The Ghost of Grania O'Malley (7 page)

The sunlight danced over the rock pool and seemed to be inviting them to drink. Jack was there before she was. He cupped his hands under the spring, caught the water and drank it. Jessie tried it the same way too, but could not keep her fingers tight enough together to hold the water. So she knelt down and put her mouth to the surface of the pool, as she had the last time she was up there. She drank long and deep, her eyes closed until she'd had enough. She wiped her mouth and watched the reflected clouds moving across the pool. She was remembering the earring and how she had found it there before. And then she knew she wasn't remembering it at all, she was looking directly at it. It was there, right in front of her eyes, lying at the bottom of the pool. It was like an echo in her mind, this feeling of having been somewhere before and then the same thing happening, in exactly the same place and in exactly the same way, like a dream, only clearer, more real. She reached down into the water, shattering the clouds, but Jack's hand was quicker than hers.

‘Jeez, what's this?' he said, dangling the earring in front of her eyes.

‘What does it look like?' a voice spoke from behind them, a voice Jessie recognised at once. ‘You'll be needing the pair, I thought.' They turned. She was the woman from the mirror. She was the woman from Jessie's dream. And she was here and now and barefoot on the rock, her hair all about her face.

‘Well, have you no manners at all?' she said. ‘You're gawping at me like a pair of gasping salmon. Look around you. It's just like you said, Jack. Isn't this the most perfect place in the entire world? My mountain this, my hill. I fought for it, we all did. We spilled good red Irish blood for it, and I'll not let them do it. I won't. But I'll need help.' And then to Jack: ‘That was a fine speech you made. Did you mean it?' Jack nodded, backing away now and taking Jessie with him.

‘Now where do you think you're going to?' She sprang down off the rock, lithe like a tiger, a sword hanging from her broad leather belt. She was about Jessie's mother's age, a little older perhaps and certainly stronger. There was a wild and weather-beaten look about her. ‘Would I hurt you? Would I? Haven't I just given you my own earrings? Gold they are, Spanish gold. I filched them myself from the wreck of the Santa Felicia, a great Armada galleon that washed itself up on our rocks – a while ago now. And there's a whole lot more where they came from, my life's winnings you might say – or what's left of them anyway.'

She drew her sword and flourished it at the sea. ‘These are my waters. You sail in my waters and you pay your dues. I took from anyone who came by, English, Spanish, Portuguese – all the same to me, all perfectly fair and square and above board. But if they didn't pay, well then, I took what was mine. Wouldn't you? A poor pirate's got to earn her crust somehow. How else is she to live into her old age? Tell me that if you will.'

Jessie sat down because she had to, because her legs wanted her to. It could not be what Jessie was thinking, because what she was thinking was impossible; but then maybe she had to believe the impossible might just be possible after all. The woman now striding towards her said she was a pirate, that the Big Hill was her mountain. It could be no one else. It had to be . . . but then it couldn't be. She had been buried in the abbey hundreds of years ago. Jessie had seen the gravestone. They had read about her at school, the Pirate Queen of Clare Island. Mrs O'Leary's pub down by the quay was named after her.

Jessie screwed up all her courage, and then spoke. ‘You're not . . . you're not Grania O'Malley, are you?'

‘And who else would I be?' she said.

6
GONE FISHING

THEY WERE ALONE AGAIN ON THE HILL. IT WAS as if time had stood still, and they had just rejoined it. For some moments they simply stood and stared at each other. Then Jack looked down at his hand. ‘It's gone. I had it. I had the earring,' he whispered. ‘I found it in the pool, didn't I?' Jessie nodded. ‘And she was here, wasn't she? I wasn't dreaming it?' He didn't wait for an answer. ‘Let's get out of here,' he said.

Mole wouldn't be caught, so Jack had to give Jessie a piggyback all the way down the hill. They reached the bottom in time to help Jessie's father drive the sheep along the road into the barn. They would be shearing the next day, he said, and it felt like rain. The fleeces had to be dry, so it was best to keep the sheep in overnight.

That evening the thunder rolled in from the sea and clattered around the island, and the rain fell hard and straight in huge drops that drummed incessantly on the tin roof of the kitchen. Inside, there was an unnatural silence over the supper table. Jessie's mother and father weren't speaking. She looked from one to the other willing them to talk, but neither did. It was just as Jack had said, first the shouting, then the silences.

Jack ate his peanut butter sandwiches ravenously and scarcely looked up. He seemed all wrapped up inside himself. Jessie longed to talk to him about everything that had happened up on the Big Hill, but there was never an opportunity to be alone together. He went up to bed early, and Jessie was about to follow him upstairs when her father asked her to help him check the sheep. ‘Two pairs of eyes are always better than one,' he said.

The sheep filled the barn from wall to wall. Every one of them was lying down, except for one in the corner. ‘I thought as much. She's lambing. She shouldn't be, but she is. That old ram must have got out again,' he said. ‘She's only young. I think she'll need a hand. Do you want to do it?' Jessie had never told her father that she didn't like doing it. It was all the slime and the blood; and worst of all, the possibility that the lamb might be dead. She pretended. She had always pretended, and she pretended again now. Her father knelt down, holding the sheep on her side. Jessie found the feet inside and felt for the head. The lamb was alive. She tugged and her hands slipped. The little black feet were sucked back inside. She tried again. The lamb came out at the third pull and lay there, steaming and exhausted, on the ground. They sat watching the ewe for a while as she licked over her lamb, her eyes wary.

‘Something the matter with Jack, is there?' her father asked suddenly.

‘Not as far as I know. He can't find his lucky arrowhead, that's all.'

She had never before found it difficult to talk to her father, but then she'd never before wanted to ask him about such a thing. She wanted to ask him outright: ‘Are you and Mum going to split up?' Then it occurred to her that maybe just by asking, just to speak of it, might make it more likely to happen.

‘Come on, Jess,' he said, ‘what's up?'

Luckily, there was something else troubling her, something she was longing to talk about to someone.

‘I think I've seen a ghost, Dad.'

He looked down at her and laughed. ‘Have you been at my whisky, Jess?'

‘Course not.'

‘You're serious, aren't you?'

‘I've seen her in my mirror, Dad, and I heard her up on the Big Hill. Then today, this afternoon, I saw her. I really saw her. Honest, up at the top of the Big Hill.'

‘At the top of the Big Hill, you say,' said her father, getting to his feet and brushing himself down. ‘Now there's a thing.' He smiled down at her and helped her. ‘D'you know, Jess, you go on like this and you'll make a writer one day. All the best writers don't know where the truth begins or where it ends. They're not liars at all, they're just dreamers. Nothing wrong with dreaming.' He pulled some straw out of her hair and let it fall to the ground. ‘And by the by, don't you worry about your mother and me. It's the Big Hill. It's only the Big Hill that's between us. Once the mining's begun and there's nothing more to be done about it, then we'll be fine, you'll see.' Jessie felt a surge of relief coursing through her and warming her like sunshine. It didn't matter that he hadn't believed her ghost story. It didn't matter at all.

‘Your hands are disgusting,' he said, and she wriggled her fingers in his face and giggled.

The weekend was spent shearing the sheep, all four of them together in the barn: her father pouring sweat as he bent over the sheep, her mother and Jack rolling the fleeces into bundles and sweeping up, while Jessie opened and shut the gate and drove the sheep into the shearing pen. Jack took to the shepherding as if he had been doing it all his life. Through it all, Jessie's mother and father scarcely spoke. Liam called in on Sunday morning after Mass. Marion Murphy had found a baseball bat, he said. Her father had brought it back from Miami on one of his trips. She'd lend it if she could play too. ‘You could teach us,' said Liam. ‘I've got a tennis ball. Five o'clock at the field. Will you come?'

Jessie went with him that evening, not because she had the slightest interest in baseball, but because at last she'd have a chance to talk to Jack about Grania O'Malley. All they had been able to do since they had met her was to exchange conspiratorial glances. They sauntered along the farm lane, side-stepping the puddles, Mole following along behind. Jack did all the talking.

‘Jess, I've been thinking. About her, I mean, about what happened up there. Here's what I remember, or what I think I remember. We got to the top, right? We found the earring in the pool. I had it in my hand. Then out of nowhere comes this weird lady, kind of like a gypsy. She said she was a pirate, right? And she had a sword. She kept telling us all about the gold she'd taken off some ship, a Spanish ship, wasn't it? And her hair was black and curling down to her shoulders. I mean, I can see her like she was here right now. I didn't make this up, did I? You saw her too, right?' Jessie tried to answer, but Jack wouldn't let her.

‘Now, we've got two choices. Either the whole thing was some fantastic dream, and we just dreamed the same dream – or it really happened. I don't reckon two people can dream the same dream. So, it happened, and if it happened, then we really met a ghost up there. Right? But there's something I can't figure out. It seemed like she knew you somehow, like she'd given you an earring before.'

‘That's because she did,' said Jessie. ‘I've seen her before. She came to my room. And she talked to me, on the Big Hill, the day you came. That's when I found the first earring. In the same pool. I keep it in Barry's bowl. But I didn't know who she was.'

‘Something O'Malley, wasn't it?' said Jack.

‘Grania O'Malley,' she said and Jack looked at her blankly. ‘Don't you know who she is? She's in the history books. She was a terrible woman, a sort of pirate queen. She'd slit your throat as soon as look at you. Mrs Burke says she was a wicked scarlet woman. She had as many husbands as she had children, and sometimes they weren't husbands at all. But what I don't understand is the earring, the second earring. If she really was there, if it wasn't a dream, then where's the second earring? You had it in your hand.'

Then Liam and the others came along on their bikes and walked with them down towards the field. There could be no more talk of Grania O'Malley's ghost or the missing earring.

Baseball was like rounders, Jessie thought, except you wound yourself up into a frenzy before you threw the ball, the bat was a lot longer and, for some reason she didn't quite understand, the batter always got to wear Jack's baseball hat. She kept her distance. It wasn't the kind of game she could play very well. When they picked sides, she would be the last to be chosen and she always hated that. And besides, she didn't want to encounter Marion Murphy again. She'd sit it out.

Watching from the seat under the tree, with Mole grazing around her feet, Jessie could think of nothing else except the ghost on the Big Hill. Even when her legs cramped up with the cold and she had to rub the life back into them, she hardly felt the accustomed pain. There was still this niggling doubt in her mind. One way or another she had to know for sure. Perhaps the ghost was close by somewhere, watching, listening, just invisible, that's all. ‘You're there, aren't you?' She said it aloud. ‘Grania O'Malley, can you hear me? If you can hear me, let me see you, please.' The ball came rolling towards her feet, chased by Marion.

‘Talking to yourself again?' said Marion, bending down to pick it up.

‘No, I'm not,' she replied. Marion gave her a puzzled look, threw the ball in and ran off.

With each day that passed, and with no sign of the ghost, no reappearance, and no second earring, the two began to believe that they must have had some kind of joint hallucination. They went over it again and again, and both clearly remembered every little detail – or they thought they did. Jessie showed Jack the evidence of her first meeting with Grania O'Malley. Time after time she took the earring out of its hiding place in Barry's bowl and showed it to him, and each time Jack was even more sure it was the same as the one he'd had in his hand that afternoon on the Big Hill, quite sure, he said. She showed him the mirror where she'd seen the head of the ghost all those weeks before, and he sat in front of it just as she had, holding the earring in his hand, and looked deep into the mirror. ‘And she was right behind you?' he said.

‘Not all of her, just her head. But it was the same woman. It was Grania O'Malley. Honest it was.'

‘But if we saw her like we think we did,' Jack went on, ‘then where's the other earring?' That was always the problem they came back to. There was no second earring, and until there was a second earring, then there was room for doubt. They searched everywhere, everywhere they had looked for Jack's lucky arrowhead, and elsewhere too. But they found neither the second earring nor the lucky arrowhead.

Their shared doubts and fears threw them more and more together in school, as well as out of school too. In school, all the playground talk was of the controversy still raging over the Big Hill. Anyone who said a word against the gold mine was branded at once as some kind of traitor. So no one spoke up against the mine, except Jessie; and the more she found herself standing up for the preservation of the Big Hill, the surer she was of her cause. And being alone against the others only made her more defiant, more determined. Jack was her sole ally, but a silent one. He rarely left her side, and was, Jessie thought, the main reason anyone listened to her without shouting her down.