Mary, Mary

by Julie Parsons

  ‘Shh,’ she said, ‘shh, shh, shh.’ And they stood, the two of them, as the sun flooded into the room, bouncing off the gleaming white walls and floor, its rays glittering on a tray of instruments on a trolley, casting a halo around Margaret’s head, and filling her, just for the moment, with warmth.

  PART

  2

  31

  The taxi driver was bored. He sat, his engine idling, the radio on, watching the people trickling out of the airport terminal. Where do they all come from, he wondered, and why if they have the money to travel, do they bother coming here? Especially in the spring with the weather so unpredictable. The car in front moved off and he edged to the head of the line. Twenty to four. It had been a slow day. At this rate he’d have to stay on the road until well after rush hour. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, the buckle of his belt sticking into the rolls of fat that poured over it. There was the sound of the back door opening. He turned awkwardly, looking over his shoulder. A woman was leaning into the car, her face pale, her eyes hidden by dark glasses. She said, ‘I’ve a couple of bags here. If you wouldn’t mind.’

  He pulled out into the traffic on the main road into the city. It was heavy as always. Moving very slowly. Must be some kind of a hold-up, he thought, further in, maybe as far as Whitehall. An accident, or some kind of Garda checkpoint. He drummed impatiently on the steering wheel, then punched the buttons on the car radio. The traffic came to a standstill. He leaned back, one hand fiddling with the headrest of the seat next to him.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s always like this.’ He looked at her in the rear-view mirror. She was sitting up very straight, looking all around. Her movements were edgy, nervous. She turned her head away from him and looked out of the window. He noticed her neck. It was long and very thin, the tendons standing out underneath the skin. She turned back towards him. He wished she’d take her glasses off so he could get a really good look at her face. When he stood beside her as he lifted her bags into the boot he had been very conscious of how small she was. Barely five foot, he reckoned. Her dark brown hair was pulled back from her forehead and gathered with a wooden clasp at the nape of her neck. When she leaned forward to settle the bags more firmly he noticed the round curve of her hips, the soft denim of her jeans pulled into her waist with a worn leather belt. He looked at the large sticker decorating one of the bags. Air New Zealand. A long way to travel with so little luggage. She thanked him for his help and smiled, her wide pale mouth opening to reveal small white teeth. And as she moved away from him, lifting her arm to pick up her shoulder bag, he had smelt something light and natural. Rose, maybe, like his daughter wore.

  He put a cassette into the tape machine and pressed play. Nanci Griffiths’ nasal twang filled the car. He glanced again at her in the mirror. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Absolutely fine.’

  The car in front began to move, slowly at first, then gradually picking up speed. She had given him instructions, told him where to go. He couldn’t quite work out her accent. He didn’t think she was from Dublin, but she seemed to know her way around. As they passed through the city centre she commented on changes that had taken place, buildings gone, buildings replaced.

  ‘You’ve been here before?’ he asked.

  She smiled. ‘Yes, a few times.’

  ‘And the last time was?’

  ‘Last summer.’

  ‘Great, wasn’t it? Let’s hope this one will be as good.’

  She didn’t reply. She sank back into the seat. Her face had changed. She looked ill, the skin around her mouth loose and trembling.

  When he stopped where she had asked, she didn’t get out immediately. He pulled into the gravel circle in front of the tall wrought-iron gates. They were locked, a chain and padlock looped around the old ornate handle, a collection of last autumn’s dead leaves still piled up against them. He turned off the engine. The music was suddenly very loud. He looked again at her. Her hands were over her face, her head was bowed. He waited. Then he got out of the car and walked away from it as far as the gates. He leaned against them, reaching up with his arms and grasping the iron bars as high up as he could, stretching his back, stiff from the hours spent sitting. When he released his grip and looked back she was standing by the boot of the car. He walked slowly over to her.

  ‘There’s something I need in here,’ she said.

  He opened the boot and she took a plastic container, lunchbox-sized, from one of the bags.

  ‘You don’t mind waiting, do you?’ she asked. ‘I’ll pay you for your time.’

  He nodded, and she walked away, through a side gate in the high stone wall. He watched her picking her way along the uneven path, until she disappeared behind a row of headstones. Then he locked the taxi and began to follow her.

  It was quiet behind the graveyard’s high walls. The only sound was his feet on the gravel of the narrow path, which wound away from the gates leading him into the tumbled labyrinth of the graves. He was reluctant to branch off down one of the narrow grass tracks, suddenly superstitious in this place. It was cold, the spring sun not able to contend with the cold blast of a north-easterly. He zipped up his leather jacket and shoved his hands into the pockets. He began to walk quickly, every now and then jumping up to see further over the irregular horizon of crosses and angels and blocks of stone like miniature skyscrapers. And then he saw her. A flash of white from her shirt over in the far corner, just for a moment.

  He turned off the path, stumbling over the rough, uncared-for ground. The sound of his breath was loud in his ears, and the grass felt damp against his legs. It was a long time since he had been in a place like this. Not since his father had been buried. He hadn’t liked it then, the coffin heavy on his shoulder, and he didn’t like it now. He was tempted to go back to the car, suddenly, unreasonably anxious. But then, as he turned from the end of one row into the beginning of another, he found her. Squatting by a group of graves that were separate, on their own, under a large tree. She was rocking backwards and forwards on her heels, taking handfuls of something from the plastic box and spreading it over one of the graves. A candle was burning at the base of the headstone, its flame flickering weakly in the sunlight, which dappled through the tree. The headstone was like nothing else he had ever seen. It was carved from a plain grey rock, some kind of limestone, he thought, in the shape of a seashell. Its edges were rough, and it looked in places as if it still had the accretions of limpets and other clinging sea creatures. The grave itself was covered in other rough stones, softened by mosses of a deep green. He looked again at what she was doing. She was placing shells carefully among the stones and the moss, and she was muttering under her breath as she did so. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the sounds gave him that same sweet comforting feeling that reminded him of something, very far away, that he thought he had lost for ever. He couldn’t read the dedication on the headstone so he moved forward slowly on tiptoes, but his heavy body unbalanced and he tripped.

  She turned. She had taken off her glasses. She looked naked, vulnerable, as if she had just woken from a deep sleep.

  ‘Sorry, I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to.’ The words fell over themselves, tumbled from his mouth.

  She looked at him silently, then returned to her task. He gazed over her bowed head and mouthed the words carved into the rocky shell.

  MARY MITCHELL

  1975–1995

  To see a world in a grain of sand

  And a heaven in a wild flower

  Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

  And eternity in an hour

  It was about fifteen minutes later that she came back to the car. Her face was hidden again behind her dark glasses. She didn’t speak, except to give him the address of her final destination. It was only as he drove down the narrow road towards the sea, past the Martello tower at Seapoint, that he realized who the girl was. He remembered. Last summer. The guards had been all over the taxi
drivers. Questions, more questions, details of fares, trips, anything unusual. A couple of the lads had been taken in, given the once-over. But none of them knew anything about the girl’s death. It was rough for a few weeks. And then, he remembered, they got some guy for it. He wasn’t a taxi man. He had some kind of private chauffeuring outfit. A scab, in other words. It was an awful case. One of the blokes on the rank had a brother-in-law who was a guard. He said her injuries were bad, she’d had a terrible time before she was killed. Poor kid.

  He got out of the car to help the woman with her bags. They’d pulled up outside a house that looked as if it had seen better days. A couple of slates off the roof, windows and doors needing painting. A pity to let it fall apart, he thought. In this lovely spot, right by the sea. It’d be worth a small fortune, these days, with the property market booming. He carried her bags up the steps to the front door. She counted out what she owed him, then added another tenner.

  ‘Ah, here,’ he said, ‘that’s a bit much.’

  She smiled. ‘No, you were very kind.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, then he stopped.

  ‘Yes?’ She turned back to him, a bunch of keys dangling from her hand.

  ‘If you ever need help with anything . . .’ He pressed his card into her hand.

  She watched while he drove down to the end of the cul-de-sac, turned and came back. He slowed down and saluted her, then he went on his way. She walked back down the steps and looked up at the house. Home again, she thought.

  32

  To market, to market to buy a fat pig,

  Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

  To market, to market to buy a fat hog.

  Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.

  She was dreaming again. It was the same dream. She had been having it regularly now for months.

  She was in a room somewhere, in a house somewhere. She didn’t recognize it but she felt comfortable, relaxed, at ease. Mary was sitting across her knees, facing her. She was aged about three, a chubby little thing with strong legs, muscles under the baby fat, which drummed against Margaret’s thighs. She was wearing a pair of cream-coloured dungarees. A big fat pig wearing a straw hat was embroidered on the bib in red chain stitch. She was wearing exactly the same kind of hat jammed down on her black curls. She was chanting the nursery rhyme with a syncopated rhythm. Margaret’s knees were bumping her up in the air in time to it. Bump, bump, bump. Up and down she went, her curly hair and the straw hat jumping from her head in time to the little song. Margaret felt happy, so happy. She was chanting the nursery rhyme too.

  To market, to market

  Home again, home again

  To market, to market

  Home again, home again.

  Then something changed. Mary was no longer on her knees. She didn’t know when or how she had left. Every time she woke from the dream she tried to hold on to what had happened, but the memory left her as she opened her eyes. She could still hear her voice, her little lisping mispronunciations.

  Jiddity-jid,

  Jiddity-jod,

  Jiddity-jid,

  Jiddity-jod.

  But she couldn’t see her anywhere. She was bouncing her empty knees up and down, up and down, over and over. She could still feel Mary’s weight on her thighs, but the child was gone.

  She stood up. She was standing by a large plate-glass window. Outside on the vivid green grass lay the straw hat. She stepped through the glass. It shattered around her. She walked over to the hat and lifted it up. Underneath lay Mary, tiny, her mouth open, shrieking the words of the rhyme. But when Margaret bent down and picked her up she realized that it wasn’t Mary. It was a china doll, her face painted in a dreadful grimace, her arms and legs in a twisted rictus, her curly hair set in stiff porcelain. Cold, hard, unyielding.

  Margaret woke. She was as rigid and as cold as the doll had been. A gale was blowing outside. The wind poured in from the sea, banging against the sash windows and flicking out the hem of the curtains, like the swaying skirts of a woman waltzing. She stared at the old beige lampshade hanging above her head. The small pompoms around its base bobbled gently in the draught. Mary’s room, Mary’s bed, but no trace of her now on the damp pillow or in the empty cupboards and drawers, still standing open as she had left them six months ago. She had thought she would find her in their house outside Auckland. She had run from room to room, tearing back the curtains so that the bright southern sun poured in, calling her name, flinging open the door to her bedroom, sure she would be there, lying on the divan, her Walkman clamped to her head, a bottle of Coke and a half-eaten apple on the floor beside her. But nothing or no one came to meet her, nothing or no one came to comfort her. No sound except the irritated buzzing of a fly trapped against the glass of the window, no sight except her own exhausted face staring back at her from the mirror in the empty bathroom.

  She got up, stiff, her legs aching. It was early, not yet seven. She walked out into the corridor. The doors to the other bedrooms were closed and the landing was dark. It was very quiet apart from the screech of the wind as it flounced around the corners of the house. She walked down the stairs, along the hall and into her mother’s room. It was exactly as she had left it. She had done nothing except strip the bed of its sheets. Everything else was as it always had been. She went over and sat down on the bed. The springs creaked. The mattress sagged beneath her. She lay down, falling into the deep hollow in its centre. Her head was where Catherine’s had been, her body moulding itself to the contours of her mother’s. The room smelt of damp and dust. She closed her eyes but the cold nagged at her, prodding her to move. She swung her legs over the side and walked to the large window, opened the shutters and folded them back into their recesses. The sea rolled, green and yellow, dirty white breakers spending themselves on the rock. Dark clouds hung low over Howth and along the edge of the horizon wisps of rain straggled into the sea.

  Rain fell in the city, rain driven by gale-force winds from the east. Winds funnelling up the Liffey, kicking up stiff little waves with white peaked caps, flicking umbrellas inside out. Rain falling so quickly and heavily that the culverts and drains couldn’t cope with the volume of water, and it lay in puddles and pools.

  McLoughlin’s feet were already wet and it was only nine-thirty in the morning. Wet feet and a bad temper. Not the best way to begin the day, he thought bitterly, as he stood in the gents’ toilet in the Four Courts. He looked down, past the white enamel urinal to the wet stain around the bottom of his trousers. It must have been a huge puddle. Took him completely by surprise as he stepped out of the car half an hour ago. But that didn’t explain the temper. Another row with Janey. It had started the way they always did. A casual remark. An imagined slight. And then the stream of accusations. When he left the house she followed him onto the driveway, her dressing gown billowing around her bare legs, her voice simultaneously loud and plaintive. He’d been neglecting her, he didn’t love her, he was having an affair, he was going to leave her. Go on, she screamed. Do it. See how you like it on your own. Your girlfriends won’t want to know after they’ve spent some time putting up with you and your filthy habits, you’re disgusting. No one could live with you. You bastard.

  Unfortunately he’d no one to blame but himself. Somehow he’d missed their last wedding anniversary. He cringed inwardly when he thought about it. And for once there was no other woman involved. It had happened to coincide with the last Galway hooker race of the season. A blowy Saturday. A beautiful autumn day, the wind from the southwest, a steady force four to five. He was supposed to come home after the race, but it was late when they got back to the clubhouse. And then, and then. He had to stay and drink with the lads. And she’d gone to bed by the time he rolled in. She’d drunk the bottle of champagne by herself. He had no excuse. He knew that but, by Christ, she knew how to extract blood. Over and over again. Until he was sick to death of her.

  He zipped up his fly and washed his hands. He stood in front of the smeared mirror and straight
ened his tie. The DPP v. Jimmy Fitzsimons, beginning today. Around and behind him swirled the black gowns of the barristers. For and against, pro and anti, prosecution and defence. Not that it mattered much to them which side they were on. Just a very nice lucrative game. And a chance to behave like little boys, fighting, scrapping, throwing clever insults. Scoring points. And winning. He wasn’t sure where justice stood in all this. But he’d realized a long time ago that whatever happened in the Four Courts didn’t have a lot to do with justice.

  He looked at his watch. Time to make a move. She was waiting for him under the dome in the Round Hall, standing on her own in the centre of the vestibule. He paused at the top of the steps that led up from the toilets, and watched her. At the sight of her face butterflies danced a quadrille in the pit of his stomach. She was wearing a plain black suit, with a long narrow jacket over a short skirt. Her pale stockings shone in the dull light filtered through the glass high up in the dome. Her hair was pulled back from her face. She looked older, he thought, thinner and paler, the colour leached from her skin. He watched her, as she turned this way and that, spun around by the crowds, taking three steps in one direction then three steps back again to the same position. Her hands were clasped at waist height, her fingers locked together, twisting around each other, then releasing and clasping again. It was a characteristic gesture, he thought. When all else about her was calm her hands gave her away with their fussing and fidgeting, their constant reassuring grasp of each other.

  Her hands holding a coffee cup the day he had come to tell her that they had charged Fitzsimons. The good news, as he thought. But he hadn’t known that her mother had died the day before. She was like a zombie when she answered the door. Her movements were jerky and awkward as she brought him into the kitchen and made him coffee. He had thought she would be pleased at his news, pleased at the thought of some kind of retribution, even revenge. But she stood with her back to the sink, holding the cup, then mindlessly, thoughtlessly, opened her grasp and dropped it onto the tiles as one hand reached for the other.