Dagmar's Daughter

by Kim Echlin

  Donal skipped stones with Colin and tried to persuade his friend to come away with him again.

  He bent sideways and sent his stone across the water, chanting a boys’ rhyme, a syllable for each bounce. A duck, a drake, a saltwater cake, he said. Colin, you can’t do anything more here. You’re going stale.

  Colin grunted impatiently, skipped his own stone a clear dozen times across the surface and chanted, A duck, a drake, a saltwater cake and a bottle of brandy-o.

  You didn’t get to brandy-o, said Donal. It dropped! Don’t you want to give your hand to more than the music here?

  Colin skipped another stone and said, I want to sound like a musician from Millstone Nether. A duck, a drake. His coarse stone plunged after two skips.

  You need to loosen the roots, cut down the branches, scoffed Donal, kicking at the pebbles. He sifted through them, tossed one away, looked for the perfect one, smooth and rounded.

  I sound fine, said Colin. There are as many sounds here as there are players. He skipped another stone. There are people here who know more tunes than we do for all our fancy travels. I don’t know half of them. And when I know a few more, I’ll go to the mainland again.

  Careful Donal found his perfect stone, skipped it so far out they couldn’t see where it sank. That’s a duck a drake twice at least, he said. Who’d want to hear our music there?

  I like our old music, said Colin. I dream places to fish and I am always right. The only time I’m completely connected is when I play Millstone Nether tunes. I’m staying for a while.

  Tradition is laziness, countered Donal. I’ve found a more perfect sound already.

  They were heading along the shore to take Dagmar in the skiff up the coast and they abandoned the dispute they had repeated with variations through those shortening days. Being back made Colin light-hearted and happy to stay. Being back darkened Donal’s brow and made him restless. He didn’t have Colin’s prodigious memory for the tunes. He was tired of playing at kitchen parties and tired of playing alone.

  They found Dagmar already by the little boat, a sack at her feet. Colin took the centre seat and rowed cross-handed straight north up the coast past the rocky-man, each of them listening out of habit to waves roting the shore. They passed a bottle around. Colin pulled the boat into a little river’s mouth far from the settlement. Dagmar was six weeks pregnant and she was irritated. Her body throbbed with the knowledge of her baby growing and the desire she felt from these two men who both wanted her. She was annoyed that Donal had given her no sign and that Colin was trying to take her over. She’d made no decision, yet a choice had been made. Colin was cocky. He kept her from her work in the greenhouse and sidled between her and anyone else who wanted to be around. He stirred things up in her and divided her from herself.

  They settled down to watch the sea and they drank a lot. Colin said, Do you know what they do with a Chinese bride? They blindfold her and all the men come up to kiss her. He squatted, hands drumming his thighs restlessly, the sky rosy and thick with clouds. He said, Then they ask her which man is her husband.

  Donal snorted drunkenly. The air chilled when Dagmar looked into the sky. Donal pushed Colin’s shoulder roughly and said, What a thing! Colin shoved him back hard. Stripping off his T-shirt Colin said, Dagmar and I are getting married. Let’s play kiss the bride.

  Dagmar looked at Colin. What made him think she was going to marry him? What made him think he could say such a thing and not ask her?

  No, said Donal.

  Colin tied his shirt over Dagmar’s eyes and said, Kiss her and whichever of us she chooses makes love with her here and now. The loser goes back to the dory and waits.

  He took another drink and passed Dagmar the bottle.

  He thinks he can just take over my life, she thought. She laughed recklessly and said, mocking them both, And what would make one man’s kiss different from another’s?

  Donal shook his head and Colin said, Coward. Look, Dag’s ready, aren’t you? She’s not afraid, she loves it. Don’t you, Dag?

  Dagmar had grown up under kitchen tables listening to women drink mugs of tea and talk of love as if it were a leaky skiff. Her father was nothing but her mother’s memory. She could not reckon how her body still quickened at the sight of Colin in spite of her mind’s strong resistance. Norea always said, Listen to your heart. But here she was nineteen and no man left on the island for her but these two wanderers. She needed to shift their attention back to her. She pulled off her blindfold and slipped out of her clothes.

  I’m going for a swim. When I come back I’ll be ready.

  Colin and Donal watched her firm bottom disappear into the water. She wrapped the cold ocean like green lacquer around her and was pleased with the silence inspired by her nakedness. The young men shifted from their anger to wanting her, feelings twisted like seaweed around an anchor. She plunged into the light waves, freer than she’d felt in weeks. She returned shivering and water-beaded back up the shore. She patted herself dry with Colin’s shirt and when he blind-folded her she had an idea.

  Colin kissed her first, his sensual familiar kiss. His scent filled her and she softened all over again. His breath beat out a rhythm that filled her body and the sky. He wanted her but he couldn’t own her, would never own her. He drew away and then she smelled Donal approach. His kiss was a fluttering tentative thing, an apology, a humiliation to be got over.

  She pretended to deliberate and said unsteadily, as if more drunk than she really was, Colin is the second one who kissed me.

  Silence slashed the shore in two. Colin cursed, picked up their bottle and drained it in a long drink, then smashed it on the rocks as he walked away.

  Donal squatted beside Dagmar, untied her blindfold, picked up her shirt from the stones and awkwardly draped it over her. He said, You made a mistake.

  Dagmar answered steadily, No I didn’t.

  His limbs were thin and eager as a boy’s and his powerful fingers traced her body da baccio in the only way he knew to touch, but he could not speak.

  When they drew apart Dagmar said, I’m pregnant.

  He said, Already?

  She laughed. Donal’s heart went blank. He might have said he loved her, that he had always wanted to make his home in her, that he had a dress in a box ready for her, but he was perplexed by her cheeky heedlessness and could not think. He got up and dressed and handed her clothes over. Soberly they walked back to Colin and got in the boat together. The winds were blowing up offshore and the waves were high. The little boat tossed and slapped against the waves’ funnels. Colin rowed them away from the land. Reckless, he pulled an oar from an oarlock and swung it over his head. Dagmar was afraid on the dark waters.

  Stop your fabbing, Colin, she said. Let’s go back.

  I’m not going back. I like it out here.

  Turn back, said Donal low and hard, the winds are up. We’ll row double-handed.

  Colin sat down unsteadily in the centre seat and turned them in a circle with one oar, the other laid across the boat, the winds tossing them out toward the open sea. Donal stood and moved toward the middle seat to grab the loose oar. He tried to push in beside Colin to put it back in the lock but Colin wouldn’t budge. Donal reached out to shove him over, but as his hand grasped Colin’s shoulder, the thick fist of his friend swung up and caught him on the jaw. Donal’s head snapped back, then he lunged at Colin, who stood swinging the loose oar over his head. Donal grabbed at it and pulled one end down, trying to get in a punch but Colin locked his arms around Donal’s neck, fell backwards and with two unsteady steps they were both overboard, still fighting in the water.

  Dagmar could no longer see the shore. She grabbed the other oar and stretched it to them but a wave heaved her out of reach. She saw their heads washed over by cold waves. They’d drown. She stared hard at the sky and a strange rain storm whipped itself up over their boat spinning the winds around to drive them like tiny turtles back to the silent shore, Dagmar shaking in the skiff and the two men swimm
ing hard to keep their heads above the water, beaten on by cold drops. Dagmar could stir up the winds and bring down the rains, but now she was overpowered by a man’s love, a force she could not fathom. Each of them made it back to shore alone and half-frozen that night. In the marshland the fish and birds chattered.

  Before dawn Colin tapped on Dagmar’s window, beckoned her out and asked her properly to marry him. He said, I think I would die if the sea swallowed you. I almost lost you.

  Together they walked up the shore to Madeleine’s. Everett was smoking at the kitchen table and Madeleine came out of the goat shed.

  He’s gone, she said.

  Where?

  He didn’t say. He came in soaked and said he was going to the mainland. Madeleine examined Colin’s and Dagmar’s faces and said, I wonder what you have done to him?

  Nothing, muttered Colin. He’ll be back. We always come back.

  Madeleine shook her head with its little chin stuck on her neck and said sadly, Every way’s likely.

  Colin spent his summer’s catch to get a thousand roses shipped in from the mainland to scatter all through his house for the wedding. Red and white and pink and yellow. From the front door to the bedroom he made a pretty trail and buried the bed in petals. Delighted, Dagmar stripped off her dress and dropped naked back into the roses as if she were falling into a pile of leaves. She read the banner Colin gilt-lettered by hand and hung over their bed: Dagmar I am all Dagmar my head my heart my hand. They lay heart to heart for twenty-eight days and Colin whispered to her, Dagmar, I love you, until the blooms were brown and drooping on their stems, until the petals on the bed were dry and turned to dust, until the water in the vases was spent. The people of the settlement loved a wedding and joked among themselves about the couple’s lingering, Good thing there’s a fall larder in there.

  One morning Colin traced his hand over Dagmar’s rounding stomach and, thinking about something else said, I’ll tell you a story ‘bout Johnny Magory. Shall I begin it? That’s all that’s in it!

  Dagmar laughed but felt a fresh chill like ice-quar in the room. He was absent, his eyes trained on the door. He said, I want to go away to make my hand. A little one on the way and me stuck fishing forever.

  Dagmar was ravenous and restive, her child soon ready for the world. She listened to his plan to travel to the mainland, to his dream to play his music, to record it.

  He said in his charming way, Little sister, I’m a gatcher. I can’t help it. I know if I go, I can get them to record Millstone Nether’s music.

  She looked through his man-hope and thought, Already his sweet love is sated. I am jealous of the bed he sits on, of the words he sings, of the strings his fingers play. Now he will leave and we will be two dead lovers, our bones embracing on the rocks.

  The neighbour women shook their heads and the old fishermen watched with lips closed against unadmitted thoughts when Colin left and lonely Dagmar wandered up each day to visit her mother in the old farmhouse, to dig in the greenhouse, to keep making things grow.

  Norea held her daughter’s face in her hands, traced the dark disappointed rings under her eyes and said, There is only one first love. But secretly she mourned.

  The light faded slowly from Dagmar’s eyes. The young woman bore her beautiful son, carried him through her mother’s greenhouse in a sling across her breasts, nursed and dreamed with him. Colin wrote fine letters from his wandering that buoyed Dagmar’s girlish loneliness. She left them lying on the kitchen table and read them to her mother, proof that she was loved.

  My angel with all lullabies under your tongue, I’m coming. I hope your labour was not too hard. For my part I won’t cry crack. I prick, peck, pluck and pull and they say they’ll make me a record I swear it—for you and our son. So you see, my love, I have not escaped the labour either. I return on angels’ wings in all haste.

  Norea said, Romantic raving! Where’s he when your sheets are cold? Where’s your fish and brewis?

  Dagmar said, Don’t talk like that. He says he’ll die without me.

  Men have died from time to time and rainworms have eaten them but not for love, said Norea.

  Dagmar folded her letters away. What would you know about it?

  Love, said Norea, is the wisdom of fools and the folly of the wise.

  There were portents and silences but Dagmar ignored them and slipped Colin’s letters under her pillow:

  Dearest D,

  This room is too lonely for words, only a mittful of people in the audience tonight. I have no rest from the picture of our Danny in your arms. He looks out of mirrors that before I saw myself in. He speaks to me in mouth music that words would only impoverish. He begs that I live at home with you and throw stones with him up the shore. But, dearest love, I am so close. Just a little more time. When we played kiss-in-the-ring under the sand cliffs by the breakers there was only one miracle could crown it.

  Averse as he was to the first days and nights of mewling wide-eyed life, Colin did not return for months. He preferred his own disarray. When he did come back, a promise of a recording written in the flat language of the mainland tucked in his pocket, he held loving lonely Dagmar, her lips eager for his. The baby wailed in his crib in the corner of the green-house. Colin told Dagmar he had to go back again. To fulfil his promise.

  And what of your promise to me? she said, throwing her trowel at him. What use to record a past that has no present in it?

  The next morning Norea wasn’t surprised to hear that Colin’s clothes were lying on the ground, tossed out his door. Oh, oh, she said, now it begins in earnest. She tapped her way over to their little house and on the front step speared a pair of Colin’s shorts with her cane.

  Inside, the baby had a basket of eggs on the floor. He crawled with them to different hiding spots and broke them in a careful ritual. Dagmar was crying in a darkened corner of the kitchen when she heard the tap, tap of her mother’s cane.

  Norea pushed the door open and, feeling the coolness of the room, said, Why have you drawn the curtains when the day is fine?

  Dagmar said, I tossed him out.

  And his clothes too, said Norea, lifting her cane and twirling the shorts on it like ribbons on a maytree. She flicked them off onto the table and asked, What did he say?

  Kill and bliss me, but first come kiss me, said Dagmar.

  Even in her rage the young woman was charmed by his words and took pleasure in repeating them to her mother. She did not tell her that she had dragged her ring in a long cut down his cheek and left him bleeding.

  And where would the wanderer be? asked Norea.

  In his grave, for all I care.

  He’ll be back. This is his drowned father’s house. He’ll want his clothes, she added practically. Will you open the door to him?

  Dagmar sobbed.

  Colin sent home letters asking Dagmar to come to him, to find someone to look after the little boy. He wrote: Remember our single self a month in a bed of roses. Put your lammie on and pull back your hair. I’ll be waiting for you with the first boat.

  Dagmar crumpled up the letter and wrote back: And who’s going to take care of the baby? Get rid of whatever dancer or singer it is this week and come back to us.

  Norea opened her ear to her daughter’s gaunt words and said, I left something like this a long time ago across the sea.

  Don’t start, Momma. I’ve heard it before.

  I can’t let you starve.

  We’re hardly starving.

  He’s the nevers.

  Salt tears fell into Dagmar’s weak tea. Look, she said, waving his last card above her head out of the way of the baby’s sticky fist, He says he’ll be back soon.

  You opened the door, said Norea. A man should die off after the first romance like mine did. Is mór an trua é.

  That’s my father you’re talking about, said Dagmar, smiling through her tears.

  Norea sniffed. I loved him but you never knew him, she said. No need for sentiment. Colin’s dazzled by his own c
oncern and you’re just another cut-tail. Bring the child back home. I’ll give you the farm as it was given to me. You’ve a gift with growing things. I’ve never been able to grow things the way you do.

  You won’t be able to stand living with me, said Dagmar. I barely can.

  I can’t stand seeing you wasting away like this. Come, Dagmar. You have so much more than I did. Make your own decision.

  Dagmar tore up all of Colin’s letters except one, which she hid at the bottom of her trunk: Dagmar, my dear love, cry in dark hours. It’s wicked to hurt each other like this simply from too much loving. Then she closed the door behind her and moved back to her mother’s house.

  And so it was that Dagmar and Colin never lived together again. When Colin was home he came and tapped on Dagmar’s window and she led him to the greenhouse where they made love under a moon shining through glass. Over time they thrived apart. Seasons became years and they achieved satisfaction in their separate talents.

  Colin became the unequalled source of the music of Millstone Nether. The people on the mainland were thrilled by his tunes and his playing. They came to visit and Colin toured them around to hear the old men and women play songs others had forgotten and he spoke of his native music as part of the great traditions of the world. His travels made him renowned as a musician who kept to his roots. He was a sponge that never filled and his knowledge was vast. Like the ocean he absorbed all that entered, and when there was a difficulty he flowed around it.