A Swift Pure Cry

by Siobhan Dowd

  When she'd done she got the phone book out and found the number of Bridie's Auntie May in Kilbran. She dialled it when everyone was out doing the cows. It rang and rang, then a woman answered.

  'Can I speak to Bridie?' Shell asked. She'd the phone line twisted round her fingers with fright. Her voice sounded like a squeak.

  'To Bridie?'

  'Bridie Quinn.'

  'Bridie Quinn isn't here. Why would she be? She's at home in Coolbar.'

  'Wasn't she there over Christmas? With the others?'

  'No. She couldn't come. She was on a school trip, her mam said. Skiing in France.'

  A school trip? In France? Since when had the pupils of the Presentation School ever got as far as Ringaskiddy? 'So she was just there for the summer, then? Helping out with the B & Bs?'

  'We stopped the B & B racket a year ago. Who is this?'

  'Just-just a friend.' She hung up before she got asked any more questions. She nearly tripped over the wire as she replaced the hook. Skiing in France?

  That night the chattering came back loud and strong. She switched the light on in the small hours and got out the note. She hunched over it under the blankets as if it might contain an answer. Bridie white and pale, miming a retch. Bridie in Kilbran, making breakfasts for the guests. Bridie in America, going from coast to coast, like in the song. Bridie in Coolbar, walking down the coast road, thumbing in the dark. Why don't you call over to her, Shell? See if you can't make it up? Mrs Quinn, her face livid, turning away. If I'd known the kind of things you two got up to. If I'd known earlier, I'd have--

  'What?' Shell whispered to herself. 'What would you have done, Mrs Quinn?' She switched out the light again. There was no answer but Trix and Jimmy's breathing so she tried an answer herself. 'Send us both off to England for an abortion, Mrs Quinn? Is that what you'd have done?'

  Forty-nine

  The next morning she woke up early. She pulled on her tights, then her pants over them. Over that she put on a warm shirt, with two jumpers on top. She crept downstairs and out before anybody was about. From the back barn she took Mrs Duggan's bike. She cycled down the drive, over the cattle grid and through the village. There was nobody to see her as she turned off onto the coast road towards Goat Island. She passed the Quinns' house on the left. A rusty bike was upended in the front yard. The curtains were drawn, dingy and yellow. Nobody was up. She'd half thought of calling there, but instead she cycled on.

  It was slow going through the cutting wind of the morning. The sky was low and dim, but the birds were going strong. She reached the track that led down to the strand and the small patch of tarmacadam where Declan had parked his father's car. She left the bike by a paling and clambered down the shingle, onto the strand.

  The tide was far out. The sands lay before her in long swaths of light and dark, pancake-flat. As the sun rose behind her, they began to gleam white and yellow. She walked across them, wishing she'd brought a scarf to keep her hair from flying about.

  The sea has made the sand a mirror

  Which my two feet destroy,

  And in that mirror two eyes I see,

  A sadness and a joy.

  It was the ditty she and Mam had made up together in their walks on the strand. As she spoke the words, a lightness came over her. She hopped gaily as she walked, smiling for the first time in what seemed an age.

  There were no craft out to sea or any sign of dog-walkers. She was on her own. She approached the rocky outcrop where the cave was. Her spirits fell again. The tattered remains of the gardai's yellow cordon fluttered in the breeze. The sand was scuffed up all around. People had been in and out, it seemed, in their droves.

  She went down on her hands and knees and went through the crack. You're a ewe on heat, Shell. You're a bull with its horns stuck, Declan. In a thornbush.

  Inside the cave the smell of something stale and ancient prevailed. The cold and darkness of the place went through her like a knife. Her eyes could make out nothing much at first. Then the dark, encrusted walls appeared, then the scattering of pebbles. And there, just above where she and Declan had lain that time, was the rocky shelf. There was a bouquet on it. Not of flowers such as you might buy from the shop, but rather several sprigs from an unusual shrub, with milk-white berries clustered on them. They were tied together with a cream-coloured ribbon. She lifted the bunch up and smelled it. It was fresh and green. Somebody'd left them not long ago; yesterday maybe.

  Anybody might have done it, she supposed. Anybody in all Ireland who listened to the news. Or any local from Coolbar. She put them back and crawled out, wondering.

  It was a relief to be out of the place. Her mam had said it was a place of beauty, made by the wind and rain, but this morning it felt like a tomb, a tomb from which no dead could ever arise. She walked briskly back towards the car park, keeping to the lee of the cliff. Halfway along, the chattering was in her head again. She found a place to sit, out of the wind, where she could think.

  The signs of Bridie being pregnant were there to see when you looked back on them. That last term at school, she'd often looked pale and tired. She'd turned her nose up at the school dinners, where before she'd been teased for gulping them down, however foul, like a human rubbish bin. By July she'd have started showing. She and her mam had probably had the fight to end all fights. They'd never got on: Bridie'd always said Mrs Quinn had a mighty temper. Perhaps Mrs Quinn had thrown her out. Or perhaps she'd walked out of her own accord. But she'd not been in Kilbran, as Mrs Quinn said, or in America, as Theresa Sheehy said. She'd probably thumbed a lift as far as Cork. She'd have had no money to speak of, no keys and no job. What would she have done?

  Her father's voice came to her. It's a desolation, Shell, down by the river harbour. The women there, all kinds, all ages. Some only your age, like that schoolfriend of yours, Bridie. As bold and brash as her.

  Is that what Bridie had become? A woman of the night? A woman of the streets? She'd always had a touch of the Mary Magdalenes about her, Declan had said. Hickory, dickory, Bridie Quinn, ring the bell and let yourself in, he'd quipped. Shell knew now what he meant. Only too well. The heel of her shoe ground into the shingle at the thought of him laughing away at every last one of them with his rhymes.

  She looked out to sea. A lemon path from the rising sun cut through the calm water, vanishing towards the horizon. She closed her eyes and imagined how it must have been, the night not long before Christmas, when Father Rose had seen what he'd seen on the way back from Goat Island...

  ...There was Bridie, walking the coast road in the quiet December night. The moon was rising above her, the sea was flat and calm before her. She'd come back to Coolbar with a baby in tow. She was desperate for a bed, some kind words, someone to help with the infant. She was going to make it up with her mam. But when she'd got home, nobody was there. They'd gone to Kilbran for Christmas, just for a change. That's what Mrs Quinn had said and that part was true, she knew. But Bridie hadn't known. She'd thumbed a lift all the way from Cork only to find an empty house.

  Shell was Bridie now, approaching Coolbar, unseen. She'd have glimpsed the Coolbar lights through the trees. She'd be gagging for a fag. An oily rag, as Declan used to call them. Night would be falling. She'd be like a ghost in the dark, a Christmas ghost, with nobody seeing her. She'd have been longing for someone to take the crying baby off her. Longing for her own bed, the familiar smell of the wash on the sheets, and the wind lashing the window, and the old dreams, the ones she'd had when she was small.

  But the lights are out. The car's gone. Not a soul. She's on her own.

  She doesn't know where to go. She keeps on up the coast road, why she can't tell. A car passes, swerves to avoid her. She jumps into the hedge. Hides the baby. That was close. She climbs the hill and cuts across the fields. Over the short grass, the gates, the hedges. Lugging the carrycot. The child's crying with the cold, a broken record. And the moon's up like a beach ball, bobbing on the sea. She reaches the path and goes down the cut, out onto
the strand. It's bright like day out here. The wind's biting. She sits where Shell sits now, maybe. Her and the baby, both. And she thinks, I'll walk into the sea as soon as the moon gets higher. Drown us both. But she doesn't. She's chattering with the wind. The baby's screaming. She remembers the cave.

  Haggerty's Hellhole.

  The Abattoir.

  The cave where Declan used take her. Where the girls go to fornicate. Where the boys tied up the girls and left them. She creeps in there through the crack, pushing the carrycot ahead of her. The baby's crying still, only softer now, like a mewl from a stray cat. It's tired. Inside she strikes a match. And there's the shelf, the rock shelf, set into the wall. It's made for the cot. She lays him on it so he's high and dry. If the tide comes in, he won't be washed away. Perhaps he stops crying. He's happy out there, she thinks. He's still, the eyelids are down at last, and his cheeks are gone soft, like pouches. She tiptoes away, thinking, He'll sleep sound now. I'll be back to fetch him. Later.

  Out in the air the waves are running in under the moon. It's misting rain and she's floating over the sands like a ghost. Must keep going to keep warm. The weight's gone. Somebody'll find it and take it away. Surely to God they will. It's nothing to do with her. She's light as a dream, and there's a strange waltzing in her head. Before she knows it, she's up the cut, out of the wind, and she's back on the road, walking. The baby's crying, only this time it's in her head, so she walks faster. A car's coming up behind her. She sticks out a thumb and it slows down. She turns to see who it is as it pulls up, but she sees it's the priest, the young fellow, in his daft, clapped-out car. She shakes her head, waves him on and he drives on. She's walking away from the strand further, away from the moon, towards the future. Until the next car comes, a dark saloon, warm and bright, a stranger in it. Anyone at all who'll whisk her from the hellhole that is all around her. He stops. He invites her inside with a fag lit, waiting for her. The headlamps are golden and he's off to the city. She's a ride all the way. The radio's blaring Across the north and south, to Key Largo and the rain's hammering it but the baby's still screaming in her head. So she steps inside, accepts a fag and shuts the door. And he's pulling away, away from the darkness into the darkness, away from Coolbar, for ever and away...

  Shell took her fists from her eyes so the yellow streaks of pictures died away. The chattering quietened down. The sun had got stronger on the sand. She stood up.

  A dog-walker passed by. A cracked eejit of a terrier was chasing the breakers.

  That's how it was, she thought. That's how the baby came to be in the cave. There was no way of proving it. But she knew. Somewhere, in Ireland or beyond, Bridie was sitting listening to the news, saying nothing, keeping quiet. And somebody else, nearer to hand perhaps, was laying wreaths on the very spot where Bridie had left her child. Mrs Quinn, maybe? Who knew?

  Molloy had been right. But it had been Bridie, not her, who'd been unable to stand the sound of the baby's cries. Could she still hear them now? In her dreams? Wherever she was?

  Anger churned around in Shell like bad butter, anger at what Bridie had done, at Mrs Quinn, at Declan, at Molloy, at almost everyone in the village; even at Mrs Duggan with her baby boy with a hole in his heart that had been mended. She kicked up the sand. Then she remembered Father Rose, giving his first sermon. Has it ever occurred to you that where there is no anger, there is also no love? Tears from the wind slid over her cheek. She wiped them away, trying to drown his voice. But it was no good. Father Rose was still talking in her head as she retrieved the bike and pedalled away from the place. She remembered the lucky sheep that had leaped from the bonnet of the car in the nick of time and been saved. There but for the grace of God go I, Shell. Or you, Shell. Or any of us, Shell.

  The tarmac fizzed under her as she cycled back to Coolbar. At the Quinns' house there was still nobody up. But in the hedgerow opposite was a white shrub in bloom that Shell recognized.

  The tender bouquet, the rock shelf, the frozen child: a heartbreak on the world.

  Fifty

  News of the doctors' final report on the bodies of the babies appeared the next day in the county paper:

  TWIN TRAVESTY

  A team of Dublin pathologists has proved conclusively that the two dead babies, a boy and a girl, found near Castlerock are not twins. Fraternal twins can sometimes have different blood groups, as these did, but it has now been further established that the babies had different gestational ages. Although born at the roughly same time, they were conceived at least five weeks apart, the team concludes. The baby found on the beach was thought to be born at around 40 weeks (at full-term), whereas the one born to the unnamed girl at the heart of the case was born premature, at about 35 weeks.

  Evidence also indicates that the latter baby, a girl, was stillborn. The doctors' report suggests that the umbilical cord became tangled around the baby's neck during labour. Tragically, the report concludes that had she been born with a qualified midwife in attendance and with the appropriate hospital care afterwards, she would probably have lived.

  The Gardai Siochana are now expected to drop all charges against the father, held in custody since Christmas. His erroneous confession has prompted serious concern in the Dail about the handling of this case, with some TDs calling for an independent inquiry into how the gardai conducted themselves. Superintendent Garda Dermot Molloy is currently unavailable for comment.

  The news broke across the village. Everyone kept saying they'd known it all along. Mrs McGrath was heard to say that the baby in the cave was probably a 'tinker child'. She said she'd seen Travellers camping up the bog road a few weeks back and what more could you expect from the likes of them?

  Shell read the words over and over but at first they meant nothing. Gestational. Erroneous. Prematurely. Tragically. Then she remembered the grey worm-like cord looped around Rosie's neck. She remembered her minuscule limbs. She thought of the baby in the cave and the baby she'd held in her arms, of Bridie disappearing, and of Declan, passing from one to the other of them either side of Easter, like a horse moving over to graze a different patch.

  A girl and a boy.

  A and O.

  Full-term, premature.

  It all made sense.

  She sat at the casement window in the Duggans' house looking out on the winter copse. The dead babies weren't twins, but half-brother and half-sister, born into the self-same vale of tears.

  She prayed for the repose of both their souls.

  Fifty-one

  With the charges against Dad now dropped, he was due home that very afternoon. She went to the house to prepare for his return. The cold had settled into the walls. A litter of post was on the mat. She flung it on the table. The three beds in her room were a jumble of unmade covers. She stripped them down. She opened the piano and took the bottle of whiskey out. It was half full. She tipped the amber fluid down the sink, but not before taking three sips. She waited for the warmth to come on the third, like Dad had said it did, but all she felt was an angry scalding in her throat and the start of a sneeze in her nose. She retrieved the pink dress from its hiding place under her bed and, brushing off the dust, hung it back in Dad's wardrobe. A malaise was in his room. His bed was a wreck, the curtains undrawn. The air was close with the smell of bad dreams. She opened a window and the wind rushed in. She stripped his bed down.

  Tired, she sat on the chair, listening. At first she could hear nothing, not even the wind. Then the stirrings started. The little creaks, a sigh, the last shred of a long-drawn-out piano chord trembling somewhere near.

  She flicked through the letters. Bills. Two late Christmas cards from nobody she remembered, far-flung friends of Mam's youth who didn't seem to know that she was dead. Then a white envelope she'd nearly missed popped out. There were blue airmail stickers, strange stamps, an address of lazy scrawl. It was to her. Her eyes went wide. To her? She'd never before had a letter from abroad. She opened it.

  A card inside depicted a robin perched on a snowy branc
h. It held an envelope in its mouth. Its wings were spread and one eye winked. Within, lines of writing slanted upward, chasing from one edge to the other:

  Dear Shell. America is mad. New York is madder. I drive a big truck up and down the island. The sky's like candyfloss, I'm sure it's fake. We're building and drinking and gallivanting and there's no stopping us, me, Gerry and the lads. I'd my Christmas bonus pinched from me or I'd have sent you a new bra. Digs are in a place called Hell's Kitchen on Eleventh Avenue and you'll say it's where I belong. We're down the Irish bar most nights. The Shamrock, I ask you, worse than Dad's fecking leprechauns. But the stout's good. A man walked in just now with a ferret on a lead and it's not the drink talking. The girls are cracked. They drink Singapore Slings with ten shots in them and still want more. I went up the Empire State Building yesterday and nearly fell off. The yellow cabs bobbed down on the other side of the clouds like tiny abacus beads. They made me dizzy. But not as dizzy as you made me, Shell. I still remember. Love from u-know-who.

  She saw him, crouched over the dark pint. The dollars flying out of his pocket. The muggers lying in wait. The clutter of glasses. The girls batting their eyelids at the world. The fag-ends. The man whistling at the ferret to jump through a hoop. The buildings lurching forward, toppling back. The cabs winking. And the cut of him, with the building dust in his hair and the Coolbar line to his face. And him writing the card, not looking at the girl opposite with the stars-and-stripes eyes, but moving the biro from west to east, like bread rising or a plane going home. Shell smells of flea balls on the dirt floor. And the trail of devastation he'd left behind him.