As You Were

by Elaine Feeney

  ‘Ah, fuck . . . Loveen, I don’na believe it,’ Margaret Rose said, looking in earnest at the taller girl who shot her a sharp look. ‘Are ya joking me? Fuck this. I thought this had all stopped. Again?’

  ‘Yeah, he is, like, I really wanted to tell him to fuck off for himself, but neither yarself or Daddy are at home now and I just didn’t think ’twould be the best thing ta do. Ya know. Bringing bother.’ Michaela lifted her tiny shoulders forwards in a hunch, and one of the spaghetti straps fell down along her narrow arm.

  ‘Lave it, Mic . . .’ Niquita said, pulling her sister by the arm, and when Michaela resisted she punched her where the strap now lay, giving her sister a dead arm.

  ‘Ouch, fuck sake, take it handy . . . I’m only trying ta help ya,’ Michaela said, rubbing her arm, then shaking it vigorously in an attempt to try and wake it up.

  ‘Ya OK, love?’ Margaret said to Niquita, nodding slowly.

  ‘Help? Yeah, right,’ Niquita said to Michaela. ‘Ah yeah, I s’pose. Yeah, I’m OK, Mam,’ she said, dropping her head and shaping her fingers into childish knots.

  ‘Look, yar not OK, tell her . . . I saw them,’ Michaela said, ‘. . . on the wall outside Neary’s.’

  Niquita lunged at her sister, twisting her arm up behind her back, and tried to gag her mouth with her other hand. Michaela shoved her tongue through her fingers and continued to blab.

  ‘Back at Neary’s? What were ya doing there? Fuck me, haven’t I bloody well told ye all to stay ways from it?’ Margaret Rose said quickly, her face red with temper. ‘I’ve asked ya both not to be hanging there . . . I must have said it a million times. Jesus, if ye’d only listen ta me . . .’ She raised one eye to the ceiling. The other stayed fixed ahead.

  Both girls looked crestfallen.

  ‘Look, I am trying my best ta protect ya both, but I canny do it if ye won’t listen ta me, tisn’t trying ta make life difficult far ye . . .’ Margaret Rose took a deep inhalation, red circles appearing on her chest and the side of her face, then she lay back on her pillows. ‘I have ta try ta keep ye both safe. Safe as I can. Well, that little prick . . . I knew damn well he’d go down this road . . .’ Both of her eyes narrowed.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mammy,’ the taller one said.

  ‘I’m sorry too . . . ya know, far going there, but like that’s literally where everywan’s hanging out,’ Michaela said, whispering cautiously. ‘It’s just dat all our friends go there.’

  ‘Everywan? Who’s everywan?’ Margaret Rose shouted, sitting up again. ‘I warned ye before about everywan, bad news hanging out there, the place is not fit far . . . far rats, and look what’s happened? No wan of us there ta protect ye is all is all . . . that’s all. I’ll just be worrying now . . . worried sick.’

  Margaret Rose took another deep breath and composed herself, recognising perhaps that there’d be no more blather from the girls if she chastised them over spilt milk. Or that she was passing the spot of parent warning that entered into unnecessary fear and would make her daughters overly cautious to live out their lives with some semblance of independence.

  But Michaela was not stopping. ‘An’ them girls of the Lally’s was walking past . . . and Johnny starts at Nick, calling her bad words.’

  ‘What kind of words?’ Margaret Rose asked.

  ‘No, please, don’na ask me ta say them again . . . just names, like . . . bad names.’

  ‘Did ya do anything? Or say anything?’

  ‘Yeah . . . well, Nick like, she like told him ta stop, but he walks right up ta her and like made this kind of face . . .’ Michaela moved her head up and down and leaned over her mother, with her hands behind her back. ‘And then,’ she whispered, quickly, unlocking the hands that were behind her back as she shoved Margaret Rose gently to imitate young Jonathan, ‘he pushed her clean off the high wall . . . harder like than that . . . then pretends it was all an accident.’

  ‘He didn’t mean it, he really didn’t . . .’ Niquita said, quickly and breathless.

  ‘Shit.’ Margaret Rose, then composing herself. ‘He push ya hard?’

  She listened to the details of the shoving-off-the-wall and the name-calling while giving the girls some biscuits. She listened to their sobs that turned into a flushed nervous laughter, they made shapes to leave and said they would be back tomorrow and every evening, laying on Mammy’s bed until Margaret Rose was home in her kitchen sitting on the same couch she fell off and with the stove lit and minding little Evan again. And just as it was Falling Asleep Finally Time, Niquita seemed unsure about making a break out the door, and suddenly began to sob miserably.

  ‘I’m late.’

  The vestal virgin. Shit.

  It was awful and she was late and there was no sign of her friend atalltalltall, sobbing still, shoulders heaving, and Johnny had told her before doing it that it couldn’t happen the first time, he had made her so sure, convinced her, because if it did happen the first time, it would be because she wasn’t a virgin at all, and that it would be because she was a slut, and so she believed him, because she is a virgin . . . was one, but she was sure Jonathan O’Keefe would still definitely maybe marry her, though he couldn’t wait any longer, because there was a long queue of good-looking wans of the Lally’s ready for him, and she knew deep down in the place where women find answers, for she was soon a woman, and all the bother and blather that was coming down on her, but for now it was maybe all over, she didn’t know, still, a part of her was convinced he’d still marry her and they could tell a white lie to make it all much better. Pretend the baby came early. Or something. But a part of her wasn’t convinced at all, and she was so very sorry. She heaved. Then retched. And she was also starting to get fat already, well, more sort of thickened around the waist, bloated, but her Michaela felt it was nothing good Spanx wouldn’t solve. Margaret Rose rolled her eyes to heaven, and of course Niquita wasn’t happy about this at all, because now he was laughing at her most of the time for being fat and seemed to be trying to make a pure fool out of her, and she remembered what happened to Auntie Krystal when her waist started to thicken like this and the wedding dress was a fiasco and no one ever let her live it down, as if everything that happened in her life and the lives of those close to her, good or bad afterwards, was all her own fault for bringing sin in the door. And Mammy should really get up out of bed, now this minute, because the wedding would need to be tomorrow or at the very latest next week to stop everyone knowing that she had a thickened waist. And Niquita began hyperventilating and shaking and shaking. Margaret Rose pressed her daughter about who knew. No one knew. Except Michaela. She sobbed. She knew right away. And now Mammy. And she flicked her eyes downwards. Promise. Swear to God and hope to die.

  And there it was all over the Sherlocks, shame. It lay heavy in the middle of my marriage bed every night, shame, and Hegs had a face of it, shame danced slowly all over his sad hands as they lay below his belly button, shame, and Shane couldn’t tell us one way or another, but I felt it by looking at him. Jane was too astray in the head maybe to feel it. But it dropped in and out of her like KerPlunk marbles. You needed to be fully astray in the head not to have it. It was the most contagious thing inside and outside Hospital.

  Margaret Rose knew exactly what was ahead of her young daughter as she cradled Niquita’s head into her breasts to muffle her crying.

  We were all absolutely silent for some time.

  Later as both girls eventually slipped into the night, Michaela leading Niquita out the doors of the Ward, rubbing her hand up and down along her sister’s spine, Margaret Rose called her daughter back for one last question.

  ‘Niquita, love, come here . . . just a sec . . . how late?’ she whispered.

  At two a.m., a time reserved for bringing news of the dead, Margaret Rose Sherlock made three phone calls.

  *

  I played football as a kid in the large field beside the cowshed, repeatedly kicking the heavy leather sack up and back against the pebbledash. My grandmother would somet
imes cycle past on her bicycle, and tell me that football isn’t a game for a girl and neither is the way I ride the ponies astride not sidesaddle. I took no notice of her, but her comments about manners and womanhood lingered. When we go to Dooley’s restaurant on a summer’s evening, I order the Farmhouse salad, to remind me of her. I take the cutlery in my hands, like she showed me, elbows inwards, though this isn’t easy as I have a very broad back, and I usually give up halfway through and lump my elbows up on the table, but I try, for a little while, to be ladylike, like she asked. I notice they don’t pickle the beetroot like she used to, so that they look like jellied fruit delights on my plate. I drink gin, because this is the way of me. Alex drinks tea, because this is the way of him.

  After Magpie, I was so tempted to lean into Alex in bed with his tea, and tell him all about it, about being terrified, terminal, but I thought it was a dreadfully selfish thing to do to another person, fill him up with worry and uncertainty, to try and make him figure out death, because that’s a dead end, a spiral, even though it’s always there, inside us all, death, creepy and skulking around. I thought if I waited, that I might have some words of consolation to follow Magpie. So I waited, and waited, as big yellow and white daisies returned their withered heads into the tarmac, ditches that overflowed with beginning again started to hush and by September’s end the green blackberries ripened to a deep purple as wild heathers bloomed.

  In the fields among cow shit and wet yellow moss, we’d swing a hurl and knock a sliotar back and over to each other, my brothers and me. The ball came back harder and faster than it went from me, and often struck me hard, between my floating ribs, vulnerable, the pelvis reaching up to defend. The smash of the ball to the hollow made me cry and fall over, like children are allowed to do, panting uncontrollably.

  This empty sack is now riddled and eating me. Great peach. Brown stone. The body remembers.

  Ah, what in the hell would girls know about sport, go in, go inside to your mother and ready us some food, and then come back out and you could whitewash the gable end of the cowshed, I’ll mix it for you, because that’s a terrible job entirely, the mixing, and one you’d probably get wrong, you wouldn’t know the right measures. You’re always drawing attention to yourself. It’s embarrassing to be straight about it. And why haven’t you any friends? But sure who’d be your friend? You can be very difficult. Give up those books. You have a lovely face. Use it. You should try to be less difficult. It’s an awful way to be in the world. Now g’wan, inside, ready the food. And come back out. And do a proper job, not the cunt of a job you did the last time.

  I’d get the measure perfect.

  Well now and I declare to Christ the light is closing in on us, so if you bring the sandwiches to the field and then I’ll have the lime mixed and you can get on with your job as quick as you like. I can’t trust you with the mix. Quick.

  Quickening.

  Good girl.

  I could tell the size of the field by looking at it. The square foot of the cowshed to the litres of the mix. Meters. Grammes. Kilo. Milli. Centi. Magnitude. Feet. Inches. Pounds. Hands. Length. Mass. Time. Electromagnetism. Thermodynamic temperature. Luminous intensity. Quantity of substance. Sfumato. Fast-dying fresco. Warm water. Oil and Venecolori. Lapis Lazuli. Colorito vs Disegno. Caravaggio’s painting was found. Hanging over the fireplace in a dining room. Society of Jesus. Hydrated lime. Near Dublin. It was the hands they recognised. Salt. The Taking of Christ. Telltales. Light. Closes. In. Around. Us. Mixture will be thinner than paint. Stings my eyes. Judas. Two graduate students found a mention of Caravaggio’s painting in a notebook in Italy. Be meticulous. Notice things. Cut in the corners with precision.

  Ah, sure what would a girl know about mixing and painting. Amn’t I right, lads?

  Father added the hydrated lime hurriedly to the salt water – instead of first dissolving it in warm water, he hadn’t the patience – clumsily, as every job. I rolled the whitewash all over the gable of the cowshed. Mother arrived in a pixie with her overcoat and cut in the narrow spots for me, we stayed silent the whole time. When I was finished, I dumped the leftover contents of the whitewash into the neighbour’s field, where Father never looked and the neighbour never told. He had, of course, got the mixture wildly wrong. We could all keep our secrets around him, safe inside our heads, until they’d leak into all our cells and their memory, their future prints, would seep out, like all noxious poison does eventually.

  Chapter 7

  First Call.

  ‘Bernie . . . Hello . . . Bernie . . . now look here, I know that Paddy is with you . . . don’na mind asking where I got yar number and ya gone all public with it on Facebook . . . I have people . . . watching. I have it, finally . . . that’s all that matters . . . I know where you are and I have no problem sending the Maughans over ta sort the pair of ye . . .’

  Pause.

  ‘What? Are ya mad . . . they’ll kill Paddy . . . we both know it, yar not doing too good hiding . . . game’s up now . . . ah, will ya stop yar shitehawking . . . no, I won’na . . . not if ya send him back . . . tomorrow . . .’

  Short pause.

  ‘Otherwise they’ll cause big trouble . . . listen here . . . yar only getting wan warning . . . ah, here now, you and I’s been around the block . . .’ She spat. ‘And we knows that man needs something with a bit more in her pocket than you . . . ya won’na hold on to him . . . so go and buy yourself a strong packet of cigarettes . . . tell him to be on that ferry tomorrow . . .’

  Pause.

  ‘I’ll make big trouble, Bernie . . . ya, I’m in Hospital . . . how ja think I am? Now you’ll be filled with bad bother if he’s not back . . . ya don’na want that on your head . . . or in yar heart . . . ya fucken trollop . . . Hello? Hello? Bernie? Ja hear me? I’m only giving ya wan warning . . .’

  Long pause.

  ‘Ah, here now . . . aren’t ya some fool . . . they’ll do anything far a dying sister . . . do you think it, do ya, ya do, yeah? . . . Well, I’ll make ya think it now, I really will, you’ll be thinking then for a long time . . .’

  Pause.

  ‘. . . Well . . . I felt sarry far ya . . .’

  Margaret Rose sneezed.

  Pause.

  ‘And. Him. I will . . . and ya knows I will . . . ya might be his hoor but ya’ll never be his wife.’

  Second Call.

  ‘Wedding’s off now, O’Keefe . . . ja hear me? Hello? Ya, it’s me . . . Margaret Rose . . . Let that be an end ta it.’

  Pause.

  ‘Look . . . I warned you before about name-calling and the passing yarself round yar doing.’

  Pause.

  ‘Ah sthap, ma brothers said they’re watching ya . . . ya little prick . . . Niquita’s our girl and she’s easily led . . . ’twould do ya a lot of good ta shut yar thick mouth . . . I feel sorry far ya without a mother . . . but now look at ya . . . well, yar some cunt.’

  She sneezed again. ‘She’d be turning in her grave now, lad . . .’

  Long pause.

  ‘Listen here . . . shut yar mouth ’cause there’s no necktie now, nothing . . . and ya should feel very lucky ya can just disappear. Ja hear me? Hello? Jonathan? Hello?’

  Pause.

  ‘If you ever so much as look at her across the street from ya . . . I’ll break both your legs . . . what ja mean “show”? Show me?’ She mock-laughed, then inhaled loudly with a snort. ‘Oh sthap, ya poor lad . . . don’na come at me with yar daddy this and that, I’ll sort him too if I have ta . . . yar a lucky boy ta be getting a clean break . . . So take it . . .’

  Short pause.

  ‘Now listen here, ya motherless runt O’ Keefe . . . I didn’t bring Niquita Sherlock into this world ta have her and yar guttery voice and yar bad habits knocking her off walls . . .’

  There was no mention of anything or anyone being late.

  Last Call.

  ‘Jim, hi, hello? Jim . . . ’tis Mags . . . were ya asleep? Sorry . . . look, I need ya to come in far a chat, quick l
ike.’

  Pause.

  ‘I knows ’tis the middle of the night. Morning like. Tomorrow will do . . .’

  Sneeze.

  ‘No, I’m grand . . . just a draught in on me, I think . . . look, I’ve a huge favour ta ask . . . no, not me . . . Nick. She’s in bother . . . what ja mean what kind of bother? Women’s bother . . . yeah . . . yep . . . I know, I know . . . look ’tisn’t time for I told ya so’s . . . I know . . . but these things happens . . . will ya help? We need it sorted.’

  Sneeze.

  ‘What ja mean how?’

  Pause.

  ‘. . . Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean . . . Christ, it’s been a long night . . . Jim, I don’na need ya judging me too, so enough. Please. Can ya help or not?’

  Babble.

  ‘What would ya knows about it? . . . Ye can just up and fuck off . . . Yar not left holding on to it . . . wondering where a roof will come from . . . or if ya’ll ever get yar life back. ’Cause ya don’na get yar life back. Ever . . .’

  Silence.

  ‘Ah here . . . I’m sorry . . . I knows yar not that sort. But I’m afraid Jonathan O’Keefe . . . well . . . and God rest his lovely mam, but he’s a real bad egg.’

  Pause.

  ‘Thanks . . . I won’na forget this. Thanks . . . but shir if I get up out of bed, I canny just up and lave . . . ya knows that . . . he’ll never come back . . . Lazarus . . .’ Margaret Rose laughed loudly and sneezed again. ‘I won’na get another chance . . . I’ve gone this far . . . OK, but ’tis hard ta get me on me own . . . Great . . . Thanks so much . . . I’m sorry . . . Great . . . They won’na let ya in till nine. Try then.’