The Island Child

by Molly Aitken

  ‘And I thought island life was hard.’

  He was good enough to laugh and wiped my forehead with a cold cloth and waffled on about his work and how his mother was taking good care of me. He said I would be fine.

  I stepped out of the bed and saw myself in the dressing-table mirror. My face was skeletal, like a starving gypsy horse. For months I’d forgotten to eat, putting Mrs Lightly’s dinners in the bin. I had no hunger in me. No hunger for anything.

  I was frozen and nothing sparked me alive. I couldn’t hold my baby or even look at her. I had nearly killed Joyce, taking her out into the winter with only her tiny romper, not even a pair of booties on her feet. That is not what mothers do. Even my mam knew that.

  I couldn’t bear to be near my child. To be reminded. I let Mrs Lightly do her work. She kept us apart. She knew.

  Pat knew too, but he would bring Joyce to me, prop her in my arms and, limp, she’d fall against me and my chest would hurt but no tears would come. I saw her face, already confused. Sometimes she’d wail. As the months passed she’d hold out her arms to him. And he would talk to her like she was grown, saying ‘This is your mommy’, and she would blink at him like she knew he didn’t understand what he was talking about but she was humouring him, to keep him happy. I did the same. I held her. And I couldn’t help but notice how warm she was in my cold arms. More months passed and she wriggled more, wriggled to get out of my cold grasp.

  I couldn’t look at him and he couldn’t look at me.

  * * *

  ‘Are you going to speak today?’ he’d ask me.

  I kept my mouth buttoned shut. It was the game he and I played. Me: the silent madwoman. Him: the questioner.

  At night I sometimes tried to cry, but there was no water in me to weep with.

  I was not stony-hearted, as Mrs Lightly thought, but I was afraid to open my mouth, afraid what might come roaring out, and once all that had been kept inside me was released, well, then I was afraid I would never see my child again. I couldn’t put words to the waves that drowned my mind. Not in English or Irish. Pat wanted me to speak so I’d be cured. He wanted me to be happy so I’d be a good mother. He wanted the wild island girl he first met. But she was long gone, if she was ever even real.

  ‘I feel nothing,’ I said. And he looked so sad.

  * * *

  Late at night I would lean over Joyce’s cot and watch her dreaming.

  I always kept the curtains ajar and the yellow glow from the street lamps would filter shadows across the little mound of her. In this shifting light I couldn’t see her nose, her mouth, and I could imagine she was Pat’s.

  In daylight, Joyce perched on Mrs Lightly’s lap, I saw all their faces, all the island men, and I had to look away. I’m sure Mrs Lightly saw the sickness on my lips. How the sight of my child turned my stomach. I know she judged me. I judged me too. I wished I could forget.

  I would dart up and take Joyce from her arms and she’d wail and reach out to the old woman and I would sit on the stairs in the hall, Joyce weeping in my arms, and press my face into her feathered hair and squeeze my eyes shut so I couldn’t see her.

  * * *

  Pat and I spent so little time alone together we forgot how to talk. One day in summer, he was driving me. I watched out the window as the grey-black of the road skimmed by. I didn’t care where we were going.

  He stopped the car on the edge of tall trees.

  ‘Look, do you see it?’ he said. Glinting between the branches was water, silver and black water. Ever since I came to this new place the closest thing I saw to the sea was a thin river.

  I opened the door and jumped out.

  ‘Oona,’ he called.

  ‘Yes.’ I turned back to him.

  He came to stand next to me, lifting a hand like he’d touch my face but dropped it again.

  ‘It’s a lake,’ he said.

  I didn’t look up at him but walked along the path towards the water. Rain softened my dress. He squelched through the mud behind me.

  The lake moved with falling drops. My heart pitched away from me. It was nothing like the sea that joined the sky at the horizon and whipped up into the air as if struggling to reach it. The ocean would never sit still and silent. Dead.

  I sank to my knees under a tree. Like my shadow, he was soft beside me, sinking down to the earth too. Take him away. I sent up a prayer like a wish to the sky, but he stayed, breathing behind me.

  ‘Do you miss your island?’ he said.

  ‘No.’ I stood up, pulled off my shoes, strode into the shallows and waited for the water to still.

  ‘You don’t miss your mom, your family?’

  ‘No.’ I turned to him to see if he knew what I meant, but he looked upset, confused. He didn’t understand.

  The rain moved too fast.

  * * *

  When we got back to his mother’s, Pat said I should write.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Anything you like. Why don’t you write about the island?’

  At first I ignored him. I cleaned the house with Mrs Lightly, but even though it was much bigger than the cottage it took little time to wash and dust. I would watch Joyce playing on the floor with her wooden bricks. Then one afternoon, while she was sleeping, I took out a piece of paper and wrote a letter to Enda, telling him I had come to Canada and about the snow and tasteless food. I didn’t post it, because I was sure he had left the island and I didn’t want Mam reading it. I tried to think who would know where he was, though, and put Felim’s name on the envelope and a small scrap of paper with my address on it and slid it in the postbox at the end of the street.

  * * *

  I read the books on Pat’s shelf, as often I slept better when I did. Joyce was sleeping better too. She cried less. Mrs Lightly kept Joyce in her room and it was far from the one I shared with Pat.

  I was just settling myself down on the bed with a book when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Will you come for a walk?’ he said.

  Pat and I walked down the road, away from the houses to where it was thick with leafy shrubs and the shade of adult trees. The wind was nippy and I wore only slacks and a blouse.

  ‘God,’ said Pat. ‘You’re so thin.’

  I held up my hands. They were long and white, but hadn’t they always been?

  ‘And you’re cold.’ He threw his coat around my shoulders, the light breath of his warmth still clinging to it.

  ‘I don’t know why women never wear a good thick jumper here,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘They do. In winter.’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’ I looked at my stiff leather shoes. I missed soft shoes.

  His fingers pressed into my shoulders and I was forced to look up and see him. His face was different, somehow caving into itself with blue shadows and lines in the wrong places.

  He stepped away and continued walking; light fell across his back. Soft rain dripped and then fell heavily.

  We ran to the shelter of tree and craned our necks towards the thrum of water on leaves. He looked at me and his face grew tight with feeling, as if a little part of him had broken off and fallen away. The rain fell through the branches.

  ‘I failed you, Oona,’ he said. ‘I thought bringing you here would be a good thing.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. I couldn’t have gone on with my life on Inis. I am here now but I wish I saw more of you.’

  ‘What else do you wish?’

  ‘I want to see the forests that grow in Canada.’

  ‘Let’s start again,’ he said. He chewed the nail of his thumb, let his hand drop and fixed me with the long, blue gaze of his that had hit me when I was washing the clothes in the sea on Inis. ‘Oona,’ he said. ‘Will you be my wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I will.’

  On the horizon of the underworld, the girl began to see glimmers of light.

  ‘Is it morning?’ she asked her silver-bearded husband, and he said, ‘Not yet, my sweet young wife, but
soon, I hope. We will go to my orchard and you can eat as much of my fruit as you like.’

  ‘Oh, I am glad. I am so very hungry.’

  * * *

  Far away from her sleepless daughter, the mother in her withered land committed the greatest sin. She stole a baby from his mother and dipped him in flames to make sure he was strong enough to resist the growth and questioning she now knew moved each new life beyond her earth. And for a while, the mother told herself she was happy with this stolen child.

  Mam and Dad

  ‘You’re back,’ says a voice.

  I lift my head from where it rests against Dad’s warm leg.

  The room is dark, lit only by the sparking fire and the thin light from the tiny boxed windows, but I can still make out the girl in the doorway of the little room. She is familiar, only a few years older than Joyce.

  ‘You look just like Aislinn,’ I whisper.

  She frowns but says nothing.

  ‘Etain,’ Dad says. ‘This is my daughter. She’s come home.’

  Etain lifts a stool and sits beside us.

  ‘How does she look?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Like her mam,’ Etain says.

  ‘She’s waiting for you.’ Etain takes Dad’s other hand.

  Dad clutches my hand tighter.

  ‘What is it?’ I whisper to him, although Etain is staring at both of us, listening easily.

  He shakes his head.

  Etain lets go of his hand, glides to the table and pours the tea, three cups.

  ‘Dad,’ I whisper. ‘When was Joyce here?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon. She sat with me like you now. She’s a strong girl, you know.’

  ‘Did she say where she’s staying?’

  ‘I don’t know, love.’

  ‘Here.’ Etain gives me a cup. ‘Sit and drink it, you need the strength.’ She is nothing like Aislinn. She puts one on a little stool next to Dad and guides his hand towards it. He smiles gently.

  ‘You were with Enda, love, weren’t you?’ His grip on my hand is nearly breaking my fingers.

  ‘I was, Dad.’

  ‘Was he happy?’

  ‘He enjoyed his life. He had a lot of friends. Enda was loved.’

  ‘I don’t think he knew I loved him, Oona.’

  ‘He knew, Dad.’

  ‘I’ll always regret I never said it to his face.’

  His hands are fumbling up my arms. I understand and bend my head close to his.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘I’m glad you got away and had a good life. You take care of yourself and that girl.’

  ‘I will.’ I kiss his cheek and he claps his hand to it, smiling briefly.

  Etain perches against the table, watching me, winding an escaped strand of whitish hair around her finger.

  ‘Will you join us?’ I say, and nod at the third cup on the table behind her.

  ‘Oh, no. This is not for me.’ She drops a drip of milk into it, picks it up and treads into the small room. I strain to hear voices but there isn’t a sound from inside.

  The kitchen is the same: turf puffing; oil lamp on the sideboard; the dresser with Virgin Mary watching over; the picture of the Sacred Heart with the red candle lit in front of it, bad luck to let the flame go out; the milk and water cans beside the back door. All that is new is a cooker, ugly and out of place among these old familiars. My mother lingers here like a ghost.

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ Dad whispers.

  ‘She’s ready to see you,’ Etain says.

  Tea scalds my hand. I swallow a cry.

  ‘Oona.’ His head is darting about, searching for me. I reach for his cheek. There’s only a day’s stubble. Etain or someone else must be shaving him. Someone has been caring for him and it’s not been me. The years I’ve missed rush back to drown me. There’s too much. Too much has happened to him and yet I know at the same time it’s been so little. An island life is a hard one, but unchanging in its hardness.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I say, bringing myself back to the man in front of me.

  He shakes his head. ‘I never should’ve told her. I told your mam and I knew, I knew how she’d see God’s work in it. But she’s not well now. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?’

  ‘It was never your fault,’ I say.

  I kiss Dad and he’s smiling and I feel a smile answering.

  ‘I’ll be back to you,’ I whisper to him and step into the dark of the little room.

  ‘So you’re back,’ a voice says from the depths.

  ‘Mam?’ I say.

  She is sitting upright. A cup steams in her hand. Her face is just the same and wholly different. She is old. Her face is frozen in a stony hardness, carved-out eyes, a gouge of mouth.

  I’m pegged to the floor.

  ‘Well?’ Her voice is smaller than I remember, but it still cuts through me. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘How do you feel?’ I ask.

  She says nothing, just watches me, her hand clawing the blankets at her throat.

  ‘I saw Kate,’ I say. ‘She told me you were sick.’

  She blinks rapidly but still says nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye,’ I say. ‘I married Michael.’

  ‘Him?’ She laughs like I’d taken up with a tinker.

  ‘And I have my own business. I make clothes like I used to with you. And I have a daughter. She’s strong-willed and kind and a storyteller. She’s studying at university. She’s nineteen . . .’

  I want to sit down but there’s no chair. The room is stuffy and my breath catches in me. My mother’s lips are tight together. Her wet black eyes are fixed on the dirty dot on the wall where Kieran threw a sod at Enda.

  I need to go outside. The air is loud with the past, with our unspoken memories. I go to the pint-sized window, pull back the curtain and peer out. The wall is deep, the view green grass and grey rock. As a child I would stare out this window at the freedom beyond it; all it held seemed full of possibilities. Now I see it’s so small. What I imagined for myself could only ever be small because I had so little to compare this view to.

  Behind me, Etain coughs and I try not to jump. I didn’t realise she was in the room.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ my mother says in Irish to Etain, not me. I don’t turn, or show any sign I remember my mother tongue. I am still me. I am still Oona.

  I hear Etain’s light step and the creak of the bed as she sits down. This is it. My mother never lost a daughter. She just replaced a sinful girl with an angel.

  ‘She’s here to speak with you, Mary,’ Etain says.

  ‘She can speak all she wants but I won’t talk with her. Dirty Devil’s child.’

  I don’t turn. ‘I didn’t come to speak to you,’ I say in Irish. The wind waves the grass outside, beckoning. ‘I thought you were dead. I’m here for my daughter.’

  A gentle, indrawn breath: Etain.

  ‘I met her,’ my mother says.

  I turn to face her. She is shrivelled and angry in the bed.

  ‘Where is Joyce?’

  Etain takes my mother’s teacup and places it on the floor. She strokes a wrinkled hand. A part of me wants to touch my mother too, to rid myself of the memory of her always flinching away from me. A part of me wants her to forgive me but I see now she never can.

  ‘She was asking questions,’ my mother says. ‘She was thinking she’d find her father here.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I told her she might well meet him but who was to know who he was? There were a lot of men. She asked about you too.’

  ‘Mam, where is she?’

  ‘I sent her to Éag.’ She clutches her chest, her eyes watering. She’s in pain.

  ‘You sent my daughter to the dead island.’

  ‘Where you lost your decency.’

  I want to spit on her but I sit on the bed. She flinches.

  ‘I do think I forgive you for my childhood, but I don’t for sending my child to a dan
gerous place on her own.’

  Her hands flutter about the blanket, her eyes darting anywhere but at me.

  ‘I never wanted you to go there,’ she says to her chest.

  ‘No, but you never wanted me to go anywhere.’ I stand up. ‘I won’t be staying. You’re welcome to her,’ I say to Etain.

  In the kitchen, I kneel beside Dad. ‘I’ll be back to you when I find Joyce.’

  ‘Where will you sleep, littlie?’

  All I can do is squeeze his hand.

  New Beginning

  When I went into her room Joyce was playing alone. She was two years old, hair neatly brushed by Mrs Lightly, and face spotless. Children were never meant to be so clean. She glanced up at me hovering in the doorway, rubbed her eye and turned back to her wooden blocks. I was a tolerated stranger.

  I knelt down on the floor beside her and she nodded and handed me a brick. I placed it on the messy pile she had built and she nodded again and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and pulling her onto my lap. She squealed, but didn’t cry. I pressed my nose against her head. She smelled of tea tree oil.

  ‘Will you be all right on your own?’ Mrs Lightly asked. I lifted my face from Joyce’s warm curls. I hadn’t seen my mother-in-law come in. She was frowning.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be all right by myself,’ I said.

  ‘I meant with Joyce.’

  ‘I know what you meant.’

  Mrs Lightly’s cheeks reddened a little. ‘I’ll just give her a cuddle before you go.’ She held out her arms and reluctantly I handed Joyce over.

  She kissed Joyce’s soft cheek, smoothed the child’s hair and dress.

  I could think of nothing to say. Mrs Lightly had so easily seen into me and seen my struggles and I was glad Joyce was still so small and wouldn’t know how some days I’d found it so hard to love her.

  Mrs Lightly watched us from a window as we climbed into the car. I waved, but I couldn’t see if she waved back.

  Joyce sat on my lap sucking a piece of cheese and humming to herself. We sped down the highway and onto smaller and smaller roads. Pat was strangely hopeful, and I caught the smiles from him. It would be better away from his mother. Every now and then he reached out to touch one of us.