Stay

by Aislinn Hunter

  “I’m a private contractor now—” Eamon pauses when he hears a banging noise in the kitchen. Says, “Come in,” and walks to the back of the house.

  Dermot follows into the bright kitchen where a baby in a highchair is waving her spoon around. A cereal bowl is knocked over on her tray and milk drips onto the floor.

  “About five years now,” Eamon concludes, going to the sink for a wet towel. “It’s better being your own boss.” His voice hits the basin of the sink.

  The last time Dermot had spoken to Eamon was when he’d come out to do some rewiring at the cottage; Eamon was still with the ESB then. Dermot’s seen him some nights at Hughes but hasn’t had the occasion to do more than nod. The baby lets out a laugh and slaps both hands into the puddle of milk. Eamon bends down to the floor, scoops up clumps of soggy wheat flakes.

  “Did you hear about Maam Bog?” asks Dermot.

  “No.” Eamon goes over to the sink.

  “They think they’ve a body out there and are digging it up today. I thought Sean—” and then it seems ridiculous to Dermot that he thought to bring the boy out. He’d thought Sean might like the education, the archeological commentary, but suddenly this seems inappropriate.

  “A bog body is it?” Eamon wipes at the pool of milk on the tray, then gives up, sets the rag down, detaches the tray from the highchair. “Hold her, would you?” He goes over to the sink and Dermot puts his hand to the child’s chest just as she leans forward. Dermot thinks briefly of Deirdre, in her mother’s house doing similar chores.

  “I don’t see why he shouldn’t go. I’d go myself but I’m working in Galway. Seems they’re getting set to run zodiac tours out the coast.”

  The baby looks up at Dermot and opens her mouth, small bits of cereal all over her tongue. She spits up on her bib, on Dermot’s hand.

  When Eamon snaps the tray back into place, Dermot lets go.

  “I’ll go call Sean.” Eamon starts to head out of the kitchen. Not wanting to be left with the baby, Dermot says, “Just have him by before nine if he’s to go.”

  “Right.”

  And Eamon watches Dermot Fay, who, until now, had never said more than ten words to him, walk through his living room and out of his house.

  Sean is at the cottage at nine on the nose, with Mary in tow. He’s wearing good clothes—a white shirt and black trousers. Abbey says hello from the bathroom door, a toothbrush lathered in her mouth. Mary runs through the cottage all the way into the bedroom. Plunks herself down on the mattress. Flagon by the bookshelf, wagging her tail. Sean sits on the couch while Dermot stands at the kitchen sink and recounts the various finds in Irish bogs. A cup of tea in his hand. An old love song on the radio. When Abbey is ready, her hair pulled into a ponytail, her boots on, they stand a moment before turning, starting out the door.

  By the time they get to Screeb the traffic has slowed. Mary, in the backseat, runs her fingers over the ridges of her corduroy pants. “Are we there?” she asks, sitting up straight to look out the window.

  “Not yet,” Sean says.

  “Now?”

  “No. You just asked me.” Sean sits back and studies the side of Abbey’s face. She has her left arm dangling out the window. When the traffic picks up speed she lifts her hand, fingers splayed in the wind.

  “Are we there now?” Mary asks.

  “No.”

  Waiting a second, finger running up and down the corduroy tread. “Now?”

  “Mary!”

  “What?”

  Sean reaches out and taps her head with his fist. “Stop it.”

  Dermot takes the bay road and follows the line of cars in front of him. Abbey looks out at the countryside and is amazed again at how beautiful everything seems. The coast to her left and fields to her right. Two boys on bicycles racing each other on the roadside. Near town, a line of houses with brightly coloured doors. Abbey wonders if she’d ever grow tired of it, take it for granted. Wonders why she never saw Woodslee or Windsor as beautiful. All that dry heat, the old brick houses and apartment buildings wavering in the sun. Although there was something pleasing about the winter—the first few hours of the day when the snow came and stayed, coated everything. Abbey’s father would take her to toboggan down Elsbury Hill. She remembers the two of them trudging up to the top, how he’d hold the sled until she was properly on it. And then he’d simply let go. The speed of it coursing down to the valley bottom. Abbey alone, pulling the cords to steer it.

  Overhead the birds fly north and west, follow the procession. Dermot puts his foot down on the gas, hits his knee on the underside of the dashboard when he changes gears.

  “Would you believe it?” he says, looking in the rearview mirror at the line of cars behind them. “You’d think someone had died.”

  The only funeral Abbey had been to before Frank’s was her Grandpa Gowan’s. They rode behind the hearse with Grandma Gowan and Abbey had laughed the whole time out of nervousness. Her mother, fed up, had told her to turn and count the number of cars behind them. Abbey got to ten, then was happy to hang over the headrest, watch the cortege that followed, wave at Jane who was driving behind them. It was 1983 and Abbey was seven. She didn’t know about the Shaws then, didn’t know that the Gowans weren’t Frank’s biological parents, that he’d been given to them. That they had kept him in the dark all those years, when they could have been honest with him about where he’d come from. Abbey had watched the cars as they drove along. Her mother pointing out how people always pulled over to let the funeral procession go by. The sunlight that day glinting off the windshields, Abbeys legs sticking to the vinyl seat. Her father saying solemnly, “All things considered, he was a good man.” That’s what amazes her now. The forgiveness in his words. Perhaps Frank had thought that whatever else the man had done, whatever secrets he’d kept from him, at least he’d stood by him. “All things considered.” That was Frank’s way of weighing a person’s worth in the end, and Abbey suddenly wishes she’d said the same of him.

  Starting In

  MICHAEL stands near the excavation site, watching people come across the bog, mill around the fourth field. The Bord has made everyone sign waivers, stay within a cordoned-off area. Men in hardhats and white short-sleeved shirts at the gates are trying to keep everything in order. No, you can’t bring the dog on the site. No, you’ll have to sell the biscuits out here. I’m afraid the toilets are for staff only. The public relations people out in force, walking amongst the locals, talking about the conservation work they’re doing, pointing out Maam Island at the end of the field. Home to twelve distinct species of birds.

  Michael watches it all, starts to think ahead to how the excavation will proceed. He’s waiting for Hopkins to come from Dublin, but all eyes are on him. Una and Gerry are still trekking back and forth, bringing equipment from the van. Around Michael a hundred people from all parts of the county move around the bog as if at a fair ground. Two men from the Museum and the paleobotanist from Clare stand just outside the pit marveling at the size of the gathering. Three Garda stand beside them: Sergeant Joyce, Charley from Oranmore, and another one, a stout man with a pencil between his fingers, who’s been holding a note pad to his chest for the better part of an hour. He’s yet to write anything down. Michael looks again to the dirt road for Hopkins and the license but there’s only a parked tractor and two lathered ponies tethered to an oak stump on the far side of the tracks.

  He hadn’t called Janey. Dermot was right. Instead he called his father in London and told him that he was finally going to dig something up. That this would be the one significant thing he’ll have unearthed with his own hand. Looking across the field Michael scans the crowd for Dermot, has him listed as an assistant digger. He looks for Abbey but doesn’t see her either. Jack Hopkins coming at last, walking towards the open flap of the bog.

  When Hopkins, a needle of a man, arrives, it’s just after ten. A hush settles over the crowd. Napkins and paper cups, a newspaper, are picked up by the wind. Keating, who has made ov
er fifty Euros selling biscuits from her van, picks up the napkins nearest her, stuffing them in a bag. The good weather has dried most of the crumb, but as people walk over the surface of the bog the top layer of peat gets pushed down. The ground takes on a clay-like appearance.

  The first twenty minutes pass uneventfully. Michael, the Museum keeper and Gerry slowly scrape the peat away. The wall with the flags remains covered while the three of them work from above. Una beside the pile of discarded soil, running the crumb through a screen. She looks up nervously every now and again, wonders if the crowd will rush the ropes when they finally uncover something. An hour goes by. The trio has trowelled down thirty centimetres. Gerry making faces the whole time that the crowd has tried to read. People come and go, wander back to their cars looking for entertainment. Liam, standing near the pit, points out the rabbit warren to a young girl inside the ropes. The crowd’s focus shifts. Those who’d been holding their breath finally let it go. Later still, the congregation near the pit starts to thin. Groups of people from different villages retire back towards the trenches, stand in circles, discussing Ahern’s election, the Cup, last week’s episode of “Ros na Run.” Here and there throughout the crowd a mobile phone rings and someone answers it, saying, “No, no, nothing yet.” The sun bright, the birds circling. A breeze coming across the lough.

  Michael wipes sweat from his eyes every minute or so. Works the brush over the peat, trying to expose the top of the head. That way they’ll know exactly how far back they have to cut. O’Flynn from the Museum works near the area where they think they’ll find the feet. After twenty minutes he looks over at Michael.

  “Anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  Michael goes back to the brush. Looks around for Dermot.

  Dermot cuts through the crowd, shoulders his way closer to the front. A “guest” badge pinned to his coat pocket. Turning to make sure Abbey’s following, he sees Deirdre McGilloway, the baby in a blanket against the crook of her neck. He stops and takes a few steps back through the crowd until he’s standing in front of her. “Dermot!” She’s happy to see him.

  “How’s the lad?”

  “Grand. Both of us.”

  Abbey arrives with Sean and Mary. Deirdre sets the baby down in the pram.

  “Has he a name?” Dermot asks.

  “John. After my father.”

  “This is Abbey and Mary. Sean.”

  “The Canadian?” Deirdre puts her hand out. Abbey shakes it. Dermot answering, “The very one.”

  Michael’s shirt is soaked with sweat. Both he and Gerry stop to take a break. They must be nearing the body. Hopkins takes photos every five centimetres and Una measures the cut, writing it on a slate board. The tarp hanging over the side wall of the pit. The Garda standing outside it, keeping everyone at bay. The whole of it starting to look like a giant peat step, Michael, Gerry and O’Flynn on the mount. For the next hour, word of the excavation’s progress goes back and forth through the crowd.

  “They’re still digging.”

  “The Brit’s gone down into the pit.”

  “The tarp’s come off.”

  “The Museum man has stepped away.”

  By noon, tired of digging down, Michael decides to approach the body from a different angle. They start taking layers off the side of the east wall, above the hand, Michael brushing away the dry crumb. Layers of it landing at his feet. Finally he hits something hard, resistant. What he imagines must be a shoulder. The folds of skin are evident, marked by dirt creases. No bigger, Michael thinks, than a flower bulb, and the same dark brown. Wiping away the clumps of dirt, using his fingers, Michael clears off a square inch of skin.

  “I’ve got a shoulder.” He looks up for Hopkins and the camera, sees Dermot instead, standing at the edge of the pit. He’s leaning forward, watching the excavation.

  “Fay, give us a hand, will you?”

  Jack Hopkins looks up as a wild-looking man on the other side of the rope hesitates, then steps over the boundary, climbs down the ladder, walks over to Michael.

  “Professor Fay, Jack Hopkins of the National Museum. Jack, this is Dermot Fay, we taught together at Trinity. And I believe you know Una and Gerry.” The two kids, covered in dirt, nod hello.

  “O’Flynn, why not try for the ribs here,” Michael says, indicating the cut-away he’d already been digging.

  “And Dermot, go up top with Gerry and start in at this angle.” He shows Dermot the direction, a sharp slant in and down. “We need to get an approximate on the head. Once we have the parameters of the body we can cut a square of turf around it. Take it out in situ.”

  Twenty minutes later the line of the right arm comes up from under the peat. Michael brushing the dirt away in quick strokes, scooping the pile of it away towards the corner of the pit with the cup of his hands. He sees the arm come up out of the earth, the back of the hand he’d first noticed, and it seems to him that this arm is reaching out to him, waiting for him to catch hold. The wrist thin-boned like a woman’s.

  Standing by the ropes Sean has one hand on the collar of Mary’s shirt. She’s tried to worm her way out of the crowd twice already and he isn’t keen on losing her. Abbey to the right of him, watching what’s going on.

  “Is that the arm?” Sean asks.

  Abbey leans forward and left to get a better view. “I think so.”

  And then, without saying anything, Sean reaches out and takes Abbey’s hand. The palm soft and warm, smaller than his. He doesn’t look at her. Waits for her to let go. His heart hammering away in his chest.

  “Sean.”

  He doesn’t look over. Thinks that if he ignores Abbey, she’ll hold on.

  Her voice is quiet. “Sean. Look at me.”

  He lets go of Mary’s collar, turns to face Abbey.

  “You’re very sweet. But,” she squeezes his hand, “there’s nothing—” letting go of his hand, pointing back and forth between the two of them. “I’m sorry.” She screws up her face as if she wishes she didn’t have to say it. Sean shrugs and stares at the ground. After a minute Abbey takes his face in her hands and kisses his forehead. Feels how flushed he is before she turns away.

  Dermot is aware of the thirty or so pairs of legs behind the ropes. Every now and again someone calls out to him, asks where things are at, but he doesn’t look up. He’d seen Abbey somewhere behind the ropes, Sean and Mary beside her. Angus and Tomás were watching for a while before they headed back into the crowd. Earlier, he’d run into Liam in the parking lot. They’d nodded hello. Inevitably, Dermot thinks, the boy will run into Deirdre. They’ll meet somewhere in the middle of the bog, or back in town, or eventually she might take up a pen as Sophie had done, and write Liam a letter. He’s yours. You have a son. And what happens after that is up to them.

  About two centimeters down, Dermot thinks he has something. The roots thicker in one spot so he has to use his fingers to gently pull them apart. He calls Jack over to take a photo. Brushes another layer away. Realizing all of a sudden that he’s found the tip of the head. Rust coloured tresses come up like lost vines, the start of a braid evident.

  When Michael has the arm up to the shoulder, when the top of the head is uncovered, when they realize her legs are curled up against her, that underground she is resting her chin on her chest, they stop, look up. Word is out. The crowd has come back and people jostle, trying not to fall over the perimeter ropes that surround the pit. Everyone wants to see a face, but all they can see is hair, a thin slip of her forehead. Michael makes plans to cut the wedge below her, to try to hack out the whole square of peat she’s resting in. “Her knee’s bent anyway. It’s getting down far enough that’s the concern.” They guess at safe parameters, mark off what must be ten centimetres from the soles of her feet.

  Last Tethers

  MICHAEL and Gerry, both of them exhausted, look at the part of the head that Dermot’s uncovered. Jack, on his knees, takes three photos. Una stares down at the skin of the woman’s forehead. Dermot keeps worki
ng. Pulls away another layer of peat, wants, against reason, to see her face. To see her unencumbered, come up from the ground, like a body coming up in the bath.

  Abbey watches Dermot from behind the ropes, sees his right hand gripping the brush handle, swinging back and forth in an even rhythm. His eyes never leave the ground. When Abbey met Dermot at the Old Bailey, one of the first things he’d said to her was, “If I had it to do over again …” But he never finished the sentence because he knew there was no going back. And Abbey saw something wonderful in that, in him having lived a life that he could sit with. She loved how he knew it wasn’t ideal, how he’d have done it differently, but how he accepted it just the same. And the fact that he didn’t rally against it comforted her. But now things are different. The world has opened up and he’s going in to meet it. For the first time, Abbey sees in him the possibility of moving on. That he might go back to Dublin. Find Rory. Stand up to it, after all.

  When Dermot has uncovered the dead woman’s eyes, brushed away the layer of peat over them, Abbey has to look away. Wonders, then, if this woman is watching—if she’s standing somewhere in the crowd, if she’s witnessing her own exhumation as if it were her birth. Abbey’s grandmother died giving birth to Frank—that was something Frank had wanted Abbey to know. He said, once, that every woman he ever knew had left him; his mother, Stella, was simply the first.

  Abbey believes that when Stella Shaw gave birth to Frank, she knew he would wrestle with her dying all his life. But even in that last instant, the baby’s head just through, she probably didn’t regret his birth; was ascending the stairwell, could hear the clamour of those who had gone before her in a room somewhere above. The baby suddenly apart from her—a boy, Frank, being held up for her to look at, although her eyes were already reeling. Stella standing at the far door, the same way this woman in the ground must once have done, knowing it would open for her, and without so much as a sound, going in.