A Swift Pure Cry (23 page)

'Jimmy,' she gasped. ''S me all right.'

He frowned then smiled, as if he wanted to join the joke but didn't know how.

'Twins!' She hooted, cackling at the ceiling. The laughter clattered round the walls.

'Shush, Shell! Mrs Duggan'll hear downstairs.'

'Don't care if the dead hear.
Twins
.' She almost choked. 'Can you pinch me?'

He pinched her.

'Harder.'

He got a good chunk of flesh on her upper arm and pinched again.

'Did one baby come out, or two, Jimmy?'

'One.'

'Sure?'

'Certain.'

'Swear?'

'I can count, can't I?'

'Can you?'

'I got nine out of ten for my last test, Shell.'

'Twins!' She howled, hugging her side.

'Don't, Shell. Don't laugh any more. Please.'

'They'll find another baby tomorrow. Then it'll be triplets.'

'Shush!'

'It's a pantomime, Jimmy. The case of the Coolbar babies. The next one will turn up in the priests' house.' She squealed and coughed with streaming eyes. 'OK, Jimmy. I'll not laugh any more.' She swallowed and pressed her lips flat.
Twins
. Tears from the laughing had gone down her cheeks. She brushed them off and got out of bed.

''S not really funny, is it?' Jimmy said.

The baby in the field, the baby in the cave. The tide ebbing and flowing. The dark encrusted walls. Mirth left her like air from a pricked balloon. She shook her head. 'No, Jimmy.' She hunted round for her clothes. ''S not funny at all. It's that Molloy. He's after me.'

'But Shell,' Jimmy said. 'I don't understand.'

'What don't you understand?'

'If you had one baby, where did the other come from?'

'Who knows? Maybe the storks dropped it there.'

Jimmy stuck out his cheek with his tongue, tent-like. 'Huh.'

'Or maybe--'

'Maybe what?'

She didn't reply. Distracted, she pulled on jeans beneath her nightdress and brushed her hair. She sprayed
Je Reviens
behind her ears. Her brain turned over, started to life, then died again, like the engine in Father Rose's car.

'Maybe nothing,' she said. 'God knows, I don't. Jimmy, I've to visit that crazed father of ours and see what he's confessed to this time. D'you want to come?'

'What? To see Dad?' Jimmy's tongue nearly popped through his cheek. His nostrils scrunched up. 'Nah.'

'Can't say I blame you. Now scoot so's I can finish dressing.'

Forty-three

Shell got out her powder-blue bag. She popped into it the miniature bottle of Powers which she'd found sitting forgotten at the back of Mrs Duggan's cupboard.
I'd a mighty appetite for the venal sins. Hell in a glass, Shell.
She'd heard of the DTs. Delirium Tremens. Declan used call them the Detox Terrors. They were the furies from hell, he said, bringing the things you most feared. He said when his uncle had had them he'd imagined snakes of vast proportions had returned to Ireland to torment him. If that's what Dad had, she thought, he'd confess to anything. Quads. Quins. Maybe a drop of whiskey would bring him round.

Rain turned to sleet as she and Mrs Duggan walked up through the town to the garda station. The wind blew the flakes forward and up, into their eyes as they walked up the main street and turned up the hill on the zigzag path. They waited in the draughty reception. The guards dropped in and out, passing her, staring, turning away.
She's the one
, she felt them thinking.
The girl in the headlines. Infanticide
.
Perpetrator. The force of the law.

A guard approached, nodding. 'He agrees to see you. If you follow me.'

'Are you sure you don't want me there?' Mrs Duggan said.

Shell shook her head. 'I've to tackle him alone,' she said.

The guard led her down the stairwell, along the corridor to the last door on the left: the room of frosted glass. He showed her in.

'Call me, if you need me,' he instructed. He closed the door and stood outside to wait.

Dad's face was on the table. He didn't move as she drew near.

She turned to check the guard wasn't looking through the glass panel in the door. Then she drew the miniature from her powder-blue bag.

'Dad,' she said, 'I brought you this.' She set it down near his hand, but kept her own fingers around it.

He didn't look up at first. Then an eye fastened on the tiny bottle of lemon-brown. His fingers inched towards it. He stared shiftily around the cell. She pulled it back.

'Dad,' she said, 'I'll let you have it. If.'

'If?' His voice was a croak. 'If what?'

'If you retract your confession. About the twins.'

'
If
.' It was more of a hiss than a word. He shut his eyes. His brows bulged and she could see a vein in his forehead throb. He gave a grim
huh-huh-huh
, the laugh of a fiend. His hand darted at hers.

'Give that here.' He'd snatched it out of her hands before she could stop him.

'Dad! Only if you retract.'

'Retract?' He squeezed the bottle, shook it, turned it upside down. He brought it up to his nose, as if he could smell the whiskey through the glass. His tongue ran round his lips. He held it so hard, she thought the glass would crack.

'Git-behind-me,' he said through clenched teeth. 'Git, git, git.'

His fist pounded the table.

Shell jumped back as if he might explode.

He flung the bottle at the wall. It splashed like urine on the yellow paint.

The glass tinkled on the floor.

Shell froze. The guard didn't hear. The door was solid. 'Dad,' she gasped.

Another mask had come over his face, a look of strange beatitude. It reminded her of the pictures of the martyrs, when they'd arrows piercing their limbs and belly, or nails stuck through their wrists, and they were looking up to the sky in holy rapture.

'Shell,' he said, 'I did it.' He outstretched his arms to her. She'd no choice but to let him hug her. Her stomach shrank. Her mouth curdled. He'd not hugged her in living memory. She smelled his prison mustiness and sour breath. 'My own Shell.'

She wriggled from him as soon as she could. 'Dad. I'm sorry,' she faltered. She fed her hands around the table and sat down.
God in heaven. What devil's got him now?
His eyes settled on hers like calm lakes. 'I didn't mean to tempt you, Dad. Are you cross?'

'Cross?' His right forefinger touched his forehead, then his chest, then his two shoulders. He smiled. 'No.'

'Only you asked for the miniature. Last time.'

'Last time?'

'Don't you remember? When I visited last time?'

He waved a hand. 'All the days seem as one here, Shell. I've my rosary for counting. But time doesn't matter now.'

'You all right, Dad?'

'Never better, Shell. I'm in the hands of the Lord.'

She dropped her voice, leaned forward. 'I'm here to ask you something, Dad. Something important.'

A tiny ripple of annoyance passed over him. 'Nothing's important any more. What is it?'

'Your confession. About killing the babies. You must retract it.'

The annoyance passed. 'Oh, that.' His hand fluttered up, wafting her words away.

'But 's not true, Dad. You didn't kill them.'

'I did, Shell. I killed them all right.' He smote his chest.
Through my fault, through my fault, through my own most grievous fault.
'Your man Molloy. He's the right idea.'

'But Dad, you didn't. You were in Cork. Doing the collections. Remember?'

'The collections?' His pupils went black and dull. They left Shell's gaze and landed on the wall, on the rectangle of light the window framed there. 'The collections?' His hand stroked the tabletop. 'After that night, the night of Holy Saturday, Shell, and the waking up in an empty house, I'd go to the city all right. I'd learned my lesson. Up and down the streets, walking, rattling the tin can. Doing the collections. Like you say. But then I'd spend it all, down at the harbour. You should see the place. It's a desolation, Shell, down by the river harbour. The women there, all kinds, all ages. Some only your age, Shell. Like that schoolfriend of yours, Bridie. As bold and brash as her. And I found a nice lady there. Peggy, she was called. A man has to have an outlet, Shell. A man like myself. But she charged me through the nose.'

She remembered the lipstick on the collars. She opened her mouth to say something. Dad and his Mary Magdalenes. It was beyond belief. No sound came out.

'It was the pink dress, Shell.'

'The pink dress?' She thought of it, folded beneath her bed. She was back at the dressing table, looking into the panel of mirrors, with the images of herself receding back into the world of spirits.
Mam
.

'Yourself wearing it. The pink dress.' He covered his eyes with his hands, digging them in like gouges. 'I should have got rid of it along with the rest. But I couldn't, Shell. It was the dress she wore the night she said she'd marry me. She'd never worn it since. It was unpolluted by the years.'

'The years?'

'The years of the drinking.'

His eyes glistened in the dingy room.

'I don't understand, Dad,' Shell whispered. 'About the drink-what's the draw of it?'

'Ah, Shell. It's not the first sip, or the second. But the third. It hums in the head. It smiles in the belly. It's like wings opening in the soul.' His gaze had an ocean of sadness in it. His voice dropped. 'After she died, Shell, everything of hers made me ill. Ill from the memory of her, watching me from the sickbed, reproaching me. She never said a word. But her eyes, Shell. They said it all. The years. The lies. The sessions. And the time I hit her. It was only the once, but I'd failed her. From that bad night to the day she died. Her eyes following me, staring up from the bottom of the pint glass. Her clothes, her records, her music books, I burned them all. You, Jimmy and Trix were at school when I did it. I had a mighty bonfire in the back field. The flames licked up to the sky, taller than me. I threw them on and watched them burn. The skirts, the slips, the pants. The lipsticks, the scarves, the Sunday hats. Gone in seconds. And the whiskey warming me as the ash flew. And the smell of her, going up in smoke. But not the pink dress. Not that.'

'You kept it back?' Shell whispered.

He nodded, eyes shut, far away. 'She danced with me in it the night she said she'd marry me. Coolbar'd won the hurling league and there was celebrating in the village. Stack's was heaving. I bought her a drink of port and lemon and I asked her. The band was tuning up, the notes like fingernails scratching the board. She took a sip. And she looked me in the eye and said
Yes
. Yes, Shell. We danced away the night. I twisted her round, rocking and rolling. Faster and faster. The walls whirling. People shouting. We danced so quick we nearly rose off the ground, with a crowd around us, cheering, clapping. There was nobody but us that night. Me, her. Her face as I swung her, Shell. Her lips pink like the dress. Her eyes like suns beaming. She was happy, Shell. I'd her two hands in mine, crossed over, wrist over wrist. I'd asked her to marry me and she'd said yes. We were happy. She. Me. Her hair spinning like ribbons. There was nobody else in the room that night. Nobody.'

His eyes were fixed on the wall where the whiskey had splashed.

'I loved your mam, Shell.'

The light in the room dimmed, as if a cloud had passed the sun. In Shell's mind, the snowflakes were falling upwards, as if going back to the place from which they'd come. Mam was leaving them with silent steps. She and Dad were on their own. The bleakness returned, heavy and still.

Dad's eyes met hers. 'I loved her, Shell.' The wreck of a life was in his face.

'I know, Dad,' Shell said. She was back at the foaming waves, kicking and romping.
Ice cream, a penny a lump.
'I know.' A tear slid down her cheek. She reached her hand out towards his. 'But Dad, the
confession--
'

The door behind her opened. The guard came into the room. 'Molloy's orders,' he said. 'I'm sorry. Time's up.'

Dad stood up. He waved a hand over his face and shook his head. He turned away and walked to the window of frosted glass. She saw his fingers there, going over the reticulations. Up, down, side to side.

'Bye now, Shell,' he said.

The guard waited, coughed.

'Bye, Dad.' His fingers were like the butterflies again, up and down the pane of glass. She saw him nod slightly. He was miles away.

She'd no choice but to go.

Forty-four

The next morning Trix, Jimmy and Shell sat in a heap on the bed cutting up the stories. They'd mushroomed overnight and there was no hiding them in the fire pile. Dead babies littered the counterpane.
Superintendent Garda Dermot Molloy asserts...A source close to the family suggests...
Trix gathered the shreds up and tossed them over the three of them like confetti. Shell shut her eyes. Somewhere in a Cork laboratory, the babies were side by side on a slab. A man in a mask was doing things to them. She saw syringes, scissors, needles. Thread, tubes, tissues. Four eyes of button-glass blue.