Back to Ms Nigeria's da. It's not that he's actually massive. He just seems like that. Impressive – that's a better word. Or frightening – that's another one.
I look across at Ms Nigeria. She doesn't look frightened. And she doesn't look impressed.
—I texted you ages ago, she says.
—One minute, young lady, he says, and he stops – he drops anchor beside the plainclothes Fed.
—I am – Name Omitted, he says. —This is my wife. You have incarcerated our daughter. Why?
The Fed is trying to make himself taller. He's up on his toes.
—Shoplifting, he says.
—Ridiculous, says her da.
My da speaks now.
—I don't suppose there's a back way out.
He kind of whispers. I think he's messing.
—It is a quite legitimate business venture, Ms Nigeria's da tells the Fed, and the rest of Dublin. —Conducted in concert with her schoolfellows.
—It looked very like shoplifting, says the Fed, —from our perspective.
You can tell. He's trying to talk like her da. But it's not working. 'Perspective' comes out like he's not all that certain what it means.
Anyway, it goes on like this for a while, the two of them throwing the dictionaries. And it gets a bit boring. I look at not-Superman. He's recovered, more or less. He knows he's not going to Guantanamo Bay and they won't be painting his wheelchair orange. His brother's okay too. The colour is back in his cheeks – whatever that means.
I look at the plainclothes Fed. He looks a bit out of it. Ms Nigeria's da is still giving it to him; he's demanding a tribunal into the circumstances of his daughter's arrest – I think. I bet I could go over and just happy-slap the Fed, lift my arm and clothes-line the bollix. I could film it and put it up on Bebo when I get home.
But I don't. It's not my style. And my phone's gone dead.
I look at Ms Nigeria. She's standing beside her ma.
My granda's an alco and he once told me that if I wanted to know what my girlfriend was going to look like when she got older I should take a good look at her ma. Like, I was only about six when he told me and I was trying to stop him from falling down the stairs but, even so, it had sounded kind of cool.
So, now's my chance.
She's there with her ma.
Maybe she's adopted.
But I don't really think that. I'm still in love and a bit – I don't know – hyper. Like, I've been arrested and interrogated. I've been accused and framed. I've stood up to the cops and accused them of racism and frame-ation, or whatever it's called. I'm like your man coming out of the court at the end of In the Name of the Father. 'I am an inno-cent mon!' Except for the sweets. And, just to remind you – all this happened in about half an hour.
And, I have to admit, her ma's lovely too. Big and all. Black-big has a lot more going for it than white-big – in my opinion, like. You should see her hair. It's amazing – it's like hundreds of snakes curled up on her head. It's not a ma's hairstyle at all.
Anyway. We all leave together. We charge out of the cop-shop. 'I am an inno-cent mon!' And we follow Ms Nigeria's da. All of us. I don't know why. We don't seem to have a choice. My da catches up with him, and they're chatting away. We follow them back over the bridge at Tara Street. The wind is knocking us all over the place.
I was going to say a lot more about stereotyping and racism and that. I was kind of angry when I started. I don't know what happened. Maybe it's this. By the time we get over the bridge and we're going past Liberty Hall, she's holding my hand. I think she's my girlfriend. Ms Nigeria, like – not her ma. But, like I said, it's pretty windy. Maybe she's afraid it'll pick her up and throw her in the Liffey, so she's hanging onto me. But I don't think so. I think I'm her fella. So, like – nice one. We'll see how it goes.
The Pram
1
Alina loved the baby. She loved everything about the baby. The tiny boyness of him, the way his legs kicked whenever he looked up at her, his fat – she loved these things. She loved to bring him out in his pram, even on the days when it was raining. She loved to sit on the floor with her legs crossed and the baby in her lap. Even when he cried, when he screamed, she was very happy. But he did not cry very often. He was almost a perfect baby.
The baby's pram was very old. Alina remembered visiting her grandmother when she was a little girl. She had not met her grandmother before. She got out of the car and stood beside her father in the frozen farmyard. They watched an old woman push a perambulator towards them. The pram was full of wood, branches and twigs and, across the top of the pram, one huge branch that looked like an entire tree. This old woman was her grandmother. And the baby's pram was very like the old pram she saw her grandmother push across the farmyard. Her father told her it had been his pram, and her aunts' and her uncle's, and even the generation of babies before them.
Now, in 2005, in Dublin, she pushed a pram just like it. Every morning, she put the baby into the pram. She wrapped him up and brought the pram carefully down the steps of the house. She pushed the pram down the path, to the gate. The gateway was only slightly wider than the pram.
—Mind you don't scrape the sides, the baby's mother had said, the first time Alina brought the pram to the steps and turned it towards the gate and the street.
Alina did not understand the baby's mother. The mother followed her to the gate. She took the pram and pushed it through the gateway. She tapped the brick pillars.
—Don't scrape the sides.
She tapped the sides of the pram.
—It is very valuable, said the mother.
—It was yours when you were a baby? Alina asked.
—No, said the mother. —We bought it.
—It is very nice.
—Just be careful with it, said the mother.
—Yes, said Alina. —I will be careful.
Every morning, she brought the baby for his walk. She pushed the pram down to the sea and walked along the path beside the sea wall. She walked for two hours, every morning. She had been ordered to do this. She had been told which route to take. She stopped at the wooden bridge, the bridge out to the strange sandy island, and she turned back. She did not see the mother or the father but, sometimes, she thought she was being watched. She never took a different route. She never let the pram scrape a wall or gate. She was drenched and cold; her hands felt frozen to the steel bar with which she pushed the pram, despite the gloves her own mother had sent to her from home. But, still, Alina loved the baby.
The little girls, his sisters, she was not so sure about. They were beautiful little girls. They were clever and lively and they played the piano together, side by side, with a confidence and sensitivity that greatly impressed Alina. The piano was in the tiled hall, close to the stained-glass windows of the large front door. The coloured sunlight of the late afternoon lit the two girls as they played. Their black hair became purple, dark red and the green of deep-forest leaves. Their fingers on the keys were red and yellow. Alina had not seen them play tennis – it was the middle of December – but the mother assured her that they were excellent players. They were polite and they ate with good manners and apologised when they did not eat all that was on their plates.
They were not twins. They had names, of course, and they had different ages. Ocean was ten years old and Saibhreas was almost nine. But Alina rarely – or, never – saw them apart. They played together; they slept together. They stood beside each other, always. From the first time Alina saw them, three weeks earlier, when she arrived at Dublin Airport, they were side by side.
The next morning, Alina's first working day, they came up to Alina's bedroom in the attic. It was dark outside. They were lit only by the light from the landing below, down the steep stairs. Their black hair could not be seen. Alina saw only their faces. They sat at the end of the bed, side by side, and watched Alina.
—Good morning, said Alina.
—Good morning, they said, together.
It was f
unny. The young ladies laughed. Alina did not know why she did not like them.
2
Every morning, Alina brought the baby for his walk. Always, she stopped at one of the shelters at the seafront. She took the baby, swaddled in cotton and Gortex, from his pram and held him on her lap. She looked at the changing sea and bounced him gently.
She spoke to him only in English. She had been instructed never to use her own language.
—You can teach the girls a few words of Polish, the mother told her. —It might be useful. But I don't want Cillian confused.
The shelter had three walls, and a wooden bench. The walls had circular windows, like portholes. Alina held the baby and lifted him to one of these windows, so he could see through it. She did it again. He laughed. Alina could feel his excitement through the many layers of cloth. She lifted him high. His hat brushed the roof of the shelter.
—Intelligent boy!
It was the first time he had laughed. She lowered him back into his pram. She would not tell the mother, she decided. But, almost immediately, she changed her mind. She had the sudden feeling, the knowledge; it crept across her face. She was being watched.
She walked as far as the wooden bridge, and turned.
Every morning, Alina saw mothers, and other young women like herself. These women pushed modern, lighter baby-conveyances, four-wheeled and three-wheeled. Alina envied them. The pram felt heavy and the wind from the sea constantly bashed against its hood.
One thing, however, she liked about the pram. People smiled when they saw it.
—I haven't seen one of those in years, one woman said.
—God almighty, that takes me back, said another.
One morning, she pushed past a handsome man who sat on the sea wall eating a large sandwich. She kept pushing; she did not look back. She stopped at the old wooden bridge. She would never bring the pram onto the bridge. She looked at its frail wooden legs rising out of the sludge. The mutual contact, of old wood and old pram; they would all collapse into the ooze below. She could smell it – she could almost feel it, in her hair and mouth. She walked quickly back along the promenade.
The handsome man was still there. He held up a flask and a cup.
—Hot chocolate? he said. —I put aside for you.
He was a biochemist from Lithuania but he was working in Dublin for a builder, constructing an extension to a very large house on her street. They met every morning, in the shelter. Always, he brought the flask. Sometimes, she brought cake. She watched through the portholes as they kissed. She told him she was being watched. He touched her breast; his hand was inside her coat. She looked down at the baby. He smiled; he bucked. He started to cry. The pram rocked on its springs.
One morning in February, Alina heard her mobile phone as she was carefully bringing the pram down the granite steps of the house. She held the phone to her ear.
—Hello?
—Alina. It's O'Reilly.
O'Reilly was the mother. Everyone called her by her surname. She insisted upon this practice. It terrified her clients, she told Alina. It was intriguing; it was sexy.
—Hello, O'Reilly, said Alina.
—The girls are off school early today, said O'Reilly. —Twelve o'clock. I forgot to tell you.
—Fine, said Alina.
But it was not fine.
—I will be there at twelve o'clock, said Alina.
—Five to, said O'Reilly.
—Yes, said Alina.
—Talk to you, said O'Reilly.
—Your mother is not very nice, Alina told the baby, in English.
She could not now meet her biochemist. He did not own a mobile phone. She would miss her hot chocolate. She would miss his lips on her neck. She would not now feel his hands as she peeped through the porthole and watched for approaching joggers and buggy-pushing women.
She arrived at the gates of the girls' school at ten minutes to twelve. They were waiting there, side by side.
—But school ends at twelve o'clock, said Alina.
—A quarter to, said Ocean.
—We've been here ages, said Saibhreas.
—So, said Alina. —We will now go home.
—We want to go along the seafront, said Ocean.
—No, said Alina. —It is too windy today, I think.
—You were late, said Saibhreas.
—Very well, said Alina. —We go.
The biochemist waved his flask as she approached. Alina walked straight past him. She did not look at him. She did not look at the little girls as they strode past. She hoped he would be there tomorrow. She would explain her strange behaviour.
That night, quite late, the mother came home. The girls came out of their bedroom.
—Guess what, O'Reilly, they said, together. —Alina has a boyfriend.
3
O'Reilly grabbed Alina's sleeve and pulled her into the kitchen. She shut the door with one of her heels. She grabbed a chair and made Alina sit. She stood impressively before Alina.
—So, she said. —Tell all.
Alina could not look at O'Reilly's face.
—It is, she said, —perhaps my private affair.
—Listen, babes, said O'Reilly. —Nothing is your private affair. Not while you're working here. Are you fucking this guy?
Alina felt herself burn. The crudity was like a slap across her face.
She shook her head.
—Of course, said O'Reilly. —You're a good Catholic girl. It would be quaint, if I believed you.
O'Reilly put one foot on the chair beside Alina.
—I couldn't care less, she said. —Fuck away, girl. But with three provisos. Not while you're working. Not here, on the property. And not with Mister O'Reilly.
Shocked, appalled, close – she thought – to fainting, Alina looked up at O'Reilly. O'Reilly smiled down at her. Alina dropped her head and cried. O'Reilly smiled the more. She'd mistaken Alina's tears and gulps for gratitude. She patted Alina's head. She lifted Alina's blonde hair, held it, and let it drop.
Alina was going to murder the little girls. This she decided as she climbed the stair to her attic room. She closed the door. It had no lock. She sat on the bed, in the dark. She would poison them. She would drown them. She would put pillows on their faces, a pillow in each of her hands. She would lean down on the pillows until their struggles and kicking ceased. She picked up her own pillow. She put it to her face.
She would not, in actuality, kill the girls. She could not do such a thing – two such things. She would, however, frighten them. She would terrify them. She would plant nightmares that would lurk, prowl, rub their evil backs against the soft walls of their minds, all their lives, until they were two old ladies, lying side by side on their one big deathbed. She would – she knew the phrase – scare them shitless.
—Once upon a time, said Alina.
It was two days later. They sat in the playroom, in front of the bay window. The wind scratched the glass. They heard it also crying in the chimney. The baby lay asleep on Alina's lap. The little girls sat on the rug. They looked up at Alina.
—We're too old for once upon a time, said Ocean.