A Swift Pure Cry

by Siobhan Dowd

  They drove the coast road. The low glimmer receded out to sea. Father Rose asked no more questions. Shell shuffled in the seat, looking at the debris. Licence. Crisp packets. No chewing-gum wrappers. She sniffed.

  'You're smoking again, Father,' she said. 'I can tell.'

  'How?'

  'You're off the gum. Plus I can smell.'

  He groaned. 'Trust you to find me out. There's a pack in the glove compartment. Would you ever pass me one?'

  She opened the compartment up and rooted around. She found a stray stick of chewing gum and a packet of Majors, the same brand Declan had smoked.

  'Can I?' she said, pointing to the fags, with a sly face.

  'No, Shell!'

  'Only joking. I'll stick to the hard stuff.'

  She brandished the gum and unwrapped it. Then she passed him a fag. He lit it with the car lighter. She chewed and he puffed in companionable silence. They turned off the main road. The eyes of a feral cat glittered from the hedgerow. An owl flapped up from a branch. There was no traffic. The night was dark and quiet. The headlamps picked out a few yards of tarmacadam gliding around them, warm and round, a halo. Beyond, thin wraiths of dark trees loomed, their branches reaching towards them. On either side, the silent presence of the hedgerows brooded. It was home, Coolbar. She felt as if she'd been away a lifetime.

  'Father,' she said, 'can we stop at the house?'

  'Your place? Isn't it locked up?'

  'There's a spare key under the mat. I've Christmas presents to fetch. For Jimmy and Trix. Besides--'

  'Besides what?'

  She crossed her hands on her lap, looked down. 'Could I show you the grave? Where I buried her? Could I?' He turned towards her, slowed the car. 'I thought maybe you'd bless it. Bless the grave. Bless her. Would you, Father?' Her voice shrank to a pinprick.

  'Don't worry, Shell.' His hand was on her arm. 'Of course we'll stop.' He climbed the hill towards Duggans' farm, but turned off earlier, for Shell's house. 'There's a torch on the back seat,' he said.

  They got out and she let them in. She switched on every last light. The house was frozen, echoless. He waited in the kitchen while she fetched the presents out from under her bed. Together they cleared the remains of the dinner she'd made that day. The plates, half full, were where they'd been abandoned on the table.

  When they'd finished clearing, Father Rose went over to the piano and touched the wood. He opened the lid and gazed at the ivory keys.

  'Do you play?' he asked.

  'No. D'you?'

  'Not much. My brother Michael was the musical one.' He played a chord. It filled the empty house, breaking the hush. 'C major,' he said. 'That much I do remember.' The notes lingered, a trail of hope.

  ''S nice,' smiled Shell. 'Jimmy plays too. He's Mam's touch.'

  Father Rose closed the piano and took the torch. 'You lead the way, Shell.'

  They walked out into the back field and climbed the hill. The mud sucked at their shoes. Shell nearly slipped. He put a hand on her arm to save her and left it there. Even in the dark, she'd no trouble finding the place. It was like a magnet, pulling her to itself. He picked out the ring of stones with the torchlight. They'd not been disturbed since they were lain. She was sure of it now.

  'This is it,' she whispered. 'Untouched. I knew she was safe. Knew it.'

  She dropped to her haunches, hugging herself in the torch's penumbra. The night breeze curled around her, murmuring from the copse. Father Rose's hand was crossing the air. Through her tears she heard his voice, like a shimmering C-major chord. May perpetual light shine on her, o Lord, he prayed. An owl hooted, as if to join in the prayer. And grant unto her eternal rest.

  Thirty-eight

  He drove over the hill and dropped her off at the Duggans' farm. The three dogs sniffed round her and Mrs Duggan came to the door, the smell of a fry behind her.

  'Shell,' she said, reaching out and hugging her. 'What are those stupid guards saying about you? Come in and have your tea.'

  The kitchen was warm and bright. From above, stairs pounded. Trix and Jimmy burst in. 'Shell!' Trix yelped, flinging herself forward. Jimmy punched the air, then himself.

  'Shush,' Mrs Duggan smiled. 'You'll wake him.' She nodded over towards the hot press. A pram was parked there. 'He's only just gone off.'

  It was Mrs Duggan's new baby boy, the one with the hole in his heart. Shell had forgotten all about him. Her heart stopped. My God. The hustle around her froze.

  On the range, fat spat.

  Everybody was staring at her. Child murderer.

  She took a step towards the pram. I'll look at the covers, not the face. It was expected of her, she could tell. I'll say, 'He's only gorgeous, Mrs Duggan,' and that'll be that. I'll never have to look again. Never. She glanced down and examined the plastic animals dangling from the bar, a lemon blanket with pinprick holes in the weave. At the bottom, a knitted rabbit was strewn in a heap. Trix barged up.

  'He's blowing a bubble again,' she shouted. 'With the spit.'

  'Whisht, Trix,' Shell said. But too late. She'd already looked. There was the glob, collapsing on a wrinkled lip. He'd chipmunk cheeks and dark, quivering lids. Mam's lines of music rose and fell, floating before her. The baby in the cave, the baby in the field. The living and the dead. His body was full of tiny movement, where hers had been still. She gripped the handle of the pram. She righted the rabbit. 'He's sound, Mrs Duggan,' she managed.

  Rest. Eternal. The warmth of the press, the sheets of tiredness, the smell of the food. The sound was breaking up, the colours had smudged. The bottom was surely falling from the world. Light per-petuuuu-aaal, the owl yodelled. Somebody was holding her, taking her up the stairs. 'He's sound, Mrs Duggan, sound,' she said. The baby was in her arms and she was walking, struggling. Up the hill, to the copse. The owl was gone, the trees were bare. Blankets came up and over her. At last. She put the baby down, somewhere in the great field, among the swinging barley.

  Thirty-nine

  They let her stay in bed all Christmas. In her mind, strange things moved. The face of Molloy. The ring of stones. The baby in the cave. Twelve rounds of the Angelus. Blackberries winking in the hedge. Did you come to shelter or to pray, Shell? To pray or shelter? The white reticulations of frosted glass, the wraith-like trees. Confess, lie, kiss or die, Miss Talent. Wa-ai-ai-t, the owl said, flapping in a bowl of light. I hate this place. Declan waving a valediction from the wound-down window.

  Trix was in the bed with her, drawing snakes on her back that turned into Christmas streamers. Jimmy bounded on the camp-bed by the window in his socks of yellow and green. We didn't need the twine, Shell. It came out on its own. Honest. They gave her a present, wrapped up in red paper. A bottle of scent called Je Reviens, the one Mam used to wear on Sundays.

  She fell asleep again. Lie. Confess. Die. Dad in a cell. No Christmas lights, only a naked bulb. He'd lied to save her, she knew that now. He was back in the kitchen, looking past her shoulder, with Sergeant Liskard waiting. Eyes frozen, locked into the face at the piano. Mam. Her eyes steady, commanding. The bars, the frosted glass, the iron door. No whiskey in the piano where he was now. What would he do without it?

  She woke up. Mrs Duggan had come in with breakfast. She laid her baby down near Shell while she made up Jimmy's camp-bed. A hush was in the room. The small mouth champed at nothing. Shell put her little finger to his fist. His fingers curled around it like a lock to a key.

  Outside, a miracle started. Snowflakes floated past her window, a rarity in Ireland's south.

  'Are you well enough to get up?' Mrs Duggan said.

  Shell nodded. 'Think so.' She emerged from the bedclothes and tiptoed over to the casement. She could see through the white specks over to the copse, and beyond that, a heavy sky with more snow in it.

  'Where's Dad?' she asked.

  'He's still inside, at the station. The gardai are holding him.'

  'Mrs Duggan,' she whispered. 'I've to see him. I've to talk to him.'

  'Yes, Sh
ell,' Mrs Duggan said. 'You can go tomorrow. When you're stronger. Father Rose will take you.' She joined Shell at the window, rubbing her hand around baby Padraig's back as she spoke, winding him. 'Your dad rang yesterday, Shell. While you were sleeping. He said they'd given him some turkey with the white sauce. And to tell you Happy Christmas.'

  The youngest Duggan dog streaked out across the yard, chasing a stray flake with its snout and jaws. No sound came from him. The world was a silent film. Happy Christmas, Shell. The snow gusted upwards as if somebody'd put every whole thing into a souvenir scene in a glass bauble and shaken it upside down. Between the flakes came a flash of a happier past. Dad in the white spray, standing by her in the breakers, his pants rolled up. They were jumping together when the waves tipped, making snow from foam. Mam walked past, her cardigan knotted round her middle, skirting the tide. She stooped to splash them with her hand, then ran away laughing when Dad kicked squalls of water up and over her. Shell, only small, clung to his forearm to keep her balance. She stamped and hopped and hooted Dad's old rhyme, Ice cream, a penny a lump, the more you eat the more you jump. Mam ran back in, lassoing them both with seaweed ribbons.

  Mrs Duggan's hand was on her shoulder. The snow settled on the car roof. 'You'll be a mother again, Shell,' she whispered. 'One day. You wait and see.'

  Forty

  'Dad,' she said. 'It's me.'

  Father Rose had taken her to the garda station in Castlerock, but she hadn't wanted him in the visiting room with her. She and Dad were alone in the room with frosted glass. A guard stood outside the door. She could hardly bear to look. Her father across from her was a shrunken man, withered and slight. His face was thin, grey-tinged. His hand drifted over the table towards her, hovering like a butterfly.

  'Shell. My own girl.' His lips were trembling. She could swear a tear glistened in his eye before he dropped his face. With a finger he traced a figure of eight upon the table, in and out.

  'You all right, Dad?'

  He shrugged.

  'Mrs Duggan said you rang. For Christmas.'

  'Did I?'

  She nodded. 'They gave you dinner, Dad, didn't they? Turkey? With the sauce?'

  He frowned, then smiled, drawing a wider loop. 'I'd a grand time in here, Shell. We'd a party.'

  'But Dad, you needn't be here at all.'

  He shook his head as if she'd never understand.

  'Why did you confess?' she burst out. 'Why?'

  The shape he traced changed to sharp zigzags.

  'Dad. Why? Answer me.'

  'The baby's dead, Shell. Thanks be to God. No need to talk about it now. But I'd to explain it to them. I'd to explain it somehow.'

  'But Dad, the baby in the cave. You don't understand. It wasn't mine.'

  He didn't seem to hear. His finger went up-down on the knots of wood.

  'Mine's above in the field,' she nearly shouted.

  He looked up, smiled grimly. 'I did this to you, Shell. God forgive me. I did all this. I knew all along the state you were in.'

  'You didn't, Dad. Did you?' She remembered how he'd stared at her that time in the midst of the rosary.

  'I tried not to see, but I knew. I did all this.'

  'You didn't, Dad. You didn't do anything.'

  He blocked off his ears. 'I'm a mortal sinner. The worst kind.' He thumped his fist to his breast three times as if he were up at the church pulpit, leading a round of the confession: Through my fault, through my fault, through my own most grievous fault. 'It was hell, hell in a glass. You don't have to die to go to hell, Shell. Any devil will take you there, any time. And the devil that came was the image of her. Moira. My Moira. Out of my league, living or dead. She'd never let you catch her. And when I woke, I didn't know where I was. The house was empty. The morning come. You, Trix, Jimmy, gone. Moira. All gone.'

  His teeth chattered. He wasn't making any sense.

  'You cold, Dad?'

  'Cold? No, I'm roasted, Shell. Roasting.' His teeth chattered harder.

  'Will I get some help? You're not well--'

  'Shush! Don't draw them on us. Don't, Shell.'

  'Dad.' She leaned forward. She put a hand on his to stop the shaky tracing. 'You must retract. Retract the confession. Father Rose says so. It's not true. You must tell them.'

  He shook her hand off his. His forefinger tapped the wood, then moved in a wavering line from one end of the table to the other. 'I confessed in my mind, before the Almighty. But it won't save me, Shell. Not now. It's too late.' He made the sign of the cross, but halfway through his shivering hand stopped, then dropped back to the tabletop. 'When I was young,' he mused, 'I'd a mighty appetite for the venal sins.' He chuckled and began again on the tracing, bringing his face down, inches from a particular knot of wood at the table's edge. 'The fairs. The lads. The pints. We'd a mighty appetite then.' He cackled and wheezed to himself as if on his own.

  The guard opened the door. 'Time's up,' he announced.

  Shell sighed, relieved. 'Dad. I've to go.'

  He looked up. 'When did you get here?'

  'I've been here fifteen minutes, Dad. We've been talking.'

  'Talking?'

  'Don't you remember? About your confession? Your statement to the guards?'

  He grimaced, more like himself. 'Oh, that.'

  'Retract it, Dad. It's not true.'

  He smiled. In the redness of his eyes, she saw him harden. 'I had it coming, Shell. Your man, Molloy: he's the right idea.'

  She stood up. 'Trix and Jimmy send their love,' she said. It was a lie, but she said it anyway.

  He gazed blearily, as if he'd never heard of them. Then he nodded. 'Tell them to be good,' he said. He wrapped his hands around himself, holding onto the fabric of his shirt at either elbow as if he were straitjacketed. He bit hard into his bottom lip.

  'I'll tell them, Dad. Bye now.'

  'You off? Already?'

  'I'll be back soon. Promise.'

  But Dad beckoned her over. Reluctantly, she approached him. He was whispering something.

  'What, Dad?'

  'When you come next. If you can manage it,' he hissed, grabbing her elbow.

  'What?'

  'Just a drop. A miniature would do.'

  'Oh. That.' She laughed. 'The whiskey, you mean?'

  'Shush, Shell!' He looked murderous. She wriggled from his grasp.

  'Time's up,' the guard repeated. As he ushered Shell from the room, Dad's hands began thumping the table. He hurled a stream of curses at her back. The noise stopped abruptly when the door shut.

  'Don't mind him,' the guard said. 'He doesn't mean it. It's the drink talking. Or rather the lack of it.' He threw a wink and laughed. 'This is the driest Christmas he's had in years, I'd say.'

  Shell looked away to the dingy walls of corridor. Hilarious. Delirious. Dad married to the drink, not her mam. And for so long now, hardly anybody could remember the man he'd been without it. Jimmy and Trix, never. And for her, it was the time in the breakers; then years of nothing.

  Forty-one

  Father Rose was waiting at reception. Molloy also was there, immaculate and frowning. He'd arranged to see her again but this time Father Rose would be with her. Molloy led them into his office. They passed other guards, secretaries and a cleaner along the way. Everywhere Molloy walked, a well of silence followed.

  His office was bare and bleak, with dingy cabinets of files and wired-glass windows. It smelled of furniture polish. He beckoned them to hard chairs on one side of his sparse desk and sat down on a revolving chair of black leather on the other. He rested his chin on his linked hands.

  Shell stared at the lino: speckled reds and blues on grey. The two men spoke. She only half listened. She couldn't get Dad and his butterfly hands out of her mind. The baby's dead, Shell. Thanks be to God.

  'You've only her word for it,' Molloy was saying, as if she wasn't there.

  'We've more than that-haven't we, Shell? She's shown me the place.'

  'You mean you believed her?'


  'I did. I do.'

  'It's baloney. Two babies? In one small place like Coolbar?' The man snorted, like a horse after a tough jump.

  'It's the truth. I know it.'

  The words went back and forth. In her mind Dad's hands and lips trembled for the whiskey in the piano, the smell of the night-bar, the rattle of the collection boxes. Don't draw them on us, Shell, don't. She pictured the main street in Castlerock, where Father Rose had led her earlier, through a morning of Christmas shoppers. The snow had melted, a light fog undulated in the chill air, dimming the lights. The ring of stones had been blessed. They couldn't be un-blessed.

  Somebody asked her something.

  'What do you think, Shell?' It was Father Rose.

  She blinked.

  'Could you bear it?' His voice was low.

  'Bear what?' she whispered.

  'If we disturbed her, Shell? If we dug her up? To prove what you say is true.'

  She stared. 'Dug her up?' She shook her head. 'Oh no. We couldn't do that.'

  'You see,' Molloy gibed. 'She's lying.'

  The ring of stones. The cotton-wool lining. The tracery of veins. They had been blessed.

  'I don't want to disturb her. Please.'

  'We can bury her again, Shell,' Father Rose said. 'In consecrated ground. I can do it.'

  Her teeth were gone like Dad's, chattering. 'Must we?'

  'Shell, I fear we must.'

  They came to the field later. Shell stood near the cairn, looking on from a distance. What if the baby's not there? What if someone's stolen the body? What if I've been dreaming it all along? The strange questions darted round her mind like arrows. Four men-Father Rose, Molloy and two uniformed guards-walked up the field. Molloy's face was without expression, his sharp features dividing the wind. Why do we have to pick up the stones, Dad? Why? Father Rose was face down, his hands clasped in front him, shoulders hunched. Mrs Duggan was on one side of her, Miss Donoghue, her old schoolteacher, on the other. The men stooped at the place, looking downwards. The guards in the uniform started on the soil with trowels. Now and at the hour of our death, Amen. Miss Donoghue had her hand on Shell's shoulder. 'It won't take long, Shell,' she said, her voice kindness itself. 'It will be over before you know it.' They hadn't wanted her to watch but she'd insisted. The heavy earth shifted beneath her feet. The trowels started a landslide in her head. The digging stopped, then started again, slower. 'They've found something,' Mrs Duggan said. The two men who were crouched on the hillside paused. One stood up, crossing himself. The dark figure of Molloy dropped down on his haunches, his hands reaching into the hole. The third had got a camera out. In the drab light, she saw a flash, three times over.