by Molly Aitken
* * *
The city is a rainbow of umbrellas. I park outside a tall house on Sea Road. On weighted feet I climb the steps and tap twice with the golden mermaid knocker. I wait but no one answers. The net curtains move like someone’s breathing on them; a shadow retreats. It’s been over twenty years. Surely she couldn’t recognise me, and there is no need to hide. Last time I saw her I danced inside a long-haired, windswept girl. Now I’m greying, tied back and wearing jeans.
I knock once more.
The Big Room
I bounded, slowed by skirts trapping between my legs but still there was a release in me. I was out, away from the stench of peat smoke and frying fish and Mam’s soap. I grabbed a hank of my hem, tucked it into my belt and sped on with the sweet cool slap of wind against my skin.
The pier was already heaving, piled high with crates of tea, bricks of turf, pouches of tobacco. The damp smell of food from the mainland. I stretched into my arms and breathed it all in.
Liam, now greying, and Old Daithi paused in their lifting to wave to me, both grinning, Daithi gap-toothed and Liam still with all of them.
‘Oona!’ It was Pegeen, who, because she was so short, had a way of appearing without me ever seeing her approach. ‘Did you ever see the Virgin Mary with her dress up to her oxters?’
‘No.’
She yanked down my skirt. ‘Is right you didn’t. She wouldn’t be caught dead in your state.’
‘I was only running.’
‘Aye, for now. But you’d all the men half distracted. Get on with you and then get home.’
I laughed as she marched off towards the village. Chuckling at his wife, Liam gave me his twinkly smile; we were in on it together, but it’d be all over the island by teatime and Mam was sure to get me on my knees for it. Bare legs hadn’t mattered the summer before, when I was still thirteen, but being fourteen and no longer at school meant wearing clothes with shame to hide my body like all women must.
Since Enda and I had brought Felim into our kitchen, Mam’s sacred space, she had realised the threat was closer than she had thought. It had woken her up and she kept me at home with her more often. Sometimes I managed to get away, like I had in the years after my sister, and I would meet Felim at his cottage to show him his letters. Once, while we sat on his beach, while I went over the English spellings on my slate, he said, ‘Did you ever think of marrying?’
‘Mam wants me to marry Jonjoe.’ I laughed, shaking my head.
‘You could marry me,’ he said.
‘Felim, we’re too young.’
He darted up and strode down towards the water.
‘But I will,’ I shouted. ‘If we can leave Inis together one day.’
He clambered slowly back, frowning, a worried look on him, and I held out my hand to him and he took it in his cold one and I squeezed.
After a morning with Felim I would stop with his mam to drink her teas and talk about the villagers, making her laugh at my descriptions of Pegeen’s eyes popping at the least whiff of gossip. I stored up this latest encounter to share with her, although I didn’t know when I’d manage it. Mam noticed when I tried to leave, finding new tasks for me she’d never even thought of before. We knitted and sewed by the basket-load, and the pot of coins on the dresser was getting heavier as she sold almost everything we made.
Enda kept teaching me and reading with me but two short years of learning was all I had to know my English, writing and numbers. That small bit of freedom was gone and this small slice of day I’d snatched while Mam’s back was turned to search for a piece of the outside, the world beyond our shores.
I dodged heaps of turf and baskets.
‘Anything?’ I yelled to Old Daithi, who was bent over a box.
‘And what will you give me for it?’
I laughed. ‘Nothing. Give me the post, Daithi.’
He handed me a clean white letter which I hid under my shawl to keep dry and told him I’d to get home. He gave me his sad smile and I ran. Mam lived for letters. Whenever one arrived from Aunt Kate or her mother a watery joy would come into her eyes and she would hold it to her chest as if the people who’d written the words were right there with her.
I was drenched with sweat when I got back and the letter had a small patch of damp on it. As I went through the door into the kitchen I whispered a quick ‘Please’ to the fairies that Mam wouldn’t notice. Her back was to me, digging in the wool basket like there was a bag of money at the bottom. Her bun was unraveling like the slimy coils on the pier but I knew I could light her up, make her smile.
‘Mam, we got a letter,’ I said.
The rustling stopped and she turned, her lips tight as she crossed the room to me. I held the envelope out and she snatched it.
‘Where did you go?’ She was too close to me.
‘I went to see if we’d a letter. I wanted to cheer you up.’
She searched my face looking for hidden sins and I knew Pegeen had already been up, and Mam was ringing with the story of my bare legs. She smiled despite herself as she ripped the letter open but as she read her smile fell away like a feather dropping from a wing. She scrunched up Kate’s letter and threw it on the fire where it uncurled, as if trying to escape, before turning black and fraying to pieces.
‘Mam? What did Kate say?’
She sank onto the stool with a look of a lonely child. My anger faded. I stepped towards her, ready to put my arms around her neck and kiss her cheek, but she stood up.
‘Kate’s met a man. He has a grocer’s in Galway and she’s going to work there.’
Before I could say anything she was striding past me, out the back door without even picking up her shawl to protect her from the rain. I stared after her, sure I’d seen a tear on her cheek, but already her bent figure was halfway up the road. She had abandoned me for the priest.
* * *
It was later than usual when Dad and the boys came home all salty and sunburnt from a day on the water and with two large baskets of glittering fish ready for scaling. They were full of the wind of excitement for the trip to bring the cows to Connemara in a few days, but I couldn’t catch their joy. Women and girls almost never went to the mainland.
I lay awake and waited for life to still, Kieran’s ragged snores and the woolly silence that meant Mam and Dad were gone to bed.
I climbed out of bed and opened the door into the kitchen. Enda was sat near the hearth peering into the Bible, chewing at the corner of his mouth.
‘Where are you at?’ I whispered.
‘I’m just revisiting the flood,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Father Finnegan is all about the New Testament, but I still love the Old.’
‘Aye, the stories are wilder, aren’t they?’
I knelt beside him and warmed my hands over the humming turf.
‘What’s got you up, littlie?’ he asked.
I was too old for him to call me that name but I didn’t care. He softly shut the Bible, smoothed the cover and looked up, giving me his full attention.
‘I’m coming on the boat with you all tomorrow. I’m going to see Kate.’
Enda pulled a hand down his face like he was trying to wake himself up. ‘Mam won’t let you go.’
‘I know, but I’ve a plan.’
‘Tell me why you want to come.’
‘I need to see Kate.’ I’d already told him about Mam burning our aunt’s letter. ‘I’ve never left the island. I’ve never even been to Éag. I don’t go to school now and I need to get away for a bit, Enda.’
The red glow of the fire played all down one side of his face. ‘All right.’
* * *
The morning opened bright and new with freshly carded clouds and thrills in all of us. I woke before the boys to brew a big pot of tea and fetch bread and milk and butter, but when I crept into the kitchen, mind awhirl going over my plan, the table was set. Mam was already up. She was plucking a chicken, its head lolling against her leg, its feathers scattered at her feet.
; ‘God bless,’ she said. It was her usual morning greeting but this time she looked up and gave me a smile. I almost let it all gush out, all my hopes of getting away to Kate, almost regretting wanting to leave Mam alone.
‘Mam, I—’
‘What’s cooking?’ Kieran called from the little room.
‘A fish each to keep you strong for your long journey away.’ Mam dropped the chicken, strode by me without a glance and began spearing the mackerels with a fork.
There was no fish for me.
I chewed slowly on my black bread, letting the sharp taste roll all around my mouth because soon I’d be eating biscuits and apples with Kate.
Dad and Kieran grunted over their food, piling it into their open mouths.
‘That reminds me, Mam,’ Enda said. ‘Father Finnegan was asking me if you’d go up to the fields with him to bless the cows for the journey.’
She gave him a startled look, and said, ‘I’ll go up to him soon.’ I didn’t dare look at Enda, afraid we’d give it away, but still my heart soared. She’d bitten. She would leave the cottage and I’d be free to race to the shore, get in Old Daithi’s currach and be rowed out to the ferry. My sack was packed with spare clothes (a dress far too tight on my newly bulging chest and a woollen shawl), my sewing needle and an old loaf.
‘Right, that’s us,’ Dad said. He wiped his chin and pecked me on the cheek. ‘See you in a few days, girleen.’
I smiled my sweetest smile.
He went to kiss Mam too but she flinched away, nodded them all out and shut the door on Dad’s worried face, plunging us into the dark.
‘Well,’ Mam said and beamed. ‘I’d better be getting up to the priest.’
‘Aye. I can clean up here and start gutting the catch.’
‘Good girl. Will you just get me my prayer book from the bedroom? There’s a verse in it I want to ask Father Finnegan about the meaning of. Most prayers are clear as glass to me, but this one is difficult.’
‘Sure,’ I said. I was curious, as I’d not been in the big room since I was small and crept in to look at the place forbidden, my blood beating against my skin with excitement and terror. She’d dragged me out and told me not to be prying in the adults’ place.
‘I’m bringing Father Finnegan a bit of sugar,’ she said. Her back was bent over a basket, next to the hearth. ‘The poor man loves it and he’s never enough.’
I passed her, opened the thick door made of a proper wood, not like the flimsy one that shut me and my brothers off from the kitchen while we slept, and stepped into the big room. It was just like before, the bed’s cover smooth as a church window, as if it’d never been slept in. From above the headboard Jesus stared down from his cross. There was a faint smell of piss and turning fish that pressed damp against the back of my mouth, the result of the door never being opened, never airing the room out. The prayer book was on the stool under the window. I grabbed it, eager to escape from the stale air and away from Christ’s knowing stare.
Three things happened: I turned away from him, the door slammed and I dropped the prayer book on the floor.
‘Mam?’
Nothing.
I ran to the door and tugged but it was stuck.
‘Mam?’
I hammered on the wood.
‘Mam, please. Let me out. I have to get out.’
I ran to the window, but even before I reached it I knew I was too big to fit, I’d grown too much in the last year, my shoulders were too broad to make it through the opening. I could shout but no one would hear me; they were all down on the shore cheering on the cows, and even if they did what would they do? Nothing. No one would help me.
I pounded my fists on the door. ‘Mam! Let me out of here.’
From the other side there was only silence but I knew she was there. She’d put something in front of the door and it was herself.
I beat three times and sank to the floor, my back against the door while Jesus stared down at me. I swore I saw him smile. He was just like his mother, watching and judging but doing nothing.
‘I wish Aislinn was my mam,’ I yelled.
There was no answer.
‘You are not my mother.’
* * *
I lay on the floor while the ferry left with all the men and cows, but not me. When I opened my eyes the room was darker and there was a breeze against my cheek. She had finally opened the door.
‘I heard you.’ She was stood above me, chicken feathers stuck to the bottom of her dark skirt. ‘Talking last night. Thought you could trick me?’ She laughed. ‘I know just how you think, I know the evil that plagues you, and Galway is full of them that’d lead you into sin.’
‘I only wanted to see Kate.’
‘You’re not leaving. The world is a danger to you. I heard it when you were born.’
I pulled my knees to my chest and curled up around them.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I said.
‘That woman will not save you. She is wicked.’
‘You’re not my mother. You are not my mother,’ I whispered over and over like a prayer.
The Island’s Ghosts
‘I will leave the island one day,’ I said to Mam’s back. ‘You can’t make me stay.’
The men had been gone a week and I had barely opened my mouth to say two words to Mam. She was knelt in front of the dresser, mumbling her complaints, but at my words she crossed herself and, still on her knees, turned to face me.
‘Don’t fool yourself,’ she said. ‘There’s two ways it’ll go. You’ll marry Jack O’Flaherty’s boy.’
‘Jonjoe. I will not.’ It was the old discussion, repeated constantly.
‘Or you’ll stay and look after myself and your dad, if he’s still with us. There’s no leaving the island. Not for a woman.’
I was out the back door before she could drag me in again. The grey sky peeled open, spilling light onto the waves. I leant against the wall, the rain cutting into my cheeks, weighing down my dress. There was nowhere to go. The sea cut off every escape.
There was no way I’d let Jonjoe tie me here; his constant grinning and chasing after Kieran like a calf after its mother would drive me mad. And not all boys were the same. Felim was different. The storm had bound us on the night of our birth; the ocean chose us to be together but it never told us it had to be here.
I whispered a prayer to my dead sister to show me the path that’d lead me away from the island and waited for an answer.
Liam passed on the road, head down, hands deep in pockets, and I called after him, ‘Is the ferry back from the mainland?’ The wind must’ve stolen my voice away because he kept striding up to the top of the hill and turned away from the villages onto the thin track above. There was only one place he could be going, only one cottage at the end of that path.
I didn’t need to ask because already more men were trudging up the road, tired-looking in their heavy shoulders but also with small smiles they gave to me, which I struggled to return. They’d enjoyed their trip to Galway.
I followed Liam’s footsteps through the rain towards Aislinn’s. As I passed in front of the cottage I heard her voice, joyful and full of laughter, but I didn’t stop, knowing I would disturb whatever warmth she had found. I walked down to the little beach, where Felim was sat close to the waves.
I settled next to him and he beamed at me. He’d never beamed before.
‘You’ve not been home yet then?’ I asked.
‘No. Should I?’
‘No. What happened in Galway then?’ I yelled in the pause between the smacking sound of the water.
‘Everything.’ He was staring at the sky.
‘I’ll leave Inis one day.’
‘I need to stay.’
‘Why?’
‘There are people I can’t leave behind.’
‘Aislinn does need you. Without you she’d have no one. I’ll only really miss Enda.’
We watched the sea, deafened, each of us in our separate imaginings, until I
went home. When I reached the cottage evening had sunk into the hill and behind the castle.
‘Get out of them wet clothes,’ Mam said when I came in. ‘You’ll catch your death.’
‘I don’t care if I do. What’s the point in living if I’ll always be here?’
‘You’ve an awful lip on you these days,’ she yelled as I slammed the door of the little room.
I sank onto my mattress and looked up at the window above. The room was dark apart from that small slice of light.
Dad and the boys clomped into the kitchen with all the news of the cows freed for their summer feeding on the thick grasses of Connemara; our island meadows were too thin and bare to keep them alive for winter.
I dragged myself into the kitchen and Enda gave me a kiss. His cheeks were warm and wet with rain. ‘Sorry you didn’t make it,’ he whispered. ‘We missed you.’
‘You’ve grown into a woman since we’ve been gone,’ Dad said to me.
‘What makes you say that?’ Mam snapped.
‘Look at her, she’s almost as tall as you, Mary. What age are you again, love?’
‘She’s fourteen,’ Enda said. ‘A year younger than me.’
Kieran didn’t give me his usual grunt. He pushed past me into the little room, his shoulders hunched by his ears, and shut the door behind him.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked Enda.
He shook his head. ‘He’s just being . . . himself.’
Mam was unwinding a ball of wool, a small puddle of red string pooling between her feet. The wool spread out.
I sat, quiet in the nook. Mam was as forcibly chirpy as a wren on a winter night pretending the sun has risen. Enda laughed with Dad, said a few kind words to Mam and winked and beamed at me. He was glowing, loud, and Mam was thrilled with him and asked question after question. He told us about the ferry ride and then how good Felim was with the cows; he had a hidden gift for animals. Felim’s name was the only thing that made Mam’s sewn-on smile fray at the edges.
* * *
I listened to the dark for what had woken me. At first there was nothing but prickling silence, then a ruffling of feathers, a spatter of wet and tap-tap-tapping on the shutter, followed by stillness again. Someone was trying to wake me.