Future Popes of Ireland Page 18

  ‘It’s a beautiful tree,’ Dev said, admiring her tattoo; she could have hugged him for it.

  It was. She had wept when they chopped it down and Conor carved its dates in the sad bare stump left on the ground.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Dev peered at her back.

  ‘You drew this?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I love this little squirrel!’

  Fidelma! She didn’t know where any of her friends had retreated to once the road widened; even now, it hurt her heart too much to return to Wicklow.

  ‘Thanks!’

  Rosie lowered her T-shirt: Dev’s turn.

  Peg continued to read her book. If she minded Rosie’s and Dev’s Tattoo Show-Off Session she didn’t let on; Rosie suspected she was glad to have the pair of them distract each other. All of Dev’s tattoos were mathematical in nature (‘Nerd phase’ – an eye-roll from Peg at ‘phase’) and he showed Rosie the pi symbol on his back (‘I know; I was sixteen!’) and the dot that represented zero on his ankle (‘You know an Indian astronomer invented the concept, Brahmagupta; I edited his Wikipedia entry!’) and the Fibonacci sequence that stretched along his elbow (‘Isn’t it beautiful?’) Peg’s eyes remained fixed on her book, no matter how hard Dev stared at her, her face inscrutable, for she was not fool enough to carve her self on her skin.

  ‘Anyway, don’t be mocking me: you have numbers too!’ Dev said, once it became clear that Peg might never look up.

  Rosie blushed as he looked at the numbers on her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t recognize that sequence.’

  4, 11, 12, 19, 29, 31.

  ‘Just some lucky numbers,’ Rosie said.

  (Some things they might never talk about, Rosie realized, the words on the small of her back also remaining unexplained, for she’d already told Peg about her time with the poet in Paris, exaggerating the details – how awful his revolutionary poetry! How greasy his silver ponytail! How crushed her heart had been! – so that the episode had the comfort of a cartoon, when the truth was she still felt the scars. Still, rejection could be the making of you, Rosie reflected, a revelation that gained an edge as Peg’s eyes remained fixed on her book, though she must have finished the page.)

  It was time to confront the second part of her mission.

  ‘This is my most recent,’ Rosie said, rolling up her skirt to reveal the tattoo of a triumphant bird on her ankle.

  ‘Is that one of those swans you were talking about?’ Dev asked, bending down for a closer look, while Peg didn’t budge.

  ‘Yes. The Children of Lir.’

  It was time to talk about Aunty Mary’s letter and what had brought her back to Ireland.

  ‘What’s that in its beak?’

  ‘A pipe,’ Rosie answered, a long story coiled in those words, though she wasn’t sure that Peg would listen.

  10

  Pipe (2005)

  ‘Is that a swan?’

  Damien peered at Rosie’s doodle.

  ‘It’s the Children of Lir.’

  ‘I see,’ Damien said, in a tone that suggested he didn’t.

  ‘The Children of Lir would hate the pipe,’ Rosie said, grimacing at the view from Aunty Mary’s porch in Clougheally. Cranes and construction fences gutted the horizon. Ugly trucks juggernauted down narrow roads. The Children of Lir’s boulder surveyed the changed beach, a pebble to progress.

  ‘It’s not fair to fossils to turn them into fuels,’ Rosie continued. ‘This beach used to be full of amazing creatures …’

  Rosie could picture them if she closed her eyes, long-necked creatures that roamed through towering-fern forests while – why not? – swans swooped around them.

  ‘They could have squashed humans with their feet, if we’d been about, and now we’re squishing them into canisters to power blenders. It’s not right.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Damien said, although what he really said was ‘Rosie!’ because while the shade of her hair dye changed – black to pink to blue – the core of Rosie Doyle was preserved in amber; she remained the teenager who insisted that crystals had the power to repel mobile phone radiation.

  The pipe wasn’t right, though, on so many levels that Rosie didn’t need to summon the Children of Lir. It was in the wrong place, for starters; An Bord Pleanála’s initial report said as much. It wouldn’t benefit the community; the money wouldn’t even be staying in Ireland, let alone Mayo. Not to mention the Rossport Five. For the first time in history, the government had signed a compulsory purchase order in favour of a corporation, and the five farmers who refused Shell access to their land were now in jail in Dublin, sending half the country – so it seemed – frenzying towards Erris. Including Damien Doyle, newly employed by the Green Party and not afraid to share this fact.

  ‘I think it’s important to have broad messaging,’ Damien said, as if this were news. ‘Focus on the nationalization of resources. Shell can talk about job creation but it’s outrageous that all the profits from the pipe go to a corporation instead of citizens. If you look at the Norwegian model …’

  Damien! Rosie thought, the voice in her head suddenly seventeen, because Damien remained the teenager who wore sensible cords and kept fastidious minutes of the Legion of Mary with colour-coded pens.

  Rosie tuned out of Damien’s lecture and peeped in the letterbox. No sign of Aunty Mary. They were on time – Damien had made sure of that – and Rosie felt a twinge of irritation at being pulled away from the Solidarity Camp when there was the road to blockade and banners to be painted and the Rossport Five stuck in jail. Still, they might recruit Aunty Mary to the cause. The pipe wasn’t going to pass directly through Clougheally, but it was close enough, and the campaign could benefit from experienced local energy.

  ‘Hello?’

  No response from the letterbox. Damien paused from excoriating Fianna Fáil’s tax policy and looked around nervously.

  ‘This place gives me the creeps.’

  ‘The creeps! Are you five or what?’

  ‘You were the one who said the house had a strange aura.’

  This she couldn’t deny.

  ‘As if Nanny Nelligan were still roaming about upstairs, wasn’t that what you used to say?’

  That was John Paul or Peg. Rosie couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter; neither sibling was to be mentioned.

  ‘The only person roaming anywhere is Aunty Mary. She’s probably out for a walk or pottering around the back. I’ll go have a look.’

  ‘I’m coming too – there was a reason Hansel and Gretel stuck together.’

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that Aunty Mary’s a witch—’

  ‘I very much hope so too,’ Aunty Mary said, emerging from the back garden and startling Damien, whose shriek confirmed Rosie’s suspicion that Gretel would have got on grand without Hansel slowing her down.

  Aunty Mary looked unperturbed.

  ‘I’m doing some gardening; come on, ye can give me a hand.’

  *

  There was only the one spade, so they took it in turns, digging new beds while Aunty Mary did some weeding. In the ramshackle garden, with its cheery cabbages and triumphant lettuces, Rosie felt a bubble of affection for her great-aunt, the spry thing in an oversized shirt who seemed glad of her new white hair. She would make a great witch, Rosie decided: a wise woman who lived at the edge of the world and would be glad to share subversive teachings and sage blessings with the Solidarity Camp …

  ‘Let me have the spade if you’re not going to use it!’

  Rosie! Aunty Mary’s gaze said, for here Rosie was daydreaming when there was work to be done.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rosie said, back into it.

  ‘Ah, it’s grand,’ Aunty Mary said, turning her attention to another weed. ‘I’d say this plot has had the most it’ll get this season, these new things are only experiments to keep an idle mind busy.’

  There’s plenty at the Solidarity Camp to keep you busy, Rosie almost blurted out, excitement bubbling at the prospect that th
e pipe might be the thing to unite the Doyles, finally.

  ‘Is this kale?’ Damien asked.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Cool. Oh, I didn’t think we’d be having lunch, so I didn’t mention this, but I’m a vegetarian now.’

  ‘No bother.’

  ‘Rosie’s vegan,’ Damien added, with the sense that she was always taking things a step too far.

  ‘Right so.’

  ‘Anyway, if you need a hand I know a great salad where you just massage the kale and …’

  (As if they’d invented vegetarianism, Mary thought, a secret smile at the confidence of the young. Hadn’t she spent days in Stella’s cooperative house in Dublin, with its soaking chickpeas and crisped kale and weed growing in the shed? That would have been before either of them was born, not that they’d ask. Not that she’d say.)

  ‘Did Nanny Nelligan farm here?’ Rosie asked, once Damien had finished sharing his recipe.

  ‘A bit,’ Aunty Mary said.

  ‘It must be a terrible thing for the soil to be disturbed too much,’ Rosie said, suddenly respectful with her shovel.

  ‘Isn’t that what gardening is about?’ Damien asked.

  Rosie shot him a look.

  ‘This kind of farming is grand. I’m talking about those diggers, coming in and ripping everything up, so they can lay down that monstrosity. It’s not fair to the ground.’

  Aunty Mary didn’t seem too perturbed about the sentience of soil.

  ‘Aren’t there pipes running under every house in the country?’

  ‘Not with unrefined gas running at 345 bar,’ Damien said, all the numbers in his head. ‘If there were an explosion at that pressure, it could extend for seventy metres, so …’

  The facts wouldn’t convince Aunty Mary; Rosie saw it in her face. Nor would fancies about the memories of soil or flying swans.

  ‘It’s a human rights issue, really,’ Rosie said. ‘Shell has a horrific record in Nigeria; they continued to work there even after the government killed the Ogoni Nine!’

  Aunty Mary had signed Rosie’s petition, back when she’d asked, but all she said now was ‘the world can be a terrible place.’

  (As if she didn’t know about the injustices of the world, Mary thought; hadn’t her voice gone hoarse from shouting? She’d seen plenty of causes of the day cycle through, enough to think that progress wasn’t shaped like a line; some zigzaggy thing it was, one that didn’t mind what folk at the arse-edge of Ireland did about trouble in other countries. Nobody in Clougheally had been bothered about the revolution until it knocked at their door. Perhaps it was spite that kept her from the Solidarity Camp or perhaps it was tiredness or perhaps it was sense, but she wouldn’t have her twilight days stolen by a squabble over a bit of gas.)

  Aunty Mary collected a final flourish of lettuce.

  ‘We’d best eat this salad,’ she said, the pipe pushed underground, for the moment.

  *

  ‘Delicious,’ Damien said.

  ‘Glad you liked it,’ Aunty Mary said.

  ‘Thanks for having us,’ Rosie said, detesting the sound of her voice. The food might change, but dinners with the Doyles were the same, symphonies of knife-scrapings and ‘pass the salt’ drowning out the chance of any meaningful interaction.

  Rosie shifted in her seat, eager to escape the creaky house and its sad aura. It was horrible to be indoors when she could have been at the Solidarity Camp, where a rectangle of light seemed to illuminate the stretch of road, exposing only the good in the world. Mary Moran Horan’s canteen poured out tea and community. The Bitchin’ Kitchin radical collective provided vegan meals. Kids played tin-can football tournaments. Farmers chatted to punks. Songs were belted out, in all keys and languages. Ciarán Delaney wandered around, recording interviews for a radio documentary by day, keeping Rosie warm in her tent at night. Here was the future, laid out in all its non-hierarchical glory, if only Aunty Mary would bother to look.

  Rosie stood and walked over to the overflowing bookshelf in the corner, in search of a sideways path towards the pipe.

  ‘This is a great collection.’

  ‘Too much clutter!’ Aunty Mary said. ‘I should box up the lot.’

  ‘There’s some interesting stuff,’ Rosie said, although there was a lot of clutter, old history books and faded Penguins but no pamphlets from the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, even as her eyes searched the shelves. Dust stared back at her, atop some ancient Irish things that might have belonged to Nanny Nelligan and some leather-bound chronicles and …

  Here was something else not to be talked about; Rosie felt its presence, as her hands passed over the gap. Her eyes met Aunty Mary’s. Knowledge and longing flickered between them, Rosie could have sworn it, ‘Peg’ unsayable.

  (The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle, Mary thought, heart soaring and plunging at the memory. She’d mislaid the opus. Thrown it out, probably. They might have laughed about it, had Peg been in the room, her fingers delighting at the spines of books, the way they’d used to. A genius! A dote. A fool, that too. Weren’t they all? Rosie certainly was; she hadn’t even the stamina to finish reading a pamphlet before she’d drawn some nonsense creature on it. And to swan back to Clougheally, all over some pipe, what a waste of a life! Mary had a baton to pass on; all she needed was the hand of an eager grand-niece who would listen to tales of Women’s Lib and the Gay Rights Movement. To drop the baton in the ditch, distracted by gas bubbles, it was too much.)

  Aunty Mary stood and gripped the sides of the table.

  ‘There’s scones if you want. Though you might not be able to eat them.’

  No! Rosie thought, not caring about the dairy, only wanting to block the flow of food that seemed designed to stopper all conversation, as Damien said, ‘Yes please!’

  *

  ‘Delicious,’ Damien said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Aunty Mary said, standing. ‘Well. Thanks for the help with the garden.’

  ‘No bother,’ Damien said, as Rosie’s head threatened to explode.

  ‘There’s a spare bed upstairs if you ever need it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Damien said. ‘I’m just in for the weekend; I’ve a room at a B&B with a friend.’

  (A friend? Mary thought, wondering if she was reading her grand-nephew right; did friends exist in 2005? Stella had relished lovers. Mary didn’t have a word for Mags; they had the warmth of their bodies. Long walks with Mags’s dogs. Crosswords pieced together over coffee. Space in their own houses when they wanted it, a healthy number of miles between them; they were too old to be disrupting routines, even as Mary felt a twinkle at the thought of her semi-secret, what-business-was-it-of-anybody’s lover. Or friend, she supposed, filling the word with mischief, as she remembered Peter and her actual friends in Dublin, who she might have introduced to Damien, except poor Peter was long dead – half of the queens she knew had been snatched by the plague, that bastard – and even if he had been around, he’d never have trekked out to Clougheally, and Mary didn’t have the words to say any of this to Damien, who might, after all, have a perfectly innocent friend whose only interest in room-sharing was frugality.)

  ‘Well. If you ever need a place.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Aunty Mary turned to Rosie.

  ‘And you’re welcome to tea, any time. So long as you don’t mind it black.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Rosie found her courage.

  ‘You should come by the Solidarity Camp some day.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’ve seen it?’

  ‘Hard to miss.’

  ‘We’d be glad of you.’

  ‘Ah.’

  (She might make it to the camp, Mary thought, wondering how many revolutions a life could hold before all the spokes fell off. She’d been worn out and rejuvenated so many times, what was another? Whatever she thought about the pipe, she wouldn’t disagree that Fianna Fáil couldn’t be trusted; across a long life, here was one constant. And Rosie and Dami
en might be fools, but they meant well; even if they lacked Peg’s sharpness, they had good hearts. She might make it to the camp, yet.)

  Aunty Mary opened the door.

  ‘Thanks for coming.’

  ‘No bother,’ Damien said.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Do,’ Aunty Mary said, shutting the door.

  11

  Spade (2007)

  Rosie clutched a glass of red wine and a fag – appropriate props for a funeral – and gazed at the spade in the drizzle. Did metal have memories? Could it remember all the generations of soil it had communicated with? Did its wooden handle remember the hands that had gripped it, through downpours and gusts and flashes of sun, something heroic about the growing of cabbages by the edge of the Atlantic?

  Rosie! sounded in her head; it was typical of her to daydream through a funeral. She should pick some lettuces to serve, that would be a useful activity, but there was already more than enough food inside and not enough people to eat it. (What would happen to the garden? crossed Rosie’s brain, before it was swiftly banished, for this was a sentence that led to thinking about Aunty Mary’s surprise letter and the new owner of the sad old house by the sea.) She should go inside and talk to the neighbours, Rosie knew, as she stayed staring at a spade, which, at least, didn’t judge her. She should have called back. Only a stone’s throw down the road and she hadn’t made the journey. The pipe! loomed in her head, an easy excuse, for she hadn’t time for anything else. Though she hadn’t wanted to visit Aunty Mary either, Rosie admitted, squirming at the truth that she didn’t feel guilty enough about this neglect, her brain daydreaming off about spades or, worse, thinking about the pipe.

  ‘Rosie!’

  Ciarán filled out the word with love, a sound to glide a cloud to earth.

  He wrapped his arm around Rosie’s waist and gave her the gentlest of touches. It’ll be okay, his fingers said, for he wasn’t alone; he’d brought the one person who could be relied upon for insults at a funeral.

  ‘Have you not given up those?’ Granny Doyle said by way of hello, before turning to Ciarán and tutting: ‘Disgraceful it was, really, she crammed her mouth full to the brim with blackberries, no mind what I said!’