The Woman’s Daughter. Dermot Bolger
his two companions begin to rub their buttocks together. The twigs snapped beneath her fingers, the naked boys anxiously grabbed their short trousers. As she turned to flee the look-out raced round the hedge to catch her and push her struggling down the leafy tunnel.
‘Spy,’ one of the boys shouted, ‘you were spying on us!’ Johnny dressed himself, white faced and ashamed. ‘What will we do with her?’ one of the others asked, and the boy paused and replied, ‘If she saw us, she must take her clothes off and take the oath to become part of our club.’
She started crying as she squatted here, surrounded by them, and it was Johnny who took her hand and said, ‘Leave her alone, we’re going home now.’ He led her out into the fresh air, beyond the gardens, and they walked down silently to where the rivulet glinted between trees. ‘What were you doing?’ she finally asked, and he threw a stone into the water and said, ‘It was a game.’
He sat on the bank beside her and went on: ‘It was a club. We swore loyalty to each other. We’d each make up tests of courage and have no secrets between us.’
The pair of them climb upstream over the rocks. By the green light of an overhung pool they kneel down and swear secret faith and loyalty to the Joh-dras. He carefully plucks the leaf of a wild nettle and they solemnly give each other a single sting on the white exposed skin of their buttocks, the badge of courage, of blood brother and sister against the world.
Daddy wore his mourning quietly, as if his grief was a stigma that could never be revealed in public. I always seemed to be sitting in the living-room with my homework, listening to his slow desperate pacing of the floor above. We more or less had the run of the house and he would never say a word, but his presence and his grief was always there as though accusing us. Everything I did was done to please him as if I carried guilt around on my shoulders. It seemed like he was balanced on an invisible window-ledge and one mistake or wrong word would push him off.
Three times a week he caught two buses to the scorched earth of Mount Jerome cemetery and every other evening went walking by himself. After tea he worked in rubber boots in the garden, manicuring the lawn as if he could only speak through its ordered shape. It was only when we went out that he’d grow stern, checking our clothes and nails to show the road that he could cope. Often when I played on the street I’d sense him watching from behind the curtains to make sure that I wouldn’t let him down, and afterwards, at supper, he’d quiz me slyly about things neighbours might have said to their children.
He never went back to the street where he was born, to the two rooms we had lived on in after his mother’s death until we moved here. The friends I remember calling to see him in the flat were never mentioned. His life before this place seemed something sordid to be locked away.
There was an election called then, and when I walked to school men were clambering up ladders to stick posters on every pole. Cars toured the street with loudspeakers. It was the first time I saw Daddy bring people into the house that used to be full when my mother was here. A poster was stuck in every window, and each night two men called for him with bundles of printed leaflets. He’d be cross if he found Johnny and me playing with them, he’d hoard them to his chest like money.
One day I found a torn Labour poster like a fallen leaf on the pavement. I loved its design of stars and red colour. When I brought it home he almost struck me, as if I had carried an ikon of the Antichrist into a cathedral. When the election was over the men never called, the energy of those few weeks seemed to drain from him. On Saturday when he took us shopping into town, he stood reverently aside to let the former schoolteacher, now a Dáil deputy, stride by without returning his respectful salute.
Every year it never seemed it would come until it was suddenly there. The buses throbbing outside the gates as the girls march up the steps in their Sunday clothes. At Tara or Clonmacnois they are lectured on the historical sites, and then the nun claps her hands for them to scamper down the gravel path towards the tiny shop where crisps and toffees and chocolate are drowned in a sea of hands. On the way home they travel, exhausted, through the alien green landscape. There is a fight for window seats and the girl beside her leans over to be sick. Spilt milk is souring in the heat. They sing in the queasy smell of the summer evening.
The morning before fifth class breaks up, with Miss O’Flynn at their head, they parade through the empty streets towards the countryside. The dark-skinned old man watches from his cottage wall beneath the roadway as they pass the red barn and start to move through the fields. Loose gravel sprays beneath their rubber soles, they point out the farms where there is work in the autumn. Some of the girls hold hands and sing, Now she won’t buy me – A rubber dolly! At Pass-If-You-Can they turn up the hill where the flooded quarry glistens blue in the light. A girl winks at friends and turns to Sandra.
‘My brother was swimming in there once and he saw two sharks.’
Her wide eyes gaze out at the water and back to their straight faces.
‘And there’s a hidden tunnel since the Penal Days from the castle to the old graveyard in the village.’
Girls whisper behind them, ‘Listen, they’re winding mad Brigid up.’ Cows graze in the castle grounds as they climb the curving stairs to the battlements. Her throat is parched from the walk, the blouse stuck to her with sweat. She stares out at the countryside divided up into squares of colour, the blue tar glinting between trees, the outskirts of the city three miles distant. The breeze is fresh against her face as her head starts to spin at that height like a hermit in the desert being tempted by a vision of the world.
I always promised myself afterwards that it would be the last time. I was so resolute that it seemed nothing he could do in the future would break my grip. I remember how the moonlight would slant into the room and I’d lie here occasionally hearing footsteps. I’d think anyone out at that time of night must be embarked on some sort of adventure. Johnny would be curled up back in his pyjamas beside me with his body so hot it was like a furnace to touch. He always fell asleep immediately afterwards, mumbling a few words as he untangled himself and turned to the wall. It wasn’t long after my eleventh birthday, and I’d think of our two guardian angels hovering, wounded and disappointed, on both sides of the bed.
Daddy thought nothing of us sharing the one bed, especially after the nightmares I used to have. It was as a badge of courage that I’d first undressed, like as in all the other games of dares. Johnny’d saved up his pocket money to buy a packet of birthday candles. He’d light one on the dressing-table to make it exciting. In the half light it was just like those old games of marriage. I’d imagine him as my husband coming home tired from work. In the darkness it was more sinister, his actions more frightening, more like a stranger. One step, two step, the bogeyman is coming, his hands pushing mine downwards towards that hard and slippery thing. I’d enjoy the excitement then, his breath coming fast against my ear, his hands never still.
It was afterwards that I’d lie awake, knowing that what I was doing was wrong, and terrified that there might be some way for people to guess my sin. I’d think of my father in the next room, how his face would crumble in if he ever knew. I knew that I had let him down, and grew more guarded now and withdrawn in school.
The single candle is stuck with wax on to the top of the chipped dresser. Its small flame lengthens and draws in the shadows along the walls of the room. They lie curled together against the cool sheet below and the rough warmth of blankets above, her feet drawn up into his stomach as she allows him to peel each nail of her toes, just the scratch of nail cutting through nail filling the silence. Then the light clicks in their father’s room and they pause for a few moments before they tentatively begin.
The blankets are tossed down below their knees, her nightdress slipped up above her head. His hand stroking across her thigh, he suppresses her giggles with his lips. Both close their eyes, retreat into their separate illicit fantasies – her husband coming home to her from work – he draws her hand down to the rigid penis – his own girl in a doorway down the dark side entrance of the Casino – where the first light hairs cluster around its base. Stiff with the thrill of fear and excitement they lie, afraid to creak the bed springs, until he grimaces in his cramped position, his mouth pushed into her hair to stifle