, always with Mam. Up with the light to fetch the dried dung for the hearth and filling the teapot with two spoons – not three – of brown leaves. After breakfast, when Dad and the boys were gone, we cleaned the table; we sewed, mended, washed. We always stayed inside or close to the cottage. If I found the chance, I would gaze out the front window at the boats and imagine life was different. I imagined I went to school with my brothers, or lived on the mainland with my aunt Kate, or sometimes pretended the little people had stolen me away to Tír na nÓg to be their queen. In my dreams, I was free like Aislinn. In my dreams, Mam was dead.