A Swift Pure Cry (13 page)

'Not much. We tied them up and left them to the mercy of the waves. We called it "the Abattoir".'

'The Abattoir? What's that?'

'You know. A butcher's place. Where they slaughter the animals.'

Shell's stomach heaved at the thought of dead meat hanging from hooks. 'Ugh.'

'Now it's where all the girls go to fornicate. Didn't you know?'

Shell shook her head.
Did you take Bridie here, so?
she couldn't help wondering. She pushed away the stray thought and peered around. 'Ugh. It's smaller than I remember. Colder. Mam said it was beautiful. A place the wind and water made over a thousand years or more. She'd sing her songs in here.'

Shell sat down. Seaweed squelched, the black pockets popping under her. She folded her arms around her knees and began to sing the one her mam'd liked, about the blacksmith who writes a letter and makes a promise, then marries someone else. The notes flew around the walls, colliding with each other in lovely clashes.

Midway through the third verse, Declan stopped her, kissing her hard on the mouth.

Before she could say a word, he was at it again, going for broke, flat out, his head down under her chin. She shut her eyes tight, the notes of the rest of her song still fizzing in her ears. Then she was back in the laundromat, where she'd taken the clothes earlier. She was watching them sloshing back and forth, jumping and flopping in the foam. Next, she was the sparrowhawk, beating its wings high above the field, poised in the blue soup of sky. As it plunged down, it turned into the fluffy-collared homing bird, flying across the Irish Sea, darting in and out of the spray in the wake of a returning ferry. Anything not to think about the strange twitching she'd felt inside her on the strand.
I was imagining it
. The sea mumbled outside, distant, uneasy. A drop of water from the ceiling kept kataplunking on a shelf of rock above her ear. A yawning nothingness seeped into her. She opened her eyes.

Declan's curls were pressed in below her shoulder, and beyond were the ridges of the encrusted wall.
Mam, why did you have to go and die?
Muffled and mysterious, she heard a toll of a far-off bell. The Coolbar church, ringing out the midday Angelus. One, two, three.
Pray for us, o Holy Mother of God.
What would Dad say if he saw her now? The bell sounds rolled away with the wind and drifted back again. Six, seven, eight.
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
She remembered Mam's record player, its needle bouncing across the black ridges of the old LPs, crackling with the golden voice of John McCormack, Ireland's legendary tenor. '
Will ye bury me on the mountain, with my face to God's rising sun.
' Eleven, twelve. A sudden heart-catching climax, the swift pure cry, her mam singing along, soaring to the high note, peeling the spuds, hand-washing the woollens, turning to smile at Shell as she wiped her hands.

Declan's knuckle dug into her back. The record player and records had all gone. Dad sold them soon after she'd died. '
Hoo-ha-ha-hoo
,' Declan yelped, as if another sharp wave had slapped up against him. He rolled off her, panting softly.

She didn't move.

'Pass me a fag, Shell,' he said after a while.

She passed one over and waited as he lit and smoked it. He offered her a drag, but she'd gone off them. He squeezed her wet hair as he puffed.

'Know what, Shell?' he said, more to the cave ceiling than to her.

'What?'

'This cave. Haggerty's Hellhole. It really is a hellhole. Like the whole of Ireland.'

'Is it?'

'It is. The Black Hole of Calcutta's nothing to it. A load of shite. Only worse.' He stubbed out the fag, then lit another. 'All Ireland's a black hole. A great big bloody black hole. D'you wanna hear my latest poem?' Before she could reply, he started:

'
Put Munster in the dumpster

Feed Connaught to the dog

Tie Leinster up in Limericks

And flush it down the bog.
'

He spat out the words at the walls, so they rebounded back on themselves. 'What d'you think?'

''S not bad. What about Ulster?'

'Ulster's an ulcer, of course. Perforated. 'S not part of Ireland, thanks be to God. The Brits are welcome.'

Shell giggled. 'They'd shoot you in Derry, Declan, for saying that.'

'More fool them.'

'As Ireland goes, Coolbar's not bad,' Shell suggested, thinking of the copse, the fold of slope, the wild things all around.

'Coolbar's pathetic. The worst of the lot. My family moved in twenty years ago from the other side of Castlerock, but as far as the neighbours are concerned we're still blow-ins.'

On the phrase 'blow-ins' an eerie gust of wind hissed through the cave, making her shiver. 'Let's get out of here,' she said.

Declan nodded. 'OK.'

They scrambled into their clothes. It was a relief to get back out onto the beach. The sun had gone in, the waves were closer to the shore. She looked out to sea and sniffed the air. A sheep baa-ed behind her. She turned and spotted it, caught halfway up the cliff on an outcrop of rock. How had it ever got there? She imagined it stranded for all time or jumping off in desperation to the rocks below.

'C'mon,' Declan said, pulling her by the arm.

He drove her back as far as the cross above the village, saying little. She sang the rest of the blacksmith song as they passed over the rough country roads, but his eyes stayed on the road ahead, staring at the tarmac broken into two halves by grass growing up the middle.

'You'd best get out now,' he said, stopping.

She nodded. 'OK. Bye then, Declan.' She opened the door and started to climb out.

'Bye, Shell.' He caught her wrist. 'Shell--' he said.

'What?'

He wriggled his hand round so that they were palm to palm. Then his fingers interlocked with hers.

Shell's heart missed a beat. He'd never done that before.

'What?' she said, smiling.

'You're--' He stopped.

She waited.

She felt him squeeze her hand.

'What?'

'You're top of the class,' he said.

Shell thought of her dismal marks at school, her failed examinations. She grinned. 'Don't be daft,' she said. 'You're the one with all the points.' Everyone knew Declan had got enough points in the Leaving Cert. to go to college twice over. He'd won a place to study the law at university, but he'd said he wasn't going, whatever his family wanted. Shell didn't understand his objection. She thought he'd make a good lawyer with his quick tongue and eye for the main chance.

'OK. You're not top of the class. You're...' He considered. 'You're in a class of your own.'

She smiled. He still had her gripped by the hand. She leaned back into the car and pecked him on the cheek.

'Tarala,' she said.

'Toodletits,' he said.

'See you Thursday?'

He looked away from her and through the windscreen, withdrawing his hand. His lips flattened.

'Thursday, is it? Declan?'

He started the engine. 'S'pose. P'raps.'

'In the field? Or down Goat Island?'

'Dunno.' He let down the handbrake. 'Wherever.' The car rolled forward. 'Over the hills and far away, Shell.'

'Bye so. Till then.'

He nodded, then shrugged. He pulled out and drove on. She saw him look in the rear-view mirror as he started down the hill, into the fold of slope. He waved. 'S'long, Shell.
Au revoir
,' he called back through the open window. The words hung in the hedges after him, then burst like bubbles as the navy hatchback glittered one last time and vanished round a bend. The last she saw of him was his dark curly-top, slightly off to one side, like a pigeon considering its next move.

She shook her head and smiled.
As daft as two left feet.
Another movement, a murmur, fluttered inside her: like a moth this time, stirring out of its chrysalis, soft and hesitant. She grabbed herself, staring blindly down the empty road.

She knew then.

Doyle's A-Z
or no. Amenorrhoea it was not.

She'd a baby growing inside her.

She turned off and went up the hill, passing into the back field without knowing where she trod. One foot after the other, she went around like a robot for the rest of the day. Her brain turned inward, onto the thing moving around in her middle.

The following evening, Jimmy brought home news from the younger Ronan boy, Seamus, who was in his class at school. Mr and Mrs Ronan were hopping mad. They'd got up that morning to find a note scrawled from Declan on the kitchen table. He was off to America, he said, leaving his family and college place behind him. His friend Jerry Conlan had a job lined up in Manhattan, he said, where he could earn a hundred dollars a day straight off, so no one was to worry about him. In the PS he'd written a final rhyme:

Back soon-

When it snows in June
.

Twenty-four

On Monday she went back to school in her winter uniform. The pleated skirt was tight, where last spring it had been baggy. Her shirt fitted, but only because it had been two sizes too big before. She fastened the top half of her cardigan buttons and left the bottom ones undone. She'd a notion it made her skinnier like that.

Out on the playground nobody came over to her. Bridie Quinn was nowhere to be seen. Declan was thousands of miles away.

She sat behind the hut. She shut her eyes, to see where her mind would take her.
Declan, walking up to her through the early ground mist on Duggans' field
.
Father Rose, making a bridge for her with his arm, saying 'There but for the grace of God, Shell...'

'Shell.' She looked up. It was Theresa Sheehy, the girl Bridie had gone off with last term.

'What is it?'

'You've got fat.'

'Have not.'

'Have too. A stone at least.'

'Well. So what?'

'You should go on the banana diet. 'S great. You lose five pounds in five days.'

'What do you eat?'

'Bananas.'

'That all?'

'And boiled eggs.'

'Ugh.' The thought of a boiled egg made Shell's stomach turn. She'd been off eggs for months, she realized, just like Mrs Duggan was off smoked salmon.

'Works, honest,' Theresa said. 'I've tried it.'

Shell shrugged. 'Seen Bridie?'

'She's not talking to you.'

'I know. But is she here?'

'Nah.'

'Where is she?'

'How'd I know?'

'Was she here last week?'

'Not a sign of her. They say she's gone off to her aunt in Kilbran.' Theresa came up close. 'I know better, though.'

'What?'

'She told me something over the summer. A secret.'

'What?'

'She said she was going to run away from home. From Ireland. Maybe she's already gone.'

'No.'

''S true. Know what I think?'

'What?'

'She and Declan.' Theresa Sheehy nodded, as if it were obvious.

'What about them?'

'Maybe they've run off.
Together
.'

Shell stared. She shook her head. 'To America? No!'

'Why not?'

'They stopped going months back. Bridie told me.'

Theresa smirked. 'That's old news.'

'What d'you mean?'

'They got together again. In the summer. At a dance in Castlerock.'

Shell's mouth opened. No words came out.

'I saw them. On the disco floor. Jiving and squirming. Like two cats on a case.'

'You're lying.'

'Am not.' Theresa shook her head and looked down her long red nose. 'Don't know what you two saw in him. The dirty devil.'

She turned and walked off.

The bell rang.

Shell didn't move. She watched as the maroon ants filed into the school in long lines. When the playground was deserted, she got to her feet and dusted down her skirt. She walked to the back entrance where the deliveries came in and slipped out.

She drifted her way through town. At the pier the librarian had walked down she paused, then turned onto it and strolled down to the end.
A pier is a disappointed bridge
, Mam used to say as they'd often walked down it, hand in hand.
It's trying to get somewhere, but it runs out of faith
.

She imagined Declan and Bridie, skipping down the streets of Manhattan, among dustbins and skyscrapers, crazed Americans, glittering limousines. Lights flashed, sirens blared, the great city pulsed with life. They were gone, leaving her behind. Forgotten. A Coke can rolled at her feet. She stamped on it, squashing it flat. She picked it up and threw it out as far as she could into the sea.
Perhaps it's not true
, she thought. But perhaps it was. Bridie had always gone on about how one day she'd run off to Hollywood and become a star. With her dirty blonde hair, she'd fancied herself as a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Meryl Streep. Maybe she was halfway across America by now, heading for California and endless sun. The next thing Shell would hear of her, she'd be starring in the pictures at the Castlerock Palace.