Himself

by Jess Kidd

  Shauna nods. ‘There was soot all right, and swallows.’

  ‘Well, there would be. This storm is a symptom of the huge quantities of paranormal energy that have been converging on this village. Jesus, the weather hasn’t been normal in weeks, has it?’

  Desmond goes to open his mouth; Mrs Cauley stops him with a look. She turns to Bridget. ‘What do you expect from this storm, Doosey?’

  ‘What does this investigation need most of all?’

  Mrs Cauley narrows her eyes. ‘A body.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Bridget nods. ‘This storm will unearth Orla Sweeney. It will lead us to her body.’

  Shauna shivers. ‘Oh God. Can’t anything just be normal around here? Can’t a storm just be a bloody storm?’

  Mrs Cauley holds up her hand. ‘No it can’t. Go on, Doosey.’

  ‘Tomorrow we go out and we find Orla’s body, because tonight the forces of nature will unearth her. That’s what I risked my arse to come up here and tell you.’ Bridget sits back in her chair triumphantly.

  ‘So she’ll just be there on the lawn in front of me? I’ll be falling over her bones when I put the washing out?’ asks Shauna.

  Bridget is undeterred. ‘Maybe not, but there’ll be clues. Lightning-struck trees, boulders rearranged in a circle, that sort of thing. They will lead us to her grave.’

  ‘Shauna, go and find a shovel,’ says Mrs Cauley, with a terrible gleam in her eyes. ‘We move out at first light.’

  Bridget toasts Mrs Cauley with a loaded glass. ‘And some rubber gloves. We will no doubt be handling evidence.’

  Chapter 41

  March 1950

  The priest walked the floor outside the door all night, praying hard and fast. Annie heard his voice grow louder on every exhale, his breath propelling an urgent murmur of words.

  She was only here at his asking.

  She would be the first to see what came out of this devil.

  As the morning broke, the mottled grey moon of a baby’s head appeared.

  The girl looked at it. It was no more than a scrap of skin, smeared and alien in her arms. Annie dressed the umbilical with gauze and wrapped the afterbirth in newspaper and hauled it into a bucket. By the time she had turned back, the girl was asleep.

  Annie took the baby and laid it on the table.

  Mucus whitened each wrinkled fold. A halo of black down surrounded a soft walnut skull. Its limbs twitched, and then floated, in turn.

  Annie stared down at its face.

  It didn’t look like him, if he was even the father. It didn’t look like anyone.

  Its grey eyes, membraned and cloudy, stopped slaloming and gazed right back at her. It flexed its tiny hands, the fingers, with their too-long nails, furling and unfurling in some sort of pagan prayer. It opened the pink wound of its mouth to speak. It was casting a druid’s spell, putting a curse on her. Annie felt it heating up the base of her spine.

  She should have dashed it against the wall but she could hardly bear to touch it. So she swaddled it quickly, holding her breath, hastily tucking in the limbs. She dropped it in the wooden box at the foot of the mattress and pushed the box with her foot to the corner of the room.

  Then Annie turned to its mother.

  The girl had her head at an awkward angle, tucked in a little to her chest. Her hair was wet and her mouth was open. Annie slid the rubber sheet away, folded a thick pad between the girl’s legs and pulled her nightdress down over her thighs. She put her arms down by her side and tucked a sheet firmly in and around her body.

  Then Annie took up a pillow.

  With the blood rushing in her ears she didn’t hear Bridget Doosey come into the room but she felt her firm touch on her forearm.

  ‘I’ll take it from here, Annie. You can go now,’ she said.

  Bridget rocked the baby in her arms by the hearth and he sucked her finger, which gave her a deep thrill of delight. His eyes flickered over her, sometimes hesitating, sometimes sweeping on. He’s reading me, she thought, and she smiled warm at him.

  Father Jim got up from the table. ‘I should take him now, before she wakes.’

  ‘She’d never forgive you, Father.’

  ‘It would be the right thing to do.’

  ‘He belongs to her.’

  The baby closed his eyes but his grip on Bridget’s finger didn’t diminish. She blessed him in his sleep. ‘She wants to bring him up herself.’

  The priest ran his hands through his hair. ‘They’ll never accept it.’

  ‘They’ll have to.’

  The priest looked down at her. ‘It’s only a matter of time before they take matters into their own hands. You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘It’s all talk, Father.’

  Father Jim seemed to have aged a thousand years. He shook his head. ‘Is it? She is collecting enemies, and this little fella isn’t going to help. I can’t protect them for ever.’

  ‘I won’t let you take him, Father.’

  ‘She’s a child, Bridget.’

  ‘No, she’s a mother.’

  The priest lightly touched the wrapped bundle in Bridget’s arms before he left.

  The light was out on the front porch so that Father Jim could only make out a dark shape moving against the wet leaves of the ivy.

  ‘I’m sorry to call so late, Father.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’

  ‘It is, a quick word, it won’t take long.’

  Father Jim opened the door. ‘All right, come inside now.’

  ‘That would be grand, Father. Here, look, I’ve brought something to wet the baby’s head.’

  The priest stepped in over the threshold and held the door open. ‘Now, I don’t think—’

  ‘Will we go into the library, Father? I’ve some information that may be of interest to you.’

  Chapter 42

  May 1976

  The world is arsewards – sky, rain, branch, leaf, earth and stone, whipped and merging.

  Mahony stumbles ahead by degrees with his hands held out in front of him. He hears only the rush and howl of the wind in his ears. But his guts hear the bass roll of thunder and his nerves catch every shotgun crackle of lightning as it forks and courses over the trees.

  He keeps moving forward, caught by brambles, lashed by branches backlit for split seconds but otherwise just blacker fissures in the darkness.

  Where Desmond is, the prick, God only knows.

  When the lightning is overhead Mahony tramples a hole in the undergrowth and squats down on his hunkers with his feet together and his arms wrapped around his shins. He tucks his head between his knees.

  So he doesn’t see a thing coming.

  Chapter 43

  May 1976

  The wind is still and the storm has passed and Father Quinn is up with the surviving larks before the town is even awake enough to find its bollocks, let alone scratch them.

  He’s a happy little figure this morning, for he has a great piece of information, spoon-sized, and he plans to have a really good stir with it.

  He combs the thick wedge of his greying hair and buffs his crocodile teeth.

  ‘I go,’ he announces to himself in the bathroom mirror. ‘I go, look, how I go, swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.’

  Róisín, coming up the stairs with a pile of clean facecloths, knocks on the door. ‘Are you all right in there, Father?’

  What could be more natural than a priest out at daybreak, striding about a storm-tossed village, doing all he can to help his community? Although today, like any other day, Father Quinn is as welcome as knob rot.

  He’s just one more affliction in an already blighted landscape. The Shand has burst her banks and dead fish swim in hedgerows. Ancient trees have dominoed down in the forest and the birds nest a foot off the ground. Roofs and crops and flocks have been lost. Water still surges down through the town, filthy with ruined livelihoods and drowned dreams.

  Father Quinn makes short shrift of the village central and the outlying
farms, and, finding himself able to turn to the real business of the day, he starts to make his way up to Annie Farelly’s.

  Having all the luck of the malignant, the widow’s bungalow is largely untouched by the ravages of the storm. Father Quinn finds her in the garden.

  ‘You have survived the storm, Mrs Farelly.’

  Annie sheaths her secateurs. ‘I have, Father. Thank you for your concern.’

  ‘Not at all. Actually, there’s a matter I need to discuss with you. It’s a little delicate.’ The priest offers her a smile that would make a lesser woman recoil.

  Annie nods and pulls off her spotless gardening gloves. ‘Come inside, Father.’

  Mahony wakes with the mother of all headaches.

  He’s lying on a wet mattress in a broken-down caravan.

  He touches the side of his head. Something is stuck to it with duct tape. The tape goes across his cheek and extends into his hairline. Mahony sits up, fighting the urge to hurl. The arse and legs of his jeans are caked with mud, as if he’s been dragged along the ground. He has no shirt or socks. His boots wait by the door, in a muddy puddle that has formed in the dipped and pitted linoleum.

  Annie puts down her teacup and turns to Father Quinn with the disgust barely concealed on her face.

  ‘How dare she?’ she whispers.

  ‘I’m afraid Mrs Cauley has long believed that she is a law unto herself. You could say that she has grown too big for her boots.’

  ‘And you say she actually bribed the clerk?’

  Father Quinn nods sadly. ‘The girl is distraught. Not only did she take a bribe but she also divulged confidential information concerning the bank’s valued clientele. Needless to say she has lost her position.’

  ‘Well, at least it explains Mahony’s visit.’

  ‘Mahony visited you?’

  ‘Yes, Father, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience at all.’

  It’s a while before Mahony can stand. When he can lift his arms he gets the dressing off his head and finds it’s made from a balled-up piece of his shirt. The gash on his forehead bleeds a little. He dabs at it with the cleanest corner he can find.

  He finds his jacket folded on the table and his empty cigarette carton and matches next to it.

  Mahony sits down on the doorstep and looks out. The clearing is strewn with Thomas Sweeney’s possessions, half-submerged in mud, flung into bushes.

  His grandfather is nowhere to be seen.

  Mahony sees a blur of blue and hears the faint babble of song interspersed by emphatic swearing. Ida hopscotches into the clearing through upturned buckets and broken chairs. She stops in the middle of an upended bathtub and executes a perfect curtsy.

  Mahony puts on his boots. Soon he’ll feel the early sun on his chest; until then he’ll shake with the cold. He pulls his jacket around his bare shoulders and gets up to follow Ida home.

  This morning Shauna doesn’t care about anything.

  She doesn’t care about Mrs Cauley’s bed bath or Daddy’s eggs. She’s not worried about the laundry or the beds. The rugs can go unbeaten and the mice can go untrapped, the roof can go on leaking and the curtains can stay drawn forever and ever.

  She just wants Mahony back.

  So whilst Daddy and Bridget Doosey might be out searching for the supernaturally unearthed remains of Orla Sweeney, she herself is looking for a real living man.

  Her man.

  She walks out into the forest with a flask of tea and a blanket. She has a shovel with which to dig Mahony out from under fallen trees and a sling for his arm if it should be broken. She has a dry pair of socks, a ham sandwich and a bottle of brandy for the shock, hers or his.

  Mrs Cauley may not fear for him, but she does.

  He’s the whole of her world right there.

  Annie Farelly crosses the garden and lets herself in at the back door of Rathmore House. Shauna is out; her slippers are waiting for her, pigeon-toed on the doormat.

  Annie makes her way through the kitchen. There’s a burnt milk pan in the sink, the floor is unwashed and a breakfast tray is half set. She steps into the hall, past the mahogany coil of the staircase and opens the door to the library.

  She follows the path through Mrs Cauley’s labyrinth. It’s been a while since Annie has walked through it and she wonders at the height of the piles that stretch up towards the ceiling. Now and then she hears faint scuttling sounds and detects some movement out of the corner of her eye. She has a feeling that she is being watched, no doubt by the legions of mice that are nesting and gnawing in the heaps of decaying books.

  Until, right there in front of her, is Mrs Cauley.

  A ray of sunshine in a nightdress of yellow flannel, stranded in a sea of dead words, fast asleep in her bed.

  Annie draws nearer with a sense of relief. How small Mrs Cauley is when she’s quiet. How much frailer she is with her mouth shut.

  The old bitch could be dead already. She’s hardly breathing; Annie has to look closely to see her chest rise and fall. Her liver-spotted hands are clasped beneath her swollen belly. Under her fingers there’s a map of the town, covered, from the coast to the mountains, with little black crosses and question marks.

  Without her wig Mrs Cauley is barely human, she’s more like an ancient turtle with her round speckled head. Her jaw lolls slack and open. She’s in a very deep sleep. She mustn’t have slept at all with the storm last night. Heaven knows, Annie hardly did, but then she hasn’t slept a great deal since Mahony’s visit.

  Annie takes a folded square of muslin from her bag, spreads it on the edge of the bed and sits down. What sort of a person would want to live like this? Like a dirty old spider webbed up in her dusty books. She’d burn the lot if she were Shauna. She’d haul all these books and papers out of the door and onto the veranda and build a bonfire. She’d set Mrs Cauley at the top and put a match to it. She’d go up with a big whoosh, with her old papery skin and dry bones.

  Annie leans forward and wipes her finger along the headboard, sending a drift of dust into the air. As if in answer, Mrs Cauley’s nostrils twitch very slightly. Annie looks at the bedside table; there’s a ring-marked pad with an empty glass on it. She picks up the glass and sniffs it: some sort of cheap spirit. Then two words, scrawled on the pad in capital letters, catch her eye.

  BROPHY. MOTIVE.

  Annie picks up the pad. The writing is very bad. She puts on her glasses and holds the paper towards the light from the French doors, turning back through the pages. She closes the pad and looks at the sleeping woman for a long time. Then she reaches into her shopper and pulls out a pillow.

  Shauna wants to cry. Mahony’s face is dirty but his smile is warm. Warmer than it’s ever been.

  ‘You’re a sight,’ he says.

  ‘And you’re a picture,’ she says.

  Mahony, shirtless and covered in filth, with a nasty cut on the side of his forehead and his hair plastered to his neck.

  He grins. ‘What are you doing with the shovel, Missus? Burying me?’

  Shauna shakes her head and laughs so that he laughs too. Mahony touches her arm. ‘You came looking for me?’

  Shauna colours. ‘Bridget is convinced that the storm will have unearthed Orla’s body.’

  Mahony takes the shovel off her. ‘That sounds like one of Bridget’s finest. Tell me about it over breakfast?’

  Shauna nods. ‘What happened to your head?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  He touches it. ‘No, it’s grand.’

  Shauna takes a step forward and kisses him.

  It’s so easy: one kiss and she’s pressed close to him, her hands passing over his back, his shoulders, learning the shape of him with his hair wet against her face and his mouth hot on hers. He holds her fast in his arms; if her legs give way she knows that he has got her.

  By the time they reach the road to Rathmore House Shauna has her hand in his and Mahony has her cardigan on. He’s knotted it high over his stomach and keep
s looking through his eyelashes at her in a way that makes her laugh.

  Everything is entirely brilliant.

  Shauna starts to realise that this is the natural way of things: Mahony walking beside her, smiling and listening to her wittering on about the storm, about Mrs Cauley’s earplugs and Bridget Doosey’s theories. They move easily around fallen trees and craters of water. Shauna marvels at the ravines cut on either side of the road by rivers of rainwater, dammed here and there with dead rats, their eyes as bright as jet buttons. In the field a flyblown sheep is lullabied by gentle breezes, her rinsed wool lifting. She’s an earthbound cloud! Her open mouth sings of eternal love and her bloated tongue talks only of marriage. The crows picking over the flooded fields are dancing the fandango and the farmers that applaud them are their biggest fans.

  As they walk back to Rathmore House they have all the time in the world and soon Mahony has his arm around her with not even an inch of air between them.

  ‘It’s just another kind of sleep,’ says Annie Farelly to the slumbering old woman. ‘You shouldn’t fear it at all, Mrs Cauley.’

  As soon as she feels the unfamiliar kiss of a properly laundered pillowcase Mrs Cauley’s eyes flicker open. There’s no fear, only mild amusement, so that for a moment Annie falters, confused.

  And then it hits her.

  An illustrated copy of Wuthering Heights howls by, glancing her left temple.

  Annie releases her grip on the pillow and looks around. There’s no one there. So Annie picks up the pillow again and applies a bit of heft.

  Then all hell breaks loose.

  A large-type edition of War and Peace starts the counter-attack proper. It launches down from the top of a ceiling-high pile onto Annie’s cranium, knocking her to the floor. Saved only by the coiled density of her perm, Annie is more than a little dazed as she drags herself up the side of the bed only to be set upon by The Complete Works of Jane Austen, which rain down variously on her head, arms and décolleté. Annie regains her feet just as The Magic of Ernest Hemingway begins a vicious offence on her ankles, snapping like an unschooled terrier.