The Woman's Daughter

by Dermot Bolger

  The youth flapped his elbows and danced around Johnny.

  ‘Lay off the kid, will you,’ Git said, handing Johnny the pipe. The stem was so short that his lips were nearly scorched by the hot bowl as he inhaled and held the drug down in his lungs for as long as possible. He passed the pipe to Mono and let the remaining wisps of smoke escape from his lips.

  ‘I didn’t come down the Tolka in a bubble,’ he said, and gazed up at the rusting girders of the abandoned shirt factory. Through a leak in the roof water dripped in a tortuous irregular pattern on to a black pool on the concrete. Slotted moonlight entered where strips of corrugated iron had been torn from the window frames. Darkness hid the graffiti and faeces and bottles. Their voices echoed in the vast cavern where rows of girls had once hunched over sewing machines. Twice a night a token security van drove through the smashed-down gate, its headlights blazing through the window slats to catch glimpses of lads inside playing football, their shouts amplified as they careered into each other in the blackness. The van circled the plant to fulfil insurance obligations and sped off again. Couples used the outhouses to fuck in, condoms littering the steps down to them. A pusher operated a chemist shop in one of them, two bodyguards sitting as sentinels on the grass outside.

  ‘Come on to fuck,’ Git said. ‘It’s Hallowe’en, let’s get out into the air.’

  In the car-park four of Mono’s mates waited with flagons of cider. ‘Are you right?’ one shouted. ‘Are we getting this bonfire going or what?’

  They went out the gates and cut through the last scraggy few trees left towards the open ground near the stream. Johnny felt enclosed by them, their easy comradeship and strutting walk, the way people stepped from their path. Here you were not required to think, here the buzzing could be drowned in your head by jeers and cider and shouts.

  The bonfire was over fifteen feet high, a circle of old tyres surrounding the base. Somebody poured half a can of paraffin over the front of it and flames quickly ran up the smaller pieces of wood and along the stream of paraffin to one of the tyres. With a spurt it took hold, the flames casting huge shadows over the grass, the night beyond made darker by the blaze. Thick smoke came from the tyres, the stink of burning rubber filling the air. They passed the flagon round and cheered as the crowd of younger children crept closer, fascinated by the blaze.

  Two hundred yards away flames hurled like an angry fist at the sky from a second fire, while on both sides of the waste ground the lights of the estates twinkled distantly as though from another land. In the dark valley by the stream only the single bulb in Turlough’s window beckoned. The flames had reached the top of the bonfire by now, the blaze was mesmeric. It caught the faces of the youths around Johnny, made them glow red and unreal like characters from a nightmare. They were shouting and dancing around the fire, hurling planks that had fallen down back up again in a torrent of sparks. The buzzing was growing louder in his head, reaching a pitch he could not tolerate. He pressed his hands over his ears and screamed to try and block it out.

  ‘What’s that spacer at?’ he heard a friend of Mono ask.

  ‘Oi, Johnny whateveryournameis, will you get it together or piss off.’

  ‘Fuck off down to your old boyfriend if you’re going to start that crack,’ Mono jeered. ‘Our Johnny is a bumboy for the old geezer down there. He likes the bit of rough trade, mixes sand in with the axle grease.’

  Johnny stared at the jeering faces, both frightened and yet desperate to be part of them, to vanish into that universe where there was no love or fear, or right or wrong. Just a numb blindness with no rules to prevent you from doing whatever you wished. The buzzing in his skull was like a constant invasion of static. He shuddered, thinking of Turlough’s kitchen, the hours there listening to the old madman’s mumbling. It was a sign of weakness and shame in their company. That cramped cottage was pulling him down, but he’d show them he was nobody’s fool, he’d break free once and for all.

  ‘You want a bonfire,’ he shouted, grabbing the paraffin, ‘I’ll give you one you’ll never forget.’

  And then he began to race frantically down into the hollow leaving the youths to gaze after him.

  ‘Beam me up, Scottie!’ Mono said. ‘It’s you that fucking brought him along, Git. It’s shag all to do with me.’

  ‘Stop up and come on. This I’ve got to bleeding see.’

  For one last moment the flames of the bonfire lit them as they ran down the slope, then it burnt on alone with the suffocating stink of blazing rubber.

  He’s coming for me now. I can see them sliding down the ditch behind him. How I’ve longed for this for years and now I’m terrified. I didn’t think I would be but I am. Must try to remember everything, forget nowhere, nobody. This dim room where I was born, these clay walls with the sheets of iron that I replaced the thatch with forty years ago. How I’ve cursed them night after night when I’ve sat here with nothing but you cursed voices for company and now they are so suddenly precious.

  Damn you voices, if you exist. I’ve served you well these eighty years, I’ve given my whole life to you, never broke my silence once. Why must you extract the last drop of blood, can’t you let me die peaceably in my sleep? He’s done nothing, damn you, why must you place this on his shoulders? All these years Matthew’s face has haunted me, the scattered matches floating away as the eyes stared up in horror when my hands squeezed his face back under the water.

  They’re circling the cottage now, his excitement has got into all of them. Johnny, go back! For your own sake run now! Go back you fool, back! They’re banging on the door of the cottage. It’s solid oak my father stole from the wood that night the tree was felled in the big storm. I held the lantern while himself and the neighbours sawed it between them. They’ll never break that door down. The way they’re chanting my name, their eyes glazed like nothing human was left inside them. That’s the door to the old hen house gone. Johnny’s in there, I can smell burning, hear the crackle through the wall, the roof beams catching.

  I’m caged here, caged, I can’t open the door. The lock is jammed, damn you, you bastards. I’m going to die in this room where I’ve spent my life. The bedclothes are catching, the felt has gone up. Help me, help me, I can’t go through with it! Can’t breathe with the smoke and the fumes here, must break the glass of the window for air. Johnny, forgive me! I never wanted to cause you harm. We’re together for ever now. It’s got my trousers, it’s got my legs! I’m on fire Johnny! I’m on fire! Must break the glass! Break the glass!

  There was a spurt of orange flame through the narrow window and the glass shattered as a hand burst through it. The fingers opened and closed with blood spilling from the wrist as the fire spread along the sleeve. And suddenly in my mind I could see inside that room where I had so often sat for hours, the frames of the two single beds with the mattresses burning, the bottle of soured milk on the table exploding, the two grey photographs over the fireplace curling up into brownish flames and then the crash as the corrugated roof began to cave in. And on the stone floor the old figure crawled with his hair on fire, the skin on his face dissolving as he screamed and I could see my own face emerging underneath.

  I could feel the heat within the room as I stood in the gang of youths who were shouting. I was shell-shocked, disbelieving, gasping for breath. And yet for the first time in months I was able to think clearly as though a shield had dropped from my brain. The night air was filled with a thousand splinters of wood, dancing like fireflies at the wonder of death. I dropped the empty can to put my hands to my head, and suddenly I felt him, like a scalding flame of energy, rushing out through the blazing door to hurtle into me in a scorching wave of heat that knocked me over on to the ground.

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t he come out?’ the youth beside me was shouting. ‘He had time to do it, he just stood at the window, he never moved!’

  I could hear them scrambling up on to the roadway, their shadows grotesque in the flames that were spreading out to ignite the old planks o
ver the stream until it seemed that the very water below them was blazing. And as I turned to watch I found that I knew the name of this place when it was a field, and the names of all the fields where the house now stood, of all the rocks that had been hauled down, of all the townlands that were forgotten. The Scrubby Meadow, the Long Trench, the Bone Park, the Stony Bother, Shallon, places which nobody else remembered now.

  I could feel Turlough dwelling like a spirit inside me, and inside him another one and another, stretching backwards in a line from the felling of the giant oaks to their first seed being carried in the wind, to the inn landlord serving the drunken king, the warrior camped in the empty woods, the stonesmith shaping his cross, the barefoot saint with the goat preaching at the foot of the crossroads, down and down to the eyes of druids who turned to stare out through my eyes. And I looked up at the small lights of the houses around me and knew that these were all my people: the woman and daughter caged in their room, Joanie’s father coughing alone through the night, the lovers seeking out darkened corners, the gangs littering up the alleyways, the woman’s hands buried in the sink of warm dishes, the workers cursing on the late shift, the widower awake in the early hours with only the radio for company.

  They were all my people, their stories, their lives, which I could never alter or affect, passed into my care, to be recorded with the tens of thousands gathered from over the centuries. And I knew that I would remember each one, that they would live again for my lifetime in my mind alone, that I would never speak their names or betray what I knew but keep this silent vigil until the time came for somebody to be chosen to follow me.

  And then I realized that I could never leave this place, would never marry, would shun all close friends. I was damned forever to be shut out, an observer, longing to touch the lives which I could never lead. I shivered, standing in that hollow lit by the fire, hardly aware of the crowds of people who had been drawn to the edge, and it was only when the sky was washed in blue and white by the fire trucks that I turned and scrambled my way along the bank of the stream, attempting to flee Turlough and the ghosts he carried with him, to recapture the person I had been a few minutes before.

  I kept trying to scream but no sound would emerge. I could feel his heart merging with my own, his voice whispering in my mind and all the other voices within his, whispering, whispering, no matter how hard I ran or how much I tried to drown out the words.

  In the gully below the village where the stream rushed out again from an underground pipe I paused, choking for breath on the wooded bank. My hands and face were covered in scratches and I tensed myself, trying to find the courage to hurl myself in. And when I gazed down at the water I saw my mother’s face and my father beside her and all the neighbours who had died whom I had once known. They stared up at me as if pleading to be remembered: let us live on again through you, don’t cast us into the darkness where our names and lives will have all meant nothing. Turlough’s face was there too towards the back of the crowd. There were faces I had forgotten which came back to me, the little girl I had played with who was ploughed down by the car, the old man with the cough who always sent me for untipped Player’s cigarettes. And Joanie’s face too, only different, her limbs clad in the drab cloth of an asylum uniform. Nearby, a lean man with a haunted stare gazed towards her as a dog whined at his heels. And in the distance, still only half formed, an outline awaited features that I knew would soon be filled by my grandmother.

  A few feet below me the stream was polluted by oil and scraps of debris but just here where I knelt it had become a crystal rivulet. I broke the water with my cupped palms and raised it, dripping, towards my lips. It tasted sweet like clear water and blood mixed together. I felt calmed and strengthened by its taste. The crowded faces rippling into each other were still there when I gazed down again and now I knew only that I loved these people, that I would never let them die. I would carry them within me for the rest of my days and spend my life in this place, whatever longings would consume me, at whatever the cost or sacrifice. This stream ran like a vein through my fingers, its flow, unbroken for centuries, bearing me into the future.

  Then the faces were gone from the water. A rat eyed me from the edge of the pipe and slipped back down into the undergrowth. I could hear the noises of the cars on the carriageway above, the shouts of the people walking home from the pub on the bridge. I used the rusted hulk of an abandoned washing machine to cross the stream and climbed up from the gully back on to the carriageway. I joined my people walking in the anonymous after-hours crowd up the steep hill towards the ruined main street of the old village. And all that night I walked through the streets of my guardianship while my grandmother waited anxiously for my return.

  In the filthy cul-de-sac behind the pigeon club a gang of youths played cards beneath the single lamp-post, two young girls laughed outside the closed-down chip shop, a squad car patrolled through alien territory. I walked silently, an unnoticed figure blending into the landscape, learning all the names and the faces by heart. At the traffic lights beside the police barracks the huge lorries throbbed, waiting for lights to change. From Monaghan and Cavan they had come, pounding through the black countryside towards the docks. A driver raised his hand in salute as the trucks lunged forward and sped down the brightly lit carriageway, leaving me behind with my secret held like a scared bird whose wings were fluttering against my heart.

  1977–1990,

  The Crystal Rivulet

  About the Author

  Dermot Bolger

  was born in Dublin in 1959. One of Ireland’s best known authors, his seven novels include Father’s Music, A Second Life and The Journey Home – one of the most controversial Irish novels of the 1990s. His eight plays, including The Lament for Arthur Cleary, The Passion of Jerome and April Bright, have received several awards including the Samuel Beckett Prize and have been staged in many countries. Plays: 1, the first volume of his Selected Plays, was recently published by Methuen.

  A former factory hand and library assistant, he founded the Raven Arts Press while still in his teens. In addition to being a poet and editor, he was the instigator of the collaborative novels, Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel (which have appeared in twelve countries) and editor of The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction. He lives and works in Dublin.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  From the reviews for The Woman’s Daughter:

  ‘A wild, frothing poetic odyssey, swinging backwards and forwards in time to pick up the stories of other “flukes of biology and chance” – the forgotten people who have lived and will live in the same place, on the outskirts of the “city of the dead”.’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘The Woman’s Daughter is a daring and courageous novel, even an experimental one, and reading it is at times a painful experience. As a peephole into one man’s version of the long, dark night of the soul, it will not be bettered for quite a time.’ Sunday Press

  ‘Bolger puts across the feeling of fear, uneasiness and wasted lives in a very fluent and lyrical manner. This novel is almost poetic in style.’

  Irish World

  ‘A dark, erotic novel.’ Irish Independent

  ‘Powerful, ambitious and original.’ Sunday Independent

  By the same author

  Novels

  Night Shift

  The Journey Home

  Emily’s Shoes

  A Second Life

  Father’s Music

  Temptation

  Plays

  The Lament for Arthur Cleary

  Blinded by the Light

  In High Germany

  The Holy Ground

  One Last White Horse

  April Bright

  The Passion of Jerome

  Consenting Adults

  Plays: 1 (selected plays)

  Poetry

  The Habit of Flesh

  Finglas Lilies

  No Waiting
America

  Internal Exiles

  Leinster Street Ghosts

  Taking My Letters Back: New & Selected Poems

  Editor

  The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction

  Finbar’s Hotel

  Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel

  Copyright

  Flamingo

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  Flamingo is a registered trade mark of

  HarperCollinsPublishers Limited

  www.fireandwater.com

  Published by Flamingo 2002

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The Woman’s Daughter, consisting of Part I and sections of

  Part III, was published by the Raven Arts Press 1987

  This edition, with new and revised material, first published by

  Viking 1991 and in paperback by Penguin 1992

  Copyright © Dermot Bolger, 1987, 1991

  Dermot Bolger asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  ISBN 0 00 712120 2

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