Skin Deep

by Liz Nugent

  ‘There you are! You want another bump, honey?’ He patted his breast pocket.

  I turned to see that one of the Russians was clinging on to his other arm.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  And now I was disappointed because I had assumed that Sam was interested in me, and even if I did not find him attractive, I resented the little Russian hooking her claws into him. They wandered off to powder their noses. I tried to make this drink last. I asked a pleasant-looking young girl which of the men in the corner was the film’s producer. ‘I am,’ she said icily in pure New York and turned her back on me. So touchy.

  Sam hadn’t come back. Nobody had spoken to me, but I no longer minded. The trays were back in circulation. I had become immune to the sound level and gradually the techno music, if that is the term, was seeping into my bones. I glided sexily towards the dance floor and I lost myself there among the beautiful young people. I was remembering the days of Mayfair nightclubs. I closed my eyes and my arms reached for the sky. This was good. This was great.

  I opened my eyes and a teenager beside me was laughing and pointing at me, yelling something in a language I didn’t understand. More people were laughing now, and it was louder than the music. I looked down to where they were pointing. The whole seam of my dress had split from under my armpit to my hip. My expensive but old beige corsetry was on display, the overspill of flesh visible under my armpit. I laughed too. I didn’t care enough to stop dancing.

  At one stage later, I dimly recall Sam approaching, suggesting that we go back to my place. The Russian must have lost interest. ‘We need to get you home, honey.’

  I asked aloud why we couldn’t go back to his room in the Negresco.

  ‘And wake my wife?’ he said, and it seemed right then like the funniest thing I had ever heard in my life. He offered to take me home, ‘no strings’, but I declined. I was happy, really happy.

  Pain seared through my head as if the fluid protecting my brain from my skull had evaporated. I opened my eyes and saw daylight and a dirty parquet floor. The angle was all wrong. Somebody was prodding me. I realized I must have blacked out.

  ‘Madame.’ It was the smoking waitress from last night.

  ‘On doit partir, maintenant, s’il te plaît.’

  Te. All civility was dispensed with.

  I fell upwards to a standing position, grabbing her shoulder to steady myself. She shrugged me away violently and handed me a barman’s yellow canvas jacket.

  ‘You must cover yourself,’ she said in English. Her look of disgust alerted me to the gaping side of my dress. I stumbled towards the elevator and then out on to the street.

  The sun was rising on my left, shimmering across the expanse of blue.

  I made my way slowly down the promenade. I did not want to go home.

  I walked unsteadily, the horror returning. Nobody had helped me. There was nothing to be done. I scoured the faces of everyone who passed, but they were mostly immigrants in construction clothing or nannies’ uniforms, en route to the early shift. Only I was going home at this hour. Home, whatever that meant any more.

  As I entered the flat, I could hear a low hum, and I could not ignore the smell.

  It’s too soon, I thought.

  I had not expected it to happen so quickly, but then I had never been able to afford an air-conditioning unit. The flies had begun to swarm already, feasting on the corpse.

  Part I

  *

  1

  In our family, there were two sides, Mammy and the boys on one, and Daddy and me on the other. My brothers were loud and wild and rough. Brian was born two years after me, then Aidan a year later, and then five years after that, Conor. Conor was just two years old the last time I saw him, but he was already big for his age and could just about handle a bucket of turf. But Mammy looked after the boys and Daddy looked after me. I don’t know why that was. It was just the way of it.

  I liked the boys when we were left to our own devices, walking to school, playing on the strand or collecting crabs from the rock pools below the harbour. In those times, we shouted and jumped and sang together, and you wouldn’t know to look at us that we were a divided family, but as soon as one or both of our parents appeared on the scene, we would immediately run to our champions, and Daddy claimed me. The boys were jealous, I told Daddy. ‘Never mind the boys,’ he’d say, ‘you are the future of this island, you’re the one that matters.’

  We used to live beside the harbour until I was seven, but that all ended when Master ‘Spots’ McGrath made me stand outside the classroom for being violent. We were doing history, and Spots was teaching us about Helen of Troy and how her beauty had caused a war. I told Spots that Daddy had said I was the most beautiful girl alive. Fergal, Danny and Malachy and my brother Brian, who were the others in my school, all laughed at me and I threw the blackboard duster at them and told them all they should be on their knees to me because I was the queen of the island. Spots told me I shouldn’t mind the silly old stories that my daddy told me and that queens knew how to behave themselves, so I bit him on the arm and he put me outside to calm down. Daddy was passing up from the harbour and found me outside the school door on the low wall, crying. Then there was a big fight in the village. I was pleased because I’d started a war too, so I was like Helen of Troy.

  Almost everyone took Spots’ side in our war, and nothing would do Daddy but he wanted us away off as far from them all as possible, so he built a house with his bare hands from the ruins of an abandoned cottage on the west side of the island. He wanted to go back to tradition, he said, and he thatched the roof and dug a well with the help of Tom the Crow. We had no electricity now and depended on batteries and oil lamps and a stove that was fed with dried driftwood and turf. The wind on this side of the island was so fierce that the first time Mammy put our clothes out on the line to dry, they blew away into the Atlantic. Mammy was furious, but Daddy said that she should stop complaining now because she was closer to America and that maybe America would get the use of our knickers and shirts.

  It was wild and isolated on the western edge, and barren. The harbour side was fertile enough in the summer for grazing of goats and sheep, but nothing would grow out here. Daddy said we’d do better on our own without interfering busybodies who’d take the side of a sadist who’d put the island’s only daughter out in the cold. Mammy argued that I would now have to walk further in the cold to get to the school and that he hadn’t minded when Brian was put out three times in the previous term for messing. Daddy said maybe he’d take us out of the school altogether and teach us at home, and Mammy shut up after that.

  Mammy had come to the island one summer when she was a young student, all the way from America. She had fallen in love with my father, who was an old bachelor of thirty-five.

  In one of their arguments, he said Mammy wouldn’t leave him alone till he married her. He said she had him persecuted. She said he’d never find anyone better than her, and he shouted back that maybe he didn’t want anyone at all. She roared at him that he ‘sure as shit wanted Delia’, and that was true. Daddy wanted me.

  I was the only one he wanted. I had always known it. The way he singled me out, took me out on the boat with him and Tom the Crow when Mam tried to say I was too small and it was too dangerous, the way he would take the food off my brothers’ plates and land it on mine.

  ‘I earned it,’ he’d snarl at my mother, ‘and I say who gets it.’ And she would turn away from us and tend to the boys, and Daddy would smile at me and put his big rough paw on top of my head. ‘Get that into you now, loveen, you’ll need the fuel!’

  Mammy tried everything she could to make Daddy love her, but he wouldn’t even remark on the new hairdo, or the impractical high shoes that she couldn’t walk in, or the short skirt that made her legs goose-pimpled, unless it was to say a harsh word. She got her love from the boys, who would nestle around her by the fire as she read them stories from the library books Spots McGrath had given her, while Daddy to
ld me the island stories in my room. As he blew out the storm lamp each night, he’d whisper, ‘Be who you want to be, my loveen.’

  The boys shared another bedroom, and Mammy and Daddy had their own room too. I was the only one with a room of my own. When Conor was born, Mammy wanted to put him in with me, but Daddy said no, he could go in with the boys.

  As I got older and too big to go on Daddy’s shoulders, we’d walk the roads hand in hand, and once when I asked him if he’d marry me when I grew up, he said, ‘Sure, I might join the queue,’ and the two of us danced home that day, and if anyone had seen us they’d have got some laugh at a grown man dancing with a little girl, but I guess that was the good thing about living out west. Nobody would see us, bar someone who’d made the special effort to cross the island.

  The only ones who’d make the effort were Tom the Crow or Father Devlin. Tom shared the small trawler with Daddy and used to visit regularly with turf or groceries or deliveries from the mainland, and occasionally Father Devlin would come to bless the house, or before one of our first holy communions to make sure we knew the seriousness of the sacrament.

  Father Devlin was always treated with suspicion by both my parents, but Daddy and Mammy both liked Tom the Crow and always gave him a great welcome. Tom was Daddy’s best and only friend and they’d known each other all their lives. He’d been in school with Daddy but was a few years younger. Everyone called him Tom the Crow because he’d killed a crow with a catapult when he was seven years old. His old mam, Biddy Farrelly, had the bar and grocery in the village.

  Daddy said Tom made him marry Mammy. The two men would be out at sea together for days on end, and sometimes they’d finish each other’s sentences, they were that close. Mammy and Tom said they both had the patience of a saint to put up with Daddy. But Tom had stood by Daddy when everyone else had turned against him. He’d often stay for a bite to eat, and Mammy would take down the clear bottle from the top of the press and pour a dribble into each of their glasses and they’d knock it back and wheeze and cough afterwards, saying, ‘God, that’s powerful stuff.’ Mammy and Daddy would be on good terms and nice to each other in front of him. Pretending.

  Mammy said she was afraid Tom would have to leave the island to find a wife because there were no women his own age who weren’t already married. Daddy said Tom would never leave the island because it was his home and leaving it would kill him. Tom said he didn’t have the same fierce attachment to the island as Daddy and that maybe some day he would leave, when his mother passed away. Daddy laughed at that and said that Biddy Farrelly would never die and that she’d outlive us all. Daddy said that us children were the future of the island and that I would be its queen.

  I used to listen to these conversations, often falling asleep in Daddy’s lap. The next morning, I’d wake up in my bed, furious that I’d missed out on the end of the evening. The boys were always sent to bed, but Daddy said I could stay up because he wanted to show me off. Tom the Crow wouldn’t be in the way of admiring me, but he always said a few soft words to keep Daddy happy.

  Sometimes Daddy would be off fishing alone and Tom would call in to wait for his return. They worried about each other out on the seas, and since we’d moved out west, Daddy had insisted on taking the trawler out of the harbour on the lee side of the island and tying it up in a tiny inlet below our cottage. Tom had advised against it and worried that the boat was more vulnerable over there, but he gave in to Daddy in the end, to avoid a row. On those occasions when Daddy was out on his own and Tom would come to the house to wait, I’d be sent to bed along with the boys and I’d sit at the door and listen and hear the gales of laughter coming from Mammy and Tom as they made inroads into the clear bottle. Mammy would complain to Tom about how Daddy doted on me. One night, I sat behind the door, wrapped in blankets, and heard a conversation between Tom and Mammy that I didn’t like one bit.

  ‘Oh my God, he follows her around all the time! He’s obsessed with her.’

  ‘Now, Loretta, is it not sweet that he pays so much attention to her?’

  ‘I just want him to pay attention to them all. He ignores the boys. Why do you think that is?’

  ‘Are you worried … like … do you think –’

  ‘No … NO, nothing like that, he would never, it’s just … it seems that sometimes … I don’t know –’

  ‘What? What is it? What has you so worried?’

  ‘It sounds weird, Tom, but he puts her on a pedestal. As if everything depended on her happiness. I don’t even know how to explain it. What was he like in school? Delia isn’t doing that well. McGrath says she’s slow on the uptake. Brian is streets ahead of her. Was Martin like her? When I met him, I thought he was the smartest man in the world.’

  ‘He was fine … grand, but maybe …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s a few years older than me, like, but he didn’t hang around with us much in them days. Spent a lot of time on his own, but you know, this island, it sends us all mad in the end.’

  ‘In the beginning, he was so kind, and desperate to have children. When Delia was born, he was almost deranged with happiness, and he was so grateful to me. But then when Brian came along, he showed no interest and the same with Aidan. Since Conor was born, he can hardly bear to touch me –’

  ‘Loretta, you shouldn’t tell me these things. That’s between you and Martin.’

  ‘I want to go home, back to Minnesota, bring them all with me, but Martin won’t even talk about it. I’m going stir-crazy. I was too young –’

  ‘Loretta, don’t be saying this –’

  ‘Who else am I going to talk to, Tom? Martin’s made so many enemies in the village that I’m on my own out here! You’re the only goddamn person that comes to see us!’

  I could hear tears in my mother’s voice.

  ‘I can’t even get off the island for a few days because he says we can’t afford it. It’s just me and the kids here, day in, day out. My mom warned me and I didn’t listen. She told me I was just like my deadbeat dad and that I was throwing away my career. I was too stubborn to write back to her after she refused to come to the wedding. She’s never met her own grandchildren. It’s all my fault, and now it’s too late.’

  ‘Why don’t you invite her over?’

  ‘And prove to her that she was right? That I’m living in poverty with four children and a husband who doesn’t give a damn?’

  ‘Loretta –’

  ‘Tom, come on! You know it’s true. The only thing he cares about is that girl. I’m jealous of my own goddamn daughter, can you believe it?’

  ‘It’s just a bad patch. Why don’t you come into the village more? On your own, talk to Nora and Mary? They’d welcome you, I’m sure.’

  At that point, my head dropped forward on to the door and made a noise. ‘Hush,’ said Mammy, and I heard the scrape of her chair. I soundlessly moved on to the bed with the blankets tangled around my legs. Mammy opened the door and stood for a moment. My eyes were shut and mouth slightly open, and I managed to keep my breathing low and even. She gently lifted the blankets and rearranged them on top of me. She kissed my forehead before she left. Traitor.

  A few weeks later, on a June night, Tom came again to wait for Daddy as there was a storm forecast. Once again, I pressed my ear to the bedroom door.

  ‘He won’t let me leave the house unless I say where I’m going and when I’ll be back. When I return, he insists on knowing who I talked to. If I get friendly with any of them, he says I’m betraying him. I can’t stand it any more. I am going to write to my mother. I’m going to admit she was right and I’m going to beg her for the money to get me off this island and home with the kids.’

  ‘What? Now, seriously, you can’t go saying things like that, that’s mental talk. I agree that things are going to have to change, but don’t do anything for the time being. Let me talk to Martin. He’s not a bad man.’

  ‘Why do you always defend him, Tom? No matter what he says, or how he treats me, or
the boys, you never say a word to him. I have no real friends here! Why should I stay? I’m taking the kids and I’m leaving.’

  I was terrified. She sounded serious, as if, in the few weeks since their last conversation, she had made up her mind. Daddy said that America was a vast, ugly place jam-packed full of people, bigger than anyone could imagine, and that you’d get lost as soon as you set foot there and that we’d never find each other again if we went. Mammy said that was nonsense and Daddy couldn’t possibly know because he’d never been there. It sounded to me like Mammy was intending to take us all away from Daddy.

  The conversation had died down in the kitchen, and all I could hear was gentle muffled sobbing from Mam and Tom the Crow saying soft words of comfort. I put my eye up to the keyhole and he had his arms around her and she had her head on his shoulder. It didn’t seem right. I’d never seen Mammy and Daddy holding each other like that. She turned her face to him and he tried to duck away, but she kissed him on the mouth and he hesitated before he kissed her back and then he did pull away sharply and wiped his mouth. I was shocked. I immediately crawled back into my bed, pulling the covers over my head. I heard the front door close quickly afterwards, but I knew now that my family was fractured for real. I heard Daddy coming in later and they did their usual growling at each other before they went to bed, as if nothing had happened.

  Some days later, I found Mammy at the kitchen table, writing. I knew she was writing to her mother, and when she stuck the letter in an envelope, I deliberately spilled the kettle of boiling water over it. I’ve never seen Mammy so angry, and that made me even more furious with her. She didn’t know that I’d seen her kissing Tom the Crow. She sent me to my room. I refused to go.

  ‘Get into your room this second, you brat, or I’ll take the wooden spoon to you!’

  The wooden spoon was the instrument of punishment in our house. The older boys got regular doses, but I’d only got lashed once or twice, and never when Daddy was home. On those occasions, there was an understanding between my mother and me that I wouldn’t tell him, because I’d always feared that the consequences for her would be bad. I loved my mother, though we didn’t like each other. Well, I had loved her, until now.