When the box came out, she could have sworn she saw Trix's sprig of holly fall from it. She turned her back and stared at the stones in the cairn, heaped in their hundreds, the labour of endless mornings.
'It's over,' Mrs Duggan said. 'Thanks be to God, they've found her. Just as you said, Shell. It's surely over now.'
'Come away now,' Miss Donoghue said. 'We'll leave them to it.'
They led her to a waiting car. She stumbled on a stray stone and looked back a last time. Father Rose's right hand was crossing the empty air. It's over, Shell. Whatever about his confession, Dad would go free. Her baby would be reburied. One day soon, the moment would be a memory.
But as she watched, the camera flashed again. And again. One of the men drove some stakes into the ground and ran a yellow tape around it. She saw the silhouette of Father Rose, his hands gesturing, then flying apart. Was he praying? Or protesting?
'What are they doing?' she whispered.
'Come on, Shell. Don't watch. Whatever it is, it's surely only a formality. It's over now.'
But it wasn't.
Father Rose came back to Mrs Duggan's house. He sat at the table, his fists clenched. Strange workings crossed his face.
'Is it over, Father?' Mrs Duggan said as she got the tea things out. 'Have they gone? Will they close the case against Shell?'
Shell fiddled with the biscuits on the flat plate, arranging them in an interlocking pattern. Chocolate, plain, chocolate.
'Will they let Joe go?'
Father Rose picked up a biscuit from the plate. He brought it halfway to his mouth, then put it back.
'I overheard them talking,' he said. 'They called it a crime scene.' He laid the biscuit back higgledy-piggledy on top of the others. Shell returned it to its original place, in the gap between two chocolate ones. 'They've taken the baby away. Under Molloy's orders. For tests, they say.'
Shell thought of sums and essays, exam papers lying face down on the desk, the wall clock ticking in the silent classroom. 'Tests?' she puzzled.
Father Rose nodded. 'To see how she died, they say.'
Her insides knotted. She thought of Jimmy cutting the cord, how'd they'd forgotten to clamp it in the two places as the body book instructed. The biscuits on the plate began to twirl, a brown and cream cartwheel, chocolate, plain, chocolate.
Miss Donoghue pressed her into a chair. Mrs Duggan put a warm cup into her palms. 'This is turning into a joke,' Miss Donoghue said to nobody in particular. She plumped herself down but didn't touch her tea. 'A bad joke.'
'I've to be down at Goat Island for five,' Father Rose muttered. He got up. 'It will be all right, Shell. It's just a formality. It'll be all right.'
After he left the kitchen grew dim. The baby slept. Miss Donoghue, Mrs Duggan and herself sat in the half-light, forgetting to turn on the lights. Tests. She saw the grey worm-like cord slithering around the baby and Jimmy with the scissors.
They'd broken up the ring of stones.
When the lads came in, full of noise, Shell vanished upstairs to the quiet of her bed. She got under the covers with her clothes on. She put her two fists to her eyelids to make the patterns happen. Don't draw them on us, Shell. Don't. Yellow explosions bobbed, floating downwards like tired clouds. From far away, the phone rang. Voices, exclamations filtered up the stairwell.
She didn't want to know.
Forty-two
In the night she listened to the sing-song breath of Trix by her side and Jimmy over on the camp-bed. She listened out for the first bird of the next day but the blackness was stuck and wouldn't shift. The silence was endless. The pages of Doyle's A-Z floated behind her eyelids. The baby was dead. Thanks be to God, Shell. The ring of stones was broken and they would say she'd killed it. And maybe she had, because she'd known about the clamping of the cord in two places and hadn't done it right.
But the next day, when she woke up, Trix had her head tucked under her armpit and she knew she hadn't killed her child. Not like Molloy made out. She'd not left her in a freezing cave to die. She'd come out dead like the Duggans' early calf. So what was Molloy doing with the body? And what was the world saying about her? What had the telephone calls of last night been about?
She woke Jimmy up as soon as the house stirred and dispatched him downstairs to eavesdrop on what the Duggans were saying when the children's backs were turned. Later in the morning he reported back to her.
'Did you hear anything?' she asked.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
He shook his head.
'Some spy. You're useless.'
'Mr Duggan's down with the cows. Trix has gone with him to see the calves. And Mrs Duggan's in the kitchen cooking. With the baby. The others are out the yard.'
'So?'
'So. 'S nothing to overhear. Mrs Duggan'd hardly gab to the baby, would she? She wasn't on her own with Mr Duggan for even a minute.'
He'd a look of triumph on him, so she knew he'd found out something. 'Come on. Out with it.'
He drew from behind his back a copy of the local paper. ''S this,' he said. 'Today's. Mr Duggan fetched it from the village first thing. Then I saw him bury it in the fire pile.'
She grabbed it off him. Newsprint blurred then sharpened as she read an article emblazoned across page one. It made no sense. She read it again.
MYSTERY BABIES FOUND DEAD
An unnamed sixteen-year-old girl and her father are being questioned by the Gardai Siochana in Castlerock, County Cork, in connection with the deaths of two babies whose bodies have been found locally. One was discovered abandoned on a strand on Christmas Eve by a woman walking her dog. The other was dug up yesterday in a field in the vicinity of the girl's house, apparently on the evidence of the girl herself.
Superintendent Garda Dermot Molloy, who is in charge of the investigation, reports that the girl's father is being held in custody pending charges. He has now signed a fresh confession admitting to having killed both babies, who are believed to be twins. While the girl is said to be the twins' mother, the identity of the twins' father is yet to be divulged. 'The case has shocked this tiny community, where nothing of its kind has ever been heard of before,' said Superintendent Molloy. 'Infanticide is a terrible crime in a child-loving nation such as ours. My job is to see that the perpetrators feel the full force of the law.'
A team of top pathologists has arrived from Dublin to examine the babies. 'They will confirm that they are twins and how they died,' says Superintendent Molloy. 'And hopefully close the case.'
The strange words popped out. 'Vicinity'. 'Divulged'. 'Infanticide'. 'Perpetrators'. 'Pathologists'. She let the paper drop to the floor.
'Shell...' Jimmy said. 'Is it you they're talking about?'
She looked at his narrow white face with the freckles bobbing on it. 'On the evidence of the girl herself.' She flopped back on her pillow, laughing. God in heaven. 'Both babies, who are believed to be twins.' Hilarious. Delirious. She laughed some more. Soon she'd a stitch in her side.
'Jimmy,' she gasped. ''S me all right.'
He frowned then smiled, as if he wanted to join the joke but didn't know how.
'Twins!' She hooted, cackling at the ceiling. The laughter clattered round the walls.
'Shush, Shell! Mrs Duggan'll hear downstairs.'
'Don't care if the dead hear. Twins.' She almost choked. 'Can you pinch me?'
He pinched her.
'Harder.'
He got a good chunk of flesh on her upper arm and pinched again.
'Did one baby come out, or two, Jimmy?'
'One.'
'Sure?'
'Certain.'
'Swear?'
'I can count, can't I?'
'Can you?'
'I got nine out of ten for my last test, Shell.'
'Twins!' She howled, hugging her side.
'Don't, Shell. Don't laugh any more. Please.'
'They'll find another baby tomorrow. Then it'll be triplets.'
'Shush!'
'It's a pantomime, Jimmy. The case of the Coolbar babies. The next one will turn up in the priests' house.' She squealed and coughed with streaming eyes. 'OK, Jimmy. I'll not laugh any more.' She swallowed and pressed her lips flat. Twins. Tears from the laughing had gone down her cheeks. She brushed them off and got out of bed.
''S not really funny, is it?' Jimmy said.
The baby in the field, the baby in the cave. The tide ebbing and flowing. The dark encrusted walls. Mirth left her like air from a pricked balloon. She shook her head. 'No, Jimmy.' She hunted round for her clothes. ''S not funny at all. It's that Molloy. He's after me.'
'But Shell,' Jimmy said. 'I don't understand.'
'What don't you understand?'
'If you had one baby, where did the other come from?'
'Who knows? Maybe the storks dropped it there.'
Jimmy stuck out his cheek with his tongue, tent-like. 'Huh.'
'Or maybe--'
'Maybe what?'
She didn't reply. Distracted, she pulled on jeans beneath her nightdress and brushed her hair. She sprayed Je Reviens behind her ears. Her brain turned over, started to life, then died again, like the engine in Father Rose's car.
'Maybe nothing,' she said. 'God knows, I don't. Jimmy, I've to visit that crazed father of ours and see what he's confessed to this time. D'you want to come?'
'What? To see Dad?' Jimmy's tongue nearly popped through his cheek. His nostrils scrunched up. 'Nah.'
'Can't say I blame you. Now scoot so's I can finish dressing.'
Forty-three
Shell got out her powder-blue bag. She popped into it the miniature bottle of Powers which she'd found sitting forgotten at the back of Mrs Duggan's cupboard. I'd a mighty appetite for the venal sins. Hell in a glass, Shell. She'd heard of the DTs. Delirium Tremens. Declan used call them the Detox Terrors. They were the furies from hell, he said, bringing the things you most feared. He said when his uncle had had them he'd imagined snakes of vast proportions had returned to Ireland to torment him. If that's what Dad had, she thought, he'd confess to anything. Quads. Quins. Maybe a drop of whiskey would bring him round.
Rain turned to sleet as she and Mrs Duggan walked up through the town to the garda station. The wind blew the flakes forward and up, into their eyes as they walked up the main street and turned up the hill on the zigzag path. They waited in the draughty reception. The guards dropped in and out, passing her, staring, turning away. She's the one, she felt them thinking. The girl in the headlines. Infanticide. Perpetrator. The force of the law.
A guard approached, nodding. 'He agrees to see you. If you follow me.'
'Are you sure you don't want me there?' Mrs Duggan said.
Shell shook her head. 'I've to tackle him alone,' she said.
The guard led her down the stairwell, along the corridor to the last door on the left: the room of frosted glass. He showed her in.
'Call me, if you need me,' he instructed. He closed the door and stood outside to wait.
Dad's face was on the table. He didn't move as she drew near.
She turned to check the guard wasn't looking through the glass panel in the door. Then she drew the miniature from her powder-blue bag.
'Dad,' she said, 'I brought you this.' She set it down near his hand, but kept her own fingers around it.
He didn't look up at first. Then an eye fastened on the tiny bottle of lemon-brown. His fingers inched towards it. He stared shiftily around the cell. She pulled it back.
'Dad,' she said, 'I'll let you have it. If.'
'If?' His voice was a croak. 'If what?'
'If you retract your confession. About the twins.'
'If.' It was more of a hiss than a word. He shut his eyes. His brows bulged and she could see a vein in his forehead throb. He gave a grim huh-huh-huh, the laugh of a fiend. His hand darted at hers.
'Give that here.' He'd snatched it out of her hands before she could stop him.
'Dad! Only if you retract.'
'Retract?' He squeezed the bottle, shook it, turned it upside down. He brought it up to his nose, as if he could smell the whiskey through the glass. His tongue ran round his lips. He held it so hard, she thought the glass would crack.
'Git-behind-me,' he said through clenched teeth. 'Git, git, git.'
His fist pounded the table.
Shell jumped back as if he might explode.
He flung the bottle at the wall. It splashed like urine on the yellow paint.
The glass tinkled on the floor.
Shell froze. The guard didn't hear. The door was solid. 'Dad,' she gasped.
Another mask had come over his face, a look of strange beatitude. It reminded her of the pictures of the martyrs, when they'd arrows piercing their limbs and belly, or nails stuck through their wrists, and they were looking up to the sky in holy rapture.
'Shell,' he said, 'I did it.' He outstretched his arms to her. She'd no choice but to let him hug her. Her stomach shrank. Her mouth curdled. He'd not hugged her in living memory. She smelled his prison mustiness and sour breath. 'My own Shell.'
She wriggled from him as soon as she could. 'Dad. I'm sorry,' she faltered. She fed her hands around the table and sat down. God in heaven. What devil's got him now? His eyes settled on hers like calm lakes. 'I didn't mean to tempt you, Dad. Are you cross?'
'Cross?' His right forefinger touched his forehead, then his chest, then his two shoulders. He smiled. 'No.'
'Only you asked for the miniature. Last time.'
'Last time?'
'Don't you remember? When I visited last time?'
He waved a hand. 'All the days seem as one here, Shell. I've my rosary for counting. But time doesn't matter now.'
'You all right, Dad?'
'Never better, Shell. I'm in the hands of the Lord.'
She dropped her voice, leaned forward. 'I'm here to ask you something, Dad. Something important.'
A tiny ripple of annoyance passed over him. 'Nothing's important any more. What is it?'
'Your confession. About killing the babies. You must retract it.'
The annoyance passed. 'Oh, that.' His hand fluttered up, wafting her words away.
'But 's not true, Dad. You didn't kill them.'
'I did, Shell. I killed them all right.' He smote his chest. Through my fault, through my fault, through my own most grievous fault. 'Your man Molloy. He's the right idea.'
'But Dad, you didn't. You were in Cork. Doing the collections. Remember?'
'The collections?' His pupils went black and dull. They left Shell's gaze and landed on the wall, on the rectangle of light the window framed there. 'The collections?' His hand stroked the tabletop. 'After that night, the night of Holy Saturday, Shell, and the waking up in an empty house, I'd go to the city all right. I'd learned my lesson. Up and down the streets, walking, rattling the tin can. Doing the collections. Like you say. But then I'd spend it all, down at the harbour. You should see the place. It's a desolation, Shell, down by the river harbour. The women there, all kinds, all ages. Some only your age, Shell. Like that schoolfriend of yours, Bridie. As bold and brash as her. And I found a nice lady there. Peggy, she was called. A man has to have an outlet, Shell. A man like myself. But she charged me through the nose.'
She remembered the lipstick on the collars. She opened her mouth to say something. Dad and his Mary Magdalenes. It was beyond belief. No sound came out.
'It was the pink dress, Shell.'
'The pink dress?' She thought of it, folded beneath her bed. She was back at the dressing table, looking into the panel of mirrors, with the images of herself receding back into the world of spirits. Mam.
'Yourself wearing it. The pink dress.' He covered his eyes with his hands, digging them in like gouges. 'I should have got rid of it along with the rest. But I couldn't, Shell. It was the dress she wore the night she said she'd marry me. She'd never worn it since. It was unpolluted by the years.'
'The years?'
'The years of the drinking.'
His eyes
glistened in the dingy room.
'I don't understand, Dad,' Shell whispered. 'About the drink-what's the draw of it?'
'Ah, Shell. It's not the first sip, or the second. But the third. It hums in the head. It smiles in the belly. It's like wings opening in the soul.' His gaze had an ocean of sadness in it. His voice dropped. 'After she died, Shell, everything of hers made me ill. Ill from the memory of her, watching me from the sickbed, reproaching me. She never said a word. But her eyes, Shell. They said it all. The years. The lies. The sessions. And the time I hit her. It was only the once, but I'd failed her. From that bad night to the day she died. Her eyes following me, staring up from the bottom of the pint glass. Her clothes, her records, her music books, I burned them all. You, Jimmy and Trix were at school when I did it. I had a mighty bonfire in the back field. The flames licked up to the sky, taller than me. I threw them on and watched them burn. The skirts, the slips, the pants. The lipsticks, the scarves, the Sunday hats. Gone in seconds. And the whiskey warming me as the ash flew. And the smell of her, going up in smoke. But not the pink dress. Not that.'
'You kept it back?' Shell whispered.
He nodded, eyes shut, far away. 'She danced with me in it the night she said she'd marry me. Coolbar'd won the hurling league and there was celebrating in the village. Stack's was heaving. I bought her a drink of port and lemon and I asked her. The band was tuning up, the notes like fingernails scratching the board. She took a sip. And she looked me in the eye and said Yes. Yes, Shell. We danced away the night. I twisted her round, rocking and rolling. Faster and faster. The walls whirling. People shouting. We danced so quick we nearly rose off the ground, with a crowd around us, cheering, clapping. There was nobody but us that night. Me, her. Her face as I swung her, Shell. Her lips pink like the dress. Her eyes like suns beaming. She was happy, Shell. I'd her two hands in mine, crossed over, wrist over wrist. I'd asked her to marry me and she'd said yes. We were happy. She. Me. Her hair spinning like ribbons. There was nobody else in the room that night. Nobody.'