The Ghost of Grania O'Malley (2 page)

She tasted the salt of her tears and brushed them away angrily. ‘I'll get there, Mrs Burke,' she shouted. ‘I'll get there, you'll see.'

From nowhere came a voice, a woman's voice, but almost low enough to be a man's. ‘Course you will, Jessie,' it said. ‘But not if you sit there feeling all sorry for yourself.' Jessie looked around her. There was no one there. Mole glanced at her quizzically. He had stopped chomping. For one silly moment, Jessie imagined it might have been Mole talking, but then the voice went on. ‘So you've a bit of a knock on your head. Are you going to let that stop you?' Mole was browsing again, tearing at the grass. So it couldn't be him talking. ‘I'm not the donkey, Jessie. And I'll tell you something else for nothing, there's no point at all in your looking for me. You'll not find me. I'm just a voice, that's all. Don't go worrying about it.'

‘Who are you?' Jessie whispered, sitting up and wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

‘Is that what they teach children these days? Can you not use a handkerchief like a proper person? Have you not got a handkerchief?'

‘Yes,' said Jessie, still looking all around her, but frantically now.

‘Then use it, why don't you?' Jessie searched out her handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘That's better now,' the voice went on. ‘I've always thought that you can tell a lot about folk from the way they treat their noses. There's pickers, there's wipers – like you – there's snifflers and, worst of all, there's trumpeters. You'll not believe this, but I once knew a queen, a real queen, I'm telling you – and she was a trumpeter. Worse still, she'd blow her nose on a handkerchief and she wouldn't throw it away like you or me. She'd use it again, honest she would. She'd use the same handkerchief twice. Can you believe such a thing? And herself a queen! I told her straight out. I said: “There's no surer way to catch a cold and die than to use the same handkerchief twice.” She was no one's fool, that queen. Oh no, she listened to me. She must have, because she lived on and into a ripe old age, just like me. She died sitting up. Did you know that?'

Chuckling now, the voice seemed to be coming closer all the time. ‘That queen, she wouldn't lie down for anyone, not even death. A lady after my own heart she was. English, mind, but she couldn't help that now, could she? Listen, Jessie, are you just going to sit there or are you going to get up on your feet and climb the Big Hill, like you said you would?'

‘Who are you?' Jessie asked again. She was hoping against hope that maybe she was still asleep and dreaming it all. But she was bleeding and there was real blood on her fingers, on her head. So the voice had to be real too – unless she was going mad. That thought, that she might be going mad, frightened Jessie above everything else.

‘It doesn't matter who I am,' said the voice, and it came from right beside her now, ‘except that this is my hill you're walking on. I've been watching you these last weeks, we all have, the boys and me. They didn't think you'd make it, but I did. I was sure of it, so sure of it that I've a wager on it – five gold doubloons. And, Jessie, if there's one thing I hate losing, it's money. And here you are, sitting there like a pudding, crying your eyes out and wiping your nose with the back of your hand. I'm ashamed of you, Jessie.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Jessie. ‘I didn't mean to . . .'

‘So you should be. I tell you what.' The voice was whispering in her ear. ‘I'll make it worth your while. I'll leave a little something for you at the top of the hill. But if you want my little something, then you'll have to go up there and fetch it for yourself. How about it?'

Jessie was still thinking about what she should do when she felt strong arms under her shoulders, lifting her on to her feet and then holding her for a moment until she had steadied herself on her legs. Then someone tapped her bottom. ‘On your way, girl.' And Jessie found herself walking on, almost without meaning to, as if her legs were being worked by someone else. She looked behind her again and again to see if anyone was there. There was no one, only Mole ambling along, head lowered, ears back.

‘Did you hear her?' Jessie whispered, as Mole came alongside. ‘She's watching us, I know she is. Come on Mole, we've got to get to the top, we've got to.' And she lurched on up the Big Hill, rejoining the track beyond the waterfall.

The grass under her feet was spongy here; easier walking, easier falling too, she thought. She remembered how her father had galloped her on his back along this same grassy path, and how they'd fallen over and rolled down the hill together and into the bracken. She remembered too the rockstrewn gully ahead, and wondered how she was ever going to get past it. She went down on her hands and knees. It would be painful and slow, but it was the only way. There were brambles across the path that had to be pulled away, endless lacerating rocks to be negotiated. Jessie kept crawling until her wrists couldn't take it any more and she had to crawl on her elbows. That was when her knee slipped and her fingers wouldn't grasp and she slid backwards. She ended up in an ungainly heap, wedged against the rocks, knees and elbows barked and bleeding, and a vicious thorn stuck in the palm of her hand. She drew it out with her teeth and spat it on to the ground.

Mole was braying at her from somewhere further up the hill. Jessie looked up, shielding her eyes against the white of the sun that was breaking now through the mist. Mole was standing right on top of the Big Hill. He wasn't just calling her, he was taunting her. Jessie levered herself laboriously to her feet and swayed there for a moment, her head spinning. She closed her eyes, and then it all came flooding back.

April, the start of the summer term at school and they'd all of them gone, even the infants, up the Big Hill on a nature walk with Mrs Burke, her head teacher and the other bane of her life besides Marion Murphy. And Jessie had been the only one to be left behind with Miss Jefferson, the infant teacher. Miss Jefferson had insisted on holding her hand all the way to the beach, just in case, she said. They were going to find lots of interesting shells, she said, to make a shell picture. It was always shells or wild flowers with Miss Jefferson – she had her own wild flower meadow behind the school. But today it was shells.

Miss Jefferson foraged through the bladderwrack and the sea lettuce, whooping with joy every few seconds and talking nineteen to the dozen like she always did. It wasn't that Jessie didn't like her; she did. But she was forever fussing her, endlessly anxious that Jessie might fall, might be too cold, might be too tired. Jessie was used to that, used to her. It was being left behind that she really resented.

Despite all Miss Jefferson's enthusiastic encouragement she could not bring herself to care a fig about the shell picture. She wanted to be up there with them, with the others. All the while she kept her eye on the Big Hill. She could see them, a trail of children up near the summit now, Mrs Burke striding on ahead. She heard the distant cheer when they reached the top and she had to look away. Miss Jefferson understood and put her arm round her, but it was no comfort.

She had begged to be allowed to go up the Big Hill with the others, but Mrs Burke wouldn't even hear of it. ‘You'd slow us down, Jessie,' she'd said. ‘And besides, you know you'd never reach the top.' And then she'd laughed. ‘And I'm afraid you're far too big to carry.' That was the moment Jessie had decided she would climb the Big Hill, cerebral lousy palsy or not. Somehow or other she would do it, she'd drag herself up there if necessary.

She opened her eyes. Here she was, after two months of trying, within a stone's throw of the summit. This time there'd be no stopping her. ‘Here I come!' she cried. ‘Here I come!' And she launched herself up the hill. Several times her legs refused to do what she told them and threatened to buckle beneath her. Time and again, she felt herself reeling. She longed just to sit down and rest; but again and again she heard the voice in her head. ‘You can do it, girl, you can do it.'

Where the words came from, or who spoke them, she neither knew nor cared any more. Nothing mattered but getting to the top. She was almost there when her legs simply folded on her, and she found herself on her knees. She crawled the last metre or so over mounds of soft thrift and then collapsed. Mole came over to her and nuzzled her neck with his warm whiskery nose. She clung to Mole's mane and hauled herself up on to her feet.

There below her lay the whole of Clare Island, and all around the grey-green sea, with the island of Inishturk far to the south. And when she turned her face into the wind, there was the mainland and the islands of Clew Bay floating in the sea like distant dumplings. She was on top of the world. She lifted her hands to the sky and laughed out loud and into the wind, the tears running down her face. Mole looked on, each of his ears turning independently. Jessie's legs collapsed and she sat down with a sudden jolt that knocked the breath out of her for a moment, and stunned her into sanity.

Only then did she begin to reflect on all that had happened to her on the Big Hill that morning. There could be no doubt that she had made it to the top, unless of course she was still in the middle of some wonderful dream. But the more she thought about it, the more she began to doubt her memory of the climb, the fall in the stream, the disembodied voice that had spoken to her, the arms that had helped her to her feet, the words in her head that had urged her on to the top. It could all have been some extraordinary hallucination. That would make sense of it. But then, what about the bump on her head? And there was something else she couldn't understand. Someone must have rescued her from the stream. But who? Maybe it was all the bump on the head, maybe that was why she was hearing voices. And maybe that was why her memory was deceiving her. She had to be sure, really sure. She had to test it.

‘Hello?' she ventured softly. ‘Are you still there? I did it, didn't I? I won your bet for you. Are you there?' There was no one, nothing, except a solitary humming bumble-bee, a pair of gulls wheeling overhead and Mole munching nearby. Jessie went on, ‘Are you anyone? Are you someone? Are you just a bump on the head or what? Are you real? Say something, please.' But no one said anything. Something rustled behind her. Jessie swung round and saw a rabbit scuttling away into the bracken, white tail bobbing. She noticed there were rabbit droppings all over the summit. She flicked at one of them and it bounced off the side of a rock, a giant granite rock shaped by the wind and weather into a perfect bowl, and in the bowl was a pool of shining water fed by a spring from above it.

Jessie hadn't been thirsty until now. She crawled over, grasped the lip of the rock and hauled herself up. She put her mouth into the water like Mole did and drank deep. Water had never been so welcome to her as it was that morning on the summit of the Big Hill. She was wiping her mouth when she saw something glinting at the bottom of the pool. It looked like a large ring, brass maybe, like one of the curtain rings they had at home in the sitting room. She reached down into the water and picked it out.

‘I am a woman of my word.' The same voice, from behind her somewhere. ‘Didn't I say I'd leave a little something for you?' In her exhaustion, in her triumph, Jessie had quite forgotten all about the promised ‘little something'. She backed herself up against the rock. ‘Don't be alarmed, Jessie, I'll not hurt you. I've never hurt a single soul that didn't deserve it. You did a fine thing today, Jessie, a fine thing; and what's better still, you won me my wager. I'm five gold doubloons richer, not that I've a lot to spend it on, mind. None of us have, but that's by the by. None of the boys thought you could do it, but I did. And I like to be right. It's a family failing of ours. “Her mother's an O'Malley,” I told them. “So Jessie's half an O'Malley. She'll do it, just watch.” And we did watch and you did do it. The earring's yours, girl. To be honest with you I've not a lot of use for such things these days. Look after it, won't you?'

When Jessie spoke at last, her voice was more of a whisper than she had intended it to be. ‘Where are you? Can't I see you? You can't be just a voice.' But there was no reply. She tried again and again, until she knew that whoever had been there either didn't want to answer or had gone away. ‘Thanks for the earring,' Jessie called out. ‘I won't lose it, I promise.'

It should have sounded silly talking to no one like she was, but somehow it didn't. Talking to Mole was silly and she knew it, but there was no one else and she had to talk to someone. ‘See what she gave me, Mole? It's an earring. It's because I climbed the Big Hill and she won her bet.' The donkey lifted his upper lip, showed his yellow teeth and sniffed suspiciously at the ring in the flat of Jessie's hand. He decided it wasn't worth eating.

Jessie looked back down the Big Hill. It was a very long way back down again. She had never given a single thought as to how she would get down if ever she got to the top, probably because in her heart of hearts she had never really believed she would get to the top. She knew well enough that, for her, climbing down the stairs at home was always a more difficult proposition than climbing up. She'd never manage it, not all the way to the bottom. It was impossible. Then she had an idea, an obvious idea, but a good one. Mole would take her down. She would use the rock as a mounting block, lie over Mole's back and hitch a ride all the way back home. Easy.

It did not prove as easy as she had imagined. First of all, Mole wouldn't come to the rock and had to be dragged there by his mane. Then he wouldn't stand still, not at first. Mole wasn't at all used to being ridden and shifted nervously under Jessie's weight; but eventually he seemed to get the idea and walked away, taking Jessie down the Big Hill and all the way back home, Jessie clinging on like a limpet, desperate not to slide off. She waited until Mole was grazing the grass on the lawn in amongst her father's ‘creatures', and then just dropped off. It was a fairly painless landing. That was where her father found her when he came back from the sheep field a short time later.