by Molly Aitken
When I climbed down from my tree Joyce was curled up on my coat with a book.
‘Joyce.’
‘Mmm.’ She didn’t look up.
‘Will you go and get your dad?’
‘Why?’
‘Just get him. I need to talk to him and you stay at the house. We won’t be long.’
She pursed her lips and snapped the book shut.
‘Okay.’
I stood bare-armed, bare-legged and barefoot in my light cotton dress. His face reflected green, sky, the edge of the world I had just, almost, touched.
‘Oona?’ His voice was heavy with the pain I’d caused, my years of distance. Questions hung from him like overripe fruit.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘It’s all right.’
I pulled him to me and kissed him on the mouth to try to vanish the pain, swallow it. He kissed me back, uncertain, gentle. Something inside me opened and I gave a small cry into his open mouth. He stepped away and looked down at me and pulled me against him, where I sobbed into his chest.
* * *
Some days when we were chopping vegetables together he’d run a hand against my forearm and ask me if it was okay. Sometimes it was.
Once, when we were out in the garden pulling weeds and Joyce was tugging the heads off the daisies, he worked close beside me and I let my head fall onto his shoulder, and we stayed that way for a long time.
The first time I turned to him in bed my body was stiff and I didn’t know where to touch him. He lay still and I took my clothes off and lay against his pyjamas. I was drifting asleep when he placed a light kiss on my forehead. It fluttered through me. Another time, I put my lips on his and slowly moved his hands across my back and down. I showed him. After, we slept close together and one morning I woke and turned to him again. I peeled off his pyjama shirt with fumbling fingers.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘We don’t have to.’
‘I’m just nervous and I don’t know what I’m doing.’
He kissed me softly. ‘Okay,’ he said, and touched me the way I’d shown him.
When we came into the kitchen Joyce was eating a piece of bread and gave me a curious look, her head to one side, and I was glad I was taller than her so I didn’t have to meet her eye.
In the evenings, when dinner was finished and Joyce was asleep, Pat and I found each other under the trees. We grasped and pulled at clothes and limbs, not knowing whose was whose. The leaves were in their autumn fire. When the frost crept back we continued meeting but at home, in the artificial warmth of the bedroom with the buzz of the fridge downstairs.
* * *
I knew from the first moment my son began to grow. I felt him unfurling, new and so green inside me.
I found Pat in his shed, bent over a half-made chair, forehead grooved, making a gentle thwacking noise as he hammered a chisel into the wood. I breathed in the usual smell of shavings and varnish, enjoyed the ordered mess.
He put down his tools and opened his arms.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I need to tell you something.’
Fear worried the crow’s feet at his eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Oh.’
‘Are you surprised?’
‘I didn’t think.’ There was dust in his hair. He stayed where he was.
‘You don’t seem happy.’
‘I just want you to be . . . Aren’t you afraid it’ll be like last time?’
The draught from the open door made me shiver.
‘I will manage. I’m stronger now. We’re stronger, aren’t we?’
He crossed the room and placed his hands on my arms. ‘Whatever happens,’ he said, ‘we’ll be fine.’
Adair
The winter came again and snow pressed against the shell of the house, piling in walls along the edges of the forest, sealing us in. Pat had to dig his way out in the mornings. That winter he was often away working in the city and Joyce was often sick.
My belly expanded like a swollen moon beneath my dress. This pregnancy was different. He was larger, realer. I could feel him, gentle, but full of life. Ready to be free.
He would look like Pat. A child of the forest.
‘I don’t want to leave you.’
I was in the kitchen, darkened by the snow in the windows. Pat’s pale face hovered above mine.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked.
‘We’ll be fine,’ I said, stroking the mound of our baby.
He kissed my cheek, prickling it with his fuzzy jaw, and squeezed my hand.
‘I’ll phone if anything happens,’ I said.
Nothing was going to happen. It was two weeks before he was due. We would be gone to the city in a week to wait for his arrival there.
Pat smiled and stood a moment more watching me. I wanted to run to him so his arms could wrap around the hugeness that was now me, but I was too slow. He was gone.
It was dark for many hours. I cooked a stew, kept the fire alight and read a book. Joyce coughed and snuffled and kept asking for tea.
In the late afternoon we were sat in the kitchen, where it was warmest, and Joyce began weeping again. She hadn’t learned to hide her feelings yet, even though she was eight.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. I wish Dad was here.’
‘So do I.’
We liked each other more when Pat was with us. He had a gift for loving us with blindness. But now she was off school we had to spend most of our time alone together.
I gave her a tea towel to wipe her face. She sat on the floor with the wooden ark and all its tiny twin animals Pat made scattered around her.
‘Why don’t you tidy them up?’ I asked.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘When I was your age, I was already mending clothes and collecting cockles on the shore.’
She threw a sheep across the room and it clunked against the wall.
‘Fair enough,’ I said.
My mind transformed from irritation to peace. It was happening more and more; one moment I was angry, the next blissful. I floated out to the other room to watch the snow fall through the big window, resting one hand on my belly. I’d been feeling low aches all afternoon, but pain was separate from my baby and me; like the snow all around, it couldn’t hurt us.
Joyce coughed behind me.
‘Mom.’ Her voice was soft and grating like sandpaper over wood. Her hands twisted together and apart. Snot dripped from her nose. I watched, waiting for her to tell me why I’d been disturbed. She looked at her feet in their knitted socks, bottom lip quivering, and turned and padded out again.
In the kitchen she was sat close to the stove. I picked up a horse, polished to a dark sheen, the grains of wood forming a rough pony’s coat. I ran the smooth neck up and down my nose, humming.
From somewhere outside I heard bird song, lilting, sad notes. Why was it out in the dark and ice? Why wasn’t it tucked up in its nest?
‘Do you hear that bird?’ I asked.
Joyce shook her head.
‘You must. It’s so clear.’
‘I don’t hear it.’
‘It’s beautiful . . . and sad. Come on. Let’s go outside to listen. Come on.’
I held out my hand but she looked at it and her face was full of fear.
‘Let’s go together.’
Her blue eyes ignited and I reached out to take her hand. Water splashed out of me and spilled across the floor, drowning the shiny animals two-by-two and splashing Joyce’s socks with damp flecks. She stared at me in horror.
‘Joyce,’ I said. ‘Get a clean sheet from the cupboard.’
She scrambled away from me, slipping on the wet floor.
‘I need to phone Daddy,’ she said.
‘Did you hear what I said? A towel. Now.’
‘You said sheet.’
‘Get me something. Your brother’s coming.’
She ran out of the room.
I should
phone Pat, I thought, as I shuffled towards the door, but a pain pinned me where I squatted, ripping up my spine.
A stack of sheets appeared before me, Joyce’s hands grasping them.
‘Spread one on the floor, between my legs,’ I screamed, and the sheets tumbled onto the tiles. She ran from the room. I heard the front door open and slam.
‘Joyce,’ I shouted.
I went slowly into the hall and wrenched the front door open.
‘Joyce?’
The snow whipped in white spirals but the black behind it and the ice stung my eyes. I turned to go back inside and saw her crouched under the window.
‘Joyce, get inside now. You’ll die of cold.’
She shoved her hands under her armpits.
‘Joyce, I’m about to push out a baby. Get in here now and help me.’
‘I hate you,’ she whispered.
I shut the door.
I tottered around the kitchen, panting and waiting for her to come back. The pains were chasing each other, faster and faster.
After forty minutes on the kitchen clock, the door creaked and a little white face lit up like a flame in the darkness.
‘I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘Joyce, I need you to telephone Daddy at work. I don’t know the number.’
‘I know it.’
The pains swelled and collapsed. The petal of a face was still there, dewdrop eyes wide.
If Mam could birth me all alone, I would meet my son without any guiding hands. But Mam had the Virgin come to her and cut me out and sing sweet songs to guide me. My boy had only me.
‘I told Daddy. He’s coming.’
Feathers stroking my hand.
Pains billowed downwards. I screamed and squatted and pushed and pushed and on it went.
And then he was coming, a baby dropping into the cradle of my hands. He was bright white. Dead still.
‘Baby? Baby!’ My voice shouting.
I rubbed his back and he coughed and cried. Tears dropped onto his tiny body.
With the sheet, I wiped away the blood and water. He was awake. My baby. He waved strong arms and legs. I crouched on the floor, laughing. He was warm against me, the soft round head smooth against my skin. I wrapped him in a giant towel to keep away the cold.
I waited for the rest to fall out of me. The cord tied us together. I panted and shook but he was quiet as the snowflakes falling outside.
There was a click of light that exposed a child with yellow hair in a white nightdress and the horror of my blood and waters on the floor.
‘Mom? Can you see me now?’
The baby mewled and I kissed his head. It was slick with something. With me.
‘He’s dirty,’ she said. ‘Should I pour a basin?’
Small, bare feet slapped by. The sound of water splashing. I jumped when a sponge touched his head, and took it to wipe him down. Small hands ran a cloth over my legs. A sniffle.
‘Joyce, you’re sick. Go back to bed. He can’t catch it.’
‘He’s a boy?’ she whispered. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Adair.’
‘Oh.’
‘It means from the oak tree ford. Go to bed now.’
She dropped a shawl over my shoulders and creaked up the stairs.
I used a chair to help me stand and padded slowly to the hall, warming him close against me. Through the window the moon was full and milky. The snow had stopped falling. Lights were out. I sat in Pat’s big wooden chair and watched the bright night.
Adair’s breath was gentle against my breast. He slept. His eyelashes were white, his downy hair conker-brown. My heart was near breaking with the love for him.
Yellow lights blazed. A car. He woke at the roar of the engine and began to cry.
‘Oona.’ Pat’s arms were around us.
‘We’ve a son,’ I said.
He kissed my cheek, his beard wet with snow or tears.
‘Oona, you’ve done it.’ He was crying. ‘The doctor isn’t coming.’
‘It’s all right. We’re all right.’
He laughed into my neck. I felt his smile. ‘What happened?’ he whispered. ‘Where’s Joyce?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s all right. Sit back down.’
‘I want to sleep now.’
‘I’ll take you both upstairs.’
‘But the kitchen.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘We need to cut the cord.’
I nodded.
With a thumb, he stroked Adair’s head. In bed, I kept one hand curled around his little foot.
When I came down in the morning, Adair held to my chest, all signs of the birth had been scrubbed away and a nurse was waiting to check we were healthy; but I didn’t need her to tell us, I knew we were.
The plum did not quench the girl’s hunger. She made her husband build them a little house close enough to the orchard so she could wander out every morning to eat. She sliced them into fruit salads and served them in a big blue bowl. Her husband made their home entirely of wood, carving flowers and birds into the beams.
The nights in her new house were too short. Sometimes when her husband climbed in beside her his eyes were lit like coal and he would burn her with his touch. At other times he kissed her breasts with petal-soft lips and after they made love she fell asleep like a child in his warm embrace.
Often he was both men, fierce and gentle, and it was both who fathered their children.
The girl’s belly grew quickly, bulging into being almost overnight like the fruit that hung in the orchard, and soon she gave birth to twins, the daughter pale and quiet, the son pink-cheeked and laughing.
For a time they were happy playing and growing in the garden.
For a time.
A Father
Pat’s face swims above me. He is lit up by the fire in Aislinn’s hearth. His beard is soft with rainwater. I reach up to him but he straightens and steps away.
I’m lying on the floor in front of the spitting turf.
‘Are you really here?’ I say, pushing myself up. ‘Is Joyce with you?’
‘No.’
No, no, because she is far away on Éag with Felim and the dead and I drove her to them.
The room is dark, the shadows crowding in towards the fire, and he has pulled back into them, hidden.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.
‘Joyce asked me to come here,’ he says. ‘She phoned my mom’s two days ago.’ He’s looking at me, at every sorry bedraggled bit. ‘Why didn’t you wait for me?’
‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ I say.
‘I was so worried. You should have told me the truth.’
‘It’s over now, isn’t it?’ The children who tied us together are gone now. ‘I’m sorry.’
He crosses the room again, and for a moment I am hopeful, but he prods the fire with his foot. The damp turf is already hissing out.
I have never seen him worn so thin.
‘Have you been eating?’
‘Have you?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘I brought food,’ he says.
‘How did you know I was in here?’ I ask.
‘A fisherman told me.’
I rub my cheeks to bring some feeling back and nudge myself closer to the warmth. He is here beside me and I still can’t find a way to say anything true. He strides to the opposite side of the room, tapping the ground with his thick shoes, and I remember him wandering Inis with his camera, talking to everyone he met, the same as all the other tourists but special too because we had saved him from the storm, from death.
‘What did Joyce tell you on the phone?’ I say.
‘Joyce just said she was safe.’
‘But she’s on Éag.’
‘I know.’
There’s almost no shelter on Éag and cold kills.
I leap up, crossing the room in three strides, and fling the door open. A wall of water hits me. The black blinds me. I can see not
hing, no lump of a rocky island out at sea, no sea at all, only the rain. There is nothing I can do, no way to help her, so I send out a silent prayer just like I used to do when I was little.
‘Please God or Mary, keep her safe.’
The sky howls at me like it’s laughing. ‘Aislinn?’ I say. ‘Aislinn, help me. Please.’
He shuts the door. His hands on my shoulders steer me back to the hearth, his lips say words in my ear and I want to scream at him and shatter his calmness. I spin away from him, turn to look back, but he just bends to tend the fire. There’s a thunk as a sod hits the embers. The thatch drips; the roar of the ocean is so close.
‘We left them to struggle and survive on their own,’ I say. ‘There was nothing kind or God-fearing about how people treated them.’
He turns to me. ‘Who do you mean?’
‘Aislinn and Felim. We were all terrible to them. We ignored them and burned their home. And I never tried to help them, not really. I didn’t think to bring them food. I didn’t talk to Felim about what was going on with him. I don’t know when I stopped talking.’
I walk to the window that now, without shutters, is just a gaping hole where the rain cuts in.
‘It’s all been a lie,’ I say.
Water pricks my face and I keep my eyes shut so I won’t see him. I listen to the whoops of the storm.
‘Pat, you’re not Joyce’s father.’
‘Will you not look at me?’ he says.
I can’t move and he doesn’t touch me to guide me back to him.
I turn and he’s breathing through his fingers, taking sharp gusts of air.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he says.
‘I was afraid you’d leave us.’
‘How could you think I would leave you?’
‘I couldn’t do it without you. I was no good at mothering her, but you always found it so easy and she loved you. We wouldn’t have survived if you went.’