The T-shirt is starting to edge its way out. Orla can feel little tendrils of cotton scratching her thighs. When the dance is over, she slips out of the schoolhouse and goes round the back to where the horrible toilets with their candy-coloured doors are. Normally she avoids using them but now she has no choice. In the putrid gloom of one of the cold cubicles, she readjusts her accoutrements. As far as she can she, in the semi-darkness, there has been very little activity going on. Maybe her period is going to be snatched away before it even started properly, because she doesn’t deserve it, being obviously so incompetent? Will it be bestowed on some more worthy girl, less awkward, with a large supply of every feminine accessory?
When she comes out of the shed, someone is standing by the wall of the schoolhouse, smoking. Sandra. The little red light at the tip of the cigarette glows like a headlamp on her face. Sandra moves to hide it but seeing that the intruder is Orla replaces the cigarette in her mouth and emits a generous puff of smoke.
‘Hi!’ Orla smiles. She does not even have to think what to do next. Here is the answer to her problems, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. ‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘You learn something every day!’
Orla sidles up to her. ‘Sandra,’ she says.
‘Yeah?’ Sandra looks at her scornfully. It doesn’t deter Orla in the slightest.
‘I’ve got a problem.’
‘What’s new?’ Sandra blows smoke into Orla’s face, then throws the cigarette on the ground and stamps on it. She coughs.
‘I got my periods.’
‘Wonders will never cease,’ says Sandra.
‘I mean it’s the first time.’
‘Better late than never, I suppose.’ Sandra’s new friends talk like this all the time. She has learned their idiom of glibness much better than she has learned Irish. She even talks in the same drawl that Monica and Noeleen have.
‘The thing is I have no you know things. And I don’t know where to get them. And I haven’t any money either.’
Sandra looks at Orla, standing in the yard in the twilight. She looks beyond her to the row of coloured doors, to the dark blue bay and the purple mountains behind it. Faint music slips through the window. Strauss. They’re doing the old-time waltz. After a long time Sandra says, ‘I’ll give you some things tomorrow. I’ve got loads of them in my case.’
‘Oh Sandra!’ says Orla. ‘You’re an absolute angel. I’ll pay you back as soon as I get a letter from my mother!’
‘Going back to face the music?’ Sandra jerks her head at the windows.
When they come back into the schoolroom, Headmaster Joe is striding down the centre of the room to the table where the record-player stands in its place of honour. You can see from the purposeful way in which he walks and from his face, which is redder and puffier than usual, that he is about to do something of exceptional importance.
‘Ciúnas!’ he screams at the top of his terrifying voice. This is always his cry for attention. It usually attracts it and now, since it is uttered a few decibels higher than usual, you could hear a pin drop.
‘What I have to say is so important that I am going to speak English.’
The horror that shudders along the line of children sitting in a ring right around the walls of the schoolhouse is palpable. Some of them gasp, and most eyes widen in shock. Apart from the very first evening, an age ago, nobody in that hall has heard a single word of English pass the lips of Headmaster Joe. They know that for him this is the language of last resort, and that he must have something really horrible to impart.
‘Today there has been a terrible, a tragic accident.’
Somebody has died, Orla thinks. Then she thinks, he knows I have been down the burn. He knows about the skulls. He knows I am connected to the skulls, although I don’t know how, myself.
He pauses for half a minute, and gazes around the room. Not for effect. Checking. Checking to see who is there and who not there.
‘Four girls have been drowned at Ballybane beach.’
He pauses and stares at the windows at the back of the room. The children wait for more information, such as, what the hell is Ballybane beach and who were these girls?
‘They were four students at Coláiste Rosron, the nearest college to this one, four girls from Dublin.’
Some of the Dubliners exchange glances with one another, and the people from Derry and Belfast look at them with a certain amount of respect.
‘They went out too far!’ he roars. His face turns very red indeed and beads of sweat decorate his forehead. ‘The teachers tried to save them but they couldn’t.’
He sits down and mops his brow. Everybody remains silent, but a tiny ripple of sound, not apparently created by any individual in particular, begins to shiver around the line, as it always does in gatherings of this kind.
‘Ciúnas!’ Killer Jack jumps up and glares with narrow eyes at everybody. Then he glances down at Headmaster Joe questioningly, not knowing what the next move is. Headmaster Joe does not shirk. He tosses his head, in so far as someone with little hair can, and stands up once again.
‘From now on’ – he reverts to Irish, much to everyone’s relief: it’s clear that the danger is over – ‘we will be more careful than ever. Nobody is allowed to swim unless there is a teacher in the water. When you are told to get out, get out. Anyone who disobeys will be sent home immediately. Do you understand?’
‘We understand,’ they chant, relaxed once more. Tragedy has passed close to them, death and danger. But it has passed on, not touching them, as the bombs in Belfast pass them by on the television screen and in the newspapers, disastrous but unreal. Headmaster Joe has been close to the edge but he has not fallen over. They are speaking Irish again, the language of the classroom, of holidays and leisure, not of real life or danger. They have caught a glimpse of the storm raging at sea, the huge waves sucking down the bodies of children. But they remain where they know they belong, safe in the childhood harbour where nothing ever actually happens.
‘I have heard ...’ Headmaster Joe continues in his low, threatening, furious voice, his schoolmaster pose that will never fool anyone again. He peers around, his eyes alighting on one child, now on another. ‘I have heard, only this morning, that some students in this college have been playing in the river.’
San abhainn: he booms on its gentle syllables and half the people in the college jump. At least half of those present spend most of their free time playing in the river.
‘That river is dangerous,’ he goes on. ‘It is full of deep treacherous pools, and strong currents. You can drown in that river more easily than you can drown in the sea at Ballybane. Much more easily than in the sea here.’
Headmaster Joe is a rhetorician, and it is this skill as well as the sheer brute force of his character that makes the college of Tubber such a great place to be.
‘It is strictly forbidden to go near that river!’ he booms, his black eyes flashing. ‘If anyone is found near it, they will be expelled immediately. And that includes you, Orla Crilly.’
Two hundred eyes turn on Orla.
‘Your banatee told me that you have been washing clothes in the river behind the house.’
Orla nods, stunned. That is all he knows?
‘You are not allowed to wash clothes there again. Not to wash clothes, or wash your feet, or your face.’
Now he is playing for laughs, which of course he gets. Orla doesn’t care. Obviously he knows nothing, not a single thing.
‘There is a place to wash your face, even in Teach Uí Dhochartaigh, and it is not the river.’
By now the hall is in uproar. It is easy to get a frightened audience to laugh.
‘Next dance The Siege of Ennis,’ he sighs. Nobody bothers to tell him they have already done it.
The workhouse
Can you dream what you do not know? Usually the stories that unfold in Orla’s head while she sleeps are mixed-up images that she recognises from the life she lives during t
he day, from stories she has read or heard or seen. She sees words, printed or written, people, places, moving through narratives that her sleeping self invents. But the people, the places, the words, come from where she has been when awake. Can it only be like that?
nuala crilly. The words. Headlines in an old newspaper. Without reading, Orla knows the text of the article. Nuala Crilly was arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary at her home in Tubber last week on a charge of wilfully murdering a baby two weeks ago. Bridget Gallagher, of Derryadda, Tubber, said that she had visited the Crillys’ house on Friday two weeks ago. Nuala Crilly was not in when she came to the house and her mother Mary Nuala told her she had gone out for a walk. When Bridget was passing the barn which adjoins the house she heard a sound. ‘What sort of sound?’ ‘It sounded like a baby crying.’ ‘What did you do then?’ ‘I went into the barn and I saw Nuala Crilly lying on straw and a baby with her.’ ‘Was this baby her own baby?’ ‘Yes, I think so.’ ‘Why?’ ‘It was known in Tubber that Nuala Crilly was in the family way.’ ‘What did you do then?’ ‘I said, Can I do something for you, Nuala? She said, No. Go away please.’
The next day the baby was missing from the Crilly household. When questioned, Nuala Crilly and her mother denied that she had had a child.
Nuala Crilly was tried at Milford Courthouse and convicted of manslaughter. She is condemned to be moved to Letterkenny Jail and there to be executed by hanging by the neck.
Nuala looks like Aisling. She is lying in the corner of Aunt Annie’s barn, on a heap of bright yellow straw. The baby is in her arms, dressed in a white robe. The baby is bald and has shining white skin and red lips. It is a boy.
Nuala wears a red dress and her hair is long and fair. She is walking down the buachalán field to the burn. With the white baby in her arms she steps across the stones, lightly stepping. A boy that looks like Micheal is standing on the side of the burn, not fishing, just staring sadly at her as she walks. She enters the tunnel of foliage and walks down to the waterfall. There she takes off the baby’s clothes and drops him like a stone over the waterfall. He smiles at her as he falls like a stone into the black skin of water.
They don’t grow on trees
Sandra is as good as her word. Next day she brings a brown paper bag containing six sanitary towels to school, and passes them discreetly to Orla. ‘Try and make them last as long as you can,’ she says. ‘They don’t grow on trees.’ Orla has no idea how long any of this will last, but she doesn’t reveal her ignorance to Sandra. Her confusion is apparent, though, and Sandra mistakes it for dismay. ‘Don’t worry. If you run out, let me know. Auntie Sandra to the rescue!’
‘Oh gosh thanks Sandra.’ Orla sighs, full of guilt and gratitude. ‘And sorry ... you know, sorry it didn’t work out about being in the same house.’
‘That’s life.’ Sandra shrugs and tosses her head: she has tied her hair up in two ponytails, a dotty-looking style that the girls in her house have recently adopted just to annoy everyone else. ‘No bones broken. So how are you feeling?’
‘Oh fine,’ says Orla. ‘I feel fine.’
‘Some girls get pains. I do,’ Sandra tells her. ‘Awful cramps.’
‘I haven’t got any,’ Orla says. Now she has something new to worry about: the absence of pain.
‘You’re lucky then.’ But it seems to Orla that Sandra may think otherwise. Clearly, having a pain is a desirable part of the whole procedure. Maybe she’ll get one later? Or the next time? If they ever come back again. She’d like to have the pain, the cramp. She wants to get exactly what all the other girls get.
Chocolate orange
After supper Pauline goes upstairs, makes a racket in her room for five minutes, and switches out the light. Then she opens her window and squeezes herself out onto the ledge. A branch of the big sycamore stretches along the front of the window. Onto that she clambers like a cat and down the trunk with her.
The moon floats in windy cardings of cloud, on a sky of darkest lightest Prussian blue. The yard all gloom and shadow, yellow puddles of moonlight. Bran the sheepdog barks twice, annoyed by Pauline’s soft loud thunk to the ground. Then stops. All the livestock, cows and pigs, sheep and fowl, are silent in their dreams of summer, nightmares of Reynard.
Pauline halts for a mere second to savour the comfortable dark and the almost silence and the friendly moon, the soft cool night air like new linen on her skin. She breathes deeply, smiling with pleasure and a sense of great achievement. It’s not her first time. It’s not her last time. They’ll never catch her now.
Lighting a fag, she runs out of the yard and sprints along the lane.
At the end of the lane Gerry is waiting, in a rusty Anglia. The passenger door is open – actually it can’t be locked – and she hops in. The noisy engine runs. Gerry looks at her and says nothing. He releases the handbrake and on he drives down into the valley.
‘Cigarette?’ she asks.
He nods.
She lights one and places it in his mouth. The car fills with smoke.
Past the familiar buildings, the post office and the schoolhouse and the church, all strange and magic in the depth of night, all clothed in the robes of their own otherness.
The beach gleams like phosphorus in the moonlight; the water is black satin with a path of silver running from the horizon almost to the shore. Waves plash softly against the sand. Splush splush splush. Plop! Splush splush splush splush. plop!
Underfoot, small creatures shift in the sand, barely perceptible, like leaves rustling.
Four other students are already gathered in the boathouse. A fire has been lit near the door. The flames cast long shadows on the stone walls. The students sit round the fire, drinking from one large flagon. Coke.
‘Caidé mar?’ one of them shouts when Gerry and Pauline arrive.
‘Caidé mar a drink?’ Pauline takes the flagon and slurps down some of the warmish Coke. She passes the bottle to Gerry who drinks too, before putting another flagon on the floor.
‘Where did ye get aholt athat?’ It’s a boy named Jimmy.
‘Tubber.’
‘He drove there.’
‘Got a lift?’
‘Got a lenda the car.’
‘Ye wha?’
Gerry receives due credit for his achievement in borrowing his faratee’s car.
‘De ye not think ye’ll get found out like?’
‘No. If I did I wouldn’t have taken it.’
‘Goodonye boy!’
One of the girls, Maureen, has a guitar. She picks it up and begins to strum. Another girl – it is Monica – starts to sing and soon they all join in. We all live in a yellow submarine, they sing. Yesterday. She loves ya yeah yeah yeah.
Pauline sings along, swaying to the rhythms of the songs. Heat from the flames licks her face. Happily she gazes through the arch of the boathouse door at the satin water and the black mountain at the other side of the lough. Streetlights twinkle all night long in the town across there, chains of lamps against the browny blackness of the mountain. The sky is never black, but navy-blue and light blue with streaks of peach. Chocolate orange, thinks Pauline, remembering the strange taste.
‘Chocolate orange!’ she sings, to the strum of the guitar. ‘Don’t ya love to eat chocolate orange in the middle of the night when the stars just aren’t!’
When all the Coke is drunk the couples lie in each other’s arms on the floor, and kiss until four a.m., when the sun rises over the hill behind them and the water in front becomes the colour of mangoes.
At the cottage
Orla meets Micheál again, this time in the farmyard of Dohertys’. He is herding the cattle from the field into the byre, for milking. It’s just before teatime: Aisling and Pauline are in the house, fighting over the bathroom. Pauline has become a daily hairwasher all of a sudden, she who in the past seldom seemed to wash anything at all. The sun is still high in the sky, burnishing the sea below, and burnishing Micheál’s reddish skin and hair. The air is rich with the smel
l of woodbine from the garden, the smell of cows, the smell of summer heat departing.
Micheál is wearing not his green ravelling sweater but his white shirt. Its sleeves are rolled up, revealing arms, reddish brownish frecklish. Orla fixes her eyes on them.
‘Hello!’ he says. It’s quite a lot, coming from him.
‘Hi-i,’ drawls Orla. Nerves tickle her inside, but not unpleasantly.
‘Ye were down with your Aunt Annie the other day?’
She looks at him in the eye, angrily. So this is what it’s about? Putting her in her place. ‘Yes.’ She can’t keep the chill from her voice, nor does she want to. ‘She wasn’t in.’
‘Was she not?’
‘I knocked and knocked.’ Orla is on the defensive.
‘A nice woman your Aunt Annie.’ He doesn’t seem to be lying, but you never know with country people.
‘I’d a present to give her from my mother.’
‘Ye’ll still have that so?’
‘Naw. I left it on her windowsill.’
‘She’ll like to get that.’
Orla sees in her mind’s eye the brown packet on the red windowsill. She sees Aunt Annie lying in a heap on the floor of the red barn.
‘Yeah,’ she sighs. ‘It’s elastic stockings!’
He laughs. ‘They’ll come in wild handy for her, so they will!’
‘Yeah, she’s bad legs, you know.’
‘Terrible things, the bad legs. Och aye!’
He smiles at her again. She looks at his eyes. They are green, large pools of dark mossy green, fringed with dark red eyelashes. The skin on his face has grown dusky with the sunshine, and his hair too seems to have got darker, not redder. When Orla looks at his face, something happens to her whole body, something that has never happened before. It’s as if she were going under ether, as in the dentist’s chair, but the ether is not smelly or frightening. Not at all. It’s as if she were going underwater, under glaucous, clear water. Under water, but breathing deeply and calmly of the freshest air.
The Dancers Dancing Page 22
