‘When are you heading back?’ asked Stevie.
‘As soon as I can get the money together. It’s tough though. You’d think there’d be more jobs out there for an art school dropout with the use of only one hand.’
‘You’re an artist?’
Kavanagh winced. ‘Well, no. Yeah … well kind of. I mean, I used to paint but I’m not doing so much these days. What I’m really interested in is tattoos. I’m doing an apprenticeship at the moment.’
‘Oh, cool. Do you have many yourself?’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, one or two. How about you?’
Stevie shook her head. ‘No, I was planning to get one at one stage, I remember, back when I started in college.’
‘What were you gonna get?’
Stevie cast her mind back to when she was 18 and found herself drawing a blank. ‘Do you know, I can’t even remember. I think I wanted to get one on my back.’
He rolled up his trouser-leg to show her an intricate black Celtic knot on his calf. ‘This is my most recent. I did this one myself.’
‘Wow, it must be difficult to tattoo yourself.’
‘Yeah, it’s a bit awkward all right. I wanted the practice though. It would be better only I was a bit hammered at the time.’
As he was pulling down his trouser leg, she thought she caught a glimpse of a tattoo above the one he had shown her. ‘Is that another one?’
‘Oh …’. He looked sheepish for a moment, but realising she had already seen, he pulled his trouser leg back up, farther this time. ‘You mean here?’
She saw a row of deep black lines on his leg that looked like scratch-marks.
‘That was when I’d just got the tattoo gun. I didn’t know how deep you were supposed to go with it, you know? I needed to kind of warm up and get used to using it before doing that proper one.’
‘Wow,’ said Stevie. ‘That’s …’ but she couldn’t articulate what it was she wanted to say. His body was not a temple, it seemed, but something to scratch and claw at. The marks were like something you’d scrawl on paper then scrunch up and throw away, and yet there they were, a permanent mark on his skin.
‘Can I …?’ she surprised herself by saying it as she reached out her hand. It was a compulsion, like wanting to run her fingers over rough-grained wood. She would rather risk getting a splinter than never knowing how it felt.
‘Sure,’ he said.
She touched his leg, tracing the lines of the tattoo scratches. When she went to pull her hand away, he placed his hand on top and wrapped his fingers around hers. They sat like that in silence for a while until he leaned towards her and then his mouth was on hers.
*
In the moment of waking to the sound of pigeons cooing and the morning sun slanting in through the window, he was a boy in the old house in Clare. He heard the familiar creak of the bed springs as he turned from the harsh morning, trying to clutch the last fragments of sleep as they fled from him. But he was not a boy. He knew this by the hangover that beat at his temples. He opened his eyes and took in the small room and the figure of the woman lying in bed beside him. How had he ended up here? Had she invited him back? He tried to remember leaving the pub.
Her hair was fanned out on the pillow under her, dirty-blonde and tangled. Her arms were stretched over her head like a ragged mermaid caught up in a net. He scanned the room to look for his clothes, a force of habit, and then looked back at her face. She was still asleep, or at least appeared to be. But it was only his T-shirt that was strewn on the floor beside the bed. He was still wearing his jeans. She opened her eyes and he looked away, then back at her.
‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
He found it best to avoid these moments, the awkwardness of the morning after when the intimacy of the previous night evaporated as the hangover set in. The last girl he had slept with … not slept with – banged, rode, fucked – had asked for some water from the glass he was drinking from, and when he had handed it to her she wiped the rim of the glass before taking a sip. He noticed the gesture and it had made him horrifically sad. He tried to remember that girl’s name now, but couldn’t. Maybe he should have left before Stevie had woken up, but it was too late now.
‘Morning. Don’t suppose you’ve anything stronger?’
Stevie laughed but then realised that he was serious. ‘Oh right. Yeah, I’ve a bottle of wine, I think.’
‘Please tell me you have a corkscrew.’
‘Oh, I don’t need one. I learnt this great trick recently for opening a bottle of wine with a shoe.’
She got up out of bed and he saw that she had also slept in her clothes. He looked at her long, slim legs as she padded barefoot towards the kitchen.
‘Where’s the bathroom?’ he asked.
‘Same place it was last night.’ She laughed and pointed towards the bathroom door.
It was coming back to him now. They had stayed in the pub until closing time. Drinking pints, kissing, exchanging stories, laughing about him breaking the wine bottle, more kissing. He had told her about the hospital, waiting in the A&E department in the chaos of the noise of the walking wounded. He could just about remember stumbling out of Neachtain’s at closing time. Chips on the way to her place. Vinegar dripping down their arms. Then smoking joints and talking about … what? Everything. Nothing. Music, art, tattoos. Yeah, that was it. She was interested in the tattoos. He remembered drunken kissing, clamouring, half-hearted grappling with clothing, but both of them too drunk to do anything other than pass out.
Stevie boiled the kettle and got the wine from the kitchen press. When she came out of the kitchen he was sitting on the sofa, looking at her pictures of the sheela-na-gigs and the map.
‘So, this is what you’re studying?’
‘Yeah, I’ve just started really. I’ve been interested in them for a while though.’
‘Yeah?’ He stood up and walked over to the pictures. ‘They’re pretty cool. Are they stone carvings?’
‘Yeah, they’re called sheela-na-gigs.’
‘Oh yeah, sheela-na-gigs. You were telling me about them last night.’ An image came to mind of her gesturing towards the map and talking animatedly as his drunk brain tried to follow what she was saying. Something about driving around Ireland….
‘Doesn’t PJ Harvey have a song about them?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, she does. Do you like her?’
‘Ah yeah. Sure you can’t beat a bit of PJ.’
‘I used to listen to that album all the time when I was a teenager. I think my family thought I was insane.’
Kavanagh laughed. ‘Yup, mine too. Did we have this conversation last night?’
‘Yeah, probably.’ Stevie poured them each a glass of wine. ‘Wine for breakfast is either a really, really good idea, or a really, really bad one.’
‘I’m gonna go with really, really good idea,’ said Kavanagh.
‘Yeah, sure it’s made with grapes so it’s probably one of your five a day.’
Kavanagh nodded in agreement. ‘It’s heart healthy. All those lads in Sicily drink it like water and they live into their hundreds.’
He stood up and walked over to the map of Ireland on the wall and traced his finger over the lines drawn onto it. ‘So, is this all the places where they are, the sheela-na-gigs?’
Stevie nodded. ‘I’ll be visiting all of those sites in the next year.’
‘All of them? Jesus, there’s loads.’
‘I know! I had no idea there were that many until I started studying them. But quite a few have been moved from their original locations to the history museum in Dublin, so I’ve already catalogued those ones.’
‘So what are they exactly?’ asked Kavanagh. ‘Are they Pagan symbols or something?’
‘Yeah, maybe. That’s one possib
ility anyway, that they were something that was left over from the change in Ireland from Paganism to Christianity.”
Kavanagh stepped back from the pictures and cocked his head to the side. ‘So … are they basically like giant vaginas? I mean, in your expert historical opinion?’
Stevie laughed. ‘Well, I suppose you could say that. They probably have something to do with childbirth, but it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s loads of different theories about them.’
‘Right,’ said Kavanagh.
He sat down on the sofa beside her and then they were kissing again. Stevie was enjoying kissing him. Just kissing. There was a clumsiness to it, as if they were teenagers. She had forgotten what that was like, the giddy new thrill of it, washing machine kisses on an endless spin cycle. The feeling of waiting for something to happen next – worrying that it would, then worrying that it wouldn’t. Tongues probing, hands roaming, doing everything but, not in bed but in dark corners of house parties, or drunken suburban laneways, or under the cover of darkness in blameless fields. His stubble was scratching her chin and she knew it would leave a mark, but she didn’t care. Yet there was a tenderness in it too, all this kissing.
She took his hand and led him back into the bedroom. It felt strange to have this man touching her, this man she barely knew, when she hadn’t slept with anyone other than Donal in years. It was like a foreign language she had learnt but forgotten, and it now felt strange and muddled on her tongue. He must have sensed her reticence. He took it slowly, waiting for her lead, kissing every inch of her until she grabbed him towards her. It was painful when he first entered her and she tensed. He sensed this and slowed down until they found their own rhythm, a mutual language their bodies could converse in, and then she was on top of him. Stretching, reaching, her hips thrusting over and over until they collapsed – spent, tipsy and sticky. They dozed through the morning, stretching out the wine, the kissing, the smoking. They kept the curtains drawn to keep the outside world from flooding in.
Chapter 11
Stevie set off on the first of her research trips to visit sheela-na-gig sites, all the while praying to the Automobile Gods that her tiny car wouldn’t break down over the course of the week. It was a hatchback that had seen better days. Duct tape covered a tear in the back seat like a bandage. Air whistled through a gap in one of the back windows. The engine grumbled its protest if she went above fourth gear. Still, it was hers to travel wherever she needed to, and it felt good to be on the road, singing loudly with the window rolled down. For this trip she was focusing on sheela-na-gig sites in Galway and the Midlands. She had an AA map of Ireland on the dashboard, a handwritten itinerary and printouts of her hotel and B&B bookings in the glove compartment, and her new digital SLR camera in her bag. Her first visit was to Ballinderry Castle just outside Tuam. From there she would travel to Roscommon to visit a further three sites. Then it was on to Longford, Westmeath and Offaly, before making her way back to Galway. Altogether, she would squeeze in visits to ten sites in five days.
She was making good time as she neared Tuam. It felt great to be on the road, singing loudly with the window rolled down, and she was enjoying the scenery, seeing the cattle and sheep in the green patchwork fields as she passed. The sun shone but there was a touch of autumn in the crisp air, and on the side of the road wild blackberries hinted at their own withering.
Stevie parked at Ballinderry Castle and headed on foot towards the squat limestone structure up ahead. It stood on a slight hill surrounded by trees. She had read that the castle was built in the sixteenth century by the de Burgo family on the shores of a Lough that had since disappeared. Over the years it had passed through many hands and had been occupied by various forces. Cromwell’s army had briefly occupied the castle, and later Parnell had stayed there. It had even been used as a British military outpost during the Troubles. Stevie smiled as she thought to herself that the only constant presence throughout this span of time was the sheela-na-gig on the wall.
From the top of the hill she surveyed the surrounding area, but she could see nobody, and the only noise was the faint rustle of the breeze and birdsong from the trees. She couldn’t see the sheela-na-gig at first as she made her way around the perimeter of the castle. Then her heart leapt as she spotted it on the archway of the main doorway, on a keystone that projected outwards. She had seen drawings of the figure in a book, but had imagined it to be larger. She realised that it could easily be missed by visitors to the castle unless they were specifically seeking it out. Retrieving her camera from her bag, she started to take some photographs of the carving. It had a large head with a neutral expression. Two plaits protruded from either side, which could have been hair, or some type of headdress. The figure was standing with legs spread wide open, and two hands were joined around the genitals. Stevie had read that this particular example was unusual and important as it featured an intricate background of Celtic-style patterns. Also, unusually for a sheela-na-gig, a rush of liquid was depicted between the legs, which could have been urine, menstrual blood or some other substance. This was where the uncertainty came in, thought Stevie, as she zoomed her camera in to take a photo of the liquid. It was impossible to know for certain one way or the other. All they had were theories.
Stevie felt like skipping as she made her way back down the hill. After all of her hours of researching, reading and planning, she had started at last. There was something special about seeing the sheela-na-gig not as a picture in a book, or even an exhibit in a museum, but in situ, where it had been for centuries. She knew that the task ahead of her was enormous, and that she was only at the start, but she had taken that first step and felt excited by the possibility of it all.
As she drove to the next site, Stevie thought about the figure and mulled over the many possible explanations of why it was there. She had started to make her way through all of the texts and research on sheela-na-gigs both in Ireland and the UK. One explanation claimed that the figures existed purely for defensive purposes, that their presence at entrances to sacred buildings had a talismanic purpose that prevented evil spirits from crossing the threshold. Then there was the Romanesque theory, which proposed that the aim of the sheela-na-gigs was to provide a visual warning to the illiterate against the sin of lust. Similar imagery of female exhibitionists could be found in Romanesque-style churches in western France, Normandy and Spain, so perhaps in an Irish context the sheela-na-gigs had acted in a corresponding way. It was also possible that they represented a Celtic goddess such as the hag-like Cailleach from Irish and Scottish mythology. Perhaps they were a hangover as a result of the change from the Pagan worship of several gods to the Christian worship of one: an uneasy link between folk belief and religion, where an assimilation of pagan artefacts was necessary to placate the superstitious. It was possible that it was a combination of all of these things, and that the figures served a number of functions, or that their function had started as one thing and evolved over time.
It was this ambiguity that fascinated Stevie, the fact that so much was mysterious, unknown, and perhaps unknowable. One school of thought that particularly interested her was the midwife theory, that sheela-na-gigs had somehow been used to aid women during childbirth. Many of the figures were found in small rural churches, and the quality of the stonework varied greatly, suggesting they were not the work of skilled craftsmen but that of amateur carvers, placing them in the realm of local tradition.
Stevie had read that women in the medieval period would have spent most of their adult lives either pregnant or nursing infant children, only to bury a large number of their offspring who died from malnutrition or disease. She could picture the women in labour, their wild eyes appealing for mercy like startled horses as the midwife made a poultice from herbs. To her, the sheela-na-gigs seemed to belong in such a setting. Perhaps back then there was comfort in the statues, the ritual of it, the sympathetic magic. Maybe they were touched for luck, fingers p
oked into idol holes, prayers offered up, to inspire the feeling that these things could somehow be controlled – pain made bearable, death staved off. She wondered if that was what it was all about: as some flowed into the world and others flowed out – birth, life, death, birth, life, death, birth – an endless cycle through the spread legs of a stone statue.
*
The roads were quiet as Stevie drove towards the B&B in Roscommon later that evening. Birds floated by like ghosts haunting the darkening sky. Having driven past it, realising her error and backtracking, she finally pulled up outside the B&B , which was cast in a faint dusky light. The proprietor, a Mrs McGarry, was looking out the window as Stevie parked, and as she approached the front door it flew open.
‘Oh, hello. Come on in out of the cold. Is it just yourself, love?’
‘Just me,’ smiled Stevie.
‘Oh, you poor pet. Come on in. I’ll show you to your room.’
Stevie followed Mrs McGarry as she walked up the creaking stairs. The old woman leaned heavily on the bannister, favouring her right leg. Stevie tried not to look at the limp and instead looked at the back of Mrs McGarry’s head, which resembled a perfectly solid helmet of permed curls.
‘Here we are, pet.’ She turned the key in the lock and opened the door.
Mrs McGarry shuffled into the room on her bad hip. She surveyed the single bed, the threadbare carpet, the faded wallpaper, turned to Stevie and raised her hands with palms facing upwards in a gesture that said, Well, what do you think?
Stevie forced a wide smile. ‘Oh, it’s lovely.’
‘Now there’s no television here, but there’s one in the common room downstairs. You can come down once you’re settled in and watch the soaps if you like.’
‘Oh, thanks, but to be honest I’m quite tired after all the driving. I think I’ll just have an early night.’
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