Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

I met Jim Gildea the sergeant a few days later, in the Unthanks’ bakery. He looked down at me as I waited for my sliced pan and he flinched; my face was still in ribbons. He didn’t want to ask me and I didn’t want him to. What happened you, Lily? I fell, Jim. I could see the relief on his face, and the knowing in his eyes of my lie. He was grateful for my lie; he’d think of it again.

THERE ARE rakes of men around here that have called to me. I’ve had years of eyes at my door. Eyes that can’t meet mine, full of hunger when they arrive and full of guilt as they leave. Eyes full of laughter, thinking I’m only a joke; eyes full of tears. I’ve seen eyes full of hate, and I never knew why those men hated me. I’d never blame a man for calling to me. Men have to do what they have to do. Nature overpowers them. Some of the old farmers were lovely, once you got over the smell. They had a smell you could nearly talk yourself into liking. I even bathed one or two of them — they loved it — like big auld babas, splashing around and grinning up at me with their soft gums and their hard dicks. Cow shit is nowhere near as bad as dog shit, or human shit. A fella called to my door one time, hardly able to stand up for drink, with a toughie English accent and shit all over the tail of his shirt. He must have wiped his arse with it, in some dirty toilet. I ran him. I’d never be that stuck.

I was only about eleven when men started looking at me. There was something about me that they couldn’t stop looking at. I grew up early. But lots of young girls grew up early in them days. There was something more about me that drew men’s eyes. It was years and years before I knew what the word for that thing was. I was wanton . I had a wanton look about me. Do I still? I don’t know in the hell. Hardly, I’d say. A young fella that I met on a lane in the forestry one summer’s day told it to me years ago. I was looking for burdock; he was striding along with his white legs sticking out from his baggy short pants and a little knapsack on his narrow back. I had my eldest fella, John-John, with me; he was only small, whining and snotting along beside me, trying to copy the song I was singing and making me laugh. His father was a real gas card, too. I heard one time that he came a cropper beyond in Liverpool, off of a motorbike. There were too many years gone by for me to care.

I brought the skinny townie back to the cottage with the promise of a bag of mixed herbs from my little garden. He leapt on me the minute I had John-John put away into the back room to play with his toys. The babies were sound asleep. Christ, you’re wanton , he gasped, as he finished, not even a minute later. I’m what, now? Then he told me what it meant, slowly and kindly, like I was a simple child. He called again from time to time over the years. I think I made him feel bigger and smarter than he was. He always took away a bag of herbs or a jar of preserves with him. That’s what he was leaving the money for, in his own mind.

I ONLY EVER refused men who really and truly disgusted me. Men who you knew would prefer to force you even if you were willing. I only refused a good man once, because I knew his goodness well and was afraid of blackening his mind against himself. He had himself beaten out of shape. He didn’t know himself. He was trying to be cold and unfeeling and bad, but he wasn’t able to be that way; he was full of kindness that he thought was weakness. That’s the way he was reared. He was pouring drink into himself, hoping he’d wake up different. He tried it on with me outside the Frolics bar below in Carney. I’d cycled out that far and was waiting for an offer of a spin home in a farmer’s car. A ride for a ride; it’s nearly biblical. I knew if I went with him it’d be the sorriest thing he ever did. I knew he was stone cracked about his wife. She was expecting at the time. I very nearly let him do it to me. I really wanted to. A few years later I’d have done it out of spite. But I pushed him off of me and belted him into the balls. I used to see him coming from Mass for years and years after that, with his wife and his two boys and his little girl. I don’t think he knew me. I don’t think he really saw me that time in Carney.

THERE’S PLENTY calls me a witch. It doesn’t bother me. I haven’t aged well; I look a lot older than I am. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It pains me everywhere. It has me curled over, balled up, all smallness and sharp edges. I’m like a cut cat half the time. Men never call here any more. My children never call to me, even. They’re pure solid ashamed of me, after all I done for them. My daughters are beyond in England. My second fella, Hughie, is married to a strap of a wan that looks at me like she scraped me off of the sole of her shoe. They had a little girl I only seen once. Lord, my heart aches just to hold that child, blood of my blood. Millicent, they called her. Milly and Lily. Wouldn’t it be lovely? My third boy is a solicitor in the city and my John-John is knocking around, never too far away, nor never too near.

He took a woeful set against me altogether, my John-John. The others just don’t bother with me, but John-John arrives down the very odd time, roaring and shouting out of him, crying and shaking. He’s gone to be a terror for the drink, anyway. His looks are leaving him; his face is getting puffed out and pasty-looking. It breaks my heart to see his lovely strong features crumbling away. I stand in the doorway and pull my cardigan tight around me. He shoves in past me sometimes, and takes what money does be in my jar on the top shelf over the fireplace. He doesn’t know I leave that money there especially for him. I expected too much from him; I know that. My John-John, my little man. I destroyed the boy by seeing too early the man inside in him. I think he thought he had to hate me to save himself.

I DO SEE that boy of the Mahons nearly every day, passing down the road to his father’s house. I hear the spinning heart on their gate, creaking slowly around. The sound floats up along the road to me, waved along by the leaves of the trees. It puts me in mind of my own dry joints; my burning hip, my creaking knees. He’s beautiful, that boy, tall and fair-haired, like his mother. His auld father is a horrible yoke. He got all his mother’s goodness, that boy. He got no part of his father that I can see. Maybe there’s something inside in him that he got from his father, but he keeps it well hid. He always salutes me as he passes; he waves and smiles and calls me by my name. Oh, he’s solid gorgeous, so he is. I’d have married a boy like that if I hadn’t been so busy going around being wanton , so determined not ever to be bound to a man.

I remember his mother well. She used to give me the time of day, not like a lot more around here who had themselves elevated in their own minds to heights far, far above me. A few of them are starting to fall from their heights, now. I see them in the village, shaking their heads at each other in disbelief, blaming everyone else. I don’t know what she died of. I was fierce sad when I heard it. That boy was grown up at the time, but he came walking up the road looking like a small child, as pale as a ghost, with his eyes hollowed out from crying. He came into my kitchen that day and drank a sup of tea. Thanks Lily, thanks Lily, he kept saying. He’d fallen out with his mother, I knew that, but I didn’t say anything to him, only that she was gone home now and he’d see her again some day. He was weak from sadness and regret, which is the most horrible feeling of all. I kissed him on the cheek before he left. I wished blessings for him, the poor love. He married a lovely girl after.

THERE’S SOMETHING unspeakable about the attraction between a man and a woman. It can’t ever be explained. How is it that I could be so foolish for a big, fat mongrel of a man like Bernie McDermott? He did something to me whenever I saw him that made me weak in my body and mind. I wanted to please him more than I wanted to mind my children. I think if he’d asked me to throw one of them over the bridge and into the rushing weir, I’d nearly have done it. Except if it was John-John. I knew my last child was his from the first moment I felt him inside in me. He gave me hell from the start. I was up before the sun every morning, retching and crying and gasping for breath. I could hardly walk for nine months with the pains he caused me. My other children were pure solid neglected. Only for John-John they’d have melted away from the hunger and the dirt. Bernie McDermott never even noticed until I was the size of a house. Are you fuckin expecting? says he. I am, Bernie, says I. Fuck me, I thought you were just getting fat. How’ll you figure out which of your mountain men is the daddy? Says I, it’s you Bernie. Me? Ha ha ha! If you fell into a bed of nettles, how would you know which one stung you? I was with no one only you for near a year, I told him. He punched me into the stomach then, and pulled over the dresser in temper. All my crockery was smashed, and my lovely Child of Prague my mother gave me. John-John ran from the back room to protect me and Bernie McDermott slapped him right back across the floor and in through the door again. He came here no more bar the time he called to make ribbons of my face over naming him inside in the hospital.