Beneath the Earth (24 page)

You've been warned, said the brother, pointing a finger in my face.

Word of this incident spread fast and not one of the women in town would look at me afterwards. It seemed that I could forget about courting.

I knew Luke Hartigan's father when he was a boy. We went to school together, where both Daniel and I were persecuted by the older lads. In my case the harassment took place because I'd been trained never to speak unless I was spoken to, a rule that left me shy and awkward around my classmates. Daniel, on the other hand, was despised because his father was a drunk and his mother was pure lazy. It didn't help that he almost never took a bath and smelled so bad that no one would sit next to him in class. Even the teacher wouldn't come near his seat. He moved away when he was about sixteen and I never thought about him again until he returned years later, tall, clean and good-looking. He had money to burn then and took over the dairy farm that had once belonged to his parents, running a herd of about eighty cattle, and even though every sinner in town knew how to milk a cow, he brought in machines to do a man's job.

Once, as I sat at the bar in Donovan's, I heard him explaining to a shower of fawning sycophants how they worked.

They operate by way of a vacuum, he was saying, waving his hands in the air in a manner that made me want to hit him a slap. The cups massage the milk from the teat but the pressure keeps the claw attached to the animal. It's far more cost- and time-effective than traditional methods.

Is it now, I asked, looking down in his direction and sniffing the air. Was there a stench of milk off him or was I imagining it?

Yes, studies confirm it. And your farm, he said. Might I ask what crops you plant?

Whatever I want, I told him. It's my land. I'll put whatever I want into it.

I wondered whether he had forgotten that we sat in the same classroom together thirty years before or whether he was pretending not to recognize me. Was there no trace left in my face of the boy I used to be? I paid for my drink and left without another word.

Daniel Hartigan didn't just come back with money; he came back with a wife too. An English girl. Very tall and very beautiful but given to dressing like a tart. She had a pair of legs on her and showed them off in such a way that proved her husband had no control over her.

You know your husband used to stink, I told her one afternoon when I found myself standing next to her at a market fair. She was examining some peaches for ripeness, picking them up to see how deeply the green had turned to yellow, her fingers squeezing the flesh of each one before discarding it again. She turned to look at me, startled, a colour coming into her cheeks that resembled the velvet red of the stall.

I beg your pardon, she said, her gaze resting on my teeth. She seemed fascinated by them in a way that unsettled me. I have teeth like any other man. There's nothing untoward about them.

Your husband, I repeated. I went to school with him. He used to stink the place out. He had no friends. The smell was like a mixture of stale eggs, dead bodies and piss. That's what you're curling up to when you crawl into bed with him at night.

She opened her mouth but said nothing, letting out a bark of a laugh instead before shaking her head and walking away, as if I was something contemptible, a creature whose conversation wasn't worthy of her time. That's the problem with the English. They think they're better than all of us. Even the women.

Anyway, my point is that I knew Luke Hartigan's father from way back. And knowing that the boy was the same age as Emer, I should have taken steps to keep him away from her. A time machine, that's what I need.

Before she died, Niamh made sure that Emer knew what a daughter was for. She showed her how to prepare my breakfast and cook my dinner. She trained her to iron my shirts the way I liked them and impressed upon her how important cleanliness around the house was to me. When my wife was gone, planted in the north field, I was grateful that Emer knew how to take over her chores, for otherwise I would have been forced to hire some girl from the village and I don't like strangers in my house.

In every other way, nothing much changed. She kept to her room when I was at home and almost never spoke about what she had seen on the night her mother died. Only once did she dare to open her mouth about it and I made sure that she would never make that mistake again. All in all, she was a good girl, quiet and respectful, and seemed to prefer her own company to mine, which suited me perfectly well.

Which is why it came as a surprise when I saw her standing outside the church one afternoon with Flynn, the priest, and the Hartigan boy, the three of them chattering away like a company of grey parrots. I saw the way Luke was looking at my daughter, and the pair of them only fourteen years old, and knew the thoughts that were going through his mind. When Flynn bid them goodbye and walked off in the direction of the presbytery, I held my ground and watched as they continued to talk, Emer laughing over some nonsense the boy said, Luke doing his best to ingratiate himself with her. He lifted a hand and dared to remove the pink flower from an oleander tree that had fallen into her hair and when he held it out to her, she took it, smiling, while he shifted from one foot to the other in his awkwardness. A moment later she leaned forward, whispered something in his ear, and whatever it was made him blush. She turned then and walked away, taking in the scent of the flower as she disappeared out of sight. The boy watched her go before giving a little jump in the street, his face beaming. Whatever she'd said, she had left him with hope.

It had not occurred to me that boys would one day come calling on Emer. And I knew then that I could never allow such a thing to happen. After all, my daughter belonged to me. That was the natural order of things. And no son of an Englishwoman and a once malodorous prodigal could be allowed near her. That was the day when things changed between the two of us.

Once we were certain, I banned Emer from leaving the house. There had been enough mud-slinging about me after Niamh's passing without adding to it now. Thankfully, I didn't have to insist, as she withdrew into herself anyway, spending most of the day in her room or lying on the sofa, falling in and out of sleep. Her belly grew big and her ankles swelled to such an extent that I asked her to wear slippers around the house instead of going barefoot, as those hooves of hers were ugly things to behold.

I asked her once whether there was a chance that Luke Hartigan might be responsible for her shame and she started to laugh before burying her face in her hands, the knuckles growing white as she pressed her fingers against her temples.

I barely know him, she said, a note of defiance in her voice that I chose to ignore. If I've talked to him more than half a dozen times in my life, that's as much as I can remember.

But it's not talking to someone that makes you a mother; everyone knows that. I considered various methods for getting rid of the baby but there was a risk that these could kill Emer too and I couldn't take that chance, not after everything that had happened with Niamh. The last thing I needed was another visit from the sergeant. So I decided to wait until the creature was born and act then.

Had it been a boy, I might have reconsidered. A son, a grandson, however I might have defined him, I could have trained him up to run the farm with me. Looking after two of us would have given Emer something to do, for I swear there are days when that girl just sits around bone idle, staring out the window.

I didn't let the doctor, the young lad, anywhere near her. Women were having babies long before doctors were invented and I predicted that her body would do most of the work for her without any encouragement from the likes of him. And I was right too. She started in the afternoon and I lay her down on her bed before sharpening a knife and scalding the blade in the fire for when the time came to cut the cord.

When she finally stopped screaming and the house was quiet again, save for the mewling of the child, I went in and did my best to avoid looking at the mess she'd left behind her on the sheets. I told her she could wait until the morning when she had her strength back to wash them up and she reached towards me, arms outstretched, emitting an animal-like sound as I took the baby from her and squeezed my fingers together on either side of the infant's nose, the heel of my hand over her mouth until she went silent. Looking around as I waited, I was surprised to see a photograph of Niamh on Emer's bedside table. I'd never noticed it before, but then every time I'd come in here it had been the middle of the night and I'd never once thought to turn the lights on.

Outside I laid the bundle on the ground while I got on with the grave-digging and then planted the little mite in the ground before filling her over. She would be warm there at least, in the dark and tightly packed earth.

They say we're going to have a good summer this year. It'll only be a few days before Emer is up and about again and then I will start my planting. I might take on a boy from the village to help me. Luke Hartigan, perhaps, just to keep an eye on him. Maybe I'll sow the seeds for the peppers and the sweet potatoes that my father would never let me plant when I was a child. He's long gone, after all, and has no say in these matters any more. The land is mine now. And by God, I'll put anything that I want into it.

John Boyne
was born in Ireland in 1971. He is the author of nine novels for adults and five for younger readers, including the international bestsellers
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
, which has sold more than six million copies worldwide,
The Absolutist, A History of Loneliness
and, most recently,
The Boy at the Top of the Mountain
. His novels are published in over forty-five languages. He is married and lives in Dublin.

www.johnboyne.com
@john_boyne

The Thief of Time

The Congress of Rough Riders

Crippen

Next of Kin

Mutiny on the Bounty

The House of Special Purpose

The Absolutist

This House Is Haunted

A History of Loneliness

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Noah Barleywater Runs Away

The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain

 

 

For more information on John Boyne and his books, see his website at
www.johnboyne.com

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at
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First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © John Boyne 2015

Some of these stories originally appeared elsewhere, in slightly different forms:

‘Rest Day' in
The Irish Times
; ‘Araby' in
Dubliners 100
; ‘Empire Tour' in
The Moth
; ‘The Vespa' in
Books Ireland
; ‘The Country You Called Home' in
The Great War
; ‘Beneath the Earth' in
The Penny Dreadful
.

John Boyne has asserted his right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473526174
ISBNs 9780857523402 (hb)
9780857523419 (tpb)

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