Bog Child

by Siobhan Dowd

‘A covert?’

  Fergus nodded. ‘Then I saw the gleam of the bangle.’

  The woman called Felicity whistled. ‘I’d say all archaeology’s in your debt, Fergus.’

  Fergus looked down and ran the toe of his boot over some heather.

  ‘In archaeology,’ Felicity continued, ‘usually a body like this is named after the place it’s nearest. But we still don’t know if this lassie here is Drumleash Child or Inchquin Child. Or even if it’s a she. The police are still arguing over which side of the border can lay claim to her. So I thought I’d resort to another tradition. Which is to have the one who found her christen her.’

  ‘You can’t christen a pagan,’ Fergus pointed out. ‘Especially not a dead one.’

  Cora guffawed. ‘So you can’t, Mam. He’s right.’

  Felicity waved their comments aside. ‘We can’t be sure how old she is,’ she said. ‘Not before carbon-dating. She could turn out to be medieval. Or even later. But somehow I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘The bangle, partly. And the presence of this.’ She reached down and took a sod of earth. It was shot through with a soft, light-coloured layer of moss.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Fergus, peering.

  ‘It’s sphagnum moss.’

  ‘Moss?’

  ‘It’s found in bog-land like this. They used it in the First World War to dress wounds. There’s a quality in it that stops decay.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Felicity said. ‘Bodies decompose because of microbes, and this moss stops the microbes.’

  ‘They should put it in face creams,’ Fergus said. ‘You could make a mint.’

  Felicity laughed. ‘This child reminds me very much of other bodies they’ve found over the years, in Denmark especially.’

  ‘Denmark?’

  Felicity nodded. ‘There was a ritual in Iron-Age times around this kind of terrain, across northern Europe. We don’t know much but it seems that bodies were placed in the bog for a reason. And my colleagues in Iron-Age history mostly think it involved human sacrifice.’

  Fergus stared. ‘Sacrifice?’ He looked to where he could see the little hand reaching out from the wall of earth. ‘Jesus. The poor child.’

  ‘On the other hand, they might have been criminals, guilty of something serious.’

  ‘But a child? Surely you wouldn’t execute a child?’

  Felicity sighed. ‘That’s indeed a puzzler. Maybe she died of natural causes. It’s quite likely. We’ll have to get her out and do a post-mortem, just as if she was born in our time. The bangle suggests that she was a person from an important local family. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have to rethink all the theories.’ She crouched down by the side of the cut and reached a hand towards the place where the head would be, if exposed.

  ‘I wish I could help you,’ Fergus said.

  ‘Maybe you can. Couldn’t he, Cora?’

  The girl stepped forward and put a hand on Fergus’s arm, as if she was testing to see if he was worthy. ‘Yes. He could.’

  Cora’s hand stayed on his arm for a fraction and then fluttered away.

  ‘Really? Could I?’ Fergus felt like a child who can’t sleep on Christmas Eve, mad to get down in that cut and brush away the earth from the child’s face.

  ‘You can help us organize the shifting. We’ll need a whole team of strong locals, because we’ll have to shift the whole block of earth around her, and expose her carefully when she’s safe indoors.’

  ‘Where’s she going?’

  ‘We’re moving her to the Roscillin abattoir, temporarily. They can’t decide if she should go to Belfast or Dublin and until they’ve sorted that out, we need to keep her cool.’

  Fergus thought of the dead carcasses of animals hanging and the small child lying on a slab in the middle of them. ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Ugh is right,’ Cora agreed.

  ‘It’s not ideal,’ Felicity said. ‘Just our luck for her to turn up bang on the border. Has any name sprung to mind?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For our bog child?’

  Fergus squinted up his eyes and examined the little hunched figure, curled like a brown gnome. In his mind she was climbing out of the bog and dancing like a plasticine model in an animation, shaking dirt from her eyes. ‘I dug and delved the mountain, but it wasn’t here, it wasn’t there,’ she trilled. He realized it was the baby-doll voice of a pop star he’d had a crush on when he was eleven. ‘Mel,’ he said. ‘That’s her name. Short for Melanie. But everybody calls her Mel.’

  ‘Mel?’ said Felicity. ‘That’s Latin for honey. Maybe if she’s as late as Roman period, she really could have been called that.’

  ‘What if it turns out to be a boy?’ Cora asked.

  Fergus shrugged. ‘Then I’ll think of something else.’

  Felicity grinned. She jumped back into the cut, got out her cassette and switched it on. ‘Fergus McCann, the finder, has just informed us that she, if indeed she’s a she, is to be called Mel. So, Mel–welcome to the light of day.’

  Nine

  Da called me to his side that dark winter. Fog was as thick as fur and day hardly came close. ‘Mel,’ he said. ‘What, Da?’ ‘I’ve a job for you.’ ‘What job?’ ‘It’s to run to the Shaughns over and say we’ve no grain or meat or milk to spare for the payment and I am putting down my cloak across the threshold.’ ‘Am I to say all that?’ ‘All that, and just like that.’

  So I ran around the mountain and down the Sky Road, and soon I came to the Shaughns’ settlement with the palings around it. They let me in. Inside, the fires were smoking and the men were huddled round them, eating and chatting. Boss Shaughn stood up when I approached. He was taller and broader than a doorway but I wasn’t scared. I told him what Da had said. And Boss Shaughn said it was some day when a pipsqueak was sent to bring upstart news about cloaks and thresholds and withholding payments. I stared, and he wagged his head like a dog about to pounce and everyone started laughing. ‘Go back to your da and tell him I’ll be over to chat about the payment tomorrow. Cloak or no cloak.’

  I turned on my heel, ready to run back up and around the mountain, thinking how I hated those Shaughns. But I tripped and fell and they laughed even harder. Except Boss Shaughn’s son, Rur. He came over and helped me to my feet. My head only came to his elbow but I looked up at him and he smiled. I remembered him from when I was a wee one, how he’d given me swings in the air. ‘Hi, Mel,’ he’d say. ‘How’s the shrimpling today?’ and chafe my cheeks. This time, he stooped and whispered, ‘Don’t mind them.’ His eyes were away to the middle distance and didn’t meet mine. ‘On you go, Mel, my girl,’ he said, kneading my shoulder. ‘Quick.’

  I ran off, my cheeks burning. Mel, my girl. My girl, Mel. His words spun in my head. All the way home I could feel his hand on my shoulder, like the brand of a fire-iron, and see his beard trimmed neat and his shoulders narrow. And his eyes looking away into the middle distance, like the riddle of time was written there.

  My life fell apart like two halves of an apple, with Rur’s hand that day on my shoulder being the knife.

  Fergus was so tired when he came home that he drifted off over his books, somewhere amidst a procedure to measure the breaking stress of copper. The images of figures and fog and the feel of another person’s touch on his arm dissolved with the sound of the doorbell.

  Felicity and Cora, he thought. They’ve arrived. They’d said they needed a place to stay for a couple of nights and he’d told them about the guest twin room. Thanks to him, Mam had bed and breakfast customers for the first time in three years. She’d been thrilled when he told her. Money was in short supply. Theresa and Cath had been drilled into hoovering and dusting. He’d helped Mam make up the beds and she’d shown him how to do neat hospital corners with the sheets. Then he’d scrubbed the room’s sink. Mam had polished the mirror until it squeaked. And now they were here.

  He slammed shut the book and darted out into the hallway to
greet them.

  But it wasn’t them. It was their neighbour, Mrs Sheehan, from the top of the close. Her son Len was in the same prison block as Joe and was serving the same sentence. Often she and Mam went together on the visits, sharing the driving. She stood in the doorway in her green leather coat, a picture of faded glamour. But the coat flapped open and she was running a hand through her hairdo and her cheeks were white. Her mouth opened but no words came out.

  ‘What is it?’ Mam said, tugging at her hand. ‘Come in and tell me. What is it, Maureen?’

  ‘Oh, Pat. It’s our boys. Yours and mine. Our boys.’

  ‘You mean Joey?’

  ‘Joey. And Len.’ She tottered forward, her fingers seeking out the petals of the rose-flower pattern on the hall wallpaper. Fergus shot forward to stop her from falling.

  ‘My God. What’s happened to them?’

  ‘They’ve been moved. To the H-block where the strikers are.’

  Nobody said anything. Then Fergus became aware of Cath standing near him. She was staring at Mrs Sheehan, pulling at the baubles on her cardigan. Then her jaw dropped and she screamed.

  ‘Mother of God,’ said Mam. ‘Shush, Cath.’ She crossed herself. ‘This is not what it seems. Joey wouldn’t join them. He’s more sense.’

  Cath screamed louder. Fergus, without knowing what he was doing, went and picked her up in his arms. He rushed off with her down the hall, through the kitchen, and out into the back yard. He put her down, still bawling, under the fluttering washing. Theresa was down at the shed, kicking a ball around.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ she said.

  ‘It’s Joey,’ said Fergus. ‘They’ve moved him to another block in Long Kesh.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So–maybe nothing.’

  Theresa came up and spanked Cath on the cheek.

  ‘What d’you do that for?’ Fergus cried, snatching at Theresa’s arm.

  ‘’S what they do in the movies, Ferg. To stop hysterics. Look. It works.’

  Cath stopped crying. Her little hands grabbed at the corner of a sheet and scrunched it up, as if to stop the wind billowing through it. ‘Will he die, Ferg?’ she bleated. ‘Will they all die?’

  Fergus put an arm around Cath. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s going to die. You only die if you starve yourself like Sands did for sixty days or more. But our Joe’s more sense. Hasn’t he?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Theresa said. ‘He was always fussy with his food. Not like you. I heard Mam say the other day you’d eat a load of old offal out of a dustbin.’

  Cath started crying again. When Theresa tried to slap her a second time, Cath got Theresa’s plait and yanked it hard and Theresa started crying too.

  ‘Pipe down,’ he shouted, but they squealed and shrieked as if the sky was coming down. They lunged at each other, bringing the sheet off the line, and fell to the grass, wrangling. Fergus gave up on them. He went down to the shed and kicked the football hard at the back fence. It missed, but an army of sparrows came darting and chattering out of the ivy. He retrieved the ball and kicked it again.

  ‘He’s more sense,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘He has, he has.’

  Ten

  Next day, Sunday, was mass day. There was no further news from the prison, so the family went to church as usual.

  Fergus had stopped believing in God when he was eight, after he’d seen his da come in with a Christmas stocking and realized Santa didn’t exist. If Santa didn’t exist, then God didn’t either. As far as he was concerned, grown-ups had done one big cheat about the two of them. Years went by and he hadn’t changed his mind.

  But in Drumleash, you went to church whether you believed or not. Everyone, that was, except Uncle Tally, who never went near the place. Today Fergus lingered at the back near the other men. He let the old words waltz around the bright benches and big windows of light.

  ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Grant us peace,’ the women intoned. The UFO-style church was a fling of the 1960s, before the Troubles. The place smelled of polish and tedium. He watched the hundred-odd parishioners sighing, fidgeting or praying their way through the service. The older women still wore triangled scarves on their heads. Not exactly Jackie Onassis, he thought as ancient Mrs Riley bustled down the aisle after communion with her belly slumping below the waistline of her floral dress. If she wasn’t nearly eighty, you’d think she was pregnant. Jesus. The place is more outmoded than Des O’Connor on a bad day.

  He thought of Felicity in her sharp jeans and short haircut and of Cora as he’d glimpsed her that morning coming out of the guest bedroom, in an outsized white T-shirt with a green-leaved tree pictured on the front.

  After the post-communion meditation, the priest said something about remembering in prayer the starving people in the land. That’s Joe and Len, Fergus thought. Who else? He bit his lip but no prayer came. Joe wouldn’t join the hunger strikers. Not he. He’d be doing his studies and counting the days. He’d be pacing his cell and thinking about freedom. He’d be shaving in the mirror, thinking about light and refraction. And remembering the girl from Newry he’d been seeing when they arrested him. Cindy, her name was. And he’d be thinking of the next family visit. Surely.

  On the other side of the church he saw Michael Rafters with his head bowed over clasped hands. You’re the best runner this side of the county. A small price to pay, Fergus. A small, small price.

  He thought of Felicity and Cora. They hadn’t come to church but were up on the mountain again, investigating the earth surrounding the body. Mam had ordered the family to say nothing about Joe to them and he’d obeyed. But the secret was like a wedge of politeness. They’d arrived late in the evening. He’d felt foolish, nodding at them, showing them to their room, pointing out the bar of soap, wishing the sheets weren’t old polyester and the curtains and carpet not faded brown. But they’d said how comfortable they’d be and he’d felt like a giraffe in a kennel and backed away.

  ‘The mass is ended, go in peace,’ Father Doyle said.

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ the whole congregation said loudly, as if in relief it was over. Fergus slipped out of the door without bothering to bless himself with water from the font. He escaped through the pristine graveyard with its gravel plots and plastic see-through crosses full of plastic flowers. He’d a vision suddenly, of a burial party huddled in the far corner under the great Scots pine, where the McCann plot was, burying Joe in a pathetic, thin coffin. He slapped his head. That was not going to be. He meandered over to the bench at the opposite corner and sat down. The sun shone and made him weary. He let his eyelids shut and listened to the chatter of people leaving, the crows cawing and the wind in the hills. Joey will be fine and I’ll be out of here. Soon. Sooner. Soonest.

  When he opened his eyes, Michael Rafters was sitting beside him. Jesus. The man was a panther.

  ‘So,’ Michael said, crossing his legs and slouching back.

  ‘So what?’ said Fergus.

  ‘Your brother’s joined the strikers, I hear.’

  ‘He’s been moved to a different block. That’s all we’ve heard.’

  ‘And why was he moved?’

  Fergus shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He and your man Sheehan. They joined the strike yesterday morning. Then the screws moved them out, before the strike could spread where they were. That’s the truth of it.’

  Fergus bit his lip. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true. I had it from a good source.’

  Fergus looked at the light playing on top of the Scots pine and said nothing.

  ‘It’s their choice,’ Michael said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s a bloody farce.’

  ‘It’s a struggle, Fergus. Not a farce. It’s in deadly earnest.’

  Fergus raised up his hands as if to embrace all the dead of the graveyard. He sucked his lips in between his teeth hard, to stop his eyes fi
lling.

  ‘Fergus, we need you. Just for a few bits of ferrying. Nothing more. We don’t pressgang people here. We’re not like the Brits. But we could really use your help. Just this once.’

  ‘I’ve my exams starting.’

  ‘I know. And with Joe and all, you’ve distractions enough. But this is just something to add to your regular morning run; totally safe, I promise. But so important to the struggle, I can’t tell you.’

  ‘I want a united Republic, same as anyone, but—’

  ‘There’s no other way to get it. That’s a fact. We’ve a Long War on our hands, Ferg. We’ve all to pull our weight.’

  Fergus stood up. ‘Dafters,’ he said.

  Michael smiled up at him, his lips framing a What?

  ‘You’ve your way of doing things and I’ve mine. I don’t judge. I just want peace.’

  ‘You sound like those bloody Belfast wives. Soft and gooey in the centre.’

  ‘Yes. That’s me. Soft as they come.’

  ‘You’ll be getting the Nobel Prize next.’ Michael playfully punched him in his belly. ‘Fergus, Joe was always mighty proud of you. Your brains and speed. Mr Nippy, he called you. I remember.’

  Fergus smiled. ‘He was always getting me to run errands. Down the village to get his fags. Down to Roscillin for the Morning Star, which he had on order. That was his communist phase.’

  ‘Think of this as another errand. For Joe’s sake.’

  Fergus slowly shook his head.

  ‘You’re a fit man. We’ve watched you. You run like the wind. There’s only ever one squaddie posted up there. At most. And easy to dodge. I promise you, you’d be helping the Cause big time. And helping the hunger strikers. It might even be the saving of them. Of Joe. Len. And the rest.’

  ‘What d’you mean, the saving of them?’

  Michael looked knowing. ‘It’s confidential. But it’s an operation that’s so fantastic, it will have all those Westminster bozos sitting up begging.’

  ‘Jesus. What is it?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘You don’t need to know. All you have to do is a pick-up and a drop. Just a few times. You’d see nobody, meet nobody and nobody would bother you ever again. I swear.’