Grace

by Paul Lynch

  The way the woman begins to talk at her and Grace does not know where to look, for where can you look, she thinks, you do not want to look at the woman’s big feet and you do not want to look at her head because Colly is whispering about her head being full of spiders, and you want to laugh even though the thought makes you squirm and anyhow how can you laugh if there are murderers about?

  Them people, she hears Spiderwoman saying. They pass through my fields to taunt me, poach my wild rabbits, that Michaelín fellow, him and his half brother. I found him the other day standing right inside my yard. Right there where you are now. He said he was looking for his dog but his dog is this big. The blackthorn stick he carried with him. They bang the windows when I am asleep. They tap the door. They take from my supplies. They lift my vegetables and herbs. Two of my hens have gone missing. They are so clever about it. She turns and points to a far cabin on the low side of the hillock. Those others are gone now, them Conns, took away off wherever they went. They had better manners and kept to themselves but they had no religion so God’s help was gone from their door.

  She hands Grace the tin lamp and points towards the barn.

  Take a sack from the shelf on the left as you go in and fill it with straw. You can sleep in the house beside the dog. He is the cat and you are the rat, that’s what he will think. You are the rat drinking the cat’s milk.

  She stands at the door of the barn trapped in some aspic of thought, looks towards the sky’s vanishing light. She thinks, how easy it would be to run away from the fact of this woman with her strange talk and that man locked up in that other room and that mole on her face that seems to have grown bigger these last few minutes, the little hairs wriggling into legs, the legs beginning to— she swings light into the barn as if expecting to see the face of some stranger, rests the lamp on a stool and rubs at her wrist, this feeling that the woman’s hand has defiled her.

  Colly fumes at her. Get out now, you silly bitch, that woman is nothing but trouble.

  She sits on the stool and lights a snug pipe. Says, here, take a toke and be quiet. She sucks on the pipe and says, how long is it since we got fed like that? What price can there be to pay for it? A bit of silliness, that’s all. That woman is just lonely, an ugly old saint being kind to us.

  Colly says, I’ll tell you what she is, she’s Saint Hairy of Spider, that’s why she’s so strong and well fed—hee!—at night all the spiders climb out and run wild over the countryside sucking the blood of animals, sucking the blood of that man behind the door, so watch out while we’re sleeping, mark my words, we’ll stir up only to find ourselves a pair of shrivels with our blood sucked out.

  She goes to the barn door and stares downhill. Through gloom the distant cabins push dark smoke into the almost-night and she takes a quick peek around the corner. There is Spiderwoman painted into dark, watching her from the window.

  Her stomach tightens when she hears Spiderwoman bolt the door of her bedroom, the sound of a man’s coughing coming from behind the other door. She tries to imagine who he is, some sick son or husband, or a person like you, Colly says, taken from the town and now held prisoner. She beds down by the dim fire listening to the dog eyeing her in the dark. How thoughts stir strangely together, thoughts of sleep beside that damned dog’s damp smell, thoughts of strange men sneaking about and rattling the windows and threatening to kill and she imagines them watching her now through the window, thinks about what the woman has said and the way she said it, that perhaps what sounds is just loneliness.

  She lies listening to the night’s noises. That is the sound of the house settling and it is not the sound of men stealing by the house, the prowlers taking a hen, getting ready to tap the window in delight. She can see herself waking in the night’s empty hours, creeping about the room and filling her satchel, stealing out the door. Takes hold of the knife just in case.

  She wakes—blindness and the sound of a soft-pressed foot—does not know the room—BlackmountainRathmullanBooleyhut—the knife real in her hand. Another foot softing the hearthstone and she can hear the ride of a long breath. Not rats and not the half-dead dog smelling beside her and not murderers but Spiderwoman. The woman’s breath giving presence to her figure stood in the room such a long while now, and she can feel the look of watching. Then the woman is moving, makes a soft clink sound, her breathing loud, the woman stepping into her room leaving the latch door open and why is it she doesn’t use a candle?

  Colly whispers, Saint Hairy of Spider, millions and millions of spiders wriggling around inside her.

  She lies staring at the dark and what she can see is an image of herself rummaging blindly for food and then leaving out the door but the walls of the house are watchers also and amplify every sound. And then it occurs to her that this is probably what the woman was doing all along, taking the food she left out into her room.

  Let’s hope, she thinks, that is all the woman wants and not something else, not the company of a boy in her bed, for there are stories of such things. That way she keeps resting her hand on me.

  Days are spent hewing and hauling wood, the ax swing burning holes in her fingers. Colly keeping watch over the storebox of winter vegetables and the cabbages still unpicked in her garden. Spiderwoman’s watchy eyes creeping into thought so that Grace begins to think the woman knows her thinking, for she knows too the woman’s thoughts, the gap in a stare that could fill a well with loneliness, that judging look that shouts, you are starting to smell like a tinker, why is it you will not undress to wash?

  She fangs the ax too deep into the wood and cannot shake it out, wrestles with it and curses and kicks at it and a man’s voice says, that’s hardly going to loosen it. She looks up to see the face of some murderer, the hen stealer, stepping across the field towards her with a jaunty look. He stands by the gate and her body becomes wood and she looks to the ax useless as a weapon, looks behind her for the watching eyes of Spiderwoman.

  The man greets her with a touch of his hat and she can see how his clothes are patched all over so that he is made up of not one suit but a hundred suits and of as many colors as there are suits and there is a smile in his eye she knows is not danger.

  He says, where did you appear from? Would you like me to unfix that ax for you?

  She thinks about letting the man come into the yard, thinks about what would happen if Spiderwoman saw such, waves at him to go away.

  The man shrugs and begins down the fields and shouts over his shoulder, keep your legs wider than your shoulders.

  Spiderwoman is waiting with the nettle soap, puts the bowl angrily onto the table. She says, take off your clothes and wash. Grace goes to the pump and begins to wash her face and hands, looks up to see Spiderwoman gliding across the yard in her cloak. She comes behind her. Take off your clothes, I said. Grace continues to wash but will not remove any clothing. The woman takes the soap and lathers it and puts her hands rough to Grace’s hair. Her voice has cut in it. She says, just be warned, boy. Whatever you are planning, I sleep with a gun in my bed.

  The food tonight is some awful slop, she thinks. A pig would not put his snout in it. She devours it and licks her teeth and wonders now if she should leave soon-as, get one last night of warm sleep and go.

  This guilt feeling that comes upon her as if the woman has reached into her thoughts. Spiderwoman is sulking at her, sits silently in her chair pulling at her shiny fingers like rosary beads. How her eyes seem to have become smaller while that thing on her face has grown bigger. Without word Spiderwoman quits to her bedroom before dark and bolts the door and a moment later she opens the door again and huffs into the room for a jug of water, returns to her room.

  Colly whispers, silly bitch forgot to bolt the door.

  How Grace wants to tell her, it wasn’t my fault, it was only a man I talked to not some murderer.

  She would also like to tell her to go and fuck herself.

  Colly says, she’s just an auld grumpy bitch, it’s the same sulk Mam used to get into, she wi
ll feel better in the morning.

  She thinks, all I did was talk to the man for a moment.

  She thinks, all the things I can do for her.

  She half wakes woven with the voices of women familiar yet unknown to her, faces that become like dim memory sliding into all that is hidden. Yet Sarah’s voice remains, and so she must go to her, rising from the dream through half dream, stepping through the murmured darkness, her feet soft upon the hearthstones lit with the dawn’s roseate. The dog opens an eye to watch as she steps through the latch door into the other room, the room near dark and the room known and full of old faces, stepping now towards the high bed, pulling at the covers and climbing into it, putting an arm around her mother. Of a sudden the figure of Mam goes stiff and arms shoot out to fight the blankets. Some guttural sound escapes from a throat that opens into an animal noise as the figure flees the bed. What comes to Grace is an alert and awful knowledge, that she has climbed into Spiderwoman’s bed. Slowly she climbs back out and steps towards Spiderwoman, who stands as if cornered by the wall, goes towards her with her hands out trying to cancel what has just happened, trying to explain with her hands what this is, that it is not herself but her sleeping self that has caused this trouble, searching the dark of her mind for an expression of truth but the truth is she does not know how this has happened, her mouth wood and then Spiderwoman finds her voice.

  Defiler! she shouts. Defiler! Thief! Murderer! Help!

  The dog starts up its heavy old woof like the awakening chime of a grandfather clock and it is then that she runs, jumps over the dog, jumps over her thoughts of the sick man in the room, grabs hold of her boots and satchel, turns the key and unlatches the door and flees outwards, can hear behind her the woman’s screams and shouts, the cold stinging her ears as she runs out the gate and then she stops after a shout from Colly, turns around and runs back to the garden and pulls a winter cabbage. Leaves on the path behind her a bread-crumb trail of earth.

  Her steadfast walk slows to a stroppy shamble. Her head lowered into tussling thoughts. She wants to sit down, kicks at a rotten fence until it crumples. Finds a rock to sit on. Gnaws a little on the raw cabbage.

  She tells herself she has escaped the slavery of that woman. Tells herself what just happened did not happen, that it was all a dream. But Colly is wild with laughter. That was lively, wasn’t it, the face on that woman!

  She sits and stares into some deep horror, this void in herself—what winged up out of the dark and carried her along.

  She says aloud, how could you think she was your mother?

  Night riders! Colly says. That’s who it was!

  The who? she says.

  The night riders. They come when you are asleep and trick you just like the pooka.

  She sits wondering how it can be so that you can still be yourself and not be yourself at all in the same moment, tries to think of her earlier self walking into that room but that walker was another.

  Clones is beset by something unknown that shapes a strange quiet. The doors are all closed and the beggars keep to the shadows. Colly yammering on about selling more fresh-air mealcakes in front of the church but then he stops. Two constables stand in front of a grain store and one of them is looking at her or looking past her and her legs thicken with sudden weight.

  She thinks, what if Spiderwoman somehow got to the town before us? She imagines the woman standing with that spidered face pointing her out to a detective.

  Colly shouting, holy fuck, muc, take a look at that!

  She steps towards a tumbrel tipped sideways onto the street. Its horse lying broken-necked in the arms of its shadow. She is met with the feeling she has dreamt all this, her feet on the street, the constables’ watching faces, this feeling of being caught, this feeling of the dead horse, and then the feeling passes. It is then she knows the policemen aren’t watching for her but are watching the town because trouble has struck.

  She steps behind the two officials and sees that the last look of the horse was at the suddened sky, sees somebody has butchered meat off the horse’s hind. A constable turns and shouts something at her and she hunches away puzzling at the policeman’s words, his strange accent.

  Get last, yes kite. Get lost, you skite.

  The town diamond is strewn with loose straw and masonry and almost as many official men and soldiers from the barracks. The people are beginning to stir up, Colly says. Some kind of gathering or protest has turned violent. She watches two children swing from wrought-iron railings. Sees the sky sit in a shop window with a jagged hole of broken glass as if the heavens could rupture.

  A detective stands in a doorway talking to some elder and then he takes a look at her and steps towards her and she thinks of the cabbage in her satchel, wonders how Spiderwoman could have gotten word so quick, the man and his immense height then upon her but she is surprised by his voice. It is gentle like an old teacher.

  He says, where are you coming from, young fella?

  She has never stared fully into the face of a detective, sees behind the man’s eyes the faceless absolute of power and how it can take you out of your life and send you away to Australia. Words form in her throat, words that might say, it was only the cabbage I took, I swear, I can go back and replant it. But out goes her hand and she offers the detective a fresh-air mealcake, plain enough, sir, but still a good chew on it. The detective’s face as still as stone but his mouth betrays the wrinkle of a laugh. He says, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get gone from this town.

  The wind slings a bitter cold from the east. And what month is this? she thinks. The sky shaped like winter and yet it is supposed to be spring. She is done for now with slavery and madwomen and done with the towns, their watchy officials prowling about, looking at you as if you were the cause of all trouble. She will ghost the farmyards at night under the noses of dozing watchmen, pass the days asleep in barns.

  It is such luck, she thinks, to find a laddered hayloft without a single soul asleep in it. It sits at the remote side of a farm half a day’s walk from Clones. She does not count the days here, carries the smell of musty straw about her as she makes her nightly prowls. Stealing oats from horses, leftovers from the dog’s bowl. Lying idle during the day having to listen to Colly. Riddle me this. Which is faster, hot or cold?

  She wakes one night seized with knowledge of another. She has learned to listen, how to map the dark with shape-sounds. Knows this is a man, heavy-footed, nosing about, something being pulled at, imagines hands padding about in thick-coated blackness. The bustle of a man alone with himself, breathing heavy as he beds down. Her hand eases from the knife. She thinks, keep a total quiet, do not even breathe a sound. The stranger turning and then turning again and what follows is a serrated cough that has no end to it.

  Finally she sits up. Would you mind, mister, stopping that cough of yours?

  It is a frightened man that hinges up. How he comes to be out of that dark by match light. A thin fellow leaning forward, blinking in the flicker-soft, the whites of his eyes made yellow. Hup! he says. What are you trying to do, scare me out of my own shadow?

  Be careful with that match or you’ll burn the loft down.

  He puts it out on his tongue. Are there others here or is it just you?

  Colly says, have you got any baccy?

  The man says, you don’t have anything to eat, do you? Here, give me your pipe.

  She reaches the pipe across and the man grabs hold of her wrist. You’re not dangerous, are you? You’re not going to bite?

  He lets go the wrist and does not see how she holds the blade in line to his heart.

  I can tell you’re a grand fellow. Hup!

  His name is Blister. She smokes with him in the dark, listens to his lips make a pop sound as he finishes each toke. Watches him with her ears as he beds down in the straw, the endless rustle of a man trying to get comfortable, his cough keeping her awake.

  By daylight she sees he is ageless and has filed sharp edges to his teeth. His ye
llow eyes signing some private madness. His body tells a story of the road, she thinks, his face run with scars and his knuckles burst and how he likes to burn matches down to a black thumb and finger. He lifts his shirt to show her the bruising mapped on his body. He says, all they got was me matches, whereas I gifted one of them a mouth in the back of his head. Hup!

  The main rule, Blister says, is get yourself the face of a dog. Carry a file with you and work your teeth down. Look at my teeth as an example. You want to look more frightening than anybody else. That way trouble will take a look at you and run off. Filing your teeth also gives you something to do at night when you have nothing else to be doing.

  Another rule. Slow travel. No point rushing your way along the roads because the man who is in haste misses his own life. All them new people you see out on the road know nothing about travel. They go about the place with a blind look. Better to walk slow along the road and listen to the chatter of the trees and the birds and you might learn something. You’ll also see opportunity when it is presented.

  Another rule. Always wash in cold water. It has long been known that washing in cold water cures aches and pains. It also keeps you free of disease. But you must make sure it is clean water and not brown water from the bog because that stuff carries deposits in it that go under the skin and eat the brain. If I seem a bit strange in the head that’s because I grew up in a place where there was only brown water.

  Another rule, and speaking of impurities, stay away from iron, pig iron in particular. I don’t know why that is. Don’t go near it, sit on it, or touch it. It has transferrable impurities that cause agitations beneath the skin. And headaches. Many’s the headache I got from leaning against an old fence.

  Another rule. Be careful what wells you drink from. Sometimes there are animals with disease that have fallen into them. They lie there rotting themselves into the water causing pollutants so that what you are drinking is the disease that killed the animal. I know at least two people who died from the brain rot that was caused by plagued cattle. I would say take a good smell of the well first if you are able. Then examine the water.