Dermot Bolger - The Woman’s Daughter

In the glade below the other children call as they run down towards the sparkling water. Johnny smiles as he stands with his net, barefoot in the stream, and she is surprised by how small he looks surrounded by the gangs of boys. A fish is sighted and they stumble clumsily towards it, their feet churning up muck through which it vanishes. Midges throb in the blue air, a parent shouts from the road, an older girl lifts up her dress and splashes across an overhung pool.

Summer pours through the twisting branches, the greens and browns mirrored in the stream, and she wishes they were all gone and there was just Johnny and her climbing down across the stones in the direction of the sea. They are all her servants inside her dream world. She lies like a princess on the bank as handmaidens splash around her, and in the evening she will bathe alone in the cool water while two maids wait with the silken cloak they shall drape about her shoulders. Johnny smiles and climbs up beside her. They hold hands, with their bare feet distorted in the water.

Do you know what I hate? I cannot stand to see you lying near the edge of the bed. If you stay in the centre you cannot fall. That’s sensible, and sense costs nothing. When I was young I was taught that you always left a space beside you for your guardian angel to rest. She was with you through the day and watched over you at night. I’d sleep with Johnny curled up beside me in a ball and our angels hovered on both sides never needing to rest. We were not supposed to talk but we did, often for hours about anything. Away from the crowd he always seemed bigger with all the wisdom of those two extra years. Often to tease me he’d put his feet up against my stomach and begin to roll me over towards the edge of the bed.

‘I’ll tell on you, I’ll tell, you’ll crush my guardian angel,’ I’d whisper urgently, and he’d giggle and roll me back to him with his feet. One night when he pushed me, I just seemed to keep rolling like the bed was being pulled down towards the floor. I remember the panic, with his hands trying to grab me and then falling into the black space with no angel there.

It was daylight when I woke in the depths of my parents’ bed and when I put my hand up to my head, it throbbed as if the bandage there had been strapped on too tight. It felt like a giant hand that was trying to crush my skull down through the mattress and I kept on screaming until my mother came. She had to lie in beside me to make me stop, just the pair of us in that double bed. And I curled up against her warmth and slept like I have never slept again, in that bed I used to crawl into after waking at night in our old flat. It was like being in the womb again, all black and safe, all loved and warm.

I was alone when I woke next and I could hear noises in the kitchens and backyards all down the row. The sound of people at tea and dogs barking across gardens so that I felt scared and forgotten, alone in the darkness. I wanted her back in there beside me, I screamed and screamed to make her come. And then I heard the creaking footsteps, one, two, three, four, the bogeyman climbing the stairs, only it was my father who opened the door to shout for me to stay quiet and not be disturbing the neighbours. I lay by myself feeling cut off, like Mrs Colgan’s retarded son up the street who was kept in the house all day and who I only saw once being chased by his mother when he escaped.

I must have slept again because it was the door opening that woke me and old Mrs Whelan, the nurse from around the corner, came into the room. On the landing I could hear my mother whispering as she sent Johnny out to the shops for biscuits. Mrs Whelan called me a brave little girl and held one hand on my shoulder as she pulled the plaster on the edge of the bandage off with one long tear. After she had bathed and rebandaged the cut and was gone, Johnny was sent up with the rest of the biscuits. He sat on the edge of the bed, apologetic and grateful that I hadn’t told on him. But I would never have betrayed him no matter what he did to me. Indeed, the more he would have done, the prouder I would have been to be able to forgive him and prove myself worthy to be his companion. I gave him two of the chocolate biscuits with a kiss and ate the rest in the darkness beneath the blankets. The next morning I woke up in my old bed still clutching the plastic wrapper.

In dreams the bed always seems to slope, the darkness waiting to claim her. Walls observe her climbing the stairs, coat-hangers sway behind stationary doors. Her father brings home a builder who tries to explain the changing temperatures in different rooms. Late one night they are awoken by her mother’s cry. Her father runs to the doctor in the next street. He drives the few hundred yards in his car to assert his social position.

She makes her First Communion in a net of white, orange candles weep heavenwards like tears defying gravity, the scrubbed knees of segregated boys gleam from the right-hand pews. She races down the steps towards the Dublin Evening Mail photographer, then watches her Saviour being crucified in the darkness of the State cinema, gently rattling the accumulated coins in her small white purse.

After school, Kitty and herself walk stiffly between the Stations of the Cross, with two lace handkerchiefs covering their heads. Kneeling at the grotto in the car-park they swap stories. The man who had raved that there was no God and ran up the aisle of the church without genuflecting, clutching a loaded revolver. And when he fired straight at the tabernacle, the bullet hit it and bounced back right through his heart.

Or the man in the house who’d renounced Christ and found that all the doors were locked. The calendar on the wall had a picture of Christ and that very date marked with a red circle. He tore it off and the next month had the same picture and date marked in red, and the next and the next. They found him dead on the floor with twelve different scenic views of Ireland lying torn from the calendar at his feet.

The wooden hatch slides shut and the mesh of light is gone. She leaves the darkness of the confession box and says her penance kneeling on the stone step of the side altar decked with candles for people’s intentions. Should I die now, my soul would fly straight to Heaven. My guardian angel appear in silver and gold to guide me home.

I have the scar still under my hair. If I shaved my head you could see it. Somehow, life seemed different afterwards. I began to stammer when asked questions in school. The words stuck like bits of hot coal in my throat. But Johnny was always there to protect me, to shout back at the girls chanting my nickname, to watch me through the wire dividing the two playgrounds. When break was over, the bell would ring and each class would stand to attention in line. The gulls would go mad clawing for bread as we lifted our arms up and down to each command barked in Irish.

Four years ago this Christmas, Kitty Murphy, or Katherine as she calls herself now, came home from England. She called to the door and we both stood there. I couldn’t let her in with you upstairs, even though I desperately wanted to trust her. It was hard to believe who she was, thirty-three then like myself, but so sophisticated looking. She has three children now and a husband, a civil servant in Leeds. After a few minutes I just wanted her to go, I became suspicious like I always do. I muttered and stared down at my feet until I drove her off and closed the door. Then I stood in the hall and realized what I had wanted to say, you’re the only friend I have, don’t leave me, help me to get out of here.

I went up to my parents’ room and stared in the wardrobe mirror, the same style of clothes I’ve worn for seventeen years, the hair combed down the same way, that face that had forgotten the feel of make-up, my short podgy figure. I could be any age up to fifty, a curio to be stared at in the street, and behind me I could see Kitty’s form in the mirror like a whole life which I had lost out on. I hurt you that night although I didn’t mean to, it was just a rage that I could not control. And even afterwards when I had to wash the blood off, never once did you cry out.