by Molly Aitken
Cold shivered over me, but still I got up and pulled on my dress and left the room. The kitchen was crowded with shadows and out the window they stood long in the moonlight. I pushed the door open and stepped into the stillest night. The stars were breathless, black clouds raced away from the bright and my heart beat rapid as a bodhrán.
A figure stood behind our wall and as I approached he peered at me, turned and began walking along the field. I rounded the wall, following, afraid if I called out I’d wake the sleeping cottage. I gained on him, and as I sped up he grew and became solid and the moon sheened off the shadow’s white hair.
‘What’re you doing out here?’ I yelled at Felim. We were now far enough away from the cottage.
I reached him and his eyes, unblinking, fixed on my lips. ‘You’re different,’ he said.
He stepped close. It wasn’t me who’d changed. It was him. His hand raised as if to hit me.
I stumbled back. ‘Don’t.’
His breath was hot on my skin. It smelled of day-old fish.
‘What are you doing?’ I whispered.
‘I’m just seeing.’
He trailed a fingernail down my cheek. I shuddered but I wanted to kiss him. I stepped closer and shut my eyes, but his touch fell away and when I looked up again he’d widened the gap between us.
‘Don’t touch me like that again,’ I whispered.
‘Don’t women like it?’
The skin still tingled but I felt wrong inside. I shook my head, thinking of the sounds of Dad grunting at night and Mam’s red eyes in the morning. Whatever made Mam sad, it was like what Felim had just done to me, unnameable, and somehow shameful and sickening.
‘No, Felim. Women don’t like it.’
‘I don’t believe you. I’ve seen it.’ He turned and began walking down the road.
‘Seen it?’ I rushed after him. ‘What did you see?’
But he was far ahead, striding into the dark at the turn of the road and close to vanishing behind Jonjoe’s house, which bulged from the hillside, more permanent than the island herself.
‘Where are you going?’ I hissed after him, my belly swooping like I’d lost something important. ‘Wait!’
He waited for me and I ran to catch up. Somehow I wasn’t cold in my nightdress; it was like Inis had warmed herself for me and whispered to the wind to soften and sung to make the stars shine brighter. The road bent close to the sea and curved back in again where the walls were just below our shoulders on either side.
We crossed a field and he stopped at a wall and peered over it at the tiny beach below.
As if from a tear in the thick air, a woman appeared on the shore and walked towards the water. Slowly, she pulled off each layer of her clothes until she shone white and her hair fell wild across her breasts. Her belly was as round as the moon above us, full with a child. I clung to the wall and leant out, a familiar hum gathering in my own stomach, and my chest tingled with exquisite pain until Felim pulled me back.
‘She’s pregnant,’ I said.
‘I see it.’ Neck stretched, he stared at her.
The moon slid behind a black pile of clouds and she ducked under the swell. Felim’s eyes were fixed on the spot where she disappeared. Time stretched, and in it I saw Aislinn drown in the watery underworld of the sea, but she broke the surface, spurting water.
‘Felim,’ I whispered. ‘Let’s go down and swim with your mam.’
‘I’m waiting to see if he comes.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know who he is yet.’
My eyes stung with watching Aislinn gliding through the dark water but no one joined her, although I knew who it was.
Felim sank down the wall, his head between his knees, breathing heavily.
‘Are you all right?’ I said.
He said nothing. I watched him crawl away across the grass, straighten when he was down the slope and start for the road.
I turned back, just once, and over the wall Aislinn broke the stars apart as she floated across her sky-sea and a man swam towards her.
* * *
I ran to catch up with Felim and walked me home and I said nothing to him. I didn’t say the man’s name. There was a reason Aislinn hadn’t shared this with him. It wasn’t Colm raised from the dead I’d seen when I was eight; it was Liam.
Felim stopped, and I bumped into his shoulder. The castle was just ahead and below my feet the road home dove down the hill, away from the ruin and into the dark.
‘Aislinn just likes swimming,’ I said. ‘No one knows. About any of it.’
‘They’ll know soon.’ His jaw was working, his teeth grinding, his face half hidden by night, half lit by moon.
‘Are you angry with her for meeting with a man?’
‘Don’t talk about her.’ His face jammed close to mine, his breath was cool now.
‘Why were you tapping on my window, Felim?’
He stepped away from me, chin dropping. ‘Go home, Oona,’ he said, voice tired.
A slippery fish flipped inside me as I headed off down the road but halfway down, the cottage in sight tucked below me in the hollow, I glanced back to wave and saw Felim duck into the ruins of the castle. Too much had happened in this night, and I was ready for sleep, but I climbed the hill again, reached the top and went through the castle’s gaping doorway. The stench of moulding wet stones filled my mouth. Stars for a roof, tall shadows standing all about watching.
And there was Enda leaning against an empty window. The wind rushed through behind him. Felim stepped towards him, their heads gently tilting, hands reaching out. Felim’s fingers were white, weaving through my brother’s dark hair.
I ran away from them because I shouldn’t have been there. I should never have seen that moment that was meant to be just theirs.
But we lived on an island, and in the end nothing can be kept hidden long.
The woman searched for her stolen daughter, and as she searched she wept, and as she wept the rye withered to dry husks, the poppies, dandelions and grass wilted, and unhatched babies shrivelled in their mothers’ wombs and fell away.
She asked everyone she met if they had seen her child but no one told her what they all whispered about behind the woman’s back, that the girl was no longer a girl and she had chosen to leave her mother. Years passed and the woman did try to forget her child. She filled her life with the sights of the world, the stories of the people she met, the meals cooked on open fires under the stars. For whole days, she told herself she was busy, she was happy, she was fulfilled, but a dream would land in her with visions of the child she lost and the pain cut deeper, the loss felt emptier. Her life was hollow, its circle broken.
And the earth was dying, all because a faithless daughter was tempted away from home. All because a mother wept and couldn’t live without the fruit of her own womb.
The Aunt
Ivy and sodden roses brush my soaked feet as I descend the steps, back onto the rain-licked Galway street. Kate must be out or she doesn’t want to see me.
In the middle of the road there’s a broken umbrella flapping like a dead crow’s wing.
‘Oona?’ a voice says.
I spin, but slowly, my rain-clogged clothes dragging me down. The front door is open. I climb the steps again. All I can make out in the hallway is a shrunken woman.
‘You’d better come in.’ She is wearing fuzzy slippers and has a hasty smear of pink lipstick across her mouth. She’s softer, rounder, shorter than I remember. Not the Aunt Kate I knew, always talking, feet up, sparking life, but I don’t know why I thought she’d be the same when I’m so different too.
I want to reach out and hold her, feel her warmth against me, but I can’t move.
‘Hello, Kate,’ I say.
The stairs scoop up to the next floor behind her. My heart beats faster. Is Joyce up there? Was I right to think she’d come here first? Or, like all mothers, do I not know my daughter at all?
‘Get into the other room,’ this ne
w Kate says.
We perch at opposite ends of a long green sofa. The house is so enormous I half expect a large family to burst in, all with the glossy curls and laughing eyes Kate once had. But we’re alone. The place is asleep, waiting for life to return.
She stares at me and I try to smile but whatever my mouth produces only encourages a grimace from her.
‘I’m glad to see you, Oona,’ she says. ‘You’re very different. Not the girl I remember.’
Her hands clench the thighs of her grey slacks. Her wedding band gleams.
‘Is your husband at work?’
She smiles, her eyes sparkling in the old way. ‘His shop’s down the road.’
‘Do you have children.’
‘No, but you missed a lot,’ she says, and I feel it. ‘You wanted to forget us.’
‘I did.’ I do.
There are no photographs in the room, nothing but chairs and coffee tables to fill the cavernous space. No shadow left by Joyce, and I don’t know if she’s been here, but I can see her with that look on her face I’ve only ever seen on her father: worried, very intense and eager.
‘I’ll make us a tea.’ Kate stands, smoothing her top.
‘My daughter, Joyce, she’s missing. She had your address and I thought she’d come here first. She mightn’t have said her name. She looks nothing like me. Fair hair and young and fierce. Always asking questions.’
The room is slippery like a reflection on water, never quite still. Kate is kneeling in front of me and I’m looking at her through my fingers. There’s a map of tiny lines on her face. Under her eyes are the heavy places. One is Inis. One is Éag.
‘You’ll be all right.’ Her wet words almost persuade me. ‘Breathe with me now.’
And I do. One, out. Two, out. Three.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘It’s all right. I got a fright when I saw you there on my doorstep, looking . . . looking just like your mam. I was in shock. I didn’t know what to say to you. You’re like a ghost come back to life.’ She takes my hands and stares at them, stroking, stroking. ‘How’re you feeling now?’
‘What is it?’
‘Mary’s got cancer.’
‘Mam?’
A white light falls through the long window and onto the tangled design of the brown carpet.
‘I tried to get her to move here,’ Kate’s saying. ‘But she’s more stubborn than ever. Won’t budge from the cottage. Got some notion of dying on the island.’
‘But she always hated the island.’ I’m standing. The light blinds me.
‘Don’t I know. But whatever I say, she won’t leave.’ Her arms circle me. Mam never once held me. ‘Will you go to see your mother? She won’t be with us long.’
I pull away. ‘You’ve seen Joyce.’
Kate sinks back onto the sofa. ‘She left yesterday morning on the ferry.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Not much. I did ask her, but she’s as good as you at dodging a question. Better. She asked me a load about you and Enda, what your lives were as children. She hasn’t a clue who she is.’
‘I told her other stories. Better ones. Stories I read in books.’
‘So, were you ashamed of us? Because what you told her was all lies, wasn’t it?’
‘I wasn’t ashamed of you.’ I feel grey, like I could shut my eyes and sleep for years. ‘When’s the next ferry? I need to find her.’
‘In the morning. Stay here tonight. I’ve a single bed made up already.’
‘Thank you, Kate.’
‘But where’s her dad? Will he need a bed?’ She says it casual, like she expects me to tell her Pat just dropped down to the shop to pick up a packet of cigarettes.
‘He doesn’t know I’m here.’
The clock in the hallway dongs.
‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’ she says.
I can’t look at her. I don’t know how to answer.
‘I need some air,’ I say.
I walk down the road towards the river. The rain enfolds me and I can breathe a little easier.
The Whispering
Enda had kissed Felim.
Enda held Felim’s head like it might break. I hadn’t noticed, in all the years, it wasn’t me who was bound to the fairy boy, but Enda.
I flew down the hill without looking back, fumbled through the back door and sat by the empty hearth. I couldn’t speak of it to anyone. If Mam knew she would be heartbroken because what Enda had done was against God. This was another secret I would have to hold deep inside me. I would have to try to forget.
Kieran shook me awake when light was trickling into the kitchen. He stood over me where I sat in Dad’s chair, a look on his face like he wanted to tell me something, and I’d never known him not to speak when there was a thought in him.
‘Kieran?’
‘That boy of yours. The Kilbride. Does he fancy you?’
‘What do you mean? No. No, he doesn’t.’
‘Right. I thought so.’ He grabbed a rod. ‘I’ve to be out, Oona.’
‘Kieran,’ I yelled after him, but he didn’t come back.
My limbs ached and I crawled into bed. I woke with pains like the whispers of cruel gossip digging into my stomach. Mam was banging about in the kitchen with the kettle and broom. The breath-filled air of the little room was dank with the smell of metal and fish. I leant over the side of the mattress and tried to throw up whatever had gone wrong inside me. Nothing came up. Both the boys’ beds were empty. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Someone dragged the door open and light slashed in.
I looked down and my sheets and dress were stained red. I sat shaking on the bed. A cold shock hit me like a wave. I was dying. This was blood. I looked about for a small dead baby, but there was only blood.
‘You’re not dying.’ Mam stood above me with her arms crossed.
‘Mam.’ My voice broke and I swallowed a sob. A deep sadness spread from my stabbing stomach. She didn’t care.
‘Arms up,’ she said. ‘Oona, stop crying.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Well, don’t start.’
I watched a blue string under the skin of her neck bounce.
‘Is this what happened to you? Is my baby going to die?’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Like your baby that died?’
Her slap landed hard on my cheek, stinging worse than my stomach.
‘I told you never to mention that.’
She yanked off my dress and pulled me up, tearing the sheet from my bed.
‘Here.’ She handed me a piece of cloth. ‘Put it in your knickers to catch the blood. There’s more. You’ll wash them at the end of the day.’
She stopped in the doorway, her back to me. ‘It’s the curse on all women. We all bear the shame. You’ll suffer it now like the rest of us.’
Being a woman meant I was red. Shame buried deep in me. I pulled the blanket over my head and curled in a ball.
* * *
The truth about Aislinn’s pregnancy spread fast, as all whispers did.
One evening, when the grey of day was being stolen by heather-coloured mist, she was gathering seaweed on the main shore. A few women were filling their baskets but not a one of them would look at Aislinn. I ignored Pegeen calling after me when I started down the beach towards her. Aislinn was changed from the free woman I’d seen swimming. Her dirty yellow hair was scooped up on her head, her upper body was wrapped in a brown shawl and she didn’t look at me, but kept bending for the red strands of kelp.
‘Oona,’ she said, without looking up. ‘You should go back to them.’
She lifted another long lock of weed from the shallows, her bare feet submerged.
Up the beach, the women had stopped their work and were huddled together, watching us.
‘People are talking about you,’ I said.
She darted a glance at me and I thought I saw a flicker of worry there.
‘They’re always talking but now
there’s something to it.’
She picked up her basket, ready to go. It was my last chance to ask her.
‘Aislinn, can two women . . . kiss?’
A small flicker on her lips. ‘Yes, Oona. They can do what they like in private.’
‘No, it’s not me.’
She stared and it felt like she saw deep into me, to the dark place I was afraid to see in myself.
‘Follow your heart, Oona,’ she said.
I nodded.
She walked away, up the shore and past the women, and they stumbled back and leered at her new shape.
‘Colm would turn in his grave,’ Pegeen said when I reached them again.
‘He’s not got a grave,’ I said. ‘It was a sea death.’
‘Aye, he’ll haunt her for ever now.’
An Immaculate Child
At church the silence of unspoken suspicion crackled through every Mass. Everyone thought it was Dad or some other man young enough who got the baby in Aislinn. Dad was known to speak kindly to Aislinn if he ever met her, but I never heard Mam accuse him, although she prayed more and went every day to clean the priest’s cottage.
Every Sunday Father Finnegan reminded us that all men are sinners but women are worse. He knew the rumours as well as anyone. Women are the root of all evil, he said. People sat up straight and swallowed his words like they were delivered from the mouth of God himself. Everyone wanted these words. They wanted God’s blessing for their hatred of Aislinn and in the long winter nights, with time to think and never a sight of her, their fear festered.
Throughout the rains and heavy skies my family kept by the fire as much as we could, eating dried fish and thin soup and stacking the embers with cow dung, saving the turf for the evenings when it was even colder. And through all those long days I watched Enda for some sign of what had passed between him and Felim, for what it meant. I searched for the courage to ask him but it always fled me. I would tell myself a man kissing a man was nothing. But the weight in my chest told me it was more real than anything that passed between myself and Felim.
On this fading afternoon Enda was reading aloud to us from Genesis. Dad snored softly in the nook. Kieran was mending a fish basket, although he wouldn’t need it till spring. Mam and I sewed by the light of the lamps. I’d not been out to see Aislinn and Felim for months, so I didn’t know if Aislinn’s baby had arrived. Since the neighbours were all shut indoors like us, I’d heard no news, only the odd muttering about the scandal of it.